Official 2006 Home Run Derby Thread

[Jackie Onassis]

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Has the HRD always been a 3 hour event?

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It takes like 90 million [censored] hours for them to get a pitch they like.

[youtalkfunny]

I didn't watch the HR Derby. I don't feel like I missed anything.

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A "Snakes on a Plane" trailer...

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Oops, spoke too soon.

[Karak567]

John Kruk said "this is like batting practice and you saw David Ortiz popping them up. He was obviously tired. That doesn't happen in BP."

Actually... that's not true. I've seen David Ortiz take BP a few times now and he always goes out there and pops stuff up all over the place at first. Then he starts hitting the [censored] out of the ball in the game.

[Spellmen]

Phillies dominate the HR Derby

[Lazy Meatball]

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how come the national league gets jobbed with jersey color?

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Both of those jersey's had a pretty ugly color scheme going on. I don't know if it was trying to match Pittsburgh's yellow colors, but they looked like something a German trnasvestite would wear. I liked watching Ortiz's first round.
So what is the criteria for who they choose, and how in the hell did Hee Sop Choi get invited last year?

[kyleb]

He hit like 4 home runs in a week or something, so they invited him based on that.

[Lazy Meatball]

Okay, watching the replay at 4am, why do they even have a catcher? Couldn't they just let unhit pitches dribble back to the wall?
And also, couldn't the pitcher be replaced by some sort of pitching machine similar to the machine at the batting cages or those tennis ball machines. Given a little bit of tweaking to get the pitches where the batter wants them, I think the consistency would add up to more dingers. Seriously, this has to be a better idea than Paul Lo Duca.

[Sluss]

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Phillies dominate the HR Derby

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And that is it [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

I just hope Ryan Howard doesn't go into the tank like Abreu did last year. Meh, on second thought what does it matter. As long as Charlie Manuel is still manager they can't win a game anyway.

[blinden84]

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Okay, watching the replay at 4am, why do they even have a catcher? Couldn't they just let unhit pitches dribble back to the wall?
And also, couldn't the pitcher be replaced by some sort of pitching machine similar to the machine at the batting cages or those tennis ball machines. Given a little bit of tweaking to get the pitches where the batter wants them, I think the consistency would add up to more dingers. Seriously, this has to be a better idea than Paul Lo Duca.

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To answer your first question, there is a catcher there because it's damn near impossible to throw a baseball accurately without a target.

As far as the live pitching goes, I can't make an argument for that, but I think it would be pretty difficult to have it throw, then the batter wants an adjustment, throw again, adjustment, change the speed, change the height, etc, it may just be easier to use a person.

[Mark L]

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and how in the hell did Hee Sop Choi get invited last year?

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iirc, they did some kind of international competition with it last year. 8 players representing 8 different countries (pudge puerto rico, abreu venezuela, etc). so thats why.