Bambino's Curse

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Alex Belth's Part 2 interview with Howard Bryant at The Hardball Times is even better than Part 1. Reading Bryant's responses you get a real sense of why there is an inherent adversarial relationship between the players and the press. Also I like that Bryant strips away all the romanticism someone like myself and probably many of you as well project on the sportswriters, imagining how it's the perfect job and all that. You know, getting paid to go to baseball games and talk to baseball players.

But the reality is it's a job and once you cross over the wall into that insider world, something is lost that you can never get back in terms of how you view the game of baseball and the players. It's like that with anything, really. Before I went to grad school, I though the world of English Literature and professors and academia was a utopia. Then I learned first hand what Kissinger meant in famous quote, "The reason academic politics are so dirty is not because the stakes are high, but because they are so low." The infighting and backstabbing and obsession with critical theory pretty much sucked every ounce of joy out of literature for me.

Even Quantum physics teaches us that the observed object changes even as it is observed. And, of course, that the same lesson implicit in the whole Tree of Knowledge, Garden of Eden myth.

Have you heard that song by the Androids called "Do It With Madonna"? Cracks me up. Best line in the song: " Have you seen her where she's wearing the cowboy hat and she's kicking the dirt?"

Remember when slugger and one half of the "Bash Brothers" was hooking up with Madonna? Ah, those were the days. Now Jose is under house arrest (when he's not getting a don't call us we'll call you from MLB clubs) and Madonna talks with an affected British accent and writes children's books. Still I love the memories of Jose Canseco in a Red Sox uniform, standing in the batter box like Apollo, the bat like a spindly broom handle compared to his bulk. And, like the Androids, I still have a thing for Madonna.

Meanwhile, Paul at the S.S. Mariner blog reveals a profound truth:

I will say this - monkeys are cool. Flying monkeys, helper monkeys, fez-wearing monkeys, monkeys on rollerskates - I don't care, monkeys are cool. If MLB had a monkey as a mascot, they'd go a long way towards solving the problems that plague the league.

True dat.

I Gotta Wear Shades

Get out your shades Red Sox fans for the future is looking awfully bright. In an overview of the Red Sox minor league prospects, this Sports Network report suggests,

The Boston Red Sox minor league system has been improving rapidly. … unlike their New York counterparts, have some prospects other teams may be interested in, such as Kevin Youkilis, Kelly Shoppach, and David Murphy.

And this should be a tonic for any tattered nerves,

If Nomar Garciaparra does walk after 2004 it's still not the end of the world with {Hanley] Ramirez around. Ramirez isn't Tampa Bay's B.J. Upton, but he's still an excellent option for the Red Sox. Ramirez is a five tool athlete with the highest ceiling of anyone in the organization.

Keep those sunglasses on, as former Red Sox manager Kevin Kennedy contends the acquisitions of Ellis Burks and Pokey Reese, while receiving little fanfare, are huge.

On Burks:

"After all these years, the bat speed is still there for him. He looks healthy, the legs are strong and he's driving the ball. Burks compliments the Red Sox lineup extremely well."

On Reese:

"This is the guy that former Reds general manager Jim Bowden refused to include in the original deal to acquire Ken Griffey Jr. from Seattle in 2000.… I really like the addition of Pokey Reese. He has tremendous range going left and right, and can turn the double play and take some of the pressure off of that pitching staff …"

This feature documentary on the Red Sox should be interesting. I'm especially interested in the "unprecedented access to the ballpark, clubhouse, and front office" the film is purported to have. It's good to see someone ran with the idea I floated back in November of 2002:

Ever wonder what really goes on behind the closed doors with Red Sox management? It'd be cool to know more. They could make a show out of it ALA NBC's The West Wing and call it Yawkey Way. I'd watch.

Seriously, I'm surprised no one has ever made a documentary on the subject, something along the lines of HBO's Journeys with George. If I were a documentary film maker, I'd be beating down the doors on Yawkey Way trying to get access. (I wish I had it all to do over again, because maybe I would be a documentary film maker beating down the doors on Yawkey Way with my camera in hand.)

My only reservation regarding the film is I don't really want to relive a season that ended in defeat. Yes, in many ways that is the quintessence of the Red Sox experience, still … Anyway, I hope they have a film crew on hand again this year just in case.

Well If Lady Luck Gets On My Side
We're Gonna Rock This Town Alive

For David Ortiz, the homerun has a particular appeal. Says the first baseman/DH,

"You don’t have to run like if you hit a double or something like that."

I love it.

You know what else I love and that I just can't help but feel is a good omen? That American Idol reject William Hung, AKA "the She Bangs guy" is currently the number one download in the iTunes store. (I bought his affectuous rendition of "She Bangs" myself).

Granted, he's not a great singer, indeed, he's awful, but you know what? He gets the job done with what he has. That is the essence of "Cowboy Up!" as well, no?

And if William Hung can become an overnight superstar, then, absolutely, without a doubt, we are living in a moment in which anything and everything is possible. You know what I'm saying?

Meanwhile, it's been five weeks now since I began my Lenten abstention from the Boston media, and, surprisingly, it's been a piece of cake to pull off. I don't think I've suffered nor do I think the blog has suffered, though all of you are the better judges concerning the latter. I know I've missed a couple of good Gordon Edes pieces, and I do look forward to reading his columns again.

Speaking of the Boston media, at least one popular blogger thinks Bob Ryan should be fired for reverse racism over recent comments Ryan has made.

Elsewhere, have you seen that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has a blog? It's a fascinating read. I wish a baseball owner had the chutzpah to do the same. It'd be awesome to get that point of view on the game.

Cuban is an interesting character. He's very full of himself and is totally arrogant, but in an endearing sort of way. I saw him as a keynote speaker at SXSW Interactive in '99, just shortly before he became a multi-millionaire by selling his Broadcast.com to Yahoo. He was a great speaker, and to this day his was the best SXSW keynote I've witnessed. One funny tidbit from his '99 keynote was his prediction that "in six to twelve months MP3 will be dead … it's a useless technology that will never achieve broad appeal." Oops.

Rooftop Ticket Nightmare

Ever have one of those dreams where you're trying to dial the phone in an emergency situation but you keep hitting the wrong sequence of numbers over and over? Well, at least you can wake up from a nightmare, but for reader and displaced Red Sox fan Chuck Allen, reality became worse than any nightmare:

I was lucky enough to be one of the Lottery Winners for the Fenway RF Roof seat tickets. I patiently waited for the appointed hour, with my assigned "One Log-in attempt only" userid and password. When the time came, I logged in as instructed and was greeted with the message "Your login has been accepted...Please click here to proceed". So I clicked on the link to RF nirvana, and to my horror it produced a pup-up window, which was quickly blasted to oblivion by my pop-up blocker. That's it...game over.

Unfortunately, (in an otherwise applaudable effort to prevent multiple purchases by scalpers/agencies) the short sighted Sox sales staff set things up so that you could only *log-in* once, not purchase tickets once. So if things happened to go wrong (pop-up blocker, page error, etc) as they did with me, you end up SOL. The notification and web-page were very clear about the fact that you could only log-in once, but they never gave any method to rectify a problem.

To add insult to injury, when I tried to log back in, I got the message "Our records indicate that you have already used your username and password. If you have any questions please call 877-REDSOX-9. Thank you for your patience." Unfortunately the 877 is the regular Sox Ticket number which was, as you may have guessed, jammed with people trying to call and order RF Roof seats. No answer/Circuit busy.

Why in the world one would set up an online ticket system for "Lucky Winners" to be limited to one log-in, rather than one confirmed transaction?!? Were they looking to piss people off? Whatever chowderhead in the Sales Office thought this up deserves to be dressed in a Yankees hat and 'Nomar Sucks' shirt, and marched out to the bleachers for proper punishment.

Argh. What a frustrating experience. I'm pretty sure I'd have lost it and started breaking things. (Then, of course, I'd feel 10 times worse moments later looking at all my broken stuff.)

Unfortunately, Chuck isn't the only fan who ran into problems, as this thread at SoSH shows.

Does MLB.com ever do usability testing? I applaud their efforts to be the most "wired" of the major pro sports, but there really isn't any excuse for the wide array of technical difficulties users have to contend with at MLB.com. I'm still baffled why all the links from the pull down menu on the MLB front page still go to a redirect page. This is going on the third year of that. Why not just update the links to point to the correct page?

Regarding nightmares, ever have the one where you cut yourself on a spherical object with no edges?

Mendoza cut his right middle finger on the seam of the ball while playing catch before the game. Though this injury was minor, it was nonetheless another setback for Mendoza in his quest to be on the Opening Day roster.

"The seam kind of sliced his finger a little bit, so, (he wasn't) available," said Sox manager Terry Francona (Browne, MLB.com)

How long before baseballs sold to the public have to come with a warning label like, "WARNING: Used improperly this product may cause lacerations to the hands and fingers. Use with caution."?

Red Sox v. Tampa Bay on MLB.TV at 1 p.m. today. I'm hoping I can take a few peeks from work.

A Land Without Ruins

A land without ruins is a land without memories --
a land without memories is a land without history.*

The poet W.H. Auden said, "All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage." If poets have a relationship with such things based on adoration, then the news media's relationship must be characterized as obsessive.

I must have scene the clip of the Vet imploding over twenty times now. No doubt, it is an impressive act to behold. Still, it leaves me sad. I know it just couldn't remain there, taking up valuable real estate and falling into decay, but I have enough of the romantic in me, enough of the poet in me, to wonder what it'd be like to be the speaker in Browning's "Love Among the Ruins" coming not upon the "hundred-gated circuit of a wall bounding all" but the ruins of a once stately ballpark.

Now,--the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
Through the chinks--

Truth be told, I find it difficult to get rid of things. Left to my own devices, I'm a pack rat, wanting to saving old ticket stubs, old t-shirts, old shovels, old magazines … Yet I also aspire to a zen ideal, which creates something of an emotional dilemma for me. And perhaps for you as well? I say this because baseball, especially Red Sox baseball, is appealing on one level because it is at every moment a fusion of the past, present, and future.

Every trip to Fenway is a recreation and a reminder of my first ever trip to Fenway with my dad. Every Opening Day is brand new but is imbibed with the spirit of every Opening Day that has come before and with the promise of every one to come in the future.

And this feeling, too, is what is at the heart of my own fascination with ruins, be they the colossal, like the Acropolis in Athens, or on a smaller scale, though no less profound, like coming across a chimney and foundation in the middle of a walk in the woods where a house once stood. The feeling of coming upon ruins is fascinating because it isn't about the past but the present considering the past. What I'm trying to say is we feel more fully in the present, the now, when we see the remains of what once was than we do otherwise among the buildings and columns and fences and chimneys still in use.

I wonder how we'll feel about Fenway when there is a new ballpark in Boston and Fenway is a relic? And how long will it stand? In some other epoch will people come across the remains and wonder what it was like "[w]here a multitude of men breathed joy and woe"?

We'll never get the chance to consider Veterans Stadium in that light. It is gone. Without a trace. Finis.