Baseball-Related Program Activities

I've taken advantage of some downtime at work and gone back through the history of baseballrelated.com to add labels (or, as the kids call them, "tags") to all the posts. Now you can easily read all the posts here that contain some content related to Johnny Damon -- including this one!

Only eight days until Levi and I see a baseball game together for the first time since the trip in August 2004.

Labels: admin, johnny damon

I'm sure there's a way in CSS to create a page with a left-hand column that's fixed-width and a right-hand column that isn't, but I couldn't figure out how to do it by modifying this particular Blogger template.

So instead I moved the graphic elements around. Now the left-hand column shouldn't disappear down to the bottom unless your window is seriously narrow or your resolution is seriously huge, in which case you've got bigger problems than trying to find the link to the list of all the major league baseball games I've seen.

Labels: admin

I was getting a little tired of the page design -- in particular, the mishmash of archive links at the bottom. (I wish the archive links list could be set to display the most recent month first, but that doesn't seem to be a Blogger option.)

We're also now an Amazon.com associate, in addition to being an iTunes affiliate. The page listing baseball songs will be updated soon -- actually, all the non-blog pages will, in order to match the new look. Rest assured that any money made from Amazon will be, of course, put towards baseball-related program activities.

Labels: admin

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.

Labels: admin, Tuffy Rhodes

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.

Labels: admin

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.

Labels: admin, all-star game, carl crawford, rocco baldelli

Comments are working again, thanks to me!

Well, not that I did anything myself that would have caused them to start working again -- but I didn't do anything to break them beyond repair when I was trying to figure out what was going on, and that can often be more important. It's still a mystery to me why they stopped working, and now it's even more of a mystery why they started working again just now. My best guess is that the host of this site, Dreamhost, twice made some behind-the-scenes changes to their PHP configuration. But I know nothing about PHP.

Anyway, in actual baseball-related news, the DirecTV e-mail newsletter that I got this morning says they'll be having another free preview of the Extra Innings package from July 14th to 18th, so perhaps I'll check in on some teams I don't get to see often, such as my beloved Devil Rays, or perhaps a good team like Levi's beloved Cardinals.

Labels: admin, directv

Levi's wife Stacey called this to my attention via nacho.org: on July 16th, the first two innings of a minor-league game between the Schaumburg Flyers and Kansas City T-Bones will be played on an X-Box and projected on the stadium's video board. (Sorry, I think you may have to register to read that article on the Kansas City Star's site. But I've pretty much given you the gist of it.)

Incidentally, I know from the logs that Levi hasn't been visiting baseballrelated.com very often, and he obviously hasn't been posting as much as he did last year -- it could be he's busy at work, it could be there's not much to excite him because we're not doing a trip this year, or it could be that he doesn't have much to say about his beloved Cardinals because they've been winning all the time and will probably win the NL Central in a walk because every other team in the division is hapless, and therefore the Cardinals are downright boring. Or maybe it's because the comments are still broken -- sorry, but I'm waiting to deal with it until I get DSL installed at my not-quite-so-new apartment, which I can't do until SBC's computer system decides I have an account history.

Original comments...

Levi: It's primarily because I've been busier at work.

And the missing comments do take a lot of the fun out of it.

But I'm trying to make a point to visit more often and post reliably, because I miss it.

Labels: admin, Cardinals, kansas city t-bones, schaumburg flyers, stacey shintani, video games

Hmm, the comments aren't working. I know the files are on the server, they're just not showing up correctly on the pages. I wonder if the hosting company upgraded PHP versions and broke the comments that way.

New comments have always been automatically e-mailed to me, and that's still working (I just tested), so I'll still be able to read your words of wisdom -- and everyone else will once I fix whatever's screwed up. Unfortunately, I won't really have time to deal with this for a while (maybe as much as a few weeks).

Labels: admin

I recently took advantage of Apple's price drop to buy a new 60-gigabyte iPod Photo, and to partially finance that purchase, I have just put my old 30-gigabyte 3rd-generation iPod up for sale on eBay. Maybe "old" isn't quite the right word, since it was purchased new at the end of June 2003, but I guess 21 months is practically an eternity in iPod terms.

This is one of the iPods that accompanied me and Levi on the trip last August, which means it spent a significant amount of time in the glove compartment of a nearly-brand-new 2005 Chevrolet Impala -- how many iPods can say that? Why, it's been to such far-flung locales as Montreal, Tampa, and the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. It's even been listened to on board Amtrak trains!

Anyway, it's still working great, as I attempted to explain in the auction description, and I managed to save the entire boatload of accessories and the box, so those are included as well. If you're the winning bidder, and you let me know you heard about this auction here on baseballrelated.com, you'll get free shipping and insurance if you're in the United States, and a discount on the shipping and insurance if you're anywhere else in the world.

(And a note that perhaps only Levi will understand: you may remember the 30-gig iPod was named North & Clybourn, so to keep the naming scheme, I had to pick a larger locale to name the new 60-gig iPod after. It's named Clark & Lake.)

Original comments:

stacey: did you ever have a 5 gig iPod? was it named jarvis?

Jim: Jarvis would be more of a 20GB iPod. 5 gigs would have to be Isabella, I think.

Levi: So how much did you get for it?

Jim: I don't know yet. The winning bidder sent me an apologetic e-mail an hour after the auction ended, saying he didn't have enough money to cover his bid. I've sent out Second Chance offers to the top non-winners, which means they get a "Buy It Now" opportunity at their bid price. If none of them accept the Second Chance offer, I'm going to relist it, but that won't happen until at least next Saturday, because you have to wait 7 days before filing a "non-paying bidder" report to get your eBay fees refunded. (Because of the quickness and apologeticness, I'm going to file a report that said we mutually agreed the transaction wouldn't happen, so the winner won't get any strikes on his eBay record. I've already sent him an e-mail explaining that, and giving him the friendly advice that not all eBay sellers will be that nice.)

Levi: Man. That sucks. I understand being surprised you end up paying as much as you do--having thought, say, that you surely wouldn't reach your maximum bid. I can imagine some regret. But I can't quite imagine not having at least counted the pennies beforehand, just in case.

Labels: admin

Since the trip is now officially last year, I figured it was about time to put it into the archives, so to speak.

I went back to the original posts about the trip and edited them into a full trip report, including the photos and even some of the comments. I also wrote a page on which I discuss some of the planning that went into the trip. The best news for people who want to read about the trip is that you don't have to start at the "bottom" and work up; now that it's not in blog form, it reads normally. The link to the narrative is also at the top of this page.

Don't worry, I didn't delete the original posts. They're still in the blog archives (scroll down to the bottom of this page and select "August 2004" or "September 2004").

Original comments...

Jason: A fine read. So, how many ballparks remain that you yet have to visit?

Jim: There are now 13 major league ballparks I haven't been to (counting RFK Stadium in Washington). Any interest in a long weekend trip to Phoenix and Denver at some point this year?

Jason: Sure. Any interest in checking out a whole bunch of minor league games in California next year?

Jason: And I just noticed the new title of the site. Funny!

Jim: Re the previous comment, for posterity: this blog was briefly named "Baseball-Related Program Activities of Anaheim." (I almost named it "Los Angeles Baseball-Related Program Activites of Anaheim," but decided that was just a little too ridiculous. Maybe that's why I'm not a baseball team owner!)

thatbob: Why schedule a long weekend roadtrip to Phoenix later this year when it might be easier to include it in a Baseball Related Programing Activities West Coast Road Trip 2005. After all, it's only a 5.5 hour drive from San Diego, but a whole 7(!) hours from Los Angeles!

Labels: admin

Over on the Baseball Songs page, all of the songs that are available via the iTunes Music Store now have direct links to the iTMS. So now you have no excuse for not adding some baseball-related music to your collection...what, you can't afford 99 cents?

Original comments...

Jon Solomon: How long did it take you to get your iTunes Affiliate Program application approved? I am eager to add similar links to the MPGR site.

Jim: I got the approval in less than 24 hours.

You can add links without being an affiliate, although then you don't get the affiliate money when someone clicks on them...here's the link to the iTunes Link Maker.

thatbob: So I guess this is your disclosure of commercial interest. Thanks. Were AAA, MLB, and Motel 6 paying you, too?

Jim: I already disclosed the monetary rewards, way back on September 6th when baseballrelated.com became an affiliate. I wish those entities had been paying us! Actually, we didn't stay at Motel 6, so they would have to have been paying us not to stay there.

Jon Solomon: I got my approval. Very nice.

Labels: admin, music

Thanks to Jon Solomon, everyone who wasn't listening to WPRB Radio on August 27 can now enjoy a small portion of Levi and Jim talking baseball on Maura's radio show. (Caution: This is a fairly large MP3 file, about 8 MB.) Sorry, no complete songs, because I don't want to get in trouble with the RIAA, or the MPAA, or the CIA, or the AAA. There's also a link to it on the Baseball Songs page.

I should point out that Jon actually sent me the audio file very quickly, so it's all my fault that it took until now for it to be posted.

Original comments...

Jon Solomon: The following photograph is from the trip Maura and I took to the Phillies game on Friday night: http://keepingscoreathome.com/images/dallas.gif

nice. face.

Dan: As I told Maura when she showed me that picture, I hope you guys didn't let him anywhere near your arm.

Also, little-known fact: Dallas Green and I share the same dentist (well, the same dentist he had when he was in NY 10 years ago, at least. I assume he doesn't travel to see Dr. Kohn like I do).

Jason: Wow, it was just like listening to the good ol' days of WNUR at 3 in the morning.

Labels: admin, radio

I've added three photos, taken with my Aunt Nancy with her camera, to the Philadelphia pictures post. Funny how I'm in all three of them (and she's not in any of them, so there's no evidence of her actually having been at the game with us).

Also, it turns out (from looking closely at one of them) that one of the vital statistics was wrong; I had forgotten that Citizens Bank Park serves Coca-Cola for washing down your Schmitter, so they join St. Louis, Toronto, Montreal, and Boston on the list of stadiums that dispense Coke.

Labels: admin

Surprisingly (because I didn't think we got quite enough traffic for Apple to care about us), baseballrelated.com is now an iTunes affiliate. So if you're going to buy and download some songs, why not first click on the link at the bottom of this page, or the one at the top of the Baseball Songs page? Unfortunately, they don't seem to have a way to link to specific tracks and get the affiliate credit (at least not yet), or I would have done that on the songs page. The other problem is that iTunes doesn't have the two "Baseball's Greatest Hits" CDs.

If we actually make any money from this, rest assured it will go towards retroactively paying for all those Hostess Baseballs we ate.

Original comments...

maura: the radio show playlist is here: http://www.wprb.com/printplaylist.php?show_id=1822

Labels: admin, music

The first batch of photos (from Jim's camera) have been posted. I put them in chronological sequence among the posts, so you'll have to go back to August's posts to see most of them.

Remember, hangers-on, if you've got photos you want posted here, e-mail them to Jim.

Labels: admin

Jason, Jenn, and Cat came over to my place today to watch Greg Maddux go for his 300th win, mainly because Cat is a big Greg Maddux fan who is bereft of WGN. In a secret ceremony involving Hostess Baseballs, I named them honorary hangers-on for the trip, especially if Cat ever remembers to visit this web site.

Now, here's what happened here in July: the most visits came on Monday, July 12th, with July 13th right behind. Clearly, everyone was very interested in my Yankee Stadium pictures. The lightest day was July 17th, a Saturday. The busiest day of the week was Friday, although that's skewed by the fact that there were five Fridays (and Thursdays) in July, and only four of the other weekdays.

The most popular hour was, once again, the hour Levi gets to work (that's what it says on the statistics page now). The most "foreign" visitors came from .au (Australia). Uchicago.edu was the domain with the most visits. Covad.net (me at home) would have beat it slightly, although it's likely that I wasn't the only visitor coming through covad.net.

Interesting searches from the past month: "mcsweeney's fantasy baseball," "dierdre pujols," "all star game burned out bulbs," "chip carey quotes," and "jeremy sumpter in foul ball."

Original comments...

maura: there weren't many mlb.com visits?

maura: maybe i'm just not aware that i now have a job where i am actually (shock horror!) BUSY AT WORK.

Jim: Does mlb.com perhaps get its Internet connectivity from Verizon? That's the only New York-looking thing that shows up as having been a frequent visitor.

Labels: admin, cathryn humphris, greg maddux, jason kaifesh, jenn carney

I don't like to post these on a regular basis because I don't want to screw up future results...but yesterday someone found this page by searching for "baseball related things that start with the letter Q."

Original comments...

Jim: Hooray for whoever searched for "baseball related things that start with Levi and Jim."

Labels: admin, quinton mccracken

Since it's July 1st, here are some highlights of the June statistics for this site...

• The busiest day was June 1st. The second-busiest day in terms of requests for pages was June 7th, but the second-busiest day in terms of actual page views was June 3rd.
  
• Tuesday was the busiest day of the week, followed by Wednesday, and then Monday and Thursday running neck and neck.
  
• The busiest hour was 10:00-11:00 A.M. Central time, followed closely by 7:00-8:00 A.M. There is a dramatic dropoff after the 2:00-3:00 P.M. hour.
  
• uchicago.edu leads the list of organizations visiting the site...specifically, press-dhcp-204126.uchicago.edu, which I assume is the computer in Levi's office. It's pretty far ahead of covad.net (me at home). Other Chicagoans are visiting the site via enteract.com and tribune.com, and I assume a lot of the comcast.net traffic is emanating from Chicago as well.
  
• Apparently, we were mentioned on the forums at sportingnews.com, but I can't figure out where.
  
• Most frequent search used to find the site: "http://www.baseballrelated.com." You know, you can just type that into your browser somewhere to find the site. Or maybe you like using Google as an intermediary.
  
• Other frequent searches: "steve kline tony larussa," "nolan ryan 235 pitches," "baseball jingles," "baseball activities," "ipod freezes," and, of course, "gary pappas shaves head."
  
• And it didn't show up on the monthly report because only one person used these search terms, but I think it's my favorite search of June: "how much does kirsten storms weigh." Less than me, I'm guessing!
  

Original comments...

Levi: It's not that I obsessively check this page. It's that I have assigned my assistant, as about 70% of her duties, to obsessively check it and write up reports for me.

Jim: Also, you can't really access the site anywhere but your office (unless you take your laptop, um, "warwalking"), whereas I can access it from my office, from home, and probably from my cell phone if I'm willing to pay 25 cents a minute. And I get new comments e-mailed to me, so I only have to check the site if I can't figure out the context of a comment (e.g., when I get an e-mail that tells me nothing but that Steve said "You're a regular Charlie Lau or whatever the hell that guy's name is."

Labels: admin

I don't have enough outlets, so every time I want to plug in my scanner, I have to unplug my electric pencil sharpener. (Actually, I would have enough outlets if I didn't have so many items that had a gigantic transformer brick attached to the plug, including the scanner.)

Anyway, the result is this list of all the regular-season major league baseball games I've ever been to, complete with scans of the ticket stubs. The list, I'm sure, pales by comparison to Levi's.

Labels: admin

I'm not sure if I'm going to have room on my iPod for any additional Johnny Cash songs beyond the handful I have ("Ring of Fire," "Folsom Prison Blues," and a couple others). This purveyor of radio station jingles has a special this month: a "grab bag" of nine random CDs for $99, which was a deal I couldn't pass up, since those CDs are normally priced at $39(!). It won't be such a good deal if I end up with duplicates of CDs of theirs that I already own, but still...

Anyway, the comments should be functioning properly now, thanks to some remote troubleshooting by Sandy. We lost one comment in the process, unfortunately, so perhaps the person who posted said comment would like to repost her words of wisdom.

Original comments...

Dan: If you don't want Cash overload, yet still want to appease Levi, just bring along the Waco Brothers' fine cover of Big River -- it's on Cowboy in Flames, which you should own, anyway.

Go Mets!

-Dan

Jim: Yeah, there's a lot of music I should own but don't. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to drink that much Pepsi between now and April 30th.

Labels: admin, jingles, johnny cash, music, sandy weisz

Suddenly, this blog has become a 2-way communication, much like an argument between a manager and an umpire. You, the readers, now have the ability to make comments on any or all of the posts. However, you do not have the ability to kick dirt on us.

Edited later to add: Hmm, something's not quite right, since there's been at least one comment added to this entry, but it still shows "0 comments." But I swear, the comments are there.

Original comments...

maura: break up the tigers!

Labels: admin

Much like the Washington Senators moving to Minnesota, or perhaps Texas...we have now indeed moved to baseballrelated.com. We're no longer beholden to any sponsors, so there are no longer ads taking up space at the top of the page.

The time stamps on the posts are now Central time, which seems to make slightly more sense.

And for those of you who know what this means and what to do about it: we have a site feed.

Labels: admin

Much like Shawn Green moving from outfield to first base when the Dodgers acquired Milton Bradley, if all goes well, this blog is about to move to its very own baseball-related domain, baseballrelated.com. Join us. Be a hanger-on.

Labels: admin, milton bradley, shawn green

Levi, you may be pleased to note that Johnny Damon made the L.A. Times sports section's daily "Quotebook" feature at the upper left of page D2, complete with photo. To quote the quote: "'[General Manager] Theo [Epstein] told me I can keep it. I don't think we want to compare ourselves to the Yankees. We'll do everything the opposite of what they do.' -- Johnny Damon, Boston Red Sox outfielder, on his long hair and beard, which is not allowed by Yankee management"

In other news, the location of this blog will be moving soon. More details later.

Labels: admin, johnny damon, los angeles times

I have updated the map by adding yellow dots to indicate the locations of the games.

Labels: admin

I added the map to the itinerary so that future viewers of this page don't have to scroll past lots of Julio Franco talk in order to see it.

Labels: admin

Three years ago, friends of ours named Luke and Sandy went on a baseball road trip and kept a joint blog about it. So I figured we should either rip them off, or pay homage to them, depending on whether or not Luke and Sandy are going to be reading this.

This is actually the replacement for some "manual" blogging I had been doing about this trip on my own web site, so I've copied all those entries over to here. The advantages are that Levi can easily make entries here as well, and we can both make entries from anywhere...including while we're on the trip, if we can beg, borrow, or steal a computer capable of connecting to the Internet at some point.

It has also been rumored that Luke may be joining us for the first portion of our road trip. I hope he can make it, even if I disagree in part with his opinions on National Anthem etiquette. While I will happily sing along to an instrumental version (especially if it's being played live by an organist), I will remain silent if someone is out on the field performing, because I actually want to listen to their performance. But I do agree that the cheering shouldn't start until the end of the song, no matter how good the singer is at hitting the high note.

Therefore, in case they do instrumental versions of "O Canada" in Toronto and/or Montreal, I want to be sure I have the lyrics down.

On another note, my mother tells me that my cousin is getting married in Connecticut in July. Depending on the exact wedding plans (and the exact wedding location), I may attempt to come up with a scheme to visit New York for a day, a city which is a noticeable gap on the road trip itinerary. The Yankees will be in town that weekend, right before the All-Star break, playing my hometown Devil Rays.

Labels: admin, brpa, devil rays, luke seemann, national anthem, planning, road trip, sandy weisz, yankees