Royals Rumblings - News for January 3, 2025

I’m not taking down my Christmas decorations until at least January 6th. I’m not missing my chance to have Dave Grohl and/or zombie Neil Peart stuffed down my chimney

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Well, everyone except Greg Walker. It took me a couple weeks to do all my Christmas lights so I’m not taking them down until after Epiphany. Also, no, I’m not mad that he stole all the MLB.com listicles.

Just for that, I’m going to steal his bit and post some Australian Baseball League news, courtesy of the Royals Player Development Twitter account:

(I really have nothing against Greg - but we need something to spice things up, right?)

Max covered the “big” news of the day with Austin Cox coming back on a minor league deal.

And with that, there’s no official news so it’s time to feature some blog posts.

Craig gets the leadoff spot today at Into the Fountains. He goes through the roster and, well, like most of us, struggles to find a starting outfield:

Happy New Year! It’s time to dust the cobwebs off the newsletter and kick back into gear. Pitchers and catchers report in around 40 days. The first Cactus League game is in 51 days. Opening Day is just 85 days away. We are close to returning to baseball nirvana.

Following the successes of 2024, and as the roster for 2025 begins to take shape, it looks relatively familiar. Why make wholesale changes after such a successful season? Yet, General Manager JJ Picollo hasn’t been just sitting on his hands. He’s made a couple of deals to fortify his club as they seek back-to-back trips to the postseason. Yet, to this point, it feels like more needs to be done. The outfield in particular could use more help.

Second spot goes to Matt Chabot at Farm to Fountains. He writes about the bullpen depth in the organization. He’s more optimistic about the unit than I am, but it did look pretty good down the stretch and it’s one of the easiest positions to both fix and see variability.

The current state of the Royals bullpen is much better than people think and might be one of the biggest strengths of the roster. They have all the major boxes checked as they have their closer (Erceg) and their setup man covered (Harvey). Leverage options from both sides of the mound are there as well (Schreiber, Stratton, Long, Zerpa). Beyond that, the Royals have several other guys who are young and could make an impact. At the end of 2024, we saw the bullpen pitch several lockdown innings for the Royals and looked like one of the best units in all of baseball.

Blog roundup:

• Jacob Milham at Kings of Kauffman: Updated MLB Draft order benefits KC Royals ahead of 2025 MLB Draft
• Jacob Milham at Kings of Kauffman: Why the KC Royals should consider signing international pitcher Kyle Hart
• Rachael Millanta at Kings of Kauffman: Redemption-seeking KC Royals starter listed as ‘breakout player to watch’
• Rachael Millanta at Kings of Kauffman: Catching logjam could lead Royals to trade market sooner than expected
• Hunter Samuels at Swinging Bunts (often writes about Royals but not in this post): Tips for Parenting a Toddler

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Remember back in the before times, before all the cheese and egg nog, we talked about Christmas movies. I didn’t think I’d do another Christmas movies entry like last year, but here we are. Some of the movies were ones that I mentioned and others were mentioned in the comments.

White Christmas (1954) - (posted in the comments but added here) Yes, it’s a bit slow because it’s a musical from the 50s. But it even had my son paying attention through most of it, though we had to explain bits like why Betty was mad at Bob and what they were trying to do for the general. It’s funny how romcoms have stuck with a tried and true formula for generations, right down to the predictable meet cute and awkward misunderstanding that results in one of the love interests chasing down the other. Yes, the General plot is a bit schmaltzy but it gives the movie much of its heart. Then wrap this present all up with an Irving Berlin score from his heydey. Bing Crosby (Bob), Danny Kaye (Phil), Rosemarry Clooney (Betty), Vera-Ellen (Judy), Dean Jagger (General Waverly), and Mary Wickes (Emma) are all great. There’s something about older, slower movies where the stars just hold the screen. Speaking of older, yeah, there are some dated issues like the song about mistrel shows and gender roles - it is definitely a product of its time. But it a really good movie and I’m glad I went back and re-watched it for the first time in decades. I’m always a little surprised when a critically acclaimed or popular old movie holds up (mostly). One of these days I’ll learn my lesson and understand that some entertainment is timeless.

Holiday Inn (1942) - The recommendation of White Christmas over Holiday Inn was a solid one, but there is a lot of creativity oozing from this movie. We like to think of meta-fiction as a post-modern thing, but it was thick in this 80 year old film. The opening number mirrors the plot of the rest of the movie with a woman having to choose between a singer (Jim, played by legendary singer Bing Crosby) and a dancer (Ted, played by legendary dancer Fred Astaire). Both put on spectacular performances. It’s a musical, but not terribly slow as all the musical numbers are worked into the plot: no one is just breaking into song walking down the street with the townspeople joining them. The idea of the Holiday Inn is that the Inn only hosts performances on holidays, so it gives each of the musical scenes a sense of occasion. That said, some remind you that the movie is old and not always in a good way. There’s a patriotic 4th of July war montage that feels out of place until you remember the movie was released in 1942. The depiction of black housekeeper Mamie weren’t great and that’s before you get a whole blackface musical number for Lincoln’s birthday. Yikes! Back to the main plot, there’s something romantic about fighting for your love. But the core of the movie is a series of love triangles with 3 different engagements broken up in 100 minutes. Jim is supposed to be the hero because he wins the heart of Linda, but he did that by cancelling her marriage to Ted. She ran off with Ted because Jim sabotaged her career and didn’t let her choose because he was worried she’d run off with Ted like his previous fiance, Lila. That takes away some of the holiday magic away for me.

A Christmas Carol (1984) - It’s seems odd to me that there’s not a definitive movie adaptation of this timeless Christmas story. This one is a serious version unlike the Muppet or Mickey version we typically watch. The effects feel like those of the TV movie it is, particularly towards the end of the movie, but the sets are good. It’s strange seeing usually villainous David Warner as Bob Cratchit but he stands out, as does Roger Rees’s Fred. Really, what makes any version of a Christmas Carol is the ability of the actor playing Ebenezer to portray the day before Scrooge, have a believable turn in the night, and come out of it a changed man the next morning. It’s a lot of dramatic ground to cover and George C. Scott delivers. His dour first act is excellent and his final act is good, if a tad manic. The tricky middle is tougher. There’s only a half hour to show the innocence of young Scrooge at Fezziwig’s, the longing of Belle’s love lost, a slight melting of the heart at Fred’s kind words, an earnest pity of the weakest in society with Tiny Tim, a believable ignorance that the bankers and grave robbers couldn’t be disparaging him and, finally, fear of a life lived wrong that causes him to ultimately repent. His time with the Ghost of Christmas Past is best while the others are a little more shaky. I don’t know if I could say this is the “definitive version” but I can’t name one that is moreso. I just don’t think the definitive one has been made yet.

Love Actually (2003) - A modern Christmas classic that I hadn’t seen until this year, it answer the age old question “what if you stuffed 2/3rds of modern major British acting talent in a film about love and set it at Christmas time”. It’s one of those “ships passing in the night” movies where some plots are going to be better than others but most are well done. There’s also a delicate balancing act between the comedic, depressing, dramatic, and farcical melodies and knowing which order to place the beats. Never mind the difficulty that a number of the threads have multiple tonal shifts throughout. I’m probably in the minority in that I feel like some of the most dramatic and notable moments had issues. For instance, the cue cards ending to the Juliet and Mark plot felt all wrong on many levels. Emma Thompson’s great speech to Alan Rickman is a powerful scene, but I felt like their acting had to make up for a thin plot to get them to that point. However, I also acknowledge it’s hard to find even a couple of spare moments to elaborate in a movie that so jam packed. It also has this interesting post-9/11 context where it acknowledges the event in the intro but has somewhat of a 90s movie feel. In all, I get why this is a classic, but so much of it is bittersweet that I think it will stay in my wife’s Christmas movie rotation but not mine.

The Santa Clause (1994) - Now we get to 2 movies that aren’t exactly classics, though the first has much more of a claim than than the second. This movie is aggressively 90s, full of Tim Allen, divorce jokes, incompetent men, pokes at psychologists, and bad slapstick. It’s also chock full of 90s morality with cringey kid guilt trips that don’t reward positive behavior or how non-conformist imagination is horrible. The one thing I can’t get over is just how callously mean these 90s holiday movies were. We just accept that movies from the 80s or earlier were a product of their time, but that during the 90s, people were trying to get better. So the elves are played by kids, but that’s followed up with jokes about “little people as a PC term” or a whole raft of mean-spirited fat jokes. I know they don’t matter much for a comedy, but I want to make note of the mixed bag of special effects. While some parts look dated, some parts up in the North Pole look great. There’s a funny montage where Chicago cops are arresting Santas all over town to ZZ Top. But, at its core, it’s a cringey Tim Allen film where he kills Santa in the first 15 minutes and then has to take the job while being a bad dad and doing things like kidnapping his son to set up the 3rd act. Everybody gets a happy ending, even if no one really grew and it’s not really earned: the 90s, everyone!

Jingle All the Way (1996) - But if you really want a mediocre 90s Christmas movie, do I have this mixed bag for you. He didn’t direct this, but the film was produced by Chris Columbus, who gave us memorable Christmas moments in Gremlins, Home Alone, and Harry Potter. Instead of that holiday magic, we got a schlocky movie with crass consumerism at its core. Both of these 90s movies had core character development about how not getting a special toy in their youth made main characters have a Christmas crisis of faith. Beyond that, this is just generally 90s dumb, mean spirited, and frustrating. It’s somehow even more zany and cringey than a Tim Allen movie, but I think it wants to be... let’s say, satire. However, it doesn’t land and feels like an exercise in seeing how many awful things we can drag our two leads through: Arnold’s “bad dad” stereotype and Sinbad’s racial caricature that was so bad it made me wince. Beyond those two, it features a big cast with Phil Hartman (who can play everything - including a cartoonish creeper here), Rita Wilson, Jake Lloyd, Robert Conrad, Martin Mull, Richard Moll, Jim Belushi, and more. The first two acts are absolutely brutal except for a Santa fight that’s pretty funny. The finale is surprisingly competent, aside from some awful special effects, and reminds you of just how much star power Arnold had at the peak of his powers and how he can almost single-handedly elevate a bad movie. But that third act can’t make up for the fact that we almost turned it off multiple times in the first hour.

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If I’m going to talk about two of the most memorable Christmas musicals of all time, I should probably include a song from there. How about Bing Crosby’s two renditions of “White Christmas” in the two movies. First, Holiday Inn and then White Christmas: