Baseball-Related Program Activities

Courtesy of my father, here's the last half-inning of Vin Scully calling Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September 9, 1965. I've heard a bit of him on the radio during both Dodgers division series games so far, and he still sounds pretty much the same, 43 years later.

During the regular season, for the games he broadcasts (everything but away games east of the Rockies), Vin does the entire game on TV, with the first three innings simulcast on the radio; Charley Steiner and Rick Monday do the rest of the game on the radio. For the playoffs, with no local TV, Vin is doing the first three and last three innings on the radio, which means he gets to take three innings off. In his L.A. Times column today, T.J. Simers suggested that he uses the time to take an extended bathroom break, but I prefer to imagine him going over to the WGN booth to try to distract Pat Hughes and Ron Santo. (Yes, I know he's too much of a professional to actually do that.)

Labels: charley steiner, los angeles times, pat hughes, rick monday, ron santo, t.j. simers, vin scully

Despite Joe Buck assuring us repeatedly that it was "the most anticipated new game show of the year," Fox's "The Rich List" has been canceled after one episode aired. Thus, it now joins Jackie Gleason's "You're in the Picture" as a game show canceled after one episode; and, more on-topic here, it joins "South of Sunset" as a series canceled after one episode due to low ratings despite heavy promotion during the World Series.

Also, Fox Sports president Ed Goren has written a letter to the L.A. Times defending Tim McCarver ("He is the best 'first-guesser' in the business").

Labels: joe buck, los angeles times, tim mccarver, tv

First of all, here's a link to a baseball piece from Sunday's Los Angeles Times magazine: the writer and his son go to a Dodgers game with Arnold Hano, author of "A Day in the Bleachers." Among other things, he doesn't like the visual and audible cues to get the fans to make noise.

On Sunday, Jason and I went to the second-to-last game of the Golden Baseball League's short season, this one the Long Beach Armada versus the San Diego Surf Dawgs.

The Armada play at city-owned Blair Field, which has an analog clock on top of the scoreboard...



And there's a ship in the outfield -- unfortunately, it's just a cutout...



Even though the mascot should be a Spanish conquistador or maybe a pirate, the mascot is actually a bird named Arby I. Here he is "helping" with a between-innings water balloon toss for kids...



And here he is sitting two rows in front of us...



Meanwhile, Rik Currier was on the mound for the Armada, pitching what would be a complete game one-hit shutout...



In some places, they have metal rails for the "K" cards to fit into, but Long Beach is a Velcro kind of town...



The final line...



Yes, "Armada" does look a lot like "Ramada," especially at the lower left. A missed marketing opportunity!

Labels: baseball books, game report, jason kaifesh, long beach armada, los angeles times, san diego surf dawgs

I just wanted to make sure the baseballrelated.com readership had seen Gene Weingarten's review of Tony Kornheiser on "Monday Night Football" (may require registration). The L.A. Times quoted the "five thousand degrees" paragraph out of context.

While I'm at it, I also commend last Sunday's "Lio" strip to you (and today's is along similar lines).

Labels: gene weingarten, los angeles times

The L.A. Times forgot to change their usual "Dodgers Tonight" text to read "Dodgers Today"...



Or maybe they're just stunned by the fact the Dodgers won the first two games of this series against the NL champions. Also, the second sentence of the "update" should read "The Dodgers might be vulnerable to a left-handed pitcher..."

I'm heading to Dodger Stadium in about an hour.

Labels: dodgers, los angeles times

Wow, I stayed up longer than the Los Angeles Times sports department last night! They went to press with "the White Sox quickly took control and built a 10-4 lead after 7 1/2 innings," but I was awake until I caught up with the TiVo recording in the middle of the 8th inning. Speaking of the L.A. Times, here's noted class act Vin Scully, quoted today talking about possibly being in the broadcast booth when Barry Bonds passes Babe Ruth's and/or Hank Aaron's home run records: "I would just as soon it not happen against the Dodgers....If I had my druthers, I would rather have that awkward moment happen to somebody else."

Thanks to advanced technology that is currently available to me, I'm now thinking I'm going to attempt to make a post here once an hour today, with the first one around two hours from now, at 11:00 A.M. Pacific/1:00 P.M. Central. I will also attempt to be online on AIM/iChat as trainmanplus all day while I'm watching TV, so feel free to chat. (If I don't say hi back, it'll be because the advanced technology has turned out to be too overwhelming.)

Labels: barry bonds, indianapolis indians, los angeles times, Opening Day, vin scully, white sox

• Hope you enjoy watching A.J. Pierzynski running to first base while Josh Paul rolls the ball back toward the pitcher's mound, because Fox is going to be showing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and that's just during Game 3. (On the bright side, it's not often that the Los Angeles Times has a box on its front page containing excerpts from the MLB official rules, as it does today.)
  
• Lou Piniella has been fairly entertaining, and has had some good insights, drawing not only from his many years in baseball, but the fact that he was managing an American League team this season, a team that had to play against the Angels and White Sox on occasion. So it's too bad he's having to share a booth with Tim McCarver.
  
• Talking about Mark Buehrle and the urgency with which he pitches, Joe Buck joked with Lou about the fact that some of the organizations he's managed for would probably hate Buehrle because you don't sell as many concessions when the games only last an hour and 40 minutes. I was hoping Lou would say, "Or sell as much furniture," but no such luck. Maybe just in case, he's making nice with new Devil Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg (whose attempt to get people to show up at Tropicana Field next year should not go unmentioned here).
  
• Scooter explained what a change-up is 45 minutes into the broadcast (note that I did not say "45 minutes into the game"). At 8:45 P.M. Eastern, all the kids who are young enough to need Scooter to explain a change-up to them are in bed already, not that anyone in the Eastern time zone is watching any of the championship series games. At 7:45 P.M. Central -- well, all the kids in the Central time zone are the children of knowledgable baseball fans of the type who go to Cardinals games and who used to go to Cubs games until the frat boys started crowding them out, so they don't need Scooter to tell them what a change-up is. At 6:45 P.M. Mountain -- well, no one lives in the Mountain time zone, especially during the daylight saving time months when Arizona is effectively on Pacific time. At 5:45 P.M. Pacific, there are no kids watching baseball because their parents are still stuck in traffic on the way home from work and the kids are watching soft-core porn via Cinemax On Demand because they've figured out how to defeat the "parental lock" on their cable box. At 4:45 P.M. Alaska time, kids are too busy drilling for oil or clubbing baby seals or whatever it is they do all day in Alaska. At 2:45 P.M. Hawaii time, kids are still in school, or cutting class to go surf, not cutting class to watch baseball. Therefore, Scooter is completely superfluous and should be destroyed.
  

Labels: a.j. pierzynski, joe buck, josh paul, los angeles times, lou piniella, mark buehrle, Scooter, stuart sternberg, tim mccarver, tv

Behind the baseball box scores in today's Los Angeles Times, there was the outline of a bat -- I mean the mammal, not the baseball implement. In particular, it was a certain trademarked bat shape that I guess is supposed to remind us of a movie that opened today (no, not "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," which has been open for a couple weeks now). Actually, there was a separate ad for that movie at the bottom of the page, if you missed the point. There was also a little disclaimer: "The shadowed image is an advertisement."

Are we to assume that the L.A. Times sees the baseball box scores as so unimportant that they're eligible to have advertising sold within them, or would they be willing to give the same treatment to any editorial matter for the right price? Perhaps I'll see if they'll accept advertising for baseballrelated.com within "Mallard Fillmore," which could only improve that particular comic strip.

Labels: advertising, batman begins, los angeles times, mallard fillmore

After Hee Seop Choi hit three home runs in Sunday's game, the headline in today's Los Angeles Times: "Three-Sock Joy for Dodgers."

Labels: dodgers, hee seop choi, los angeles times

Over the winter, new expensive seats were added at Dodger Stadium by reducing the size of foul territory and moving the dugouts forward. This is fine, except that there's apparently a city ordinance that limits Dodger Stadium capacity to 56,000, so some of the cheap seats are no longer for sale (they're going to be covered with tarps).

Predictably, there was a column in Sunday's Los Angeles Times about a man who's had four front-row seats at Dodger Stadium since it opened in 1962, who was offered the chance to move forward to the new front row at a substantially higher cost ($120,000 versus $20,000). He turned it down, so now his seats are in the fifth row, and he's "protesting" by not attending Opening Day. I find it a little hard to feel sad for someone who can afford $20,000 for Dodgers season tickets; what about people who are going to be shut out of the cheap seats for popular games because there are fewer of those available? (Granted, those are harder for columnists to find on a deadline.)

Labels: dodger stadium, los angeles times

Poor Stephen King, on the West Coast while the Yankees and Red Sox are playing in late July: "With no NESN, I was reduced to the coverage in the Saturday Los Angeles Times -- which, due to their ridiculous infatuation with the Dodgers, was skimpy."

I would guess that the Los Angeles Times is less infatuated with the Dodgers than the Boston Globe is with the Red Sox, if only because there are two major league baseball teams within the Times' home delivery area, and they try to serve both constituencies. In fact, it was probably the amount of Angels coverage that kept them from putting a longer Yankees-Red Sox story in that morning's paper. They've definitely had more Angels articles than Dodgers articles this offseason, because of the name change foolishness. Speaking of which, ESPN is going to be using "LAA" in the score box on any Angels games they broadcast this year, and they don't even have the same owner as the Angels anymore!

Original comments...

Jason: Imagine that - a city newspaper writing a whole lot about their local baseball team.

Since the Angels are now "LAA", does this mean the Dodgers will be "LAD"?

Jim: Yes, based on "NYY" and "NYM," the Dodgers will be "LAD," unless they try to get clever and go with LAN (for "National").

Levi: I hope they abbreviate DC as "DC-(N)" as if they're a politician.

Labels: angels, dodgers, los angeles times, red sox, Stephen King

Back in March, a man named Michael Mahan, who has more money than me, bought the entire right-field pavilion (bleachers) at Dodger Stadium for two of the three games against the Giants the last weekend of the season. With that big a group buy, the tickets cost only $3.50 each (face value $6.00). He sold some to a broker, donated some to Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and has been selling the rest through his web site for $15.00 each.

Everyone who buys a ticket, though -- and the big brothers and big sisters themselves -- has to sign an 8-page contract that if they catch a Barry Bonds home run ball, they have to give it to him, and then he'll sell the ball and later split the money with him.

The Dodgers found out about all this, and they're a little annoyed, but there's not much they can do; in California, selling tickets above face value is only illegal on stadium property. They also threatened to let people into the pavilion for free during the games if there is a significant number of empty seats, but Mahan says he's distributed almost all of the tickets, so that shouldn't be an issue.

This was all on the front page of today's L.A. Times, but reading that article requires registration, whereas baseballrelated.com doesn't. I think the reason this made the front page today is because Bonds has gotten near 700 home runs a little faster than Mahan predicted back in March.

I'm going to the Dodgers game tonight, but sitting in the "reserved" (third) level, behind home plate, so no Barry Bonds home run balls for me. Well, since they're playing the Padres, a Bonds home run ball would be highly unlikely no matter where I'm sitting.

Original comments...

Jim: It wasn't in the L.A. Times article, so I forgot to bring up Charlie Sheen buying the entire left-field bleachers for a game at Anaheim in 1996. ("Anybody can catch a foul ball," he supposedly said. "I want to catch a fair ball.") The Angels apparently didn't even make him fill up the section, because by all accounts, it was just Sheen and a couple of friends sitting out there. No one was in danger of hitting any milestone home runs in that game, though, and Sheen went home empty-handed.

Levi: You know, I was just retelling that story to Luke on Monday, but I had Sheen at Comiskey Park. My mistake, I assume, since Jim is known to be mistake-free.

Dan: Jim knows(tm).

Labels: barry bonds, dodger stadium, dodgers, giants, los angeles times

1. I used the L.A. Times web site to stop my subscription for the two weeks I'm going to be out of town. As Levi might have expected, I'm fully intending to buy a local paper every day of the trip, except perhaps when we're at my aunt and uncle's house (because I think they get the Philadelphia Inquirer) and when we're at his parents' house (because they get the Carmi Times).

2. I finally remembered to call the Hilton Pittsburgh to request a rollaway bed, so that Levi doesn't have to sleep in the bathtub, or curled up in a dresser drawer. Up to this point, I had been a little worried about the ability of the AAA web site hotel booking interface to actually communicate successfully with the various hotels' computer reservation systems, but the Hilton did have my reservation in their system, so I guess we're all set. "See you August 28th," said the woman on the phone. Maybe I should have requested a room facing PNC Park, too, but I'm not sure they even have such a thing. (I think this is the only hotel on the trip within possible sight distance of a ballpark...I think the Holiday Inn Express in Detroit is a little too far from Comerica Park, with too many tall buildings in between.)

Original comments...

Toby: That's the first time in the history of the U.S. that The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Carmi Times have been mentioned in the same paragraph.

thatbob: Actually, Jim, there is an ordinance that allows you to burn down tall buildings in Detroit if they obstruct a view and haven't been used for anything in 50 years, so, you know, bring some matches.

Levi: Knowing Jim, I expect him any time we travel together, to have exact change for any tolls.

I'll be more impressed if he also has exact change for any newspaper honor boxes he needs to use along the way.

And Toby, if you can schedule the pull-out section of the Times about Baseball Related Program Activities for the Monday, August 23rd edition, that would be great.

Toby: OK, but I'm going to need you to proofread it. In my last section (on the local summer baseball and softball teams), I forgot to mention the names of two of the businesses that sponsor the 40-some-odd teams in their respective cutlines and got a call from one of the omitted businesses, during which I was reminded (in a threatening manner) how much advertising that business buys with our paper.

I'm sure the same thing's happened a million times at The Philadelphia Inquirer, don't you think?

Jim: What the Philadelphia Inquirer has is the CEO of Citizens Bank calling the CEO of Knight-Ridder every time they don't use the full name of the Phillies' ballpark, I'm sure. But then it takes a while to trickle down to the people who actually work at the newspaper.

Labels: brpa, carmi times, los angeles times, philadelphia inquirer, planning, road trip

The L.A. Times' sports media writer, Larry Stewart, ended his column today by pointing out that 10 years ago, everyone hated the continuously on-screen score display when Fox introduced it, and now everyone loves it, so perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to judge Fox's latest innovation, Scooter the Talking Baseball.

Well, there are a couple of faulty premises here. For one thing, I watched Fox's first preseason NFL game in the summer of 1994 and remember that I thought it was a pretty good idea to have the time remaining on-screen throughout (and was indifferent, at worst, to having the score up there as well).

More importantly, I think even people who hated the on-screen score display could tell that there was a sensible rationale behind it. The entire rationale behind Scooter seems to be "kids will love to watch baseball on TV if there's an animated talking baseball telling them what a fastball is, even if the game starts at 8:30 Eastern and lasts past midnight," which I don't think is sensible.

Also, when the on-screen score display was first introduced, it didn't make any noise, unlike Scooter.

Original comments...

Levi: I still refuse to believe that Scooter exists.

Labels: los angeles times, Scooter

A correction from today's L.A. Times: "The box score from Monday's Chicago White Sox-Kansas City Royal baseball game in Sports on Tuesday incorrectly gave the pitching line for Chicago pitcher Damaso Marte as 1 inning pitched, 0 hits, 3 runs, 3 earned runs, 3 walks, 0 strikeouts, 0 pitches, 17.00 earned-run average. The correct line is 0 innings pitched, 3 hits, 3 runs, 3 earned runs, 0 walks, 0 strikeouts, 17 pitches, earned-run average of infinity."

Labels: damaso marte, los angeles times

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