Month: December 2004

I’ve been thinking about the match-ups we’ll see on our trip, and which teams we’ll be rooting for. I think Jim would agree that the default, absent other reasons to root for (Say, that they’re the Cardinals) or against (Say, that they’re the Braves) a team, would be to root for the home team.

But mitigating factors do affect several games on this trip. So here’s my first pass at the rooting plan:

Game 1: Swing
Game 2: Cardinals
Game 3: White Sox (over the Tigers. Sorry, Detroit, but local interest comes first.)
Game 4: Red Sox (over the Blue Jays. Sorry, Toronto, but toppling the Yankees comes first.)
Game 5: Expos
Game 6: Red Sox
Game 7: Phillies
Game 8: Cardinals (over the Pirates. Sorry, Pittsburgh, but you guys had to see this one coming.)
Game 9: White Sox (over the Indians. Sorry, Cleveland, but that team name’s got to go. And take that offensive logo with it, why don’t you?).
Game 10: Ooh. This is a tough one. I want to root for the Brewers over the Pirates, because they’re the home team and I love Wisconsin. But I just don’t know that I can root for a team owned by Bud Selig. I may have to root for the Pirates, despite their being owned by Kevin McClatchy.

Julio Franco just keeps getting better!

Yesterday or the day before, Andy Van Slyke, well-known for running his mouth*, accused Julio Franco of using steroids, saying, basically: Look at him–he’s like a hundred years old and still playing. He’s got to be on the juice.

To which Franco replied, “I am on the juice. The juice of Jesus of Nazareth.” What the hell he means, I have no idea, but I’ll go with it. Franco is now the first baseman on my team of entertaining goofballs. Let’s see: Doug Glanville in center, Julio Franco at first, Joaquin Andujar on the mound, Jim Bouton in the pen.

I guess my team still has some roster spots to fill. Suggestions?

*It’s amazing how much of the “Barry Bonds is an asshole teammate” line comes from Van Slyke and Jeff Kent, who, by all appearances, are assholes.

Whetting Levi's appetite

I fired up the ol’ scanner tonight, and first of all, since the other attendees have already seen their tickets:

And this is the route map as it stands now. I have a feeling some portions may not be the AAA-approved routes, such as the “back way” to get to Yardley, Pennsylvania from the north (on U.S. 202 and state route 31), which involves going through some of the less smelly parts of New Jersey.

I’m sorry that my clumsy attempts to reduce the image size, not to mention my clumsy attempts to draw a line, made Mapquest’s beautiful cartography look like crap, but I’m not exactly working with the Adobe Creative Suite here. (This is the non-online, made-from-dead-trees 2004 Mapquest “Routemaster” spiral-bound road atlas we’re looking at, just in case you’re wondering why Mapquest.com doesn’t look that good when you use it.)

Another itinerary update

Stacey is now listed as an official hanger-on. If this keeps up, someone is going to end up riding in the trunk. Fortunately, Levi folds up into a compact package, and a flashlight and a couple of comic books can keep him occupied back there for hours.

Darn it, someone is already sponsoring Karl Rhodes’ page at baseball-reference.com. But, Tuffy, I thought what we had was special!

Today’s best baseball moment:
Julio Franco talked about filling out a questionnaire for some media thing. When he got to the question, “What’s something no one knows about you?” he wrote, “My age.”

Other things I like about Julio Franco: his goofy batting stance and his goofy career path. He didn’t play in the majors in 1998. In 1999 he had 1 at-bat. He struck out. Then in 2000 he went to the Mexican League and hit something like .475. In the three years since then, he’s had 699 at-bats with respectable numbers. And he’s so old he makes Benito Santiago look, well, if not young, then at least less like the living dead.

Re: the long version of “Feels So Good”

I haven’t looked at the daily distances yet, but I know the trip is approximately twelve days.

That’s not nearly enough time for the long version.

PS Do you think Chuck Mangione wants to join us for a game? He’s from Rochester, so maybe he’d want to meet up in Toronto.

Another itinerary update

I’ve added approximate driving times to the itinerary, for Levi to calculate how many times the long version of Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” can be played on each leg of the trip. Actually, since Levi has a first-generation iPod, I’m not sure how familiar he is with the concept of the “on-the-go playlist” feature of the third-generation iPods. This allows someone in the passenger seat to easily construct a playlist consisting of, for example, “Feels So Good” three times, the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” twice, and then “Feels So Good” four more times. It would also allow someone in the driver’s seat to steer the car into a tree.

On another note, I got my brand-new passport in the mail today, so that I can more easily get into and out of Canada on this trip. My previous passport was issued in 1984, the last time I traveled outside the borders of the U.S. Why, it’s old enough that it has separate stamps for France and Belgium in it! (My mother finally dug the old one up from wherever she’d been hiding it and sent it to me, thus finally allowing me to apply for a new one.)