Louise Douglas

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  • Congratulations to a Yankee Legend

    Congratulations today to Mariano Rivera who earned his 602nd save  last night in a game against the Minnesota Twins, moving him one ahead of Trevor Hoffman. As Hoffman retired before the start of the season, that gap will only increase until 41 year old Rivera calls it a day too.

    It’s not a record that will stay unbeaten, like Cal Ripken Jr’s streak, but it’s definitely phenomenal. As well as his 602 regular season saves, he also has 42 post-season saves, which I think would qualify him for inclusion on the list of greatest post-season closers of all time, even if playing for the Yankees has given him a lot more chances than other closers.

    Reading all the stories about number 602 reminded me of this video from when Trevor Hoffman visited the MLB Fan Cave in June (when he still had the record).

    I also read this tweet, which is pretty interesting:

    http://twitter.com/#!/Tom_Singer/status/115901858429681664

    Not that this means that K-Rod would have any chance of getting close to the record, even if he can keep playing at a high level for long enough, he may need to move away from the Brewers to get himself more save opportunities.

    This year has been a big year for milestones. Here’s the ones that I can think of from the top of my head, but I know that there have been more:

    • Mariano Rivera – 602 saves
    • Derek Jeter – 3000 hits
    • Jim Thome – 600 home runs
    • Paul Konerko – 2000 hits
    • Juan Pierre – 2000 hits
    • Michael Young – 2000 hits
    • Tim Wakefield – 200 wins

    You probably know that I’m not a Yankees fan, I don’t like the fact that they have so much money that they can afford pretty much any player they want (as long as the player wants them too, *cough* Cliff Lee *cough*). But no matter how much I dislike the team, I respect the players who play the game the right way like Rivera and Jeter, and I think it’s really cool (and nowadays extremely unusual) when a player plays their entire career with a single team.

    I would say it’s been a good year for baseball all round – it’s just a shame there are only 135 games left of the regular season, and that my team were not quite as ‘All-In’ as expected.

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  • 3 Strikes, They’re out?

    After a rather busy, but very enjoyable weekend, I sat down to catch up on baseball for the first time since Friday night. The White Sox are now on a 7 game losing streak, putting us 14.5 games out of first place, and 5 games under .500. Since my last post about the Sox, we’ve been officially eliminated from postseason contention, and it seems like right now, the team has lost any kind of ‘oomph’.

    standings

    I would have thought they would be playing for pride by now, especially some of the team that have not been contributing as much this year (Dunn, Rios, I’m talking to you…), but the last few games have made it look like they are just looking forward to going home for the winter. The rookies that have come up from Charlotte have been doing very well since the September call-ups, but I think Ozzie is still playing the veterans too much, maybe out of respect, maybe out of loyalty, who knows?!

    I’ve read a lot of rumours that Ozzie will be moving to the Marlins when they move stadiums and become the Miami Marlins next year. I’m unsure what I think about this right now. The most recent rumours are that we were looking to trade him for players like Logan Morrison. If this was true, I think I’d be more okay with it. I love Ozzie, and most of the time I like his management style, but I find the constant disagreements and rumours of infighting with Ken Williams quite distracting.

    start_the_trade_talk_ozzie_guillen_for_logan_morrison

    I know something needs to happen before the start of next season, but how drastic it will be, we’ll just have to wait and see! I just hope that my favourite players (Paulie, Beckham, AJ, Buehrle, Humber) are still with us next season, so I can see them on my trip to Chicago, although I’ll be writing more about that soon when I’ve got dates sorted out!

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  • Now Reading: Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre

    Jon Richardson’s book was just as I expected, honest, a little grumpy and completely hilarious. The book was pretty much just a stream of consciousness, and there were a lot of times reading the book that I found myself nodding in agreement with what he was saying. It was a lot like his stand-up or the radio show he used to do but a lot more frank – it’s refreshing that he’s not embarrassed to just tell it like it is.

    The next book I’m reading is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I was bought it for Christmas last year, but it’s never worked it’s way to the top of the pile. Last time I was at the cinema I saw an advert for the new film adaptation, so I decided now was as good a time as any to read it. I probably won’t go to the cinema to see it (too expensive nowadays!), but it will be good to have read the book before it comes out on DVD.

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  • Walking off with the White Sox season?

    Last night was one of the rare occurences where a White Sox game starts early enough for me to watch all of it. Although now I kind of wish I didn’t! It was looking so promising, a 3 run homer by Alexei, then back to back jacks by De Aza and Morel. But typical of this year’s White Sox season, we still managed to give up an 8-1 lead and lose 9-8 on a walk off home run by Miguel Cabrera.

    alejandro-deaza-3rd-sep

    It had to be against the Tigers too, moving us to 7.5 games back, and 1 game back of the Indians. It’s gonna be a struggle to make anything of this season I think, but at least we have now seen some promising young talent coming up from Charlotte and proving themselves better (at least for now) than some of the multi-million dollar contracts on the team. That said, I’m not giving up hope until that ‘E’ appears on the standings.

    Chris Sale

    There was also a 36 minute rain delay in the game last night – although how it went from 98° to torrential rain, I have no idea. Seeing fans scurrying from their seats to run for cover while the umpires let the game carry on was pretty amusing – although I can’t imagine it’s much fun for the players when they are getting absolutely soaked.

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  • One Day, One Great Actor, One Dodgy Accent

    I went to see One Day last night. Having read (and really enjoyed) the book, I was in two minds whether to go see the film or not. Surprisingly, the film was fantastic. They kept it quite true to the book (David Nicholls wrote the screenplay), although trying to fit 20 different years into the same film meant that a lot of the detail of the story was missed.

    The best part of the film was Jim Sturgess as Dexter – he played the part exactly as I imagined it when I read it, and just as in the book, you can’t help but like Dexter even when you’re not supposed to. He got the last few years of the story spot on – I actually found some of the scenes quite difficult to watch.

    Rafe Spall was a good choice to play Ian, he had the look, and the ‘comedy’ was just right, I don’t think they showed as much of him in the film as I would have expected, but I guess that’s what happens when you have to condense the book into less than 2 hours. Although at 1hr 47 mins, it’s not that long, so they probably could have made it longer.


    So that brings us to Anne Hathaway. I usually like her, but I think the directors of the film made the wrong decision picking her to play a girl from Leeds. They should have either had her do a London accent, or just no accent at all. Her accent swung from a ridiculously terrible attempt at a broad Yorkshire accent, to sounding vaguely Scottish, to sounding like she’s not even trying an accent at all. If I’m honest, I would have preferred them to pick a northern actress for the part (but maybe I’m just biased).

    Now if you’ve read the book, you know how it ends (I’m not going to spoil it if you haven’t). I thought that they might have changed the ending, but I’m very glad they didn’t. Although when ‘it’ happened, even though I was expecting it, I was still as shocked as I was when I read it in the book.

    I think when it comes out on DVD, I’ll probably watch it again and see if it’s as good the second time round. If you’ve seen the film and read the book, let me know what you think – was it what you expected?

    If you’re interested, here is the film trailer:

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  • Now Reading: Jon Richardson – It’s Not Me, It’s You

    We Were The Mulvaneys was definitely not one of the best books that I have read recently. The story was good, focusing on the falling apart (and eventual putting back together) of a American family following the events of one night. It just took a long time to get going, and didn’t really capture my attention fully until around 250 pages in (out of about 450 in total). There was a lot of description involved in setting up the story, which meant that I found it hard to get ‘involved’, or to feel ‘attached’ to the characters, like I tend to do in my favourite books.

    The next book I am reading is by my favourite comedian, Jon Richardson. When I first started work, he did a Sunday morning radio show with Russell Howard, and I used to listen to the podcasts on my way to work. They used to talk about such random things, but made me laugh so much that I’m sure I got strange looks from everyone else on the bus. I didn’t know he  had a book out until I saw on Twitter that he was doing a book signing,  so I was straight on Amazon to buy it. It looks like it’s going to be a funny book, about his OCD and how it makes it hard for him to find a ‘significantly tidy other‘. As he describes on the back of the book, it is ‘an essential guide to what you do wrong and why it irritates him so much‘.

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  • USA to UK…via Iceland?

    My new shirts from the MLB Shop finally arrived yesterday morning. I’d had to contact MLB about where they had gone, as it had been 6 weeks, and according to the tracking page they had left the USA 6 times. I found out that the reason it took so long was that it had been sent to Reykjavik, Iceland by mistake – not sure how that could have happened!

    On a side note, the customer service from MLB was excellent, every email was responded to really quickly, and every response was exceptionally polite. Much better than the shipping company, who didn’t even bother to respond to my email.

    I ordered 5 new shirts, including two of the Nike ‘Hair-itage’ shirts – Ozzie Guillen and Brian Wilson. My favourite one is the Brian Wilson one – fear the beard! I decided the black shirt with the orange beard was a little less in your face than the bright orange shirt with the big black beard. I also bought 3 Texas Rangers shirts (including a Josh Hamilton one – my favourite Ranger).

    brian-wilson

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  • Baseball or Ballet?

    baseball-or-ballet

    Nice grab, didn’t catch the runner though…

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  • Philippians 4:4

    Part of this bible verse popped into my head on the way home from work tonight:

    Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

    It’s highlighted and marked in my bible as it’s one of my favourites, and I’m glad that it came into my head today, as I think it was needed. Philippians 4 is one of my favourite chapters, and also contains my favourite verse, 4:13

    I can do all things through God who gives me strength.

    I got an email tonight from YouVersion, telling me ‘Great work keeping up with your reading plan‘. I’m guessing it’s just a standard system generated email, as it should really have said ‘Get your act together and catch up‘.

    I’ve not been doing too well keeping up to it at the moment – I’ve not had time before work, and get too distracted at lunch time to concentrate on what I’m reading. I’m going to start getting up a little earlier to give me time to read and absorb. I’m currently about 30 days behind, but I’m hopeful that I can catch up.

    I’m really enjoying reading through the whole Bible, I’m finding a lot of verses that I’ve either never read before, or have read and not taken in, so I’m looking forward to continuing and making some progress.

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  • 26 Tuesdays of Awesome Music!

    One of my favourite artists, Ron Pope, is currently doing an awesome ’26 Tuesdays of Music’ project. I signed up for it in June, and the emails have been coming through every Tuesday since 5th July. The first week was a special treat with 5 songs included, and every week since then I’ve had an email in my inbox with a new song waiting to be downloaded.

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    It’s a brilliant way of releasing new music, and I love that because I signed up in June, I don’t have to pay for the songs each week, so it seems like I’m getting new music for nothing. Some of the songs have been completely different to the previous albums (Got My Mojo Working is a particular new favourite), but I also love the other songs, like the new version of I’m Yours.

    If you want to check out this project, take a look at his website. You can also follow him on Twitter. If you want to know what he’s like, here’s a brill cover of Firework by Katy Perry that he did with The District:

    All I can say is that I’m really looking forward to the next 18 Tuesdays of new music, and keeping my fingers crossed he’ll come and play in the UK!

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