Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Ringolsby on Blogging

Kaufman: You say you don't know that much about the Internet and I wonder how you feel about being a blogger now. There's this trumped-up difference between we trained journalists -- professionals -- and bloggers. I wonder if you buy into any of that or care about it or how you feel about it now that you're writing for a blog.

Ringolsby: I'm not real sure what all the technical terms are. In my mind it's a Web site. We're providing news and coverage of what goes on. I'm not going to say what's a blog or what's not a blog because I don't even understand where the terminology "blog" comes from.

There's some interaction with readers who want to ask questions and stuff. But I've seen some Web sites where they just get into being a bunch of guys sitting around screaming and yelling at each other and stuff. We don't have that kind of setup. We don't have that type of interaction created. I don't feel that much different except it's hard to take a computer screen into the bathroom in the morning.

Kaufman: You gotta get a laptop.

Retiring Wahoo

Those who want to bury Wahoo have to acknowledge why he has lasted so long -- that in doing so they would be burying more than a racist caricature; they would be burying a part of our childhood and our culture. They must acknowledge that our collective attachment to Wahoo has little to nothing to do with an intent to disparage a race of people. So much of the resistance to attempts to get rid of Wahoo is a natural reaction by Tribe fans who feel that those who protest Wahoo are accusing them of racism, and telling them that there is something fundamentally wrong with those magical trips to the ballgame. This would offend anyone’s sense of justice. These activists must acknowledge the innocent aspects of our attachment to Wahoo before their appeals to his harmful effect will ever be well-received.

Once Tribe fans believe that our love for Wahoo is understood, we will be more apt to ask ourselves why we would want to be attached any longer to a symbol as potentially demeaning to a race of people as Wahoo is.

Diagnosing Bunning

Republican movers and shakers are pressuring Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning of Kentucky not to run for a third term in the U.S. Senate. It's been reported that his "cranky" and "cantankerous" moods are alienating party bigwigs. But it's his baseball career that's made Bunning a grouch.

Maybe Bunning is grouchy because he never played in a World Series -- even though he was a key part of the 1961 Detroit Tigers, who won 101 games, and the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies, who had a six and a half game lead with 12 games left.

Maybe Bunning is grouchy because despite winning 224 games and throwing two no-hitters, including a perfect game, he had to wait 25 years after his retirement to get into the Hall of Fame.

Maybe Bunning is grouchy because was a four-time 19-game winner instead of a five-time 20-game winner.

Or maybe Bunning is grouchy because he led the NL four times in hit batsmen, and you don't excel in something like that unless you're ... well, cranky and cantankerous by nature.

McGwire Emerges

In this instance, McGwire agreed to an interview with the understanding that it would focus on his work as a hitting tutor, and not on other issues. But at one point, McGwire did address the criticism he has received for being linked to performance-enhancing drugs.

“I’m such an easygoing guy,” he said. “I don’t need to sweep away any bitterness.” His foray into tutoring, he said, is not about what it can do for him, but what he has to offer. “I believe I have so much knowledge to give and help people improve as baseball players,” he said.

For the four major leaguers who were in his midst this winter — Matt Holliday and Bobby Crosby of the Athletics, and Chris Duncan and Skip Schumaker of the Cardinals —McGwire’s guidance was like a cross between fantasy camp and physics class.

“As They See ‘Em”

The conundrum of umpiring is neatly posed by the peculiar rule of the knee-to-shoulder strike zone, which Mr. Weber calls the sole instance of a playing area that is demarcated only in the minds of officials. “The strike zone isn’t, nor has it ever been, set in stone, or even sand,” he writes. “It’s set in air, a concept, not a thing. It can’t be transported from one ballpark to another, but like the memory of a secret code it has to be formulated by each umpire each time he squats behind the catcher, every game, every pitch.”

One umpire compares the strike zone to a Supreme Court ruling: the language may be clear, but generations will reinterpret it.

On another train, on another plane

Today at THT