Hey, it’s Enrico Pallazzo!

I said I have an idea for a movie blog post.  Jon suggested a sports movie blog. That wasn’t my idea, but it was a pretty good one.  I don’t know how many movies I’m going to do. But if I was going to start, I had to start with my favorite movie of all time, which might be a baseball movie.  That’s right, I’m talking about The Naked Gun.  Is it a baseball movie?  I’ll give you my answer at the end of this post.

I took AP Literature as a senior in high school.  After the AP test, we had to do a movie project. When my brothers took the class, their friend’s project was him pretty much just fast forwarding to different scenes in a movie and showing them to the class (I think maybe it was Goodfellas, but I’m definitely not sure about that).  One of the other students in the class commented, “Why don’t you just show the whole movie?”  As you’ll see, this blog post is going to be a little like that.

The opening scene in Beirut is a solid start to the movie.  Arafat, Qaddafi, Gorbachev, Ayatollah Khomeini, Fidel Castro, are Idi Amin plotting against the United States.  But fortunately, Frank Drebin was a hero while on vacation. And they got this right. You had people who thought Gorbachev and Arafat were good guys.  Gorbachev obviously wasn’t as bad as Stalin, but he was trying to save communism. Fortunately he failed. And Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize. The guy was an actual terrorist and he won the Nobel Peace Prize. I am literally more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than he was and obviously I don't deserve one.

After the opening credits, we have Nordberg kind of dressed like he’s going to murder somebody, but no gloves.  When he goes to bust the guys on the I Love You, the one guy throws down his gun.  Nordberg gets shot and all sorts of other bad things happen to him.  I like the part where he leans against the wet paint. Why is there a wedding cake and a bear trap on the boat?  Nordberg had a 50/50 chance of living, but there’s only a 10% chance of that. He ended up at Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle.  And why was it called Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle? Because Ricardo Montalban was a devout Catholic and he objected to a much more crude joke name for the hospital.  Wikipedia says that St. John Paul the Great made him a Knight in the order of St. Gregory the Great, which is the highest honor that a Roman Catholic lay person can receive from the Church.

Frank succinctly summarized my feelings on the British monarchy with this line:  “For no matter how silly the idea of having a queen might be to us, as Americans we must be gracious and considerate hosts.”  There is absolutely no need for the monarchy anymore. Monarchies are stupid to begin with, but at least the king or queen once served a purpose.  Henry VIII and George III are two of my least favorite people in history, but at least they actually governed England.

I really enjoy the scene where Frank questions the guy on the dock.  He gives him $40 for information. The guy gives him the $40 back for information. Then he gives him another $20 and then borrows the $20 to give it to Frank.  So Frank made $20 and the guy owes him another $20. That’s some quality police work.

In the meeting between Ludwig and Drebin, we learn that Frank doesn’t smoke Cuban cigars.  I approve. Ludwig has a pen that is impervious to everything except for water? What good is that?  But it was a gift from the Emperor Hirohito and it’s value is “beyond estimation.” Also it serves the same function as a pen that I could get for 8 cents on Amazon.  I get why some things are valuable, but not others. A pen is a pen. I don’t get why people would spend a ton of money on a car. My Honda Civic is a nice car and it gets me from place to place just like cars that are twice as expensive (or much more than that).  If I was rich, I’d drive a Honda Civic and use pens that cost 8 cents. Cars are cars and pens are pens. But not all seats at a baseball game are the same. Not all beers are the same. Not all seats on an airplane are the same. I get spending more money when you’re getting something of value for the extra money you spend (like a better seat or a better beer).

How does Ludwig’s sensory-induced hypnosis work?  He presses a button and then somebody is determined to kill a particular person?  This is not explained. I don’t care. It’s still a great movie.

John Houseman plays a driving instructor in the car chase scene.  Unfortunately, we don’t get to hear him say the name Alec Berg. Apparently this was his last movie.  He died in October 1988 and the movie came out in December.

We get an 80s movie montage with “I’m Into Something Good.”  Yes! The 80s were the best. I wish I could remember the decade.  I do have some very vague 80s memories. My memories mostly involve baseball.  I remember the Dodgers winning the World Series in 1988 and I remember the earthquake in 1989.  Other than that, I think the only other 80s memory I have is going to Ohio in 1988. Ronald Reagan was president until I was five years and 11 days old, but George H.W. Bush is the first president that I can remember being president.  Notre Dame went undefeated and won the National Championship in 1988, but my first very vague college football memory is Notre Dame beating Penn State in the snow in 1992. But man, 1988 was a good year. The Cold War was coming to an end, Dodgers won the World Series, Notre Dame won the National Championship in football, and The Naked Gun came out (unfortunately the Lakers winning the NBA Championship knocks it down to like a 96 out of 100).

“When l see five weirdos dressed in togas stabbing a guy in a park, l shoot the bastards.  That's my policy.” I mean, that is a pretty good policy.

The scene with the reception for the queen is excellent.  Frank searching the guy but actually going through Ed’s jacket pockets is awesome.  And to commemorate our friendship, the city of Los Angeles presents the royal family with a Revolutionary War musket.  Maybe the Brits could put that in a nice display case near the George Washington statue in London to remind them of who won the war.

The baseball scenes start with establishing shots outside the stadium and of the stands.  The DVD commentary says that the shot outside the stadium was Angel Stadium, which I didn’t recognize (it was pre-renovation and I was there long after the renovation).  The stands they use are Wrigley Field. But why do they have an Angels game in the movie? If the queen was visiting Los Angeles, she wouldn’t be going to Anaheim (which is not in Los Angeles) to see the Angels.  I was thinking maybe the Dodgers wouldn’t let them use the Dodgers, but they let them use the stadium so why wouldn’t they let them use the team? Maybe it’s because they wanted to use Reggie Jackson for the movie. Reggie Jackson’s last year was 1987 with Oakland.  But he was an angel from 1982-1986 so maybe it was more believable to have him on the Angels in 1988 than it would have been to have him on the Dodgers (he was mostly a DH the last few years of his career so he couldn’t do that for the Dodgers, but of course he plays right field in the movie).

The broadcast booth is Curt Gowdy, Jim Palmer, Tim McCarver, Dick Vitale, Mel Allen, my birthday buddy Dick Enberg, and Dr. Joyce Brothers.  Why no Vin Scully? The best broadcast booth that I’ve ever heard is just Vin Scully. Of course, for the comedy you should have all those other guys.  But how do they not get Vin Scully also?

I wrote the previous two paragraphs without doing any research other than watching the movie with and without commentary. This article has some answers to my questions. The Dodgers said they didn’t want to participate because of the brawl. That was a bad decision. It says that Vin Scully loved Airplane! and wanted to be in the movie, but the Dodgers didn’t let him (but the Dodgers didn’t recall not letting Vin participate).

I love the guys sitting in the queen’s box.  They paid just as much for those seats as the queen did.  So why does the queen get to sit there?

Enrico Pallazzo is clearly not the same size as Frank Drebin.  How does his tuxedo fit Frank perfectly? Was there another random tuxedo in the dressing room?

Frank singing the national anthem is a fantastic scene.  You have the terrible singing of the wrong words, the police shuffling out onto the field with their hands over their hearts, and Enrico Pallazzo tied up in his dressing room.

The bloopers are classic.  You have a guy getting hit by a car, a guy mauled by a tiger, and a guy losing his head trying to take away a home run in center field at Dodger Stadium.

The first pitch by the queen is from the stands.  That’s the way ceremonial first pitches used to be done.  William Howard Taft was the first president to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game in 1910.  But Ronald Reagan was the first president to throw out the first pitch from the mound. Of course, George W. Bush threw out the greatest first pitch of all time before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series.

When Frank gets hit with the bat and stumbles all the way back to the backstop.  He would have been stumbling for a long time before they took all that foul territory and filled it with seats at Dodger Stadium.

We get a second 80s movie montage with “I Love LA!”  It’s fantastic. And I love that song so much when I hear it at the end of a Dodger game and hate it so much at the end of a Laker game.  And every time I go to Los Angeles, I have to listen to it (of course, I’ve never gone there to see the Lakers).

How does Frank meet with Ed as an inning is going on?  Ed says there’s only one more out until the seventh inning stretch.  I suppose it could have been a pitching change.

When Frank calls the guy safe at home, the catcher goes nuts.  You could make a case that he’s not out. He might not have tagged him with the correct ball.  When the other umpires start arguing with Frank, how do they not realize that Frank is some random guy and not one of the umpires on their crew?  You can make your own Joe West joke here because he’s one of the umpires.

Reggie Jackson must kill the queen.  But the queen’s life is saved. The woman who fell on Reggie Jackson violated the laws of physics.  She fell at an angle that was not at all perpendicular to the ground.

It seems that the umpire saved the queen’s life.  But that’s not the umpire. And that leads to the greatest line in the history of movies:

When Ludwig takes Jane at gunpoint and goes to the top deck, that happens very quickly.  It would take a long time to get from the field level to the top deck at Dodger Stadium. When Ludwig falls, he probably wouldn’t have been killed by the fall.  Although it’s from the upper deck, Dodger Stadium is built into a hill so the fall isn’t that far. I was thinking about this and the woman who falls on Reggie Jackson the first time I took the Dodger Stadium tour (the link is from the last time I took the tour, the first time I took the tour was before the blog was around).  Of course, then he gets run over by a steamroller and the USC band. What happens to Frank’s chest protector? Why does it look like it was deflated or something? It looked normal, then we get the “Two can play at that game line,” and then it looked all weird.  The DVD commentary actually answers this question. There was a gag that they took out that would have explained it, but people didn’t think it was funny. So there it is. When Frank is talking to Jane, why can the whole stadium hear what they’re saying? I get that they have a camera up there, but are they wearing microphones?  But the good news is that Nordberg is going to be on his feet and as good as new in a week.

So is it a baseball movie? I used to listen to a baseball contest and the topic of what makes a movie a baseball movie came up.  One of the guys had a very low bar to clear for a movie to be a baseball movie. This would easily qualify. Here’s the case for this as a baseball movie.  The last 22 minutes of the movie take place at a baseball game in an actual Major League Baseball stadium. There are baseball jokes. You have real baseball teams and some real players.  Reggie Jackson plays an important role. My verdict would be that it’s not a baseball movie. The subject of the movie isn’t baseball. I think you could not be a baseball fan at all and still like this movie.  But if you’re not a baseball fan, you definitely won’t like Major League and you probably won’t like Field of Dreams (but there are probably a lot of non-baseball fans who like A League of Their Own and that’s definitely a baseball movie).  I would say it’s a police movie. While a decent portion of the movie has to do with baseball, the whole movie is about police officers.  Whatever it is, it’s an all time great movie (and it won zero Oscars, which just illustrates why I don’t care one bit about award shows which are incredibly stupid). You wouldn't expect my favorite movie to involve O.J. Simpson, the queen of England, and the USC marching band, but that's how good this movie is.

No Sports and No Beer Make Jim Something Something

The good news is I still have beer.  I can drink about two or three per week and that will get me through April (ordinarily I’d probably drink about 4-8 in a week).  Then I’ll have to start drinking all the wine that I’ve been given as gifts over the years and never drank because I don’t like wine.  That would last me through the middle of June. Hopefully it won’t come to that. Of course, I could go out and buy more beer, but I haven’t been going out at all other than to take walks.  I’ve been getting everything delivered, but I can’t get beer delivered from grocery stores. I might be able to get it delivered from local breweries.

Anyway, I’ve been around for over 36 years now and this has to be the weirdest time of my life.  It will end, but we have no idea when. The numbers in Italy have started to get better, but they’re far from being out of the woods and we’re a couple of weeks behind them.  Hopefully things will turn soon here and warmer weather will get rid of this thing and there won’t be a second wave. But there’s no way to know yet if any of that will happen.

So I haven’t blogged since November when I went to the Notre Dame-Duke game.  The world was so much simpler then. Anyway, we’re about three months into 2020 and I’ve been to one sporting event this year.  It was the NBA G-League for the Long Island Nets against the Maine Red Claws at Nassau Coliseum. Carsen Edwards scored 33 and Tacko Fall had 16 points and 14 rebounds.  The G-League has the silly rule where you only shoot one foul shot and it counts for however many foul shots you would have gotten. So a foul shot could be one, two, or three points.  It’s a terrible rule, but it’s the G-League so whatever (it’s not as bad as starting extra innings with a runner at second, but it’s bad). I think they use regular rules with foul shots in the last couple of minutes of the game.

I was supposed to go to the Big East Tournament this month.  I had tickets for the last three nights. There was a good chance of seeing Villanova against Seton Hall in the second semifinal game on Friday night, which would have been awesome.  The winner of that game would have most likely played Creighton or Providence in the championship game, which also would have been great. I had Kyle, Vinny, and my dad lined up to go to the games with me.  On the Sunday before the Big East Tournament, the CDC said that people over 60 should avoid large crowds. I told my dad that he shouldn’t go and as much as I wanted to go to the final, I decided that I was most likely just going to sell both tickets for that night.  By the end of the next day, I had decided that I wasn’t going at all. Of course, they started the Big East Tournament. They had Wednesday night and they started Thursday afternoon without fans. My tickets were Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. So as it turned out, none of the sessions that I had tickets for were played.

Losing the Big East Tournament was disappointing enough, but then the NCAA Tournament was cancelled.  They had announced that they were going to play without fans, but once the NBA shut down the season and all the conference tournaments got cancelled, I knew the NCAA Tournament wasn’t happening.  College basketball is definitely behind baseball and college football on the list of sports I pay attention to. It’s definitely ahead of the NFL now. Whether I care about it more or less than the NBA pretty much depends on how the Celtics and Notre Dame are doing.  If they’re both good, I probably care about the NBA a little more. Of course, this year the Celtics were good and Notre Dame looked like a decent NIT team. But even when college basketball is behind the NBA on the list of sports I care about, there are few things I enjoy in sports as much as college basketball in March.  I had a streak of 10 straight years of taking the first Friday of the NCAA Tournament as a personal day so that I can watch 12 hours of college basketball without any distractions (actually I attended the tournament on that Friday in 2013 and 2016). I was set to continue that streak this year. Instead I was working as a teacher from home.

Of course, all sports are shut down right now.  Bill Simmons said something about how he’s heard that the NBA has to get their season done by Labor Day.  If that’s the case, I’m hopeful that the NBA will have their playoffs this year. But I won’t be too broken-hearted if it doesn’t happen.  The Celtics are pretty good, but I don’t think they’re a legitimate championship contender yet. I think there’s a chance they could beat anybody, but I don’t have confidence in them to win four straight series against at least three good teams (they’d have Philadelphia in the first round who isn’t that good, but they’re a bad matchup for the Celtics).  I would say the Lakers would have a better chance of winning the championship than the Celtics and as we know, the Lakers winning the championship would be worse than not having a champion.

Last Thursday was supposed to be Opening Day in baseball.  I did the best I could to make it a good day. I’ve gotten into a routine where I take a walk late in the afternoon.  I moved that up to the early afternoon so that I could watch the Dodgers and Giants on Opening Day in 2013 on MLB Network.  My dad and I were at that game because it was during my Easter vacation and I had never been to an Opening Day so I wanted to go.  I’ve probably been to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 baseball games in my life. That was my favorite game that I’ve been to.  Clayton Kershaw shut out the Giants. He was due to lead off the bottom of the eighth and it was scoreless. I figured they’d pinch hit for him.  But no, they let him hit. And he hit his first (and so far only) career home run. The Dodgers tacked on three more runs and Kershaw finished the shutout.  So on what was supposed to be Opening Day I watched the game, ate peanuts, drank a Sam Adams Chocolate Bock (not really a baseball beer, but it’s probably my favorite beer), and then made myself hot dogs.  They only allotted two hours for the game so they cut out the Dodgers hitting in the bottom of the second and the bottom of the sixth. It’s quite possible that I’ve never seen the bottom of the second of that game.  I definitely got a beer at that game. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss Kershaw pitching and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the first at bat for the Dodgers. So the bottom of the second seems like a probable time for me to have gone for a beer.

I was supposed to have my annual Easter vacation trip coming up.  I was going to go to minor league games in Louisville and Wichita (it was going to be the second home game ever for the Wichita Wind Surge) and then I was going to get to two games at the newly renovated Dodger Stadium.  Why Louisville and Wichita? Why not? I’ve pretty much only driven through Kentucky and Kansas so I would have added them to my lists of states where I’ve spent the night and where I’ve seen sports. The two Dodger games I was going to go to were Dollar Dodger Dog Night and Friday Night Fireworks.  I’ve done Friday Night Fireworks twice before (2017 and 2019) and you get to go on the outfield grass so that’s pretty awesome. But that’s not going to happen. I had also thought about going to see the Dodgers in May in Kansas City because I’ve only been to one game in Kansas City, that stadium is awesome, and the Dodgers so rarely play there.  The Dodgers are supposed to be playing in New York in late May. The Astros are supposed to play the Mets in early June and I wanted to go and boo them. We’ll see if baseball is happening by late May/early June. I was also hoping to get to the new Rangers stadium this year, but that’s very much up in the air. As for a non-sports trip, I was thinking about taking a trip to Rome/the Vatican (and Poland) this summer.  Hopefully Italy will open for business by then, but yeah, that trip isn’t happening this year. I haven’t given up on getting to a Dodger game or two in Los Angeles, but it’s probably a long shot at this point.

There are lots of questions about baseball.  When will the season start? How many games will be played?  What happens to the All Star Game? How late can the season go?  I have some thoughts. I have no idea when the season will start, but I hope they play at least 100 games.  I think they’re just going to have to remake the schedule. There’s been talk of doubleheaders on Sundays. I’m down with that.  Let’s say they can play a 108 game season. Here’s what I would want to see. You do away with interleague play, you play everybody in your division 12 times (48 games), and you play everybody in the other divisions six times (60 games).  There’s one big problem with that. You have 15 teams in each league, which means that you can’t get rid of interleague play without having at least one team off in each league each day. So let’s try this again. You redo the interleague opponents so that you just have the East playing the East, Central playing the Central, and West playing the West.  You play one team from the other league four times and the other four teams from the other league three times for a total of 16 interleague games. You play the teams in your division 10 times (two five-game series with a doubleheader in each series) and you still play the teams in the other divisions in your league six times. So that would be 116 games.  As for the All Star Game, I hope it happens. It’s supposed to be at Dodger Stadium and it hasn’t been played there in 40 years. Next year’s All Star Game is in Atlanta and 2026 is in Philadelphia, but I don’t think any other All Star Game hosts have been picked yet. So you could just put the 2022 All Star Game in Los Angeles. But I have another idea (which isn’t entirely serious, but I like it a lot).  The season might have to go deep into November. You can’t be playing night games in the Bronx or Cleveland or Minnesota in mid-late November. So we just award all seven games of the World Series to a neutral site like they do with the Super Bowl. And since the All Star Game was supposed to be played at Dodger Stadium and you can play night games there in mid-late November, we play all the World Series games at the hopefully not so neutral site of Dodger Stadium.

So yeah, I would be crushed if baseball didn’t happen.  It would really hurt if I was denied the chance to see Cody Bellinger and Mookie Betts play in the same outfield (and Betts is a free agent after this year) and another opportunity for Clayton Kershaw to win a World Series.  And by the way, I haven’t blogged since the whole Astros cheating scandal came out. Clayton Kershaw has had his struggles in the postseason, but he was great in the 2017 postseason except for his one start in Houston. The Dodgers won his first four starts in that postseason.  He wasn’t great in the first start, but he was good enough. In his next three, he pitched 18 innings allowing four runs on 10 hits and four walks with 20 strikeouts. In the World Series, he pitched 11 innings at Dodger Stadium and allowed one run on five hits and two walks with 15 strikeouts.  The start in Houston when they were illegally stealing signs (it can be done legally, but that’s not what the Astros were doing) was a total disaster. Like I said, Kershaw has had bad playoff performances, but for the Astros to never swing and miss on a breaking ball in that game tells you everything you need to know about what was going on there.  Kershaw and the Dodgers were cheated out of that World Series. If not for the Astros cheating, the Dodgers win that series in five or six. It would be an absolute travesty if Kershaw ended his career without winning a World Series. Hopefully this year is the year. By the way, it’s interesting how the Astros cheating scandal cost three different managers their jobs, but the Patriots get caught cheating multiple times and everybody talks about how great Bill Belichick is.  And also by the way, I guess I’m glad Tom Brady went to Tampa Bay. I will still hate the Patriots. I already disliked the Buccaneers because of Jameis Winston, but now I might have to put more effort into disliking them because they might be better (but hopefully Tom Brady is just over the hill and they won’t be good).

We’re not going to have the Olympics this summer, which isn’t fun.  But if you gave me NBA playoffs this summer and the Olympics next summer, that would be a pretty good deal (NBA Summer League in Las Vegas was another thing I at least thought about going to, but I doubt that’s happening this summer and I’d rather have the playoffs than the Summer League anyway).  It would also shorten the gap between the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. I’m not going to talk about the future of football right now.  I’m not 100% convinced that the season will be played entirely as scheduled, but I’m hoping that we’ll be past all this in time for football. I am hoping to see Notre Dame at Lambeau Field in October so I hope everything is good with football.

So yeah, I’m two weeks into spending pretty much all of my time at home.  So my time has been spent working at home, some light weight lifting, going for walks, listening to podcasts, and watching the Office and Parks and Rec.  I’ve seen every episode of the Office multiple times (I’m not up to season 8 yet, usually I just skip season 8 entirely and most of season 9 because it’s pretty bad after Steve Carrell left until the last few episodes, but I’ll watch everything this time), but this is the first time I’m watching Parks and Rec.  It’s good, but it’s not the Office. I might have to start rewatching some movies and perhaps do a movie blog post at some point. I’ve had a movie blog post in mind for a long time that I’ve never gotten around to, but I don’t make any promises.

I hope everybody is doing okay.  I’m really looking forward to when life gets back to normal and I can just go back to being mad at the Astros for cheating.  They deserve the reaction they were going to get from fans on the road this year and I hope they don’t miss out on that.

Mike Brey Used to Coach at Duke

My second attempt to attend a Notre Dame football game this season went much better than the first.  In September, I didn’t make it to Notre Dame for the Virginia game.  For this trip, I had my first experience with the Newark airport.  It wasn’t too bad, but JFK is easily the best of the New York City airports.  My flight was delayed about an hour, but it only arrived a half hour late.  So that was much better than being canceled.

I had this game marked down as a game I wanted to go to.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a true road game.  I’ve seen a bunch of neutral site games.  I’ve seen Navy home games against us in Baltimore in 2008, the Meadowlands in 2010 (that was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had at a Notre Dame game), Dublin in 2012, and Landover in 2014.  I saw a Syracuse home game against us in the Meadowlands in 2014.  I’ve seen Notre Dame home games in the Shamrock Series in Yankee Stadium in 2010 and 2018, Landover in 2011, Jerryworld in 2013, and Fenway Park in 2015.  And I’ve been to bowl games in Miami after the 2012 season and Yankee Stadium in 2013.  But I’ve only been to a few games at another school’s regular home stadium.  My first college football game was at Pittsburgh in 2005 (which is an NFL stadium, not on campus).  We went to Georgia Tech in 2006.  We won both of those (the Pittsburgh game was a lot of fun, Georgia Tech was a win that was closer than it should have been).  The only one I’ve been to since I graduated was Penn State in 2007.  That season was a disaster.  I flew to Cleveland and got picked up by my friends who were on their way to the game from Notre Dame.  Here’s what I remember about that game.  It was Jimmy Clausen’s first start.  Darrin Walls returned an interception for a touchdown.  Trevor Laws was great (I remember Penn State fans sitting near Wilhelm and me commenting about how the PA guy kept calling his name because he was making so many tackles).  What I didn’t remember was that Walls’s touchdown gave us the lead (we lost 31-10, I didn’t remember being up 7-0).  Tom Zbikowski returned a punt for 47 yards.  We had 0 yards rushing as a team (-25 on 10 carries for Clausen and 25 on 16 carries for the rest of the team).  And we won the turnover battle 3-1.

So I’ve been wanting to go to an away game on another school’s campus for a while.  I considered going to Virginia in 2015 at the last minute.  Sean was still living in northern Virginia, but he was not around that weekend.  I think I briefly considered going to the Temple game that year, but that didn’t happen.  I wanted to go to Boston College in 2017, but John’s daughter was due to be born that week.  Last year I had a hotel room near Northwestern, but I canceled it because I didn’t win tickets in the lottery and I couldn’t rope any my friends into going.  This year I wanted to get to Duke.  Tom and Erin are living in the area again so I had a place to stay.  I had never been to Duke so that was something to do.  It was really easy to get tickets.  General admission seats were really cheap.  I’m talking like what I paid per game for student tickets back in 2005 and 2006 cheap.  I could have gotten good seats for like $75, but I just went the cheap route.

This was my view for the first three quarters.

On Saturday, I went out for lunch at Backyard BBQ Pit.  It was on Man vs. Food.  I got the pulled pork with baked beans and mac and cheese.  It was pretty good, but not as good as I was expecting.  I used to work with a guy who made pulled pork and his was at least as good as theirs.  After going back to Tom and Erin’s place for a bit, Tom and I went to campus.

It wasn't quite as good as I was expecting, but I would definitely have it again.

The game day experience is very different at Duke from what I’m used to at Notre Dame.  We got there a little before 3:00.  There weren’t that many people walking around campus.  Also you can easily find tons of information online about all the things to do and see on campus at Notre Dame for game day.  Duke didn’t have much information.  I did see that there was a Duke Basketball Museum that was free and right next to Cameron Indoor Stadium.  What were the hours?  Could you go inside Cameron?  That was all unclear.  Anyway, it’s a small museum and we checked it out quickly.  For some unknown reason, they didn’t have an exhibit on former Duke assistant coach Mike Brey (the only interesting thing about Duke basketball).  I was reminded of the 2014-2015 season.  Duke won the National Championship, but we beat them two out of three times.  We came so close to beating Kentucky and if we had, we were legitimately good enough to win it all.  I asked a guy working there if we could go into Cameron and he said there was practice that was scheduled until 5:00 and they would have tours after that, but practice might go late.  So I had thought about going to Mass near campus (there were 5:00 and 5:30 options at two Catholic churches).  But I had to take advantage of an opportunity to see Cameron (don’t worry, I was back on Long Island in time for a 10:30 Mass at Holy Family on Sunday).  After leaving the museum, we went to see if we could go inside Cameron.  The doors weren’t locked so we walked in.  They were doing tours so we got on line.  But indeed, there was a practice so we didn’t see much.  They just told us about the history or the building and Duke athletics, but we didn’t get to go into the seating area.  And the tour ended at the museum, which we had already seen.  So we went to a hotel on campus.  There was a bar and TVs.  I had a Red Oak Amber from Whitsett, North Carolina, which was pretty good.  We went back to Cameron and got in line for a tour a little after 4:30.  The line was longer so we had to wait a bit.  I think we were the first tour that went in after 5:00.  Volleyball practice was still going on.  We got to the end of the tour and our tour guide held us up for a bit and waited for practice to be over.  So we did get to see inside.  If we didn’t, I was ready to get back on line and do the tour for a third time.  There was a free volleyball game the next day, but I had an early morning flight.  It would be cool to see Notre Dame play Duke in basketball there, but our February game is sold out and the cheapest tickets on Stubhub are almost 20 times more expensive than what I paid for football tickets.  I guess women’s basketball might have been a more realistic option (by the way, Duke has had some success in women’s basketball, but they haven’t won any ACC women’s tournaments since we joined the conference).  Anyway, it’s a really old-looking gym.  Google says that it holds 9,314 people, which is 165 more people than Purcell Pavilion.  But it’s much more tightly packed because Purcell held over 11,000 before renovations.  After that we went back to the hotel bar because it was cold.  Between our two stops at the bar, I saw a decent amount of the LSU-Alabama game.  When it was about 6:45, I headed to the stadium and Tom headed home.

Mike Brey used to work in this building.

Notre Dame beat Duke in volleyball on this court in October.

The lighting isn't great, but that's the best we could do.

Wallace Wade Stadium opened in 1929.  It holds 40,004, which is slightly more than half of Notre Dame Stadium’s capacity.  It had kind of a minor league baseball feel to it.  It was small and all the concourse and all the concessions were located above the seating area.  It was cool to see a game there, but there was no atmosphere.  It wasn’t loud at all.  Duke fans didn’t seem too excited.  In the general admission seats were I was, there were definitely more Notre Dame fans than Duke fans.  One interesting thing about Wallace Wade Stadium is that the 1942 Rose Bowl was played there.  It was just weeks after Japan’s attack on Oahu and they were worried about an attack on the west coast.  The Rose Bowl was supposed to be Duke against Oregon State so Duke offered to host it.  Duke was undefeated and ranked 2nd, but they were upset by Oregon State (Oregon State’s only Rose Bowl victory).  This game was not particularly exciting.  We won 38-7.  Ian Book ran very well, and threw four touchdown passes, but he only had 181 yards passing on 32 attempts and he threw two interceptions (one was a fourth down where he threw deep and Duke would have been better off just letting fall to the ground because it hurt their field position so whatever).  Brian Kelly continues to take the ball when we win the coin toss which makes no sense whatsoever.  We outgained Duke 469-197 so that was good.  Chris Finke played his best game of the season so that was nice.  We threw the ball downfield a decent amount, but our receivers just don’t get separation on deep routes.  Our hope is Chase Claypool making great catches or getting pass interference calls.  I mean, both of those things did happen in this game (Claypool had five catches for 97 yards and Duke was called for pass interference three times), but it would be nice to just get some guys open down the field.  We could have been in much better position going into halftime.  We were up 21-0, but we couldn’t score again.  A bad punt led to Duke’s touchdown.  After Ian Book's first interception, Duke had the ball at the end of the half with a chance to make it a one-possession game, but they missed a field goal.  If they had scored a touchdown there, they would have had all the momentum, but I felt fine after they missed the field goal.  And then we dominated the second half.  So that was cool.  The stadium really emptied out and I moved to the 50 yard line for the fourth quarter.

This was my view for the fourth quarter.

It was maybe 10% full by the end of the game.

It was quite cold.  The box score lists the temperature at 35°.  The coldest game I’ve ever been to was Syracuse in 2008, when it was 27°.  That game was miserable (more because of our performance than the weather), but Manti Te’o visited from Hawaii and somehow still decided to come to Notre Dame.  The coldest game I had been to since then was Stanford in 2014.  It was October 4, but it was only 41°.  In 2014, Kyle and I saw Notre Dame play hockey at Fenway Park when it was around 25°.  The good news for this game was that there was no wind.  I was pretty good in the first half of this one, but the second half was really cold.  This was the first win that I’ve seen in person without Notre Dame wearing really silly uniforms since Navy in 2014 (my other wins since then are Boston College in 2015 and Syracuse last year).  Notre Dame is now 31-12 with me in attendance and 10-1 since I was at the loss against Oklahoma in 2013.  Who was the loss against?  Duke in 2016.  That season was so stupid.

I finished my day by going to Timeout in Chapel Hill.  It was also on Man vs. Food.  I had the chicken and cheddar biscuit, which was featured on the show.  It was quite good.

This was much bigger than the Chick-fil-A biscuits.

I don’t know when I’ll get to another true away game.  Next year we only play two (Pittsburgh and USC) because we have a bunch of neutral site games.  The USC game is a possibility, but that’s Thanksgiving weekend so traveling across the country is not ideal, but I wouldn’t rule it out.  I would like to see us play USC out there, but it probably depends on what Sean and Catherine are doing for Thanksgiving.  In 2021, we play at Virginia.  That would be a cool place to see a game.  Boston College and North Carolina would be on my list of places to get to (I’m thinking of how easy places are to get to, if I have a place to stay, and how difficult tickets will be to get).

We have three more regular season games.  If we win them all, we have a chance to make the Cotton Bowl or the Orange Bowl, but we’re going to need some teams ahead of us to lose.  My guess is that we won’t move up enough to make one of those (we’d probably have to be in the top ten because two of the twelve spots in the New Years Six are likely to be taken by teams way outside in the top ten with an ACC team other than Clemson in the Orange Bowl as long as Clemson makes the playoff and the Group of Five team taking one Cotton Bowl spot).  Our next options are the Citrus Bowl (we can go there only if a Big Ten team makes the Orange Bowl) or the Camping World Bowl (which should really be our worst case scenario, but might be our most likely scenario right now).  Go Irish!

No Irish

My weekend did not go according to plan.  I was supposed to be at the Notre Dame game against Virginia.  Instead, I found myself picking up my car at school at 10:00 on Friday night.  I was really looking forward to being back at Notre Dame, but I had no control over the situation.

My last football season as a student was 2006.  I had a pretty nice run after that.  Between younger friends, Dennis’s fifth year (back when he was working on Notre Dame degree 2 of 4), and Jon going to law school, I had a place to stay on or near campus for six out of seven years after I graduated (2007-2013).  In those seven years, I got to 12 games on campus (Navy in 2007, Syracuse in 2008, USC and Washington in 2009, Western Michigan in 2010, Air Force and USC in 2011, Michigan and BYU in 2012, and Oklahoma, USC, and Navy in 2013).  In six years since then, I’ve been to two games on campus at Notre Dame.  I saw us have a nice win against Stanford in 2014 and I saw one of the many disasters of the 2016 season (Duke).  So I was pretty excited to get back for the Virginia game, but it was not to be.

My flight was scheduled for 7:30 from LaGuardia.  I despise pretty much everything about LaGuardia.  But I discovered the bus from Woodside.  I took the train from Hicksville to Woodside and you can get a bus to the airport from there.  The bus was ridiculously crowded, but not until the second stop and I got on at the first stop.  So I wouldn’t say it was a particularly pleasant experience, but it was easy.  I got to the airport in plenty of time and had Five Guys.  Getting through security was as easy as I’ve ever done it at LaGuardia.  I got to my gate and there was plenty of room to sit and relax.  This started as the best LaGuardia experience I’ve ever had.  But the 4:30 and 5:30 flights to Chicago had been canceled.  The 6:30 flight was now listed as departing at 8:50.  But my 7:30 flight was allegedly still on time.  I had a similar situation to this when I was flying down to Raleigh to stay with Tom and then go to Charleston.  Eventually that flight got delayed so I didn’t really trust that this flight would be on time.  I had been sitting down for about ten minutes when my flight got changed to 9:20.  I was supposed to be landing a little after 9:00 Central.  Now it was going to be around 11:00 Central.  This wasn’t ideal because I was supposed to be getting a 5:00 bus to get to campus, but whatever.  An hour later, my flight was canceled.  There was no way I was getting to Chicago early enough to get to the game at Notre Dame at 3:30 the next day.  I briefly considered going to Cleveland or Detroit.  My options there were either ridiculously expensive at the last minute and/or I’d be racing to make it to campus for a 3:30 game.  So I gave up.  I took a depressing bus ride back to Woodside.  I took the train back to Hicksville.  And then I walked back to school.  I was back home at about 10:30.  I did watch some of the Dodgers beating up on the Giants so that was fun.  Unlike my very unpleasant experience at LaGuardia when I was flying to North Carolina in 2017, I can’t blame LaGuardia for this one.  It was entirely because of the weather in Chicago.  It just would have been nice if they figured out earlier that my flight wouldn’t be happening.  I wasn’t mad about the whole situation, I was just disappointed.  I missed out on seeing Jon, his family, Kevin, and Notre Dame-Virginia.

As for the game, I missed an enjoyable second half.  I’m still confused about Notre Dame, most of the teams on our schedule, and most of the currently ranked teams other than like Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, Auburn, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.  I think those teams are all pretty good.  Who else is good?  Who was the best team left on our schedule after the Georgia game?  I think it’s one of Virginia, USC, and Michigan.  I mean, USC probably has the most talent, but they don’t seem like a particularly good football team.  Are we any good?  All we had done was beat two bad teams and lose to a good team.  Our running game had been nonexistent, our second-year starting quarterback has followed the pattern of Brian Kelly second-year starters and regressed, and our pass rush had been disappointing.  We weren’t particularly good in the first half and trailed 17-14 at halftime.  The defensive line dominated the second half.  I thought the pass rush would be the strength of the team and they played like it in the second half with a bunch of sacks and forced turnovers.  They set the offense up for one easy touchdown and scored one of their own.  We ran the ball pretty well (taking out Book’s carries, the rest of the team ran for 168 yards on 28 carries, 6.0 per carry, and four touchdowns).  But Ian Book continued to not be very impressive (6.6 yards per attempt and 0 touchdowns).  The good news was that he didn’t turn the ball over.  I also got Old Fields Barbecue delivered since I missed out on some tailgating.  It came at halftime.  That was a solid decision.

We play Bowling Green next week.  Brian Van Gorder is their defensive coordinator and not surprisingly, they’re giving up 50 points per game against FBS schools.  They’re scoring 9 per game against FBS schools.  That game should be over by the middle of the second quarter.  Then we have USC, a bye week, and then we go to the most evil place on earth to play Michigan.  If we can get through those two games, our November schedule does not look bad.  We’re home for Virginia Tech (2-2), at Duke (3-1, they got smacked by Alabama, beat two pretty horrendous teams, and beat up on Virginia Tech), home for Navy (2-1), home for Boston College (3-2 with losses to Kansas and Wake Forest), and at Stanford (2-3, they seem pretty bad).  I guess Duke is the best team of that group.  I would still say I’m expecting another loss and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than one, but with our talent, a well-coached team should probably go 11-1 and certainly no worse than 10-2.

I had a really fun trip to Notre Dame for a stadium tour, basketball game, and hockey game in February 2016.  I was on campus in the summer of 2018 to see Dennis (then working on Notre Dame degree 4 of 4), do a stadium tour, and get to a South Bend Cubs game.  I made a last minute trip to Notre Dame in January for outdoor hockey.  And that’s all fun, but it’s not the same as being there for football.  I definitely hope I get there next year, but my top football priority next year is the game against Wisconsin at Lambeau Field (I still say we should have done one at Lambeau, one at Wisconsin, and one at Notre Dame against them instead of one at Lambeau and one at Soldier Field).  Let’s look at the rest of Notre Dame’s 2020 home schedule:

9/12- Arkansas
9/19- Western Michigan
10/10- Stanford
10/31- Duke
11/7- Clemson
11/21- Louisville

Obviously, Clemson is the highlight.  But it’s going to be the most expensive and it’s almost certainly going to be a night game and it’s in November.  Night games are not ideal when I don’t have a place to stay on campus.  Traffic is going to be really bad leaving because nobody is hanging around after the game.  I can pretty much rule out Western Michigan and Louisville unless a bunch of my friends all plan on going (even then, I wouldn’t really want to go to a game at Notre Dame the Saturday before Thanksgiving).  Maybe Arkansas would be interesting (they haven’t been very good lately, but they’re an SEC team and it’s the first home game and we should be 1-0 after beating Navy in Dublin).  I’ve generally avoided October games lately because of baseball playoffs, but Stanford would be early in the NLCS so I could live with missing games at that point (if the Dodgers win the World Series this year, I’ll be more willing to miss playoff games next year).  But Stanford might be a night game also.  Next year’s World Series will be over before Halloween so the Duke game would be a possibility too.  I guess a lot will depend on what my friends are doing.  If they want to rent a house somewhere near campus, that would make a night game much more appealing.  So I hope I get to the Lambeau Field game and one home game.  Next year’s away schedule isn’t very interesting.  There’s Navy in Dublin (I guess I would be interested in that one if I hadn’t done that in 2012, but I’m mad at Ireland for turning their backs on Catholicism), Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, and Georgia Tech in NFL stadiums (Pittsburgh plays all of its home games in an NFL stadium so that’s fine, but I’ve done that game before, I’d rather play Wake Forest and Georgia Tech on their campuses), and USC.  It would be cool to do a Notre Dame-USC game in Los Angeles and my brother does live out there now, but it’s Thanksgiving weekend and flying home the Sunday after Thanksgiving from LAX doesn’t sound like fun (that might be worth staying an extra day and taking a personal day on Monday).

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.  I have a big October ahead.  Hopefully 2019 is finally going to be 1955 again for the Dodgers.  And Notre Dame has games with their biggest rival (USC) and their biggest enemy (Michigan is not our rival).  Go Dodgers!  Go Irish!

The Best of the Best

I got to see Clayton Kershaw again.  No, not the Croatian circus clown who travels through Croatia in a wagon led by mules.  I saw the Clayton Kershaw who recently passed Jewish woman Sandy Koufax for the most wins ever by a Dodgers left-handed pitcher.  (If you’re confused by all that, listen to the Ron Burgundy Podcast with Clayton Kershaw.  Thanks John for sending it to me.)

The Dodgers were in town for a weekend series.  I bought tickets a while back for the Friday night game.  Ordinarily I’d wait to see how the rotation lined up so that I could see Kershaw if he was pitching here.  But with the Dodgers coming here in September, I didn’t want to miss football.  Yes, Notre Dame had one of their two easiest opponents of the year, but we’re hopefully playing fourteen games this season.  I didn’t want to miss any.  As it turns out, the Sunday game got moved to the night game.  If Kershaw had pitched on Sunday, I probably would have gone.  That’s a combination of my waning interest in the NFL (between the Jets having their second USC quarterback in a decade and the Patriots cheating and winning all the time, college football is so much more fun) and the NFL’s poor scheduling.  Hold on, I have an NFL rant:

The NFL needs to hire a Vice President of Common Sense for their scheduling.  They just had ten early afternoon games and three late afternoon games.  I’m fine with splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, but they easily could have moved at least two of Seattle at Pittsburgh, Arizona at Baltimore, and New England at Miami to the late afternoon and gotten a better split with the afternoon games.  Other than splitting up the Los Angeles and Bay Area teams, why do teams from the Pacific time zone have to play in the early afternoon?  Why not have the Dolphins play their home games in September in the late afternoon when it won’t be so hot?  That’s it for my NFL rant.

Anyway, Dodgers-Mets worked out well for me.  Clayton Keshaw ended up pitching on Friday night.  It was also Catholic Night at Citi Field, which I didn’t realize when I bought the tickets.  My former student Patrick got picked in a lottery to throw out the first pitch.  I had bought the tickets thinking that my dad would go with me, but he was not feeling up to it.  I offered them to four people, but they were all going out of town for the weekend for weddings and family birthdays and stuff like that.  So I just ended up selling the extra ticket.  Even though it was the Dodgers, I would have just sold both of them, but I didn’t want to miss Patrick throwing out the first pitch or Clayton Kershaw throwing many pitches.

As it turned out, I missed Patrick’s pitch.  I took the Long Island Railroad (or the lirr, as another former student called it).  I had to change at Woodside and get a 6:07 train.  I thought I’d be fine.  The train was a little bit delayed, but it wasn’t too bad.  The problem was when I got to Citi Field.  I walked from the train and was right outside the stadium at about 6:25.  The lines to get in at the rotunda where ridiculous.  I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ve entered the stadium for all 22 previous games that I had been to there.  I was hoping that pretty much everybody goes in there and if I tried another gate, the lines would not be so crazy.  I was wrong.  The lines were terrible everywhere.  I probably would have been better off just waiting to get in at the rotunda.  I ended up getting in around 6:55, about five minutes after his pitch.  I felt really bad.  His mother, who I’ll call, um, Mrs. Patrick since I don’t use last names of people I know on the blog, showed me the video.  I had reminded Patrick of Derek Jeter’s advice to George Bush before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series, but his catcher was some girl that he hadn’t met before and she asked him not to throw it too hard so he didn’t, which meant that he bounced it.  If one of the Mets was catching it, he could have fired it in there.  He did get to throw it from the mound, though.  I was thinking they'd make him throw it from the grass in front of the mound.

Anyway, the game got off to a bad start.  Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run to the second batter of the game, J.D. Davis, and I worried that this would be one of those silly 2019 games where everybody is hitting home runs.  Fortunately for Clayton Kershaw’s two biggest fans, me and Patrick’s sister/my former student Briana, that was not the case.  Kershaw mowed down the Mets for the next five innings.  He ran out of gas in the seventh and left with one out and the bases loaded (I thought Roberts left him in for a batter too long).  Joe Kelly allowed one of the inherited runners to score.  So Kershaw’s line was six and a third with two runs on four hits, three walks, and five strikeouts.  He was in line for a win thanks to a four-run fourth (with an RBI singe from former Notre Dame baseball player A.J. Pollack and a three-run home run from Dodgers’ top prospect Gavin Lux) and a three-run seventh (Chris Taylor had a two-run double and Cody Bellinger drove him in with a single).  Edwin Rios added a two-run home run in the eighth and the Dodgers won 9-2.

This was my view for a couple of innings.  This was Kershaw's first pitch.  He got an easy out here.

I only watched a couple of innings from my real seat.  Then I went down to say hello to Patrick, Briana, and Mr. and Mrs. Patrick/Briana.  I didn’t realize that they were sitting with a whole group of people who were there for Catholic Night.  Two more of my former students, Michaela and Fiona were there.  It was good to see all of them.  There were empty seats nearby so I sat with them after talking up on the concourse for a bit.  I only had a hot dog to eat.  It was good, but it was no Dodger Dog.  I opted not to have a beer.  It would have been a little weird to drink in front of former students who are all in the 16-18 range.  If they were 21, I would have offered to buy them a beer.  I did have a victory Summer Ale when I got home.

Briana and Patrick are easily two of the best students I've ever taught and they're even better people.  When I signed Briana's yearbook, I said that she was the Clayton Kershaw of students that I've taught.

I made this for Briana when she graduated.  FanGraphs did most of the work for me, but I had to do a little work to include playoffs.

Patrick is a senior so we talked about the whole process of applying to colleges (Briana is a junior so she’ll be doing it next year).  He’s going to have plenty of good options.  It made me think about what I would do if I was a senior in high school applying to college now.  Back in 2001-2002, I applied to four schools and I really didn’t consider sports at all.  That was a mistake.  For me to have the best possible college experience, sports needed to be part of that.  I wanted to go to Georgetown, but that had nothing to do with the basketball team (they hadn’t been particularly good since Iverson).  And the other schools I applied to were not big time sports schools.  I would also lean strongly toward Catholic schools (three of the four schools I applied to were Catholic, I’ll refrain from making a joke about how they were all Jesuit).  Of course, I ended up at Notre Dame eventually for the two good Charlie Weis years.  If we assume that I’m a high school senior who was a Notre Dame fan, Notre Dame is obviously my first choice.  I think Villanova would be my second choice.  If I want a Catholic school with good sports, they’re the clear second choice (you could argue their basketball team could make it the first choice, but I’ll say Notre Dame’s football/basketball combination plus academics keeps it number one).  After that, I don’t really know where else I’d apply.  I mean, I guess I’d apply to Boston College, maybe.  You know, if I didn’t get into Notre Dame and wanted to go to a school that loses to Notre Dame all the time (yes, I know they used to beat us in football way too often, but we’ve won the last six in football and they can’t beat us in basketball even when we’re bad).  I guess I’d look into the other Catholic schools in the Big East.  St. Joe’s in Philadelphia has had some success in basketball and isn’t too far away.  Gonzaga has a great basketball program, but I couldn’t see going all the way out to the west coast unless I was going to the Los Angeles area.  I wouldn’t have too much interest in other major football schools.  I just can’t picture having any allegiance to a college football team other than Notre Dame.  I mean, I always root for the service academies as long as they’re not playing Notre Dame, but I am clearly not meant for the military.  If I was going to consider any big state schools, they would be Virginia (the campus is great and they’re not completely detestable like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida State, etc.) and UCLA (I could go to Dodger games, I could watch football games in the Rose Bowl, and USC would still be my rival).  Anyway, hopefully Patrick ends up at the right place right away, unlike me.

That was probably my last game of the season.  If the Dodgers make it to the World Series and end up playing the Yankees, I’ll look into getting tickets, but I’m not optimistic about the prices being reasonable enough for me to go.  Here are the updated numbers for Kershaw with me in attendance:

10 starts (Citi Field in 2009 and Washington in 2010 before the blog, 2013 in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia, 2015 at Citi Field, 2016 at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, 2018 at Citi Field, and this game at Citi Field), 2 pinch hit appearances (0-1 with a sacrifice bunt)
Dodgers:  11-1 (the loss came in the game where he unsuccessfully pinch hit)
Kershaw's Win-Loss: 5-0
65 innings
1.25 ERA
68 strikeouts
38 hits
14 walks
0.80 WHIP
2 complete game shutouts