Dizzy

The Mets got hammered by the Pirates this afternoon, 13-1. We had two hits and three errors. Even though we trailed 7-0 after two innings I kept following the game, thinking that we’d stage a comeback. Talk about Blind Faith:

We were wasted and couldn’t find our way (to) home(plate), either.

OK, so the game made me dizzy, and it didn’t help that I read this and was able to see the dancer spin clockwise and anti-clockwise: The Truth About the Spinning Dancer. (The latter being my more dominant perception, which isn’t surprising — if the thesis is correct — as I am right-handed.)

It’s much too nice an afternoon to be indoors (no DP: this blogger doesn’t blog in her underwear from her mother’s basement) so I’m going outside to commune with nature in the backyard and see what I can do about the weed situation. We spent all the money from the mlb.tv refund on corn gluten, an organic method for controlling crabgrass. Just about all the neighbors use pesticides and herbicides (and the ones next door still got crabgrass, which then spread into our yard — geez, Louise ….) so all the time we spend hand-weeding seems kind of pointless sometimes. I mean, how much are we saving the earth when everyone else is pouring on the chemicals? Us versus Weeds is like Sisyphus versus Boulder. But at least we have a clean conscience (and dirt under our fingernails) when we read about things like groundwater contamination.

Give ‘em a yell! Give ‘em a hand! And let ‘em know you’re bipolar in the stands!

Meet the Mets

Some Mets fans have been booing the team at Shea. The team hasn’t been playing well, but my feeling is that you never boo the home team. Being a fan is like being married: you’re in it for the good times and the bad times.

After looking pretty sickly in a series of losses we beat the Atlanta Braves two games in a row, defeating their two best pitchers. Yesterday we beat DP’s pal John Smoltz (raising his ERA from 0.78 to a whopping 2.00) and our first baseman Carlos Delgado hit two homers. Delgado has been struggling, hitting around .200 and making some embarassing errors in the field. He’s been the target of a lot of the boos, but after his homers the fans cheered and wanted him to step out of the dugout to take a curtain call. He didn’t oblige.

Asked why he didn’t come out for the curtain call after his second blast off the scoreboard, this was the response:

“The way I look at it, I hit a solo home run in the seventh inning. I got a great deal of respect for the game and I don’t think that’s the place for a curtain call. We appreciate the support of the fans, but we’re here to play the game. They pay me to go out and hit the ball and drive in runs, and I didn’t think it was the right situation.”

Then he smiled, and added, “Having said that, I’m not going to lie. I feel good. It’s a lot better than the boos.”

    — Delgado answers curtain call question

Of course after he didn’t take the curtain call some fans booed him.

I’m with Delgado on this. Whether or not he was sticking it to the fans who’d been booing him, it’s up to him if he wants to take a curtain call. Plus even after two homers it’s not like he’s out of the slump, so maybe that’s why he said it wasn’t the right situation. And I learned that Delgado is not a big curtain call guy anway; he’s hit over 400 homers in his career and has only taken a handful of curtain calls: Delgado’s curtain call history.

I read somewhere last night (I can’t find the article or blog post right now, so forgive me for not noting the citation) that the team has an “us-against-the-world” attitude towards the media and fans. I can’t blame them for feeling that way. They haven’t played well but they haven’t deserved to get booed and they don’t deserve to get dissected, sliced, and diced by the media after every game. But that’s the way it is in today’s immediate gratification society and the 24/7 news cycle.

Big market teams can pay their players more, but I wonder if some guys wouldn’t take less money to be on a solid team in a smaller market where the fans and the media are a little more reasonable. New York City has been running a stop smoking campaign for a number of years; maybe they need to run a “stop being manic-depressive over your sports team” campaign, too.

The Dan Patrick Show: Today’s show is brought to you by the word “perspicacity”

NBA Commissioner David Stern strives to further develop our vocabulary. He’s clearly the William F. Buckley of sports commissioners:

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, …

Stern always sounds kind of snippy when he’s on the show, but I guess that’s because he has steeled himself to deal with DP’s smartypantsness. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig comes across as more relaxed.

And since I never gave props for two great words dropped previously in this blog, all hail rrgirl for doofetti and Scoop for uxorious.

(In a stage whisper so that the right-wingies won’t think less of me):
I always liked Buckley. I used to watch Firing Line when I was a kid; it was pretty heavy stuff and a little over my head at times but I was impressed with Buckley’s intelligence and wit. He would attack an opposing opinion, but he would never attack the person who stated that opinion. You don’t see much of that anymore.

Fair and Balanced

Just so that our friends on the right don’t think we’re ignoring them I looked up Bill O’Reilly’s birth tune:

I think this is the song that Hillary and Bill Clinton sing when another one of her superdelegates goes over to Obama.

I wanted to find Robert Cox’s birth tune but I searched Google and could not find his birthdate. Good for him for being able to keep his personal information private. It’s pretty frightening how much personal information is available on the Internet.

The Mets are currently losing in ugly fashion to the Cubs. Looking forward to following the Pennsylvania primary results as they come in tonight.

Boo, Bitter, and Beaver

Boo:
Some fans at Shea Stadium booed Mets pitcher Johan Santana during his home debut earlier this month. He had a bad game, giving up three homers to the Milwaukee Brewers, and wasn’t an ace that night. But he’d pitched well previously and the Brewers are a good team. A few days earlier, at the home opener, pitcher Scott Schoeneweis was booed during the pre-game ceremony. OK, so he had a bad first half of 2007. But that was last year! The boo birds generated a lot of discussion in the NYC papers and Mets’ fans blogs and forums. I was embarrassed to be a Mets fan when I heard about it. I’m so glad DP didn’t bring it up when he had former Mets pitcher Ron Darling on the show last week.

I’m not a booer. I don’t boo the opposition and I certainly don’t boo the home team. Some fans feel that with ticket prices so high they have the right to voice their displeasure when the team doesn’t perform well. Others feel that they are the “12th man,” the extra guy on the team, when they verbally harass the opposition. I guess I have an overdeveloped sense of decorum and sportsmanship. Sure it’s possible to rattle the opposition with boos. Maybe I don’t truly love my team because I don’t boo their foes. I don’t know. I’ll cheer my head off for my team. But booing is just not me. I wonder if boo birds are as harsh on themselves and their friends and family. Do they boo their children when the kids come home with bad report cards?

Boo, part deux:
Pope Benedict XVI sure got a lot of coverage during his recent trip to the U.S. It seemed like every time I looked at newyorktimes.com there was a photo of the Pope on the front page. I read that he had a meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office, which is appropriate as he is a major world figure. It’s too bad U.S. presidents haven’t treated the Dalai Lama with as much respect. Bill Clinton did a sneaky “drive-by” visit, dropping in when the Dalai Lama was meeting with Al Gore. And while President Bush met with the Dalai Lama last year there was an embargo on any photographic record of the event. What, too shy to be seen in the presence of a holy man?

Oh. Just the guy in the saffron robes.

Bitter:
rrgirl commented High Tech, Low Tech:

my personal definition of “bitter” runs along the lines of “angry, frustrated, resignation” instead of an elite sounding, overused and dismissive “self-pitying grumpiness.” Obama’s use of the term didn’t bother me at all - I think he gets it. to someone in the habit of throwing out the term to avoid engaging in heartfelt empathy for another’s striving against soul-crushing defeats, “bitter” might remind them of their own eagerness to escape to safer ground. I didn’t hear that in Obama’s speech - I don’t hear it in anything he says. the only elitism I hear is in what sounds like false piety of those trying to use “bitter” against him.

And CP added:

An un-artful comment by Obama to be sure, but it’s being played to the hilt by the media and Clinton. It’s something to fill the 24-hour news cycle until the next gaffe.

I find it interesting that Barack Obama asks America to try to understand the African American experience but flippantly dismisses small-town life.

OK, so maybe he didn’t mean it in a bad way, but using it in a speech to people on the Left Coast smacks of opportunism. Tailoring words to appeal to a particular audience is something I’d expect from a politician, so the incident just proved to me that Obama is not as different as he wants us to believe. This isn’t enough to make me run and vote for Clinton, though, for she is as good as anyone at speaking out of both sides of her mouth. And if you throw her husband into mix, that’s four sides of two mouths. That’s a lot of stuff coming at you from all directions. Like, quadriphonic.

Beaver:
Hawaii commented in I’m a sucker for animal stories …:

My favorite line of this (other than the “beleaguered beaver” expression)is “A state conservation official later said they might have been better off leaving it alone”. Heh. No good deed goes unpunished.

And rrgirl added:

this year was the first time I saw non-zoo beavers in a Cleveland Metro Park. I’ve seen girdled trees and dams as long as I can remember, but this was the first time I saw beavers hanging out along the shore, and they are HUGE! I guess I expected them to be a little bigger than woodchucks or raccoons. 40 lbs seems about right. I do hope all is well with the NYC beaver and they let it safely on it’s way.

The beaver died.

I was upset when I read the update in the City Room blog and discovered that the beaver had died.

What can I say? I don’t boo, and I always want a happy ending.

I’ve never seen a beaver in real life, but I have seen a beaver dam and beaver-gnawed tree stumps. I thought they were just the neatest things, evidence of nature in action.

Songs to Give Birth By

What was the #1 most popular song on the day you Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann were born?

Not that Dan’s and Keith’s mothers had radios on in the delivery room.

And even if they did they wouldn’t have heard these versions.

(Devoted DP and KO fans will be able to figure out which song goes with which fellow.)

I’m a sucker for animal stories …

After approaching what the department’s public information office called “the beleaguered beaver,” Police Officer John Angus secured the animal in a safety noose and pulled it on to the rear of the harbor launch, where it was kept in a bucket and doused with water.

    — 40-Pound Beaver Is Rescued From East River

High Tech, Low Tech

I’ve been remiss in attending to this, the Blog of Evil. A lot of spare time has been spent at two ends of the technology spectrum lately. On the low end, the weather has been nice and conducive to getting out in the yard to dig around in the dirt in preparation for this season’s gardening. Nothing like having grass stains on your hands and dirt under your fingernails at the end of each day. On the high end, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on hardware and software in preparation for buying a new computer. Part of me would like to buy a bunch of parts and put together a computer from scratch, but I’ve never done it before. I’ve worked on computers a bit but I’m afraid of messing things up if I try to build one from the ground up. (Plus there is so much cat hair floating around the house I worry about creating a computer with a built-in hairball.) Once the new computer is up and running then I’ll re-do the old machine; that’ll be my guinea pig.

It’s hard to know where to start when trying to catch up after being away from this blog for a few days. A lot has been going on: bitterness, DP’s discussion of Tibet and the Olympics, Mets fans boo the Mets. Not to mention your comments, most of which send me off on wild tangents of thought. If I was a more disciplined writer I’d do a better job of responding to your comments.

For now I’m just going to leave a nugget of information I stumbled upon when browsing the Web, 72 Tips for Safer Computing.

Remember what Sgt. Esterhaus said:

“Let’s be careful out there.”

The Dan Patrick Show: Your Mother!

Caught the very end of the show live today and heard DP’s mother on the air. With the addition of sidekicks Paulie (where’s he been; I don’t think I’ve heard him all week) and Seton I assumed DP moved the show into a studio, but I guess he must still be doing it from home if Mom can just drop by to say hi.

It sounded a bit awkward (yeah, wouldn’t you like it if your folks visited you at work?) but as a big DP fan it was kind of neat to hear his Mom. Especially after all the stories he’s told about the family. He tried to get her to chat about the time she whacked DP’s brother Bill in the head with a frying pan; she didn’t open up about that, although she did seem to revel in the memory of getting “nice green switches” from a tree which she would use on the misbehaving children. Yikes: corporal punishment! DP’s right: If his mother did that sort of thing these days then she would go to prison.

Not getting to hear Keith Olbermann yesterday was disappointing, but hearing DP’s Mom was nice.

Maybe Lou will be on next.

The Dan Patrick Show: Sadness and Despair

Hawaii commented in The Dan Patrick Show: Deep Throat!:

Leave it to Dan to tease something into the last hour. Though now he says he can’t mention who it is in case he can’t make it. That’s a change of story, and would be good for the KO theory. If it wound up being Peter Gammons, I would not mind that too much. An excellent second choice to KO. I like Reilly, but that would be a disappointment.

So much for The KO Theory.

It’s Reilly.

Dang.

I like Reilly, too, but this certainly is a letdown.