Audition for Real

Former New York State Governor David A. Paterson was a guest host on the New York sports talk radio station WFAN last night.  Station officials told the Associated Press his three-hours in front of the mic were "effectively a tryout for a more regular job."  Paterson previously co-hosted a show with Mike Francesa, which some people speculated was an audition.  The former elected official had also phoned in to various shows as "Dave from Harlem."  He publically revealed that persona on a show hosted by Tony Paige.

Wide Open Spaces

We're closing in on the southwest itinerary now—but because of the distances involved (and because there are a couple time-consuming nonbaseball attractions, about which more later), it's going to be our least baseball-dense trip ever. Here's how it's shaping up:

Thursday, 4/28: Las Vegas 51s / Sacramento River Cats

Saturday, 4/30: Arizona Diamondbacks / Chicago Cubs

Sunday, 5/1: Tucson Padres / Colorado Springs SkySox

Tuesday, 5/3: Albuquerque Isotopes / Omaha Storm Chasers

Possible bonus game, Wednesday, 5/4: Las Vegas 51s / Reno Aces

Two games a week apart in Las Vegas? Only the need to return the rental car makes this sensible at all....

Season Preview

Kiplinger.com

Pitchers and catchers are just a little ways off now, so here's the rundown of what we're considering for this year. If we're coming to your part of the world, represent!

1. An amuse bouche of New England games in early April:

• Boston Red Sox: My childhood team, now just another Evil Empire

• New Hampshire Fisher Cats: In my youth, I would have killed for a team in my own state. But a fisher cat appears to be some sort of weasel.

funny-cats-gallery.blogspot.com

You Gotta Have What?

In anticipation of a possible trip together to see baseball in Japan, Melvin gave me a copy of Robert Whiting's, You Gotta Have Wa, accepted as the authoritative English-language work on Japanese baseball.

Windy City Crab Bids JU Adieu

If you spend enough time contemplating contemporary mainstream book and movie reviews, first of all god help you. Second, you may notice that the zeitgeist is a self-reinforcing thing. Mainstream reviews tend to be written by middle- or upper-middle-class urbanites, and they therefore privilege whatever it is that class has been led to believe is important at a given moment. The avatars of this phenomenon are dull people like The New Yorker's David Denby and The New York Times's Michiko Kakutani (although she's really in a special class of cluelessness), and their subjects inevitably provide frameworks for other lazy writers of similar ilk. I'm not telling you anything Stuff White People Like hasn't already, and I do truly wish I had a better or more original take. But there are some icons so mysteriously beloved that I can't figure out how to account for them other than by some quasi-mystical projection/identification complex perpetrated by minimally talented white people —I'm talking about you, tuneless Rufus Wainwright... and you, whiny and smug David Sedaris... and most of all you, dead John Updike.

The Fat Lady Sings (Again) in Portland

Popular culture holds that an aria by an operatic soprano, Brünnhilda from Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung most typically, can help us determine that, at last and unequivocally, the end is finally here. On December 21, 2010, the proverbial fat lady sang the song that signaled the end of the 21-month long opera that has been the demise, again, of the Portland Beavers baseball club.  That is too bad; Portland has a long history as a baseball town.

I also feel a personal sense of loss.  Unlike most of my ballpark visits, which are one and done, I've seen three games at beautiful PGE Park.  The Portland Beavers were one of the first minor league teams I saw.  They were also the first team Melvin and I wrote about when we started this blog.

Doppelgängers

René Magritte, La reproduction interdite, 1937

Baseball is full of echoes, starting with the name itself--those concatenating "b-" sounds, admittedly differentiated by vowel length--and continuing to how we talk about players (e.g., "That guy swings like Danny Cater"). We look for resonances and similarities everywhere, if only to clarify how we're distinctive--or to find out how we're not. While it's not unusual for a baseball blog to go a bit into hibernation during the off-season, I've been slowed up far more than anticipated because I've been steeping in the work of our evil twins. Yes, there is a duo of baseball nerds out there who (thankfully) outstrip us in geekery but (inevitably) also know way, way, way more about minor-league ball than Rob and I ever will.

I'm speaking, of course, of Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks, the impresarios of the Baseball Prospectus podcast "Up and In," which I have now listened to all 34 episodes of--a real feat and/or waste of time considering that each one runs around two hours, if not more. I started listening with episode 19 and then listened to numbers 0.9 (did I mention they are appealingly pretentious?) to 18 interwoven with 20 through 34. This has led to a great deal of confusion on my part. I'm really looking forward to the World Series, though--the Reds look like dark horses to me.

29X Face

What with holiday shopping and trying to finish a big job at work, I missed the news that the New York State Commission on Public Integrity last week fined Governor David A. Paterson $62,125 "for soliciting, accepting and receiving five complimentary tickets to Game One of the 2009 World Series for himself, two aides, his teenage son and his son's friend." The $62,125 civil penalty consists of the $2,125 value of the tickets plus two $25,000 fines and a third $10,000 fine for violating three sections of the Public Officers Law. The commission based its decision on testimony by gubernatorial staff and the Yankees, as well as "an independent handwriting expert and common sense."  Ah yes, common sense.

Christmas at, well, Christmas

In mid-summer, Melvin and I enjoyed "Christmas in July" at Progressive Field and elsewhere in the Indians organization.  Now the team has come up with another novel idea: "Snow Days."

For five-plus weeks the ballpark has been turned into a winter funderland.  There is a ten-lane snow tubing hill, quarter-mile skating path, 3,000 square-foot snow maze and more.  It is Cleveland in December, so the Indians have turned on the heaters in the team dugout and there is a fire pit on the home run porch.  While the concessions don't match the in-season choices, guests aren't limited to hot chocolate.  And if you need something stronger, there is a happy hour most evenings.  The whole thing runs through January 2 and folks can even ring in the new year—complete with dinner, dancing and fireworks—at Progressive Field.

Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.  And a good opportunity to send solstice-time greetings from both of us and best wishes for 2011.

The End of the Beginning

As I (intermittently) listened to New York State Governor David A. Paterson co-host Mike Francesa's afternoon show yesterday on sports radio station WFAN, I was reminded of a statement by Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the Second World War.  After the Allied Forces victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Churchill said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." (R.D. Laing was fifteen at the time, and Scottish as well, so probably no influence on this formulation.)