Oh mah gaw

The Mets are going to the World Series. The Mets are going to the World Series. The freaking Mets are going to the freaking World Series.

If anybody needs me, I’ll just be somewhere in Sharjah, quietly freaking out.

Brooklyn, Baseball, and Bumper Cars

I decided not to stay home and brood on the day that my job was closed due to budget cuts. Instead, I took my nephews (Elder Satan, 14; and Satanski, 5) to Brooklyn. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve been to Brooklyn, but that’s more due to a lack of any specific reason to go, than to an opposition to the borough. The primary reason for our trip was to see the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ Short-Season Class A affiliate. I really enjoyed the minor league games I went to when I was going to school in Virginia (Single A Lynchburg Hillcats and Triple A Norfolk Tides), and thought that it would be a fun trip to see with the boys. I didn’t want the first baseball game I took them to to be a MLB game, especially since those tickets cost a lot, and I wasn’t sure if the kids were willing to stay for an entire game.

We arrived in Coney Island about two hours before we needed to get to the stadium, so we grabbed something to eat and then went to an arcade and played air hockey, skee ball, and that basketball game where you see how many baskets you can get in 30 seconds. Elder Satan and I had hoped to compete against each other, but the balls took forever to come back, and we agreed that it would be a waste of time to count the few baskets we were able to get before the time ran out. We did better competing at skee ball and air hockey, and I’m not mentioning them just because I won.

We played bumper cars, too, and it cracked the boys up to see me driving anything. I am awesome at bumper cars, though, and with Satanski by my side, managed to crash into Elder Satan a lot, while avoiding most of the weird strangers who kept trying to ram us. It was harder to find things for Satanski to do, since we learned the hard way that he didn’t have the height for the basketball game or the coordination for skee ball (his balls had the disturbing tendency to end up one or two lanes over from where they’d started). He had a great time on the motorcycle video game, although his brother had to help him steer, and on Dance Dance Revolution, where a helpful little kid stepped on whatever food pad caught his fancy, sometimes even making the correct combination. Although we were excited about seeing the Cyclones, we were all a little sad to leave the arcade when it was time to head over to the stadium.

We shouldn’t have been, because we had a great time at the game. One thing that I love about minor league stadiums (I know, I know: technically, stadia is more correct, but hardly anybody uses that word anymore) is that they try to get and keep your attention in a way that major league ballparks do not. As we walked to the game of MCU Park, people in Carvel shirts gave Carvel Flying Saucers to anybody who cared for one (Satanski declared that he was frightened of these, and did not take one), and after we had our tickets scanned, stadium employees handed out CUNY duffel bags to the first 2,500 fans, so we got some of those, too. It was Thomas the Tank Night last night, so kids who wore Thomas clothing got to take the field (I didn’t dress Satanski in anything related to Thomas, but he did enjoy the Thomas songs and trivia throughout the night). Did you know that Thomas & Co. are 65 years old? I didn’t either.

Satanski made friends with a similarly-aged boy in the row behind us, and they laughed for five innings straight at the beverage vendor in our section, whose call was, “Beer and a bottle of water!” He did have a thick accent (like New Yorkers often sound on tv and not as much in real life), and for some reason the boys just died every time he said that. I didn’t get it, and the joke did grow old with repetition. I didn’t mind it so much when that kid and his family left after the fifth.

Satanski was more into the game than I’d dared to hope he would be, and he got really excited when the Cyclones scored on a two-run double. “Touchdown,” he yelled. It was pretty cute. Even after I explained that there were no touchdowns in baseball (“or cheerleaders, either,” he added), he yelled the same thing the next time the Cyclones scored. Another thing that he enjoyed was when three people dressed as Ketchup, Mustard, and Relish had a race along the left field line. Satanski and I do not like mustard and relish, so we rooted for Ketchup, but he was vanquished the gooey, oddly-textured Relish. I listened to him talking on the phone with his dad, trying to explain how we booed Mustard and Relish, and took the line to explain to my very confused brother that his son and I had not randomly jeered condiments.

My older nephew, who is not as evil as his brother but is nevertheless known as Elder Satan, was not as chatty as his brother during the game. We did share a laugh over a 20-something hipster couple where the guy had an insane handlebar moustache and the woman had fuschia Lee Press On nails.  We spent two innings trying to get a picture of the guy, and I finally was able to get it not too long before we left at the top of the eighth.

It was a long trip back home (an hour on the subway and then a wait at Port Authority, and then traffic at 11 pm on 495), but we had a really great time yesterday.

Human element, my foot

I’m really sick of hearing the words “human element” used to excuse really crappy calls in baseball, and I’m sure that now Armando Galarraga is, too. Poor guy.

Take it out on the opposition

It sounds like Mets closer K-Rod nearly got into a fight with bullpen coach Randy Niemann on Sunday night. That would be the same Sunday where K-Rod came in and struggled, and then struck out A-Rod on a 3 – 2 count to end the game. On deck was Robinson Cano, who has turned into an alarmingly (if you’re not a Yankees fan, anyway) awesome baseball player lately, although he’s not putting up the numbers he did in April and the Mets were able to shut him down this weekend. He’d slumped so much during the series that if he had come up, I’m sure he would have wanted to redeem himself by putting his team ahead. Anyways, I suggest that K-Rod spend less time getting into heated arguments with old guys and more time actually doing his damn job. Sure, K-Rod and Niemann made up later, but K-Rod has to learn control. A lot of control.

You’re out!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist making a bad pun about the totally awesome news that MLB finally fired some not-so-great umpires. Of course, I’m sure that more went into this decision than their penchant for blowing calls, or else C. B. Bucknor and Angel Hernandez (who somehow wasn’t even mentioned in this article) would have been gone a long time ago. Still, I hope this makes umpires think twice and consult with one another before they start guessing at calls. It’s hard enough to defend baseball to those who think it’s a boring game that goes on for too long, without having to add a disclaimer that umpire errors are expected in baseball. At least, the commissioner thinks so.

Pics or it didn’t happen

I’m home! I really enjoyed California a lot, and although I wouldn’t say that my vacation was especially relaxing, I do feel like the time away benefited me. As promised, I am including links to my pictures from my trip to California. I also went to Disneyland, but didn’t really feel like taking pictures there.

• Los Angeles Dodgers vs Atlanta Braves
• Bullitt at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim vs Texas Rangers
• San Diego Zoo
• SeaWorld San Diego

Some of my favorites:

Despite the Dodgers' loss, the stadium still shot of fireworks

Cute couple dancing before the movie started

The actual name of a street on the bus route back to the hotel

This animal is not dead or dying.

Blah blah blah…Ginger

I hadn’t heard anybody gossiping like fishwives lately, so I turned on Sunday Night Baseball. I enjoy the broadcasts because Joe Morgan and Jon Miller are totally in love with one another, and there’s nothing more satisfying than watching a couple’s love deepen. The addition of Steve Phillips ups the hotness factor by infinity, and the more he talks, the less we have to hear Joe. Their tangents are usually irrelevant and not interesting besides, but every now and then they reveal something so intensely personal about a player, coach, or other baseball staffer that you wonder why anybody still talks to them.

Tragic

I find it interesting how following seemingly random links on the internet can teach you something you’d never have any reason to know otherwise. I started out looking at this Metafilter thread about the web site dead.atyourage.com. You enter your exact date of birth and find out about famous/infamous/interesting people who died at your age or thereabouts.

The first person on my list was Lyman Bostock, a baseball player I’d never heard of. Apparently, he is still the only MLB player to have been murdered during the baseball season. That’s sad enough, but I went to the Wikipedia article about him and read the story of his death; it’s heartbreaking. He was a great hitter on his way to being a pretty big star, and was murdered by Leonard Smith, the jealous, estranged husband of a woman he’d only just met. Even worse, Smith was found guilty in his second trial (the first ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury), was committed for psychiatric treatment, and was released after seven months when he was deemed to be no longer mentally ill. Including that time and the time he was in jail awaiting trial, he served less than two years for Bostock’s murder. ESPN Outside the Lines also did a story on Bostock’s murder. It seems like a slap in the face of Bostock’s family that Smith has been free for nearly thirty years, even though he was found guilty of murder. As a direct result of this case, the state of Indiana changed the way that the sentences of those found guilty by reason of insanity are handles, so that people found guilty and then deemed no longer insane would go to jail, instead of be released.

That probably wasn’t the point

So I was reading Doug Glanville’s latest column for the New York Times today. He was discussing the revelation that Alex Rodriguez, baseball god, Madonna-lover, and all around hot stuff had admitted that recent allegations that he’d taken steroids were true. And holy crap, the best player in baseball admitted that he’d taken performance-enhancing drugs. True, he wasn’t the one who broke the story; ESPN did. But Rodriguez confirmed quite quickly, which seems admirable when compared with the Clemenses and McGwires of the world. So I thought that Glanville’s article was interesting and well-written, and it’s a shame that the thing that really caught my attention was this: there is such a thing as a curveball machine.

Amazing! I’d love to have one. What will they think of next?

Sick

I’m sick. I’m sick of trying to teach people who have no interest in learning anything, I’m sick of being nice to people who are really just jerks and have no interested of being nice to me, and I’m really just literally sick. I got a tickle in my throat after Saturday’s Mraz concert (waited outside in line for about a half hour, the temperature was in the low 60s, and I was not wearing a sweater), which stayed pretty steady as a small cough until last night, when I sat inside a freezing bar for the better part of 5 hours watching the freaking Phillies beat the Dodgers. Stupid Matt Stairs! Anyway, that meant that today I awakened with my sexy sick-voice, a runny nose, and no desire to do anything as pedestrian as go to work. But I try not to abuse my sick time, so I went in and was convinced by my coworkers that I should use some of my sick time, since I have several weeks’ worth remaining. Before I left, though, a woman came in for my basic Excel class, so I started to teach it. Big mistake. I should have gone home. She wasn’t interested in listening to explanations of things, she wanted to make charts when she couldn’t even format cells, and she then wanted to learn about all the advanced functions she’d heard about at her former job. I understand the curiosity, but why would she go to a BASIC class expecting to learn this stuff? Then she asked me if a master’s was required to do my job,and whether I had one, like “Are you a real librarian?”  I suspect she found me unqualified for my job (which is not Excel instructor, by the way), and she was thinking of applying for it. Good luck, lady.

So now I’m home and am experiencing the healing powers of microwaved tea and TiVoed Monday night television.