Notes from the first few days of the season

Expanding on a few tweets I’ve made while watching some games this week…

1. Nice to see Albert Pujols quickly rewarding our faith in calling him a Player to Watch by hitting two home runs on Opening Day. Obviously, he knows a Cardinals-friendly blog when he sees one.

2. When I got home from work Monday, the only game on TV was Giants-Astros. Things were going along unremarkably until an Astros pitcher named Sammy Gervacio came in for the top of the 9th. He had, it turned out, a bizarre pre-pitch ritual, wherein he would briefly stare down the third-base dugout while holding the ball up. I’m not really doing it justice here; suffice to say that Mrs. Levi thought he was a robot. The only videos I can find of it are only halfway decent; here’s someone’s shaky-cam from the stands on Opening Day, and a brief video from spring training.

He was effective on Opening Day, striking out 2 of the 3 batters he faced; however, he ended up taking the loss in the second game, giving up two hits and an earned run in a third of an inning. And then he went on the disabled list with a shoulder injury. But I hereby proclaim him a Player to Watch once he gets back.

3. The Rays should know better than to set off fireworks inside Tropicana Field, as they did before their Opening Day game, which was not on Opening Day, for unexplained reasons. The haze never dissipated during the game, and for me watching on TV, it made Tropicana Field look even darker and dingier inside than it normally is. At one point, Rays announcer DeWayne Staats had to read an ad proclaiming that game was broadcast in “beautiful HD, brought to you by H.H. Gregg.” That HD was not beautiful. If H.H. Gregg had that game on any of the TVs in the store, it would have caused potential buyers to run away screaming, going home to embrace their old standard-definition TVs.

4. Wednesday evening, I discovered that DirecTV was carrying the Rogers SportsNet coverage of the Blue Jays-Rangers game, including the Canadian commercials. Which, it turned out, weren’t all that exciting. In fact, Lowe’s is running the same commercials in Canada that they are in the U.S., just with a different announcer at the end saying “Canada’s new home improvement warehouse.” Also, movie ads in Canada don’t end with the rating, which make them seem incomplete — they just kind of stop.

Don’t expect many more posts like this from me during the season, since I’ll be watching a lot less baseball once DirecTV’s free trial of the MLB Extra Innings package is over. This really should be Levi’s type of post, but he has unfortunately turned his attention to his “I’ve Been Reading Lately” blog, and to other literary activities, in the past couple of years. Just in case you’re wondering where he is…

Opening Day 2007: Hour 9

6:02 — Why, they’ve got a special graphic to use when Craig Biggio gets a hit.

6:11 — Xavier Nady, who has a great name, hits a home run to tie the Pirates-Astros game at 2.
6:21 — Hey, the Twins aren’t on WCCO anymore, which is kind of like the Cardinals not being on KMOX anymore. Herb Carneal may well be rolling in his grave already.

6:25 — The Pirates-Astros game isn’t quite as speedy now that it’s gone into extra innings.
6:32 — Perhaps somebody with more time on their hands than Levi or me — probably a member of SABR — has calculated the percentage of World Series and/or pennant winners that won their first game of the season. I’m suddenly interested in what that statistic is.
6:33 — Jason Bay hits a 2-run homer in the top of the 10th. He should be on the Devil Rays instead of the Pirates, given that both have “Bay” in their names.
6:38 — The Astros strike out, in the bottom of the 10th, for the first time in the game.
6:42 — The Pirates win a game! The Pirates win a game! And now there’s only one game in progress.
6:43 — In this

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post-literate age, “DQ Grill & Chill” seems to be the new name for “Dairy Queen Brazier.” I wonder how Bob Greene feels about that. (The former columnist for the Chicago Tribune, not Oprah’s personal trainer.)

You know, after I got fired two years ago, I should have tried to contact him to commiserate. We could have had a chat over Blizzards or something. I don’t even remember exactly what our disagreement was about.
6:53 — The Twins announcers are comparing former Devil Ray and current Oriole Danys Baez to Rick Sutcliffe, and talk about how he hooks his hand around behind him before he delivers the ball. At one point, they call him “a hooker.”

Opening Day 2007: Hour 8

5:05 — “My 29” is using the FSN graphics package, which isn’t particularly unusual, but their graphics seem to be making more noise than they currently do on FSN. Guess that’s part of the MyNetwork attitude.
5:10 — They’re not booing in Houston, they’re saying “Luke,” as in Scott, who just hit a 2-run home run.
5:16 — The Astros announcers mention that Brad Ausmus is a news junkie, and suggest that while his teammates are watching “Sportscenter,” he’s watching C-SPAN or CNBC. I’m sure Fox management sent out a quick memo with a suggestion of their own about which network should have been named there.
5:27 — A commercial for a concept I haven’t thought about for a while: Perkins restaurants.
5:35 — Watching the Pirates is making me hungry for pierogies for dinner. Good thing I have some in the freezer for just such an emergency.
5:49 — Waiting for the pierogies to thaw in boiling water, I switch to the A’s-Mariners game just to see it end, on a fly ball to Ichiro in center field.
5:50 — Meanwhile, the Pirates and Astros are already in the top of the 8th, so it’s a pretty speedy game.
5:58 — Yes, it’s sad when ballpark prices for food and souvenirs are so high that families are forced to choose one or the other, but kids are always ready to improvise.

Opening Day 2007: Hour 7

4:00Baltimore Orioles at Minnesota Twins (ESPN and WFTC)
Pittsburgh Pirates at Houston Astros (FSN Houston)
4:01 — Extra Innings is carrying an over-the-air game broadcast, something I haven’t seen before on DirecTV. I guess the ability to do this is part of their new contract. It’s from “My 29” — well, not really mine, because it’s WFTC in Minneapolis/St. Paul and KFTC in Bemidji.

4:03 — They do a nice little tribute to Herb Carneal at the beginning of the Twins broadcast. I have to admit that he’s someone who was never really on my radar.
4:05 — I’m getting a little tired of “Magic Carpet Ride,” which is the music being played during a Chevrolet ad that’s been running a lot today. But I guess the members of Steppenwolf aren’t getting tired of cashing their royalty checks.
4:10 — The Orioles haven’t opened a season on the road since 1977.
4:12 — The Rockies are down 8-6 going into the bottom of the 9th, but anything can happen. 3 out of 4 Opening Day games previously played at Coors Field ended with a walk-off home run.
4:20 — An ad read by the Rockies announcers goes, in its entirety, “Hey, if you have a crack in your windshield, call Elite Glass, number one for more than one reason.” This makes the broadcast interactive, since it allows the audience to speculate endlessly about what those reasons might be.
4:24 — True, anything could have happened, from a walk-off home run to a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-type magical transformation causing the person in the mascot costume to turn into an actual small purple triceratops. But what actually happens in the bottom of the 9th is a double followed by three straight strikeouts. The new red uniforms worked for the D-Backs!
4:36 — Forget C.C. Sabathia. Kent Hrbek is looking a little large now that he’s retired.

4:37 — However, while Kent Hrbek is being interviewed, the Twins hit back-to-back home runs. So whatever he’s doing, it’s working.
4:40 — Very sad that the Menards guy isn’t in Menards commercials anymore. At least they haven’t turned him into a computer-animated character who appears at the end of the commercial as they’ve done with the Empire Carpet guy.
4:52 — Shannon Stewart of the A’s certainly looks different than he did when he was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for June 2000 (relatively work-safe link to Wikipedia).

Businessman’s special

Yes, I went to this game alone, because all my friends here in L.A. have jobs and are a lot less likely than Levi to take a half day off to go to a game. On this date in Dodger history, in 1963, Sandy Koufax pitched a no-hitter. No such luck for Derek Lowe today, although he was fairly effective; the real problem was some fielding mistakes by the Dodgers, notably an amusingly botched rundown. So the Dodgers’ winning streak came to an end, and now they have to go to San Francisco and spend three games intentionally walking Barry Bonds.

Cheesesteaks are new at Dodger Stadium this year, courtesy of a local chain called South Street, to which I was introduced by hanger-on Jason. Their Dodger Stadium cheesesteaks are half the size and twice the price of the ones they serve in the restaurant — but, still, it was pretty tasty, and a nice change of pace from a Dodger Dog.

For the first time, I brought my radio and listened to it during the game — might as well get some use out of it, I figured, since I never use it at home, not even its NOAA weather radio-receiving functions. (It’s just a cheap AM/FM/TV/weather portable radio, not a fancy radio that turns itself on whenever there’s a thunderstorm watch in the middle of the night, like a certain other baseballrelated.com poster has in his bedroom.) Vin Scully gets simulcast on radio and TV for the first three innings, which is great, although he’ll occasionally say something that sounds like a complete non sequitur when you’re listening on the radio because it obviously relates to something not quite game-related that’s being shown on TV at that moment. Today was school field trip day, and a couple of times, he was referring to what must have been shots of kids in the stands.

Anyway, for the fourth inning and on, Charley Steiner and Rick Monday come in to do the radio only. They’re fine, except that they’re not Vin Scully. Now, Rick Monday — if you’ve got to be known solely for one thing, there are a lot worse things you could be known for than “keeping an American flag from being set on fire.” And Charley Steiner — well, when the Dodgers were down 4-2 and had the bases loaded for Kenny Lofton in the bottom of the ninth, he was excited enough that I was expecting him to blurt out “Follow me to freedom!” if Lofton got a hit. But he flew out to end the game.

Another advantage of listening to the radio — they announced the attendance about a half-inning before “Guess the Attendance” was played in the stadium, thus allowing me to loudly and confidently yell out that it was choice “A” on the scoreboard. So, in conclusion, I’ll probably bring my radio again if I’m going to a game by myself, or if I’m going to a game with someone I don’t want to talk to.

I should mention that this was all prompted by my mother. She suggested a couple weeks ago that I go to a weekday afternoon baseball game before I start my new full-time job on the 17th. I said, in my Eric Cartman voice, “But, Maaaaaaahm, the Dodgers don’t plaaaaaaay any weekday afternoon games.” I looked at the schedule anyway, and saw this game, so there you go.

Relating to that job: I temporarily have a PC in my living room within view of my TV, and Levi now has Internet access at home. Way back at the beginning of the season, I suggested that the two of us should watch the same game simultaneously, instant-message each other during the game, and post the log here. However, we haven’t yet been able to come up with a time that both of us are able to actually do this — Levi’s busy at work, as usual, and seems to have more of a life on the weekends than I do, and tends to attend a few Cubs games, especially when they’re playing the Cardinals, and since he’s just recently moved up to home Internet access, it’s probably going to be a while until he has a Treo or Blackberry and can use the Internet from the Wrigley Field stands. (To be fair, there’s been a couple of games when Levi was available but I wasn’t.) And now I’m not 100% sure how busy I’ll be at my new job, but I am certain that it will preclude us from scheduling this for one of those weeknight ESPN games that starts at 7:00 Eastern — I’ll still be at work at 4:00 Pacific. It also doesn’t help that we’re limited by the baseball schedules of ESPN/ESPN 2, WGN, and TBS, since those are the only networks that we can both watch together, and neither of us is too excited about doing this during a Braves game on TBS.

All of this is to say that there will probably be an IM transcript posted here when you least expect it.

Score that play 6-3, and thus ends 2005

Wow, every time Levi’s wife makes a jack-o’-lantern involving a baseball personality, their team with which they’re associated wins the World Series! Levi, how does it feel to be married to someone with magic powers? I hope you’re more accepting of it than Darrin Stephens!

No, seriously, I’m sure Stacey would be the first to tell you there’s nothing otherworldly about her pumpkin carvings. However, consider the following: we started this blog at the beginning of the 2004 baseball season, and since then…

  • The World Series was won by a team that hadn’t won in 86 years.
  • Then the World Series was won by a team that hadn’t won in 88 years, after winning the American League pennant for the first time in 46 years.
  • Also making a World Series appearance was a team that had never been there before, in 43 years of trying, and their uniforms look a lot better now than they did for many of those 43 years.
  • The Yankees have not gone to a World Series.
  • The first four “Complete Peanuts” volumes have been released, right on schedule, and they are awesome.

Clearly, the existence of this blog has been a major force for good in the world of baseball. Therefore, I’m considering starting a few more blogs.

  • Cure-for-Cancer-Related Program Activities
  • Democratic-Party-Related Program Activities
  • Origin-of-the-Universe-Related Program Activities
  • Jim’s-Sex-Life-Related Program Activities

Uh, but just for interest’s sake, Stacey, whose face do you foresee rendering on a gourd next October?

Longer than there’ve been fishes in the oceans

Six hours into the broadcast — reflecting Fox’s ridiculously unrealistic 3-hour time slot plus the maximum 3 hours of TiVo padding, it was the top of the 14th…

The good news is that I had caught up to the live

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broadcast at 10:30, and set a manual recording for 11:00 until — well, just in case, I set it to go until, well, about the time the morning news was going to start. So I was a little disappointed that it was “only” 11:20 when the game actually ended. But I have to assume I was one of a very select few not in Houston or Chicago who actually saw the game from beginning to end, although it’s admittedly a lot easier to sit through 14 innings of baseball when you can fast-forward through the commercials…

That Chicago Sun-Times “Market Wrap” edition isn’t looking like such a silly idea now, is it, Levi? That might be the only way for Chicagoans to get the box score of this game in their newspaper tomorrow — uh, I mean today.

Hey, speaking of silly ideas, where was Aaron Neville in the middle of the 14th to sing the real song? Actually, Bud Selig probably would have insisted on a reprise of “God Bless America” for no good reason.

On a TV note: since I grew up in the Eastern time zone, I’m used to sporting events that run long being followed by the local affiliate’s 11:00 or 10:00 news in its entirety, whether it’s at 12:00, 12:30, or even later. Therefore, I was a little surprised to discover that Fox’s flagship station in Los Angeles must have their entire 10:00 news crew home, because when the coverage of the game ended, they went straight to their regularly scheduled 11:30 “Simpsons” rerun.

Thank god for 13th-round draft picks, or, Barbara, don’t pack up your bag just yet!

Well, well, well.

1) That was a nice reminder that what we’re all seeing every time Pujols plays is a Hall-of-Fame career in the making. Cardinals fans are extremely lucky to have him, and we ought to appreciate it with every at-bat.

2) Even were the Cardinals to go on and get trounced tomorrow night, Pujols (and, to give credit properly, Eckstein and Edmonds, who had tough at-bats before him) at least took what had been a frustrating, disappointing series and gave us something we’ll remember for a long time.

3) My brother’s two concerns post-game? He was hoping the construction guys hadn’t started the wrecking ball back in the 7th for Busch Stadium. (Fox had, as their highlight reel of Busch over the years demonstrated.) Second, he wanted to know if Fox had reconsidered their choice of Lance Berkman as Chevrolet Player of the Game–chosen, as usual, in like the second inning.

4) In the 9th, with one out, Barbara Bush–visible all game as a little Boglin head perched just above the railing behind home–started packing up her bag. “Why,” she probably thought, “would I want to sully my beautiful mind with thoughts of Brad Lidge blowing this game?”