I (Capital) never (Dot).
Ever (Period). Took (Not
by mistake (Close paren))
Any steroids (Footnote 10)
and cross my (Comma), hope to (Dash)–
Stuck (No) needles in my (Ca$h).

This is Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: Using the web to search is cheating…you gotta know (or guess) off the top of your head.

This is Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: Using the web to search is cheating…you gotta know (or guess) off the top of your head.

This is Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Note: Using the web to search is cheating…you gotta know (or guess) off the top of your head.

This is Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

Welcome to Humbugardy. I’m your host, Alex Scorebard.

(I know a good idea when I pilfer see one. I hope Annika doesn’t mind that I’m stealing her idea expanding her innovation into the world of baseball poetry.)

Here are the rules: I will provide the answer, you provide the question. The answers will all be related to both baseball and poetry somehow. The answer may be a poem, or be about a poem. Sometimes the answer is an incomplete poem, and you must complete the poem with your question.

The first person to question the answer correctly gets the points, and gets to choose the next answer.

The question must be in the form of a question. If the answer is an incomplete poem, the question must not only be correct, it must scan correctly to complete the poem.

When I announce that the answer is questioned correctly, the winner can then choose the next answer. After which, I’ll post the next answer. I’ll post one or two answers per day, at random times.

Ready to start? The first person to comment below can pick the first answer from the following categories:

The Random Diamond Note Generator has one sentence structure that goes: “RANDOMPLAYER will miss RANDOMNUMBER days after he accidentally swallowed a RANDOMFOOD whole.”

This has now actually happened in real life: Danny Putnam of the Stockton Ports will miss seven days after he accidentally swallowed a grape whole.

Eerie.

Let me also take this opportunity to point out that while some diamond notes now cost money to read, Humbug’s Diamond Notes are, have been, and shall remain, free.

Looks his victims in the eyes
Says he must apologize:
“Sorry for the needless scare
I gave to cameras everywhere.”

I try to avoid religious debates, but I feel it is imperative to correct a few common misconceptions about Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

I won’t talk about the string theory/spaghetti analogies. That’s been done to death. The first misconception I want to discuss is about the creation itself:

I have included an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget.

This misconception is probably the result of a bad translation of the ancient texts. Of course, the Flying Spaghetti Monster created midgets along with everything else, but the word “midget” was never in the original text. A more accurate translation would be that The Flying Spaghetti Monster created “mountains and trees, and little fields where children could play.”

It’s likely that “little fields” became mixed up with “little children”, which was then translated incorrectly as “midgets.”

Most people would agree that it makes a lot more sense to base a philosophy of life on children dressing up as pirates, than on midgets.

 
The second misconception is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster gets angry if people don’t wear full pirate regalia:

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s….As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

While there is no denying this statistical fact, the reduction of pirates and the consequential global warming are not evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is angry. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is indeed all-powerful, but each person has their own Fork within to tap into that power. The Fork can be used for good, or for evil.

Consider the severe drop in pirates since 1980 on Mr. Henderson’s graph. Where are all the people in their magnificent full pirate regalia? They are ashamed, and have lost their faith.

Is it a coincidence that the last time the Pittsburgh Pirates won a World Series was 1979? Is it a coincidence that the Pirates have not even had a winning season in over a decade?

The Pittsburgh Pirates have a shiny new stadium, probably the most beautiful park in all the land, and people are staying away in droves, because the team stinks.

Then consider this: is it a coincidence that the General Manager in charge of this awful team is named “Dave Littlefield”? It’s the most transparent name in any religion since “Darth Sidious”.

The global catastrophes that have resulted from the shrinking population of pirates is not caused by the anger of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s the result of an evil conspiracy.

Littlefield is out to destroy every single true Pirate fan, until all but one, his secret apprentice, remains. We will keep thinking the Pirates are doomed, that their collapse is imminent, when all along, this is exactly what they wanted. When we finally realize what has happened, it will be too late. The last of the Pirate fans will be gone, and together, Littlefield and his apprentice will hold complete control of the Fork. Nothing will be able to stop them and their Evil Dynasty. The Two Evil Pirates will rule the galaxy with an iron fist, winning every battle, without mercy, for years on end.

For those of us who believe in competitive balance, dark times are ahead. May the Fork be with you.

When you play, sometimes–
sometimes–the moon turns her back.
You can’t see her face.

        Estrada’s gotta hinder Erstad.
        Erstad’s gotta touch the plate.

You’re binary stars.
Orbit. Tempt. Brush off a kiss.
Slow. Reverse afresh.

        Erstad’s gotta beat Estrada.
        Estrada got the ball too late.

        Estrada got no time to balance.
        Erstad got a full-speed stride.

You’re not free. You dance
to gravity’s melody.
Two bodies, one space.

        Erstad got a quick decision:
        Estrada? Nada. They collide.

You fall in concert,
absorbed into the moment.
The game owns your flesh.

Here, I’m a Phillies defender.
Dombrowski is off on a bender.
They aren’t facing the truth:
They need talented youth,
The Tigers are not a contender.

I recently finished reading Will Carroll‘s book, The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball’s Drug Problems. I fully intended to write a book review about it, but when I sat down to do it, I made an unfortunate typographical error.

Instead of a book review, I accidentally made a “book revue”. I know it’s not quite the same, but stuff happens.

Book Revue: The Juice.

• low bandwidth version (368 Kb, mp3 audio file)
• medium bandwidth version (981 Kb, mp3 audio file)
• high bandwidth version (1.72 Mb, mp3 audio file)

My deepest apologies to Will Carroll, and anyone who dares to listen to the revue. My blunders aside, “The Juice” is a good book. You should buy it.

TFD sent me this New York Times article about a controversy regarding W.H. Auden’s translation of Dag Hammarskjöld’s “Vägmärken”. We had an interesting back and forth about it, which I’ll share:

Score Bard: Anyone who wants to translate “Vägmärken” as “Waymarks” doesn’t deserve to complain about the quality of a translation. Just because a word is a direct cognate doesn’t mean it’s the right choice. I’ve never even heard of the word “waymark”. To me, that’s not even English.

“Road signs” or “Milestones” are what popped into my head.

I’ve read bits and pieces of it before in Swedish. Now I suppose I’m going to have to read the whole thing, and both versions…

TFD: The case against Auden, though, seemed pretty good–that he was putting his own “map” onto Hammarskjöld. (Not that i’d have any idea, really.)

Score Bard: Without reading both, I’d have no idea, either. That’s part of the problem with translating poetry, though. Do you translate the words or the artistry? It’s a delicate balance, and I suppose it’s possible Auden could have exploited his artistic license a bit too much.

TFD: You try to get to (as close as possible) the complete meaning of the originator. That includes everything (artistry)…imho, of course.

Score Bard: Sure, but some things just don’t translate directly. Sometimes you really do have to make a choice between preserving the original beauty and preserving the original semantics. If you translated one of my serious baseball poems into Swedish (not that anyone would want to, but bear with me), it would be meaningless to 99.9% of Swedes, who don’t even know what a baseball looks like. You’d have to find something else–soccer or hockey maybe, or even something outside of sports–to convey the underlying message. If you stuck too close to baseball, you wouldn’t have communicated anything at all. It’s tricky.

TFD: Hmm. Well in your example i guess it depends upon whether or not you were saying something universal that could be communicated through baseball. If not, and most Swedes didn’t know baseball, then why even translate? You can’t change it to soccer and make it even remotely the same poetry (again unless there are some larger universal things that could be drawn.) but even in that case I’d be pretty hesitant.

That would be like translating Sagan’s work into Mandarin by using meterology or Christianity as a metaphor. Yikes, bad example, but i think you get my drift.

Score Bard: Well, that’s why I was saying “serious” baseball poetry, because there’s usually some universal message involved if it’s “serious”. The key is to convey the same message.

The problem with translating poetry is that there’s so much more to translate than just pure semantics. It’s not like translating newspapers, which I used to do for a living. There’s the harshness or softness of the sounds, the smoothness or roughness of the rhythm, there’s the way one word will relate to another just by having similar sounds or meanings or connotations. All of those things are present in a great poem, and most of those things will be lost if you just do the most accurate literal translation of the meanings of each word or each metaphor.

I always found the hardest part about translating is when there was a word in one language with several equivalent words in the other, but none with quite the same connotation. “Vägmärken” is a perfect example. “Road signs”, “Milestones”, “Landmarks”–those words just don’t convey the same image. Those three translations feel to me like they all have somewhat positive connotations in English, but in Swedish, the word to me has a certain inevitable loneliness and sadness to it–you imagine traveling a small winding road through the Swedish forest, and coming across a milestone left behind centuries before you, by people long since dead.

So if you want to convey that inevitability, that loneliness, that sadness, that sense of historical context which is built into the Swedish word, you can’t just translate the word directly into English and leave it at that. You have to find some other way to convey those emotions.

TFD: I agree with you completely that you can’t just translate literal words. I was just saying you have to say within what you, the translator, deem to be the “meaning” of the original poem/writing. you have to stay as close as possible, while giving up as much as possible your own prejudices, etc. So in many ways you need to be reporter, historian, wordsmith, and world semantic expert.

I think, again based on my limited view of the article, that the claim being made was that Auden was going outside ‘generally accepted guidelines’ if such a thing existed. I’d like more verification from an Auden scholar to review the translation who is familiar with Swedish…he/she could ascertain whether or not the lens that Auden was using was too cloudy.

Score Bard: Yes, Baseball has its unwritten rules, as does poetry translation, I suppose. I have a pretty simple to-do list now:

• Write down all those unwritten rules once and for all
• Get out the Yellow Pages, and call one of the numerous Swedish-speaking Auden scholars listed therein.
• Go down to my corner bookstore and buy a copy of “Vägmärken” in both English and Swedish.

I’m rather busy tonight, but I should have time to get those things done before lunch tomorrow. It’s only three things, after all.

He worships Seattle-based dessert food:
“Thornton secretive cake.”
Adrian Beltre cuts off other bread bins,
And darn never eats chicken.
Brilliantly Boone burps egg flour chunks,
Managing to eat it in bold haiku-
Winn hath wrought thy butter, Olivo eats bread:
“Thornton secretive cake.”

It looks like the leader of Royalty
Unloaded all pledges of loyalty
Cuz his passionate blood,
When his team was a dud,
Reached near-fatal levels of boilty.

1. These two events, the former at a costume ball in Stockholm, the latter in Seattle, happened on the same date, 135 years apart. Not only that, the years have the same exact four digits.

2. She claims she was 55 days younger, but this cannot be verified. The documentation was lost or destroyed during the Nazi occupation.

3. Perhaps the creative urge with sports is genetic. One of his more popular songs was called “Lawn Tennis.”

4. His other film was, of course, one of the top-grossing films of all time. Lee Marvin, on the other hand, had no other films that year.

5. November 29, 1633, in Paris.

6. Vida Blue (twice), Bobby Valentine (twice), and Bob Oliver.

7. The game featured the fifth-to-last career home runs for two different hall-of-famers.

8. Joining Lou Gehrig, Al Kaline, Dave Winfield, and Tom Landry, among others.

9. It was the first overtime game in USFL history.

10. It featured the first female ape in outer space.

AL East
The Yankees are sitting in last.
Steinbrenner cries, “I’m aghast!
I have a bill
For 200 mill!
Gimme my victories, fast!”

AL Central
The quickest teams out of the box:
The Twinkies, along with the Sox.
The Royals appear
To bring up the rear.
There’s nothing to mention that shocks.

AL West
No failure, and no big success.
It’s tied, so we cannot assess
Or give any spin.
Who’s gonna win?
It still remains anyone’s guess.

NL East
It’s mentally hard to compete
When nobody fills up a seat,
And you live on a plane.
The Nats won’t complain:
Having a home now is sweet.

NL Central
The only thing anyone should
Declare to be now understood
In a definite way
After two weeks of play
Is the Pirates won’t be any good.

NL West
Without having Gagne to close,
L.A. is still crushing its foes.
If DePo were me,
I’d be dancing with glee,
And be sticking my thumb on my nose.

I shall tell a story. You will read it.

You’re at a party, music blaring, people dancing, and suddenly, across the room, you spot the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen in your life.

She’s the one. You know it. So you work up your courage, walk up to her, and blurt out:

“Will we dance?”

I was saddened yesterday morning to open up the San Francisco Chronicle and find an obituary for my favorite professor at UC Berkeley, Julian Boyd.

Professor Boyd was, among other things, the world’s leading expert on the difference between the words “shall” and “will”. You may think that this is an incredibly mundane topic to be an expert on, but nothing about language or philosophy was mundane when Julian Boyd explained it. Profane, maybe, but never mundane.

When you went to a Julian Boyd lecture, you never had any idea what was going to happen. The lecture would always start off in one place, and then go off on all kinds of seemingly stream-of-consciousness tangents, every one of them incredibly fascinating and funny and entertaining at the same time. Try to imagine Robin Williams as a linguistics professor, and that’s kind of what we’re talking about.

Other lecturers are entertaining, but the thing that separated Professor Boyd was that he genuinely cared and paid attention to his students. I remember one time, he was in the middle of a lecture, and he suddenly stopped, and turned to my girlfriend (now my wife), and asked, “Is something wrong?”

She was confused. “No. Why do you ask?”

Professor Boyd said, “Usually, when I’m lecturing, you nod in agreement when I make a point. You didn’t nod. I find it rather comforting when you nod, and when you don’t, I worry I might be doing something wrong.”

That just blew me away that he would not only notice such a small behavioral quirk of someone in the classroom, but also notice, in the middle of a lecture, that she wasn’t doing it. That just shows how much he genuinely paid attention to his students, and why he was so universally beloved:

“…Julian’s students unanimously adored him. Their write-ups had an unabating religious fervor. Nearly all of them said the same thing: that taking a course from Julian was a life-changing event and the apex of their Berkeley experience.”

Steven Rubio has a wonderful tribute that does a great job of capturing the spirit of Julian Boyd. I love this description of his colorful language:

As perhaps befits a linguist, Julian had a way with words. And some of his favorite words were curse words. And so his lectures were the academic equivalent of an episode of Deadwood, and once in awhile he’d apologize and say he was going to do better in the future, but even his apologies usually contained a “fuck” or two. I was never sure if he just couldn’t help himself, like a savant with Tourette’s, or if he thoughtfully, consciously placed every word he spoke exactly where and when he wanted, like a good linguist. In any event, the result was marvelous. And, since his lectures were so famously dense, the fucks and shits also served to keep his audience alert …

For all of those wonderful things about Professor Boyd, I haven’t yet mentioned the most important thing of all: Julian Boyd had a genuine joy of language: a love, a wonder, a curiosity and a sense of fun about words that was positively infectious.

It infected me, and happily, I’ve never been cured. That, for me, is his legacy. This blog, and all the things that have happened to me because of it, would never have happened if not for Julian Boyd.

So thanks, Professor Boyd, and may could might should you rest in peace.

Trying to write a complete dictionary using limericks.

I would ask what the point is, but that would be a self-defeating question.