Archived Discussion Main / GretzkyHasTheBall

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Triterope: Added references to Little Big League and Futurama.

Dark Sasami: Does the bit from White Men Can't Jump where the girl rings in with the question to answer before Alex Trebek has finished reading the answer count? You can't do that, and Alex Trebek of all people knows that.

Ununnilium: You should link "shall remain nameless" to the actual show. ``

Seth: This is a wiki where we put in examples, making anything nameless defeats the point of the format (You know following one link after another until you realise you have waisted 2 days). Just put the name in.

Grev: Okay, okay. done.

Rare movie example: In Angels In The Outfield (the 1994 remake), pitcher Mel Clark (played by Tony Danza) is said to have thrown over 160 pitches in one game. In real life, 100 pitches is generally the threshold in which starting pitchers start becoming fatigued and are relieved, with 110-115 being max. One-hundred sixty pitches is unreal in the modern game, and his arm likely would have fallen off.

Tanto: Five words: 147 pitches. It's extreme, but not completely unheard of — and it was a lot more common not ten years before the movie was made, so it's not like the writers had no idea what they were talking about. The reduction of pitch counts is a relatively recent development, a reaction to the improved offensive context and inflation of baseball salaries as teams try to protect their investments.

Andrew Leprich: Yeah, you're right. It's extreme, but not outside the realm of possibility.

Grev: That, and the fact that the only place where there's actually a rule that a pitcher can't last past a certain pitch count is in Little League. There's nothing preventing a pitcher from starting both ends of a doubleheader if he (or the manager) so chooses.

Jefepato: Blernsball eventually proves to be very different from baseball. I'm not sure I see the point of including the entry.

Travis Wells: Yeah, it's in here (for writers not knowing a games rules) and in Calvin Ball (for games without rules). That makes no sense.

Ununnilium: Agreed. Yoink!

• In baseball-themed Futurama episode "A Leela of Her Own," Hermes says that Leela pitched 77 innings without getting an out. In pitching statistics, you have to get outs to accumulate innings. However, the sport in question is blernsball, which is not quite the same as baseball; some aspect of the futuristic game's unexplained and incredibly convoluted rules may make this possible.

Brickman: Am I the only one who thinks intentional Calvinball-esque ignorances of the actual rules should be separated from cases where the writers actually failed to do the basic research?

Why the hell can't the goalie be the captain of a hockey team?

Azreal: Holding and punching are EMPHATICALLY not allowed in American football. As quoted by the NFL Rules:

15 Yards (and disqualification if flagrant)

1. Striking opponent with fist.

and

Five Yards

1. Defensive holding or illegal use of hands (automatic first down).

They are valid tactics in the sense that yes, they can work if you aren't caught, but to think that the rules allow them shows no familiarity with American football. So yes, the refs in Eyeshield 21 should be doing a better job, and penalizing a LOT more often than they do.

Ununnilium:

• The concept of weight categories is absent as well. How does 5'9" Stallone end up in the ring with 6'5" Lundgren?
  • The Heavyweight Division is just 200+ lbs, with no restrictions based on height. If Stallone was heavy enough, he'd be in that division though it probably wouldn't be in his best interest.
  • Some boxers gain a little weight (or even drink lots of water before weigh-in) to get into a heavier category, to achieve more fame in a more popular weight category or just for the challenge. This troper remembers a real-life boxer (Roy Jones, Jr.), who manage to compete at pro level in FOUR different weight categories at various times. Subverted in Neverdown (Nevalyashka), a Russian film about a fictional featherweight with a jaw of steel and no good punch, who would constantly get knocked down but never knocked out, and decided to compete in the super heavyweight division, for boredom with a lack of a true challenge and star fame in pro featherweight. However, he is absolutely unable to gain a single pound of weight, and therefore repeatedly cheats himself in by wearing 60-pound lead underwear under his shorts at weigh-in.

Ergo, not an example.

• To say nothing of the fact that, should a real-life boxer fight like Rocky (without any semblance of defense), they'd be knocked out in the first round of every fight they were in.
  • The term 'rope-a-dope' is a strategy invented by Muhammad Ali with the same basic tactic, but as you would expect is only really effective when employed by boxers with excellent defenses and stamina.
  • While this troper also was somewhat irritated by Rocky using such a strategy, he would like to point out that this particular detail was eventually fixed in the third movie.
  • And only the third movie.
  • Though that may have been the general idea to begin with, it was only 33% true. The second third came from Rocky fighting with a left-handed style before eventually dropping it in favor of his natural stance (which it turns out he did not use). The last third involved Rocky standing up to the best Clubber Lang can throw at him without going down, eventually gaining the confidence he needs to ignore the initial stance swap and simply pummel Lang with his Limit Break.

So... how is this this trope? @-@

Grev: I'm gonna have to defend this one, since I put it up. It shows that the research wasn't done, because Rocky is taking far more punishment than even glass jaws would, and still is able to go the full 15 rounds with just normal wear and tear to his face and body. That may go under some other category of the Did Not Do The Research hierarchy, but I put it here because it's derived from sports.

• Exception: Mr. Baseball has Tom Selleck's titular character being surprised that pro baseball games in Japan can end "in a goddamn tie!"
  • To wit, That Other Wiki says that games are called tied after 12 innings.

And how is this an exception? Or related to this at all?

• Literary example: Michael Crichton's novel Next is clearly the result of massive amounts of research, but apparently still not enough to know that a football (soccer) match is played in halves, not quarters.
  • He may have got this misconception from youth soccer, which unlike the pros often is played in quarters. Then again, he may simply Not Have Done the Research.
    • Maybe they play quarters in America, but not anywhere else in the world. Youth soccer/football is always halves (though usually shorter than 45 mins.)
    • The game in the book was played by 7th or 8th graders in America, so it's correct.

Thus it's perfectly accurate, thus not an example.

Ununnilium: More "Natter reveals it's not an example" examples:

• You try finding any episode of any thing where a spelling bee is won on one contestant correctly spelling two words back-to-back (the way Scripps does it). Most of the time, either the only other remaining contestant misses a word, or a contestant correctly spells a word that the previous contestant had missed.
  • Akeelah And The Bee ended with a tie, but not before announcing that one contestant could win by spelling the word his opponent missed.
  • This troper once won a school spelling bee wherein that is exactly how it worked. Nobody goes around watching every school's spelling bee and sending MIBs after anyone who doesn't follow the official rules. (Because there aren't any. No matter how much Scripps wants to convince its viewers that they are the authority, they're not.)
• The Doctor Who episode, "The Curse of Fenric" has the Doctor baffling formerly Sealed Evil in a Can Fenric with his Achilles' Heel, he can't resist a puzzle. So, the Doctor uses a chess puzzle of the "Find the winning move" variety. Fenric cannot solve the puzzle because his antagonistic philosophy prevents him from seeing it: the black and white pawns must work together! Except chess is antagonistic. The supposed solution makes not the slightest hint of sense.
  • "Mental masturbation"-type chess puzzles can be notoriously unintuitive. White and black pieces coordinating moves is completely fair game. One infamous kind of puzzle, the "helpmate," requires that both sides cooperate in order to checkmate Black.
  • Some puzzles even incorporate nonexistent pieces. Archbishops (bishops that can ricochet off the edges of the board) and knight-riders (knights that can make continuous moves in the same direction) are some of the more common ones.
    • The common term for this is Fairy chess and dates back to the early 1900s.
• The Postal Service song "Nothing Better" contains the lyric "I will block the door like a goalie tending the net in the third quarter of a tie game rivalry." This editor can't think of a sport that is played in quarters that uses a goalie.
  • Lacrosse?
  • Beach soccer.
  • Water Polo
  • YMCA youth soccer (as mentioned above in the Next reference).
  • Hockey. It's Hockey, people.
  • Hockey isn't played in quarters.

• Martha Coakley. Curt Schilling. Serious Business. Epic Fail.
  • To clarify, Coakley, during her campaign for Ted Kennedy's vacated Senate seat, protested when former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani, a known Yankee fan, came to Massachusetts to campaign for her opponent. When told that former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling- yes, he of bloody sock fame- was also supporting her opponent, she dismissively referred to Schilling as "another Yankee fan". Schilling himself probably summed it up best.
  Schilling: I've been called a lot of things ... but never, I mean never, could anyone make the mistake of calling me a Yankee fan. Well, check that. If you didn't know what the hell is going on in your own state, maybe you could...
• When Oprah Winfrey interviewed Drew Brees after the latter led the New Orleans Saints to their first ever Super Bowl victory, she tried to wipe what she thought was some lipstick off his face. Pretty much every football fan in the country could tell you that's a birthmark. Did Not Do The Research, Oprah?

Grev: Pulled these two examples because they're just plain ol' Did Not Do The Research. Oprah's gaffe doesn't even relate to the game at all; it'd be an identical folly if she tried to spit-shine Gorbachev's head to get that bit of dirt off...