Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Jeff Pearlman continues to loathe his job


The working conditions are terrible. None of his colleagues do their job. The whole damn operation is a waste of time. I'm just waiting for the "I don't believe in nothin' no more, I'm goin' to law school!" post.

Not that I don't see where Pearlman is coming from. Press boxes are bad places to watch games. Reporters do ask inane questions. Athletes do give vapid answers. That whole scene is rather silly.

But rather than mope about it, Jeff, do something about it. Tell SI that you're done with the conventional beat and you want to cover stories differently. Tell them you want to eschew the box, dispense with the postgame interviews and ask the questions you're presumably not allowed to ask. You wonder why no one asks if Jay Cutler is overrated? Ask it yourself! You want to rain on the Bears' playoff pretensions? Do it!

But for God's sake, drop the pity party. Everyone has a job they hate from time to time. None of us like being away from our kids for work. All of us, however, sack the hell up and get on with it.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:13pm (14) Comments

Tom Brookens Sighting


You probably have to be in your mid-30s and had to have lived in Michigan in the mid-80s in order to care about this.

Anybody know what John Wockenfuss is up to?
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 4:49pm (5) Comments

Chalk pulls a Favre


Remember Dave Chalk's retirement from Bugs & Cranks last week? Well, he's takin' a mulligan.

You'll recall my bewilderment re: Dave's stated dissatisfaction over steroids and money and stuff ruining baseball, and wondering why that all of a sudden became a problem for him when it was nothing really new. He responds, with the upshot being that 2008-2009 were particularly bad in those departments, thus fueling his dissatisfaction. The substance is too long to blockquote, so click on through to read his explanation.

I like to see more baseball bloggers, not less, so good for Dave for taking a week and rethinking it all.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 2:10pm (7) Comments

My Morning in Exile


Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall fell. I'm obviously not equipped to do the event historical justice in this space, so I'll share my own shallow personal remembrance: I was in the 11th grade, taking an advanced placement government and politics class. The teacher was way more interested in international relations stuff, however, so the syllabus and text for the class was premised almost exclusively on Cold War politics. With the fall of the wall, the entire lesson plan for the class was essentially mooted. It was at that moment that I realized "hey, maybe they're not teaching us everything we need to know in school."

Secondary remembrance: the fall of the Wall led directly to the Scorpions' late-career hit "Winds of Change." Who would have thunk that a band who once put out an album called "Virgin Killer" with a cover depicting a nude pre-teen girl covered in broken glass would one day tell us everything we needed to know about the thawing of NATO-Warsaw Pact relations? Anyway:

  • The Phillies say no to Pedro Feliz's option; may activate a time machine and get the exact same player five years younger in the form of Adrian Beltre in free agency.


  • Some McCourtenfreude from the Boston Globe.


  • No, Sammy Sosa is not doing an homage to that awesome Eddie Murphy SNL skit.


  • Lackey to Milwaukee? Eh, why not? It's not the craziest thing Olney has said recently.


  • The Rangers have pitching depth from which to deal. Hopefully for them it will work out better than all that catching depth they had last year.


    • One definition of happiness: receiving a case schedule from a court and realizing that you'll be long gone before any of the hard stuff has to be done.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:38am (10) Comments