Tag: Sports, Games and Competitions

One Hitter

It was a pitchers’ duel last night between the Sox and the Mariners. Dice K was really good but Seattle’s Felix Hernandez was an entire class better. It was quite the thing to see screw ball action pitches in the top of an inning being followed by 99 mile an hour fastballs in the bottom. Hernandez’s calm no-hitter was broken in the eighth. He’s had only four hits against him this year and at 21 may be the real phenomenon of the next couple of decades.

Matt Campbell’s photo above (European Pressphoto Agency) was in The New York Times this morning and continues the paper’s dedication to great baseball photography. The interesting thing for me is how it captures how the green of Fenway acts as sympathetically to highlight the colour of the grass and the red dirt. A classic shot, given the location of the ball and Ichiro’s foot.

Alou! Mets! Baseball!

Good to see Moises Alou in the Mets uniform tonight. He has cemented my satisfaction that one should have both a favorite American League team and a National League team. Why? Better chance of having former Expos to root for. Also usually provides you with something to watch when Boston is playing Tampa.

Resources for starting or enhancing your own joint obsession:

That’s a start. Who other than Pedro has been on each of the Expos, Red Sox and Mets? Not Moises. Not Bill Lee. Kirk Bullinger can live that dream if he were only to pull up his socks and get back into the game.

Fact: Julio Franco enters his 30th professional season tonight.

Friday Bullet Point Chat…No “-a-ramas” Or Nuttin’

How many ways can you write the same thing week after week before there is any coffee on the desk in front of you?

  • It’s the Kingston Brew Pub’s Wellie Toss tomorrow afternoon at 2 pm. We are talking the kids as this is the closest thing we have to a good cheese roll around here. Wellie Boot Hurling seems to be a legitimate Highland Games activity so maybe I will have a wee nippy sweetie while we are at it. Definitely a KSPC sanctioned event.
  • The Flea and others point out the decision to raise the right flag at the 90th anniversary of Vimy Ridge this summer. I added my two cents to remind that Newfoundland had its own flag of its own Dominion and that should be added, too. I even let my mole know. I have a mole again now. A mole with ambition as well.
  • Besides that good move, it was a tough week but was it as tough as the Prime Minister’s? He showed his dopey mean side, practically offering the nation the wisdom of the person who asks the question “are you still hitting the bottle?” while politicizing the troops in Afghanistan for his own purposes. Nice. He may have guaranteed the separatists win in Quebec. Brilliant. He seems to be cooking the books of the electoral reform review. Perfect. Oh yes, and the transparent intention budget leading to the fastest Federal-Provincial tax break transfer in history. I will be so happy to think of that and the other “special interest placation through tax break” aspects the NuGov National Vision as I prepare my own taxes this year.
  • Best Blue Jay’s slag of the week:

    Who else is ready for another season of Jamie Campbell starting his home run call for pop-ups that get caught by the shortstop?

    Days to go now.

  • Rita Joe passed away, too. One of the good things about growing up in Nova Scotia with a cohesive people like the Mi’kmaq in the community, with neat aspects like creation stories mentioning things you take school bus trips to see like Glooscap’s canoe, is you hear about people like Rita Joe when you are a kid and you get fed some respect. Not really enough but some.

That is it for now. Thanks for all the kind thoughts about the Frobster.

How Bad Is Manny?

While I have a Manny bat, I really do not love Manny. I do admire Coco greatly (and have the t-shirt) because of the heroic diving catches he makes from time to time. But I suppose even the usefulness of that is a question some may go over. Likely there is a little more to go into than when one questions Manny:

All of today’s best P.B.P. systems agree that Ramirez is the worst defensive left fielder in baseball, and by a comfortable margin. This holds true even after accounting for the effect of the Green Monster wall in left field. “Manny is at the far end of the as-bad-as-you-can-get-in-the-field spectrum, said Mitchel Lichtman, who designed one highly regarded P.B.P. defensive statistic called ultimate zone rating, and who consulted for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2004 to 2006. But the experts differ vastly on just how much a single bad left fielder can hurt a team.

Is he that bad? I like the NYT as much as the next guy but I think this is just a hatchet piece. Consider the description of Ortiz: “Ortiz is even less mobile than Ramirez, and given his corpulence, the demands of playing the field may substantially increase his risk of injury.” His corpulence! That is just mean. Worries? No way – it’s just baseball season when you get to pray your favorite fat slobs beat the heartless but trim Yankees.

Doug Mientkiewicz On My TV


Come over to the dark side, Doug. Resistance is futile.

I watched the Yankees-Twins pre-season game last night care of the glory that is cable TV. If the Web 2.0 had a quarter of the success of cable TV, it might amount to something one day. Like that miracle of the 1990’s, pervasive email, the miracle of the 1980s, pervasive cable TV, has changed our lives so fundamentally we do not even notice it anymore.

Last night, the miracle transported me to a small baseball field in Florida to watch the Yankee hopefuls beat up on the hopefuls for the Twins. One of the former who used to be one of the later stood out – Doug Mientkiewicz. He stood out not only for his horrible grapefruit league batting average of well under 0.100 but his incredible catching at first, stretching out with last second splits to grab the ball a tenth of a second earlier than if he let it come to the glove.

I don’t know if that is enough to earn him a spot, though, given his batting. But one thing about pre-season baseball, compared to say NHL hockey, is there is a lot more potential for fluidity at the far end of the bench and with the farm team system more opportunity for parking people for specific purposes later in the season so we will likely see him play.

The NTY has a good story on Mientkiewicz (Ment-KAY-vich to you non-Slavophones) in this morning’s edition.

The Rules For 500 Up

I know I am not supposed to post twice on a Friday but I have just had two shocks. I met someone my age who had no idea what 500 Up was and, when I described the game, reported not having ever played anything like it. That was shock one.

I though 500 Up was a great universal. I thought it was primordial. Now I Google “500 Up” and only my post pops up as referencing the game. This is really weird. It is like I mentioned bread – or at least popsicles – and realizing the people I was talking to had never heard of them.

Sloan has a song called “500 Up” off of their first record. Here are the lyrics. Disturbingly, the game is only there as a passing reference, an analogy mixed with another image – a reference only one in the know would know:

Sliding downwards
You’re the batter
That’s what they say
500 up
On the ladder

Do you know the rules to 500 Up? Why is this not on the internet somewhere? That is shock number two. Now I have to know. Are there different points to catching the ball in the air and fewer points for getting it on a bounce? How many points? Did you decide how many before each time you played? I haven’t played it for 21 years. I haven’t played Kingston Nova Scotia stickball for 35. That was a hell of a game.

Happy March!

Did I mention ever that I really do not like winter? Well, winter is about to DIE again in the vast fertility rite that we call the planet Earth. Screw you winter.

Many things happen in March. An inordinate number of birthdays, including this year the giving of the bitchin’ hardwood croquet set. Baseball is played. Shilling actually pitched yesterday. But best of all it is the time of the great melt. It has been dripping already but soon there will be puddles, streams of melt. With luck I could plant beets this month.

[Ed.: but…but:]

CHANGEOVER TO ALL RAIN WILL BE THE SLOWEST ACROSS THE NORTH COUNTRY
WHERE A HALF OF FOOT OF SNOW WILL BE FOLLOWED BY A SIX TO NINE HOUR
PERIOD OF FREEZING RAIN WITH ACCUMULATIONS OF A HALF TO THREE
QUARTERS INCH POSSIBLE.

OK, sure we have an ice storm coming. Sure there are three weeks of winter left. Sure, sure, sure – blah, blah, blah. Old man winter is about to DIE!

It’s All Your Fault!

You never called to remind me. You didn’t email or knock on my door. And as a result I missed watching Syracuse and Georgetown, leaving me to referee a massive meltdowny tantrum. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

The Syracuse players sprinted off the court just as the fans rushed on. The players didn’t want to avoid the court-rush from 26,287 fans at the Carrier Dome on Monday. They wanted to embrace the support. Some stood up on the scorer’s table and slapped high-fives. Others went on the floor, showing they’re not claustrophobic. Syracuse’s 72-58 upset over No. 9 Georgetown denied the Hoyas a chance to clinch at least a share of the Big East regular season title. More importantly for the Orange, it secured a victory it would like to point to on its resume for the NCAA Tournament selection committee.

Wow – they smoked them. It must have been great. I wouldn’t know.