Road Trip*

Shyster is hitting the road for a couple of days. California if you must know. There will be baseball -- I'll be catching the Padres and Mariners Saturday night, and may get a chance to take in the Dodgers-Jays on Friday -- but I'll probably not be writing about it until I get back to stinky old Ohio on Monday.

Recommendation for the weekend: watch Homer Bailey's Major League debut Friday night. If I'm the Reds I let him break in against weaker bats than the Tribe, but then the Reds do a lot of things I wouldn't do.

Otherwise? Some other young chap is making his season debut in Pittsburgh on Saturday, which should be fun. Go Pirates.

Mets-Tigers looks like it might be the most fun of all of the interleague matchups this weekend. As much as I'd like to hate the Mets, they're a pretty likable team and the novelty of the Tigers being good hasn't worn off for me yet. If I get too wasted in California and end up sitting on my brother's couch all day Saturday and Sunday, that's the series I'm tuning into.

Hasta Martes.

*While I, um, borrow most of the pics that accompany my posts, I actually took this one myself. That's US-50, a couple dozen miles east of the Utah-Nevada border, on April 20, 2003. I had sort of lost my bearings around that time, and vistas like that one helped me find them again. Just thought you should know.

Out at the Ballgame

Remember those carefree days of early 2002 when we thought of Jose Canseco as mere beefcake instead of a whistle blower? When we were far more interested in Mike Piazza promising us that he was heterosexual than we were in Jason Giambi promising us that he hadn't "done that stuff?" When Gary Sheffield was more likely to slur someone's sexual orientation as opposed to their race?

Ah, those were the days!

Well, if you're in the Bay Area, you can relive them between now and July 11th, as the New Conservatory Theatre Center presents Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning play Take Me Out:

We're in a locker-room; a private place where the sweat and the grime mix with the tears of defeat or the shouts of triumph. Where the trouble on or off the field is kept locked up with the deodorant and the tobacco. We're flies on the wall of a true red, white and blue pastime. So imagine the mess when one of America's best ball players goes into the locker room and out of the closet with one overly confident stride!

Sweet! But, man, this just isn't as topical as it was when it was written a few years ago. Any special reason why I should go, Mr. Reviewer?

The last time I'd seen a live performance of Take Me Out, I was in the front mezzanine and completely distracted by the nudity. This time, in spite of being six rows from the nakedness, I was more focused on the play. Great bodies up against a great script? The script wins. Perhaps I've matured as an audience member. Or perhaps NCTC took me all the way to home-plate this time around!

That cuts it. I'll be there with bells on.

Lawyers, Ethics, and Baseball Tickets

Bad couple weeks' press for Atlanta lawyers. First one goes out of his way to spread TB, and then one makes an ass out of himself and my profession over some choice Braves season tickets:

Aisle 101, front row, seats 5, 6, 7, 8 behind home plate. On Tuesday morning, a divorced Atlanta couple took these objects of joy into a courtroom — and turned them into a source of misery. H. Elizabeth King, a psychologist, accused her ex, Charles Center, a lawyer, of breaking their 2002 divorce agreement to divide the tickets.

King said in court Tuesday that Center had gone out of his way to give her bad tickets this season — to games that conflicted with her tickets to Wednesday night concerts at the Chastain Park Amphitheater. And, worse, she claimed 80 percent of the tickets he gave her were for day games, implying he’d done it because he knew she had skin cancer.

Center testified that the four tickets to 27 home games cost about $6,000. And he was distributing them to her the way he’d always distributed them, sequentially, according to a mathematical formula. He admitted he would
“manipulate” that arrangement when people asked or if there were conflicting
schedules.

So far, attorneys’ fees in the dispute have run to about $13,000.

Since the story doesn't tell us all that much about the actual litigation tactics which led to this scene, we can only truly call the ex-husband -- himself a lawyer -- a jerk. If he truly is messing with the mother of his children over the tickets like the article suggests, he's a petty bastard, and would be no matter what his profession.

That said, I've practiced law for nearly nine years. Though the vast majority of my cases and clients have involved simple business being conducted by more or less decent people, I've represented a lot of bastards too. I've also had opposing counsel who run the gamut from princes to punks. Throughout my career I have often taken solace in the "we can only advise and remain ethical, all else is up to the client" mantra, but I also know it's a copout.

Lawyers may very well have a duty of zealous representation, and may have a floor of ethical behavior below which we may not sink lest we incur sanctions, but that does not mean (a) that we should not strive to counsel our clients against taking unreasonably assholish positions even if they are technically within their rights to do so; and (b) that, if our advice is ignored, we still have to remain in the case. The ethical rules do not require us to check notions of common decency at the courthouse door.

Yes, there is always someone who will take these cases and run with them, but I hope that before counsel of record was retained, at least a couple of other lawyers told these season ticket holders that there is no sense spending tens of thousands of dollars of their own money and costing the legal system thousands more litigating the issue of who gets the nice seats when.

While I'm on my high horse, allow me to offer something else.

I don't know why I care, but I did a bit of digging, and found this article, which prominently features the couple in question. It turns out that, based on their own experiences with cancer, the two of them worked and produced a book for kids about how to cope with parents who have cancer called Kemo Shark.

While no one except the spouses involved can ever truly know what goes on in a marriage, it's amazing to me that two people could work together to raise a couple of kids, deal with cancer, and then turn that into a positive like a book to help kids cope, and then turn around and have a stupid court battle that ends with one of them yelling "I'm not going to jail! I'm not going to jail!"

Remembering Fernando. No, the other one. Um, not that one either. Just read the post.

Fernando Hernandez made his major league debut for the Detroit Tigers on April 3, 1997. Over the course of his career -- which lasted two days -- he allowed nine base runners in an inning and a third, six of whom scored. And that was after a fast start. Retrosheet reveals that he struck out his first batter faced -- the Twins' Greg Myers -- bailing Willie Blair out of a horrific seven run second inning in Minnesota. The Fernando Hernandez era had begun!

Coming out for the third inning, he retired Marty Cordova, and followed that up by allowing a walk and a single. Reaching down for that inner-Fernando we all knew he had, he struck out Todd Walker. After allowing a double and another walk (intentional, man! Fernando totally could have gotten Knoblauch out!), Hernandez' was lifted. Three-fourths of the way through his illustrious career, Hernandez had pitched one inning, allowing two to score. It would have been three if not for a runner-kill at home plate via a throw by the immortal Brian Hunter after a single to center. Teammates were always going that extra mile and giving a little extra for Fernando. He was just that kind of guy.

The rubber would hit the road in Hernandez' next and final big league appearance two days later. Coming on with one on in the second, he allowed a single. Then, in a moment which is probably still discussed over after dinner cigars and cognac at the Fernandez home, he retired future hall of famer Frank Thomas on a pop out. But Hernandez was not all about quiet efficiency and finesse. To the contrary, his intrepid bravery was on full display against the very next batter when he beaned Albert Belle. Hernandez' BR.com page shows that he is still alive, but I'm sure Belle is biding his time somewhere, waiting for the right moment to take his revenge. Fernando no doubt waits, ever-prepared to see his ancient foe and once again engage him in battle.

While he may not have known it at the time, Fernando's best days were behind him. He followed the Belle beaning with a walk, a double, and a triple, and with that the Felix Hernandez era was officially over. In a moment of poignant symmetry which reveals just how much Hernandez had meant to his teammates, Tigers' manager Buddy Bell arranged for Willie Blair -- the man Hernandez bailed out at the dawn of his career -- to come in and retire the final batter in the final inning at its twilight, saving Fernando one extra earned run. Retrosheet doesn't reveal if the Comiskey Park crowd gave Hernandez a standing ovation, but I think it's safe to assume they did.

The career totals for Fernando Hernandez: 2 games, 1 1/3 innings pitched, 5 hits, 3 walks, 1 hbp, and 6 runs allowed, all of them earned, for an ERA of 40.50.

Why do I go on so about Fernando Hernandez? Because I just learned that my friend Todd, a man who (a) loves baseball; (b) likes to save money when he can; and (c) appreciates the obscure, encountered the perfect sartorial storm yesterday when he purchased an official Fernando Hernandez Detroit Tigers jersey. That means someone, somewhere cared enough about Hernandez to order that jersey and keep it in wearable condition for a decade. They then thought highly enough of it that, rather than simply toss the thing, they figured that it was worth money, and sold it to a second hand clothing store. Todd has it now, and if I know Todd like I think I do, he will have it for at least another decade.

If someone cares enough about Fernando Hernandez to treat his ephemera with tenderness and care, the least I can do is to document his legend.

Ok, the Nats may be a little hard up . . .

Their AAA first baseman is 35 year-old Robin Jennings, late of the Cubs, Twins, and Reds organizations, who had been out of baseball since 2003. Since that time, he's been working for those Bigger, Stronger, Faster guys, in whose commercials he appears.

Good for him, though. How many of us are doing what we love at 35?

Strange Boxfellows

A link from Deadspin to a story about GWB throwing out the first pitch of the 2001 World Series reveals that no matter how nasty the GOP primaries get, at one time, one of the candidates thought that his opponent was trustworthy enough to pass money down the aisle to a vendor and deliver a hot dog back in exchange:

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, an ardent Yankees fan, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., sat in a box next to the dugout.

It was probably great until the 5th inning when Giuliani tried to convince McCain to trade up to better seats and McCain was all "no, that usher looks too tough. We'd better stay here."

A-Rod's Lady Friend

I don't care if A-Rod cheated on his wife (see below post about the personal lives and personalities of pro athletes). I do care, however, that a handsome ballplayer with a $250M contract can't do better than Joslyn Morse (link very NSFW), who appears to have been sculpted out of play-doh by either an anime artist or a fourteen year-old boy.

The proportions . . .they're . . .off.

How We Know What Isn't So

The Chicago Sun-Times is stoking the fires of a Jermaine Dye for Bobby Abreu trade. That's well and good, I suppose. Both Dye and Abreu have been horrific this year. Abreu costs more than twice as much as Dye, but neither the Yankees nor the White Sox are particularly hard up, and each player is in the last year of their contract (Abreu has a 2008 club option with a $2M buyout). I'm sure both players could use a change of scenery and it's possible, I suppose, that this could be one of those trades that benefit both teams.

Still, there's always some baloney floating around trades like this, and the baloney in this one comes from this bit in the Sun-Times article in which the Sox think the trade is a good idea because:

Not only because Abreu is a good friend of Guillen's -- which worked out well when right-hander Freddy Garcia came over -- but also because the Sox believe Abreu is a slow starter and his best baseball this season is ahead of him.

I believe Guillen and Abreu are friends, but the bit about Abreu being a slow-starter is largely horseshit. A quick scan of Abreu's splits over at Baseball-Reference.com reveals that in three of the past five years, July was, by far, Abreu's worst month, and August was his worst month in another of those years. In each of the past three years, Abreu's best months were either April or May. His August and September tends to align nicely with his season totals. Upshot: while not an extreme spring player, recent-vintage Abreu tends to be better before the pennant races truly heat up and can often be counted on to post his worst month in July.

Given how bad he's been so far and given that he doesn't appear to be hurt, one would naturally think that Abreu will improve as the season wears on. Such thoughts, however, are not based on empirical evidence. Just as a coin which has come up heads five times in a row is no more likely to come up tails on its next toss than it was on it's first, statistically speaking, Abreu is just as likely to stink it up for the rest of the year as he is to break out of his funk, and nothing the White Sox tell the Sun-Times beat reporters can change that.

But at least we know Ozzie will be happy having his buddy around.

The Glitter That Sends Your Little Gleam

There's a general consensus out there that Jeff Kent is a jerk. Indeed, SI recently ran some poll results showing that, after Bonds, Kent is the least-friendly player in baseball. Ladies and gentleman, I give you . . . .THE MONSTER!

That's Kent, shaking my friend Todd's hand at Dodgers' photo day last week. According to Todd, "Kent was super cool. Took his time, seemed very nice, and shook a ton of hands."

Nomar Garciaparra, on the other hand, is widely thought of as one of baseball's nice guys. Always viewed as a leader whether or not he is actually leading. He saved someone from drowning in Boston Harbor a couple of years ago. If anything, a knock on him during his Red Sox days was that he was too nice, and couldn't will his troops to victory the way a guy like Jeter allegedly does (or did). Todd's take on Nomar at photo day: "Nomar was phoning the shit in."

Obviously photo day 2007 is not a sample size large enough upon which to base anything, so it would be folly for me to say Kent is a nice guy and Nomar indifferent at best (indeed, the SI poll is probably the best evidence I've seen that Kent is, in fact, a jerk). But then again, how meaningful are most of the interactions between ballplayers and those that follow them? Even the beat writers only get a handful of minutes a day, and a large percentage of those occasions occur in a locker rooms after games and are imbued with a win-enhanced jocularity or a loss-inspired testiness. Because of this, how can anyone really say what ballplayers are really like?

Whether it's Barry Bonds' surliness, Ryan Freel's scrappiness, or Greg Maddux's braininess, it seems to me that the sports media is way too quick to make character judgments about guys we know little about outside of their abilities to handle or deal high heat. It's upon these sorts of snap judgments that we base our shock or outrage when players fail to act admirably, whether it be on the field or off of it. Until the first screw-up the bar, I feel, is set artificially high, based on our default desire to think of athletes as superhuman. After the first screw-up we write them off as bums, failing to grant them the same right to have a bad day once in a while that everyone else is afforded.

I don't have anyone or any incident in mind with this. It's just something that has bothered me from time to time.

The Beautiful Game

Don't lump me in with those guys who dismiss soccer out of hand. I've tried to get into soccer. I really have. I've been to several MLS games. I've watched EPL on Saturday mornings. I've read stuff all over the web trying to figure out what, exactly, I'm missing, but it still hasn't clicked with me, nor at this point do I think it ever will. I am resigned, I have decided, to be one of the millions who get mildly exuberant about the World Cup every four years, and then happily forget about it just as some Eurotrash guy hoists something shiny over his head.

At times I feel bad about this because, lip service to nonconformity aside, if billions of people think something is cool, it probably is pretty cool. Then I come across something like this, from That's On Point's recap of the USA-China friendly this past weekend:

The absolute apex of this came in the 32nd minute, in perhaps the best sequence I've seen by the USMNT in nearly two decades of watching it. It began with a weighted ball up by Michael Bradley deep in his own half to Sasha Kljestan, who ran it down right on the touchline. Kljestan found his Chivas USA teammate Ante Razov with a looping cross to the left penalty area. Razov could have volleyed on the China net, but instead headed to an on-rushing Clint Dempsey, who in turn flicked a header to a rampaging DaMarcus Beasley.

The Beaz threaded a pass back to Razov on the left side of the area...too bad his shot was blocked by China keeper Chen Dong . . . it's a definite shame that Razov didn't score since it won't get the YouTube immortality.

I don't quote that in order to make some lazy joke about how soccer is boring, or low scoring, or what have you (again, billions and billions can't be wrong, right?), but it strikes me that soccer is the only sport in which the most interesting, exciting, or best-executed events routinely fail to occur in the course of accomplishing the game's object (i.e. putting the ball in the net).

We can disagree about home runs vs. small ball, but no matter what you prefer, we're praising strategies and events which result in runs. No one would ever says the "best sequence" they'd seen in twenty years was a fly ball that died on the warning track or a failed suicide squeeze. No matter how great the rebound, the outlet pass, and the pre-shot jukes and jives, no one ever stood up and cheered when Dominique missed a dunk or Bird bricked a jumper. No matter how great the previous 70 yards of the drive were, Joe Montana's legend would be diminished tremendously if Super Bowl XXIII had ended with his pass to John Taylor getting knocked down instead of caught. Do we praise defensive plays? Absolutely. But ToP's blurb about the US-China friendly wasn't about how great a play the keeper made. It was about an 80% beautifully-executed sequence that ended in failure.

I don't begrudge soccer fans their love of the Beautiful Game. I realize that I am and always will be in the minority, if not in this country than at least in the world, in not caring much for soccer. All I can say, however, is that if the best moment of USA soccer an expert like ToP can point to in twenty years resulted in a blocked goal, maybe I'm really not missing anything at all.

UPDATE: An email from ToP's Mike Cardillo addresses my failure to "get" soccer better than anything I've come across before. Mike writes:

I don't really need to get into a lengthy debate about the merits of a non-goal. The thing with soccer is, in a lot of ways it is art. There is really no limit to what the 11 v. 11 on the field can do at any time. Creativity, vision, panache, what have you. There is a reason why great footballers are called geniuses.

In baseball, on any given play there are two results -- an out or not. Of course within that dynamic any number of things can happen, but over the course of time it's pretty much the same thing over and over again, with an occasional triple play thrown in. For a quick example, take a comparison between Ronaldinho and Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod can jack say, 50 home runs and really the only difference is length of the homer and where it landed. Ronaldinho can score 20 goals in the Spanish league each one from a different place, with a different syle of strike.

I guess in the end its a matter or taste. Science vs. art.

I'm not really inclined to concede that baseball is "pretty much the same thing over and over again," but I think he's right about it being science to soccer's art. While there is some amount of creativity involved in a pitcher setting up a hitter, baseball really is a game of geometry and physics with far less room for the improvisation of soccer. I still can't say I understand or appreciate that improvisation enough to make me a soccer fan, but I feel less guilty about that now than I did before reading and thinking about Mike's email. I don't get opera either, and many people don't get jazz, and that's just the way the world works.

Hey look: soccer guys and non-soccer guys being civil to each other. What a concept.

Question . . .

How did Dennis Quaid never get tapped to star in Suddenly Last Summer: The Sam McDowell Story?

David Wells Remembers

From USA Today re: the Padres rotation:

David Wells says the Padres follow the lead of Peavy, who is 7-1 with a 1.68 ERA. Wells says the Padres' staff reminds him of the 1998 New York Yankees, when five starters each won 12-plus games, including David Cone's 20, Andy Pettitte's 16 and Wells' 18.

David had better keep mum about those 1998 Yankees comparisons, because no one on that squad was 9-9 with an ERA near 5 and a .310 batting average-against like Wells is projected to do for the Padres this year.

Yeah, He's Going to Opt-Out

A-Rod hears the jeers:

"I heard some, but it's always in good fun," he said after his solo shot through the rain off Jonathan Papelbon gave New York a 6-5 win Sunday night and the rubber game of the series. "I think the Boston fan always has a lot of fun and I appreciate that. It's not a big deal."

I get the feeling that quote was vetted by his management team during a Sunday afternoon conference call during which plans for the A-Rod 2007-2008 Free Agency Extravaganza (code name: Project Anaheim) began to take shape. If he were truly staying with the Yankees, the quote would have been something like "Words don't hurt . . . [deep, composing breath] . . .words can't hurt me . . ."

After the media-driven hell he's endured in New York he's never going to sign with Boston, but he's got to at least keep the possibility open so he can drive up the bids from other teams in the off-season, right?

Doubleknits

I tend to be a classicist when it comes to baseball attire and cringe when I see old video of the baby blue/pajama pants/doubleknit era. The teams that keep it clean and keep it basic look better, in my estimation and -- aesthetically speaking -- nothing seen on a baseball field in the 1970s looks better than what can be found today.

OK, there's one exception. I loved Saturday's Tigers-Indians throwback game, because I always loved those old Tigers roadies:

The Tigers joined in the Indians' celebration of '70s weekend at Jacobs Field with a rare throwback night. They donned jerseys reminiscent of their 1977 road greys, featuring the block-letter "DETROIT" on the front and blue, white and orange stripes on the sleeves and pants, as well as retro hats with white trim around the orange English 'D'.

C'mon, doesn't this:

Look better than this?:
I'm willing to admit I'm in the minority here, but I think Detroit it the only team that looked better with the pullover doubleknits than without them, at least when it comes to the road gear. And the fact that they did this while being one of only a handful of teams that managed to keep their heads about them and hold on to their classic home duds during the polyester explosion makes it all the more impressive.

Great Moments in Erudition

And Thus Gary Sheffield Spake:

"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out

Still ain't none be coming out, Gary. Still ain't none be coming out.

Do Closed-Door Meetings Work?

This story about the Cubs' closed-door meeting before Wednesday's game was the first time I can ever recall a reporter actually asking the players whether such meetings make a difference:

[Derek] Lee didn’t want to talk specifics other than to say it was “obvious” why the meeting was called, but he did admit that the immediate success rate of such meetings isn’t overwhelmingly high. "I would say they’re 50-50 in my experience, so we’ll see what happens,” Lee said.

Immediately speaking, nothing happened, as the Cubs left their meeting and went out and got shellacked 9-0 by the Marlins.

But is Lee right? Can teams expect closed-door or player-only pep talks to light a fire about 50% of the time? Now is certainly time to ask the question, because we are entering high season for closed-door meetings. Those magical, pre-batting practice affairs during which troubled teams try to talk their way out of jams that their bodies played their way into. My guess is that they don't work, mostly because the teams that hold such meetings are already in bad shape to begin with, and no amount of air-clearing or touchy-feeliness is likely to right a sinking ship.

But what do the numbers say?

Unfortunately, Baseball-Reference.com doesn't keep track of such things, so I had to resort to some illicit Lexis-Nexis research on my law firm's dime, trying to track down as many reports of "closed-door" or "players' only meetings" that have taken place since June 1, 2006. Ignoring those meetings which seemed to deal with issues other than a team's poor performance (e.g. Boston had one last year to announce Jon Lester's Lymphoma diagnosis; the Marlins had about a dozen following last year's Girardi-Loria dust up.), I found twenty-seven of them, nineteen after June 1st of last season, eight through May 31st of this one. There were probably a handful more that some reporter didn't find out about, but I'm guessing I nabbed the lion's share.

So, do they work?

To figure this out, I looked at a team's record at the time the meeting took place, the results of the first game immediately following the meeting, the results in the first ten games following the meeting, and then looked at the team's final record. Some findings:

• The average winning percentage for a team holding a closed-door meeting was .474;

• Teams holding a closed-door meeting were 14-13 (.518) in their first game following the meeting;

• Teams posted an average winning percentage of .471 in the first ten games following a closed-door meeting;

• The average end-of-season winning percentage for teams which held closed-door meetings -- or in the case of 2007, the current winning percentage -- was .481.

Upshot: while a closed-door meeting gave teams a modest boost right after adjournment, teams which went the Dr. Phil route actually performed worse in their first ten games following the meeting than they had before the meeting. Over the course of the season, the closed-door meetings meant a .007 boost in winning percentage, which translates to 1.1 wins.

While these numbers seem to suggest that closed door meetings don't work particularly well, Derek Lee was being a bit pessimistic regarding how often the gambit works. Sixteen of the twenty seven teams who had closed-door meetings finished the season with better records than they had at the time the meeting was held, which beats his guess of 50-50.

Some random fun:

• The best team to call a closed-door meeting was Mets, who had one on August 9th of last year, when they were 67-44 and running away with the NL East. The reports I saw didn't say why a team that was cruising decided to convene a meeting. Maybe they just wanted to play some Cranium in private?

• The Mariners, Marlins, Phillies, Yankees, Dodgers, and Nats have all had multiple closed-door meetings during the period I reviewed. The Braves, Cardinals, Astros, Reds, Padres, D-Backs, Red Sox, Orioles, Twins, Tigers, and A's had none. I had hoped to find some common thread among teams that either had or didn't have closed-door meetings. Eyeballing it tempts me to make an argument that teams with respected gray-hairs at the helm (Braves, Cardinals, Tigers) tended not to, but with a couple of odd exceptions, it's mostly the losing teams that have them. Not really a surprise.

• The Dodgers are the kings of the closed-door meetings. They had three of them after June 1, 2006 last season alone. The first one sent them on a 17-28 skid until the next meeting, after which they won 28 of their next 42. They must have figured that they had tapped into the secret of meetings at that point, because they had another one in early September, ended the season winning 13 of their final 21 and made the playoffs;

• The Nats also had three meetings last year, though they didn't help at all. The first two were a mere thirteen days apart in June, and went a combined 8-12 in the ten games after each meeting. They were a .447 team before they started conclaving and .438 at season's end. Clearly, they should have just kept the doors open;

• The Phillies like their meetings to be a bit dramatic. Each of their two confabs were, according to the news reports, called by Jimmy Rollins, the first on the Fourth of July and the most recent on Opening Day. Maybe the stars-and-stripes bunting goes to his head.

Apart from the fact that I really need a research assistant, what did we learn here today? Not much, really. At least not much we didn't already suspect. Losing teams are the ones that most feel the need to clear the air, and all of that air-clearing doesn't do much to help matters. Despite whatever your local columnist is going to write round about the All-Star break, your sorry team needs more than some motivational rah-rah in order to turn things around, and bad clubhouse chemistry is the symptom, not the cause, of a losing team.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to a meeting.

Dude, need 2? I got 2.

Scalpers are poised to rejoice in New York as the state is about to remove price caps for tickets sold on the secondary market. Not that this means anything given the ubiquity of scalp sites on the internet which have pretty much rendered the old restrictions unenforceable. Still a good thing inasmuch as having old, reality-defying laws taken off the books lessens the likelihood of some poor sap being prosecuted for something that society doesn't truly consider a crime anymore.

Most interesting thing in the article:

Both the Yankees and their archrival Red Sox recently have made a practice of cracking down on season ticket holders who are caught selling their unwanted seats on the Internet, in violation of team policy.

Never having held season tickets for anything before, I wasn't aware that teams had rules against this. Next week I will be visiting ShysterBrother in California and I want to do things up in style, so I recently purchased some expensive Padres tickets online. However, the seats I had my eye on didn't appear on most of the Petco Park maps I saw, so worrying that I may be getting ripped off, I called the Padres ticket office to get the lowdown. The lady who answered was really nice, looked up the season tickets, confirmed for me that they were authentic, confirmed for me that the seller was a season ticket holder, and told me to enjoy the hell out of the game.

The Yankees and Red Sox wouldn't do this?

The Legends in Living Color

I wanted to kill Ted Turner the first time I saw a greenish-skinned Bogart placing the letters of transit in Sam's piano. Though the fad of colorization of movies is now thankfully in the past, I will never get back my early teenage years in which I could have been fantasizing about Ingrid Bergman but wasn't due to the off-putting, alien hues of her modest but powerfully evocative décolletage.

But I kind of like this story about a guy in New York who is creating near photo quality, in-action paintings of old baseball stars we only know in black and white. Why not?

I tend to think that many of the alleged problems alarmists point to in today's game are only considered such because they don't occur in rich sepia tones. Maybe illuminating the titans of yore with the full spectrum will convince a few people that it's the same game now as it was then.

Takeru Kobayashi Cringes

The Columbia Blowfish of the Coastal Plain League (amateurs! No, really), have announced a stunning new addition to their lineup:

It’s called the Ruthian Dog.

This massive wiener is named for legendary slugger Babe Ruth, whose hot-dog-eating exploits were as prodigious as his home-run-hitting feats.

“It’s nearly a half-pound of meat. And that doesn’t include the bun or any condiments you slop on it,” said Blowfish owner Bill Shanahan, who thinks the fabulous frank will be a huge hit with fans.

It costs $7.14, but that includes a Coke.

I, for one, welcome our new half-pound wiener overlords.

And the Buckeyes Breathe a Sigh of Relief

The NCAA field of 64 has been announced, and there is good news for Ohio State fans like me:

No Florida Gators.