Mister Jacob's Citadel

         1994 was a good year. 1994 in retrospect was probably one of the greatest years in film history. Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and The Shawshank Redemption  were all released that year. 1994 was also great because that was the year of my birth. It is no coincidence that so many great movies came out the year I was born. Anyways, there was also one movie that was released in 1994 that is a personal favorite of mine.             The Lion King was directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. The screenplay was written by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton. The Lion King was released in the midst of the Disney Renaissance, the period between 1989 and 1999 when Disney returned to its animated musical roots that made the studio so successful in years past. The Disney Renaissance was an unprecedented run of success for the studio. In this ten year period Disney released The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Bea...

     It is time for the National League to join the modern age and adopt the Designated Hitter (DH) rule. The National League has held onto the archaic tradition of pitchers hitting for far too long. The DH rule has been one of the best changes that has been made to the game of baseball. The game would be much healthier and more exciting to watch if the DH rule was universally adopted.      I understand that this is a divisive issue. Pro-DH rule people and anti-DH rule people are just as divided on this subject as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are when they argue about whether or not it is rabbit season or duck season. That last part may be an exaggeration, but the Designated Hitter rule debate goes like this every time it is brought up by Major League Baseball:      MLB: Maybe we should look into the National League trying out the DH rule.      American League: Good idea!      National League: Screw that! We ...

           Luke Heimlich is one of the top college pitchers in the country. The 6'1 lefty throws a mid-nineties fastball and has a slider that tops off at 83 MPH. The Oregon State Beavers pitcher also has a 15-1 record, a 2.42 ERA, and has struck out 142 hitters in 111 innings. There's only one problem. Luke Heimlich plead guilty to molesting his then six year old niece when he was fifteen years old.      Heimlich was eligible to be drafted last year, but no MLB team would touch him after the reports of his actions came out. He's eligible to be drafted again this year and as of this writing Heimlich has gone undrafted. That could change by tomorrow and it could change in the days after if a team decides to sign Heimlich as an undrafted free agent. Hopefully, Heimlich remains undrafted. A Major League team drafting or signing Heimlich would be an absolute nightmare for everybody involved and would send the same terrible message that the NFL...

            Benicio del Toro is a bad motherfucker. That was the one thing that constantly kept popping into my head while watching Sicario (2015) which was directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Taylor Sheridan. Sicario follows young F.B.I. agent Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt) as she finds herself being recruited by a secret government task force that is charged with finding the leader of a violent Mexican drug cartel. However, Kate Mercer's principles causes her to clash with the unethical methods of her superiors Matt Garver (Josh Brolin) and the mysterious Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro).       Sicario is a phenomenal modern day western. This was the first script that Taylor Sheridan ever wrote and the crazy thing is that he continues to get even better. Clint Eastwood put the old western film genre to rest with Unforgiven (1992), but Sheridan has created a new modern day western of sorts with his excellent writing and direct...

New York Yankees teammates Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are set to strikeout a combined 500 times.             Dave Kingman was an outfielder, first baseman, and designated hitter that played in the Major Leagues from 1971-1986. He was a 6'6 slugger that hit 442 home runs and drove in over 1,000 RBIs. These stats came with an extreme set of drawbacks. Dave Kingman only had a career .236 batting average, struck out 1,816 times, and had an on-base percentage of .302. Kingman's high risk-high reward approach was truly an anomaly for his era. Adam Dunn, who played from 2001-2014 had a nearly an identical career to Dave Kingman's. The only difference is that Adam Dunn was able to draw a lot of walks and had a pretty high on-base percentage. Even though Adam Dunn's career ended only four years ago, he was still somewhat of an anomaly in Major League Baseball. In 2018, it seems like there is one Dave Kingman or Adam Dunn per team. It is now routine th...