Another potential benefit to the Red Sox win

This is an Associated Press photo of Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney removing a sign in Boston that is supposed to read “REVERSE CURVE,” but has often been graffitied to read “REVERSE THE CURSE,” and which has on this occasion been graffitied with a slightly different message…

According to the AP’s caption, the sign has been up for at least 33 years. Now, here’s the good news about it being removed: it’s nonstandard. It’s a warning sign, so according to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, it should be black letters on a yellow background. You know, like one of these. So let’s hope the Massachusetts Department of Transportation or the city of Boston (I’m not sure who has jurisdiction over that sign) is going to replace it with better signage.

Score that play 1-3, and thus ends 2004

Well, Levi, aside from the fact that you had a rooting interest in the team that lost the World Series, I would hope you can agree with this statement: overall, this was a great baseball season. Maybe you wouldn’t use the emphasis, but I would (and did).

Original comments:

Lucas: My condolences, Levi.

Toby: Sorry, Levi. When are you coming home? I have a CD for you.

Dan: Levi, I feel your pain — ’twas me in ’00. I didn’t speak to anyone for days. And I still don’t like talking about it.

Steve: Even though it didn’t turn out right for the Cardinals this year, thanks to Levi and Jim for making this one of the most enjoyable interactive baseball seasons ever. This blog was like an angioplasty in the artery that led to my black baseball loathing heart. There are many things that still bug the hell out of me about baseball but this is neither the time nor the place. Thanks again.

Quoth the Rajah

“People ask me what I do in the winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do: I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
Rogers Hornsby

Here’s hoping the Cardinals stave off winter one game at a time until at least Sunday.

Original comments…

Luke, hanger-on: Only 129 days until pitchers and catchers report.

Levi: I was counting on someone knowing the number. I was consoling myeslf that it’s about four months.

Thanks, Luke.

It could still happen

Don’t worry, Levi; my co-worker Joe and I spent our lunch break on Tuesday coming up with horrible “curse” scenarios that would cause the Red Sox to lose in spectacular fashion. Among them: Curt Schilling has a perfect game going, until his legs fall off. Also, Tim Wakefield gets hit by a truck.

Original comments…

Jason: Other curse scenarios:

Johnny Damon gets lost during a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

David Ortiz loses his shirt at one of the local riverboat casinos, so he has to serve as a greeter for the rest of the series until his debt is paid off.

Bill Mueller gets married to Bill Buckner’s daughter, and decides to take her last name.

Manny Ramirez gets stuck atop the Gateway Arch.

Terry Francona turns into Terry Francenstein.

sandor: Of the three post-game Red Sox interviews I’ve seen in this series, all three players spent their first moments behind the mic profusely crediting God for all of their good fortune.

So it wouldn’t seem totally unreasonable to me, if in fact God is responsible for the Sox players’ success, for Him to suddenly… change his mind. Who better to put on a curse than the cursemeister Himself?

Levi: Or, if Satan is responsible for their good fortune, I could see him getting really pissed and pulling the plug.

We’ll know that tonight when Jason Marquis, with a freshly-grown goatee, hits three home runs and throws a two-hit shutout.

Johnny-o-Lantern

I’m too busy today to really comment on how poorly the weekend went for the Cardinals. So all I’ll do is share with you the jack-o-lantern Stacey made Saturday. She also made a Cardinals one, but I don’t have a photo yet.

Original comments:

Cushie: Stacey is a genius.

Jim: My co-worker Joe at first thought the Johnny-o-Lantern was Photoshopped. Perhaps after Halloween, Stacey can mail him the desiccated husk of the pumpkin.

What is it with Sox named Bill?

In Sunday’s game, Bill Mueller had the potential to become the next Bill Buckner, but a funny thing happened: the Red Sox won in spite of his errors. Well, also, it was only Game 2, so the Sox didn’t have a chance to win it all the way they did in Game 6 in 1986.

Anyway, perhaps this is a sign that Babe Ruth’s ghost has finally stopped haunting the Red Sox. Hopefully, he is now haunting Horatio Sanz for doing the worst Babe Ruth impression ever on this week’s “Saturday Night Live.” It was such a horrible impression that they had to start playing the wrong lip-sync track for poor Ashlee Simpson in order to distract the viewers from its horribleness. (The Babe Ruth impression, I mean, not necessarily Ashlee Simpson’s lip-sync track.) It also doesn’t help that Horatio Sanz is incapable of doing a comedy bit lasting longer than 90 seconds without cracking up for no good reason.

Original comments…

Jason: I didn’t know anyone still watched SNL.

Jim: But it’s so easy to TiVo through the boring parts, and occasionally there’s something that makes it all worthwhile.

Celebrations

Some people, when their team wins the pennant, pour champagne on their heads.

Me, I paint the second eye on my Daruma doll, four years after painting the first eye and wishing for a Cardinals World Series.

Such a ritual has the benefit of requiring much less clean-up than one involving the bubbly.

Original comments…

stacey: under the category of “bad wife” – i’ve carved a johnny damon pumpkin to celebrate the red sox:

http://www.therocketship.com/baseball/images/johhny.jpg

Your National League Champions

Oh, too excited to organize my post today. And still too busy at work. So it’s a list again.

1) I kept telling everyone all day that the Cardinals would beat Clemens. After all, he’d lost 190 games in the majors–26 of them in the post-season! No Cardinal pitcher has lost anywhere near that many (Now, I do think Jeff Fassero may have lost 190 games for the Cardinals in 2003 alone, but we shipped him off to Colorado.). We surely had the edge going in.

2) The last time the Cardinals were in the World Series, I was in the 7th grade. My history teacher, John Reker, a Cubs fan, was not very gracious when the Cardinals imploded against the Royals.

3) I will understand if some unreliable folks among you are rooting for the Bostons. I realize that no one in America outside of Cardinals fans and Yankees fans is rooting for St. Louis. But we’ve already won the title that has always mattered most to me: the National League Pennant. I’m with John McGraw on this one–who really cares what that upstart, pipsqueak beer league does? Sure, you want to win the World Series, but that’s gravy.

4) Brian Gunn of Redbird Nation (who isn’t just getting links here–the Wall Street Journal seems to mention his column a couple times a week these days) quoted Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated as describing the NLCS as “a glorified game of HORSE between Pujols and Beltran.” I guess Pujols, with his 4 homers and .500 batting average, ended up on top.

5) That catch that Jimmy Edmonds made is the biggest catch I’ve ever seen him make. Maybe not his absolute best, in a Platonic, form-of-perfect-outfield-catch kind of way, but definitely the most important great catch he’s made. I think it’s far more impressive than the Mays catch that’s always replayed: he covered a lot of ground, back to the ball, laid out full-length, and caught the ball over his shoulder while landing. It made the difference between 3-0 and 1-0, and might have singlehandedly saved the nation from a week of bad political metaphors on Fox sports.

6) And last, but not least: did someone put Scooter out of our misery? We haven’t seen him since his two appearances in game 6. I’m not complaining, mind you.

Y’all are welcome at the Rocketship on Saturday night for chili.

Original comments…

Dan: On point No. 2… You mean overwhelmed by the Twins (’87), right? Joaquin, specificaly, imploded in ’85, although I’ve heard way too many Cardinals fans blame it on the umps.

Levi: Oh, you’re right. I blame the 1985 implosion largely on Whitey Herzog. After that call, rather than calling a meeting and rallying the troops–as LaRussa would have done–he kept up the whining and basically conceded the Series.

Luke, hanger-on: I’ll have you know, Levi, that I was the Cardinals never lost a game that I watched while wearing a red shirt. I’ll also note that I wore red socks for the last two games of the ALCS.

I wouldn’t suggest either team owes me a share of their championship bonuses.

But I woudln’t say they don’t, either.

Hurrah for chili! Hurrah for the best postseason in history! Or at least this millennium!

Cushie: I’m a bit conflicted. Would love to be watching this series at the Rocketship with good chili, but I have to go with the Sox due to the whole New England thing going on. However, as I’m in Old England I am instead figuring out how nocturnal I’m about to come. If the games go six hours I’m totally screwed. You guys get worried when games go until 1am, my games start at 1am.

Levi: I spent the fall of 1996 in London, and I listened to any games that I could pick up on Armed Forces Radio, but that did mean being up at nearly 2 am for the first pitch. That made for one of the worse nights in my life as a fan, when the Cardinals gave up 10 runs in the first inning of game 7 to the Braves. Even worse, at work the next day, very few people even understood why I was having a bad day.

Levi: LaRussa’s got wa.

Jim: This year, it looks like the World Series is being carried live in the U.K. on Channel Five, and then repeating the next day during normal waking hours on a cable channel called, of course, North American Sports Network.

Cushie: Yes, Channel Five has it, and that’s regular network tv. It’s just damn late. It’s hosted by some serious meat-heads (one British, one American). The funny part is that even though this is commerical TV, they don’t show ads during all the long breaks. Instead, they kick it back to the meat heads in the studio for more dumb banter. But I shouldn’t complain- at least they’re showing it. And it’s good preparation for staying up all night next week for the election results.

Color the Series red

One final accomplishment from the trip in August: we saw both World Series teams, twice each.

I think we’re going to have a schism among the proprietors of this blog now, since I’m going to be rooting for the Sox.

Original comments…

Levi: I figured during our trip there was a slim chance that we’d see two of the teams that we saw twice end up in the World Series. And I didn’t figure those teams would be the White Sox or Dodgers.

Jim: You thought the Brewers and the Tigers were going to be in the Series?!

No static at all

So is it time to start thinking about next season yet? This is something that was just announced today, and, Levi, you might want to look into the possibility getting your baseball radio broadcasts through XM. As I understand it, they do make portable receivers that can pick up the satellite signal; it’s not just a car thing.

Original comments…

stacey: this is not related to xm radio, but instead to two things i’m fascinated with: curt schilling and cadavers:

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cs-0410210298oct21,1,2783485.story

Bodhisattva: Nice Steely Dan reference in the title (makes up for the previous Cowsills reference).

Jim: I wasn’t thinking of the Cowsills, I was thinking of the “original motion picture soundtrack.”