<< Hot summer nights | Main | Surgeon General's Warning >>

Last night I was compelled to emerge from my hot and sweaty hermitage to watch the Jays get ass-thrashed by the New York Yankees. The good folk in Communications and Culture, perhaps in an attempt to make grad school something more than 'book-learnin', reserved a block of tickets in the much-coveted 500 level far above third base. I was the first one at the Skydome... er... corporately corporate Rogers Centre, and the nice man behind the ticket wicket foolishly gave me the entire fat stack of tickets. I briefly thought about scalping all but one, but at 9 dollars a pop retail there wasn't too much of a profit margin there. I also didn't want to watch a baseball game by myself, since baseball is boring. And finally, perhaps my self-imposed days of solitude have made me a better person? Bua ha ha! Anyway I gave most of the tickets back and tromped up to the skyward levels, where I was treated to a wonderful exhibition of dudes soaking and raking the sand around all the bases. For 45 minutes.

Then other people showed up. It occurred to me that I hadn't been to a baseball game since the ancient days when Ozzie Guillen played for the White Sox, and even then I was more interested in why baseball fans were idiots than the actual game. Not a lot changes in 15 years. What was rather odd were the large number of little kids (and not-so-little kids) in New York attire. What is it about this city that makes normally rational and patriotic citizen-entities drop all allegiances and jump on the NY bandwagon? Is it the crazy overpaid roster the Yankees boast? Is it something about East Coast hip-hop? The fact that like 75% of all romantic comedies, both film and television, take place in New York? The Big Apple has some sort of universal pull, a mystique which renders other, lesser cities helpless and impotent.

In the first innings of the game, one man delivered an "85 MPH split-finger" directly into another man's muscular thigh, an event which resulted in a frightful hullabaloo around the pitcher's mound. The gates to both bullpens opened up and the relief-pitcher cavalry rushed to the aid of their respective teammates, who were engaged in some feverish shoving and perhaps the exchange of some naughty words too. What I wanted to know was: which bullpen decided FIRST that their team needed additional bodies in the general pel-mel, and opted to run the entire breadth of the field to get there? The second bullpen obviously had to respond in kind, to equalize the numbers, but if both had just stayed put... This is why relief pitchers are retarded.

Roger Clemens, my estranged biological father who has never once sent me child support or any kind of birthday card, did a good job for the Yankees considering he's so, so, so very old. He had his own baseball video game in like 1985. Apparently even when a 100 mile per hour fastball slows down to a paltry 89, experience wins the day.

Whose job is it to watch the pitcher and report what they throw? Rogers Center has this display up by the scoreboard which lists the speed/type of pitch thrown: 78 MPH change-up, 86 MPH slider, and so forth. Someone's gotta be hiding around down there with a speed-gun and a ridiculously good eye for how the pitcher's holding the ball. Do the pitchers ever turn and look at an incorrect call on the pitching display and think, "Ha, that invisible idiot... didn't see that knuckleball coming. I don't even know how to throw a knuckleball!" If I were a pitcher, I would fuck with the stats spy whenever possible. Even if it meant losing the game. That's why I'm not a pitcher. It has nothing to do with the fact that I can't throw.

I don't think a lot of people in my program know much about baseball, but that's okay because I don't either. "It's not my area," is the usual line when you encounter some question or problem which doesn't directly relate to your chosen academic expertise. Of course, saying that something "isn't your area," doesn't mean you don't stick your contribution in anyway, it's just a disclaimer for if you happen to be wrong. If you're wrong about something that is in your area, you're pretty much screwed. Thankfully and unsurprisingly, baseball is Nobody's area.

Posted by Chris at 03:52 PM >> Commentations (2)