Portrait » We’ve reached the dog days of Spring Training

"Whit Merrifield gets some ink in this Associated Press story about the grind of Spring Training:Royals also make another AP story. Dave Skretta talks about the team speed.At MLB.com Enrique Hernandez Jersey , Jeffrey Flanagan attempts to predict the Royals 25-man roster after Ned tells him it won’t be official until the last day:Sam Mellinger caught up with Alex Gordon, who wants this year to be more fun and less expletive:Fellow Tommy John surgery recipient (victim? sufferer? what’s the right word here?) Lance McCullers Jr tweets well-wishes at Salvy:The traffic has subsided from Fansided. There’s only one story over the last couple of days as Bradley Potter asks “Can Cam Gallagher and Meibrys Viloria fill the void?”Only one listicle, too.Katherine Acquavella at CBS Sports gives MLB Offseason Grades.Actually, the Royals appear on another list. Craig Edwards at Fangraphs lists players who count as the most dead money in 2019. The top spot belongs to a Royal!We at Best of Royals Review were torn between two different options for this week’s entry so one will run this week and one will run next week. As our last entry in February was about the Zack Grienke trade, today we’ll revisit the James Shields trade: Royals and Rays OVER THE Brink.So, there’s not a lot in the thread as Clark was just updating the story with news as it came in. However, the comments, all 1200+ were, um, frustrating, mourning, frustrating, cathartic, frustrating, ...enlightening? I dunno. We hesitate to even re-open this wound of a thread but it was one of the most significant moments in Royals history. It was like a support group for Royals fans going through the stages of grief.Or at least it /was/ until a couple of Rays fans felt it was a perfect time to come over and threadcrap in celebration.One of them went full concern troll and then went back to DRaysBay and was bragging about how badly he got RR. Nice guys.Here is the story stream for the trade.Also, the title of Craig’s more measured analysis of the trade was brilliant and prescient: Dayton Moore Closes Phase One Of The Process.This might be a bit too dark for Friday’s Rumblings, but I ran across a couple of heavier, older stories for this week.First, Vox’s Sean Illing talked with the founder of a Buddhist hospice center and looked at: “What the living can learn from the dying”:This story was featured on ESPN’s front page for quite a while last summer.It’s about a soccer ball that survived the Challenger explosion and then went back into space.This ESPN story is about a professional loser, so to speak. The gimmick for wrestler Curt Hawkins is (was?) that he always lost, losing at least 200 straight matches. Odd side note: it seems like ESPN and CBS have both increased their coverage of rasslin’ the last couple of years.Speaking of heel turns Walker Buehler Jersey , is this the most elaborate in history?Mike Axisa at CBS Sports picks apart Jeter’s press conference.Or, if you don’t like any of those because life is too short and miserable, try Arbys.Today we’re going to talk about the 22nd best selling game of all time. It sold more copies than Super Mario Bros 3, any Pokemon generation except the first two (RBY and GS), and any Grand Theft Auto game except V (which is multi-platform and just passed this game very recently).To put too fine of a point on it: it has outsold any game that has ever appeared on any Sony or Microsoft console except for the aforementioned GTA V and the X360 pack-in game Kinect Adventures. That means no Call of Duty, no Halo, no other GTAs, no Final Fantasies, no EA sports games,nothing. What is this game? The innocent little “educational” Nintendo DS tile Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day.A couple of weeks ago we talked about Reggie’s retirement and one of his major talking points in the mid 00s was Nintendo’s “blue ocean” strategy.The Cliffs Notes version is that “red ocean” is competing with exiting companies over the same customers while “blue ocean” is opening up your product to other markets.With the Nintendo DS and then the Wii, Nintendo tried to market games to some traditionally non-gamer demographics and was decried for doing so in some circles.However, It was a smashing success.This started with pet simulator Nintendogs, which had a “marketing campaign that targeted non-traditional game advertising outlets, including young female magazines such as Teen People and Seventeen.”Nintendogs would go on to be the 14th best-selling game of all time.Next would be Brain Age.Dr. Ryuta Kawashima is a Japanese neuroscientist who did studies on the brain and authored a book Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain, because he “found that by performing simple mathematical calculations and reading books aloud, one could retain mental clarity and stave off the mental effects of aging”.This would become the basis for Brain Age, a simple “educational” game that calculated your “Brain Age” and then had exercises to improve it.There were simple math puzzles, word puzzles. reading aloud, Stroop tests, Sudoku, and more.The” game” caught fire in Japan and would eventually sell 4 million copies there. This runaway success pushed Nintendo to release it in the US and Europe.US sales exceeded Japanese sales while European sales doubled them!It has sold more than 20 million copies to date.Nintendo’s success with the Blue Ocean strategy would continue into the next decade as the 1st (Wii Sports) http://www.dodgersfanproshop.com/authentic-max-muncy-jersey , 5th (Wii Sports Resort), 12th (Wii Play), 17th (Wii Fit), 18th (Wii Fit Plus), and 40th (Brain Age 2) best selling games of all time followed (alongside the aforementioned 14th and 22nd).Below is a video featuring the music and gameplay from Brain Age: NEW YORK (AP) — When the New York Mets went looking for a general manager, they found one in a peculiar place.On the other side of the bargaining table.Longtime baseball agent Brodie Van Wagenen is switching roles to become GM of the Mets, the team announced Monday evening. Contract details were not disclosed.“Brodie is an extremely knowledgeable, creative, progressive and collaborative leader, who I’m confident will lead us toward sustainable success,” Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon said in a statement. “I’m very excited for our fans to hear and see the direction Brodie outlined for us.”A news conference to introduce Van Wagenen was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at Citi Field. He was chosen by Wilpon and his father, Mets owner Fred Wilpon, to replace Sandy Alderson, who took a leave in June following a recurrence of cancer. Alderson said the club’s poor performance did not merit him returning.And so, at the start of a pivotal offseason, the Mets’ first pitch is a changeup.“I’m beyond excited and motivated to take on this new challenge,” Van Wagenen said. “I want to thank Fred and Jeff for believing in my vision and abilities. I look forward to beginning the progress of getting the Mets to contend for a championship year after year.”The 44-year-old Van Wagenen is swapping sides in labor relations. He has represented high-profile players all around the majors, including current Mets stars Jacob deGrom, Yoenis Cespedes and Todd Frazier. Van Wagenen also represented Mets minor leaguer Tim Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL quarterback.Van Wagenen co-founded the baseball division of CAA Sports in 2006 and had been co-head of CAA Baseball. He emerged as New York’s top choice for general manager from a list of 10-12 initial candidates. He must leave his clients and give up his career as an agent to take the job.With buzz building about Van Wagenen flipping roles, players and rival agents around the majors have expressed concern about a potential conflict of interest — though the move is not unprecedented. Former big league pitcher Dave Stewart made the switch from agent to front-office executive with the Arizona Diamondbacks http://www.dodgersfanproshop.com/authentic-max-muncy-jersey , and a couple of GMs in the NBA did the same.NFL executive Mike Tannenbaum, vice president of football operations for Miami, worked as an agent between jobs with the Jets and Dolphins.Following the Mets’ second consecutive losing season, Jeff Wilpon said he would look outside the organization for the 13th GM in franchise history. He said he was open to “untraditional candidates” and preferred to have someone in place by the Nov. 5-8 general managers’ meetings.“Brodie showed us he is a progressive thinker, who is prepared for this role and has great baseball acumen,” Fred Wilpon said. “Jeff brought forward an array of candidates and we all agreed that Brodie’s high character, blend of analytics, scouting and development ideas illustrate why he will be successful in this role.”Tampa Bay Rays senior vice president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom was the other finalist.Doug Melvin also had a second interview with ownership last week. But the former Texas and Milwaukee general manager was told days ago he was no longer in the running.Alderson was hired as general manager in 2010. He helped lead New York to consecutive playoff berths in 2015 and ’16, including a trip to the 2015 World Series.Since he stepped down, baseball decisions have been made by the trio of assistant general manager John Ricco and special assistants Omar Minaya and J.P. Ricciardi, all reporting to the Wilpons.Jeff Wilpon also said he would like Ricco, Ricciardi and Minaya to return — but that didn’t guarantee they would be retained.Van Wagenen was an agent at IMG from 2001 until joining CAA. He played college baseball at Stanford with Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch, and the two became good friends.A native of California, Van Wagenen and his wife, Molly, have three children and live in Connecticut. Molly’s stepfather was late astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.