Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Did you guys know they replay Monday Night Baseball at 3 am? I didn't know this. Behold the rambling late night post. This may not all be about baseball.
Top of the third, Jon Miller says, "One thing we haven't seen tonight, is Carlos [Zambrano]'s trademark animated behavior."
Bottom of the third, Carlos Zambrano strikes out, turns towards the dugout and, while still on the field, brings down his bat and snaps it over his knee like a man about to break the neck of a sick horse with his own two bare hands.
No retraction of now clearly-refuted earlier statement by Miller.
It's 4:30! I'm packing! It's hard to type because I wore down my fingernails today sanding and filing my sculpture and my fingertips hurt!
I'm done with the prison! We had a really good last class. One of the people who had missed a couple classes was back (we don't ask), and a bunch of guys really seriously told me that their attitudes about art (especially abstract art) have been greatly changed. I think a few of them who weren't that into it before are really going to pursue it now. We actually educated people. People enjoyed our teaching. One of them had to leave quickly because they were about to cry. I did more highway driving than I've ever done in my life previous to this point. I survived the semester without killing my partner or crashing the van and with only one complete nervous breakdown (not very fun, I don't recommend them).
My painting professor claims I'm an abstract expressionist and don't even know it. My fibers professor apparently tells other professors that I should have continued with fibers. My clay professor thought I had "a vision for glazes". On my final review my video professor went nuts gushing about my final project (the Tigers video), then wrote "You might want to consider taking more video classes in the future!" My outreach professors have both told me they enjoyed my dedication to community work. My wood professor thinks I have a 'feel for the material many never achieve'. I won an award for a photo I took this semester.
The hiliarity here is that I identify myself not as a painter, fibers artist, sculptor, videographer, activist and, heck, only as an amateur, although enthusiastic, photographer-- but as a scientific illustrator. I don't know if I should be flattered or incredibly discouraged.
Should the prize money from that photo go towards a telephoto lens, or files, gouges, and rifflers for woodworking?
Todd Walker just got robbed like 5 times in one night. And did you all see Nomar hit a grand slam? Personally speakin' I'm waiting to see what goes next. My guess is something in his side, a big muscle. I feel like he's due for a core injury, he's done pretty well with destroying extremities of late.
It's 4:45! I'm packing! How the hell did I accumulate this much stuff? I don't know how it fits in this room! How am I gonna get it into boxes? Why did I agree to meet my next-year roommate at 1 for lunch tomorrow? I should've said 2 or something.
The Cubs just tied the game. Dear Marlins: you suck. You're trying, but you suck. It's not your fault. Blame management. But no matter how excited Joe Morgan gets about your defense (HI HANLEY HOW YOU DOIN' KID?), you suck, and that is that.
Homerun by Jacque Jones, the Cubs just went ahead. This game went from 3-0 Marlins to 6-3 Cubs, in one inning. The 8th inning. Joe Girardi looks like someone just hit him square in the face with a dead polecat.
THE CUBS BENCH COACH IS DICK POLE. At 4:50 am, this is almost unspeakably hilarious when placed in the context of Dusty Baker turning around and slapping his hand like 50 times in rapid succession in what I can only assume is Dusty's strange and individual way of showing otherwise inexpressible excitement. Former Red Sox Dick Pole, as I'm sure the more elderly readers of this blog will recall. He went to Northern Michigan University, that I didn't know.
I should go pack some more!
OK wait, quick. During the Tigers game tonight? Rod and Mario were talking about the KissCam, and how they tried to put them up on the KissCam during commercial break, ha ha, what jokes and japes. "That will never happen again," Mario says.
Again?
They continue to talk about it. Apparently at some previous point, Rod had, as a joke, gotten them put on KissCam, and had KISSED MARIO, presumably on the cheek, but still HILARITY. "I shouldn't be talking about this," he said, and Mario laughingly agreed, and I died 8 ways from Sunday.
They're not Orsillo and the RemDawg, but Rod and Mario hold a pretty special place in my heart.Labels: baseball, Cubs, gameblog, MLB, offtopic, random
4:31 AM
Monday, April 24, 2006
Not dead! Honest! It's just that move-out is scant few days away (not to mention the final, and my last outing to the prison), and I deal with almost nothing so poorly as I do move-out and move-in. The worst times of the year here in BCRS land are move-out and move-in. I am not good with transitory periods.
I also haven't been seeing much in the way of Red Sox lately. Indeed, the closest I came was that game on I think the 21st, where Papi, Manny (finally!), and Tek all homered, and we STILL CONSPIRED TO LOSE, because Mike Timlin COULDN'T HOLD ONTO HIS GODDAMN BALLS (he's got 3, you know) and he MADE LIKE A BOMB AND EXPLODED.
What happened was that I was watching the Cubs/Cardinals game, idly waiting for the first David Eckstein=scrappy reference of the day, when who should phone but Beth, rambling excitedly about Manny and Papi hugging, or something, and homeruns, or something, and she's at the house of someone named Julia, and they have TiVO which is like the shining Holy Grail of electronics, or something, and OH MY GOD WHAT IS MIKE TIMLIN DOING.
Oh look, I thought idly to myself. Michael Barrett is beating himself up over letting that ball get by him. Ho hum. Wait. Timlin? What?
I fired up Gameday, which is slow as the molasses that once consumed Boston (100% of FACT!) but still better than nothing, and I stared in horror at the little graphics as Mike Timlin slowly but surely imploded before our very eyes like a timelapse video of an apple rotting down to a wizened little brownish core.
"There's nobody warming," Beth hyperventilated. "WHY DON'T THEY HAVE ANYONE WARMING HE'S ALREADY GIVEN UP A HOMERUN."
"Um." I eloquently replied. There's nothing quite like knowing apocalyptic baseball is going on right down the phoneline from you, but you can't see it. I checked the boxscore of the previous game. Wake had gone 8 innings, Tavarez had sucked copious polluted wind for a whole 0 outs, and Foulke had come in to put a quick end to the misery. So the bullpen should have been, if not well-rested, at least not decimated. "I dunno" was about all I could offer Beth, who by now sounded as though she was thrashing about in an epic battle with the Giant Squid of Exquisite Agony, from what I could tell over the phone.
Eventually the phone got handed off to Julia Whose House They Were At, and I rambled incoherently at her for a bit (hi Julia! I had a crippling cold and hadn't slept in like 2 days!), and then Beth took the phone back and said I was not allowed to make fun of her for Keith Foulke anymore because of the "flipbook" of photos I had taken of Brandon Inge on Opening Day. To which I respond: whatever, madam. Our seats were situated so that we HAD to be looking at Mr. Inge all game long. And he's cuter than Foulke. And has knees. And actually likes baseball. ("Oh, so that's how it is!" Beth responded to that last) Plus he wears high socks. Are you all with me, people?
So I'm pleased to note that we won today (yesterday), that Papi is getting into full-on "fear my jovial wrath" mode, that Youks is still hitting pretty darn well, that Clement got a nice little ego-boosting win despite not pitching spectacularly, that Papelbon continues to Save, making the pressure on him to not blow one just that much more ridiculously strong.
And can we talk about his mohawk for just a second? As near as I can tell, he reached a certain number of saves, and this somehow meant he lost a bet with Youks, and thus had to have the mohawk, um, created. Does that not seem to fishy to anyone else? He WON the bet by performing up to a certain level, and his reward is letting Kevin Youkilis, who LOST the bet by not performing up to whatever level they had set for him (a certain number of homers etc. I think), do whatever he wishes to his (Papelbon's) hair. In what Bizarro universe does that make sense?
The moral of the story, I'm pretty certain, is just to not bet with Kevin Youkilis, ever.
So, the schedule as it stands right now. Wood studio, packing, studying, panicking, and last day of teaching at the prison on Monday. Lunch with next year's roommate, shipping of several boxes, packing, studying, and panicking Tuesday. Biospsych final and probably all-nighter of packing Wednesday. Move-out on Thursday. Chilling in Southfield and nighttime Tigers game on Friday. Drive back to MA on Saturday. Attain coma-like state on Sunday. And then I'm back in the land of WEEI and NESN, and you'll all have to suffer a more oft-updated blog.Labels: baseball, Mike Timlin, MLB, rant, terrible
4:34 AM
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
You're gonna have to click that photo to get the large version to really see it, but suffice it to say that this is pretty much exactly what I imagine goes on in the Red Sox bullpen on a daily basis now.
OK, maybe without the cliff, but other than that.
Sigh. Another day when both the Red Sox and the Tigers played, and the only baseball I was actually able to watch was the Cubs game. I am getting right sick of this, Detroit, d'you hear me? Right sick of it.
The Cubs/Dodgers game was pretty good though. Bill Mueller walked in every single at-bat he had, Todd Walker went 0-for-4 with 2 strikeouts, and we had several shots of Nomar leaning on the dugout rail and yawning during the game, all of which filled me with a deep sense of joy and nostalgia.
DLowe had one of his more or less good games. And actually I always like watching Carlos Zambrano pitch, because there's always a good chance that he's going to freak the hell out while on the mound and, I don't know, smear his face with infield dirt and charge into the opposing dugout and stuff JD Drew into a Gatorade cooler or something. He just gives that general impression, you know, that at any given time he's only about 5 seconds away from tearing someone's trachea out, possibly his own.
Oh, and Jeff Kent was alive, back in the lineup after getting beaned in the head during the Giants series (while Barry Bond giggled hysterically, no doubt, wishing he had finished choking him properly when he had a chance). Am I the only Red Sox fan watching these games? Probably. It's not like I have any other baseball to watch BECAUSE THE TIGERS DON'T BELIEVE IN TELEVISING GAMES.
By the by, if you can't get enough of Jim Leyland's FREAKOUT!!111!1, you should probably go check out my RotT post about it.
My goodness, and how could I nearly forget to mention that, right at this very moment, Jason Varitek is suffering stoically through a sore ass. Despite all the hilarity, and all the jokes along the lines of "in Boston we care more about the ass of our starting catcher than we do about local news" or "the ass IS the news" or "his ass is hurt? impossible, nothing can hurt the mighty ass of Jason Varitek", I'm a wee bit concerned. I mean, he's a catcher, he's usin' that thing, and he's on the wrong side of 30 for a backstop. So, I'm sure he'll be able to play through it, but I'm getting that twinge of concern.
And I know that none of you care, but if you'll recall correctly you'll remember that a couple of my favorite nonSox/Tigers players are Pirates. There's Zach Duke, there's John Grabow, and there's Jody Gerut (there also used to be Tike Redman, but he's a Tiger now, joyfully). Usually everyone knows what's going on with Zach Duke, and Grabow and Gerut don't make the news that often, but there's been an awful lot of chatter about Jody Gerut these days, almost all of it wholly bizarre.
Here's the deal. Gerut's been missing time with a bum knee, and he had surgery on it in '04, and it flamed up again at the end of '05. He did OK this spring, and then got sent to AAA... he usually plays right or left field, and the Pirates aren't putting anyone over Jason Bay in left, and I suppose they felt pretty solid with Jeromy Burnitz The No Longer Cub in right. Got it?
Gerut apparently told the team, when they said he'd be going to AAA, that his knee was in a right state and he was probably going to need more surgery on it. This caused the Pirates to go "ummm hell no", because according to the labor agreement, you can't be sent to the minors if you're injured. Which makes sense, otherwise players would always be trying to play through horrible injuries and would be injuring themselves further in an effort to stay in the majors.
The Pirates say that Gerut is more or less fine, and that his knee "tested out strong" according to their medical experts. Gerut went to some outside doctors who said he's got patellar tendinitis and he's opting for surgery.
So the Pirates slapped Gerut on the restricted list, meaning he wouldn't get paid and they wouldn't cover any costs of his surgery, or travel to and from it, or whatever.
So Gerut, through the Players Association, filed a grievance against the Pirates.
DRAMA!!11!
I know none of you care. I know that. But I've been relishing the madness of it all, and I've been paying attention since I like Jody Gerut, and now you all know as well even if you don't want to.Labels: baseball, Cubs, Dodgers, Jody Gerut, MLB
2:52 AM
Monday, April 17, 2006
Of course I had class today, since Patriot's Day doesn't exist anywhere in the known universe outside of Boston, and U of M doesn't believe in Easter Monday either (which works for me, since they equally don't believe in Passover). My morning classes ended at 11:30, and, after stopping to get coffee (vital) and a billion more travel packs of tissues (sadly vital... *cough cough sneeze sniffle*), I staggered back to see if I could catch some of the Sox game.
I don't like using MLB.tv if I'm doing too many other things on the computer at the same time since it makes it buffer like a dying wombat, so I fired up the Gameday broadcast, just to see what was going on. I kept half an eye on that while doing work and gathering materials for class tonight, which I have to leave for in half an hour because my partner is a worthless untrustworthy human being. Just as an aside.
At one point I clicked over to see what was going on, and saw that Julian Tavarez was pitching. Since this was Gameday, that meant that his mug shot was duly displayed.
I nearly fell off my seat. I've always thought it, but it's even more startling when you see it sort of sprung on you: THE DUDE LOOKS LIKE AN ALIEN. A violent, insane, tempermental alien. The kind of alien who would beam cows up into his spaceship and perform all sorts of experiments on them, like to see how cowflesh reacted to his alien fist when he slammed it into their bovine heads.
Anyways, it was nice to see someone other than Papi get the clutch hit, for once, so big fat fake holiday thanks to you, Mark Loretta. This is not to say that Papi did not contribute, because he went yard. Again. Because that's what he does. I'm still pleased about that contract. Really my only concern is durability because Papi, love him as I surely do, is not the sveltest of players. Which is fine for right now, but it's hard to tell how he'll hold up as he ages over the length of this contract. It's entirely possible, of course, that he'll be like Roger Clemens and just keep on truckin' regardless. And when I say 'like Roger Clemens' I mean in physique, not personality or attitude or general level of evil.
Man, I can't wait to get back East, where I can actually watch these games. There's little comfort in being in Michigan, because it doesn't matter that I love the Tigers, the damn games aren't televised half the time anyways.
I went to the last game of the Michigan/Ohio State series on Sunday, despite the fact that I sniffled through it like a huge sickly loser. Photos are here if you'd like to see them, but I'll probably be writing about it when I've got a little more time anyhow.
Oh, and on a completely non-sport-related note, the End of the Year show awards were announced a couple days ago and I, um, won an award. Which is entirely shocking, because I never win those sorts of things. I won it for an approximately 5 foot long print of this photo (click for big):
It was the sort of thing I submitted to the show just on a whim, because I'd already had to get the damn thing printed out for my photography class, and if you spend that much money getting something printed large-scale, you may as well use it again, right? Plus it had taken a bleedin' long time to draw all that crap on myself, especially the bones on the back of my right hand, because I had to draw them with my left hand and I am not in the least tiny bit lefthanded.
This is the third year I've submitted something to the End of the Year show, and the first time I've won anything (although, in all fairness, there was no way in hell I was gonna win for what I submitted freshman year. Still, I thought last year's offering was pretty good). I'm still very surprised about it all. This image, incidentally, is one of my most popular photos on Flickr, which says something about the good taste of Flickrites, I'm sure.
Any incoherence here I fully attribute to the fact that I am ill and feel like cat pee right now.Labels: art, baseball, Julian Tavarez, MLB, offtopic, Red Sox
3:59 PM
Saturday, April 15, 2006
You can't defeat me and my baseball photos, University internet! The problem, thankfully, was not my machine, nor was it Flickr. It was the University internet. The problem was apparently this and it took almost 20 hours to correct. I'm still not entirely clear on what it was, exactly, or what kind of 'outage' could leave some internet working just fine and make some completely random sites like flickr, MGoBlue.com, any Gawker sites, and any Typepad sites inaccessible. Seriously, what the hell does that? How does that even happen?
Anyways, it's fixed now, and the photos from the Michigan/Ohio State baseball game can be found here. That's all of 'em, here are some highlights for you lazy sods, which I know many of you are. Click for big as per usual.
AJ Scheidt is our third base man. I'm sure the casual observer viewing my Flickr photostream would think I was stalking the kid or something, but I can't help the fact that the home dugout is on the third base side, and leaning on the back of the home dugout roof is probably my favorite place in the park to watch the game and, therefore, take photos.
Dan DeLucia was OSU's starting pitcher. Despite the fact that he is a HATED BUCKEYE, you've got to give him credit for the high stirrup socks.
Yay a Wolverine run. There were many of these. 14, in fact. In this case you've got Mike Schmidt crossing the plate, with AJ Scheidt waiting to greet him.
Sunset over the Fish. As soon as the sun went down I started cursing, because it's hard to get good action shots under the lights with my camera... it has a 'sport' mode that I use to get the shutter fast enough, but this sends the ISO all to bollocks and everything gets dark and grainy.
Second base man Doug Pickens spinning his batting helmet on his fingertip while waiting during a break in the action at third. I had to take like 5 or 6 shots to get this one, but every time he let the helmet drop he would shove it up and spin it some more, so I had chances. Incidentally, it seems like everyone I talk to somehow or other knows Doug Pickens. One of my friends (with whom I went to opening day) went to his high school. My cousin plays baseball with one of his younger brothers. He's just one of those ubiquitously knowable guys.
Dave Mika and Jeff Kunkel. Um. Our catchers are, apparently, good friends.
I love how they just wander out into the crowd after the game. This is the backup catcher, Dave Mika.
Dan Lentz didn't get into the game, but he was on the dugout rail for almost all of it, so I have a few shots of him. I took about 10 or 15 shots of him playing with this baseball, trying to get a good one. None of them are spectacular, but this was the best of the batch.
Go check out the rest of them though, because there are some good ones up there that I won't post here just due to space constraints and no particular desire to make your computer explode, and because I'm going to the Sunday afternoon game so you know there'll be more up in short order.
And thanks again to Brian and Ian for meeting up, because it was jolly good times and if you guys are that much good luck for the team, you may have to show up at every home game for the rest of the season. I'm just sayin'.
edit: FUCK. Carlos Pena is a (minor league) Yankee.Labels: baseball, in attendance, Michigan, NCAA, photoblog, Wolverines
8:37 PM
Offense? We don't need no stinkin' offense. We've got Curt Schilling, and Jon(athan) Papelbon, aka 'the guy who won't talk to me at parties anymore' (by the CHB) and 'OMG THE SECOND COMING OF ROGER CLEMENS OMG OMG OMG' (by everyone).
The bats were abysmally bad today. Everyone except for Gonzo, who had the only two RBI for the Sox, and Youks, who walked twice. I'd be more worried if Jamie Moyer didn't tend to do that to people (on occasion. Not so regularly the last couple years). Quite luckily we also had pitching that effectively shut down Ye Olde Seafarin' Moosemen, because Curt is looking on form so far, prompting fear of injury in my paranoid brain, and because Papelbon is looking like a truly kickass closer, prompting fears of overuse and burnout in the same bit of anatomy.
Manny's not hitting, Coco's out. I don't know. It's all very unfortunate and hard to pay too much attention to when you're in the midst of finals hundreds of miles away. This afternoon I was in the wood studio, beavering away on my sculpture. I'm using rasps, because there's not much chiselling to be done anymore. The wood I'm using is red pine, which is a sort of buttery pinkish yellow, with streaks of brown (rot) and blue (no one has any idea). So I was working away, and all of a sudden I noticed that part of the wood was stained red.
Hmm, I thought to myself. I've never seen it that color before.
Of course then I glanced down at my hand and realized I'd rasped all the skin off one of my finger joints and it was bleeding like the dickens. And of course as soon as I noticed it, it started to feel like a bobcat was mauling my hand. But before I noticed it, I was so absorbed in the work that I didn't even notice.
The point is that this is my concern about the team. They're doing well enough, and they're getting wins, and we're rightly absorbed in that, to a certain degree. But I fear that we're hemorrhaging out somewhere, and we won't notice until it's rather too late to do anything but flood the streets in a panic and make traffic even worse than it already is.
Anyhow.
Flickr is being a grump right now, so I can't upload the photos from it yet, but I was at the Michigan baseball game this Friday and it was perfect weather and we DESTROYED Ohio State. Destroyed them. Broke their souls and left them twitching upon the ground. It was so beautiful I nearly wept for joy. Preview images!
The socks of Craig Murray, who wasn't playing.
Ohio State's 3B, Ronnie Bourquin.
Also I FINALLY MET TIGERS BLOGGERS, and thus the circle of life is completed, or something. Brian of Beyond Boxscores and Big Ten Hardball fame showed up with his lovely wife, and Ian of Sweaty Men Endeavors fame showed up with his lovely self. After spending the first couple innings hanging on the back of the dugout with my friend Mike (who, incidentally, appeared out of nowhere when I was in the midst of snapping a photo, startling the hell out of me by suddenly being a voice at my shoulder saying, "Well, it's not the Tigers, but...") I displaced everyone in their row on the bleachers to join them. Whereupon we made fun of OSU, and everyone's at-bat music, and people who dance on dugout roofs between innings, and the OSU batboy, and everything the Lions have ever done, and horses. I definitely feel sure we made fun of horses at some point.
I don't know how comfortable the boys are with having their image plastered ALL OVER THE INTERNETS, but we did get a photo of the 3 of us (thanks Mrs. BeyondBoxscoresandBigTenHardball!) and it is such an adorably random looking shot that it fills me with a mellow love of the blogging world, the internet, Ray Fisher stadium, and Chris Shelton.
More to come tomorrow if Flickr stops being a little bitch and/or my computer stops being a little bitch. Whoever is causing the problem can think about it overnight and hopefully realize the error of their ways and rectify it. You too, Manny. You reflect and rectify as well.
edit: Because I am a completely paranoid nutbag I just threw on a pair of sneakers and ran down to the dorm computer lab to see if Flickr would work on their computers. Hey, it's my last year in the dorms, I may as well take advantage. It's not appearing down there either, so the problem is either somehow with the dorm internet connection, or with Flickr itself. This is much more comforting than if the problem was with my computer, because both those things are much more likely to get fixed in a timely fashion than my computer would be. Also, I know the people who run Flickr are on another time zone quite removed from eastern (either west coast time or British time, I can't quite tell, I know the person who started it used to be involved with b3ta, which is a predominantly British phenomenon. Point being, it could be on the mend as we speak. All this means, basically, is that I'm batshit insane and want my Flickr back now plzkthnx.
edit this afternoon: Well, at least I'm not going insane. Still, that tells us exactly NOTHING about what is causing this, or when it'll be fixed, and OH MY GOD DOES THIS SUCK. At least I know it's a University problem and not just my machine, I guess.Labels: baseball, MLB, Red Sox
3:04 AM
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
We'll get to that image in a second.
By now you've probably all noticed the change 'round these parts; that is, the new banner. It was a sad day when I realized it was pitiably anachronistic to have Joey Harrington and Bill Mueller as the visual focal points of a site covering the Lions and the Red Sox. So now we have a blue cat (of the appropriate species) wearing red socks, which should withstand the test of time. Or something. I may tweak that banner a bit (if you were swift on the day I first put it up you might've briefly seen a version without any borders), but that's how we're gonna do things here at BCRS nowadays.
And by 'we' I of course mean me, my computer, and Mortimer, the collective cactus being that lives on my windowsill. He's very helpful.
But anyways. It's been a bit, and during this time of year that means that I've missed quite a lot. I blame education. I see that Coco Crisp has done something shattering to his hand and/or finger, the official word being "a non-displaced fracture at the base of his left index finger," which, for us nonmedical sorts, is a hairline fracture (see, non-displaced, the bone hasn't moved).
Doesn't sound too bad in the grand scheme of awful and terrifying possibilities, but I don't like the location. The base of his index finger... ugh, that's something he's gonna need for both fielding and batting. It's a part of the hand that gets a lot of pressure put on it, if you think about how much you use your index finger (even on your nondominant hand) for. But the front office doesn't seem panicked, and it's early yet, and it's not like Adam Stern is a horrible replacement. More Red Sox Jews for Passover, huzzah!
In happy good yay-making news, however, David Ortiz has been signed to a 4-year extension, with a club option tacked on at the end. I'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find some someone who is unhappy with the deal, because no matter what it is there will always be some Red Sox fan who finds something about a deal to be unhappy with, but in this case that person is a bitter, bitter soul who lives out their days in the darkness of their parents' basement, pecking away at their computer and cursing the sun like Gollum and generally hating life and joy. Or maybe they're a Twins fan and they feel ever so shafted.
Also, the presser gave us this image, which is clearly one of the greatest AP photographs to ever exist and in a way validates the entire signing all by itself. Seriously. LOOK AT HOW COOL HE IS. And the bling! And the SMILE. And the FUZZY THEO BENIGNLY PRESIDING OVER ALL IN THE BACKGROUND. His hat kind of looks like a bicycle seat but even that is OK because it's David Ortiz and if he wants to wear a bicycle seat on his head, you damn well best sit back and whistle at how sharp he manages to make it look.
The home opener is in a few hours but I, of course, will not be able to see it, as I'll be frantically painting away in my last (official) painting studio of the year. Beckett's going and I'm just a wee bit annoyed that I won't be able to get a good look at him, but it's OK.
Why is it OK, you ask?
This is why it is OK.
I almost didn't want to say anything beforehand, because I hardly believed we were actually going until we were walking up past Ford Field and into the park. The weather was perfect and Bondo was pitching and we had prime Brandon Inge viewing seats (although not necessarily the best seats for photos, what with my telephoto-lens-less camera and all, but I tried). The Tigs lost but it was an amazingly good time and you should all go look at the photos so that you may enjoy it as well.
For more detail on it you can check out my exhaustion-crazed and vaguely incoherent post about it over at RotT.Labels: baseball, blognews, Coco Crisp, contract, David Ortiz, injury, MLB
10:59 AM
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Ah, this is why I love baseball season. This afternoon when I got back from class I caught most of the White Sox/Indians game on WGN, while keeping an eye on Gameday to see how the Tigers were doing. I had to go to a lecture, but I still managed to catch the tail end of the Red Sox game on MLB.tv, while watching the end of the Cardinals/Phillies game on ESPN. Then on a lark I flipped on TBS, and lo and behold, the Braves game was just starting because they're out west playing the Dodgers.
So I got to see Jimmy Rollins extend his hit streak to 38 games (on replays later in the game; he hit safely in the first inning), and Trot Nixon hit a homerun to back Josh Beckett's completely kickass outing, and Kameron Loe is friggin' gigantic, and the White Sox bullpen dropped the ball, and Jon(athan) Papelbon had an excellent 9th inning and Jeff Francoeur yay! And Bill Mueller yay! (wearing number 14, short hair, and no goatee. Very strange) No Nomar though, because he's already on the DL. Oh how I chortle.
Finals are murder these days, and will be for much of April (although it'll get easier in a couple weeks when art classes end; the rest of the university ends much later), but when there's a chance of baseball being on one of 4 TV channels, plus the computer... ah, it makes the horror of realizing you have to have a project whipped up all final-like in Final Cut in less than a week much easier to bear.
Quick thoughts:
-Papelbon DID look good out there. Calm, strong, etc. etc. But NESN kept cutting back to the bullpen, where Foulke was sitting, fleecey shirt on, looking vaguely disquieted. Clearly, putting Papelbon in was the right move here. But I hate to think what this is going to do to Foulke's already well-documented less than level state of mind.
-So, after the middle game in that series, who's about ready for Doug Mirabelli to come back? OK, I understand that Wake was doing a lot of that himself, what with the, er, control problems and such. But how much of that was the knuckleball being its usual knuckling self, and how much of it was Wake maaaaaybe not trusting his catcher as much as he used to? That's complete idle speculation, by the way. I have no idea. It's just something else to bite our nails neurotically about.
-Oh, and who had a heartattack over Timlin tonight? Was that necessary? Yeesh. I was all set to make some sort of lame joke about the fact that he's wearing his camo tshirt under his jersey again (100% of FACT), and then he had to go and nearly give the game away and my brain was all, "NO MIKE TIMLIN I CAN NO LONGER JOKE ABOUT YOU IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE SO STRESSFUL."
-Beckett looked really, really good. For a while there I thought we were going to Astro him. I won't believe it though until we see if that holds up and the blisters stay away. Heck, he could pull a Clement and melt down after the All Star break. There's time yet.
-Seriously, Kameron Loe is HUGE. Between him (at 6'7) and Scott Feldman (at 6'6), there was a bloody lot of Texas pitcher out there tonight.
-Is there anything in the universe more annoying than Hawk Harrelson saying "HE GONE!" whenever a White Sox pitcher strikes someone out? I tend to think not. Apparently, many others agree with me. Check out the graphic on the 'Hawkisms' page, by the way. Truly inspired stuff.
-After winning the first game against Barry Zito in absurd fashion (poor Zeets, allegedly his parents were in the crowd), the A's came back to win the next two games against the Yankees. I enjoy this trend. And Huston Street's been looking great. Not that he doesn't look great in an aesthetic sense, but great on the mound too.
-Mueller's been hitting pretty well out in LA. Sadly. I still haven't seen near enough of Lowell to tell if it's a worthwhile exchange, but my gut feeling is that, as of right this very particular moment, it's not. Hopefully we can make it up elsewhere.
-I know this is my Red Sox blog, not the Tigers one, and I know they were playing the Royals, not a real team, but STILL. Did you SEE Jeremy Bonderman's line? 8 Ks in 6.2 innings, 1 run that came when a runner he left on base scored during Spurling's time on the mound. Oh Em Effin' Gee. And did you SEE Chris Shelton on Opening Day, with the TWO HOMERUNS, and holy freaking cats and so on and so forth?
-Bronson got the win today for the Reds, and just so happened to hit a homerun. Yes. That is correct. Bronson Arroyo, the pitcher who looks like a little leaguer with a too-big helmet jammed over his abundance of blondeness, hit a bloody homerun. It was a nice one too, I saw it replayed during I think the Cardinals game.
-The salary list is out, and is topped by 3 Yankees, to the surprise of exactly no one. You have to go down to number 7 to hit a member of the Sox (Manny).
I am most amused by the fact that you have to go all the way down to number 117 before you hit a single Devil Ray.Labels: baseball, MLB, random
5:15 AM
Sunday, April 02, 2006
It's the most wonderful time of the year! And I don't mean the impending end of the semester and finals, which is why it's been a bit sparse over here lately. No, I mean Opening Day in mere hours. And on top of that, the new roster photos are finally out (took 'em bloody long enough). I think we all know what new roster photos mean around here.
Fun with roster photos 2006!
Note for a reminder: as these are linked directly from the site, the images will change when the team changes them, making the comments possibly no longer applicable. I find this amusing and also am too lazy to upload every single one to a Photobucket account, so you will learn to love it as well.
Pitchers
 Abe Alvarez
Oy. Not a good start to the new season of roster photos. He looks unaccountably ruddy, and also rather like his head is sinking backwards into his neck.
 Josh Beckett
Listing to the left like a bad drawing done on a tilted table.
 Matt Clement
So, since when did the Easter Island statues develop anorexia? And I love how they've overemphasized his neck here, just to remind us how scrawny he can sometimes look.
 Manny Delcarmen
Holding that smile with all his might, lest he burst into the hysterical nervous tears he so clearly wants to burst into.
 Lenny DiNardo
In Lenny DiNardo's eyes, there is no soul. Only tiny narrow smile and BLACKNESS.
 Keith Foulke
So, uh, anyone seen that movie Slither yet? You know, the one with the giant glistening rubbery slugs?
 Craig Hansen
4:20! 4:20! 4:20! 4:20! I mean, Hansen always looks a little drugged-out to me, but this is ridiculous.
 Jon Lester
They've got to stop stealing store-window dummies and putting hats on them for the photoshoots if they players don't show up.
 Edgar Martinez
Will eat you. End of story. If there was a sound effect accompanying this photo, it would be "Hooowwaarrrgggh".
 Cla Meredith
This guy's only 22, right? So how the hell did the photographers manage to make him look like a washed-up French musketeer squinting from the glare off the highly polished muskets of his enemies?
 Jon(athan) Papelbon
"Yo. Whassup. J P-bon here. Rispekt."
 David Pauley
Someone's been spending a little too much time with Craig Hansen, methinks. Also featuring frighteningly dis-united eyes.
 David Riske
First literally 'laugh out loud' roster photo of the season. I couldn't help myself. Anyways, I'm sure he'd make a perfectly genial scarecrow for a farm somewhere.
 Curt Schilling
What's up with cropping it at the top of the frame? Curt attempts to retain his title as 'whitest man in the AL East'.
 Rudy Seanez
Melting... meeeeeelllllttttiiiiinnnggggg. And a tiny bit upset about that.
 Julian Tavarez
Oh my gawd. It looks like someone took a normal skull and compressed with a couple boards and some heavy rocks.
 Mike Timlin
It looks like he's had a rod shoved up his spine to hold him perfectly vertical. I wonder if they actually do this.
 Jermaine Van Buren
A hat precariously perched at the top of a mudslide.
 Tim Wakefield
Why does he look so damn narrow? It's like Alan Embree minus 80% of the sense that he'll molest your children.
 David Wells
Isn't this still his old roster photo? In any event, you can just imagine the photogs holding up a cupcake behind the camera. It would account for that tranquil yet focused look in his eyes.
Catchers
 Josh Bard
What the HELL is going on here? This is one of the most hideous photos I've seen in a while. The rounded, unformed smile... the weirdly darkened but still unsaturated skin on his cheeks... the plasticky look of his face... the eyebrows that look like they're struggling to do something, but we're not quite sure what... truly a work of art, this one.
 Jason Varitek
'Tek looks awfully happy about the fact that his photo was taken from a bust sculpted out of Spam.
Infielders
 Hee-Seop Choi
This is not a roster photo. Doesn't count. Moving on...
 Alex Cora
Those ears will help him fly around the infield all Dumbo-style to better reach high balls, clearly.
 Alex Gonzalez
Pull on his cheeks and his eyes will take that one extra step and slide over to the sides of his skull.
 Mark Loretta
They couldn't have waited the half second longer it would've taken to let him actually smile? As it is he looks like Elmer Fudd.
 Mike Lowell
Without those eyebrows and all that facial hair, he would not have a face.
 Alejandro Machado
Why, mummy, whyyyyy? *sob*
 David Ortiz
The one photo in existence where Papi looks pleasant yet is not smiling.
 J.T. Snow
Great, our new first baseman is fun for children of all ages. Just be sure you don't try to fit his head into the triangular hole, it'll only fit in the square one.
 Kevin Youkilis
Oh Youks. What have you done to yourself? It's like someone put a goatee on a side of ham and made it hang out with Mark Bellhorn for a weekend.
Outfielders
 Coco Crisp
Never one to disappoint with the hat tilt, now is he?
 Dustan Mohr
The happiest caveman in town!
 Brandon Moss
Now that the original Albino Cave Elf has retired, it looks like Brandon Moss is making a push to take over the title.
 David Murphy
I'd like to know which photog it was who decided to take a huge bite out of his right side.
 Trot Nixon
I never thought I'd see the day when a roster photo would deemphasize the buttchin. Yet here is Trotter, cleanshaven and inexplicably looking all of 12 years old.
 Wily Mo Pena
Why do so many roster photos feature necks that could lead full and rich lives of their own as completely separate entities?
 Manny Ramirez
You'd think with the amount of money he's making, Manny would have no reason to look like a homeless man. But you would be wrong.
 Adam Stern
Did they even bother to plug in lights for this photo shoot?
Also, I don't know if you all read Postsecret, but if you're not doing so, you should be, it's ace. I popped by today to see what there was to see, and lo and behold, there was THE BEST POSTSECRET EVER.
See for yourself.Labels: baseball, fun with roster photos, MLB, Red Sox
3:07 AM
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