How will the GW crowd make this The West’s fault?

Wabbit Season. Duck Season. A-Rod Season.

Hard to post with Tommy now so you do what you can. Emailing Cincinnati Bill on the game he attended last night at Cincy and the hotdogs I consumed last time there reminded me of a story from another game in Philly: Story: We are leaving Citizen’s bank park in Philly and Kranepooligans and I hit the men’s room before the long drive home. On the way into the men’s room, there was a slight line. A guy put a big tote of hotdogs next to the line by the door and said, “free hotdogs”. I did not take one but I p’d next to many men who had their ****s in one hand and a frank in the other, happily chomping away at the “free”, old, raggety dogs….mmmmm…ambiance.

Chipper Jones has opened the season on A-Rod by being the first fairly credible guy (Canseco has said some ominous things) to speculate that A-Rod may break the record but get ready for the same speculation as to his “legitimacy” as well. I agree. He played in the rampant era of only a few years ago and as far as I’m concerned, once you take HGH, you are forever tainted, because your body fundamentally changes after that. I’m NOT SAYING that I know anything or that he did anything; just that the speculation will be increasing and it has to be entertained on he and really, all others. What they’re doing is superhuman so you wonder. That’s all.

Tony LaRussa is batting the pitcher 8th. Hooray! I agree, Tone. I used to do it in Strat-O-Matic and I used to do it in Earl Weaver Baseball. Of course in Earl Weaver, I was batting Christy Mathewson 8th and Frank Frisch 9th. It makes for an around-the-corner lineup. The first time through, the cleanup hitter is cleanup. Subsequently, there is another good hitter in front of the #3 hitter, who is really your team’s best hitter, power and average considered. Leadoff is over rated. The leadoff hitter is only guaranteed to hit leadoff, ONCE per game.

The difference between 8th and 9th isn’t going to amount to anything: perhaps a handful of AB’s lost per season. And in later innings, in the NATIONAL LEAGUE (real baseball), you are typically hitting for the pitcher after 6 anyhow. So for 2 or 3 cycles, you are putting a better hitter in front of your lineup meat. What’s wrong with that? Baseball is amazing in the stodginess and slowness to deal with new ideas. It has taken baseball 125 years to start playing the 2nd baseman in the outfield with no one on base. WHY? It makes too much sense? Look at Moneyball. Moneyball threatens so much of the baseball hokum that most just curse it rather than realize that it is sound. You know, it’s funny, because we laugh at ancient civilazations for doing dopey things like blaming the weather on the “gods” and throwing young girls into the volcano to “appease” the “gods”, but really, for many things today there is as much hooey as ever. Look at Al Gore. He won the popular vote for US Pres and he is mad as a hatter with the dopey, anti-West, anti-USA global warming nonsense that has more holes in it than Carlos DelGado’s swing. We are not immune to dopiness, is my point. Good job Tony LaRussa on the pitcher in the 8 hole. Wow. Long way around on that one, eh?

Luis Castillo was a great pickup for the Mets. The more I see of this man, the more I like. This guy has an IDEA out there. This man is a PRO. And maybe I can forget Jose Valentin, who looks like Snidely Whiplash of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. It has passed Valentin by mostly, and it was clear in the playoffs last year. Go Luis.

(Whiplash)

Great piece on some breathtaking “news creation” by the liberal, hate-Bush, hate-America media. Have a look. It is blatant. It is unabashed. It is sad. It is happening all the time. Click here to read

Tommy on Tommy

Here is Tommy getting weighed on the same scale that my mom used to weigh her children. He doesn’t seem to mind but sometimes he squawks. This thing is pretty darned accurate–down to the ounce.

Here is the very first time that Tommy hears ANY Mississippi Delta Blues at all and of cour

The Battle of the Bulge

The 28th Pennsylvania : Their Finest Hour

Going through the Europe files last night and I came to Luxembourg. During December 16 to December 26, 1944 in Luxembourg, in a place called the Ardennes forest, Hitler threw his last roundhouse of the war against a stretch of front that was considered impassable due to the rugged terrain. It was felt that no attack would come at this point so Eisenhower was rotating units here for rest and the front was patrolled fairly thinly. My uncle’s division, the 28th Pennsylvania, was put here after 100+ days of straight combat going all the way back to Normandy in June 1944.

Driving with Balloons.

 

Mrs. Pinetar recently coined her own axiom: “It’s hard to drive with balloons in the car”. Amen to that. I mean, you can’t SEE, right? D*** balloons…

 

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Did people notice at the Hone Run Derby at the All-Star game that there were more kayaks in the Bay than landing draft at D-Day? Was anyone besides me laughing that really no balls were hit into the water? Oh well. I guess the wet suit will come in handy on Halloween or shoveling snow. Do they do that in SF?

 

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Ichiro to be signed and announced as signed, likely tomorrow. This makes Hargrove’s mystery, Nixonian resignation all the more juicy. Was the deal to pay off Hargrove and make him go away so that Ichiro-san could sign a long term deal? Boy, oh boy. You know you are a BIG player when you can get a veteran manager dusted, just like that.

 

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And speaking of balloons, take a look at this. Someone emailed me this so I don’t have the credit to cite but don’t sue me, ok? One of the more amazing things I’ve ever read. Makes going over the falls in a barrel seems sensible.

Knee High by the 4th of July

You know they say that your corn should be knee-high by the 4th of July. Here it is July 8th. How did I do? Of course that’s the ONE spot in my yard where I get enough sunlight to prove the axiom true–the rest of it lags behind. Of course, even if it matures, I won’t get any of it. The squirrels will. If I had my way the yard would be like Squirrel-Stalingrad. Nature’s little high-wire act, my a**. The pocket gophers I don’t mind so much. Mrs. Pinetar and I have one we refer to affectionately as “Chip”. My cat eats them like popcorn, though. And they are only “sport-kills” as he will never eat them and he’ll eat just about anything he kills.

Mrs. Pinetar is from the city and she has not seen any of these animals mostly. One day I came home and she informed me that we had a “Beaver” in the yard and then produced photos of a groundhog (See Below)

Now no one in my family is mistaking any groundhog. We’ve all shot plenty of them. Even my mother shot a few. Since she’s a lefty, she’s the only one who could shoot out the bathroom window (a great vantage point but not for right handers). My dad is a big gardener and ONE lousy groundhog can DESTROY his garden in one afternoon. That’s why they were dispatched harshly, and still are. I can’t do that in my yard but if my tomatoes and cukes were eaten, I’d have to re-think that one. –fog

Getting the Belly

Mrs. Pinetar is afraid of McGonnigle, the cat. Not really afraid but she thinks he doesn’t like her and is wary of him. He has nipped at her hand in the past, apparently.

 

Today, I showed her that when he is nice and sleepy, he will be good and he purred for her and he even rolled over and “gave the belly”, or, felt comfortable enough to roll on his back for belly scratches.

 

She said, “yea, he gave the belly for YOU! He wouldn’t do that for me”

 

I said, “…you have to do it right. You have to approach slowly and let him smell your hand for a while, because that’s how he identifies you and assesses threat level. Then, you start with safe scratchies that he likes and keep doing that until he trusts you more and more and then slowly work the scratchies under him and he’ll just flip over and stretch and give you the belly.”

 

She said, “yea, sure, that works for you…”

 

–fog

June 6, 1944 D-Day

Click here to watch an actual high school video project on D-Day (who said video games are a waste of time?)

Today was the day that a lot of people got all shot up so that others could be free.  Amazingly, as time goes on, many young people today do not know much about it.  Is that an indictment of our current education system?  Perhaps.  

The guys who did this are the guys from my dad’s generation.  Every one of my uncles and my dad’s friends, it seemed, were in this fight.  Some Europe, either France or Italy.  Some the Pacific.  Some in India in the CBI theatre.  But they were all in it.  This generation is rapidly passing into history every day now and we owe it to them not to forget these deeds.

Oh, and the rumor is not true that CNN has demanded a posthumous apology from Dwight D. Eisenhower and an admission that, “mistakes were made” on D-Day.

To quote a popular song of 1944: “Praise the Lord and pass the amunition and we’ll all stay free…”

–fog 

Now it’s “Dr.” Sheffield?

I knew it. I predicted it. Today, as predicted, people are bending over backwards to characterize Sheffield’s remarks as anything other than what they are: racist hate speech. They are being spun and reworked on various media outlets. On XM radio, both last night and this morning, I heard these disgusting racist views being turned into a veritable doctoral dissertation on baseball economics.

Really? I didn’t know that Sheffield was that deep. I didn’t know that he cared so. Because when I read the remarks, I got the distinct impression that I was hearing the raw anger of a bigot. But now I find out that I’m wrong. Gary was misunderstood. I’m told the situation he was remarking about is “complex”.

He was commenting on the economics of baseball player development. Yea, apparently, it’s cheaper to “develop” players in the West Indies than in the American inner cities. And this pains Dr. Sheffield.  Apparently he’s just “frustrated”. This twisted, second-guess, morning after logic says that racially insensitive Major League teams would rather “develop players” (whatever that means) overseas than “develop” them here in the USA, and while that doesn’t hurt the numbers of whites in the game, it somehow hurts AOAD. Ok, sure. Got it. And with that line of reasoning, does anyone care to comment that while 13.3% of America is AOAD, the NFL and NBA are way north of 60% AOAD? I guess Professor Sheffield will be coming out strong any day now, calling that “reverse racism”?

It’s funny, because I don’t see any of these deep socio-economic thoughts in his comments.  But like a very Liberal judge “finding” things in the US Constitution that no one else can see or has ever seen, people keep “finding” these nuggets in the text while I can’t for the life of me, see them.

There’s an elephant in the room and he might just as well be wearing a white sheet and a pointy hat. But no one will go NEAR it. That’s a big problem for baseball and for America. This garbage has to stop. It’s NOT OK. This guy needs to apologize fully as well as any print or broadcast “journalist” types who are blowing smoke up our collective bippy on this item.

I don’t recall anyone bending over backwards for John Rocker or Jimmy the Greek or Al Campanis. Those situations weren’t viewed as “complex”. It was real simple. Those people were eviscerated and hounded out of jobs and careers overnight. No explanations. No second chances. They apologized, in some cases groveled. They apologized over and over and over and over, but it was NEVER enough. The Liberal media and disingenuous Liberals everywhere needed a scalp and they would stop at nothing until they got it. And you may like that brand of harsh, Old West justice. That’s great.  Good for you. But then it should work both ways, no? And it CLEARLY doesn’t work both ways. And that’s wrong.

Ask yourself this question: If you made comments of this ilk, would you still have a job today? Would you have, at least, been called down to Human Resources for “further review”? Be honest.

One last thought: Why is it so important to your politics; your world view— that some people are allowed to talk like this and others are not? What greater good flows from that exactly? –fog

Cheny is Evil. The Taliban? Misunderstood.

I got to talking politics a little with the woman next to me at work. Somehow it came up where she repeated the oft-chanted, Democratic/Liberal-talking-point, “Cheney is evil”. Now this woman is older (50’s) and is pretty darned smart, so when I heard the talking point come out of her, verbatim, I was fascinated. I asked her if she was joking. “No”, she said she was serious, and kept repeating that “he is just evil”. I said, “well, what has he done that is evil? Can you give me some examples?”