I was riding on the bus from NYC to Providence for Thanksgiving and that movie was playing. I must have forgotten my headphones or been too committed to listening to music, because I spent the entire time trying to see if I could surmise the plot of the movie without sound. It turned out to be surprisingly easy- I think I was pretty close to what you described.

Just your typical mailed-in romantic comedy trying to cash in on the male audience by using subject matter that guys are currently drawn to (Texas Hold’em). Basically, the same thing they did with Fever Pitch…I watched that movie while I was really sick one weekend because I was too lazy to find the remote or get up and change the channel. Needless to say I didn’t feel any better afterwards

I think this whole showing up or embarrassing athletes is generally a silly topic.(Although walking out to left field to remove Cleon Jones certainly qualifies.) Hillman is teaching and reinforcing what he expects as a new leader in an organization. This seems to me like a good management practice be it baseball or any other business.

As for which athlete Joe was referring to, I have to guess that it is a Kansas City player because Joe is much more likely to have a deeper insight into those he covers daily. Larry Johnson does seem like a good guess, particularly when juxtaposed against one of his favorites, Priest Holmes.

*Four-at-a-time plan, usually watch about five a week.

**Shoot ‘Em Up being the latest exception. I came into this with very low expectations from seeing the trailer, but still…. Clive Owen and personal favourite Paul Giamatti? How bad can it be, right? The POS made those Charles Bronson Death Wish sequels look like The Godfather, folks. It was a movie so bad that it offends you by virtue of its own existence, just by the fact that valuable movie-making resources were wasted on its creation. Paul, Clive… what the hell were you guys thinking?

***Rosi’s Le Mani sulla citta is the next of the latter.

On Powers, I think Glenn Greenwald best explains what the incident reveals about US media, albeit with some well-earned frustrated outrage peeking through, which is sure to distract the nabobs from substance in order to preach about tone. But any “tone” that savages Tucker Carlson can’t be bad. Anyway, I don’t know how to put a link in a post here but the “leave a comment” box has a field for Website so I put it there. Maybe it will show up. I don’t know.

This idea of the players being “professionals” is something of a red herring. “Professional” from a behavioral standpoint is determined by your approach, not your age or the amount of money you’re making. The very fact that yelling, screaming, and gesticulating on a regular basis rarely works over the long term is also unrelated to age and “professionalism”. There is no imaginary cutoff between being a high school player, college player, and professional player where screaming and humiliating people stops working and treating them as people worthy of respect starts working because it is a completely false structure to begin with. Everyone knows high quality, mature high schoolers who deserve to be treated with respect and respond well to respectful coaching. Similarly, the ease with which posters can speculate as to a near infinite number of hopelessly immature “professionals” suggests that treating a low quality person with respect will not bring a high level of effort and focus from that person simply because they have graduated to the pros.

Successful coaches understand their sport, have an attention to detail, and have the ability to day-in, day-out create a winning environment. The theatrics are beside the point. Watching college basketball is often disgusting. The gyrations of the coaches on the sidelines are ridiculous. You think Roy Williams needs to look like he’s on the verge of having a fit to get his point across? You think with the caliber of teams he’s recruited that he’d have won only 1 national title if he had a sideline demeanor that was even mildly appropriate? (And that’s an example of a coach who is definitely a good guy; there are a lot of similar examples of coaches who act absurdly and are definitely not good guys.) Sadly, these models of immaturity are what players are socialized into expecting, and they often need some combination of theatrics and “professionalism” from their professional coaches in order to fully understand the intensity level expected.

If anything, the childish T-shirts and the fact that the players have to “earn” the childish T-shirts is a bigger concern about Hillman’s approach than addressing his players after a game. My experience is that slogans tend to trivialize or infantilize the need for hard work, not reinforce it. And from a coaching standpoint, you need to carry yourself in such a fashion that it is implicitly expected that everyone will conduct themselves in such a fashion as to meet the standards of your organization, not that some will “earn” their way in and some won’t.

All that said, after the torture of watching a Buddy Bell managed team, I agree 100% with the poster who suggested that if Hillman is going to emphasize OBP (and by extension other strategies that actually increase your chance to win as opposed to dramatically decrease it), I’ll be able to write off an awful lot of peripheral nonsense.