Saturday, February 01, 2003
Soylent Green is People!
It's cool to see that one of my favorite sports writers has crossed over to the metapysical side of sport fandom.
Bill Simmons, writing at ESPN's Page Two (and the same article appears in The Magazine), tackles the notion of fan karma having an effect on a team's outcome:
… couldn't the collective energy of thousands and thousands of fans-all pulling their own karmic routine at the same time, instinctively pushing in the same direction- resemble a giant blackjack table?
Well, if you're a frequent reader of Bambino's, you already know I believe it.
Here's a sampling of previous posts on the subject:
… during a crucial moment in a game, say a situation in which the Red Sox are one strike from victory, if a couple hundred thousand of us fans believe in our hearts that the team is going to blow it � well, I think such sentiment can affect the outcome of the game. Call it a curse. Call it quantum physics. Call me nuts.
… for me the Curse isn't supernatural or phantasmagoric. I don't literally believe the demonic ghost of Babe Ruth flitters around Fenway trying to gum up the works.
No, for me, and perhaps for some of you as well, the Curse is my own memory, my own personal problem with summoning perseverance in the face of mortality.
If you look at voodoo or Santeria, psychologists will tell you that the curses work because the people truly believe in it. Neurology is full of cases demonstrating the power of our own minds, consciously or unconsciously, over our bodies. Most Red Sox fan feel there is something wrong with the Red Sox, something that predisposes them to defeat, whether they call it a curse or not. Perhaps, then, the collective mental energy of millions of Red Sox fans believing, truly believing that the team will collapse plays a role in that inevitable collapse?
So this notion of karma that Simmons writes of is alive and well here at Bambino's.
It's like that scene in the 70s sci-fi flick Solyent Green when the cop played by Charlton Heston figures out that the food source on the overcrowded earth in the year 2022 is actually made up of human beings.
Heston exclaims in all his Moses like might, "Solyent Green is people!"
Indeed it is.
Friday, January 31, 2003
Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head
Reading Gerry Callahan's piece in the Herald this morning, "R.I.P. New Fenway," I couldn't get over the disparity between Callahan's thesis and the metaphors he chose to get his point across.
On the one hand, Callahan is trying to say it's time to modernize, time to build a state of the art stadium to replace aging Fenway. He wants us to believe he's a thoroughly modern dude, a man of the 21st Century.
But if that is the case why does he use metaphors that suggest he's much more a man of the 50s? A man who thinks a woman's only value is her sexuality: "… new perfume on an old pig." A man, who when confronted with a woman in a powerful, hitherto male-only position, chooses to denigrate her: "… now they are intent on turning Fenway into the Nancy Pelosi of ballparks. An old broad with a new face, stretched like salt water taffy around her skull."
That he reaches so far to bring Nancy Pelosi into his old Fenway/new Fenway metaphor is telling.
Ironically, Callahan seems obsessed with cosmetic surgery, "… with all this extensive cosmetic surgery, Fenway Park will be known as Joan Rivers Stadium …Goodbye, J.Lo. Hello, Joan Rivers," yet fails to see that it's the kind of male attitude implicit in his article, i.e., young, beautiful women are of value, older women should be discarded, that makes the billion dollar cosmetic surgery industry thrive.
Nice work, Gerry!
I don't mean to turn this post into a bully pulpit on the issues of sexism and ageism, after all we are all guilty of it to varying degrees, but I expect more from journalists, even if they are sports writers where a certain tongue-in-cheek good ol' boy swagger is part of the charm.
The Callahan piece disturbed me. To me, it crosses the line from joking and playful banter into something bordering on misogyny. The result is a loss of respect for and trust in the writer.
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Futurama
Quick Red Sox fan quiz: Who are Kevin Youkilis and Hanley Ramirez?
According to Aaron Gleeman in an article at Baseball Primer, they are among the 50 Best Major League prospects, coming in at #35 and #32 respectively, and they're signed by your Boston Red Sox.
On Youkilis:
… an extremely intriguing player, to say the least.
He walks at an incredible rate and he does so without striking out. In his first two pro seasons, Youkilis has a total of 166 walks in only 199 games.
On Hanley Ramirez:
The hype-o-meter for Hanley Ramirez is off the charts right now and it is probably unrealistic to project so much on to a player that hasn't even played in a full-season league yet. At the same time, he has incredible natural skills and his performance so far has been incredibly good. The only reason he is ranked this low is because he has yet to prove he can do well against more experienced competition, in tougher leagues.
Take it for what it's worth, of course, predicting prospects isn't any different than predicting the stock market; although it's good the Red Sox do have 2 players on Gleeman's list, as many teams have zero (including a team a couple hours south who wear pinstripes).
And, regarding the future, the seats on the Wall plan has been unveiled in detail. The artistic rendering shown on in the Herald looks pretty cool, as does this architect's mode of the seats themselves.
As for the inevitable uproar from some segments of Red Sox Nation, Massarotti gets it right:
For years, the Red Sox have been criticized for being behind the times, behind the curve, out of touch. Fans sniped at former ownership for possessing poor management skills, for giving out bad contracts and for failing to produce minor-league talent. We mocked them for being bad businessmen. Now the current owners are being criticized on many of the the same issues, albeit from the other side, and you wonder sometimes what it will take to make New Englanders happy (Herald).
Well, I'm one fan that is all for the changes. Welcome to the 21st century.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
I Want My, I Want My HDTV
You can tell it's winter because all there is to talk about is the new Red Sox policy on ticket sales.
As an added perk to Red Sox season ticket-holders, they will be allowed for the first time to purchase single-game tickets before the general public ( Edes, Globe).
As for my response, I'm with this guy:
"If it's about revenue to get a World Series, then do whatever is necessary, as long as the money goes back into the team," said David Eastmond of Roxbury (Edes).
And as much as I like seeing a game live, in the flesh and blood at Fenway, I've got to admit that I'm going to by squirreling away my extra nickels and dimes in order to save up to buy an HDTV/plasma wide screen TV rather than buying Red Sox tickets.
Call me a victim of the post-post-post modern era in which we all retreat to our own little cocoons and interact with the real world only through the TV and Web, but to me it only makes sense.
Unless I'm lucky enough to finagle tickets in the first couple rows on either baseline, the actual watching the game experience for me is far better on TV. (Really, I get most of my games via radio/web cast, but when I do watch a game on TV, I get lost in it just on regular cable on a 32" screen.)
And have you seen a baseball game on wide screen plasma? Holy moly. Read review of watching Bruce Allen's review of watching the Super Bowl on HDTV and tell me you're not ready for it.
Some of you, undoubtedly, have already entered this brave new world. And of you I'm jealous.
Tune in. Turn on. Drop out. Heh heh …
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
He Said, She Said
From a recent Herald piece:
The truth, quite simply, is that the Red Sox didn't need to gut the entire house this winter. They just needed to do some cosmetic work, clean out a few closets and invest in a little redecorating.
Structurally speaking, the foundation is still good (Massarotti).
From the rascally Sean "P-Diddy" McDonough:
On Henry/Lucchino: "(They) cannot afford to own the team, they have nothing left... John Henry doesn't want to reach in for more... this group is very PR conscious... their talk is hollow"
On Colon: "If you've got a 5-game winner versus a 20-game winner -- you make the trade" (from WFAN transcript via DirtDogs).
In the immortal words of Austin Powers, "Which is it, baby, spit or swallow?"
Either you trim budget (in order to have money to resign folks like Nomar in the near future) while trying your best to put a competetive team on the field right now and rebuilding the farm system by protecting prospects, or you go for broke right now and piss your money away on anybody available. You can't do both.
No matter the choice, something tells me the prodigal son McDongough would be bitching and moaning.
Looks like Sean McDonough is picking up where his recently deceased father, Will, left off in finding nothing but negative in the new ownership. In the end, he might be right, but, honestly, I find the one note samba being sung by the family McDonough annoying and suspect.
If Henry et al really are broke and really are only in it of the short term profit, wouldn't they have acted differently? Wouldn't they have ditched Nomar and Pedro already?
Meanwhile, my illness yesterday has subsided. Still not 100% but I'm ready to come off the bench.
Monday, January 27, 2003
No Ripken, No Gehrig
Still don't know how Gehrig and then Ripken were able to maintain that consecutive game streak …
This morning about 30 minutes before I normally wake up, I'm suddenly overcome with a feeling of nausea (the real thing to and not the Sartre version). But since I suffer with chronic stomach ailments ever since my travels in Peru over ten years ago, I didn't think much of it.
I couldn't eat breakfast. Didn't want my morning coffee. Only wanted to drink water, lots of water.
And being the Calvinist cum Ripken wannabee that I am, figured I'd tough it out and go to work.
To cut to the chase, while driving I start to feel worse and worse until finally I get onto this very curvy section of road, a section in which pulling off to the side to get sick is not an option, and, "Whoop, there it is!" I manage to get hold of a plastic bag I had in the car, so imagine me driving with one hand and holding the bag up to my mouth in the other …
Needless to say, I found a place to turn around and abandoned any thoughts of going to work. That I'm writing this now, several hours later, is an indication that I'm feeling somewhat better. I still can't eat anything, and I've got the chills something terrible but at least no more vomit comet.
Normal Bambino's blogging will resume when I come off the D.L.
Sunday, January 26, 2003
Geek Weekend
Sorry for the lack of posting. Not only is there not much baseball to talk about right now, but also I'm making the switch to Apple's OS X operating system, both at home and at work, and it's taking up all my time, i.e., learning how it works and playing with all the new features.
At this point, I can happily report that OS X rocks. I expected it to at work where I just received a brand new top of line dual processor G4, but I was leery of how it'd do on my 3 year old G3 iMac. But there have been no problems at all. It actually seems that my iMac is faster under OS X than it was OS 9.2
OK, enough of the computer geekiness.
While skimming the Globe this morning, I was surprised to find the subheading reading "The Millar's tale" in Edes' Baseball notes. Not only was it surprising to read that" there remains a chance something will be worked out that will allow Millar to play for Boston," but also it was surprising to see that I used the exact same headline, "The Millar's Tale," here at Bambino's back on January 15th.
I'm not suggesting that the copy editors at the Globe are reading my posts and taking my headline ideas, of course, just that it's interesting that we both chose to use the name Millar in an esoteric reference to "The Miller's Tale" from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. A literate bunch we are in Red Sox Nation.
