Author: Jim Ellwanger

Things are easy when you’re big in Japan

As I’ve been going through the archives of this blog putting the old comments into the actual posts (almost done, but not quite), I was reminded of a few things. Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus bringing their fight to baseballrelated.com, for example. Jason’s strange obsession with Calista Flockhart eating hot dogs. Oh, and back in March of 2004, I had expressed dismay that a certain page on baseball-reference.com was unavailable for sponsorship at that time.

I immediately checked its current status, and, well, baseballrelated.com is now sponsoring baseball-reference.com’s Tuffy Rhodes page.

Get your game on, go play

My thoughts about the All-Star Game, and Fox’s coverage thereof…

  • Perhaps you should not, during your pregame show that is tightly timed and controlled to the second, go live on the air and ask Ernie Harwell a question about Al Kaline, because he will of course give a long-winded answer, thus causing Jeanne Zelasko to have to cut him off and look like a jerk doing it. (I almost wrote “big jerk,” but I don’t want some pro-pregnancy group complaining about my choice of words to describe a woman who is, uh, with child.)
  • British national anthem? I know “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” when I hear it! The amount of patriotic songs played before and during baseball games is growing out of control.
  • Hey, I thought Scooter was dead! Too bad every kid who cares already knows what a change-up is because they’re faithfully rendered in video games these days, probably with better camera angles than Fox has available.
  • Hey, it’s the descendant of the glowing blue hockey puck, this time showing the path of the ball to the plate.
  • For a second, I thought they said Jim Bouton was the general manager of the Nationals, but it’s actually someone named Jim Bowden. Too bad; Jim Bouton might reach Ed Hart-ian levels of general manager-ness.
  • I should have realized the game was going to be sponsored by Chevrolet and gotten an apple Home Run Pie at the supermarket on Sunday, but no, all I had was lemon. It was slightly better than the vanilla pie I ate Sunday, but not much. I think I’m going to stick to Hostess fruit pies for my future fruit pie needs; they also do a good job of distracting comic-book villains, as I understand it.
  • Joe Buck: You can tell a lot about Dontrelle Willis by the way he wears his hat.
    Me (singing): The way he wears his hat, the way he sings off-key…
    Tim McCarver (starts babbling about how if Gershwin were alive today, he might have written that song about Dontrelle Willis)

    Oh, my God, I’m starting to think like Tim McCarver — well, sort of, since I had the sense to just start singing the damn song, instead of talking incoherently about it.

  • Those red-white-and-blue bases that were used at Tiger Stadium for the 1971 All-Star Game look pretty cool and retro, like ABA basketballs. All we get in the 21st century is “Spider-Man” advertising.
  • Doesn’t Fox realize “Bad News Bears” is not a 20th Century Fox movie? I guess they’ll take anyone’s money. And I guess no actual Fox stars wanted to go to Detroit, just noted crazy person Billy Bob Thornton.
  • No Danys Baez in the game? Poor Devil Rays. Guess I’ll have to take advantage of DirecTV’s post-All-Star-Game preview of MLB Extra Innings to watch, say, the Devil Rays-Blue Jays game on Friday. The TiVo is already set.
  • Is the National League ever going to win the All-Star Game again? I know, one might have expressed similar sentiments about the American League in, say, 1981.

Our clique is the world, the world is our clique

I find myself not caring about the international baseball tournament next March — except for the fact that the players who are going to be in it may not get their full spring training regimen of stretching exercises and appearing on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (I know, I know, the stretching exercises are not that big a deal). Major League Baseball is pretty international as it is anyway, and will no doubt get even more international once all the Cuban players defect during the international baseball tournament.

Also, since I never watched baseball or softball during the Olympics, I can’t get too worked up about their absence from the Games beginning in 2012. But then, I haven’t been that interested in the Olympics at all for the past couple of summers in which they’ve been held. Last summer, we were on the baseball road trip for the second half of the Olympics and I only watched a couple of bits and pieces on the CBC in motel rooms in Detroit and Canada; the first week, I watched some of the opening ceremonies, and then later that week was at a restaurant where I had a good view of a TV showing women’s beach volleyball. I didn’t care who won, but it made me happy to be heterosexual.

Green M&M’s in pie form

While I’ve been editing the old posts here to include the comments from the old system, I have of course been reading a lot about Hostess Baseballs. So when I took a break and went to Ralphs to do my weekly grocery shopping, I took a longing look at the section that includes Hostess, Little Debbie, and other snack pastries. As has been mentioned already here, 2005 is a year without Baseballs; however, I saw a product there that I had never seen before, and I just had to buy a couple…

That’s Lemon Creme flavor on top and Vanilla Pudding flavor on the bottom. There were several other flavors available, including cherry, apple, and Chocolate Pudding. They’re made by Horizon Snack Foods of Salt Lake City, so I’m sure they’re just as sweet as Donny and Marie.

One problem: I don’t think the caricature of Johnny Damon on the label quite does him justice. (Also, that doesn’t quite look like a home run stroke, but maybe test marketing showed that a product called Bloop Single Pie didn’t sell as well.)

Nothing’s gonna touch us in these golden (baseball league) years

I get a lot of e-mails offering to hook me up with various items and people, from Russian mail-order brides to university degrees. But on Friday, I got one that was a little different: it was from Fullerton Flyers general manager Ed Hart, thanking me for this baseballrelated.com post, personally inviting me to future games and offering to hook me up with tickets.

What he didn’t know is that Jason and I were already planning a trip to Saturday night’s game; Jason was attracted by a giveaway of bobbleheads in the image of Coal Train, the coyote mascot. Jason managed to get a couple of other people to join us — Errol, who he knows from a web site/message board he frequents, as well as Jason’s and my friend Rachel, who was more or less filling in for Levi, since she’s from a small town in southern Illinois (Clay City) and likes the Cardinals, although she has a full head of hair, eats meat, and doesn’t take her shoes off that often. Anyway, I spoke to Ed briefly on the phone, he asked me how to spell my last name, and there were tickets waiting for me at the will-call window, although there were a few moments of confusion when I thought the guy behind the window was asking me for my name, but he was actually asking me for the name of the person who left the tickets for me, which I should have remembered is the more important concept at minor-league will-call windows.

The Flyers were playing the Chico Outlaws again, although since the Outlaws were wearing gray shirts instead of black, it was like we were watching a completely different team. And this time, the Outlaws had a couple of big innings and won 8-2. After the game, Ed Hart was standing by the exit gate, so I introduced myself and we chatted a little bit; turns out he’d just been Googling for mentions of the Flyers and happened to run across baseballrelated.com.

Not too many pictures this time; I posted the “no frowns” portion of the sign at the gate last time, and here are more Golden Baseball League rules…

And here’s Coal Train with my other bobbleheads (Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson, and a hidden Tim Salmon)…

Incidentally, something that made Rachel laugh a lot: the Flyers’ catcher was Drew York, and I suggested that when he came to bat with the Flyers needing a hit, or a run, or whatever, that the crowd should sing “It’s up to you, Drew York, Drew York!”

Thanks again for the tickets, Ed!

Commentators ahoy!

Okay, I have now switched things over to the Blogger comment system, so your ability to comment on posts here should be back for good. Unfortunately, for reasons known only to Blogger, it looks like the oldest posts — May 9, 2004, and before — don’t have comment-ability.

I am now going to attempt to put the comments from the old system into every post, which is going to be ridiculously tedious. And I do it all for you.

Baseball turns to gold

Last Friday — I’m only just now posting this because I was waiting for my DSL to be active before uploading the photos — Jason and I went to see the Fullerton Flyers play the Chico Outlaws. This is the Golden Baseball League, a brand-new independent league with four teams in California, three teams in Arizona, and one team that doesn’t have a home. So we braved Fourth of July weekend traffic on our way to the campus of Cal State University Fullerton (yes, we’re in the car pool lane, but it was still slow going)…

We liked it right from the get-go, because while we were in the ticket line, we heard the people in line behind us discussing the fact that you could get 2-for-1 tickets if you showed a Vons or Pavilions club card. Jason did so, and so we got two tickets for $8. (The offer on the web site says you’re supposed to have a club card and a receipt, but they didn’t ask him for a receipt.) They also handed out free full-color programs including rosters and scorecards — nothing too elaborate, 12 pages, 5-1/2 by 8-1/2.

The name “Fullerton Flyers” is railroad-related, because Fullerton is a railroad town (they even have an event called Fullerton Railroad Days every year). And the theme extended to the front gate…

Incidentally, here’s a close-up of the poster at the gate. Notice what’s at the bottom of the list of prohibited items. I’m not sure how they enforce it…

And the concessions trailer has railroad heralds stuck to it, seemingly at random (neither the Rio Grande nor the Pennsylvania Railroad ever served Fullerton)…

And the mascot’s name is Coal Train, who is apparently a coyote wearing engineer’s overalls. I’m not sure what a coyote has to do with railroading, except that there were a few Road Runner cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote got run over by trains…

Because of the train and the coyote, they have two sound effects, the “train whistle” and the “coyote howl,” that are played incessantly over the P.A. system. In fact, “Charge” isn’t da-da-da-da-da-da, “Charge!”, it’s da-da-da-da-da-da, howl.

The Cal State Fullerton Titans baseball team has a weird set of retired numbers in right center. Oh, wait, those aren’t retired numbers, those are the years they won the national championship…

The Flyers pitch to the Outlaws…

The Flyers’ Garry Templeton II — son of Flyers manager Garry Templeton — attempts a bunt…

Jason bought the “medium” size of Kettle Korn, so named because the bag could feed a medium-sized European country…

The size of the Kettle Korn is probably why Coal Train was doing exercises with some kids on the field at one point…

It was Wacky Hat Night, but I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the truly wacky hats, just this patriotic attempt in front of us…

And this, which isn’t so much wacky as it is a souvenir of the Billy Goat Tavern…

Don’t you hate people who talk on their cell phones at baseball games?

The Flyers won 3-2 (I couldn’t get a good picture of the scoreboard through the netting to prove this), with the difference being a home run by Fullerton catcher Casey Clary; the attendance was announced as 758. The level of play was similar to Class A in the “official” minor leagues, I’d estimate. One plus of the Golden Baseball League: their “competition,” the California League, uses the designated hitter; the GBL doesn’t.

Just one more

All good baseballrelated.com readers (and writers) are going to mlb.com and casting their ballots for Carl Crawford of the Devil Rays in the last roster spot in the All-Star Game, yes? Sure, he’s no Rocco Baldelli, but then, who is?

In other news, it seems the comments aren’t working again, thus making me look like an idiot after I made that post a few days ago. I may have to invoke the nuclear option — actually, it’ll be more of a smart bomb — this weekend.

There are Indians around, it’s Cleveland baseball

If you’re such a big baseballrelated.com fan that you’re excited about the comments, then prepare to lose control of various bodily fluids: I’ve just acquired and uploaded a new baseball-related radio station jingle, this one from WERE in Cleveland, dating back to 1961.

Incidentally, another jingle in this series starts off with the lyrics “In the 25th century, we’ll still be tuned to ‘ERE,” which was wildly optimistic, but unlike a lot of other radio stations that were around in 1961, they actually have made it into the 21st century! (Well, sort of, since they don’t seem to have a web site.) Only 395-1/2 more years to go to prove that jingle correct.

Remember, for your listening pleasure, also available here at baseballrelated.com are jingles mentioning the Giants, the Phillies, the Red Sox, the Orioles, the Yankees, the Tigers, and my favorite of the bunch, the Pirates.