Faux News

This just in: Fox has invited the Yankees and Red Sox to play a seven-game series in the consolation bracket. The games will be broadcast in prime time Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the NLCS and the ALCS play-by-play will be delivered via telegraph

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and local re-enactors. Or, if you prefer, you’ll be able to get a radio broadcast by Scooter.

I think you know what you must do

Sorry I wasn’t made aware of this sooner. A blog called “The Road from Bristol,” originally founded for the purpose of conducting an NCAA basketball-type tournament to determine the worst ESPN personality (Stuart Scott won, of course), went on to do a similar tournament to determine the worst non-ESPN sports broadcaster. The championship “game” is currently under way, and it’s Tim McCarver versus Hawk Harrelson. Vote in the comments to this post.

If baseball games were decided by "number of cool things in the stadium"…

The banner at Petco Park that turned “Western Metal Supply Co.”

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into “Western Division Champions” was very clever. Perhaps in New Busch Stadium, the Cardinals can have a legend under the scoreboard clock reading “Central Time” that can be appropriately altered in applicable Octobers.

Make your plans now

It’ll probably change soon, but right now, a highlighted link on the Tampa Tribune’s home page is to a PDF file of the Devil Rays’ tentative 2006 schedule. This is clearly intended for the people who are incredibly excited about the fact that minority owner Stuart Sternberg has taken control of the franchise — all five or six of them. Also, on a non-baseball-related note, the headline on the Tribune’s story about a major traffic jam caused by a truck overturning on Interstate 275, the main freeway through Tampa, is “Late For Work

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Thursday? Show This To Your Boss,” which is just too cute.

Operation Duplicate Chili: a qualified success

Hey, look, I made chili! And there are plenty of things to put on and in it, including Farmer John brand bacon, in honor of the poor Dodgers (their longtime sponsor, one of the few “longtime” things the Dodgers still have)…

The chili would probably taste a little better if Derek Jeter weren’t on TV, but that’s what Fox gives us…

I call this only a “qualified success” because I’ve heard no reports from Levi on whether he’s eating chili as well, which was the whole point of Operation Duplicate Chili. Levi’s been jet-setting all about, going from apple orchards to public libraries in the Pacific Northwest. But since I have plenty of the chili left over — and most of the makings for a second batch — it’s a safe bet that we’ll be eating the

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same chili some night in October. Actually, not exactly the same, since I bet Levi won’t be putting bacon on top of his.

The best part of the game was the tape of Joe Torre interviewing Gene Autry in the Angels’ locker room in 1986; that tape’s probably been shown before, but I don’t remember having seen it.

Everyone’s getting into the baseball act

I know it’s hard to believe, but even the monthly customer newsletter of the service that hosts baseballrelated.com wants in on the baseball commentary action…

Baseball is a weird sport because it’s quite often the cheapest sport to attend, yet the players are paid the most of any pro sport. For example, I believe they were paying people $12 to attend the Giants games this weekend, but at the same time Alex Rodriguez earned $20,000,000 per attempt to swat away the ball while being tagged on his way to first like a little girl!

The way baseball can afford to pay its athletes so much while at the same time keeping ticket prices and stadium refreshments so reasonable is actually through a number of quite-unrelated side businesses. The most lucrative of which is the bulk purchasing and re-selling of highly desirable domain names! I KID YOU NOT.

It USED to be that only the richest sports franchise-owning billionaires and the president of the United States could get into this literal GOLD MINE of easy profits. But now, thanks to DreamHost lowering the price of .com, .net, .org, and .info domain registrations to just $9.95/year even YOU can now get in on this GUARANTEED PAYDAY! (You still get one free domain registration with every shared hosting plan too of course.)

Just remember, you are required by law to send all profits made through the resale of domain names to the New York Yankees. With the playoffs beginning tomorrow, they need this money more than ever to offer complimentary tickets to the starving children of the rest of the league’s players.

Yes, the newsletter is always written in this style, although it’s usually not about baseball.

Standings in the place where you live

That’s right, it’s time once again to compare the Sports Illustrated predictions with what really happened in 2005. Oh, and I might as well throw in Bob’s picks, while I’m at it, and I hope I’ve managed to correctly decipher all the cute names he used for the teams…

SI Prediction             Bob's Prediction            Actual Results

NL East

Atlanta Braves N.Y. Mets Atlanta Braves
Florida Marlins Atlanta Braves Philadelphia Phillies
N.Y. Mets Philadelphia Phillies Florida Marlins
Philadelphia Phillies Florida Marlins N.Y. Mets
Washington Nationals Washington Nationals Washington Nationals

NL Central

St. Louis Cardinals St. Louis Cardinals St. Louis Cardinals
Chicago Cubs Chicago Cubs Houston Astros
Houston Astros Milwaukee Brewers Milwaukee Brewers
Cincinnati Reds Cincinnati Reds Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers Pittsburgh Pirates Cincinnati Reds
Pittsburgh Pirates Houston Astros Pittsburgh Pirates

NL West

San Francisco Giants San Diego Padres San Diego Padres
L.A. Dodgers Colorado Rockies Arizona Diamondbacks
San Diego Padres L.A. Dodgers San Francisco Giants
Arizona Diamondbacks San Francisco Giants L.A. Dodgers
Colorado Rockies Arizona Diamondbacks Colorado Rockies

AL East

New York Yankees New York Yankees New York Yankees*
Boston Red Sox Boston Red Sox Boston Red Sox
Baltimore Orioles Toronto Blue Jays Toronto Blue Jays
Toronto Blue Jays Baltimore Orioles Baltimore Orioles
Tampa Bay Devil Rays Tampa Bay Devil Rays Tampa Bay Devil Rays

AL Central

Minnesota Twins Detroit Tigers Chicago White Sox
Cleveland Indians Minnesota Twins Cleveland Indians
Chicago White Sox Chicago White Sox Minnesota Twins
Detroit Tigers Cleveland Indians Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Royals Kansas City Royals Kansas City Royals

AL West

L.A. Angels Oakland A's L.A. Angels
Texas Rangers L.A. Angels Oakland A's
Oakland A's Seattle Mariners Texas Rangers
Seattle Mariners Texas Rangers Seattle Mariners

*-The Yankees and Red Sox both finished with the same record (95-67),
and the MLB standings I'm looking at have the Red Sox on top for what
I believe are reasons relating to alphabetical order. But it seems weird
to me to have the division champion listed under the wild-card team.

Sports Illustrated was better with their predictions than they were last year, but here’s a special salute to Bob for predicting the correct division champion in the NL West (and they managed to finish with a winning record, too!).

One thing I noticed while perusing the final standings: the Cardinals had the same record at home and on the road (50-31). I believe earlier in the season, I made a tongue-in-cheek comment in this blog that the Cardinals were “boring.” Clearly, the word I meant was “consistent.”

The views of Bill James do not necessarily reflect…

This is probably going to be the last Bill James excerpt for a while, because it’s playoff time. I have balsamic vinegar and cocoa powder in my kitchen right now, two things I have never had in my kitchen before, because I am preparing for Operation Duplicate Chili, in which Levi and I both eat chili made from the same recipe while watching the baseball playoffs, even though we’re several thousand miles apart. This can only help the Cardinals. Why, I might even take my stuffed animals into the living room and set them up facing the TV!

The following is from the 1986 Baseball Abstract, and the headline is “Is Steve Sax Available?”

The Houston Astros, I have decided, must be an acquired taste. You know what an acquired taste is, something like French cooking, modern sculpture, jazz, fat women, ballet, Scotch, Russian films…it’s hard to define. An acquired taste is a fondness for something the advantages of which are not immediately apparent. An acquired taste in my part of the country is painted saw blades. Do they have those where you are? You go to somebody’s house and you discover that above their fireplace they’ve got a bunch of old, rusty saw blades with farm scenes painted on them, look like a hybrid of Currier and Ives and Norman Rockwell. I don’t really understand what the advantages are of having them around, but I figure that they must be an acquired taste. Or like Charlie Chaplin. I mean, W.C. Fields is funny. The Marx Brothers are funny. Charlie Chaplin is an acquired taste.

We all acquire a certain number of inexplicable attachments; mine include Bob Newhart, Jethro Tull albums, sabermetrics, and Pringles potato chips. I am assured by other people in my life that all of these can be hard to get into if you have no history with them. If taken literally, everything in life is an acquired taste with the exception of a few basic staples like salt, sugar, sex, and slapstick comedy, which we all share an enjoyment of; however, the term is not usually applied to things which make an obvious display of their attractions — in the case of a baseball team, by doing things like winning lots of games, playing interesting baseball, or developing exciting young players. One would never describe the New York Mets, for example, as an acquired taste. Acquired tastes have very subtle advantages. The expression “this must be an acquired taste” is quite useful, inasmuch as it can be adapted to hundreds of situations, meaning something a little different each time.

If you hear the expression “Must be an acquired taste,” on leaving a French restaurant or any other restaurant in which the food costs more than $20 a pound and tastes as if the oregano was left out, what it means is “I suppose you’d rather have stopped at Kentucky Fried Chicken, wouldn’t you?”

On a date, if you hear the expression “Must be an acquired taste,” what it means is “This is the last time I’m going out with this bozo.”

In an art gallery, if you hear the expression “I guess it’s an acquired taste,” what it probably means is “What the hell are we doing here?”

If you’re discussing a fondness for some particular poet, painter, playwright, or breed of dog with someone you are close to, and he or she says “I guess it’s just an acquired taste,” what that means is “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“It’s an acquired taste” means either that I’m in the know and you’re not, or that this is a particular type of sophistication to which the speaker does not aspire. I do not aspire to be an Astros fan. The Astros are to baseball what jazz is to music. Think about it:

1) Jazz is improvisational. Jazz musicians, uniquely among musicians I hope, sometimes string the elements of their music together as they go, with no particular plan or outline. Do you think the Astros know where they’re going? Do you think there’s a score for this?

2) Jazz ambles along without crescendos or refrains, going neither andante or allegro and without reaching either fortissimo or pianissimo. A good piece of jazz only uses about half an octave. The ultimate jazz tune is a saxophone player undulating slowly between D flat and middle C.

Similarly, the Houston Astros amble along at 80, 82 wins a year; the last four years they’ve been 77-85, 85-77, 80-82, and 83-79. Since 1969 the Oakland A’s have finished a total of 216 games over .500 in their good seasons, and 169 games under .500 in their bad seasons. The Houston Astros have finished 70 games over .500 in their good seasons, and 67 under in their bad seasons. The ultimate Houston Astros season is one in which they lose on opening day, then win, lose, win, lose, win, etc. until they reach 81-81.

3) Jazz is usually played indoors.

4) Jazz uses comparatively few instruments. Jazz ensembles are rarely enlivened with sousaphones, steel guitars, oboes, bassoons, or any other instrument which might tend to break up the monotony. Similarly, the Houston Astros use comparatively few weapons, relying heavily on the stolen base and the starting pitcher, but with no power hitters, no batting champions, no Ozzie Smiths or Jack Clarks. Both jazz and the Houston Astros, in short, are boring.

5) All jazz music sounds pretty much alike to the uninitiated, that 99.97% of us who haven’t acquired the taste; it’s repetitious, depressing, ugly, and inclined to bestow a headache upon the recipient. Much the same can be said of the Houston Astros, well known for wearing baseball’s ugliest home and road uniforms. Similarly, one Houston Astros season, one Astros game, and one Astros player looks pretty much like the next one.

No, I’m kidding of course; the Astros have been a little boring in recent years, but they’ll get over it, and I’m sure jazz is as beautiful, varied, and enjoyable as real music if you happen to have a taste for it. It’s just that…well, I’m a night person. During the Abstract crunch (a fifth season, unique to Winchester, Kansas) I start to work around 4:00 P.M. and I work until daybreak. About ten years ago we went through a period where the only thing on the radio between one and four A.M. was country music. I’ve never understood this…I mean, if you don’t like C&W in the middle of the afternoon, why do radio executives think you’re suddenly going to be struck with a yen to hear some Merle Haggard at 12:59 A.M.? Now it’s jazz; I listen to a mixture of classical music, rock music, and talk shows as I work, and at seven o’clock every evening, they all decide that I’d like to hear Count Basie. Public radio stations, usually a reliable port in a storm, have for some unfathomable reason decided that jazz is socially and morally uplifting, and that they have a responsibility to impose it on us. But if I want to listen to Mozart in the afternoon, why does anybody think I’d want to listen to Miles Davis all night?

Ah well, I’ve got my Jethro Tull and a stereo, and baseball season’s coming…what I should do is get a VCR and record a couple hundred baseball games, and play them back while I’m working. I might even acquire a taste for the Astros.

This time around, Bill James lost me in calling Bob Newhart an acquired taste. This was written in late 1985, when he was starring in a very popular sitcom on the CBS Monday night lineup. The modern-day equivalent: would anyone call Ray Romano an acquired taste? No, everybody loves him.

Also, “…undulating slowly between D flat and middle C…” — I think Bill James may have confused jazz with new age here. I haven’t gotten around to reading the 1987 Abstract yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s mention of a myriad of fans of both baseball and jazz having written him angry letters in response to this piece. “Jazz is usually played indoors” is very, very funny, however.