Tag: MLB

Here’s the latest on Stephen Strasburg and Gerritt Cole

What I’m Hearing: MLB Insider Bob Nightengale provides the latest on the lucrative free agent market for pitchers and the latest with Strasburg and Cole.

What I’m Hearing: MLB Insider Bob Nightengale provides the latest on the lucrative free agent market for pitchers and the latest with Strasburg and Cole.

“We pay a lot of attention to what …

“We pay a lot of attention to what happens in other leagues,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told Yahoo Finance when asked about what the NBA is going through in China. “Sooner or later, something happens to everybody. Your time is going to come. And we try to pay attention as to how they handle crises like these and problems like these and how they try to move forward.”

Meet the Twitter star turning Baseball Reference pages into song lyrics

Don Zemmer is a Twitter sensation.

“Yan, Heim Gannon Thake Mike Morse Tooley Gordon Rhodes, Hy Gunning Ryder Rye Cantz Snow Moore.”

Sing it out loud to the tune of Old Town Road and you’ll experience the art form that @DonZemmer — actually, it’s 33-year-old Simmy Cohen, a Long Island native who works in marketing — created on a whim and now has the attention of some very famous fans on Twitter.

Cohen takes popular songs — everything from Enimem’s Lose Yourself to Oasis’s Wonderwall to The Star Spangled Banner — and finds Major League player names from Baseball Reference to fit into the lyrics. For example, “wonderwall” becomes “John Vander Wal.” Then, he puts all the pages from the site together in a video and sings it.

So how did this all come about? For The Win spoke recently with Cohen to find out.

How did you come up with the concept?

It was at the beginning of fantasy baseball season, I’m a very big player. I’m in a a bunch of WhatsApp groups and we were talking about team names after our draft. We were talking about fitting player names into Hebrew phrases. One thing was building on top of another, we constructed a Hebrew song as a team effort. I just took it and made a whole song out of it by searching through Baseball Reference. I sent it to them and they shared it with other Whats App groups. It went viral among those groups and my first reaction was, “I could have done so much better.” I didn’t know other people would see it. I wanted to do another one, so I created a Twitter account Don Zemmer because “zemmer” is Hebrew for “song.”

At some point, I wanted to try English, secular songs. I did the national anthem and that kind of blew up because a bunch of bigger accounts saw it. Lose Yourself also blew up.

How long does it take you to put it all together?

Probably around an hour.

That’s it? That’s amazing! How do you find the names that fit the lyrics so quickly?

I’m more formulaic now. It takes me a lot quicker than I used to. People think I have so much time on my hands. I know so many of the main words already. I, me, see, say … Brad Hand for “and.” I know which players to use. At this point, I’m filling in the blanks.

The thing is I don’t have to be perfect, and I don’t try to be perfect. I have an Excel spreadsheet, and I copied and pasted the names from each letter of the alphabet. They have minor league names, Japanese player names … people called me out with Piano Man on using some guy named “Memory”. At first I wrote, Play me a “Nimmo Ray” but I decided on this guy, Memory. In general, I’m torn on whether I use the better match to the word or someone people will recognize. Sometimes it’s fun to use obscure player names.

I notice you sometimes don’t re-use names in the same song. Is that your preference?

I don’t do that anymore. I decided that was being too strict and unnecessary. Full names are always great, or a nickname, like Dat Dude for Brandon Phillips or Doo for Sean Doolittle. My rule is if you search the name in Baseball Reference and their page comes up, it’s fine to use.

You’re also singing them yourselves and putting yourself out there in a way that adds to the humor of it.

A hundred percent, I totally get it. It adds to the charm of it. I am trying, I’m not trying to sound not good. I have an average voice, but I don’t care. That’s definitely part of it, that’s not the shtick. It’s really about the names and having moments in the song. I try to stick in some moment that it’s either a weird match or an obscure player. The quality of my voice is the last thing I go for.

Where do you take this next?

I just did a movie scene, which didn’t go over so well. Someone said, “Do the Gettysburg Address!” Others have said to do other sports. Baseball’s my thing and there’s something about these old baseball names that have a lot of appeal to me.

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21 cities that could possibly get an MLB team

As the possibility of the MLB expanding to 32 teams becomes more likely, let’s take a look at 21 cities waiting in the on-deck circle.

If you build it…

While those now-infamous whispers were initially echoing from the baseball heavens via Shoeless Joe Jackson to a confused Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, they resonate a very topical reality in today’s baseball landscape. As MLB revenues top the $10 billion mark, with local television deals seemingly attainable (and working), many cities would like to be the ones voicing such promises.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has not shied away from talking about expanding both in the US and internationally, either. And, with the premise that adding more teams will add more revenue—while, don’t forget, playing into the back-and-forth tactics of the CBA—the idea of expansion is very possible.

Of course, there are difficulties to consider—a defining difference from the NFL and NBA: For every new franchise that comes into the league, if there’s a minor league team in the area…well, it’s been lovely, but you gotta go!

Still, expansion in the MLB isn’t “if” it’s “when and where?”.

Here’s a look at 21 cities with a population, market size, and location that could put them in the on-deck circle.

Orlando

(Getty Images)

Orlando tops the list—mainly because it’s recently topped the MLB expansion headlines. Orlando Magic co-founder, Pat Williams, has become the face championing to get an MLB franchise in Central Florida. Although baseball in Florida doesn’t have the most celebrated PowerPoint presentation, that isn’t to say a team near Disney World would be a disaster.

Orlando is a top 20 television market with a metro area of over 2.5 million people. Nielsen’s 2020 DMA (Designated Market Area) rankings have Orlando’s marketing reach at 18th. With someone holding the financial status like Williams leading the charge, it’s possible the MLB would not brush this off as a mere publicity bake sale. (Williams, ironically, would like the team name to be the Orlando Dreamers.)

Odds: 7 out of 10 

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The man who helped bring an NBA team to …

The man who helped bring an NBA team to Orlando now wants to bring a Major League Baseball team to the theme park mecca. Pat Williams, a former executive with the NBA’s Orlando Magic, said Wednesday that Orlando was more deserving than a half-dozen other cities that have been mentioned as homes to potential MLB expansion teams in the future. Whether Williams succeeds is a tough call.