Tag: red sox

The grass is always greener on the other side, they say

The only real comment I have about watching the Devil Rays-Blue Jays game on TV tonight is that when Levi and I saw the Jays at SkyDome last year, the artificial turf was a brilliant shade of bright green; now that the building is known as Rogers Centre, they’ve switched to the modern-day artificial turf that more closely matches the color of real grass, yet somehow manages to look much worse on TV than real grass does.

Since that wasn’t quite substantial enough for a post, I’ll also provide a baseball-related excerpt from Bennett Cerf’s 1956 collection of jokes and anecdotes “The Life of the Party”…

Two rooters at a ball game were so engrossed in the contest that neither wanted to take time out to march back to the refreshment bar for hot dogs — and there wasn’t a vendor in sight. They finally bribed a kid nearby to go for them, giving him forty-five cents and saying, “Buy a dog for yourself at the same time.”

The kid came back with thirty cents change for them, explaining, “They only had my hot dog left.”

Actually, this one is slightly more typical of a Bennett Cerf collection of jokes and anecdotes…

Milton Berle discovered Tallulah Bankhead rooted to a radio in her dressing room one day, screaming her head off for the New York Giants. “Gosh,” exclaimed Miltie, “I didn’t realize you were so interested in the national pastime.” “Darling,” snapped Tallulah, “I am the national pastime.”

Incidentally, Tallulah wanted some new recipes for her chef to try. She called her favorite bookseller and ordered two copies of Fanny Farmer’s Boston Red Sox Cookbook!

Hospitality

I believe it is every team’s–and every fan’s–duty to make a trip to an out-of-town ballpark to watch his team as the visitors an enjoyable experience. I believe it’s incumbent upon fans not to shower abuse (or beer) in greater quantity than they would shower same on any hometown fan. I believe the correct response to “Is this Aisle 527?” doesn’t involve profanity.

But I don’t believe that hospitality should extend to playing a song the visiting team is familiar with from its home ballpark, so imagine my surprise when “Sweet Caroline” began blasting from the Wrigley Field speakers last night. Now, if the P.A. guy had, right after “Touching warm . . . touching you!” given the turntable a solid kick, sending the needle skittering and screeching across the vinyl, then it would have been okay. But just playing the song, straight, is like the French translating all the road signs just in from the Maginot Line into German.

Original comments…

thatbob: “Blasting from the Wrigley Field speakers…”?

Wrigley Field shouldn’t even have speakers that blast. That would solve your problem right there.

Well, that was queer

I was out of town for a couple days, so I just now got around to watching the “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” episode featuring the Red Sox. I’d never seen “Queer Eye” before, and I don’t think I’ll ever be watching it again, but at least some kids got a refurbished Little League field out of it, not to mention some doughnuts from a certain doughnut shop chain that isn’t as good as Krispy Kreme, but I guess underwrote part of the cost of fixing the kids’ field up after it had been destroyed by Hurricane Charley.

I’ve got the fever

As you may recall from a post here a few weeks ago, I wanted to hate the new movie “Fever Pitch.” You can’t truly hate what you don’t know, so I went to the theater today, grumbling through the euphemistically-named “pre-show countdown,” grumbling through the trailer for a Hilary Duff movie, grumbling through the trailer for a movie about girls sharing pants, really grumbling through the trailer for “Titanic” in space, and returning to a normal level of grumbling during the unexplained and unexplainable short promoting “American Dad.” Then the actual movie started.

Oh, wow, it’s just so downright charming, it’s impossible to hate. And it’s about baseball! Johnny Damon is in several scenes! The words “Devil Rays” come out of Jimmy Fallon’s mouth! I didn’t even mind Tim McCarver’s brief appearance! It made me forget all about that other movie called “Fever Pitch” with Colin what’s-his-name.

Seriously, Levi, I highly recommend that you and Stacey see it. If nothing else, it made me want to go see another game at Fenway Park, or fall in love with Drew Barrymore (or someone similarly cute), or preferably both.

Kitty loves baseball

I was planning on giving Levi the first word on the first game of the season, but I think he’ll agree that it was vitally important that I post this picture of my cat Chessie (who jumped off the TV shelf once the Yankees started winning)…

And I assume this commercial was met with great joy and delight in Rocketship-land…

Original comments…

Levi: Damn you, TiVo! I missed that ad completely!

Jim: That’s why I haven’t enabled the semi-secret “30-second skip” option — I want to see what I’m fast-forwarding through, just in case.

I guess now you’ll have to watch the commercials on every single baseball game until you see this Johnny Damon one!

Opening night

Could we possibly ask for a better Opening Night game?

Sunday night, we get the World Champion Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium against the World Champion (Choker Division) New York Yankees.

For the second year in a row, Johnny Damon will be our first sight of the baseball season, stepping into the box in all his glory.

And on the mound, we get pure contrast. David Wells v. Randy Johnson. Junkballer v. Flamethrower. One of the roundest guys in baseball v. the tallest, skinniest. They ought to go on the road as a comedy team. They’re listed at Baseball-reference.com as weighing the same, despite the Unit’s six-inch height advantage. Now that’s comedy.

It’s time. Y’all are invited for chili and corn bread.

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.

One more baseball book

As it turned out, I also received from my father as a Christmas gift “Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season.” (It just showed up the other day because Amazon.com combined it and some other items into an order with “Wonderfalls,” which wasn’t released until February 1st.)

The book is kind of structured like a blog, with dated entries from both Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King, interspersed with excerpts from e-mail conversations between the two of them. I, of course, couldn’t resist immediately flipping ahead to the entries for August 24 and August 26. For August 24, Stephen King writes about trying to pick up the game on the radio while driving around downtown Boston, and then getting back to his hotel and finding out they don’t have NESN, the cable home of the Red Sox, and Stewart O’Nan writes about the actual game, mainly Doug Mirabelli’s 3-run homer. For August 26, Stewart O’Nan writes about Bronson Arroyo: “Tonight he has his curve working and shuts down the Tigers for 7-1/3, giving up only an unearned run in a clutch 4-1 win.” Stephen King’s August 27 entry mentions the Dan Shaughnessy column from that morning’s Boston Globe, although he claims that the headline was “Dark Days Appear to Be Long Gone,” and I have scanned evidence that the headline was “Dark Days Have Hit the Road.” Perhaps this means that some of Stephen King’s other writing is less than accurate; I’m not sure if I believed all that about the girl with telekinetic powers wreaking havoc at her prom when I saw it. Or maybe they changed the headline for the later edition.

Anyway, starting back at the beginning of the book now, I’m only as far as spring training. Maura will perhaps appreciate what Stewart O’Nan says about the Red Sox’s spring training home: “Fort Myers is an endless grid of strip malls and stoplights, and everyone drives like they’re either having a heart attack or trying to find an emergency room for someone who is. We fly past Mattress World, Bath World, Rug World. It’s Hicksville, Long Island, with palm trees and pelicans.”

Original comments…

maura: but … is there an ikea??

When I got the bleacher tickets for the Red Sox, I also registered for the opportunity to buy tickets atop the Green Monster. However, I got an e-mail tonight telling me that I was not among the chosen few. Maybe it’s a good thing, because I got an up-close look at the seats on one of the Pat Sajak shows, and they look potentially vertigo-inducing, being so high up and pretty much directly above that steep drop-off.