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November 20, 2009
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Great Moments in Championship Celebrations (4)
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Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.Friday, November 20, 2009Great Moments in Championship CelebrationsThis has nothing to do with baseball at all, but this story sent to me by MooseinOhio is so cool that I gotta post it somewhere.* After the Celtics won the 1986 championship, [Bill] Walton sat alone in Bird’s kitchen drinking Wild Turkey until after the sun came up. Drinking Wild Turkey in a kitchen until dawn > spraying champagne all over sweaty guys in a locker room. Though, yeah, I suppose those things aren't mutually exclusive activities after cutting down the nets. *As an FYI, after the switchover to NBC, I'm probably going to revive my old dead personal blog for stuff that I can't really post over there, non-baseball stuff, and what have you. As of now there's only some old remembrances and a road trip diary. It might serve as a nice hangout going forward, though. My Morning in ExileSo I get to take the kids for their H1N1 vaccinations today. That should be a barrel of laughs. On the bright side, they're spending the night at my folks' house, so I'll only have to hear their complaining about it until I drop them off around dinner time. After that, Mrs. Shyster and I grab some fabulous Columbus cuisine and sample the hot Columbus nightlife. Well, what else are we gonna do? We're all through with "The Wire" DVDs. As for "The Wire," the best thing I got out of it is the certainty that my recent decision to stop watching any non-ballgame-related television was a good one. Unless they bring back "Barney Miller" or something, there's no way any show can top it, so why waste my time? Thursday, November 19, 2009Your Thursday afternoon tizzyThere is some brewing discontent over the NL Cy Young vote, as two members of the webby portion of the BBWAA -- our friends Keith Law and Will Carroll -- did not include Chris Carpenter on their three-man Cy Young ballots. Keith voted Javier Vazquez second (Lincecum first and Wainwright third) and Will voted Wainwright first, Lincecum second and Danny Haren third. They were the only ones who included Vazquez or Haren on their ballots. A comment about this from reader Ron in the thread below my earlier post: “Two voters, Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus and Keith Law of ESPN.com, did not include Carpenter on their ballots.” Nice. Leave the best pitcher in the NL off of your ballots to insure the saber-metric favorite wins. The BBWAA guys might not be the best at voting, but the saber friendly guys don’t have the right to accuse them of manipulating the vote anymore. Ron, I love you. You've been reading this blog longer than just about anyone and I always appreciate your input. But you're factually wrong here inasmuch as even if Will changed his vote for Haren to Carpenter and and Law did the same with his Vazquez vote, Lincecum still wins. And really, if Will was really trying to throw it to Lincecum, wouldn't he have voted him first? But I don't mean to single out Ron. I posted his comment simply because it stands at the somewhat extreme end of the discontent I've read at a few message boards. There really are people out there scratching their heads at this, and I imagine there will be at least a little grousing about their votes over the next couple of slow news days. For my part, I wouldn't have voted the same way Keith and Will did -- neither Vazquez nor Haren would have made my ballot -- but they explain their rationale and I understand why they voted the way they voted even if I disagree with it. At the very least I understand docking Carpenter based on innings pitched, and that seems to be the point of controversy here. I'm a bit more of a romantic than Keith and Will are, I think, so I'd probably have included him on my ballot for reasons associated with his comeback from injury and all of that, but it's certainly legitimate to not include him. I predict that some people will use Keith's and Will's votes in some argument that statheads shouldn't be given the franchise over the next couple of days. Such an argument, if it comes, should be rejected out of hand. At most this is some down-ballot curiosity, the sort of which we see on the votes for every award. Lincecum takes the Cy YoungI don't have a link yet, but people are talking about it already. He's a fine choice. Great year. I probably undervalued the fact that he had more innings than Carpenter, so no arguments here. Given that he has a court date on a controlled substance thing coming up soon, be prepared for the most boring celebration party of all time. My Morning in ExileI know it's basically just been a string of MMIE's lately, and for that I apologize. Wrapping up one's legal career and preparing to jump right into a new one really has a way of taking up the afternoon. Still, six new posts a day ain't exactly chopped liver as far as baseball bloggers go. You can still complain in the comments, though. Heck, I'm not happy with it myself. I feel like I'm watching baseball from 1000 yards right now. Anyway: Wednesday, November 18, 2009My Morning in ExileIn the wake of my many threats to grow the greatest Grizzly Adams beard the world has ever seen once I start blogging full time next month, my wife emails me this post written by famed blogger Heather Armstrong and says "you married the wrong woman!" Which, while I see her point, is totally not true. Armstrong may have a thing for guys at computers with beards, but she's a stay at home blogger too. If I had married her, our kids wouldn't have health insurance. So, no worries Mrs. Shyster, I still love you and all of your fabulous benefits . . . Parent-teacher conference at ShysterDaughter's kindergarten at 1PM. I have this feeling that the fact that I've been calling her "Mookie" lately is going to come up. Tuesday, November 17, 2009Great Moments in Transparency: Christina Kahrl’s Rookie of the Year voteIt's too much to ask every writer to be as thorough as Christina Kahrl is in explaining her Rookie of the Year vote, but how nice would it be if every voter actually explained the thought process behind their awards choices? It’s GreinkeNot a big surprise. Two writers voted King Felix first. One voted for Verlander. First place votes for Sabathia would have bothered me. Overall nothing to complain about here. He's getting married on Saturday too, so all in all it's a pretty good week for Zack. My Morning in ExileSlow day, so I scan the news. Great (Captain Robert Falcon) Scott! Or was it Shackleton? Roald Amundsen: the Chase Utley of explorers. Discuss. Monday, November 16, 2009New Twins uniforms revealedNew house, new duds: Plans for the new uniforms and logos unveiled today include: Some pics available here. Some others here. Personally, I like the elimination of pinstripes on the road, which I think looks impossibly lame. Pinstripes = sharpness. Sharpness demands white. Pinstripes on gray looks terrible. I also like the near elimination of the "M" cap (it's still available in an alternate cap). The TC is one of the coolest logos around. The more of that the better. And of course, as I've mentioned many times in the past, the M logo gives me flashbacks to 1987 and 1991, and those Twins teams bummed me out pretty terribly. If they really wanted to be cool they would have eliminated the solid blue home alternate which never, ever, ever, ever, ever looks good. On any team. Anywhere. at any time. Solid jerseys that don't match the pants ought to be banned. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||