I remember hearing a while ago that Bob Dylan, of all people, was considering recording the voice for a GPS navigator. If his speaking voice is anything like his singing voice, a lot of people are going to end up in ditches.
So I was surprised to find out that there are actually already a bunch of these celebrity voiced gps units. Mr. T (I think he just yells at you)? Gary Busey? Knight Rider? And last of all, and for reasons no one can understand, Curt Schilling.
Through some internet miracle I scored absurdly good tickets to today's rout of the Seattles. Like best seats in my life tickets. Last week. For face value through the team website. Which is supposedly impossible...except that it actually isn't, as this grainy screenshot (that you'll have to trust is me on television) demonstrates.
Ticket resellers are a drain on society. At least the part of society that likes going to baseball games.
David Ortiz struck out on an eephus pitch in the 4th inning of last night's game against Detroit. As I have previously stated, I love the eephus, and I cannot recall ever actually seeing this rare (non) pitch used. It looks like Armando Galarraga lobbed one in there though -- a 57 mph "curve ball" whose curvature was supplied by gravity. Ortiz had one of the classic reactions to it: paralysis. Even though I never like seeing Papi strike out, I have to say the expression on his face was absolutely priceless. It was the perfect blend of shock and regret. The sort of expression someone would get upon disembarking an intercontinental flight and realizing they left the stove on. He stood there stock still for about 5 seconds, gazing off into the distance, his face a mask of despair -- personifying the tragedy of missed opportunity. He seemed to be thinking about the alternate reality where he hit a 700-ft home run, and by extension, all that ever could have been. That is what the eephus does to you.
Update: There is video of it here.
In other hilarious baseball news, yet more evidence that A-Rod fails in the clutch: he fainted during the birth of his daughter in 2004. Mere weeks after helping the Yankees choke away the pennant, he choked away the delivery of his first-born, further compounding the impression that he cannot perform in pressure situations.
Bristol, my home town, inventor of the 4th of July Parade, should have an interesting day this July: the Red Sox 2007 World Series trophy, and recently incarcerated ex-Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci will both be marching.
The Bristol Phoenix, on Buddy's history with the parade:Mr. Cianci incurred the wrath of chief marshal Dr. Manuel Luciano DaSilva and town officials after he crashed the chief marshal's reception, which was being held under a tent at the Bristol County Medical Center. Mr. Cianci, who had just been elected mayor of Providence, had not been invited to attend. Despite being turned away, Mr. Cianci showed up anyway — via helicopter.
"Guests ... were less than delighted to see Cianci arrive; the downdraft from his helicopter props threw up billowing clouds of choking dust under the tent canopy," Mr. Simpson writes.
Five years later, in 1980, Mr. Cianci crashed the parade again, when he arrived at the Colt High School athletic fields via helicopter.
"They smuggled me in like the Trojan Horse," Mr. Cianci was said to have quipped later.
Other years include stories of Mr. Cianci falling off horses, being "un-invited" from the parade, and being called "rude" by the parade chairman. But one of his most storied connections to the parade and Bristol's residents will mark its 25th anniversary this year. For the last quarter century, one of Mr. Cianci's toughest stretches of the parade route has been 2 High St., the house owned by Raymond DeLeo. In 1983, shortly after being indicted for assaulting Mr. DeLeo over a rumored mutual romantic interest, Mr. Cianci defiantly marched by his house, pretending not to notice him. Over the coming years, guests in Mr. DeLeo's yard were known to turn their back when the mayor approached.
The rift ballooned in 2002, Mr. Cianci's last year marching, when guests in Mr. DeLeo's yard sang him an impromptu song in "honor" of his recent indictment on corruption charges that would eventually send him to prison for five years:
"For he's a RICO felon, for he's a RICO felon, for he's a RICO felon, which nobody can deny," they sang.
The last time Cianci marched (in 2002), shortly before being convicted of racketeering, he got a standing ovation. After his Napoleon-like exile, his return should be fairly amusing.
As for the trophy, that was arranged by Jeremy Kapstein, the guy who sits directly behind home plate at every game, and therefore has a position of influence with the team. He came down to Bristol for some seafood and had the misfortune of running into a parade official who managed to finagle it through "two or three months of e-mails, phone calls, back and forth letters and even a hastily arranged meeting among Mr. Kapstein and Fourth of July Committee officials in the parking lot of the Verizon store on Route 6." Nice.
[Some pictures from 2006, 2007]
Jan 26. Regular Red Sox ticket sales. I sign onto the ticket buying website at 10am, and spend hours in the Virtual Waiting Room™ with no success. My prospects of visiting Fenway this year appear slim.
Feb 6. Email from the lottery machine, letting me know that it has deigned to permit me to try, just try, buying tickets to one of this year's "special" games.
Feb 9. - 12:00pm I sign into the Virtual Waiting Room™.
10:11pm I actually get through the waiting room, and buy some sweet obstructed view seats. At least they're for Opening Day.
*Title shamelessly stolen from Jere.
-Courtesy my good friend Matt, the information that Stephen Colbert appeared in a Law & Order Criminal Intent episode (imdb). Probably, you can watch it somehow with your iTunes or what have you, but I don't have an iTunes (it conflicts with my policy against paying for things), so I can't and I can't find a great version of it on the tubes other than this rather long climatic scene (which doesn't make a lot of sense out of context)
-Speaking of murderers, I have had two separate and very different dreams where Mike Lowell, 3rd baseman of the World Champion Boston Red Sox is trying to kill me. In the first one he wiped out a backyard full of children with an automatic rifle and then stalked me, knowing that I had witnessed the crime. I somehow managed to throw him off a jetty. In the second, he went from room to room of some vaguely-defined dormitory stabbing people.
Everything I've heard about the real Mike Lowell leads me to believe that he is the sort of chap who helps old ladies cross the street, but what you do in other people's dreams says a lot about you. If he kills again, I am going to the authorities.
-When you finally are murdered by Mike Lowell, you will be pleased to know that you can be forever interred in a casket or urn bearing his team's logo from "Eternal Image - Brand name funerary products that celebrate the passions of life." Brand name! Only $5,000! Need I say more?
That steroid report came out today. I am not convinced that this is some major issue ruining the game forever-- after all, historically speaking unfair conditions were present during many other periods (think all-white teams...). But the players named are certainly deserving of some scorn. Jere points out that the turn-of-the-century Yankees were basically a total fraud.So the 2000 champion Yanks were pretty much a cartel, with Roger the Traitor, Pettitte (what would Jesus do? Cheat, apparently), Stanton, Justice, Glenallen Hill, Denny Neagle, Jason Grimsley, of course, and, ha, Knoblauch in on the act. (Like with Gagne, though, the stuff didn't work for one Mike Lansing.) You tellin' me Derek Jeter didn't at least hear about this stuff going on?
How dare he accuse St. Jeter of a misdeed! Captain Intangible Super-Classy Jeter surely had no clue any of this was happening. After all, he had none of the investigative tools of a retired Senator seven years after the fact.
I've always been more pissed off by the thought that steroided players were affecting championships than that they were breaking records. I mean, a record is only as good as the reputation it bestows upon the holder, and if everyone already considers you a fraud, what is it worth anyway? On the other hand, even though Giambi's 2 home runs in game 7 of the 2003 ALCS proved to be the difference no one is giving us that game back. And even if a Series winning team is found to have had a bunch of steroid-users, it is tough to single out the responsibility. Yet what is more important, Bond's home run record that no one considers legitimate anyway? or a bunch of World Series outcomes altered unknowably?
Hopefully, those 2000 Yankees will go down in history like the Black Sox.
How nice it was to have a post-season free of angst and neurosis. Such a strange feeling. Just a nice normal contest where the better team won, and showed once more that purple vests never, ever, have a place in baseball. The weirdest thing about the series was that all season I never doubted that Boston was the best team in the league, and even when they went down 3-1 in the ALCS I still couldn't imagine them losing it, though I knew a comeback was somewhat improbable. I never freaked out about the away games they'd have to play in low-Earth orbit. A marked difference from 2004, when I saw calamity around every corner. The world is a very different place...
1903, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007. We're coming for you, Athletics.
I think they printed up these shirts a little early.
Suck it, most other teams.
Update: Mr. Papelbon, preparing for the post-season.
And now, for no reason at all, this:
The Retrosheet description of this game can't do the play justice. The shortness of the clip takes something away from it as well (there was a longer version online a while ago but it got taken off YouTube by MLB thugs). Yet there is something quintessentially Mannyesque about the Great Unexpected Cutoff of 2004. As you can see, Damon in centerfield picks up a wall-ball and tries to fire it to 3rd when Ramirez dives improbably into its path from off-screen, allowing the runner to score. It was officially recorded an inside-the-park-HR, but we all know what it really should have been labeled: an interception.
[click for larger]
The Providence Journal has an article about the current brainiac of the Sox farm system. Despite the reporter being impressed by his use of his word 'elucidate' it is fairly encouraging. Craig Breslow is a Yale Biophysics and Biochem major currently titrating* himself up the pitching ranks.“In molecular biophysics,” he said, “you deal with methods of elucidating structures of proteins through such means as x-ray crystallography and spectroscopy. In biochemistry, I studied organic processes on a molecular level — things like DNA replication and genetics.”
Wow! That's my plan too. Hey Red Sox organization, I'll be a few miles from Pawtucket next year, and I've got at least a foot on Pedroia!
Um, OK, Craig.
What say we talk about what pitches you throw.
“I have a ‘slurvy’-type slider I throw to lefties,” he said, “and a cut fastball I throw to righties. I have a big overhand curve I use to try to steal strikes. My best pitch is my changeup.”
So far this season, Breslow’s array of pitches has been almost as baffling to batters as molecular biophysics.
Going into last night’s game, the 26-year-old lefty had an earned-run average of 1.59 in 25 relief appearances covering 39 2/3 innings. He had given up just 30 hits while striking out 48 and walking only 9. He had a record of 1-1, with one save, and hitters were batting a mere .208 against him.
...
“For four years,” he said, “I studied with some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Now, I’m having fun playing baseball. When I get here (to the ballpark), I’m all baseball. If I keep pitching well, I’ll have a job in baseball.”
And if he doesn’t, he can put that Yale degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry to good use.
Bonus Biophysics Joke: Why is this guy such a good pitcher? Well imagine a tiny spherical cow...
*This is definitely the wrong use of this word, but we don't have to know about such things in cosmology.
Despite my 'absence' I will offer a brief unrelated baseball prediction which may be fulfilled in the next several years. I think that managers will start differentiating between different types of pitches in pitch counts -- at least for hurlers who throw pitches of varying strenuousness. I am tired of seeing Wakefield getting treated with the same metric as guys who don't throw 70 mph floaty-dopey fluttah balls. For example, you could count fastballs and splitters as 1, while making curveballs and changes .75, and knuckleballs .5. It would probably be possible to model more accurately how far pitchers can go into game. Of course, someone would have to come up with better values for the different pitches but I am sure that someone will think of this soon enough. If they're smart.
Congratulations Iron Eagle! My car has now driven far enough to circle the Earth four times.
[The vehicle's namesake is actually from another nickname that I heard somewhere for Red Sox reliever Mike Timlin that struck me as extremely appropriate. (Since, you know, he spends his free time bowhunting wild boars, wrestling bears, and "taking care of the pigeon problem" at Fenway.) Being a small, gas-saving station wagon, that sounds like it is running on batteries, the contrast was too much to resist. Caw!]
It isn't enough that we have to put up with Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver in these nationally broadcast games, now we've got to deal with bizarre technical problems. One of the irritating parts of these games in the first place is those green-screen ads behind home plate that hover artificially over the background and bleed into the uniforms of surrounding players. In the spectrum of life's annoyances these things come in somewhere in between used straw wrappers and the slightly reduced stickiness of tape that required additional effort to tear. Some weird phenomenon in the later innings of yesterday's game was more interesting than irritating though. Ordinarily, the ad takes up only its designated rectangular area, which is a distinctly lighter shade of green than the wall. But some glitch caused the camera to view all of the backstop as it's target area, and while it showed a black SportsCenter ad, the entire wall behind home was dark black. It isn't so easy to see in the picture, but I assure you, when they contrasted clips from before they went to these black ads it changed drastically. It wasn't lighting or anything like that, it ought to the same color as the dark grass. I have never seen this happen before, the only mistakes I've ever seen with these devices are when someone happens to be wearing exactly the same color, but that is clearly not the case here. Somehow the "color sensitivity" got reduced really far without affecting anything other than the backstop. I also guess that the frame of reference for the banner has nothing to do with borders and relies on something totally different, probably some type of software that can tell the orientation of camera. Of course, with the way the Sox were hitting last night, they could have avoided all this trouble by simply pointing the stupid thing at Lansdowne St. and going out for a pizza.
This year's Patriot's Day game was severely disappointing compared with last year's. There was that lousy rain delay forcing the game from its unique AM start, generally crappy weather onwards, and unlike the 2006 walk-off HR, this year's game was basically decided in the first inning. All of which may have been contributing the rage that bubbled over yesterday in the form of an unprovoked pizza throw.
During an unsuccessful reach for a fly ball in the left field stands, some poor guy had a slice of cheese pizza lobbed at him for no clear reason. As we all knew it would be, the moment was notorious enough to warrant an entire column in the Herald today:“I’ve never caught a foul ball in my life,” said Brookline’s Sole, 30, between innings. “It’s been my dream to catch one. That’s the closest I’ve ever come. The pizza just thwarted it.”
Tragic. But of course, tragedy + time = comedy, and since the tragedy here was rather small it only took about a minute for Remy and Orsillo to start combing over the footage like the Zapruder Film. The moment where they spontaneously stick that "Pepsi Fan of the Game" underneath him, priceless.
The secret government in charge of the universal weather machine seem to have missed the fact that baseball has started, since it has been snowing here all day. The opener didn't go quite as well as we would have liked, but would I attribute that mostly to Curt's switch from mostly RPG-gaming to weblogging, which everyone knows is much harder on the elbows. He'll get it together soon enough. Incidentally, The Sock seems to be have stopped by this site a while ago, when he had just started his blog. I saw that a Floridian IP was directed from the admin page of 38pitches.com right after I wrote a short post about his new endevor. This was a pretty disconcerting experience since I had jokingly referred to Mr. Schilling (whose player t-shirt I happened to be wearing at the time) as "pompous" in it. Obviously, since St. Curt has not only been stooping down among the mortals who maintain respected Sox blogs by starting his own, but also to the unpopular grad student-run websites, he should know that this was intended in a jocular way.
It was right before I fixed this page to work in Explorer so he probably didn't even get to read it, but if he did, and was offended, and somehow found the time to check out people linking to him during the actual season, allow me to suck up to you by pointing out that: (a) I rated you in the top 20 all-time Red Sox (Socks?), unlike the actual people running the countdown; (b) when you were rehabbing in 2005 my dad and I came out to see you pitch in Pawtucket on the 4th of July; (c) I've got like 2 cards from early in your career in Houston and Baltimore (and I am holding on to them instead of selling them for the thousands of dollars I assume they are worth); (d) as previously stated I own one of your jersey t-shirts and wear it often. Presumably, I am dead to him despite all this, and next time he's on EEI he'll find some way to get in a dig on physics grad students, but I still think his blog has exceeded all expectations and the curly haired boyfriends of the world can go to hell.
In other news, the long wait is finally over. Matsuzaka time has arrived, giving me a flimsy excuse to stick this video up. Gyroball: threat or menace? You decide.
"Live by the slow curve, die by the slow curve."
Such were the words of pitcher and raconteur Bill Lee following Game 7 of the 1975 World Series, wherein he gave up a game-losing 2-run homer on the riskiest pitch in baseball: The Eephus. A pitch with nothing on it; no spin, no lack of spin, no motion, no speed. Since the previously mentioned Top 100 Red Sox blog finally got around to naming Mr. Lee the 35th greatest player in team history, now seems as good a time as any to write about his famed junk pitch.
Despite the outcome of the 1975 WS, the Eephus is probably baseball's most cunning psychological weapon. Other than perhaps the steal of home, there is no more audacious thing to do than to reach back and chuck an arching 40 mph nothing-ball in there. The pitch is both an insult and a dare. Since the Eephus is so wildly off-speed, power hitters swing and miss by a mile. Then, for the rest of the game, all that they and their teammates can think about is the possibility of its re-occurrence. In fact, the success of the pitch is based by the frequency of its use. Throw it too often, and your risk giving up an embarrassing home run; too little and the batter will stop thinking about it. Spaceman Lee's mistake in game 7 was getting greedy. He used it to twice dispatch Tony Perez earlier in the game, but the third time he tried it Perez was unimpressed and launched a towering homer that was gone so fast that Yaz didn't bother to turn around in left field.
Rip Sewell, father of the Eephus, never endured this indignity. Only Ted Williams ever hit a home run off his signature pitch. A bogus home run in the 1946 All-Star game, which Williams later admitted stepping out of the batters box to reach. Sewell is said to have invented the "bloop curve" after an injury restricted his ability to throw hard for extended periods and forced him to resort to mind games. But this never hindered him, as he managed 9 winning seasons out of 13 and nearly 400 games.Sometimes, the ball dropped down into the strike zone while the suddenly emasculated hitter flailed. More often they managed some kind of contact, yet for some reason (perhaps arc of the pitch was too severe) they couldn’t knock it out of the park. And that’s all they wanted to do. As a hitter, you don’t see an outrageous pitch like the Eephus and think, Single. The Eephus pitch was an insult: they wanted to pulverize it, kill it, crush it. They’d get so worked up waiting for it they couldn’t see it straight, and they’d ground out, or pop out, or miss altogether. They risked injury -- the swings they took where that hard. And then they were embarrassed, angry. Give it to me again, you son-of-a-bitch! But ... no. Probably not, not for you. Not any time soon. Batters would wish for another chance they might not get for a year, but the pitch would be in their minds every time they faced Sewell -- that big looping marshmallow of a pitch. It was galling, an itch they couldn’t reach, an ache. Sewell was careful not to throw the Eephus too much -- he tried to keep it around 10 times per game. He wanted hitters to hope for it, but he wanted its arrival to be unexpected, every time. This made all of Sewell’s other pitches look a little bit better, because any pitch, any pitch at all, looks fantastic when compared to to the Eephus. [Link]
I love baseball oddities, especially those whose practitioners can be counted on both hands. The junk ball is one such oddity. Unfortunately, we haven't seen one thrown since 2004, but I think the Space Ball is poised for a comeback. A slow, galling, unexpected comeback.
If you are anything like me, you have often said to yourself, "that Curt Schilling fellow sure must have some interesting insights and opinions, I wish he would bother to share them with us." I am assuming here that you live in outer space or inner Mongolia and are not aware of his lengthy interviews, open letters addressing 9/11, frequent postings on Sons of Sam Horn, or call-ins to sports talk radio when some random caller disparages his splitter.
Luckily for you, hypothetical and uninformed reader, Everquest player, Red Sox pitcher and noted opinion-haver Curt Schilling now writes a blog. A vessel from which to pour forth the self-aggrandizing and pomposity that he can't unload through those other forums. Seriously though, his involved approach is actually pretty refreshing and his site has a good chance of being an insightful and revealing look inside the game from one of its most cerebral and articulate players...and hopefully, he might get some baseball in there too.
Say what you will about Red Sox fans, they do nothing halfway. It is in that spirit that I must point out the existence of Top 100 Red Sox, a daily countdown of, well, you get the idea, written by a coterie of knowledgeable bloggers. 100 is a lot of people, there is some room for mistakes in ordering, but that doesn't make arguing about it less fun. John Cusack would be jealous.
After a little estimation you realize that the bottom third are going to be the Ike Delocks of the world. Listing the greatest 100 anything is quite a challenge, and it is hard to figure out what serious quantitative differences they used to separate #81 from #82, but as an excuse to write about and debate players of different eras it definitely works. It isn't that I necessarily have strong feelings about Ira Flagstead, but check out this paragraph:The club honored the Montague native with “Flagstead Day” in 1928. “Boston’s outfielder” was presented with a variety of gifts, including a new car and $1,000 in gold...A .290 career hitter, he closed out his baseball career with Tacoma of the Pacific Coast League. He died at the age of 46 in March of 1940.
$1000 in gold? Died at the age of 46?! Who the hell is this guy?
Nothing matches baseball for obscure knowledge, and this countdown has it in spades. By the mid-sixties they started getting to people who I already knew, so it became interesting for the intended reason, and I applaud their venture. How they are figuring out that relief pitcher and Mike "The Iron Eagle" Timlin comes in at #59 I have no idea. (I just started calling him this and it made sense. It also happens to be the name of my car.) Their approach is supposed to be primarily statistical, but unless they are compounding win shares (something I didn't see any evidence for) it isn't immediately clear how they are comparing say, a 3rd baseman to a pitcher, or a relief pitcher to a starter. But this ambiguity is what makes it interesting. They have declared their intent to acknowledge only the years played in a Boston uniform, rather than the career as a whole. Guys like Babe Ruth, Dennis Eckersly, and Jimmie Foxx being notable examples of this. It will be interesting to see what they place the most emphasis on.
I would say that the #1 spot is a foregone conclusion, but the rest of the top 10 is up for grabs, especially depending on the historical sensitivities of the writers. This group of bloggers is quite thoughtful, so I am confident they will not trend embarrassingly to the recent when a bit of perspective is called for. I doubt that I could accurately predict their choices, but I can certainly give my own. It will be interesting to see how in line I am with their picks.
1. Ted Williams
2. Cy Young
3. Pedro Martinez
4. Carl Yastrzemski
5. Tris Speaker
6. Roger Clemens
7. David Ortiz
8. Harry Hooper
9. Smokey Joe Wood
10. Bobby Doerr/Carlton Fisk
No Babe Ruth, no Schilling (though Game 6 alone entitles him to a top 20 spot at least), and Clemens gets bumped way down for being backstabbing asshole (these things matter.) And Ortiz's spot is on basically on loan. If he retired tomorrow he'd crack the top 20 for the astonishing, mind-boggling, incredibleness of his 4 short years, but some more time and performance is necessary to justify that position. After all, has he let me down yet? They aren't quite using the same rules as me and are trying to apply more statistical rigor to their run-down, but hopefully I'm not way off.
I expect the brain trust over there to be kinder to Ruth, and slightly less keen on Ortiz, Yaz, and Fisk, but there isn't a great deal of flexibility there. In my mind Pedro and Cy Young are sort of a draw, but despite pitching only part of his career in Boston, Young has the goddamn pitching award named after him. It is impossible to know how he would fare in today's league, but back then he was one of those psychos who pitched both games of a double header, scoreless. And then threw a perfect game the following day. If I had it my way Clemens wouldn't be on there at all, but you can't forget him entirely. Since I can't purge him from the top 10 I'm copping out with #10. Whatever, I don't have rules, or any claim to expertise, or a readership who will be mad at me if I violated either.
I will keep my readership appraised of the results.
