Friday, March 19, 2004

Silent, Grim, Colossal, the Big City …*

The interviewer all-star of the baseball blogosphere, Alex Belth, has another superb dialogue online. This time it's with one of my favorite Boston sportswriters Howard Bryant, who not only pens a regular column at the Herald but also wrote the book Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston.

It's insightful to me that Bryant had no desire to be a sportswriter when he was growing up and that he only got into the sports business as a means to an end to get Shut Out written. Perhaps this is why I find Bryant's columns among my favorites. As he says,

I enjoyed the writing opportunity the Herald gave me, because you get to actually try to write instead of following the beat writer minutiae about Derek Jeter's sore elbow, which pitcher will receive an extra day of rest, etc.

One quibble I have with Bryant occurs here:

I always make the argument that the city of Boston - still to this day - can be reflected through its sports teams. Very few cities, if any, can say that. I don't think the Yankees are necessarily a reflection of New York.

I don't disagree with Bryant's contention that Boston teams, in particular the Red Sox, are a mirror of Boston's civic persona, but I'm not sure how he can suggest that the Yankees are not a reflection of New York.

What do you think of when you think of NYC? I think of money, the financial capital of the world. I think of a city that prides itself on being the best, that wants, in every way to be the most important city on the planet. Hmm … sort of sounds like the Yankee ball club, no?

I'd suggest that the history of the World Trade Centers is a fitting parallel to the Yankees. The powers that be pretty much demolished an entire neighborhood and way of life in order to put up the Twin Towers and make claim to the tallest buildings in the world. For years those towers stood as symbolic reminders of the financial power of NYC. They were the "bling bling" of the entire city that same way Steinbrenner's omnipresent, gigantic World Series ring is. And when the tragedy of 9/11 occurred and the WTC Twins were brought down, NYC paused in grief for a moment, then, shook it off, cleaned up the site in record, and made plans to rebuild on the very same spot.

All that reminds me of the whole "Aaron Boone gets hurt, no big deal, we'll just replace him with the best ballplayer in the game" that went down. The Yankees are always unfazed and always thinking bigger and better, just like NYC as a whole.

And have you seen the over the top designs for the proposed NYC 2012 Olympic bid?

The Yankees are New York City. Of this I have no doubt. The faces of Posada and Jeter are one with the sky line of Manhattan in my mind.

OK. That's enough talk about that. Don't interpret my conclusions on NYC as a fondness for the rotten apple. No, it's more along the lines of Sun-Tzu's famous caveat from The Art of War: "Know thy enemy."

Meanwhile, I'm officially getting antsy concerning Trot Nixon's back injury: "Though Francona hasn't ruled Nixon out yet for Opening Day, it seems to be a shrinking possibility" (Browne, MLB.com).

This year I fear the disabled list far more than I fear the Yankees.

*The title is a line from O. Henry's The Four Million

Thursday, March 18, 2004

High Hopes for MLB.TV

What a difference a year makes. Last year you may recall the ongoing difficulties I had with MLB.TV and the entire broadband package I bought for the season. It now seems, however, the problems were more the fault of Real Network rather than MLB itself, as this year the service is making using of Windows Media Player rather than the Real One Player.

windows media player, closeup of Curt SchillingI'm not a big Windows fan, so I was skeptical when I handed over my cash for another season of the "All Access" package, but I've got to say I'm impressed so far. Yesterday I was able to catch some of the Spring Training game against the Indians from my desktop at work while working on some low intensity tasks (proposed web-based sales/marketing plan) with the media player window tucked nicely up into a top corner of my screen.

The audio was flawless and the video feed was better than any I experienced all of last year. I should point out as well that last year I was never able, not once, to get a video feed at work and only had about 25% chance of successfully getting just the audio feed. So this is very promising.

Of course, it is still Spring Training and a 1pm game. We'll see how it goes during the first Red Sox v. Yankees series. That'll be the real barometer of how well MLB.TV is doing.

I really want it to succeed because, as you can imagine, it's just the thing for fans who are outside of the New England broadcast area.

Allergy Update: I'm in a debt of gratitude to Paul, of the S.S.Mariner blog, who, in a comment to my I'm dying from allergies post, suggested that I try NasalCrom. I'm happy to report that I have not had a single sneeze let alone one of the uncontrollable sneezing attacks I wrote of having frequently. And I know the pollen is still out there because the pollen count reports are still high and I still get the low grade headaches and watery eyes when I step outside. But I can play through both of those symptoms. It's the sneezing that wiped me out.

The posse over at All-Baseball.com have a roundtable discussion of the AL East. I like this metaphor suggested by Rich Lederer:

The A.L. East is baseball’s version of Survivor: All-Stars. The Tribal Council will vote the Tampa Bay Devil Rays off the island by June, the Baltimore Orioles by July, and the Toronto Blue Jays by August. … Who will be the Sole Survivor?

Speaking of Survivor, the "Boston Rob" castaway is making the classic mistake so many of us Red Sox fans make: arrogant over confidence when things are going well. I think Rob is already counting his million dollars, but he, as a Red Sox fan should know better. There is still a whole lot of game left to played.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

May the Sun Always Shine on Your Windowpane.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

The Red Sox will be sporting green jerseys to honor the day during today's matinee against Cleveland. Yes, it's a clever marketing tool to sell commemorative replica jerseys to fans, but I still think it's a cool idea. I'm a sucker for things like retro uniform night and all that.

And just as everyone becomes a wee bit Irish on St. Patty's day, reaching into the closet for something green to wear, so, too, it seems more and more baseball fans the world over are wearing red stockings:

"I've always loved the Red Sox, but the more moves the Yankees make, the more I root for Boston," said 44-year-old Bradenton resident Eric Heyer, who brings his father, Bob Bonheyer, 74, to about seven games every spring.

"The Yankees continue to create new Red Sox fans every time they go out and sign another big free agent. I think the A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez) deal boosted the Sox fan base more than the Yankees" (Swancey, Sarasota Herald Tribune).

Yesterday, my complimentary copy of the "I Love to Score" scorebook arrived in the mail. It's sweet. Now I'm going to have to actually use it. Truth be told, I haven't sat down and scored an entire game in a long time. But it's time to reacquaint myself with this specialized knowledge unique to the game of baseball.

I love this quote on scoring from Dickson's book The Joy of Keeping Score:

A baseball game condensed, repackaged in black and white, or what Roger Angell once called "a precisely etched miniature of the sport itself," a box score has great allure. Writer Bill Conlin wrote, "The baseball box score is a pure American artform" (p. 34).

How true, an artform it is.

You know in this interactive, multimedia age we live in, it'd be easy to do something during a TV broadcast like after each play have a little graphic popup in the corner of the screen showing how that play would be symbolized on the score sheet. Ideally, this would be an interactive feature that you could toggle off or on while watching. Such a thing would be a great way to introduce TV-centric kids to this special, indeed mysterious, aspect of baseball.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Yea though I walk through the valley of death …

In a forthcoming issue of GQ magazine and excerpted in a prepublication press release, former, and now infamous, Red Sox manager Grady Little makes the following statement:

"I had players come and tell me that when they're on the field they're thinking about those ghosts. They think about Bill Buckner -- and not wanting to be a Bill Buckner. And if I got a couple of players come tell me that face-to-face, then I know in my heart I got twenty thinking that. It's just a couple of them got the balls enough to say it out loud" (Yahoo).

If this is true, if players have acknowledged the so-called "ghosts," then this is one of the most profound and unexpected statements I've ever heard.

See, I always expected this was the case despite what players have said along the lines of "that was in the past … this is a different ballclub in a different year …"

As you probably know, while I've titled this blog "Bambino's Curse," I do not believe in any way that the Babe Ruth himself, either while living or from the grave, excoriated the Red Sox, nor do I believe the trade of Babe Ruth is in any way explicitly tied to the World Series drought since 1918; however, I do believe that over the years, a lack of winning combined with the odd and downright phantasmagoric ways defeat and near miss have entered the Red Sox history book has manifested itself into a curse of sorts, a palpable sense of cynicism and doom that, unchecked, gets a bit stronger each year.

Remember the Joseph Campbell quote I referred to a week or so ago?

The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the mind - whether in dream, broad daylight, or insanity … (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

That's what I'm talking about here. Those are the ghosts. And the myth, call it the Curse of the Bambino, call it bad management, call it not enough OBP, call it whatever you want, but acknowledge how the myth that "the Red Sox will always lose" can be powerful for fan and player alike:

…to grasp the full value of the mythological figures that have come down to us, we must understand that they are not only symptoms of the unconscious (as indeed are all human thoughts and acts) but also controlled and intended statements of certain spiritual principles, which have remained as constant throughout the course of human history as the form and nervous structure of the human physique itself (p.257) [emphasis is mine - ed]

So here we have the unconscious creating a power that influences all aspects of our humanity, including our physiques, the very constitution of the human body, nine of which are on the field in red stockings at any given time.

… the universal doctrine teaches that all the visible structures of the world — all things and beings — are the effects of a ubiquitous power out of which they rise, which supports and fills them during the period of their manifestation, and back into which they ultimately must dissolve. This is the power known to science as energy, to the Melanesians as mana, and to the Sioux Indians as wakonda, the Hindus as shakti, and the Christians as the power of God. Its manifestation in the psyche is termed, by the psychoanalyst, libido (p.257-8).

And I maintain this ubiquitous power is known to the Red Sox fan, and if we believe Grady Little's statement in GQ, to the Red Sox players as well, as "the curse" or the ghosts of the past.

Furthermore, this awareness of myth and its power is the first step in awakening the mind and body to the higher plane of existence. This is where Campbell's concept of "the hero" comes in. I've already suggested that Curt Schilling, by fully embracing the Red Sox lore, is one such hero. We'll find out, in the course of this season, if Schilling and the rest of the team can complete the hero's journey into the abyss and back.

And, of course, we as fans have to do our own ghostbusting by beating back our own doom and gloom inner demons. We can do it. We did pretty well last year with staying positive. I'll confess I crumbled, though, when Grady Little made his fateful decision to leave Pedro in and Posada got that bloop hit. At that point, the ghosts moved in, taunting me, and I was not heroic in thought or action. I want nothing more but another shot at redemption.

Monday, March 15, 2004

The Blogger's Fear of the Pollen Count

Related to previous posts on the power of our own minds to overcome adversity, is this story from Wired News on medical investigations into why a placebo works.

As neuroscientist Melanie Leitner put it before an audience of scientists last month, "What does it mean to harness the power of belief?" (Dotinga)

Interestingly, the story also talks about how our minds can work against us as well.

The nocebo effect, the dark side of placebos, presents yet another puzzle for researchers to solve. … One study found that the number of aspirin users reporting gastrointestinal problems jumped by six times when they were told that the symptoms might be a side effect of their treatment.

Of course, you already know this on subjective level. If you think you're going to suck at something, you most likely will. What's fascinating, though, is the possibility that "something may be happening in the neurons of the brain itself."

Meanwhile, the trees are about to leave here, the weeping willows already have, so the air is fully pollinated and my head is about to explode. And no power of positive thinking can overcome my body's histamine dump. I need drugs.

Unfortunately, I'm totally out of my Nasonex and don't feel like going through the hassle of going to the doctor's office and waiting and waiting and waiting just so that, finally, I can go in and get poked and probed and interrogated when I know exactly what I need. (I've been able to call without going in previously but I guess there is some limit to that as they said I "have to see the doctor.") So I'm going to try some now available over the counter Claritin, which hasn't been nearly as effective as the Nasonex, but I'm hoping there may be a placebo effect, you know. (If anyone reading this is an MD, throw me a bone and hook me up with a prescription for Nasonex. Is that unethical? I bet Courtney Love could score some nasal spray in 15 seconds. Heh heh.)

I mention all this because it effects the blog. The past three days, as soon as I return from walking the dog, I go into a 20 minute, out of control sneezing attack that leaves me feeling spent on top of runny noise and itchy eyes and I end up using up all my morning writing and thinking about writing time on recovery. Not to mention how difficult it is to read the screen through watery eyes.

Do I whine? Very well then, I'm whining. I am large; I contain multi-whines.

Rumor has it, Pedro Martinez had a bad outing yesterday, but "Orioles starting pitcher Sidney Ponson was even worse." No biggie. It's only Spring Training. I'm at the point now, and I'm sure you are as well, where the initial excitement of Spring Training has waned and I'm more than ready for the real deal. It's worth remembering, though, that players do need the time to get in their respective grooves.