Tuesday, December 19, 2006
b, 
Happy Red Soxful Chanukah!
Heading home for break, thank cats, where there are no more finals, and the news is all Matsuzakan. I've nothing to say about that that everyone else hasn't already said (insane money, but oh this market, hatred for Scott Boras, he had better be worth it, I hope Damon cries himself to sleep over having his number given away, stupid posting system, what's up with his ridiculous puffy jackets?, etc). So, random business.
There have been some pick ups of the Donnelly variety, but this is why I hate the offseason; I can't say anything about these guys, because ANYTHING could happen, most especially with relievers, who sometimes seem to be completely different players from one year to the next. We're stocking up on pitching, and that is good, because I think (hope) that we've learned our lesson there.
Dave Roberts is a Giant, in case you were paying attention. The Giants play at Fenway in interleague this coming June. Wicked, wicked excited to welcome Dave Roberts back to Fenway.
Jonathan Papelbon, starter? Theo's feeling good about it, so I shall as well. Hopefully he can tone his intensity down enough to last, although his first year might be a rocky one. People in Detroit have already started saying the same things about Zumaya, actually... he did come up through the system as a starter, and he throws so insanely hard that they're worried about burnout unless they try to settle him into a more necessarily sedate starting role. I think Papelbon can develop more pitches better than Zoom can, though, at this point in their respective careers. Zoom's still young enough so he's kind of in love with the fact that he can throw 103 mph. Papelbon seems more flexible, at least mentally.
Everyone who has ever had JD Drew on their team hates him, apparently. I don't know. There are guys who flourish in Boston, and there are guys who become nightmare versions of themselves. We already (apparently) have Manny for next season; we don't need anyone out there dogging it. Bleh.
I don't know what to say about this, really, but I was cleaning out my backpack to make it airport-safe (being an art student, it gets filled with unairport-safe things, like scissors and steel metal scraps and *gasp* water bottles over the course of a semester) and found these little dudes hanging out at the bottom of it. Uh, yeah, I guess there is not much to say about them, but I thought I ought to share.
Click for big, natch. Er. Right then.
Oh, and Roar of the Tigers (and MVN) is in the midst of a very exciting makeover. There may be some HTML snags, and things like the blogroll and archives aren't... quite.... working yet, but it'll get there soon. It's much cleaner now, although also less orange, which I think is a shame. Have a look!Labels: baseball, MLB, offseason, random
9:42 AM
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Things to be Thankful for
-Taking (the right to negotiate with) Daisuke Matsuzaka away from the Yankees.
-The slim yet still-present possibility of Michigan going to the BCS title game despite The Game Last Weekend of Which We Shall Not Speak.
-Turkey.
-The Colts losing.
-The removal of Gary Sheffield from the AL East (although this is, obviously, a bit of a double-edged sword for me... now that he's a Tiger, I've got to eventually wrap my mind around the concept of rooting for him. Haven't been able to do it yet).
-Getting to see Joey Harrington back in Ford Field (ha ha! ha. ha. oh god).
-Kevin Youkilis winning an imaginary MVP award, basically for being Jewish and not overtly failing at life.
-Tom Brady.
-Mike Hart.
-Bill Mueller.
-Mike Furrey.
-A psychotically entertaining, high-rolling offseason baseball free agent market.
-Jeff Garcia starting.... but not for the Lions.
-Coffee.
-Ha ha, if Papi can't have it, at least you can't have it either. Although seriously. Justin Morneau? Really? Did they just take the remaining names, after they'd weeded out Jeter, and pick one from a hat?
-A ballpark that's not named after a company of questionable merit... or any company, for that matter.
-The Tigers' 2006 season.
-The Red Sox 2004 season.
-Wolverines baseball taking the Big 10 title in the 2005 season.
-Knowing that, no matter what, at least I'm not attending Ohio State.
As per usual, my family will reserve giving thanks for anything until after we've sat through the Lions game. This is our tradition, and it works out well for us; if the Lions win, we can give thanks for that, and if they lose (as is far more likely), we can spend the entire ride home giving thanks for surviving yet another miserable game and not actually perishing in the stadium from sheer shame.
Gooooooo Lions! Hope springs eternal and all that. Happy Thanksgiving!Labels: holiday, humor, list, random
12:33 PM
Thursday, October 26, 2006
It's been all Tigers, all the time lately. If you're dying for my writing (er, I rather expect you aren't), you can get all the goodies over at Roar of the Tigers. I've been pretty sick lately, and between that and the Tigers and the art school (drawing dead beetles! visiting transgenic mice! designing book layouts!), I just haven't had the mental strength to update more than one website regularly. Sorry, BCRS. I humbly apologize to you.
So in case you missed it, I went to a World Series game. Game 2, to be exact, the one the Tigers won. There was nothing wrong with Kenny Rogers' hand from where we were sitting, I can tell you that much. The initial, exhausted, frozen-solid post about it is here, the more reasoned, sane, next-day post is here, and the photo album from it is here.
There's stuff going on in the Red Sox world-- Timlin appears to be resigned, for a discount; Tito is having more health problems; Papelbon's set to try starting; Manny's being Manny in the infantile whiny sense, as opposed to Manny being Manny in the infantile amusing sense; new coaches are being hired. It's just really hard to concentrate on all that when THE TIGERS ARE PLAYING WHEEEEE and the whole freakin' region is going insane.
And, of course, I can't even think about the Lions right now without wanting to break something. At least they LOOK like they want to win, these days. They're just completely incapable of doing so.
No matter what happens in the World Series, I'm not looking forward to the end of the baseball season. College football only lasts until around New Year's, and it's a long, barren stretch of time between that and the start of the Michigan baseball home season, which will be the first time I get to see baseball again. So I'm cherishing this Tigers run as much as I can while it's still going on, and when it's over I'll be able to turn my mind to this place again.Labels: baseball, MLB, random, World Series
1:50 PM
Monday, September 25, 2006
So the Red Sox are done.
Well. You know what they say. When one door closes, another one opens...
It's hard to be too upset about the Sox. Even before the actual, mathematical elimination came through, we knew it was over. When your team has Julian Tavarez holding the dual roles of team ace and official Manny babysitter, you simply aren't going anywhere, or at least nowhere that ends in trophies. That's just a fact of baseball and life, and I think we've all been so used to it for a while now that we just weren't too sorely wounded by the last feeble eepings of the dying sea slug that was the 2006 Red Sox.
I know Patriots fans are upset. To them I say, look upon the works of ye mighty Detroit Lions, and cherish thy freedom from true despair.
Losing to the modern-day Green Bay Packers. How utterly mortifying. My roommate, who has only the vaguest understanding of sports in general, asked me who the Lions were playing. I told her. She said, and this is 100% of Fact, "Oh, that's the pretty-boy team, isn't it?"
"What?"
"Brett Favre, isn't he a pretty boy or something?"
Oh holy freakin' cats.
"Not for, uh, at least 10 years, he hasn't been."
That was probably the highlight of the Lions game for me.
I am refusing to think about them. I am REFUSING. To think about them. Except to say that if Roy Williams guarantees another win this season, I am going to march down to Ford Field myself and duct tape him to the Joe Louis fist. You hear me, Roy? You can mouth off all you want when you're strapped down under silver belts of sticky goodness on the business end of a giant hovering black forearm. That sounds so dirty. I am not editing it out.
Actually, I couldn't even watch all of the Patriots game last night, because the sound on that station cut out just before halftime. Only on that channel. I switched over to the Cardinals/Astros game for a little bit before the pressure of the work I had yet to do and the fact that I really have had enough of Roger Clemens, thank you very much ESPN, conspired to make me give up on televised sports for the night.
Eh. The Tigers had already clinched a playoff berth for the first time in 19 years. That was all the TV I needed to see.
Of course I am also officially Not Upset about Michigan, as we beat Wisconsin to start off our Big 10 season right. Still, I've been doing this with every win so far... I say to myself (and everyone around me), "OK, good, another win... now let's see what we can do next week." They've beaten Notre Dame and Wisconsin, very not shit teams, and Vanderbilt, which is, uh, well, it's not Central Michigan, anyhow. And I still have very lukewarm feelings about each upcoming game. Last season was more scarring than I thought it was, clearly.
Good game, in the sense that we didn't get rained on this time, but unfortunate because the first in-conference home game of the season brought the sorority girls out in droves. Our favorites were the large group who showed up in the second half, crammed the benches so people had to stand sideways, and then turned, backs to the field, and talked to each other for the rest of the game. Dear These Girls-- I hate you. My seatmate hates you. Every single person in every row you infested hates you. You can talk at home on your bloody porch couches as well as you can here. Never come to another game again. With much rage, actual football fans.
The Z for Zoltan gestures are spreading like wildfire. At the last home game I saw just a few of them in the stands, and a few in the band. At this game, they were all over the student section. Zoltan! Zoltan! ZOLTAN! We're only obsessed with kickers a little bit at Michigan, honest.
The rest of the photos are right here, for those of you who are interested.
Wolverines, Tigers, pro football. Right now we just need that sea slug of a Red Sox team to quietly expire without breaking any more of its squishy little parts along the way. I've reached the point of begging the baseball overlords to let the season end, please, with no more casualties. Give this slug a watery grave and wait for its eggs to hatch next spring.Labels: baseball, football, Lions, loss, Michigan, MLB, NCAA, NFL, random, Red Sox, Wolverines
7:41 PM
Friday, September 08, 2006
Happy birthday to Jere and Billfer and I swear someone else that I'm not remembering right now because I'm a bad human being. But anyways happy birthday, guys!
Today I turn Sean Casey! Tonight. At the midnight which passed like 3 hours ago. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.
Sean Casey! Wow.
For the Ann Arbor locals, we went to Leopold's for a wicked low-key kinda thing, 'cause that's how we roll. The kids I went with tried to teach me euchre, which is something that Michigan natives apparently are born knowing in some deep reptilian part of their brains. Like baseball in Massachusetts natives, maybe.
And let the record state that my very first legal SeanCasey-aged beverage consumed was a Cape Codder. Because it seemed APPROPRIATE, dammit. And was tasty.
SO! Right. Look at all the blogging power, having a collective birthday today. I mean, Jere and Billfer are HEAVY BLOGGING HITTERS, so to speak. Clearly September 8th is a blessed day, a day on which dedicated bloggers are spawned. Prospective mothers, take note.
I have no good way to end this so! Haiku!
Older than Felix
But at least still younger than
Dustin Pedroia.Labels: birthday, haiku, random
2:39 AM
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Unless something very unexpected happens, a couple nights ago I attended my final baseball game of the season. Sniffle, etc. It featured an hour long rain delay, a frustrated Jeremy Bonderman, a spectacular Brandon Inge catch, Andrew Miller, Ichiro, a lot of sarcastically glorious Neifi Perez love, and a Tigers loss. However, it also featured a bunch of Tigers bloggers and Real Live Baseball, so despite all the negatives (loss, rain, Neifi's continued existence...) it was a rollicking blast.
The post is
here at Roar of the Tigers, naturally enough, and the photos from it are all here on flickr.
I am, by the by, officially wired up now and I did get to see the Red Sox game last night, such as it was. I also have to admit that I jumped around like a fool and made squeaky sounds when Anibal Sanchez completed his no hitter and was raised, teary-eyed, up onto his teammates' shoulders. Damn, kid. I rag on ESPN rather a lot, but it's hard to dislike them after they cut away from the Sox game and gave us a chance to see that as it happened.
There's not much to say about the Red Sox right now. It's pretty much just all about waiting for the end, sending positive thoughts and fluffy kittens to Jon Lester, and hoping no one else gets hurt/sick/arrested/killed in the next few weeks.
Football starts soon. I don't know about you kids, but I'm all kinds of psyched to see what sort of MAD STRATEGEEZ the Lions roll out this year. Here we come, 3-win season!Labels: Anibal Sanchez, baseball, MLB, random, Tigers
4:08 PM
Monday, August 28, 2006
Red Sox? What Red Sox? I'm busy getting excited about... uh... the Lions... Jon Kitna... oh god. Right. That doesn't help.
Yeah. I'm getting excited about... MICHIGAN FOOTBALL. There we go. Wolverines. First game in less than a week! Woo. Football. Maize and blue. Back to school. I have to move into a new apartment. Jeez. This is all incredibly unhelpful.
Wait. I've got it.
Someone recently found this site by running a search for the phrase "nude pictures of Justin Verlander".
Ha ha! A proud moment in the history of Blue Cats and Red Sox. There we go. Something we can all be happy about.
For the record? I don't have any. And I very much doubt that any exist on the internet, unless his parents start posting photos of him as a baby in the bath or something. Sorry, anonymous and absurdly hopeful internet weirdo. Better luck next time.Labels: baseball, Justin Verlander, MLB, random
10:39 AM
Monday, July 31, 2006
Game 1: Rally Monkey invades Boston, spreads ebola among populace, laughs evilly.
Game 2: David Ortiz miraculously cures ebola using nothing but his mango salsa recipe and the advanced enzymes in his own saliva.
Game 3: Rally Monkey has radioactive Boston Harbor water dripped onto it, mutates into horrible hairy behemoth, terrorizes city anew.
No need to say more, I reckon.
Strange things are afoot. We picked up Bryan Corey for Luis Mendoza, and Corey is intriguing in the sense that he stands a reasonable-to-good chance of being less exciting than Julian Tavarez and/or Rudy Seanez, where 'exciting' means 'likely to induce cardiac events'. Mendoza had been riding a low level of suck with the SeaDogs, so whatever. To put Corey on the 40-man they had to move Clement to the 60-day DL, a move we can all live with, since half of you have no memory of who Matt Clement is anymore beyond the lingering salty tang of his nervous tears.
Trot somehow managed to hurt his arm by swinging too hard at a baseball. He missed too, just to add to the indignity of the whole thing. Suddenly Wily Mo is looking like less of a trade chip and more of a huge guy with pointy facial hair who'll be seeing some quality plate time in the near future, unless of course he's a trade chip to get us someone who can fill that niche even better. I mostly hate this injury because it's so freaking stupid and so typically Trot; instead of landing funny on his shoulder and popping it out of the joint or getting hit in the nuts with a pitch, he has to go and pull a muscle by swinging like some kind of uncontrolled greenie-addled nut. Awesome.
The Yankees picked up Bobby Abreu for what is basically the baseball equivalent of a frozen bag of snow peas. The Phillies, because apparently salary-dumping Abreu was just a gateway drug to further insanity, threw in Cory Lidle too. I don't understand how this happened. The last rumor I had seen was that the Yanks were going to send Melky Cabrera or something to Philly for Abreu, not the variety pack of minor league wastewater.
Strange things, like I said. Let us not dwell upon them. Let us instead dwell upon that joker up there at the top. His name is Bryan Morse and he's a left-handed starting pitcher with a tendency towards sidearming. Or, at least, he's a starter now, for the North Shore Spirit. When he was drafted by the Marlins, he pretty much only relieved in their minors. He pitches with his mouth open and his tongue lolling out. He's 27 years old now so this is probably about as good as it gets, but he's had flashes of brilliance; today, for instance, or the time in high school that he pitched a no-hitter. And he's a lefty, so you never know when someone might decide he's worth taking a flyer on and bringing him up.
He threw 7.2 innings of perfect ball on Sunday, retiring the first 23 batters in a row before Québec Capitales catcher Olivier Lepine singled in the 8th inning. Morse went on to complete the game for a 3-hit shutout of les Capitales. For a while there I thought I was going to get to see my first perfect game in person, although my dad, ever helpful, kept saying things like, "That's 12 in a row now!" and "Wow, he's 6 innings through it now!"
Yes, I finally, after rainouts and vacations and much rescheduling, hauled myself down to Fraser Field to take in a Spirit game. I had not been there since it was the Mad Dogs' park, and it is indeed much improved. We sat in the first row ($12 tickets! Thank you independent league baseball) just to the right of directly behind homeplate. Great view, especially for a game that's all about the pitching, as this one was. I was initially concerned about the net being so close to our faces, but it turns out I could pretty much shoot straight through the netting with the teleconversion lens on, and it wasn't much of an issue.
Photos from the game can be found here. It's a pretty good photoset for the same reason a lot of the college ones came out well... you can get right up close to the action and the players. Plus it was a day game, so the light was good.
David Wells starts tomorrow (today). I expect him to get rocked, because it's his first game back in a Galapagos tortoise's age, and he'll probably be rusty as all get out. The Indians may be stuck behind some serious winning percentage in the AL Central, but they can hit if they get it in their minds to do so. Who knows, maybe if everyone in New England eats a cupcake at work in solidarity, he'll somehow pitch beautifully.Labels: Angels, baseball, Bryan Morse, in attendance, independent league, MLB, North Shore Spirit, random, Red Sox
5:36 AM
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Sadly, that is a photo that I myself took. Yes, I had the dubious priviledge to witness Clement's possible ticket to the DL, and certain ticket to mental anguish. Come to think of it, last season I was at the game where Wells drove his foot through a rabbit warren on the field or something and tweaked his ankle. I dislike this pattern.
The rest of the photos from the game can be found here and, y'know, go see. It's all very exciting. I had good seats, again, because my family loves me.
As for all the recent news I've conked out on due to The Internship and, uh, deranged sleeping hours. Let us see.
-Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth. I couldn't care less, and really the only thing I have to say about it is that I'm glad it happened in San Francisco, because at least then the only people who actually have an honest, uninhibited enthusiasm for the guy got their jollies in. They support him well enough, the least they deserved was to have the homer hit in their own house. And now let us never speak of him again.
-Oh wait, the best bit about Bonds' homer? He hit it off of.... *insert dramatic drumroll here* our very own BH Kim. This photos shows it happening, and Kim's pose cracks me up indefinitely. It's a great shot, by the way, really catches the moment at the perfect time. This is why I love Flickr.
-Freakin' Yankees. Here's what they're like. My brother just finished up his last regular season of high school tennis. They ended up splitting the conference title with our rival town, Marblehead. While my brother is happy that we won a share of the title (since Swampscott hadn't won it since cats know when), he was still bitter. As he put it, "We had the best team Swampscott's seen in ages and we still couldn't win it outright. Marblehead didn't even have their best team in years, and they still got a share."
And that's exactly what the Yankees are doing right now. They're not even fielding that great a team right now. Their pitchers are hurt, or hurting, or old, or some combination of the three. Their lineup is patched together from injuries and AAA callups. And I'm pretty sure they just tonight swiped first place in the division from us. The Sox, while I wouldn't go so far as to say were fielding their best team in ages, were running some pretty good people out there up until everyone decided to get injured like a week ago, and it was just enough to barely stay ahead.
That's bleedin' annoying, is what that is.
Congrats to Swampscott tennis, by the by. SEE WHAT A GOOD SISTER I AM
-Scott Sauerbeck hides in bushes! Scott Sauerbeck hides in bushes! It's a story to make you laugh and wince. I mean, it is hilarious, and it's not surprising that they all fool around, but I'm sure it's another thing entirely for his poor wife to have to hear about her husband driving around and crouching in bushes with drunken 28-year olds.
-Kyle Farnsworth threw a fastball during Monday's game that was so hard, it broke the laces on Posada's glove. Can you say MEEP?
-Jermaine Van Buren's delivery, and I feel like I've said this before, is the most violent damn thing I've seen in ages. It doesn't just look like it strains his arm when he throws, it looks like the whole limb is going to come unscrewed and fly off at the shoulder. I know Tigers fans were worrying about how allegedly violent Joel Zumaya's motion was/is, but compared to Van Buren I think Zoom even at his most wild was mere tiddlywinks. I can barely watch this guy pitch. It's like watching a car crash over and over and over again, occasionally, when NESN sees fit, in gory slow-motion.
-I maintain my stance on Gustavo Chacin, that being: he looks like a praying mantis, and his delivery is extraordinarily mantis-like, from the way he stands in his set position to the range of motion his arms go through over the course of the pitch.
Oh, and to the UMass Boston folk radio station that I have to listen to at work all day: tell your early afternoon lady DJ that it's pronounced shah-SEEN, not CHAY-sin. Because I understand that someone working at a college folk radio station is not going to be the biggest baseball fan ever, in all likelihood, but if you have the poor woman reading a promo for the game 20 times over the course of her show, it would be nice if she didn't embarrass herself every time she did so.
-Is Mike Timlin the most unexpected DLing ever or what? And if you say 'what', you lie. I didn't even know he was sore, let alone under consideration for the List of Woe. And do we know precisely what's wrong with him and I've just missed it? Bruising? Muscle tears? Ligament damage? Colony of beavers building a small inexplicable dam in his shoulder joint? Anyone?
-Manny Delcarmen! Kiddo! What happened? Did you get head lice? He had this glorious head of curls and now they're ALL GONE and it is shockingly sad. Someone needs to tell him that Youk isn't shaving his head as a fashion statement, he's doing so because he has incredibly bad male-pattern baldness and presumably it is less painful to go bald on your own terms than on those of your genes. Now, I'm not saying he should venture into post-concussion Damon territory or anything, but if he's capable of growing that hair, he should take advantage of it while he can.
If he did have head lice, I'm very sorry and wish him the speediest of recoveries from arthropod parasites.
-Reed Johnson has the weirdest freaking batting stance. He does a series of bat wiggles beforehand, then squats down very sharply, and then the weirdest bit. Right before he brings his bat around, his front leg kind of points forward and twitches around complexly. It's so bizarre looking and I can't help but think that it must throw his timing off something awful, but apparenly it's not too detrimental to his hittting. Or he wouldn't be on the team. Right?
-Clemens is allegedly going to Houston. Good. If we can't have him, you can't have him either! I bet Steinbrenner kills a chicken in rage.
-Coco's back, but suddnely Manny is hurting and Wily Mo is gone and Loretta got whacked in the foot last night and WHY ARE WE ALL BROKEN RIGHT NOW
-There were more of these, but I am tired. So. You are spared.Labels: baseball, in attendance, injury, Matt Clement, MLB, random, Red Sox
12:34 AM
Monday, May 15, 2006
Rainouts eat my brain. That's my excuse and I'm stickin' to it.
What a bleedin' awful last few days. I had tickets for the Sunday game too, but when a state of emergency was declared I guess it was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be baseball played, although I was rather hoping to go and see Manny contentedly doggypaddling in three feet of standing water in the dugout with a pink bat in his mouth.
Of course it is just my luck to live in one of the hardest-hit areas. Schools all around are closing and half the roads are impassable... I don't know how I'm going to get to The Internship tomorrow, especially if the rain picks up again tonight. I drove in on Saturday and nearly gave myself a great big soaking wet zero-visibility heart attack. There are ducks swimming in my backyard. We do not have a pond in my backyard. At least, we didn't before.
So, anyways, I'm a bit behind, aren't I? I've been a little distracted by things like The Internship and THE DETROIT TIGERS OMFG WHAT. But not so distracted that I haven't noted the following:
-Matsui's injury, speaking as someone who has done endless damage to her wrists during a very unfortunately injury-prone past, was difficult to watch. It's not just that he very very obviously snapped his wrist, what got to me was the way that after his arm came up off the ground, his glove hand was dangling around on the end of it like a puppet with its strings cut. And then NESN decided it was necessary to show this to us A THOUSAND TIMES DURING THE COURSE OF THE BROADCAST, as if once wasn't BAD ENOUGH.
-Tanyon Sturtze is on the DL. Yaaaaaay. I didn't realize you could go on the DL for "pure suck", but I guess if you call it a sore shoulder you can go on the DL for anything these days.
-I understand why they pushed Friday's game through so hard. Everyone knew that the weekend was gonna be a wash, and making up two games in a series is hard enough, let alone three. But I still didn't have to like it. That said, Matt Clement was absolutely right to blame at least part of his troubles on himself and not on the weather, because Kameron Loe was pitching in the same weather and we all know how he looked.
-If you recall the BCRS NonSox and NonTigers List of Players to Shamelessly StatStalk During the Season, you'll recall that Kameron Loe is on it. Although it hurt to watch him baffle our batters, I still do like the guy, I can't help it. He's huge and doofy and when he drops down to that sidearm pitch and oooooo shiny. Plus the superhigh socks. Plus the fact that he HAS A 7 FOOT LONG BOA CONSTRICTOR NAMED ANGEL, whom he's had since he was 19. And I quote:
MLBPLAYERS.com: Why did you name the snake Angel?
Loe: The name Angel came because people generally associate snakes with the devil, but she is very sweet and she has never hurt anybody. I bring her into the clubhouse every now and then for my teammates and their kids to look at and play with.
MLBPLAYERS.com: Have any of your teammates been less than enthusiastic upon meeting Angel?
Loe: I think I got the biggest reaction from Alfonso Soriano. He didn't like her. He would stand around and look at her as if he was interested, but he did not want her anywhere near his personal space.
More of Loe on Angel:
Angel is pitcher Kameron Loe's 7-foot Columbian red-tailed boa constrictor. He has had her for about six years and she's a big hit among the Rangers, almost becoming their unofficial mascot.
"I'd like to watch her eat a Rally Monkey," Loe said.
Loe wraps up Angel in a bag and keeps her in his locker when he brings her to the ballpark. Otherwise she stays at his apartment.
"I let her run around the backyard," Loe said. "But I can't take her out for a walk on a leash."
For those of you who are interested, the Columbian red-tailed boa constrictor, Boa constrictor, is your standard boa, what most people are referring to coloquially when they say they have a boa constrictor. 7 feet is not too big for them, as they can be around 8 to 10 feet and the females are usually larger. They can live on average from 20 to 30 years if well cared for and are 'docile', although you wouldn't want them around your pet chihuahua.
In the wild their diet can consist of iguanas, birds, and monkeys, so Loe's comment about Angel eating a Rally Monkey is 100% of SCIENCE FACT. A Capuchin (the species of monkey that has shamefully produced the Rally Monkey) would probably be just about the right size for a snakey snack. In captivity I'm pretty sure they mostly are fed rats, since I highly doubt Loe is actually going out and getting iguanas and monkeys for her.
-Randy Johnson's slow collapse is rapidly becoming one of my favorite things to watch this season.
-If you haven't heard the Rick Sutcliffe drunken shenanigans yet, please go do so at once. The anecdotal tale of Bill Murray spying Mark Bellhorn across the clubhouse, shouting, "For-MER Cub-BIE" in a drunken voice and tackling him to the ground had me in hysterics.
-Joey Harrington is a Dolphin. My mind, it is blown. Expect the return of The Timid Joey Harrington I Keep in my Closet soon enough. I've already photoshopped his head onto a photo of someone swimming with dolphins.Labels: baseball, Kameron Loe, MLB, rain, random
4:12 PM
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
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
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The Boston Globe has posted an article about Mike Timlin which has struck Red Sox fans dead from pure amazement and amusement and awe and, I do think, a healthy little pinch of sheer terror. Kristen, Beth, and Red all got to it before me, but I can't just pass it by. Let me summarize it for you, although you really, really REALLY need to go read the whole thing.
-Mike Timlin, Tim Wakefield, and Matt Ginter go hunting for wild pigs.
-Timlin talks very very seriously about bows and hunting and the Globe photographer wees in his pants a little from the intensity of it all.
-Timlin shoots a feral pig with a giant fucking arrow fired from a giant fucking bow.
-And I quote:
The sow starts screaming from the brush. Loudly.
''She's not having a good day," Timlin says.
The pitcher's still whispering, but he's exhilarated and full of adrenaline.
"...She finally moved away a little bit and I drilled her. See the arrow down there. Still stuck in the sand. It's good blood. It goes right through them. Probably right above the heart. She ran about 40 yards over there. There's two pine trees. It broke her left front leg. I shot her on the right side, it went through and broke her left shoulder. She screamed for a little bit but she's probably done now. She gave a serious death squeal. She's kicking and then all of a sudden, wheeeh, and then stop."
-They go back to camp. Neither Wake nor Ginter has killed anything, though Wake saw some deer and Ginter saw a bobcat.
-Trot Nixon text messages Timlin (!!!!!) wanting to know if he's killed anything.
- Timlin remembers a special takeout request.
''David Wells asked me to bring him back some for breakfast," he says. ''And I'd like to get some sausages made up in Fort Myers. That sounds good."
- Red Sox Nation collectively says "...." and then screams and hides under the covers.
MIKE TIMLIN KILLS A GIANT WILD PIG AND TALKS EXCITEDLY ABOUT ITS DEATH SCREAMS.
I don't think I can say HOLY FREAKING CATS enough about this article. Seriously. Mike Timlin is a HARBRINGER OF AGONY AND BLOODY DEATH, and I don't mean that in the figurative 'rarr tough relief pitcher' sense, I mean that LITERALLY.
I can think of exactly one pitcher who matches up to this, and that's Ugueth Urbina, who allegedly attacked some of his workers with a machete and then set fire to them.
Also, say hello to this dude. Hee Seop Choi is now a member of the Red Sox, claimed off waivers, which is extraordinarily weird because he did (and does) have minor league options left.
Anyways. Things have been a bit mad around here lately, what with the semester ending and shows opening (two in about two months, that's a bloody lot of work to get ready and submit rightquick) and teaching in prisons, and the partner for the prison class deciding to not show up for things anymore including the actual prison workshop, leaving me to drive the hour to Jackson and to conduct the class of prisoners entirely by myself... but I won't talk about that class, I won't, because I could go on forever, and ALL I WANT TO DO IS SEE SOME BASEBALL DAMMIT.
Which, weather and workload permitting, I might get to do later this weekend.
In the meantime let me just shuttle you around to some things that you should be looking at because they are, pretty much, awesome.
Jere has a wicked good post about why we're so upset about the Bronson trade and why this makes sense even though we, one of the most informed fan bases in baseball, know in our forebrains that it's not the worst or craziest trade ever. It's in our backbrains that we react poorly to it. I like Jere's take on it and you should read it and feel better about eating that entire pint of ice cream while dabbing at your face with tissues over the fate of a guy you've never even met.
Side note on the informed fan thing: I'm overgeneralizing, of course. There are dumb, dumb, dumber-than-the-dirt-on-the-cleats-of-Johnny-Damon Red Sox fans out there. And there are, obviously, very very smart and informed fans of pretty much every team out there (behold my mighty linkbar; some of 'em are over there). What I'm saying is that while there may be small or even medium-sized pockets of dedicated fans for most teams, the Red Sox have ridiculously huge numbers of ridiculously informed fans, half of whom can and at a moment's notice will gleefully crunch as many stats as you like. We also have a huge number of idiots following the team, but at least we're balanced.
Actually, this is a chicken-and-egg kind of question for me, a fan who's too young to have seen it start out: which came first, the crazed fan base demanding the massive amounts of information, or the extensive media coverage creating the super-informed fans? Someone get on this.
As a fellow Red Sox/Tigers fan, Cat is quick to compare the hollow-thud-in-your-chest sensation of this trade to the midseason Farnsworth trade last year, reminding us all that we are not alone in our irrational pain. Or reminding just me, then.
Andrew asks you to vote in the Arquimendez Pozo Award poll for the best WBC name. Great fun. Pool B, by the way, should be and is (as of this moment) a complete runaway victory for Stubby Clapp.
Evan writes a ridiculously thorough little report on pitchers and injury, which can be found in two parts, Part I and Part II. He talks to Jon(athan) Papelbon's baby brother! He talks to Will Carroll! It's good stuff. Go, read, git your education on.
If you haven't yet heard about the Michigan blog vs. ESPN talk radio SUPER BIG INTERNET CONTROVERSY, I figure MGoBlog's coverage is as good a place as ever to find out. The moral of the story is, Michigan bloggers write funny things, and ESPN talking voiceboxes are too stupid and belligerent to acknowledge the fact that, oh yes, by the way, they blatantly stole their last segment from said blog.
Batgirl shows that Lew Ford, to complete his image of dorkitude, has a marvelous Spring Training farmer's tan. His upper arms look whiter than me, and I'm painfully white.
The Brushback has the answer for why the Sox have been trading like mad lately. It makes so much sense, it must be true.
Tommy LaSorda throws the controversial WBC umpire under the bus All subtle-like, though! Quoth the Dodger sage:
I do not want the fans in Japan, or in Mexico, to think that these calls were made because the umpire is American. The umpire that made those calls has had a reputation for many years of being controversial. In fact, he has created controversy for many American teams, and managers, including me.
Also, look everyone! It's Beauty and the Beast!
Hopefully I'll have Real Live Baseball to post about shortly. Until then, have a good weekend, and check this stuff out or you're just as bad as Matt Millen, and it'll only be a matter of time before we're burning you in effigy in the streets.Labels: baseball, hunting, Mike Timlin, MLB, random, Red Sox
2:31 AM
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