Formerly Felines for Anarchistic Green Democracies

A Bostonian at the University of Michigan.


There will also be discussion of the New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, and Michigan Wolverines. Probably in that order.

Detroit Tigers content now at Roar of the Tigers!



























 
Archives
April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 September 2009













 




Blogging the Detroit Tigers for the Most Valuable Network.












the flickr photostream

Head here to see what I've been shooting lately.


the game sets

Head here to see the shots from a specific baseball or football game (or anything else I've made a set for).



Features


Spelling rant
Yankee Star Wars
A Tigers Comedy of Errors
How bad is Keith Foulke really?
Harry Potter and the Boston Red Sox
Bellhorn vs. Graffanino vs. Lamprey
Critiquing team slogans
Joey Harrington blogs a baseball game
Jason Varitek gets injured
Winter meetings fashion report
Mascot Rant #1
Mascot Rant #2




8 Days of Jewish Baseball
Day 1- Kevin Youkilis
Day 2- Brad Ausmus
Day 3- Al Levine
Day 4- Jason Marquis
Day 5- John Grabow
Day 6- Justin Wayne
Day 7- Shawn Green
Day 8- Gabe Kapler and Theo Epstein

the Story of Chanukah, Red Sox style
Part I: the cruel reign of Steinbrennochus
Part II: rise of the Soxxabees
Part III: the rebellion begins!
Parts IV, V, and VI
Parts VII and VIII


Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Fun with Roster Photos
Note: Comments may not exactly correspond to images, as the images will change when the team puts up new photos. Adds a level of surreality, I think.
Detroit Tigers
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Chicago White Sox
Baltimore Orioles
Boston Red Sox 2006
Boston Red Sox 2007
New York Yankees 2007


Teams of the Cat

Boston
Red Sox
Patriots

Detroit
Lions
Tigers

Miami
Dolphins

University of Michigan
Wolverines (all sports)

this is all


Sports Reads


12eight
Baseball Desert
Baseball Heavy (PawSox)
Basegirl
Bullshit Memorial Stadium
Cursed to First
Empyreal Environs
Firebrand of the AL
GYS Network
Joy of Sox
Livejournal Home of Red Sox Nation
Misery Loves Company (Sox and Mets)
Over the Monster
Papel-blog
Peter on All
Professional, Idiot, and the Tailback
Red Sox Fan in Pinstripe Territory
Respect the Tek
Sass-a-thon
Singapore Sox Fan
Surviving Grady
Twitch124
Yanks Fan vs. Sox Fan


Detroit Tigers and Lions



Roar of the Tigers

Beyond Boxscores
Bless You Boys
the Cheap Seats
Daily Fungo
Detroit Tiger Weblog
Lions Den
Mack Avenue Tigers
Mickey Tettleton Memorial Overpass
Motown Sports (messageboard)
Motown Sports Revival
Northern Michigan Detroit Sports Blog
Out of Bounds
Sweaty Men Endeavors
Take 75 North
Tiger Tales
TigerBlog
Tigers Central
Where have you gone, Johnny Grubb?


I'm a member of DIBS!



College Sports


MGoBlog (Michigan)

Big Ten Hardball
Blog that Yost Built (Michigan)
Blue-Gray Sky (Notre Dame)
Boi from Troy (USC)
Every Day Should be Saturday (Florida, general college sports)
iBlog for Cookies (Michigan)
ParadigmBlog (Michigan)
Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer (Alabama)
Schembechler Hall (Michigan)
Sunday Morning Quarterback (Southern Miss, mostly general)



2632 (Orioles)
Aaron Gleeman (Twins)
Around the Oval (Ohio State)
Bard's Room (White Sox)
Bat Girl (Twins)
Ben Roethlisberger (personal blog, god help us all)
Bronx Banter (Yankees)
Bronx Block
Buckeye Commentary (Ohio State)
Camden Chat (Orioles)
Enlightened Spartan (Michigan State)
Futility Infielder (Yankees)
Let's Go Tribe (Indians)
NYYFans.com (Yankees forum)
Pinstripe Alley (Yankees)
Replacement Level Yankees
Royals Authority
Royals Review
Tribe Report (Indians)
TwinsGeek



Armchair GM (all)
Athletics Nation
Blog Maverick (Mark Cuban)
Catfish Stew (Athletics)
Deadspin
Ducksnorts (Padres)
Fire Joe Morgan
Gaslamp Ball (Padres)
Goat Riders of the Apocalypse (Cubs)
Idiots Write About Sports (A's, Giants)
Lookout Landing (Mariners)
McCovey Chronicles (Giants)
Metstradamus
Minor League Ball
On the DL (gossip)
Pittsburgh Lumber Co. (Pirates)
Rays Talk
Red Reporter (Reds)
Serious Dismay Sports
Uniwatch (all teams)
USS Mariner (Mariners)



Gilbert Arenas
Curtis Granderson
Tommy Lasorda
Mike Maroth
Pat Neshek
Raymond
Nate Robertson
Curt Schilling
CJ Wilson
Kevin Youkilis



the Brushback
Call of the Green Monster (Red Sox)
Die-hard Cubs Fun
the Dugout, chat room of pro baseball
Korean baseball cartoons (inexplicable)
Soxaholix
Wizznutzz (Wizards..just read it)



Ann Arbor is Overrated
B3ta
Dave Barry
BaseBlogging
'boards
Chromasia
Corey Corcoran
Fried Rice Thoughts
Go Fug Yourself
Goodspeed Update
Grand Mental Station
Quo Vadimus
McSweeney's
pasquinade
PostSecret
Ryan Estrada
Scaryduck
Vitriolica
Whatevs.org
Mike Wieringo


if you are wishing to email the resident feline anarchist, you may do so at
bluecatsredsox@gmail.com


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.


Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com































 
Tuesday, July 15, 2008  

So, Josh Hamilton, huh? I think he can maybe hit the baseball a little bit.

I have to admit that I had basically no expectations for the Home Run Derby. All Star festivities are generally just too much for me-- I get bored with the endless, pointless ceremony; the speeches given by people who, like Chris Berman, really have no business giving speeches; the treatment of the selections as a Srs Big Deal when they're really, REALLY not (see: Varitek, Jason); and so on. The Yankee Stadium lustfest that is this year's All Star Big Story doesn't help either. I'm sure I'd love it if I was a Yankee fan, but since I'm very much NOT, I am more annoyed by it than anything else. WE GET IT ALREADY.

Thing is, I know it's a historic stadium and historical shit happened there and like the entire Hall of Fame played there and what-the-fuck-ever. BUT IT'S NOT EVEN THAT OLD. It's not like this is Fenway or Wrigley. For cats' sake, THEY'RE KNOCKING DOWN TIGER STADIUM EVEN AS WE SPEAK and that gets MAYBE a mention and a couple seconds of video on Sportscenter. Yankee Stadium gets a bloody memorial service. I know that I'm biased, I know that full well, but I think that most everyone who is not a Yankee fan is getting sick of endless parade of wankery.

I mean, I've been to Yankee Stadium. It was kinda cool. It was interesting. It was (gasp!) historically significant and I appreciated that. HOWEVER, it was NOT a spectacularly beautiful park like Comerica or PNC, and it is NOT a perhaps-inconvenient-but-overwhelmingly-charming-due-to-its-age kinda park like Fenway or Wrigley. It originally opened in the '20s, sure, but it doesn't look like a ballpark from the '20s. It looks like a ballpark from the mid-70s, which is essentially what it is, after the remodel.

I'm not trying to hate on Yankee Stadium. Normally I am perfectly content to leave it for the (understandable!) enjoyment of Yankee fans. But this All Star crap is driving me crazy, because they're treating the place like a veritable Wonder of the World, and it just... isn't.

Anyways. Josh Hamilton!

Like I was saying before I got sidetracked into rant-mode, I had few expectations for the Home Run Derby. I had it on for the sake of having it on, but I was doing work on the computer at the same time and was only kind of watching it.

Now, I'm aware of the Josh Hamilton Story. Everyone, at this point, is aware of the Josh Hamilton Story. I know some people who derive immense amounts of joy from the Josh Hamilton Story. Personally speaking, it always skeeved me out a little bit. Of course it's awesome and great that he overcame alcoholism and heroin addiction to get back to where he is now, but I always felt wicked bad for the (Devil) Rays, who believed in him first and really got screwed over by the whole thing.

While it's good for him that finding God helped him to overcome his Issues, y'know, to each their own, it always makes me wince a little to hear another ballplayer thanking Jesus after he had a good game. Like, really? I'm with Jim Bouton on this one-- I'm waiting for the ballplayer who thanks evolution for helping him develop the hand-eye coordination he needed to hit a big homerun. And of course there's the whole race issue, which is not Josh Hamilton's own fault, of course, and many other people have already addressed it in many other places.

The point (there's a point?) is that I was pre-conditioned to be underwhelmed by the Derby, and that while I admit to the awesomeity of his story, I haven't exactly been wholeheartedly squeeing over Josh Hamilton this season.

Then he started hitting.

And you know what? It didn't matter. It didn't matter that this was a player with a somewhat controversial and probably heart warming story. It didn't matter that this was taking place during one of the most overblown 'events' of the season. It didn't matter that ESPN had like 12 guys announcing it and a single announcer would have sufficed.

I defy anyone-- ANYONE-- to watch Josh Hamilton hitting those homeruns and NOT enjoy it. It was impressive and spectacular and it was damn near impossible to keep from saying, "Wow," and, "Holy freaking cats," at the TV. It was awesome in the sense that it actually inspired awe. It was FUN. It was, probably, what the Home Run Derby SHOULD be.

Of course then there was the let-down of the second round, and the hilarious sadness of Justin Morneau actually winning in the end (getting both snubbed for the post-derby interview AND called 'Jason' by the guy giving him his check). But for that period of time when Hamilton was batting during the first round... that was what this crazy All Star crap should be all about.

(Josh Hamilton photo from a Red Sox/Rangers game in mid-April of this season.)

Labels: , , , , ,


4:56 PM

Saturday, July 05, 2008  
The 4th of July was good except for how the Tigers lost at baseball. The Red Sox did not, though, and Jason Varitek got to wear stars all over his gear and get called Captain America all day long, which I bet he's been secretly waiting for since he got that big C. The 'FUCK YEAH AMERICA!!' hat designs were also OK....

...until I saw them on teams whose usual color schemes did not include blue. Teams like the A's, who looked downright absurd wearing their green jerseys with those royal blue hats, and the Diamondbacks, on whom royal blue just does not work. I get that they wanted the hats to be blue so they would still be 100% 'FUCK YEAH AMERICA!!', but if only they'd gone with a much darker blue, it would have looked less bizarre on a lot of teams.

And let us not EVEN get into the HORROR that was the Cleveland hat. On the one hand, you have a racist caricature of a native American with the American flag on it, as if to say 'FUCK YEAH AMERICA CONDONES THIS IMAGERY! THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT!' On the other hand, much of Chief Wahoo's face is covered with the dark part of the flag design, so he looks like he's in blackface. Good work, MLB. Way to go.

The ugliest uniform of the day award, though, goes to the Chicago Wrong Sox, who apparently confused the 4th of July with Memorial Day and decided to wear camo jerseys. Desert camo jerseys. With tan pants. And brown hats. Brown hats with black-and-thus-barely-visible logos (unless they were slightly darker brown; it was hard to tell on TV). Combine that with stuff like Nick Swisher's ugly Buckeye face and you have a sight that no eyeball should ever be forced to encounter.

Labels: , , , ,


12:26 AM

Thursday, July 03, 2008  

So that game sucked, and the dome sucked, and the series sucked. Unfortunately I can't say that the Rays sucked, because they mostly did not. Playing 'Sweet Caroline' after tonight's loss was a jerkweed kind of thing to do, but I suppose they earned it.

It's not like we as Red Sox fans are in denial over the fact that the Rays are good this season (well, I probably can't speak for everyone). The fact that this particular game featured a complete collapse of the bullpen was what made it so hard to take.

I mean, can Craig Hansen even pitch at this level anymore? I want to say yes-- he's still striking guys out more than he's walking them and, uh, he doesn't have a 135.00 ERA like Fernando Rodney did earlier this season and... uh, he got a haircut, which shows, uh... dedication to the team and. Stuff. Definitely stuff. But HOLY FREAKING CATS was he HORRIFIC in this game. Sure, he came into a shitty situation, consider that fact duly acknowledged, but in 0.0 innings of work he allowed 5 runs: 2 inherited runners, and 3 all his very own. That is not 'slight meltdown', that is 'eeeaaaayyyyaaaaggghhhh gurk gurk splat wibble'

And what of Manny Delcarmen before him, who was just handing the bases to Rays all over the place without recording a single stinkin' out, what of him? Can HE still pitch at this level? Can he do so after a meltdown this intense? If he was a closer, in a way I'd feel better, because closers at least are practically trained to forget outings like this. Run-o'-the-mill middle relievers, however.... well, if they were tough enough to keep from getting psyched out by their own suck, maybe they wouldn't be middle relievers. Also maybe if they were good at throwing baseballs.

So, all of that sucked, a whole bunch of suck, infinite suckulation, but the postgame was made AWESOME by the presence of Mr. Dennis Eckersley, who reacts to bad Red Sox pitching like it's meant to specifically and personally insult him. After ranting a little about Dice K's short (5 inning) start opening the door for Bullpenplosion, they cut to commercial, and when they came back he was smiling in that 'I laugh so I don't start screaming' way he has.

Then he had to assure the audience that he was calm, he had calmed down, so the discussion could begin again.

I do not think that there is another analyst in baseball right now who takes bad pitching so personally, and, if there is, there is most assuredly no one who does it with such amazing crazy rage and pure '70s style.

Labels: , , , , , ,


12:14 AM

 
This page is powered by Blogger.