Friday, February 06, 2009
Truck Day! The one true sign of spring. Or, at least, a sign that things are moving in a generally spring-ish direction. The weather today was not really in a spring frame of mind, but a small, determined, bundled-up group of fans (most of them clutching cameras) huddled around the back of the truck behind Fenway this afternoon.
Brr.
A small, chilly, but appropriately attired fan.
Johnny Pesky made a brief appearance to speak to the media and send the truck off properly. He shook his head when asked if he was heading down with the truck. "Too many people," he said, adding that he'd join up with the Sox in Fort Myers a little closer to the official start of Spring Training.
Truck Day is not much of an event in and of itself, of course; it's the symbolism of Truck Day that Red Sox Nation so adores. It means baseball is officially On the Way to Starting, and since we're all baseball-starved obsessive freaks out here, On the Way to Starting is something we take seriously. Even when it's really cold out and there are lots of other, warmer things to do at 1 pm in the city.
At least there was sun?
Happy Truck Day, kids and kittens!Labels: baseball, Johnny Pesky, MLB, photoblog, Red Sox, Spring Training, Truck Day
8:14 PM
Friday, October 10, 2008
It's on.
All photos by Samara Pearlstein, obviously.Labels: ALCS, baseball, Devil Rays, MLB, photoblog, Red Sox, rivalry
5:12 PM
Saturday, June 21, 2008
I have seen a lot of games at Fenway Park. I've seen wins and losses and extra innings. I've seen homeruns and grand slams and triples, walk-offs and double steals and brawls. I've seen Red Sox players making spectacular plays and awful plays, hugging each other and hugging players on other teams. I've seen them feeding the mourning doves that sometimes land on the field and I've seen them almost hit the red-tailed hawk that lives in the lightbanks with a high pop fly and I've seen them almost get hit in the head by low-flying swallows.
I've seen Fenway sunny, and lit up in the dark, and cloudy, and in the middle of a brilliant sunset. I've been to obnoxiously hot games at Fenway and nose-runningly cold games at Fenway and games where the temperature is absolutely perfect. I've seen rain so dense that the light towers hang double reflections in midair. I've seen mist and fog so thick the Prudential building completely disappears.
I had never seen a rainbow at Fenway.
Before tonight.
So I can check that one off the meteorological checklist.
I had also never seen Paul Pierce shaking off Jason Varitek's pitch signs before tonight, so that was a fun little bonus.
 Labels: baseball, Celtics, Fenway, MLB, Paul Pierce, photoblog, rainbow, Red Sox
1:44 AM
Friday, May 16, 2008
In case you missed it (and really, I update so randomly over here that you probably did), I was at two out of the four Red Sox/Tigers games in Detroit. Good times for the Red Sox half of my brain, as I'm sure you may recall. My seats for the first game were in a luxury box (!!), so I took mostly photos of Comerica, which is decidedly a Tigers photo interest, but for the second game I showed up early enough to take in BP. Red Sox BP.
The entire photoset is here if you just wanna check 'em all out, but here are a few highlights.
There really are insufficient words to describe how amazingly nice The Mayor is. He seems extra-friendly because he's a pro ballplayer, sure, and pro ballplayers aren't exactly known as an unusually friendly group of people (more the 'prickly, overpaid prima donna' types, really), but he'd probably have people raving about his niceness even if he was a stock broker or something.
I'm not really sure what the deal with this is. It's Aardsma and Buchholz here, but lots of guys on the team were doing it. It appeared, to the untrained eye, to be Rock, Paper, Scissors, and they seemed to be doing it in greeting, you know, like instead of a high five or ass pat or other more commonplace gesture. Just a quick rousing game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Accompanied by much crazed ballplayer laughter. I don't know. Anyone got an explanation?
Jon Lester, bubble gum, triptych. Nom nom nom POP!
I know that Beth already posted with the other shot of this event, but I thought it bore repeating. Dice K snuck up on Tavarez, grabbed him from behind, and gave him a surprise back stretch.... much to Julian's delight, as you can see in the photos. Aw, hell. I don't WANT to miss Tavarez, but damn it all, I rather think I'm going to.
O hai reunion! I saw Edgah chatting quite a bit with Papi, and Manny, and (for whatever obscure reason) Youk. Actually most of the Spanish-speaking Tigers took the time to have a little meet-and-greet with Ortiz, and I took photos of a bunch of the hugs and such, but I especially liked the fact that Papi is tugging on Edgah's shirt here.
Of course I took loads of boring portrait-y shots too:
 
 
 
 
 
and so on.
As I said at the top, if you want to see the rest of the shots from the game, they're right here. Yeah, I went a little crazy. I don't usually see the Sox on the road so I don't usually get to see Sox BP. That's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.Labels: baseball, MLB, photoblog, Red Sox
8:48 PM
Sunday, May 04, 2008
I first came to the University of Michigan in the fall of 2003.
Michigan 35, Ohio State 21. 2003.
Michigan 45, Michigan State 37, 3 overtimes. 2004.
Michigan 27, Penn State 25. 2005.
Michigan 14, Ohio State 3. 2006.
Michigan 31, Michigan State 13. 2006.
Michigan 17, Oakland University 0. 2007.
Michigan 5, Eastern Michigan 3, walkoff homerun. 2008.
Today, in May of 2008, I went to a baseball game.
Michigan 15, Ohio State 1. 2008.
Tomorrow I move out, with a BFA, a minor in Biology, and 5 years of memories.
Thanks, U of M. Thanks, Ann Arbor. I'll miss ya.Labels: baseball, football, NCAA, photoblog, University of Michigan, Wolverines
7:27 PM
Monday, March 31, 2008
Oh general baseball population Opening Day! Look at this schedule I'm working on here, kids:
8 am- 1 pm: class
1 pm: Tigers/Royals (RotT post up)
4 pm: Giants/Dodgers (expected mentions of Barry Bonds despite the fact that Barry Bonds is no longer on the team: 1,093)
somewhere in here: a bit of Cubs/Brewers (Gabe Kapler!)
7 pm: Angels/Twins (Torii Hunter returns to Minnesota OH THE DRAMA OH THE HUMANITY!)
10 pm: Astros/Padres (um... baseball!)
You know how when a dog finds something that smells really good to them they'll roll around in it? Just seriously go to town, rolling back and forth in a crazed canine ecstasy? That's basically what I'm doing with this Opening Day schedule. WALLOWING IN BASEBALL. If I could literally roll around in it, I would.
Also making me smile: I went to a bunch of Michigan baseball games this weekend, including a double header on Saturday with rain expected on Sunday. That means they put the tarp on the field after the game, and since it was a college baseball game, the team had to put the tarp on the field.
Kevin Cislo makes a friend.
Alan Oaks frolicks.
There are very, very few things in the world funnier than watching college baseball players do the groundskeeping.
A few more photographic highlights:
Kenny Fellows, fastfastfast.
I'm always excited when I manage to get an in-focus shot of the outfielders (Derek VanBuskirk, in this case) in action.
Zach Putnam makes a combination of the :D and :P faces.
The rest of the photos from the game are right here. Lotsa shots, since it was a double header and I was enjoying the heady feeling that comes from shooting a double header with a camera that (unlike the camera I had last year) does not make me worry about a) battery drain or b) how many photos are on my card.
Hope you lot are all enjoying the general baseball population Opening Day as thoroughly as I am.Labels: baseball, MLB, NCAA, opening day, photoblog, Wolverines
3:15 PM
Monday, October 22, 2007
I know I haven't been posting over here very often, but rest assured, I have been spreading the insane Sox love during that time:
I have to say that Game 5 was maybe the most stressful baseball game I've watched in a long, long time. There were any number of times when I thought my roommate would come in the next morning and find me curled up dead in front of the TV. It really did feel like 2004 again: that sort of awful do-or-die thing that most of us, given the kinds of jobs we have and lives we lead, just don't feel that often. Eeesh. I mean, there are big games, and there are Big Games.
Of course this is why JD Drew's grand slam at the start of the next game was so very amazing to RSN. It wasn't just that he hit a postseason grand slam; it was that we knew, at that moment, that we probably would not have to live through another Game 5 just yet. Two of those games one after the other might have been too much for us.
Last night was tense most of the way, but still nothing approaching Game 5. I LITERALLY thought I was causing myself physical damage during Game 5, either from the nail biting or the stress-induced internal traumas. Game 7 was rough until we broke it open, but still, WE were the team on a roll at that point, not the Indians, and despite the double plays (which, by the way, NEED TO BE ADDRESSED before the World Series, 'cause my GAWD I know Westbrook throws that sinker, but that many balls on the ground in the infield with men on base is NOT OK) the Sox just looked more tapped in than the Indians did.
Now, of course, comes the Dire Challenge. We have the Red Sox on a roll, and the Rockies on a roll. I am split on this World Series (prediction-wise... obviously not rooting-wise), for two reasons:
The Rockies' streak may have had time to cool down since they've had a relatively long wait between the end of the NLCS and the start of the WS. Obviously the Rockies have some good players, or they wouldn't be able to rattle off that streak in the first place, but a lot of baseball streaking is made up of amorphous stuff like 'staying hot' and 'feeling locked-in' and other such newspaper tag phrases. The Rockies were able to maintain their streak in part because they were playing game after game with no breaks (or short breaks), so they were as individuals and as a team maintaining a rhythm that worked. Maybe (hopefully) the time they spent waiting for the ALCS to resolve itself will have put them off their game a bit. The Red Sox are on a roll, and they only have two days to stew on it. Advantage: Sox.
The Red Sox may be burnt out after the struggle to win the ALCS. That's the problem with the league championships when the games and series are close. You can't slack off, because then you have no shot at all at the World Series, but in a way you don't want to exert quite as much effort as you possibly can. Most everyone's hurting in one way or another by this time of year, and if they push too hard just to get through the LCS, they might not have much left for the WS. See: Detroit Tigers, 2006. Of course this isn't always the case (see: Boston Red Sox, 2004), but it can be, and it worries me. The Rockies had pretty stress-free series, and they've had lots of time to rest their pitchers. If Game 5 was that stressful for ME, I can only imagine how much exponentially worse it was for the actual players. Advantage: Rox.
We shall see what we shall see. All we can do is keep the mojo up (DON'T WASH THAT JERSEY) and hope for another Papelbon jig.Labels: ALCS, baseball, MLB, photoblog, Red Sox
12:00 PM
Sunday, September 02, 2007
I'm hoping that writing about this will be sort of therapeutic. Or something.
By now you're probably all well aware of the historically horrific Michigan football game that took place on Saturday, when Appalachian State became the first 1-AA team in the history of ever to defeat an AP-ranked team. It was every bit as bad in the stadium as you probably imagine.
Usually the first game of the season is a time for fun and happy good times. The opposing team is always some non-conference school with a definite fluff factor, and while of course there's the Any Given Saturday factor and all that, it's still THE MICHIGAN WOLVERINES playing against SOME LOW-DIVISION SCHOOL, so the odds are not exactly squared up. If you're a Michigan fan, it's stress-free. All you have to worry about is how hot it's going to be in the stadium at gametime, and if you're watching at home, well, no worries at all.
This year already got off to a bad start, because most people who wanted to watch at home couldn't-- thank you, Big 10 Network. Bad karma for sure.
It was pretty warm out, but I've experienced worse in the Big House before. We also weren't sitting in the student section for the first time in my life, which meant that instead of balancing precariously on a narrow bench with a bunch of drunken frat boys swaying dangerously into me, I actually got to sit down for much of the game. That and the fact that there was a seat or two vacant in my row (so we weren't packed in like sardines) makes the heat shockingly easier to bear. I still managed to get sunburnt, but that's par for the course.
Still, it was a pleasant sunny day, with one of those "high skies" you hear about sometimes in baseball. You know the kind: that endless vault of blue without a scrap of cloud in it, bright enough to look perfectly collegiate against anyone wearing maize. It was hard to imagine that the game was going to have any outcome other than the expected one.
When Michigan first drove down the field and scored on a Mike Hart touchdown run, it seemed even more like things were going to progress in the usual manner. Mike Hart looked great, a force of sheer unstoppable Mike Hart-ness. Who does not love Mike Hart? Is this a thing which is possible? I think not.
Appalachian State scored soon after that, though. It was a little deflating, especially because it came on a great big 68-yard pass, the kind of thing that it would later seem impossible for Henne to throw. Chad Henne apparently prefers little dumpy passes that may travel 30 yards sideways, but only ACTUALLY go 2 yards up the field. We know Henne has the arm; when he does go long, part of his problem is actually going TOO long and overthrowing his receivers. So I'm not sure why the coaching staff sticks with this wee-pass scheme when it has failed to work so many times.
But the point is that even though the game had been quickly tied up, we weren't too upset yet. A little pissed off at the defense, sure. Grumbling a little, sure. But no one in the stands ACTUALLY believed that we were looking at a straight-up defeat. This kind of stuff has happened to Michigan before. We've had a TON of trouble with mobile quarterbacks the past few years, and Armanti Edwards is very, very mobile (or at least we sure made him look that way).
(Why yes, that IS a hole the size of Alaska that has obligingly opened up in the Michigan defense for Mr. Edwards to saunter right through.)
I guess this is a kind of arrogance, but honestly? We win these kinds of games. We may do so annoyingly according to the fans, especially in the Lloyd Carr era, where the win would likely be just enough and not a whit more, but we win. This isn't an arrogant statement; it's a statement of FACT.
The whole game slowly became a series of unbelievable occurrences. Surely we wouldn't be down this much by halftime. Surely we wouldn't be down in the second half. Surely we wouldn't be down so close to the end of the game.
When we came back in the last minutes of the game to squeak ahead, it was like everyone in the crowd said, "Ah ha!, so THIS is how it will go!" We would sneak ahead of the Mountaineers and it would be an ugly, ugly game that would get the attention of the team, so they would hopefully be extremely motivated to learn from their mistakes... but we would still WIN. It seemed impossible that we wouldn't. And then when we came back AGAIN, with that great pass from Henne and the great catch from Mario Manningham... when we got into field goal range...
That was ugly. That was an ugly, ugly blocked kick, but holy freakin' cats, it should not have even come down to that. Is it inexcusable for Gingell to be kicking the ball that low? Yes. Of course. What the hell. But it is MORE inexcusable to be depending on a field goal with the clock ticking down to prevent a defeat at the hands of a 1-AA team, even if that 1-AA team is the best 1-AA team to ever put on its little 1-AA pants.
I am not sure that I can accurately describe the feeling in the stadium after the Mountaineers ran that blocked kick back and dogpiled on the Michigan sideline.
It may best be summed up by the older guy sitting in front of me, who, as soon as the game ended, sat down heavily on his bit of bleacher and immediately pulled out and lit up a cigarette. This is a clear violation of probably 50 different and equally strident Big House rules and regulations. You'll see people sneaking alcohol into Michigan games all the time, but I had never seen someone smoking; that always seemed to be a much worse offense.
This guy was so obviously stunned and traumatized that he did not, in that moment, care. At all. He stared into space, motionless except for the little motions needed to smoke his cigarette. He looked so utterly lost that people coming up the stairs past him kept patting him consolingly on the back. It's possible that he didn't decide to ignore the rules; it looked like he might have just forgot where he was altogether.
Were there any good moments? Sure. Of course.
One of the best moments was after the bands had come off the field at halftime and the kickers were warming up. Jason Vitaris, the Appalachian State place kicker, was kicking down at my end of the field. They had only managed/bothered to get the net about halfway up, so when he boomed a kick way high, it ended up in the crowd, maybe 10 or 15 rows up.
Vitaris gazed patiently into the crowd, waiting for the ball to get thrown back. The Michigan fans of course immediately started passing the ball backwards, farther and farther up into the stadium, yelling at people who didn't understand what was going on. This took a while, since the ball had a long way to go and its passage was pretty erratic. The whole time this was going on Vitaris was just staring at the crowd, like he couldn't quite believe that he wasn't getting the ball back.
This continued until the crowd collectively managed to get the ball all way to the top row, where it was ceremoniously hurled out of the stadium entire. Vitaris kind of looked around furtively, like he still could not believe that the whole thing wasn't some sort of colossal joke and he would be getting his ball back shortly, before he finally had to give up on it.
The other best moment was when we were walking back from the stadium and one of the kids hanging out of a window along the way was screaming to everyone, "Drink the loss away! Drink the loss away! It's the only way!" in a truly brave and heroic manner. That's the good ol' collegiate spirit right there, that is.
The rest of the photos from the game are right here, if for some sick masochist reason you want to look at them all.
(Watching Sportscenter. They're talking about BASEBALL. The Yankees/Devil Rays game, to be exact. The Sportscenter announcer says something along the lines of, "Nobody expected much out of the Devil Rays here, but they're at least as good as Appalachian State". Of course the D'Rays went on to win. Yuk yuk yuk. We're a catdamned joke now. People will for years talk about some rinkydink team upsetting a powerhouse and they'll use Michigan and Appalachian State as a metaphor. This may never die and I hate that fact just as much as I hate the game outcome itself.)Labels: Appalachian State, football, history, in attendance, loss, Michigan, NCAA, photoblog, record, terrible, Wolverines
5:39 PM
|
|
