The good news is that Boston is up by seven and a half and won their games over the weekend against the White Sox supported by 29 runs. The bad news is that the Yankees woke up against the lowly Tampa Bay hitting 21 in yesterday’s games. The Sox face Cleveland, Tampa Bay and Baltimore as well as Seattle, the Angels and the White Sox before they meet the Yankees again at the end of August. At least three strong teams and the rest weak. In the next month, the Yankees meet KC twice and also the Jays but two series against the Tigers and one with the Angels. All in all, probably similar schedules but a lot can happen in a week or two. This should be a dandy stretch.
The Ontarios Against The Excelsiors Circa 1873
It was a fantastic time except I had to assist a crank (fan) after a keener and later mortified muffin (person of little experience and skill) let a bat fly into the stands. All is well and you can rest assured that the ER at the Samaritan Medical Center is dandy and the Sacketsonians are extremely kind…but, other than a wicked warm-up of many solid contacts, I missed playing our game but still caught a bit of the senior game between the Sackets Harbor Ontarios and the Rochester Excelsiors. High neato quotient nonetheless and greater plans are in the works.
Sour Beer Studies: Gueuze Cuvée René, Lindemans, Belgium
I had great concerns about this beer given my whole Cantillon thing and my expectation of mouth puckering sourness. How wrong I was. While it is dry and even assertive in its acidity, this is no lemon.
On the nose there is fright fruit with some pear and berry. The beer pours a slightly cloudy deep straw with some lighter highlights. The head is a rich fine white with sheeting lace. In the mouth there is a creamy soft water aspect that frames the biscuity champagne blended with dry apple cider. Grassy notes with pear and even hints of strawberry. The acid is subtle, quite unlike Cantillon: gentle instead of strident. The Lindeman house style is definitely there – a minerally cream of wheat thing.
What did I learn? Sour beer can work with food. This would make a good strong counter point to a summer grill, fennel and prosciutto salad, herbed chicken or a lemony haddock bake. Strong but not universal approval from the BAers.
Vintage Base Ball Tomorrow
Some neato happening tomorrow as a small group of vehicles will leave Kingston filled with guys who are going to play a game in another country that they have never played before. Heck, even though we’ve had a batting practice, all nine players have not even been in the same room together yet. But tomorrow we play vintage base ball, sort of the logical extension of the Kingston Society for Playing Catch.
What happened was there was a call out from Sackets Harbor, New York to tourism folk in Kingston to get a team together to take on their team, the Ontarios, in a game using circa 1865-1875 rules as part of their Can-Am summer festival. A team from Rochester is also coming. Kingston’s inclusion is warranted. Some research shows that in 1875 and not much before and not much after Kingston had a club, the St. Lawrence Base Ball Club, that had two levels of players – the Reds and the Brown Stockings – that briefly played at the highest level. In 1875, they played the Live Oaks of Lynn Massachusetts as well as another a team from New Haven, Connecticut which appear to be the teams that the two pitchers who claim to have invented the curve ball and beat one of them. In that year, they also seem to have beaten the Canadian Champions Guelph Maple Leaf Club as well as the London Tecumsehs. The next year, they appear to have joined Canadian Association of Base Ball but also went on a ill fated tour of central NY which led to most of the team being fired for indescribable conduct of some sort.
So we are holding ourselves out as the echo of the mighty St. Lawrence. It is an exploratory game, not only to see if we are any good and even if we are not to learn the rules and exactly which rules are to be used from the quickly moving post-Civil War period but also to check out the sort of uniforms and equipment might be needed to do this right. For tomorrow we are dressing something like Mennonite cricket players but I did buy a bat as well as a couple of lemon peel balls from the Phoenix Bat Company of Columbus, Ohio. The lemon peel has no core and is a bit bigger than a modern ball which makes it a bit easier to handle – which is good because we do not wear gloves.
So likely some photos tomorrow. Best of all, it is being sponsored by the Sackets Harbor Brewing Company, the good folks of which I have had the pleasure of getting to know through beer blog work. This bodes very well for lunch, whatever the score.
Is Wisconsin The Continent’s Beervana?
Slumming around the internet, I came across this article about beer and Wisconsin which made me wonder whether it is the beer friendliest jurisdiction in North America.
From handing out free samples at grocery stores to shunning a proposed tax increase, Wisconsin lawmakers love their beer. One of the first bills they passed this year made sure bar patrons didn’t lose drinking time when the clock jumped back an hour this spring. Other pro-beer bills are brewing.
Free beer at the grocery store! Good Lord. There are places in Canada where they hold exorcisms for folks who think like that. But then there is this: “Wisconsin is also one of only a handful of states that allows parents to purchase alcohol for their children to consume in their presence.” Holy Moly. I had no idea. Well, sure, this is progressive and good and all – especially if you believe like most conservatives that the family is the source of the best instruction and all that stuff…but I had no idea. Who knew?
Chitchattery Fridayesque
Another week is gone. It was a good one except for the Red Sox starting their August collapse a little early. In other sporting news, apparently there was a move to press gang the Chilean U20 soccer team for the Hudson Bay fleet last evening. And I play vintage base ball this weekend in another country. Who knew? Sunday sees me and the other member of the Kingston St. Lawrence Base Ball team taking on Sackets Harbor, NY in a game that will use rules somewhere between 1860 and 1875. Gary may even be seen tomorrow but we are still uncertain as to what the day will bring. I may, too, be in a canoe. What a wonderful week. Here is the linkfest:
- Constitutional Update: Where is the balance of powers when one branch asserts autonomy?
- I caught a good story from Reuters about a journalist embedded with Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.
- I haven’t read any Harry Potter and boycott the movies due to the lack of claymation so I see not reason to give a hoot about spoilers and the release of a page or two early. Doesn’t there seems to be an over-enlistment of the authorities in the propping up of a franchise?
- Are we entirely over 9/11? It appears that travel has hit a high but are we forgetful or confident. Americans are staying home we assume due to the dollar…but is that it? Why does no one come to Canada?
Americans are coming to Canada much less than they used to…”Canada needs to add more fun and adventure to its image,” the report, released by Deloitte and the tourism association, said. “We need the right product — the right active tours and adventure experiences. And most importantly, we need to promote them.”
Soon lighters will return.
- It has been announced that a father and son team of metal detecting nerds hit the motherload with a Viking treasure trove being announced in England this week. Did you know that metal detection is really cool? That you can get a Bill Wyman model metal detector? I wish I metal detected.
- Acquitted conduct. I was listening to CBC Ottawa last evening on the drive home and there was a “sentencing consultant” from the US being interviewed who said that Conrad Black faces the prospect of facts relating to the charges he was acquitted upon being still included in the sentencing on the charges he was found guilty. That makes no sense and I am sure, ten years past any criminal work, that it is entirely unknown in Canada. Wow. I actually feel a little bad for Connie this morning.
Update: The Flea guides us to the new enemy – New Victorians.
That is all for now. I wish I were in England where I could spend some time watching for ocean-going rubber floaty toys. I bet I’d meet up with Bill Wyman if I only spent more time doing things like that.
Group Project: Federal Poll Breakthrough!!!
Please provide your ideas for any party to make a change, capture the national imagination, bust out of these doldrums. Maybe the Greens should come right out and promote attacking Yemen. Maybe the Tories should promote a useless infrastructure project in a dumb place like the Arctic…oh, they did that already. Or is national vision even needed? Maybe the NuGovernment has invented UnPolicy as the NuVzn?
Shake the tree.
Yankees As Yankees
All my big talk about the Sox is just a front. I know that. You know that. Sooner or later the giant awakes and begins the march to October. Did it happen last night?
There was an urgency to last night’s game, the Yankees said, because of the opportunity it presented. They were facing Roy Halladay, who is probably tougher on them than any other starter. A loss would have been understandable, but a victory could make a statement. After losing this month to Dan Haren, Johan Santana and Scott Kazmir, the Yankees still needed to prove they could outlast a team with an elite starter. Andy Pettitte matched Halladay for seven strong innings, and the Yankees won the kind of tight game they have lost far too often.
Conversely, attentive readers will recall that last year, the Sox sucked in September losing to Tampa Bay and Kansas City. To be fair to that season, August saw seven of none starters on the DL but losing to Kansas City is a huge warning sign even though many good people and much good music and good BBQ come from there. Last night, the Red Sox lost badly to Kansas City.
A Bat In The Basement
Dozing off at the end of the evening, I dreamed that there was something flitting in the blue glow of the TV light. Then I realized there was no dream as I wasn’t sleeping. We had a bat trapped in the house and it was down here in the basement. So here are my bat removal tips gleaned from seven minutes of experience:
- Turn on the lights where you do not want the bat to go. They will flit in those rooms but will exit again.
- Bats are quite cheery when there is just one of them and one of you.
- A table cloth held up as a screen works as a good corralling device.
- Keep it moving.
- At least one bat in the world has a hard time seeing the wall above a door and will whap into it over and over.
- Bats tire after ten minutes of swooping and wall whapping.
- Once tired, bats are happy to land and be gathered up in a table cloth and taken outside.
- Our cat is not a bat attacker.
One more thing. Human reactions can range from terror to fascination in these moments.
Group Project: The “Ridiculous Position” Question
There is a funny thing about the word ridiculous. Anyone that uses it in serious discussion makes me think of Don Rickles. Nothing in a serious discussion is “ridiculous”…yet…
Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended his government’s decision to pursue free-trade talks with Colombia despite persistent human-rights problems Monday, saying it’s “ridiculous” to stop economic talks until conditions are ideal. “We are not going to say, ‘Fix all your social, political and human-rights problems and only then will we engage in trade relations with you,'” Mr. Harper said at a joint news conference with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. “That’s a ridiculous position.”
Of course we do that. It is called an embargo and it is a useful tool from time to time. The US uses it against Cuba. Canada’s conservatives advocated its use quite handily against South Africa to great effect. Harper in the general sense, then, is being ridiculous in his general proposition. And there is a little something of Don in Steve when you think about it, something about the inability to smile without sending a second message.
But what about the specific? There are certainly situations where trade is a better tool than embargo. Customers and clients are better to have than criminal drug lords. Yet the US Congress has determined in this particular case that is not the case and has stopped their free trade relationship discussions from moving forward. Is it that Harper has picked a country in need of good news to get some of his own? Is he the patron of dumb causes like Arctic paratroopers? Is he leaving out other more sensible choices like Brazil and Argentina which could make a real difference in the movement of goods because they are, you know, “pinkos”? Or is he the vangard of free stable democratic government and picking a hard case for a good cause, indirectly trying to work to halt the murders of trade union leaders and other forms of repression that country is plagued with?
And if there was free trade with Columbia – what would you buy?