Perhaps I should be ashamed that this is my first blog entry in months. But I’m not. Too bad.
So I was invited to a party last Sunday. (Yes, I do get invited to parties. I do! Okay, I wasn’t invited, but my wife was, and I got to go out in public.) Was talking baseball with one of the other attendees, an A’s fan of long standing, and he told me the anecdote below. Sadly, I can’t verify it, and I’m only going on what the A’s fan said and the way he said it, and even though it might lose its impact in words that you see onscreen rather than hear, here goes:
As Bill King and Ray Fosse sat beside him in the broadcast booth in Milwaukee, Lon Simmons was talking about baseball stuff when suddenly he stopped dead and said, “Uuuuugggggghhhh! An elephant died at the zoo!” Like the A’s fan, and like me upon hearing this story, you might be thinking, “What does that mean? An elephant? Is this some kind of baseball slang I haven’t heard before or something?”
“Oh my goodness, Bill! Those brats!,” said Simmons, referring to Milwaukee’s famous bratwursts. ”How many of those did you have?” And the next thing you heard was Simmons and Fosse making “ergh” noises and trying to get away from Ground Zero.
Now, how often do you hear broadcasters accuse their colleagues, rightly or wrongly, of emitting lethal gas? So obviously, if someone in my home and/or immediate family were to commit such an expulsion, which none of us would ever, ever do, the new expression of protest will be “An elephant died at the zoo!”
For some reason this reminded me of a Giants broadcast in which, returning from the break between innings, Hank Greenwald, after several seconds of dead air, made two “geh!”-type sounds, then an audible swallow of what, as I recall, turned out to be a sandwich. “My mother always told me not to talk with my mouth full, but I’m a grownup now and I can do whatever I want.”
Both stories, of course, pale in comparison with the now classic Ron Fairly tale from 1988, which the A’s fan reminded me of and which I seem to have recounted in EEEEEE! about four times: In what evidently was a boring game, Fairly told one of those old baseball stories—I think it was the one about the horse who visits Casey Stengel/Leo Durocher/Yogi Berra/Dave Bristol for a tryout: holding a bat in his teeth, he hammers pitch after pitch out of the park; in the outfield, he catches fly balls in his teeth, then drops them and boots them back toward the infield with his hoof; and when the manager in question asks if he can run, the horse says, “If I could run, I’d be in the Kentucky Derby!” Ah-hahahahahahahahaha!
Upon finishing the story, Fairly started laughing... and could not stop. I don’t know what was cracking him up, because it sure couldn’t have been the story. But eventually, as he’s nearly breathless with laughter, the crowd microphone picks up a fan yelling, “Get a hold of yourself, Fairly!” and then, later, “You should hear yourself, Fairly!” More silence from Ron, and then a snort and a “Hee hee hee!”
The A’s fan mentioned that Fairly and his partner, Wayne Hagin, didn’t get along, so Hagin just sat there, refusing to bail out his partner and pick up the play-by-play. I don’t remember being aware of any animosity between the two, but Hagin’s decision to stay silent would fit with what little I do know about the guy. I don’t miss either broadcaster, but I don’t miss Hagin even more than I don’t miss Fairly.
If you have deigned to read this blog entry and can think of some good broadcaster stories, I’d love to read them.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Buster: Smoked
I’ve written a new piece on Buster Posey’s horrific injury, in case you’re interested If you’re not, shame on you. Shame!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
This blog is sort of inactive
My new material, such as it is, can now be found at my
Ruin Your Eyes site. Occasional announcements and other stuff will show up on the companion blog.
Ruin Your Eyes site. Occasional announcements and other stuff will show up on the companion blog.
The San Francisco Giants are the World Champions of All Time, Space, and Dimension
Yes, I know this is supposed to be a blog, which implies that there are regular updates about every facet of everything I do, but you don’t want to know what I’m wearing on my feet. Perhaps you do want to know, in case this news passed you by, that THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS ARE THE WORLD CHAMPIONS OF ALL TIME, SPACE, AND DIMENSION. I never get tired of typing that. Watch: THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS ARE THE WORLD CHAMPIONS OF ALL TIME, SPACE, AND DIMENSION.
For something I wrote about the fact that THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS ARE THE WORLD CHAMPIONS OF ALL TIME, SPACE, AND DIMENSION, please see It’s True! on the RYE website. Sure, it’s more than a month since the happy event took place, but I’ve been thinking about it all this time, and I’m still not sure it's real.
For something I wrote about the fact that THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS ARE THE WORLD CHAMPIONS OF ALL TIME, SPACE, AND DIMENSION, please see It’s True! on the RYE website. Sure, it’s more than a month since the happy event took place, but I’ve been thinking about it all this time, and I’m still not sure it's real.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Blap!
It’s been only five months since my last blog entry, so stop complaining (or cheering, as the case may be). Today I added a new piece, Blap!, to the website. Read. Enjoy (or hate, or maybe ignore). Or don’t do any of those things—I mean, who am I to tell you what to do? Stand up for yourself, already!
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Hatin’ the Saints... Hate Hate Hate
Well, I don’t really hate the Saints, but I’m pretty annoyed that yet another major sports team has won its first championship before the San Francisco Giants have won theirs. If you know me at all, you know that this is one of my little pet peeves about being a Giants fan, and I go a little bananas when I hear about things like Brian Sabean saying the kind of stuff quoted by Steven Rubio in his blog:
“With this lineup, I think we can springboard off the 88 wins from last year and get into playoff contention.“ Here’s Sabes’ rationale: “Number One, we'll have more experience on the field. Number Two, guys will be able to hit in the order where they have traditionally hit.”
I don’t want to use too much of Steven’s article, but what he says here, I think, points to just a small part of what I perceive as the toxicity of the San Francisco Giants:
“What is he telling us about his approach to player evaluation? His first ‘reason’ addresses defense, his second talks about offense. What he is saying in the first case is that the defense will be better in part because there will be ‘more experience on the field.’ He says nothing about the actual defensive abilities of the players on the field; he does not say ‘our defense will be improved because we’ve added some solid glove men.’ He merely says they have added experience to last year’s model. As for hitting, he is saying that the offense will be better because of how the lineup will be constructed. He says nothing about the actual hitting abilities of the players; he does not say ’our offense will be improved because we’ve added some better hitters.’ He merely says that the hitters he does have will fit better into the lineup than they used to.”
I responded on Steven’s blog, and you can always go there to read it, but this is more or less what I said: Sometimes I wonder if Sabean says things just to fill up dead air. When he says the kind of thing quoted above, does he actually believe it? Perhaps more to the point, does he really give Giants fan so little credit as to think we believe it, if only because he, the Baseball Insider, said it? Know what? Yes and yes. At least that’s what I think.
It’s still difficult to believe, but I know there are optimistic Giants fans out there, happily pushing that boulder up the 90-degree slope, only to have it roll right back over them the instant the Giants eat the big one, every season. And these folks are able to dust themselves off and say “Wait till next year!” And to an extent, I envy them, because I’m just not wired with that kind of optimism. I think I suffer from, if not realism, then the wisdom of experience—namely that the Giants have shown no particular willingness to win me a damn ring after all these years.
I honestly love and adore this team—or, at least, “The San Francisco Giants,” regardless of who’s out on the field—but (as with parents and their children) that doesn’t mean that I don’t wanna smack ’em once in a while. Now, I’m not saying that there’s no way the Giants can win a World Series, either this year or next year or ever. Sure they could. I just don’t believe it, because I don’t buy into the Brain Trust.
Meanwhile, hard as you may find this to believe, I do not think Brian Sabean is an idiot. I do think he’s made some bad decisions, possibly based on bad advice. I do think he really doesn’t understand how to evaluate talent, or at least major league talent. Is he the man who realized what Tim Lincecum and even Matt Cain would become? Maybe. Maybe he really was the visionary there. But in Sabean, what I think we’re looking at here is a man who so firmly believes that the old ways are best—whatever those old ways might be, up to and including divination via tea leaves and psephology—that he really has no room for any o’ them newfangled notions such as on-base percentage. Now, to be fair, he has actually used the expression “on-base percentage” at least twice during his tenure with the Giants, but that doesn’t mean he believes in it.
The thing is... well, look, if you really want to get a sense of the various ways baseball is analyzed, just do some Google searches. People—not necessarily Baseball Insiders, either—knock themselves out compiling raw data, then presenting it in various (and often understandable!) ways. I am not one of these people, but often they, their methods, and their results fascinate me. What they’re up against, though, is baseball people whose mindset hasn’t moved much past the 1960’s, the kinds of folks who, when you get hit on the elbow by a 100-mile-an-hour fastball, would advise you to spit on the welt and rub dirt on it.
Baseball is merely one of those realms in which decision-makers just do stuff the way it’s always been done, because it’s always been done that way. There are, however, some baseball organizations that actually embrace new ways of looking at data—and I really wish my team were one of them.
Instead, the San Francisco Giants remain the one team that’s waited longer than anybody else—not only in Major League Baseball, but also in the NFL, NBA, and NHL—to win its first championship in its current general metropolitan area. Even the farkakte Saints, whom we always used to be able to count on to stink, have gone and made the Giants look like fools.
So who’s the next team to win its first championship? Some of you might say “The San Francisco Giants,” and I sure wish you’d be right, but you’ll be wrong. I would, and will, never, but ever, switch my allegiance to another baseball team, but it sure is hard to ignore that boulder flattening me year after year after year. It hurts. Please, boulder, stop doing that for a year, just to be different. Is that too much to ask?
“With this lineup, I think we can springboard off the 88 wins from last year and get into playoff contention.“ Here’s Sabes’ rationale: “Number One, we'll have more experience on the field. Number Two, guys will be able to hit in the order where they have traditionally hit.”
I don’t want to use too much of Steven’s article, but what he says here, I think, points to just a small part of what I perceive as the toxicity of the San Francisco Giants:
“What is he telling us about his approach to player evaluation? His first ‘reason’ addresses defense, his second talks about offense. What he is saying in the first case is that the defense will be better in part because there will be ‘more experience on the field.’ He says nothing about the actual defensive abilities of the players on the field; he does not say ‘our defense will be improved because we’ve added some solid glove men.’ He merely says they have added experience to last year’s model. As for hitting, he is saying that the offense will be better because of how the lineup will be constructed. He says nothing about the actual hitting abilities of the players; he does not say ’our offense will be improved because we’ve added some better hitters.’ He merely says that the hitters he does have will fit better into the lineup than they used to.”
I responded on Steven’s blog, and you can always go there to read it, but this is more or less what I said: Sometimes I wonder if Sabean says things just to fill up dead air. When he says the kind of thing quoted above, does he actually believe it? Perhaps more to the point, does he really give Giants fan so little credit as to think we believe it, if only because he, the Baseball Insider, said it? Know what? Yes and yes. At least that’s what I think.
It’s still difficult to believe, but I know there are optimistic Giants fans out there, happily pushing that boulder up the 90-degree slope, only to have it roll right back over them the instant the Giants eat the big one, every season. And these folks are able to dust themselves off and say “Wait till next year!” And to an extent, I envy them, because I’m just not wired with that kind of optimism. I think I suffer from, if not realism, then the wisdom of experience—namely that the Giants have shown no particular willingness to win me a damn ring after all these years.
I honestly love and adore this team—or, at least, “The San Francisco Giants,” regardless of who’s out on the field—but (as with parents and their children) that doesn’t mean that I don’t wanna smack ’em once in a while. Now, I’m not saying that there’s no way the Giants can win a World Series, either this year or next year or ever. Sure they could. I just don’t believe it, because I don’t buy into the Brain Trust.
Meanwhile, hard as you may find this to believe, I do not think Brian Sabean is an idiot. I do think he’s made some bad decisions, possibly based on bad advice. I do think he really doesn’t understand how to evaluate talent, or at least major league talent. Is he the man who realized what Tim Lincecum and even Matt Cain would become? Maybe. Maybe he really was the visionary there. But in Sabean, what I think we’re looking at here is a man who so firmly believes that the old ways are best—whatever those old ways might be, up to and including divination via tea leaves and psephology—that he really has no room for any o’ them newfangled notions such as on-base percentage. Now, to be fair, he has actually used the expression “on-base percentage” at least twice during his tenure with the Giants, but that doesn’t mean he believes in it.
The thing is... well, look, if you really want to get a sense of the various ways baseball is analyzed, just do some Google searches. People—not necessarily Baseball Insiders, either—knock themselves out compiling raw data, then presenting it in various (and often understandable!) ways. I am not one of these people, but often they, their methods, and their results fascinate me. What they’re up against, though, is baseball people whose mindset hasn’t moved much past the 1960’s, the kinds of folks who, when you get hit on the elbow by a 100-mile-an-hour fastball, would advise you to spit on the welt and rub dirt on it.
Baseball is merely one of those realms in which decision-makers just do stuff the way it’s always been done, because it’s always been done that way. There are, however, some baseball organizations that actually embrace new ways of looking at data—and I really wish my team were one of them.
Instead, the San Francisco Giants remain the one team that’s waited longer than anybody else—not only in Major League Baseball, but also in the NFL, NBA, and NHL—to win its first championship in its current general metropolitan area. Even the farkakte Saints, whom we always used to be able to count on to stink, have gone and made the Giants look like fools.
So who’s the next team to win its first championship? Some of you might say “The San Francisco Giants,” and I sure wish you’d be right, but you’ll be wrong. I would, and will, never, but ever, switch my allegiance to another baseball team, but it sure is hard to ignore that boulder flattening me year after year after year. It hurts. Please, boulder, stop doing that for a year, just to be different. Is that too much to ask?
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Final Prisoner Piece
The last piece of my four-part epic about AMC’s The Prisoner is available for your reading pleasure at what will eventually become The Usual Place. Another way of looking at this is, whether you like it or not, you can find another Prisoner piece on the Ruin Your Eyes website.
Sadly, the only people who I know have watched the thing are my wife, my son, and me. Somebody out there must have seen it, or could. And then that somebody could leave comments here! Yay!
Indeed, I know a certain blogger who devotes at least as much time to watching TV as I do. I wonder if we’ll ever find out what he or she has to say about The Prisoner, old or new....
(By the way, if it’s any incentive, this last Prisoner piece is a short one.)
Sadly, the only people who I know have watched the thing are my wife, my son, and me. Somebody out there must have seen it, or could. And then that somebody could leave comments here! Yay!
Indeed, I know a certain blogger who devotes at least as much time to watching TV as I do. I wonder if we’ll ever find out what he or she has to say about The Prisoner, old or new....
(By the way, if it’s any incentive, this last Prisoner piece is a short one.)
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