The first shoe dropped (Bradford for Payton) earlier today. Now the ESPN ticker reports that Preston Wilson has been sent to the Washington Nationals from Colorado for Zach Day plus a PTBNL or cash.
That leaves the Rockies with a hole in CF. Sounds like half a shoe to me. Perhaps those Eric Byrnes-for-Joe Kennedy rumors might be a reality pretty soon…
The Bradford-for-Payton trade is now official.
Some other move is sure to follow, but there’s no word yet. Internet speculation includes Joe Kennedy and Craig Wilson. If I were to make up a rumor, I’d send somebody to the Dodgers. We’ll just have to wait and see…
Rich Lederer is trying to take Bob Welch’s 1990 Cy Young award away from him and give it to Roger Clemens.
Over my dead body.
Welch’s 27 wins was the most ever in the AL in the DH era. That alone should be enough for the Cy Young, in my book.
TangoTiger chimed in with saying that Welch should get some team award for most wins, because wins are a team stat. My reply:
Don’t give me that “team award” nonsense. There is only one award for pitchers, and that’s the Cy Young. So that’s the award I’m giving Welch.
Both Boston and the A’s were good teams in 1990. With a little luck, Clemens (or Stewart) might have won 27 instead of Welch. But he didn’t have that luck, did he? At some point, you gotta reward what people *actually* do (win *actual* games), instead of what they might have done with better luck in some Monte Carlo simulation.
Clemens matched up against Dave Stewart *five times* in 1990 (twice in the playoffs), and lost all five, including the final game where he showed up wearing that stupid eyeblack and got himself thrown out of the game.
I saw all five of those games. If you want to impress me enough to give you a Cy Young with 21 wins when I have pitchers with 27 and 22 wins, you have to beat me every once in a while, and not go all psycho on me when it counts the most. My 1990 ballot goes: Welch, Stewart, Clemens, in that order.
No doubt Clemens had some great peripheral stats in 1990, and no doubt Clemens was the better pitcher over his career. I wouldn’t even argue with you if you said he was the best pitcher ever. But 1990 was the year the A’s kicked Clemens’ ass from coast to coast, and there’s no way I’m letting him get a 1990 Cy Young, if I have anything to say about it.
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.
Mark Kotsay agreed to a two-year extension today. He is signed through 2008, with a no-trade clause through 2006. He’ll make about $7 million a year. To which I say: Ahh!
Having Kotsay out in center is so comforting. If a ball is hit in the air towards center, I don’t even worry. If the ball is catchable, Kotsay will catch it. He’s like the feeling you get after a long hard day of work, and then you finally put your head on that soft, cold pillow, and put the warm covers on. Complete relaxation and comfort. He’s a security blanket.
So we know now that Kotsay won’t be traded; if Jay Payton is indeed traded to Oakland, he’ll likely be traded elsewhere right away. Dodgers? Cubs? Rockies? Yankees? Still waiting for this whole puzzle to fall into place…
I’m not going to get all worked up about the rumored Jay Payton-for-Chad Bradford trade until I hear the other shoe drop. This is not the first time these two have been involved in a trade rumor with each other; there was a similar rumor at the Winter Meetings when Payton was still with San Diego. That deal fell through, but we can guess that Beane indeed likes Payton. This is one trade rumor that does seem to have teeth, but it still doesn’t seem that this is all that Beane has in mind.
Since Payton is a likely free agent at year’s end (there’s a team option), and since it’s unlikely Bradford would have been around next year, either, on the surface this would be strictly a trade for 2005. Does this trade, on its own, improve the A’s playoff chances?
Justin Duchscherer and Kiko Calero have a tight grasp on the A’s RH set-up jobs, so Bradford would probably have been competing with Keiichi Yabu for playing time during mop-up duties, which would not have added much to the A’s playoffs chances.
Jay Payton is essentially Eric Byrnes with better defense. But Byrnes isn’t playing much, except against lefties, so just upgrading Byrnes doesn’t help much. Would Payton replace Kielty or Swisher in the lineup? Unlikely; Payton’s gone after this year; you’d still want to play the guys who are still going to be around next year.
The only thing that makes sense is if Payton pushes Kielty or Swisher to DH, and Hatteberg gets sent to the bench. That improves the A’s offensive power and defensive range (at the likely expense of some OBP), yet doesn’t kick any part of the A’s future out of the lineup. Relegated to bench duty: Byrnes, Hatteberg, and Durazo (if/when he gets back from the DL), all of whom would be gone next year anyway, (as would Payton).
It would be an incremental improvement, but what’s the point of that? The Angels are running away with the AL West, and there’s a gazillion teams ahead of them for the wild card, including the Yankees and the Twins. Beane should be focusing on improving the team for the future, and if it also helps the present, too, that’s a bonus.
Getting Payton gives Beane choices. He could flip Payton elsewhere, or keep him and trade Byrnes or Kotsay without appearing to give up on 2005. If they trade Kotsay, that might give them the money to exercise Payton’s option, and he could play CF in 2006 while the A’s wait for Javier Herrera to mature. Or whatever.
Payton-for-Bradford? Meh. Not bad, but not exciting. Payton-for-Bradford and then Byrnes/Hatteberg/Durazo/Kotsay for prospects–OK, wake me up when that happens.
Some short sentences. My flu bug has got me shrinking, so I’m a little weak. If I keep shrinking at my current July rate, you’ll have to look for by blog entries in Minusland by September. Where’s my Vita-Wonk?
There’s no reason to remake Bad News Bears, but there is a reason to make another film based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, my favorite book as a kid. Simple reason: they didn’t get it right the first time. The trailers don’t give me much confidence they got it right this time, either, though: still too much focus on Wonka, which makes everything weird and creepy (typical of Tim Burton). But if you want to make the story magical, which is what I loved about it, you have to look at everything through the innocent eyes of Charlie Bucket. I’m sure I’ll see the movie, and thanks to the trailers, I’m fully expecting to be disappointed.
I’ve probably watched more TV the last five days than the last five months put together. The A’s weren’t on TV the last two days, either, so that didn’t help. That Twilight Zone marathon the other day was good stuff. It was more surreal than that Surreal Life marathon. I don’t know why I kept watching that, but I was bored, I guess. I watched some of the new Battlestar Galactica series yesterday; it’s better than the old one, I think. Saw a few episodes of Star Trek:DS9 that I had missed.
The A’s faced the GoodTedLilly yesterday, and got shut out. It happens. They beat the BadTedLilly a month ago, so these things even out.
Here’s hoping the Blue Jays face the Unhittable Rich Harden, and the A’s can even out their record at .500 again.
Looks his victims in the eyes
Says he must apologize:
“Sorry for the needless scare
I gave to cameras everywhere.”
There is much discussion around these parts, especially over at Will’s place, about how sports teams are reluctant to give press access to Internet writers. Part of that, I’m sure, is the problem of pure volume: lots of people would like access, but there’s only so much room.
I found an interesting entry by Mark Liberman on Language Log about Sports Interviews as Rituals, that sheds some more light on this issue:
…when I listen to recordings of journalistic interviews, I rarely get the impression that anyone is trying to learn anything new. The journalists already know what the stories are. Their questions are not designed to discover any new facts or ideas, but rather to get quotes that will fit in to designated places in the frameworks of logic and rhetoric that they have already erected.
As they say, read the whole thing. There are many interesting points. One of the most fascinating to me is that there is a implicit agreement between the interviewer and interviewee regarding the content of the interview and the context in which their quotes will be used. When that unspoken agreement is violated, people get angry.
Part of the problem with getting press access for bloggers is the fact that there are no established ground rules. Bloggers can write about whatever they want. They have a completely different set of incentives from newspaper writers. It’s like letting a complete stranger into your house; if you have no idea if they’ll behave the way you expect, you’re not likely to let them in.
Eventually, established bloggers will get regular press access. But only after the product has been rendered predictable 99.9% of the time. Teams will let bloggers into the locker room the moment they understand exactly what will be coming out of it.
Is that remaining 0.1% worth the effort?
The A’s got back to within one game of .500 by beating the White Sox 7-2 Sunday afternoon, victimizing Mark Buehrle with the luckiest inning the A’s will get all year. Trailing 2-0, they did practically nothing right, but still scored four runs.
Innings like this are lucky, but I’m not going to apologize for it. First of all, the White Sox make me sick (I had tickets for the game today, but didn’t go), so I don’t feel sorry for them at all.
Second, this was luck as the residue of design. The A’s don’t strike out much; they put the ball in play; lucky hits and double plays are natural outcomes for that kind of team. I’ve seen the A’s hit into a lot of double plays, including three DP’s this game. The A’s were due for some lucky hits. So this inning felt good, like payback.
Some fishermen in Thailand caught and ate a record-sized catfish.
The catfish may be the largest freshwater fish ever caught.
I’ve finally gotten around to reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, a great book. How did Europeans conquer North America? With germs, more than with firepower.
Right now, I’m lying at home, suffering from some germs of my own. I feel like crap, and not just because the A’s had their winning streak broken by Jon Garland and the White Sox.
I’ve had a fever twice this year, once during spring training in Tucson, and again this weekend. Both times I got sick, the White Sox were in town, playing the A’s. Coincidence? I think not.
The White Sox were 53-25 going into tonight’s game, but according to Baseball Prospectus’ Adjusted Standings, they should have been 10 games worse, about 43-35. How are they defying the numbers?
Germs, I say! The White Sox are a carrier, like fleas, mosquitos and rats. And like European conquerors, they spread disease wherever they go, rendering their opponents in a weakened state, so that they can win despite their mediocre talent.
Damn parasites. Begone! I hate you.
There’s nothing better than listening to Bill King when he’s cranky.
Listened to the game on the radio this afternoon, and King was in fine form. I was doing some dishes in the middle innings, and only sorta paying attention to the teasing banter going on in the booth, when King suddenly said to one of his radio mates, “Don’t be an ass.”
There was a moment of silence, as everyone (including me) was rather stunned that King would say that on the air (especially considering that KFRC is now a religious station). Then, just as suddenly, you could hear people bursting into laughter in the background.
If this were someone else, they probably wouldn’t have laughed, as the announcer might be looking at some trouble. But this is Bill King. You laugh because you know he can get away with it. After all, this is the guy who four decades ago got away with the infamous “Mother’s Day” incident, when, while still on the air, he shouted down an incompetent NBA ref, using a compound word that would get bleeped even today on cable TV.
Bill King can say whatever the heck he wants. If they couldn’t stop him before, they can’t stop him now, when he’s an institution. He can use a phrase like “Katy, bar the door” as he did in the post-game show, and when his younger collegues look at him in confusion, he can just refuse to explain what it means. Bill King answers to no one.
I once heard an interview with King, where he was asked what advice he would have for young broadcasters. He suggested working on expanding your vocabulary, because the more ways you have to describe something, the more ways you have to describe the action in accurate and interesting ways. That’s obviously helped King, as I doubt that any broadcaster can match his vocabulary.
When a guy with Bill King’s ability to turn a phrase goes on a rant, there’s nothing better. Come to think of it, maybe Sandy Alderson took his firm stance and busted the umpires’ union, just because he had listened for years to Bill King’s colorful opinions about how horrible the officiating was, and became convinced something had to be done. The umps are better now, and King complains less often about them. While baseball is better for it, the broadcasts are not. I miss those umpire rants.
But all is not lost; there are still things that irk King, such as interleague play. A couple weeks ago, Ken Korach mentioned on the air that MLB was considering reversing where the DH was used during interleague play next year: in the NL parks and not in the AL. It was the first King had heard of it, and his reaction was classic:
What???!!!
That sounds just like Selig logic. And that’s an oxymoron.
Hot day in Alameda. Took photos of the kids swimming lessons in the morning using my new Superhero Camera™. Afternoon, pulled kids to the library in their red wagon. Borrowed some books. Pulled kids in wagon back home. Drove to Round Table Pizza to pick up a free dinner, a promotional gift given to all fans in attendance at A’s 16-0 victory over the Giants on Sunday. Drove back home. Ate.
Headed to the game in the evening, sans children. The day was dragging, full schedule, and then when I got to the High Street Bridge, the drawbridge was up, so I had to just sit there, stuck between cars, nowhere to go, waiting for about 10 minutes for the boat to pass, for the bridge to come back down, and for the tomato growing out of my forehead to ripen so I could finally pick it.
All that waiting made me a bit cranky, and I missed the top of the first, and that made me more cranky, and then as I sat down in the right field bleachers with Zachary Manprin and Kerry Haas, the golden sun aimed its dragonfire breath into our eyes, and that made me crankier still. If the game had gone badly, and lasted deep into the night I might have been seduced to fall for the temptations of pure villainy. But happily, it was a short, merciful victory for Our Heroes; the game only lasted 2:09; and I stayed on the Right Side of the Law.
The most interesting moment of the evening was when Nick Swisher’s home run headed straight for me like a monkey outta nowhere. For a terrifying instant, I thought I might have no choice but to try to catch the darn thing, and then, in an even more terrifying instant, I realized I didn’t bring my glove.
If you look at a replay of the home run, you can see me; I’m the guy wearing the moth costume, holding his hands up in front of his head, and shouting “Not in the face! NOT IN THE FACE!” Zachary, just to my left, was much more cool about it, of course. He said, “Remember, baseballs are more afraid of you than you are of them,”, but that’s easy for him to say, considering he’s about twice as big as me and darn near invulnerable in his big blue suit.
Fortunately, however, the ball didn’t quite have the juice to reach me; it fell directly in front of me, two rows short, and bounced back onto the field. I felt relief. Said my big blue friend, “Gravity is a harsh mistress.”
Well, there you have it. It was a very long day, the tights were uncomfortable…but we’ve covered that before. Victory: well pitched (Blanton), timely hitting (Johnson, Crosby), good defense (Chavez). Game: played quickly, sans ennui. Other French words: Coliseum, demitasse.
I could go on, but when tomatoes grow out of your forehead, it gets you thinking. What is life for but to grow? And to grow, you must eat, and also, you must sleep. And to sleep, you must dream, dream of a life that is better, a life that is filled with GOOD THINGS. And that, my friends, is why we say Good Night. Good night children, good night tomatoes, good night Nick Swisher, good night monkeys outta nowhere, good night Brad Fischer, good night golden dragon, good night green elephant, good night red wagon.
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Consider, if you will, a team that looks like the worst team in baseball one month, and then suddenly turns around and looks like the best the next. What kind of twisted mind writes a plot like that? The author is going mad, and trying to take the audience with him.
* * *
And if not mad, then sick. My wife and kids are all suffering from bad coughs; when I’m around them, I feel like I need to cough, too. I am I getting sick, too? Or is coughing psychologically contagious in the same way that yawning is?
* * *
How weird is it that the voices of Tigger and Piglet died on the same weekend? And as someone who was born on the very day that Disney released the first Winnie-the-Pooh film, it kinda freaks me out. They say…but I won’t.
* * *
To sound a happier note: they say that winning is contagious, and I will, too. Last night, Barry Zito finally caught that victory virus that’s been afflicting the rest of his team. For the first time in ages, his mates didn’t screw up a well-pitched game, and he picked up that fourth win he should have had a long time ago.
* * *
More happy notes: my new Nikon D70 Digital SLR camera arrived today. Haven’t had time to play with it much yet, but I already love it. Plenty of pictures to come, I’m sure…
* * *
Pictures, meet weirdness: can someone explain to me why several fans at the Coliseum last night were holding giant, four-foot-tall cardboard cutouts of the head of Paul Giamatti?
They didn’t show any giant cutouts of baseball players: no Barry Zito heads, no Eric Chavez heads. There weren’t superstar actor cutouts of Tom Cruise’s head or Russell Crowe’s head or Harrison Ford’s head. Nope, just giant Paul Giamatti heads.
Why Paul Giamatti? Sideways or not, Paul Giamatti is a classic Hey-It’s-That Guy, the kind of actor you recognize but forget his name.
The stands of the Oakland Coliseum during an A’s game was almost as bizarre a place to find a picture of a semi-famous actor as the whole Colin Mochrie / fanimutation thing.
* * *
I missed Ichiro’s leadoff home run against Zito, because I was (a) playing with my camera, and (b) flipping back to the NBA draft to see who the Warriors were going to pick with their two second round picks.
* * *
I’ll watch any draft, in any sport, anytime. I have no idea why; I just love ’em.
I can’t help but think that Chris Mullin could have traded down a few spots and still ended up with Ike Diogu. I saw only one mock draft anywhere that had Diogu higher than 15th: Dick Vitale had him pegged to the Warriors at 9. Many other drafts I saw didn’t even have him going in the first round. Part of the art of drafting is picking the right player, and part of it is maximizing the value of your pick.
The Warriors lack the kind of inside presence that Diogu supposedly will provide, so it sounds like a good fit, if Diogu can actually play. If he can, then Mullin is a genius. Very few other people had him rated that high. I’ve had a sneaking suspicion for awhile now that Mullin, unlike a lot of GMs (and darn near every Warrior GM ever), can tell a real player from a stiff. Diogu is the ultimate test of that theory.
I was looking back at all the Warriors first round picks since Mullin joined the front office. Since 2001, the only mistakes the Warriors have made have been passing on a high school player (Amare Stoudamire) or two. When you look at where they’ve been drafting, and how all the players below their picks turned out, they’ve really done a darn good job at picking the best player available.
I half-expected the Mullin to grab a European player with the second-round pick, since he seems to like them so much, but instead he went for a high-school player (Monta Ellis) who needs to bulk up and a college player (Chris Taft) who probably came out a year too early. Good picks for second-rounders; they each have flaws right now, but Tremendous Upside Potential.
* * *
Every draft has one: the guy expected to go in the top six or seven, who ends up plunging to the end of the first or the second round. 2005’s top draft-droppers: Aaron Rodgers (NFL), Luke Hochevar (MLB), and Gerald Green (NBA).
Bill Simmons is probably so giddy about Green falling to the Celtics at 18 that he’s having trouble getting his running draft diary written, just like that guy in that movie who was at a complete loss for words because he was so surprised he got the girl he had been longing for that he couldn’t come up with a metaphor based on a motion picture to explain how being happy about being so surprised about getting the girl had made him speechless, but I could be wrong, just like that guy in that TV show who thought he was doing the right thing but in a twist of cruel irony at the end turned out to be doing the very wrong thing he had been trying to avoid, but it would be very hard to explain how exactly I was wrong because at that point the plot becomes so convoluted that you need a small, devilish author (another Hey-It’s-That Guy whose name you can’t remember) from the Outer Midnight Zone to show up and explain everything with a quick elegant summary, which we don’t have, so you’ll just have to do without and assume I’m correct until proven otherwise in the morning when this long nightmare is over.
I think the most remarkable thing about the A’s blowout victory over the Giants was the time. The A’s scored sixteen runs, and yet the game only took 2:14.
Normally, in a blowout, you start counting the hairs on your arms by about the fourth inning for some excitement, but not today. Rich Harden was breezing along; although he wasn’t completely unhittable, he was throwing strikes, and every ball the Giants managed to hit hard was right at someone. When Deivi Cruz got a broken bat bloop hit to break up Harden’s no-hitter in the fifth inning, I said to my wife, “there goes the last bit of tension that was left in this game.” To which she replied, “No, the A’s still have a chance to score in every inning.”
Jason Christensen must have felt the missing tension, too. When the A’s scored three more runs off him in the bottom half of the fifth, Christensen added some intrigue to the proceedings when he intentionally threw at the feet of Nick Swisher, who had homered earlier in the game. Swisher managed to dance out of the way, and both benches were warned.
I didn’t know if Swisher had done anything that would make the Giants angry at him (knowing Swisher’s cockiness, it wouldn’t surprise me), or if the Giants were just frustrated from getting their butts kicked. In any case, that made things a bit more interesting for about thirty seconds, wondering if the A’s would get back at the Giants in some fashion. But then Swisher hit another homer two pitches later, and that’s the best form of retaliation of all. I’m a fair-weather Giants fan, so I don’t derive any particular satisfaction from beating the cross-bay rivals, but Swisher’s revenge was sweet. Even though it was 14-0 at the time, I jumped out of my seat to cheer it over the fence.
Incidentally, Swisher became the first A’s player to homer from both sides of the plate in one game since Ruben Sierra. Which in my mind makes him the first A’s player to ever to accomplish that feat, because I’ve had Ruben Sierra’s existence in an A’s uniform surgically removed from my brain. The procedure cost a lot of money, but it was worth every penny.
After Swisher’s second homer, the teams started going through the motions. The A’s passed up several opportunities to take some extra bases, and didn’t score again. The last 2 1/2 innings were relaxing, and went by briskly.
Ron Flores followed Harden and pitched a perfect eighth. I like Flores. The guys throws slop, but he throws slop for strikes. Of course, he hasn’t given up a run yet in the major leagues, so what’s not to like? The only thing that bothers me about him is that every time I see him with his left-handed motion, wearing that #47 on his back, I have to stop myself from wondering when the A’s signed Jesse Orosco.
Kiko Calero followed with a 1-2-3 ninth, and it was time to head home. Nothing like a blowout and a sweep to make a team look great. The pitchers are pitching, the hitters are hitting, and the defenders are defending. It was a good day to be an A’s fan.
Since Bobby Crosby returned on June 2, the A’s are 15-8; four of those losses are owned by Ryan Glynn, who is no longer in the rotation; and three of the other losses were to probable 2005 All-Stars: Roy Halladay, Livan Hernandez, and John Smoltz. This team is playing really well.
I got home, looked at the standings, and noticed that the A’s are now just five games under .500, and those five games are the five games they’ve played below .500 in 31 games against the AL East. The A’s have only played six games so far against the AL Central. The Angels, on the other hand, have had thirty games against the Central, and only six against the AL East; the LALALAAs will spend half of July and most of August working their way through the AL’s best division. The A’s are still 10.5 games out, but hope is alive.
Danny the Rabbit continued the recent streak of excellent A’s starts Saturday, allowing three runs in a complete game victory over the Giants. I’ll be out at the Oakland Coliseum on Sunday, to see if Rich Harden can keep it going.
Which means I won’t be home to follow the Bout of the Year: the Toronto Blue Jays versus the Washington Nationals.
Not only are these teams 1-2 in the MLB Heavyweight Standings, but Sunday’s losing team along with its entire league will be eliminated from the Heavyweight Title for the rest of the year.
Originally, Livan Hernandez was scheduled to start, but he threw on Saturday instead. Now the hopes of the National League will rest on the hyper-inconsistent arm of Tony Armas. The AL is placing its hopes on Gustavo Chacin. Chacin has had a much better year than Armas, but Chacin’s last two starts were not very good.
It could be any kind of game. I’ll keep my eye on that out-of-town scoreboard.
Update:
The Blue Jays break a 5-5 tie with two runs in the eighth, and two in the ninth, to eliminate the Nationals and their league, 9-5. Congrats American League, and may the best team win!
I’m not a sabermetrician. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you.
I should probably trigger a big flashing red light on people’s sabremetridar. I love baseball. I’m an A’s fan. I do computers. I know SQL like the back of my hand. But sabermetrics just doesn’t turn me on.
I think here’s why: The single thing I enjoy most about baseball is the art of pitching. I love trying to think along with the pitcher, figuring out what to throw next, how to keep the hitter off balance.
Suppose I’m Barry Zito, and I’m facing Richie Sexson, and I’m behind in the count 2-1, having thrown an inside fastball for a called strike, and two consecutive curveballs out of the zone. What do I throw next?
To me, that’s by far the most interesting question in baseball. But without detailed pitch-by-pitch data, sabermetrics cannot answer that question, and must remain silent.
If we really want to understand why Barry Zito has struggled the past two seasons, we’re not going to find that understanding in his K/9 rates. That understanding lies in his pitch-by-pitch decisions, in how often he gets himself backed in a corner, with few options to deceive the batter.
Justin Duchscherer is a mystery to me. How does he keep getting people out? He has a nice 12-6 curveball, but otherwise he doesn’t appear to have good stuff. But there’s this: I find it really difficult to guess what he’s going to throw next. What is he doing, exactly? What’s his M.O.?
Kirk Saarloos has pitched decently all season, but he has tended to get tired early. But yesterday, he threw a complete-game shutout. The Chronicle reported that he added a hard slurve to his repertoire for this game. Is that why he struck out more batters and could throw more pitches than usual? Or was it just that the Mariners are bad? Does this new/altered pitch help him get batters out, and if so, how?
I don’t have access to pitch-by-pitch data, so I can’t run an SQL query to get answers. I’m just going to have to keep watching ballgames. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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.
Last night was the worst loss of the year. It hurt, bad.
The A’s had two outs in the ninth and a two-run lead when Michael Morse singled in two to tie the game. Somebody get a scouting report on this guy; he hit .253 in AAA; he’s hitting .397 in the majors. He can’t be this good. He must have plenty of holes in his swing somewhere.
Then with a one-run lead in the twelfth, Bobby Crosby dropped a throw from Ryan Glynn that would have been a game-ending double play. Next batter singles, and Eric Byrnes has a chance to throw the runner out at home, but he boots it, too.
Just when I had a little bit of hope, when I thought the A’s had a chance to make a really good run, this happens. I like the pitching matchups against San Francisco this weekend. With Harden back, I thought they had a good chance to get on a winning streak, and pull close to .500 before the All-Star Break.
Suddenly, hope is the furthest thing from my mind. I can’t get my mind around this loss. It just knocked all the air out of me; I can’t think of anything except the stunning fact that I just got punched in the stomach, and I can’t breathe.
