I’ve been trying to take this approach with my 5 year old and assume he’s fundamentally intelligent. I always thought those books with a little circle and a number to tell you what age you can read it at weren’t quite right, so it’s nice hearing you confirm that suspicion. We’re currently reading through The Wind in the Willows, ironically enough, and The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla is sitting on the shelf waiting to be opened next. I grew up with the most meager exposure to literature, so this all is just as exciting for me finding good books to read to my son.
Things looking dire for the Orioles. They will need to tap into '04 Red Sox mojo. What adjustment do you think the Orioles have to make to overcome what the Rangers done to Orioles pitching to get all those walks? I believe it was 3-3 in the regular season.
The walks came from rusty pitching, not from Rangers adjustments. Game 2 was a giveaway. I’m afraid it all depends on Baltimore actually playing up to their talents. This whole bye business doesn’t work for baseball. Yeah, Atlanta got lucky on a Trey Turner error and a hanging breaking ball, but all three of the 100-win teams have looked like they’re just coming out of hibernation.
In addition to some of the inspiring authors of children literature mentioned by DBH the interview, in my childhood (and later in my life) I greatly enjoyed reading Astrid Lindgren (the Queen!), Selma Lagerlöf, Michael Ende, Kipling, Eduard Uspensky (whose stories, ironically, are emanation of goodness, while the author himself was a terrible person. It’s seems like he poured all his light in his books and left nothing for himself.), Jules Verne, Gianni Rodari, Mark Twain, several Bulgarian authors and probably many more I cannot remember right now.
Despite my enormous respect for DBH’s literary tastes, I would say that graphic novels should not be written off entirely as a serious genre. I used to look at them haughtily, but in my thirties I was acquainted with such works as Persepolis, Maus, Blankets, Sandman, and some of Alan Moore’s graphic novels (From Hell, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen), and I must say that all of them are actually not a bad literature (tailored, of course, for their specific environment. If you pull the text out of the comic form, it will be incoherent at best). This is also true for writing in other despised hybrid genres such as video games. For instance, the writing in a game such a Planescape: Torment puts to shame most of modern fantasy literature.
There are dozens of truly accomplished graphic novels. No Japanese person would agree with David, just for starters. Video games, though, are a bridge too far. A bombed-out bridge negotiated by a first-person shooter in a firefight with aliens.
You lot are talking about books like Persepolis and Maus, but I took the question as referring to comic books. Even then, I’m not a fan of things like Sandman.
I think both Persepolis & Maus are overrated. Sandman is well-crafted junk. I just know artists like Jack Kirby were integral to the development of my imagination. Without comics I’d probably be a mid-level scholar publishing unread essays on Wallace Stevens.
I can’t say. I’ve never been able to get through Maus or Persepolis. The whole genre I find laborious and dull; neither good visual art nor good prose. To me it is to literature or film as tattooing is to the plastic arts.
Maus is also probably the most misunderstood comic ever published. It's marketed by the people who put medals on the front of children's books as being "about the Holocaust," but it's really about Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, a deeply unpleasant human being who also happens to be a Holocaust survivor.
Your one of the only Nipponophiles not obsessed with ghibli films today, a true rarity. I don’t know much about contemporary Japanese art either tbh I’ve only seen 2 films by Miyazaki.I do like the art style though atleast.
Not to spoil it, but the edited book of essays on anime that Rob De La Noval and I have overseen (and will hopefully be depositing this month) opens with a quote from Miyazaki that is more or less about how he hates anime.
I've tried to like anime many times and just can't get into it. Love Miyazaki though except for Porco Rosso, couldn't get into that one for some reason. Also, I wouldn't rate spirited away as his best. I'm more partial to nausicca and Mononoke
Most graphic novels began their lives as serialized comic books, and were collected into graphic novels later on following standard industry practice of of bringing together specific story arcs under one cover. The development of graphic novels as a distinct art form postdates most of the more celebrated examples of the genre (Watchmen, Maus, Sandman, etc.).
By way of reply to this whole thread, I was born in '95 and raised on a steady diet of comics, sci fi, fantasy, anime, and video games, and I've kept these interests alive into adulthood (partially by way of rebellion against an adulthood started too early, but all the same). Acknowledging that several of these things are not everyone's cup--I know they're not David's--I will say that in my own case I'm unlikely to have pursued study in the things I did without their influence.
I will never understand the appeal of comic books and video games, but I have nothing against science fiction or fantasy, if they’re done well. There are plenty of books in both genres that I like. Really, I don’t read according to genre.
Comics, for me at least, are wonderful disruptions of genre because of how many different things they can play with; I also think they do a good job of thinking through modern cosmology with mythic spectacles. Video games have mattered less to me than to many of my peers, but a couple of them got me through grad school (Zelda in particular). I suspect this is a generational thing: when I was growing up, gaming was the coveted prize to ask one's deities for. I never had to do quite as much cajoling for comics.
I don't really play anymore. In fact, I tried, but the attempt was perfunctory and I quickly sold my system. Having said that I too loved games with good stories, which for me, were Zelda, Halo, BioShock series, Mass Effect series, Dragon Age series, etc.
Gaming has only grown in popularity since then. I read somewhere that it is now bigger than sports and movie industry combined. Especially with MMORPGs and mobile gaming it liberated itself from the shell of nerdiness. Obama personally contributed bringing the gaming to the mainstream by using in-game campaign adverts and playing some games himself. These days you can even see Elon Musk's streaming his Diablo 4 play and he is far from the only avid gamer among celebrities.
When I was a teenager, I liked Dune, despite the horrid prose--though even then I recognized that, behind its appearance of imaginative originality, it was really just a hotchpotch of Lawrence of Arabia, Aldous Huxley at his most psychedelic, and a Rafael Sabatini romance about a deposed Duke leading a ragtag army of outlaws in a battle to reclaim his throne from a wicked usurper. Unfortunately, the following novels were bad, so apparently it was a one-off feat of inspired pastiche.
Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus may not really qualify, and again I like it despite the incompetent style.
I'll think about whether anything else occurs to me.
I thought that you would have also liked Frankenstein, A Brave New World (you already mentioned Huxley), Klara and the Sun, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a number of works by Philip K. Dick, Strugatsky brothers, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut. I considered mentioning some novels by Dan Simmons and Orson Scott Card, but Michael will probably skin me alive. And I am going to bet my house that you (rightfully) cannot stand Heinlein on every level (moral and aesthetic).
There have been some good examples of video games taking advantage of their inherent interactivity to tell unique stories--Bioshock's creative attack on Ayn Rand was kind of a turning point for me in realizing the kind of social criticism they can do if the people in charge have a vision.
As with anything, it depends on who's doing it, what for, and why. Less socially significant, but no less inspired, there's also a game where you can be a goose that bothers the denizens of an English village.
It’s absolutely an accident a birth. We tend to retain an affection for those forms, whatever they may be, that first give us a taste of the transcendent — and that some have first sampled it in as inescapable and capacious a medium as digital entertainment isn’t surprising. So go forth and create in honor of where you came from — the flower will smile down on any bit of its ancestral mulch!
I don’t blame you. In my mind, video games, at their best and in themselves (as opposed to what they necessarily borrow from the other arts) are primarily about finding expressive,surprising, or joyful ways of navigating digital spaces. For those already immersed in a digital space, some of these games can certainly be judged more beautiful wastes of time than the majority. But there’s plenty to say in favor of remaining relatively unplugged.
Willful denial and refusal to learn is the only way you can be assured you’ll always be right it’s the best response towards life and one I frequently take and recommend
I'm ashamed to confess that degenerate brutes that we are over here (in Europe, that is) we neither understand nor follow baseball. Since you believe in universal salvation I can only hope that at the end of time we can be forgiven for preferring the oafish physicality of soccer to the graceful sublimity of baseball.
I thought that my opinion of Hart family has already reached the upper possible limits, but now it rocketed in the stratosphere. I am myself a Liverpool fan.
True, but, at the same time, you will agree that there must be a place of (at least temporary) chastisement/correction for those who think golf superior to baseball. Otherwise, chaos is come again.
Looking forward to listening to this. You ought to see if you can’t land some speaking engagement st the new BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Jersey, given the importance of that tradition, nisi fallor, to one of your talks with Roland.
It's been a minute since I've read Roland, but don't you guys talk through a handful of Swaminarayan saints? Or am I confusing that text with something else?
Perhaps I’m a bit late to the thread. But I always felt that Calvin and Hobbes raised the comic strip to the level of art - one that works equally well for children and adults.
First, I'd like to apologize for my Rangers unceremoniously sending your Os to their Fall leisure.
Second, thank you for your impromptu list of children's books: The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla, Wind in the Willows, the Alice in Wonderland stories, Winnie the Pooh, A Wrinkle in Time, The Silver Chair, Watership Down (did you like the animated version, by the way). Upon reflection, do you have any others to recommend, say, for a precocious ten-year old? I wonder what your opinion is of Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels.
The Orioles sent themselves to the sidelines, as did the Braves and the Dodgers. Or, rather, the schedule undid them all. The bye is simply a ridiculous interruption of the flow and rhythm of a season; baseball is all about fine timing and continuous play. The Astros got lucky in having to face the woeful Twins, or they too would have been eliminated. I suppose I will be skipping the World Series this year. I don't want to watch a "championship" contest played between teams that got there not despite, but because of, losing their divisions.
I love the original Earthsea trilogy and the early stories. The later books are to be avoided.
First off, sorry about the Orioles (genuinely), my close buddy and O's fan was a little shell shocked. The immediate future is bright for that bunch though. I wonder if the data supports your theory that the bye really favors the wild card teams. I think am too lazy to do the research, but regardless there is too much money in expanded playoff competition, so it ain't going anywhere.
I enjoy many books/series in both the fantasy and sci-fi genres, although there is a precipitous drop off from the best novels. I tend to periodically revisit my favorites, like stepping into a well-loved pair of slippers. Generally, I read fantasy or sci-fi for relaxation, but the books in the Earthsea trilogy are among the precious few that regularly cause me to put the book down and lose myself meditating on a passage.
Two years is a small sample though. Other leagues have a bye format. Every sport is different, but athlete's are creatures of habit regardless of the sport they play. Almost every athlete speaks about rhythm as an important factor in performance, but so is health, preparation, and for baseball, being able to line your pitchers up in an ideal way. I would be more convinced if we were several years down the road with a clear pattern, or if the data showed that byes favor lower seeds in across sports (which perhaps it does, as I said, I have done zero investigation on this). I will grant you, it is pretty startling to see all of the top teams going down like wheat to the scythe though.
Baseball has always been a sport of such timing that every prolonged break is a disruption. Football and basketball don’t involve quite as much constant fine tuning. All four of the teams that had a bye came out of it as if slowly emerging from hibernation. The timing of the batters, the location of the pitchers, the crispness of the defense were all affected. Houston too, honestly. But, you know, the Twins…
I know I saw the Orioles butcher a hit-and-run play, give a game away in which they had 14 hits and 8 runs by consistently walking the bottom of the Rangers’ order, miss hanging pitch after hanging pitch, fail to advance runners with no outs, miss cut-off men—all the things they didn’t do in the season. As for the Dodgers, it was even worse. They couldn’t score against a team as weak as AZ.
I imagine organizations will figure out how to deal with byes in time, but it isn’t baseball. And the new format has so diluted the postseason that the regular season has become almost meaningless. The first twelve across the wire isn’t really a pennant chase; it’s a ridiculously prolonged qualifying round.
I generally agree with you, but that same fine tuning has made baseball far more prone to these kinds of swings than football and basketball long before the bye. If you're a hair off the homers become long flys and those pitches start just missing the corner. MVP players go stone cold for an entire series, Cy Young candidates start giving up homers or missing the zone, the injury sub suddenly has the bat of a god, or an old vet on his last run briefly reclaims his former glory. This can happen in any sport, but especially in baseball where players (or entire teams) can be ice cold or blazing hot for a month or more. Of course, that makes playoff expansion that much more egregious in baseball where the long season should smooth out those runs and produce a small group of truly excellent teams to vie for a championship.
But these playoff expansions, in all sports, are just cash grabs. They dilute the meaning of the regular season, especially at the end, and have little regard for the quality of the competition or the well-being of the players.
I also think that it is possible that the Orioles' youth worked against them. They will probably handle the moment better in the future.
Please forgive my invincible ignorance, but what specifically are the sins Disney committed against Winnie the Pooh and Alice? I know even the question may shock you but I am one of your more loutish and uncultured readers largely due to growing up in a trailer park in a small town in New Mexico which was ranked 49th State in the union for education, so please forgive me.
I just re-read three outstanding sequels to The Wind In The Willows by William Horwood and wonderfully illustrated by Patrick Benson
Let’s agree to disagree on that.
I’ve been trying to take this approach with my 5 year old and assume he’s fundamentally intelligent. I always thought those books with a little circle and a number to tell you what age you can read it at weren’t quite right, so it’s nice hearing you confirm that suspicion. We’re currently reading through The Wind in the Willows, ironically enough, and The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla is sitting on the shelf waiting to be opened next. I grew up with the most meager exposure to literature, so this all is just as exciting for me finding good books to read to my son.
Things looking dire for the Orioles. They will need to tap into '04 Red Sox mojo. What adjustment do you think the Orioles have to make to overcome what the Rangers done to Orioles pitching to get all those walks? I believe it was 3-3 in the regular season.
The walks came from rusty pitching, not from Rangers adjustments. Game 2 was a giveaway. I’m afraid it all depends on Baltimore actually playing up to their talents. This whole bye business doesn’t work for baseball. Yeah, Atlanta got lucky on a Trey Turner error and a hanging breaking ball, but all three of the 100-win teams have looked like they’re just coming out of hibernation.
It is definitely a rhythm game and you are right about the bye. Condolences...
That's the book cover I've had since '74 I believe.
In addition to some of the inspiring authors of children literature mentioned by DBH the interview, in my childhood (and later in my life) I greatly enjoyed reading Astrid Lindgren (the Queen!), Selma Lagerlöf, Michael Ende, Kipling, Eduard Uspensky (whose stories, ironically, are emanation of goodness, while the author himself was a terrible person. It’s seems like he poured all his light in his books and left nothing for himself.), Jules Verne, Gianni Rodari, Mark Twain, several Bulgarian authors and probably many more I cannot remember right now.
Despite my enormous respect for DBH’s literary tastes, I would say that graphic novels should not be written off entirely as a serious genre. I used to look at them haughtily, but in my thirties I was acquainted with such works as Persepolis, Maus, Blankets, Sandman, and some of Alan Moore’s graphic novels (From Hell, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen), and I must say that all of them are actually not a bad literature (tailored, of course, for their specific environment. If you pull the text out of the comic form, it will be incoherent at best). This is also true for writing in other despised hybrid genres such as video games. For instance, the writing in a game such a Planescape: Torment puts to shame most of modern fantasy literature.
There are dozens of truly accomplished graphic novels. No Japanese person would agree with David, just for starters. Video games, though, are a bridge too far. A bombed-out bridge negotiated by a first-person shooter in a firefight with aliens.
You lot are talking about books like Persepolis and Maus, but I took the question as referring to comic books. Even then, I’m not a fan of things like Sandman.
Oh, and there are some quite fierce Japanese critics of Manga as a genre.
I think both Persepolis & Maus are overrated. Sandman is well-crafted junk. I just know artists like Jack Kirby were integral to the development of my imagination. Without comics I’d probably be a mid-level scholar publishing unread essays on Wallace Stevens.
I can’t say. I’ve never been able to get through Maus or Persepolis. The whole genre I find laborious and dull; neither good visual art nor good prose. To me it is to literature or film as tattooing is to the plastic arts.
Maus is also probably the most misunderstood comic ever published. It's marketed by the people who put medals on the front of children's books as being "about the Holocaust," but it's really about Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, a deeply unpleasant human being who also happens to be a Holocaust survivor.
Yes, I got that. I just don't like it.
I am also not a fan of manga, although it is closely related to anime and the latter gave us Miyazaki.
I’m not a Miyazaki fan either.
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.
Your one of the only Nipponophiles not obsessed with ghibli films today, a true rarity. I don’t know much about contemporary Japanese art either tbh I’ve only seen 2 films by Miyazaki.I do like the art style though atleast.
Not to spoil it, but the edited book of essays on anime that Rob De La Noval and I have overseen (and will hopefully be depositing this month) opens with a quote from Miyazaki that is more or less about how he hates anime.
I've tried to like anime many times and just can't get into it. Love Miyazaki though except for Porco Rosso, couldn't get into that one for some reason. Also, I wouldn't rate spirited away as his best. I'm more partial to nausicca and Mononoke
Most graphic novels began their lives as serialized comic books, and were collected into graphic novels later on following standard industry practice of of bringing together specific story arcs under one cover. The development of graphic novels as a distinct art form postdates most of the more celebrated examples of the genre (Watchmen, Maus, Sandman, etc.).
Well, but Will Eisner.
Well, I like certain classic comic strips, like Pogo and L’il Abner (first phase). As for Eisner--ok, but he was no Damon Runyon.
Ah, I was just asking about Pogo when you posted this. Pogo, Krazy Kat, Carl Barks's duck comics ... these are works of genius.
Winsor McCay?
By way of reply to this whole thread, I was born in '95 and raised on a steady diet of comics, sci fi, fantasy, anime, and video games, and I've kept these interests alive into adulthood (partially by way of rebellion against an adulthood started too early, but all the same). Acknowledging that several of these things are not everyone's cup--I know they're not David's--I will say that in my own case I'm unlikely to have pursued study in the things I did without their influence.
I will never understand the appeal of comic books and video games, but I have nothing against science fiction or fantasy, if they’re done well. There are plenty of books in both genres that I like. Really, I don’t read according to genre.
Comics, for me at least, are wonderful disruptions of genre because of how many different things they can play with; I also think they do a good job of thinking through modern cosmology with mythic spectacles. Video games have mattered less to me than to many of my peers, but a couple of them got me through grad school (Zelda in particular). I suspect this is a generational thing: when I was growing up, gaming was the coveted prize to ask one's deities for. I never had to do quite as much cajoling for comics.
I don't really play anymore. In fact, I tried, but the attempt was perfunctory and I quickly sold my system. Having said that I too loved games with good stories, which for me, were Zelda, Halo, BioShock series, Mass Effect series, Dragon Age series, etc.
I'm quite fond of the world building present in the Dragon Age series. A shame it will likely not receive a compelling conclusion.
Gaming has only grown in popularity since then. I read somewhere that it is now bigger than sports and movie industry combined. Especially with MMORPGs and mobile gaming it liberated itself from the shell of nerdiness. Obama personally contributed bringing the gaming to the mainstream by using in-game campaign adverts and playing some games himself. These days you can even see Elon Musk's streaming his Diablo 4 play and he is far from the only avid gamer among celebrities.
Have you read any of Stanislaw Lem's work?
Any favored sci-fi novel recommendations?
Hmm. I'm not very widely read in the genre.
I like a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin.
When I was a teenager, I liked Dune, despite the horrid prose--though even then I recognized that, behind its appearance of imaginative originality, it was really just a hotchpotch of Lawrence of Arabia, Aldous Huxley at his most psychedelic, and a Rafael Sabatini romance about a deposed Duke leading a ragtag army of outlaws in a battle to reclaim his throne from a wicked usurper. Unfortunately, the following novels were bad, so apparently it was a one-off feat of inspired pastiche.
Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus may not really qualify, and again I like it despite the incompetent style.
I'll think about whether anything else occurs to me.
The Invention of Morel could also count as sci-fi
Shamefully, I've never read Le Guin or David Lindsay and really need to rectify that.
I wondered if you had read Gene Wolfe since he's kind of sci-fi's answer to Borges and Nabokov.
I thought that you would have also liked Frankenstein, A Brave New World (you already mentioned Huxley), Klara and the Sun, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a number of works by Philip K. Dick, Strugatsky brothers, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut. I considered mentioning some novels by Dan Simmons and Orson Scott Card, but Michael will probably skin me alive. And I am going to bet my house that you (rightfully) cannot stand Heinlein on every level (moral and aesthetic).
There have been some good examples of video games taking advantage of their inherent interactivity to tell unique stories--Bioshock's creative attack on Ayn Rand was kind of a turning point for me in realizing the kind of social criticism they can do if the people in charge have a vision.
As with anything, it depends on who's doing it, what for, and why. Less socially significant, but no less inspired, there's also a game where you can be a goose that bothers the denizens of an English village.
Or a selfish talking raccoon who uses a phone app to pull his entire town into a bottomless pit.
It’s absolutely an accident a birth. We tend to retain an affection for those forms, whatever they may be, that first give us a taste of the transcendent — and that some have first sampled it in as inescapable and capacious a medium as digital entertainment isn’t surprising. So go forth and create in honor of where you came from — the flower will smile down on any bit of its ancestral mulch!
You are absolutely right about shooters and even strategy games. Good writing can be found sporadically only in single player RPGs and adventures.
Um, ahem, well—I will simply assume that this can’t be true. But that’s just me.
I mean after 140 or some other massively ridiculous number of hours of dialogue and motion capture eventually one must have at least some story
I refuse to believe it, though I also refuse to find out for myself.
I don’t blame you. In my mind, video games, at their best and in themselves (as opposed to what they necessarily borrow from the other arts) are primarily about finding expressive,surprising, or joyful ways of navigating digital spaces. For those already immersed in a digital space, some of these games can certainly be judged more beautiful wastes of time than the majority. But there’s plenty to say in favor of remaining relatively unplugged.
Willful denial and refusal to learn is the only way you can be assured you’ll always be right it’s the best response towards life and one I frequently take and recommend
I like Zelda, anyway.
David, have you played Planescape: Torment or Knights of the Old Republic 2? I think you will like Chris Avellone's writing.
Oh, once upon a time for KOTR. Lifetimes ago now.
Having a small kid kinda limits what you can put on the TV anyways, doesn't it?
Look yea some of us just need pictures in the book to be able to think.
In addition to Moore I’d add Moebius Morrison,Kierby and many others
I'm ashamed to confess that degenerate brutes that we are over here (in Europe, that is) we neither understand nor follow baseball. Since you believe in universal salvation I can only hope that at the end of time we can be forgiven for preferring the oafish physicality of soccer to the graceful sublimity of baseball.
There’s no surer proof of grace than the realization that even that is possible.
PS, My son follows Premier League Football, I have to admit.
I sincerely hope that he is not a Man United fan. This is like been a Yankee but much worse.
God, no. Liverpool and Tottenham.
I thought that my opinion of Hart family has already reached the upper possible limits, but now it rocketed in the stratosphere. I am myself a Liverpool fan.
Frankly, it’s the Beatles thing. If Paul and Ringo still pull for Liverpool, that’s good enough for him.
True, but, at the same time, you will agree that there must be a place of (at least temporary) chastisement/correction for those who think golf superior to baseball. Otherwise, chaos is come again.
Oh, God, is anyone truly that depraved?
Looking forward to listening to this. You ought to see if you can’t land some speaking engagement st the new BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Jersey, given the importance of that tradition, nisi fallor, to one of your talks with Roland.
Which one, O barefoot boy with cheeks of tan?
It's been a minute since I've read Roland, but don't you guys talk through a handful of Swaminarayan saints? Or am I confusing that text with something else?
Perhaps I’m a bit late to the thread. But I always felt that Calvin and Hobbes raised the comic strip to the level of art - one that works equally well for children and adults.
Well, I very much like Calvin and Hobbes, but it was not the first to raise the genre to the level of art.
I would say that Calvin and Hobbes stripped any goodness from the cosmic, but that's just me.
First, I'd like to apologize for my Rangers unceremoniously sending your Os to their Fall leisure.
Second, thank you for your impromptu list of children's books: The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla, Wind in the Willows, the Alice in Wonderland stories, Winnie the Pooh, A Wrinkle in Time, The Silver Chair, Watership Down (did you like the animated version, by the way). Upon reflection, do you have any others to recommend, say, for a precocious ten-year old? I wonder what your opinion is of Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea and its sequels.
The Orioles sent themselves to the sidelines, as did the Braves and the Dodgers. Or, rather, the schedule undid them all. The bye is simply a ridiculous interruption of the flow and rhythm of a season; baseball is all about fine timing and continuous play. The Astros got lucky in having to face the woeful Twins, or they too would have been eliminated. I suppose I will be skipping the World Series this year. I don't want to watch a "championship" contest played between teams that got there not despite, but because of, losing their divisions.
I love the original Earthsea trilogy and the early stories. The later books are to be avoided.
First off, sorry about the Orioles (genuinely), my close buddy and O's fan was a little shell shocked. The immediate future is bright for that bunch though. I wonder if the data supports your theory that the bye really favors the wild card teams. I think am too lazy to do the research, but regardless there is too much money in expanded playoff competition, so it ain't going anywhere.
I enjoy many books/series in both the fantasy and sci-fi genres, although there is a precipitous drop off from the best novels. I tend to periodically revisit my favorites, like stepping into a well-loved pair of slippers. Generally, I read fantasy or sci-fi for relaxation, but the books in the Earthsea trilogy are among the precious few that regularly cause me to put the book down and lose myself meditating on a passage.
After two years, we can say pretty clearly that the bye favors the teams with poorer records.
Two years is a small sample though. Other leagues have a bye format. Every sport is different, but athlete's are creatures of habit regardless of the sport they play. Almost every athlete speaks about rhythm as an important factor in performance, but so is health, preparation, and for baseball, being able to line your pitchers up in an ideal way. I would be more convinced if we were several years down the road with a clear pattern, or if the data showed that byes favor lower seeds in across sports (which perhaps it does, as I said, I have done zero investigation on this). I will grant you, it is pretty startling to see all of the top teams going down like wheat to the scythe though.
Baseball has always been a sport of such timing that every prolonged break is a disruption. Football and basketball don’t involve quite as much constant fine tuning. All four of the teams that had a bye came out of it as if slowly emerging from hibernation. The timing of the batters, the location of the pitchers, the crispness of the defense were all affected. Houston too, honestly. But, you know, the Twins…
I know I saw the Orioles butcher a hit-and-run play, give a game away in which they had 14 hits and 8 runs by consistently walking the bottom of the Rangers’ order, miss hanging pitch after hanging pitch, fail to advance runners with no outs, miss cut-off men—all the things they didn’t do in the season. As for the Dodgers, it was even worse. They couldn’t score against a team as weak as AZ.
I imagine organizations will figure out how to deal with byes in time, but it isn’t baseball. And the new format has so diluted the postseason that the regular season has become almost meaningless. The first twelve across the wire isn’t really a pennant chase; it’s a ridiculously prolonged qualifying round.
I generally agree with you, but that same fine tuning has made baseball far more prone to these kinds of swings than football and basketball long before the bye. If you're a hair off the homers become long flys and those pitches start just missing the corner. MVP players go stone cold for an entire series, Cy Young candidates start giving up homers or missing the zone, the injury sub suddenly has the bat of a god, or an old vet on his last run briefly reclaims his former glory. This can happen in any sport, but especially in baseball where players (or entire teams) can be ice cold or blazing hot for a month or more. Of course, that makes playoff expansion that much more egregious in baseball where the long season should smooth out those runs and produce a small group of truly excellent teams to vie for a championship.
But these playoff expansions, in all sports, are just cash grabs. They dilute the meaning of the regular season, especially at the end, and have little regard for the quality of the competition or the well-being of the players.
I also think that it is possible that the Orioles' youth worked against them. They will probably handle the moment better in the future.
Please forgive my invincible ignorance, but what specifically are the sins Disney committed against Winnie the Pooh and Alice? I know even the question may shock you but I am one of your more loutish and uncultured readers largely due to growing up in a trailer park in a small town in New Mexico which was ranked 49th State in the union for education, so please forgive me.
Have you ever seen the horrid Disney cartoons?
Cretin that I am I think that's all I've seen. Never read the original books.
Well, there's an obvious remedy to that.
Thanks for sharing I’ll have to check it out I suppose we all need to “follow our bliss”