Category: misc

Posts that don’t quite fit into any other categories.

A Poll

You can vote in the comments section. I’ll tabulate the votes, without, I promise, the help of Diebold.

Question: Should Steve and I coach a little league team together?

Not that I’ve asked Steve about this before this very moment. Not that I have a team in mind, or have any idea how one goes about getting one together. Not that I know a damned thing about pitching, or coaching kids (except that you can’t talk like Lee Elia). Not that I am even known to be a fan of children.

It’s just a poll.

Original comments…

Luke: Oh, God, yes. I’m imagining something of a cross between “Bad News Bears” and “Dead Poets Society,” or

In my last season of Little League we were coached by a couple of guys from the high school team. We thought they were the coolest — they introduced us to Eazy E and NWA, among other things — especially relative to all the incompetent and abusive fathers we usually got. I’m pretty sure they were only coaching us to work off community service, but still. You guys could be Little League kings.

Can either of you throw a curveball? The greatest terror I’ve ever known was when one of these coaches threw curveballs straight for my head, only to have them break in for strikes. The day I learned to stand in against a curve without hitting the deck is the day I became a man.

(No, wait. I became a man the day I started putting mustard on my hot dogs — I was 24 – but that’s another story.)

How much does it cost to sponsor a team? Schlitzserv Sluggers has a nice ring to it. We could take them all out to Simon’s after the game and buy them soda pop and chocolate cigars. (Unless they have lost, in which case we’d take them to the Y to run laps and lift weights.)

Steve: I don’t know…. I hope you are talking about this Steve. Otherwise I’ll feel stupid.

There was a time when Bloodshot sponsored a little league team. I watched them play a few times. They had this one fat kid who looked just like Fernando Valenzuela. He was so slow that unless he absolutely murdered the ball he would get thrown out at first on hits that would have been singles for other kids. The most remarkable thing about this kid though was that he could hit. Watching him swing was kind of like the famous Simpsons “Ringers” episode. They show Homer in slow motion and his whole gut is shaking with the momentum. This kid would wind up and almost completely extend his arms. The bat would come through the zone in slow motion and he would power the ball mostly to left field (a dead pull hitter). He was about seven or eight but easily had 10yr old power.

One thing I gathered is that if you can instill even the smallest bit of discipline you can seriously capitalize on the other teams errors. There was one team that would just run and run and run. They were kind of like the 85 Cardinals without the base-stealing. If they had a hit they would just keep running to force the fielding team to throw to second base and tag the runner. Many times the ball was late or would land at the second baseman’s feet. Clearly this was the product of adults well attuned to the poor coordination of youngsters. There was this win at all cost mentality that didn’t quite seem appropriate. It sacrificed the notion of fundamental baseball and all the kids were cocky because they were little doubles machines.

There were some drawbacks. A seven-inning game would last about three hours. Three innings were coach pitch and four innings were kid pitch. Kid pitch was excruciating. So many walks….

I’ll strongly consider it if I get to wear polyester softball shorts and have a whistle.

Levi: Certainly I was thinking of you, Steve.

And my vote is yes!

Even though I’m not sure I’m serious about it yet.

stacey: i vote yes, too. this is way better than levi’s plan that i lead a girl scout troop. i’ll even bake cookies and bring them to the ballpark with oven mitts on.

Luke: Why not both? Hell, *I’d* join a Girl Scout troop if Stacey were the leader. You could even swap jobs occasionally: Stacey would coach the boys (and sporting girls) in how to bunt and spit, and Levi would teach the Scouts how to make bread and mulled wine.

Levi: And once in a while, I’d have Tony Becker and his mom come by for a lesson in making Mint Juleps, or Pete Bodensteiner could run a lesson on cigars.

This sounds better all the time.

Tom Ellwanger: Try to get Don Zimmer to coach third base. This is a guy who knows something about baseball.

Levi: But if we get Zimmer to coach third, there will always be the danger of him attacking the other team’s best pitcher!

He’ll at least deliver an honest, hearfelt apology afterwards, though. And kids need to see honest, heartfelt apologies–there are too few examples in public life. Maybe it would be worth a brawl now and then?

sandor: I vote yes. I was about to say, I’d even try to join the team, since I never got to participate in Little League when I was little. But then it occurred to me, what the hell was I thining, I did play Little League when I was little, but it was such a terrible experience — for me and for my teammmates — that I’ve apparently tried to block it out of my memory. So you better keep me away.

If I’d had coaches like Levi and Steve, however, who knows how much better it would have been. Certainly I would have learned the simple lesson of watching the batter when playing right field, instead of watching the planes fly overhead. Such pretty planes…

Tony: Not knowing much about little league, I guess I’d have to say it’s really up to Steve and Levi. I think it would probably afford everybody more opportunities for sunshine, eating hot dogs, and wearing funny hats.

However, if you like the idea of Mint Julep lessons from my mother, you’ll love these pictures that Dad took down at the ranch last summer.

thatbob: I can’t see Levi having more than three minutes’ patience with a bunch of kids – or they having more than a minute’s patience with him – so to me, the proposal is reminiscent of The Country Show, in the sense that it would be a joint venture in idea only, while in reality Steve would be left to shoulder most of the work. Which would be great! Any venture that leaves Steve to shoulder most of the work is worth following closely! But I still have to vote against the idea, mostly because I think I have a better one: Steve and the rabbi coach a Little League team. That way, when Steve is working his ass off, the rabbi can get in a few drinks. And this all makes for a much better movie.

Toby: If you do, Levi, I promise I’ll come up and cover one of your games.

To be fair

Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Craig Wilson has so far gotten insufficient (read: zero) attention at this site for his fantastic new hairdo.

I bet he’s muttering about East Coast media bias at his locker before games as he thumbs through the paper and sees photo after photo of Johnny Damon’s hair and beard.

So here’s to Craig Wilson and his gloriously flowing golden locks. We come from the land of the ice and snow, indeed!

P.S. My friend Downtown Toby Brown says I’m in trouble if, on our trip, I root for the Brewers to beat the Pirates. Toby’s long-suffering Pirates fandom does deserve our support, so I guess I’ll be rooting for the eyepatch and parrot over the suds and brats.

Original comments…

Jim: Ah, yes, now I recall that during the Pirates-Phillies game I watched way back on Opening Day, the Pirates announcers were being effusive in their praise of Craig Wilson’s hairdo, comparing him to Johnny Damon (but also pointing out that with his blond hair, a Johnny Damon-style beard wouldn’t look as good on him).

Steve: Golden locks my ass! As soon as he takes that helmet off you’re looking at a mullet pure and simple. Just be careful if you try to talk to him about his hair or get his autograph on your upcomming trip. He might go Geddy Lee on you.—“Living in a fisheye lens/Caught in the camera eye/I have no heart to lie I can’t pretend a stranger is/A long awaited friend”

stacey: Thing One: Johnny Damon makes my heart swell with love and hapa pride.

Thing Two: Sorry, Toby. Although pirates also make my heart swell, beer and brats and proximity win. At least until I meet an actual pirate, at which point I can reassess.

Survey says . . .

At Saturday’s Cubs/Mets game at chilly Wrigley Field, there was a play that I didn’t have any idea how to score. I don’t have my scorebook in front of me, so you’ll have to bear with me–I might be wrong about which player did what–but here’s the basics:

Todd Walker was at first base with one out. Corey Patterson hit a bouncer to second baseman Super-Joe McEwing. While fielding the ball, McEwing was in the basepath, where, in the process of fielding, he has the right to be. Walker’s choices were to stop, crash into McEwing, or go around him. He chose to go around, at which point he was called out by the second-base ump for going out of the baseline.

It was the correct call, but how was I to score it? Was Walker out 4 unassisted? Or is there a special notation, like the single Japanese character Scott Sepich noticed a Japanese journalist using for a 6-4-3 double play?

I think I need the opinion of an official scorer. To the Baggarlyphone! Maybe Andy can ask the Giants’ scorer for me, if he doesn’t know himself.

Original comments…

Toby: Levi, I believe the indication is OOBP. You would draw a perpendicular line halting the runner’s path between first and second. And no, I don’t think McEwing gets that put-out.

Toby

Levi: Thanks, Toby. That makes far more sense than anything my friend Michelle and I came up with at the game. My excuse is that it was too damn cold to think.

baggarly: never fear. the runner indeed is called out for running out of the basepath. score the play a fielder’s choice, the runner is out 4 unassisted.

next week, kids, catcher’s interference!

baggarly: actually a smart play by the runner, since if he’d been tagged, i’m guessing the mets turn a double play (which, as all us budding official scorers know, you can never assume).

Levi: Thanks, Baggs.

If Walker had crashed into McEwing, he would have been out for interference, right?

Jim Edmonds

Redbird Nation, the best Cardinals site on the web, describes Jim Edmonds’s approach at the plate perfectly today:

That’s the way Jim Edmonds plays baseball. It’s like someone took a film strip of Will Clark swinging a bat, crumpled it up, cut out a few frames, reassembled them out of order, ran it back through a film projector, then used it to teach Jedmonds how to swing a bat. But the results — those high, majestic home runs — would be as if Thrill had hit them himself.

Side note: I miss Will Clark. Back in the late 80s, I would never have thought that possible, but watching him as a Cardinal the last two months of 2000 secured him a place on my team of all-time favorites.

Move over, Wayne and Mike!

A coworker who is also a Cardinals fan has a twelve-year-old son with whom he watches most Cardinals games with the MLB Extra Innings package.

Recently, the feed was down for a few days, but my coworker and his son still wanted to see the game. So they did the next-to-next-best thing (The next-best thing being, of course, radio): they watched the pitch-by-pitch ticker online, and they announced the game as if they were broadcasting it.

All that was really just a long preamble so I can tell you this: my coworker’s six-year-old daughter said, “You guys need announcer names. Dad, your name is Bob. Ethan, your name is Aladdin.”

Which gave my coworker plenty of chances to say things like, “Matt Morris sure is pitching well tonight, isn’t he, Aladdin.”

Unbelievable

Here’s Barry Bonds so far this year.

I said to Stacey last night, “Maybe this will be the year he hits .400, just to show that he can.”

Stacey said, “Maybe this will be the year he hits .500.”

I’ll go out on a limb and say that if he hits .500, he’ll win another MVP.

Of course, he’s going to have to get past Dontrelle Willis to do that. Dontrelle Willis as a hitter, I mean.

Original comments…

Steve: So is he using a new more glamorous steroid or just trying that much harder? I like those projections but what about the non-breakable record no one talks about 190 RBI?

No matter what the question is, the answer’s always "Jeopardy!"

I tried out for “Jeopardy!” today for the third time in three years, and passed the test for the third time, which means you get to play a brief mock version of the game and be grilled by the contestant coordinators. I mentioned this trip, and was asked what city/stadium I was looking forward to the most; I said Boston and Fenway, because I thought it would take too long to explain that I’m looking forward to all the stops for different and varied reasons. Then, when asked what I’d do with the money, I said maybe I’d do an “all 30” trip…but it’s probably a little too early to start planning that one, since they didn’t call me for the 2002-03 season, and they didn’t call me for the 2003-04 season. Perhaps the problem is that they calculate everyone’s expected winnings based on how well they do at the tryout, and I would blow the show’s budget.

Really, what I’d first do with my game show winnings is move to a place big enough to hold a pinball machine without it taking up half the space in the living room. And then I’d get a pinball machine.

Bobby V.

Stacey pointed out that my suggestion back on April 7th that the Cardinals pretend, for an important at-bat, that Albert Pujols is So Taguchi resembles former New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine’s greatest moment. To recap: On June 9, 1999, In the 12th inning of a game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Bobby Valentine was ejected for arguing a catcher’s interference call. He went to the clubhouse–presumably after doing a bit of dirt kicking and enthusiastic swearing–but returned a few minutes later wearing a disguise. After a while, the announcers noticed the stranger lurking at the back of the dugout, and a few days later, the National League suspended Valentine for two games and fined him $5,000.

The difference between Valentine’s approach and the one I advocated for the Cardinals is instructive. When confronted by the league about the disguise, Valentine fessed up. He argued that he wasn’t really trying to fool anyone, and he swore–despite seemingly contradictory photographic evidence–that he wasn’t in the dugout. But he never denied that the man with the big nose, glasses, and mustache was him.

Denying photographic evidence is a start–in fact, it will be a necessary part of my plan–but it has to be accompanied by an all-out denial on all fronts. The only hope of avoiding a lengthy suspension for Pujols, Taguchi, LaRussa, and probably me, too, is a refusal to accept that any type of evidence proves that the player who we claim is Pujols is not actualy Pujols. It’s hard to believe, given Valentine’s reputation, but in this case what did him in was not being stubborn enough. I wonder what Ari Fleischer’s doing these days. Given some of the lines he peddled during the last couple of years, this would be child’s play.

I wonder if Bobby Valentine would put up that kind of defense if you accused him of manufacturing that strangely orange tan he sports these days?

Oh, and the Mets won, 4-3.

The Knuckler

I was able to see a couple of Cody McKay’s pitches on ESPN last night. The knuckler was a thing of beauty, floating up there all wobbly, whispering seductively to the hitter, “C’mon. Take a hack. Pound me into the ground.” And the hitter did.

The “fastball” on the other hand, was lacking not just most of what is best known as the “gitty,” but it was also a little short on the “up” and the “go.”

Still, two scoreless innings, right now, are enough to put McKay in the running for our fifth starter job.

Oh, and Hector Luna deserves some attention for hitting a long home run in his first major-league at-bat. The last Cardinal to do that? Gene Stechschulte, a relief pitcher, whose baseball-reference web page is sponsored by www.firequipmentpics.com, with the tag line, “Large fire truck picture website that recognizes Gene for the great pitcher he is.”