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The Appreciator - Welcome to the World of Matt
Home
Appreciations
    Why The Appreciator?
    Collected Wisdom
    Media Reccomendations
    Soul Fillers
    Reuben R. Reuben loves Reubens
Matt’s Satisfying Expressions
    Personal
    Originals
Sports Writings
    Baseball
    Cubs 2016 Season
    Things Less Important Than Baseball
    Radio
Music Writings
    On Musical Intake
    On Musical Output
    Hot Stove, Cool Music
Tributosaurus
    Official Site/Schedule
    Press
    Videos
Good Comp, Bad Comp
Introducing “Our Game”
About Matt
Further The Conversation
    Contact Matt
  • Home
  • Appreciations
    • Why The Appreciator?
    • Collected Wisdom
    • Media Reccomendations
    • Soul Fillers
    • Reuben R. Reuben loves Reubens
  • Matt’s Satisfying Expressions
    • Personal
    • Originals
  • Sports Writings
    • Baseball
    • Cubs 2016 Season
    • Things Less Important Than Baseball
    • Radio
  • Music Writings
    • On Musical Intake
    • On Musical Output
    • Hot Stove, Cool Music
  • Tributosaurus
    • Official Site/Schedule
    • Press
    • Videos
  • Good Comp, Bad Comp
  • Introducing “Our Game”
  • About Matt
  • Further The Conversation
    • Contact Matt
Favorite Appreciations, Sports

The Best Rally I Ever Missed

 I just married the most ardent Cubs fan in town.

OK, I guess we have to define “”ardent.” She doesn’t use face paint. She doesn’t have any logo jewelry, tattoos or piercings. Our home isn’t festooned with memorabilia. She can’t recite endless stats of the current team, nor rattle off rosters from previous years.

But she feels the love for her team as passionately as anyone I’ve ever been around. Her father brought her to the Wrigley Field bleachers as a little girl, usually with her sister and four young female cousins, six Pierce Street cuties watching the game while the old man had a couple. It was her Sunday bliss.

So now she maintains one can never be in a bad mood at Wrigley Field. She glows there.

Our wedding day was scheduled with an afternoon game in mind. Morning ceremony, followed by Bloody Marys and breakfast, all wrapped up by noon so guests who’d want in could make it to first pitch of the Cubs game.

Well of course guests wanted in. We were paying.

 

To read the full article, with it’s thrilling conclusion and genuine “One To Grow On” lesson, click here.

Matt’s Satisfying Expressions, Originals, Sports, Things Less Important Than Baseball, Top sidebar left slider

GUAGI. The Official definition and explanation.

The prototypical big, tall wide receiver or tight end is a fierce football weapon, especially on the goal line.  He is often a “coverage dictator,” forcing a defense to commit itself.  Also these days, “50/50 “deep balls are commonplace in both NFL and college football. A receiver is more valuable when he has a large catch radius, and the skills necessary to “go up and get it.” This is always discussed with varying clarity though, as there has been no perfect way to describe this skill set.

Behold, #GUAGI.(Go Up And Get It)

#GUAGI (noun): a receiver’s ability to gauge the flight of a football, strategically maneuver to catch it at its highest point, & strongly fend off defenders and complete the catch.

#GUAGI needs to be an official scouting term, an attribute easily discussed in conversational shorthand.

My current NFL’s best in #GUAGI:

DeAndre Hopkins

Mike Evans

Rob Gronkowski

Mike Williams

Kyle Pitts soon?

In terms of historical #GUAGI, Randy Moss is the uncontested G.O.A.T.

Note: A receiver need not be tall to have an excellent GUAGI (Steve Smith!), and a tall receiver does not necessarily have good GUAGI (Alshon Jeffrey).

Get your official #GUAGI merchandise here:

www.cafepress.com/guagi

100% of the proceeds go to The Greater Chicago Food Depository.
Let’s fight those food deserts

Baseball, Hot Stove, Cool Music, Music Writings, On Musical Output, Radio, Sports

At HSCM, Collided Worlds Eventually Fuse Together

Allow me to explain myself.

Mom was an opera singer and a voice teacher. She also knew that Bill Terry was the last National Leaguer to hit .400.

Dad once was a sports writer, and is my favorite baseball fan.

He also can detail musical evolution within the 15 Shostakovich symphonies.

My oldest brother Jon plays the bass, slide guitar, banjo, dobro and pedal steel. He was once considered a Don in the Chicago Bluegrass Mafia.

My other older brother Bobby was a center fielder on a really good high school team, for which I was the bat boy. The team bus picked me up at elementary school for away games.

My passions have always been split, equally. I was the kid racing from tennis practice to trumpet lessons. A trip to New York usually meant both Yankee Stadium and Lincoln Center. I’ve chased concurrent dreams, and professions, in both music and sports for as long as I can remember.

I now often go from radio shows directly to sound-checks. I sometimes sing 15 songs at a sold out concert, go home to watch a game on tape delay, then host a show in the morning.

I am a very fortunate man.

So an event like Hot Stove Cool Music this past Friday night at Metro is powerful bliss.

Hey, look! There’s Max Crawford, an original member of Poi Dog Pondering and now the leader of the Total Pro Horns, who also happens to run the electronic scoreboards at Wrigley.

Hey, that’s our emcee Lin Brehmer, a fine high school pitcher and Cubs season ticket holder who is also the best rock and roll DJ in the city.

Who’s starting the show on bass? It’s the organizer of the whole night, Len Kasper. He’s relieved that the Cubs game he just called did not go extras or have a rain delay. He’ll try to get home at a reasonable hour, because he’s doing the national game the next day on Fox.

Our greatest living baseball writer, Peter Gammons, is over there tuning his guitar as he preps to play a Paul Butterfield Blues Band song called “Born in Chicago.”

The musicians we get to play with include members of Smashing Pumpkins, Local H, Shoes, Wilco, Bob Mould, and Rage Against The Machine. In the middle of the show, Rick Nielsen and a couple other members of Cheap Trick show up and take the stage.

Every one of them loves baseball.

These realms, the two that I will always inhabit, are not that different.

Friday was a passionately played sandlot game.

You figure out who can play shortstop, who wants to catch, and who ought to be put safely in right field. There aren’t many young lefties who pull.

Who’s the best fit for this high harmony on “Surrender”? Which guitar players will step up and nail “Cherub Rock”? Whose amp should we make sure not to turn up too high?

Introduce yourselves, practice for a bit, then play. I mean, really play. Pay attention to one another, listen and watch to find the best way to make magic.

I’m torn right now as to my favorite personal moment of the night.

I stumped the Hall of Famer Gammons with my favorite baseball trivia question in the green room. For the record, Theo Epstein got it later with his first guess.

I got to sing and front “Monday” with a full horn section, Jimmy Chamberlin from Smashing Pumpkins on drums, and Wilco’s own John Stirratt on the bass.

We’ll go with 1 and 1a.

“Worlds colliding” isn’t a fair description.

Life is ours to create, experiences and interests ours to curate.

Friday night was a perfect, unforgettable night in the world I live in. And I know there are millions who live there with me.

Epstein’s guitar playing needs some work.

• Matt Spiegel co-hosts “The McNeil & Spiegel Show” 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday-Friday on WSCR 670-AM. Follow him on Twitter @mattspiegel670.

Baseball, Sports

The Destruction Of Belief

The game I love is irreparably harmed.

With 13 names added to the lists of cheaters and liars, the specter of PEDs looms larger than ever. The carnage is not just the worth of the guilty, or their isolated reputations.

We’ve lost our belief in greatness, as it happens.

Remember that sense of wonderment when, say, Cecil Fielder hit 51 in 1991? Go further back to George Foster hitting 52 in 1977.

We’ll never have it cleanly again. That’s unquestionably the greatest casualty in all of this.

Growing up, one of my favorite baseball trivia questions was this: Who are the only five men to hit 50 or more homers in a season twice. Until the late 1990s, the answer was Ruth, Mays, Mantle, Jimmy Foxx and the oft-overlooked Ralph Kiner.

Now, that list is nine. Sammy Sosa hit more than 60 three different times. There were 16 seasons of 50 or more homers between 1900 and 1995. There have been 26 in the 18 years since.

Now, in conversation or watching a game, praise a power hitter. See how fast the “juicing” rejoinder comes.

It comes from a friend, from a fan, or in your own mind. In my case it comes from a Twitter follower, a texter to the radio show, a co-host, a producer.

I can’t fight them on it. Truly.

Cynicism has been rewarded, time and time again. And I hate it.

I once argued passionately to credit Jose Bautista for the work he did with hitting coach Dwayne Murphy in Toronto. This lifelong power prospect and (to that point) bust started to swing earlier and pull absolutely everything.

He worked, trusted and rebuilt his approach. You can read all about it if you want.

But no one wants to hear it. Most would much rather scream “roids” and end the discussion.

Chris Davis, a lifelong power prospect and bust, has become more patient (though his plate discipline stats of late have come back to earth), and he says he has matured in Baltimore. You can read all about if you want.

Most aren’t interested.

One friend posted on social media that he “can’t wait until Chris Davis gets exposed.”

This is the emotional damage baseball has wrought upon itself.

The innocent are no doubt being victimized by this, daily. And we don’t know who they are.

I was mad about steroids for years, with a righteous anger to find the wicked, demonize them and safely return to praising the clean.

The rage is gone. Resignation has set in. This is not a good prism by which to view something you love.

So by what method could you rediscover that sense of wonder?

•Work tirelessly to separate the frauds from the clean? Testing inadequacies and innumerable lies sadly don’t make this feasible.

•Shut down every interaction with the “roids!” screamers and bury your head in the sand? We can’t do that; so many shamefully did it in 1998 and beyond.

•Abandon the appreciation of the home run? I greatly appreciate pitching, diving catches, triples, opposite-field singles and perfect cutoff throws. The problem is, the longball is pleasing.

•Accept that everyone is conceivably cheating and therefore still credit those who are clearly better than the rest? I’m not quite ready for that last option, though it seems in some ways the safest.

Joy might be rekindled with pure unabashed skepticism.

What we have to do is this: Know the stories of the athletes we watch. Understand the genuine talent, efforts and improvement that are sometimes evident.

A light bulb that went on is not always some fabricated myth. A healthier mindset is not always some fraudulent cover.

Are there drugs involved? How can anyone really argue against the possibilities?

All I can argue for is the full picture.

I hope the testing catches up with the users in a way that allows trust to bloom again.

I hope improvement gets acknowledged, even amid the doubts.

And I hope our relationship with the game gets easier.

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 “You know, I guess I think I’ve always been a professional critic… you know, or some sort of professional appreciator or something."
-Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (2000)

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