Take Me Out to the Ball Game: Pitching vs Rapping

I’ve always been pretty comfortable with the fact that I’ve never been much of a sports guy. I did play sports here and there as a kid; a little soccer, basketball, some peewee football, but I was never into it. I wanted to be anti-sports cool, not the cool where you make the big play and get the cheerleader but the cool where you smoke cigarettes and do drugs and get the girl with the hair that’s dyed funny. Sports were stupid and weak and were a distraction for people to think about something besides how God awful their lives were.

Well, as of 2010 that has changed. Your boy is slowly but surely flipping back to his childhood and rediscovering a lost joy. It’s not sports in general but baseball in particular. I don’t think there’s anything to be said about it except that I have started a passionate and heartfelt affair with America’s past time and am in the process of falling head over heels in love.
Earlier this year I was sitting in the bleachers at the Oakland Coliseum watching the A’s beat the Giants and something just happened. Everything clicked. I had an epiphany. I had a realization. This game called baseball is the greatest game ever invented! The different levels of drama. The pacing. The possibility. The hope. The big plays. The little plays and everything in between.

I collected baseball cards and was into the Giants for a period when they had Will Clark but I still wasn’t really all that into it. I was just doing it because that’s what you did when you were nine years old. There was never anything for me to really latch on to. Hip-hop it wasn’t. Then, sitting there in the coliseum that night, it all made sense. I’ve been completely on it’s jock since; listening to the radio, going to games, downloading baseball apps, reading the paper, all over it. It was like noticing for the first time that the girl one cubicle over at the job you’ve been working for over twenty years is actually incredibly attractive and intelligent; you just hadn’t taken the time to really get to know her.

My favorite is the pitching. Baseball is a two man game, pitcher verse batter, that’s where it all goes down. Good sluggers are great, it’s fun when they knock balls out to McCovey cove, but pitchers are artists. The pitcher leads the team and they are the stars. And I love how no matter how good a pitcher may be or how much skill and practice they have under their belt, they have to be in the game mentally or it’s all over.

I watched Tim Lincecum pretty much fall apart on Friday night at AT&T Park and then I watched Barry Zito have a melt down the following evening. Don’t get me wrong; I love the Giants and I was upset they were getting served by the Diamond Backs (a bunch of bums) but I could appreciate the fact that here you had two great pitchers that just couldn’t seem to get their minds in the game and that was fascinating to me. Tim has won two Cy Young’s back to back but it doesn’t mean a damn thing if he can’t calm himself and get into the rhythm of his pitching and I love that about the game.
I think pitching may be similar to rapping in a way, specifically freestyling. I can’t be sure but I imagine that pitchers have good nights when they think about what their doing but don’t over think it. I’ve found that this is a good approach to freestyling. You think about what you’re going to say next but not too much, you have to let go and have faith in your skills so that everything flows off the tongue in a fluid stream and you sink into the pocket of the beat. I see that in pitchers. If you watch closely you can see when they start to over think what their doing and then it all goes to hell and the crowd is booing as they walk from the mound to the dugout (which is what happened to Barry Zito Saturday afternoon).
-Dublin, 08-31-10, Richmond CA

"You F**K My Wife?"

You F**k my Wife?
D.W.F.R. with Robert Hong
(Raging Bull)








What the f**k is D.W.F.R.?? Well, it stands for Dublin’s World Film Review. I know. Really f**king stupid.
OK, enough with the introductions. I’m Bob Hong and I have been asked by Dublin to submit a film review about any film I wish. He asked that it be current but I haven’t seen any “current” movies and could really give two s**ts about them either. So my review, or essay, or whatever the f**k you want to call it is about the nineteen eighty film “Raging Bull” by Martin Scorsese.
“Goodfellas” is great, blah blah blah. “Taxi Driver” this, “Taxi Driver” that, you talking to me?” blah blah blah. “The Departed”? Please b**ch. I’ve got news for you pu**y’s out there: “Raging Bull” is the greatest Martin Scorsese ever made. S**t. It’s the best Bobby D. and Joey Pesky movie ever made too.

Let’s get into it: the editing. Really sit down and watch how this masterpiece was cut. The little details with the slow motion and the close ups? Holy s**t. They all work to project Jake LaMotta’s paranoia to the breaking point. The little things! Frank Vincent drives away and throws a cigarette out of the car in slow motion and Jake watches him, sure that the man is f**king his wife. Everybody seems to be f**king Jake’s wife. In his head at least.

The black and white. Has a film ever been filmed so gorgeously? In my opinion black and white kicks the s**t out of color every time and this film is exhibit A. It was made in 1980 but I swear to God I feel like I’m watching people in 1945 interacting and saying things like “Your gonna over cook it!” or “Go f**k your Mother!”. It makes the little hairs on the back of my head shoot up.

The sound. Holy f**k it is brilliant. When two guys are in the ring duking it out you don’t just hear the punching and a bulls**t soundtrack that tells you how to feel. You hear glass smashing! You hear tympani bashing! You hear the sounds of elephants charging and a lion growling! This is movie sound at its best and most f**king amazing.

S**t, people say that Marty peaked a while back and is just making crap from here on out. Two things I would say: 1) "The Aviator" really wasn’t that bad, in fact it was pretty good, and 2) if this man had never made another film besides “Raging Bull” he would still be high up on the pedestal that he sits, maybe even higher since then he wouldn’t have made “Shutter Island” and I wouldn’t have wasted two hours. Hey Dublin! Is that current enough for you?!!!!

Robert Hong is a film student at the Academy for the Arts and is currently running the film projector at the Red Vick.