Monthly Archives: February 2024

MOVIE REVIEW: Grabbers (2012, Ireland and UK)

It’s so common a trope that there’s got to be a name for it. A monster appears / arrives in a small isolated community. A few strange things happen, and then some people disappear. A few people in the community investigate, and discover the monster. For some reason, authorities outside the community cannot come to the rescue. So it’s up to our heroes to figure out how to defeat it and rally the community for the fight.

Movies from The Blob to Tremors have used it, and even movies outside the “monster movie” genre (like Jaws and Halloween) use at least some of the parts.

Given how common it is, any movie that uses it should be judged not on how well it uses the trope, but on the strength of any other ideas or sub-plots that are used. Continue reading →

The Deadball Project – Post-Series Wrap-Up

Naturally, I have some thoughts. Let’s get the negatives out of the way first.

The hardest thing to keep track of is probably the correct Pitcher’s Die to use. There’s the “handedness” factor and fatigue – it can be really confusing figuring out whether you’re supposed to use a d12 or a d8! Like me, many players will probably opt to drop the “handedness” factor altogether. Adding in the effects of player “traits” might get confusing, too. Fortunately, those don’t come into play that often.

Another thing that calls for adjustment is that all the plays to infielders are ground balls. No popups or lineouts. I may have missed something in the rules, but a player should naturally feel free to turn (for example) a 6-3 groundout into a popout to short if nothing else is affected by the play. Other tinkering should be possible to allow for players to play out of position – a shortstop at second, or a starting pitcher coming on in relief. That might already be in the rules (or in the expansions); I just didn’t read them closely enough.

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The Deadball Project – Game 6

Mets 6, Polish All Stars 4

Jerry Koosman had it; Phil Niekro didn’t, and the Mets took the series four games to two.

Koosman scattered four hits over seven shutout innings, while Niekro didn’t make it out of the second. “My knuckler wasn’t knuckling,” he said. “With one exception,” said Stan Musial after the game, “the hits were all weak singles. Bloops or grounders just out of the reach of our infielders.”

A parade of relievers held the Mets to just two runs afterwards, with the help of two double plays.

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The Deadball Project – Game 5

Polish All Stars 8, Mets 2

With the starting pitching being a rematch of the opener, both teams were hoping that this game would not be a repeat of that one, where both starters were knocked out of the box early. Both Seaver and Harry Coveleski lasted well into the game (six and seven innings, respectively), but the results were notably different.

The Poles figured Seaver out early, scoring four runs off him in the first three innings. The Mets got two of them back thanks to a home run by David Wright in the bottom of the fourth, but they’d manage only five baserunners after that.

Continue reading →