Category: baseball

Shorted season

How did I not notice before? It’s baseball season already.

Oh, I’m not talking about Major League Baseball; hard to miss that one. I’m referring to Minor League Baseball. I was reminded of this when I got an e-mail touting MiLB.TV – 800 games for only $29.95 for the whole season to one’s computer. This seems like not such a bad deal.

The reason that minor league baseball is off my radar is that it’s not yet being played around Albany. The Tri-Cities Valley Cats, a Houston Astros farm team, are in the New York-Penn League a “short season A” league that doesn’t start until June and ends around Labor Day. It seems strange for a city of 95,000 in a metropolitan area of about 850,000 to have such a low affiliation. Meanwhile, my hometown of Binghamton, with maybe 47,000 and a metro of 250,000 has a Double A team in the Eastern League, the Binghamton Mets.

Speaking of the Eastern League, I love the angle of this story about Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice Rice being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It notes that they are the 28th and 29th players from the Eastern League so honored. BTW, I’ve thought for years that Rice, selected in his 15th year of eligibility, was deserving.

I usually seem to miss that free opportunity to experience Extra Innings, the MLB package of games around the country. This year, it was April 6-12. I did take advantage a few years ago, though. It’s fun watching the same game, while alternating two different announcing teams; totally different perspective.

I just realized that I haven’t talked with my father-in-law about the inaugural Hall of Fame Classic featuring retired players, some of them Hall of Famers, replacing the Hall of Fame Game. That’s probably because tickets aren’t available at all until this weekend to Museum members, and not to the general public until April 26. A different system than waiting in line in Cooperstown in February or March, which is what my father-in-law’s tradition has been.
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Failed to note the passing of the colorful Mark “the Bird” Fidrych, the AL Rookie of the Year. Here’s a 1985 interview:

ROG

ROG

Harry Kalas, RIP

I was saddened to here about the sudden passing of the legendary Philadelphia Phillies announcer Harry Kalas. Harry, whose career spanned 43 years, the last 38 with the Phils, was inducted into the announcers’ wing of the Baseball of Fame in 2002. He was 73

Condolences to his family, including his brother Jim, who I know as he’s a member of my former church and was my boss’s boss’s boss for a time; he has the same resonating voice.

Here’s Harry celebrating the 2007 National League East division champion Philadelphia Phillies with his rendition of “High Hopes”.

And even if you’re not a sports fan, the voiceover in the commercial and others in the series is Harry’s.

ROG

ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, Scott and Gordon

Our first contestant is soon-to-be-daddy again Scott from Scooter Chronicles:

1. In a previous post, you predicted the winners of each MLB division. Who do you think wins the league pennants, and who wins the World Series?

Once you get to a short series, there are so many variables so it’s hard to say. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a wild card like the Boston Red Sox. And, shades, of 1986, I’m going to pick the Mets to beat them.

By the way, Scott – you NEED this: a free, 586-page PDF of the Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009.

2. What is your take on the AIG bonuses? Where do you think the government needs to take this?

First, those noting that the bonuses were a small percentage of the bailout are correct. Second, the first point is totally irrelevant; AIG is totally tone deaf. I’ve been REALLY uncomfortable with this “too big to fail” label; gives these companies a feeling of entitlement. Given the fact that the average American didn’t even know what AIG WAS a year ago, it’s unsurprising. The only time I ever saw them was on advertisements on Sunday morning talk shows. So their audience was never the average American, it was the DC movers and shakers.

At this point, with over a sixth of a TRILLION dollars already in, the government isn’t going to say to AIG, “Go ahead, go bankrupt,” though those bonuses could have been voided if it had. Some of the bonus monies are going to be given back – or deducted from the next check. But if the government is going to nationalize these companies, and they have all but done so – whatever you want to call it – they damn well better job of setting the rules of engagement for giving away lending OUR money. Politically, if not economically, I think the administration needs to try the “clawback” of AIG bonuses; I know that New York State’s Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has been looking at the contracts as well. Here’s an interesting article about other money our government might try to recover.

3. Who is your favorite musician? Could be a member of a band, or a solo artist, or whomever. But specifically, a musician.

This is probably influenced somewhat by my birthday present, the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival DVD, but I guess I’ll pick Eric Clapton. The stuff on the Yardbirds, Derek and the Dominoes, Blind Faith, his early solo stuff, and especially Cream moved me greatly, and that concert showed that sometimes, he’s still got it.

4. What is your favorite season of the year?

Spring, beginning of new life. It gets warmer. Oddly, it’s also still in Lent, so I get to sing the more mournful stuff in church.

5. Did you read “Watchmen”? If so, what did you think of it? Have any interest in seeing the movie?

I read Watchmen when it came out, and I liked it a lot at the time. I feel as though I should read it again either before or after I see the movie.

Next up, social network maven Gordon from Blog THIS, Pal!

1. Taking a quick business trip to NY City, I want to visit again…but I also want to do more out-of-the-way, quirky places as well as the usual tourist-y stuff. Any suggestions?

The Queens Public Library. Serving the most diverse county in the country, it has a wide variety of collections.

2. Your preliminary thoughts on these early days of the Obama presidency – is he doing right? Way off course?

I have some reservations, but I’m more pleased than displeased. The stuff on Iraq, stem cell research, Gitmo, and much of the stimulus I’m for, especially the emphasis on GREEN jobs and the part about health care, in part because of this story, something Scott has blogged about recently. I loved his apology over the Daschle nomination.

But I’m still not convinced that we’re not going into a quagmire in Afghanistan, as the Soviet Union did, if we’re not already, and more troops might not help. Also, there were a LOT of vacancies in the Treasury Department with a lot to do. I know he inherited TARP, but it rather stinks.

The other question I’ll hold in abeyance.

Still taking more questions!

ROG

ROG

I is for Indian

As every American fifth-grader knew when I was growing up, the aboriginal people of the Americas were called Indians because the Europeans who headed west to get east thought that they had reached Asia, probably the East Indies (Indonesia, et al), but it is THIS place that’s involved in the current discussion:

There developed real confusion when saying Indian whether one meant someone from the Asian subcontinent or from the Americas.

Subsequently, there was a movement by some Americans to use the term Native American instead of American Indian as more “sensitive” to the first Americans. Yet there were and are many entities that still use the term Indian, from the American Indian Movement to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, part of the US Department of the Interior to the new Museum of the American Indian, pictured above, which incidentally is staging an exhibition of Native American comic art.

So what do the people involved feel? Seems from this article that there is really no consensus:

A 1995 Census Bureau Survey of preferences for racial and ethnic terminology (there is no more recent survey) indicated that 49% of Native people preferred being called American Indian, 37% preferred Native American, 3.6% preferred “some other term,” and 5% had no preference. As The American Heritage Guide to English Usage points out, “the issue has never been particularly divisive between Indians and non-Indians.

Further:
In the end, the term you choose to use (as an Indian or non-Indian) is your own personal choice…The recommended method is to refer to a person by their tribe, if that information is known…[W]henever possible an Indian would prefer to be called a Cherokee or a Lakota or whichever tribe they belong to.

The 2010 Census is coming up and the Bureau will be using “American Indian or Alaska Native” as the designation for native peoples, just as it did in 2000. At least one of the reasons may lie in this true story I heard from someone who works at the Bureau. Census forms are tested periodically. In some neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, Census was finding an anomaly; a large number of people were checked as Native American, often inconsistently within a family structure. It soon became evident that the new arrivals were checking their country of origin for themselves, but their children who were born here they designated as Native American. The children WERE native to America.


Still, I am still quite uncomfortable referring to the Major League Baseball team in Cleveland or the National Football League team in suburban Washington, DC by their respective nicknames. It just feels wrong to me. At least the NFL team doesn’t have that dopey grinning logo, Chief Wahoo, which reminds me very much of the caricatures of black people in old minstrel shows.

For those of you not into sports or from the United States, the topic of sports nicknames “honoring” Indians at the high school, college or professional level has been an ongoing debate, as you can see, for instance, in this article.


ROG

ROG

SPORTS questions

OK, I’ve gotten myself in another one of those March Madness men’s basketball pools, with, as usual, little idea what I’m doing. I know the seedings not until tomorrow and the first games not until midweek (and the play-in game doesn’t count), but any teams you think are peaking at the right time, I’d consider your advice.

Meanwhile it’s spring training in baseball so it’s time to make my predictions for the division winners:
AL EAST: The NY Yankees. More than ever, they’re trying to buy a pennant. but they have. Haven’t they?
AL CENTRAL: The Minnesota Twins. Not only is it my father-in-law’s favorite team, they started looking like a team last year.
AL WEST: The Los Angeles Angels. Smart money picks the Texas Rangers. And it may be right.
NL EAST: The New York Mets: with a new stopper, they can’t collapse three years in a row. Can they?
NL CENTRAL: the St. Louis Cardinals. I want to pick the Cubbies, but they broke my heart last year, the centennial of their last World Series victory. of course, THIS will be the year they win it.
NL WEST: Colorado Rockies. Because an overpaid Manny won’t help the Dodgers nearly so much.

Meanwhile, I’m more convinced that anyone who was using steroids before 2004, when the MLB ban went into effect, I don’t care. Well, I sorta care, but not enough to think they shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame. Of course, I’m on record thinking that Shoeless Joe Jackson should be in the Hall of Fame. So should Pete Rose – as soon as he dies.

Prediction: Tiger Woods will win one, and only one, Grand Slam tournament in 2009.

What’s boring about the NBA is that only three or five teams have even a reasonable shot at the title; last year’s finalists, the Celtics and the Lakers; and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Maybe the Orlando Magic. MAYBE the San Antonio Spurs.

What sayest thou?

ROG

ROG
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