Baseball-Related Program Activities

When Jim and I started this blog more than four years ago, we shared a couple of fundamental principles. To wit:

1 The Devil Rays suck and will forever suck.

2 Bud Selig is evil, or at least incompetent.

Good to know at least one of those truths still shines.

Congratulations, Rays, on your first pennant of many. Congratulations, Phillies, on your World Championship, and congratulations to longtime Baseball Related Program Activities favorites Matt Stairs, Geoff Jenkins, Jamie Moyer, and So Taguchi. I'm glad Ryan Howard buck-bucking onto the dogpile didn't kill Brad Lidge.

Labels: brad lidge, bud selig, devil rays, geoff jenkins, jamie moyer, matt stairs, phillies, ryan howard, so taguchi, world series

Double-Booked Tropicana Field Holds First Haunted House World Series

"[D]ates for the haunted house were reserved in late July, a time when the possibility of the stadium being used for the World Series did not seem realistic to anyone in the Rays' front office."

Labels: devil rays, phillies, the onion

If the World Series had been Dodgers-Red Sox instead of Phillies-Rays, Fox's TV coverage would have gone something like this...

Joe Buck: Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny Manny?

Tim McCarver: Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny Manny, Manny Manny Manny Manny.

Joe: Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny -- Chris Myers?

Chris Myers: Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny. Manny Manny Manny, Joe.

Joe: Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny -- there's a grand slam by Rafael Furcal -- Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny.

Tim: Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny Manny (continues until end of inning)

By the way, don't let anyone claim that the Rays are a "small-market" team -- Tampa-St. Petersburg is the 13th-largest media market in the U.S. (link is to a Nielsen PDF). Larger than Seattle-Tacoma (#14), larger than Minneapolis-St. Paul (#15), larger than Miami-Ft. Lauderdale (#16).

Labels: dodgers, joe buck, Manny Ramirez, red sox, tim mccarver

Well...we knew back in April that something was happening, but not necessarily this!

Labels: devil rays

Locations scrolling across the globe on the "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" set this week: New York (as usual), Cooperstown, Williamsport, Tampa Bay.

Labels: daily show, devil rays

Labels: cats

Appearing on "The Colbert Report" tonight, baseball statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com compared Obama to the Rays -- and McCain to the Seattle Pilots.

Labels: barack obama, devil rays, john mccain, pilots

"HD" stands for "Highly Delicious" (or, perhaps, "Holycow, Dodgers!").

In retrospect, Levi and I saw this coming at Wrigley Field on September 2nd, when we saw the Astros beat the Cubs 9-7 in 11 innings -- a game which obviously impressed neither of us enough to write about it on this blog. (Also, that game lasted long enough that we had to get to bed, one of us to go to work, and the other of us to catch a flight back to L.A.)

Labels: chili, cubs, dodgers

Courtesy of my father, here's the last half-inning of Vin Scully calling Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September 9, 1965. I've heard a bit of him on the radio during both Dodgers division series games so far, and he still sounds pretty much the same, 43 years later.

During the regular season, for the games he broadcasts (everything but away games east of the Rockies), Vin does the entire game on TV, with the first three innings simulcast on the radio; Charley Steiner and Rick Monday do the rest of the game on the radio. For the playoffs, with no local TV, Vin is doing the first three and last three innings on the radio, which means he gets to take three innings off. In his L.A. Times column today, T.J. Simers suggested that he uses the time to take an extended bathroom break, but I prefer to imagine him going over to the WGN booth to try to distract Pat Hughes and Ron Santo. (Yes, I know he's too much of a professional to actually do that.)

Labels: charley steiner, los angeles times, pat hughes, rick monday, ron santo, t.j. simers, vin scully