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
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
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