Mets fans should feel quite afraid.
Their team’s launched a crazy crusade.
Bye, Kazmir! Bye, Huber!
Your GM’s a goober
Who lost to LaMar in a trade.

Choi fills L.A. with elation.
And Penny improves their rotation.
They’ll miss Paul Lo Duca.
But with Gagne’s bazooka,
Their pen will survive deMotation.

In addition to presaging Douglas Adams and his Restaurant at the End of the Universe, this quote from S.J Perelman demonstrates the proper use of the word “humbug”:

What floored me, actually, wasn’t that the veal had found a way to communicate–a more or less inevitable development, once you accepted the basic premise of Elsie, the Borden cow–but rather its smarmy and masochistic pitch. Here, for the first time in human experience,a supposedly inanimate object, a cutlet, had broken through the barrier and revealed itself as a creature with feelings and desires. Did it signalize its liberation with ecstasy, cry out some exultant word of deliverance, or even underplay it with a quiet request like “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you”? No; the whole message reeked of self-pity, of invalidism, of humbug. It was a snivelling, eunuchoid plea for special privilege, a milepost of Pecksniffery. It was disgusting.

–S.J. Perelman
I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been, A Matrix Of Lean Meat
New Yorker Magazine
1953
From the Fierce Pajamas Anthology

There’s a Star Trek: TNG episode where the Good Guys come up with a paradoxical logic puzzle that is designed to drown the Borg Collective in a massive feedback loop, trapping the Bad Guys in a neverending attempt to solve an unsolvable puzzle. Paralysis by analysis, if you will.

I wanted to respond to Brandon Chizum’s article comparing baseball and wine. What Brandon is trying to describe is the aesthetic experience: the sensation we get when we experience a pleasurable work of art, and how this sensation can be common across separate art forms. I started to try to describe this sensation scientifically, as a function of the brain. But I didn’t realize that Brandon’s article was, for me, a Borg Logic Trap.

My response kept growing and growing until it was no longer a short blog entry, but had evolved into some kind of horrific five-volume Manifesto Of All Things Ken, with no end in sight.

So I gave up. But I just wanted to say that there’s nothing particularly unique about the link between baseball and wine. You could find similar links between Skateboarding & Flower Arranging. Or Sumo Wrestling & Opera Singing. Or Marilyn Monroe & Manny Ramirez. Or Greg Maddux & Gilgamesh. Or…

This is your brain. This is your brain on fire. Stop, drop and roll.

For you see, art is like a program fed into an automata, and the automata goes into a certain state when…

Honey, where’s the remote? Oh, never mind, I found it. Click.

So then, the information “Oakland cuts Eric Karros”, is input into my brain, and my brain outputs “Not Surprised”. First of all, Karros didn’t hit. Duh. But there’s also the fact that Oakland first basemen have a rather unique requirement in their job descriptions: with all that foul territory, they need to be able to run down foul popups. Scott Hatteberg is pretty darn good at it. Karros, on the other hand, looked like a horse trying to swim through quicksand.

BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB. BLORP.

Late October, when pitches aren’t thrown,
Our wives don’t spend evenings alone.
Nine months after that,
While we watch batters bat,
We get babies for reasons unknown.

Congrats to Jason Barker, Christian Ruzich, John Gizzi, and (soon, we hope) Jon Weisman on their new family additions.

Did I forget anyone?

Oh, yes, a big Happy Birthday to my youngest daughter, who turns four tomorrow.

Arroyo plunks ARod right on the arm.
ARod’s enraged, though the pitch did no harm.
ARod starts shouting, “That was intended!”
Arroyo replies back, “Don’t be offended.
The pitch got away. It was not at all planned.
The ball merely slipped right out of my hand.”
Says ARod, “Yeah, right. Any bridges to sell?
I do not believe you. You can go straight to” Varitek cuts off this long conversation:
“Mr. Rodriguez, I see your frustration,
But would you be kind now, and go take your base?”
ARod shouts, “Shut up, punk! Outta my face!
I’ve heard enough of this dumb Boston bunk!”
Varitek asks, “Who you calling a punk?”
ARod points moundward, shouting, “Punk? You!”
And also to Varitek, “You’re a punk, too!”
The reply: “You seem tense! Did you get enough lunch?
Here’s a nice knuckle sandwich and a cupful of punch!”
ARod and Varitek fight to the ground
Players flood toward them from everywhere ’round
As if a dam of sanity had burst and dementia was now surging through and

sometimes, when the world seems too intense,
a small, human sacrifice
is what it needs–

a madness to stop the madnesses,
a hurt to stop the hurts.

A trail of blood
oozes down the face of Tanyon Sturtze,

and the game proceeds.

Tell me if you couldn’t see this one coming about three or four years ago.

No sooner does word begin to leak about a final decision on the Expos home than news also begins to leak about a decision on a new A’s stadium. The A’s are apparently going to try to get a new stadium built in the Coliseum parking lot.

I think what this really means is that Orioles owner Peter Angelos is not going to get a bucketful of cash for the Expos moving to the DC area. If Angelos had gotten a settlement, then that would have set a price that the A’s could have paid the Giants for moving to San Jose. No DC price, however, no SJ dice.

The whole A’s ballpark issue has always been contingent on the Expos issue. A’s owner Steve Schott had been hoping, hoping, hoping for a precedent that would allow him to move his cash registers to Silicon Valley. But now he’s stuck in Oakland. Sniffle, sniffle.

The Coliseum site was viewed as the second-best East Bay site by a city-funded HOK study. The best site, in downtown Oakland, has been designated for a housing project. It’s a shame, because that site, with an abandoned classic movie theater, would have been a really cool place to put a ballpark. The architects could have had a field day with all those ballpark quirks carved by necessity from the surrounding neighborhood.

Parking lots have no quirks. This is my biggest concern with the Coliseum site. Well, that, and the question of where the money to build this thing is going to come from, but that’s just a minor detail, right?

Like it or not, the A’s are competing with the Giants for the Bay Area baseball entertainment dollar. SBC Park has San Francisco Bay to form its quirks, complete with fabulous views. How can the A’s compete with that?

Obviously, the architect would need to emphasize the view of the Oakland Hills. The view won’t be as fabulous as SBC’s, but it would be nice.

But the A’s need to have something that’s better than SBC. To do that, they’d need to take advantage of SBC Park’s flaws.

SBC Park is beautiful, but it’s cramped. The concourses are narrow, and it’s hard to walk around. Being so cramped and crowded, it’s not particularly accomodating to families. In contrast, you’d probably want the New Coliseum to have spacious, comfortable concourses. You’d want a large New Stomper Fun Zone where the kids can be free to run around, perhaps like the “Park in the Park” in San Diego. Then you’d have something to offer baseball fans that’s better than what the Giants have.

As for the quirks, well, I don’t know how to solve that problem. In a parking lot, it would be hard to come up with quirks that wouldn’t be transparently artificial. Perhaps if you go all Frank Gehry postmodern on the place, you can get a funky style to fit into the site somehow, and give it that extra bit of coolness, the sense of place that would make people want to experience being there. But that would require a brilliant architect, and a client who cares for aesthetics beyond just the beautiful sound of a cash register.

As brilliant as the A’s are in running their finances and building their ballclub, I haven’t seen much evidence that any sense of aesthetics runs in the A’s blood. They’re an organization that’s more about science than art. I fear the A’s will make a New Comiskey-type mistake, and just start counting the luxury boxes. We’ll end up with a bland, out-of-place, run-of-the-mill retropark, and the A’s won’t be much better off financially than they are right now, because the ballpark will flop.

I sure hope that won’t be the case. I’ll be making some noise if it is. Stay tuned.

You can’t use a black hole to travel to an alternate universe, Stephen Hawking explained earlier today.

Too bad. I was hoping to vacation someday in that sexy alternate universe where Spock wears a goatee and Major Kira lies around eating grapes like some kind of Roman empress.

But at least there’s some consolation: by closing the door to alternate universes, Hawking produces baseball statistics, instead. According to CNN:

Hawking settled a 29-year-old bet made with Caltech astrophysicist John Preskill, who insisted in 1975 that matter consumed by black holes couldn’t be destroyed.

He presented Preskill a favored reference work “Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia” after having it specially flown over from the United States.

“I had great difficulty in finding one over here, so I offered him an encyclopedia of cricket as an alternative,” Hawking said, “but John wouldn’t be persuaded of the superiority of cricket.”

Smart guy, that Preskill. But while Hawking was explaining the relationship in our universe between black holes and baseball statistics, he failed to offer any sort of explanation for the Joe Morgan paradox.

The prevailing explanation for the Morgan paradox had been that Joe Morgan is caught in a multiversal quantum entanglement formed by some kind of tunnel between alternate universes.

With such a multiversal tunnel, the Joe Morgan from our universe, which has baseball statistics, could randomly flip-flop quantum states with a Joe Morgan from a universe without baseball statistics. Morgan’s statements would always make sense to him, but others will perceive his utterances as either lucid or nonsensical, depending on which universe Morgan occupies at any given moment.

But with black holes ruled out as a source of multiversal tunnels, the question becomes how a multiversal tunnel could be formed.

Some have suggested that an explosion resulting from a collision of brilliant minds such as Preskill and Ken Jennings could rip a hole in the fabric of the universe large enough for Joe Morgan to pass through.

Unfortunately, Hawking did not comment on this issue in today’s presentation. So for now, the Morgan paradox remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of science.

I’m not shocked the bullpen is great.
I’m not surprised Beltre bloomed late,
Or that Green has declined.
But I’m startled to find
Izturisn’t lost at the plate.

Was this guy, arrested while drunk, nude and covered in nacho cheese, returning from the SABR convention?

I’m not sure if Chris Mullin is insane or a genius, but for the first time in–what, decades?–the Warriors are giving us East Bay residents a reason to pay attention.

Interesting portrait of Dennis Eckersley, as he prepares to enter the Hall of Fame.

Mayobanex Santana: bad player, great name.

Getting inside information about injuries in Oakland may be possible, Will. Stephen Hawking says that some information does indeed escape from black holes.

Would it be better to write a baseball book than a mystery novel, if getting published is one of your goals?

If you’re wondering how I can write so badly, think about the fact that I spent two years studying in the San Jose State English Department, and you’ll understand.

They Might Be Giants and Homestar Runner together? When they meet it’s a happy land!

Never. Ever. EVER. EVER let Ricardo Rincon face right-handed batters, unless it’s a blowout.

A 0-0 game in the 12th inning is not a blowout. Every other option you have is better.

Rincon gets out Carlos Delgado, fine. That’s what Rincon does, gets lefties out. But then you kept Rincon in to face Gregg Zaun. Zaun walks, of course, and a rally gets started. Fortunately, Justin Lehr bailed him out.

If you’re like me and you’ve never actually met Will Carroll in person, you’ll feel like you know him a whole lot better after you read this interview of Will by Alex Belth over on Bronx Banter.

Rickety Rocketry
Clemens gets clobbered by
Pals he wore pinstripes with
One year ago.

Houston’s whole season has
Been disappointing; such
Underperformances
Ruin their show.

On Baseball Prospectus Radio last week, Will asked A’s beat writer Susan Slusser “what’s wrong with Barry Zito?” Today, Phil Rogers asks the same question on ESPN.com.

In both cases, I’m rather flabbergasted neither Slusser or Rogers mentioned the most obvious reason: Barry Zito changed his delivery this year from the stretch. He decided to stand more upright instead of hunched over to take pressure off his knee.

The first question to ask when troubleshooting a problem is, “what changed?” So if you ask Ken Arneson the Barry Zito question, my first guess is this: the new delivery didn’t work.

Why it didn’t work, I’m not an expert enough to say. But I think whatever other excuses you make (missing Rick Peterson, thinking too much, less deceptive changeup, loss of control, etc.) are probably cascading problems from the original one of changing his motion.

If Zito misses Rick Peterson, it’s probably because Peterson wouldn’t let Zito change his motion, and Curt Young did.

I heard that he’s gone back to the old style stretch delivery now, but I haven’t seen it yet. I hope it will help get the old Zito back. I’ll be watching tonight.

I returned from Sweden Wednesday night, went to bed, got up at 3am Thursday morning and noticed that I had tickets to Thursday night’s A’s-White Sox game. Oops, forgot about that.

I guess I could have tried to get rid of the tickets, but I also found upon returning that the police had found my stolen car while I was away. So instead of spending Thursday recovering from jet lag and trying to find some takers, I spent it working the police and insurance bureaucracies to get the car out of storage and to a repair shop. Fortunately, the car was in fine shape, except for a drained battery.

I didn’t want to let the tickets go to waste, so I decided to go to the game. Besides, I hadn’t seen so much as a baseball highlight in over three weeks. I needed some baseball.

The game started at 7pm, which is 4am Sweden time. I managed to get about a 20 minute nap before heading out to the Coliseum, which I hoped would be enough to get me through the game without falling asleep.

I arrived just in time to see the first pitch from the concourse, and by the time I reached my seat, Rich Harden had gotten three outs.

This was the best game I’ve ever seen Rich Harden pitch. He zipped through the batting order twice, facing the minimum through six. The best part was that he was doing it with ground outs instead of strikeouts. He was painting the corners, and keeping his pitches down in the zone. He ended up pitching eight innings, striking out only three, but getting 15 ground outs. He only threw 95 pitches. This was the Rich Harden that makes A’s fans drool. The game flew by.

Really, what if Rich Harden could pitch like that more often? Have there ever been any pitchers who throw 96-100 mph who were ground ball pitchers, not strikeout pitchers?

The A’s rode a Bobby Crosby double to a three-run rally in the 4th, and Eric Chavez homered in the next inning, and those were all the runs the A’s needed. Harden gave up a tip-your-hat-to-a-good-hitter homer to Magglio Ordonez in the 7th, but that was all.

I got my first look at Octavio Dotel in the ninth, and was satisfied with what I saw. He didn’t show much velocity in walking the first batter, hitting only 92 mph on the gun. I started thinking “Arthur Rhodes all over again”, because Rhodes showed up with the A’s not throwing as hard as advertised, too. Then Dotel started cranking it up to 95, and got the next three guys out.

The game was over in 2:02, and there wasn’t a happier guy in Oakland about that than me. I stayed awake for the whole game, collapsed into bed by 10pm, feeling in fine shape, except for a drained battery.

I was flipping through the Swedish TV channels one jet-lagged night, and ran across an imported American show I never watch, Once and Again. It only took a second to realize that if you want a lookalike, Billy Campbell will play Billy Beane in Moneyball, The Movie.

Jon Carroll channeled some Will Carroll in his column today.

Crossing the globe to visit relatives has its benefits, but relaxation isn’t among them. Planes, trains, buses, boats, and cars…moving from one relative’s town to the next, packing luggage, hauling luggage, unpacking luggage…when I get back to America, I’m going to need a vacation.

So an hour or two to pause and gather my thoughts here is quite welcome. Perhaps that’s why I like to blog: to relax, as mental therapy, a short respite from the sufferings of real life.

* * *

If Paul Simon had gone to Sweden instead of South Africa, would I be humming “Diamonds on the Seats of my SAAB” right now? Nah. To say those words and mean them would be to stop making sense.

Displaying luxury is the least Swedish thing you could possibly do. The Swedish Dream can be summed up in one word: “Lagom”. There’s no direct English translation for that word, but it’s an adjective that means “just the right amount or size, neither too much nor too little.”

Swedes don’t want the biggest house with the biggest cars and the most prestigious job with the biggest salary. They want a lagom house, with a lagom car, and a lagom job that pays a lagom salary. To be moderately successful is ideal; being a huge success is embarrassing. Have you ever heard a Swedish athlete brag?

* * *

Eastern philosophy holds that the path to enlightenment is to avoid desire, and thereby avoid suffering. Western philosophy holds that the path to enlightenment is to embrace desire despite the suffering that results. Swedish philosophy is a compromise: enlightenment through a moderation of desires and a moderation of suffering.

I’ve spent three years living in Sweden, but I have never been able to embrace that Swedish philosophy on a personal level. To me, it’s like preferring to hit a double over a home run. I want to either play hard, or not play at all. What’s that quote about hell being reserved for the neutral?

* * *

On this trip, I visited Köping, population 17,000, the town where I lived from the ages of 13-15. As an kid with American-sized dreams, Köping seemed like Satan’s Own Godforsaken Frozen Hellhole of Boredom. Your main choices in life seemed to be to (a) grow up and work at the local Volvo transmission factory, or (b) get the hell out of Köping.

I was baptized and confirmed in Köping’s 500-year-old Lutheran church, but it didn’t help me feel any closer to Heaven. Eventually, my prayers–please God, let my answer be (b)–were answered, and I got a chance to return home to America.

It’s been twenty-two years since I left Köping, and today, it’s the same as it ever was. The Volvo factory still dominates the town. The water is still flowing in the river downtown. The church is still the tallest building. There’s a McDonald’s now, though. That’s progress.

* * *

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had stayed in Köping. I probably would have had a lagom job and a lagom house and a lagom car and a lagom Swedish wife with lagom smart kids, and I would have let the days go by until one day I would have asked myself, “Where is my fabulous job?” And I would have asked myself, “Where is my large automobile?” And I would have said to myself, “This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!”

I would have said to myself, “I have never been to Yankee Stadium” and I would have driven off in my car, taking that highway where it leads to, leaving a trail of broken hearts, suffering their lagom losses.

God knows Oakland needed Dotel.
But KC, with Beltran to sell,
Got just Buck, Wood and Teahen?
I’m really not seahen
Why Baird would want those personnel.

As prospects, they’re all second-tier.
How good they will be, it’s not clear.
The players they need
Are Olivo and Reed
But this just hasn’t been KC’s year.

Sometimes I think I read too many blogs. Before I came to visit friends and relatives here in Sweden, I was a bit afraid that Europe was awash in anti-Americanism. All these blogs told me so! But here’s an interesting statistic:

American sportswear observed by a certain American tourist in Sweden:

North Carolina Tar Heels pants: 1
Boston Red Sox caps: 1
Minnesota Twins caps: 1
New York Yankees caps: 8,124,205

OK, maybe I exaggerated that last number a little. But only a little. Here in Sweden’s third-largest city, Malm