Royals Rumblings - News for March 6, 2020

Pete Grathoff at the Star reports on YouTube TV reaching a sports streaming deal:

Last week, YouTube TV announced it wouldn’t be streaming any Fox Regional Sports Networks, denying cord-cutters in Kansas City another outlet for watching the Royals and Sporting KC. But Variety reported Thursday that YouTube had reached a deal with the Sinclair Broadcast Group that reversed that decision — for the most part. YouTube TV will drop two of the RSNs (Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket) and the Yankees’ YES Network, Variety reported. However, Fox Sports Kansas City, which streams Royals and Sporting KC games, will remain on YouTube TV. Sinclair bought Fox’s RSNs last year.

Meanwhile, Vahe Gregorian profiles Maikel Franco:

Their sense of all that was informed in part by an experience of Rene Francisco, the Royals assistant general manager for major league and international operations. As the general manager of Gigantes del Cibao in the Dominican Professional Baseball League, Francisco had witnessed his considerable pop first-hand playing winter ball for the Gigantes. That doesn’t just leave a player, they reasoned.

We’ve got a lot of stuff from The Athletic (sub required, of course):

These involve former Royals:

Kevin O’Brein at Royals Reporter write an article entitled “10 Reasons Why I Am a Royals Fan”. Ok, ok, anytime you give us shameless pub like this, I’m going to have to reciprocate. Professional courtesy and all.

I am going to be honest, this blog still makes only a minor dent in the Royals blogsphere. After all, this is not Royals Review or Kings of Kauffman or even the defunct Rany on the Royals. While the following has grown a bit on “The Royals Reporter”, it still is pretty much a small outlet for a lifelong baseball fan and passionate sabermetrics-nerd who has embraced the Royals as his favorite baseball team over the past near-decade of living in Kansas City.

Lots from Fansided, too, starting with the aformentioned KOK:

• David Scharff implores fans to “Trust the process, but expect the rewards”
• Mike Gillespie reminds us that “Tim Hill’s shaky spring training continues”
• He also asks (in slideshow form) “Will this season be 2012 all over again for the KC Royals?”
• Shaun Bauman suggests that “Franco finally shows promise for KC Royals”
• But then he slideshows “3 potential trades involving Maikel Franco”

KC Kingdom also has a number of stories:

• Leigh Oleszczak declares “Great spring training not enough for Kyle Isbel to make roster”
• She also states “Fifth starter still a mystery for Royals”
• Cody Rickman explores (re:slideshows) potential moves as “Yankees could be interested in trading for Danny Duffy”
• Travis Neely talks about the reports this week about “Starters encouraged to throw exclusively from stretch”

Last week, we mentioned the “go to” move for the Best of Royals Review (TM) was definitely /not/ to just go to the Royals Review Classic page and start reading, hoping to stumble across something. And that’s definitely not what we did today: Royals and Peanuts Baseball Eerily Similar.

We’ve featured Jeff before (and again) and his best work on this site was sabermetric breakdowns that were much better than was available to the general public at the time. But this one was pure gallows humor and perfectly captures the spirit of Royals baseball a decade ago.

The White Sox signed another key piece to an extension as they hope to take a big step forward in the division:

The Chicago White Sox and third baseman Yoán Moncada have agreed to a five-year contract extension, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports. The deal would reportedly guarantee $70 million with a team option that could bring the total to $90 million.

Poz keeps going with his Baseball 100:

David Roth, formerly of Deadspin, waxes poetic about awful internet sites:

Before you can deal with any of this, you’ll need to close this subscription box. You can achieve this by clicking either a tiny “x” or a passive-aggressive statement like “No, I don’t want great articles.” But while you’ve been triaging a second small video player has floated up into the middle left of the screen. A sedan silently snakes along a road hewn into a mountain and forces itself into your consciousness. It switches to a video of the Mets’ new manager, which you do not really want. Also, you now have to close a new rectangular ad at the bottom of the screen, advertising the same subscription offer as the first pop-up box.

I can’t believe I haven’t written about Scribblenauts until now. The DS was a treasure trove of crazy, weird fun games and this was one of my favorites and one of the best. My descriptions can’t quite do it justice. So if you have never heard of it or forgot about it, I’m going to let you find out about it the same way I did more than a decade ago - from a message board post.

Below is the (in?)famous NeoGAF Post #217 (WARNING: contains salty but descriptive language):

I had played all the big titles at E3. Private showings of God of War III, Heavy Rain, Alan Wake. But at 4:00 on Thursday, I was wandering around the show floor, wondering what else I had to see. I saw a small little booth for “Scribblenauts!” in the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment section. I mean, who goes to that booth? But I remember hearing about it on GAF, and so I decided to check it out.

Best game of E3? Without a fucking doubt. Anyone who says otherwise did not play Scribblenauts. Best game of all time? Jesus Christ, I don’t know, maybe. It’s a game that challenges your IMAGINATION. No other game has ever done that.

So listen to this story. I was in the early levels; I didn’t quite have an idea of how ridiculously in-depth the database was. I was summoning things like ladders, glasses of water, rayguns, what have you. But I reached a level with zombie robots, and the zombie robots kept killing me. Rayguns didn’t work, a torch didn’t work, a pickaxe didn’t work. In my frustration, I wrote in “Time Machine”. And one popped up. What the fuck? A smile dawned on my face. I hopped in, and the option was given to me to either travel to the past or the future. I chose past. When I hopped out, there were fucking dinosaurs walking around. I clicked one, and realized I could RIDE THEM. So I hopped on a fucking DINOSAUR, traveled back to the present, and stomped the shit out of robot zombies. Did you just read that sentence? Did you really? I FUCKING TRAVELED THROUGH TIME AND JUMPED ON A DINOSAUR AND USED IT TO KILL MOTHERFUCKING ROBOT ZOMBIES. This game is unbelievable. Impossible. There’s nothing you can’t do.

Holy fucking shit.

FYI: That post is so ensconced in video game lore that it takes up most of a section on the Scribblenauts wikipedia page.

As soon as I read that, I knew I had to have that game and it did not disappoint. I played it and a number of sequels for many more hours. There are some weaknesses and limitations that pop up in the gameplay after many hours but I’m comfortable saying that it lived up to its high billing. Honestly, the hardest part was limiting yourself (“Fine, I won’t use Cthulu this level again since I used it on the last 3”).

Here’s the first world of the game. Some levels are solved for speed, others have a bit more, ahem, creativity (say, at the 3:12 mark):