Baseball-Related Program Activities

The predictions were posted on March 29th, and exactly seven months later, it's now time to see how everyone did.


(Levi's predictions, made in the comments to the March 29th post, didn't actually include the Rockies, which I didn't notice until I was preparing this table. If he wants to lie in the comments to this post and claim he meant to put them in first or second place in the NL West, that's his prerogative.)

Labels: bill james, predictions, sports illustrated

Man, I'm sick of the Red Sox always winning the World Series! (Now there's something no one's said in about 90 years.)

I've still got plenty of baseball chili in my fridge. Hope it works just as well tomorrow night as "Heroes" chili.

Labels: red sox, rockies, world series

This needs to be stopped now.

Labels: advertising, sign, world series

Labels: red sox, rockies, sign, world series

At Fenway Park this season, the Red Sox averaged 101.4% capacity. Actually, before you click on that link, try to guess which team drew the lowest percentage.

Labels: attendance, devil rays, red sox

One problem with starting the World Series on a Wednesday is that I don't go straight home from work on Wednesdays; I volunteer at Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic, recording textbooks. Now, I don't have a problem watching baseball on TiVo delay, but the big problem here was that I had to make my baseball chili ahead of time (which I did on Wednesday).

Anyway, as I was leaving the RFB&D studio at 7:00 tonight, I heard a loud voice coming from across the parking lot. My first thought was, "Wow, someone's really talking loud on their cell phone." Then I heard a different loud voice, and thought, "Wow, why are those two people talking so loud to each other?" And then I realized what the voices were, and realized that someone was sitting in their car with the windows down listening to the World Series on the radio. I hummed loudly as I walked to my car because I didn't want to hear Jon Miller give the score. (Fortunately, all I really heard from him was the phrase "It's a change-up.")

Not that hearing the score at that point would have mattered much.

Since I did end up watching it on TV, I can report that in the bottom of the 3rd, Joe Buck referred to Chris Myers as "our little jub-jub." This is because, when Joe Buck was on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" last week, Conan offered $1,000 for his favorite charity if he'd work "jub-jub" somewhere into the game broadcast, "jub-jub" being something that Conan would blurt at random moments in the "Simpsons" writers' room.

Labels: chris myers, conan o'brien, joe buck, jub-jub, world series

To kick off the World Series, I've got a piece up today at the Poetry Foundation's site about baseball and poetry. Play ball!

Labels: poetry

In the weeks after Rod Beck died this summer, I kept thinking I'd write a brief obituary, talking about what a fun player he was to watch, about the way his arm dangled, about the way he got guys out for a couple of seasons there at the end despite having almost nothing left, about the period when he lived in--and welcomed strangers to--a trailer behind the minor-league ballpark that was his home stadium. I never got around to it.

Beck was a favorite, and I missed him when he retired. When he died, no one who knew him had anything but good to say about him as a person and a friend, but it seemed to be quietly assumed that his death had been the result of one of the addictions he had fought throughout his career.

Today, Amy K. Nelson has a piece at ESPN that tells the whole story of Beck's last years, from the perspective of his friends and family. He comes out of it seeming even nicer and more thoughtful than I expected, but that only makes his death--and what his addiction did to his family--even sadder.

RIP, Shooter.

Labels: Rod Beck

But he doesn't look particularly happy to be there. Perhaps the people he's with -- I assume that's his niece and her kids, also from the future -- are distracting him from keeping score and/or reading, and are annoying him by wearing Red Sox paraphernalia instead of Cardinals items. Or maybe he's just worried about the time travel paradox.

(You may also note that Fox's graphic has misidentified him.)

Labels: indians, james taylor, red sox

Early in tonight's Red Sox-Indians game at Fenway Park, the Fox TV cameras spotted lifelong Sox fan Stephen King reading in the stands. Now, as I've admitted before, I read at the ballpark--but only when I'm alone, and only between innings. King, on the other hand, was reading during the game.

He fully redeemed himself later, though. When sideline reporter Chris Myers sat next to him and asked him about being caught reading, King responded:

With baseball, you can read eighteen pages just in the inning breaks. And now that Fox is doing the games, you can read twenty-seven pages because the commercial breaks are longer!

Now if only he'd thought to describe, in bloodcurdling detail, what he thought should happen to Scooter the talking baseball.

Postscript: Too bad the Red Sox weren't playing the Yankees--Stephen King could have probably written a whole novel about their zombie problem.

{Animated gif of zombie Shelley Duncan by rocketlass.}

Labels: Scooter, Shelley Duncan, Stephen King, zombies

Found while I was looking for something else: a newspaper ad for KWK radio in St. Louis.

Labels: advertising, Cardinals, kwk

Via Sports By Brooks: get ready for the late-night comedy of Joe Buck.

Labels: joe buck

It's competing against actual postseason baseball in most of the country, but tonight's episode of "Journeyman" on NBC is titled "Game Three"; the plot is that Our Hero ends up back in time in October 1989 and has to either warn people about the forthcoming earthquake or warn people not to bet on the Giants. Since the show takes place in San Francisco, I guess it was inevitable (although this is only the third episode).

Labels: giants, journeyman