Baseball-Related Program Activities

What would be a very bad time for your microphone to go out? If Barry Bonds makes it to 755, I bet KNBR will be putting a few extra microphones in the booth for every game.

Labels: barry bonds, giants, radio

Now people are just piling on. This is today's installment of the nondescript comic strip "Adam@Home." (Actually, the copyright date looks like 2003, so this may be a repeat. That's one problem with getting a comic strip online instead of in a decent newspaper that usually remembers to put a notice above each strip that's a rerun.)



In other news, during yesterday's lockdown of the Rayburn House Office Building, preparing to do a search for a suspected gunman, the Capitol police sent out this e-mail: "During the search, the police officers will knock three times on each office door, announce 'United States Capitol Police,' knock three additional times and then voice the code word 'baseball.' Open your office doors for the police, and cooperate with all police instructions." Baseball fever is still strong in Washington!

Labels: devil rays

If it's the subject of a "Jeopardy!" Daily Double (a category called Swimmers, for $600), it must be a legitimate thing to name a baseball team after...



Answer given in the comments, if you need it.

Labels: devil rays, jeopardy

I'm not sure if "honor" is the right word, but in honor of Barry Bonds' current home run total, here's Milo Hamilton's call of Hank Aaron's 715th home run on April 8, 1974, while both members of baseballrelated.com were ensconced in wombs.

Meanwhile, Albert Pujols is on the cover of Sports Illustrated again, for the second time in less than two months, and why not? Also in the issue is Baseball Prospectus's projected home run leader board from the year 2020, which I want to reproduce here for posterity:

1. Barry Bonds (765)
2. Hank Aaron (755)
3. Babe Ruth (714)
4. Alex Rodriguez (678)
5. Willie Mays (660)
6. Adam Dunn (638)
7. Ken Griffey Jr. (637)
8. Albert Pujols (620)
9. Manny Ramirez (589)
10. Sammy Sosa (588)
11. Robotic Hitting Unit HR-1 (587)
12. Frank Robinson (586)

One of the above was actually my own addition to the Baseball Prospectus list, solely to make Levi chuckle.

Labels: Albert Pujols, barry bonds, milo hamilton, predictions, robots, sports illustrated

From the Post-Dispatch today:

La Russa, asked how Marquis should approach this start, said, only half in jest, "If it was me, I would approach it like it was the last start of my life and if I lose that game, I'm going to die.

"You don't want to die, do you? Of course, I hit under .200 and nobody ever played me."

Meanwhile the Cubs, trying to win their second game out of their last fifteen, just gave up a three-run homer to Mikey P., turning a 3-1 lead into a 4-3 deficit.

Labels: jason marquis, mike piazza, st. louis post-dispatch, tony la russa

1) On the broadcast of today's Cubs/Padres game:

Pat Hughes: Be careful with this guy, Ron: he spells his name Cla--no "y," but it's pronounced "Clay." I thought it was a mistake. It disturbed me. I couldn't sleep last night. These things are important.

Ron Santo: You're bothered a lot of the time, aren't you?

Pat Hughes: Can't you tell?

2) Cardnilly heard two people in the stands at Busch Stadium talking about Juan Encarnacion:

Inmate-looking guy [re-emerging from the concourse]: Say, who hit that last home run?
Mildly frightened bystander: Oh, one of the new guys. I forget his name…
ILG: Was it Incarceration?
MFB: Yep. That was the guy.

3) Operation Shutdown may be over, unless Derek Bell can talk the judicial system into letting him continue his workless protest.

4) Pedro has a green thumb. Now if only he'd grow out his hair again, I could wholeheartedly root for him.

5) Congratulations to Jim, who made the 600th post to this blog earlier in the week.

Labels: cubs, juan incarnacion, operation shutdown, padres, pat hughes, pedro martinez, ron santo

I forgot to mention that I filled out a handful of All-Star ballots while at the game -- and on the American League side, I voted for all the Devil Rays. That way they won't feel quite so bad when the only Ray who gets to go to Pittsburgh is Scott Kazmir.

Labels: all-star game, devil rays, scott kazmir

Yes, I went to this game alone, because all my friends here in L.A. have jobs and are a lot less likely than Levi to take a half day off to go to a game. On this date in Dodger history, in 1963, Sandy Koufax pitched a no-hitter. No such luck for Derek Lowe today, although he was fairly effective; the real problem was some fielding mistakes by the Dodgers, notably an amusingly botched rundown. So the Dodgers' winning streak came to an end, and now they have to go to San Francisco and spend three games intentionally walking Barry Bonds.

Cheesesteaks are new at Dodger Stadium this year, courtesy of a local chain called South Street, to which I was introduced by hanger-on Jason. Their Dodger Stadium cheesesteaks are half the size and twice the price of the ones they serve in the restaurant -- but, still, it was pretty tasty, and a nice change of pace from a Dodger Dog.

For the first time, I brought my radio and listened to it during the game -- might as well get some use out of it, I figured, since I never use it at home, not even its NOAA weather radio-receiving functions. (It's just a cheap AM/FM/TV/weather portable radio, not a fancy radio that turns itself on whenever there's a thunderstorm watch in the middle of the night, like a certain other baseballrelated.com poster has in his bedroom.) Vin Scully gets simulcast on radio and TV for the first three innings, which is great, although he'll occasionally say something that sounds like a complete non sequitur when you're listening on the radio because it obviously relates to something not quite game-related that's being shown on TV at that moment. Today was school field trip day, and a couple of times, he was referring to what must have been shots of kids in the stands.

Anyway, for the fourth inning and on, Charley Steiner and Rick Monday come in to do the radio only. They're fine, except that they're not Vin Scully. Now, Rick Monday -- if you've got to be known solely for one thing, there are a lot worse things you could be known for than "keeping an American flag from being set on fire." And Charley Steiner -- well, when the Dodgers were down 4-2 and had the bases loaded for Kenny Lofton in the bottom of the ninth, he was excited enough that I was expecting him to blurt out "Follow me to freedom!" if Lofton got a hit. But he flew out to end the game.

Another advantage of listening to the radio -- they announced the attendance about a half-inning before "Guess the Attendance" was played in the stadium, thus allowing me to loudly and confidently yell out that it was choice "A" on the scoreboard. So, in conclusion, I'll probably bring my radio again if I'm going to a game by myself, or if I'm going to a game with someone I don't want to talk to.

I should mention that this was all prompted by my mother. She suggested a couple weeks ago that I go to a weekday afternoon baseball game before I start my new full-time job on the 17th. I said, in my Eric Cartman voice, "But, Maaaaaaahm, the Dodgers don't plaaaaaaay any weekday afternoon games." I looked at the schedule anyway, and saw this game, so there you go.

Relating to that job: I temporarily have a PC in my living room within view of my TV, and Levi now has Internet access at home. Way back at the beginning of the season, I suggested that the two of us should watch the same game simultaneously, instant-message each other during the game, and post the log here. However, we haven't yet been able to come up with a time that both of us are able to actually do this -- Levi's busy at work, as usual, and seems to have more of a life on the weekends than I do, and tends to attend a few Cubs games, especially when they're playing the Cardinals, and since he's just recently moved up to home Internet access, it's probably going to be a while until he has a Treo or Blackberry and can use the Internet from the Wrigley Field stands. (To be fair, there's been a couple of games when Levi was available but I wasn't.) And now I'm not 100% sure how busy I'll be at my new job, but I am certain that it will preclude us from scheduling this for one of those weeknight ESPN games that starts at 7:00 Eastern -- I'll still be at work at 4:00 Pacific. It also doesn't help that we're limited by the baseball schedules of ESPN/ESPN 2, WGN, and TBS, since those are the only networks that we can both watch together, and neither of us is too excited about doing this during a Braves game on TBS.

All of this is to say that there will probably be an IM transcript posted here when you least expect it.

Labels: astros, dodger stadium, dodgers, game report, vin scully

The L.A. Times forgot to change their usual "Dodgers Tonight" text to read "Dodgers Today"...



Or maybe they're just stunned by the fact the Dodgers won the first two games of this series against the NL champions. Also, the second sentence of the "update" should read "The Dodgers might be vulnerable to a left-handed pitcher..."

I'm heading to Dodger Stadium in about an hour.

Labels: dodgers, los angeles times

There is an article about John Kruk in the June issue of Playboy. The most amusing anecdote is this one: after his bout with testicular cancer that left him with less gravitas than before (in the Stephen Colbert sense), he fathered a son. Soon after the birth, he had a maternity nurse hold the baby up to the window, pull down its diaper, and verify for him that it had two testicles.

Labels: foul balls, john kruk

Lou Piniella is going to be a color commentator on Fox, paired with Thom Brennaman, at least for a month and a half. If I recall correctly, he had some pretty good insights during that one game during last year's playoffs where he was the third man in the booth -- when he could get a word in edgewise between Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, of course.

Labels: devil rays, joe buck, lou piniella, thom brennaman, tim mccarver, tv