{"id":699591,"date":"2026-05-15T12:48:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T12:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/699591\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T12:48:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T12:48:16","slug":"kansas-city-royals-news-need-help-with-replays-we-might-know-a-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/699591\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas City Royals news: Need help with replays? We might know a guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jaylon Thompson profiles\u2026 Bill Duplissea<\/a>! It\u2019s the Royals ace replay man.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first four innings, I\u2019ve got to be 100%,\u201d Duplissea said. \u201cI can\u2019t lose a challenge in the first four innings. The fifth and sixth (innings), a little tougher for me. And the seventh, I\u2019ll roll the dice.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 I try to play it like leverage. Importance of the game and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026and, that\u2019s all the official stories for today.<\/p>\n

How about this official non-Royals story from David Fischer at the Associated Press? The Tampa Bay Rays and local leadership announced a deal<\/a> for a $2.3B ballpark and surrounding neighborhood.<\/p>\n

The Rays ownership reached an agreement earlier this year with Hillsborough College to build the stadium and mixed-use entertainment district on the college campus and to renovate some of the college\u2019s buildings. The property is located next to the New York Yankees\u2019 spring training facility and across a highway from Raymond James Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.<\/p>\n

The Rays have said they hope to have the new stadium built within three years.<\/p>\n

That leaves just the A\u2019s to get their house in order. Then, once MLB sorts out the CBA over the coming months (hopefully), we\u2019ll see 2 expansion teams.<\/p>\n

Blogs are a little short, too. Lesky didn\u2019t write yesterday. Craig Brown hasn\u2019t been seen since the start of the month. Royals Keep didn\u2019t write anything yesterday. Is there some news embargo I don\u2019t know about?<\/p>\n

How about we give Darin Watson and U.L.\u2019s Toothpick the top spot? For the last few years, he\u2019s done something unique. He picks a notable Royals season and writes a \u201cThis Date In Royals History\u201d every day. This year, he\u2019s writing about the 1976 Royals. And, for instance, yesterday, he wrote about what happened to the Royals on May 14th, 1976<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Kansas City picked up its fourth straight win, outscoring their opponents 43-11 in those games. The hot hitting continued as Tom Poquette led off the first inning with a single against Chicago\u2019s Pete Vuckovich. Amos Otiis followed with his sixth home run of the season for a 2-0 lead. John Mayberry doubled with one out, and Al Cowens singled with two outs for a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n

He even adds in little nuggets like this:<\/p>\n

Somebody who did have three hits was White, who had been struggling at the plate as he was in the process of taking the second base job from fan favorite Cookie Rojas. White admitted that he had been hearing criticism from the fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re even throwing money at me. The other night they threw 35 cents at me, I gave the umpire a nickel. A quarter sailed past my eyes out there. I don\u2019t want to get hit, lose an eye, or be out of the lineup for months. I just wish they\u2019d quit throwing at me.\u201d–White, quoted by Sid Bordman, The Kansas City Star, May 15, 1976<\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t done movie reviews in more than a month and this is only our third set all year, even though it\u2019s May. We have an odd mix today: a trio of Disney movies we watched after the Olympics and another trio related to the state of Iowa. A common thread? I don\u2019t know that there is one.<\/p>\n

This is exactly the movie you\u2019d expect to get if you told Disney to make an inspirational movie about the 1980 Olympic hockey team. Kurt Russell does a great job as Herb Brooks. But, aside from him, it\u2019s a mostly no-name cast that plays a couple of steps up from a made-for-TV movie. It tries to be a lot of things and underdevelops most of them. There are dashes of Herb\u2019s family drama, little bits of Jim Craig and Mike Eruzione, and some Forrest Gump-esque touchstones of 70s history. That said, the central narrative of Team USA pulling together is strong. The movie is fine – there\u2019s nothing glaringly wrong with it – I just don\u2019t understand how it finds its way to some Top Sports Movies lists.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Disney, here\u2019s their cleaned-up hockey version of The Bad News Bears. But it has enough going for it that it spawned a couple of sequels, an animated series, and an NHL franchise. It rode the early 90s wave of NHL popularity and has both the look and sensibilities of that time. It\u2019s a paint-by-numbers sports plot where cliche kids and cliche adults do sports movie cliches. But director Stephen Herek has everyone and everything doing what they\u2019re supposed to do. The movie never takes itself too seriously, and Emilio Estevez plays along. There are some memorable scenes like the kids quacking at the principal, Estevez quacking at his boss, and the Flying V. We all learn a lesson and go home happy.<\/p>\n

To say Cool Runnings is a clich\u00e9 sports movie is fair. But it also sells it short. Jon Turteltaub delivers a clean, well-paced, and well-structured movie that isn\u2019t a complete retread. It had an interesting production history. The Jamaican bobsled team was originally funded<\/a> by the Jamaica Tourist Board and American George B. Fitch. It was treated as a joke by North American media but became a focus of American Olympic TV coverage after the USA ice hockey team lost. The movie was originally supposed to be<\/a> a drama and a more authentic Jamaica tale. However, between a director change and studio pressure, we received the finished product. Similarly, the movie earns its \u201cloosely based on true events\u201d descriptor – it\u2019s no documentary. I\u2019m not Jamaican so I\u2019m in no position to say how paternalistic or caricatured it ended up and\/or whether it\u2019s well received. What I can say is that John Candy does well in his earnest straight-man role rather than as a cut-up. The movie is quotable, has a good soundtrack, and is looked upon fondly today.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how much more I can add to this that hasn\u2019t already been said. It\u2019s an iconic baseball movie and Craig Calcaterra is 100% wrong<\/a>. I don\u2019t (didn\u2019t) have a complicated father\/son relationship, so that doesn\u2019t hit me as it does some people. But I love its romanticization of baseball and second chances. Yes, it\u2019s another one of those movies from the 80s and 90s that lionizes Boomers, the decades they grew up in, and the American Dream. As for the nuts and bolts of the movie, the cinematography is simple, but effective, and so is the music. Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, and more all give good to great performances and that\u2019s what makes it work. It was nominated for three Academy Awards and was added to the National Film Registry.<\/p>\n

We watched the 1962 film version, starring Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, et al. It\u2019s from the 50s and it\u2019s a musical, so it\u2019s a little slow \u2013 but you know what you\u2019re getting yourself into. Even through modern eyes, it\u2019s eminently watchable (even without a monorail<\/a>). The music is iconic, particularly \u201cSeventy-Six Trombones\u201d. There are lots of timeless jokes like an American Gothic sight gag. After starring for years on Broadway, Preston is a delight, owning every scene he is in. It\u2019s amusing that the studio wanted to replace him with a bigger name. He is Harold Hill and no one could have given a better performance. His delivery of \u201cI always think there\u2019s a band, kid\u201d is one of my favorite in all of cinema. The play is a love letter to Iowa: they\u2019re not rubes, they\u2019re the hardest to con and that\u2019s how he got his \u201cfoot caught in the door\u201d. The finale with the parents loving the horrible band is a fun twist that still lands. It\u2019s a charming musical and well worth a look, even if it\u2019s just to watch Preston chew scenery.<\/p>\n

Bridges of Madison County (1995)<\/a><\/p>\n

Needless to say our son did not watch the final movie with us. It\u2019s easy to start out with the plaudits for this film: Meryl Streep gives an Oscar-nominated performance, Clint Eastwood is perfectly understated in playing off of her, and they have tremendous onscreen chemistry. Eastwood\u2019s direction is superb, making it both earthy yet exotic. It\u2019s slow and deliberate, but I rarely found myself clock-watching. The framing from the kids\u2019 perspective is used to break up tension and add an additional thematic layer.<\/p>\n

All that said, I\u2019m not the target audience, and it was a hard watch for me. And I think it\u2019s less about the movie than the source material. There\u2019s not a lot of deeper meaning here, but it pretends to have some as does some of the analysis around the movie. Yes, I know it\u2019s the 1960s, and women couldn\u2019t even have bank accounts. But this movie isn\u2019t about that. This isn\u2019t a modern story about mental load and how that disproportionately affects women. Richard works when she works; they both have the same limited leisure time – life on a farm is hard and they both do what they can. The affair only happens in the first place because Richard is taking the kids to show a cow at the Illinois state fair – he\u2019s involved in child rearing. While these are all things true of that time period, the movie goes out of its way to show that Francesca\u2019s husband is a good man and she has a loving family.<\/p>\n

So in the end, this is just a raw hedonistic fantasy all dressed up. We all make choices in our lives, and each time we go down a path, other paths close. If you want a family, as Francesca does, you can\u2019t be a nomad wandering from place to place and person to person, as Kincaid does. There\u2019s a scene where Robert explicitly points out how this led to his own divorce. You can have one or the other, but you can\u2019t have both. Francesca wants to have her proverbial cake and eat it, too. She\u2019s not trapped in a relationship by circumstance – she chose this life, warts and all, and willingly chose it again in the end. Could you imagine gender swapping this movie? Guy has a loving wife and family, but his job is a grind. He\u2019s at a conference and has an affair with a free spirit there. Nobody is seeing that as a great love story; he\u2019s just a jerk who should have bought a sports car for his midlife crisis rather than breaking up his family.<\/p>\n

This all makes the core message, climax, and denouement fall flat with me. The affair makes neither sympathetic. Robert breezes into town, does all the right things at first, watches another woman trying to pick up the pieces of an affair, yet continues down the wrong path. Francesca knows all this, lives all this, and still goes down the same wrong path. In the end, we get \u201cthis guy I had an affair with for four days of my octogenarian life is my soulmate, so, kids, be a dear, and spread my ashes near his instead of your loving father\u201d. Never mind that she admits to herself that this was a fantasy all in her head, and she acknowledges that if she ran off with him, it would never last, and she\u2019d resent him for the life she left behind. That seems to run counter to Robert\u2019s \u201cthis kind of certainty comes but just once in a lifetime\u201d message. So why again are we cheering for this couple? Why do we want her to open the car door and run to him in the rain?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s frustrating because a lot of the \u201ctechnical\u201d aspects of the movie \u2013 especially the acting and directing – were so well done. However, the characters and themes are bad. Then again, I suppose that was true of a lot of the literature I had to read in school, too.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already posted the Field of Dreams speech twice (02.20<\/a>, 03.27<\/a>) this year. Not that I didn\u2019t think about doing it again.<\/p>\n

But how about something different: How about the finale from The Music Man?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jaylon Thompson profiles\u2026 Bill Duplissea! It\u2019s the Royals ace replay man. \u201cThe first four innings, I\u2019ve got to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,35554,2596,2595,4,252,38557],"class_list":{"0":"post-699591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansas-city-royals-news","13":"tag-kansascity","14":"tag-kansascityroyals","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-royals","17":"tag-royals-rumblings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116578674488316876","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}