The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

[jknott10]

Subscribed. This looks like a very interesting read. As I just over looked it for now. Will be reading from page one when I get time. Especially since the braves are my favorite team

[s0crates12]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

Man I can't wait for the next update, spent the last couple of weeks reading all 4 years! This season has been a disaster injury wise, still amazed how you got through it! So I have faith JayHey will get you past the Rockies! And I can see Beachy coming up big! Go Braves!

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

Thanks!

lilbiggio, do you think we'll be seeing more updates over the summer? Also, how do you make those Sports Illustrated-style pieces? I'm thinking Adobe After Effects...

All the images are done in Photoshop... well except for that one time Martin Prado got dysentery. That was Microsoft Paint. If you want me to go more indepth on how to make something just refer me to an image and I will certainly point you in the right direction:




We return back home to Atlanta, GA for the middle games of this first round series. In Atlanta we get ready for some home cooking because ain't it nice not having to worry about Coors Field allowing a cheap one to fly out at any given moment?



With the home red on as is Ted Turner's built in tradition throughout the playoffs, the Braves had an outstanding game 3. Mike Minor who this season has been like that ugly girl at the dance that nobody knew was hot unitl she got rid of the retainer... well hell, Cinderella Minor pitched his *** off for the hometown fans.

I would like to take this time Braves Nation and offer my public apologies to our only Southpaw....

..

My bad man... I know this year we got kinda sidetracked with the whole Zambrano/Hanson thing. The John Boy/Beachy "Natty Lites brings out the inner douchebag in you thing"...oh and Medlen being Kris Medlen too... but Mike Minor even though you wasn't talked about much, as our only left hander on the mound, you came through sir.



And think about it friends, the Rockies lineup had to get all kinds of readjusted to offset for the southpaw. All of a sudden, CarGo, Dunn, Werth? Useless... Tuto? Pitched around. And the Braves defense feasted on popups and weakly hit ground outs to second base. The only sad thing was that again, the offense did not really make a statement in this game, and we took a 1-0 win into Game 4.

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

Not so fast tho...




Just like that the Red Jerseys have been deemed "done". The Rockies took Game 4, and showcased one more time that this is still statistically the best team in the National League. Kenshin Kawakami didn't even have a chance tonight.

No exaggeration, the first batter of the game Carlos Gonzales hit a leadoff homerun. One batter later, Troy Tulowitzki (damn I'm getting tired spelling his name) goes yard. We're left scratching our heads. IT wouldn't be the first time a Braves pitcher gave up back to back jacks so early. Surely the worst is done...

Nope... because you see Adam Dunn with his 44 Homeruns who was rendered useless last Friday Night, had to make sure he got him one too. But in the same Damn INNING?! Unfortunately it had to go down like this. 3 - to - Zip out the gates, and well... without making this go on any longer than it needs to. That would be more than enough to send this boy to Game 5, back at Coors Field.


Kawakami for 3 years has been spot on. He's been the one reliable cog in our machine of a pitching staff. For the first time in 3 years... he made us question going in his direction. For the first time THIS year, we have got to start questioning if this series would have ended tonight, had Tommy Hanson been healthy. In the past we'd question it for dramatic effect, but now... this is legit, sincere, fear that had Hanson been out there we might have avoided potential demoralization.

Oh well back to Denver for the Win or go Home game.

[AC]

One of the better games we've played this year, considering this has been the season of pain and misery, we were able to overcome a 5 run deficit, and punch a victory thanks to a Nate McLouth pinch hit walk off single.


This game was shady at first as it was evident early on, that Rafael Furcal was due for a every throw is going to be offline and over Freeman's head no matter what type game. He had 4 errors on his own. Conrad who has had to take over at third after Pastornicky got to the show and decided he was not mature enough for the trials of batting over .200, bobbled two at the hot corner. Oh and Uggla decided to join in and airmail an easy throw.

Being down 5-0 is tough to take, but the boys were resilient tonight, and chipped away.. First with back to back jacks by Jordan Schafer, and Conrad. Then Uggla, then even Furcal got him one he could handle... damn it was quite a nice comeback...



but wait, Jorge there's more good news:



Finally after two months, Big Z is on his way back to the show, we've survived the storm, we're into September up by not a whole lot, but enough to feel good that this could be a playoff bound team. Adding Zambrano to our rotation is going to take the weight of the world off of all these young guys shoulders.

But first boys and girls, he gotta make a quick stop in Gwinnett.

That first photo is something like I'm going for. I'm gonna look for a better example. Thanks for the help. I remember when Prado got dysentery LOL. Great updates, hope you beat Colorado.

Does anyone really care where I sent this from?

[AC]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

So Jordan Schafer is about 2 weeks from recovery, and to be honest we need him in the worst way as the team is going through one of the worst midseason slumps ever experienced in these pages of the Memoirs.

The runs are still not coming easy. Up in Chi Jair Jurrjens saw a brilliant preformance go to waste as we once again have too many guys not being able to get guys in from 2nd base.



4 hits? You kidding me? When Heyward has 2 of them, which are at this point complimentary because of his dominance, you are telling me this team only mangled 2 additional hits in 3 trips through the order? That ain't going to win you many ballgames.


The next time out was a bit better. Out in Arizona Kris Medlen had his best start of the season striking out 8, and only allowing 3 hits. But... get this, the Braves only had 1 run on the board mainly because the DBacks are so terrible of a team they gifted us a run on a wild throw to first.

Then Burroughs came up, we'd been nursing a 1 run lead all game into the 7th... John Boy Rocker brought in as the lefty specialist. And he gets boomsticked on. Yes, this is madness guys.. we're going to lose this ballgame right here at the end on some nonsense changeup that didn't drop in the zone.




This game was a bit better result though, as Heyward went yard first for a 2 run shot to tie the game in the 8th, and then Kid Clutch. The 45 million dollar man with only 12 homeruns through 3 months finally came through. Brian McCann welcome to the 2013 season. We've been waiting on you as the team has free fallen into second place in the NL East you fool.

The Braves rally for three part, how'd you do that? Thanks in advance!

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be



Game 5's starting lineup, this sir can not be life. Schafer our hottest hitter from August to Right Now, batting a putrid .091. Heyward .071, Freeman and Furcal with less than a buck fiffty in batting average. It has been horrible.. Martin Prado has carried the team all series long. Look for the Direct to DVD release of Disney's Martin Prado vs. the Colorado Rockies at a store near you.



But seriously back to business, in a winner take all game when your best hitters are deciding to take the entire series off. It's a great thing to have a pitcher who's pissed at himself for a bad outing come out and make things right again. That boys and girls was Jair Jurrjens approach tonight as he fanned 6 and took a shutout into the 7th.

And that is where the video will begin:

The 2013 NLDS

Spoiler

[AC]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

Game 5's starting lineup, this sir can not be life. Schafer our hottest hitter from August to Right Now, batting a putrid .091. Heyward .071, Freeman and Furcal with less than a buck fiffty in batting average. It has been horrible.. Martin Prado has carried the team all series long. Look for the Direct to DVD release of Disney's Martin Prado vs. the Colorado Rockies at a store near you.



But seriously back to business, in a winner take all game when your best hitters are deciding to take the entire series off. It's a great thing to have a pitcher who's pissed at himself for a bad outing come out and make things right again. That boys and girls was Jair Jurrjens approach tonight as he fanned 6 and took a shutout into the 7th.

And that is where the video will begin:

The 2013 NLDS

Spoiler

Spoiler

What a tight win! Great job!

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

To the guys trying to make graphics:

Spoiler

The first graphic is actually a pretty easy thing to do. Mainly used Gradients for backgrounds. And then to make the dividers you want to use the rectangle marquee tool and create a rectangle the length and width that you want. Then go to layer-layer style- bevel and emboss. From here you can cut off the excess that you don't want and Photoshop will adjust the bevel to the new width. That first image was nothing but the above two techniques and then cut and paste the images from MLB the Show into the a new layer. Doing something like that would take about 5-10 layers.



The second graphic is a little more advanced but still a relatively easy technique to do. The way I like to do it consists of creating two new layers. In the first layer create the main background that you are trying to create. (in this example it would be the bluish gray background.)

In the second layer make a thin rectangle about 2cm wide (or however wide or narrow you want). Anyway fill it in with an alternate color. Then hit CTRL+T and rotate it 45 degrees. Alright so now you see that you have cut it into a diagonal. Highlight the rotated rectangle with the magic wand to select it. Then go to the first layer and delete the part that is highlighted. Delete or hide the second layer because you don't need it now. And then Lasso the excess that you don't want, and you should now have a diagonal edge to the rectangle.

***
He sat in the same wooden chair, the blood still fresh from earlier that day slipping down his brow and into his beard. They had been at this for now 4 days. And while it seemed subconsciously the grasp of the rope around his wrists could be falling complacent. The man sitting in front of him with a gun in his hand still seemed as alert as he was the first night they had met.

If he was going to make it out of this situation he would only get one chance to do it. The man with the loaded gun seemed to not be the type to make a mental mistake and leave him alone for too long. But he was growing frustrated by the hour. He could tell that much.

And why wouldn't he... he had driven a long way to find out an answer that was not in this house. He had no more knowledge to give than anyone else that could have worked in the Braves organization.

He had told him over and over that he didn't know. For some strange reason people think pointing a gun at someone's head is going to make answers appear out of the blue sky. yet he knew the man wouldn't shoot because if he thought that for a moment the truth was hidden inside his head, he wouldn't let those thoughts splatter on the cold ground.

He looked at the shelf by the door. Inside he knew there was a small pistol. If only he could get untied for just a moment.... it wouldn't even take 5 minutes. The roles could be and would be reversed.

Something on your mind Frank?

Startled by the sudden communication.. he thought of a lie.

Frank Wren ... No

***

[AC]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

To the guys trying to make graphics:

Spoiler

The first graphic is actually a pretty easy thing to do. Mainly used Gradients for backgrounds. And then to make the dividers you want to use the rectangle marquee tool and create a rectangle the length and width that you want. Then go to layer-layer style- bevel and emboss. From here you can cut off the excess that you don't want and Photoshop will adjust the bevel to the new width. That first image was nothing but the above two techniques and then cut and paste the images from MLB the Show into the a new layer. Doing something like that would take about 5-10 layers.



The second graphic is a little more advanced but still a relatively easy technique to do. The way I like to do it consists of creating two new layers. In the first layer create the main background that you are trying to create. (in this example it would be the bluish gray background.)

In the second layer make a thin rectangle about 2cm wide (or however wide or narrow you want). Anyway fill it in with an alternate color. Then hit CTRL+T and rotate it 45 degrees. Alright so now you see that you have cut it into a diagonal. Highlight the rotated rectangle with the magic wand to select it. Then go to the first layer and delete the part that is highlighted. Delete or hide the second layer because you don't need it now. And then Lasso the excess that you don't want, and you should now have a diagonal edge to the rectangle.

***
He sat in the same wooden chair, the blood still fresh from earlier that day slipping down his brow and into his beard. They had been at this for now 4 days. And while it seemed subconsciously the grasp of the rope around his wrists could be falling complacent. The man sitting in front of him with a gun in his hand still seemed as alert as he was the first night they had met.

If he was going to make it out of this situation he would only get one chance to do it. The man with the loaded gun seemed to not be the type to make a mental mistake and leave him alone for too long. But he was growing frustrated by the hour. He could tell that much.

And why wouldn't he... he had driven a long way to find out an answer that was not in this house. He had no more knowledge to give than anyone else that could have worked in the Braves organization.

He had told him over and over that he didn't know. For some strange reason people think pointing a gun at someone's head is going to make answers appear out of the blue sky. yet he knew the man wouldn't shoot because if he thought that for a moment the truth was hidden inside his head, he wouldn't let those thoughts splatter on the cold ground.

He looked at the shelf by the door. Inside he knew there was a small pistol. If only he could get untied for just a moment.... it wouldn't even take 5 minutes. The roles could be and would be reversed.

[b]

Startled by the sudden communication.. he thought of a lie.




***

Ooh, some back story!

Yeah, I'm a noob at photoshop. I just saved what you wrote, so I'll try it out sometime. Thanks!

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

Alright, after taking a good week off... licking our wounds, and celebrating a return trip to the NLCS over Del Taco and Heineken. As Lion King's Rafiki would say...

It tis TIME!




And a short flight up to St. Louis Missouri is where we head to next. Last time we were at Busch Stadium in the playoffs, well let's just say things didn't end too nice for us. We were drop kicked out of the tournament by Pujols, and Holliday.




This year, Pujols is still around and in fact a nice little sub story between him and Heyward and who's going to be the big dog in the yard at the end of this series is sure to ensue. but before things erm... ensue... we gotta figure out how to stop Andrew Brown. Who the hell is this guy batting .545 with 3 jacks, AND protecting the Cardinals two best players? He sure as heck has a generated face so I guess we can question him a little. Right?



The 2013 NLCS started off quite nice for our boys from Cobb County as we had our second best hitting performance of the whole darn year. Game 1's key stat? 20 hits


Everybody seemed to join in on the party as there were 8 long balls. 3 in the first inning. It was like Game 4 vs. Colorado, except this time we were doing the ***-kicking.. and yes, pummeling the curveball 8 times, 3 of them from Kid Clutch Brian McCann is an excellent feeling to start off a series against a team that had your number back in the day.



But before we gloat friends, let's humble ourselves in the next breath. This Cardinals team is tough as nails, and well, the following game is why I guess we should never assume a series difficulty is too easy based off of one game.

I mean this is baseball boys and girls. Everybody is due a great day, as well as a bad day. Game 2 with Francisco Liriano on the mound vs. Mike Minor who had a huge game 3 back in the NLDS, was more along the lines of what everybody in the media thought this series would be heading.



It was an intense back and forth pitchers battle. And Lirano seemed to coax the ball into grounding out over and over into demoralizing inning ending double plays. It got kind of bad once it was noted that the Braves hadn't had one runner past second through 8. No extra base hits, and a bunch of weak *** pop ups to first. THIS, after a 20 hit game seems like ducktales my friends... but it is the nature of the playoffs.



With the series split 1-1 heading down to Georgia, here is the tale of the tape. Clearly the first game skewed the stats to our favor. But game 2 we see that the Cardinals clearly are one of the better teams in the league and this will be a long drawn out, ugly series.

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

With the series all tied at french fries.. 1-1 for those taking score, we go back home to Atlanta. It would be game 3 in which the MLB the Show 11 karma police decided Tommy Hanson had served enough time in the hole and could be available to come off the DL and jump in right now and ultimately finish off the Cardinals. Unfortunately for Mr. Hanson... we don't really roll like that.



You don't just come off of Career-threating elbow injuries and go pitch immediately in a winner takes all the momentum for himself playoff game. No.. no we're going to proceed through this realistically and treat Hanson as if the elbow is made of glass now. He can sit on the bench. He can start his work in the bullpen but he ain't starting..

... yet atleast.



Not that his absence is hurting us too much this series... because unlike the NLDS, the pitching staff is starting to catch fire. We're getting some nice gems out of the arms of the staff, and tonight Kris Medlen continued that theme pitching 6 and 1/3 of 2 hit ball. His best game by far since the 2010 World Series vs. Cleveland.



Of course he'd get a no decision... can't be having him get a legit win or anything right? Craig Kimbrell would give up the tying run on a 1-2 count with 2 outs, blowing the save. Ironic since it was a 2 inning save at that. Thankfully we rallied after Freeman got an infield hit, Uggla moved him over, and Kelly Shoppach hit a pinch hit walkoff single up the middle.

[lilbiggio]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

But Wait Reggie, Deion and lil Walter there is more:

ALCS Game 4

Spoiler

Arod the hero? This guy was the ultimate goat last year in the 2012 World Series... but against Boston in a situation where the Yanks go down 3-1, Rodriguez hit a long 437 foot fly to deep centerfield to help the Yankees even the series at 2-2.

Most of the postseason has been decided between the lines. In fact other than Brandon Beachy acting like a complete *****, this entire season has been decided between the lines. Our roster problems seemed to work themselves out.

Well buddy, this one we gotta chalk up to lockeroom problems. Jason Heyward is apparently in the doghouse.

Yes you might want to put the Capri Sun Screwdriver you just made down. Jason Heyward,the two time MVP has found himself not in the starting lineup.



It was a move that reminded many of that one jerk moment back in '77 when infamous Yankee skipper Billy Martin decided he had seen enough out of All Star Reggie Jackson and made a questionable move to pull the oldest trick in the book of pulling-your-mega superstar-out-of-a-contest-between-the-Red Sox-IN-THE-MIDDLE-OF-THE-DAMN-INNING-for-loafing-on-a-play! (Whew)

The only relative difference in this comical situation and ours was that our guy Jason atleast had the heads up that his services would not be needed this evening prior to first pitch and could eat his breakfast that day in peace..



Last year it didn't really matter. He did the same **** then too... but well, he had the excuse of pressing and the other guys stepped up and helped him out. This year, there's really no excuse for a 1 hit NLDS Series. 4 hits in the entire series for the NLCS. It's not enough to just put him in the 8 hole and try to let him work out of it. Heyward as special as he is... damn... we gotta treat him like everyone else on the squad. No way Prado would still be in the lineup if he went 4 for 24 in 2 series. Screw that Nonsense...



On the positive side... Pujols is batting just as bad. Maybe it's time to switch the Cardinals lineup around a little just to get something going offensively for them too. Pujols and Andrew Brown will switch the 3 and 5 spots for the time being.



Whatever is going on with the Cardinals bats, they had better figure it out quick because Game 4 the bats of Reyes, Pujols, Freese, and Holliday continued to stay ice cold. Jair Jurrjens made relative easy work out of them throughout the game and worked a complete game shutout on an insane for MLB the show 123 pitches.



Atlanta will look to finish this off in Game 5 with Big Z on the mound vs. The Cardinals Adam Wainwright. Last time he was out he gave up 20 hits to the Braves. Although we can't really expect that again, it's a scary concern that he is probably going to pitch the game of his life now to redeem himself. It wouldn't be the first time this scenario played out.

[bhurst99]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

I'm starting to smell a World Series repeat.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: The Ted Turner Memoirs Part 4: Rise Of The Powers That Be

Hooked.

Time to find the first few seasons.