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His hair was slicked back, and the right side of his jersey was soaked. Royals manager Ned Yost looked unkempt despite his afternoon off, following an ejection in the first inning of a 6-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox.
After each victory, the team designates a player of the game. On Sunday, following their seventh win in a row, they settled on their manager-turned-spectator. The players doused him with water – they insisted they would not waste beer for such a celebration — as the stereo system's bass pulsed and a strobe light flashed through the room.
"Since he didn't make it through an inning, we figured it was his day to get the award," designated hitter Billy Butler said.
The last time Yost watched his team on TV, after an ejection against the Houston Astros on May 27, the sight infuriated him. He fumed at the shoddy at-bats, and criticized his club to reporters afterward. That was three weeks and 12 wins ago —another lifetime for a team that has surged to a season's best four games above .500.
For Yost, glued to a TV inside the visiting manager's office, the product on Sunday was far more pleasing. He departed after arguing a run-scoring balk ruling against James Shields. Though Shields labored, he survived a 10-hit barrage to achieve a quality start, three runs allowed in six innings. Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez launched early home runs to pace the offense, and Jarrod Dyson padded the lead with fourth-inning RBI single.
In all, the Royals (36-32) outscored their hosts, 22-6, in 27 innings at U.S. Cellular Field. Shields painted this as the team's best of the season, one in which all cylinders clicked. They are roaring into a four-game set with Detroit, the leaders of the American League Central, "the biggest series of the year," Butler said.
A three-game destruction of a divisional opponent allowed the Royals to puff out their chests, ever so slightly, on Sunday afternoon. All cautioned about the length of season remaining, and the perils of placing too much emphasis on one series. But the importance of this week is obvious, with the Royals merely a game and a half out of first place.
"Obviously, we're the hotter team coming in," Butler said. "One of the hottest teams in baseball, if not the hottest. We've got to keep that rolling."
"We need to have this same swagger going into Detroit," Hosmer said. "If we make a statement like we did here, that's big."
"We're in the best position to go on in there that we could be in," Yost said. "And we'll just take it from there."
Yost handed the controls to bench coach Don Wakamatsu two batters into the bottom of the first. The sequence was eventful: Shields yielded a leadoff triple to fleet-footed outfielder Adam Eaton. Shields already had a two-run lead thanks to Hosmer's homer, but he possesses one of the best pickoff moves in baseball, a weapon capable of defusing the threat.
On his second attempt, Shields thought he nabbed his man. He stared down Eaton, watched him stutter-step away from the bag, looked toward home and fired back to third base. Mike Moustakas placed a tag on Eaton.
"I thought it was a really good move," Shields said. "I think if a lefty throws it, and they're used to it, I don't think they call that play. I don't think it was a balk."
From behind the plate, crew chief Paul Emmel disagreed. He ruled Shields "stepped toward home plate" before the pickoff, Yost explained later.
Convinced this wasn't the case, Shields attempted to engage with Emmel. As Shields recounted the story later, he asked Emmel for an explanation for the call. Emmel instructed him not to argue. Shields insisted he wasn't arguing. "And then he told me not to talk to him," Shields said.
At this point, Shields' manager arrived. Yost stalked from his perch to protest. His initial discussion with Emmel appeared cordial, though it took a similar vein: Yost asked for an explanation, he said, and Emmel told him not to argue. After a few moments, Yost clapped his hands and headed back to his dugout. As he departed, he turned back and spat "Get the call right," with an expletive sprinkled in.
The reaction was immediate. Emmel flicked his right hand, and only then did Yost reveal his anger. He screamed in Emmel's face as Shields steadied himself on the mound. His day would not get much easier.
"They hit the mistakes that I made," he said. "They also got hits on a lot of balls that they were kind of check-swinging on, as well."
The biggest scare arose in the third. Shields was protecting a four-run lead after Perez's three-run jack off starter Andre Rienzo. Shields yielded a two-out double to Gordon Beckham and a walk to Conor Gillaspie. Up came Jose Abreu, the rookie phenom with 19 homers thus far. When Abreu unloaded on a thigh-high fastball, No. 20 appeared within reach.
"I thought it was over the ivy" in center field, Shields said. "I thought it was gone."
From his spot inside the clubhouse, so did Yost. Both were wrong. The ball died at the warning track. Dyson settled beneath it. Shields waited by the dugout steps to salute Dyson as the Royals exited the field.
The offense stayed quiet, for the most part, for the game's duration. In the eighth and again in the ninth, Wade Davis and Greg Holland each allowed the tying run to reach the plate. Yet the outcome would not change.
Inside the Royals clubhouse, their post-game playlist boomed through the speakers and the players prepared for the challenge ahead. They delivered a statement here this past week. They can deliver a bigger one in Detroit.
"To knock off the top dog, you've got to beat them," Butler said.
To reach Andy McCullough, call 816-234-4370 or send email to email@example.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/McCulloughStar.


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All Films.All Above Board.NOW INCLUDES TV SHOWS & TV LISTINGS
Biopic of the legendary 1950s film star. Directed by Mark Rydell ('On Golden Pond'), and starring James Franco as the tortured star, the film traces his rise to fame, his intense ambition to succeed as an actor, his affair with the actress Pier Angeli (Valentina Cervi), and shows how his achievements were cut short by his tragic early death. The story takes place against the backdrop of 1950s Hollywood and features actors playing many of the famous names with whom Dean was associated, including Elia Kazan, Nicholas Ray, Martin Landau and Julie Harris.

subset: commoncrawl


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my brother in the morning
In his words:
You know when you wake up, and you're still half-asleep and everything is confusing and you can't figure out what to do about the alarm? My usual line of thought is like, "It's 7:00am and I have to get up? This is bad. How do I make this not happen?" I usually turn off the alarm, or find a way to postpone it. And then I end up being late.
But this morning I realized that I could change the time on my alarm clock.


text: Video News: United Kingdom Boxer Mason Menard Signs New Managerial Deal Lightweight contender Mason Menard has reportedly signed an exclusive managerial contract with No Limits Mindset, LLC. The 28-year-old Menard, who hails from Reynard, Louisiana and has been boxing professionally for over 10 years, holds a record of 33-2 with 24 knockouts. He is currently coming off of an 8-round decision victory over Carlos Cardenas in March of this year and was also featured on an HBO card against veteran Ray Beltran. © DailyMotion - Wednesday, August 16, 2017


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Your Daily Rorschach Test
Look closely and what do you see here? Now imagine that it is upside down, which is how it looked to me and Charlotte yesterday morning, but as you may have noticed, I'm having some issues with photos showing up flipped. Now guess what we were making for Mothers' Day brunch? Or Linner, as Charlotte called it, because my Mothers' Day insistence was that I be free to sleep until 1 pm. Woo-hoo! Then I ate fried chicken with extra salt on it and then pizza with salt piled on it so it was visible and then i got my period. Care to overshare with me today? Call me at 1-888-4-102-102 between 11 and 1. I will give you my best free advice and some free DVDs and we will have fun. Talk to you soon.


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Cairo International Film Festival Features Six Films Nominated for the 2015 Academy Awards
Cairo International Film Festival Features Six Films Nominated for the 2015 Academy Awards
In a line-up of powerful film screenings reflecting the unwavering come back of the
36th Cairo International Film Festival (9-18 November) the festival features 6 international films, submitted by non-governmental film organizations to vie for the Best Foreign Language Film award at the 2015 Oscars, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Charlie's Country (Australia - 2013) International Competition: Directed by Rold de Heer, the film tells the story of a warrior named Charlie, who lives in a remote indigenous community within the northern region of Australia. As the government increases its stranglehold over the community's traditional way of life, Charlie becomes lost between two cultures. The film's leading star, David Gulpilil, earned the Best Actor Award at Un Certain Regard within Cannes Film Festival in 2014.
Eyes of a Thief (Palestine, 2014)| International Competition: Directed by Najwa Najjar, the film stars Khaled Abol Naga and Souad Massi. Filmed in the heart of the occupied territories of Palestine over the course of 25 days, Eyes of a Thief is based on a true story during the upheavals of the Palestinian Uprising in 2002, offering a glimpse into the Palestinian society and their options of survival and resistance.
The Light that Shines Only There (Japan, 2014)| Festival of Festivals: Directed by Mipo Oh, the film follows a young man called Tatsuo, who becomes head over heels with his friend's sister, who is clearly older than him and strives to make a living to save her poor family. The film was showcased at the closing of Osaka Asian Film Festival and received the Grand Prix at the Montreal World Film Festival.
Rocks in My Pocket (USA - Latvia, 2014) | Festival of Festivals: Written, produced and directed by Signe Baumane, the animated picture is set in the late 1920s Latvia, where a pretty young lady, Anna, falls in love with an adventurous entrepreneur. Following their marriage, the husband's jealousy drives him to hide Anna away in the forest far from other men, where she bears 8 children. The film earned the FIPRESCI award and a Special Jury Mention from Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Timbuktu (Mauritania, 2014)|Prospects of Arab Cinema: Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, the film traces the vivid transformation of the city of Timbuktu, which lies on the Mauritanian borders with Mali. A popular city recognized for its illustrious culture and openness to the world; it's even said to be the place where African and Arab heritage and civilization were born. Timbuktu has turned into a bloodbath by extremist groups, which banned everything - starting from music to football and cigarettes. Sissako garnered two awards from Cannes Film Festival namely; the Francois Chalais Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. He also won the Best Feature Film Award at Jerusalem Film Festival.
Little England (Greece)|Festival Closer: Directed by Pantelis Voulgaris, the film is set during the interwar period in the Greek island of Andros, where two sisters living in the same house fall in love with the same man. The film has also earned the Golden Goblet Award for Best Feature Film at the 17th Shanghai International Film Festival in June, 2014, in addition to Best Actress and Best Director awards.


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The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats scored a significant victory last year in passing legislation to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Yet the bureau can't fully protect consumers fully until it has a director.
The president has nominated former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the bureau, and he was approved by the Senate Banking Committee, but the nomination is stuck in the full chamber. Forty-four Senate Republicans have vowed to block the nomination until the bureau's structure is changed to a commission, among other changes. The House has already passed a bill to convert the bureau to a commission.
Many other agencies are led by commissions, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, both of which protect consumers; Elizabeth Warren, the architect of the CFPB, specifically mentioned the latter as a model in her 2007 article proposing the creation of a "Financial Product Safety Commission." So the Republican proposal appears reasonable, making its opponents look like they are caught up in some Washington version of inside baseball, sacrificing consumer protection over dull governance issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. The way the House bill would structure the commission risks at worst handing the bureau over to financial institutions and at best producing a partisan deadlock.
Why would a simple commission effect such a change? Because of its composition. First, the House bill would make one commissioner an official from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has shown little interest in protecting consumers; for example, though Congress gave the Fed powers in 1994 it could have used to bar predatory mortgage lending, the Fed disdained using the powers until 2008, too late to stop the Great Recession. Mindful of this history, last year's Congress resisted calls to make the bureau subject to the Fed's leadership. Republican proposals to give the Fed power over the bureau thus seem like attempts to restrain consumer protection.
Second, no more than two of the remaining four can be Democrats. And remember those 44 Senators: if the bureau becomes a commission, it is easy to imagine the Senators imposing conditions on approval of commissioners. For example, they may insist that two of the commissioners represent the financial industry. It is a short step from refusing to confirm Nobel laureate Peter Diamond to the Fed's Board to declining to nominate CFPB commissioners who lack a particular perspective. Two such commissioners, together with the Fed official, could form a majority of the bureau's five commissioners to protect banks from consumers, rather than consumers from banks.
Even if financial institutions fail to capture the bureau, the commission model could easily reduce its effectiveness. A commission setup increases the likelihood of deadlocked voting, with the result that consumer protection measures are not adopted. For example, when a seat falls vacant, if the remaining four commissioners are split among consumer and financial institution interests, a determined Senate minority could imitate the 44 Senators and decline to confirm a fifth commissioner to break the deadlock. Alternatively, if Republicans can keep the directorship vacant until the presidential election and then defeat Obama, perhaps their opposition to a director will melt away.
These scenarios are not fanciful. Financial institutions have a long and often successful history of fighting attempts to regulate them by capturing regulatory agencies so that instead of retarding banks' interests the agencies protect them. Besides the Fed, another example is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. When states enacted laws to prevent predatory lending in the years before the Great Recession hit, the OCC, then led by former bank lobbyist John Dugan, blocked application of the state laws to national banks.
Why are Republican legislators so unsupportive of consumer protection? It's hard to know whether the answer is ideological or self-interest. Those who oppose regulation generally can be expected to oppose regulation of financial institutions. Thus, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus has said that Washington and regulators exist to serve banks. And helping banks builds campaign coffers. For example, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the current election cycle, the finance, insurance, and real estate sector has donated $2.3 million—nearly four times as much as any other sector—to Senator Richard Shelby, a leader of the 44 Republican Senators and the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.
In short, changing the bureau to a commission could end up with the illusion of a consumer protection agency that will help prevent the next Great Recession, but not the reality. Perhaps we should update the old adage: if you can't beat 'em, capture 'em or stalemate 'em.
Jeff Sovern is a Professor of Law at St. John's University in New York.


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Sample entrees from over twenty of St. Augustine's famous restaurants at the 19th Annual "A Taste of Saint Augustine" on Saturday, April 25th from 11:00am to 5:00pm at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. Admission is $5 and taste tickets are $1 with restaurants charging between 1-5 tickets per entree. Be sure to enter your vote for the "People's Choice" TOStA (Taste of St. Augustine) award for your favorite dish. There will also be live music from local bands as well as beer and wine samples! Use your Taste ticket for discounts to local attractions.
For more information call 904-829-3295 or visit:
Carriage Way B & B still has availability for this crowd pleasing event. Click HERE to reserve your room with us today!


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Clinton Power + Associates provides relationship counselling for individuals and couples and marriage counselling from the following two locations in Sydney, New South Wales:
Sydney CBD
The William Bland Centre
805/229 Macquarie St
Sydney NSW 2000
Wells St
Newtown NSW 2042
Click the links above to learn more about the services offered at each of those locations and the practitioners who work there.
Book a FREE 15-minute phone consultation today on
0412 241 410
Speak to one of our experienced relationship counsellors about your individual relationship issue or a problem in your relationship or marriage to find out how we can help.
Call 0412 241 410 now or click the book online button below.