dr4b | Entries tagged with baseball

Things I am getting really tired of:

Being sick
Being cold and hiding under my kotatsu
Snowstorms in Tokyo
That Erik Bedard trade
Sho Nakata

But. With the imminent return of baseball season, apparently Norihiro Komada is back as a commentator on Mega-spo! And just as entertaining as always.

Though, something's very wrong when I see footage of some guy in high socks pitching and I think "Dang, he's hot", and then I realize... crap, that's Koji Uehara, who is definitely NOT HOT. Hiroshima's Soyogi, on the other hand, is hot. Though his voice is surprisingly about an octave lower than I expected him to sound. And then later on I'm watching as they show the Ibaraki Golden Golds playing a game today... apparently freaking KIN-CHAN pulled a daida ore! He's only, you know, 66 years old. Or something like that. (He shares my birthday.) Anyway.

I have a bunch of things to make a photopost out of, but apparently Dreamhost is down. So either a little later tonight, or sometime tomorrow.

As for the rest of the day, I still have a cold. Bleh. I spent one of my classes today teaching a student some slang, oddly enough. It's very hard to explain the differences of "up with" "down with" "up to" "up for" and so on. For example:

"What are you up to this weekend?"
"Eh, not much."
"Are you up for seeing a movie?"
"Yeah, I'd be down with that."

"Hmm... do you feel up to seeing a movie?"
"Eh, nah, I'm pretty sick, I came down with a cold this week."
"Down with colds! Up with movies!"

But, aside from being hoarse and all, it wasn't too bad a day. I ended up completing my Englishification of my cheapo Japan map, making big English signs for it ("Where are you from? I'm from Ehime." "Ehime? Where's that? It's on Shikoku. It's near Kochi." "Tokyo is bigger than Nagoya. Sendai is not as cold as Sapporo." "Osaka is about 400 kilometers west of Tokyo.") which are just phrases from various Sprint lessons. It looks pretty cool. Now I just have to finish making my Seattle poster.

I ended up staying at GEOS really late though... Eri and I were going to go to dinner but she wasn't done working until like 9pm. We got pasta at the place under Akabane station again. I had the melanzane again and it was all yummy, but she ordered pepperoncini pasta and I'm not sure she realized it was going to be REALLY SPICY. Whoops.

It's not like I had any plans besides coming home and trying to stay warm, of course.. which is kind of what I'm planning for tomorrow. Just relaxing. I'll probably leave my apartment to get lunch or dinner and other than that I think I should just stay here and try to get well. Or something like that. I mean, especially since it's snowing... riding my bike home in the snow was quite an adventure. This was my first time really riding ON snow; the other times have been through snow but without it stuck to the ground at the time. Funny, but the part of my body that hurt the most when I got home was my arms. Stabilizing a bike in snow is kind of a pain. Fortunately I didn't fall off the bike or get hit by a car or anything, so I win. I guess.

OMFG I LOVE KATSUYA NOMURA HE'S SUCH A GRUMPY OLD MAN

It's Spring Training time and a bunch of kids come up to Rakuten's Nomura-kantoku and ask him for his autograph... they're like "sign?" so he's like "SINE? SINE. COSINE. TANGENT." The kids are like "dude wtf" and he's like "It's math. Today's lesson. Sine. Cosine. Tangent. Repeat!" and they're like "Sine... cosine... tangento?" And then he signed stuff for them once they repeated it a few times.

I have to wonder if this is another one of those weird "Only in Japan" moments, or if MLB managers would also be trying to give math lessons to little kids who wanted autographs :)

I miss Kiltie Band. I think this is my third Sleigh Ride parody in four years.

Stove League
(to the tune of "Sleigh Ride" by Leroy Anderson)
(New lyrics by Deanna "Marinerd" Rubin)

Just hear those cellphones beeping
As trades are cheapening too.
And all the press is fussin'
In a stove league discussion with you.
Online the fans are whining
As Theo's signing up Drew.
And all the scouts are gushin'
In a stove league discussion with you.

Sign 'em up, sign 'em up, sign 'em up, let's go
It's all a big show
We're giving 'em these contracts full of dough.
Sign 'em up, sign 'em up, sign 'em up, it's lame
Just playing the game.
We're finding a twit who can hit
So the fans recognize his name.

Our roster's full of losers
And beggar-choosers are we.
The 40-man is frozen
with the players we chose in '03.
And when we're feeling braver
We'll try to waiver 'em through.
There's just no sense in rushin'
In a stove league discussion with you.

There's a Krivsky mimic by the name of Flanagan
Signing ancient arms to bolster up the pen again.
Seems the Mariners, Reds, and Orioles will see the biggest flop
At the ticket booths when they watch attendance drop. Plop plop plop.

There's a perfect roster nothing in the world can buy
So we'll trade our soul for someone like Morneau or Dye.
It'll nearly be like a deal pulled off by Bowden or by Beane.
This wonderful plot's what we've got
when the seasons are in-between!

Just hear those cashbags jinglin',
Agents mingling through.
They'll get a deal for Lilly
That'll make you look sillier too.
You should consult a sponsor
If you're choosing Bonds or Alou.
But every batter's crushin'
In a stove league discussion with you.

Sign 'em up, sign 'em up, sign 'em up, let's go
These choices all blow.
We're looking for a catcher who can throw.
Sign 'em up, sign 'em up, sign 'em up, who cares
If we have young players
We'll balance our team with the theme
getting Thomas and Zaun and Stairs!

Our lineup's big on hitters
But not on splitters or curves.
We'll sign a Mirabelli
And he'll catch the hell he deserves.
So now it's time to park it
'Cause this bidding market's a zoo.
There's just no use in thinkin' when
Strike zone's shrinkin' and
Fastball's sinkin' and
Deals are stinkin' when
GM's winkin' and
stove league drinkin' with you.

(crossposted from Marinerds of course, but ever since the RSS broke with Blogger beta I don't know if anyone here's reading that anyway.)

This was, of course, posted to Marinerds, but I do tend to crosspost song parodies here. On the other hand, I've become afraid that the original of this is a lot more obscure than I thought it was (I dunno, I first heard it when I was like six or seven years old and was more aware of Paul Simon than of Bob Dylan...)

A Simple Insultory Philippic (Or How I Was Howard Lincoln'd Into Submission)
To the tune of "A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)" by Simon and Garfunkel
New lyrics by Deanna "Marinerd" Rubin

I've been Mark Teixeira'ed, Juan Rivera'ed,
I've been Vlad Guerrerro'ed, then Pineiro'ed
I've been Grand Salami'ed weekly till I'm blind
I've been George Sherrilled, and imperiled
A columnist from the Everett Herald!
That's not the one you read? Well... nevermind.

I've been Robb Quinlanned, sent to Inland.
I've been Danny Harenned, John McLarenned.
Well, I've played every base I want to play
And I got platooned with Aaron Boone
And all of those splits won't buy me hits
So I take a swing (and then I pray).

I knew a man, who played some ball
He sure thinks that he knows it all
But not the same as you and me!
He's stuck back in history. He's so confused
That when you say "Richie"...
He thinks you're talking about Richie Ashburn!
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no mojo.
But it's alright, Paul, everybody must get Rohned.

I been Nick Swishered, been silverfishered
Randy Johnson, won't you please come home?
I been pitchered, catchered, right and centered
Been Brad Pennyed and Chris Carpentered
I just discovered somebody nuked the Dome!

Play ball.

I've lost my lineup card, Grover...

This is all because I thought that "Mr. Lowe, You've Got A Lovely Slider", to the tune of "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter" wasn't going to fly...

The Guy With The Slider
(to the tune of "Eye Of The Tiger" by Survivor)
(new lyrics by Deanna Rubin)

Comin' out, back on the mound
Got the sign, threw his pitches
Went the inning, now he sat them all down
Just a man and an armful of heat

So many times, they're taking the bait
He makes the batters look silly
He gets his grip and it's hurled to the plate
As they fight just to stay on their feet

(Chorus:)
It's the guy with the slider
It's the arc of the flight
Darting down as the batter is retired
And the last of the lineup
Tries to hit him tonight
But they're striking out facing the guy
With the slider

Face to face, out on the field
Brush 'em back, actin' angry
They'll track his arm, still he keeps it concealed
'til they've swung, having misjudged the speed

(Repeat chorus)

Comin' out, finished the game
Got the save, got the glory
Several years from now they'll mention his name
As a man in the pitching elite

(Repeat chorus)

It's the guy with the slider,
The guy with the slider...

Relatively boring day I guess. I wanted to go out and experience the lovely weather, except I noticed that my car tires were looking relatively wimpy, so I experienced the lovely weather by going to the gas station and pumping air into my car tires. It may explain why my gas mileage has been (relatively) low (for a hybrid). The two tires on the passenger side of the car were in the 15-20 psi range, when they're supposed to be 30-35. Oops.

Ran some errands, then went over and played volleyball. My arm is fine but now my neck aches. I can't win. I did overhand serve quite a bit though and did fairly well at it, but it was mostly a last resort because I was sick of hitting the ceiling serving underhand. BG has returned after a several-week hiatus, but I avoided being on his team all day so he only got to tell me what I was doing wrong in hindsight once.

After vball I wasted the evening! Wheeeee. I watched another episode of Brother Beat (how I can enjoy a show with no plot so much is beyond me, but I do), and sang some songs, and wrote a parody of "I Hope I Get It" from A Chorus Line about Spring Training, and I think I should work more on my Vegas pictures so I can put them online, or something. Oh, and I should go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I hope.

I'll lj-cut the parody lyrics because I'm nice and I doubt anyone out there actually likes baseball AND is familiar with A Chorus Line, although I suppose the chance is higher on LJ than it'll be on Marinerds :) I really ought to get back to working on Moneyball The Musical.

( God, I Hope I Get It )

Not much to say about today. Work, then home, then some Puzzle Pirates, then going to the gym to lift weights. And interspersed with that was more writing. See, the last few days I've been rereading the book Moneyball because I was asked why I hadn't reviewed it on Marinerds. The reason is that well, EVERYONE's reviewed it, how would my review be any different? And then I came up with the answer: not a REVIEW, but a REVUE. I started with a parody of "Billie Jean" about Billy Beane, and some joke dialogue, and well, now I have a short two-act play, which I figure is in some state to be unleashed on the world.

So, here, in all its glory, is the first draft (ha!) of my stage interpretation of the Michael Lewis book. Hope you enjoy it. I've listed and linked to the songs themselves incase you don't feel like reading the rest of it, or if my liberal application of swearwords to Billy Beane's speech patterns offends you.

Moneyball: The Musical!

A musical book revue in two acts
By Deanna Rubin

Cast
Billy Beane as the General Manager
Paul Depodesta as the Computer Guy
Michael Lewis as the Narrator
Eric Kubota as the Head Scout
Jeremy Brown as the Draft Pick
Scott Hatteberg as the Pickin' Machine
and various scouts, family members, and a book reviewer

Songs

Act One

1. Prologue - Moneyball Tonight ("Comedy Tonight", from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Forum)
2. Draft (Main theme from the musical "Rent")
3. The Ballad of Swisher's Kid ("The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", from Sweeney Todd)
4. I Just Get On Base ("I've Just Seen A Face" by the Beatles)

Act Two

1. Fixing the Hole ("Fixing A Hole" by the Beatles)
2. Giambi's Face ("The Rain in Spain" from My Fair Lady)
3. Scott Hatteberg, Pickin' Machine ("Truckin'" by the Grateful Dead)
4. Finale - Billy Beane ("Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson)

Constructive criticism is welcomed, of course.

Went to Blue C after work today with Oren. It was actually pretty bad. Most of the conveyor belt was empty and the things I did have didn't taste great. Bleh, oh well.

I played PP for the evening. I have come up with many many brilliant baseball-related rename ideas for ships. See, the standard name scheme for ships is to be an adjective and a fish, like "Charming Tigerfish" or "Famous Ling" or "Aggressive Pickerel" or "Unique Carp" or whatever. They have a list of "standard" fish names on the PP wiki page here. Now, keep in mind, I thought up the first few of these without even consulting that list for inspiration:

Tim Salmon
Sid Bream
Randy Bass
Connie Mackerel
Catfish Hunter
Preacher Roe
Florida Marlin
Chicago Chub
Detroit Tigerfish
Anaheim Angelfish
Tampa Bay Devil Ray
Cincinnati Redfish
Boston Red Sockeye
St. Louis Cardinalfish
Colorado Rockfish
Chicago Whitefish

And then there were some that'd be kind of pushing it, like the Nomar Gar (ciaparra), the Granny Hamnerhead, the Calvin Pickerel (Pickering), Harvey Haddock (Haddix), Carlos Silverside (Silva), Johnny Tench or Kevin Tench (for Bench and Mench, respectively), or Placido Polanco could go either way for a Plaice or a Pollack... and then there's Steve Trout and Brandon Puffer.

Yes, I'm a dork. Hmm, I need to go hunt down some shanghais for the Baseball Carp first, I think, though.

So I went to volleyball tonight. It went well. I kicked butt. I even served overhand all the time -- every serve -- and about 75% of them, maybe more, went over. Good stuff. Unfortunately, the evening was spoiled by me accidentally throwing the volleyball across the gym between games and hitting Terry in the face and smooshing his glasses. Oops. A game later I smacked a really good spike into the back line -- and Liesl went after it and was off-balance and Terry literally smacked into her trying to get it too and they both fell over, and I was like "Gaaahhhh, it's NOT ON PURPOSE, I SWEAR."

Also, I made a really nice dive for a ball, except I don't have kneepads, so now I've got a really nice scrape and bruise on my left knee. And then after jumping towards the end of the night I felt a twinge in my right foot, like the arch was cramping up. (I have arch problems AND knee problems so this is just like, on top of everything.)

I stopped by Safeway on the way home to do grocery shopping. I got my normal amount of food/drink, plus detergent and fabric softener, which are kind of heavy, but I figured I'd get inside the building and park and just have to make it to the elevator, right? Wrong. The elevator was BROKEN, so I had to climb up six flights of stairs with my heavier-than-usual groceries with my more-tired-than-usual arms and my bruised left leg and pulled right foot. Man. That SUCKED. I decided not to rant to LJ then or I would have been pretty damn bitter.

I logged in to PP to do shop stuff, but someone I hadn't seen in forever asked me to come sail with them, so I did for a bit. Whee.

Hopefully nobody will page me in the next 12 hours before I hand off the pager at work, and I will have gotten through my first week of on-call-ness purely by being lucky enough to not have the damn thing go off. I've been bringing my laptop and SecureID everywhere because I figure if I don't bring them I'll get paged, so if I do, I won't. Sort of like umbrellas.

Also, via Bat-Girl: "Nothing like doing Sudoku puzzles, huh?" said Twins outfielder Lew Ford with a smile. Heh. I ♥ Lew Ford, he's such a dork.

Um, today's Thursday and I have no plan after work. I'm thinking of going to Blue C or trying to see a movie, or both, or maybe I'll just be lazy and stay home alone, but I hope not. If anyone's up for something like that, let me know.

My entire day has been processing two problems I'm trying to solve in my head.

One is debugging a script at work. I think I have finally at least isolated what the hell is going wrong, but solving it will require redoing my algorithm.

The other is my favorite new logic puzzle!!!!@!!1!!11one. Take a random baseball boxscore from the first half of the twentieth century on the New York Times archives, before the time period where Retrosheet has the play-by-plays available, preferably of a long complicated game where they actually used *gasp* two pitchers on a side. Using the box score summaries and the text in the article, figure out the earned and unearned runs to assign to each pitcher.

Holy fuck this is both really complex and difficult and TOTALLY entertaining in a "Whee! Logic Puzzle!" sort of way.

For example, the one that I've been hacking at is this one (PDF file, copied from the NYT archive). I'm trying to figure out when Mulcahy got taken out in the second inning and how many earned runs were charged to him. This is not as easy as it sounds. But I figured out a lot of great things so far. For example, from the article I know that Whitehead batted in 5 runs with a triple in the 4th and a double in the 6th. Young batted in 2 runs in the first with a two-run homer. Every other run in the game was batted in during that epic 2nd inning. The two-run homer had Moore on base when he hit it, because Moore only had two hits in the game and one had to be in the second inning since he batted in two runs, thus his first one was in the first inning. Whitehead was up to bat 6 times, and got hits in the second, fourth, and sixth innings. He scored a run in the second. He was the last batter of the game and got out somehow (we know this because there were 17 hits, 1 error, 4 walks, and 24 outs for the Giants, which totals to 46 plate appearances, or 5 times around the order plus one. Also there were only four walks and Rucker batting second comes up short of an AB, but so do Ott, Cuccinello and Witek, and Rucker couldn't have walked to end the game anyway. I know that every player but Danning scored a run in the second inning; also Danning hit his double and RBI in the second inning because it was his only hit in the game. I know that Witek scored a run in the second inning and was batted in by Melton, because Whitehead and Rucker couldn't have batted him in that inning and there's no way Moore could have batted him in, since Whitehead and Rucker had to score runs that inning as well.

Anyway, you get the idea. The best part about this as a logic puzzle is that wheeeee, I can get an unlimited number of box scores for freeeeee and disseminate them this way. I'm almost thinking it'd be fun to make up some baseball logic puzzles this way, even. Man, I'm a dork.

Umm, anyway, the other thing I did this evening was go to volleyball. We had a bazillion people there so we ended up splitting into 3 teams of 5 and playing shorter games. I sort of hate this because of the downtime -- I wanted to stay warmed up so I ran on a treadmill for a bit and lifted weights and basically just jumped around a lot to not become dead weight. The games went reasonably well though. Little John was getting all this advice from a random dude who wandered in and I thought it was just some gym guy being a know-it-all (since John is a freaking AWESOME volleyball player, but he's the same height I am -- even his teenage son is like half a foot taller than him), but it turned out to be his volleyball coach from some league he plays in, so then I felt sort of bad for giggling about it. On the other hand, like I said, pretty much every single person in our volleyball circle was there, plus a new woman who was really really good too -- hell of an arm. Eddie is back in school and has time to play again, and even Laura came back, she'd been gone a few weeks, and Jen apparently feels her knees are strong enough to play, finally. So, yeah. Fun stuff. We pretty much played until the gym was kicking us out.

My brain is mush!

I found out tonight that I can search through old New York Times newspapers just by logging in to the Seattle Library network from home. I don't have to actually go there to look up old baseball boxscores. This is really dangerous. I'm currently culling individual game box scores and articles from the 1940 Phillies for something I want to write. Someone stop me before I go overboard! Oh wait.

Heidi and Megan and I went to the gym tonight, which was good. My back is sore and my left arm is a little weak, which is bad. On the other hand it'd been three weeks since I lifted weights, so it's not entirely unexpected.

I-Gene showed up and we sat around playing Bemani games all night. Lots of Pop'n and some IIDX. I think if I wake up in time, I'll come down and enter the tourney tomorrow too, but I don't expect to actually get anywhere in it. Mostly because I suck at IIDX. On the other hand, I kick ass at Pop'n'Music. It's really satisfying to be scrolling around random songs and be like "Hey, well, lemme go take a stab at this [random lvl 26 song]," and actually be able to PASS it. I don't really like the LED remix of Everyday Lovelyday, by the way, but I actually thought the remix of Jelly Kiss in IIDX 10th was actually pretty good.

We LOVE Pop'n'Music. We really do. We might even almost like it as much as baseball. Which reminds me, nobody told me SVGL has Pop'n now, which means a weekend trip down to the Bay Area is in order -- the only question being whether I wait until baseball season or not.

I felt sort of bummed out last night and tonight, so I went out and bought a shitload of books. My travels took me through two Half Price Books and a Barnes & Noble, with a stop at Chipotle for dinner along the way.

I guess the good part is that I spent enough to get the Half Price Books 2006 calendar, which means COUPONS! Whee!

( What I bought, if you care, which you don't )

Anyway, the problem is that I already had about five books in my queue before going shopping for more. Oh well. Book shopping rules. I'll have to find some time to scour the east-side Half Prices one of these days. I still wonder how many books I read in 2005. I'm seriously guessing it at around 40; I should have kept better track. I want to drive down to Powell's one of these days, too.

I finally bothered making a "books" icon. It sort of sucks but it'll do until I figure out something better.

Oh, and by the way, does anyone want a free copy of Pro Football Prospectus 2005? Jonah Keri gave me a copy when I was at that Baseball Prospectus event a few weeks back, and well, I can't seem to find anyone who likes football and actually reads books about it, so otherwise, it'll probly go to Half Price next time I make a book run.

(A sequel to the 2004 song)
(The chorus comes from the Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus, well known for his "MY OH MY!" yells when calling out exciting plays.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2005 Seattle Mariners
To the tune of "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel
New lyrics by Deanna "Marinerd" Rubin

I am just a fangirl, and my story's pretty dull
I have wandered all through Safeco
With a scorecard full of scribbles, such are summaries.
Games won and lost, still the team appears like it did last year,
In disregard to cost, hmmm...

When they started this season's tragedy, things were looking pretty good
With a couple big free agents
And the rookies from Tacoma seemed so talented.
Then, oh no! Dan's leg twisted, Bobby's arm blew out, and Miguel Olivo
Hit about as well as freakin' Spiezio.

My oh my...

Asking only for replacement, we go looking to trade Winn, but we get no offers
Just a prospect and a catcher named JoeJessica
I do declare, of the moves done at the trade deadline,
I think we got screwed there

Now the crowds abandon Safeco, an attendance drop you'll see,
They are smaller than they once were, and larger than they'll be, that's not unusual.
Yo, it's pretty strange, after bringing up King Felix, we are more or less the same
Roster changes, and we're still completely lame.

My oh my...

And we're calling up our minor leagues, Betancourt and Morse, Dobbs and Doyle,
'Cause our players have been plagued with inability... and injury, whoa-oh...

Out on home plate stands a catcher, after twelve years he has played
He's our very last reminder of the Mariners that made it to the playoffs
In the nineties
And they brought Seattle fame
Now we're scheming and we're dreaming
But the cold fact still remains:
We lost tons of games.

So, last night I was going to write a short blurb on Marinerds about Hugh "Losing Pitcher" Mulcahy, to honor Ryan Franklin's non-tender, but then when looking through books for notes about lousy Phillies pitchers, was reminded of the even worse luck and worse talent pitcher Jack Nabors, who pitched for the Philadelphia Pathetics in 1916. There's this great story about Nabors, well on his way to a record-setting awful 1-20 season, who was pitching in Boston one day, and supposedly went into the ninth inning holding a 1-0 lead and a no-hitter -- only to have a set of mishaps like walks and errors lead the Red Sox into tying the game 1-1 with a runner on third, so Nabors deliberately threw a wild pitch 20 feet over the plate, letting the runner score and ending the game at 2-1, "because these guys are never going to get me another run, and if you think I'm going to sit out here and pitch another eight innings in this summer heat, you've got to be crazy."

Great story, isn't it? Except the thing is... it didn't happen that way. Last night I noticed that I couldn't find a record of any game that came close to matching this description on Retrosheet, and my suspicion was that it was actually the game where they lost 3-2, but Retrosheet doesn't have play-by-plays or box scores for 1916, just the final scores and starting pitchers.

This morning, on the way to work, I stopped in at the library, briefly looked around baseball books with no luck, and then asked a clerk, "I need to access a newspaper that would have the box score of a baseball game played between the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Athletics on June 24, 1916. Can you help me?" Fortunately, we found the New York Times sports section for that day, and sure enough, the box score indicated that this Nabors anecdote, which I have seen in at least three books, is not factually correct, for various reasons. I left the library with a big grin on my face and a box score printout in my grubby little hands. Seeing the printout sitting on my desk at work all day, I couldn't wait to get home and write this article detailing my find. Man, I'm a goddamn dork, aren't I? On the other hand, I actually really sort of enjoy hunting down these historical discrepancies in baseball books -- only a month ago I also found several in a 1980's Phillies book I was reading as well. Something tells me that being a fact checker for a book publisher doesn't pay as well as being a software engineer...

Um, so anyway, work was okay -- at one point Rich and I were working on releasing some code, but we needed Jack's help, so we were going to call him since he was taking the day off, and I said "Wait, wait, if you call him you HAVE to say happy birthday," so Rich calls him like "Hey, Jack! We just wanted to wish you happy birthday! Well... er, actually, no, we wanted to ask you about these files."

After work I went to

samildanach and

llynecat's apartment for Jack's birthday party though. I met their down-the-hall neighbor Jason and we went and picked out some board games, and in the meantime,

spazzychic (who I had never met but knew of for a while) and

aquatwo (talk about WEIRD COINCIDENCES, though I hadn't seen him in forever!) showed up, and we ended up playing Pit for a couple of hands, during which time Jack's sister Peggy showed up. And after that there was pizza-eating and we watched the movie Shaun of the Dead, which was very funny, but I don't think I'll ever actually watch it again (I don't deal so well with all the blood and guts scenes). After that we watched the X-Men trailer, and I was feeling sort of zoned-out, so I came home.

I logged into PP and wanted to just zone out more and puzzle, so I asked Jarrett if I could sail with him -- he was doing a long trade run -- and it was EXACTLY what I needed. I'm #5 in the ocean in Carpentry again, biznatches.

Today, the Mariners went and signed the cutest left-handed pitcher in the AL. Unfortunately, they signed him for something like 4 years and $37 million, but well, after the Carl Everett signing, nobody has any idea what the heck Bavasi is thinking.

Ah well. I ♥ Jarrod Washburn even if he'll most likely be a useless junkballing 36-year-old lefty by the time this contract ends. His eyes are SO BLUE! SO BLUE!

I actually spent today at work reading documentation that someone else wrote. How weird :) After work I went to the gym, ostensibly with Megan and Heidi, but I must have totally missed Megan. Heidi showed up about 15-20 minutes after me though, so we worked through a lot of weights together, and some cardio. I upped my weights on the single lat and I actually did 15 reps in EVERYTHING. Maybe it was a bad idea, but things seemed easy tonight for whatever reason. Some weeks I'm great at lifting, some weeks I'm awful at it.

The rest of the evening was spent reading up on the Washburn signing, goofing off on Puzzle Pirates a little bit (my tailor is upgraded!!!), and umm... an art project that I can't discuss right this minute. Every now and then it's really good to just sit down and draw some stuff.

I find myself extremely fortunate in that the laziest choice for lunch for me at work is the salad bar place. Well, I suppose there's the salad bar place and the sandwich place, but I feel like I have more control over my lunch at the salad bar place and healthier choices. Either way, they don't require exiting the office building and walking into the cold. I can only imagine how bad it'd be to work in a building that only had something like, say, a McDonald's in the lobby.

Speaking of cold, my throat started feeling sore this morning and got worse as the day went on. This sucks. I have to SING tomorrow night, dammit.

I'm reading Goose Gossage's autobiography and it's the funniest thing I've ever picked up. Laughed aloud three times on the bus ride home tonight, even.

I also came to the conclusion today that John Olerud is the Mark Jensen of baseball players. I can't decide whether this is a bigger compliment to Jensen or to Olerud.

Tonight I went to the gym with Megan and Heidi for a bit, but since my left arm is shot from volleyball and my throat is sore, I couldn't really do a lot of lifting or running, so I mostly just did some stretching and some light lifting. I came home and hung out chatting on PP for a bit. Now, I should go write more, or sleep, or both.

Yay! Every day in Pittsburgh is more fun than the last, it seems. I always hate to leave here. On the other hand, I also know that if I wasn't just here for a week, people wouldn't bother making time to hang out with me quite the same.

Anyway, I ended up going to lunch with the gang anyway, as it turned out. Met up with Django and Matt and Isaac and Konstantin at the Union Grill. Whee! That was really fun, except that everyone spent most of lunch talking about Warcraft :) It was kind of funny when Django and I would try to change the subject to no avail. No, actually, it really WAS funny, I'm not being sarcastic. Afterwards, I walked back to campus with people, talked to Django for a bit (and forced him to sign my copy of Memories of Empire), and then I went looking for Mark Stehlik, who was out at a meeting, unfortunately.

So I went to PNC Park! Whee, I dunno. I had looked at the schedules for the 500 and 501 buses and then decided to just ignore them and hop on the first bus headed downtown on Forbes. Whee. So I got to walk across downtown Pittsburgh a bit in the rain, which was nice and nostalgic. I walked to PNC Park, and the gates were actually open, so I got to walk in and go around the outfield area and take some pictures of the field and stuff... well, except it was grey and rainy. Ah, well. I went to the Pirates Team Store looking for some stuff but most of the stuff I wanted, they didn't have. You know, like a Jason Bay number shirt that wasn't in 2XL. I debated getting a Zach Duke number shirt, but in the end decided to just not get any Pirates shirt and I'll just wear the ones I have at the pirate party. I did get a few other things, though.

Then I came back to campus and talked to Mark Stehlik for almost two hours. That rocked. Mark is super-awesome. (For the non-CMU folks, Mark is/was the undergraduate computer science advisor, but to a lot of us he's more like just this awesome friend who is great to talk to but is always super-busy and used to have some say over what classes we took.) So, Mark is proud of me for being a programmer AND we talked about baseball for a while. Also, he told me he's going to Qatar next semester for 8 weeks. Craziness, but maybe he can hang out with Roman sometimes.

After that, I walked back from campus so I'd have an hour or two here to do some work. Bayani called me and we figured out a plan, kinda -- Carl would bus here, and then Bayani and Kate would come here and we'd all get dinner at Del's. Whee! So, that is exactly what happened, modulo a few things like Carl's bus being a little late, and Benoit debating whether to go, and inviting his girlfriend Kami, but then deciding neither of them would go after all. So just the four of us went to Del's, and Del's was fantastic and we ate a ton of food and hung out for a while. I'm trying to convince Bayani and Kate to come visit Seattle sometime, of course! (And I'm trying to convince Carl to come with me to Japan next summer :)

We came back to Squill with this idea of maybe playing a board game, and instead ended up hanging out and talking for an hour or two. I swear this is a pattern. Carl and I swore we'd play a board game tomorrow night. Time will show whether we actually do. Whee. After Bayani and Kate and Carl left, I got out the laptop and started catching up on work and email and stuff. Then Charlie got back and forced me to play Set with him. Again.

I am not sure my plan for tomorrow either, of course :) I am going to do work in the morning, then take pictures of Squirrel Hill for Megan, maybe, and then go to campus in the late afternoon to stop by the University Shoppe since I forgot to so far, and I'm meeting up with a friend for coffee at 3, and in theory in the evening Carl and I will plan to play board games again, and fail. But anyone who wants to be part of our abortive gaming attempt is welcome to try to make it succeed :)

You know, there's something strangely comforting about sitting in the living room of a geek apartment with three geeks around, drinking birch beer, looking at Perl code on a laptop, while Benoit is working on his paper, Rafael is reading something, and Charlie is being Charlie. Maybe I *should* be looking for roomates or housemates in Seattle. I dunno.

Oh, um, also, I need to get to the airport for an 8am flight on Thursday morning. I'll probly just 28X it unless someone is crazy enough to feel like driving me there, which I would love, but also feel so insanely guilty about that it's not even funny, so eh.

This is a duet between Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez as part of their 2005 "Al-Star" team. I didn't bother recopying my entire post, but figured I usually post song parodies here, so wheee.

"The 2005 MVP Al-Star Team"
To the tune of "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits
new lyrics by Deanna "Marinerd" Rubin

Pujols (in the style of Sting in the intro):
I won my MVP...

A-Rod:
Now look at them voters, here's the way you do it
You play the baseball as a stud Yankee
We got the writers, got the big-ass payroll
But money means nothin' to a guy like me.
Now that guy Pujols, playin' on the Cardinals
Lemme tell you, that guy can jam
Maybe'd be his second if not for that Bonds guy
Maybe he's as awesome as I am

I fought to win some mighty great sluggers
Vlad Guererro, and Dave Ortiz
I got to send them back to the dugout
'Cause they ain't this year's MVP's

Pujols:
See that A-Rod with his ribbies and his homers?
Yeah, buddy, he's a nightmare
That crazy slugger's gonna be a hall of famer
That crazy slugger is a zillionaire

I fought to win some mighty great sluggers
Andruw Jones, and Derrek Lee
I got to send them back to the dugout
'Cause they ain't this year's MVP

A-Rod:
I shoulda learned to pitch like a star
I shoulda learned to strike out bums
Look at those slackers, they're out there, sitting in the outfield 'pen
Goofing off all day
The call comes, "What's that? Pitch for an inning?"
They're throwin' on the mound for just an out or three
See, that ain't workin', that's the way you do it
Get your money for nothing and your naps for free

Both:
We had to beat some mighty great sluggers
But we're the finest as you can see
We got to send them back to the dugout
'Cause they ain't this year's MVP

Pujols:
Now we're the winners, any way you cut it
We worked our butts off for that MVP
We're always out there, lookin' at those bench guys
They get their money for nothing and their naps for free

A-Rod:
You get your money for nothin', and your naps for free

Pujols (overlapping):
I won my, I won my, I won my MVP...

I wanted to get sushi for dinner tonight, but I was too tired when I got home. So I had pitas and hummus instead... and by the time I was done, I felt awake and alert enough that I wanted to go get sushi. Except, I was full. Dammit.

A week or two ago I reviewed a book on Marinerds, Ninety Feet From Fame by Mike Robbins -- quite glowingly, as it was a phenomenally entertaining and informative book -- and today I got an email from the author, who had read my blog and was actually thanking me for the positive review. ("You'd be surprised, but most of the comments I get about this book are because (sad but true) I accidentally put the wrong name for the 1960 Pirates manager on page 8.") Very bizarre but cool -- now I just have to hope that the guy whose book I slammed the other week doesn't write me an angry email :)

Okay, okay, so I did stay up all night and listen to Game 4 of the Japan Series. See, on a whim I figured I'd check and see if Michael Westbay was broadcasting the game -- I'd listened to a few of his broadcasts earlier in the year. He runs japanesebaseball.com, and this year for fun decided to do "english broadcasts" of Japanese baseball games, basically him sitting there watching the game on TV and relaying what was going on. As the year went on it started sounding more and more like a "real" radio broadcast, which was sort of spiffy.

Anyway, not only was he broadcasting, but the people who usually help him out in the chat room with stats and transcribing the plays weren't around. So I said I'd help out for as long as I was awake. At first I was just saying things in jest, like "Gosh, now might not be the best time to point out that the 3-4-5 of Sheets-Kanemoto-Imaoka is hitting 4-for-34 so far in this series, would it? :)" but then he'd actually mention it on air, like "Deanna informs us that the 3-4-5 hitters are..." so after a while I started really getting into it, like when he was like "Wait, where did we get Hiyama from?" I looked up the boxscore to explain that blah blah when Fukuhara came in to pitch, they did a double switch putting him in batting 6th and putting Hamanaka in RF batting ninth, and then Williams replaced him, and thus Hiyama was pinch-hitting. Etc. I mean, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you weren't used to reading Japanese box scores, would you be able to figure it out from something like this or this?

I digress. The upshot is, I was having such fun being a stathead and chatting with Westbay, a few others, and one poor disenchanted Tigers fan who had tickets to Game 5 at Koshien and was getting worried he wouldn't get to go (eventually he just headed out to an izakaya to get plastered), and god forbid, the Marines were actually WINNING the game (Seung-Yeop Lee hit a 2-run homer in the 2nd inning and drove in another run in the 4th, and the Tigers never managed to get more than 2 runs). So I ended up sticking around for the whole bloody game. It actually became a nailbiter when Imaoka and Hiyama hit those two RBI singles in the 6th -- and Okada FINALLY FUCKING BROUGHT OUT JFK (er, "JFK" is the bullpen setup-closer tandem of J eff (williams), F ujikawa, and K ubota, and they had been in the first three games for all of one inning when Fujikawa came out) -- but the Tigers didn't manage any more runs off the Marines' bullpen, nor did the Marines manage any off the Tigers' vaunted tandem. Masa Kobayashi almost imploded in the ninth like he did in PL Playoff 2-stage game 3... walked Kataoka, and Kuji pinch-ran, and Yano tried to sac bunt him ahead, but Imae saved it with a sliding catch to get Yano's bunt and doubled off Kuji at first. Kobayashi struck out Fujimoto after that and the Marines were Japan Series champions. Westbay-san put his microphone up to the TV after that so we could hear all the MVP speeches and whatnot. I'd said that Imae was going to be MVP, and I was right. Woo.

I emailed Jack to explain what happened and went to sleep around 6am.

I got up around 11:30am and went to work. We had a knowledge transfer meeting that I had to be at. I can't escape the tech writing thing altogether, y'know.

After work I came home, played some PP because it was Looterati Squid Squad Night and watched the World Series Game 4 and ate dinner... then went over to the gym to play volleyball.

I decided to stick a tape in the VCR and tape the game before I left, though. I didn't want to miss the White Sox sweeping. (Kind of like how the second thing I said in the chatroom was "I don't want to miss the Marines sweeping!") And a damn good thing I did!

I played volleyball for 2.5 hours. It was good exercise. There's this guy who always is weightlifting on Wednesdays and he always seems to come by and WATCH us play but never plays. Well, tonight I found out why -- it's actually because he's really GOOD at volleyball and doesn't want to overpower anyone. He was pretty nice though. I played pretty well when I was next to him in the rotation because I didn't want to look bad. And I played pretty poorly when I got stuck next to the bossy guy because I was nervous. So go figure. We had 15 people so we split up into three groups of 5 and played rally scoring to 15 points, but eventually people decided they didn't like sitting out a whole game, and a few people left, too.

Then I came home and watched the last hour of the game. Wooo, go White Sox. I'm disappointed that the postgame show was so boring though, at least compared to last year's. I guess the Red Sox were just a bunch of weirdoes... I still remember Pedro running by and stealing the World Series trophy, and Manny Ramirez ignoring the interviewers and flashing his fingers at everyone who'd walk by, and someone coming up and dumping a beer on Theo's head while he was talking to the camera. This time... eh. And Jermaine Dye as MVP? I was really hoping for Shoeless Joe from Jefferson City, MO. At least the Fox people played themes from the musical Chicago in the background of stuff.

Anyway, uh, yay. I'm doing some laundry right now because I am out of socks, and then I will sleep and all.

By the way, I've decided I'm going to take some Japanese classes at a community college in the spring, to unrust myself (I swear, I'm great at reading baseball box scores and articles, but that's IT these days) on conversation. And then I *AM* going back to Japan sometime during baseball season. It's really important to me, and if I'm going to take this "I can do anything if I put my mind to it" attitude from now on, I might as well start there. I also have another fun idea or two for things to do in the offseason, but they'd probly be better tailored to another post some other time. Yeehaw.

So, yeah, my posts should be getting back to boring and short again soon.

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Deanna

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February 2019

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Every Day an Adventure

Entries tagged with baseball

Down with Snow, down with Sho

Auto Graph Theory

Song Parody: Stove League, to the tune of "Sleigh Ride"

Song Parody: A Simple Insultory Philippic

Song Parody: The Guy With The Slider

Whoosh.

[semi crosspost] Moneyball, the Musical!

Moneyball: The Musical!

Baseball Carp!

Volley-OOP

Volleyball, box scores, etc.

Whee

When the going gets tough, the TOUGH BUY BOOKS

The 2005 Mariners, in song

Being a history nerd is fun. Also, Shaun of the Dead was weird.

Washburninating the baseball field

Cold, in more ways than one

"I bought Pirate earrings!" "No, you bought Pirates earrings."

Song Parody: Money for Nothing

Whee!

Well, that's it. No more baseball for 5 months :(

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February 2019