Piazza’s home runs are sublime.
He’s passed every catcher all-time.
It’s especially neat
That he pulled off this feat
Without playing years past his prime.

I visited Petco Park on April 15th. I took a lot of pictures, and have now assembled them into a slideshow format. I have two versions:

• Petco Park Tour–Long Version (101 pictures)
• Petco Park Tour–Short Version (25 pictures)

I inadvertently stumbled onto a piece of baseball history on a recent trip to San Diego.

Check out my little slideshow about it.

Higginson, Patterson,
Johnson and Robertson,
Viña, Urbina, and
Esteban Yan.

Rodney, Rodriguez, then
Norton and Munson, plus
Jeremy Bonderman:
Hopelessness gone?

Many call Moneyball
foolish philosophy,
trusting computers but
doubting one’s eyes.

Seeing’s believing say
those with experience;
antistatistical
faith never dies.

“Number six-sixty!”
The words swam through azure skies
to a rural road

near a small green hill
where a lone cow sat chewing,
breathing the airwaves.

Let’s dip into the mailbag…

You write good but watch out for people stilling poems.
–Mariah

People-stilling poems? Is that some kind of poetic musical chairs freeze tag?
I’ve never played it but I’m willing to try.

Round and round the bases they go
The monkey and the marlin,
The snake thought it was all in fun:
The yankee quotes George Carlin.

OK, who doesn’t have a seat? Sorry, tiger, you’re out. Oh, don’t cry…

Was just wondering if you’ve bailed on Barry Zito forever, forever.
–Ryan

Well, I’m still ticked off that Barry Zito’s uncle didn’t show up that night and change history for me. And if Zito is willing to mess around with the space-time continuum himself, why the heck doesn’t he just go back in time and change those playoff homers he gave up to Posada and Ramirez? I think he’s just full of hot air, that’s what I think. So yes, my wrath may never, ever wane.

But you never know. Time travel creates all kinds of temporal parodoxes. When you’ve got a guy like Zito messing with space-time itself, forever and forever squared are difficult concepts to ascertain.

Does the Prime Minister know of your families past? If so, is he nervous living next to the relative of the assassin of a former King?
–Bill

My brother and Swedish Prime Minister Persson have been neighbors twice, in two different cities, and they once had a conversation in a bar at the Rejkjavik airport in Iceland. Not only is Persson not nervous about it, I think they’re secretly in love with each other.

Having said that, I don’t think Mr. Persson trusts me at all. Every time I go to visit, Mr. Persson is conveniently “out of town”. Or he’s just “too busy” to invite me over for afternoon coffee. Or he has these mean “security guards” who won’t let anyone in to his home for a chat. Yeah, right. You and I know the real reason: that chicken Swede is worried about the kind of unilateral cowboy action that may eminate from a tough-skinned, unpredictable American brother.

What’s this humbug I hear about Will Carroll?
–Dan

Will Carroll is a guy who has a magical secret place where he can go spend time not talking about injuries. And don’t we all need a place where we can go spend time not talking about injuries? What a lucky boy is he!

He is full of guts and gore, prospectus and condiments, notably horseradish, cheese wiz, bacon bits, and soy sauce. What is humbug, however, is the rumor that Will Carroll contains chutney.

The Red Sox begin 0-1,
Just like the Yankees begun.
I’m relieved they’re both beatable;
I think a competeable
Division would be much more fun.

Such talent, the young Milton Bradley!
It seems he can sometimes play Vladly.
But he’s brittle and lame
And his last childish game
Got him fired for acting so badly.

I’ve been bursting at the seams trying to hold this big news in. It’s been a secret for a long time, but now I can finally tell everyone about it.

Late last year, I got an email from Luke Harrison, a producer for the Tech TV cable channel. They were planning to do a reality TV show about the lives of bloggers called “Houses of Blog”.

Since Tech TV is a Bay Area company, they were looking for some prominent local bloggers who might be willing to participate. They’d come into our home, and set up some cameras, and film whatever we were doing. During the day, they’d send over a cameraman to do handheld shots and follow us if we leave home. We wouldn’t get paid, but we’d get a bunch of free gadgets and video games and other cool product placements.

I talked it over with my wife, Barbie. She was hesitant at first, concerned about the effect that fame might have on our family. But I said, “C’mon, this is Tech TV. Nobody watches Tech TV, you just flip past it on your way to some other channel.” So she agreed to do it, if the kids wanted to.

My 7-year-old daughter, Sofia, agreed as soon as she heard she might be on TV. Jodie, the 3-year-old, initially said “Be on TV I don’t want to!” but when I explained about all the fun video games she would get, she relented.

They started filming in January. The plan was for them to film for three months, and then they’d edit it together and show it in the fall. Those plans are now up in the air, after Tech TV was acquired by Comcast for $300 million last week. Tech TV is now going to merge with a channel called G4, which is only about video games. A reality show about bloggers might not fit their new format.

But we’ll see. Even if the new G4/Tech TV hybrid doesn’t want the show, they might be able to sell the program to some other network.

Anyway, they wrapped up their filming at the end of March. The rule was “No blogging about the filming during filming” so I wasn’t able to say anything about it until now. Luckily for me, my blog is mostly about baseball, so it was easy to avoid the subject. I can’t imagine how hard it was for the other bloggers they filmed who were more in the habit of writing about their daily lives.

They haven’t edited anything yet, so I haven’t seen any of the film, but I’ll bet our first episode is a doozy. WARNING: Spoiler Alert! I’m going to tell a few things that happened while they were filming. If you don’t want to know any details of the show, SKIP THIS PART and go to where it says END SPOILER below .

The very first day they started filming, we took Sofia to school and then headed to the hospital for Jodie’s doctor’s appointment. Jodie has had speech problems. She was very late to begin to speak, and when she finally did begin to speak, her speech wasn’t normal. We ran all kinds of hearing tests on her, but she hears fine. So then we ran some other tests, of which we were about to hear the results.

We arrived at the pediatrics clinic, and explained to them about the cameraman who was following us around. Dr. Chui agreed to talk to us on camera. We went into her office, and there she gave us her diagnosis. She thinks that Jodie has Habogad’s Syndrome, a rare genetic speech disorder. The symptoms fit her to a T: unusual skin pigmentation, garbled syntax, and a preference for hear books read backwards rather than forwards. Dr. Chui said there is no known cure, but we could try some experimental speech therapies to see if they would help.

Barbie wept. Jodie looked up at me and said, “Sad Mommy is. Why?” I explained that Mommy was sad that there is no medicine that could help Josie talk better.

“Talk better? Heh!” said Jodie. “Medicine? Heh! These I want not. Sad be not, Mommy. Talk I can.”

Barbie nodded, wiped her tears, and we headed home.

So while the morning was depressing, the afternoon brought good news. Or so we thought, at first.

We were sitting around the dining room table for lunch, when Josie shouted, “Coming now mailcarrier is. Quickly she walks, always in motion is she!”

I went to the mail slot and picked up the mail. It was there: the letter we’ve been waiting for. The letter from MIT.

Sofia had applied to MIT last November after she passed her GED and aced her SATs in September. She’s a brilliant young child, a prodigy really, and has dreamed of going to MIT ever since she visited their web page, and found a cute picture of an ostrich staring right at her. “That’s the school for me!” she declared. It seemed exactly the kind of school that would welcome a student who is a little bit different from the crowd.

We decided to open the letter before we had to pick her from from her high school. If MIT rejected her, she might be crushed, and we’d need to soften the blow. We opened it, and–good news! Sofia was accepted to MIT!

We went to pick up Sofia from school. We decided not to tell Sofia in the car; we’d wait until we got home. But there’s really no way to make a three-year-old keep a secret; it’s impossible. Jodie tried really hard not to give away the secret, but she just couldn’t keep herself from giving hints.

“Excited you will be when home we get,” said Jodie.

“Why?” asked Sofia.

“At home something is,” said Jodie.

“Yeah? So what? We have lots of things at home,” said Sofia.

“Something new we have. See it you will,” said Jodie.

“What?”

“Tell you I cannot. A secret it is. But waiting for it to arrive you have been!”

“My letter from MIT?” said Sofia softly. She looked nervous.

Soon we arrived home, and we let Sofia open the letter. She took one look and burst into tears.

“Sofia, honey, why are you crying?” I asked. “You were accepted!”

“I know,” she sniffed.

“So what’s wrong? Are you afraid of being so far from home?”

Sofia looked at the floor, and shook her head no.

“Are you afraid of being the smallest person in your school?”

Sofia shook no again. Jodie piped up: “Already smallest person in her school Sofia is. Size matters not!”

I continued. “Do you want to study something else besides string theory and particle physics?”

Sofia shook no.

“Then what is it, sweetie? Tell me.”

She sniffled again. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”

“About what?” I asked.

“MIT is near Boston right?” asked Sofia.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Does that mean there are lots of Red Sox fans there?”

I put my arms around her and gave her a hug. “Yes, sweetie, I’m afraid there are. If you don’t want to go to MIT or Harvard, that’s perfectly fine with me.”

She lifted her head up and smiled. “Thank you, Daddy. I love you.”

END SPOILER

Now, I have no idea how Tech TV is going to edit this all together, but that should make some great heartwarming television, don’t you think? And there’s three whole months of that kind of stuff! I’m so excited thinking about it, I can hardly contain myself. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

I just hope this Comcast purchase of Tech TV doesn’t send the whole Houses of Blog project into the trash. That would totally suck. Let’s not even think about it.

Yankees, Red Sox
I sing of arms and clubs, who forced by Fate
To fight each year in unrelenting Hate,
A song of Anger, Envy, Fear, and Pride,
Of damage done when zealous gods collide,
Where innocents are killed off in defeat
Or left as scavengers of stinking meat;
Great gods at war we mortals can’t avoid,
When evil empires need to be destroyed.

Oh, Muse! What causes lying at the root
Could launch this fierce preoccupied pursuit?
What gave offense and vexed an angry Boss
To vow for Boston loss on bitter loss?
We mortals cannot know; we only pray
That Fate will keep us far out of their way.

Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays
Water wages war
silently. It finds fissures,
cracks, cuts, crevices,

and seeps in, slowly,
unnoticed, working within
to corrode its foe,

whose quiet weakness
is not exposed to itself
until it’s too late.

Tigers
I know I might hear some derision
For making the crazy decision
To pick Detroit first
When they should be the worst,
But I hate this entire division.

Twins
This winter, their talent decreased.
Their bullpen’s no longer a beast.
But they still just might snag
One more Central flag
Simply by sucking the least.

Royals
For years, they have seemed non-existent.
That’s probably why I’m resistant
To believe there’s a chance
They could win and advance.
I think they’ll be too inconsistent.

Indians
I like the way Cleveland plays D.
But still, there’s no way I foresee
Them winning this year.
They must perservere,
And hope one more season’s the key.

White Sox
They fill me with fear and foreboding.
Their talent’s been slowly eroding.
There could be success,
But my guts make me guess
That this whole team will end up imploding.

Joseph Campbell was born 100 years ago today, so it’s an appropriate day to express my gratitude to him.

Campbell is for me what Bill James is to baseball statisticians: the guy who opened my eyes to a completely new way of thinking. Back in college, I was struggling to understand why I was so obsessed with baseball. Campbell’s insights into relationship between myth, culture and human psychology provided me the answers I was looking for. Baseball is my personal mythology.

Now, I don’t buy Campbell’s story about myth hook, line, and sinker. As a guy whose personality type is that of an architect of systems, I can see that Campbell’s explanations don’t quite work as an architecture. DNA is the building block of life, and from that, springs forth a subconscious mind that spews a common form of myth? It doesn’t quite fit. There’s a missing step between DNA and myth. That’s partly what my Keeping Score in the Arts series was about: how a simple brain architecture can produce the complex set of behaviors we see in human culture.

Nonetheless, Campbell’s insights are invaluable to me. Campbell’s mantra of “Follow your bliss” also helped me feel less guilty about my obsession. All my baseball activities: watching on TV, going to the ballpark, reading, blogging, writing silly poetry, playing fantasy games: that’s my bliss. No apologies.

So where do I go from here? Will Carroll recently asked a similar question, wondering about blogging as a career. He said we need to ask ourselves, “What’s in it for me?”

Short answer: youneverknow. If you follow your bliss, one thing will lead to another. But what that other thing will be is a mystery. As Campbell put it:

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

So I’ll follow my bliss, and go dancing through doorways, just to see what I will find. Happy Birthday, Joseph Campbell, and thanks for the advice.

Am I a jinx or something? Just hours after I had written that the A’s bench is not a bottomless pit, my statement gets tested. Mark Ellis is out 6-8 weeks after dislocating his shoulder in a collision with Bobby Crosby.

We’ll soon find out how valuable Ellis’ defense really is. If Hudson and Mulder start giving up a lot more hits than usual this April, we’ll know why.

Although Frank Menechino is also hurt, the A’s shouldn’t miss much offensively. And this illustrates what I enjoy most about watching Billy Beane work. You can talk all you want about Hudson, Mulder, Zito and Chavez, but Beane’s real genius shows up in the 35th-40th men on the roster. He creates depth at every position. When Ellis gets hurt, he not only has one competent backup, he has three (with Baseball Prospectus projections):

The entire division has only one middle infield backup, Eric Young, who is a better hitter than the A’s fourth-string second baseman. That’s why Billy Beane is so good. And that’s why I said the A’s can win a war of attrition.

I just wish I wasn’t so right so soon.

Angels
When Moreno decided to add
Kelvim, Bartolo, and Vlad,
He took on some debt.
But I’m liking his bet:
This could be the best team they’ve had.

Athletics
Their fielders aren’t out of position.
Their aces don’t sit by omission.
Their bullpen and bench
Aren’t a bottomless trench:
The A’s just might win by attrition.

Mariners
They never make trades that are bold.
They let all their players get old.
If somehow this team
Wins despite a bad scheme,
Bavasi’s a wizard: Behold!

Rangers
Soriano-for-ARod: a rarity.
It gave them a future with clarity:
Nix those not among
The Mench who are Young
Arming Blalock with hope and Teixerity.

Dan Werr has posted some very cool maps over on Baseball Primer. Check them out. My favorite map is the one which divides the US into areas based on which MLB ballpark is closest.

For those of you who enjoy puzzles, here’s one for you, based on that map:

My house is very close to the dividing line between two teams. That made me curious which ballpark I was actually closer to. So I pulled up some maps and a ruler and measured. As the crow flies, it looks like it’s about 5.2 miles to the nearest ballpark (7.7 miles by car). The second nearest ballpark is 5.6 miles away (but 13.5 miles by car).

So I live about 350 yards from the dividing line. Which ballpark do I live closest to?

Also, I can walk about 350 yards from my house and see one of the ballparks. Which one?

John Dowd, the Pete Rose investigator, recently theorized that George Steinbrenner pressed Bud Selig for Rose’s reinstatement because it would help Steinbrenner’s own Hall of Fame chances. Denials everywhere.

Dowd’s theory I shouldn’t discuss,
But I must say I like all this fuss:
When we take George and Bud,
Drag their names through the mud,
We annoy them like they annoy us.

I’m cursing my dumb ISP.
For email that I didn’t see.
I suddenly found
My web site was down
From a change in my static IP.

Yesterday, my ISP suddenly changed the IP address of my web server. This means that if you tried to go to www.humbug.com, you were likely being sent to the wrong machine.

Silly me for assuming that buying a “static IP” meant my IP address would be static.

My ISP had given me a week’s warning, but I rarely check the email address they sent the warning to, so I didn’t see it until it was too late. It took me over six hours to notice the problem and then fix everything that needed fixing.

I apologize for any inconvenience. You may now return to your regularly scheduled humbug.

Phillies
In advance of the Phillies’ new dwelling
Wade went out Wagner/Worrelling.
With the wicked new hurlers,
And better Pat Burrellers,
A title is what I’m foretelling.

Marlins
The Marlins, refusing to budge,
Would not give a contract to Pudge.
Winning without him?
I’d certainly doubt ’em,
But champions, we shouldn’t judge.

Expos
Despite that the Expos lost Vlad,
With Nick, Jose, Carl, and Brad,
Their lineup’s a winner.
Though pitching is thinner,
I don’t think this team will be bad.

Braves
Two Bushes, two war-in-Iraqs.
Meanwhile, just one Bobby Cox.
A thirteen-year reign
Is hard to sustain.
He’s due to start taking some knocks.

Mets
Matsui and Reyes–I’m skeptical.
Though Cammy’s a gold glove receptacle,
And the Mets seem improved,
I am not very moved;
I sense they will still be ineptical.

Ever think about the space-time continuum?

What if Moneyball was a biblical story? A young scout plays Adam. Billy Beane is Eve. Everyone is living in the Garden of Eden, happy in their ignorance. Bill James is the serpent. He tempts Beane to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Beane gives the apple to the young scout. Joe Morgan is God. He gets quite wrathful about this turn of events. Hilarity ensues.

Beane may not be perfectly cast as Eve, but we’ll give him the part because he is so hairy.

I haven’t followed college basketball at all this year, but my Final Four is still intact in the Baseball Primer pool: Duke, Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, Connecticut. I owe it all to the psychic powers of my Grandma Agnes.

When she died I had a dream. She came to me and said, “The space-time continuum moves in mysterious ways. When the great leader of your land is caught lying and unwillingly removed from power, you shall receive my gift.”

So I’ve watched with keen interest while Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Dubya have all been accused of lying. Alas, impeachment never succeeds. But If I win this pool, everything becomes clear. Grandma Agnes was actually referring to Martha Stewart.

Mark McClusky wonders how to make his girlfriend love baseball. I think the only proven method is osmosis.

My oldest daughter is osmosing baseball. Much to my delight, she chose a baseball theme for her 7th birthday party this weekend. It’s fascinating to watch her interest in baseball grow. She’s not really into the competition or the players much; her interest seems to be mostly cultural: the styles, the music, the history. I wonder if it’s just her, or if this is the Women-Are-From-Venus path into the sport.

My wife did her best Martha Stewart imitation for the birthday party. She transformed the backyard into a baseball stadium. Every kid had their number retired on the wall:

One of the party games we played was pickle. The kids got to run the bases and the adults tried to tag them. It brought back forgotten memories of hours upon hours spent playing pickle as a kid. With the modern aversion to stolen bases, and the hyperorganized nature of youth activities these days, I wonder: do kids play pickle anymore?

Party poopers: I have just been informed that our undocumented acquisition of bunting will come under investigation by the SEC.

Why? It makes no sense! Does somebody up there hate us? They didn’t say that. Read the book. Joe Morgan moves in mysterious ways. Hilarity ensues.