Saturday Morning TV: Baseball Friends

You know what I love more than home runs?

Continue...

What If Rupert Murdoch’s Empire Were Hacking All The Way Down?

Rupert Murdoch owns a lot. That sentence doesn’t even need an indirect object. He simply owns a lot. Of newspapers, of movie studios, of television networks, of television programs, of websites, of magazines, of record labels. He even owns fifty percent of Australia’s National Rugby League. Chances are that of the thousands of pieces of content you interact with everyday, a good third to one-half of them link back to him in some sort of gold-plated game of Six Degrees of Rupert Murdoch.

He now owns one hell of a scandal. Murdoch’s News Corporation is the parent company of News International, which published the British tabloid News of the World. It’s recently come to light that News of the World engaged in phone hacking to illegally obtain information. Earlier this month, British prime minister David Cameron called for a massive government inquiry into the affair, hoping to address claims of hacking and police bribery.

High-ranking British police officials are stepping down. Members of Murdoch’s empire are being arrested. The United States is now getting involved: the FBI just began investigating whether or not News Corp’s violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with the alleged hacking and bribery. Oh yeah, and they might have accessed the voicemails of victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 London bombings.

Rather than wade into this quagmire and attempt to report on it (there’s plenty of that going on already), I’d like to speculate on what the world would be like if such underhanded behavior pervaded the furthest reaches of Murdoch’s empire. Cue the dream sequence music.

Continue...

Continue...

All-Star Tuesday: One Year Later

About a year ago, I was fortunate enough to attend last year's MLB All-Star Game in Anaheim.  Yesterday I was fortunate enough to liveblog the Home Run Derby, which featured an exciting, last-ups victory complete with a record number of home runs hit in the final round by the Yankees' Robinson Cano.  Just when I was beginning to think of the #HRDerby as dull and repetitive, they come back with an exciting nailbiter - kind of like how whenever MythBusters starts to get too stuffy and science-y, they pull out a sequence featuring Kari Byron running through some obstacle course or something.

And yet even after all the fun I had last year, and all the fun the fans in attendance have, and all the fun players appear to be having on the field, getting the chance to fraternize with the best and brightest in the sport, there's still a contingent arguing that the All-Star Game is obsolete?  Because of TV ratings?  Come on!  Everybody knows that TV ratings only exist for the benefit of advertisers and every advertiser knows that the climate of the industry is gravitating away from the 30-second TV spot and towards more new-age, interactive means of reaching consumers.

The All-Star Game is about so much more than TV ratings and showcasing the world's best commercials (the same cannot be said for events of other major sports).  It's all the things Mr. Fetter notes in his "Atlantic" article: a break from the grueling baseball season, and a (better) way to decide home field advantage in the World Series (than simple alternation).  But it's also about so much more.  It's about... well, I won't spoil it in the opening; you'll have to hit the jump to find out.

Continue...

Continue...

On Putting Fantasy Above Reality In Baseball

On May 29, 2010, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim first baseman Kendrys Morales won a game against the Seattle Mariners with a grand slam home run – the first ever in his young career. Few things in baseball are more exciting than a grand slam, so to win a game with one guarantees the play airtime on SportsCenter.

Unfortunately, Morales received SportsCenter coverage for more than his home run. Brimming with pride upon winning the game, Morales rounded the bases and leapt onto home plate in exultation. A bone in his left leg broke on impact. Surrounded by his teammates, he fell to the ground in pain. Celebration turned to tragedy in a heartbeat.

Morales has not played a big-league game since. He was expected to play this season, but complications in his rehabilitation will prevent him from taking the field in 2011.

Why does this matter to me, an obnoxiously dedicated Philadelphia Phillies fan? Morales was on my fantasy team.

Continue...

Continue...

MLB 11 The Show (ing you all the possibilities!)

When I play Batman: Arkham Asylum for my PS3, I can basically use my controller as a conduit to embody the caped crusader. I can take control of my favorite childhood superhero and guide him through a world of mystery and intrigue and a plot that surpasses even the craziest comic book adventures. It's fun and exciting, because I get an (admittedly very removed) sense of what it's like to occupy the skin of The Bat from the comfort of my own living room. I find that if you really get into the spirit of these games, it becomes a form of virtual reality.

The same is supposed to be true of baseball games such as MLB 11 The Show - it can act as a sort of virtual reality simulator of what it's like to occupy the skin of a professional ballplayer. The new "pure control" system (a feature borrowed from the competing 2K Sports franchise) attempts to further physicalize/virtualize the game more than timed button-presses are capable of doing. Now, pulling back on the analog stick is a digital stand-in for a pitcher's windup or a batter's stride toward the ball, and pushing the analog stick forward is akin to taking a mighty hack or delivering a pitch. Convinced? I didn't think so...

I'm not completely sold on the game's ability to imitate what it feels like to actually play in a major league game; at least not in the same way that Arkham Asylum actually - in a sick, twisted, nerdy way - makes you feel like Batman while he beats the tar out of Joker's thugs. Maybe I just haven't logged enough hours to get the hang of it, but so far The Show lacks a certain "organic" quality of the gameplay that lets you really lose yourself in the world of playing the game - that certain way of controlling your players and making team decisions that goes beyond hand-eye coordination and starts to become instinct.

But what The Show does provide is threefold: an up-to-date (and updatable) database of rosters; a pretty decent visual simulator of what it's like to watch a game; and a mostly-fun RPG-like single-player create-a-player mode. More information ahead for those who care to hear more...

Continue...

Continue...

Revisiting the Simplicity of Baseball Cards

This Saturday, a very important announcement about the baseball season was made: The Chicago Cubs announced that youngster Andrew Cashner would be their 5th starter for the 2011 season, pushing veteran Carlos Silva off the 25-man roster. This is just one of the tidbits of information that flashes across the bottom of your screen while you watch Spring Training games on MLB Network. Why was I fixated on this one, then? It was because I recognized the name "Carlos Silva" from a 2011 Topps baseball card I had just opened.

That's right, at Spring Training this past weekend, I picked up a couple of packs of baseball cards, and I've been hooked ever since. Organizing them by collector's number, constructing fantasy depth charts on my table top, you name it, the whole nine yards. In fact, right before I heard the news, I had shifted Silva's card from my "good starters" pile to my "garbage starters" pile. And it looks like Cubs GM Jim Hendry's decision justified my classification.

Opening these few spring packs made me realize how much I missed baseball cards. I have binders full of the stuff at home, compiled between the years of 1989 and 2003, but once they're in the sleeves, you very rarely take them out and play with them like you do when you open a new pack. Part of the reason that baseball cards are so much fun is their permanence: they actually exist, cardboard and ink. Sure you can get stats and pictures of baseball players online, but it's very different from opening up a new pack of baseball cards. It's kind of like the difference between settling down with a cup of coffee and the print version of the New York Times, and paying a reasonable price for the New York Times' digital subscription.

So, has the death of print journalism coincided with the decline in popularity of baseball cards? I don't see how there possibly couldn't be a connection.

Continue...

Continue...

Saturday Morning TV: What Should Brett Favre Do?

What should I do? Should I watch this video again? Should I watch the original Lebron James ad? Maybe I should just hop on Google…

Continue...

Fear and Loathing at Spring Training '11

When I imagine a journalist going into the field for a long and immersive trip, my mind always calls up images of Hunter S. Thompson lugging his huge typewriter along with him and setting it up in a dark corner of his hotel room during any rare quiet moment of his travels. Well, if I had to bring a typewriter with me on my trip to Phoenix to cover a long weekend of Spring Training Baseball, it would probably end up broken, succumbing to the same fate as my computer, whose hard drive unexpectedly and inexplicably crashed the night before we left. So now I'm out here in the blazing Arizona desert with nought but a notepad and my smartphone with which to document my adventures.

The baseball journalistic aspects of my trip (stories about all four games my colleague and I were scheduled to watch and how the individual performances of each player and team fit into the Grand Outlook of the Season as a Whole) were set to appear on my other blog, thoughtsaboutbaseball.blogspot.com, so I won't bore you with the technical stuff here. Thankfully I had signed up for Twitter just mere hours before my computer died, so I was still able to live-tweet some of my more colorful observations. You can follow my travels at @Hunter_S_Batman.

It's hard to focus on this tiny screen long enough to write even this brief post, even after today's baseball action is over; I'd much rather be poring over my scoresheet or analyzing some projected lineups. Maybe things would be different if I had a working computer, even though I previously wrote an entire full-length post using only my Android phone. The amount of information necessary to process before the start of a baseball season requires the computing power, speed, and convenience of a full O.S. - but then again a computer might have just provided me with more potential for distraction.

So I hope you'll forgive ne if I put my smartphone away in favor of my glove, cap, and Matt Kemp autographed baseball. I'm sure I'll find it more fun to welcome in the spring by hanging out in the sun than straining my eyes at this tiny little touchscreen in a dirty old hotel.room. I promise I'll be back with you once everything settles down.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Continue...

The Butterfly Effect of the NFL Lockout

Is football too big to fail? It’s long since surpassed the baseball as America’s national pastime. Last fall, a regular season football game between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat Game Four of the World Series in overnight ratings. Though folks like Seth Everett (formerly of ESPN’s Baseball Today podcast) will tell you that baseball is best judged by local not national ratings, you simply can’t deny football’s dominance when it’s beating out the championships of other sports.

Football may not be so dominant this year, however.

The NFL recently instituted a lockout after the league and players failed to see eye to eye on a new collective bargaining agreement. If this were a sports blog, I’d delve into why the owners and players disagree ($$$, the proposed addition of two regular season games, $$$, etc.), but we’re not so I won’t.

I’ll just boil it down: if the two sides can’t reach an agreement, there won’t be football this year!

And it isn’t just the millionaire players and owners who’ll feel its absence.

Continue...

Continue...

Super Bowl Commercials 2011: A Tremendous Display of Blatant Capitalism!

"You know, I think I'm paying more attention to the commercials than to the actual game. I need to reverse that."

This was a comment I overheard during Super Bowl XLV. And while this is never the scenario a football fan envisions during their sport's biggest broadcast of the year, I can't say I could find fault with his initial reaction. At the time, the game was looking like it would turn into a blowout (a situation that was thankfully rectified later on) and each 30-second spot was garnering laughter and cheers from the audience.

Which is to be expected. When a company is shelling out up to $100,000 per second of airtime, the marketing folks had better have what it takes to steal the show. Many of these companies brought their A-Games, saturating the screen with arrangements of color and light and sound designed to stimulate the highest possible desire to buy their products.

I, for one, enjoyed watching some of the higher-echelon commercials, but they didn't inspire in me a desire to buy - they only inspired in me a desire to blog about commercials. Who would have thought the blogosphere would provide us with the tools to undermine the advertising age?

Continue...

Continue...

Sunday Reading: Dominating the Man Cave with ESPN

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. The Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will do battle in Dallas, Texas for the Lombardi Trophy. And after all of the dust settles, where will legions of football fans tune in for their weeks-long post-game breakdown?

ESPN, of course.

Bruce Feiler recently wrote in an articled titled “Dominating the Man Cave” for the New York Times: “ESPN may be the most under-acknowledged media powerhouse in the United States.” It’s the third-rated network on cable. Its revenues last year ($8.65 billion) made up 23 percent of the Walt Disney Company’s total revenues. Yet, it’s taken for granted by so many sports fans – men, in particular – that its success is largely unacknowledged.

The company pervades all aspects of the national sports media: television, radio, print, web. Yet its relationship with the athletic community can make covering topics like male infidelity and stupidity (see Ben Roethlisberger and Brett Favre) difficult and uncomfortable. Feiler writes:

“If this awkward mix of male sensitivity and insensitivity — running product through your hair while pinching the bottom of a colleague — sounds familiar, maybe it’s because it reflects (and perhaps shapes) a larger male ambiguity. ESPN encapsulates the same atmosphere of perpetual male adolescence that infuses Judd Apatow movies, all those grown-up Halo and Modern Warfare players, the endless movie superheroes.”

The men at ESPN may never have to grow up. But at least they all wear suits.

Continue...

Sunday Reading: Footballs and Paper Planes

Are you ready for some football?!  Today is the second day of NFL playoffs, and things are already looking crazy.  I won’t bore you with the details (I only have a passing knowledge of them myself), but it’s worth noting the absurdity of a team with a losing record triumphing on Wild Card weekend.

To celebrate these gridiron shenanigans, I’d like to share with you toward what Deadspin calls “The Greatest Letter Ever Printed on NFL Letterhead.”

In 1974, Dale O. Cox wrote the Cleveland Browns a letter to complain about the “sailing of paper airplanes made out of the game program.”  He clearly felt the Browns weren’t adequately addressing the paper airplane menace.  Fearing for his eyes, the fan told the Browns that he would “hold [them] responsible for any injury sustained.” 

The response from the Browns is exquisite:

“Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974.  I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.”

I have no words.  Head on over to Deadspin to see this thing on actual letterhead. Continue...

Sunday Reading: Are You Ready for Some Football Commentary?

I’m a baseball man.  I played the sport as a kid, watched my home team get crushed by some Canucks, then watched them turn it around fifteen years later.  Were it not for my participation in grade-school music programs, I like to think I might’ve at least tried to make the baseball team.

But now that baseball’s over, I’m turning my eyes to America’s newer pastime, thanks in no small part to my interest in fantasy sports.  There’s nothing like a good-natured office rivalry to drive you to weighing the pros and cons of various backup running backs.  

It appears I’ve picked a good year to start watching people toss around the old pigskin.  Each season brings its own storylines (I wonder if Brett Favre’s hired someone to help write his perennial sagas), but the craziness seems to be boiling over this season: Brett Favre may be the first zombie ever to play professional football (or to text someone pictures of his junk); people are more worried about Michael Vick’s ability to run the ball than his time served for dogfighting (with animals not planes); and Pittsburgh’s proven their willing to turn the other cheek with regard to Ben Roethlisberger’s “indiscretions” – as long as he gives them a third championship. 

Unfortunately, these are just the tips of this multi-pronged iceberg.  Slate’s NFL Halftime Report addresses many of these issues and more in a lengthy discussion between a handful of writers/football fans.  Two of the major themes they return to consistently are bad refereeing and the seemingly overwhelming number of injuries.  Slate blogger and author Tom Scocca sees the two colliding in one of this year’s most devastating plays:

“For a concise summary of the NFL in 2010, it's hard to surpass the play that knocked Colts receiver Austin Collie out of Sunday's game against the Eagles…From the Colts' point of view, here was yet another key player lost to the senseless and still uncontrolled brutality of the game. From the Eagles' point of view, here was a play where they got totally jobbed by the refs.”

Of course what happened to Collie was a tragedy, Scocca says, but it’s also one of the clearest examples of referee incompetence.  Plenty of sports are struggling to integrate increasingly powerful and precise technology into their outdated, flaw-ridden officiating systems, and football is no exception.  How the league chooses to handle this and the rising tide of injuries will shape the game over the coming years.

Casual and hardcore (see: tailgating) fans of the sport should give this one a read.  Nothing goes better with a few beers than a healthy dose of critical thinking about your Sunday ritual.

Continue...

And It Starts All Over Again...

Last year at about this time, I wrote a post previewing the World Series between the Yankees and the Phillies. Those of you who follow such things know that we were dangerously close to having a rematch of those same two teams this year, but as it happens, the San Francisco Giants just defeated the Texas Rangers to win their first world series since abandoning New York for sunny foggy Northern California in the 1950s. After the Giants went up three games to one on Hallowe'en, it was all but inevitable that they would win eventually. But Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum put on a show last night, Edgar Renteria hit a big home run, and we ended 2010 in style.

It's always a bit melancholy as a long season draws to a close, no matter the outcome. I have a belief that sports are as exciting as you want to make them, and for a baseball nut like me, I was able to relish every game, every play, every pitch that my schedule permitted me to witness. But as high as emotions rise in the climax of the season, right up until the crowning of an eventual champion, that's as low as the corresponding letdown takes you after it's all over. It was great fun to analyze and/or agonize over every moment of a grueling season and the dramatic playoff tournament... but now the grim reality of the situation is that there's no more baseball for nearly six months.

Faced with the prospect of a long and dismal off-season ahead, my thoughts naturally wandered back to last off-season, my first as a semi-professional blogger. Last off-season included an overabundance of lists, as will this one, no doubt. But I don't want the '10 - '11 off-season to be a structural repeat of '09 - '10. Nor do I want my off-season activities to become a mind-numbing routine. And these preferences of how I manage my baseball related activities reflects how I feel about my real-life activities as well. I'm well aware that everything is cyclical in nature, but at what point do we all get bored of the same old cycles? And to what degree is our entire cultural machine an effort to keep us from falling into one big collective rut?

Continue...

Continue...

Sixty Feet, Six Inches – Tales from the Mound to Home Plate

As I write this, replay footage of Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay’s no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds rolls on my television.  Baseball playoffs are here, and they’ve been kicked off in spectacular fashion.

It’s a fitting start to this postseason.  Baseball writers have dubbed 2010 the “Year of the Pitcher.”  Never before have two pitchers thrown perfect games in one season.  A botched umpiring call took away a third perfect game in Detroit.  Five no-hitters were thrown this year – six if you include Halladay’s October gem. 

The relationship between pitcher and batter has changed, and fans can’t find an easy explanation.  Is it baseball’s exorcism of its steroid demons, catalogued in Ken Burns’ recent Baseball epilogue?  Is it the maturation of a class of pitchers suited to dominating the opposition?  Maybe the hitter talent pool’s diluted after two decades of expansion (four new teams since 1993).  The most likely explanation?  All of the above.

Though written in 2009, Sixty Feet, Six Inches couldn’t be more relevant in the Year of the Pitcher.  The book, co-authored by Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson with Lonnie Wheeler, gets its title from the distance between the pitching mound and home plate – the space within which 95% of baseball’s action takes place.  It is that distance, that relationship, which defines the sport.

So what can a book by a Hall of Fame pitcher and a Hall of Fame hitter teach us about baseball in the new millennium?  A whole lot, it turns out.

Continue...

Continue...

WWE Summer Slam 2010!

"Thanks for introducing me to the world of Professional Wrestling."
"It's pretty great, isn't it?"
"...It's bizarre..."

That's an exchange I had with my girlfriend after I took her to WWE Summer Slam, their biggest live on pay-per-view event of the summer, and arguably their second biggest event of the year, after WrestleMania. It happened to be at LA's Staples Center, and I happened to know someone who could get us into the press box. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity.

I had never been to a WWE event before, despite having watched many dozens on television and pay-per-view. I have to say that actually being inside the arena makes it a totally different experience. The action is noticeably more electrifying... while not at all less bizarre. However you may judge the institution of pro wrestling, I love it all the same.

The first thing that struck me about being there live is that those fireworks and pyrotechnics are LOUD. We were high up on the level of the rafters, and still each blast brought a shudder of physical discomfort - not only a sharp pain in the ears, but also a jolt through the whole body. It's like someone grabbed you from behind and shook vigorously. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be standing right in front of them on the entrance ramp.

I also, for the first time, got a look at the cameras that provide such an up-close-and-personal view of the action to the average TV audience member. Any time there's a superstar walking to or from the ring, there's a huge camera tracking him (or her) from less than two feet away. It makes you very aware of the theatricality of the whole business: when the jumbo-tron features an intense closeup of Kane glaring at his brother, The Undertaker (who made a very special guest appearance, mysteriously showing up in a previously empty casket!), if you look down, you can see that he's making a conscious effort to ignore the camera guy shoving a lens in his face. Then you should see them haul ass away from the ring, lest they get engulfed in flame spouting from all four turnbuckles. It's clear that great athleticism is necessary for more WWE jobs than those that require spandex and body oil.

It's also much clearer that the fighting is fake when you're watching in person. That's mostly because they can't employ the remarkably effective strategy of quickly cutting to a different camera angle as soon as a punch lands, which draws attention away from the lack of actual contact. But it's not just the striking moves - when you have a view of the whole ring, it's easier to see that the superstars' movements follow a choreographed pattern, like a big macho testosterone-charged dance.

But you can't fake the athleticism. Or the charisma required to sell the reaction to a hard clothesline or hype a match. Pro-Wrestling has never been a contest of combative skills - it's more accurately described as a group of extremely talented stunt performers acting out physical soap operas. And there's something highly entertaining in that concept, even more so if you accept it for what it is.

The first thing I did when I found out I was able to attend was to brush up on the latest storylines. Because WWE pay-per-views are traditionally the culmination of plots that build during the weekly TV programming. In order to fully appreciate the spectacle of these grown men mercilessly pounding on one another, you have to stay up to date on who are the faces (good guys) and who are the heels (bad guys), who's feuding with whom, and who's getting a shot at which title.

I won't bore you with a recap, but suffice it to say, no major belts changed hands - except for the Divas Championship, but let's be honest, it's generally harder to get excited about the ladies' division. There's only so many times you can watch a girl slam another girl's head into the mat before it gets old. In the main event - a giant 7-vs.-7 tag team elimination match between team WWE (face) and The Nexus (heel) - John Cena took a break from his burgeoning film career (backed by the nascent WWE Films) to lead his team of heroes to a come-from-behind victory.

In the epic BIFF moment of the night, Randy Orton failed to follow through on a longstanding WWE tradition: breaking the ring announcers' table. After current WWE Champion Sheamus cost Orton a shot to win the title by disqualifying himself (he hit the referee with a steel chair [which, incidentally, I learned are legal to bring in the ring as long as you don't hit you're opponent in the head with it]), Orton kicked Sheamus in the balls, flung him outside the ring, set him up on the table, and performed his finishing move, the RKO (a cross between a Stone Cold Stunner and a Diamond Cutter). But when he landed the move, there was nothing but a disappointing thud, and the table remained intact. I guess they don't make them (tables OR superstars) like they used to - I've never seen Triple-H fail to break a table with The Pedigree.
Continue...

Tuesday at the All-Star Game!

I know Charge-Shot!!! generally likes to steer away from sports in favor of more nebulous activities falling under the heading of "popular culture." But big events like the World Series and the MLB All-Star Game are certainly newsworthy and, I would argue, culturally significant. And considering I'm a semi-professional baseball blogger, this kind of stuff puts me directly in my element.

Last night my girlfriend and I attended the 2010 MLB All-Star Game in Anaheim. (I made sure to note that the city was in fact Anaheim and not "Los Angeles of Anaheim" and that Anaheim and Los Angeles are in fact cities from two distinct counties and have absolutely no affiliation except in the cobbled-together name of a dumb baseball team who wants to extend its market share. Okay, rant over.) We sat in Section 102, directly adjacent from the bullpens - which was especially interesting because we got to see (and hear - those glove pops are loud when dudes are throwing 90mph!) all the pitchers warming up before they entered the game!

As it turns out, the pitching changes were the most interesting part of a 3-1 game that included only two scoring plays the entire night - a sac fly by Robinson Cano to score Evan Longoria for the AL, and a bases-loaded, bases-clearing double by Brian McCann (the eventual All-Star game MVP) for the NL. The blandness of the game was overshadowed by the historical significance of the outcome: it was the first victory for the National League All-Stars since 1996, breaking a near-curseworthy drought of 13 years without a win.

So why were the pitching changes so interesting? All-Star pitchers usually don't log more than 2 innings, to allow the managers to take advantage of the wealth of talented pitchers on the roster. This practice also helps individual pitchers avoid fatigue - while it does have significance (see below), the ASG does not count towards the standings, so it would be improper to overtax a pitcher in an exhibition game to the extent that it impinges on his regular season performance. (I was incensed in 2003 when Mike Scioscia, manager of the hated rival Angels, used A's pitcher Mark Mulder for 2 full innings, even after he gave up five hits, including a home run. He only started 6 more games that season before going down with an injury.)

Thus we got to see such legendary talents as Andy Pettitte, Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, and Jonathan Broxton give their warmup tosses just mere feet away from us! Pitcher utilization requires significant amount of planning in addition to strategy, because starters usually require more time to warm up than relievers. But since the game now determines which league gets home field advantage in the world series, a manager must be fluid and not adhere too strictly to a plan when the game could be on the line.

I know what you're thinking, and, yes, this is the kind of stuff that I get excited about. Don't get me wrong, it was also exciting to see Ryan Braun make a tremendous diving snag of a tough line drive. And to see a ball pop out of Matt Holliday's glove as he ran to the wall. That's pretty much all that went down around the left field area. Aside from when starter David Price was warming up on the field, air-mailed one of his warmup tosses, and nailed a fan in the face! Priceless!

But essential to the enjoyment of any game at Angel Stadium are the colorful fans, which we A's fans affectionately refer to as "Anaheim Scum." Take the three guys sitting in front of us: a sunburned Cubs fan who announced every player in a rotten Howard Cosell impression. A Dodger fan who sought solidarity by getting to his feet and shouting "DODGER BLUE!!!" He seemed confused and disappointed when people stopped responding after the fourth or fifth time. And finally an Angels fan, decked out in a Vladimir Guerrero jersey and a Mickey Mouse hat, who spent most of the game creepily snapping candid photos of the blonde Rangers fan sitting in front of him. Listen to this exchange as her group got up to leave:

Angels fan: "Ooh, she's leaving, gotta get a picture of that!"
Other Rangers fan (brunette): "You guys are the most obnoxious people I've ever seen."
Angels fan: "Well, you have bad hair, and you're ugly! F*ck off, you piece of trash! And the Rangers suck! They're trash!"

No joke. Ver batim. He then got into it with a Red Sox fan who called him a mouse (cuz of the ear hat, of course). Why wasn't this the side of the O.C. that made it onto the TV show?

All in all, it was a thrill to be part of the festivities and to see all the stars up close. Congratulations to the National League for finally showing something more than total incompetence. Thanks to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig for making these games count for something. (Sure it's kind of arbitrary, but less so than just having home field advantage alternate each year. Why not have it go by team winning percentage? Don't ask me, I just work here.)

And a big thanks to all the fans (including me!) who voted a maximum of 25 times each for their favorite players. Despite changes to the All-Star game proceedings that make it both more unwieldy and less interesting, we are at bottom what this game is all about.
Continue...

New Single Watch: Weezer

Being a Weezer fan is sort of like being a follower of a millennial religion: you keep awaiting that promised day when all of your years of piety will pay off and your messiah will return and take you away to Paradise but secretly you know that all of modern science concludes that you have been living a lie.

(Of course, the Mayans prophesized that in the year 2012 Weezer will release a CD described in ancient texts as "better that the Blue Album and Pinkerton put together"...)

So you can imagine how I feel whenever Weezer drops a new album or song: I get all excited and hope and pray that this, this will be the one that turns it around. This will be the one that puts my favorite rock band of all time back on the right track. This is the one that makes up for all the Red Albums and Raditudes.

Does "Represent", a newly released tribute to the U, S, and A's 2010 World Cup soccer team (a common theme for Cuomo and friends), truly represent the return of old school good Weezer, one of the quintessential post-grunge bands of the 90's?

Take a listen and judge for yourself.

Sing along with me, kids. "My day is coming / it's coming some day..."

Continue...

Saturday Morning TV: Sometimes Commercials Are More Fun

About Nike’s new ad for the World Cup, Slate’s Seth Stevenson wrote: “But when this spot first showed up on my TV, as I was watching SportsCenter late one night, I thought to myself that I couldn't remember having ever derived more exhilarating joy from a TV commercial.”

Continue...

Mascots That Will Give You Nightmares

Last week, I was traveling to and around Philadelphia for work (which was the reason for my absence of a post last Tuesday). While in the City of Taserly Love, I was fortunate enough to catch a baseball game at Citizens Bank Park, the relatively new home of the Philadelphia Phillies. With pretty much every seat providing a good view of the field and the focus directed towards what happens on the field, it's a very pleasant, no-frills ballpark... but with one noticeable blight: the presence of the Phillie Phanatic.

This embarrassing creature is not only an offense to reason and logic; he's also a liability. Despite his place in the Hall of Fame (one of only three mascots currently enshrined) and his title of "Best Mascot Ever" (according to Sports Illustrated for Kids), he is also the most sued mascot in sports: he once cost the Phillies a $2.5 million settlement for injuring a civilian at a paint store event. He also has a history of assault (or, more specifically, being assaulted) and extortion - when ownership of the Phillies changed hands in 1983, the Phanatic's designers sold his copyright to the team for $250,000, more than 48x what the Phillies could have paid for the copyright ($5,200) upon the character's creation five years earlier.

He was relatively benign during the game I saw - aside from rolling all over the freshly-manicured home plate while catching the ceremonial first pitches and stealing the thunder of some middle school dance team that was performing between innings. (He's actually surprisingly graceful considering his 6'5" 300 lb. frame, as evidenced when he shook his groove thing on top of the Phillies' dugout along with a trio of old ladies.)

But the Phanatic, is just the prelude to another terrifying mascot I want to talk about. Hot on the heels of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, London's PR team has been hard at work developing a relatable and marketable figure to act as the face of 2012's Olympic festivities. Flying in the face of the cute and cuddly mascots created for Beijing and Vancouver, the London top brass decided on the the creepy one-eyed pair of Wenlock and Mandeville. Find out about them after the jump...

Remember the five multi-colored Friendlies (or Fuwa) from the Beijing Olympics? Each one represented one of the Olympic Rings and embodied a specific part of Chinese culture. The coolest gimmick about these guys, though, was the fact that if you took the first syllable (or the second; they're both the same) from their seemingly nonsensical names and put them all together, you get the title of the popular and catchy theme song for the 2008 games: Beijing Huanying Ni (which translates to "Beijing Welcomes You").

Okay, maybe neither the mascots nor the song were all that popular over here in the states. But if you were in China for the duration of the games (as I was, plus the weeks prior), you couldn't turn around without seeing a billboard or a bus stop plastered with these guys' adorable little faces! The folks who planned the Vancouver Olympics followed suit in the cuteness category. Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi represent mythological creatures (a sea-bear, a young sasquatch, and an animal guardian spirit, respectively) from Canada's *cough* storied and unique culture *cough*.

Now I'm all for breaking the mold, but seeing as the Olympic-watching public are now used to cute and cuddly mascots, I don't see how these surreal and creepy images will play. Wenlock and Mandeville are two futuristic Cyclopean figures, with stubby arms and legs, dressed in metallic orange and blue, respectively.


Their names have historical meaning: Much Wenlock, a small town in the English county of Shropshire, is widely considered to be the birthplace of the modern Olympic games (founded by Dr. William Penny Brookes in 1850 as the Wenlock Olympian Games). Stoke Mandeville Hospital, located in the English civil parish of the same name, houses the largest spinal injury ward in Europe - and their Stoke Mandeville Games were the inspiration for the modern Paralympic Games.

But nothing about the storied history, which the two mascots supposedly represent, is in any way evidenced by their ridiculous character design, described by the Daily Telegraph as "two parts Pokemon to one part lava lamp." ...Unless they stem from some crazy, opium-induced fantasy by the Much Wenlock's own Dr. Brookes, the "founding father" of the modern day Olympics (he was an apothecary after all). But if that was the case, participants would likely carry more than a torch during the opening ceremony...

Having weird and scary mascots in and of themselves isn't too much of a problem... except they're specifically marketing them for children! (See their ridiculous backstory of how they were formed from the last two drops of molten steel from the building of the Olympic stadium, and were subsequently given life by a magical rainbow.) They debuted them at a school, for goodness sakes! I'm surprised they weren't carted away, along with the whole camera crew.

Plus, they were designed so that their eyes (one apiece) could double as camera lenses, for the purpose of marketing Wenlock and Mandeville shaped webcams, etc. So now they want to encourage these creepy figurines to spy on your kids while they're at their computer! I'd be concerned what "magical rainbow" (read: wireless radio command) would bring the mascots to life inside your own home, leaving them free to wreak havoc while you're sleeping.

We have two years until Wenlock and Mandeville's games start, and the people in charge are counting on these mascots to raise approximately 12 million pounds towards the 70 million pound fundraising goal of the 2012 games. Not that I want the folks of merry old England to lose money, but I think it would be best for everyone involved if these two atrocities kept as low a profile as possible, and let the focus be on the athletes and the competition. Because I have a feeling that the more time Wenlock and Mandeville spend on television, the more complaints London will have of Olympic-related night terrors. Continue...