Author: Levi Stahl

Get ’em while they’re hot!

It looks like the Florida Marlins are beginning yet another fire sale.

This will be their second such sale in their twelve years of existence. Are they determined to make the Devil Rays look good?

Anyway, if you want a speedy center fielder for your beer-league team, you might call them up. Sounds like they’d consider an offer of a bag of batting practice balls.

Just keep repeating to yourself: Bud Selig has been good for baseball. Saddam Hussein was a threat. Bud Selig has been good for baseball.

God Bless Take Me Out to the Ballgame

When I was a kid, I read a good book (the name of which I’ve forgotten) about an American boy growing up in China and going to an English school. He didn’t want to sing “God Save the Queen,” but not doing so got him in trouble. His father pointed out that he could instead sing, quietly, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” which shared a melody with the British anthem.

It will no doubt cheer BRPA2004 readers to learn that, while watching the White Sox win the World Series on Fox, those in attendance at the Rocketship realized that, while “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “God Bless America”–two songs whose relative importance in baseball history Bud Selig seems to have confused–do not traditionally share a melody, there is, it turns out, no reason that they shouldn’t.

That’s right: “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” can be sung–flawlessly–to the tune of “God Bless America.” (And vice-versa, I suppose, but, well, yuck. Why do that to America?)

Try it at home. Try it at your favorite ballpark the next time the PA guy demands a show of religious-themed patriotism rather than a celebration of what you’ve actually chosen to do with your day.

Or wait until I get Jim to sing it and post the MP3.

As the caption to a photo at the Neo-Futurarium of a boy flipping off the camera said, “See–everything in the world’s not made of toilet.”

Games Brian Giles plays

1) Baseball

2) Touch Marquis Grissom Before He Gets to the Dugout

I knew about #1 from his All-Star appearances, his playoff appearance against the Cardinals this year, and his thousands of home runs against the Cardinals and Cubs in recent years.

But I didn’t know a thing about #2 until Viva El Birdos, in the midst of talking about the possibility of Giles becoming a Cardinal, pointed out that he’s clearly a goofball. From Gaslamp Ball:

“Announcer Tom Hamilton once remarked that when the Tribe defense leaves the field, Grissom would run like a madman for the dugout. Why? Grissom was trying to avoid a little game that Giles played: ‘Touch Marquis Grissom before he gets to the dugout.’ Grissom wanted no part of that, and I can see why after Giles presented Marquis’s birthday cake to him in the nude. Hamilton said, ‘Yes, folks, in the clubhouse, Giles presented the cake to Grissom wearing only his birthday suit…and that’s all I can say on the air.'”

Morganna the Kissing Bandit used to play a similar game, but I’m pretty sure she never tried it with Marquis Grissom.

Don’t you think Morganna ought to have a baseball-reference.com page? It could list her successful kisses and such.

Ouch

A hell of a full-body beatdown is administered to Phil “Scrap Iron” Garner by Tom Verducci at SI.com.

And every word of it seems right on. The manager did take several chances last night to put his team into the best position to win, then he complained about their effort afterwards.

That’s a couple of the key ingredients for longterm bad karma.

Tasty!

In the ninth innning of Sunday’s Sox win, Scott Podsednik at the plate, Joe Buck says to Tim McCarver, “You know, Tim, a lot of people thought Garner should have put Lidge into game six of the NLCS, just to get the taste of that Pujols home run out of his mouth. What do you think?”

“Well, Joe, I don’t think that taste is there.”

But right around the time McCarver said “taste,” the ballgame was ending as Podsednik’s homer cleared the right field wall.

Maybe that taste is there after all? Tastes a bit coppery, like blood.

Thank god for 13th-round draft picks, or, Barbara, don’t pack up your bag just yet!

Well, well, well.

1) That was a nice reminder that what we’re all seeing every time Pujols plays is a Hall-of-Fame career in the making. Cardinals fans are extremely lucky to have him, and we ought to appreciate it with every at-bat.

2) Even were the Cardinals to go on and get trounced tomorrow night, Pujols (and, to give credit properly, Eckstein and Edmonds, who had tough at-bats before him) at least took what had been a frustrating, disappointing series and gave us something we’ll remember for a long time.

3) My brother’s two concerns post-game? He was hoping the construction guys hadn’t started the wrecking ball back in the 7th for Busch Stadium. (Fox had, as their highlight reel of Busch over the years demonstrated.) Second, he wanted to know if Fox had reconsidered their choice of Lance Berkman as Chevrolet Player of the Game–chosen, as usual, in like the second inning.

4) In the 9th, with one out, Barbara Bush–visible all game as a little Boglin head perched just above the railing behind home–started packing up her bag. “Why,” she probably thought, “would I want to sully my beautiful mind with thoughts of Brad Lidge blowing this game?”

What Is and What Should Never Be

Note to headline writers and creators of Fox graphics:

A word or phrase that sounds like a different word or phrase is not necessarily a pun. A pun must involve some play on both the sound and the meaning of a word or phrase.

For example, titling a graphic describing, say, David Eckstein’s postseason hitting prowess “Eck-Ray Vision” is utterly inappropriate, unless he’s managed his postseason hitting prowess with rays from his eyes or some such nonsense, which he hasn’t.

So stop it. Stop it stop it stop it.

That is all.

Congratulations, George Bush!

With the sale of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the subsequent firing of the only general manager in the team’s history, Chuck LaMar–he of the .400 winning percentage over the team’s 8 seasons–the field has been cleared for the Bush administration to take sole possession of first place in the “least accountable organization” standings.

Manifest failure? Sickening incompetence? Take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld. Smile while you’re picking up your consulting check, Brownie. If you worked for anyone else–even the new and improved Tampa Bay Devil Rays–you’d be out of a job. As someone more clever than I put it, “Not only does the buck not stop there–it doesn’t even slow down!” Well, it’s finally landed, for the Devil Rays, at least.

Next step for the Devil Rays: setting some goals. Any kind of goals.

Faux News

This just in: Fox has invited the Yankees and Red Sox to play a seven-game series in the consolation bracket. The games will be broadcast in prime time Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the NLCS and the ALCS play-by-play will be delivered via telegraph

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and local re-enactors. Or, if you prefer, you’ll be able to get a radio broadcast by Scooter.