A couple friends of mine are 2 of the 3 stars in these commercials for Boston Globe Red Sox Store that will air during Red Sox games on NESN this year. Check them out:
These 2 feature a Boston Terrier watching the Boston Red Sox:
I love the ending of this one:
A Ball Thief is on the loose:
This past weekend was the 81st annual Academy Awards show (aka “The Oscars”). Also this week, baseball started having preseason games. With both of these things on my mind, my brain decided it would to combine the two. The Baseball Oscars or The Baseball Nerdcademy Awards are the result of those brain signals crossing.
Now, I could just hand these imaginary awards out based on my random whims (and I still may do that), but first I need some nominees. For that I need your help. Please send your nominees/suggestions/votes/hatemail to me via any of these multitudes of contact methods: on this post as a comment, email, twitter, or any other way you can figure to contact me. Hopefully I’ll have enough good choices to pow-wow with the other nerds (Serpico) and have the awards ready for next week.
To get everything started I will seed each category with one nomination (related to my favorite team). All the categories from the Academy were not used for 2 reasons. The first is because I don’t want to have to hire an accountant to tally anything. The second is because I probably couldn’t figure out a way to make it fit. Here are the categories and my first nominee: Read more »
Yes, This is an actual seat at Fenway. Probably cost an arm and a leg.
I’m a fan of Red Sox baseball. I travel from New York to Boston to see a few games a year. I grew up in a Red Sox Baseball household. What I’m getting at is that I love almost everything about my precious team. What I don’t love (and by don’t love, I mean HATE) is Fenway Park.
I hate having bruises on my knees from the closeness of the rows. I hate having a stiff neck because the seat is not actually pointing toward the infield. I hate getting excessive physical contact from the person next to me because we both don’t fit in to the not wide enough seats. I hate that the park is so small that even though I wake early and spend almost 8 hours online, I’m only able to get scattered single seats with obstructed views. I hate that it’s impossible to get from one side of the park to the other because the only way to do this is the third base concourse. That concourse is more crowded that Paris Hilton’s bedroom and smaller than her brain. And I hate anyone who is too in love with the park to see the benefits of a new one.
All this hate can be erased with a plan for a new park, but that’s not likely. How unlikely? A new Red Sox ballpark will probably not happen during my lifetime. This is what CEO Larry Lucchino said:
I think a result of the investment that our ownership group has made is a Fenway Park that will be stable and solid and with a normal maintenance will be around for another 50 years
Gah! Well, I guess now that I live in New York City, and the Mets have a new stadium, I should go check those guys out. I hear they have this familiar ability to do well and then fail in the end that I grew up with.
I decided to find all the spare electronic parts that I could find around my apartment and build a baseball projections robot. Some of the things I found include: an alarm clock, TI-83, a broken toaster, a VCR, an Apple IIe, a PlayStation, a watch with a calculator on it, and a car phone (with carrying case). Armed with my trusty soldering iron and a wondering imagination, I put together ProjectoTron 3000.
Last night, I put in all the current MLB statistics that were available at the time (stats through 4/2/08) and let it start calculating. I went to work in the morning and it was still calculating. Finally when I got home this evening I was able to see it starting to spit out some odd projections for the season. There are a few that I think I should share with you.
First there is JI Read more »
Hey internets, remember me? I’m the webmaster for this site and I was writing on Wednesdays for a while. Well, I have been a bit busy. In my real life I switched jobs and that was stealing most of my free time. I am now a “web development engineer” as opposed to my previous job where I was a “software engineer.” For some of you I basically just said I went from being a “computer guy” to being a “computer guy,” but the truth is I went from being a “MS SQL guy” to an “ASP.NET guy.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to switch from WordPress to a C# software package, I still have to, at least, check out version 2.5 before making rash changes.
Enough of the computer/software talk, on to the sports. Since I’ve finally settled into my new routine, I was able to take in a full weekend (Saturday) of sports.
First event of the weekend was a Rolex Sports Car series race: GAINSCO Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead Miami Speedway (say that 3-times fast). Read more »
With the Red Sox having their opening day over in Japan, I dutifully set my alarm clock for 5:50 AM so I could kickoff baseball season in style, i.e. in pajamas in the dark with the sound turned real low. Co-editor Willis had suggested trying to talk via interweb as the game was going on, but I’m not fancy enough to have a laptop. I did, however, keep notes throughout the whole affair, and am presenting them to you now.
The Night Before: In order to prepare waking up ass-early, I readied myself by going to bed around 10 (which would afford me an equal night’s sleep as usual). I made myself sleepy by drinking Guinness and warm milk, though not at the same time.
c. 2-5 AM: Weird dreams. I don’t really remember what they were about – something about replacement dinners? I dunno. Anyway, I do know that in more than one dream I said, “I have to leave so I can get up early and watch the game.” No, really.
5:50 AM: Snooze button.
5:57 AM: I trudge myself out of bed, make myself comfy on the couch and fiddle with the remote until I find NESN. I turn to the channel just as the Japanese national anthem is being played. Mildly disconcerting. And then the managers are given bouquets of flowers. I wonder how Joe Torre would react to a bouquet of flowers. Or Earl Weaver.
6:07 AM: I find it reassuring to hear the voices of Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy. I take a minute to wonder what would happen if Remy were lost in downtown Tokyo without a translator. Would he ever find his way home? It’s like a zen koan.
6:11 AM: Joe Blanton takes the mound. He is on my fantasy baseball league this year, but these Tokyo games don’t count toward anything in our league due in part to their peculiar scheduling.
So I have no feelings of ambivalence, but would rather not have a Red Sox defeat that crushes his soul. Or patella.
6:19 AM: A Mark Ellis HR. Oh, goody.
6:23 AM: Jack Cust is at bat. His presence makes me wonder if there are going to be any good Mitchell-report heckles this year. It is too early in the morning for me to think of any.
6:38 AM: Seeing a scruffy Jason Varitek reminds me that I’ve missed baseball oh so very much.
There is so much fun stuff out there that I’m going to try to blogroll every Sunday some of what I have been reading during the week. (Feel free to email me things I should be reading — The internets are a big place and I do need guidance.) This week I have some broken keepers, baseball prognostications, RedSox Pictorials, a Philly Prank [umm... that doesn't look right... what do you call someone on the Phillies? (other than terrible)], and more.
I’ve requested entry into the fantasy leagues of the Babes who Love Baseball, because losing to my friends in one league and losing to the people I work with in a second league wasn’t enough. I now want to lose to strange bloggers I don’t even know. [Babes Love Baseball]There really isn’t an aftermath to speak of. Boston isn’t burning. There isn’t wailing and lamentation in the Common. Folks have just kind of moved on.
The reasons for the collective shrugging of shoulders up in this part of the world are pretty 
abundant. We all know that the team isn’t going anywhere. The foundation of every excellent team (Offensive line, Defensive line, Quarterback) is in place and will be for years to come. The Kraft family is invested in the longterm success of the team and the facilities. The genius coach is still a genius coach. And the aging linebacker corps will get younger and faster next season (though I think everyone’s a little broken up about losing Bruschi and Seau). Over all, there’s a citywide sense that we’ll all be alright.
A friend of mine that doesn’t follow sports too closely told me that he was always surprised by how Boston fans were so opportunistic in terms of their demeanor. That is to say, once the Patriots (or any local team) lose, fans can move on to other things fairly quickly and not dwell in misery too long. I find such an assertion funny, because for my entire life up until 2004, you couldn’t say “Boston fans” without squeezing the phrase “long suffering” in. Nowadays, Boston fans are apparently seen as folks with an abundance of things to cheer about. So I did a little thinking on the matter, and I realized that perhaps this friend is right. I did a quick “pulse check” on the Boston Sports Scene as of this morning, and the results are in: Read more »
