Month: July 2020

Sports Throwback Thursday: 2004 Cardinals

The 2004 St Louis Cardinals were the hottest team in baseball. They won 105 games and had many talented players such as Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, Reggie Sanders, Edgar Renteria, Matt Morris, Chris Carpenter, and the list goes on.

The 2004 Cards is one of the greatest teams not to win the World Series. The Boston Red Sox swept them.

One of my favorite memories from that season is the 2004 National League Championship Series against the Houston Astros. This was a great playoff series. It got overshadowed because of the Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit against my Yankees. If you look back at Games 5-7, it was some of the Astros-Cards series’s best games. In Game 5, Jeff Kent hit a walk-off three-run homer for the Astros; Game 6, Jim Edmonds responded with a game-winning 2-run shot in the 12th inning. In Game 7, Scott Rolen hit a clutch 2-run homer against Roger Clemens in the bottom of the 6th inning to give the Cards a 4-2 lead.

The 500 Mil

The 500 Million Dollar Kid! Patrick Mahomes signs a 10-year contract worth $503 million. The highest deal in NFL history. Jesus Christ!

Patrick Mahomes is having probably the most impressive young career that I’ve ever seen in all of my years watching football. Since he came on to the scene in 2017, he was elected to the Pro Bowl twice, won league MVP in 2018, and just finished bringing a title to Kansas City and won Super Bowl MVP. He accomplished all of this before turning 25.

Mahomes is only one of the four African-American quarterbacks to win the league MVP. He deserves all of the success and money he’s getting.

I can’t wait to see more of Patrick Mahomes and what else he will accomplish. Hopefully, he can stay healthy because he’s talented, and he makes the game fun.

Stand and Deliver

Stand and Deliver is a film that’s currently streaming on Netflix. It’s based on the true story of a Math teacher, Jamie Escalante.

Yesterday, I saw the film for the first time since High School. This film brings back so many memories. I remember I first watched it in 7th Grade. The second time I saw it was in my Freshman Year in High School.

Edward James Olmos was magnificent. He got nominated for an Oscar and Lou Diamond Phillips for a Golden Globe. The film also had outstanding direction from Ramon Menendez.

Stand and Deliver is the Latin version of Freedom Writers, or should I say, Freedom Writers before Freedom Writers, where one teacher changes the whole culture of the classroom.

I like the beach scene with the students. All of them get in the water. Ángel Guzman, played by Lou Diamond Phillips, didn’t want to get in the water, but his classmates kept insisting him. So he decided to join them. The film’s funniest moment is when the students were being interrogated for cheating, and Ángel said that he got the test from a mailman and that his body is decomposing in his locker. Pancho’s laugh in that scene made me laugh.

At the end of the movie, we see the statistics increasing of students passing the AP Calculus Exam every year.

Escalante said that 90% of the film was accurate. He passed away in 2010. If you still haven’t watched Stand and Deliver, please do so.