More 25 Things

Since yesterday’s post, A bunch of other guys have written their own “25 Baseball Things” piece. Click here for The Common Man’s. Here for Wezen-Ball’s. Click here for Joe Hojnacki’s at The Pitch.

Longtime reader TC Shillingford, late of Mr. Thursday’s Curious Mechanism, emailed me his own 25 things. Many of them were interesting, but this one may have been the most fun:

12. Based on the information I have available to me (not to mention my understanding of that information), not only am I not opposed to steroid usage in baseball, but I support it. If it really does help keep players healthy and on the field, then I say great. Baseball is a war or attrition, and so many promising young careers have been dissolved by injury. If a wonder pill can keep them on the field, I don’t see the problem with it. If there ARE long-term health problems, though, I’m willing to reconsider my position. I have no animosity toward Barry Bonds, outside of the way he generally comes off as less than pleasant, and, frankly, there have been few times in my life I’ve enjoyed baseball as much as I did when he was playing it the way Ruth did.

I think Jack Marshall just plotzed.

This one was far stranger:

21. I have long thought that Radiohead’s “Exit Music (for a film)” would make an excellent song for a closer. The lyrics are simple and easy to understand, and would serve a closer well, albeit in a somewhat unique fashion. The song is a slow builder, though, so in my fantasy, the closer is of Rivera-like dominance and celebrity, and so the whole crowd gets into it, sings along, and finishes the song after the music has cut out and the inning has begun, perhaps concluding the song just as the closer finishes in the inning.

I love that song but, Um, I don’t see it happening.


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Pete Toms
15 years ago

I’m lock step with assertion #12.

Brandon Isleib
15 years ago

Yeah, a whole crowd singing “We hope that you choke” is not good for a closer…I’ve never known crowds to specify antecedents with any reliability.

Tony Antonielli
15 years ago

Shillingford’s point 12 is right on in my book!

lar
15 years ago

I don’t know, Brandon. College basketball fans are pretty good at clarifying who the “you” is in the “Na Na Na Na Na Hey! *YOU* suck!” chant.

I know you already linked my wezen-ball post, Craig, but here’s another fact that probably should have made its way onto the list: for Christmas 2006, while visiting Massachusetts, my girlfriend took me to Cooperstown for the day. That was a lot of fun, seeing the museum. But what made it so much more special was when we went to the bar (Doubleday’s, I believe) to have a drink. There’s was an old man sitting at the bar who started talking to us about his time in the Yankees farm system in the 1940s. He had a bunch of stories, including some about Yogi Berra. Apparently they’re friends to this day. It was a fantastic hour or so, listening to him tell stories. He gave me a card. His name was Charles Turi, and he told us he was shopping his memoirs around.

I don’t know if he’ll ever sell them, but we had a blast talking to him. I can just imagine his life, retiring to Cooperstown because of how special the game was to him as a young man. Not a bad deal.

Ponch
15 years ago

I have one of my own that I would like to post.  When I was around 10 my family and I stayed in a hotel in Cincinnati for some reason.  The next morning, I had Burger King french toast sticks and got ready to go see the Reds play…circa 1982.  This was awesome…and The Beach Boys were going to play after the game.  Also awesome!  Anyway, I wound up with massive food poisioning from the sticks.  I was beyond miserable all game.  As vaguely as I remember puking in the bathroom, I remember trying to enjoy the Beach Boys afterwards and failing.

Ponch
15 years ago

I have one of my own that I would like to post.  When I was around 10 my family and I stayed in a hotel in Cincinnati for some reason.  The next morning, I had Burger King french toast sticks and got ready to go see the Reds play…circa 1982.  This was awesome…and The Beach Boys were going to play after the game.  Also awesome!  Anyway, I wound up with massive food poisoning from the sticks.  I was beyond miserable all game.  As vaguely as I remember puking in the bathroom, I remember trying to enjoy the Beach Boys afterward and failing.

Vin
15 years ago

Wouldn’t the second one basically be tantamount to a bunch of fans shouting “we hope that you choke” to the closer?

Though, I’ve always said that if I were a ballplayer, my coming-to-bat music would be the bass line at the start of “The National Anthem.”

JakeSuds
15 years ago
TC Shillingford
15 years ago

In theory, the majority of the song in sung by the crowd to themselves, but the final lines are sung to the opposing batters.  I don’t think about this as much as I used to, I’ll admit, but when you work in an office, doing a job that isn’t particularly challenging, you spend a lot more time imagining impossible situations than, perhaps, is healthy.  Soccer fans throughout Europe sing shockingly elaborate songs about the sexual exploits of opposing players, so I don’t see why an American crowd can reference Romeo and Juliet, via Radiohead, and then express their fondest wishes to the batter.