I’ve taken advantage of some downtime at work and gone back through the history of baseballrelated.com to add labels (or, as the kids call them, “tags”) to all the posts. Now you can easily read all the posts here that contain some content related to Johnny Damon — including this one!
Only eight days until Levi and I see a baseball game together for the first time since the trip in August 2004.
I noticed today that around a dozen people had been led to my other blog this weekend by searching for “Jason Giambi thong.” So, steeling myself against the hideous assortment of possible discoveries that flitted through my clearly too-active mind, I plugged those terms into {a popular search engine that may or may not employ Jim} and discovered . . . this.
Apparently Giambi is the owner of a gold lame thong, which he dons when he feels the need for some supernatural help in breaking a slump. But that’s not the worst of it: he also has on occasion lent this thong to teammates who felt a similar need! Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon have both admitted to wearing it. Jeter told the Daily News,
“I had it over my shorts and stuff. I was 0-for-32 and I hit a homer on the first pitch. That’s the only time I’ve ever worn it.”
{Editorial note: wouldn’t you have expected “and stuff” to be in brackets?}
I’ll leave you with a hypothetical question for those Yankee fans out there: is winning worth this? Will you ever be able to sleep again, having pictured Jason Giambi in a gold thong? Would a quiet last-place finish really be so bad?
“I walk around with my shirt off. If I had anything to hide, I wouldn’t do that.” — Johnny Damon
At last, some musical content that’s more on-topic than the Larry Finlayson update.
I haven’t been keeping up very well with the baseball songs page (although I’m planning to update it as part of a renovation of both baseballrelated.com and my personal site, hopefully by the end of the year if I get around to it). But it’s there, and its content is able to be searched, which is how I recently heard from a musician named Howie Newman.
In 1979, he recorded an EP of five original baseball songs called “Baseball’s Greatest Hits” — about a decade before Rhino ripped off the name for their compilation — which is available both through iTunes and in the popular “compact disc” format.
He also has a couple of other original baseball songs on two more recent releases, also available via iTunes. And he has two baseball songs available as free downloads. One is off “Baseball’s Greatest Hits” and is called “Astroturf.” The other is more recent and is called — well, I don’t want to totally give away the surprise, so I’ll just say that my collection of baseball songs now includes musical mentions of Joe DiMaggio, Ozzie Smith, and Johnny Damon.
Well, despite my unemployment, I’ve been feeling pretty good recently. Hmm, as long as I’m sitting here in front of my computer waiting for “Deal or No Deal” to accumulate on the TiVo, I’ll activate iChat. Why, I’ve got an instant message popping up already! It’s from hanger-on Maura. She usually has something interesting to say, often about baseball. I’ll just bring the message window to the front, and…OH, MY GOD, NO!
Acting as if I’m a real columnist having a lazy day, I present a “News and Notes” column!
1) Headline in the Sun-Times following the Palmeiro news: Caught ‘roid-handed. Another good headline this week, despite not being baseball-related, was the Trib’s headline announcing the appointment of a federal monitor to watch the city’s hiring practices: City gets a Hall monitor. I imagine the headline writers are all staying up late these days practicing their headlines in the hopes of Daley being indicted. Me, I’m just practicing my gleeful chortle. Maybe I’ll get to warm it up chortling over Rove.
2) Palmeiro and Sandberg are linked yet again, this time in Sandberg’s Fire Sermon in Cooperstown on Sunday being followed so closely by Palmeiro essentially giving back his “Redeem in five years” ticket to the Hall. Those of you up on Cubs gossip will know how they were linked before, but if you need a refresher, contact me in some way that enables me to tell you the story while not being sued for libel.
3) Albert Pujols has stolen 11 bases this season without being caught. Next up for Prince Albert: some work in the offseason on his change-up so he can pick up some innings out of the bullpen.
4) Speaking of running, poor Lenny Harris, in legging out a three-run double against the Cardinals the other night in Florida, catapulted himself to the top of my list of worst baserunners in the game. He’s been a slow runner for years, plagued by leg and weight problems, but these days, his build is Kruk-like and he runs as if he’s on two peglegs. If this were a backyard whiffleball game, everyone would agree on special slowness rules for his ghost runner.
5) TV Guide is changing its format to not have nearly so many listings. How will I ever know when Scooter’s going to grace my television? I guess I’ll have to go to Jeanniezelasko.com to find out. I wonder if Jim has any thought about the changes to TV Guide?
6) In a discussion at work the other day about how to encourage bloggers who have written about our products, the idea of just contacting them with a thank-you came up. Or maybe we should send them minor-league baseball tickets?
7) After the Sox/Tigers game I attended recently at Comiskey, I was walking out next to a girl who said to a friend, “There’s my bus, gotta go.” She looked up to the ballpark, blew a kiss, and said, “Love ya, Comiskey.”
8) After today, there’s a third of the season left, and Ken Griffey Jr. has still not visited the DL.
9) For a while a few weeks back, an image search for Johnny Damon brought up a certain pumpkin as the fourth response. It’s fallen back to ninth lately. Get to work, readers!
10) The Post-Dispatch reports today that the Cardinals are, after all, leaving KMOX and buying 550 AM KTRS. I think it’s a big mistake, as do many other Cards fans, and I’m sad to hear about it. KMOX was the Cardinals for me for my childhood. But this is really a topic that deserves its own post soon.
While I’ve been editing the old posts here to include the comments from the old system, I have of course been reading a lot about Hostess Baseballs. So when I took a break and went to Ralphs to do my weekly grocery shopping, I took a longing look at the section that includes Hostess, Little Debbie, and other snack pastries. As has been mentioned already here, 2005 is a year without Baseballs; however, I saw a product there that I had never seen before, and I just had to buy a couple…
That’s Lemon Creme flavor on top and Vanilla Pudding flavor on the bottom. There were several other flavors available, including cherry, apple, and Chocolate Pudding. They’re made by Horizon Snack Foods of Salt Lake City, so I’m sure they’re just as sweet as Donny and Marie.
One problem: I don’t think the caricature of Johnny Damon on the label quite does him justice. (Also, that doesn’t quite look like a home run stroke, but maybe test marketing showed that a product called Bloop Single Pie didn’t sell as well.)
The episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” featuring five members of the Red Sox airs next Tuesday, June 7th, at 10:00 P.M. Eastern on Bravo (with copious repeats throughout the following week). TV Guide gives it a 9 out of 10 and includes, as a tantalizing preview, the phrase “Johnny Damon gets foil highlights.”
Also in next week’s TV Guide, Superstation WGN has a full-page ad (in the color section, although it’s a black-and-white ad) touting their Friday afternoon telecast of the Cubs vs. Red Sox as a rematch of the 1918 World Series, for all the TV Guide readers who have been waiting for that for 87 years. Presumably, the Saturday game is on Fox (although my DirecTV edition of TV Guide only lists what’s on the national Fox schedule, so it’s “teams to be announced”) — and the Sunday game is in the week-after-next’s TV Guide, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s a complete mystery where it’s going to air.
For the second day in a row, a Baseball-Related Program Activities-related comic strip; today, it’s “Nancy”…
thatbob: Sluggo’s insight feels remarkably thin to me, but I love to watch Johnny Damon’s hat pop off in any medium.
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.