#WILD HOMERIC EPIC SPOTTED
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Deep dives into folklore: Greek mythology
Greek mythology is a rich and intricate tapestry of gods, goddesses, heroes, and mythical creatures that has captivated the imagination of people for centuries. Rooted in ancient Greece, this body of myths has had a profound influence on Western literature, art, philosophy, and culture. Let's take a deep dive into the fascinating world of Greek mythology.
Creation Myth: Chaos and the Titans
The Greek cosmos begins with Chaos, a formless, primordial void. From Chaos emerges Gaia (Earth), Tartarus (the underworld), and Eros (Love). Gaia gives birth to Uranus (Sky), and together they create the Titans, the powerful and primeval beings who ruled the cosmos before the Olympian gods.
Uranus, fearing the power of his children, imprisoned the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires (hundred-handed ones) in Tartarus. This angered Gaia, who conspired with her son Cronus to overthrow Uranus. Cronus castrated his father, and from the blood that fell to Earth, the Furies, Giants, and nymphs were born.
The Reign of the Titans
Cronus became the ruler of the cosmos, but he feared a prophecy that foretold his downfall at the hands of one of his children. To prevent this, he swallowed each of his children as they were born. However, his wife Rhea managed to save Zeus by giving Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead. Zeus was raised in secret on the island of Crete.
Upon reaching maturity, Zeus challenged Cronus and the Titans in a great war known as the Titanomachy. With the help of his siblings, the Cyclopes, and the Hecatoncheires, Zeus emerged victorious. The defeated Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus, and Zeus became the king of the gods.
The Olympian Gods
The Olympian gods, led by Zeus, ruled from Mount Olympus and governed various aspects of the mortal and immortal worlds. Each god and goddess had their own domain and specific attributes:
Zeus: King of the gods, god of the sky, lightning, and thunder.
Hera: Queen of the gods, goddess of marriage and childbirth.
Poseidon: God of the sea, earthquakes, and horses.
Demeter: Goddess of the harvest and fertility.
Athena: Goddess of wisdom, warfare, and crafts.
Apollo: God of the sun, music, poetry, and prophecy.
Artemis: Goddess of the hunt, wilderness, and wild animals.
Ares: God of war and bloodshed.
Aphrodite: Goddess of love and beauty.
Hephaestus: God of fire, metalworking, and craftsmanship.
Hermes: Messenger of the gods, god of commerce and travelers.
Dionysus: God of wine, pleasure, and festivity.
Heroes and Their Labors
Greek mythology is replete with heroic figures who undertake extraordinary quests and face daunting challenges. One of the most famous heroes is Heracles (Hercules), known for his twelve labors imposed as punishment for killing his wife and children in a fit of madness induced by Hera. These labors include slaying the Nemean Lion, capturing the Golden Hind, and cleaning the Augean stables.
Other notable heroes include Perseus, who slayed the Gorgon Medusa; Theseus, who defeated the Minotaur in the labyrinth; and Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War, whose only vulnerable spot was his heel.
The Trojan War
The Trojan War, a central event in Greek mythology, was fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. It was sparked by the abduction of Helen, the wife of Menelaus, by Paris, a prince of Troy. The war lasted ten years and involved famous heroes like Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus. The war is chronicled in Homer's epic poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey."
The Underworld and Afterlife
Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, ruled the underworld, a realm where the souls of the deceased went after death. The ferryman Charon transported souls across the river Styx to the realm of the dead. The most famous section of the underworld is Tartarus, a place of torment for the wicked.
Mythical Creatures and Beings
Greek mythology is populated with a diverse array of mythical creatures, such as the fearsome Chimera, the multi-headed Hydra, the Sphinx, the Griffin, and the Pegasus. These creatures often played roles in the heroic quests of demigods and mortals.
Legacy and Influence
Greek mythology has left an indelible mark on Western civilization. Its themes of heroism, tragedy, and divine intervention have inspired countless works of literature, art, and philosophy. The plays of ancient Greek playwrights like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides drew heavily from these myths. Additionally, the Renaissance saw a revival of interest in classical mythology, with artists and scholars exploring its themes in their works.
In conclusion, Greek mythology is a vast and intricate tapestry that weaves together the stories of gods, goddesses, heroes, and mythical creatures. Its enduring legacy is evident in the continued fascination with these tales and their impact on art, literature, and culture throughout the ages. The myths serve not only as captivating stories but also as windows into the ancient Greek worldview, exploring the complexities of the human experience and the relationship between mortals and the divine.
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The Last Night Part XIII
More author’s Notes at the end because it may contain spoilers!
But if you’re just joining us... where the heck have you been?
Here are the previous parts vvv:
Here is Part I
Here is Part II
Here is Part III
Here is Part IV
Here is Part V
Here is Part VI
Here is Part VII
Here is Part VIII
Here is Part IX
Here is Part X
Here is Part XI
Here is Part XII
Part XIII
They had moved Cordelia to the best guest room in the Institute, small but comfortably furnished with a narrow oak bed and a simple writing desk, but pleasantly decorated with blue striped wallpaper and flowery chintz curtains. A lace-skirted sink, with running water, occupied one corner, and a large window stood open to the night and the fragrance of the garden. In the distance, a shimmer of silver indicated the sun on the Thames.
James walked in carrying an impressive stack of literature he’d taken from the library under his arm and in his free hand he carried a lantern illuminated with the soft bluish glow of a witchlight. He saw Cordelia first, her red hair vibrant against the white pillow case. Color had returned to her skin and the thick black veins that ran underneath it were now gone. The thick top quilt was pulled up and tucked around her chest so that her shoulders and arms were out and rested by her sides. She was modestly covered by an ivory cotton gown. Every once in a while, her fingers would twitch against the fabric of the top quilt and it felt as if the weight of the stack of books weighed on James’s chest.
He set the books on the foot of the bed and sat on the wooden stool beside Cordelia. Wishing more than anything, that miraculously, she would open her eyes and turn towards him with a smile.
“Dickens, Chaucer, Wilde, Homer, Sophocles,” said Jem as he sifted through the books James had brought. “Interesting choices.”
“I brought things that might encourage her through the darkness,” said James.
“Nothing like a good epic to encourage one through dark times,” said Jem, as he set The Iliad back on the stack. “She was administered medicine not long ago, so she is peaceful and still, but do not be alarmed if she cries out. If she begins to sweat or claw at the blankets, come and find someone immediately. If you find yourself growing tired and in need of some rest, you will also need to find someone to take your place.”
James remembered his father and the fierce devotion he had shown his mother when she had fallen ill after transforming into her clockwork angel during the war. He never left her side, not even to eat or drink, or so James was told by relatives and maids. And any time Tessa would fall ill, succumb to an injury, or give birth, Will remained by her side until she made it back on her feet again. His parents remained his highest example of love and devotion. After nearly twenty years of marriage, they still seemed to illicit in one another the emotions of young love: a bit reckless, always public, possessive, but demure, and full of endless patience. James hoped to one day find a love as eternal as the one his parents shared, and he thought he had when he met Grace Blackthorn. To learn that his feelings were simply the product of an enchanted piece of jewelry left a sinking feeling in his chest. Not because of the loss, his feelings for Grace always felt burdened, troublesome, and lonely. He grieved for the love that had the potential to burn as brilliant as his parents.
A sharp pain burst across the center of James’s forehead. He leaned forward, his eyes shut tight, and tried to rub the pain away.
“James?” Jem came beside him and placed a light hand on his shoulder. “What is it? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said James. “It’s nothing. Just a bit of head pain is all.”
“How long have you had it?”
“It comes and goes,” said James, and waved his Uncle’s concern away. “Thank you, Uncle Jem. For allowing me to be here with her.”
“It is what is best for Cordelia,” said Jem. “She needs the familiar voices of the people she is closest to in the world. Your sister was in here not long ago. While I admire Lucie for the incredible talent that she possesses, someone should warn her about her overuse of adverbs.”
“Are you volunteering?” asked James.
Jem scarred mouth twitched.
“Coward,” said James and turned to look at Cordelia. “Can she hear us talking? Even now?”
Jem nodded. “Yes, I believe she can.” Jem placed a hand on James’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “When I return to administer her medicine, I will bring you a vial for your headache. I’d also like to examine you tomorrow, to be sure it’s nothing serious.”
Jem left with a quick click of the door when it closed behind him. Now alone with Cordelia, James felt as awkward as he had when he was a fourteen year old school boy attempting to speak to his crush.
With a sigh, he moved the stool closer to Cordelia and the witchlight that flickered on the nightstand. Her fingers twitched against the bed cloth. He picked up the hand closest to him and held it in both of his. Her skin felt so soft. Had it always been so soft, he wondered. Memories of her finger tips grazing his skin in the orange light of the Whispering Room made his mouth run dry. Unsure what possessed him to do such a thing, he brought her hand up to his face and pressed his cheek into her cool palm.
“Daisy, my Daisy.” The name he’d given her didn’t seem to match her anymore, but there was a familiarity in it that he clung to. He hoped that maybe she could cling to it too. “If you’re able, will you grant me the smallest reassurance that you’re alright in there? When we were young, Math and I would communicate through small signals in class when our Instructor would be droning on about the history of runes, which I should have paid closer attention to, but my mind was otherwise detained on some personal dilemmas at the time… Forgive me, I’m rambling.” He brought her hand down.. “Squeeze my hand once if you can hear me?”
His eyes went to her face and watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest. He waited for the coveted pressure of her fingers gripping his with the desperation of a sinner languishing for forgiveness.
When it never came, he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles. “That’s all right. Your focus should only be on healing. I brought some books to share with you. Personal favorites from the library that I thought you might enjoy. Mostly classics, because I thought you might like something familiar and those damned contemporary authors and their quest for enlightenment; squandering on about transcendentalism.
“I thought we could start with…” When he reached for his father’s beloved copy of Great Expectation, he caught a vibrant red leather bound book with gold lettering on the spine that glistened in the light beside the bed.
Layla and Majnun
He picked up the copy and stroked the letters with curiosity. He recalled Sona and Alastair calling Cordelia, Layla, but never understood the reference; being so enamored with another woman and his personal throes, he didn’t think to ask.
Cordelia expressed a desire to read it together some day, but under the circumstances, he didn’t think that she would mind.
James kept Cordelia’s hand in his own. With his spectacles perched on the end of his nose, he propped the book against his thighs and opened the cover and found a small inscription on the left hand corner. It read:
Dearest Layla,
I hope this book brings you pleasant company during your travels. You have always wondered and asked why I call you by the name that this most divine tale is titled after, this may bring you some clarity. Please believe that my absence from your life is in no shape your fault and do not burden yourself with trying to understand it. Please know and forever keep in your mind, that I love you and your brother and your mother. Nothing is forever, my darling, we will be together again.
Be omide khodâ,
Bâbâ
The words were slightly smudged in some spots, as if water had dropped onto the ink. The pages were all wrinkled and torn in some places. For a moment, it felt to James like he was opening something sacred: a journal, a personalized letter, a love note, but he couldn’t help himself from turning the page. He turned until he found where one should always start a new story— at the very beginning.
As he read, he smiled to himself when he approached the part about when Layla and Majnun first met. It reminded him something of the first time that he saw Cordelia. When he really saw her. Away from the blinding manacle around his wrist. She was beautiful, but more than that, she was pure light. When he approached a passage, his tone slowed:
[His soul was a mirror for Layla’s radiance: how could he keep such reflections to himself? She shone in him like the sun at noon in a cloudless sky: how could such light be concealed? How could he turn away, even for a second, from the only thing that gave meaning to his life? Kais’* heart was out of step with his reason, and however hard he tried to hide his love for Layla, he failed miserably. Without her, he felt the arrows of reproach from a thousand bows; without her, the pain of separation cut into his heart like a knife.]
When he finished reading it aloud, he felt the faintest flutter from Cordelia’s hand against his, and when he looked up, her mouth was slightly open. The book nearly tumbled out of his lap as he leaned closer to her.
“Cordelia?” He picked up her hand in both of his again and tightened his hold, bringing it to his chest. “Cordelia, can you hear me?”
Her eyes fluttered back and forth underneath the hoods of her eyes.
“I’m here,” he whispered and climbed into the small space on the bed beside her. Carefully, he tucked her head underneath his chin and straightened the quilt around her again. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
___________________________
The cottage of Cecily and Gabriel Lightwood was a low, thatched building standing amid the fields in an arrangement of a perfectly tended garden. Ivy grew on the green-painted windows, and the eaves and the plastered walls. The front gate hung open, slightly distressed on its posts, and a bicycle lay carelessly toppled against the porch, where two large glazed pots, of the most intense blue, foamed with flowers in hues of Mediterranean pink, orange, and red. The cottage should have inspired only disdain for its tumbledown air, but instead Grace Blackthorn, who was raised to despise her adopted uncle and aunt, found it strangely romantic.
From the rough stones of a back hall, she emerged into the kitchen where a most egregious ruckus was coming. Since arriving at the Lightwood cottage, she’d spent most of her time either in the garden reading or in the kitchen talking to the housemaid who seemed to be the most interesting individual in the house and who didn’t seem to mind Grace’s presence especially after recent truths had risen to the surface like bloated dead fish. The kitchen was always orderly. On a wooden table in the center, a tea urn hissed above its small burner, a stack of old blue and white china teacups waited to be filled. A cake stand held an assortment of the usual small sandwiches and the plain rock cakes that were popular now. Only today, atop the counter, kneeled someone in tweed trousers, one leg bent on the counter and the other outstretched for balance as they reached for something in the cupboards above. She quickly recognized him as the young, illusive Christopher Lightwood.
She leaned her shoulder against the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest.
Since her arrival at the Lightwood’s, she’d rarely seen Christopher. They’d pass each other in the hallways or sit across from each other at meals, but he would be scribbling in a notebook, his face covered in some type of grime. She never attempted a conversation with him considering her relationship with his friend and cousin James. She had the impression that he didn’t care for her so much.
She could hear him whispering to himself. “Where are the damn tongs?”
“Bottom drawer,” said Grace, “to the left.”
There was a terrible clamber as Christopher looked over his shoulder at Grace, resulting in his leg slipping off of the counter. He reached for a ceramic bowl for stability but ended up taking the kitchen utensil down with him. She could not prevent a cry of fear as he hit his back upon the impact.
“Are you all right?” she cried as she ran around the wooden table. “I’m terribly sorry.”
His glasses were askew, as were the dark brown tendrils of hair that mirrored his father’s, fringed at the ends as if burnt. “Fine,” said Christopher after shaking ceramic out of his hair. “I’m fine.”
“Allow me to help you,” she said. Christopher, she had noticed, had the kindest eyes out of all of his friends. She reached her gloved hand out to him.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Christopher, not unkindly, but rather sheepishly. He grabbed a hold of the table’s edge and hoisted himself back to his feet. He brushed his hands off on his trousers, but seemed otherwise unscathed. “Sorry if I disturbed you. I was looking for the—“
“Tongs?” Grace pointed to the drawer by Christopher’s left hip. “They’re in the top drawer. And there is no need to apologize. I was the one who startled you.”
“Not at all.” He turned and opened the kitchen drawer, moved things around a bit, and finally retrieved the tongs from the far back. “A-ha!” He clapped them together several times. “Wonderful. Thank you. Our housemaid likes to hide them from me.”
“Why is that?”
“Possibly because I’ve melted the last several,” he said, and though she could not detect any note of humor, she couldn’t help but laugh into the back of her gloved hand. Christopher looked at her perplexed, his cheeks turned a soft shade of pink.
“Melted them?” she asked. “How on earth did you manage something like that?”
He examined the tongs in his hand. “Uh, it’s difficult to describe.”
“Could you show me?” she asked, shocked by her own bravery, or her desperation to escape her lonely isolation. “I’ve heard so much about your experiments and I really admired your discovery of the cure for demon poisoning.”
“I conduct most of my experiments in my Uncle Henry’s basement,” he said. “He’s not really my uncle, but I’m close enough to Matthew that he might as well be. I have a few experiments in my bedroom, but I don’t think that it would be appropriate for us to be alone in that regard.”
Grace hesitated, but there was no hint of condescension in Christopher’s tone, and his blunt face showed worry in a single vertical crease between his eyes. He was trying to treat her well. She understood that in the past couple of months, or years, she had lost some trust in how people would treat her. She blinked her eyes and nodded once without a word.
“Of course,” she said. “I’m embarrassed for suggesting it.”
“That’s quite all right,” he said, as he examined the tongs. “You must be terribly bored here.”
She was, but she felt it rude to say it. “It was very kind of your parents to allow me to stay in their home considering the grief my dear mother has brought to them.”
“Lucky for you my mother does not share my father’s grudges.” He meant it in fun, but he noticed the dubious look on her face. As she ran her finger through a spilt pile of flour on the counter, he wondered how all of the time he could have mistaken Grace for being so cold and plain when she looked saddened and lost. “Perhaps you could help me with something.”
Her gray eyes lit with curiosity. “With what?”
“I need an assistant to conduct one of my experiments,” said Christopher. “Since Thomas is spending time with his family after their recent loss and the four of us are not meant to be spending too much time together as punishment, but perhaps we can conduct some sort of arrangement for you to be my assistant of sorts. If it’s not too forward to ask.”
Grace fought to keep her emotions respectful, but inside she felt the quick bubble of anticipation that she had not felt in some time swell in her stomach. “As long as I wouldn’t be in the way and your comrades wouldn’t mind us spending the time together.”
“There’s no need for them to know,” said Christopher, straightening his glasses up higher on his nose making his eyes appear abnormally large. “Besides, they don’t seem to take much interest in my experiments anyway. Thomas is with his family. Matthew is under Charles’s watchful eyes, and James is—“ Christopher flushed.
“Is what?” she asked.
She already suspected that they all knew the truth behind the bracelet that she had given to James, but no one cared to ask for her side of the story. Why she did what she did? It was probably for the best. She wasn’t entirely sure she could tell them the truth of it anyway.
“James is with Cordelia.”
“It’s all right.” She pressed her lips together, and began to wonder if it was a mistake to have entered a conversation with him. “What I did was terrible and I won’t pretend to see it otherwise. I understand if you are disinclined to trust me.”
“Can I ask how you did it?” he asked. “How did you enchant the bracelet?”
The question took her off guard. Most people that have approached her with the question asked her why she felt the need to do it. James Herondale was more than inclined to give her his affections on his own; there was no need for an enchanted bracelet. Her answer was often some variation of the same lie.
“I would prefer it if you didn’t ask me that question,” she said. “Only because I cannot answer it. But would it help to know that it wasn’t me who did it?”
“It would,” said Christopher. “It does.
Grace folded her hands in front of her and felt a strange weight removed from her shoulders; grateful that while her truth remained hidden, some of it could be shared with someone else. And while she didn’t believe herself to be entirely innocent, there was some relief in not being entirely guilty either.
The housemaid entered through the swinging doors from the servant’s quarters, humming a Irish melody, which was cut short when she found the two of them in the kitchen. Her cheeks flushed as her watery eyes drifted down to the tongs in Christopher’s hands.
She switched her basket of fresh veggies over to her other hip. “Are you doing the cooking for supper tonight, boy, or are you just polishing the silver again?” she asked. “Because I know you’re not taking my good pair of tongs to use for your little experiments.”
(Author’s notes: Hello! Thank you for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you for indulging me through this quarantine while I pine and wait for Chain of Iron to be released. So a few things, I think everyone knew the book James reads to Cordelia would be Layla and Majnun... it would have been insulting if it was anything else. If you’re not familiar with the story (here is a link if you want to check out a preview), Majnun’s name at the beginning of the story is Kais. SPOILER: when Layla and Kais separate, he becomes mad with sadness and the town people call him Majnun, which means ‘madman’, so that’s why in the passage he is referred to as Kais... in case you were wondering. It’s such a beautiful story. I highly recommend everyone to read it. It gives me strong Romeo and Juliet vibes. There are so many variations of the story, but I really liked this one, and I believe it’s mostly accurate to the original source-- correct me if I’m wrong.
Also, I’m not sure where that Christopher and Grace scene came from. I wanted to experiment with their characters in a friendly way and I wasn’t mad at it, so I thought I’d share. There is a purpose for it in the story. I hope you enjoyed it. As always, if you liked it, please give it a heart, give me a follow, pop in with some comments about what you liked and even what you didn’t. I really appreciate you all. Next update will be Sunday, 7/26. Cordelia is waking up and things are about to get messy.)
#jordelia fanfiction#cassandra clare#chain of gold#The Last Night#the last hours#james herondale#Cordelia Carstairs#christopher lightwood#grace blackthorn#the shadowhunter chronicles#shadowhunters#Matthew Fairchild#thomas lightwood#lucie herondale#tessa gray#will herondale#jem carstairs#Brother Zachariah#belial#layla and majnun
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Musings
The first English translation of Homer’s Odyssey was completed in 1615, by classicist, dramatist, and poet George Chapman. He begins:
The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way
Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
The first time I read the Odyssey was the summer before ninth grade. I had applied to a bougie private high school that I later chose not to attend, but as an acceptance gift they sent me a beautiful golden book, the Robert Fagles 1996 blank verse translation of the Odyssey. His first line:
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course,
At the time I had only the vaguest notion of the plot of the epic. I knew, or I thought I knew, that it was the story of Odysseus and his journey home, punctuated with an endless series of wild monsters and treacherous encounters. When I opened the book I was shocked to find that the Odyssey begins not with the adventure of the titular hero, but back home in Ithaca with his mopey abandoned son. My second shock came shortly after, when the goddess Athena descends to earth to inspire said mope, and does so in the form of Mentes, a man.
I reread the lines to make sure I hadn’t missed anything in the confusing clamor of ancient verse. Athena disguised as a man? Surely that couldn’t be right. But it was. Every single disguise of Athena, sans one, was a man. Not only that, there were multiple scenes where mortals recognize her for her true nature and yet still regard her in her guise. In those moments she existed as goddess and mortal, female and male simultaneously. It was almost too much to handle.
400 years after George Chapman, Emily Wilson became the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English. She hurled a book through a millenia’s glass ceiling and when it landed it opened to:
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost.
At age 14 I wandered from a tiny private Jewish middle school into Boston Latin Academy and was promptly lost. Trapped in the practices of the past 300 odd years, every student was required to take 3-4 years of Latin. The first year was relentlessly boring. We bumbled our way through the textbook, memorizing endings and grammatical rules as though the language was a series of mathematical formulas and not something to be read and spoken and learned.
In tenth grade I cut my hair. For years I had kept my waist-length hair in a thick side braid and in a day it was all gone. I can’t for the life of me remember what was it that made me do it, or when I got the idea. At some point I started telling people that I was thinking about it, and then I started telling people that I was going to do it, and then I did it. Anybody who has gone abruptly from long hair to short knows the miracle of the first shower: the giddy lightness that moves from your neck down through your whole body.
We started reading real Latin in class and suddenly the language became alive. I wrestled with the text to produce a messy grammatical translation at the bottom of my page and then neatly rewrote a more pleasing version alongside the columns of poetry. I doodled all across the back of the pages--beautiful Greek men with flowing hair, columns and bays, Icarus, wings outspread, falling into the sea. Aphrodite descends to earth in disguise as a young huntress. I search between the pages for Athena.
Near the city of Crete lived an unremarkable but blameless man and his unremarkable wife. So scared was he of the pain of raising a daughter that he delivered the ultimate warning to his wife: if their child should be born a girl, she must be killed. Only a boy should live. We all know the story--with the dropping of the ultimatum, the course of the tale is sealed. The mother will have a baby girl and she will be unable to destroy her. In this tale there are no babies in baskets, or foundlings left in the woods. Instead, instructed by a goddess, the mother conspires with a nurse to raise the child as a boy. The father names the child Iphis, after his father, and the mother is happy because the name suits a boy or girl and it removes part of the burden of the lie. The child grows up fine and beautiful, with all the best features of the male and female. Their disguise is unquestioned, and they grow up happy, sharing their childhood with a friend, Ianthe. We know this story too. Young love blossoms, and soon the two are engaged, to the delight of father and the despair of mother and child.
I read this story properly for the first time, in Latin, in the summer of 2020, with the help of my Greek professor. At the beginning of our Greek class the year before we had each chosen Greek names. I was fascinated by the gender play in this story, and so I stole the name Ianthe from it. I am drawn much more to Iphis, of course, but I find the name Ianthe more lovely. And perhaps it is fitting that I embody that fascination with the choice of the name of the character so in love with Iphis, whatever gender they may be.
Burning with love and chafing at the equal ardor of Ianthe, Iphis cries out in despair to the gods.
“If the gods want to spare me, then they ought to spare me already! If not, if they wish to destroy me, then at least deal me some regular harm, according to the laws of nature! Never has love of mares consumed a mare, or of cows a cow: sheep love rams, and stags chase after does, the females of their own kind. Thus too birds couple, and amongst each and every type of animal, no woman is seized by feminine desire. I wish I were no woman!”
We reach this part of the poem and I am compelled to stop and reach through the text, to try in vain to comfort the grieving lover. You’re not broken at all, poor girl. You’re not alone.
My professor asks me if I knew the story when I chose my name, and I tell her that I did. I am always aching to be recognized, to be seen, but at the same time I want to reassure her that this angst of Iphis’ which dominates the text is not a pain I have had to bear. Blessed by my circumstances, I have never once resented who I am. I have never been made to feel unnatural, and I have never felt alone. Again, perhaps it was right that I chose to become Ianthe, the unwitting and undisturbed bride who manages to never hear a thing about the anguish that surrounds her betrothal.
The end of the story offers a neat resolution-the goddess hears Ianthe’s prayers and transforms her into a man. Light the marriage torches and sound the bells! I am torn in every direction. I don’t know what’s more important--the love of a woman for a woman, the ability for a character to straddle the line between gender, or the transformation from woman to man. Despite knowing that the social construct of gender in Roman times is far from the one I exist within, I can’t help wondering about Iphis after the curtains close. Are they happier as a man? Are they a man at all, or a woman in the body of a man? Was gender ever anything for them other than a weight around their neck, or a performance to play? I translate and translate and wonder what pronouns to use, reading the word woman again and again.
Iphis leaves a gift in the temple, dedicated to the goddess with an inscription:
DONA: PVER: SOLVIT: QVAE: FEMINA: VOVERAT: IPHIS.
A boy pays this gift, which a woman had pledged, Iphis.
I take a spoken Latin class and think of using neuter endings for myself and then I don’t. I go from “she/her” to “she/they” to “any pronouns.”
O Muse, instruct me of the man who drew
His changeful course through wanderings not a few,
Trans. John William Mackail, 1903.
Athena comes to earth as Mentes. Aristophanes jests with his tale of the original third androgynous gender as pretty boys vie for spots on the ground next to Socrates.
Tell me, O Muse, of the Shifty, the man who wandered afar.
Trans. William Morris, 1887.
The goddess commands that Iphis live as a baby girl until she can grow into a man. I bind my chest with medical tape and stick socks in my jeans and write my first original ancient Greek poem.
Tell me the tale, Muse, of that man
Of many changes,
Trans. Herbert Bates, 1929.
Telemachus strings up a line of women like caught bird for the crime of being sex slaves and translator Fagles kills them again when he calls them “sluts” and “whores” where the Greek says “sleeping.”
This is the story of a man, one who
was never at a loss.
Trans. William Henry Denham Rouse, 1937
I’m letting my hair grow out again, in an undercut this time. Quarantine has seen me take at last to the clippers, shaving the sides and leaving the rest to grow. It’s long enough now to tuck behind my ears. I’ve spent my Saturdays chanting the Odyssey in a sing-song up and down my house and yard. I’ve memorized over 50 lines by now, but none as powerful as that eternal first. Someday I’ll translate it too. I imagine how appropriate it will be to have a little “trans.” before my name.
The first word of the Odyssey is Ἄνδρα, Andra-man. I take the man inside of me, right next to the woman and the thing which is neither, and I work on translating myself.
#classics#original#my writing#ancient greek#latin#translation#gender and sexuality#long post#here have an essay i wrote for class#iphis and ianthe#ovid#the odyssey#homer#translating homer#gender
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Oh, to Be Ivanka!
So many hot spots, so little time.
By Frank Bruni Opinion Columnist July 2, 2019
Any random heiress can sunbathe in the Seychelles, ski in Aspen or, with the right Sherpa and thermal wear, ascend the Himalayas.
Only Ivanka has keepsakes from the Demilitarized Zone.
It must have been wild, finding herself next to an egomaniacal autocrat like that. It must have been something to meet Kim Jong-un, too.
With Daddy she swanned toward the Hermit Kingdom, testing the boundaries of Take Our Daughters to Work Day. I briefly wondered what value she was adding, because I foolishly prioritized the interests of America above the adventures of Ivanka. Optics be damned, she created a memory to last a lifetime. I trust that she and Jared, also gratuitously present, will mention it in their holiday letter.
Oh, to be Ivanka! The clothes, the kids, the teeth, the entitlement. She goes everywhere because she belongs everywhere — that confidence is in her platinum-encrusted genes — and because there’s no corner of the world or cranny of existence that isn’t enhanced by her presence.
That was the joke in a Zelig-inspired, Gump-reminiscent meme that exploded in tweets over the past few days. Look: There’s Ivanka between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. And here’s Ivanka teaming with Jonas Salk to develop the polio vaccine. She stretches out in bed with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. She peeks through a window in the background of the painting “American Gothic.”
Sometimes Twitter is a toilet. Sometimes it’s a reason to live.
And sometimes a hashtag distills a bottomless sea of disgust into a few acid droplets. The one accompanying these images was #unwantedivanka. It stemmed less from her brush with the Dear Leader than from a bit of video that showed her clumsily inserting herself into a conversation among Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Emmanuel Macron of France in Osaka, Japan. They may have credentials, but she has luminosity.
And gall. That’s what binds her and Jared. It’s their marriage’s secret sauce.
Last week he finally started to unveil his Middle East peace plan — because of course Jared can solve what actual experts failed to — and it threw $50 billion of theoretical investment at the problem without tackling any of the toughest stuff. It had already been disparaged by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; in a closed-door meeting he told Jewish leaders that the proposal was “not particularly original” and quite possibly “unexecutable,” according to an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post.
The rest of the world greeted it with no more enthusiasm, alternately shrugging and laughing, but Jared was partly insulated from that response because he and “Ivanks,” as he fetchingly calls her, were off to the Koreas. So many hot spots, so little time.
Ivanka nudged Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, out of the frame, essentially performing the roles of the entire cabinet and the first lady (who skipped the trip) at once. Coming soon: her book on multitasking.
When the president introduced her during a visit with American troops in South Korea, he said: “She’s going to steal the show! She’ll steal it!” I got a little misty just then. She has grown up to be what every dad dreams of for his daughter: an attention kleptomaniac.
And so lovely. Trump told the troops that she and Pompeo were “Beauty and the Beast.”
Back home, her big brother was doing the family even prouder. A chip off the old birther, Don Jr. shared — then erased — a tweet that asserted that Kamala Harris, whose father came from Jamaica and whose mother came from India, was “not an American black.”
I seldom feel sorry for President Trump — O.K., I never do — but if I were going to, it would be on account of his spawn and spawn-in-law. He has given them celebrity, fancy government titles, security clearances and entry into circles they’d never penetrate otherwise. They have given him humiliating headlines to go along with the mortifying ones that he already had in abundance. Talk about a trade imbalance.
But we can’t dismiss them any more than the president can, because they’re mascots not just for his administration but for this moment in American life.
Ivanka and Jared typify the belief that altitude is achievement, that breaching a sanctum is as valid as earning a place there, and that faking it is indeed making it. Call yourself a peacemaker and — abracadabra — you’re a peacemaker. Play the part of a diplomat with enough élan and people will eventually take you for one.
They’re shamelessness made flesh. In Homer’s epic poems and in Greek mythology, no flaw rivals hubris, but in the Family Trump, it’s as nonnegotiable as veneers. Pride isn’t what goeth before the fall. It’s what gets you to the inaugural ball.
[Get a more personal, less conventional take on political developments, newsmakers, cultural milestones and more with Frank Bruni’s exclusive commentary every week. Sign up for his newsletter.]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/opinion/ivanka-jared-trump-nepotism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
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Imagine Jamie trying to teach Claire one of his other languages. ;)
This is one of my favorite head canons… Jamie patiently teaching Claire phrases in some language, him being sweet and encouraging, Claire being a little awed by him but not wanting to inflate the JAMMF ego by being super effusive about it. I am so here for this, anon! I hope this fits the bill.
xoxo,
Mod Kate
Lesson
“So, let me see if I’vegot the list down.”
Jamie tipped his head and raised his glass as if toencourage me. He was a sight to behold like this –– bathed in candlelight, a little bitintoxicated, a mischievous smirk on his lips, and red hair mussed by my rovinghands.
Despite his efforts to tame his locks, an errant curl continued to flop onto his forehead in an arc and over his eyebrow. When he blew it out of his eyes –– again and again –– his eyebrows pinched together and his lips pursed.
Recently committed to exclusivity, we had taken a longweekend holiday to Austria. After getting our fill of fried meat that crunched withgreasy and satisfying richness, fire-singed chimney cakes with gritty sugar andstuffed with berries and ice cream, chewy bready dumplings that felt heavy onthe tongue, and beer upon beer upon beer, we had nipped over to a liquor storefor whisky.
“Scots on holidays,” he had explained, holding the bag up and kissing me.
“Not Scottish,” I had reminded him, arching onto my tiptoes in a way that pulled at my calves.
His hand found the small of my back through my coat. “Ye may as well be when ye’re wi’ me..”
Together, we were planted on the floor of our rented apartment. We faced one another,sharing the bottle and allowing our eyes and mouths do some flirting.
I had been marveling at his ease speaking in German.
He hadnever once gotten a sideways look, asked for a menu in English, or imploredsomeone to slow down or repeat. He did not sound like a Scot speakingGerman. Rather, his accent seemed, at leastto my untrained ear, to be on par with the locals.
Glowing from alcohol, I told him all of this. He haddismissively commented that he had an ear for languages. It launched us into thecurrent discussion: a cataloging of the ones he could speak.
“You speak English.”
“Obviously, Sassenach.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I lost the battle,rolling them and earning a snort of amusement from him, before continuing mylist. “French. Gaelic.”
“Again, obvious.” His fingers drummed on his thigh and mineworked at a stray thread at the hem of my t-shirt, skin working over the tan linefrom my shorts. His mentee, a French kid, was a big part of his life. I heard him speak French with him before on the phone. Gaelic, well that one was pretty obvious. “Try for ones ye’ve never heard me speak…”
“Latin–” I started, unsure of where I’d go next.
“Ecclesiastical Latin, but aye. Latin.”
I made a face – asingle raised eyebrow, wide eyes, parted lips turned up at one corner as breathrushed out of me. I tried to sound as unimpressed as possible when I said, “Imean, we all get a small dose of Latin in church. You know… being Catholic.”
I reached out and pushed aside the errant curl he had been battling all day. His skin was warm, smooth under my fingers. The hair was slippery and soft, and begged me to sink all of my fingers in, to cup his scalp in my palm.
“How much Latin are we talking about?”
“Oh, well… I’m probably near fluent. But ye ken Church Latin’sno’ Classical Latin. There’s a wee bit of difference.”
This time, I was unable to rearrange my face into a neutralexpression. I had no clue what the difference was between the two. He read my confusion perfectly (I fought the urge to add “Claire’s facial expressions”to the litany of languages Jamie Fraser spoke fluently) and clarified.
“I can read Ciceroand Virgil. But the pronunciations are no’ the same when it’s spoken. What’s inthose works… it’s different from what I can speak, ye ken. A lot of thepronunciations in the Church Latin have come to match modern Italianpronunciations of words.”
“So, can you read, write, and speak Classical Latin? Just the pronunciations aren’t spot on...”
“Och, no.” He made adismissive sound, running a finger around the rim of his almost empty tumblerof whisky, eyes focused on the amber liquid. “My reading’s braw, I’m fair enough speaking and understand more than Ican say. But I’m no’ going to author anything any time soon. Besides, The Aeneid is beautiful enough and Idinna need to add epic poet to my CV.”
“Of course you’veread the classics in the original languages.”
At this, he smiled, the bare arch of his foot climbing upthe back of my calf.
God, I was awed byhim and I needed to quit letting it show. This was new enough that I was notsure how to be off balance with him.
Jamie poured another healthy dose ofwhisky into my empty glass, bathing the melting ice cubes in amber. Earlier, hehad chastised me about not taking my whisky neat, but relented and filled bothof our glasses with cubes.
“What about TheOdyssey?” I asked, truly curious.
“That’s in Homeric Greek and–”
“You speak Greek, too. That’sone I forgot.”
“Again, though. Classic Greek. I could navigate ye through fifth centuryAthens, have a conversation with Sophocles, but am no’ goin’ to be much use ona yacht island hopping.”
“Pity.”
“Yes, ye’d look bonny all stretched out on a yacht in the middle of a crystal sea, tanand oiled up.”
I ignored the suggestiveness in his tone and let thebutterflies in my stomach flutter away when I said, “Cities, countryside are more my thing. I’m not really one for island hopping.”
He snorted a displeased kind of noise. I decided to reroute us back to the conversation at hand.
“What am I missing?”
“German–”
“Obviously,” Ilaughed, mimicking his intonation and accent from earlier in ourconversation.
The earnestness onhis face when he said ‘German’ was almost enough to undo me. His hand wandered,filling itself with the curve of my waist beneath my t-shirt. I mirrored touch,slipping my own fingers under his t-shirt and flattening them against theslight swell of muscle at his flank.
“You instructed me to list ones I’ve never heard you speak.”
At this he, he tugged me to him, gathering me against him.In short order he fastened his lips to my pulse point and sucked slightly.Sighing and bringing my hands to his shoulders, I whispered, “What else?”
“Biblical Hebrew.”
My lips sought the warmth of his mouth and hovered justbarely over his.
“Spanish, though only speaking. Havena tried to read in it, definitely canna write in it.”
He was breathing through his mouth now and I was catching eachof his quickening exhalations. “And?”
“My Dutch is fair enough for a wild weekend in Amsterdam.”
I hummed, twining my fingers into his hair as he moved hislips to my jawline. “Teach me something.”
“Hmmm. Language of yer choice, Sassenach.”
I let my cheek find histemple as his tongue flicked out to taste the corner of my lips. When hewhispered a response, his breath was cool where his tongue had wet me.
“Tell mea language ye want to learn.”
“Gaelic… teach me something in Gaelic.”
“What do ye want to ken in Gaelic?”
He mumbled something in said language against my skin, mouthjust below my earlobe. “Enough to know when you are sweet talking me.”
A Scottish noise, low in his throat. “It’s safe to say that if I’m speaking in Gaelic to ye, it’s sweet talking.”
Suspicions confirmed, I sighed a little, fingers tangling in his hair as they’d been wanting to all day.
“We can start with ‘ledthoil.’”
I tested the words, my pronunciation apparently abhorrent enoughthat it earned a low chuckle. It vibrated in his belly. His fingers slid underthe hem of my t-shirt and came to rest over my belly.
“What does it mean?”
“Please,” he said plainly, thumb traveling a circuit over myhipbone. “Ye can use it with me when ye beg me to finish ye off later on.”
“Not bloody likely,” I mumbled, fighting the urge to archinto his fingers. It was a battle of wills –– the two of us stubborn and tryingto bring the other to heel. ���Led thoil.”
This time, I earned a hum of approval. “Verra good.”
“I’m a fast learner,” I mumbled, admitting to myself that myvision was blurring at the periphery as both of his hands ran along the curvesof my hips.
“Aye, ye are.” He wet his lower lip with quick slip of his darting tongue. The words that could come out of that mouth in an entire litany oflanguages threatened to make me swoon. “Ready for yer next phrase, then?”
Nodding, I pulled his hair a little to tilt his head andposition his mouth back near mine.
When he said “bu toilleam glainne fion dearg?” his voice lifted on the end just enough for me torealize the phrase was a question.
“That’s a lot, Fraser.”
“It’s how ye can order a glass of red wine.”
“Why do I need to know that? You will never say that to me and there aren’t really any monolingual folksin Scotland.”
“Ye’ve asked to learn, Sassenach.”
He raised and eyebrow and slowed when he repeated thephrase, taking his time with each word. He shifted, leaning back against thebed and assumed an appropriate, professional distance from me. I sat cross-legged and just stared, watchinghim raise a knee, balance his elbow, and rest his cheek on his fist. My empty hands longed to be filled with his hair.
When I raised an eyebrow, he again read me perfectly andjust said, “Ye’re m’student right now. This is a matter of pedagogical... nay... professionalresponsibility.”
When minutes later I finally strung the phrase together, hegrinned and said, “Perfect.”
I dispatched with the praise for mastery of the phrase and lifted my shirt over myhead, crawling towards him on all fours, whispering, “Another.”
Eyebrows raised, he obliged. “Calman geal.”
“Calman geal,” Imimicked as I drew up beside him and moved to straddle his thighs. His fingers were quick with the clasp on my bra and I slipped it down over my arms, letting it fall between us. “Definition,please.”
“White dove.” Awarm palm skated from my hip to my breast, his eyes not leaving mine. “Allbathed in moonlight, that’s what ye are to me. A white dove. My white dove.”
“Calman geal,” Irepeated, bringing my lips to the corner of his mouth and fingers to his hips.
Later, his fingers working over the sweat-heavy curls at thenape of my neck, he whispered it again and again. Just as my mind crossed theprecipice to sleep, I heard him whisper something.
“Huh?” I intoned, somewhat sleepily. When he did not answer,I whispered, “What is it, love?”
“Och, I can say things to ye that would be daft and sillywaking, and your dreams will know the truth of them.”
“Tell me,” I asked quietly, needing to know.
A pause. A fullbreath –– inhale and exhale. Asigh. A confession: “Just that… there’sno’ a language I ken that has the words that let me tell ye fully how much Ilove ye, Claire.”
Needing to be closer, I arched into him, my cheek pressedover his riotous heart and absorbing each beat. “I know.”
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The Ilios Butterflies
Even with your graphic settings on low, Overwatch is a great looking game. But there are some fine details that won’t show up unless you’re on high settings. For example, something magical happens if you have your “effects” setting on medium at least.
“Hey guys did you know there are tiny butterflies flying around the flowers of Ilios Well?”
That’s something I must have said hundreds of times at the start of the game, in match chat (the orange text chat both teams see) whenever the game sends me to Ilios Well. It is thanks to the Ilios butterflies that I fell in love with all those obscure details in Overwatch. I noticed them a year and a half ago and haven’t stopped loving them since.
They’re pretty cute. They don’t do much. They just fly around flowers. Not all the flowers mind you, only select spots, for some reason I haven’t yet figured out.
Click here for an imgur ALBUM of ALL the spots where you can see them on Ilios.
and
Click here for a short video of the PINK butterflies
and
Click here for a short video of the YELLOW butterflies
Now the wonderful thing about those butterflies isn’t how cute and tiny and amazing they are. No, it’s that they’re an easter egg !
Quite a nerdy one too.
Turns out they’re not a made up custom model loosely based on what a butterfly is supposed to look like but they’re exact copies of a real life species called papilio ulysses.
Papilio ulysses is huge with its wingspan of 14cm (some of its sub-species are smaller and other bigger) and the males have the upper side of their wings (the part that’s on their backs) a bright blue and the lower side brown whereas females have both sides brown.
So you can only see the bright blue wings when a male is flying, when he’s resting or feeding, his wings are “closed” and you only see the brown part.
The Ilios Butterflies, yellow and pink and in the middle : papilio ulysses
(needs more JPEG)
So yeah this is clearly a 100% match.
Papilio ulysses, that’s the easter egg. Ulysses is the roman name of Odysseus, the hero of the ancient greek epic poem by Homer, the Odyssey.
Long story short, in the Odyssey the greek army is at war with city of Troy and they manage to capture Troy using the stratagem of the Trojan Horse , which was Ulysses/Odysseus’ idea. Also, Ulysses/Odysseus was the human champion of the goddess of wisdom Athena at that time (she likes having human champions that she helps as long as they remain virtuous) and Overwatch’s Athena seems particularly worried about what is happening in Ilios, Ilios being the only map (the other two being Nepal and Lijiang Tower) where she lets players know a bit about why they’re here. On Ilios, we’re here because of Talon activity in the area, Athena thinks they’re after the recently unearthed artifacts (the statues of Athena, Hera and Aphrodite).
Now what’s the link between the Trojan Horse and Ilios? Well, another name for the city of Troy back then was Ilios.
*mindblown gif*
The Ilios butterflies, modeled after a species with bright blue wings (aka, the anti camouflage color), are the same color as the plants they fly around, making them really hard to notice (they’ve been around since launch, I’ve checked old footage, but no almost no one knows about them). Almost like they’re camouflaged, waiting for the right time to strike, like the soldiers inside the Trojan Horse of old, ready to take the city of Troy. Which has me thinking the future greek hero of Overwatch could have some kind of camouflage ability, nothing like Sombra’s, more like actual camouflage that only works as long as you’re static even if you’re hiding in plain sight, Trojan Horse style. Idk, this is wild speculation.
There are pink, yellow and red flowers on Ilios, but only pink and yellow butterflies, no red butterflies for some reason.
Ilios is based on the greek island of Santorini and the pink flowers we see everywhere on the maps are very likely based on the real species bougainvillea which is found everywhere on Santorini. However bougainvillea is not native to the island, it comes from the rainforests of South America, Santorini being an arid volcanic island with 90% of its flora being dry bushes. Papilio ulysses isn’t native to Santorini either, it comes from the rainforests of Australia, Indonesia and other nearby tropical islands, it wouldn’t survive in the arid climate of Santorini (almost no native flowers on the island and way too dry anyway).
I think the developers picked this species solely for the easter egg, unless it’s a clue about the state of climate change in the world of Overwatch, allowing tropical butterfly species to survive in the dry mediterranean climate. Who knows...
Phew that was a lot of links to click on, I hope you’re not too mad about that :3
I hope you clicked on the first three links, they’re kind of important, if you haven’t, go do it now :D
That’s all I have on the Ilios Butterflies, I hope you liked it and will spread the word about them (and remember that you need to put the graphic setting called “effects” on medium at least, they don’t appear at all on low) !
They’re cute, they deserve to be noticed :D
If you’re open minded and if you enjoy wasting time hunting for the many obscure things the devs have put in the world of Overwatch, I have an all new discord server :D
https://discord.gg/Eg8pZdn
#overwatch#ilios#butterflies butterfly#easter-egg#greek mythology#ulysses#odysseus#odyssey#trojan horse#troy
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You Broke Me, Pittsburgh Pirates
My Dearest Pittsburgh Pirates,
Well, that will do it. Might as well circle March 28, 2019 on the calendar because that’s the next time you will play a meaningful game. You had a chance this week to get back into the race and you threw it away. You played two playoff contenders who were ahead of you in the race and you do the same this week. This was your opportunity to gain ground. Instead, you scored two runs in three game against Atlanta leading to a sweep at home. The offense finally found a little life after completely embarrassing itself for seven games in which you scored only seven runs. That was rather difficult to watch. When the offense finally did show up in Milwaukee against the Brewers, their offense showed up as well. Friday night was basically rock bottom for this season but more on that nightmare in a bit. When it was all said and done, done being the key word, you had lost two out of three against the Brewers. That makes for a 1-5 week when you needed it to be at least 5-1. Not exactly stepping up to the plate (pun intended) when the season was on the line. You are now 64-67, you are 13 games back in the division, and you are 8 ½ games back in the Wildcard with seven teams in front of you for the two spots. The season is over. Start looking at how to improve for next year because this one is done.
Friday night’s game broke me. It shouldn’t have been so devastating because it was already nearly impossible for you to make the playoffs after being swept by the Braves. I shouldn’t have been so emotionally invested but I sat through over 5 ½ hours and 15 innings of that game to watch you finally take a two run lead in the top of the 15th after you had tied it in the 9th to send it to extra innings. That’s when Hurdle’s decision to pull Musgrove after four innings so Josh Bell could pinch hit and strike out with the bases loaded really burned you. Every reliver had pitched except Kyle Crick who apparently wasn’t available because of back pain. Brault had thrown four scoreless innings and had batted in the top of the 15th so I assumed he could come back out even after throwing 58 pitches. Apparently, he couldn’t. This is going to be known as the “Clay Holmes season” now. Things have gone downhill since you gave him that spot start in San Francisco (It’s a coincidence because the offense imploded. Pitching him really had very little to do with your collapse.) Now he will be remembered for the half inning that put the nail in the coffin for 2018. Holmes got the first out but looked a little wild doing so. He proceeded to walk the next guy, then throw a wild pitch, and then another walk. He struck out Ryan Braun so now it was still 6-4, men on first and second, two outs, and pitcher Jordan Lyles coming up. The Brewers were out of position players, so they had to let him bat. Holmes walked him on five pitches. It was ridiculously embarrassing. It got to the point that catcher Elias Diaz wasn’t even giving him signs. He was motioning/begging him to throw it right down the middle and he couldn’t. That loaded the bases. A single by Erik Kratz scored two to tie the game and then another single by Orlando Arcia (and a terrible throw home by Polanco) scored the winning run. That was it. The game, the season, the hope. All gone. I sat in silence for about an hour after it was over. It broke me. The game was actually the perfect microcosm for the whole year. Not very optimistic, then suddenly you seem like you’re destined for great things, but you immediately plunge back to earth. It was quite a ride.
Cue the panic. I’m just going to say it now to get it out of the way. Chris Archer has been undeniably bad since coming over in the deadline deal. He said it himself. He got lit up yesterday for six earned runs in four innings pitched. Since coming over, he’s got a 6.45 ERA, 1.75 WHIP, and hitters are batting .313 against him. That’s worse than bad. His BABIP against is a whopping .377 so there’s reason to believe that will improve. The Pirates are tinkering with the pitches he throws and how he throws them so there were going to be some growing pains. Starting pitching is extremely hard to acquire and to get someone like Archer for this year plus three more isn’t easy to do. This is a guy I’m still very excited about. Yes, Shane Baz was a first-round pick and that’s a big piece to give up. Yes, Austin Meadows has been crushing the ball (7 HRs, 1.002 OPS) in Triple-A since being traded and your offense has struggled terribly on top of it. Yes, Tyler Glasnow looked good in his first couple starts, though he’s leveled out and shown the same tendencies of high pitch counts, too many walks, and the inability to control the running game. Either way, this trade doesn’t look good right now. This season doesn’t matter anyway. Archer can take the rest of this season to iron out the kinks and come back next year ready to be a top of the rotation starter with Jameson Taillon. The risk is still very much worth it because if he gets back to the pitcher he’s been his whole career, which is reasonable to believe, then you have one of the top 20 pitchers in all of baseball. Just try not to panic after five starts because I’m sure a lot of the fan base will.
When looking at the team going into next year, there will obviously be changes that need to be made but maybe players aren’t the only thing that should be considered. The coaching staff has performed questionably at times this season and before you go into this three-year window of potentially being competitive, you might want to consider making changes. I only watch so many other baseball games in a season but whether it’s Rick Scofield or now Joey Cora, you seem to have the worst third base coach in baseball year in and year out. They make mistakes constantly. I can think of three boneheaded mistakes Cora has made in the last month. That’s too many. Jeff Branson, your hitting coach, looked very bad this week with the offense performing beyond inept. They rank 17th in baseball in OPS which isn’t terrible but not exactly something to write home about. When they grind out at bats, they can be a formidable offense. They just don’t seem to do that often enough. Even Ray Searage, who I do want to keep, isn’t void of criticism. Your pitching staff has the most errors and wild pitches in all of baseball. That doesn’t fall squarely on him but that’s got to be something that’s remedied. And then we get to the top with Clint Hurdle. I’ve had issues with him all year and it feels like I have weekly complaints. My one for this week goes back to Friday night’s game when he pinch hit for Musgrove in the 5th inning with the bases loaded. You haven’t been scoring runs and he was desperate for some. Fine. He showed a sense of urgency. Where was that urgency a month ago when you were still in the hunt and he let Alex McRae pitch in a tie game against the Cardinals for three-plus innings? That didn’t even piss me off as much at the time as it does now. He finally starts coaching with desperation after you are basically eliminated from the race? Good timing, Clint. My guess is this entire coaching staff will be back next year, but I’d be down for firing Branson, Cora, and Hurdle. They have just proved to be amateurs on way too many occasions.
This is where I usually say what’s on the docket for this week and what you need to do in order to get back in this race. Well, that’s all pretty pointless now. You can’t lose today, which is nice, but that’s only because you don’t play. The road trip continues with three games in St. Louis against the red-hot Cardinals starting tomorrow followed by three games in Atlanta against the Braves, you know the team that swept you this week and held you to two runs in three games. If you wanted to even consider the thought of getting back into this thing, you have to win all six games. That would only be enough to ger started. The likelihood of you winning all six games is so miniscule that’s it’s not even worth talking about. Now is the time that you should start auditioning people for next season. Keep playing Adam Frazier at second to see what he’s got. Play Kevin Newman more to see if he’s got any hope of starting. Bring up Kevin Kramer and work him in more. Now’s the time to figure out what you have up the middle next year. Hell, try Kramer third if you want to get bold. I don’t care. With this pitching staff and bullpen, you can compete now. The window is open and the National League doesn’t have a team so dominant that you couldn’t sneak into the running. Start figuring all this out now so we don’t have to you don’t waste a year of this window trying things out. You showed some potential this season. We will chalk it up to that. Now figure out how that potential comes to fruition in 2019. Good luck, as always. Talk to you next week!
Shattered Into A Million Pieces,
Brad
P.S. stands for Pretty Simple. The question is what’s wrong with your offense and what happened during that epic losing streak? The answer remains the same: home runs. Or the lack there of. You rank 24th out of 30 teams in homers and in the NL you rank 12th out of 15. That won’t cut it in a home run driven league. During the seven runs in seven game stretch, you hit two homers total. The walkoff by Frazier against Chicago was one and the other was the meaningless solo shot in the 9th inning of the 6-1 loss to the Braves by Polanco. Clutch hitting comes and goes throughout a season. Home runs are the way to get sure runs and your team doesn’t hit enough. That’s also something you need to address this offseason…
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literature quizzes . repost with your muse’s results for the following quizzes !
HOMERIC EPITHET .
You are Harry the giant-killer. In Homer’s epics, he attributed this epithet to Hermes, the messenger god who had a secret side business in giant-killing. Hermes is considered the protector of thieves, travelers, and athletes, and enjoys things like poetry, music, and journeying to and from the Underworld just because he can.
FATAL FLAW .
Your brutal honesty. You’re blunt. You’re outspoken. Frankly, you’re kind of a jerk. But you get away with it because you’re usually right and also because you’re indispensable to the major plot. But honestly? It’s going to come back to haunt you. One of these days, you’re going to be TOO honest. You’re going to refuse to lie at a critical juncture, upholding your honorable caustic truthfulness, and you’re going to pay the ultimate price for it.
GREEK MYTHOLOGY DEATH .
Killed by a wild boar that was sent by one of the gods. See, here’s the thing—someone sent that wild boar. It might have been Artemis, because she was jealous of your skill with a bow and arrow; it might have been Ares, who hated you; or it might have been Apollo, because your girlfriend blinded his son. There’s really no telling. You made enemies. This is just what happens when you’re too beautiful to even exist. Either way, you got mauled by a pig and are now dead, but you died in Aphrodite’s arms as she wept, so at least you've got that going for you.
WHICH LITERARY SETTING DO YOU BELONG IN ?
You got “On the road!” Like so many literary characters (Huck Finn, Odysseus, Gulliver, etc.), you’re an adventurer and explorer at heart, and the literary setting that most closely matches your personality is, quite frankly…all the settings! You’re not meant to settle down in one spot—you’re the kind of person who hits up multiple parties in one night, and your insta is probably filled with pics of all the cool places you’ve travelled to. So embrace it! Take to the open road with your friends, run through a field of wildflowers in the middle of nowhere, and please get a pic next to the world’s largest Ketchup bottle.
tagged by: @sarraqum <3
tagging: @rollingsnowsmasher - @lunarcries - @fateandfury - @fallasea
#▓ ▌ ℌ;; There’s much more underneath those witty remarks (about)#I loved answering these tbh#also how accurate though#especially that wild boar one omg
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The best wins of 2018 for all 30 teams
When we look back at the 2018 season, we see countless memorable moments from an exciting MLB campaign. But each club had one signature victory, in many cases embodying its season. With the help of each MLB.com beat writer, here is each club's best win of '18.
Angels: 13-9 win vs. OAK (April 6)
Trailing by six runs in the second inning, the Angels' revamped offense came alive to fuel the team's biggest comeback win of the season. Shohei Ohtani sparked the uprising by homering in his third consecutive game, and Justin Upton's three-run shot capped a five-run seventh that put the Angels over the top. Full recap >
Astros: 10-5 win vs. LAA (Sept. 22)
After giving up five runs in the eighth inning to spoil a superb 11-strikeout start across six scoreless innings by Justin Verlander and falling behind, the Astros rallied for their biggest inning of the season, scoring nine times in the bottom of the eighth to win, 10-5. Full recap >
Athletics: 13-10 win (10 innings) vs. TEX (July 24)
The A's struck for 11 unanswered runs in the final four innings of a wild 10-inning affair in Arlington, pulling out a 13-10 victory over the Rangers. Stephen Piscotty provided the game-tying home run in the ninth, and Khris Davis delivered the final blow with a three-run homer in the 10th. Full recap >
Blue Jays: 9-8 win vs. TB (Sept. 20)
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Justin Smoak hit back-to-back homers in the ninth inning as the Blue Jays rallied from six runs down to stun the Rays with a 9-8 victory at Rogers Centre. The six-run turnaround was tied for the largest ninth-inning comeback in franchise history as Toronto sent nine batters to the plate; the win put a serious damper on the Rays' aspirations for the postseason. Full recap >
Video: TB@TOR: Smoak caps comeback with walk-off HR in 9th
Braves: 10-9 win vs. MIA (May 20)
Facing a 9-4 deficit entering the bottom of the ninth against the Marlins, the Braves staged a six-run rally that was capped by Dansby Swanson's two-out, two-run, walk-off single. After Ronald Acuna Jr.'s one-out sacrifice fly accounted for Atlanta's first run of the frame, five straight Braves reached safely ahead of Swanson, who fouled off consecutive 99-mph pitches before lacing his game-winning hit to left. Full recap >
Brewers: 13-12 win (10 innings) vs. CIN (Aug. 29)
There was the postseason clincher in St. Louis and the division clincher in Chicago, but the Brewers' wildest win of the year was Aug. 29 in Cincinnati, a 10-inning thriller that featured four ties and five lead changes, defensive gems and disputed calls aplenty, plus the first of Christian Yelich's two cycles in the span of three weeks. Full recap >
Video: MIL@CIN: Yelich records cycle with 6 hits, shows arm
Cardinals: 7-6 win vs. WSH (Aug. 13)
The signature victory during the Cardinals' eight-game winning streak came on Aug. 13, when they delivered a blow to Washington's playoff hopes while resuscitating their own. After Matt Carpenter put the Cards in front with a three-run, eighth-inning blast, Paul DeJong sealed the win with his first career walk-off homer. Full recap >
Cubs: 4-3 win vs. WSH (Aug. 12)
It was the kind of blast that kids dream about in their backyards -- two outs, bases loaded, trailing by three in the bottom of the ninth. On Aug. 12, David Bote lived it. The Cubs' rookie delivered a pinch-hit, walk-off grand slam against Nationals reliever Ryan Madson, setting off pure bedlam at Wrigley Field. It was the 25th ultimate slam on record and the first by the Cubs since Aug. 31, 1963 (Ellis Burton). Full recap >
Video: Must C Comeback: Bote's grand slam completes comeback
D-backs: 8-7 win (15 innings) vs. LAD (April 2)
The D-backs trailed the Dodgers, 6-3, with two outs and no one on in the bottom of the ninth with dominant closer Kenley Jansen on the mound. After a pair of two-out walks, Chris Owings hit a three-run homer to tie the game. After the Dodgers took a 7-6 lead in the top of the 15th, the D-backs wound up tying the game on a Nick Ahmed double, before a single by catcher Jeff Mathis in the bottom half of the frame won it. Full recap >
Dodgers: 5-1 win vs. MIL (Oct. 20, NLCS Game 7)
Rookie Walker Buehler started, series MVP Cody Bellinger and Yasiel Puig launched crowd-silencing homers at Miller Park, Chris Taylor pulled off a miracle catch in left field and Clayton Kershaw pitched the ninth inning as the Dodgers eliminated the Brewers in Game 7 of the NLCS, 5-1, advancing to their second consecutive World Series. Full recap >
Video: NLCS Gm7: Buehler, 2 HRs lead Dodgers to World Series
Giants: 7-5 win (14 innings) vs. LAD (April 7)
Andrew McCutchen's three-run homer in the 14th inning gave the Giants a satisfying victory over their archrivals. It was McCutchen's sixth hit of the game, making him only the second player since 1900 to have six hits in a game with one of them resulting in a walk-off victory. Full recap >
Indians: 10-9 win (14 innings) vs. HOU (May 27)
Down by five runs to the Astros in the bottom of the ninth, the Indians forced extra innings on five RBI singles. In the 13th, Yonder Alonso answered Evan Gattis' solo shot with one of his own, before Greg Allen delivered his first career walk-off homer in the 14th frame. Full recap >
Mariners: 4-3 win (10 innings) vs. HOU (Aug. 12)
After saving three straight games over the Astros, Edwin Diaz was supposed to have the day off in the Aug. 12 series finale in Houston. But when Ryon Healy homered with two outs in the ninth to tie the game following Houston's three-run rally in the eighth, Diaz called to the dugout and said he wanted to pitch. Mitch Haniger's RBI double gave Seattle a 4-3 lead in the 10th, Diaz came on for yet another one-run save and Seattle notched an impressive four-game sweep to pull within four games of the American League West lead. Full recap >
Marlins: 2-1 win (17 innings) vs. CHC (March 30)
Nothing came easy for the young Marlins in 2018, including their first victory of the season. In game No. 2, Miguel Rojas' walk-off single off Brandon Morrow scored Brian Anderson, capping a 5-hour, 18-minute affair, the longest game in Marlins Park history. Odrisamer Despaigne, who started the next day, threw a scoreless 17th for the win. Full recap >
Mets: 6-5 win (12 innings) vs. WSH (April 8)
Shortly after Yoenis Cespedes flared a 12th-inning, go-ahead hit into center field early on the morning of April 9, the Mets closed out a 6-5 win in Washington to match their 1985 and 2006 predecessors for the best start in team history. They went on to open the season a franchise-best 11-1. Full recap >
Nationals: 14-12 win vs. MIA (July 5)
One day after the Nationals held a team meeting, they had their defining win of the season on July 5. After falling behind, 9-0, against the Marlins at Nationals Park, the Nats stormed back for the largest comeback in club history, an improbable 14-12 win led by Trea Turner's career-high eight RBIs. Full recap >
Video: Must C Clutch: Turner gets 8 RBIs, hits go-ahead HR
Orioles: 6-5 win vs. NYY (July 10)
This back-and-forth affair provided Orioles fans final, lasting memories of Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop. Three weeks before they'd be traded, Machado twice brought the O's back with game-tying home runs, and Schoop socked a walk-off single to lead Baltimore to a 6-5 win over the Yankees at Camden Yards. Full recap >
Padres: 7-6 win vs. ARI (Aug. 18)
The Padres unveiled a nine-foot-tall bronze statue of newly enshrined Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman before the game. Then they honored the legacy of the legendary closer in the best way possible: by winning in the ninth inning. Christian Villanueva's two-out bloop single into left field sealed the victory, setting off a celebration that included Hoffman himself partying in the Padres' clubhouse. Full recap >
Phillies: 7-4 win (16 innings) vs. LAD (July 24)
Trevor Plouffe had a short stint with the Phillies, but he hit a three-run homer against Dodgers infielder Enrique Hernandez in a 16-inning walk-off victory on July 24. The Phillies' bullpen finished the game with 10 consecutive scoreless innings, with starter Vince Velasquez pitching the 16th. Full recap >
Pirates: 7-6 win (10 innings) vs. MIL (July 15)
A week after general manager Neal Huntington foreshadowed a potential Trade Deadline sell-off, Josh Bell's walk-off double in the 10th inning capped a five-game sweep of the Brewers with a rain-soaked, 7-6 win at PNC Park. The Pirates' winning streak reached 11 games on the other side of the All-Star break, and they wound up buying at the Deadline. Full recap >
Rangers: 3-1 win (10 innings) vs. HOU (April 15)
Bartolo Colon took a perfect game and a 1-0 lead into the eighth inning against the Astros at Minute Maid Park. Colon lost the perfect game in the eighth and gave up the tying run. But the Rangers came back and won it in the 10th on a two-run double by Robinson Chirinos. Full recap >
Rays: 6-4 win vs. BOS (March 29)
The Rays trailed the Red Sox, 4-0, on Opening Day when they came to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning. That's when they sent 10 men to the plate against two Boston relievers, drew four walks and took the lead for good on Denard Span's three-run triple to complete a six-run rally. Full recap >
Red Sox: 9-6 win vs. LAD (Oct. 27, World Series Game 4)
The Dodgers looked primed to tie the World Series at 2-2 when Yasiel Puig belted a three-run homer to make it 4-0 in the sixth. But after Red Sox ace Chris Sale lit into the dugout for sub-par at-bats, the Sox came storming back for an epic comeback. The big blow was a three-run, pinch-hit homer by Mitch Moreland in the seventh to put his team within a run. Eventual World Series MVP Steve Pearce tied it with a homer in the eighth, and the Sox erupted for a five-spot in the ninth for a stunning 9-6 win. Full recap >
Video: Must C Comeback: Sox score nine late to win Game 4
Reds: 9-7 win (12 innings) vs. ATL (April 24)
In a game where rookie starter Tyler Mahle had a no-hitter through six innings, it became a bullpen battle and a 9-7 walk-off win in 12. Scooter Gennett hit two homers, including the game-winner, and had a perfectly-executed suicide squeeze bunt in what became a nail-biter of a game. It was the first time in 2018 that Cincinnati earned back-to-back wins. Full recap >
Rockies: 2-1 win (13 innings) vs. CHC (Oct. 2, NL Wild Card Game)
If any game embodied the pitching-oriented 2018 Rockies, it was the 2-1, 13-inning victory over the Cubs in the NL Wild Card Game. Kyle Freeland shut down a tough lineup for 6 2/3 innings, and the bullpen held on until Tony Wolters -- who had a .170 regular-season batting average -- delivered the winning RBI single. Full recap >
Video: Arenado on advancing to the NLDS after win over Cubs
Royals: 5-4 win vs. CLE (Aug. 24)
The Royals stunned the Indians at Kauffman Stadium, 5-4, on Aug. 24 when two rookies, Ryan O'Hearn and Hunter Dozier, delivered home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning off closer Cody Allen to walk-off the Tribe in perhaps the most thrilling Royals win of the season. Earlier that night, a water pipe broke near the Royals' bullpen in right field, which flooded the warning track and created a 30-minute delay. Full recap >
Tigers: 3-2 win (12 innings) vs. TB (May 2)
What began as a pitchers duel between Michael Fulmer and Blake Snell ended in the 12th inning with a walk-off squeeze bunt from backup catcher John Hicks, scoring JaCoby Jones as Matt Andriese and Brad Miller collided chasing the ball for a 3-2 win over the Rays. Full recap >
Twins: 7-5 win vs. CLE (June 3)
Twins left fielder Eddie Rosario almost single-handedly carried Minnesota to a win over the Indians, as he hit three homers, including a walk-off two-run shot off Cleveland's closer, Cody Allen. To make it even better, Rosario's family from Puerto Rico was in attendance at Target Field. Full recap >
White Sox: 14-7 win vs. KC (March 29)
The season opener at Kauffman Stadium didn't exactly start well, with the Royals scoring four runs in the first inning off James Shields. But the White Sox scored the next 14 runs on the strength of six homers, with three from Matt Davidson and two from Tim Anderson for an eventual 14-7 victory. Full recap >
Yankees: 7-5 win vs. SEA (June 20)
Gary Sanchez completed the comeback from a five-run deficit with a mammoth game-tying blast in the eighth inning and Giancarlo Stanton celebrated his first signature moment in pinstripes with a walk-off shot in the ninth, enveloped by his teammates at home plate as they celebrated a memorable 7-5 victory over the Mariners at Yankee Stadium. Full recap >
Video: SEA@NYY: Stanton's walk-off HR caps 5-run comeback
Source: https://www.mlb.com/news/each-mlb-teams-best-win-of-the-2018-season/c-302151326
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Oh, to Be Ivanka! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/opinion/ivanka-jared-trump-nepotism.html
Frank Bruni does it again!!! This is hilarious 😂 and disgusting 🤮at the same time. Please read 📖 and SHARE. TY 🙏
Oh, to Be Ivanka!
So many hot spots, so little time.
By Frank Bruni, Opinion Columnist | Published July 2, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 2, 2019 |
Any random heiress can sunbathe in the Seychelles, ski in Aspen or, with the right Sherpa and thermal wear, ascend the Himalayas.
Only Ivanka has keepsakes from the Demilitarized Zone.
It must have been wild, finding herself next to an egomaniacal autocrat like that. It must have been something to meet Kim Jong-un, too.
With Daddy she swanned toward the Hermit Kingdom, testing the boundaries of Take Our Daughters to Work Day. I briefly wondered what value she was adding, because I foolishly prioritized the interests of America above the adventures of Ivanka. Optics be damned, she created a memory to last a lifetime. I trust that she and Jared, also gratuitously present, will mention it in their holiday letter.
Oh, to be Ivanka! The clothes, the kids, the teeth, the entitlement. She goes everywhere because she belongs everywhere — that confidence is in her platinum-encrusted genes — and because there’s no corner of the world or cranny of existence that isn’t enhanced by her presence.
That was the joke in a Zelig-inspired, Gump-reminiscent meme that exploded in tweets over the past few days. Look: There’s Ivanka between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. And here’s Ivanka teaming with Jonas Salk to develop the polio vaccine. She stretches out in bed with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. She peeks through a window in the background of the painting “American Gothic.”
Sometimes Twitter is a toilet. Sometimes it’s a reason to live.
And sometimes a hashtag distills a bottomless sea of disgust into a few acid droplets. The one accompanying these images was #unwantedivanka. It stemmed less from her brush with the Dear Leader than from a bit of video that showed her clumsily inserting herself into a conversation among Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Emmanuel Macron of France in Osaka, Japan. They may have credentials, but she has luminosity.
And gall. That’s what binds her and Jared. It’s their marriage’s secret sauce.
Last week he finally started to unveil his Middle East peace plan — because of course Jared can solve what actual experts failed to — and it threw $50 billion of theoretical investment at the problem without tackling any of the toughest stuff. It had already been disparaged by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; in a closed-door meeting he told Jewish leaders that the proposal was “not particularly original” and quite possibly “unexecutable,” according to an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post.
The rest of the world greeted it with no more enthusiasm, alternately shrugging and laughing, but Jared was partly insulated from that response because he and “Ivanks,” as he fetchingly calls her, were off to the Koreas. So many hot spots, so little time.
Ivanka nudged Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, out of the frame, essentially performing the roles of the entire cabinet and the first lady (who skipped the trip) at once. Coming soon: her book on multitasking.
When the president introduced her during a visit with American troops in South Korea, he said: “She’s going to steal the show! She’ll steal it!” I got a little misty just then. She has grown up to be what every dad dreams of for his daughter: an attention kleptomaniac.
And so lovely. Trump told the troops that she and Pompeo were “Beauty and the Beast.”
Back home, her big brother was doing the family even prouder. A chip off the old birther, Don Jr. shared — then erased — a tweetthat asserted that Kamala Harris, whose father came from Jamaica and whose mother came from India, was “not an American black.”
I seldom feel sorry for President Trump — O.K., I never do — but if I were going to, it would be on account of his spawn and spawn-in-law. He has given them celebrity, fancy government titles, security clearances and entry into circles they’d never penetrate otherwise. They have given him humiliating headlines to go along with the mortifying ones that he already had in abundance. Talk about a trade imbalance.
But we can’t dismiss them any more than the president can, because they’re mascots not just for his administration but for this moment in American life.
Ivanka and Jared typify the belief that altitude is achievement, that breaching a sanctum is as valid as earning a place there, and that faking it is indeed making it. Call yourself a peacemaker and — abracadabra — you’re a peacemaker. Play the part of a diplomat with enough élan and people will eventually take you for one.
They’re shamelessness made flesh. In Homer’s epic poems and in Greek mythology, no flaw rivals hubris, but in the Family Trump, it’s as nonnegotiable as veneers. Pride isn’t what goeth before the fall. It’s what gets you to the inaugural ball.
#donald trump#u.s. news#politics#trump administration#president donald trump#politics and government#trump#republican politics#white house#international news#republican party#national security#us: news#must reads#maga#elections#democracy#ivankatrump#jared and ivanka#north korea#kim jong un#u. s. foreign policy#u.s. foreign policy
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2018 Division Series Preview: Boston Red Sox
Missing velocity has turned Chris Sale into an ALDS wild card
The MVP roars. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Baseball’s premier rivalry meets again in the postseason, 14 years after a pair of epic Championship Series duels. This time, it will be a five-game set and the Red Sox have home-field advantage thanks to a tremendous regular season.
The Season Series
Boston was the only team to best the Yankees in the season series this year, taking 10 of 19 from the Bombers after winning the season finale. The Sox outscored the Yankees, 116-102, and dealt the decisive blow to their division hopes with a four-game sweep at Fenway Park in August. The Yankees took six of nine at Yankee Stadium but mustered just three wins in 10 tries in Boston.
Who stood out? Rick Porcello went 2-0 with a 2.31 ERA over 23 1/3 innings in four starts while Chris Sale allowed just one run over 13 innings across two victories. He held the Yankees to a .118/.220/.250 line. Mookie Betts hit a ridiculous .415/.506/.738 with 14 extra-base hits against the Pinstripers.
Meanwhile, Aaron Judge batted .346/.443/.654 with five homers and Giancarlo Stanton hit .371/.423/.700 with five homers and 12 total extra-base hits. Luis Severino guided the Yankees to three wins at the Stadium.
Injury Report
Dustin Pedroia, Marco Hernandez, Austin Maddox and Carson Smith are out for the year. Chris Sale is healthy, but his velocity was significantly down in his last start of the year. Eduardo Nunez has dealt with knee issues for the last few seasons.
Their 2018 Season
You know the story. Boston took the league by storm this year, winning a franchise-best 108 wins. They have home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Their 876 runs led baseball — Yankees were second with 851 — while 647 runs allowed was only bested by the Astros (534), Dodgers (610), Cubs (645) and Rays (646).
Betts is the likely AL MVP after leading baseball with a .346 average, putting up a 1.078 OPS and playing a Gold Glove-caliber right field. Sale is a Cy Young favorite with a 2.11 ERA over 158 innings while racking up 237 strikeouts. The crazy thing is that J.D. Martinez had a more impressive year in some ways, nearly winning the Triple Crown.
The Lineup We Might See
Mookie Betts, RF – .346/.438/.640, 32 HR, 30 SB, 185 wRC+ (AND 10.4 WAR!!)
Andrew Benintendi, LF – .290/.366/.465, 16 HR, 21 SB, 122 wRC+
J.D. Martinez, DH – .330/.402/.629, 43 HR, 6 SB, 170 wRC+
Xander Bogaerts, SS – .288/.360/.522, 23 HR, 8 SB, 133 wRC+
Mitch Moreland, 1B – .245/.325/.433, 15 HR, 2 SB, 100 wRC+
Ian Kinsler, 2B – .240/.301/.380, 14 HR, 16 SB, 87 wRC+
Rafael Devers, 3B – .240/.298/.433, 21 HR, 5 SB, 90 wRC+
Jackie Bradley Jr., CF – .234/.314/.403, 13 HR, 17 SB, 90 wRC+
Sandy Leon, C – .177/.232/.279, 5 HR, 1 SB, 33 wRC+
The lineup won’t look quite like this in Game 1 with J.A. Happ on the mound for New York. Steve Pearce (140 wRC+, 158 wRC+ vs. LHP) will certainly play first base and Eduardo Nunez (78 wRC+, 71 wRC+ vs. LHP) could take over at third base. Pearce could also start at DH or first vs. righties and force Moreland or Bradley Jr. to the bench.
But, hot diggity dog, the top of that lineup is good. You can’t let guys like Bradley Jr. and Leon get on or else Betts, Benintendi and Martinez will make you pay.
Come Sale away. (Getty Images)
The Starting Pitchers We Will See
Game 1 (Friday at 7:32 PM ET): Chris Sale vs. J.A. Happ
The stuff: He’s got a 95+ mph fastball, a wipe-out high-80s slider and a low-80s changeup. The guy has some of the best stuff in baseball when he’s on.
The questions: Health and ability to go deep in games. Sale pitched just 12 innings over four starts in September. He struck out 18 and allowed just five runs, but he didn’t look quite like himself. Perhaps that was because the games were meaningless. His fastball averaged just 90.2 mph in his final start of the year as his velocity has trickled down his last few starts. Mike broke down Sale’s disappearing velocity earlier today.
Performance vs. NYY: Outside of one bad start last September, he’s really had the Yankees’ number since coming to Boston. His seven innings of one-hit, 11-strikeout ball at the Stadium in June was perhaps the best road performance against the Bombers this year.
Game 2 (Saturday at 8:15 PM ET): David Price vs. Masahiro Tanaka
I’ll be brief on the next three starters because Domenic and Mike broke them down over the last few weeks. Here’s Dom’s preview that touched on Price recently.
The story with Price is simple: He’s a great pitcher. He’s had a strong second half. But he can’t seem to beat the Yankees’ and their right-handed power, nor has he acquitted himself well in the postseason. Both of those storylines hang over him heading into Game 2.
Game 3 (Monday at 7:40 PM ET): Rick Porcello vs. Luis Severino
Porcello’s had a fine, average-ish year, as Domenic pointed out last week. Like Price (and Sale), he’s struggled in the postseason historically. However, he’s been able to keep the Yankees off balance and one-hit them at Fenway in August after no-hitting them into the middle innings in April. He was unable to beat them at Yankee Stadium in one try.
Game 4 (Tuesday at 8:07 PM ET): Nathan Eovaldi vs. CC Sabathia
I can’t put it better than Mike, who broke down Eovaldi’s season and his strong numbers against the Yankees. Check out his piece!
Game 5 (Thursday at 7:40 PM ET): TBD vs. TBD
If we get this far, I’d bet on Sale starting instead of Price for obvious reasons, though Sale may be needed in relief in Game 4 like last season. On the Yankees’ end, they get to pick between whoever performed better among Tanaka and Happ in the first two games.
The Bullpen
The Red Sox will have seven relievers for this series, eight if you count Eovaldi in the early part of the series. Craig Kimbrel is the closer, mostly in one-inning stints, though the postseason will likely call for longer outings. Matt Barnes has been his primary setup man both before and since returning from the disabled list.
From there, it gets hairy. Recently, Alex Cora has turned to Steven Wright and Ryan Brasier in the middle innings. Wright especially has kept the Yankees off-balance, but the knuckleballer shouldn’t scare the Bombers.
Eduardo Rodriguez will act as the long man after missing out on the Game 4 start. Beyond him, the final two spots came down to Brandon Workman, Joe Kelly and Heath Hembree with Hembree missing the cut. Kelly was dreadful down the stretch and Cora will likely loathe utilizing him in a high-leverage spot.
Tipping Points
Sale’s readiness: He’s barely pitched down the stretch and he’s arguably the most important player in this series.
Relying on the bullpen: We know the Yankees can rely on their bullpen, but will they to the extent they need to or will Aaron Boone leave his starters in too long? On the other side, can Alex Cora find a bridge between his rotation and Craig Kimbrel that doesn’t cost his team a game or the series?
Left on right: It’s not as simple as the platoon advantages, but the Red Sox are going with two lefties presumably for three of the five starts in this series while the Yankees boast the best collection of right-handed hitting talent in baseball. If Sale and Price can navigate the lineup 2-3 times through with a lead, Boston should take the series.
Mookie Betts: He’s so freaking good. Ugh.
Missing velocity has turned Chris Sale into an ALDS wild card
Source: https://bloghyped.com/2018-division-series-preview-boston-red-sox/
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15 Gorgeous Small Towns In America’s Mountain Regions
From the Adirondacks to the Rockies, these charming mountain towns deserve a moment in the sun. If you’re planning a visit, consider a vacation rental from FlipKey—like a cozy cabin right on the hiking trails or a modern ski condo.
In a land with hundreds of individual mountain ranges and endless acres of national forests, some of the most exciting vacation destinations in the US boast skylines that haven’t changed in centuries. Home to craggy peaks with steep trails, twisting singletracks and swirling whitewater, this country’s beautiful little mountain towns deserve their own moment in the sun. That’s why we’re featuring 24 scenic communities—each home to less than 10,000 residents—with serious four-season appeal and tons of small-town charm.
Whether you’re planning an adventure vacation or a relaxing mountain getaway, these coast-to-coast destinations show off the most breathtaking vistas America has to offer (not to mention some of the coolest backcountry cabins and rustic ski lodges available for rent on FlipKey).
Bryson City, North Carolina
What Bryson City lacks in size, it makes up for in towering peaks, panoramic views and big natural attractions (namely, the Great Smoky Mountains). For hiking and biking enthusiasts, the Appalachian Trail and Tsali Mountain Biking Recreation Area are both nearby, but the city itself is better known for another outdoor activity: epic whitewater rafting. Don’t miss the opportunity to face some huge drops and rapids on the Nantahala River. Of course, if you prefer to stay on dry land, you can always browse the handcrafted items on display in the area’s artisan-run shops.
Find a great place to stay in Bryson City!
Ely, Minnesota
Ely is a small town that’s easy to overlook: northern Minnesota, population 3,460, set against the stunning backdrop of the Shagawa Lake. So how did it end up on this list of stunning mountain vacations? We’ve got a few good reasons, starting with the town’s recent renaissance and an upswing in tourism. From ice fishing and dogsledding in the winter to late summer canoeing and early autumn hiking, this hidden-gem outdoors hub has a lot to offer, and travelers are taking note.
Find a great place to stay in Ely!
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
For cliffside Victorian homes, quaint galleries and boutiques, meandering mountain roads and 25 miles of backwoods trails, rent a historic home in Eureka Springs and start exploring the Ozarks. This popular mountain vacation destination is surrounded by natural attractions including three lakes, two rivers and a number of public caves, so canoeing, kayaking, fishing and hiking abound. But the fun doesn’t stop after summer ends; nearby spas and outstanding exhibits at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art make Eureka Springs an enchanting winter escape.
Find a great place to stay in Eureka Springs!
Park City, Utah
In 2015, two local spots merged to create Park City Mountain Resort, now the largest ski resort in the country. Add 7,300 skiable acres to the 400+ miles of trails accessible to hikers and bikers during the summer, and you’ll understand why this city is a buzzworthy destination year-round. (Of course, if you’re looking to save a little money, steer clear mid-winter when the Sundance Film Festival comes to town.) If hitting the slopes—or trails—isn’t your definition of a good time, the restaurants, galleries and luxe boutiques on Main Street won’t disappoint.
Find a great place to stay in Park City!
Fayetteville, West Virginia
Given West Virginia’s nickname (“The Mountain State”) and motto (“Mountaineers are Always Free”), the state’s rugged peaks are an essential part of its heritage—just as much as the small towns nestled in the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountain ranges. Fayetteville is one of those charming destinations, home to the oldest river on the continent and the world’s second-longest single arch bridge. Aside from the region’s legendary whitewater rafting, Fayetteville is also known for rock climbing, llama treks(!) and Bridge Day, an annual October festival and sporting event centered around BASE jumping.
Find a great place to stay in Fayeteville!
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Gatlinburg is practically synonymous with Great Smoky Mountains National Park and those iconic misty mountain ridges. It’s a regional hub for whitewater rafting, horseback riding, ziplining and a long list of other popular outdoor activities; visit in the winter, and you can even fly down the slopes at Ober Gatlinburg, Tennessee’s only ski resort. Beyond the scenery, though, this entertaining mountain vacation town is known for its boutiques, live bluegrass and a surprising number of distilleries. Ever wondered what apple pie moonshine tastes like? You can sample it here. Make a day trip of it and book yourself a moonshine and wine tasting tour.
Find a great place to stay in Gatlinburg!
Homer, Alaska
Homer has its fair share of nicknames: “Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.” “Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea.” “The End of the Road.” But make no mistake about that last one: this destination is not a dead end. Hemmed in by the mountains and the sea, Homer boasts the best of both worlds, so you can go hiking on Kenai Peninsula trails in the morning and sea kayaking on the Kachemak Bay in the afternoon. Well on its way to becoming the state’s adventure tourism capital, the quaint and quirky mountain town lures Alaskans and out-of-state travelers alike with its mild climate, jaw-dropping scenery, excellent fishing and prime bear viewing opportunities. You can even book a six-hour grizzly bear-spotting tour, including a thrilling plane ride and a hike to get a closer look at these fascinating creatures.
Find a great place to stay in Homer!
Hood River, Oregon
Hood River has been called both “a recreational boomtown” and “an agricultural powerhouse,” because the Columbia River port city is equally famous for its strong winds (a windsurfer’s dream) and good fruit. Located an hour east of Portland, where the Columbia River Gorge meets the Cascade Mountain Range, the area boasts some of the best windsurfing in the world and 15,000 acres of orchards—plus microbreweries, top-notch cycling, scenic gorges and balmy temperatures nearly year-round. Pair a leisurely cycle with some first-rate wine tasting on the Oregon Wine Country Experience, a guided cycle stopping at three wineries and offering some of the area’s best views.
Find a great place to stay in Hood River!
Ketchum, Idaho
Whether you’re a daredevil biker, skier or mountaineer, it’s about time you (ahem) caught up with Ketchum—the self-described home of “one of the lowest resting heart rates anywhere.” Once a Wild West mining center, this central Idaho town is just one mile from Sun Valley, the first American ski resort. Naturally, skiing is an essential part of the fabric of the community (and with 250 days of sunshine each year, it’s not a bad place to visit if you’re craving a little fresh air). Reserve a cabin rental or luxury lodge and prepare for an epic outdoor adventure.
Find a great place to stay in Ketchum!
Killington, Vermont
Best known for its namesake resort, Killington boasts 6 peaks, 22 lifts, 155 trails and 3,000 skiable acres, making it the largest ski area in the eastern US. Eleven miles away, the Nordic Ski and Snowshoe Center offers more than 35 miles of cross-country skiing and snowshoe trails. And while we’re crunching the numbers, here are five reasons—music festivals, mountain climbing, biking, hiking and golf—to visit after the snow melts. Oh, and one more thing: Killington has played host to three Spartan World Championship events. (We think that about sums it up.)
Find a great place to stay in Killington!
Lake Almanor Area, California
In northeastern California, where the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas meet, Lake Almanor offers swimming, tubing, kayaking, canoeing and 52 miles of forested shoreline. If lazy summer lake days aren’t your style, the region’s great trails and beautiful meadows are also perfect for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing when colder weather sets in. No matter when you visit, thanks to the number of smallmouth bass, giant rainbow trout and kokanee salmon, the fishing is great year-round.
Find a great place to near Lake Almanor!
Leavenworth, Washington
For a feel-good comeback story, look no further than the tale of Leavenworth. After the decline of the area’s railway and timber industries in the 1960s, the former logging town remodeled its buildings to create a Bavarian-style alpine village. In the decades since, Leavenworth has become a bustling tourist destination known for its Cascade Mountain scenery and a packed calendar of festivals and performances. If you visit during the summer, don’t leave without catching an outdoor show at the Leavenworth Summer Theater; during the winter, backcountry skiing and snowmobiling are two exciting ways to explore the surrounding region.
Find a great place to stay in Leavenworth!
Red Lodge, Montana
If you don’t know about Red Lodge’s skiing and snowboarding scene, here’s what you’ve been missing: affordable prices, heart-stopping vistas and plenty of fresh powder (around 250 inches of snow each year). Avoid the crowds at big-name resorts and opt in for a cabin rental with stunning views of the Beartooth Mountains. When warmer weather arrives, this desirable mountain towns town becomes a hot spot for climbing, fishing, rafting and horseback riding. What’s more? In Red Lodge’s historic downtown, you’ll find plenty of unique local spots to shop, eat and enjoy a pint.
Find a great place to stay in Red Lodge!
Taos, New Mexico
Perhaps best known for Taos Pueblo, the only living Native American community to be declared both a National Historic Landmark (1965) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1992), Taos is a desert town at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Range. Here, galleries, museums and landmark sites are not difficult to come by—but neither are legendary hikes and unforgettable mountain vistas. For a great introduction to Taos, book a guided driving tour, which includes Taos Pueblo and the Rio Grande Gorge. Craving cold-weather activities? Seventeen miles northeast of the town, Taos Ski Valley offers skiing and snowboarding during the winter.
Find a great place to stay in Taos!
Telluride, Colorado
Welcome to Rocky Mountain High Country. If the skyline is giving you a case of déjà vu, it might be because you’ve seen it before—on a can of Coors beer. Telluride is an iconic spot, home to cabin rentals with soaring mountain views and the dazzling slopes skiers dream of all year. We’re partial to the excellent hikes (don’t miss the trek to 365-foot Bridal Veil Falls), thriving restaurant scene (try the buffalo, venison or elk) and buzzy annual events like the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
Find a great place to stay in Telluride!
The post 15 Gorgeous Small Towns In America’s Mountain Regions appeared first on The FlipKey Blog.
from Tips For Traveling https://www.flipkey.com/blog/2018/10/01/15-gorgeous-small-towns-in-americas-mountain-regions/
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15 Gorgeous Small Towns In America’s Mountain Regions
From the Adirondacks to the Rockies, these charming mountain towns deserve a moment in the sun. If you’re planning a visit, consider a vacation rental from FlipKey—like a cozy cabin right on the hiking trails or a modern ski condo.
In a land with hundreds of individual mountain ranges and endless acres of national forests, some of the most exciting vacation destinations in the US boast skylines that haven’t changed in centuries. Home to craggy peaks with steep trails, twisting singletracks and swirling whitewater, this country’s beautiful little mountain towns deserve their own moment in the sun. That’s why we’re featuring 24 scenic communities—each home to less than 10,000 residents—with serious four-season appeal and tons of small-town charm.
Whether you’re planning an adventure vacation or a relaxing mountain getaway, these coast-to-coast destinations show off the most breathtaking vistas America has to offer (not to mention some of the coolest backcountry cabins and rustic ski lodges available for rent on FlipKey).
Bryson City, North Carolina
What Bryson City lacks in size, it makes up for in towering peaks, panoramic views and big natural attractions (namely, the Great Smoky Mountains). For hiking and biking enthusiasts, the Appalachian Trail and Tsali Mountain Biking Recreation Area are both nearby, but the city itself is better known for another outdoor activity: epic whitewater rafting. Don’t miss the opportunity to face some huge drops and rapids on the Nantahala River. Of course, if you prefer to stay on dry land, you can always browse the handcrafted items on display in the area’s artisan-run shops.
Find a great place to stay in Bryson City!
Ely, Minnesota
Ely is a small town that’s easy to overlook: northern Minnesota, population 3,460, set against the stunning backdrop of the Shagawa Lake. So how did it end up on this list of stunning mountain vacations? We’ve got a few good reasons, starting with the town’s recent renaissance and an upswing in tourism. From ice fishing and dogsledding in the winter to late summer canoeing and early autumn hiking, this hidden-gem outdoors hub has a lot to offer, and travelers are taking note.
Find a great place to stay in Ely!
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
For cliffside Victorian homes, quaint galleries and boutiques, meandering mountain roads and 25 miles of backwoods trails, rent a historic home in Eureka Springs and start exploring the Ozarks. This popular mountain vacation destination is surrounded by natural attractions including three lakes, two rivers and a number of public caves, so canoeing, kayaking, fishing and hiking abound. But the fun doesn’t stop after summer ends; nearby spas and outstanding exhibits at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art make Eureka Springs an enchanting winter escape.
Find a great place to stay in Eureka Springs!
Park City, Utah
In 2015, two local spots merged to create Park City Mountain Resort, now the largest ski resort in the country. Add 7,300 skiable acres to the 400+ miles of trails accessible to hikers and bikers during the summer, and you’ll understand why this city is a buzzworthy destination year-round. (Of course, if you’re looking to save a little money, steer clear mid-winter when the Sundance Film Festival comes to town.) If hitting the slopes—or trails—isn’t your definition of a good time, the restaurants, galleries and luxe boutiques on Main Street won’t disappoint.
Find a great place to stay in Park City!
Fayetteville, West Virginia
Given West Virginia’s nickname (“The Mountain State”) and motto (“Mountaineers are Always Free”), the state’s rugged peaks are an essential part of its heritage—just as much as the small towns nestled in the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountain ranges. Fayetteville is one of those charming destinations, home to the oldest river on the continent and the world’s second-longest single arch bridge. Aside from the region’s legendary whitewater rafting, Fayetteville is also known for rock climbing, llama treks(!) and Bridge Day, an annual October festival and sporting event centered around BASE jumping.
Find a great place to stay in Fayeteville!
Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Gatlinburg is practically synonymous with Great Smoky Mountains National Park and those iconic misty mountain ridges. It’s a regional hub for whitewater rafting, horseback riding, ziplining and a long list of other popular outdoor activities; visit in the winter, and you can even fly down the slopes at Ober Gatlinburg, Tennessee’s only ski resort. Beyond the scenery, though, this entertaining mountain vacation town is known for its boutiques, live bluegrass and a surprising number of distilleries. Ever wondered what apple pie moonshine tastes like? You can sample it here. Make a day trip of it and book yourself a moonshine and wine tasting tour.
Find a great place to stay in Gatlinburg!
Homer, Alaska
Homer has its fair share of nicknames: “Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.” “Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea.” “The End of the Road.” But make no mistake about that last one: this destination is not a dead end. Hemmed in by the mountains and the sea, Homer boasts the best of both worlds, so you can go hiking on Kenai Peninsula trails in the morning and sea kayaking on the Kachemak Bay in the afternoon. Well on its way to becoming the state’s adventure tourism capital, the quaint and quirky mountain town lures Alaskans and out-of-state travelers alike with its mild climate, jaw-dropping scenery, excellent fishing and prime bear viewing opportunities. You can even book a six-hour grizzly bear-spotting tour, including a thrilling plane ride and a hike to get a closer look at these fascinating creatures.
Find a great place to stay in Homer!
Hood River, Oregon
Hood River has been called both “a recreational boomtown” and “an agricultural powerhouse,” because the Columbia River port city is equally famous for its strong winds (a windsurfer’s dream) and good fruit. Located an hour east of Portland, where the Columbia River Gorge meets the Cascade Mountain Range, the area boasts some of the best windsurfing in the world and 15,000 acres of orchards—plus microbreweries, top-notch cycling, scenic gorges and balmy temperatures nearly year-round. Pair a leisurely cycle with some first-rate wine tasting on the Oregon Wine Country Experience, a guided cycle stopping at three wineries and offering some of the area’s best views.
Find a great place to stay in Hood River!
Ketchum, Idaho
Whether you’re a daredevil biker, skier or mountaineer, it’s about time you (ahem) caught up with Ketchum—the self-described home of “one of the lowest resting heart rates anywhere.” Once a Wild West mining center, this central Idaho town is just one mile from Sun Valley, the first American ski resort. Naturally, skiing is an essential part of the fabric of the community (and with 250 days of sunshine each year, it’s not a bad place to visit if you’re craving a little fresh air). Reserve a cabin rental or luxury lodge and prepare for an epic outdoor adventure.
Find a great place to stay in Ketchum!
Killington, Vermont
Best known for its namesake resort, Killington boasts 6 peaks, 22 lifts, 155 trails and 3,000 skiable acres, making it the largest ski area in the eastern US. Eleven miles away, the Nordic Ski and Snowshoe Center offers more than 35 miles of cross-country skiing and snowshoe trails. And while we’re crunching the numbers, here are five reasons—music festivals, mountain climbing, biking, hiking and golf—to visit after the snow melts. Oh, and one more thing: Killington has played host to three Spartan World Championship events. (We think that about sums it up.)
Find a great place to stay in Killington!
Lake Almanor Area, California
In northeastern California, where the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas meet, Lake Almanor offers swimming, tubing, kayaking, canoeing and 52 miles of forested shoreline. If lazy summer lake days aren’t your style, the region’s great trails and beautiful meadows are also perfect for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing when colder weather sets in. No matter when you visit, thanks to the number of smallmouth bass, giant rainbow trout and kokanee salmon, the fishing is great year-round.
Find a great place to near Lake Almanor!
Leavenworth, Washington
For a feel-good comeback story, look no further than the tale of Leavenworth. After the decline of the area’s railway and timber industries in the 1960s, the former logging town remodeled its buildings to create a Bavarian-style alpine village. In the decades since, Leavenworth has become a bustling tourist destination known for its Cascade Mountain scenery and a packed calendar of festivals and performances. If you visit during the summer, don’t leave without catching an outdoor show at the Leavenworth Summer Theater; during the winter, backcountry skiing and snowmobiling are two exciting ways to explore the surrounding region.
Find a great place to stay in Leavenworth!
Red Lodge, Montana
If you don’t know about Red Lodge’s skiing and snowboarding scene, here’s what you’ve been missing: affordable prices, heart-stopping vistas and plenty of fresh powder (around 250 inches of snow each year). Avoid the crowds at big-name resorts and opt in for a cabin rental with stunning views of the Beartooth Mountains. When warmer weather arrives, this desirable mountain towns town becomes a hot spot for climbing, fishing, rafting and horseback riding. What’s more? In Red Lodge’s historic downtown, you’ll find plenty of unique local spots to shop, eat and enjoy a pint.
Find a great place to stay in Red Lodge!
Taos, New Mexico
Perhaps best known for Taos Pueblo, the only living Native American community to be declared both a National Historic Landmark (1965) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1992), Taos is a desert town at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Range. Here, galleries, museums and landmark sites are not difficult to come by—but neither are legendary hikes and unforgettable mountain vistas. For a great introduction to Taos, book a guided driving tour, which includes Taos Pueblo and the Rio Grande Gorge. Craving cold-weather activities? Seventeen miles northeast of the town, Taos Ski Valley offers skiing and snowboarding during the winter.
Find a great place to stay in Taos!
Telluride, Colorado
Welcome to Rocky Mountain High Country. If the skyline is giving you a case of déjà vu, it might be because you’ve seen it before—on a can of Coors beer. Telluride is an iconic spot, home to cabin rentals with soaring mountain views and the dazzling slopes skiers dream of all year. We’re partial to the excellent hikes (don’t miss the trek to 365-foot Bridal Veil Falls), thriving restaurant scene (try the buffalo, venison or elk) and buzzy annual events like the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
Find a great place to stay in Telluride!
The post 15 Gorgeous Small Towns In America’s Mountain Regions appeared first on The FlipKey Blog.
from Tips For Traveling https://www.flipkey.com/blog/2018/10/01/15-gorgeous-small-towns-in-americas-mountain-regions/
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Why Fiordland is an adventurer’s playground
The most wild, remote and probably most beautiful corner of New Zealand is without a doubt, to travel Fiordland. Although it’s full of adventure and possibility, few tourists venture beyond Milford Sound. Janey from Little Wanderlust Stories is a good friend of mine and was lucky enough to live and work down in this epic area, and she’s agreed to share her local tips and knowledge with us!
New Zealand is known around the world as the land of adventure. And to be fair, it is the place that invented bungy jumping and where the Lord of the Rings was filmed. There are thousands of bucketlists out there telling you all of the ‘must do adventures while in New Zealand,’ and let’s be honest here, they are all the same.
My journey on the Milford Track in 30 photos
So many of New Zealand’s best experiences, especially for true adventurers, are still relatively unknown.
Fiordland National Park is one of these lovely little secrets. Widely known to travelers as the home of the iconic Milford Sound, many won’t explore beyond that, and most come in as a day trip from Queenstown or to hike the ridiculously popular Milford Track (which books out a year in advance). But there is so much more to experience, and if you’re brave enough to venture away from the popular spots.
I lived, worked and played in Fiordland for seven months and let me tell you – if it’s adventure you’re looking for, Fiordland will not disappoint you, ever. I spent every free moment seeking something new and exciting, whether it was on the water, under the water, up a mountain or in the bush.
The biggest bonus about so many of my wild adventures in Fiordland was that no buses stop in these places and tourists don’t really know about them, meaning you’ll have the place to yourself! But seriously, this national park is so big, unless you’re adventuring with other people you’re unlikely to bump into anyone!
If you’re like me and dying to get off the tourist tracks, away from people and experience some pretty epic raw adventure in a beautiful natural landscape, then keep reading! If you’re not quite sure if adventuring in Fiordland is for you, I promise by the end of this blog post you’ll change your mind.
So without further a do, here are my best picks for 12 epic adventures to have in Fiordland National Park!
1. Hike to the beautiful Lake Marian
This is definitely one of the most scenic hikes in New Zealand, and that’s saying something!
The Lake Marian Track is pretty easy to follow; while it’s getting more well-known in recent years, it’s well trodden and would be tricky to get lost! Park your car just at the beginning of Hollyford Road and follow the sign marked for Marian Falls, cross the swingbridge and leave the tourists behind (or most of them anyways) who only walk up to see the waterfall.
It’ll take around 1.5 – 2 hours to get to this beautiful alpine lake, and while the incline can be steep, it’s not so bad compared to many other hikes in New Zealand, and it is so worth it!
The trail itself is not well-maintained. It’s often muddy, there are a few parts you will have to climb up tree roots (but only a tiny bit). While this trail is easy to follow, it can be tricky underfoot so it is important to be wearing good boots (seriously, the amount of times I’ve seen people hike in flip flops is nuts) and take it from me, it’s very easy to twist your ankle on this track if you aren’t careful.
Lake Marian’s water is crystal clear green, often offering mirror reflections of the surrounding snowcapped peaks. Clamber over giant boulders down to the lake side to fully enjoy the view. Trust me, it’s the perfect place for a picnic lunch.
Or, if you fancy venturing further in summer you can walk around the edge of the lake with the option of going into the valley at the other end BUT DO NOT try this in winter/spring time when the avalanche risk is high. In winter, just stick to the main side of the lake.
We hiked to Lake Marian in September which is springtime in Fiordland, it’s getting warmer but still a little cold with snow on the mountains. The crystal clear water of Lake Marian was tempting enough for us to hop in for an incredibly quick swim!
2. Push your limits on Dore Pass
Getting into the wild of Fiordland is easily done on this hiking adventure, though after that, nothing is easy. Expect no phone signal, no clear trail and very little in the way of waymarks.
Dore Pass is a highly advanced hiking trail and I wouldn’t tackle it alone or at the very least, without a PLB (personal locator beacon). Experts only! But man, it promises an awesome adventure!
Start the trail from a very tiny car park on the Milford Road with the doc sign post for ‘Glade Hut’ written on it. From here the route itself is only around 10.5km one way but it is going to be tough. TOUGH.
You’ll begin by crossing the Eglinton River – we opted to do this in bare feet. I’ll warn you now, it is cold – and head into the treeline in front of you. There is no clearly marked trail, and the aim is to find the orange flag on the outskirts which then should lead you to a faintly marked trail.
And from here it is up, up, up you go!
For those of us with navigational skills, alpine experience and a love of the wilderness you will love Dore Pass!
Reaching the top of the pass is sensational. 360 degree views of where you came from to where you’re going make the last few hours of bush bashing, steep climbs and trail finding totally worth it. You’ll look down to the end of Lake Te Anau and the start of the Milford Track and from here this is when your alpine skills and the necessity of having a PLB or friend with you will make the difference.
The trail runs along the mountain ridges, with only waratahs/cairns guiding you (which are sometimes hard to spot). There will be sections you’ll be shimmying around a boulder or crossing landslide sections. Don’t panic, there are always hand holds somewhere or if not, the hardcore alpine weeds are pretty durable!
Ignore the ‘bunny trails’ leading you away from the waratahs to what seems like a shortcut. These are not shortcuts. Unless you fancy flying or rolling down into the valley below!
This trek will take anything from 7 – 10 hours. We did it over two days, started late, camped and then completed it the next day but camped in the woods before heading home.
The only bitch about this trek is you will either have to get the ferry back on the other side from Glade Wharf, which is the beginning of the Milford Track. Or turn around and hike back to the car the same way you came, which remember, is another 7 – 10 hours! What I recommend is to take the ferry back over to Te Anau Downs and then hitchhike back to the car! If you’re lucky enough some of the tour buses will take you down!
This is one of the most epic hikes I’ve ever done. Don’t get me wrong it is HARD and I struggled, cried, was covered in mud a lot and really had to push myself. But wow it was worth it!
3. Can you do the Routeburn Track in a day?
Another one of New Zealand’s famous Great Walks is the Routeburn. Although they are popular, you can’t stop your curiosity going wild wondering what the hype is all about. One of the shorter of the Great Walks coming in at a shy 32 kilometers, most people do it in three days. Unless you’re a kiwi then you do it in a day to avoid the high cost of the hut fees. Or better yet, run it.
Sounds crazy, but it’s do-able, trust me!
Hiking New Zealand’s famous Routeburn Track
If you like well trodden trails, don’t mind bumping into a few other people along the way and are looking for some incredible scenery. This is a pretty epic trail! Starting from either The Divide just off the Milford Road or from the other side in Glenorchy.
The most beautiful part of this whole hike for me, was the Mackenzie hut and the climb up to Harris Saddle. The lush green valley and blue, crystal clear alpine lakes are surrounded by mighty mountain peaks giving the beauty a sense of drama. The views here never get boring.
There is a great mixture of up, down and flat walking. The trail is incredibly well maintained offering huts, shelters and camping options that allow both adventurers looking for a challenge and easy walkers to enjoy the same route at their own pace.
4. Alpine climb to Homer Saddle
If you love alpine hikes but you don’t have days to spend off trail, carry camping gear and head for the high peaks deep in Fiordland, Homer Saddle is a cheeky hidden secret.
Drive down the Milford road and just before you get to the Homer Tunnel, turn off and park your car in the car park to the side of the tunnel.
From here, you’ll see an old ‘nature track’ which used to be run by DOC but had since been wiped out by landslides.
Follow the nature trail as it begins to skirt up along the alpine mountain side, slowly gaining height. There are absolutely no markers for this trail, it’s officially not maintained by DOC, so you’re pretty much on your own. But that’s what we love, right?!
The route up to the Homer Saddle has a faint trail, but really you’re only going to make it up onto the ridge if you have a little alpine experience. If in doubt, just aim for the top! The top being a pretty gnarly sheer Alpine ridge with the perfect view to have a coffee too!
You’ll be looking down the winding road into Milford Sound, after the homer tunnel. Be careful not to fall though, there’s a few hundred meter drop below you!
Discloser – people have died on this hike even someone just last year; experts ONLY.
5. Venture into the Valley of the Trolls
If you want to enter a world where you could imagine trolls living under waterfalls, fairy rings and the home of elves then this is the place to be. Valley of the Trolls is a secret little spot just off the Routeburn Track. So for the first few hours of the day you’ll be walking pretty much half of one of New Zealand’s Great walks – that counts as being ticked off, right? – but your destination is way better than the end of the Routeburn.
I’ve been hesitant to give this beautiful spot up, but for adventurers looking for new, accessible trips this is a must do and deserves to be explored! There are no trail markers to take you here, I went on word of mouth advice from a friend and good guessing work! So how do you get there?
Follow the Routeburn Track until you get to Lake Harris. From here the lake seems to snake into a valley on the other side. That valley is your aim. Walk down to the lake side close to the harris shelter and look for small pink markers. These are trap lines and are basically found along the side of the Lake towards the valley.
Entering the valley the first thing you notice is a thundering waterfall cascading down the mountain peaks at the far end and a spiderweb of little rivers littering the valley floor. This makes the ground underfoot a little boggy and wet, not ideal for camping. But no worries! The walls of the valley have some epic Lion King styled over hangs, perfect to pitch a tent or just cosy up in a bivvy bag under the stars with little worry of rain!
How many places in the world can you find a campsite setting in a valley of magical creatures? Even the toughest of us adventurers want to camp in a Disney-like setting!
6. White water kayak bright blue river rapids
Fiordland is a mecca for the white water kayaker but is not for the faint hearted!
It is steep, fast, continuous (not a lot of places to stop for a breather), full of boulders and technical maneuvers but most of all – a shot of adrenaline right to your heart!
If you look down, you’re paddling over clear glacial blue waters. Look ahead to see you’re paddling through a rainforest, the raging white water drops away between steep boulders and you look up and you’re in the middle of the mountains, gazing up at snow capped peaks all around.
There is nothing quite like, white water kayaking in Fiordland National Park.
I say potential mecca because although Fiordland is full of amazing rivers, it is lucky a passerby will find the river at the right level unless you’re very experienced. The rivers are formed at the base of glacial granite valleys, meaning the water races over the rock below without sinking into the ground and quickly flows away down river. This is why the rivers in Fiordland can be dangerous, flash floods can be pretty common here!
So basically if you’re after some epic white water, it’s best you plan to hang around a while for the rain to come. If you’re like, you might even see whio or the Blue Duck, New Zealand’s white water rafting duck that lives in the fast flowing waters of Fiordland.
For those lucky enough to be here at the right time, the Hollyford river is where you want to be!
There’s some easy but technical warm up sections down Falls Creek with grades 3/4 to get you started before you continue down to some epic grade 5 rapids below Marian Creek and eventually, flowing out through continuous grade 4 rapids as you pass Morraine Creek.
The Hollyford is hands down one of the most beautiful, magical and terrifying(ly awesome) rivers that will just stay with you forever. So if you’re a keen white water kayaker, this is where you want to be!
7. Go on a sea kayaking adventure
Growing up on the water, sometimes there is no better way to explore somewhere so remote than in a kayak. Being on and close to the fiords in a kayak is a pretty special experience.
Being in a kayak up close and personal to the small caves, marine life, birds and native bush in the Fiords beats being stuck on a giant cruise ship with hundreds of other people any day!
Kayaking Milford Sound in the pouring rain
You can kayak in both Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound through tour companies, but if you have your own kayak and a sense of adventure – there’s not too much of a limit to where you can explore!
Kayaking alongside dolphins, rare penguins and seals while being surrounded by some of the biggest and dramatic mountains is just, indescribable!
My favorite moment was heading down to Milford Sound with a bunch of my friends just before midnight. Hopping in kayaks and paddling the length of Milford Sound until we just about reached the Tasman Sea. Kayaking with just the moonlight to light our way, incredible stars and the playing splashes of the jumping dolphins and seals nearby was sensational.
Just before we beached our kayaks onto Anita Bay a seal jumped over the front of my kayak giving me the absolute fright of my life! – Is it embarrassing to say I almost fell out of my kayak? – We set up camp at about 2am, enjoyed a beer under the stars before falling asleep to enjoy a early morning paddle back the next day.
8. Explore the depths of the fiords diving
Scuba diving in Milford Sound is a completely unique adventure. The marine life and ecosystem down there is hard to find anywhere else in the world! Each dive is different and for adventurers looking for a unique experience in Fiordland, this will definitely satisfy you!
Milford Sound is famous for having some of the best diving in New Zealand, if you can bear the cold. A few meters of fresh rain water sits on the surface, so you descend through it to the saltwater below which is much warmer. You can even see a divide in the water.
The dark tannins in the freshwater layer trick deep dwelling sealife into living much closer to the surface than they normally would so you often get to see creatures and corals here that you wouldn’t have a chance to anywhere else in the world.
Descend Dive is the only company in Milford Sound offering diving adventures; PADI trained, I was geared up and ready to go. Setting off early in the morning, we were out to make a day of it.
Jumping into the water and descending down a few meters everything goes fuzzy for a moment as you cross from the freshwater layer into the salt water. Finding my bearings and looking around, along the sheer cliff faces are trees of white coral (actually named black coral) it didn’t take much more than that to blow me away. The sheer cliff faces were full of life, and the friendly locals came to join in the fun – seals! That was also the moment I realzed it’s hard to scream (in excitement) with a regulator in your mouth.
So what are you waiting for? Gear up and jump in! You’ll even get a fresh water shower under Stirling Falls before you hit shore!
9. Climb the iconic Mitre Peak in Milford Sound
Mitre Peak has to be one of the most incredible mountains I have ever climbed! And none is so iconic, lording over Milford Sound in all it’s glory. But it is not for the faint of heart – or for anyone with a fear of exposure or heights.
It can be done in a day, but why rush when you could camp on the saddle? For anyone who spends time in Fiordland, standing on top of Mitre Peak will be on your adventure list.
There is something captivating about that iconic spike that wills us to take on, not only the mountain, but the sea and the stubborn New Zealand bush as well.
Getting to Mitre Peak is an adventure in itself and is for hardcore mountain badasses ONLY.
There is no overland trail to the beginning of this climb so you have to approach the mountain by sea! The best way is to kayak – there is nothing better than gliding through smooth glassy water, especially when dolphins and penguins come to play along the way! Drag it onto the beach and leave it somewhere the tide won’t wash it back out – that would not be a fun swim later!
There is nothing on Mitre Peak for you, and you need to bring all your water with you. Most people I know who have climbed it end up getting lost in the bush for a while, running out of water, and having to steripen puddle water. Yuck!
Now it’s time to take on the stubborn New Zealand bush. It’s almost like entering Narnia and playing chase with a gremlin! The only thing to keep you on track is the occasional pink ribbons tied sneakily to tee branches and roots along the way but otherwise it’s not an official trail and is unmarked.
As the trail rises it’ll become so steep you’ll be climbing on all fours, with the help of tree roots, cursing each step as you heave yourself towards the saddle.
Breaking out of the bush felt like I’d just broken out of jail.
Suddenly the light was back, the air was clearer and the views were already sensational. Now for the final push to the peak.
I hope you have a head for heights and serious alpine experience because it is dodgy as fuck! With sheer drops on both sides down into the fiord below, a slip here and you are a goner.
Unless you have incredible balance, nerves of steel and no fear of falling, you will be bum shuffling and be on all fours! But you’ve made it (hopefully) and now can enjoy the epic, snow capped peaks and the view out into the Tasman sea beyond the fiord.
There are companies like Adventure Consultants that do guided trips up Mitre Peak and I think there are options of roping in at the top.
If you’re looking for hardcore adventure in Fiordland, Mitre Peak will give you the thrill you’re after!
10. Unzip your tent to some epic views from the top of Cascade Peak
Cascade Peak, although shorter than Mitre Peak is a much harder climb, mentally. There are no trails or tracks to follow, you’re simply bush bashing your way through dense rainforest. The trees offer no light or views and landmarks don’t really exist to help you here.
The best way to describe how to get to the top of Cascade peak, is to keep climbing up, until you quite literally, can’t go up any higher!
Once at the top of this challenging mountain; the mental battle you just had, heaving yourself and your backpack up the steep slopes, makes everything worth it! You’re met with a view of mother natures greatest creation, Piopiotahi (or Milford Sound). Camping on the top of Cascade is a bit of a squeeze. There are a few larger flat areas but the vegetation is slowly taking over and blocks those epic tent views we are all after.
If you want a tent view of the mighty Milford Sound and the surrounding Tasman sea, then you you’re going to have to camp on pretty much, a knife’s edge. Just make sure if you pitch your tent here, you don’t roll over in your sleep, it’s a long way down!
At the top, you can finally breathe fresh air and get to play with the cheeky and curious kea (the world’s only alpine parrot) who will stop by for a visit – and try to steal your food – they are heaps of fun and good company. But keep your valuables and your boots zipped in your tent.
Remember in places like this in New Zealand, we always practice leave nothing behind except footprints.
In the evening sit round your small cooking fire and watch the sun go down out over the Tasman Sea and watch the shadows slowly creep up the mountains around you. In the morning, make sure you wake up for the sunrise to enjoy the incredible Alpine glow, lighting the mountains up in dazzling colors of orange and red, as the sun rises high into the sky.
This will be an adventure you won’t forget in a hurry!
11. Sleep under the stars on Gertrude Saddle
Gertrude Saddle is a day hike on the Milford Road but can be more challenging than you expect it to be and often has fatalities for those going up in bad conditions or who are unprepared. Now maintained heavily and new safety measures in place after a few tragedies in previous years it is a great climb for both thrill seekers and avid walkers.
It’s dangerous when the rock slabs are wet.
Normally Gertrude Saddle will take around 6 hours but where’s the fun in just enjoying this hike for a day? Catch Gertrude Saddle on a sunny clear day you better pack your bags, bring your tent and sleeping bag and get ready for an epic camping experience.
On the top of the saddle are only really two camp spots, on is behind a rock with the purpose of sheltering you from the wind, the other just a few metes along. But the best camp spot is just upwards from here. Climb higher than the saddle to the humps above and find dry flat ground to pitch your tent.
The views down into Milford Sound and the surrounding mountains are incredible, and if there is anyone else up there, it won’t feel like it. We went up here at the end of summer but caught a clear warm day. Laying in our sleeping bags outside, no wind and a perfect clear night sky filled with stars. We counted the shooting stars until we fell asleep, outside.
It was perfect until, of course, the 2am land wind came in and woke us up shivering, moving us back into the tent, though the sunrise the next morning, was one of the best I’ve ever seen!
12. Climb to the top of one of Milford Sound’s iconic waterfalls
Lady Bowen falls is one of Milford Sound’s permanent residents. Flowing all year round this lady can be thunderous and unforgiving or soft and gentle. If you kayak in Milford Sound you’ll get the chance to get up close to the base of the falls.
But the view is much better from the top, trust me!
Lady Bowen falls track has always been a “locals only” haunt not known to tourists and travellers passing through, especially after some have fallen to their deaths from the top, but those who spend a lot of time down there eventually discover it.
The ‘trail’ starts just around from the visitors cafe just around from the cruise ship terminal. From here you’ll bush bash your way through the trees, scrambling to look for the mixture of pink and red ribbons leading you up the trail.
Thankfully the popularity among the residents for this track has led people to put rope holds to help you. The track is relatively well-trodden until you reach the giant water pipes leading to the top of Lady Bowen Falls. I hope your balancing skills are good because you’ll be walking along these pipes for a while!
Once off the pipes you’ll come to a river, which, you guessed it, leads you pretty much to the falls. Just be careful not to get too close, the rocks up here are slippy and that would be a pretty unforgiving fall. But you’ll be rewarded with the best views of Milford Sound, on top of one of the most iconic waterfalls!
Do you seek adventure when you travel? Have you been to Fiordland? Is this wild corner of New Zealand on your bucketlist?
Disclosure – most of these adventures are for people who have expert knowledge and experience in the outdoors, especially in wild alpine environments. People have died on some of them when they are unprepared or inexperienced from things likes falls or flash floods. When in doubt check in with DOC or go guided
The post Why Fiordland is an adventurer’s playground appeared first on Young Adventuress.
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Ranking the MLB teams after Week 24 of the season
After 24 weeks, the regular season is winding down, and we’re seeing the rankings approach their final shape. The Indians saw their win streak snapped at 22 just before they clinched an AL Central title, and they were the easy, unanimous choice for No. 1 among our voters. The Dodgers rebounded from their slump to climb back up to the second slot, while the Astros sit perched at the third spot. All three clubs have had long runs at the top, but the Indians seem likely to finish the regular-season No. 1.
Can the Yankees force a tiebreaker with the Red Sox? Who will earn the top record? Who will rise to the top in the NL MVP race? A lot can still change.
Do fans feel there’s a dynasty in the works at Wrigley? Or is there an outbreak of agita on the North Side? Vote now!
Some free agents are guaranteed big-time paydays no matter what, but others, like Jay Bruce, could improve their offers by delivering big postseason results. Whose paychecks could benefit from playoff performance boosts?
2 Related
What races we have left are nearly run, but they could provide some final drama, in the standings, in the postseason picture — and in the Rankings. The Cubs’ sweep of the Cardinals over the weekend pushed their NL Central lead to four games over the Brewers with just 13 left to play. Will that be enough? The voters still like Milwaukee and St. Louis in a straight vote on their merits — placing them ahead of the pack of clubs still in the running for the American League’s second wild card — but they might be the two top-ranked teams left outside of October’s action. Will either be able to mount a late rally to reignite the Central race or keep up with the Rockies for the second wild card? Time is running out.
Lower in the rankings, we saw a few minor moves. The largest leap was made by the Athletics, who sprang forward four slots, perhaps a late reward for a club among the league’s bottom third for a recent four-game sweep of the Astros. The fading Marlins and Mets fell furthest, as both NL East teams dropped three rungs as the division’s trailing quartet of clubs behind the Nationals all close in on losing records this season.
This week’s voters are Bradford Doolittle, Eric Karabell, Tim Kurkjian, David Schoenfield and Mark Simon.
Week 23 rankings | Week 22 | Week 21 | Week 20 | Week 19 | Week 18 | Week 17 | Week 16 | Week 15 | Week 14 | Week 13 | Week 12 | Week 11 | Week 10 | Week 9 | Week 8 | Week 7 | Week 6 | Week 5 | Week 4 | Week 3 | Week 2 | Week 1 | Preseason
Record: 93-57
Week 23 ranking: No. 1
With 74 extra-base hits this season, Francisco Lindor has a shot at becoming the first shortstop with 80 or more in a season since Jimmy Rollins and Hanley Ramirez both did it in 2007. Lindor is already the first shortstop to hit 30 or more homers since Ramirez in 2008. Given that Lindor is still just 23 years old, the even better news is that there’s a whole lot more of what he’s going to do to look forward to. — Christina Kahrl, ESPN.com
Record: 96-53
Week 23 ranking: No. 4
Now that the Dodgers’ epic tumble after their sizzling summer is over, let’s keep things in perspective. They’re still a virtual lock to win 100 games. Yes, Justin Turner has cooled off from hitting .377 in the first half, but his .830 OPS in the second half isn’t chopped liver. Cody Bellinger is hitting even better in the second half (.985 vs. .961 OPS), as are Yasiel Puig and Chris Taylor. Nobody should look forward to facing a team with that lineup and Clayton Kershaw and Yu Darvish on the mound in a short series. — Kahrl
Record: 91-58
Week 23 ranking: No. 2
With an 11-5 run in September to clinch the franchise’s first AL West title, the Astros look like they’re swinging back into high gear for the stretch. Doing that wasn’t a cake walk — they swept the Mariners twice and took a series from the Angels to put big dents in both team’s wild-card hopes. Dallas Keuchel’s quality start Saturday against Seattle should also provide hope that the best team in baseball in the season’s first two months is ready to live up to the hype that start generated. — Kahrl
Record: 90-59
Week 23 ranking: No. 3
Max Scherzer indicated that he is still working off the rust from his two-week DL stint in August, and that’s evident in his inconsistency. Scherzer’s fastball and slider numbers were good in a start against the Phillies, but sandwiched around that were signs of struggle against the Brewers and Braves. His fastball velocity averaged 93 mph, a tick shy of his season average. The chase rate against his slider in those two starts was about half of his season average. Scherzer has three starts to get things right; I suspect that he will. — Mark Simon, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 85-64
Week 23 ranking: No. 6
The Red Sox have managed to stay on top of the division despite the Yankees’ being one of the hottest teams in baseball this month. Mookie Betts has been on fire in September, and Dustin Pedroia is hitting over .300 since he got back into the lineup. Boston has a tougher schedule than New York down the stretch, but if the Sox’s studs keep hitting and Chris Sale keeps doing Chris Sale things, the Red Sox should be just fine. — Michael Bonzagni, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 82-67
Week 23 ranking: No. 7
The Yankees have feasted on Orioles pitching this season. They’ve scored 154 runs in 19 games, a rate of 8.1 runs per game. That’s the most any team has scored against a single opponent in a season in the expansion era, which is since 1961. The previous high was the Diamondbacks’ 146 runs against the Rockies in 2002, and those games involved Coors Field. — Sarah Langs, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 87-63
Week 23 ranking: No. 5
With his 24 home runs in two months with the D-backs, what is fueling J.D. Martinez’s huge stretch run for Arizona? One factor is that he’s seeing fastballs more often in the NL (by 5 percent), and his 1.277 combined OPS on the year between Detroit and Arizona against fastballs is higher than those of the individual AL and NL leaders, Joey Gallo and Bryce Harper. — Kahrl
Record: 83-66
Week 23 ranking: No. 8
Kyle Hendricks ran his quality start streak to seven to help the Cubs win their weekend series against the Cardinals, but stay tuned for Jake Arrieta’s potential return to action from his hamstring injury for the series against the Brewers at the end of the week. Arrieta’s 1.98 ERA since the All-Star break is better than that of every NL starter not named Strasburg, and Hendricks’ 2.42 ranks seventh among NL starters since the break. — Kahrl
Record: 82-68
Week 23 ranking: No. 10
Charlie Blackmon’s bid to win the NL MVP award has serious juice, thanks to a second half that has been every bit as huge at the plate as Giancarlo Stanton’s has been for the Marlins. Since the All-Star break, Blackmon has put up a 1.091 OPS to Stanton’s 1.103. Will bias against numbers generated (some of the time) at Coors Field’s altitude outweigh Stanton’s playing for a noncontender for this year’s awards voters? Or will Blackmon’s teammate Nolan Arenado sneak into the picture or split votes with Blackmon on a fractured ballot? — Kahrl
Record: 77-72
Week 23 ranking: No. 9
Let’s offer a positive after a rough weekend in the form of Luke Weaver, who has not allowed an earned run in his past 13⅔ innings pitched and has yielded two runs or fewer in his past six starts. Key to this: throwing strikes. In his past five starts, Weaver has struck out 42 and walked only four. Between the minors and majors, Weaver is 16-3 this season, and that’s a win-loss record that is well-earned, especially given that Weaver’s ERA in the super hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League was 2.55 in 15 starts. — Simon
Record: 79-70
Week 23 ranking: No. 11
The Brewers have been hot this week, hanging in there even after Jimmy Nelson went down. Their starters have been good, but they haven’t gone deep into games, and their bullpen has picked up the slack. The relievers have the second-best ERA in baseball the past 10 days. The Brew Crew have the Pirates and Cubs coming up this week — they’ve won four of five against Pittsburgh and are coming off a sweep of Chicago last week. — John Fisher, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 78-71
Week 23 ranking: No. 12
The Twins open a huge series in the American League wild-card race Monday at Yankee Stadium, where they’ll play a three-game set. The Twins enter the series five games back of the Yankees for the first wild card. Minnesota is 2-1 against the Yankees this season, with all three of those games at Target Field. The Twins are just 3-6 at Yankee Stadium since 2014. — Langs
Record: 76-73
Week 23 ranking: No. 13
Yusmeiro Petit has been the Angels’ unsung hero for the past month, throwing 16 consecutive scoreless innings (the longest active streak in the American League). He has also been lights-out this season against the Indians and Astros (1.86 ERA in seven appearances), who account for the Angels’ next six games as they try to stay in the running for the second AL wild card. — Paul Hembekides, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 74-76
Week 23 ranking: No. 16
Seattle’s remaining schedule does them no favors — they’ll have to face Cole Hamels, Carlos Carrasco and Corey Kluber on consecutive days beginning Thursday. Third baseman Kyle Seager continues to enjoy a torrid September, hitting safely in 13 of 16 games with an .883 OPS since the calendar turned. — Hembekides
Record: 73-76
Week 23 ranking: No. 14
With 38 home runs hit so far, Joey Gallo has two weeks to become the first Rangers hitter to go yard 40 or more times in a season since Josh Hamilton did so for them in 2012. If he gets there, Gallo would become just the third left-handed hitter in franchise history to hit 40 homers, joining Hamilton (once) and Rafael Palmeiro (twice). He’s a near-lock to set the single-season Rangers record for strikeouts, just nine shy of Pete Incaviglia’s 185 whiffs back in 1986. — Kahrl
Record: 73-77
Week 23 ranking: No. 17
The Rays’ bullpen finally came apart Friday after an amazing stretch. Prior to that bizarre 15-inning defeat, Rays relievers had allowed no runs and seven hits in 18⅓ innings in the previous four games. The problem was that the Rays didn’t take advantage, winning two of those four. Playing the Red Sox and Yankees had something to do with that. One pitcher deserving of major props is Steve Cishek, who has stranded 10 of 11 inherited runners and allowed runs in only one of 22 appearances. He has been great since his acquisition at the end of July. — Simon
Record: 73-77
Week 23 ranking: No. 15
Orioles starters have a 5.63 ERA this season, the worst mark in the majors, worse than any last-place team and plenty of teams further below .500 than the O’s. Earned runs have been official in the American League since 1913, but Baltimore has had just four seasons with a starters’ ERA worse than 5.63, and they all came in the big-offense era of the 1930s. — Langs
Record: 73-76
Week 23 ranking: No. 18
The Royals are still technically in the AL wild-card race, but they need a lot of help with only two weeks left in the season to milk one last postseason appearance from their free-agency-bound core. The Royals’ starting pitchers have a 5.63 ERA since the All-Star break, which isn’t anything new, but the Tigers are the only team with a worse ERA (5.88) from their starting pitchers in the second half. — Bonzagni
Record: 70-80
Week 21 ranking: No. 21
Josh Donaldson has turned it up in the second half. In the first half, he hit .261 with nine home runs and 25 RBIs in 46 games. In 56 second-half games, he’s hitting .274 with 21 homers and 46 RBIs. His .268 season batting average would be his worst in a season since he hit .255 in his final season in Oakland in 2014, but his OPS of .949 is right around where it has been in his two prior seasons in Toronto. — Langs
Record: 68-82
Week 23 ranking: No. 19
Remember how Gregory Polanco told Marly Rivera how sad he was when his friend and teammate Starling Marte got suspended for PED use? Polanco has not been the same player he was in 2015 and 2016. His power numbers took a hit into July, though he was still hitting .269/.322/.424 when he suffered the first of two hamstring injuries. Polanco’s attempt to return has not gone well. He was stripped of the base stealing ability and the power that made him an impact player. A winter away from the majors might be needed to clear his mind and fully heal his body. — Simon
Record: 67-81
Week 23 ranking: No. 23
The Braves have strung a few wins together lately (seven of their past 11 games), including taking two of three from the Nats in Washington. They have three more against the Nationals this week before finishing the season against the Phillies, Mets and Marlins. Freddie Freeman has continued his career season, a campaign that would have him in the MVP conversation if he hadn’t missed so much time. His 1.026 OPS would be third in the majors this season. — Fisher
Record: 66-83
Week 23 ranking: No. 26
Daniel Mengden threw back-to-back quality starts, including a complete-game shutout against the Phillies on Friday. It was the first time an A’s starter blanked opponents over nine innings in more than a year (since Kendall Graveman shut out the White Sox in 2016), and it might do wonders to boost Mengden’s case to win a regular role in a crowded 2018 rotation picture beyond Sean Manaea. — Kahrl
Record: 69-80
Week 23 ranking: No. 20
With the Marlins falling apart, losing 17 of their past 20 games, south Florida is focused on Giancarlo Stanton. Parked at 54 homers on the season, he has hit only three in September and none in his past six games. The Marlins face the Mets this week, and Stanton has never homered in 18 plate appearances against Monday starter Matt Harvey, but their next six games are in Arizona and Colorado. Chase Field and Coors Field are two of the five easiest parks to hit home runs in this season. — Fisher
Record: 66-84
Week 23 ranking: No. 25
Six Reds have hit 20 home runs this season, including Scooter Gennett and Scott Schebler for the first time in their careers. That’s the most 20-homer seasons in any year in franchise history, topping the 2008 season in which five Reds hit 20 homers. Cincinnati is also on pace to finish above .500 against its NL Central rivals for the first time since 2014; the Reds are currently 35-32. — Hembekides
Record: 65-84
Week 23 ranking: No. 22
That Amed Rosario is the fastest Met (and fastest shortstop) per Statcast’s sprint-speed ranking isn’t surprising. That Brandon Nimmo ranks second is. Nimmo has the potential to be an extremely important low-cost Met next season — someone capable of a .400 OBP and potentially worth 3 WAR as half of an outfield platoon. — Simon
Record: 66-83
Week 23 ranking: No. 24
It has been a rough season for the Padres, and it might only get rougher. Only the Giants have a tougher remaining schedule than San Diego. They could be a factor in the NL wild-card race, with a couple of home series against the Diamondbacks and Rockies, but it’s not looking good for the Cardinals or Brewers if they’re counting on staying alive with late bids for the second wild card. — Bonzagni
Record: 62-87
Week 23 ranking: No. 27
The Tigers have the worst record in the AL this month, thanks in large part to some really, really bad pitching made worse by Michael Fulmer’s absence for the remainder of the season. But the offense hasn’t fared well either, ranking in the bottom-five in the AL in runs, home runs and OPS, with Miguel Cabrera putting up a woeful .628 OPS in the second half. — Bonzagni
Record: 58-91
Week 23 ranking: No. 28
Rhys Hoskins is still streaking in Philly; he’s already third on the team with 18 home runs. The Elias Sports Bureau tells us that is already easily the most homers in a season by a player who debuted as late as he did (Aug. 10) and who hit his first homer as late as he did (Aug. 14). Also, Phillies fans must be excited to see Aaron Nola bounce back with two straight solid starts. — Fisher
Record: 60-89
Week 23 ranking: No. 30
On Saturday, the White Sox clinched a season-series victory against the Tigers for the first time since 2008. Their bats have come alive as a team, powering a 6-3 stretch since Sept. 9. Jose Abreu, Avisail Garcia and Tim Anderson are all OPSing over 1.000 in September, while top hitting prospect Yoan Moncada has started to heat up, pasting three homers this month. — Hembekides
Record: 58-93
Week 23 ranking: No. 29
The Giants are one game behind the Phillies for the worst record in baseball and 39 games behind the MLB-leading Dodgers. This is the latest in a season that the Giants have been at least 39 games back (of the division since 1969 and of the league prior to that) since Oct. 3, 1943, when they were 49½ back to end the season. The Giants haven’t finished last in the NL West since 2007 — Bruce Bochy’s first season at the helm. Here’s a list of times the Giants have finished as the worst in the majors: 1900 and 1902, both years before the World Series began. — Langs
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Ranking the MLB teams after Week 24 of the season
After 24 weeks, the regular season is winding down, and we’re seeing the rankings approach their final shape. The Indians saw their win streak snapped at 22 just before they clinched an AL Central title, and they were the easy, unanimous choice for No. 1 among our voters. The Dodgers rebounded from their slump to climb back up to the second slot, while the Astros sit perched at the third spot. All three clubs have had long runs at the top, but the Indians seem likely to finish the regular-season No. 1.
Can the Yankees force a tiebreaker with the Red Sox? Who will earn the top record? Who will rise to the top in the NL MVP race? A lot can still change.
Do fans feel there’s a dynasty in the works at Wrigley? Or is there an outbreak of agita on the North Side? Vote now!
Some free agents are guaranteed big-time paydays no matter what, but others, like Jay Bruce, could improve their offers by delivering big postseason results. Whose paychecks could benefit from playoff performance boosts?
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What races we have left are nearly run, but they could provide some final drama, in the standings, in the postseason picture — and in the Rankings. The Cubs’ sweep of the Cardinals over the weekend pushed their NL Central lead to four games over the Brewers with just 13 left to play. Will that be enough? The voters still like Milwaukee and St. Louis in a straight vote on their merits — placing them ahead of the pack of clubs still in the running for the American League’s second wild card — but they might be the two top-ranked teams left outside of October’s action. Will either be able to mount a late rally to reignite the Central race or keep up with the Rockies for the second wild card? Time is running out.
Lower in the rankings, we saw a few minor moves. The largest leap was made by the Athletics, who sprang forward four slots, perhaps a late reward for a club among the league’s bottom third for a recent four-game sweep of the Astros. The fading Marlins and Mets fell furthest, as both NL East teams dropped three rungs as the division’s trailing quartet of clubs behind the Nationals all close in on losing records this season.
This week’s voters are Bradford Doolittle, Eric Karabell, Tim Kurkjian, David Schoenfield and Mark Simon.
Week 23 rankings | Week 22 | Week 21 | Week 20 | Week 19 | Week 18 | Week 17 | Week 16 | Week 15 | Week 14 | Week 13 | Week 12 | Week 11 | Week 10 | Week 9 | Week 8 | Week 7 | Week 6 | Week 5 | Week 4 | Week 3 | Week 2 | Week 1 | Preseason
Record: 93-57
Week 23 ranking: No. 1
With 74 extra-base hits this season, Francisco Lindor has a shot at becoming the first shortstop with 80 or more in a season since Jimmy Rollins and Hanley Ramirez both did it in 2007. Lindor is already the first shortstop to hit 30 or more homers since Ramirez in 2008. Given that Lindor is still just 23 years old, the even better news is that there’s a whole lot more of what he’s going to do to look forward to. — Christina Kahrl, ESPN.com
Record: 96-53
Week 23 ranking: No. 4
Now that the Dodgers’ epic tumble after their sizzling summer is over, let’s keep things in perspective. They’re still a virtual lock to win 100 games. Yes, Justin Turner has cooled off from hitting .377 in the first half, but his .830 OPS in the second half isn’t chopped liver. Cody Bellinger is hitting even better in the second half (.985 vs. .961 OPS), as are Yasiel Puig and Chris Taylor. Nobody should look forward to facing a team with that lineup and Clayton Kershaw and Yu Darvish on the mound in a short series. — Kahrl
Record: 91-58
Week 23 ranking: No. 2
With an 11-5 run in September to clinch the franchise’s first AL West title, the Astros look like they’re swinging back into high gear for the stretch. Doing that wasn’t a cake walk — they swept the Mariners twice and took a series from the Angels to put big dents in both team’s wild-card hopes. Dallas Keuchel’s quality start Saturday against Seattle should also provide hope that the best team in baseball in the season’s first two months is ready to live up to the hype that start generated. — Kahrl
Record: 90-59
Week 23 ranking: No. 3
Max Scherzer indicated that he is still working off the rust from his two-week DL stint in August, and that’s evident in his inconsistency. Scherzer’s fastball and slider numbers were good in a start against the Phillies, but sandwiched around that were signs of struggle against the Brewers and Braves. His fastball velocity averaged 93 mph, a tick shy of his season average. The chase rate against his slider in those two starts was about half of his season average. Scherzer has three starts to get things right; I suspect that he will. — Mark Simon, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 85-64
Week 23 ranking: No. 6
The Red Sox have managed to stay on top of the division despite the Yankees’ being one of the hottest teams in baseball this month. Mookie Betts has been on fire in September, and Dustin Pedroia is hitting over .300 since he got back into the lineup. Boston has a tougher schedule than New York down the stretch, but if the Sox’s studs keep hitting and Chris Sale keeps doing Chris Sale things, the Red Sox should be just fine. — Michael Bonzagni, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 82-67
Week 23 ranking: No. 7
The Yankees have feasted on Orioles pitching this season. They’ve scored 154 runs in 19 games, a rate of 8.1 runs per game. That’s the most any team has scored against a single opponent in a season in the expansion era, which is since 1961. The previous high was the Diamondbacks’ 146 runs against the Rockies in 2002, and those games involved Coors Field. — Sarah Langs, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 87-63
Week 23 ranking: No. 5
With his 24 home runs in two months with the D-backs, what is fueling J.D. Martinez’s huge stretch run for Arizona? One factor is that he’s seeing fastballs more often in the NL (by 5 percent), and his 1.277 combined OPS on the year between Detroit and Arizona against fastballs is higher than those of the individual AL and NL leaders, Joey Gallo and Bryce Harper. — Kahrl
Record: 83-66
Week 23 ranking: No. 8
Kyle Hendricks ran his quality start streak to seven to help the Cubs win their weekend series against the Cardinals, but stay tuned for Jake Arrieta’s potential return to action from his hamstring injury for the series against the Brewers at the end of the week. Arrieta’s 1.98 ERA since the All-Star break is better than that of every NL starter not named Strasburg, and Hendricks’ 2.42 ranks seventh among NL starters since the break. — Kahrl
Record: 82-68
Week 23 ranking: No. 10
Charlie Blackmon’s bid to win the NL MVP award has serious juice, thanks to a second half that has been every bit as huge at the plate as Giancarlo Stanton’s has been for the Marlins. Since the All-Star break, Blackmon has put up a 1.091 OPS to Stanton’s 1.103. Will bias against numbers generated (some of the time) at Coors Field’s altitude outweigh Stanton’s playing for a noncontender for this year’s awards voters? Or will Blackmon’s teammate Nolan Arenado sneak into the picture or split votes with Blackmon on a fractured ballot? — Kahrl
Record: 77-72
Week 23 ranking: No. 9
Let’s offer a positive after a rough weekend in the form of Luke Weaver, who has not allowed an earned run in his past 13⅔ innings pitched and has yielded two runs or fewer in his past six starts. Key to this: throwing strikes. In his past five starts, Weaver has struck out 42 and walked only four. Between the minors and majors, Weaver is 16-3 this season, and that’s a win-loss record that is well-earned, especially given that Weaver’s ERA in the super hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League was 2.55 in 15 starts. — Simon
Record: 79-70
Week 23 ranking: No. 11
The Brewers have been hot this week, hanging in there even after Jimmy Nelson went down. Their starters have been good, but they haven’t gone deep into games, and their bullpen has picked up the slack. The relievers have the second-best ERA in baseball the past 10 days. The Brew Crew have the Pirates and Cubs coming up this week — they’ve won four of five against Pittsburgh and are coming off a sweep of Chicago last week. — John Fisher, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 78-71
Week 23 ranking: No. 12
The Twins open a huge series in the American League wild-card race Monday at Yankee Stadium, where they’ll play a three-game set. The Twins enter the series five games back of the Yankees for the first wild card. Minnesota is 2-1 against the Yankees this season, with all three of those games at Target Field. The Twins are just 3-6 at Yankee Stadium since 2014. — Langs
Record: 76-73
Week 23 ranking: No. 13
Yusmeiro Petit has been the Angels’ unsung hero for the past month, throwing 16 consecutive scoreless innings (the longest active streak in the American League). He has also been lights-out this season against the Indians and Astros (1.86 ERA in seven appearances), who account for the Angels’ next six games as they try to stay in the running for the second AL wild card. — Paul Hembekides, ESPN Stats & Information
Record: 74-76
Week 23 ranking: No. 16
Seattle’s remaining schedule does them no favors — they’ll have to face Cole Hamels, Carlos Carrasco and Corey Kluber on consecutive days beginning Thursday. Third baseman Kyle Seager continues to enjoy a torrid September, hitting safely in 13 of 16 games with an .883 OPS since the calendar turned. — Hembekides
Record: 73-76
Week 23 ranking: No. 14
With 38 home runs hit so far, Joey Gallo has two weeks to become the first Rangers hitter to go yard 40 or more times in a season since Josh Hamilton did so for them in 2012. If he gets there, Gallo would become just the third left-handed hitter in franchise history to hit 40 homers, joining Hamilton (once) and Rafael Palmeiro (twice). He’s a near-lock to set the single-season Rangers record for strikeouts, just nine shy of Pete Incaviglia’s 185 whiffs back in 1986. — Kahrl
Record: 73-77
Week 23 ranking: No. 17
The Rays’ bullpen finally came apart Friday after an amazing stretch. Prior to that bizarre 15-inning defeat, Rays relievers had allowed no runs and seven hits in 18⅓ innings in the previous four games. The problem was that the Rays didn’t take advantage, winning two of those four. Playing the Red Sox and Yankees had something to do with that. One pitcher deserving of major props is Steve Cishek, who has stranded 10 of 11 inherited runners and allowed runs in only one of 22 appearances. He has been great since his acquisition at the end of July. — Simon
Record: 73-77
Week 23 ranking: No. 15
Orioles starters have a 5.63 ERA this season, the worst mark in the majors, worse than any last-place team and plenty of teams further below .500 than the O’s. Earned runs have been official in the American League since 1913, but Baltimore has had just four seasons with a starters’ ERA worse than 5.63, and they all came in the big-offense era of the 1930s. — Langs
Record: 73-76
Week 23 ranking: No. 18
The Royals are still technically in the AL wild-card race, but they need a lot of help with only two weeks left in the season to milk one last postseason appearance from their free-agency-bound core. The Royals’ starting pitchers have a 5.63 ERA since the All-Star break, which isn’t anything new, but the Tigers are the only team with a worse ERA (5.88) from their starting pitchers in the second half. — Bonzagni
Record: 70-80
Week 21 ranking: No. 21
Josh Donaldson has turned it up in the second half. In the first half, he hit .261 with nine home runs and 25 RBIs in 46 games. In 56 second-half games, he’s hitting .274 with 21 homers and 46 RBIs. His .268 season batting average would be his worst in a season since he hit .255 in his final season in Oakland in 2014, but his OPS of .949 is right around where it has been in his two prior seasons in Toronto. — Langs
Record: 68-82
Week 23 ranking: No. 19
Remember how Gregory Polanco told Marly Rivera how sad he was when his friend and teammate Starling Marte got suspended for PED use? Polanco has not been the same player he was in 2015 and 2016. His power numbers took a hit into July, though he was still hitting .269/.322/.424 when he suffered the first of two hamstring injuries. Polanco’s attempt to return has not gone well. He was stripped of the base stealing ability and the power that made him an impact player. A winter away from the majors might be needed to clear his mind and fully heal his body. — Simon
Record: 67-81
Week 23 ranking: No. 23
The Braves have strung a few wins together lately (seven of their past 11 games), including taking two of three from the Nats in Washington. They have three more against the Nationals this week before finishing the season against the Phillies, Mets and Marlins. Freddie Freeman has continued his career season, a campaign that would have him in the MVP conversation if he hadn’t missed so much time. His 1.026 OPS would be third in the majors this season. — Fisher
Record: 66-83
Week 23 ranking: No. 26
Daniel Mengden threw back-to-back quality starts, including a complete-game shutout against the Phillies on Friday. It was the first time an A’s starter blanked opponents over nine innings in more than a year (since Kendall Graveman shut out the White Sox in 2016), and it might do wonders to boost Mengden’s case to win a regular role in a crowded 2018 rotation picture beyond Sean Manaea. — Kahrl
Record: 69-80
Week 23 ranking: No. 20
With the Marlins falling apart, losing 17 of their past 20 games, south Florida is focused on Giancarlo Stanton. Parked at 54 homers on the season, he has hit only three in September and none in his past six games. The Marlins face the Mets this week, and Stanton has never homered in 18 plate appearances against Monday starter Matt Harvey, but their next six games are in Arizona and Colorado. Chase Field and Coors Field are two of the five easiest parks to hit home runs in this season. — Fisher
Record: 66-84
Week 23 ranking: No. 25
Six Reds have hit 20 home runs this season, including Scooter Gennett and Scott Schebler for the first time in their careers. That’s the most 20-homer seasons in any year in franchise history, topping the 2008 season in which five Reds hit 20 homers. Cincinnati is also on pace to finish above .500 against its NL Central rivals for the first time since 2014; the Reds are currently 35-32. — Hembekides
Record: 65-84
Week 23 ranking: No. 22
That Amed Rosario is the fastest Met (and fastest shortstop) per Statcast’s sprint-speed ranking isn’t surprising. That Brandon Nimmo ranks second is. Nimmo has the potential to be an extremely important low-cost Met next season — someone capable of a .400 OBP and potentially worth 3 WAR as half of an outfield platoon. — Simon
Record: 66-83
Week 23 ranking: No. 24
It has been a rough season for the Padres, and it might only get rougher. Only the Giants have a tougher remaining schedule than San Diego. They could be a factor in the NL wild-card race, with a couple of home series against the Diamondbacks and Rockies, but it’s not looking good for the Cardinals or Brewers if they’re counting on staying alive with late bids for the second wild card. — Bonzagni
Record: 62-87
Week 23 ranking: No. 27
The Tigers have the worst record in the AL this month, thanks in large part to some really, really bad pitching made worse by Michael Fulmer’s absence for the remainder of the season. But the offense hasn’t fared well either, ranking in the bottom-five in the AL in runs, home runs and OPS, with Miguel Cabrera putting up a woeful .628 OPS in the second half. — Bonzagni
Record: 58-91
Week 23 ranking: No. 28
Rhys Hoskins is still streaking in Philly; he’s already third on the team with 18 home runs. The Elias Sports Bureau tells us that is already easily the most homers in a season by a player who debuted as late as he did (Aug. 10) and who hit his first homer as late as he did (Aug. 14). Also, Phillies fans must be excited to see Aaron Nola bounce back with two straight solid starts. — Fisher
Record: 60-89
Week 23 ranking: No. 30
On Saturday, the White Sox clinched a season-series victory against the Tigers for the first time since 2008. Their bats have come alive as a team, powering a 6-3 stretch since Sept. 9. Jose Abreu, Avisail Garcia and Tim Anderson are all OPSing over 1.000 in September, while top hitting prospect Yoan Moncada has started to heat up, pasting three homers this month. — Hembekides
Record: 58-93
Week 23 ranking: No. 29
The Giants are one game behind the Phillies for the worst record in baseball and 39 games behind the MLB-leading Dodgers. This is the latest in a season that the Giants have been at least 39 games back (of the division since 1969 and of the league prior to that) since Oct. 3, 1943, when they were 49½ back to end the season. The Giants haven’t finished last in the NL West since 2007 — Bruce Bochy’s first season at the helm. Here’s a list of times the Giants have finished as the worst in the majors: 1900 and 1902, both years before the World Series began. — Langs
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