Blue Jays 4, Devil Rays 2. The Rays’ winning streak of June is now but a distant memory.
Tomorrow: Cleveland! Actually, it’s late enough that it’s later today, really. My excuse is that, since this is only a pretend version of the trip, I can go to a friend’s birthday karaoke party in real life.
Expos 2, Marlins 1. I don’t know, Les Poissons didn’t look like World Series champs to me. But maybe that’s because I’m still bitter.
Tomorrow: Toronto, and at last, I won’t look so out of place with the Devil Rays cap I’ve been wearing this whole time!
Jason: You should probably have washed your Rays hat by now. Just because you’re in a French-speaking region, that’s no excuse to drop your sanitary habits.
According to a Washington-based media news site, assuming the greater D.C. area really is getting the Expos, one radio station group owner is already looking forward to getting the broadcast rights…and putting the broadcasts on their classical station, which would henceforth use the slogan “Bach, Beethoven, and baseball.”
Elsewhere, someone has already suggested Washington Insiders as a team name. If it were up to me, though, I’d follow the Swing of the Quad Cities model and name the team The Fat Cats in Washington.
Jason: I’d name them the D.C. Follies. It fits so well.
Dan: Or do the trendy non-plural team name: The D.C. Cab.
Yankees 10, Blue Jays 3. No Jeter! No Giambi! Yankees still win. Levi grumbling about not being able to watch the Cardinals’ current awesomeness.
Wait a minute. What am I doing up so late? We’ve got to get up early to make it to a day game in Boston tomorrow!
The answer to the question posed at the end of this entry is, no, I won’t remember when July 17th rolls around. So here’s the first half of Itinerary Number Two…
Saturday, July 17: Cubs 5, Brewers 0. A complete-game shutout for Greg Maddux!
Sunday, July 18: Tigers 4, Yankees 2. The Tigers get their 44th win, one more win than they had all last season!
Monday, July 19: Expos 6, Pirates 2. A rare Expos win!
Tuesday, July 20: Marlins 9, Mets 7. A seesaw battle in the Big Apple!
Tomorrow: The Bronx! Also: More exclamation points?!
I don’t like to post these on a regular basis because I don’t want to screw up future results…but yesterday someone found this page by searching for “baseball related things that start with the letter Q.”
Jim: Hooray for whoever searched for “baseball related things that start with Levi and Jim.”
With one month to go until the trip officially starts with me flying to Chicago, I thought I’d show you all the items I got from AAA…
Not all of these items will make the trip, because their weight adds up. Most likely to be left at home are the Tourbooks for Arkansas/Kansas/Missouri/Oklahoma and Iowa/Minnesota/Nebraska/North Dakota/South Dakota, since in both cases, we’ll be in one of the included states for no more than a few hours.
Levi: I guess I’ll make the reservation for a trailer rental now.
Baseballrelated.com was represented today at the 2004 induction into the Baseball Reliquary’s Shrine of the Eternals, a.k.a. the parallel universe version of the Hall of Fame. The best part is that I didn’t have to go all the way to Cooperstown for the inductions; instead, I took public transportation to Pasadena.
Where else are you going to hear Lester Rodney, the 93-year-old former sports editor of the Daily Worker, tell Jackie Robinson stories? Probably nowhere. The story about Pee Wee Reese putting his arm around Jackie never fails to move me.
Later, Dick Allen waxed eloquent about having to play Roberto Clemente and the rest of the “Lumber Yard”: “They’d keep us on defense for 35, 40 minutes, and then we’d only be in the dugout for 7 minutes.”
After I got home, I watched my TiVo recording of (what turned out to be) a 10-4 Cardinals victory over the Reds. DirecTV has had another free preview of the MLB Extra Innings package for the few days following the All-Star break, hoping to sell a few people on ordering it for the second half of the season (for only one-third less than what it cost at the beginning of the year). I figured I should watch the Cardinals so Levi and I will have something to talk about all those days in the car. That Scott Rolen certainly is a good player! Also, the Reds held my interest by bringing in a member of my All-Name team, Todd Van Poppel. (Among the other members of my All-Name team: Quinton McCracken and Delino DeShields.)
Since it was a home game for the Reds, it was the feed from Fox Sports Net Ohio, and something strange was going on every time announcer George Grande would do a “Reds baseball on Fox Sports Net is brought to you by…” announcement; he’d read the plugs, and then would shut up for 15 or 20 seconds until the music bed ended. (And 15 to 20 seconds of a baseball announcer being silent seems like an eternity!) My semi-educated guess is that local cable systems put in their own sponsorship announcements there, but if anyone knows differently, please use the comments below. Actually, since I don’t watch much baseball on TV, for all I know, all the Fox Sports Net affiliates are doing that now.
Jim: Two things I forgot to mention…the induction ceremony was being interpreted for the benefit of the “Dummy” Hoy contingent, and because I was seeing it over and over, I now know the sign language for “baseball”: bring your fists together in front of your chest, elbows out, as if you’re in a batting stance.
Also, the first person to leap to his feet to give Lester Rodney a standing ovation was a man wearing a Dennis Kucinich T-shirt.
Levi: No, the pause is the new system where you, the viewer, supply the ad copy. Then you send Fox money.
Toby: What a Smart Alec Levi is. Yes, Jim, that slot might be for local inserts or it could be for a local station identification.
And I certainly hope Montreal’s Terrmel Sledge makes your All-Name list.
Was Buck O’Neal at this gathering you attended?
1. That was interesting having the starters enter from the stands, but instead of having them lined up in the aisle, they should all have been sitting in various places around the lower deck, and would have acted surprised when they heard their names called…you know, having to put down their hot dogs, maybe borrowing a glove from the kid next to them, whatever.
2. I am amazed to find out that there are teams in the National League other than the Cubs and the Barry Bondses. I have also heard rumors that there are teams in the American League other than the Yankees and Red Sox, but saw no solid evidence during the game broadcast to back up the gossip.
3. I know Suzuki is a very common last name in Japan, but why does Ichiro Suzuki get to rise to the level of Cher, or Pelé, and get only his first name listed in Fox’s on-screen graphics?
4. Seriously, Joe Buck is almost completely insane, and I’m certain that it’s all Tim McCarver’s fault. They need to be separated immediately before there’s an ugly incident in the press box, and by that I mean Joe Buck should stay where he is and Tim McCarver should be dropped on an iceberg somewhere in the Arctic.
5. Hey, Fox spent some money to upgrade Scooter’s animation since I last saw him! Great; that’s money that could have been spent to teach illiterate kids to read, or to increase the salary of a certain “Malcolm in the Middle” writer.
Toby: I couldn’t agree more about dropping McCarver!! And that’s a great idea about introducing the starters (kind of like a “Price is Right” intro).
Does anyone else remember when Vida Blue played and he had just “Vida” on the back of his uniform?
Levi: I’ve always liked Ichiro!’s first-name-uniform thing in part because of Vida Blue, who was before my time as a fan, but whom I’ve seen in photos.
And I agree wholeheartedly with Jim and Toby about McCarver. I used to like Joe Buck when he was just a kid doing Cardinals broadcasts. He was modest and straightforward and obviously had grown up listening to his dad and Moon Man Shannon. But a few years with McCarver and he’s completely around the bend.
And that was yesterday’s bad news: in the midst of all the good news about how baseball is doing well and ratings are up, Fox has said they may be interested in extending their contract. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!
Steve: 1) How about Piazza getting his revenge by tipping pitches? “Hey Manny, here comes the fastball.”
2) I watched the game with the sound off mostly but it was quite awkward to see them give Clemens whatever award he got in the middle of the game.
3) Fantasia and Ruben both suck!
4) I know its the all star game and the AL was leading and all but talking to the manager in the dugout while the game is happening is just plain wrong.
5) I guess Taco Bell just wrote off that million dollars they gave away since that fat guy who throws as hard as Matt Morris was still able to hit a target the size of rhode island. Where’s the drama.
6) Danny Kolb!
Dan: I was hoping at the last minute there’d be a mixup forcing Muhammad Ali to sing the national anthem and giving the first pitch to Fantasia.
And I’ll say this much.. good thing Piazza wore a catchers’ mask, because I sure bet he was smiling underneath it as the AL rocked Clemens.
Jon Solomon: Comcast has taken to talking to Lary Bowa in the dugout in the middle of certain (non-exhibition) Phillies games. It just isn’t right.
Secho: A couple of weeks ago I was watching a White Sox telecast and they had an in-game interview with Ozzie Guillen, and Hawk prefaced it with something like “I hate that we have to do this in the middle of the game but I guess we do” and then handed it off to DJ who threw some softball questions at Ozzie for 2 or 3 minutes. (BTW, I hope Hawk clubs Mariotti upside the head the next time they cross paths) The whole thing just seems so forced as to counteract any possible insight you can get from the dugout mid-game.
How about Ali throwing up the bunny ears behind A-Rod during the team photo? Good stuff.
Dan: Ali really was the perfect guy to have there, considering his long, righ ties with the game of baseball as well as the city of Houston. Nolan Ryan — you know the guy they had as the Taco Bell pitching coach? — now HE’S a guy that most certainly had no business being there at all
Jason: I didn’t watch the game. Did I miss any shots of Calista Flockhart eating a hot dog?
Levi: I would think that in these worried days of FCC crackdowns, a broadcaster might think twice about interviewing Larry F’in Bowa.
Buck and McCarver interviewed Steve Kline during Saturday’s game, and it was actually kind of fun. On a couple of close plays, Kline said, “Oh, he was out, obviously out,” and Joe would say, “No he wasn’t, Steve.”
And in reference to a statement McCarver said about muscle weighing more than fat, Kline said, “Well, then that bacon I had for breakfast this morning must have had some muscle on it.” And on why he doesn’t stretch much: “I learned that you can’t tear fat. So you don’t have to stretch.”
…make it 11 games in 11 cities in 10 days. Clearly having our trip in mind, the White Sox and Phillies have scheduled a makeup interleague game for Monday, August 30th, at 1:05 P.M. at Some Sort of Cellular-Type Company Field in Chicago. If the game doesn’t run too long past 3 hours, we should be able to see it, then drive to Milwaukee afterwards and see the 7:05 P.M. Brewers-Pirates game that’s been on the schedule all along.
I’ll update the itinerary later today. (Also, this would be a great day for Chicagolanders to take off work and become official hangers-on. We should have space for three of you in the car.)
Edited late Tuesday afternoon: As promised, the itinerary is updated.
Levi: I have to admit to proposing this addition to Jim with a bit of trepidation. I really do think that ending the trip with a two-city twinbill will answer, once and for all, whether I can possibly get tired of baseball.