Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Monday, October 19, 2009

NBC Comment of the Day


If St. Louis baseball fans are so great and "die-hard" why aren't the Browns still in St. Louis?

-- Commenter "Bamboozled" in "Teh Yankees are the greatest, dood!" post.

I often use this feature to mock, but I can't decide if this one is mock-worthy or brilliant. I'm leaning brilliant. The actual mouth breathers over there probably think that the Browns moved to Phoenix in the late 80s.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 7:21pm (12) Comments

Nats tickets? Really?


From the military police blotter:

The Marine Corps said Monday a sergeant charged with faking war injuries to obtain freebies intended for wounded warriors will plead guilty . . . The 34-year-old Marine from Springhill, La., faces eight counts carrying prison terms of up to 31 years. He is accused of bluffing his way into 33 events last year, including six rock concerts, two Washington Nationals baseball games and a Washington Redskins football game.

I understand the rock concerts and Redskins games. Those are expensive! But why anyone would risk their freedom and honor over Nats tickets is beyond me. They have roughly the same value of a spent Metro card, don't they?
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 3:13pm (11) Comments

Great Moments in Supply and Demand


From Peter King, the latest from Yankee Stadium:

So I went to Yankee Stadium the other night to watch Yankees-Angels. Pretty cold. In the bottom of the fourth, a vendor came by. "Hot chocolate!'' he yelled. "Hot chocolate!''

I looked at his badge: Hot chocolate $10.

Sixteen ounces of chocolate-flavored water. Ten bucks. I went online to try to quantify the profit margin, and the best I can figure is the Yankees must be making about $9.15 profit on each hot chocolate sold.

I guess the fact that you have a captive audience screws up one's ability to analyze this from a purely microeconomic perspective. Then again, I went snowmobiling in Yellowstone three years ago and it was 25 below when we started out (reached a balmy 8 degrees later in the afternoon). At our lunch stop we got free hot cocoa. I probably would have paid $79 for it, but I'm assuming the snowmobile outfitter wanted return business one day and decided to take the hit.

(thanks from MooseinOhio who, unlike me, can bear to read Peter King)
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 2:01pm (14) Comments

My Morning in Exile


So I go to the science museum with the kids yesterday. They have this feature where, via a gigantic lever, a person can lift up a full-sized car. My five year-old daughter and four year-old boy think it's awesome. When they ask me how they could lift a car, I tell them that the thing attached to the car and the rope is a lever, and that while the reasons are kind of complicated, it's basically a machine that helps people move heavy things. They accept that, later talking about "the machine that helped them lift a car." A few minutes after the kids used it, some full-grown adults of the redneck persuasion lift the car. Overheard: "there's gotta be some trick to this thing." Also overheard was a sentence that had "one of them optical illusions" in it.

Question of the day: are we sliding back into a dark age in which science is viewed as magic -- and in some cases sorcery -- or did we never truly leave the dark ages in the first place? Now, on to more enlightened fare:

  • The post in which I challenge the assumption that Yankees fans are "the best in the world." This thing hasn't been live that long, and I've already been called an idiot by multiple commenters.


  • Best of three Division Series? No thanks.


  • Unwritten rulebook? What unwritten rulebook?


  • Plaschke thinks the Dodgers really screwed up by not following through with that Cliff Lee trade back in July. Never mind that there was never a Cliff Lee-to-L.A. deal on the table back in July.


  • Clouds so swift, Rain won't lift. Gate won't close, Railings froze. Rockies won't drop, old Brad Hawpe, he ain't goin' nowhere.


  • Bobby Valentine a finalist for the Indians' job. Which kind of makes no sense to me, but it's tough out there, so who am I to say that someone shouldn't take whatever job he can get?


    • Bread. Apples. Very small rocks. Cider. Gravy. Cherries. Mud. Churches. Lead! Lead!

    A Duck!
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 12:13pm (50) Comments

    And That Happened: NLCS


    Phillies 11, Dodgers 0: I'd jump all over the Kuroda start, but (a) the alternative would have been Chad Billingsley, right, and he didn't have much of anything himself last night; and (b) even if he gave up one run over eight innings or something, he still would have lost because Cliff Lee is the freakin' Terminator (8 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 10K). They could have gone with Randy Wolf, of course, who hasn't pitched since (I think) the 1988 NLCS, but at least he gets a turn tonight. In other news, Ryan Howard's triple made me tired.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:36am (7) Comments