Not Quite Perfect
So there I was, sitting on my couch, watching Luke Hochevar mow down Cleveland batter after Cleveland batter1 Wednesday night and, for a few moments, I thought history was unfolding on my TV. The first 15 batters Hochevar faced failed to reach base. He was commanding every pitch beautifully. He and Matt Treanor seemed to have a solid plan of…
Bond III
Time for two more Bond movies. Thunderball, 1965 Four years, four Bond movies. While there was a sense of extravaganza to the first three Bond movies, Thunderball feels like the moment the series became a massive event. Sprawling, audacious plots by the bad guys. Large deployments of troops by both sides. And massive climactic battles. In this case, it all…
A Bar Too High
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: expectations for athletes are never fair. Especially for kids who were high school stars and who move on to elite college programs. All these kids do is play a game they have some natural talent for very well and suddenly outsiders are ranking them against other kids their age, experts…
Blog Housekeeping
I’ve been kicking around a minor change to the blog for a couple weeks. I’m still not 100% happy with how it looks right now, but I’m going to go with it for the time being. Basically, Reader’s Notebook posts are disappearing. I will still be listing the books I read, but instead of doing a monthly listing, I will…
The Sisters
Winters are hard for me. I think that’s probably the case for most stay-at-home parents. You run out of things to do to entertain the kids. They get sick of being stuck inside around each other, and you, constantly. The longer the winter stretches, the more tension builds. I’ll admit that each year, when we get to late February/early March,…
The Perfect Setup
If the Internet is good at anything, it’s connecting people with similar, obscure interests.1 If there’s something that interests you even in the slightest, chances are you can find a community of people who are crazy about the subject. Blogs, Flickr groups, newsgroups, podcasts. Thirty minutes of searching on Google can produce enough research material to keep you busy for…
People…They’re The Worst
It seems like once a week I’m linking to Joe Posnanski’s blog. Believe me, I’m tempted to do so more often. In fact, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t already set up a blog where all they do is use Joe’s posts as a jumping-off point for their own writing. His latest effort, at its surface a commentary on what happened…
Baseball Season
Opening Day, bitches! In general, I’m against beginning the season on a Thursday. Opening Day should be on a Monday, preferably the Monday of the NCAA title game. But, needing something to take my mind off of basketball, I’m granting MLB a waiver this year. I can’t wait to fire up MLB.tv in a few hours and start watching some…
Old Songs Made New
This week Pearl Jam reissued their second and third albums, Vs. and Vitalogy. I’ve listened to both online, and neither is as interesting or exciting as last year’s reissue of Ten, their debut album. Ten was recorded and produced in a manner that did not fit with how the band’s sound evolved. While remixing and rereleasing it was probably self-indulgent,…
Pisser
Well, that certainly sucked. I should have done what I threatened to do midway through the first half: turn off the TV, get in the car, and drive until the game was over. It worked against Davidson three years ago. Perhaps it would have worked yesterday. Instead, I just turned the volume down when the second half began, pulled out…