Disaster Area

Oh Wait - This Is More Like It

This is great:

But this is incredible:

Opening Day

Ah, the season opens (well, at least for the beloved hometown Seattle Mariners and most of the league).

20 year old phenom Felix Hernandez turns in an amazing performance - predicted almost exactly by Dave Cameron over at USSMariner .

We don't have tickets for a game until the 13th, but that will be soon enough.

Ah, Baseball

Wow, back to back posts. How unusual.

Well, I don't write much on the blog about baseball, but tonight was a ray of sunshine in the middle of a miserable month for the hometown Seattle Mariners. After clawing into the fringes of playoff contention by early August, a road trip where they lost all eleven games - to their division rivals, no less - pretty much blew that notion out of the water in much the same way the Bismarck went down in WW2.

After that ill-fated road trip, the team has been home to the Yankees and Red Sox this week. After surprisingly taking two of three games from the Yankees earlier, they have now taken the first two games against the Red Sox with the final game to be played on Sunday. Even better, Sue and I were at tonight's game in person.

Now, the Yankees are hated by everyone except Yankee fans, much like Man Utd in real football and the Dallas Cowboys in American football. And Yankee fans (much like the other teams mentioned) are generally pretty obnoxious. The Boston Red Sox were, until recently, the lovable underachievers who hadn't won the World Series for about a millennium. That all changed in 2004, when they did actually win the World Series again, since which time their fans have become as pleasant to be around as the aforementioned Yankee fans. So it was nice to see the hometown squad take yesterday's game from them 6-0, and then turn around and win tonight's game 4-3.

While I like to see a good play, or movie, or ballet, there's something different about sports - and that is that the outcome is not pre-determined (unless Sunderland are playing football - rimshot, please...) Tonight's game was a great example. Three times Boston took a one run lead, only to see Seattle tie the game. The game was well played and tense throughout, and the outcome was uncertain right up to the last out.

If opera were a sport, then it may not actually be over when the fat lady sings - the other team might have another fat lady ready to tie the game and maybe win it in extra innings. Or take the theatre - when was the last time you saw Sir Laurence Olivier head butt his co-star and get sent off for the last ten minutes of a west end play?

So there is something unique about sports as entertainment. And tonight was all that.

Chi-Town Brawl - Lego Style

Aaaarrrgggghhh. Too many boxes. But, oh well, what are you going to do. Nobody likes the work that goes with moving house, but I guess it's a necessary evil if you want to actually, well, move.

But here's a light hearted item from the baseball world. Last weekend there was a nasty brawl in the Chicago local derby match between the Cubs and White Sox. Video and photographs litter the internet, but only in one place can you relive the entire thing in Legovision. I point you to:

The Brawl at the Bitch: A Reenactment

...over at Batgirl.com

Notes for the uninitiated: the target of the thrown punch is A. J. Pierzynski, a one time Minnesota Twin and all around obnoxious personality by all accounts, hence the Twins interest. Also, the White Sox (or, as Ms. Girl prefers to call them, the Bitch Sox) are the hated division rivals.

Hu's on First?

The visit of President Hu (pronounced "who" to the uninitiated) of China to Seattle has been a veritable cornucopia of pun opportunities.

For instance, I really wish he'd finished that postgraduate degree. Then he'd be Dr. Hu.

And rumor has it that at these shindigs there's always a great deal of protocol to be figured out on who gets to speak when. Apparently, they finally did work it all out, and they decided that "Hu's on first".

For those of you uninitiated in perhaps the greatest comedy routine of all time (and I include anything British in the competition), here's a snippet (although it really does help to have just a smidge of baseball knowledge for it to make sense):

Abbott: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

Costello: Are you the manager?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: You gonna be the coach too?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names?

Abbott: Well I should.

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.

It sure doesn't hurt that the Mariners came  back from 6-1 deficit to win 9-6 tonight.

Baseball and Quirks

You gotta love those quirky baseball players. Here's super-geek Lew Ford, outfielder for the Minnesota Twins.

"I brought my laptop and also my desktop computer down to spring training. You know, because the desktop is more powerful and has a 19-inch flatscreen monitor. But when we first made our road trip, I couldn't figure out what to do with my computer, so I brought it to Toronto and Cleveland. Somehow the guys found out about it, so I had to explain why I packed it... I could only bring like one change of clothes because I brought my computer."

"I've read a story about how (Twins manager) Ron Gardenhire saw you having dinner on a road trip one time with some guys you met playing games on the Internet. That seems to be the "quintessential Lew Ford story.""

"You should have seen his face when he asked how I knew the guys and they said, "We met on the Internet." He just stood there and stared."

"He also seemed a little concerned. "I'll be looking for this article. What are you going to put in there about the computer stuff?" he asked. "You have to remember: I don't take the big one on every trip. You have to make sure to put that in there.""

So moms, don't let your kids grow up to be baseball players. Well, unless they're pretty good and can make tons of money to pay for the computers and such.

Ah, Baseball

We moved to North America 24 years ago, leaving England for Montreal, Canada - the same day the British fleet sailed for the Falklands, although we had not intention of being quite as mean to the Canadians as the British fleet eventually was to the Argentinians. We also got there a hell of a lot quicker - one day versus about six weeks.

I bring up this piece of nostalgia merely to point out that we arrived in North America just as the baseball season was about to start in 1982. Sure, I'd heard of baseball, but never actually seen it, nor understood the rules. The very first weekend, though, I was sitting in our hotel room with nothing to do so I started watching a game on TV. Fan for life right there, within three hours.

Baseball is a leisurely paced game. There is no clock. Not just that, games are played every day for six months. Fans are prone to waxing long and eloquently about the game. As much as I like football (REAL football, aka soccer to US readers) it just doesn't have the poetic cachet that baseball does. And don't get me started on American football or basketball.

Anyway, as I posted recently, the baseball season is just underway, and the hometown Seattle Mariners are actually showing some promise, winning 2 out of 3 to start the season and looking reasonable doing it after two seasons of futility. Baseball blogs are plentiful and often of dubious quality, but we have one of the best team ones right here in Seattle over at USSMariner.com. For sheer fun and entertainment, though, Bat Girl, a fan of the Twins of Minnesota, just can't be beat. Today's game recap is a thing of beauty. A clip from today's riff on the whole 01-02-03-04-05-06* thing:

"As Radke stared at Ford wide-eyed, something popped inside his mind. A world without time, he thought as he took the field. A world without time, he whispered to himself as he gave up a double to Frank Catalanotto. So, how would you know when to meet your hairstylist? he muttered as he gave up a dinger to Troy Glaus. Maybe in a world without time you wouldn't have any hair? he whispered as he gave up another dinger to Lyle Overbay.

In the dugout, Rick Anderson and Ron Gardenhire exchanged glances.
"Lew must've popped his brain again," said Anderson."

Hope always springs eternal for even the most moribund of teams in April. Sure, a third of the league is essentially dead in the water by June, but that's still two months away...

* At 3 seconds and 2 minutes past 1 o' clock (am or pm, I guess), the date and time today was 01:02:03:04:05:06. This is, of course, only in the USA, where the month comes before the year, and the year is truncated to two digits (didn't we learn anything from Y2K???) So any of you Brits can feel comforted in the knowledge that a) you didn't miss anything, and b) even if you did, it doesn't happen in the UK until May 4 (Star Wars Day).

Meanwhile, on the Diamond...

Today was Opening Night for baseball for most major league teams, the Seattle Mariners included.

The hometown lads went down with reckless base running abandon, 5-4 to the Legally Mandated Name Changed Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in Orange County, or whatever they're calling themselves this season. At least the Mariners were in the game right to the end, which is more than can be said for the hated division rival Oakland A's, who were down 7-0 at home to the Yankees before the first beer had been spilled. The Yankees kept piling on and just closed out a 15-2 win... Now there's a season opening downer for you.

Ah, Baseball

Got to go to my first live game this year tonight. As my wife is out of town I went with a friend, a fellow musician from church. What a great night. The weather here is perfect right now, in the 70s and even by the end of the game it was just starting to get chilly, but not in that bone-numbing way. The game was preceded by Japanese phenom Ichiro receiving a special Commissioner's award for his record breaking 262 hits last year, and also marked by the giving away of free Ichiro commemorative bobblehead dolls. Woohoo, free cheap crap! Here's a view of the scoreboard commemmorating the event:

The conversation, the beer, the occasion, were all fantastic. The game itself, well, it was a very forgettable 6-1 loss for the home team boys, and never in doubt due to a five spot put up by the opposition in the first inning. (For you UK football types, that's like going down 3-0 in the first ten minutes - not impossible to overcome, but pretty damn unlikely.)

One of the other redeeming qualities was the appearance of the moon over the stadium, looking like this:

So, all in all, despite the lousy game and worse result, a great night out...

The Promise of Summer...

Arrived  yesterday...