Month: October 2004

Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen

I think, at this point, all I can do is quote Levi’s post from way back on April 5th.

I may have a new favorite non-Cardinal player.

Last night, we had a couple of people over to watch the opener between the Red Sox and the Orioles. We settled in, started the TiVo, and the first image of the season caused everyone to gasp in sheer, unadulterated awe. Johnny Damon, over the winter, turned into a god. He grew out his already shaggy hair so that it hangs over his shoulders, trailing out of his batting helmet or cap. And he grew a beard. It was hard to concentrate on what he was doing during his first at-bat, because all anyone in the room could look at or think about was all that hair. Then, on his first play in the outfield, he was coming in for a ball, not too fast, and it looked like there was no hope of his cap falling off. Everyone was disappointed. Then, like a silent prayer being answered, the cap popped off his head and his glossy locks floated free. There was much cheering in the Rocketship.

I apologize for not having a link to a photo. I haven’t seen one today, which just tells me, once again, that the majority of sportswriters have been doing their jobs so long that they no longer really love sports. Otherwise, today’s headlines would be along the lines of: Damon’s Hair, Beard Open a Glorious Season.

You know it’s going to be a great year now.

Original comments…

maura: and look at that kid tonight!! looks like the trim worked!!

Steve: If I wasn’t taking another crack at joining the foreign service tomorrow I would come over and show everyone the Johnny Damon autograph on my boobs. I still liked him better with the buzz but whatever.

I stand corrected!

As predicted, "Clubhouse" isn’t as good as the real baseball playoffs

The “Clubhouse” episode that was promoted last week, in which Doc Brown is uncomfortable with modern technology, was not shown this week. Instead, it was an episode in which there are trade rumors swirling around Dean Cain’s character (who is named “Conrad Dean”; get it?). I forgot to “stay tuned for scenes from next week’s ‘Clubhouse,'” so I don’t know if they showed the same promo from last week.

At any rate, because of disappointing ratings, CBS is soon going to move “Clubhouse” to Saturdays to make room for “The Amazing Race,” which is a better show but is (usually) less baseball-related.

On another note, I’m listening to the Cardinals-Astros game on ESPN Radio. Boy, are these commercials annoying!

Jeff Kent

Why, oh, why could Jeff Kent not have looked out at his truck yesterday morning and decided it needed a quick wash?

Original comments…

Steve: Hello friends, I haven’t checked in for a while but are any of you Damon lovers troubled by the fact that he’s gone from hero to zero in about 10 seconds? His .009 batting average is not going to help the Red Sox dispatch the Yankees and it will also make it difficult for him to get that Pert plus endorsement even though Piazza is kind of washed up. In no way am I trying to say “I told you so” because I never did and am frankly upset at his poor performance but I would say at least 75% of the Red Sox problems start with Mr. Lovelylocks. What say you who have been lining up to get his autograph on your boobs all season? And I don’t just mean Stacey!

ps Levi is excused from replying because he has bigger fish to fry right now. I bet his sinker is almost ready and he’s warming up to take on Beltran.

Levi: You’re right about Damon, sad to say, but he did score the winning run last night.

Oh, and I owe you whatever it is I owe you, as Mr. Bonds did not hit .400. Aargh.

thatbob: My adulation of Damon has almost nothing to do with him being a baseball player, so likewise has almost nothing to do with his slump. I mean, I feel bad for him professionally, and if we were on speaking terms I might even suggest a shave and a haircut to, you know, try and change his luck. But I would still want him to grow it all out again in the post-season.

Has any writing on this blog suggested that (we) like him because he’s any good?

stacey: yeah, i’d have to say i’m with bob on this one. my all-cute team has absolutely nothing to do with baseball talent. although johnny’s slump is really heart-rending.

Toby: Darn! I knew there was something I forgot the last time I saw Levi. I meant to get his autograph on my boobs.

thatbob: sure hope this link works:

http://www.boston.com/ae/events/halloween/pumpkin_photos?pg=7

Luke, hanger-on: J Damon homered to right, K Millar, B Mueller and O Cabrera scored.

How ’bout them apples?!?

Luke, hanger-on: J Damon homered to right, O Cabrera scored.

And them apples!

I’m never cutting my hair again.

thatbob: Luke (and everyone not watching from the Rocketship) sorry you missed the discussion we had (initiated by Matthew or Ross?) about JD hitting for the SuperCycle. You know: a 4 run homer, a 3 run homer, a 2 run homer, and a solo shot. It looked like he was working towards it with 2 men on for a couple of at-bats, but alas. Well, maybe we’ll get to see it in The Series.

When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads

I hope nobody was watching yesterday afternoon’s emergency collection of “King of the Hill” reruns on Fox 11 in Los Angeles with their fancy new plasma TV, since the “RAINOUT” graphic that was continuously in the upper right-hand corner would have been burned in forever.

When I had the world’s most informal internship at independent station WTMV in Tampa in the summer of 1992 (they’ve since changed their call letters twice and started using Popeye’s parrot as a mascot), they carried games from three of the teams that then had spring training in the Tampa Bay area: the Cardinals, the Reds, and the Blue Jays. The agreed-upon broadcasting technique for a rain delay/rainout is that the announcers will fill exactly 10 minutes at the scheduled start time before returning control to the affiliates. WTMV’s second- and third-hand equipment was horrible enough that it would be problematic and awkward for them to backtime a half-hour show and join it in progress at the 10-minute mark, so instead, they had a 20-minute tape of baseball-related music videos that they probably got free from Major League Baseball to carry them to the next half-hour. Then they could start filling time with whatever sitcoms were lying around the control room, which usually meant reruns of “The Munsters Today.”

Original comments…

thatbob: Huh, so that’s how the sausage gets made.

Two to go!

I feel bad that, at the best time of the year for baseball, I’ve been incommunicado. Work has just been too busy. But I couldn’t put off at least posting a few post-season thoughts.

1) I’ve always liked Jorge Posada, but I like him even more now that I learn (from Luke) that he buried Fox Sports’ absurd new “Diamond Cam” a few nights ago. The Diamond Cam answers a question that fans have been wishing they could see since before the invention of television: What would a hitter standing in the box look like if you were a zombie just about to dig his way out of his grave right by home plate? Bob deserves the credit for realizing that it was a zombie’s point of view that Fox was representing. He also deserves credit for groaning, zombie-style, every time the Zombie cam appears.

2) Last night, we had a nice little crowd at the Rocketship. Sarah brought her knitting and some fine, fine cobbler. Sandy brought his computer and some silicon chips, and Bob brought his appetite and his fine, fine zombie impression. Stacey fell asleep on the couch, but woke up for the good parts. And a couple of audience members had the confidence in our boys in red to go home before the end.

3) One point that I’m sure King Kaufmann is going to touch on in his Salon column today: one part of the three-headed cliche monster that Fox has saddled us with in this series said late in last night’s game, “One problem for the Astros is that they haven’t been able to get Brad Lidge, their best reliever, in the game.” Which, of course, is not true. The Astros have chosen not to get their best reliever in the game, because their manager, Phil “Scrap Iron” Garner, has not wanted to use Lidge except in a save situation. Only, if you bring in someone else to pitch to Pujols and Rolen in the 8th inning of a tie game, you’re not ever going to have a save situation. And suddenly you’re in a 2 games to none hole.

4) What can be said about the Red Sox? Sad, sad, sad. Here’s hoping that losing to the Yankees won’t make Johnny Damon reconsider his grooming habits.

5) Baseball Reference has the 2004 stats up. That was quick. Not that many of those links are to 2004, but you folks already know what happened in 2004.

Still watching "Clubhouse" so you don’t have to

What I learned from “Clubhouse” this week: the New York Empires’ scheduling is such that they would play a night game Friday, and then what was referred to several times as a “morning game” on Saturday. (This was presented as the justification for the batboys having a sleepover in the stadium.) Also, while baseball players may enjoy dancing with Brazilian swimsuit models, they enjoy even more talking about Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions” with the model’s translator, who turns out to be her mother (who for some reason never bothered to teach her daughter English, despite she herself knowing enough English to read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions”).

On next week’s episode, equipment manager Doc Brown gets a computer put on his desk, but he doesn’t know how to work it. However, batboy Pete, our hero, is a 16-year-old boy and therefore a computer expert. I guess Doc Brown isn’t comfortable with any technology within the range 1985-2015 (i.e., anything that comes after the DeLorean and before the Mr. Fusion).

Why would Levi be jealous of me?

I’m over 6 feet tall, I have a full head of hair, I have a cat who doesn’t get up on the kitchen counter, and also…

Jason and Todd got tickets through a contact at their job, so there we were in the top deck of Dodger Stadium for Game 4 of the National League Division Series, the Dodgers needing a win against the Cardinals to stay alive.

Jason invited me, and Todd invited his wife Jenn, of course. So here she is eating pizza…

This was the first time I had sat in the top deck at Dodger Stadium. It was not bad. I’m pretty sure I was closer to the field than when I had sat in the upper deck in San Diego in May, and I was definitely closer to the field than I was in the upper deck in Philadelphia in August. And these seats are only $6.00 general admission during the regular season. (They were jacked up to $12.00 reserved for this first round of the playoffs.)

It must be the playoffs, because there’s the bunting…

And a special logo painted on the field…

And a blimp…

And what seems like hundreds of umpires…

So many umpires, in fact, that they don’t display them at the bottom of the scoreboard because there’s only space for four of them (it’s not really visible in this photo, but trust me, they’d normally be at the bottom)…

And they handed out everyone’s favorite loud and annoying item, Thunderstix…

So let’s all think blue! Or think 76 or 980, if you’d rather think about numbers than colors…

Odalis Perez pitching in the top of the first…

And then some stuff happened that I didn’t take pictures of because I was trying to follow the game, but night fell with the Dodgers behind 6-2…

It was time to summon the giant floating heads of Eric Gagne…

He did pretty well against the Cardinals, but the damage had already been done…

Noted Kenny G fan Ray King got into the game and was effective against the Dodgers…

Perhaps he and Mike Metheney were humming “Songbird” during their meeting on the mound…

Since this auxiliary scoreboard wasn’t needed for its usual purpose of displaying out-of-town scores, it was instead pressed into service for additional statistic display duty…

See the taillights in the parking lot? Yep, people are leaving in the 8th inning, despite the number of come-from-behind wins the Dodgers have had this season…

It’s the bottom of the 9th, the Dodgers are down by four runs, the fans are being exhorted to show their blue (not “show they’re blue”), and this is all seeming familiar to Jason and me, as if it happened just a week and a half ago…

Speaking of which, the note about Alex Cora that was displayed as he was batting in the bottom of the 9th seemed very familiar…

But on September 28th, the Dodgers were facing the Rockies’ bullpen. The Cardinals’ bullpen, and Jason Isringhausen in particular, is a somewhat different story. So, long story short, some happy Cardinals…

The Dodgers wish them well in the NLCS, especially if they’re going to be playing the Braves…

And even though the Dodgers lost, it was a great and highly improbable season, so the stadium crew thinks it deserves a playing of “I Love L.A.”…

Oh, and by the way, this game set a new Dodger Stadium attendance record…

Go Cards.

Original comments…

Levi: Ah, that was a fun series. And I feel really good about Round 2, whomever we face. I’m rooting for tonight’s Braves/Astros game to go 22 innings.

And I loved seeing the hugs and handshakes. It made me really happy, and it seemed a better send-off for the Dodgers than just retreating to the clubhouse would have been.