Month: June 2004

I have no desire to be the biggest jerk in the park

If we’re going to go after foul balls on the trip, we’d better make sure there aren’t any kids in the way, unless we know for a fact that the kid has a lifelong dream of being on “Good Morning America.” Personally, I’ve always preferred the “Today” show.

Original comments…

Steve: Whatever…It’s not like the kid even got trampled. Who among us hasn’t pushed a four year old out of the way. They often show up at the most inopportune places. At least its nice to see that baseball is falling all over itself to make amends. For what I don’t know but it’s pretty clear that the media in this country is dying for some “feel-good” stores. Well, off to rescue some puppies and kittens.

Eric: Let’s not idealize 4-year-olds. A lot of 4-year-olds are selfish little jerks. A 4-year-old’s mom tried to take my seat on an airplane, as the stewardess explained, “because they want to sit together.” “Tough shit!” I told the stewardess. “I want to have sex with Jennifer Connelly, so I guess that makes two of us aren’t going to get what we want.” I mean, come on. A 4-year-old can’t sit quietly on his own for a two-hour flight? They have to push me out of my comfortable, front-of-the-plane aisle seat into a middle seat at the back of the plane? What bullshit. Being 4 years old is no excuse for anything.

They didn’t even ask if I would voluntarily give up my seat. The stewardess just put them there and told me I had to move. United, man. “Fly the airline where all the employees hate you.”

Luke: If a foul ball comes our way at Busch, feel free to trample all over me, if it might send some swag our way.

Dr. Octopus: I push 4-year-olds out of the way all the time! Even when I’m not at the ballpark! And with all my tentacles, I can push down numerous 4-year-olds simultaneously! Ha ha ha ha!

We could be sleeping in the flowers

I now know what I’m going to be doing the night before leaving on this trip: seeing They Might Be Giants at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. I only wish this had more to do with baseball; unless I’m forgetting a track, I don’t think they’ve got a baseball-related song as a group. With his solo side project Mono Puff, John Flansburgh has a song called “What Bothers the Spaceman?” about Bill “Spaceman” Lee, which I may or may not have mentioned here. (Yes, it’s in the baseball song collection on my iPod.)

By the way, Jason Kaifesh suggests that some kind of “farewell dinner” get-together should be held in Chicago before the trip, on the evening of Friday, August 20th. Sounds like a good idea to me, especially if I don’t have to plan it from afar. What do you think, Levi (or others)?

Original comments:

Jim: Thought of a semi-baseball-related lyric, from “Purple Toupee,” off the “Lincoln” album: “I shouted out, ‘Free the Expo 67!'” The Montreal Expos were named after Expo 67. I can already predict that they are not going to play that song at the House of Blues.

thatbob: Are you taking odds?

My arm hurts

There is an article in today’s L.A. Times about the 15-inning Red Sox-Angels game on June 14, 1974. The winning pitcher was Barry Raziano of the Angels, who threw two perfect innings in relief; it was his only major league victory.

But more importantly: Luis Tiant was the Sox’s sole pitcher, going 14.1 innings until he gave up the winning run. Nolan Ryan started for the Angels, and went 13 innings, making 235 pitches. But then, in 1974, he averaged 160-180 pitches a game. The Times reporter asked Bill James about it: “It obviously ruined his arm because he had to retire 19 years later.”

Original comments…

Toby: Ah yes… back when baseball was played by men and ruled by an impartial commissioner, not played by ridiculously overpaid prima donnas and ruled by agents and accountants.

Back when baseball players were your heroes, not celebrities.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless there’s a souvenir cup involved

Hmm, Levi and I should have coordinated our vacations so we didn’t have weeks where only one of us has to carry the blog load.

Anyway, potential guideline for the baseball trip: no drinking “beer by the yard,” even if it’s really only 18 inches, because once you’ve consumed one of those things, it’s pretty hard to get up the next morning and drive somewhere. Trust me.

I meant to check out for Levi what the current odds were on the Cards winning the World Series, but I was too busy collecting my winnings on a certain non-baseball bet I placed at the sports book on Monday afternoon.

Original comments…

Steve: So did you drink a “yard” or a “half yard?” A yard is about equivalent to 40oz of beer. After sitting by the “beers of the world” stand at Comiskey the other night and paying $5.50 for 16oz PBR, I think the yard of beer is your most economical beer selection at the ballpark. I don’t endorse you drinking a yard of beer a day becuase I wonder what that would do to your diet of Hostess Baseballs. It could get ugly.

Jim: I drank a full yard (of Dos Equis amber, this being a Mexican restaurant, which was primarily pushing margaritas by the yard, but you could get any drink that way). It was $13.95, but that’s Vegas hotel pricing, not ballpark pricing.

Non-baseball vacation. It’s sad, but such things do exist.

Stacey and I are off on vacation with her family for a week, starting tomorrow. So I will be away from the Internet (Unless one of Stacey’s sisters has one of those magic internet phone-watch-missile-defense-system-thingies, which would probably terrify me so much that I couldn’t use it even if I wanted to do so.) and not posting to BRPA2004.

In my absence, I hope Jim will at least impersonate me for a post or two. It’s not like it’s that hard. You mention Johnny Damon, lament a Cardinals loss or cheer a Cardinals victory.

Or you could post something about Raul Mondesi—whose nickname is “The Buffalo”— and Operation Shutdown: The Sequel, which he pulled in Pittsburgh, the home of the original, unmatchable Operation Shutdown.

And you could link to this silly picture, from the game where Mondesi, now an Angel, tore his quadriceps.

There. Now Jim will be able to impersonate me with ease. See you all when we return.

Original comments…

thatbob: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

One of these things is not like the other

1) Damon claims in this article that it took him only three weeks to grow the beard. But then he goes on to say that he will have it back in about ten days. Maybe that means he’s getting better with practice?

2) According to an article Stacey found, which I can’t find right now, Damon’s been shaving since he was six. That’s what she says.

3) And just to leave you all warm and fuzzy, here are Damon’s reasons for choosing tutoring program at the Boston Public Library and a city program, ReadBoston, as the beneficiaries of his charitable act:

“I didn’t read well when I was young,” said Damon. “They help kids do that. My parents were always working. I never had help on my homework, so it just related a lot with my life and me growing up. I think it just helps out everybody. It brings awareness and hopefully, they can get a lot more donations and help out a lot more kids, and that’s what Boston’s about. We have all these colleges here. We want to try to make each kid smart enough to go to these colleges.

“We’re going to have even more ‘smahtah’ kids here in Boston.”

You all know what to do.

4) In today’s non-Damon note, I noticed something interesting that recent Cardinals call-up the Third Molina was doing last night while catching Chris Carpenter. In the late innings, as Carpenter tired and his pitches started to float up a bit, Molina began dropping his target all the way to the dirt. He’d set up, then hunker down and more or less lay the open glove in the dirt. The tactic seemed to work: Carpenter started aiming at the glove, and the pitches, when they didn’t drop as much as they should have, ended up around the knees rather than around the belt. Does anyone know if this is a trick that Jose Molina or Bengie Molina uses?

Original comments:

Bengie Molina: I use that trick all the time. I also have the picture of a fly painted on the inside of my mitt, which the pitcher attempts to squash. It seems to help, unless a real fly lands on the end of the bat.

Levi: The real question, though, is how the hell a family produces three major leaguers at one position?

Were there no pitcher or shortstop genes in their family? Or did those all go to the gals?

sandor: Smart idea, Bengie. Been to Amsterdam lately?

Secho: What we do know is that Mr. and Mrs. Molina were pretty quick to get their groove back on after Bengie was born. His birthday is July 20, 1974, while Jose’s is June 3, 1975. So they are, at this moment, both 29 years old, and not twins. So I guess itt’s not too surprising that they share common talents and interests, though you would think one of them would’ve been pitching to the other one all those years.

Who were the last set of 3 brothers to play major league ball simultaneously? The Alous?

Levi: I think it’s the Alous. The only other trios I can come up with off the top of my head are the DiMaggios and the Boyers. I know there have been at least a couple more.

I really like what I’ve seen of The Third Molina so far, although he does still look not quite ready for a full-time job in the majors.

stacey: did the third benes brother never make it out of the minors? they were all pitchers, i believe. maybe they grew up down the street from the molinas.

Luke: Pat Hughes and Dave Otto were discussing this during last night’s game — Ron Santo was taking the series off, so there was much more talk about actual baseball and much less about hairpieces, sweaters and funny names — and they said there have been 19 sets of brothers, the most recent being Jose, Hector and Tommy in 1977. Here’s a complete list.

Cluke: And I think it goes without saying that the awards for best names go to Clete, Cloynd and Ken Boyer.

Cloyd!

Down on the farm

Honorary hanger-on Jason Kaifesh called me Sunday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go to a minor-league game. Of course I said yes. The California League-leading Lancaster Jethawks were playing the Inland Empire 66ers (San Bernardino) in a game with a strange 6:00 start time, perhaps because the temperature can get quite high up in the Antelope Valley. First, the best of my attempts at an action shot. Note the ball seemingly frozen…

Since Lancaster is near Edwards Air Force Base, they have two space shuttles on either side of the message board, albeit space shuttles that look more like NASCAR vehicles, with the advertising. Hmm, didn’t the idea of having NASA raise money by selling advertising space come up at some point during the Reagan administration?…

Speaking of which, note the flags, and the fact that the wind was blowing very strong towards right field throughout the game, although there was only one home run hit in that direction (quite a few fly balls to the warning track, though). Is there some kind of mailing list you can subscribe to, if you have a flagpole, to let you know when you’re supposed to have your flags at half-mast?…

This being the minor leagues, they let a kid race the mascot around the bases while the game is in progress (I mean, between innings, but still…). I can provide witnesses to corroborate the fact that Kaboom the Jethawk took a dive, by the way, in case any federal prosecutors interested in a RICO case are reading this…

Lancaster Municipal Stadium, a.k.a. The Hangar, is fairly new, which means they have a manual scoreboard. Yes, that is a ridiculous contradiction, but we live in ridiculous times. At least the manual scoreboard’s numbers are readable (when they remember to put them up), unlike certain electrically-operated numbers that are hard to read when the sun is shining directly on them and a third of the light bulbs are burned out…

Final score: 66ers 7, Jethawks 3. One of the best things about the game, by the way, was the noise the crowd made when the P.A. announcer announced that the Lakers had lost Game 1 of the finals to the Detroit Pistons. It was the noise of several thousand people simultaneously making a noise that meant, “But the local media has been leading us to believe that the Lakers are the team of destiny for months now!” I know, I know, that’s not really baseball-related.

Now I’m headed to Vegas for a few days. Unfortunately, the Las Vegas 51’s won’t be in town while I’m there, so I guess I’ll have to find something to do other than watching minor-league baseball.

Original comments…

Levi: I’m surprised, Jim, to see you refer to the flag as being at half-staff.

As this site shows, lowered flags on ships are at half-mast, but lowered flags on land are at half-staff.

There recently was a story in the Tribune about a woman who contacted the head office of McDonald’s to inform them that they were not, by flag codes, allowed to lower the flags at their restaurants in tribute to their CEO, who had died suddenly. According to her, a government directive had to go out. She was backed up by the reporter and by a government official, whose name and position I’ve forgotten.

Anyway, it’s the first I’d heard about it. Anyone know anything more about these rules?

And were the flags down for Reagan, or for the Lakers?

The cross-wits

The title of today’s Merl Reagle crossword puzzle is “Bawl Game,” and the theme relates to Tom Hanks’s line in “A League of Their Own,” featured as 111 Across (“THERESNOCRYING”) and 119 Across (“INBASEBALL”).

As it turned out, since there’s no crying in baseball, all the theme answers were missing a “WA” somewhere, including 35 Across (“Ex-Boston-N.Y.-Tampa player with over 3,000 hits”), 85 Across (“Grassless area on a diamond’s perimeter that lets a fielder know the wall is near”), the long one, 66 Across (“Post-home run comment”), and the one that took me the longest to get, 88 Across (“Try to fool a batter, perhaps”). Answers in the comments section.

Original comments…

Jim: 35. DEBOGGS
85. RNINGTRACK
66. HEREALLYLLOPEDTHATONE
88. THROCURVE (unlike all the other theme answers in the puzzle, the missing “WA” letters weren’t both removed from one word)

Luke: No wa? But you gotta have wa!

thatbob: Japanese fighting spirit!

What a trip we could have had

What if we had chosen Itinerary Number One for the trip? Well, I’ll tell you…

Saturday, May 22: Reds 8, Astros 7. What a game to start off the trip with!

Sunday, May 23: Brewers 2, Pirates 1. This one was much easier for Levi to score.

Monday, May 24: Blue Jays 6, Angels 5 (10 innings). They must have heard about our trip, because they keep having one-run games for us.

Tuesday, May 25: Expos 3, Braves 1. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, because there goes the one-run game streak. But the Expos won a game! And we had plenty of elbow room at Olympic Stadium, with attendance only 4,237 (including us).

Wednesday, May 26: Red Sox 9, A’s 6. Hooray for Johnny Damon! Not because he was the star of this game, but just on general principles, even if he did shave his beard just a few days ago.

Thursday, May 27: No game. We had talked before about maybe seeing the Red Sox or the Phillies two days in a row, but ended up not doing that, and both teams were blown out by the visitors today (A’s 15-2 over the Sox; Braves 6-1 over the Phillies).

Friday, May 28: Phillies 3, Braves 2 (10 innings). Another one-run game, featuring a walk-off homer.

Saturday, May 29: Indians 8, A’s 6. Hmm, the A’s seem to only be able to score 6 runs — no more, no less — when we’re in the stands.

Sunday, May 30: Orioles 7, Tigers 3. A four-run game? Inconceivable! Not to mention the fact that one of my favorite-named players, Ugueth Urbina, fell apart.

Monday, May 31: Cubs 3, Astros 1. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it was a little chilly in Chicago for Memorial Day, since I remember that it was that way in 2002 as well. Anyway, a good game to end the trip, even if we’re now sick of the Astros. And the Braves. And the A’s.

(Will I remember to start doing a day-by-day posting once we get around to July 17, the start of Itinerary Number Two, the way I should have done for this itinerary? We’ll find out together.)

Original comments…

Levi: This trip clearly would have been inferior to the one we are going to take, because this trip has no Cardinals games.