The Baltimore Orioles have been awarded 70 Gold Gloves, recognizing defensive excellence, since 1957 – the most in the American League and second only to the St. Louis Cardinals.
One of my Yoga students came to class this week and asked, “What are you going to do now that there’s no baseball?”
Apparently, some people believe that I am small, uninspired, and one-dimensional in my interests.
There is plenty to do in the off season, I’m told, and I am ready to do all of it.
I won’t bore you with ALL the things I will be doing. But, I assure you there will be lots of them.
Here are just five.
1) Sort Photos.
I took hundreds of photos at baseball games this season. (Actually probably more like a thousand, but “thousand” makes me sound weirdo-y, so let’s say, hundreds and leave it at that.)
It’s time to paw through them and see who’s in there …
Former Richmond Flying Squirrel and rookie Giant Joe Panik, who just won his first.
Congratulations, Giants!
This project trumps my other photo project – sorting through my grandfather’s slides from the 1950s and ‘60s of people and places I don’t know or can’t recognize. Boxes and boxes of slide carousels fill an entire closet in our guest room. I suppose I could go through them. Or, I could put it off another year and continue to pile all the things that should be stored in the closet on the floor in our bedroom.
2) Bake.
It’s free-agent time in baseball, which means the Baltimore Orioles will cut loose many players who have multimillion-dollar paydays coming.
Yes, it’s the cruel financial reality of being a small-market team … we can no longer afford many of our best players.
Am I happy to say “goodbye” to Andrew Miller and his 94 mph fastball and spaghetti legs? No. Do I understand why the Orioles probably won’t pay $10 million+ a year to resign a one-inning reliever? No.
Also in the free-agent pool is longtime Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis. The Orioles have declined his option for 2015, but still remain hopeful they can re-sign him. Will they? Maybe. Will someone else swoop in with a better offer? Maybe.
But, not if I can help it.
I want to do my part to help collect the millions that the Orioles will need to keep Nick Markakis.
I’m thinking, bake sale.
I can’t bake enough to keep Andrew Miller, Nelson Cruz, and Nick.
I stick with Nick.
Anyway, cupcakes.
Thousand dollar cupcakes.
I encourage you to bake some cupcakes for Nick, too.
Just remember, take all the money you raise and send it to:
Baltimore Orioles
Let’s Pay Nick Fund
Camden Yards
Baltimore, Maryland
3) Care for Munchie.
Among the unusual birthday gifts Editor/Husband gave me this year was this …
Munchie.
Editor/Husband thought a venus flytrap would solve a long-standing kitchen problem.
When the compost pail gets kinda full-ish, it attracts fruit flies. Now, sure, you might take a moment to comment below with your good ideas of how to stop attracting fruit flies in our kitchen. “Take out the compost more regularly,” you might suggest, or “Get rid of the stupid compost pail.”
Your suggestions, while interesting, would be wrong.
The best and only way to deal with fruit flies is to get a venus flytrap and hope he has a taste for them.
My first question to Editor/Husband after “You got me a venus flytrap? Really?” was “Do we have to find food for him? Do we feed him meat?”
Apparently, no. You do not feed them meat.
Except all the “flytrappists” online insist you must. They say you have to buy flies and bloodworms and feed them to your plant. They do suggest you be careful, though, since many people are highly allergic to bloodworms and just touching one could kill you.
If the venus flytrap doesn’t get you first.
I’ll let you know if one of the cats goes missing.
4) Read War & Peace.
I am not kidding.
Tolstoy’s War & Peace is almost always listed as one of the greatest novels ever written. Which is funny because I know only one person who has actually read it.
None of my friends – even the fussy ones – has read it.
So, I’m reading it. Because they won’t. And, you probably won’t either.
I’m doing it for you.
Look, I’m already a quarter of the way through!
It’s actually very good.
Although, you have to wade through an awful lot of war to get to the peace parts.
Public Domain, 1903.
Napoleon Lajoie, the “Little Frenchman” and namesake of the Cleveland Naps (today, the Cleveland Indians), is not in War & Peace.
Public Domain
Napoleon Bonaparte, also a “Little Frenchman”, is.
Fun Fact: The original title for War and Peace was War – What Is It Good For? Tolstoy’s mistress didn’t like the title and insisted that he change it to War and Peace.
Most animals find numbers and basic math uninteresting (Cat: “Who sent you here? Go away.”) or irrelevant (Dog: “I either had one treat or 50 treats out of the bag there on the floor, it’s hard to say for sure. I have to go barf on your shoes now.”)
But, not baseball fans. We love numbers and statistics. Wins, losses, batting averages are just a start. ERA. RBI. WAR, WHIP, WPA. Yeh, I know, it’s annoying.
A Word Press editor recently suggested that bloggers check their page view numbers no more than once a week.
How can I twist my page views into obscure, meaningless statistics about my self-worth and popularity, if you won’t even let me look at them?
I check my statistics daily. Sometimes every couple hours. (I just checked them.) I don’t want to miss a single page view.
Hey look, it’s you and me!
So, it didn’t get past me when my “Followers/Subscribers” number hit 999 earlier this week.
If you blog, you know how sketchy this number is.
Barry Bonds hit 762 home runs in his career. I have 999 followers.
(Here’s a stat: I have more followers than Barry Bonds has home runs.)
But, both numbers are juiced. Barry Bonds used steroids. I get followed mostly by spammers and a baffling number of non-English speakers. Welcome, “callgirlsdubai”!
But, still … a milestone IS a milestone, even if it is meaningless.
So, I put out the word to my friends – follow my blog and help me reach 1,000. And, almost immediately Jamie did.
I love Jamie. She is wonderful.
She is follower 1,000.
I decided then and there that I would write a blog post in her honor. Here we go.
Jamie has two dogs, two cats, and one husband.
And, here’s what she told me about baseball:
We have a big baseball conflict in our house. I’m a hardcore Yankees girl, and Jaremy lives, eats and breathes the Red Sox. Our compromise is the Nationals.
I have always said that 100 percent (look, more numbers!) of Nationals fans are default “fans”. They’re really fans of other teams, but since they’re near Washington, DC, oh hell, they might as well root for the Nats since they’ve got nothing better to do. Jamie has proven me 100 percent correct. (I told you, she is wonderful.)
Yankees fans.
Red Sox Fan. Tigers fan.
So to honor Jamie, I will write five nice things about her Yankees. (If you’ve come looking for my post on Yankees jokes … please click here.)
He was born in Baltimore. Played briefly for an early incarnation of the Orioles … and bestowed one of the very best curses on the Red Sox that you’ll ever see. (Once the Curse of the Bambino ran out – and by god it had a good run – the Red Sox started winning, getting all uppity, and growing facial hair. Still, it’s not too late for the Babe to re-wallop them with another good Bambino-sized curse from the great beyond. Come on, it’ll be fun.)
The Yankees catcher was the inspiration for Yogi Bear. And, who doesn’t love Yogi Bear?
1961, Courtesy of the National Archives ID #286013
I once had a cat named Yogi, who was named after Yogi Bear. He was a darn good cat.
Yogi. Cat.
3) If you follow the family tree, the New York Yankees were originally the Baltimore Orioles.
That New York stole the original Orioles from Baltimore (for a paltry $18,000 in 1903) is not surprising. In 2000, the Yankees stole pitcher Mike Mussina from the Orioles (he cost the Yanks $88.5 million). (I’m still pretty upset about this.)
4) The Yankees have won 27 World Series titles. (The Orioles have won three.)
1) I’m not really a Milwaukee Brewers fan. About all I know about the Brewers is that they were, at one time, an American League team, and that at some point in the late 1990s, Orioles non-legend Ben McDonald pitched out the end of his career there. I also know that they began their life as the Seattle Pilots (which in the late 1960s enjoyed its one season as a major league team, but is forever remembered thanks to Jim Bouton’s bawdy book Ball Four, which my dad finally let me read when I was 30).
2) I have a degree in political science. This shows itself whenever there is an opportunity to vote. Voting is my democratic right. I will vote for anything. Primary. General Election. I will vote for American Idol. If I’m sitting in a meeting and someone says, “It’s time for lunch, let’s take a vote, pizza or sandwiches?” I get very excited. I take my duty seriously. If there is an opportunity to vote, I will vote.
3) I think baseball uniforms are oddly, weirdly cool. I think the Seinfeld episode about changing the Yankees’ uniforms from polyester to cotton (and featuring Zen Master Buck Showalter) is Gold, Jerry, Gold! Watch the moment here.
Zen Master Buck Showalter wasn’t always the Orioles Manager … once, long ago, he was on Seinfeld, and, oh yes, he managed a little-known team called the Yankees.
So, if you give me the chance to vote on which fan-designed Milwaukee Brewers uniform will be worn by the team this season …
Oh sweet heaven, this is the best January ever! So, the deal is this …
Three fans designed uniforms …
Ron from Maryland’s Design
Nicholas from Wisconsin’s Design
Ben from Minnesota’s Design
I’m ready to vote. I’m going with Ron from Maryland. I’m so glad you asked why. I like that throwback Milwaukee Brewers logo. I like that bright blue. I like that Ron included socks. And, I like that Ron is from Maryland — maybe he’s really an Orioles fan just killing time until Spring Training. Good enough for me … Vote Ron!
(Ben from Minnesota? You were a close second. But you lost me with the Texas Rangers cowboy font on the back. Plus, the cap. Is that a toaster?)
To vote, just visit the Major League Baseball website, which you can do by clicking here. You have until January 22.
After you’ve voted, go ahead and read Jim Bouton’s Ball Four about a crazy, raunchy season in baseball. (Unless you’re a 12-year-old … in which case, please wait until you’re 30.)
The Baseball Bloggess 