Saturday, April 02, 2005
Bloody heck, so much has been going on. Let us see.
I watched Tigers baseball today. L'dezzie looked great. But I'll get to that in a second.
Blogging News
Evan the MVN-Master has moved his blog to a new location at All-Baseball. He also has a kickass Q and A session with injury-guru Will Carroll up. Will has an interesting take on the Varitek contract that I rather like: "...what if Varitek has two good years, one average one, and one bad one? Everyone would be saying what a bad contract it was - in year four! If it’s ten million for four years, wouldn’t you pay 12-14 for what he did last year, 8 for a decline, and 5 for a crappy year (he’s a vet …). That puts you in the ballpark. Shifting the thought process on long term deals is often necessary."
He also says that Pudge's weight loss could definitely be due to his offseason nutritional plan, Guillen should be OK, and the combination of Tram, Gibby and Cluck will mellow out Captain Tightpants. Gosh, I hope so. Anyways, it's cool, go read it.
Tao of Manny and Keys to the Game have combined forces in the most unlikely and unexpected blog teaming I've ever seen, and have both brought their widely disparate yet equally awesome blogging abilities to the MVN site vacated by Evan, now called Wallball Single. It's kind of a mental shock to read one of Brian's posts and then bust right into one of Jose's, but you can't deny that they both rock on their own and will probably rock harder together.
Beth the Cursed to First-Mistress has moved her blog to a new location at Typepad. She has some valid gripes about Blogger, but quite frankly I'm not willing to pay for a blog just yet. Anyways, you know how awesome her writing is, so update your links. I will update the one on my sidebar as soon as I can muster up the willpower to open the template.
You know those interviews Athletics Nation was teasing us with? Well, he's started posting them. So far he's posted interviews he did with Bobby Crosby and Barry Zito (including a photo of Zeets wearing a pair of truly hideous orange pants-- looks like the A's could use some Queer Eye love too). Blez also got to go to the party for the release of the book Aces, which was attended by Billy Beane and several players. He got his photo taken with some of them, including Rich Harden.
Rich Harden is basically four years older than me. LOOK AT RICH HARDEN. LOOK AT HIM. That, my friends, is just plain old not fair. Cripes. Clearly the hot pitcher revenue sharing system has been thwarted by Beane's wily ways again.
Billfer has somehow gotten himself an interview with the famous and much-loved former Tigers announcer, Ernie Harwell. Go read. Coolness. Once again I can only bow down in awe before these massive blogging forces.
Bill Simmons is finally writing about baseball again. Thank cats. I like reading his stuff, but I really couldn't force myself to read crap about college basketball and pop culture. There are some things I just don't give a flying shard of hammer-textured copper about.
Baseball News
With hockey a mere distant memory in the ancestral brain cells of some Canadians, ESPN had some free air time. So they decided to show some college baseball. No Michigan games scheduled, but this is still pretty cool. See what the scouts see! More baseball on TV! Awesome all 'round!
Mike Myers is indeed back in Boston. Just so we're all clear on that. I guess I will have more to say on the Sox after THE SEASON OPENER WHICH IS THIS SUNDAY barring rain, but today I watched the Tigers/Yankees game.
Wil Ledezma went 6 innings, 3 hits, no runs (earned or otherwise). Of course then Jamie Walker came in and promptly loaded the bases and let in two runs, followed by Ugie letting in one other, but thankfully the Tigs already had 4 runs by this point and the Farns slammed the door shut. The Farns has been good every time I have seen him this spring-- if he can somehow keep his head on straight this season I will rapidly learn to love him.
Highlights of the game:
It started off with A-Rod getting thrown out at the plate. Always a joy to see. And then Kevin Brown was immediately rocked for 4 runs and a ton of walks, and only went three innings. Kevin Brown, you suck so badly sometimes it is almost endearing.
Carlos Pena had a two-run homerun and then went out and made a spectacular defensive play, stretching out at first and snagging a ball that probably would have been a double. In related news, my love for Carlos Pena continues unabated.
There was some chatter in the middle of the game that CNN was reporting that the Pope had died but other stations weren't saying it, leading to the following exchange in the middle of the game thread on the Tigers message board.
MelissaG915: So, is the pope dead or not? CNN says yes, other affliates saying clinging by a thread. Yoda: That's like asking if KC is in last place yet. Technically no, but.. yes.
Brandon Inge was wired for sound today, leading to the following exchange when Jeter trotted over to third at some point during the game.
Inge: Hey man, how’s your shoulder doing? Jeter: Mm, OK, back and forth. -pause- Jeter: Got 20 homers yet this spring? Inge (doubling over with mirth): Pfft!
In further news, I love Brandon Inge. Also, gotta give Jeter some reluctant props for knowing that Inge's been having a good spring.
Duke Castiglione did an interview with Pudge Rodriguez after he had come out of the game. Pudge was wearing a tightish shirt with cut-off sleeves. MEEP. I made all kinds of whimpering noises and the kids I was watching the game with laughed at me. I wish there were photos of this online. Pudge looked good. Pudge looked very good. Pudge looked EXTREMELY FUCKING MIG-WELDING-LEVEL HOT. Not to, you know, get all fan-girl about it. He also looked good behind the plate, had a couple of laser throws and all.
After the interview they had a shot of him leaning up to a fence and smooshing his face up against it. I sort of stared at this like, what the hell? Then the camera shifted a little bit and I realized he was giving his little girl a kiss through the fence. The cuteness rendered me insensible for an inning.
After the last out was recorded the camera zoomed in on the Farns, who was stalking off the mound next to 44th Rounder. The Farns reached down, camera squarely on him, grabbed his cup, jiggled it around several times in a slow and deliberate fashion, then patted it firmly for good measure. This cracked up everyone in the room. It was so blatant and the camera angle was so face-on and the Farns wears his pants so tight that it was almost beyond awesome.
Art School News
Tonight the art school rewarded me and my fellow art students in a small fashion for all the ass-kicking it has been doing lately. Tonight, you see, was the opening reception for the End of the Year Show, which is in all the galleries on North Campus and the WORK Gallery on Central. The opening is kind of a big deal, and everyone shows up, and there's free food and punch and a jazz ensemble.
This jazz ensemble had actually set themselves up directly underneath my piece, which was kind of evil, because no one could get close to it to really look at it, and all the obsessive little pen-work really looks good up close. Grr.
Still, it was pretty awesome, because there were a lot of my friends there (more than last year, where it was almost entirely professors, grad students, and random Ann Arbor residents... this year the undergrads actually showed up too), and some of the art was pretty good, and there was the aforementioned free food and punch.
There was also a piece of artwork ABOUT THE BOSTON RED SOX THAT I HAD NOT CREATED. I was so excited when I saw it that I turned around and tackled the grad student who had created it. Actually I just gave her a really exuberant hug and made her think I was insane (I am). It was really a piece about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, using the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry as metaphor, but you didn't know this until you ducked under the attendant curtain and saw the glow-in-the-dark writing and images overlaying the Red Sox images. I... seriously, I can't explain how excited this made me.
We also got to see a raccoon while we were waiting for a bus to come, and I got up pretty close to him. He was amazing. He had the nicest face and the cleverest little hands you ever did see.
You may view photos from the lovely event here, so you can see what it was like and what some of the art was like and what some of my art school friends are like. I'm actually in a couple of the shots, unfortunately, but you can just skim past those to the sculptures and the raccoon.
I should probably go to sleep because I am going to a Powwow tomorrow with some people (don't ask). Goodnight, kids. Sunday can't come soon enough.
2:30 AM
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