Make mine a Pedro!

You know you've finally made your mark in the Big Apple when you get a drink named after you. I expect that this particular cocktail will be stirred in most of the New York area, except in Yankee Stadium, where it will probably be ever-so-slightly shaken...

Spring clean

You may have noticed that there hasn't been much new on here of late. I could go with the usual excuses (too much work, not enough real news, etc.), but you've heard them all before, so I thought I would try out a new one: the reason there haven't been any posts lately is because the blog's stately-but-slightly-depressing dark-blue colour-scheme was hampering my creativity.

So, as you can see, I've gone for something a little lighter and more airy (for now, at least) in the hope that it will rescue the blog from the Bergman-esque depths and send it off on its merry way towards a brand-new season of baseball.

Green Day

Aaaah, March 17th. Fond memories of drunken Irishmen sprawled out on 5th Avenue at 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

I won't be wearing any funky Major League gear today, but in honour of my Irish ancestors - the Hannans - I will be watching the Red Sox play the Marlins, in the company of a couple of cans of Guinness. Sláinte!

Quality start

Beth hasn't been around much lately, but as always, when she takes here turn in the rotation, she gives a quality start. She has a great picture of Fenway on her blog, which in itself would be worth the proverbial thousand words, but she's not content to leave it at that. In the very same post she goes on to describe a double-play she saw this week in a way that I can only describe as Angell-esque. Apologies for quoting verbatim once again, but Beth has great stuff:

It should be mentioned, though, that a wickedly sharp double play enacted by the Braves' crisp infield yesterday was worth the price of admission. I can't be bothered to find out the names of the players involved, and no game recaps seem to mention the play. But you know what it's like, and in a way, who the players are doesn't matter right now, does it? The ball bounced toward the shortstop, who, with grapevine steps to his right, snapped up the ball, whirling in one smooth motion toward the second baseman, who stood straddling his bag, catching and leaping and throwing all at once as the runner slid toward him, zinging the ball to first where it was caught with a stomp in the heartbeat before the hitter reached the base...

Could have been any players. Could have been any team. Could have been any year. So graceful was the play, so meticulously did it hang together, that it seemed as if the opposition between the teams had given way to graceful cooperation, as if the two teams had become one machine, precise, moving in concert. The miracle of a play like this is that it was routine. Commonplace. Garden-variety. A jewel taken completely for granted in the beautiful game.

I imagine that the pitching line on this entry would look something like this:

IP 8 H 4 R 1 ER 1 BB 1 SO 5.

Green Onion?

I've been reading Call of the Green Monster for a while now, but haven't linked to any specific posts, up until this particular one, which had me laughing out loud in the office. The site is reminiscent of other classic satirical sites, but the baseball aspect gives it a great twist.

I know that not everyone is going to laugh out loud, but if this:

"Even picking up a cup of coffee is trouble, because these voices in my head keep telling me it might move," he continues. "And when a waitress hands me a plate of food, I lunge for it in the wrong direction, and end up knocking it over. I mostly eat at home."

doesn't make you at least chuckle, then maybe it's time to think about taking that sense of humour in for a much-needed service.

Same movie, different actors

There are some new faces on board over at The Cub Reporter. John Hill is a man after my own heart - when I read his first post, "Men in Pyjamas", it was a little bit like looking in the mirror:

Don’t ask me to explain just why then I watched the final five games of the [2002] series too; I can’t. Maybe I wanted to see who won in the end, but I don’t remember really caring either way. Maybe I was more intrigued than I’d care to admit, but I certainly didn’t miss baseball as that off-season set in. In fact, I hardly gave it a thought; I was far too enveloped in football (you know, the one actually involving feet), rugby and cricket, the typical English sporting diet, to notice its absence, or even its return the following spring. The post-season rolled around again though, and inexplicably I watched again, and the weariness and the apathy faded faster than those Cub hopes and dreams. Just as in the only moment I can actually remember from that first series between the Angels and Giants, there was sweeping off feet involved. I was a baseball fan then, a Cub fan within months, obsessed beyond repair only a few months after that, and now here I am.

"Obsessed beyond repair"? This is great stuff - go check out the new kid on the block.

Insider information

Tom Verducci's column in Sports Illustrated is called Inside Baseball, and this week he proves just why that is. If you've ever wondered what it would be like not just to go to spring training but to be an integral part of it, check out his article, which describes the week he spent at spring training with the Blue Jays.

There are some nice little insights scattered throughout the article, but my favourite quote was one which goes to prove that no matter at what level you play baseball, some things stay the same:

While on the bases, if an infielder asks you to step off the bag so he can clean the base, don't. He's trying to pull the hidden-ball trick.

It doesn't matter whether it's the Major Leagues or Little League - no-one wants to walk back to the dugout after getting retired on that particular play.

Happy, erm, March 9th

It's Wednesday, it's Juliette Binoche's birthday, it's Baron Bliss day in Belize. OK, so I'm trying a little bit too hard to find an excuse for passing on a fine gift, but via Futility Infielder and a couple of other websites comes this gem: an mp3 of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September 9th, 1965.

Beyond the obviously historic nature of the broadcast, it's just a sheer pleasure to hear Vin Scully. His voice is inextricably linked to my love of baseball because, having got hooked by the 1986 World Series on TV, the first baseball videotape I ever owned was the highlights tape of the '88 World Series, with Scully broadcasting for NBC. His commentary just seemed to flow so naturally - it didn't feel like he was trying to make too much of it. When you listen to him broadcasting a game, you find yourself focusing on the game, not on the broadcaster. He filters the game's crucial moments through a mastery of the beauty and simple poetry of the English language. In stark contrast to some of today's high-profile broadcasters (*cough* Tim McCarver *cough*) the focus is on the message, not the messenger. At crucial and historic moments, we don't want contrived cleverness, which tends to take away from the moment, but rather simple imagery, which adds to the moment and ensures that it will stay with us for years.

"There's 29, 000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies..."

Perfect line, perfect game.

Stuff and nonsense

Spring training is with us, but apart from the occasional glance at MLB.com I'm not overly concerned with what's going on (no, not even this). One could easily apply to spring training the promotional review that can be found on my copy of David Gray's White Ladder: "[This album] makes your life better by its mere existence...".

In the absence of any cutting-edge baseball analysis I thought I'd share a link to a website that's been doing the rounds on several of the blogs I read. My technical knowledge is too limited to know exactly how the website works, but the results can be a lot of fun to look at. If I had the time, inclination and skills to make a banner for the blog, it might look something like this:

Ah, the simple pleasures of the Internet.

A Day In The Bleachers

This was our ballpark over the weekend:

(thanks to webmaster Loony for the photo)

As you can probably gather from that, spring training is more of a dream than a reality right now. So, to compensate, I spent some of the weekend in Arizona (virtually, at least), in the company of those lucky enough to have warm breezes blowing over their ballparks.

Given the way that I came to the sport of baseball, I don't think that I'll ever be one of those fans interested only in games that count involving their team, sometimes to the exclusion of all other teams and even entire leagues. Yes, I'm a fan of the Boston Red Sox, but that will never preclude me from being a generic fan of the game, and that means that I was able to spend three relaxing hours in front of my PC this weekend, watching the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim play the Colorado Rockies (of Denver).

The score was of no consequence (7-6 Colorado, if you really want to know, with a nice 5-run rally in the 9th inning), nor was the fact that, by the seventh inning or so, neither I nor the announcers on FSN Rocky Mountains could recognise or name any of the players on the field - there was baseball, and that was enough to make it a good day. There'll be plenty of time to get worked up about the Yankees or Baltimore's apparently volatile new right-fielder. For now, it's enough that the summer game is back in my life on a regular basis.

Big hand

Leaving your blog in someone else's hands whilst you're away is a tricky matter - it's a bit like leaving the keys to your apartment with a good friend in the hope that, at the very least, they'll make sure that your bonsai / cat / goldfish doesn't die whilst you're away. If I were to extend the house-sitter metaphor a little, I would have to say that not only did my bonsai not die an ugly death, it actually prospered in my absence. Thanks to Tim (a.k.a. DBFII) for looking after the place in my absence and metaphorically filling the fridge up with beer, to make my return to Paris all the less painful.