...but how could you forget?

Halloween

With less than 12 hours before the majority of us will don wild regalia and howl into the abyss of All Hallow's Eve, I'm sure that many of you are saying: "hey! writer for a blog that I randomly found while looking up peanut brittle recipes! I'm a Minnesota Twins fan who would like to show their passion for the team in my Halloween costume, can you help me?"

The short answer is: yes. The long answer is: I will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to keep you reading this blog. Costume ideas: sure. Field dress a moose: you betcha. Wet t-shirt contest: WHATEVER YOU WANT.

For now, try one of these Costumes from the Peanuts From Heaven Inc. wardrobe line

1) Cuddyer and Young Masters of Supraction

You too can be a master of Supraction (TM) just by dressing like the magical masters of Twins Baseball. 

Requirements: open shirts, and a willingness to show your chest.

2) Dread Pirate Nathan

The scurviest scallywag who ever sailed the seven seas and slung sliders of some splates! Requirements: A basic pirate costume, applique goatee and an ability to "Yarrrrrrrr"

3) Sgt. Gardy's Lonely Hits Club Band

The best pundits in the business who also happen to be musically avant garde and willing to risk their health for the sake of experimentation.

Requirements: Neon military regalia, three friends (and if you're reading this, I'm not sure which one you're less likely to have)

4) The Nefarious Dr. Cakeburn

By day you can be as mild mannered as a rookie pitcher afraid of offending others. By night, burn with the heat of an oven preset to 350 degrees, and foil all the enemies of Twindom through the deliciousness of cake

Requirements: Cake, flames jutting around behind you, some kind of nuclear cake baking accident.

Just try one of these Peanuts from Heaven approved costumes, and you too will be as cool as me....wait...I mean cooler! MUCH MUCH COOLER!! 

Ladies and Gentlemen...

The Philadelphia Phillies are world champions.

If you are not exactly thrilled by that information, that's okay, you are on a blog written for fans of the Minnesota Twins. But as my able co-blogger wrote yesterday, this was a good series. The games were close, four were decided by a single run, most in the last three innings. The match-ups and strategies were intriguing to study, and the team that played the better baseball won.

{I do think the Rays were the better team throughout the course of the season. But you can't say you're playing "World Championship Calibre" baseball when the two guys who are normally your best hitters wave around ass bats in the air, like they just don't care}

I'll give credit where it's due. The Phillies play hard nosed baseball, which is appropriate for a hard nosed city like Philly. They've got a good double play team in Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley (whose play to get ex-Piranha Jason Bartlett at the plate was crazy crafty and deserves mad props). They've got a gritty bullpen that comes through in the clutch {hint, hint Twins}. And they probably spit a lot...which is always good.

So congratulations Philadelphia, tough luck Tampa Bay, and only 104 days until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training!

A pause to reflect/rant

As we sit in suspense, waiting for the weather to improve and for baseball to resume, I have noticed something - people are angry. Not just about the collapsing housing market, the collapsing credit market, their collapsing love lives, or any number of other things - people are pissed as hell about the World Series.

Why?

I'm not exactly sure.

Here are the reasons most commonly named as being "why I am f&*%$g pissed at the World Series": a) suspended game 5, and b) it's boring.

With regards to a) ... It's the freaking weather. Bud Selig cannot control the weather. Not even A-Rod can control the weather, although he should be able to for as much as they pay him. My dad actually happens to be in Philly right now, and he says yes, it actually is that bad. Freezing cold, rain, 30-40mph winds...who wants to play baseball in that shit?!? The weather suspended game is unfortunate but it would have been just cruel to make them continue if it was that bad. GET OVER IT.

With regards to b) HOW??? How is it boring? I actually heard one asshole MN radio deejay refer to this as "the most forgettable world series in history." He obviously thought he was hilarious...ha freaking ha. Have our attention spans really gotten so short that if neither of the teams in the series start with a 'Y' and end in 'ankees' or have a 'Sox' in their name, we don't care anymore? What about watching the game? What about AWESOME BASEBALL. FOR THE LOVE AMERICA, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU????

This series has been pretty awesome if you ask me - tight games, suspense, good playing... i mean really. Pay attention to the damn game. No, there's no Derek Jeter. No, there's no Manny with his wacky antics. But there shouldn't need to be. It seems we have forgotten what the game is about. ...and that makes me sad.

:(

I mean...the Tampa Bay Rays are in the World Series! Who would have thought?? Isn't that pretty cool in itself??

UNRELATED NOTE:
I drove through Philly on Friday on my way to a wedding in the Poconos. It was actually sort of a side trip, because my boyfriend really, really wanted a cheese steak (which I've gotta admit was pretty tasty). Anyways, we drove by the new Phillies stadium (sans Phillies)...it's sweet. Add that to my list of places to visit.

So there it is. I'm looking forward to hopefully a game tonight...or you know, possibly tomorrow...or the day after...or whenever Mother Nature decides to stop shitting all over Philadelphia.

Enough of this...

In a startling and beautiful moment of clarity, I have made a command decision.

I am better at analyzing baseball than Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. My parents are better at analyzing baseball than Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. My dog is better than analyzing baseball than Joe Buck and Tim McCarver (and, as he's been dead for two years, that's quite an accomplishment).

In this spirit I'm proud to bring you the analyses of myself, Mr. No Ass, and the Knitting Queen.

*Pregame*

SR: "Following after Tim McCarver's analysis, that the key to victory for the Phillies, is to keep winning games, I would suggest that the key to victory for the Rays is to stop losing."

*1st Inning*

NA: "C'mon! Longoria tagged Rollins out!!"

KQ: "Yeah, I can tell by that picture of the glove half-way up his butt!"

SR: "Fox has to make sure they've got something sexual on at least once an hour."

KQ: "Are they sure they can't get any closer than this?"

NA: "Then we'd be looking at his colon."

*2nd Inning*

NA: "America's other favorite past time?"

SR: "American Idol."

NA: "Pbbbbbbt!"

*3rd Inning*

NA: "Hey, Rays, any time you want to take some pitches, that would be good."

KQ: "It must be a strategy."

NA: "Not a very good one.

KQ: "Just wait, maybe it will be a good strategy..."

NA: "Isn't part of a good strategy, changing it when it doesn't work?"

KQ: "Oh. Yeah."

*4th Inning*

[Crawford connects]

NA: That's gone.

SR: That's gone.

Joe Buck: It's gone.

KQ: What just happened?

...later...

SR: The Rays are just going to keep pitching Howard away, until he proves he can hit it to left

[Howard hits a massive three run home run to left]

NA: He just proved it.

*5th Inning*

Shane Victorino on mic: "I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it!"

KQ: "NO YOU DON'T!"

[Victorino catches it]

KQ: "shoot."

*6th Inning*

SR: "I might complain about his strike zone, but this umpire's strike out call..."

NA: "Yeah, it's emphatic."

SR: "I'm a little afraid he may knock out a left handed hitter with that uppercut."

*7th Inning*

[After two pitching switches]

SR: "The line-up for the Rays goes lefty, righty, lefty, lefty...would you leave the left handed reliever in to face all four?"

NA: "hunh?"

SR: "Did you fall asleep?"

NA: "..."

SR: "Dad?"

NA: "li'l bi-" [Pause...Snore]

*8th Inning*

Joe Buck: "You could make the argument that Pena's foot is about to come off the bag when they double Feliz off of first."

KQ: "Yes you could...if you were stupid!!"

*9th Inning*

[After a minor throwing error]

KQ: "That's the start of a comeback!"

[Two outs later]

KQ: "I guess not"

*Key Insights of the Game*

SR: The Rays need to be patient.

KQ: You can't win if you don't hit.

NA: [Snore]

A battle for the soul of baseball

I hesitate to write a World Series post about something that's not the World Series...but I'm going to do it anyway because I am my own editor and pbbbbbt!

While the Phillies and Rays' games have been back and forth battles there's something else that's been bothering me. Something that starts with a "J" and ends with an "oe Buck".

I've said before that Tweedle Dumbass irritates me. Last night was no exception. While Jamey Moyer pitched quite well for a man who can now collect AARP benefits, and the Rays defense kept an erratic Garza in the game, Mr. Buck's started telling us the story of Matt Garza's confrontation with Dionner Navarro, then veering off on a tangent about Eva Longoria, then giving a pitch count, then telling us that 24 Redemption is "OUTSTANDING" (what a shock!), then giving Ryan Howard's statistics, then urging us to watch football, and then finishing the Garza story, just 4 short innings later. Just so you know Dumbass, any time you want to call the game, that's okay too.

For a while I found sweet, sweet relief. I turned on the radio and heard San Francisco Giants announcers (Jon Miller and Joe Morgan) call a couple innings. They talked about things like the strategy for hitting against a fastball specialist like Matt Garza, and the effect of the Jamey Moyer's change-up on young Rays hitters. Unfortunately, my parents didn't like the time delay between seeing something, and hearing it called on the radio.

This begged the question: why don't I have magic powers that can eliminate the time delay between television and radio? Since I can't answer that one, I'll ask another: why do we have the worst announcers in the game, for the biggest games in the season? Why must we be forced to have Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in our home for three weeks a year, like the unwanted Mounds bar halloween candy you buy on sale November first?

The answer, of course, is money. Fox pays baseball top dollar, so Fox gets to show the Series. FOX pays 466 Million Dollars each year to broadcast one game a week and two rounds of the playoffs. But baseball ratings have dropped precipitously ever since Fox took over, with this years ratings marking the lowest ebb yet and since Fox took over World Series ratings have gone, down...down...down. 

Why all this has happened, no one can quite explain: some point the finger at the networks forgetting to advertise baseball until October (I don't know if I'd like to see Justin Morneau on American Idol...but it would probably juice up the ratings), others say that it's the lack of major markets in the World Series (but the Yankees/Mets Series in 2000 got the lowest ratings of all time--until two years later, when the Angels were in it).

I say it's the announcers. If you give a lousy product to enough people, eventually they're not going to want it (Of course, I said the same thing about the Scary Movie Franchise...and those guys must be bazillionaires by now). If the announcers don't make watching the game even more enjoyable, you have to be a serious fan to endure it. Witness: the first three pages of a google search and Buck and McCarver yields nothing positive, but dozens of "fire these idiots" petitions.

So let me make a suggestion baseball: void your contract with Fox and move things over to ABC (which owns ESPN and thus would own the sport). They already pay 200 Million, plus Fox's 400 means you can get more than 600 Million Dollars, let's say: 624,375,000. 

Why that amount? 

Because if you take away $24,375,000, you'd still have the richest television contract in the history of baseball, and you'd be able to pay for one day of free admission for every major league team as an apology for the '94 strike, rampant steroid use, Buck and McCarver, and those hideous Futuristic Jerseys from the late 90's. 

You'd make thousands of average baseball fans happy and give yourself a huge PR bump. Add in an inning or two of announcing for local fans at home from your new premier announcers (say: Hall of Famers Bob Ueker, Tony Gwynn, and oughta-be-hall-of-famer Bert Blyleven), and you suddenly have made a move that makes baseball a topic of conversation throughout America, whether they are sports fans or not. Make yourself the sport for fans, the sport that gives back, the sport that admits mistakes and make yourself the sport everyone likes.

That would be awesome; but almost completely inconceivable. So Tweedle Dum will keep giggling like a teenager in health class at anything remotely amusing, and Tweedle Dumbass will keep whining about every umpire call like a teenager doing health class homework. And ratings will keep dropping.

But owners will keep getting money. And isn't that what matters?

Oh...wait...no it's not. A back and forth ball game, with home runs, scrappy plays and a walk off...whatever that was for the Phillies...that's what matters. 

Game 2 Random Thoughts

As an observer free from vested interests, I'm rather enjoying simply watching good baseball and letting my mind wander. Here now, random musings from my time spent watching game 2.

***

Fox spent a good deal of time discussing Rocco Baldelli, once the Rays greatest player, then a man crippled by injuries and a vague mitochondrial abnormality. Baldelli still hits reasonably well but can't play defense nearly as well as he once did. But Fox is discussing the post-injury training behavior. Saying proudly: "He has mastered the art of swallowing a handful of pills at a time."

Is it just me, or does that laudatory comment, tacitly endorse ingesting gobs of painkillers?{Probably not, but I don't like Fox...so, for the sake of humor, let's say they did}

***

Oh, joy! Tim McCarver and Joe Buck [aka Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumbass] can finally examine an umpire's call in excruciating detail, pointing out the foolishness of calling a strike, then appealing to first base, then reversing the call, and then destroying the very fabric of our society.

Sadly, the ump was wrong, and did make a bad call...but I'm afraid I'm not mature enough to say: "Tim and Joe were r----; were righ-" see, I even vomit in my mouth when I write it.

***

Tweedle Dumbass is now promising us an honest review of "24" if we just tune in to game 3.

Wait a second...you're using a promotion of another program, to promote the program which will do the promoting?!? 

In that spirit I hope you all read Kristina's next post, and then, my next post, in which I will give you an exclusive review of Kristina's post.

***

Jason Bartlett just got an RBI on a bunt to make it 4 to 0. And somewhere a pirannaha is gnashing its teeth in joy.

***

Wow, good play by Baldelli, doubling off the runner one a liner with one out. Clearly "mastering the art of swallowing a handful of pills," can make one a better ball player. Maybe more players should swallow handfuls of pills?

***

Why is it that annoying promotional gimmicks turn up in the World Series? Rally Monkeys. Thunder Stix. Now the cowbell, the ubiquitous trinket every Tampan/Saint Petersberghian clutches and shakes during rallies. The incessant clatter may officially kill all humor I once found in the phrase: "I've got to have more cowbell." Curse you Tampa/St. Pete!! CURSE YOU!

***

Wow...I haven't said anything about the Phillies. Hmmm...okay, here's something, my older brother once lived with Pat Burrell's cousin.  And I'm guessing that both my brother and Pat Burrell's cousin, would be as effective with runners in scoring position as the Phillies have been...which is to say: not at all. 

***

Penetrating analysis from Tweedle Dum: "Trailing by four runs in the seventh, ahead in the count 2-0, Jimmy Rollins should take here, and he probably will, but he might not."

Allow me to analyze a little: "Dan Wheeler has just run the count full, so he wants to throw a strike here, but he might not do it, in which case it would be a ball." 

PAYCHECK PLEASE!!

***

The English teacher in me takes issue with MLB's legal disclaimer. "This game is broadcast through the authority of the office of the commissioner of baseball." I'm want to circle it in red and write: You're on a Preposition Safari: REVISE!!!

***

Last night my boss asked: "why would any parent ever allow or encourage their 7 year old child to have a blue mohawk?" I told him, "because baseball is awesome and photos of your small child being stupid are great for embarrassment in later years." Just ask my parents about my "Boston Heights Dairy Dudes" Little League Rookie Card. {Or any of my prom dates...if they haven't suppressed the memories through shock therapy.}

***

Another bad call, and the Tweedles might just break down crying. It's basically like having the drunk guys who sit behind you at the game on national TV. "Yurr an eediot. Yah, stupid...I'll kill ya, but I need another one first, ya dirty rotten...OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SONG!!"

***

As the Tweedles foam at the mouth, and dance the night away the Rays have won, tying the series and sending us to the city of brotherly love for games this weekend. And if you've learned anything from reading this post...I'm supremely disappointed in you, and myself.