Sad News for baseball fans: Leslie Nielsen passed away today

CLASSIC UMPIRE SCENE FROM NAKED GUN

One of the funniest comedians ever, great deadpan delivery. Some memorable lines from his best roles as Dr. Rumack in "Airplane!" and Detective Frank Drebin in the "Naked Gun" series.

There is probably not an umpire out there who has not fantasized about using some elements of his strike-three, punch out mechanics from the scene above. Some probably do have his mechanic of beginning the mechanic before the ball pops the mitt. A CLASSIC BASEBALL SCENE.

R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen.

“This is your last chance. And I'm not talking about one of those Major League Baseball Steve Howe kind of last chances.”

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from the movie Airplane!:

Dr. Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?

Ted Striker: Surely you can’t be serious.

Dr. Rumack: I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.

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Rumack: Well, I don't have anything to say, you've done the best you could. You really have, the best you could. You can't expect to win em all. But, I want to tell you something I've kept to myself through these years. I was in the war myself, medical corps. I was on late duty one night when they brought in a badly wounded pilot from one of the raids. He could barely talk. He looked at me and said, "The odds were against us up there, but we went in anyway, I'm glad the Captain made the right decision." The pilot's name was George Zip.

Ted Striker: George Zip said that?

Rumack: The last thing he said to me, "Doc," he said, "some time when the crew is up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to get out there and give it all they got and win just one for the Zipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Doc," he said, "but I won't smell too good, that's for sure."

Ted Striker: Excuse me doc, I got a plane to land.

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Rumack: I won’t deceive you, Mr. Striker. We’re running out of time.

Ted Striker: Surely there must be something you can do.

Rumack: I’m doing everything I can… and stop calling me Shirley!

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Dr. Rumack: You'd better tell the Captain we've got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.

Elaine Dickinson: A hospital--what is it?

Dr. Rumack: It's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now.

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from the movie Naked Gun:

Frank: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

Jane: Goodyear?

Frank: No, the worst.

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Mayor: Now Drebin, I don't want any trouble like you had on the South Side last year, that's my policy.

Frank: Well, when I see five weirdos, dressed in togas, stabbing a man in the middle of the park in full view of a hundred people, I shoot the bastards, that's *my* policy!

Mayor: That was a Shakespeare-In-The-Park production of 'Julius Caesar,' you moron! You killed five actors! Good ones!

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Jane, since I've met you, I've noticed things that I never knew were there before... birds singing, dew glistening on a newly formed leaf, stoplights.

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Muammar al-Qaddafi: Hey, who are you?

Frank: I'm Lt. Frank Drebin! Police Squad! And don't ever let me catch you guys in America

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President Bush: Frank, please consider filling a post I'm creating. It may mean long hours and dangerous nights, surrounded by some of the scummiest elements in our society.

Frank: You want me to be in your cabinet?

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Frank: That's the red-light district. I wonder why Savage is hanging around down there.

Ed: Sex, Frank?

Frank: Uh, no, not right now, Ed.

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Frank: I'm single! I love being single! I haven't had this much sex since I was a Boy Scout leader!

--Music Stops. People stare.--

Frank: I mean at the time I was dating a lot.

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This is Frank Drebin, Police Squad. Throw down your guns, and come on out with your hands up. Or come on out, then throw down your guns, whichever way you wanna do it. Just remember the two key elements here: one, guns to be thrown down; two, come on out!

The Naked Gun Trilogy - Funniest Moments



Airplane! and The Naked Gun Tribute

Little League World Series is flirtin' with disaster, y'all

OK, I promised myself that this year I would not say anything negative about the Little League World Series. But I lied. I love the event, it still represents a slice of Americana, but there are some things I cannot watch much longer without venting.

First, the obligatory messages that you see EVERY broadcast, bar none. This wasn't quite so annoying when there was only ONE broadcast per year, but now that the LLWS looks more like March Madness, these messages have got to be scaled back somewhat.

1) The umpires are volunteers, they pay their own way here.
This message is usually delivered immediately after a retched safe/out call or a ball/strike call that Ray Charles would not miss. I'd pay some of these guys one-way ticket back home. Listen, these guys are supposed to be the creme de la creme of Little League umpires. It's not too much to ask that they appear to know what they are doing. Do your Leslie Nielsen, strikeout looking, punch out dance on the THIRD strike fellas. And this is after repeatedly looking at the indicator to check the count. It's not that hard to keep track in your head guys.

And if the field is 2/3 the size of a major league field, why do we need the same amount of umpires to cover it? Seems like four would be plenty. Most of these guys have probably rarely worked with ONE partner, much less FIVE others. And a one week or two week crash course is not going to get these guys up to speed in time.

2) The major leaguers are watching the LLWS in clubhouses across the country.
This is a bit of a tip of the cap and some needed good PR for ESPN's other corporate partner--Major League Baseball. I doubt too many guys are watching too strenuously when 75% of the time, they are playing at the same time. Oh, exception noted for the Cubs and White Sox, who are mandated by their coaches to watch the games in order to pick up base-running tips to improve their game.

3) The must play rule is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
No, it's not. It gives an advantage to the teams/leagues that carry less players on the roster. Unless they are mandating and enforcing that everyone actually has the same roster size coming into the game, there is an inequity that is being ignored.

4) The pitch count is the second greatest thing since sliced bread.
No, it's not. Unless you are also going to mandate that these kids do not throw curve-ball after curve-ball--ad nauseum--to say nothing of the slop-slider these kids twist off. I can't get through a single game without severe pain and inflammation in my elbow. And I'm just watching these kids throw.

To have the pitch count rule in place without doing anything to address breaking balls--I don't think you've made the world a much safer place for youth pitchers nationwide. And the continually mounting pitching injury statistics bear that out.

5) Which dovetails rather nicely into my next rant. Pitcher safety.
Having pitch counts will not be a salve to the wound that Little League Baseball and youth baseball in general will suffer when one of these pitchers takes a come backer to the face or head on national TV. To say nothing of the damage done if one of these calendar year 13 year-olds delivers a pitch to a late 11-early 12 year old batter.

The CA team's lineup last night went back-to-back with the 6-foot, 170 pound "Little" Leaguer and another good sized kid with a "Major" League swing. If he connected he could easily take out the 3B or pitcher with a rocket line drive.

One of the CA batters, after swinging at a third strike in the dirt that got past the catcher, TOOK OFF FOR FIRST BASE!! Do you know why he might have done that??? My guess is because he plays in a league or a travel team where they are ALLOWED to take off on a dropped third strike by rule. Granted, PONY does that and some 12 year-old travel leagues do, but my guess is that a lot of these 13 year-olds have played on the bigger field before.

We all marveled at Danny Almonte a couple of years ago until we learned that he was too good (too old) to be true. But was he such a phenom that LL or ESPN figured that people enjoyed watching the level of competence a 13-14 year old could provide and tried to increase the numbers by backing up the birth date eligibility to allow for it to happen more frequently?

We used to joke about kids who were big enough to have driven the team bus, but some of these kids look like they could actually LIFT the team bus.

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt guys.

There is a lot of chatter about birth dates and it's effect on advancement and development throughout the major sports as well as other important elements of kids lives, such as education. And while the data is difficult to dismiss outright, I think a larger factor I see at work in these games is what Dr. Mike Marshall used to refer to as the LLWS being a Tournament of Accelerated Maturers.

If I remember right, we vacated a world championship won by the Philippines some years back after it was discovered that the team was stacked with 15-16 year-old kids. While that team was advanced physically, they were not that much bigger than a "normal" 12 year-old. And granted, there is a great range of size at this level, but the 14-15 year-olds would have more repetitions and greater overall skill development which that would deliver. It's a game of repetition and as a former colleague used to tell me "Charlie, you cannot teach BIG."

I hope these guys don't have such a party on the ratings bonanza (read money) that has accrued to both LL and ESPN from this expansion. Expanding the number of teams that play to promote the game is one thing, but expanding the talent pool to shoehorn borderline HS players into a kiddie pool is not pretty. To say nothing about how it endangers the safety of the players on the "short" end of the gene pool.

And I hope some poor kid never sacrifices his health and safety before the adults realize they have pushed the envelope too far.

P.S. - One more suggestion guys. The teams from "Saudi Arabia" and "Germany" that are in reality U.S. military base teams probably do nothing to promote the game internationally. The Middle East team should truly represent the Middle East, not the U.S. Same with the European representative.

If Little League isn't big enough in these countries that they are not able to field a team capable of getting out of their local pool maybe they should be handicapped as in golf and bowling and allowed to pull players from a wider radius than in the U.S. Maybe base it on population density or something and adjust it annually until these guys catch up.

And if you miss one year on the formula and one of these teams actually wins the title one year, so what. I MEAN, SO WHAT!!! Wouldn't that do more to promote the sport internationally at this level than almost anything else Little League can do? I mean some of these countries must be growing weary of being cannon fodder for the U.S.A. to trample over all the time.

Or throw all the team in the Final Four or Final Eight or whatever into one pool and play single-elimination from there. It's not really a "level playing field" when the International field is stacked with two or three championship caliber talent and only one team gets through to play a U.S. team that had to stretch to maybe win one game to get to the finale. The American team year after year seems to be able to set up it's pitching to win the tournament, while the World teams have to play hard every game just to get to the Final.

I would still watch a Japan-Curacao WS final.

Just a thought.