“We need to have a talk about the door.”
Her venom bared, she sheds her socks, her blouse,
her bra, her pants, then slithers off the floor
and into bed. Her eyes encoil her spouse.

The hissing message piques his ears. His hair
is shocked erect. His paws are clenched. His back
is arched. He freezes, sizing up her stare,
then creeps up slowly, hungry for attack.

The closer takes the field, immersed in sweat,
the bases loaded, two outs, one-run lead,
the swarming air abuzz about the threat,
the prize so near desire transmutes to need.

He bends and grabs the rosin, throws it down,
then with a long, deep breath, ascends the mound.

My copy of Saving the Pitcher has finally arrived!

It was a dark and gloomy Saturday morning, damp and windy and overcast. The ground was wet from an overnight rain. It almost never rains in the Bay Area this time of year. The view out my front window looked displaced.

All morning, one part of my brain seemed focused on finding a way to disbelieve the news of Doug Pappas’ death. It kept failing. One part of my brain kept trying to figure out why that other part of my brain couldn’t stop thinking about Doug Pappas’ death, since I had never met or conversed with the man. That part of my brain kept failing, too.

After breakfast, I drove my wife and kids out to a birthday party in Walnut Creek, on the other side of the Oakland Hills. Normally, Mount Diablo serves as a landmark as you approach, but it was missing, shrouded by fog. How do mountains disappear?

I dropped my family off at the party, then headed towards the Coliseum for the A’s-Royals game. As I drove, I almost felt nauseous, like I had awakened inside a badly written book, or an MC Escher drawing, where I keep getting turned upside down by some logical flaw, but I can’t quite figure out where the hole in the logic is. I had an ominous feeling about the game, like something was going to go horribly wrong. Someone would get hurt, or Reggie Jackson would say something embarassingly arrogant in his number retirement ceremony, or the A’s would find a new way to lose in excruciating fashion.

Continue…

I propose that we create an award for writing that best exemplifies the spirit of Doug Pappas’ work. I’m not sure how such an award would work, but my first nominee is Ray Ratto, from today’s San Francisco Chronicle, in an article about the effort to bring baseball to San Jose. Money quote:

And never mind what they might have heard from Baseball Commissioner And Stadium Extortionist Bud Selig, and never mind what Peter Magowan says about territorial rights, and never mind what overmedicated civic boosters with laptops tell them about how San Jose’s perilously low self-esteem demands a baseball team.

Cash. Now. Because cash beats everything. This is baseball, after all.

To succeed with this, they come up with half a billion with no strings attached, they tell Selig they’re ready to damn the zoning laws and break ground, and then they will watch an evaporation of the territorial rights issue with the alacrity of butter on a hot brick.

I was thinking about David Cameron’s post about Tim Hudson, and how a number of pitchers have been putting up excellent numbers despite low strikeout totals.

Then I came across this statement by Robert Bly, in an introductory note to some David Ignatow poetry:

A shoemaker in the Middle Ages…could be in business and yet never have to slide into statistical mentality, since he probably knew everyone who bought shoes from him, and one works on a shoe long enough so that love energy can rest in it, even for a few moments. But it’s clear that business in quantity, that is most post-Industrial-Revolution business, requires that Eros consciousness be given up, and the love energy be pulled back inside.

In Swedish, there’s a word for this “love energy”: snickarglädje, which translates roughly as the “joy of carpentry”. The word refers to the delighful little excessive details that craftsmen lovingly add to their work, not for the functionality, but just for the sheer joy of making something beautiful.

At a statistical level, there’s no such thing as snickarglädje. The quirks that rise up at an individual level get smoothed out in quantity.

If there’s anyone in major league baseball who exemplifies snickarglädje, it’s Tim Hudson. He has about six or seven different kinds of pitches he throws at different speeds with different arm angles. He seems to be making things up as he goes along, inventing new pitches as the situation calls for. Like that shoemaker in the Middle Ages, his work seems custom-made for every client. It’s a joy to watch. No formula can explain it.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my homework question.

I asked the question as a step in helping our organization formulate an argument. I found it quite interesting that doing just that–arguing, reasoning–is the very thing that people here seem to find lacking in our education system today.

I’m going to duck explaining what our goal is, and ask some follow-up questions. (I don’t want to bias your responses so that you tell me what I want to hear.)

Suppose that our education system set as its primary task to teach people how to reason: to understand, work through, criticize, and present arguments. How would society benefit? How would the individual benefit? There are always tradeoffs, so what would we be losing with this shift in focus? How would we teach differently in elementary school? In high school? In college?

Will might be interested in Robert X. Cringely’s new column on an Apple reorg. He hints that Apple might eventually stop selling Macs altogether. A quote:

It wouldn

I’m involved in a grass-roots organization (I’m not supposed to say exactly what kind), which has given its members a homework assignment.

My assignment is to ask this question: what do you want people to get from their education?

Looks like I’ll get to witness Zack Greinke’s major league debut on Saturday.

Reggie Jackson is also getting his number retired. I *might* have some extra tickets; email me if you’re interested. I should know by tomorrow.

I cheated.

This week is “TV-turn-off” week at my daughter’s school. I’m not a big fan of holding this “event” during baseball season. I’d rather keep my TV off from November through February than go a week without baseball on TV. But I’m trying to be a good sport about it.

But when I heard that Randy Johnson had a perfect game in the ninth inning, I had to see it. Sorry, kids.

Watching the old man throw the perfect game brought back memories of the first no-no I ever saw in person: Nolan Ryan’s 6th no-hitter, thrown at the age of 43 in 1990.

For fun, I went back and checked the boxscore of that game. That prompted me to check the boxscore of Ryan’s 7th no-hitter, thrown a year later.

I noticed that these three games had something in common besides just being no-hitters thrown by men in their forties. Can you guess? I’ll post the answer in the comments.

Mountains, pyramids,
Eiffel towers, church steeples:
their bones understand.

Perfection stands tall
against an immense blue dome
and points toward God.

The next sneeze is only a dust mite away. Still, the problem remains.

Now I can just say, “I hurt it like Sammy Sosa did.” The back pain is awful, but so is feeling like a meathead trying to explain how I got hurt. With rest and ibuprofen, I’m usually restored to normal in about four to six days.

This happens to me once or twice a year. Sometimes, though, the sneeze comes on too quickly, and catches me in a bad position, so that my weak muscligamentendon ends up absorbing the force of the sneeze, and breaks.

I try to sneeze with good posture. I also sneeze a lot, thanks to a mild house dust allergy.

There’s a muscle/ligament/tendon (don’t know which) in my lower back that I keep on reinjuring over and over. I’ve been kind of embarrassed about it, but now I know I’m not alone.

I have a problem.

I

A well-groomed infield.
Honor the work as sacred.
Hop over foul lines.

Aries
The pitcher you leave
out of your lineup at Coors
will throw a shutout.

Taurus
Jorge Posada’s
nose will hurt your head-to-head
totals this weekend.

Gemini
Don’t drop Brad Radke
just because he stinks it up
every now and then.

Cancer
A.J. Pierzynski’s
batting average should improve,
but you have options.

Leo
The stars have aligned
for Brandon Inge, but they’ll soon
unalign again.

Virgo
Carlos Delgado
and Vernon Wells will hit, but
doubt Eric Hinske.

Libra
Jon Lieber will get
enough run support, but not
Donovan Osborne.

Scorpio
Need a Bret Boone sub?
Recall Seattle’s good times
with Mark McLemore!

Sagittarius
Both Roger Clemens
and Kevin Brown have managed
to stay healthy. Jinx!

Capricorn
Bench Sammy Sosa
just because you have a hunch.
He’ll hit two homers.

Aquarius
Joel Pineiro
will only pitch like last year
after you drop him.

Pisces
Reject any trade
if you have to give up a
Florida Marlin.

A’s record 2000-03 with a chance to advance to the ALCS: 0-9.
A’s record in 2004 with a chance to sweep a series: 0-5.

Sigh.

Ray Fosse said today on the A’s telecast that the Detroit Tigers don’t have an advance scout.

Is this just cheapskate penny-pinching? Or is it smart not to waste money on having scouts travel around, since so much video is now available? How much more can you see in person? How much is that extra information worth?

Right on. Irresponsible journalists like this one deserve all the public flogging you can give them.

(HUMBUG PRESS INTERNATIONAL)
The Humbug Journal has ascertained that the bidder who purchased a Picasso for $104.1 million is a group of baseball executives headed by art collector Jeffrey Loria (owner, Florida Marlins), Bob DuPuy (President, Major League Baseball) and parking lot mogul Frank McCourt (owner, Los Angeles Dodgers).

McCourt helped the group finance the entire purchase through a series of loans, equity partnerships, and pre-arranged promotional deals. The group supplied no capital of its own to acquire the painting, titled “Boy With A Pipe”.

The first promotional deal will take place in June, when the painting will be modified slightly to participate in an advertising campaign promoting a new motion picture.

A source familiar with the Picasso group explains the promotion like this: ‘We need to reach out to a younger demographic to bring them to the museums. Our research shows that we have a huge opportunity with kids, to bring them into painting. We needed to engage them in relevant and meaningful ways. It’s the future of how we generate excitement inside the museum and about art itself.”

Picasso’s work is now relevant and meaningful.

“This is the perfect alliance between two quintessential art forms, painting and movies,” said the source. “This partnership celebrates superheroes, whether they are on the canvas or on the big screen and we are extremely excited about the opportunity to create this unique promotion.”

“It will become a part of our continuing marketing efforts to appeal to younger art lovers in new and non-traditional ways,” added the source. “We anticipate that the painting will break records at our museums and movie will be a hit in the theaters.”

[UPDATE: Our source has denied making these statements. “I never said that,” said the source. “Don’t put words into my mouth. Listen to what I say. That’s not what I said.”

Humbug regrets having said that he said what he said. It’s an isolated mistake. We’re not like that. That’s not who we are. We do not intend to step down. We will stay the course. Humbug stands by its name.]

When I attended college in the mid-80’s, the only kind of computer printers anyone could afford were dot-matrix. Although professors usually wanted your essays typed, they hated reading dozens of papers written with those fuzzy dots. Most professors didn’t allow dot-matrix printouts.

That meant you had to write your papers twice, the old-fashioned way: once in an original draft, and another time on a typewriter.

One time, I wrote a brilliant essay, typed it, and turned it in. When I got it back, I was shocked to find I had received a B. The professor commented: “You make some excellent points, but your paper lacks a strong thesis.”

When I went back and compared my original draft to what I had turned in, I discovered I had forgotten to type one sentence. Not just any sentence, either: I skipped the thesis sentence, the one sentence that tied the whole paper together, that expressed the very point I was trying to make.

Petco Park is like that paper. It could have been brilliant, but there’s one big flaw which drops it from being a masterpiece to merely good. The Western Metal Supply Company building, which should be a centerpiece of the park, gets lost in a sea of larger, noisier structures surrounding it.

There’s a more in-depth review, along with lots of pictures, at humbug.com.