Aaron Judge now owns a share of the all-time American League homer record

UncleScoopy

I think Pin Stripe Alley summed it up perfectly:

He has been worth 11 wins, on a team with a 9.5 game lead in the division. Despite being pitched around for a week, he hasn’t expanded, chased, or pressed at the plate. He walked 14 times between No. 60 and 61, including five straight times in the last two games. He never shook from his approach at the plate, and when Tim Mayza left a sinker out over the plate, well, you’ve seen it by now:

It’s not just the homers that make this guy incredibly good. He’s no Dave Kingman. He’s totally disciplined, and oh, that long, smooth, beautiful swing. His adjusted OPS+ is 213. Mickey Mantle’s was 210 in his triple crown season when he batted .353 with 52 homers. That’s how good Judge has been. Judge is leading in all three triple-crown categories, plus walks and runs scored. Oh, yeah – also on-base percentage and slugging average.

Nothing against Ohtani, who has been equally good, but the Angels are far below .500 and are probably going to finish in about the same place they would have finished without him. I know its not Ohtani’s fault that he and Trout seem to be about the only capable major leaguers on the team, but that’s today’s reality. Judge, on the other hand, is absolutely the reason the Yankees won the division, as Pin Stripe Alley noted. He’s surrounded by a bunch of guys hitting below .230. The two guys hitting behind him now are a rookie who was playing for Scranton in mid-August, and an aging veteran with an OPS+ of 97, so you know Judge is not going to get anything meant to go over the plate, but he never presses. The team has already clinched, so he could just swing for a homer every time up, but he continues to play optimal baseball, working for team victories rather than his personal records. He takes his walks, and lies in wait for the pitchers’ inevitable mistakes.

Judge is one level-headed dude. He earned that record.

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On the other hand, the AL pitchers of 1961 couldn’t afford to pitch too carefully around Maris. He had four great hitters behind him – three MVPs (Berra, Mantle, Howard) and Moose Showron, who hit 28 homers of his own that year. The details:

  • Maris received a grand total of zero intentional walks that year. Judge has been awarded 18.
  • Maris came to the plate 157 times with runners in scoring position, and drew only 19 walks. Judge has had about the same number of opportunities (151), but was walked 40 times (18 intentional).
  • Weirdly enough, Maris came to the plate with runners on second and third 20 times and received no intentional walks in those situations, and only one unintentional walk. (Walk rate: 5%) Judge has had only 12 such plate appearances, and three of those resulted in intentional walks, with one more unintentional free pass. (Walk rate: 33%)
  • In seven of Maris’s “second and third” appearances, there was only one out – an obvious situation to walk a guy in the process of setting the all-time home run record, since it simultaneously avoids his bat and sets up the double play. No dice. They pitched to him all seven times rather than face Mickey with the bases juiced. In contrast, Judge had six chances in that situation, and was intentionally walked three of those times. Only three? Yeah, go figure. The other three pitchers or managers were obviously daft, since Judge took two of them deep, giving him a nifty 3.500 OPS in that situation.

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RELATED: Judge now has 672 plate appearances, Maris had 698 in 1961, and didn’t hit #61 until the very last game of the year, which was #163 in a 162-game schedule! (One game was rained out while tied. The stats counted since it went enough innings to be “official.”)

Now THIS is proper tailgating

UncleScoopy

Miami Dolphins fans set up a makeshift strip club in the parking lot before the game.

One wag tweeted: “Disgusting! Does anyone know when the next Miami home game is?”

Hey, it’s good to root in Miami. Outdoors at Lambeau we’re lucky to set up a makeshift igloo. I once saw some guys ice fishing in their truck bed.

And that was a pre-season game in August.

Les Actrices Françaises Nues à l’Ecran is updated with the latest French nudity

UncleScoopy

New pics 09/30 (if you don’t see thumbnails below, this link should work):

Murielle Huet des Aunay in “Neige”:

 

Marina Hands in “hommes au bord de la crise de nerfs”:

Céline Mauge in “ça tourne à Saint-Pierre et Miquelon”:

Marie Carrour in “ça tourne à Saint-Pierre et Miquelon”:

French version, with extensive commentary

Charlie’s archives (1000s of collages, no ads, no password required)

Julianne Nicholson full frontal nudity in Blonde (2022)

UncleScoopy

This is the film with Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe / Norma Jeane. Julianne plays Norma Jeane’s deeply disturbed mother.


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The Ana de Armas pictures are here.

Ana de Armas created an uncanny portrayal of MM. I especially loved the scene when she tells Arthur Miller things he didn’t know about his own play. Adrian Brody also did a great job in that scene, portraying Miller at first suspicious of, and utterly flabbergasted by, Marilyn’s erudite comments, then completely moved by her insightful grasp of the characters.

Arthur Miller disappointed Marilyn and betrayed her trust, but he came off better than Joe DiMaggio and JFK, who are portrayed as a couple of complete douchebags. A callous JFK treats Marilyn like a sex slave. Joltin’ Joe, although he seems to care for MM in his way, is a simple, jealous, paternalistic brute who slaps her around.

Despite great performers like de Armas, Brody and Bobby Cannavale, I wasn’t crazy about the film, which is too long in general, and contains several individual scenes that seem to drag on long after they have made their points. And those are often hypothetical or purely imaginary points, since the film is not a Marilyn Monroe biopic. In fact, it bears only a superficial resemblance to her life story. Slate did a good job of covering the differences between this film and reality. Blonde is a combination of facts, speculation, and pure invention, based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates. The names of her famous lovers and husbands are never even mentioned in the credits, although their identities are obvious. They are credited as “the ex-athlete,” “the playwright,” and “the President.” The underlying essence of the film is that Marilyn spent her life with an aching emptiness over her missing father, and that her long-term relationships always reflected her search for a father figure.

By the way, the identity of her biological father has been quite convincingly determined by DNA. It was a studio executive named Charles Stanley Gifford. That was no great surprise. Gifford was Marilyn’s mother’s boss. According to some reports, Marilyn probably knew that he was her father, because she allegedly made repeated efforts to contact him and was always rebuffed. That parentage means that Marilyn was a direct descendant of John Alden, a famous historical figure who came over on the Mayflower, and whose marriage to a fellow colonist was immortalized in a famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” Other descendants of Alden include John Adams, Orson Welles, and the aforementioned Longfellow, so Marilyn was in good company. (Other distant relatives include Dan Quayle, Julia Child, Jodie Foster and Raquel Welch.)

The film’s sensationalistic NC-17 rating seems totally unnecessary. There is a fellatio scene (no visible penis), and much sex and nudity, but there is nothing that you might not see in any R-rated film. On the other hand, TV Insider thinks the NC-17 was justified, not by one or two moments, but by the overwhelming impact of scene after scene.