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"Beanball Sax" on Google Video
Created from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw8iF9Zxaz0

A little chin music in the Se Riguu...to the tune of "Yakety Sax." Shamelessly ganked from somewhere else on the Interblag.

Pitchers & Catchers report in 22 days!

I booed Barry Bonds again.

It was also especially satisfying to watch my Nats beat the Giants, since I was sitting next to a bunch of Giants fans. I gave one of them stick for rooting for Barry, and he countered:

"Steroids don't make you a better hitter!"

To which I responded

"I agree. Barry was a TREMENDOUS hitter, even without the 'roids. So why did he do it? That's the tragedy. That's what I don't get."

"Well, yeah, so he's a cheater and..." Suddenly, he was out of arguments.

Half-smoke report: After a fairly thorough search of the new RFK concession stnads, I found NO HALF-SMOKES! If anyone can tell me where I can get a half-smoke in new, improved RFK, comment, because I've got a fever for one. I did, however, find a few new and tasty things. The terrace food court now has a Hard Times Cafe outlet: their nachos are the best in the business, with real (spicy!) chili. Also, there's another barbecue joint (whose name I forget) selling brisket sandwiches and something they call "Texas sausage" in a tortilla. I know they have to market to an Anglo audience, but I also know a chorizo when I see/eat one. I guess this is another one of those border things--like how some country music is really just Ranchera in English (and how Ranchera is really just Country, in Spanish).

Everybody seems to be hip to my "Take the DC General Exit" trick now. Doh!

In sum: Mr. Lerner, can we have some half-smokes?

OK. This is a long shot, but can anyone who reads Korean at least tell me what on Earth this comic strip is about? The best I can work out is that it’s about Alfie Soriano’s ups and downs...but since I can’t read Korean, I have really NO clue. It does, however, feature the original of the image I have shamelessly ganked above

Maybe I'm just a bit euphoric after our 4-1 win over the Astros last night. But I think it's come to this: I like Alfie Soriano. And, strangely, Alfie seems to like the fans who sit in left field in RFK.

I had promised to boo him mercilessly all year because of his spoiled-brat act during spring training. But all is forgiven now. The homers? Sure, the homers helped. But it was nice to see him trot out to left field last night and acknowledge the ovation he got from the fans there (myself included). He's a Nat. Who knew?

ESPN has an interesting article online that attempts to estimate the number of Barry Bonds’ homers that can be attributed to performance-enhancers. Everything hinges on the testimony of “Game of Shadows,” naturally. Using its reasoning, Bonds’ “juice-adjusted” numbers come down to a career HR total of 616 or so, no asterisk.

The findings are contestable, of course, but the methodology seems quite interesting, nevertheless.

I also think it rather interesting that Bonds’ contemporaries have not been subjected to the same withering statistical/historical analysis. The cloud of steroid suspicion is vast, but in this case, Bonds gets most of the attention because we have unusually-detailed allegations against him. Were similarly-detailed data available on, say, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, etc. I wonder what the findings would be.

Some people continue to insist that Bonds is being unfairly singled out for abuse--for a number of reasons, his race being among them. Why pick on Bonds, and not anyone else?

I contend that Bonds is an exceptional case in more ways than one:
( How? )

The Nationals will be owned by theLerner Group!

Expect a long open letter to the owners on this blog soon. It's only too bad that I'm not down at RFK to watch the white smoke rise and the crowd chant in thanksgiving...oh wait. Different selection process.

Alfie Soriano continues to be an enigma to me.

One minute, he makes a pretty good running catch in left field. ALFIE YOU'RE MY HERO! I bellow in appreciation.

The next, he doesn't even bother to make an effort for a playable ball which drops for a double. ALFIE, QUIT LOLLYGAGGIN' OUT THERE I bark.

What's it gonna be, Alfie-boy? What's it gonna be? Nats fans everywhere want to know.

Oh, the rest of the game. Yeah:

Tony Armas is not a great starter. Good middle relief, maybe. But he just ran out of gas tonight. The bullpen wasn't great, either. Majewski wasn't terribly pitch-efficient--but it might have just seemed that way, since we were behind.

Hitting? Guys, if you've got bases loaded with nobody out on Pedro, SCORE. First Vidro strikes out, then Guillen hits into a double-play. The pain.

Also--I wish Metro would do something about transportation from nats games. The metro TO the stadium is OK, but getting home is just murder. I wish there were something like an express bus from RFK to Metro Center: that would speed things up nicely.

There's a fierce discussion over at baseball regarding some racially-insensitive (or at the very least ill-advised)comments made by Roger Clemens:

"None of the dry cleaners were open, they were all at the game, Japan and Korea," Clemens said. "So we couldn't get any dry cleaning done out there, but I guess the neatest thing is that 50,000 of them were at Anaheim Stadium."

To which my standard response applies: all you white folks look the same at a distance, too.

I bothered to do a bit of number-crunching on Soriano, in an effort to figure out why he might be a liability at second base for the Nats.

It occurred to me that we can get an idea of a second baseman's effectiveness by looking at the number of bases he "earns" as against the number of bases he gives away (errors).

So, just for shits and giggles:

Soriano "earned" at least 373 bases last year (singles + 2(doubles) + 3(triples) + 4(homers) + walks + steals), and committed 21 errors. So for every base he gives away with a fielding error, Soriano "wins back" 17.76 bases with his hitting and baserunning.

For the sake of comparison, consider Ron Belliard of Cleveland--a less impressive batter, but a statistically more reliable second baseman:

Belliard "earns" 278 bases last year, but only committed 13 errors. For every error he commits, Beliard earns 21.38 bases.

Now let's see how he stacks up against Jose Vidro, the Nats' current starting second baseman. Put an asterisk on Vidro's stats, since he only appeared in 87 games:

In 87 appearances with the nats, Vidro earned 161 bases, while committing only 5 errors. For every error Vidro makes, he earns 32.20 bases!

So, taken as a whole, Soriano's impressive batting numbers are really undercut by his awful fielding. He gives with his bat, but takes away from your club with his glove. By the numbers, you might want someone at second base whose net contribution is higher when you factor in errors. In this light, there's no reason why Vidro, not Soriano, should be at second base.

IF--and this is a big if--Soriano is a decent outfielder, we can expect his "bases per error" numbers to go up. The outfield is probably not as error-prone as the middle infield (I invite statistical evidence to prove or disprove this assertion).

Alfonso Soriano will play left field reports the Post. Apparently, he had a long chat with Alberto Castillo during the bus ride from Viera to Jupiter. Castillo was able to bring Soriano around:

Castillo said that Soriano had talked over the situation with his family and decided to accept a move to left field.

"I told him this is a job, this is a business," Castillo said. "It's going to be very hard for him, but after talking with his family and everybody else, he's going to go try and enjoy the outfield."

Geez. "accept a move to left field?" It's not as if he needed to accept Islam or anything.

America's total dominance of their own national pastime ended last night with a broken-bat 6-4-3 double-play. A Mexican team that had nothing left to play for but pride beat Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, 2-1, in front of a rowdy, mixed crowd in Anaheim.

blackaces will probably have more to say about this later--but briefly, here's my take on it all:

Much has been made of the scheduling of this tournament during Spring Training. Big-league owners and managers grumble that it disrupts their regular-season preparations, and that the risk of injury to some star players is unacceptable in games that are essentially meaningless.

Meaningless, of course, to nobody else but the U.S. team. The final four-- Japan, Korea, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic--all look sharp. They are executing better and more cleanly, and it seems that each qualifying team is in much better shape. I don't know anything about the run-up to this tournament, but I can only infer from the performance of the successful teams that they pushed their training and preparation back into the off-season to prepare.

Notwithstanding the many public protestations of pride for being able to play for the national team, I can't help but feel that Team USA simply did not do what was necessary to prepare for this tournament. The hitters didn't look like they had their timing. Some pitchers, who are ordinarily lethal during the regular season, couldn't find the strikezone with a map and a GPS receiver. They were simply cold, and were facing opponents that were hot after what looked like a fair number of practice drills and repetitions.

Wake up, MLB. Time to select a stable national team and have them train together consistently over the next three years. Time, also, to relinquish control of the game to a more representative body--that will ensure integrity in competition. If the present system continues, and there are significant rule changes (no pitch counts, reworking the brackets, etc), there will be nothing to prevent protests that MLB is attempting to fix the tournament to ensure an American victory. Time for baseball's FIFA or IOC. Time for Team USA Baseball to start looking like Team USA Soccer.

Oh, and prediction? DR and ROK in the final; DR wins 4-3 after a late-inning two-run homer.

I was annoyed to read this article last week in the CityPaper about plans for the new baseball stadium.

Predictably, there will be more and better accomodation for big-spending corporate box buyers, and less for the average fan.

Particularly scandalous are plans that limit upper-deck seat widths to a paltry 19 inches from armrest to armrest--in crumbling old RFK, they are 20, some even 21 inches across. Equally appalling is the fact that the upper deck will be nearly 30 feet higher up in the air than the upper deck in RFK--the better to make room for an extra tier of luxury boxes.

Of course, Comrade Chris will probably jump for joy at all of the revenue-generating goodness. Well, I won't. Frankly, I can't afford really good seats more than every once in a while. I might be the only Nats fan to say this, but you know what--I'm going to miss RFK when it's gone, especially if the new stadium is going to be built along these proposed lines. The best thing about RFK was that I could get reasonably good seats for almost no money, baseball-wise. In the new stadium specs, the upper-deck seats I used scrounge for would cost $60 rather than the $15 (or even $10!) I used to get them for.

The worst thing about this for me is that the people in the luxury boxes often don't give a damn one way or the other about baseball, anyway. They're too busy watching TV or closing deals to know what a hit-and-run looks like, much less bother to keep score or sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". The best ballgame I ever went to (that wasn't a Nats game) has got to have been the one time Comrade Chris and I sat in the bleachers at Wrigley: beautiful sightlines in a crumbling old ballpark, with people who knew baseball. And I can't forget about the bar right there in the bleachers. Now that's luxury for the common fan!

Earlier this week, Barry Bonds returned to baseball following a prolonged knee injury. He returned to a ballclub and a city that had sorely missed his power at the plate; his fans in the Bay Area, apparently, had been ready to give him the benefit of the doubt and welcome him back to the lineup with nary a jeer or catcall. Were fans truly prepared to believe, as doubtless many Giants fans seemed to believe, that Bonds had taken steroids unwittingly? From the warmth of his reception in San Francisco, one might have even been tempted to think that the flax-seed oil of forgiveness had salved the wounds opened up by the now-infamous BALCO affair.

But when Bonds stepped out of the visitors' dugout to lead off the top of the 2nd inning tonight at RFK Stadium, the truth stood up to greet him. From the moment that his helmeted head appeared at the dugout's entrance, the boos of 32,403 people--give or take a few Giants fans--cascaded down upon him. From the upper decks came calls of "Cheater!" and chants of "Steroids!" In the very first row, only a feeble spit away from the visitors' on-deck circle, one fan waved a bright red cardboard asterisk, a yard wide, the face of an impassive Bonds. If his name was announced over the loudspeakers, it was lost in a sea of abuse. Even the scoreboard-keeper seemed to have abandoned his duties to jeer Bonds--the names on the scoreboard were those of the Nats, who had been retired the inning before. Nor did did the boos stop, as many such displays do, when Bonds took his place in the batter's box--it continued, louder than ever, punctuated by cheers for the strikes thrown by Nationals ace Livan Hernandez. When Bonds finally popped up to a waiting Jose Vidro, the crowd continued to boo--and was not satisfied until they saw Bonds disappear into the dugout once more.

And if Bonds thought that his towering solo home run in the top of the 4th would silence his detractors and vindicate him, he was mistaken. Yes, the booing did, briefly, give way to applause when the ball sailed over the fence. But the applause just as quickly gave way to still more and louder booing and catcalling as Bonds ponderously made his way around the bases and back into the dugout, grinning defiantly.

Two things about Barry Bonds are now absolutely undeniable. The first is that he is, perhaps, the greatest hitter of his generation in baseball, destined to equal or surpass Hank Aaron's career home-run record, perhaps even that of Sadaharu Oh. The second is that, while Bonds will eventually gain the recognition he has always sought, he will, ultimately, be denied the respect he has always craved. I expect the boos for Bonds to continue throughout this three-game series in Washington, and to follow him to Colorado, and San Diego, and everywhere else he goes for as long as he plays baseball. No matter what his achievements, no matter what he says or does, Bonds will always carry an asterisk a yard wide with him; any discussion of his considerable achievements will now be inextricably bound up in a web of provisos, exceptions, and speculation. And, try as he might, this titanic ballplayer's name will never again be heard above the jeers and catcalls of a furious public.

I'm going to go Boo Barry Bonds at RFK tonight.

Alas for my beloved Nats!

Took Dad & babybro to the ballpark today--a beautiful September afternoon, clear skies and light intermittent breeze. Magical for baseball. My Nats clawed their way up from a six-run deficit to take the lead in the 8th, only to lose it all to the Braves in the 9th.

Wait 'till next year!

I kept serious score. For those of you who aren't yet initiated into the sacred mysteries of the baseball scorecard...it's a tough thing to explain. But when I keep score at a ballgame, I understand things better, and appreciate the game more. I count, for instance, the distressing number of 4-3 putouts, and deduce Smoltz is using a sinker or split-fingered fastball, since Nats hitters seem to be behind & on top of the ball when they make contact. I can be generous--giving a base hit when the official scorer gives an error... Of course, I change my scorecard to conform with the official. But in that split-second I write 1B instead of E-3, the batter gets a hit, and the fielder tries nobly. In a second it is all undone, but the brief moment is enough.

There's something great about baseball games, and baseball fans. I can talk to total strangers at ballgames without fear. I miss a call, and lean over to an old man I have never met before, and ask what the call was, and he gives it to me. Best example so far this season: They run out of stubby pencils to keep score with today. I beg around the stadium concourse for a pencil. A middle-aged gent hears me, and says "can you score with a pen?"

"Sure," I say.

"Here," he says, handing me a pen.

When I go to a baseball game, I'm in America. I sing the Star Spangled Banner. Today, being September 11, an Army sergeant stood on the home dugout and sang "God Bless America," as the whole stadum stood at attention and sang, softly, as they might a church hymn. Little kids root for their home team--a little boy taunts the visitors with SWING BATTER! The crowd boos the umpires. The delerious cheers of a late-innings rally. Cries of vendors and the crack of the bat.

The Redskins won today, and the NFL has begun. But I'm not ready for football. Not yet. Let me have one more Nationals homestand before I'm ready to turn my attention to football.

Probably the most novel method of kimchifermentation yet devised. Photo: The Korea Times

It would appear that the now-infamous Pine Tar Incident was closely watched by people all over the baseball universe.

From Korea comes news that Doosan Bears ace Park Myung-hwan's unusual habit--wearing cabbage leaves under his hat during games--has been forbidden by a special Rules Committee session of the Korean Baseball Association.

According to Park, he began to wear cabbage under his hat after hearing that the great Babe Ruth did so--presumably to shield his head from the heat of the summer sun. There is some merit to this--an old Italian cycling training manual suggests doing the same.

In any event, the umpires ruled that Park had violated the now-famous Rule 8.02(b) that caused the same ruckus in Anaheim so recently. The Korean authorities were harsh, but fair:

"In common sense, it is difficult to consider that wearing a cabbage leaf will affect pitches. But, since it has become a controversy, we decided to set a limit on the boundaries of foreign substances."

The BBC report that exceptions to the rule will be made if a player can produce a doctor's note in advance.