Say It Ain’t So! Mark Patrick Leaving The Big Chair?

Just got the sad news, which is “unofficial”, that Mark Patrick is leaving the XM Radio 175 Baseball This Morning Show.  No details were given but I suspect that it might not have been totally amicable on both sides.  According to XM sources, Buck Martinez is still under K and will return to that show and format with some one or more as yet, un-named co-hosts.

My take on the show is thus: In year 1, with Mark Patrick, Buck Martinez and Larry F. Bowa, the show redefined good sports radio.  They had unbelievable rapport and chemistry and weaved in and out of serious and silly with little trouble.  It was as if you were evesdropping in a big league clubhouse when the guys were coming in and getting their coffee and talking about the games of the night before.  It was fantastic radio.  The humor was superb.  The proof that it was great was evident in the fact that EVERYONE that year in baseball, was using the show’s catchphrase “stay hot”.  You heard “stay hot” popping up everywhere.  You KNEW that all of baseball was tuning these guys in every morning–and you loved it.

Year 2 saw Orestes DeStrada substrituted in for Bowa, who left to coach for the Yankees.  DeStrada was chosen most likely for his attributes, unfortunately for the listener, he had absolutely NO sense of humor or appreciation for what they had built the show into, the previous season.  It was a tough listen for that year and a half.  The suits at XM did a lot of damage to a very valuable property by casting DeStrada and then by refusing to rectify their obvious error in doing so.

Year 3 was the same lineup as Year 2, until Orestes was let go or left; they never really made that clear.  What was clear was the spring in Mark and Buck’s step when the decision was made.  Clearly, they were unhappy with the year 2-3 cast.

The decision to stick with just Patrick and Buck was decent.  You were always hoping that they’d find the “magic guy” like Bowa was, but you knew that would be a tall order.  After the debacle of Orestes, you were just happy that they didn’t go plugging just any old baseball fringe-lifer in there in order to have 3 guys.  It worked for the most part and Mark Patrick was again able to do his silly schtick.

The forays into Bill Ripken weren’t real good listens.  Bill Ripken has a sense of humor, but I don’t think it jelled well with Buck and The Big Chair.  They needed to look back to when it was great: with Bowa; and look to recreate that atmosphere, if at all possible.

***

Now that Patrick is gone, we need to complain long and loud and bitterly to XM to do the right thing and give us back The Big Chair.  So here it is.

This is the petition.  Leave a comment below and leave a short message and when it hits 500 or 1000, we’ll pass it along to XM.  Whattayasay?

The phone number for XM 175 is 866-MLB-ONXM.

Beyond that, this is the email address for XM radio comments.

Listnercare@xmradio

Mushnick, Hernandez: Fighting the Good Fight!

From Phil Mushnick’s column in today’s (Friday) NY Post (Click here to read): 

With incivility the way of the modern sports world, the Phillies, at home Tuesday, were down, 2-0 to the Mets, but had runners on first and third.

On SNY, Keith Hernandez took a well-timed shot at the constant ear-aching and pounding “Big League Experience” provided through the public address speakers at Shea Stadium: “Notice how they don’t have the music blaring here in a tight situation? Kinda nice.”

Gary Cohen and Ron Darling, working with Hernandez, at that very moment could’ve formed a united and populist front with Hernandez. They could have said, “Amen, amen to that!” That would have had some impact.

But they seized such an opportunity and came up with nothing; they suddenly went silent, not a word out of either. Pity.

***

Now I’ve no idea which came first, my email to Phil Mushnick or his idea to put this in his column.  He did say he had seen it himself so I am willing to bet that I had no effect on his inclusion of it.  I really don’t care either way, I’m just glad he’s (along with Keith Hernandez) fighting the good fight on Shea’s (and all of MLB really) ear-splitting, obnoxious, self-created noise problem.  The noise detracts so much from the game experience, that I would say that it keeps people away.  I know it does for me.  When you add up the drive, the tolls, the $14.00 parking that’s impossible to find now, with the new stadium taking it all up, the obnoxious drunks at the game, the outrageous prices for ANYTHING you can name (water included); when you add it all up and throw on a heaping scoop of lose-your-hearing sound effects assaulting you and making conversation WITH THE PERSON IN THE SEAT NEXT TO YOU downright challenging, then the balance is tipped and I’ll save the $200.00 and get a better view at home, where Keith Hernandez will at least have the guts to TELL me, “…hey, Shea is too loud–it’s obnoxious here…”

Thank you Phil Mushnick.  You are always fighting the good fight!

–fog 

Babe Ruth Grave Robbers

It used to be that if you were famous, you’d be buried in Westchester, NY.  The place is crawling with cemeteries.  Right across the street from my workplace is Kensico, where Lou Gerhig is buried and on the other side of the valley is the Catholic burial ground where Babe Ruth and Billy Martin are buried.  I was on the website for the place and noticed that even though they are Roman Catholic, Arthur Flegenheimer is buried in there.  Anyone know who that was?  That’s right, it’s Dutch Schultz.  Schultz was perhaps one of the worst mass murdering gangsters the USA has ever harbored, and, by the way, he was Jewish.  Go figure.

When I did my Yankee talk at the home, many were surprised that I hadn’t been to Ruth’s grave.  I’m not into graves, what can I say?  I DID carve a life size statue of the guy, however, and am carving another, so I thought that someday I’d go over there.  Yesterday was that day.  It took 5 minutes to drive over.  What fascinates me about this stuff (besides the unbelievable ornateness of the cemeteries up there) is what kind of stuff people think to leave at the grave.  We saw quite a few bats and balls and weird stuff at Gehrig’s grave and so I thought this would be no different.  It wasn’t.

This is the view as you walk up a sharp hillside from the access road.  Behind you is a fantastic view of the valley.  It’s a shame that they waste the view on the stiffs. 

At first, Ruth’s stone looks overblown, but it gets lost in the grandeur of the other monuments and mausoleums in this place.  We’re talking top shelf.  In fact, all in all, I’d say the Bambino estate has shown some restraint, believe it or not. 

 

The first thing that you notice is the flags.  Little Yankee flags.  Not too bad.  Go Yanks, right?  Then it gets better. 

 

I love this.  There were maybe 5 different of those little “helmet Sundae” helmets.  You know, the kind that the ice cream comes in?  The 9 dollar ice cream is great and apparently, they make a great tribute to the Babe.  The “K” hat?  I have no idea.  The stones?  Anyone know who does this or why?  Gehrig’s grave and Martin’s grave all have the little rocks on them.  I do not understand that.  DaVinci Code?  Harry Potter?  Col. Potter? 

 

I wonder if Cardinal Spellman knew how many professional girls that Babe took up with?

I love this one: Sunflower seeds!  Haha, as if the Babe can enjoy them!  Sure, he’ll love that.  I don’t think they even knew what those seeds were in the 1920′s, but hey, go for it.  Score some posthumous points with the Babe.  Another little sundae helmet. 

 

The baseball cards strew around were another puzzling one.  There were dozens of them.  And almost no Yankees of any kind.  Guys like Marcus Giles and Joe McEwing.  Guys who had NO POSSIBLE connection to the Babe or the Yanks or the Roaring Twenties or baseball greatness.  I mean, we’re talking Joe McEwing!

And there were all manner of balls left there.  Mostly baseballs but a few softballs and several plastic whiffle type balls as well.  Most of them were signed by the leavers.  Some just said things like “To: Babe From: Maria” as if Ruth would know and appreciate Maria’s gesture.  Some of it was kid handwriting, so you can give that a pass, but others were definitely left by adults. 

 

Here’s a good one: A Yankee Schedule and soggy.  Perhaps the Babe needs to KNOW who the Yankees are playing today?  Now, he can reach up and thumb through the soggy schedule.  How thoughtful.  And the Yo-Yo was a nice touch.  Maybe the Babe would get bored in there and need to “walk the dog” with the light up YoYo.  Note the sunflower seeds as well.  Hey, a guy can’t YoYo without some chaw, right?

 

The usual: balls, rocks and cards but I really love the Yankee beer-stand concession cup.  Only 10 bucks for a beer and wouldn’t George Herman love a beer about now?  Hoo Yea.

 

Here’s a mixed bag: A 1979 penny, deliberately placed there, no doubt.  No idea re significance.  A Rockies baseball card–because you know, Ruth played a lot of games in Denver.  The bracelet is one of those Lance Armstrong jobs but another color.  The Cigar is classic.  You KNOW he’d want to take a haul off of that, having died from oral cancer from smoking those things!  And the ticket on the right is apparently from the recent Hall of Fame inductions as it has Oriole/Ripken overtones and says Cooperstown Hall of…you know.  On the bottom is the ball point pen inscription, “Babe, you are better than Hank Aaron and [unintelligible]“  No words on Bonds but it’s a safe bet that if they didn’t like Aaron, they weren’t digging Bonds’ act. 

 

There you have it.  A snapshot of the flotsam and jetsam that people actually take the time to leave on the grave of a person that they have never met and do not know, although each and everyone THINKS they know him.  The lesson?  If you get mega-watt famous.  Really, really famous.  We’re not talking Paris Hilton, flavor of the month famous, but really, really Winston Churchill famous, people will leave odd things on your grave.

How about this for a measure of fame.  If, after everyone who you physically met in the flesh while you were still alive had passed away, and people were STILL visiting your grave, you were famous.  But even that if fleeting.  Mary Pickford was by far the most famous female human in the world for over ten years and she couldn’t get arrested now if she came back to life.  –fog 

Louis Armstrong: Great. Posada? Lucky.

This is an interesting thread from Bugs and Cranks that I happen to agree with: Jorge Posada’s batting average on balls in play (or BABIP) in the last three years has been .312, .294., and .302. This year? .406. This stat says that basically, he’s lucky right now.

Is he exhibiting better plate discipline? No, his walk to strikeout ratio, 0.63, is in line with his career average, 0.66. Is he hitting more flyballs? No, his groundball to flyball ratio, 1.21, is a tick off his career average (1.20). So what IS he doing differently? Nothing. Balls are falling in freakishly more often this year than in the past.

Prediction: Posada’s average comes down with a vengeance. Now we’re deep into the year so it would be hard to offset all the early going, so he’ll have himself a great year for a 36 year old catcher with a career .275 average. And, of course, he hit .675 with 3 HR’s and a clutch of 2B’s to destroy my fantasy team this week, so he’s got that going for him.

***

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I didn’t do a real good job on the Louis Armstrong Hot Five post because I was hot and tired. Luis Castillo left the game at Wrigley Field in Chicago yesterday with “heat exhaustion”? Pulease, Looey, come on up in my attic and see how you like the heat. In fact, yesterday, with the fuse pulled so I could rewire things, the attic fan was out of action and it was inhuman up there.

I’ve been listening to the Hot Five recordings for many years. They are amazing. They are genius. A group of artists, absolutely peaking. It’s brilliancy on top of brilliancy and if you know the history at all, you know that like most genius stuff, at the time it came out, NO ONE else was doing anything of the sort and after it came out EVERYONE else was trying to catch up–and most couldn’t touch it.  Armstrong was 24 when the Hot Five sessions began.

In The Arts or Sports (also an art), there are a few eye-popping, legendary performances that live on and on. Ruth’s called shot in the 1932 World Series. Williams’ .406 season. The first 4 minute mile. And so on. Most of these things are now word-of-mouth, hearsay, so it’s hard to put yourself right there and understand maybe WHY those things are so special.

But with the Hot Five recordings, you can listen to them all, end to end, over and over. You can hear a guy who is so beyond his peers that it’s a joke. In this case, the hardest thing to imagine is the context of all the other music that came out around the same time. It’s hard to find any of that because it’s long ago just hopelessly dated and virtually unlistenable to modern tastes. You would have to hunt for it. It’s gone. But Louis work is still very much available and very listenable even today. And that is probably the truest test of a real subjective thing, which is, music, and which music is “good” or “great”.

People throw around that term too loosely for it to have any meaning anymore. A lot of words got written since Shakespeare’s time but very few of them are still being read. I would think that very little of the music that the Baby Boomers grew up listening to will be found in 80 years time anywhere other than the Library of Congress archives. Perhaps the Beatles will, but not all of their stuff by any means. The Rolling Stones? The Who? Led Zeppelin? Probably all their stuff will be 100% forgotten and dead by that time. You get my point. But in another 80 years time, in 2087, there will STILL be folks listening to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and it will still be as amazing as it was in 1926.

Why I don’t Run With the Bulls

Apparently, it’s all the rage. Want to prove your manhood? Run in front these bulls. I’ve no doubt that alcohol is involved. Alcohol + explosives or Alcohol + livestock = trouble, a scar and maybe a story to tell later on about how dopey you were. Here is the link to the slideshow on Yahoo . Thanks to Cincinnati Bill for the tip on this one. –fog

Ants Will Not Cross A Chalk Line

Mrs. Pinetar hates bugs. Any bugs. Now I’m not thinking I want them in my house, but I realize that we share the world with these things and you will end up seeing them from time to time. So recently, we have ants coming in the house. Big carpenter ants. One here or there, nothing big really. But Mrs. Pinetar can’t stand them.

So she puts a chalk line down on the doorjams. Because apparently, “Ants will not cross a chalk line”. Period. They are incapable. No one knows why! Could be a good PHD thesis in there somewhere. Why don’t these little industrious ba*tards cross chalk?

I was just walking through the chalk at first and then I got yelled at. I didn’t notice it. But the ants did. Apparently, they are polite and actually use the door areas to enter the dwelling and that’s right where Mrs. Pinetar has the chalk down. So I keep hearing the “Ants will not cross…” line and I finally I google and wikipedia the daylights out of it and it’s a widely held belief! Also, it is pretty well held that ants can’t stand the smell of Peppermint and they are killed outright by baking soda. Another entry said that you can kill a fire ant nest by pouring 3 gallons of boiling water on it. Think of that. What geniuses! The scale there says that ants can’t stand a boiling lake of liquid raining down their hole. Could you? Could Bin Laden?

What about the Champagne region of France? The soil is notoriously chalky. Do they have no ants there because the ants just can’t get around? The White Cliffs of Dover are chalk, no? Ants? Guess not. It may work because I actually haven’t seen a single ant since the “Edict of Chalk”. And if you have an ant farm, do those guys actually grow anything?

***

Chris Carpenter throwing BP the other day and more recently threw his curve for the first time. Unsure if it was off of “flat ground”. Pavano swears by the flat ground. Carps was my second overall pick in fantasy in a big bet on starting pitching. Oswalt was number one. Oswalt’s WHIP is nearly a buck forty. League average is 1.37 so any day now, I’m expecting to hear of “stiffness” in Oswalt’s bulldozing-driving shoulder. If was the Yankees, I’d just BUY Johan Santana and Carlos Zambrano and be off.

Incidentally Yankee fans, how’s that cash plan working? The one where you spend way north of 200 million dollars? A game under .500 as we speak?! Oof!

And Ozzie Guillen, as I predicted in this space, preseason, is on the bubble and may get “done” any day now. If Ozzie goes, you can almost HEAR the ground under Torre get softer…hoohohohohoooo…

*** As promised, I will outline my plan to make XM sat radio’s traffic actually something I can use. Guys, Phoenix has it’s own traffic channel! What for? I’ll do the traffic for Phoenix for the next 10 years: I-10 is jammed. Done. That’s it!

New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island have 1 lousy, raggety-a** channel! That’s about 50 Phoenix areas in headcount and roads and pi**ed off guys who pay money to hear a dedicated traffic channel on XM in New York and end up flipping on the free stuff: 88AM on the eights and 1010 WINS on the 1′s. Even Bloomberg on the 5′s. They have better traffic. You s**k XM.

Here’s what you need to do. Make 4 channels for the NY-Metro area. Lose Phoenix and the Spanish Language soap opera channel and a few of the dopey hip-hop channels. There ain’t enough Zeppelin anyway. What are there? 3 Classic rock stations?

That’s right, 4 NY channels.

(1) Manhattan and River Crossings

(2) Westchester and Connecticut

(3) Long Island

(4) New Jersey

There you go, geniuses. And realize that if someone is in Westchester, they need to know about the Tappan Zee Bridge (the forgotten bridge of NY traffic) the GWB, the Tri-Boro, the White Stone and the Throgs Neck. Did I miss any? And the Cross Bronx should be mentioned, good or bad, every minute and a half!

And don’t put ADS on the f****ng traffic channel. I don’t want to sit in my car and wait out the f****n Zocor spots while waiting to take the Tappan Zee or risk the XBronx to George Washington. I need it NOW. Don’t make me wait. And don’t introduce it. I know WTF I’m listening to and swearing at. Just info. Info. Info. Don’t sell me anything.

And instead of telling me every minute who the traffic is brought to me by, try UPDATING IT! When I’m blowing down the Cross Bronx doing and unheard-of 55mph, don’t be telling me about the jam that’s obviously not there anymore! 

And lose the goofy color scheme, would you?  I’ve never ever heard it green, ok?  When it’s red, I don’t care about red, I just want to know where the tractor-trailer, chemical spill is before I’m driving into the jam!  It’s always yellow.  97% of the time it’s f****n yellow.  The jam alert in NY, is yellow.  Oh f***n boy.  That’s too much information.  Slow down, I can’t process it fast enough.

You could easily cut 1 minute and a half out of the loop and lose no information whatsoever.  Maybe then, I could use it and wouldn’t have to listen to WINS or CBS.  At CBS, Dan Rather can type up and xerox the jams 20 times before XM has anything on it.

–fog

Al-Ban-I-aaa, Bob Murphy’s on the A-Dri-Atic

My brother suggested a post where we ask the readers the following question:  What is the farthest away from home you have ever been and still picked up WFAN in New York and heard a Mets game?  It is a 50,000 Watt station (whatever THAT means) and the signal can “skip” at night particularly.  “Skipping” is when the signal can go around the curvature of the earth by bouncing off a layer in the atmosphere and coming back down again.  I believe that the “skipping” can be multiple up-and-down cycles.  I think the sun does something chemically to the atmosphere that causes the skipping, rendering it useless during the day but when the sun does go down, the skipping can happen.  That’s how millions of Southerners and Westerners became St. Louis Cardinal fans in the 1920s to 2005.  KMOX was a powerful signal that they said could be heard clear as a bell on most nights from Las Vegas to Atalanta.  And for many, many years (1869-1957), St. Louis was the farthest WEST and SOUTH major league franchise in the USA.  So they and KMOX became the de-facto team for much of the rural country.  Mrs. Pinetar and I can totally attest to that as we went out to St. Louis 2 years ago and all around town are folks who drove hundreds of miles to see the Redbirds.  Atlanta, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Tennessee, you name it.  America’s team basically.  I’m sure John Cougar Melloncamp will write an obnoxious song about it and it will be turned into not only a truck commercial but will be somehow adopted by Major League Baseball as some kind of anthem.

My “distance-Mets-moment” was in college.  In the Spring, I was driving home from Boston and somewhere in Connecticut I flipped past 66am, not expecting anything and I heard the voice of Bob Murphy wash over me doing a Spring Mets game.  It was totally unexpected and it caught me way off guard.  I loved it.  I still remember it.  I was amazed at how powerful that voice was and how good feeling just washed over me as soon as I heard The Murph.  Don’t forget, Murphy did the Mets from 1962 to 2004 or so.  I have probably heard that man say more words than anybody besides perhaps my parents.  A fixture with his ultra-square, humorless, workmanlike, unimaginative delivery, complete with that odd Oaklahoma drawl…”The Mets ween, they weeeen!”  And who can forget the 1000′s of “Ghat eeem!”‘s??  Wherever you are, Murph–Smoke up!

My brother’s Murph-moment (and the point of this post) tops all.  He was on his father-in-law’s sailboat in the Adriatic Sea (That’s between the old Yugoslavia and Italy for those of you not homeschooled).  He was playing with an AM radio (he will do that) and clear as a bell one night, Murph came in for a few minutes and then I think, he faded.  Murph across the Atlantic!  Bob Weeens, Bob Weeens…  –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

stray rod on pole position

A-Rod is still the story.  Now it is the “bush league” play of yelling at the third baseman.  The takeout on Pedroia.  The slappy play on Arroyo.  This guy has a little AJ Pierzninski in him.  He is not a good PR man.  There is something about him that rubs you the wrong way.  I can’t articulate it but it is there.  I don’t think even Yankee fans dig this guy.

And running around with broads and taking them to strip clubs while your wife is home.  Not cool.  I know that a lot of ballplayers do this and there is a time-honored DMZ for the beat writers but this is more of a papparazzi thing.  And I’m surprised that it has taken this long to come to our shores.  In the UK, this stuff has been fever-pitch for decades.  The media eviscerated Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler over oftentimes, nothing.  They made things up at times.  Fleet Street is bad and now it is here.  And look, if you’re Joe McEwing, no one cares if you are out with a Hooters girl but stray rod, you have to know that you are fair game now.  There’s a certain ignorance and/or arrogance about this guy.  I’m sure that in a few years, this broad will teach stray rod’s daughter a few moves on the pole, you know?  She’s what?  Three now?  Great pal. Classy.  Your daughter will understand.  Don’t give it a second thought because with kids, it’s all about you dude.

Watching ESPN2 and I see Orestes Destrade there.  Oy.  At least he’s not on MLB This Morning with Mark and Buck anymore (and haunting my commute).  They haven’t added a third guy to that mix and I think that is wise.  Don’t rush.  Test out some people first for chemistry like Regis did in finding Kelly Rippa.  Run some guys through there and eventually, the winner will make himself clear. That show, was ALL ABOUT chemistry when Bowa was on there so chemistry is the number one, two and three attribute you are looking for there.

My nephew has his first traveling league game tomorrow and I, for one, am stoked.  This is going to be fun.  He may get to pitch.  He went 3 innings in their last tuneup match and has been throwing strikes.  One of his little understated fist-pumps when he gets a strike is worth it’s weight in gold to me.  He even changed speeds on a big kid and I yelled to him, “nice change” and he gave this incredible smile and did it again.  The kid swung out of his shoes at it.  I asked him later if he did the changeup on purpose and he said, “…no, but when you said that, you reminded me that I did it and so I did it again…”

He’s 7.

–fog 

XM signal is weak

Yesterday, both my wife and I noticed that the XM signal is terrible!