baseball

We are then introduced to the shabby state of both the grounds keeping and of stadium security at the Polo Grounds, as we see an angry rabbit (Bugs Bunny, RHP/UT) is able to heckle the visiting team from left field, where he has dug a fairly substantial hole, and is enjoying a carrot-dog and (it appears) has consumed a large bottle of wine through a straw.
…
In a tense confrontation at home, we see the Gorillas replace the umpire by force with one of their own so that they can call Bunny out at home in the next play. Bunny, to his credit, then manages to argue the fake umpire into reversing his own call.

Vote756.com: I’m going with option B, the asterisk.

Commissioner Bud Selig announced Tuesday the discovery that Hall of Famer Hank Aaron had in fact accumulated 50 previously unaccounted-for home runs … bringing his once record total of 755 to an even higher 805 and putting the all-time home-run record perhaps forever out of reach.

What happens when a real celebrity has a real blog? There are a few mediocre celebrities that have pseudo-real blogs. (Zach Braff comes to mind. Aside from the fact that you can clearly see he’s high every now and then, he’s about the least controversial guy in Hollywood.) Few truly famous people are out there creating honest-to-goodness blog entries. Mark Cuban is one. Curt Schilling is another.

Schilling is a rock star in the baseball universe, and he has been since even before he helped pitch the Red Sox to the most amazing win in baseball history. He started a blog a few months ago and he writes from the heart, not just marketing drivel or media propaganda. It’s great reading. He writes about Spring training, about his team, about his life. He basically keeps a blog just like I keep this blog.

Right now Schilling’s under a bit of a media attack. Some jerk reporter has accused him (and his team) of doctoring “the sock” — exaggerating the amount of blood by adding ketchup or some nonsense like that. But Schilling — unlike most people who find themselves the subject of media scrutiny — has a blog. His reply to the issue is brilliantly-written and well worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

If you have the nuts, or the guts, grab an orthopedic surgeon, have them suture your ankle skin down to the tissue covering the bone in your ankle joint, then walk around for 4 hours. After that go find a mound, throw a hundred or so pitches, run over, cover first a few times. When you’re done check that ankle and see if it bleeds. It will.

So I had a bit of a bug on Saturday and spent most of the day in a deep Alka Seltzer Plus-induced sleep. At one point I awoke to find a curious message on my answering machine. A little kid somewhere in the San Bernardino area code called with a get-well message for Eric Gagne, the Dodgers pitcher. “I’m your biggest fan,” he said, “and I hope your leg gets better really soon.”

I considered calling him and pretending to be the dominant closer, but (a) I have no idea what Eric Gagne sounds like, how he talks, or what in the world you’d say to a kid that thinks you’re a hero and (b) I feared that since he’s sort of close to LA, he might have a classmate or something that does know Eric, and then I’d get the kid or the pitcher in hot water with a lie …

It would be tragic if I was to pretend to be someone I’m not and then have him brag to all his friends and get busted for it. So I just hoped that someday the kid gets to catch a pop fly at a game, that Eric’s leg is on the mend, and then hit delete.

I step into the batter’s box, placing my right foot in the hole … scraped inside the back chalk line. I am aware of nothing but [the pitcher] — not the crowd, not the infield in and Lord knows not the blue sky.

This moment is the essence of the game, its molecular core. It is why we love baseball as we love a family member, while the other sports have to manage with our lust, infatuation or uncommitted affection. Either I will win or [the pitcher] will win, and even the most rudimentary fan will immediately know it. No one will have to wait for the game films. And no teammate can help me.

A baseball game will stage about 80 of these batter versus pitcher matchups, all of which appeal to our American sense of democracy — we must take turns at bat — and our thirst for conflict and for quick and clear resolution, the backbone of prime-time television, our real national pastime, as well. Eighty miniversions of CSI.

Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci spent five days as a Toronto Blue Jay during spring training this year. His account of the experience appears in the March 14, 2005 issue of SI.

I really love that I didn’t have to stare at the page and wonder. I knew immediately, based on the context of the rest of the site, what MFY Fan meant. In other news: I just got what is probably my fifteenth or twentieth Sox cap. There’s something alarmingly tragically poetic about a man so hopelessly searching the world for a cap to replace what was “the perfect cap”.

You can win the World Series every year. You only have one chance to destroy the Yanks. As my friend Mike (a Tigers fan) wrote me last night, “Everyone outside of Yankee brats are celebrating quietly with you guys. It’s like you killed Michael Myers, Jason, Freddie Kreueger and Hannibal Lecter in one night.”

This is easily one of the funniest articles I have read on ESPN2 in a while. Dave, tell me what your thoughts are on his adaptation of Kevin Costner’s lines?
‘Roids are all the rage

Red Sox 4, Mariners 1
May 18

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John Lennon’s Revolution 9 - the tuneless dirge that drones “Number nine, number nine” - should have been blaring in the visitors’ clubhouse before last Saturday’s game at Fenway Park. The Mariners were facing Pedro Martinez, who in nine career games against them was 9-0 with an 0.91 ERA. Could they break their streak of futility? Pedro quickly made the answer clear: nein. In the first inning he struck out the side on nine pitches, a feat rarer than a no-hitter. Martinez became just the 35th pitcher in major league history to do it.

By the end of the day Martinez had thrown 99 pitches (73 for strikes) and struck out nine …

I took a class in the Fall of ‘94 called Desire and Power in Western Literature. I hated the class and I’m pretty sure the professor, Dr. Snodgrass, didn’t like me very much. I wrote this rambling, terrible excuse for a term paper, in November of that year. It is titled “The Paradox of Popularity: or What does the 1994 MLB strike have to do with being a Tom Petty fan?”
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Dan Duquette was fired Thursday as general manager of the Boston Red Sox, less than 24 hours after the historic, hard-luck franchise was bought by new owners.
In his eight-year tenure, Duquette grew to be one of the most polarizing figures in Boston sports, guiding the team with a robotic style that never quite clicked with fans who are among the most passionate in baseball.

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Pedro Martinez was a strange sight in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse Thursday — more muscular and, for a change, an early arrival at spring training.
Then he took the field and looked like the same old Pedro. He threw smoothly and showed no sign of the worst injury of his brilliant career.
“I haven’t gassed it up yet, but I’ve been feeling really good,” Martinez said.
Credit an offseason program in his native Dominican Republic in which he lifted weights regularly for the first time. He said he took just seven days off and spent so much time in the gym that he sometimes didn’t get to his boat, where he listened to music, until 10 p.m.

The highest-priced tickets in baseball got pricier Wednesday when the Boston Red Sox announced a 7.4 percent overall increase for this season.
Prices for the cheapest seats — upper and lower bleachers and outfield grandstand — are unchanged from last year, but all others are rising. Infield roof box, loge and field box seats, the most expensive at Fenway Park, will increase from $55 to $60.