Category: internet

Things seen on the World Wide Web.

놀이 공!

Someone on Baseballprimer found a bunch of Korean baseball cartoons. As Dan Rivkin would say, they’re awesome!

If you’ve got a lot of time to kill at work, you can read the comments to the post at Baseballprimer for some translations. And the guys at The Birdwatch have picked out some related to the Cardinals.

Original comments…

Dan: Wow, those ARE awesome!

Levi: In Korean, “Those are awesome” translates to: “그들은 최고 이다!”

At least according to a robot.

Dan: I think my favorite is the one with the nude Tony Batista, but I also really like the one with Bernie Williams and his guitar and the Yankees watching porn.

It was 10 of disappear

Now, I admit that I’m stealing this from Baseballprimer, but I couldn’t resist. There’s a happy ending to an initially worrying story: yesterday, it was reported that the family of noted oversized reliever Rich Garces (listed as 6’0″, 250 lbs., a measurement that makes Bush’s budget deficit predictions look comparatively right on target) hadn’t seen him for a few days and were worried that he might have been kidnapped. Well, he turned up safe and sound, having spent a few days at the beach. That in an of itself is a good story–if only because now little kids don’t have to cry all night worrying about kidnappers big and strong enough to kidnap El Guapo–but the Google translation of the story from the “Dazzling Venezuelan” newspaper makes it even better. The title to this post is the headline to the story, if that gives you any idea of the clarity and power of this translation.

The story also reveals that El Guapo is in talks with the Orioles. The pairing of Garces and Oriole Sidney Ponson would be a victory for all fans of out-sized pitchers. Here’s hoping!

Original comments…

Levi: Correction: It isn’t a story from the Dazzling Venezuelan. It’s from ESPN Deportes.

Jim: I wish the police really did have a Division of People Misled!

And can we please start calling him “Corpulento Throwing” instead of “El Guapo”?

Levi: I can think of 57 million people who could have used their services back in November.

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.

Roundup

I’ve had a bunch of BRPA2004-related items bouncing around my head all week, some new, some forgotten items from our actual trip, but work has been busy. So now, with a free fifteen minutes, a list:

1) Overheard on our way across the Roberto Clemente Bridge to PNC Park, we overheard a kid tell his dad, “We’ll be at the game today, so we won’t have to watch it on TV!”

2) In Pittsburgh, for sale on the street near the ballpark, there was a yellow t-shirt with fake bullet holes on it that read, “Where was Ray Lewis when Joey Porter got shot?” On the back, it read, “Scoring dope for a teammate!”

3) And on a t-shirt I saw outside Comiskey, “Baseball’s not boring. You are.” Luke and I agreed that while the shirt was more or less right, we would neither one wear it.

4) King Kaufman of Salon.com has been running the Barry Bonds is MVP Stat of the Day for a week or so in his column, running through all the ways in which Bonds is almost lapping the league offensively. It’s been fun–as King Kaufman usually is–so you might check it out. My favorite part of it was a reader’s response to Kaufman’s suggestion that a new term needs to be created to describe second place when it’s as far from first place as is usually the case when you’re looking at Bonds’s stats. A sad Democrat suggested “Mondale.”

5) The Cardinals clinched their fifth division title in nine years Monday while in Milwaukee. According to the Post-Dispatch, several Cardinals after the audience had left climbed to Bernie Brewer’s house, posed for photos, and slid down the slide. I assume Steve Kline was involved.

6) I can’t find the story, but it was also reported that at Monday’s game, Tony LaRussa was nearly taken out by Bratwurst when he came out of the dugout right in the middle of the sausage race. Where’s Randall Simon when you need him?

Original comments…

Jim: It mentions the Tony LaRussa bratwurst incident in the same Post-Dispatch story where it mentions the Bernie Brewer slide incident.

By the way, for those not fortunate enough to be hangers-on: after Levi saw the “where was Ray Lewis when Joey Porter got shot” T-shirt, it was pretty much all he talked about for the rest of the trip. And it’s not even baseball-related, except for the fact that the vendor was attempting to sell it to people attending the Pirates game.

Speaking of which, sad news from Pittsburgh…not baseball-related, but related to a different kind of ball. I know Kevin Martin, subject of the article, from 1998, when I was a member of the Steel City Pinball Association, although I’m not sure if he’d remember me at all. You may note, if you scroll down to the individual standings, that he had a 49-17 record and I was 27-39. He also has enough money to buy warehouses, and a Ferrari.

Levi: The Ray Lewis t-shirt just astounded me with its vitriol and crassness. I mean, it wasn’t even a t-shirt about the team playing that day, or a Pittsburgh team at all–it was a t-shirt about one of the Steelers’ rivals! Talk about unpleasant obsessions.

Toby: You have to understand that the Ravens are actually the original Cleveland Browns. Though the rivalry isn’t as balley-hooed (sp.?) as the Yankees-Sox, there is probably as much animosity between Pittsburghers and Clevelanders.

When I visited Pittsburgh (along with Levi’s sister) a couple of years ago, we left the same day as the first-round playoff game in which the Steelers came back from a huge deficit to beat the “new” Browns.

It was quite evident all across town how Pittsburgh felt about the Browns.

thatbob: “Ballyhooed,” according to Google and m-w.com.

Um, thanks Levi, I had never before seen the sausage race as a metaphor for becoming distracted from our Christian faith by the smaller details of Christian community. That’s because I’m not a batshit crazy Christian looking for a homily metaphor in every moment of modern life! Did you look at John2117.org? It’s jaw-droppingly amazing!

I don’t know what I was worried about

A scan of a ticket is worth a thousand words:

Also in the envelope was the promised $20 in concession vouchers, in the convenient form of four $5 vouchers. That should make it easier for the people who want to eat sausages with Secret Stadium Sauce to purchase them, and if anyone wants to search the catacombs of Miller Park for the stand that reluctantly sells veggie dogs, well, Levi can go off by himself and try to find it.

In other news, I discovered that the necessary files to operate an iTrip are freely available for download, so I will have no reason to connect my iPod to Levi’s computer.

And finally, here’s a quote from a Usenet newsgroup that I felt desperately needed to be posted here: “One of the funnier stories on ESPN radio was Rob Dibble talking about how he checked into a hotel and misunderstood the instructions on the TV screen — he thought he was ordering a block of adult films. The only thing more embarrassing than having the adult films show up on your bill is having to call down and ask the nice girl to please take the block off so you can watch some.”

Original comments…

Toby: Just don’t go to the concession stand during the 7th inning stretch while they’re having the sausage race. Randall Simon is back with the Pirates, you know… There could be another incident…

maura: actually, he was released over the weekend, shortly after he found his SUV riddled with bullets.

Levi: Now, I don’t get releasing Simon right now. You don’t save anything on his salary at this point. You don’t really save an important roster space, because in two weeks you can call up everybody and his grandma. And you lose the fun of having Randall Simon on your team.

I could have understood releasing him the minute you signed him–coming to your senses and just getting rid of him so somebody else, anybody else, could play first base for you. But now that you’ve carried him all this way, why not hold onto him the rest of the year?

Toby: What kind of season is his grandma having in A ball, anyway?

thatbob: When I was freeloading with Angie in San Diego for the librarian convention, we made the same mistake with the “Adult Block” feature. Except we weren’t actually trying to order the adult block, we just wanted to look at the funny movie titles. Really!

I can hear music

First of all, Maura passes along this awesome link from ESPN.com’s Page 3, in which they list the at-bat songs for many MLB players. (Page 3? How many numbered pages does ESPN.com have now, anyway?)

And to fulfill a request by Cushie, here are the songs on the “baseball” playlist on my iPod, conveniently in one list. Levi and hangers-on, don’t click on the link if you want to be surprised in the car, although many of the songs have been named on this blog in the past, in several different entries that I don’t feel like going back and looking up.

Original comments…

Cushie: Awesome!

Luke, hanger-on: Here are some songs on the BRPA 2004 playlist I’ve been assembling since becoming a hanger-on (most of which you have already, and some of which have relationships to baseball and roadtrips that are tenuous at best):

Catfish, Bob Dylan
Two Bass Hit, Dizzy Gillespie
Bang the Drum Slowly, Emmylou Harris
Mrs. Robinson, Simon & Garfunkel
Pirate Jenny, Nina Simone
Yanqui Go Home, Camper Van Beethoven
I Could Drive Forever, Smog
On the Road Again, Bob Dylan
On the Road Again, Willie Nelson
This is Not a Song About a Train, Andrew Bird

Plus a CD’s worth of Bob Edwards-Red Barber chats and Barber highlights that I’ve been saving for the trip.

Jim, you have iPodRip, right?

Jim: I don’t have iPodRip or anything similar, mainly because I’ve never had a need to get music from my iPod onto my computer. Although if iPodRip can export playlists into HTML or XML, and it looks like it can, it probably would have come in handy when I was creating the song list!

thatbob: If you’re doing spoken word pieces, you really need to find the famous Lee Elia rant against Cub fans. And if you can find Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly singing “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg” then… then… then that’ll be awesome!

Dan: And if you need the Lee Elia rant, lemme know, I’ve got it in MP3.

Friday reading

Last year, espn.com ranked all 30 ballparks…which, of course, means their list is out of date already, and I’ve got to believe the two new-for-2004 parks would rank higher than the parks they replaced. I can’t disagree with most of their observations, at least of the stadiums I’ve been to, although some of the items they rated aren’t relevant to me (I’ve never had much of a desire for stadium beer, for example).

On the trip, we’ll be going to their best (PNC Park) and their worst (Olympic Stadium), as well as their Number 9, Number 11, Number 12, Number 16, Number 19, Number 20, and Number 23, plus the new, and therefore not on their list, Citizens Bank Park.

Basebrawl, the fun version

Now, even if you didn’t enjoy Jason Varitek’s attempt to pluck out Alex Rodriguez’s eyes on Saturday, I think you’ll enjoy the brawl from last night’s White Sox/Twins game as presented by Batgirl.

What, you say? There was no brawl? Well, she thinks there should have been, after Corey Koskie was hit by pitches three times in the game. And she’s got Lego men and a digital camera, all she needs to make her own brawl.

By the way: what do you think Varitek was going to do with A-Rod’s eyes if he got them? At first I thought he was planning ahead to use the hidden ball trick, but I don’t think that would work as well with eyeballs as it did with a potato that one time.

Original comments…

Dan: I think I read Varitek was going to threaten to throw his eyes into the Tigris River unless the Yankees withdrew their club from first place.

Jason: I think he was confusing Alex Rodriguez with Bette Davis.

Just ask Kim Carnes.

Batgirl, the baseball variety

Got some time to kill on a slow Friday afternoon at the office? Stop playing Minesweeper and check out Batgirl’s site. I found it yesterday, and she sold me with this post that features a lot of great possibilities for newspaper headlines about that day’s Twins win.

She’s a Twins fan, which is probably all you need to know about the depth of her passion for baseball. Although I enjoyed the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome the one time I was there, it would take a great love of baseball for someone to spend more than a couple of the beautiful days of the Twin Cities’ short summer staring at the baggie in right field instead of having a beer at an outdoor restaurant and keeping your eyes out for Prince.

We’re talking The Human Computer and Fruit Pies kinda love. That’s the kind of love Batgirl has for the Twins.

Original comments…

Jason: Talking in the 3rd person? Is she Bob Dole’s granddaughter?

Jason wonders if she’s gone to any St. Paul Saints games. Jason would go if Jason was in the Twin Cities area.

Donna Cochener: leeeeeviiii…. when you guys do your baseball roadtrip, can you get me a Hello Kitty from each team? It’s my newest collection. I’ll pay you for the Kitties and for the pain and suffering, too. 🙂 I already have a Mariners Hello Kitty and a Dodgers Hello Kitty, so those are covered…

Levi: No.

Well, maybe.

Note my kindness getting the better of my better judgment here. I think Hello Kitty should be put on just about everything . . . except baseball trip itineraries.

stacey: donna, if levi won’t get you a hello kitty from each park, i’ll make you several slices of hello kitty toast and mail them to you.