Tag: Me and Mine

Rain Out In Watertown, New York

It was Thor, the God of Thunder and Marvel goodness one and opening day at the Watertown Wizards zippo. Our company included a former high school pitcher who was able to explain whallops of stuff I was not picking up. My Mets t-shirt itself triggered two conversations with other and extraordinarily friendly fans. Free pennants as the give away and Mel Busler of WWNY 7, shown below doing his job, signed the photo we took of him and the kids last year. They did get an inning and a half in against Glens Falls before the lightning started in the retreating clouds to the east but within a half an hour it was all around and time to retreat to the Texas Roadhouse where we have been given assured of no chance of a table at 5 pm. I can report that the ribs were again fantastic, though the place’s interest in NY craft beer seems to already evaporated with Bud and Blue now being the theme.

I figured out a bit more about the NYCBL. It is not so much an undrafted college players league as a pre-draft one. Players make the team only after their first or second years and they come from throughout the USA. Watertown has players this year from Texas, Oregon, Nebraska as well as New York. Plus – the best hot dogs I have ever had at a ball park. No question about that at all.

I Skipped The Stanley Cup

For the first time in about 18 years, I did not watch one Stanley Cup playoff game and I really don’t care that the Senators lost. Why is that:

  • Kids: I have no interest in watching idiots fight and explaining it to my kids. NHL hockey thinks fighting is part of the game but I can go to NCAA games with the kids in northern NY for under 30 bucks for the family including gas and see nothing but end to end play. And I get to scream “Yale Sucks!“
  • Other sports: As you know baseball has got my attention but so does NCAA hockey, basketball and football. I also have access to masses of soccer. All the sports are exciting and allow me to be a fan for way less than NHL hockey, whether it is tickets or paraphernalia.
  • The strike: Lost me completely. Bettman’s changes didn’t make a change but he was good enough to put the Cup on the shelf for a year to play God. The cap has made for tedious roving free agent parity. Bo-ring.
  • The teams who win: Tampa Bay Carolina, Anaheim. Who cares? No one in the US except people in those cities. No one in Canada. Not me. Maybe if they were selling BBQ, shrimp and Mexican food but they are selling hockey. Bring back the Winnipeg Jets.
  • The Leafs: For better or worse, I am a fan of the Leafs. They have sucked for years. They play a style of hockey that screams of entitlement and floater. They need their guts ripped out from the board room to the bench. They will suck for many years to come so, though I have a soft spot for the Wings which predates their golden years, I have to accept it. The only blip on the Leafs radar this year was seeing Davey Keon show up for a wave and a smile during a pre-season ceremony.

There it is. The NHL better do something. So should the Leafs. Otherwise, I am joining the growing majority and saying “Feh!”

Eating In Portland

In case you are wondering we are doing OK but you would be if you had Beal’s Ice Cream (hard ice cream specialists), Red’s Dairy Freeze (soft serve specialists), Maine Diner on the way here (lobster roll and chowder), Gritty McDuff’s (lamb burder and cask ale), 3 Dollar Dewey’s (fish sandwich but shockingly no smoked fish chowder), baseball game hot dogs (plain please), Beale Street BBQ (bulk ribs…say that again…bulk ribs), Scratch Baking Co. (blondies and peabean coffee) and a trip to Hannaford for a side of salmon and enough scallops to stuff seven for under thirty-eight bucks.  Scratch Baking was a bit of a surprise.  Even though it is a few blocks away, I had it in my head it was pricey.  Not so.  Blondies for $1.75.  And fine beer and wine, too.  Achoffe IPA and a half Cantillon for $6.99.  Nutty.  But seeing as owner Bob co-founded Magic Hat Brewing of Burlington, VT it makes sense.  Portland is the new Burlington, you know.

Three Signed Balls

So we are out early at the ball park to get a good seat behind home.  We are all covered in red to fit in with the minor league Red Sox crowd.   The kids say they want to get the balls signed.  I had three that I had bought for 500 Up and the kids wanted to bring them just in case and away I go, off on a fool’s errand, thinking that I would get some old guy selling programs to sign when a nice lady in a staff shirt tells me to stand over there.  “Over there” is a little pen with guys with big cameras and other guys with binders of memorabilia.   So we stand and we wait and after a few minutes the kids start to complain.  A lesson in patience or a lesson in dashed dreams.  I know not which but either is good for a kid in grade three.  Then a Reading player comes over, a memorabilia guy shouts Michael, he signs and turns and his back says “Garciaparra” – Michael, not Nomar however.  The kids aren’t satisfied.  They don’t want no stinking Reading players autograph.  So we wait.  Nothing.  Then a guy walks out.  A kid.  A tall skinny kid with 11 on his back.  He lifts a finger and then walks away.   “Awwww” the kids say.  I hear “awwww” again and a huff for good measure.   But then Mr. 11 comes back, signs a memorabilia thing for a memorabilia guy and I hear myself say from the back “can these three kids get their balls signed?” and he says sure and a path opens to the front.  Three red dressed kids are scooted forward and he signs each one with a neat and natty signature but I can’t read the name and he walks away in one direction and the kids and I go in another.  

Back in the stands, we show the balls and say who is number 11?   Apparently Clay Buchholz was Boston’s Minor League Player of the Year in 2006 and he beat Roger Clemens in his last start.   More ball cases now needed.

When I am At The Ballgame…

…I shall eat a hot dog. Nothing better to watch a crumbling home team better than by eating a hot dog. To be fair, tomorrow’s game will see Halliday on the mound so a Bosox loss would not be a fraud upon the gods but I will still root for the last knuckleballer and eat a hot dog and so will the lad. The selling of hot dogs is big stuff in MLB. The Mets apparently sell the most:

Shea Stadium leads all major league ballparks with annual consumption of more than 1.5 million hot dogs. (Yankee Stadium, interestingly enough, is not ranked among the top 10.) According to Aramark, most of Shea’s dogs are sold by 48 vendors who roam the stands, as opposed to concessionaires who sell from fixed locations. The average vendor sells 150 a game, and 10,000 to 12,000 a season. Working for commissions ranging from 13 percent to 16 percent depending on seniority, they can make $150 to $200 a game, and as much as $30,000 a season.

Some say it’s going to be a twenty buck dog but for me it is all about averages. In the next 30 days I plan to see MLB, Double A in Maine and a Watertown Wizards game just over the border and I shall eat a hot dog each time. I know the Watertown dogs are about two bucks so even if the wieners at Portland are six to eight, I think over all I can invest in the twenty dollar dog knowing that I can look over the end of it and seem Manny Ramerez about twenty feet away.

If you plan for these things, you can have these things. Apparently they may play the Canadian national anthem at Watertown, too. You just have to ask.

Garden Tasks


Hah! Denied! I defy ratty desire!

While I am lazy as the next guy, I do plan from time to do something. Yesterday I made the compost big mouse proof. We are a heavily composting neighbourhood and an exceptionally well mammaled one as well. We have mice, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and the odd big mouse. I say big mouse because to say otherwise is to make an admission as to the reality of this situation. I though we had it in hand as there was a gap in action after the application of the 50% cake mix 50% plaster of Paris solution. But cleaning out the shed yesterday told another tale – so we have moved to chicken wire. Nothing as manly as turning 24 inches times 25 feet of chicken wire into rat-proofing. Not that the neighbourhood has them. It is simply now more proofed from them.

Today, then, I turn to the important task of contemplating planting basil, flat parsley and chives. And double digging. Got to double dig.

Tra-la, It’s May!

Comments in the morning. I just had this flashback to four years ago and my newbie blogging reactions over how nice I thought it was getting up in the morning to a bunch of stuff to read. Even though the stats are still sort of collapsing (everyone seemingly migrating to the beer blog ever so slowly), the comments are far more important at Gen X at 40 as I now and for some time have had no real expectations for this organ of mine other than being a place of pleasant if vigorous and unexpected.

You see things have changed. Last month I got about 105,000 visits from 57,207 unique visitors. While that latter number is the highest ever, I think the visits peaked in August 2005 at 338,790 but I only had 30516 uniques in that month. So I think we can see that I have gone from a 1/11 to less than 1/2. I used to kid myself that you were coming back 11 times a day. Can you say “spam filters”? It is indicative of it all, of course. Where once we thought these blogs were going to be newspapers, we are just pen pals. And that is more than good enough.

I have to give particular thanks for one particular reader this morning. Chris Taylor was good enough to share baseball tickets he could not use. I had it in my head they were for Toronto and Detroit and they enter the weekend’s mid-table letter pile. And, as it is for a Thursday, I think 5 hours driving for a 3 hour event will be a pass and I ask if I can pass them on again to someone who is going to use them and the ever kind Chris says sure. So I give the tickets away, come home to find them, end up having to dig through the recycling box to find the envelope and there it is – and it is not for the Jays against the Tigers…it’s for the Thursday night game next week against the Sox! I am so there. Six rows back of the visitor’s dugout screaming my love for Manny. I think I will go early to get some photos. My daugther is already planning the poster referencing Gerry Remy and portland.

What is the superlative of “woot”? “Most wooty”?