Scott’s questions about Romney’s Veep, baseball and travel

I got to think Romney’s VP pick won’t be a white non-Hispanic guy.

Scott of the Scooter Chronicles, who is BACK blogging after an understandable hiatus – asks these questions:

1. (The Usual) Who do you think ends up in the World Series this year?

Interestingly, it feels more like parity to me this year. It’s not that ANYONE could win the Series – it won’t be the Royals or the Mets, e.g. The AL East will be very competitive unless the BoSox don’t recover from their epic collapse. Will the Rangers represent the AL for the third year in a row? Not feeling it; the Angels, with Pujols, should win the West. And the AL Central remains a mystery to me.

Washington will be better, Philadelphia will be worse. The Braves are supposed to have some great young arms, after THEIR epic collapse. The Giants will improve, iff Buster Posey’s healthy. I think Cincinnati wins the NL Central.

For no good reason, I’ll go with two Florida teams, the Tampa Bay Rays and the FloridaMiami Marlins. Unless Andy Petitte’s return to the Yankees is way more successful than I expect.

4. (May have been asked this before) If money was no object, what is your dream vacation?

Not just money, but time: I want to go to every Major League Baseball park in the same year. Fly to Seattle, take the train to the 5 California teams, then to Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Georgia, followed by the Midwest, starting with Missouri and ending, via Toronto, with Pittsburgh, then finishing with the I-95 corridor from DC to Boston.

3. Any travel plans for the warmer months?

It’s ALREADY the “warmer months”! If it’s 75 in Albany in the fourth week in March, with mosquitoes in the yard, what will July look like? That said, we’ll probably make it to Newport, RI.

5. Did you ever visit an area, not expecting much, but were surprised at what it had to offer?

Last summer, we went to this cabin in the Adirondack Mountains. Let’s say that it wasn’t my thing. But we went into town to North Creek, where I got to use the library. It had some nice restaurants, and it was quite scenic.

2. Who do you think Romney will pick as a running mate?

Let’s start with names he said he’d consider earlier this year: several governors- Chris Christie (NJ) – too much of a blowhard; Mitch Daniels (IN) – his family will veto this; Bobby Jindal (LA); Susana Martinez (NM) – pictured; Bob McDonell (VA) – fatally tainted by the ultrasound thing; Brian Sandoval (NV); Nikki Haley (SC) – having problems in her own state. Former governors Tim Pawlenty (MN) – got out of the Presidential race too early, so his fire in the belly will be questioned, plus he’s dull; Mike Huckabee (AR) – seriously?; Haley Barbour (MS) – his prisoner release just before the end of his term will not serve him well; U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (FL), a Cuban Hispanic with issues, who won’t necessarily bring the Mexican-American vote; CIA director David Petraeus – the name associated with an increasingly unpopular war. Here are some more names being bandied about.

I got to think it won’t be a white non-Hispanic guy. Rubio was my initial pick, or maybe Haley, but now I’m leaning towards Martinez, head of a swing state, or Jindal .

BTW, the reason the Etch-A-Sketch comment by a Romney associate resonated so much is that most people find him disingenuous.

Video Review: Moneyball

I haven’t watched a movie on DVR/video in several months. One of the issues is that it becomes too easy to treat it like well, a video, stopping and starting at will, something substantially different than going to the movie theater and watching a film from being to end, without interruption.

Two things, though, converged to make the preferred viewing methodology possible last Sunday. A friend of mine who had Netflix received the Moneyball DVD in the mail, but would not be able to watch it over the weekend because she’d be out of town. Then my wife and daughter went to a play (at Steamer No. 10, for you locals), allowing me the opportunity to watch Moneyball as though I were at the movies. Well, not quite, with my 20″ TV screen, but otherwise, more or less the same. And I REALLY wanted to see this, having just missed it in the cinema.

Moneyball is the story of the Oakland A’s baseball team that competed in the American League with teams such as the New York Yankees, who had about thrice the payroll as the A’s.

Inevitably, not only did the poorer teams lose in the playoffs, if they got there at all, but their free agents tended to flee to the richer teams for the big contracts. Such was the case in 2001, when, after the A’s lost to the Yankees in the playoff, Jason Giambi signed with the Yankees and Johnny Damon with the Boston Red Sox.

A’s General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), once a big-league prospect who washed out, had difficulty trying to engineer a particular trade with another team. Beane identified the guy who essentially put the kibosh on the deal as Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), who uses statistical information called sabermetrics to evaluate and select players for teams, a concept Beane embraces; the scouts and manager Art Howe (a scarily accurate Philip Seymour Hoffman), not so much. So the season became a struggle between concept and execution.

I liked this movie. It wasn’t jammed packed with excitement, except baseball excitement, but told a compelling story. It may be true that you don’t need to know the game to appreciate the narrative, but I know my knowledge of the game most definitely enhanced my enjoyment. Perhaps it was the aspect of rejecting the “conventional wisdom” and taking a chance on a belief system was that non-baseball fans related to, and I can definitely see that.

Halloween 1986: Gary Carter and a Greyhound Bus Strike

The only time I saw Gary Carter in person was the year he was inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame, in 2003. It wasn’t at the induction ceremony, but in Cooperstown that same weekend.

For most of the 1980s, I would travel on a bus from Albany, NY, to my hometown of Binghamton, NY to attend an annual Halloween party, held by a high school friend of mine and her then-husband. The only way to get there was by Greyhound bus, and there must have been some sort of labor dispute in 1986 because they had replacement drivers. I remember the driver on the return trip to Albany get off the wrong Oneonta exit, riding through parts of the city not usually traversed on that route, and ending up in parts of the SUNY Cobleskill campus I had never seen before; two or three passengers, including myself, ended up being the navigators during a torrential downpour.

As for the Saturday night party itself, it happened to coincide with Game 6 of the World Series between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox. Boston was up 3 games to 2. Usually, we didn’t watch the Series at this party, but the hostess was a big Mets fan. In fact, she was wearing an excellent replica of the uniform of the Mets’ All-Star catcher, Gary Carter, her favorite player, who was the hero of Game 4; her coif even replicated the curls in his hair.

The room went wild after the Mets’ unexpected Game 6 win, due in no small part because of Carter’s 10th inning, two-out hit. There had already been quite a bit of drinking going on and there was…more afterward.

Fortunately, I didn’t miss the final game of the Series, as I had feared. The same blinding rainstorm that made my return trip to Albany on Sunday so eventful also rained out the game at New York’s Shea Stadium, so I did get to see the Mets’ victory in the decisive Game 7 on Monday when I got back to Albany. Incidentally, “NBC’s broadcast of Game 7 (which went up against a Monday Night Football game between the Washington Redskins and New York Giants on ABC) garnered a Nielsen rating of 38.9 and a 55 share, making it the highest-rated single World Series game to date.”

The only time I saw Gary Carter in person was the year he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 2003. It wasn’t at the induction ceremony but in Cooperstown that same weekend. He seemed like a great guy who had what Yahoo! sports called an “unapologetic joy” for the game. I was sorry to hear that he died this week of a malignant brain tumor, diagnosed in May 2011.
***
Gary Carter dead at 57, and on the passing of youth.

Costello Calls to Buy a Computer from Abbott

ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.

COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?

Only because I was feeling a bit under the weather Sunday, I had the unusual chance to watch both football and baseball on TV, which always reminds me of the George Carlin bit on the two sports, a version of which you can watch HERE. Here are some baseball bloopers, only some of which are as funny as promised.

There’s a famous comedy routine about baseball by the classic duo of Abbott & Costello called Who’s on First? You can read it here and watch an iteration of it HERE.

My sister sent me this variation on this about computers, the humor of which is lost unless you’re familiar with A&C’s bit. So in honor of the World Series starting today – I’m rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Texas Rangers – and the fact that Major League Baseball did not have a work stoppage this year (unlike NFL football and especially NBA basketball):

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks I’m setting up an office in my den and I’m thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name’s Lou.
Continue reading “Costello Calls to Buy a Computer from Abbott”

Damn those Pirates!

This will be this losing season #19; no comparable winning streak evolved.


The Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team was in first place in the National League Central division, with a 53-47 record, the morning of July 26. This was astonishing since the team had had a record-breaking 18 losing seasons in a row. That evening they played a game against the Atlanta Braves, which they lost in the 19th inning on an amazingly bad call by an umpire; you can read about it here. They then lost the next game, also by one run, won one, then lost 10 in a row, knocking them out of playoff contention, and eventually making this losing season #19.

I think that one bad call somehow messed with the young team’s mojo. They wuz robbed, I tell ya! Robbed!

Today is, of course, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I’ve cheated, as I am wont to do, and talked about a bunch of Pirates.

 

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