Category: Uncategorized

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.

A Trip To The Snowy South


A few months to go yet.

A nice bomb down to the great state of Ithaca where we had diner at Moosewood with Gary and Maude as the greatest Charlie Brown snow in history fell outside. I wanted to sing “Hark the Herald” to loo-lo-loo-lo-looooo as roundheaded cartoon kids skated. We split a jug of draft Cascazilla which was entirely the right drink at the right time. The Ithaca Holiday Inn has solidified itself as the place to stay. We are down in Ithaca there a lot and others have thrown everything from the hallways that smell like a nursing home, to a “pool” that was about 15 by 22 feet, to that light that flashed all night, to the other pool with the green water and the sandbars forming naturally in the deep end. Go with the Holiday Inn. Room 265 works for kids if you are not in the Room 1000 bracket.

We ended up at State Diner on, no question appropriately, State Street and had a great breakfast. We often end up at Ithaca Bakery for breakfast where I have a bagel with sprouts, guack and a formed veggie patty so between that and Moosewood I have to make sure I balance my man-drum pretend-Ithacan with my townie pretend-Ithacan. State Diner can do that for me now. I eat corned beef hash and poached eggs but only on the road. This was a good one. Solid move on the toast as well with 3 slices per order and a light touch on the butter. But it was butter. Coffee is better at the Ithaca bakery but not by much. The staff are kind and helpful at both.

Next time, we hit the Shortstop Deli.

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.

New Science From The New Government

Isn’t it great when politics can solve issues in science:

…a pair of Environment Canada bureaucrats said they don’t even know who’s responsible for climate change policy anymore. They said the now-defunct directorate was specifically in charge of overseeing all new climate-change policy, and that its 10 employees are being reassigned to various quarters.

“Even the people working here say, ‘Who’s really accountable for making climate change policy anymore?’ They don’t even know,” said one bureaucrat who requested anonymity. “Right now we don’t know who’s accountable.”

While that is admittedly a lot of ways of saying it, it appears the results of New Science is in – no worries – move along! Bloggers and politicians have settled the matter so let it be. Hopefully so they will have the vision to apply the same understanding of which knowledge can be to medicine and engineering.

No, I meant the other sort of engineering.

Monday And Coffee

I think I just disproved that theory about coffee. Consider this:

  • Monday.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in”.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting so I can’t make coffee as we have a grinder and that will wake the nieces.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting so I can’t make coffee as we have a grinder and that will wake the nieces so I have to get it at work meaning a foggy drive in.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting so I can’t make coffee as we have a grinder and that will wake the nieces so I have to get it at work and I get to work meaning a foggy drive in – and there is no coffee when I get to work.

Somewhere, somehow, I earned some credit of some sort.

Chatteriffic Bullet-a-rama For A Friday

A fabulous day is here. The Friday that begins the great final melt, the weekend the rains come. Soon we will be smelling things, things that have been out there under the snow and ice for months. Soon car windows will be down, we will notice sounds from a distance as we sit in our houses, dogs a few streets over will interrupt our thoughts, the neighbours fights will introduce new words to the kids. Tra-la!

  • Update: Did you know that Kingston has the lowest unemployment between Halifax and Winnipeg? 5.0% percent.
  • Update: I had never heard the phrase “pimp my Zamboni” until I heard this story.
  • I am a broken record, I know, but sometimes you still here the music between the skips and so it is with great pleasure that I give you the greatest conversation of the week making fun of Web 2.0. An argument between people who want pornier porn and those who can advocate this with a straight face – “beware the coming misappropriation of the phrase ‘social software’.” Fabulous in its meaninglessness.
  • Indeed – what has Ghana done anyway?
  • Here is new information I did not know before. With all the talk of hands off our resources, the right way is the only way, and Alberta is taking the lead…now they are begging to not have their special case Federal tax break taken away:

    Alberta Finance Minister Lyle Oberg warned Thursday against any move by Ottawa to scrap a special tax break for the oil sands, saying it would be the final punch in a triple whammy blow to the energy sector. The Harper government, which needs Opposition party support to pass its March 19 budget, is reviewing an NDP call to scrap what’s called the accelerated capital cost allowance program for oil sands…tax expert Jack Mintz of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management estimates that oil sands projects would pay $165-million more in federal and provincial corporate income tax a year if the income tax rules applied to them were the same as conventional oil and gas investments. But, he adds, if oil sands investments were treated the same as Alberta’s non-energy projects, the additional tax would be $440-million a year.

    Maybe we can have these bonuses put on the table when we have to deal with the insufferable self-promoters of the West that lies between BC and Sask next time. Nice to have been pulling their weight so they can tell us how self-sufficient they are.

  • Speaking of meaninglessness, apparently Red Sox veteran pitcher Curt Schilling is blogging.
  • A couple of travelers sent me nine photos of their trip to Belgium. I like their travel planning.

That is it for now. Maybe more later. I have some planting to plan and I have start working on my spring festival outfit. And thinking about who to invite to the cheese roll.