Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Killing time until 8:07 tonight


With a question raised in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch mailbag: if you were the Cardinals, would you trade Albert Pujols for Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp?

No, no one is really suggesting it. It's more of a "would you rather . . ." kind of game. And for the record, my usual answers to these things are Veronica over Betty; Betty over Wilma; Bailey over Jennifer; and Mary Ann over Ginger.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 3:38pm (22) Comments

And now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like


The Giants' Double-A team moves to Richmond and gets a new monicker:

"Flying Squirrels" was announced this afternoon as the nickname for the new Richmond Double-A baseball franchise. Also under consideration as finalists were Rhinos, Flatheads, Flying Squirrels and Hush Puppies. The new team will begin playing at The Diamond next season and is affiliated with the San Francisco Giants.

Personally, I like hush puppies. Not for a team name or anything. I just like hush puppies.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 2:52pm (13) Comments

Remembering the ‘89 Quake


The Chronicle's Henry Schulman was in the press box before Game 3. As with all good accounts of such things, Schulman captures the tragic, the comic and the simply insane:

Like the fans, many of us assumed power would be restored and the game would be played. Then came word from transistor radios (remember those?) that "the Bay Bridge had collapsed" and "the entire city was on fire," exaggerations both, but enough for us to realize we needed to go to the field to cover not a baseball game, but a stadium evacuation . . . In another scene hard to forget, Giants manager Roger Craig quickly got into his pickup truck in full uniform, wanting to beat the crowd to the freeway, and rode off. We always assumed the Humm Baby came to work on a horse.

The Chronicle is running a number of these actually. I always find personal rememberances like these to be far more enlightening than top-down news reports.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:21pm (6) Comments

My Morning in Exile


If anyone cares, I finished season three of "The Wire" last night. It just gets better and better, as you all said it would. Again, no spoilers for those of us who haven't seen it all yet, but I will offer a question: why on Earth didn't HBO do an Omar/Brother Mouzone spinoff? If people watched "Simon and Simon" and "Hardcastle and McCormick" they sure as hell would have watched "Omar and Mouzone," wouldn't they?

  • That NLCS preview I mentioned earlier.


  • Unless the baby was coming out of Hamels' body as opposed to his wife's I'm having trouble seeing why he got to ride in a police car to the hospital. Why wasn't he forced to drive his minivan like every other expectant parent?


  • The Yankees may need Joba to start after all.


  • After thirty years, isn't it much easier to simply ignore one another and go on about your business than it is to go through the hassle of actually divorcing?


  • You mean to tell me that the division series outdrew the cage match in which Dusty Rhodes won both the TV Title and one month's worth of services from Baby Doll after defeating Tully Blanchard? Unpossible!


  • Pro tip: don't lend the Rangers anything. Seriously, don't even float them bus fare.


    • Note: it's also not acceptable to give up any "Hardcastle and McCormick" spoilers, as that's next in the NetFlix queue.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:18am (16) Comments

    I like the Dodgers, but it’s gonna be close


    I wrote up an NLCS Preview over at NBC. I'll be honest and say that this thing could go either way, but if I have to pick, I'll go with the Dodgers, mostly because of bullpens.

    The more I think about this matchup, the more excited I get. I think the Yankees will beat the Angels fairly easily, but I think we're going to get some great baseball out of the Dodgers and Phillies.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 9:55am (22) Comments