Going mobile

There’s a Cardinals version and, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, here’s the Pirates version — but the cutest one is, of course, the one with Li’l Mister Met. (The Angels one might be

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the cutest if it had monkeys — but it doesn’t.)

Levi and Mrs. Levi: are you sure you don’t want kids?

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.

Devil or angel, please say you’ll be mine

(This “ticket” is a printout, courtesy of a season-ticket holder who didn’t want to see this classic battle of good vs. evil represented by the Angels and the Devil Rays, although I can’t imagine why someone would turn down the chance to see the Devil Rays!)

Let’s get this anecdote out of the way first: as I was walking through the concourse of Angel Stadium on my way to the concession stand, proudly wearing my Devil Rays cap and Rocco Baldelli T-shirt, an Angels fan pointed at me and yelled, “Holy crap! They do exist!” I said nothing; unfortunately, it wasn’t until much later that I realized my comeback should have been, “There are dozens of us! Dozens!” That has the advantage of being a reference to “Arrested Development.”

Yes, at my suggestion, Jason, Rachel, Chris, and I went to Angel Stadium because my beloved Devil Rays were in town.

We were early enough to see the tail end of batting practice…

And they were showing the White Sox-Mariners game live on the giant screen…

At Angel Stadium, you can sometimes spot cameramen in their natural mountain environment…

Exchanging lineup cards; Lou Piniella looked like he was in a good mood…

Angels starting pitcher Chris Bootcheck, which I believe is also the name of a Windows XP utility…

Carl Crawford at the plate…

Devil Rays starting pitcher Mark Hendrickson, who is 6’9″, but doesn’t look quite as intimidating as Randy Johnson from way up here in the “view” level…

Why, these “view” level seats are high enough up that we can see Arrowhead Pond, home of the Los Angeles Mighty Ducks of Anaheim…

On the scoreboard, Jose Molina has to be “J.Molina,” but Bengie Molina gets to be just plain “Molina”…

Say, here’s something stupid and distracting: cell phone text messages on the scoreboard…

While we’re at it, note that the Dodgers are “LAD” on the scoreboard here in Anaheim…

The Devil Rays somehow manage to light up Bootcheck, but as evening turns to night at Angel Stadium…

…the Angels have the bases loaded in the bottom of the 6th…

However, the Angels only put 3 runs across in the 6th, and so the Devil Rays are ahead 6-4 going into the bottom of the 9th with Danys Baez on the mound. After some anxious moments, Danys Baez has to call time because he’s broken his belt; he has to walk over to get a new one…

And then both the umpire and catcher Toby Hall get to watch him closely as he puts the new belt on…

The “broken belt” ploy works, and, holy crap, the Devil Rays win…

Happy Rays…

Happy Jim…

After the game, we wait in the parking lot for the traffic to clear. Rachel and Jason leaning on Jason’s car…

Chris and Jason…

Poor Angels, now tied with the A’s for the American League West lead…

More from "Faithful"

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.

What? More baseball?

While we’re waiting for Levi to regale us with tales of cute, furry kittens insinuating his dreams, here are some pictures from the two baseball games I went to over the past few days. Jason had some Dodgers vouchers to use up before the end of the season, so he, Cathryn, and I went to the Dodgers-Padres game last Thursday…

The colored seats at Dodger Stadium, a picture taken because who knows when they’re going to decide to put in new chairs?…

This is the right-field pavilion, which I guess we could have bought all the seats in, but didn’t think of it before the beginning of the season the way some people did…

Jason had a big bowl of nachos and a big drink…

The final line (the Dodgers didn’t do much)…

Slightly less blurry, the final score…

An artistic shot of the Los Angeles skyline on the way out…

Sunset Boulevard: not just a movie starring Gloria Swanson, it’s also a Dodger Stadium parking lot exit…

Three days later, Jason and I went to Angel Stadium of Anaheim, or whatever it’s really called now, to see the Angels play the Rangers.

Jason wanted to say hi to the mummified body of Gene Autry…

Then he had another big bowl of nachos (I assume that’s sour cream on top and not icing)…

And a soda in a magical color-changing plastic cup (red, or at least pink, when full; clear when empty)…

During the game, a train stopped at the Anaheim station, across the parking lot. Unfortunately, the Amtrak schedule is not well-suited for taking train trips to Angels games…

Not only can you see trains from the stadium, you can also see the Matterhorn at Disneyland, which I’ve pointed out with the red arrow in this picture…

Yes, the Angels have some retired numbers…

They also have some fake rocks and real water…

The end of the rows of seats have an Angels logo on a raised baseball-diamond shape. They’re covering what’s actually molded into the seats: an Edison International logo on a baseball diamond…

Now that they’re not owned by Disney anymore, the Angels are free to get some other family entertainment spots as their sponsors…

And other family-oriented sponsors…

They still make some of the ushers go out on the field for the seventh-inning stretch, but now they have to take off their straw hats for “God Bless America”…

And put their hats back on for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (which, at this game, was sung by the same woman who had just done “God Bless America,” I guess because they figured as long as she was on the field with a microphone, she might as well)…

Meanwhile, during most of this, Rangers rookie pitcher Chris Young was on the mound being tall…

Which means it was time to break out, yes, the Rally Monkey!…

Didn’t work, and what is probably my last game of the season ends just as my first game of the season did, with a win by the visiting Texas Rangers…

Original comments…

Jon Solomon: Chris Young is a friend of mine from when he played basketball (and baseball) at Princeton. I got to go to Fenway as a member of “the media” a few weeks ago to cover his first MLB win. They let me go on the field, in the locker room and everything. What were the Red Sox thinking? I’ve got an interview with Chris from after the game up on princetonbasketball.com. If you want a password to listen, just let me know.

Jason: I suggested stopping by the Hooters of Anaheim after the game. However, Jim declined, since he was TiVo-ing the Bucs-Seahawks game and didn’t want to know the score.

But when I got home, I did drink a quart of Jack Daniels.

Jim: Hmm, what a coincidence. But in my case, I needed it to help me forget the Bucs-Seahawks game.

Good day, bad mom

Any day that the Cardinals and Cubs both have off is a bad day. Not as bad as a day when the Cardinals lose, but pretty lousy.

In part to make up for those teams having an off-day yesterday, I sneaked out of work at noon with my coworker, Peter, an Angels fan, to go see the Sox play the Angels. It was an exciting game on a beautiful day. When the Sox got runners at the corners with one out, the Angels called Jose Guillen in to play at the second base position while they shifted the second baseman to the left side to join the shortstop; Guillen went to the dugout to borrow someone’s infield glove. When you have five infielders and they’re all playing up on the grass, it looks like a wall of fielders. So Juan Uribe hit it over them, way over them and off the left-center-field wall for a long game-winning single.

Around the third inning, a couple of women showed up with about ten kids in tow, ranging in age from about 5 to 9. Each kid had a plastic cup of some particularly noxious-looking red slush. They sat a few rows behind us and watched the game. Then, in the 8th inning, with the Sox down 8-5, I heard the lead mom say, “OK. It’s time to go. Put down your cups [of particularly noxious-looking red stuff] and come along.”

Just as I was about to turn and give the mom the glare I usually reserve for SUV drivers who run red lights while talking to their broker on two phones, I heard a boy pipe up, Oliver-like, “But the game’s not over.”

It wasn’t an exclamation; it was more a combination of clear statement of fact and implied question. “Exactly!” I thought. “That kid gets it. That kid is going to go far. Reserve the Oval Office, because I’m ready to vote for that straight-talking kid as soon as he hits 35.”

But the kid might as well have been Helen Thomas in the briefing room, the way the mom Ari-Fleischered him. She ignored him. He might as well have spoken in Ancient Assyrian. She didn’t even pretend there was a legitimate answer to his statement. The kids filed out, the Sox tied the game, then won it, and everyone got back to Rolling Forest Meadowsville Park Hills half an hour earlier.

My only hope is that the boy’s clarity of thought, his sharpness of understanding, are not damaged in coming years by his mother’s obvious lack of same. I have little hope, though. We all know that the sins of the fathers have a habit of redounding unto the seventh generation; can the sins of the mothers be any less malevolent?

Original comments…

Toby: My only hope is that word of this post doesn’t get back to the mom, who, in turn, sues Levi for the emotional pain it has inflicted on her.

Jason: Levi could always countersue her for the emotional pain *he* had to suffer because she took her kids home early.

He could even try pinning child endangerment on her, as well.

Becky S: Sheesh, what kind of values are people teaching their kids these days? My brother once dumped a woman because she wanted to leave a Phillies game during extra innings. He’s gonna make a great dad!

Levi: Should I have called DCFS? I don’t have a phone, but I bet I could have borrowed one for the sake of the child.

Also, Jim never had a mullet

Q. What has Levi done many, many times in his life that Jim had never done until last night, at least as far as he can remember?

A. Fall asleep listening to a West Coast baseball game on the radio. True, Devil Rays announcer Paul Olden is no Jack Buck, and “edgy” news/talk station WFLA is no “classy” news/talk station KMOX, but it was a neat experience. I may have to do it more often than once every 29-1/2 years.

I actually almost turned it off once the Angels scored five runs in the seventh inning, but decided to stay up for updates on the Rangers-Tigers game which ended up being won by Texas 16-15 in the 10th inning. I also wondered idly how many times in his Devil Rays broadcasting career Paul Olden has had to say something like, “Things have gone bad for the Rays,” as he did a couple of times during the last inning and a half last night.

Original comments…

Levi: I bet he has had to say that about as often as Bob Uecker, despite it being only April, has had to dig for topics of discussion during a blowout.

Tom Ellwanger: Well, at least they were competitive for 7 innings. Make that 6-1/2.

Levi: I have to admit that I’m impressed the D-Rays have a radio affiliate. Remember a few seasons ago when the Expos, at the worst point of their mismanagement, had no English-language radio broadcasts?

Actually, the Devil Rays are much better off than the Expos. First, they’re outhitting Barry Bonds, at least. And second, they’re averaging on the season more fans per game than the Expos drew in total for their three weeekend games against St. Louis.