Baseball DIY

Well you don't see this everyday. Dave Bidini has an essay up over at Powells Books about the six months he spent following B Division Italian baseball team. Like the essay, then buy the book. I bet those guys eat way better than the minor leaguers in the US.

Baseball in Italy...who knew?

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers shoved two cameramen Wednesday, sending one to the hospital in a videotaped tirade that included throwing a camera to the ground and threatening to break others.

"He was frail, gaunt," Accorsi remembered Tuesday. "He was real talkative, but he never said anything about being called 'Moonlight.' And he didn't look like Burt Lancaster."

Thanks to Jeremy Murrish for the link.

Graham is also discussed here.

Every four years or so, you hear some jive about how important it is to vote. Well, it's important to vote on this every year.

George Soros is part of a group trying to buy the Washington Nationals.

"It's not necessarily smart business sense to have anybody who is so polarizing in the political world," Rep. John E. Sweeney (R-N.Y.) said. "That goes for anybody, but especially as it relates to Major League Baseball because it's one of the few businesses that get incredibly special treatment from Congress and the federal government."

So what exactly are you saying, Mr. Sweeney? You're being a little obtuse.

Oliver Perez and Kenny Rogers recently became the two most recent pitchers to injure themselves while taking their frustrations out on inanimate objects. Last year, my love of the crazy antics of Julian Tavarez soured a little when he broke his hand punching a dugout phone down the stretch. I'm sure that position players do the same thing, but I think they're probably (I don't have evidence to prove it right now) smart enough to at least use a bat or some other weapon that's not a part of their own anatomy.

Here are some suggestions for ways players could more constructively or effectively channel their anger:

1) After sleeping on it (problems are always smaller in the bright of dawn), write the water cooler a letter explaining why you're upset and what the water cooler can do to improve your mood. Be sure to say that you aren't mad at the water cooler, but rather that you are mad at its actions.
2) Pay the batboy a buck or two to really lay into that laundry cart for you. If he breaks his toe, at least you won't miss your next start.
3) Look for someone talking on a cell phone in the crowd and Artestify. They should know better.
4) Bring a guitar to the dugout with you before every game. You'll know what to do with it.
5) If you're really, really, really ticked off and nothing else will suffice, just go after your manager with a fungo. It's better to look crazy than just plain stupid.

Even Johnny Damon thinks books are cool.

This is absolute trash.

You might say that Albert Pujols is my favorite player. You might, but my three-year-old nephew Chris would say that he's my favorite "teamer." Chris and his brother, Brad, have a way with words that increases my expectations for the literary accomplishments of the generation to come.

What I like about the "teamer" phenomenon is that it speaks to a problem that I run into occasionally in vintage base ball: occasionally, I or another player will use "run," "out," or some other anachronistic term that was not in use at the time that we are depicting. This is considered "improper." My contention, at first in jest but now with a little more gravity, is that I'm depicting the invention of the term in an 1864 game. Who says that someone didn't say "two runs scored" instead of "two aces scored" in 1864? He or she probably got the same look that I gave Chris the first time I heard him say "teamer," but someone had to be the first to say it.

The best thing about language (and just about everything else) is that it's always changing. There are roughly fifty bajillion words/phrases that mean "home run," and that's the way it should be. As long as the sounds that your mouth makes (or the words that your hand writes) convey the shade of meaning that you intend, that word is "proper."

What do you think a home run will be called in another hundred years?

Over at the Washington Post, George Robinson reviews several of the latest sports books including The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems by Will Carroll. I love how this is the "real story", because, you know, it's all been fiction until now.

Please.

Robinson isn't too thrilled with Carroll's work but does manage to give it a backhanded compliment of sorts:

The Juice is a sloppy, messy book whose disparate chapters read more like contributions to a festschrift than parts of a unified work. Nor is it clear who the book's intended readers are. But this book offers a lot of hard facts and some necessary myth-busting. For all its many faults, The Juice is a useful volume, if only as a reminder that, as Will Carroll states bluntly in its conclusion, "The simple joy of the game escapes us from time to time." ·

I'm not sure if he wants us to read the book or not but I know how I feel about it. I'm reading books on war and gardening right now. I'm sure that the steriod scandal will be just fine without me.

Not having access to a free batting cage or a yard big enough to hit a ball off a tee, I am in search of a low-risk/high-reward drill to improve my swing. I feel like I don't get any practice in between games, so my confidence every time at bat is based purely on the results of my previous trip to the plate. Something must be done.

While waiting for Jill to finish up at the gym Wednesday, I went into the basketball court with a towel in one hand and a great idea in the other. Our gym has the leakiest roof known to man, so it is not unusual to find a waist-high trash can collecting rainwater here and there. Gripping my towel like a baseball bat, I swung it at the molded plastic receptable. THUNK! I can't describe how great that sounded, incomparably better than the aluminum ping but not as good as the wooden crack. I took some more swings, some sounding good, others barely grazing the brim. It is my theory that the THUNK! result is what I'm looking for; the towel, in this swing, is almost rigid by the time it comes into contact with the can. When the towel-can connection sounds like a hairbrush going through curly hair, the towel is limp, due probably to some mechanical problem with my wrists/shoulders/trunk.

Again, this is just a theory. It's a cheap drill that may or may not work. I'm going to buy Ted Williams' The Science of Hitting to try to work on my skills, but for now, I'm enjoying this little experiment. If anyone knows of any better drills unlikely to result in property damage (my own or my neighbors'), please let me know.

I'm not trying to start a fight or anything, but the latest Rolling Stone cover is sacrilege.

In case you missed it, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy had an episode set in Florida during Spring Training this week and tried to fix all the things wrong with Johnny Damon, Tim Wakefield and other BoSox. Fortunately, Bravo replays every Queer Eye episode a million times (at least) so it shouldn't be too hard to catch in reruns.

And now you have a perfectly acceptable heterosexual reason for learning about how to dress and fix your hair. The best part though is what that guy does with people's houses. Do you suppose they'll ever do Queer Eye for the Married Thirty-Somethings with a Kid?

Maybe? Possibly?

Somebody needs to help me.

The playoffs, were they to happen today:

American League
Baltimore (AL East winner) vs. Minnesota (Wild Card)
Chicago (AL Central winner, best in AL) vs. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Which Is Also Located in California, One of the 50 United States (AL West winner)

National League
St. Louis (NL Central winner, best in the NL) vs. Philadelphia (Wild Card)
Washington (NL East winner) vs. San Diego (NL West winner)

I'd watch all of those series.

Where can you find the phrases "ludicrous muff," "dead-head tickets," "the high-brow domicile of the baked bean," and "the ball squeezed its way through Flack's buttered digits" all in one place? In this 1918 article dealing with the finale of the Cubs-Red Sox World Series. You can almost hear the Unknown Scribe grunting as he linguistically bench-presses 400 lbs. Thanks to John Eagleson for the link.

The Cubs play the Red Sox this weekend. In 1918, the Cubs and Red Sox were two of the most historically successful franchises around. It's kind of like when I was 10 and my parents seemed to be really, really happy. And then, all of a sudden, the big "D" reared its ugly head and my mom and I haven't won a World Series since 1908. Wait, no, that's not right. I hate when I confuse my personal history with baseball's.

Bison Books has a very impressive collection of essays out by John Schulian, a former Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist and longtime SI contributor. This is from the description for Twilight of the Long Ball:

A report from the true heart of baseball, this anthology leaves behind the bad boys and big names of the major leagues to take readers to the places where the spirit of America’s game resides. These are a veteran sportswriter’s dispatches from the bush leagues and the sandlot, his tributes to the Negro leaguers, mining-town dreamers, and certifiable eccentrics who give baseball its heart and soul, laughter and tears.

Now that sounds like the most intelligent book I've heard about baseball in a long long time. It's about damn time somebody reminded us why the game matters.

Instead of reading this summary of the Major League Baseball amateur draft, read the chapter in Moneyball that depicts one.

So, I just finished reading Inside Job by Connie Willis which is basically a love letter to HL Mencken and it was great. It's a novella, very well written (all her stuff is) and funny. She definitely puts the screws to all the spirit channelers and psychic readers out there (and the folks who just keep throwing money at them). It's from a small press so there was a limited print run but it's a very fun read and I certainly recommend it if you can luck into your own copy.

Otherwise, I'm cruising through a biography on Gerald Durrell (who is one of my favorite people ever, let alone favorite authors) for the next issue of Eclectica Magazine, Sunshine by Robin McKinley which I should have read a year ago and a collection of essays on Japan, Kuhaku put out by Chin Music Press. This one wins the award for most beautiful book I've come across in a long time and it's very interesting reading as well. A review for it will show up at Bookslut this summer.

And, oh yeah, Faucet Fish, is very popular around here lately. I am having trouble explaining why a baby beluga whale has not come our of our shower faucet though. The little guy keeps looking, but no luck yet.

It would be cool if it could happen though, wouldn't it?

Eugena Pilek has a new book out, Cooperstown that has the ring of one of thse quirky small town dramas that can be quite fun for summer reading. The tagline that hit me was "a sportswriter who hates baseball" which should make for few comedic moments (hopefully). At least Pilek's writing something different about baseball, which is not such an easy thing. And it's summer! Let's all read fun books!

Or something like that.....

So wandering around the nearby mega book store the other day I was intrigued by the new crop of books out for Father's Day. These displays are taking the space of the Mother's Day books and I couldn't help but notice that while last month we were all about weight loss and touching romance (not to mention "make your hosue a clutter-free zone!", this go-round is all about books on things you can throw and bbq. (Not things that can be barbequed and thrown, but you get the idea.)

Interesting society we are living in.

But still, lots of new baseball books out there, many of which appear to be total dreck but these might pique your interest. Lou Gerhig gets the biography treatment in The Luckiest Man. I've always been interested in Gerhig, both as a ball player and then poster child for ALS. This book strives to address each side of his very public life equally, which should round out his legend much more so than Gary Cooper's rather squeaky clean portrayal did.

The 100th anniversary of Ty Cobb's debut in the majors brings Peach, an illustrated biography of one of the game's more contentious personalities. (How pc is that?) What interested me about this book is that it is not only a bio of Cobb but also looks at how his legend has been treated in modern times. What was Cobb really like and why is he better know for being a jerk than a great player to pop culture afficionados? I kept thinking of that line in Field of Dreams where Shoeless Joe says they wouldn't let Cobb play because they didn't like him when he was alive. So why even throw that in there? Should be cool to see what else the authors dug up and the photos are all outstanding as well.

And hot off the success of Moneyball, Michael Lewis has a slim little "feel good" book out right now: Coach, a memoir about his high school baseball coach. It's not going to reveal anything mindblowing about the game like Moneyball did, but I'm a sucker for jocks who say thanks to the person who taught them what matters both on and off the field. It positively screams Father's Day gift by the way, even if your dad isn't a fan I'm sure he will love considering himself the leader in your life (whether or not that is true, who cares. He's going to think what he wants anyway.)

As for me I heartily recommend any and all books by Sarah Vowell who is the best writer ever when it comes to American history and sarcasm. Powells has a great interview with her and if you bought The Incredibles be sure to check out the extra with Sarah at work. She is the voice of Violet which has made reading her books all the more enjoyable for me. (I keep hearing her say, "Is Dad in trouble or the trouble?)

Sarah Vowell rocks even if she is a basketball fan.

This is a comparison of shortstop Jimmy Rollins ($2.4 million salary) and my Captain ($18.6 million salary). I think statistics are HIGHLY over-rated. Until they come up with a stat that measures Awesomeness you will never be able to truly capture the essence of my Captain using statistics alone. So much of his greatness is intangible. That's why I have chosen to call him Capt. Intangibles.

Any guesses as to the secret identity of Captain Intangibles?