Monthly Archives: September 2012

Free Baseball!

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I love that broadcasters call extra innings in a game “Free Baseball”. 

No one calls it “Free Basketball” or “Free Football”.  (Do they?)

Basketball has “overtime”, which is probably the dullest thing they could have come up with.

Football has its “sudden death”, which is appropriately violent, and, given the frightening increase in head injuries and permanent debilitating damage the game does to many players, is probably a fair-enough description.

But, “free baseball” is a gift.  You’ve sat through two … maybe three hours already … and still, the baseball gods shower you with more. Ten innings, 11, 12 … in the case of the Baltimore Orioles, don’t be surprised if you get to 18 innings before it’s all done (and the right fielder ends up pitching).

That the Orioles have a crazy major league record in consecutive wins in extra-inning games (16 in a row at last count, the most consecutive wins by a team in extras since 1949) makes it a bit sweeter, I know.

But still.  “Free Baseball.”  Yay!

My last blog post was way too long. Consider the last 200 words “Free Blog”. Even though the whole thing was free, the last 200 words was even more free … a little bonus gift to those of you who kindly slogged through the first 500 words.

So, I want some “Free Baseball” on this blog, too. So, here are some things floating around on the Internet that are free and perhaps even baseball related.

Just a few bonus innings this time.  Enjoy!

10th Inning ~ Shoeless Joe Jackson, 2012 Edition

Only A Game is a terrific NPR sports show. A few weeks back they did a story on ballplayer Joe Jackson, a many-times great nephew of Shoeless Joe Jackson. Jackson, the Shoeless one, is arguably the greatest ballplayer to ever swing a bat in Chicago. He, sadly, lost his legend when he got mixed up in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. This is one of those quirky, sweet baseball stories, that reminds you how important the rich lore and history of baseball is to the love of the game.  Click here to listen.

11th Inning ~ Charlie Mars

Charlie Mars is a Mississippi singer/songwriter. We saw him in concert last week and he was very, very good. His tie to baseball? Well, I was following the Oriole game on my phone at the show. OK, a tenuous tie at best. But, the Orioles won and I really like Charlie Mars, and his new song is currently free on Amazon. So there you go. Click here for the song.

12th Inning ~ Oakland A’s Do The Bernie Lean

I love teams that truly embrace and encourage their crazy fans. Those are the fans who love their team unconditionally, and will do whatever is necessary to cheer them on. This year, the Oakland A’s celebrate those fans who dance the “Bernie Lean” at games. The Bernie Lean is, if you don’t already know, the zombie-like, arm-flailing dance born from the “Weekend At Bernies” movie from 1989. Bernie was dead in the movie, by the way, which greatly influenced how he got around in the film. Here’s the video from Oakland … it’s crazy, stupid. But, the A’s get in on the joke, and I like that in a team. Click here to watch (Bernie Leaning, optional).

Tending The Baseball Garden

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I think one of the most perfect things about baseball is the way it mirrors the seasons.

Hope springs eternal in the springtime! The time for digging up the old flower bed, tending some returning plants, putting a few new seeds in the ground.  A little water, a little sunlight, a little weeding, a little hope.

The energy is fresh and it’s so wonderful to be outside working up the soil. What emerges? Fresh arugula or a young Mike Trout in the outfield, depending on which garden you’re tending.

Then comes summer … the fruits of one’s labors. If the ground was good, if the water was plentiful, if you worked hard … oh, what an amazing garden you can have. In garden terms, the tomatoes are bountiful and delicious. In baseball terms, this means you’re winning.  (A mangy, unfriendly groundhog eats your tomatoes? Your starting pitcher goes on the DL. Kinda, sorta the same thing.)

But, 162 games is a long, long, long growing season.

And, so now here we are in the fall. So tired. So tired of weeding. So tired of tending. So tired of zucchini. Everything is getting old and leggy and limp.  And, we’re trying to coax just one more week – just one more win – out of that tired tomato plant with the worn out shoulder-vine.

Oh sure, you toss in a few lettuce seeds in late August to see what might sprout up and carry you through the last weeks of the growing season.  (Manny Machado, Dylan Bundy? Hear that? You’re the fall lettuce of the Orioles.)

Mostly, though, you’re just trying to squeak out the last bit of life from a worn-out garden. You’re sort of getting tired of watching the garden, but you still want to savor every last minute you have left with it.

You keep cutting back the basil because where will you be in December when it’s only a distant memory?  You’ll be wishing for that basil plant, that’s where. So you cheer on that basil plant, and you clip those seed heads and you remind it that it’s only one game back of the Yankees.

I’m still working on how the World Series fits into the garden. To be honest, as an Orioles’ fan, it’s been years since I’ve had to think about how one extends a season into October.

But, how about this …

Maybe the World Series is a giant pumpkin that’s been hiding in the weeds, only to “pop” out all orange and huge and brilliant when the knee-high weeds finally die back on their own. It’s the culmination of a long, long season … and a lot of hard work by a pumpkin that started out as a hopeful seed just a few months ago.

Yeh, ok, that’ll do. If a giant pumpkin pops out of my dying garden in the next couple weeks, that would be the equivalent of the Orioles going to the World Series. It would also be a little strange because we didn’t plant pumpkins. (But, that doesn’t mean I give up hope for the Orioles.)

And then, next thing you know, it will be cold and dark and the garden will grow quiet.

As winter comes, you swear that was the last time you’ll spend every free moment in the garden. You swear that you’ll never put in such a big garden again. You swear that it’s too much work and you’re done with gardening. Forever.

But, then after a little well-deserved little rest, the seed catalogs start showing up in the mail. And, then on one very dreary, snowy day, when you’re missing the basil, just like I told you would happen, you pick up a catalog and start dreaming of your spring garden … and then you wonder how the boys did in the off-season, and you start counting the days until pitchers and catchers report.

But, it’s not quite winter yet. So, for today … with just 10 games left, I’m cutting back the basil and cheering for the Orioles and the jalapeño peppers, both of which seem to be particularly hot and sassy this year.

And, hoping for a pumpkin.

Want to carve your own Oriole Pumpkin?  Click here for the stencil.

This blurry photo is from 2011. To give the Baltimore Orioles’ bird something to do in October, I attempted to carve my very first pumpkin. If the Orioles go to the post-season this year, I will carve a much finer Oriole pumpkin. Oscar the cat, by the way, is 20. He was 5 when the Orioles last made it into the post-season.

Riff-Raff

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There’s this saying they have in North Dakota: “Thirty below keeps the riff-raff out.”  I’m sure you may have your own variations out where you are.

For the record, I did my North Dakota time. You may now consider me proof that 30-below temperatures will cause some – call me riff-raff, whatever – to flee.

So, I’m reading the new Rolling Stone (and I highly recommend the interview with Bob Dylan which is delightful and reminds you what happens when a crazy genius like Bob Dylan becomes a crazy, irascible, crabby, unfiltered old man … and I mean that in most reverent way possible).

Anyway, there is also an article about how football became America’s number one sport … and how it has completely dominated television with its constant adrenaline-rush, mad-action, carefully scripted production.

And, in a throwaway to make their point, they call televised baseball “lugubrious and soporific.”  Lugubrious and soporific? Oh my! How erudite and loquacious of you, Rolling Stone.

Sure, if you don’t know how to fill the space within the game, then you won’t enjoy the easeful, sweetly slow pace of baseball. And, with so much noise in the world today, if you don’t know what in the world to do with the blank, quiet, waiting moments, then you’ll probably be, at best, bored … at worst, sound asleep.

But, those spaces of inaction are very much part of baseball. Having the time to watch things unfold – to get into the pitcher’s eyes and his careful windup, to get into the batter’s head – can make baseball riveting.

I’m pretty sure it was the Seattle Mariners who many years ago experimented with editing games for television. Snipping out all the quiet, slow spots. They were left with an hour or so of the “action.” I don’t know how many games this lasted, but needless to say … it didn’t last long.

On the other hand, my Yankee-fan Editor/Husband (hi honey!) reminds me of this:

There were some spring-training games that were telecast with a minimal broadcaster presence. I think they had several players and coaches miked up, but no one really in the broadcast booth. And, it was spring training, so it was a game of not much importance, but there was SO MUCH going on. There was the outfielder singing to himself.  And, the first-base coach talking to the base-runner and the first baseman. And, the catcher talking to the umpire and the batter.  And the manager … and the coach. There were ALL of these little centers of activity and interest and tension, while it might seem like “nothing” was happening!

Watching baseball on television isn’t easy, because it asks you to fall into a simple, slow rhythm yourself. Sometimes, you have to sing to yourself. And, for a world that’s super-charged with energy, for a television that offers continuous wall-to-wall action, that isn’t easy.

But, maybe that’s just baseball’s way of keeping the riff-raff out.

(I’ll sing the praises of the best baseball broadcasters – and there are some great ones out there – another time.)

And, by the way, I really do love Bob Dylan. I even have his brand new one, Tempest. It’s crazy sweet.  (And, as I write this, just a $5 download from Amazon … just click here).

Oh, I suppose some would say that the title track – a 14-minute, 45-verse recounting of the sinking of the Titanic, that weirdly entwines both historical fact and fictional characters from the movie – is, well, lugubrious and soporific. But, maybe Bob just wants to keep the riff-raff out, too.

Lotsa Luck

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Many years ago, I had a neighbor who was an elderly widow. One morning she went outside and discovered that someone — we never found out who – had deposited a healthy, little puppy in her front yard. It was clearly not an accident. We decided that someone knew how lonely our neighbor was and decided she needed a companion. She named her puppy Lucky. And, yeh, he was a pretty lucky pup. He was lucky our neighbor was up to a task she didn’t ask for. She kept good care of her pup, although a bit of housetraining would have been a nice touch.

So, let’s talk about luck.

Because the notion of luck often rankles me.

Has anyone ever told you that your success or the fruits of your efforts were lucky? Someone once told me, quite kindly, that I was very lucky that my massage therapy practice was doing well during such tough economic times.

Luck? That’s it? I’m just lucky? OK, maybe. But, maybe, just maybe — and I’m going out on a limb here — but maybe, my clients have found some value in my work. Maybe I’m good at my job. I know they didn’t mean anything rude by it. And, yes, I do believe that random things happen that influence one’s success or failure. Right time, right place. That can lead to a bit of good luck. But, to suggest that someone’s good fortune is pure luck … well, that’s just unfair.

And, you know what? Maybe, just maybe, the Baltimore Orioles are more than lucky, too.  Maybe, they’re a good baseball team.

I am so tired of the so-called baseball experts who have decided that since the Orioles’ success this year doesn’t fit into their neat little mold of what makes a team good … that the statistics show that the Orioles should be no better than average … that there’s no way they could possibly be in a pennant race in September … then, surely, the only answer is that they have been lucky.

This has gone on all season. The chatter started already in April. They couldn’t explain why the Orioles were winning. That’s because there’s no easy way to chart intangibles – like team dynamics, players improving over previous seasons, or the zen-like influence of a manager like the Orioles’ Buck Showalter. And, without the intangibles, yeh, sure, the Orioles sort of looked beatable on paper. So, without bothering to think through the intangibles, a lot of sports talkers – ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and, just yesterday, National Public Radio among them – decided the Orioles had to be simply lucky.

I say, they’re wrong. Baseball statisticians haven’t found a way to quantify intangibles. But, that doesn’t mean those intangibles don’t exist.

If luck drove sports, then wouldn’t every team hover around .500? A little good luck. A little bad luck.

Or, how about this — maybe everything is luck. If the Orioles win a game, are they lucky? Sure. They’re lucky it didn’t rain and stop the game. They’re lucky that their winning pitcher didn’t fall down the dugout steps and dislocate his shoulder before the game. They’re lucky that the losing team scored fewer runs.

Every team has their good luck. And, their bad luck.

But, luck doesn’t exist in a vacuum. What those “experts” call luck, I call a good mixture of talent, heart, skills, and smarts. The Intangibles (which, by the way, would be a terrific title for an action movie).

In the case of the Orioles game against the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night, I guess you could say the O’s are lucky that their superstar rookie is Manny Machado and not Bryce Harper.

And, here’s just one reason why. Enjoy one of the most beautiful, exciting, and head’s up defensive plays of the year, courtesy of a 20-year-old rookie. Did he just get lucky? You decide.

Click here to watch.

Oh, and the Orioles won again today. (yippee!) Wrapping up a three-game sweep of the surging Tampa Bay Rays. So, I guess all that luck of theirs hasn’t run out yet.

I Never Meant To Cause A Fuss

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I have a super-secret blog. The fact that you are reading it right now (and you’re not married to me) sort of lessens its super-secret status.  But, it was super secret, once.

I just decided I needed to type something … something nice. About something I loved. And, I thought I could say one or two nice things about baseball and Yoga.  And, it would make me feel good inside to write something positive about some things I love.  What could be easier?

Oh sure, I published it on a blog.  I put it out there.  I just didn’t want to embarrass myself … especially in front of my friends.  So, at first, I didn’t tell a soul.

Eventually, I told my husband (hi honey!) because I needed a grown-up editor to rein in my occasionally all-over-the-place, mixed-up thoughts (and my inability to know a 2-seam from a 4-seam fastball, to spot a balk, or to understand the need for all the spitting).

I asked some friends if I could mention them in my posts, because they know baseball. And, some said “yes” and a few sent some nice thoughts, too.  But, I wouldn’t give them the address.

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