YFSF

Michael Jackson

For all the controversy, he made some wonderful music.

Don't stop 'til you get enough.

Pink Sox

A picture of my lovely daughter Alice, who has embraced her pink Pedroia shirt with a gusto reserved only for EVERY OTHER PINK THING IN OUR HOUSE. She loves pink. And she has a pink Sox shirt thanks to my mom and dad. And therefore, she now loves the Sox. 

Whatever it takes, right!?

Tough Run

The Sox are on a 12 game dash through what are (were?) four first place teams - the Tigers, Rangers, Yanks, then Phillies.  What a stretch.  We wonder if this has happened before, at least since the advent of interleague play, where a team plays four consecutive series against division leaders.  Paging Elias!

Shifting Sentiments

Connecticut is Yankee territory, by a whisker.  We expect nothing less, what with the rudderless Joe Lieberman and his convenient allegiances setting the example.

Take a Hike, Redux

Lest we be charged with being a partisan hack, we thought it important to offer the Boston version of Phil Mushnick's cost-comparison.

For the same cost of sitting in the cushiest spot at Fenway, one could catch a Greyhound bus to Cleveland, sit in the Diamond Box at the Jake , and have a meal at Beard Prize nominee Michael Symon's Lola. No hotel, though, you need to get right back on the bus to Beantown.

Every Picture

It's hard not to look at this picture by Rob Carr, which was plastered across today's New York Times Sports section, and see disdain, cockiness, anger, and release.  A-Rod, having just launched a first pitch home run in Batlimore, flicks the bat up in the air strongly (that bat is UP there), a show of stern confidence, perhaps - no, definitely - arrogance.  His face, looking clearly towards something off the field, no smile.  It is both emotional and emotionless, a really fine work of sports photojournalism, a moment caught in the context of Alex' current catharisis, injury, and return to the field.  It is a picture that offers little in the way of flattery, but it seems an honest portrait.

Adjectival

On Wednesday night a little-known player with a very odd name hit a game-winning homer in the tenth inning for the Red Sox. Jonathan Van Every. We wondered if having an adjective as a last name (or part of one) is more common than we imagined, so we took a look.  

Scanning through Baseball Reference in alphabetical fashion*, our first adjectival seems to be Don August, but only if we hold him in high esteem. There are countless Bakers, but nobody Baked (other than Barry Zito, perhaps). We almost had another in Ed Beatin, but the spelling error is a problem. Then we got to Karl Best, definitively an adjectival, and a superlative one at that! Tommy Bianco, in translation, qualifies, but we are sticking with our mother tongue for this investigation. If we include colors (we are holding them out -- Blue, Gray, Brown, Green, etc. -- along with names/nationalities like English, German, or the French) then the crew of Blacks is in, with one oddity: every player who has played MLB with the last name "Black" has a one-syllable first name. Bill, Bob, Bud, Bud Jr., Dave, Jon, Joe, and John. Why is this?  

Nate Bland is another rarity, though frankly I found his play quite tasteless. And my mind was left a Blank by Coonie, Fred, and Matt. In 1912 Bunny Brief started his medium-length five year career. Harry Bright began his in luminous fashion in 1958. Rounding out the Bs, Frank Buttery slipped in and out of the league in 1872 in a mere 18 games. 

Mark Clear. Jim Converse. Coco Crisp. All the Crosses. Alvin Dark, Ron and Dell Darling, Buddy Dear, Mark Dewey, Jake Early. Carl, Harry, and Hugh East. Jamie and Ted Easterly (we'll keep cardinal directions off the rest of the list, like colors and nationalities). George Fair. Darcy Fast. Finely following Fast is Frank Fleet. And Charlie, Fred, and Mike Frank. Ed and Roger Freed. Jim, Mike, and Roy were all Golden, and there have been several players who were Good. A whole bunch of players are and have been Gross. 

Eight players were Hardy, and Bob, playing in the 1920s, was Hasty. Andy, Charlie, Ed, and Hugh were all High, though hopefully they didn't play in that state. Pat Hilly played for a spell, his career up and down far too quickly. 

Joe Just. Bill and Vic Keen. Harry, Jeff, and Joe Keener. Bill and Dick were both Kenworthy, the first father/son gay breast-implanted baseball players ever. (We kid, we have no idea if they were related, much less gay. Kenworthy isn't even an adjective, for that matter, unless you are a doll). Guy, Kerry, and Lee Lacy. Tom Lawless played with impunity. Seven guys were Little, a couple Lively, and sixteen Long.  Billy, Ernie, and Johnny were all Lush, playing in the days before Prohibition.

The Ms provide a motherlode:  Alex and Woody Main.  Evan Meek. Roy Meeker. Garrett Mock. Eric Moody. Forrest More. Darryl Motley. 

Not many Ns, but for one whose name is actually qualified as "The Only Nolan", from the nineteenth century.

There have been no Atheists or Agnostics, but there have been a bunch of Pagans and even a Papish! If we were French we'd mention the Petit, but we're not, we're actually Petty, like Charlie and Jesse.  

Quick! It's Eddie and Hal! No problem, Randy is Ready!

Woody Rich, Pop Rising. Harry Sage. Several Savages. Mac Scarce. Bill Sharp. Bill, Chris, Dave, and Rick Short. Many Smalls.  One Smart guy (JD). Three Starks. Adam Stern. Of course, there's Doug Strange (and Alan and Pat, too). Jamal and Joe Strong. Even a guy named Sturdy, literally: Guy Sturdy.  DIck Such. Bill Swift, x2.   

Some players get tan, but Bruce and Chuck were Tanner than most. 

Dixie Upright - what a name.  Jack and Luke Urban, one actually somewhat urban (Luke was born near Boston in Fall River) the other more rural (Jack a Nebraska native).

In the end, there have been a number of Wise men (ten in fact), but many more Young ones (38).  

We love those adjectives.  Without them, nouns would be ___

* If we missed any, and we surely did, please add in the comments.

The Most Exciting Play in Baseball? Really?

Ok, this post is a tad late, but I am going to go with it anyhow.  After Sunday night's game, there were numerous references to the straight steal of home by Jacoby Ellsbury as "the most exciting play in baseball".  As the days passed I put some thought into this, and have decided that this is not correct.  The straight steal of home happens quickly.  There is very little structural drama.  It either works or it doesn't.  It is one of the most daring plays in baseball, and it is, for a brief second, dramatic and exciting.  But is it really the most exciting?  Is it any more exciting than any other close play at the plate?  Couldn't one (and one will, right now) argue that a batted ball to a gap, a relay, a close play at the dish is even more exciting, such as it contains numerous components that have to work in sequence and in concert, has more moving parts, and ascends, in developing fashion, to a climactic moment?  Isn't that build-up an essential element of drama, of greater excitement?  

I suppose the counter argument might be that this is a play that requires no batted ball, it is a play instigated by the runner in control of the moment, and therefore of qualitative difference. It is a play that doesn't rely on moving parts or external circumstances but rather the simple swashbuckling play of a single player. But I am not sure that the analysis has been that subtle or nuanced; the cliche repeated this week is that the straight steal of home is the most exciting play in baseball, without qualification. It wasn't referred to as "the single most exciting play in baseball in which the ball isn't batted", or something like that. What do people think? More interestingly, what is the most exciting play you have ever been present to witness, and why?  Offer anecdotes in the comments.

New Technology, Same Old Feeling

Growing up as a pre-teen kid in the 70s it was always kind of a game to huddle underneath my bedcovers with an AM radio either listening to Ken Coleman or searching for far-off games from across the eastern seaboard. On a lucky night I might even get a faded KMOX, all the way from St. Louis. Tonight, as my wife slept to my left, I tuned in to the last few innings of the Sox-Yanks, put earbuds into the iPhone, and did my best to surreptitiously listen in (and now, type this post). Whereas 30 years ago I was doing my best not to be found out by my mom and dad, today I did my best not to roust my tired wife. Three decades have passed, and transistor radios may be mostly obsolete. But the digital, wireless joy of late comebacks and heroic homers feels just as it did back then.

What a game.

Identity Theft?

  

Last week Topps sued Upper Deck for supposedly stealing designs from the 1970s for their current crop of cards.  Wax Heaven has some images of the UD set, we've used a shot of their Ichiro card, the nerdish Roger Nelson is representing for the 1975 Topps set. You be the judge.

In the world of architecture, derivative works are very hard to litigate, even the slightest change to a design inoculates the derivative from charges of plagiarism. In another hot-button case going on right now, the AP is famously embroiled with Shepard Fairey over his (fair?) use of one of their Obama images. This Topps suit will be interesting to watch, though if the same standards regarding derivations are applied to these cards that are used in architecture it would seem that Topps has little to no case, even as the similarities are pretty obvious.