Today at THT

Things to read as you wonder whether it’s unethical to tell your five year-old daughter that there will be no shots at this morning’s doctor’s appointment when you know fully well that, yes, there will be shots:

  • John Brattain is none too pleased with the A-Rod stuff, but it has very little if anything to do with A-Rod taking steroids. He’s serious too, dude. He’s quotin’ Dostoevsky and everything.
  • Brian Borawski drops some business on y’alls. Brewers and AirTran are teaming up for some sort of limited naming rights deal. I don’t root for airlines, but I hope this doesn’t mean the end of the Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines. They give you chocolate chip cookies when you fly!
  • Sean Smith talks minor league defense. There’s probably a great book to be written about the subject. It would explain how Ron Gant was ever a second baseman and stuff like that.
  • Finally, over at Fantasy Focus, Derek Carty has Part Three of his series on drafting injury risks. The fun part? This week’s entry contains the caveats to last week’s entry. It’s kind of like how the medallion in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” had the instructions to lower the staff a few inches in God’s honor on the back. As such, if you go into your fantasy draft without reading this week’s entry, you’re digging in the wrong place.
  • Fine. So I’m lying to my daughter. She’s going to get some Timbits afterwords, though, so it’s not like I’m the worst father ever.


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    dlf
    15 years ago

    As long as you don’t tell ShysterGirl that ‘this will hurt me more than it hurts you’ you should be fine.  But it’s eternal damnation for any parent who trots out that line.

    themarksmith
    15 years ago

    You tell ShysterGirl there won’t be, and then once inside the examination room, you tell her the truth and cackle maniacally while holding a tongue depresser and cotton swab. Bouncing side-to-side is preferrable.

    John Brattain
    15 years ago

    Heh.

    When it came time for my first daughter to go through that, I arranged beforehand to have myself injected with a saline solution to demonstrate that getting a shot was no big deal.

    Worked like a charm—she took her needle like a trooper.

    I figured that was the way to go so I made arrangments to do likewise when it came time for my youngest to receive hers. I strode into the office with a mix of confidence and pride thinking about what a wonderful dad I was being willing to get a useless shot just so my daughters wouldn’t be traumatized.

    Everything went according to form until it was time for her to get the shot. It took myself, the nurse and the receptionist to hold her down while the doctor did her duty. It involved more screaming than a slasher flick (some of it from my daughter too).

    The nurse and receptionist looked worse for the experience and when I exited the office into the waiting room I was greeted with glares generally seen from witnesses at executions of child-killers.

    Have fun!

    Best Regards

    John

    lar
    15 years ago

    It’s hard to say what’s going on with Midwest. They survived a take-over bid by AirTran about a year ago, but the economy has really gotten to them since then. The Brewers canceled their charter deal with them, but I don’t know who they’re using now.

    The AirTran sponsorship is for the on-the-field party area in right field. It used to be called the Mercedes Benz Field Haus. Quite the drop in prestige there, I’d say.

    Those Midwest chocolate chip cookies are absolutely beloved around here. You can buy them in the stores, at Miller Park, and at the Bradley Center.

    Pete Toms
    15 years ago

    Timbits!  Didn’t know you folks south of the border knew from such!  My youngest loves em, the chocolate variety.  Craig your standing as an honorary hoser is further cemented.  Take er easy eh!

    Craig Calcaterra
    15 years ago

    Yeah, we’ve got a Tim Hortons on every corner here in Columbus.  Kind of an accident of history, really. Wendy’s bought TH, oh, ten years ago, and Wendy’s is based in the suburb of Dublin, Ohio.  They decided to use Cbus as a U.S. lab in order to determine how best to roll out Hortons across the U.S.  We have a lot of half-Wendy’s, half-Hortons stores.

    That’s all over now as Wendy’s first spun off Horton’s and just recently got bought out by Arby’s, but we still have our TH’s everywhere.

    Nick
    15 years ago

    I will willingly pay a few extra bucks to fly Midwest with their large seats and amazing cookies.  On one flight, I asked the flight attendant if she would bring back an extra cookie if there were any left following the first pass through the cabin.  She came back with a Ziploc bag full of about 25 cookies—just for me.  Survive, Midwest; Survive!

    studes
    15 years ago

    Sorry, Craig, but yes, that is unethical. By THT rules, you are now forced to read this book from cover to cover and send John a ten-page book report on why you’re a miserable excuse for a dad.

    Chris H.
    15 years ago

    As to ShysterGirl, you’re absolutely doing the right thing, and it’s not even remotely unethical IMO.  At 5, you have to play a lot of ends-justify-the-means games.  Look, nobody questions the ethics of lying about Santa, and this is way more important.

    Plus, if you don’t lie, the car ride over will be sheer torture.

    As to Midwest, I have made a habit of flying them any chance I get.  Being so far north in IL, it’s actually a bit easier for me to go to MKE instead of ORD or MDW anyway, and the wider seats/etc. make for a very enjoyable trip.  Plus, the cookies are amazing.

    Sadly, my current employer won’t usually allow me to fly them if they’re more expensive than some cattle-car-esque flight out of ORD…

    Craig Calcaterra
    15 years ago

    Dave—I always felt like this blog, both in content and volume—was a living, breathing demonstration on why I was a miserable excuse for a dad.  I can tell you what some city council member in Miami had for breakfast this morning, but I’m struggling to remember my son’s middle name.

    Alas.  All for the greater glory of THT . . .