Baseball Lying and Skybus Flying

For fans of baseball, the middle of January is a lonely time of year. It's been months since the World Series, there still a couple months till opening day, and most of the trading's happened. Spring Training, that time of false optimism for about 90% of teams is still a month or so away. You know it is the low times for baseball when the writers over at MLB.com have their top story about how a player who wasn't named in the Mitchell Report just got around to addressing false statements that he was named in the Mitchell Report. MLB.com has never had the greatest writers in the world, and when a story doesn't fly over a fence for the 756th time, they have trouble stringing together words worth reading. So please, baseball writers, quit writing meaningless articles about Jeff Francoeur's film choices and brush up on your Sabermetrics. You're going to have to learn what OPS+ means some day.

Somewhat baseball related: I was looking at what Spring Training and trying to see if I could fly down to Lake Buena Vista, FL to see the Braves play on the world's cheapest airline, Skybus. Unfortunately, Skybus does not fly anywhere nearby, but it does fly to the city where the Orioles play their warm up games. No thanks. Skybus interests me to no end. I am amazed at the fact you can fly on the East coast for somewhere around 40 dollars usually, with some tickets going as cheap as $25. The catch upfront is that the plane has no actual service for passengers, and the hidden catch is that they don't actually fly you to the cities they list. Want to fly to New York? Well, they fly you to New York - Newburgh, NY to be exact, about 75 miles outside of New York City. New Orleans, right? You land somewhere in the middle of nowhere Mississippi and are expected to have a way to the Big Easy. That makes me shudder. LA is a bit easier - you land just fifteen miles outside in Burbank. I think this Spring I'll still try to fly Skybus, maybe to New Orleans in March. Maybe to Florida, where their destinations are a little closer to recognizable civilization. Backwoods Mississippi scares me.

Loch Ness Kotsay

The Braves recently announced the acquisition of Mark Kotsay from the Oakland A's to fill Andruw Jones' space in centerfield for 2008. Kotsay is about as mediocre as it gets, his OPS+ is at 100 exactly for his career. I'm not exactly sure what Kotsay's wife Jamie's OPS+ is, but is she mediocre? Not so much.

In Search of the Elusive Jamie Kotsay
Kotsay Going to Atlanta. Husband Going With Her.

Both articles come from Ump Bump.

Tomahawk Chop

The spring semester is still a few days from starting, but I've already set aside a reward for a hopeful strong finish. I'm getting tickets for the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets series in May. I've always been a Braves fan, but never seen them play, so the three games against their biggest rival should be a treat.

Other tickets I picked up/plan to pick up recently:

1/9 - UNC vs. UNC Asheville basketball
1/18 - the everbodyfields in Winston-Salem
3/7 - Chatham County Line CD release with the everybodyfields in Carrboro

I hope everyone had good and safe time on New Year's Eve. I hope your night was as good as mine, just without the shouting match over which suburb of Winston-Salem was better, Walnut Cove or Clemmons, at two in the morning in a crowded diner.

Mitchell Report

I'm right in the middle of studying for an exam on Henry IV, Part 1, John Donne's "The Ecstasy" and Paradise Lost, but I felt the significance of the Mitchell Report warranted a quick post.

- The only good part for me was seeing none of my favorite players named in the body of the report. That means no significant Atlanta Braves players, besides David Justice were named. From skimming through it, the only recent players to suit up for Atlanta was Todd Pratt and Gary Sheffield. I don't quite know when Sheff would have gotten into steroids or HGH, so there is a possibility he could have been juiced in Atlanta. And John Rocker, but that guy and roid rage go hand in hand. I like to think Justice got into the juice while he was playing for the Yankees, a point I will get to in a moment. So yes, the silver lining of this whole mess (and it is one) was no Braves greats. No Maddux, no Glavine, no Smoltz, no Chipper. Definitely not Mark Lemke either. Have there been/are there guys who are getting an illegal edge while on the Braves roster? Of course. Did the team come out relatively unscathed? Yes.

- Paul Lo Duca is a pretty big douchebag. He seemed about as likable as a guy can be while playing for the Dodgers and Mets, but the Mitchell Report has changed my perception. Apparently, Lo Duca is responsible for putting multiple players in contact with Kirk Radomski, the ex-Mets employee who was shipping steroids and HGH to MLB players. Off the top of my head, I remember seeing that Kevin Brown and Eric Gagne were two of the catcher's referrals. From the sound of things, I wouldn't be surprised if there are Facebook pictures of Miguel Tejada doing bodyshots of anabolic steroids off of Paul Lo Duca's manboobs.

- Kevin Brown is a shady dude. There are multiple accounts in the report of Brown overnighting envelopes full of cash, sometimes as much $10,000, to Kirk Radomski's doorstep. Radomski tells at one point of coming home to find a rain-soaked envelope sitting on his doorstep from Brown with $8,000 in cash inside. Brown had checked 'waive signature' when he mailed it. Kevin Brown lacks common sense.

- The two teams that seemed to have more players than others listed were the Yankees and Dodgers. Granted, both teams tend to have lots of free agents come through for a few years at the end of their careers because both franchises can afford high dollar players. Yet, the Yanks had Clemens, Pettitte, and Chuck Knoblauch along with David Justice, Denny Nealge, Kevin Brown and Mike Stanton named, not to mention Giambi. Two of MLB's flagship franchises with some bad, bad press.

- The MLBPAA isn't doing what is right. Head of the player's associating, Donald Fehr, sent out memos to all players recommending they not cooperate in the Mitchell investigation. That really disappoints me. I understand they want to protect their players, but be reasonable. These ball players did something very wrong. Done condone it.

- Barry Bonds was not named. I've decided that the government didn't want to waste ink and paper printing something everyone already knew.

- I'm really scared what happens after this. This will not fade away. I'm scared for baseball. I'm scared that my childhood favorites are going to be implicated soon. That would break my heart.


Now back to studying. Take care everyone, and I'm sorry if your boyhood idol was just outed as a big time user.

Edit: Something I forgot to include up there that is of definite significance: the General Manager. There are multiple cases of the GM having good sources tell him that a player was cheating and using, and went ahead with acquiring/resigning said player. Not just Brian Sabean in San Francisco with Barry Bonds either. Theo Epstein had full knowledge of Eric Gagne's use of steroids, a year in advance, before Gagne was shipped over from Texas. True, Epstein is one of those new wave of baseball guys that I like so much because they are embracing the scientific and analytical aspects of the game. However, that doesn't keep the Red Sox GM from being a 'win at all cost' type of guy. Remember, being a win at all costs type of guy doesn't make you heroic or worthy of worship. It makes you they guy who gives someone a bloody nose while playing ultimate frisbee. It makes you a doucebag.

Yeah, I'm a little pissed off about the state of baseball right now. It is a great game, but money has totally corrupted it.

Now back to Henry IV, Part 1.

Matt

Understand the Rivaly

I haven't been able to keep up on concert reviews lately because I've been faced with the sworn enemy of bloggers everywhere: actual work.

I hate the Yankees as much as anyone. Really, I am a Braves fan. But Shelley Duncan, the new guy in pinstripes makes me laugh. The Red Sox aren't far from being the Yankees in a lot of people's books these days, so Duncan's prank he played on a ten year old Sox fan is classic. Go here to see what I'm talking about.

PECOTA!

The Dugout has been hosting their big finale buildup at Progressive Boink all during the past week, and tomorrow marks the giant conclusion. I check the Dugout daily just to see what Bill Pecota, Dmitri Young, and Kyle Farnsworth are up to. Go to their website and read the entire week's post before tomorrow, and make sure to track through the archives as well. Tomorrow may be the last decent dugout - they make the move to AOL Fanhouse after that.

BOOM BITCH!

The Georgia Peach

I just watched Tim Hudson of the Atlanta Braves on Paula Deen's cooking show. I think the pairing of baseball and good Southern food is a match that is well overdue. My favorite ball club and my favorite television cook together, making delicious ham with pineapple and brown sugar. Doesn't get better on a Sunday.

Time to Take the Car Keys Away From Grandpa

I used to really like Andy Rooney. He seemed really wise and humorous in the way only old men can be. He knew a lot about linguistics. These days? Not so much. Andy Rooney has talked bad about the game of baseball. That alone is not so bad - plenty of people say bad things about baseball and it is warranted. If someone wants to make a case for the game losing some integrity, I will listen. If someone wants to talk about how foolish it is for the game to worship the past more than celebrate the present, or play pretend-ethics in a world that is pushing towards being meta-ethical, I'll listen. But Andy Rooney has crossed a line. He has said horrible things about baseball. Andy Rooney is not a baseball man. He cannot say these things. Read through the following from Rooney's column for the Stamford Times (huh?) and just make sure to notice a couple things. 1) Xenophobia? 2) Andy Rooney writes like a fifth grader. Fuck you, old man. Fuck you.

Andy Rooney — A no-hit game for me

Baseball has never been my game. I never liked it as a kid, probably because I could never throw a ball very well. My friends said I threw like a girl and that's enough to put any young boy off a game. As I've probably told you — after over 4,000 columns it's sometimes hard to remember what I've said before — my father took me to a Yankee game when I was about 10 years old and Joe DiMaggio struck out three times.

My disinterest in baseball as a kid has lasted all my life. I'm still not interested in the game. I don't watch it on television or follow it in the newspaper. I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me. They're apparently very good but they haven't caught my interest. I also think baseball needs some rules changes, too. For example, the player who starts the game as pitcher should have to play all nine innings without a substitution. A pitcher hardly ever plays more than a few innings and then the manager replaces him with someone who isn't as good. I think baseball managers dominate the games more than the players do and more than coaches do in other sports.

There are 30 major league baseball teams, but sometimes it seems as though the New York Yankees are the only team that ever wins the World Series. There have been 102 World Series since 1903. The Yankees have been in 39 of those and they've won 26. Five teams have never won a World Series. What in the world keeps baseball fans in those cities coming to games?

The figures they keep giving us on broadcasts of baseball games are batting statistics, the amount being paid the players, the number of fans in the stands. There are other statistics I'd like to hear more often. When a player comes up to bat, they can tell me what his batting average is but I'd also like to know how many times he's struck out. Tell me how many different teams he's played with. Which player on either team has made the most errors? What's the average IQ of a baseball team compared with the IQ of a professional football team?

It seems like a major mystery that baseball has never caught on in other countries the way it has here. There are baseball leagues in several countries but their citizens' interest is mostly in soccer [football as they call it]. Cricket is popular in some countries, but it makes hopscotch seem exciting.

It's easier to understand why our football game isn't played in other countries. Football is complicated. It takes a lot of practice and it's expensive. All players need for a soccer game is a ball and a pair of shorts and shoes. It's harder for a bunch of kids to get together Saturday morning and go to a vacant lot to play football than to play either soccer or baseball.

Some of the best times of my life were playing football, and some of the best friends I made were fellow football players in high school and college. You're more dependent on teammates in football than in baseball and a bonding takes place.

In a football game, you're dependent on the players on either side of you. In a baseball game, you're pretty much on your own. Basketball is a better team sport to me than baseball, but size means too much in basketball. I never got taller than 5-foot-9 and didn't make the basketball team in school. I ended up as the backstroker on the swimming team. I was a good swimmer but hated doing laps for practice. The water was always cold and after half an hour in the chlorinated pool my eyes were red and my skin wrinkled. It took the fun out of swimming.

Considering the fact that who wins or loses any game makes no difference whatsoever in our lives, it's interesting how important a game can seem to us sometimes. The greatest sports loss of my life was a high school football game. We were undefeated and the game was the last of the season. It ended in a scoreless tie and we were crushed by what seemed like the worst defeat of our lives.

Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com

Coloradical! Vinny Castilla Day! Sufjan!

My favorite site on the net at the moment might just be The Dugout. There is a link to it to the right under the blogroll. The Dugout is basically imagined AIM conversations between pro baseball players and the occasional civilian that pops into the chatroom. All the players and managers have the same type of screen names you thought were really cool and creative in middle school that you still use. Yesterday, I found a great post on The Dugout from a while ago called Vinny Castilla Day. It features Castilla in his Rockies days, as well as the best satire of Sufjan Stevens I've ever seen. Go laugh your ass of.

oh my gohhh-eee-yohhhd

Slaughter Rule

The Texas Rangers beat the Baltimore Orioles 30 to 3 today. No one has scored that many runs in over one hundred years. 11o to be exact. Think about that. Someone seems to hit 500 home runs every couple years. Someone seems to hit 300 wins every handful of years (and don't let anyone tell you it won't happen again). A guy comes along who hits 700 home runs every few decades. But it takes more than a century for a team to score 30 runs in a single game.

In high school at South Stokes, I remember playing some pretty awful teams - we beat East Wilkes 30-2 one time, and that was a five inning game thanks to the slaughter rule. The poor Baltimore organization have to endure all nine innings of this one. What's worse, the two teams had to turn around and play the back end of a double header after finishing. There is no way Baltimore can have any bullpen left. Perhaps we'll see some position players coming in to throw knuckleballs to the Rangers. I would love to see it.

Arizona, How Could You?

Eight days ago on Just Call Me Juice, I responded to an article that Marco had posted about his picks for the rest of the MLB season. I said I thought the Braves would make the playoffs just because their schedule from then out was much lighter than that of the LA's and San Diego's. Then I said I wasn't going to bother tallying up Arizona's because I didn't think they had a chance.

Well, now Arizona is in first place in the NL West. Thanks guys. Equally embarrassing, Atlanta is 3.5 games out in the East and 1.5 in the wild card race. The Braves went on an awful slide after my prediction of them getting the wild card. I think the additions of Teixeira and Dotel were great, but may have been a bit late. So, thanks to Arizona, I look like an idiot. Bob Wickman is responsible for a little bit of that as well.

Also, I recently tried to search on Ebay for a Braves jersey that screamed, "I am a true lifelong fan of the Atlanta Braves." I had my sights set on Mark Lemke. Lemke was a favorite of mine as a kid, I always put my vote in for him on the All-Star ballot even though there were guys like Craig Biggio who were better second basemen. Well, a Lemke jersey runs at about $70 on Ebay, which is a bit more than I want to pay. I thought maybe if I found a Jeff Blauser or Steve Avery it might be cheaper, but no. I am really not too thrilled with having to pay $70 for the jersey like that.

Man vs. Four-Star Hotel

Reading reports that Bear Grylls from Discovery Channel's Man vs. Wild staged scenes and spent nights in a motel while all the time leading viewers to believe he was roughing it killed a little bit of me today. The feeling of a little part of my insides dying was almost exactly the same as when I watched Mark McGwire's congressional testimony from 2005.

Before this, who else was cooler and more all-around badass than Bear Grylls. Look at his name! His first name is Bear, and his last name is Grylls! With a Y! Don't you wish your name were that cool?

And sure, the comments from people about how this makes Grylls all the more insane and impressive because he drank juice out of elephant shit or his own urine when he could have turned off the cameras and walked over to the catering table are worth something, but come on. This brings him down to just a level above the guys from Jackass who do that kind of stuff for kicks and giggles. I never thought it was just him out there alone because of the camera angles make it obvious, but I imagined Bear was all that more badass because as he kicked the Earth in the balls, he had to watch as fat guys holding boom mics and cameras got bottled water and Big Macs. I thought he withstood that torment for me, the viewer, even when he knew he could kill them and take their supplies by making some endangered snake spit venom in their eyes. I thought we had something Bear. What happened to that?

EDIT: I just read that Bear named his son Marmaduke. If it is true, and I completely believe it is, I don't feel as sad about the whole faking thing. Because naming your son Marmaduke is either 1) the coolest thing you could possibly do, 2) the funniest thing you could, or 3) something that requires larger balls than anyone in the world can contest. Bear Grylls deserves some Chuck Norris-esque jokes about him.

WTFMLB? Part II

I caught the first of what I assume are multiple commercials this evening during the All-Star game for the Major League Baseball playoffs that featured Dane Cook. I said a day or two ago that I expected terrible jokes, but I was completely wrong. It was just terrible, and there were no jokes. What happens when very funny white dudes with shallow comedic acts go serious on you? The Guardian happens.

I don't care if someone does a hack job on the coast guard. Please don't do it to baseball though. ESPN has done enough embarrassing with The Bronx is Burning for all of us. And I'm not even a Yankees fan.

WTF, MLB?

Major League Baseball announced that Dane Cook will be the face of the 2007 MLB Playoffs. Apparently, not enough males in the 13-26 age group watch baseball.

This seems like a very dumb decision if the MLB and Fox are attempting to gain viewership from demographics that aren't loyally glued to the television for playoff baseball in the first place. And if they didn't care about expanding the audience, why not go with someone who is actually tied to the game of baseball? At this rate, I bet a series between the Padres/Brewers and Red Sox/Angels would compete with 2007's NBA Finals for broadcasted event that no one cared about.

What are the chances of Cook making a joke about the name of a Cardinals' first baseman, regardless of that team being in the postseason or not?

Stop if the car is going "clunk." / Don't answer emails when you're drunk.

I decided to move my writing from the Livejournal because the site setup over there didn't allow for everything I was hoping to do. Also, this white background is prettier. Look for writings on whatever interests me at the moment.* Discussion is welcomed.





*What interests me will probably be music, baseball, literature, and humor.