A point about baseball and money I think it is important to keep in mind in these boring times

Yes, it is boring and predictable that the Yankees, what with their payroll about a third larger than that of the next biggest payroll in the mlb and closer to double their NL rival this year (according to this), won the World Series. We have all heard it before, about buying a championship team. And listen, I hate the Yankees as much as the next guy. I felt almost physically sick when they were talking about A-Rod's and Texeira's first rings like the endpoint of a great hero's journey instead of the result of playing on shitty teams for a few more million until now.

BUT, I submit to you the following counter-arguments before you point your hate the wrong way:

• Spending money is American. That is the American way. The Yankees wouldn't make all that money in the first place if they weren't putting out a great product, both on and off the field. Sure they live in a giant metropolis, but I'd be interested to find out how much of their income doesn't filter in from the immediate area. They have I guess what people call a "brand." That is American. Baseball is American. Capitalism is American.
  
• So-called "small-market" teams (don't know about you, but I would love to be the guy with the biggest take of the Florida Marlins' 36 million) still make a SHIT TON of money. Where does the majority of that money go? In the owners' pockets. Every time you go to these annoying new stadiums, with their mall-like interiors and their $10 beers, most of your money is going into the owners' pockets. Every owner in the mlb is making all kinds of money. But guess what? Some owners don't give a flying fuck if their team does well (see the Chicago Cubs up til recently) and some do. Some owners, like some players, will take a couple million less to put more money into building a better product. Don't think for a second the Yankees wouldn't pull in just as much dough if they came in second, and then more of the dough could go to the owners' pockets. But instead they go out and buy the best team in baseball. That is American. That is baseball.
  
• Amid all the talk of Pay-Rod and stuff, it's easy to forget about some long-time Yankees like Andy Pettite or Mariano Rivera. Those guys are old-school, man, playing for the same team for so long. Pettite's salary isn't even all that ridiculous. Almost any player in the mlb will tell you they want to play for a contender, and therefore the Yankees are easily the most desirable team for the players, since they know every single year the front office is going to do everything possible to win.
  

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, ya, I hate the Yankees, but also I am pissed at every other team for not spending more dough. You know they got it. There's no such thing as an underdog, just owners who don't care enough to make a mil or so less. And I guess that, too, is pretty American. That's baseball.

Recent revelations and sub-revelations

• Adults shouldn't have to say words like "panini," "sammy," or "yummy."
  
• If you think you're good enough, maybe you'll be just that. If you think you aren't, maybe you can be great.
  • Here are the particular memories which have led me to this startling conclusion:
    • When I tried out for the track team in 10th grade I was sprinting, and then suddenly for the first time ever asked myself if I could go any faster, and found out that I could, a lot.
    • When I was in 4th or so grade I was in music class and was singing along all bored when I realized by controlling my throat and mouth I could actually sing the actual pitches I had theretofore falsely imaginined myself to be singing.
• Somehow every previous time I listened to Bach's St. Matthew's Passion I just thought it was "pretty good."
  • Bach, as I have recently been told, as paraphrased by me, said writing invertible counterpoint was easy-- he would just talk to God and write down the conversation.
    • Bob Uecker, on the other hand, said catching a knuckleball is easy-- all you have to do is wait until it stops rolling and pick it up.
    • Charlie Lau, on the other other hand, said there were two theories on hitting the knuckleball, but unfortunately neither of them works.
• Doing the dishes is actually pretty easy, plus then you have something clean to put your food on.
  • Example: eggs.
• The right music, editing, and narration can make you feel sorry for planemos that have been kicked out of their solar systems by gravitational conflicts.
  • "...They're by themselves" -- a real honest-to-God scientist, not some wistful poet.
  
  

Well I'll be... (repost from last year)

Wouldn't you know it, but the league run by some kind of strange tribal warlords who have instituted a form of cheating into the rules of the game won again. I for one am shocked that the league which builds its teams around this institutionalized form of cheating ends up being better every year. It just doesn't seem to follow from the fact that said cheating increases revenue, attracts more sluggers and lets them play longer, and allows pitchers to focus solely on pitching. So why, since the DH was first introduced to the mid-summer classic in 1989, has the AL won seventeen games and the NL only three? Beats me. In the words of my favorite cartoon cat, Ray Smuckles, "Dear. God. I. Am. Not. A. Religious. Man. But. Please. Help. Me. See. The. Connection. Here."

Also, there is the matter of this:

I behaved like a child and now I am embarassed; let me try to explain

Do you feel mature? Do you feel in control of your emotions? Do you think you are above it? Do you think you are detached enough from it? Are you "over it"? Try this:

-Pitch in what appears to be a pretty well-matched softball game
-Get two outs in the second inning
-Walk nine batters in a row, one of whom may be retarded and two of whom cannot hit the ball forward into the field of play
-Finally get out of the inning on a lead-off technicality called by your merciful merciful man in blue
-Strike out at the plate

Now, you may be more mature, but what happened with me is that I threw a fit and beat the shit out of a plastic gas can and a water bottle, and suddenly I couldn't slow my breathing or look any human in the eye lest they know that I HATED THEM ALL.

Now, try this:

-Go out and have a bit more control, but have every walk followed by a home run, or every error followed by a triple, etc.
-Despite it all have your team be hitting well, and keeping the score within reach
-Get some people on base in front of you, so you have a chance to redeem yourself
-Strike out at the plate

I know I am 31, but it was all I could do to not just throw myself face-down on the ground and pound my fists into the dirt and scream. I stopped talking to others, and did not register when they talked to me. I stared blankly ahead. I threw a pitch and stood there quietly until it was time to throw another. I tried to breathe deeply and tried not to hate everything in the world, especially softball, but I failed. I hated every single thing about everything. I was filled with hate. I could feel the blood in my cheeks, and it was the feeling of hate. I could feel the sweat building in my pores, and it was excess hate that couldn't fit in my body. My eyes were misty with hate-condensation. Every movement of every muscle in my body was a meticulously choreographed physical expression of pure hate. My focus was nearly complete, but utterly negative. You have perhaps heard of a "fuck all" attitude. This was my complete focus: fuck EVERYTHING. My mind was sharp. My thoughts were crisp. Every ball and every strike I threw were balls and strikes of pure hate. I hated myself for throwing the ball; I hated the ball for floating towards the plate; I hated the plate for being next to the batter; I hated the batter for swinging the bat; I hated the bat for striking the ball; I hated the ball for flying through the air; I hated the air for providing refuge for birds; I hate birds because, well, I don't know, that's just sort of personal.

We rallied late, and I was on deck as the game ended, one ball away from another chance at redemption. And yes, I hated the person who struck out in front of me. That final keystone of hate called "strike three" should have been mine to lay in my own perfect collosus of suck.

Well I'll be god-damned

Wouldn't you know it, but the league run by some kind of strange tribal warlords who have instituted a form of cheating into the rules of the game won again. I for one am shocked that the league which builds its teams around this institutionalized form of cheating ends up being better every year. It just doesn't seem to follow from the fact that said cheating increases revenue, attracts more sluggers and lets them play longer, and allows pitchers to focus solely on pitching. So why, since the DH was first introduced to the mid-summer classic in 1989, has the AL won sixteen games and the NL only three? Beats me. In the words of my favorite cartoon cat, Ray Smuckles, "Dear. God. I. Am. Not. A. Religious. Man. But. Please. Help. Me. See. The. Connection. Here."

Also, there is the matter of this:

I Hate Al & Dan; I Love the Future

I was watching the Cardinals game today and I just reached a point where I couldn't take it anymore. During an exciting game, Al and Dan (the FSN midwest announcers for the Cards) were just blabbering on about their T-shirts and their cats and shit. I hate them! I hate listening to them! It's all blabbering until something vaguely bad happens, then it's Dan bitching like a fifth-grade jilted boyfriend. Then it's Al saying something vaguely almost goofy and Dan acting like it was the weirdest thing ever, and totally sucking Al's cock over it for the next ten minutes. Fuck those guys. I mean, I'm sure they're nice people and I don't hate them as people, they are just fucking awful announcers. At the beginning of each game I pray to the gods that this thing will happen more where the audio feed gets fucked up and you only hear the sounds of the game without any announcers. Gods, please make this happen more than once in a blue moon. It is the most glorious. It is the most high. It is the most exalted. Baal, Crom, Jesus, Mormon, come to my aid. Make this happen.

The future has allowed me, through mlbtv, to understand how truly bad our announcers are. I have watched games from all over the league, and I'd say ours and the Diamondbacks' TV announcers are the very bottom of the barrel.

(Who's the best, you ask? Vin Scully. Joe Morgan and Jon Miller. Joe Buck even, and Tim McCarver. The dudes who do the WGN cubs games, I don't know their names.)

But the future, bless its little heart, has also allowed me to do this: I hooked up a little radio's headphone output into my computer, into Logic (an audio recording program), through about 10 seconds' worth of delay (the most I could get from a delay plug-in), then bussed through about half that delay over again to match FSN's unreasonably long broadcast delay, then through the living room stereo. This way I could mute out the TV and listen to our radio announcers, Mike Shannon (awesome) and John Rooney (fucking sucks hard, but at least better than Al & Dan), whose broadcast is in real time. Thank the gods for the future. Thank the gods for the one good announcer in this city. Thank the gods for computers. Also thank the gods for love, and for cute animals like platypusses and guinea pigs, and also thank the gods for the enduring miracle of the overtone series. That shit blows my mind. I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff. The world is full of things to be thankful for. Thank you.

Matt Morris

Matt Morris got cut by the Pirates. I always liked him as a pitcher, and as a Matt. There were very few famous Matts in sports when I was a kid. Looking back into baseball history, the closest thing might have been Matty Alou, but he retired before I was born. Nowadays you can't throw a plastic beer bottle onto the field without hitting a Matt-- just talking more well-known players, you got your Holliday, your Clement and Cain, your Lawton, Belisle, & Murton, & plenty more. Matt Morris really opened the door for Matt to be an acceptable name for a baseball player. I thank him for his courage.

Figure 12: The Man Himself, back when he was a Cardinal



Figure 12b: Wisdom
"I'm proud of my career. I didn't mean or want for it to end this way. I've always said the other team will let you know when you're done."

What? No way.

This is incredible.

It reminds me of this:




P.S. I hate birds.

Albert Pujols is the new Brian Wilson

...according to this hilarious post comparing baseball teams to rock bands past & present (thanks for the heads-up, Viva El Birdos).




An excerpt:

St. Louis Cardinals are The Beach Boys: The wholesome, family-friendly exterior conceals a deviant, tragic core (substance abuse, performance enhancing and otherwise; tragic deaths of key performers). Led by an authoritarian egomaniac (Tony LaRussa; Murry Wilson). One brilliant member surrounded by a rotating cast of a couple solid supporting players and a bunch of scrubs (Albert Pujols; Brian Wilson). Shocking, inexplicable late-career resurgence (2006 postseason; "Kokomo").

Dream Analysis, or Terror Quantified

This morning I woke up and remembered a dream I had. Not a dream from last night, but one from sometime in the past couple weeks. You know, you have dreams and you forget them, then for some reason you remember them days or weeks later. In my dream I was eating a Big Mac. I wasn't enjoying it. I remember putting the Big Mac back down in its box (this is where I put burgers when I need to take a "burger break") and feeling mildly stressed out because I still had about half of it left to eat (I'm still a die-hard member of the clean plate club, modern nutritionists be damned). It was a mildly stressful dream. If the unit of unpleasantness in dreams is the nightmare, this dream may have been about 1/20 of a nightmare. It is less exciting to have bad dreams this way, but I imagine I get more sleep at night.


In my waking life I very much enjoy the Big Mac once or sometimes even twice per year.


What does it mean?


After careful consideration, I believe the ambivalence towards the Big Mac in my dream is either:

a.) an unconscious expression of my real-life ambivalence towards the Hardees Thickburger. I love the Hardees Thickburger; however, I am horrified (to the tune of 1/5 a nightmare) by the cultural aura surrounding it.
-or-
b.) an unconscious expression of my real-life ambivalence towards Mark McGwire. I love Mark McGwire; however, I am horrified (to the tune of 1/5 of a nightmare) by the cloud of steroids-related controversy surrounding him.


I have boring nightmares.

sacrifice

I never thought in a million years I'd say something like this, but I'm uncomfortable with all this hate and vitriol directed at Roger Clemens lately. There's so many names to choose from, but even top sportswriters are getting in on this Clemens feeding frenzy. I think I figured out why the discomfort. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm starting to suspect the media of using Roger Clemens as a white-guilt sacrifice to the gods of equality who'd call them racists when they bashed Bonds. He's being cast in the role of a reverse "great white hope"-- The One people had been waiting for to prove all these 'roid allegations weren't racially driven.

I'm not saying he isn't well cast. In this role it helps, as it does Bonds, to come across as an asshole. Nor am I saying it is such a bad thing to offer up such sacrifices. The gods are insatiable. And I'm most decidedly not saying I am now, or have ever, talked about such things through anything but my ass. I'm full of shit.

a wager

Say it ain't so, George. Cody McKay? Larry Bigbie?? Fernando Vina?!?



Ah, but at least there's a corn in the turd-- now I can say with a fair degree of confidence that I have bigger balls than Roger Clemens and Miguel Tejada. Wanna bet? I could probably fit seven of Barry Bonds' balls into just one of my balls-- even if I first put one of Jose Canseco's balls inside one of Roger Clemens' balls, then put Roger Clemens' ball-stuffed ball into one of Barry Bonds' balls.* But I'm not here to point fingers, and I'm not here to stuff hypothetical shrunken balls into other hypothetical shrunken balls. No, what I'm here for is to compare ball size, and the smart money's on mine. So go ahead, lay down your bets. Yes, put down some smart money. On my balls. Put money on my balls.


* Much like the Turducken.

sometime in the next twenty-five days...

This guy is gonna kill some heroes for lots of people. Before that happens I want to make some fearless predictions:


-Lots of pitchers, I bet, will be on there. Especially ones who were hurt (see Paul Byrd or, for that matter, Rick Ankiel). And I don't just mean the ones with that obvious 'roids look to them. In the category of my own worst fears, I have a dread that Chris Carpenter is gonna be on there.


-Lots of people you never heard of will be on there. And that's good. I've heard the argument put forth that it's even worse for someone like Bonds to do steroids, since he was good without them. To me, that's bullshit. The guy who uses roids and squeaks by should be dealt with the same as the guy who uses roids and hits 73 home runs.


-Either some doctors are gonna have to come out and truly stand behind the idea that HGH really does help in recovery from injuries (right now the only legal uses are for unusually short children, AIDS, and adult growth hormone deficiency), or that mythical excuse is gonna get blown wide open.



These are just predictions. I know that HGH isn't the same as steroids, and I know it was not yet banned by the MLB (though illegal in the USA) when some people took it. I also know it is a thorny issue when you come to performance enhancing drugs, and there are always new ones that aren't yet banned cropping up on the medical horizon. I don't even really know where I stand on the morality of it. But I do know where I stand in one respect: there needs to be a fair way to regulate, and with the humongous amount of money and resources available to MLB, the most obvious solution is simply to have mandatory random drug tests for every player, period. And just for the PEDs, mind you, I don't care about all the coke, weed, meth, crack, or even acid they might be taking, I don't think the MLB should concern itself about the baseball versions of Ricky Williams types. To me, random mandatory testing is the only way to avoid the witch-hunt scenario some people are against. It doesn't discriminate on talent, it gets the greats and the squeakers-by alike, and if we could get the MLB not to warn players when their turn was coming, it might even work.