First, G, you can take your happy little energy drink and move to the side. The idea here was something along the lines of orange slices soaked in something horribly potent and hopefully flammable. (The idea is a blatant ripoff of the tailgaters in RJYH, who make it a ritual to soak cherries in grain alcohol for months and months then dish ’em out prior to kickoff.)
Next up, I’m ex-freaking-hausted. Up early (or at least early for me) two days in a row with a red-eye trip to St. Louis in the middle. It was a great time, though. Got to see some interesting things, do some even more interesting things, and see a 46-year old man beat out an infield single. Sweet.
About the only downside to the trip was the kid behind us who could whine at 3,000 decibels, and was 2-for-2 in knocking mostly-full drinks down the back of our legs. I’m not a parent, and I’m not going to pretend to be one, but can’t people take care of their kids!?!?! The lady with the girl told her to “be careful with the drinks” as I watched the stream of Coke flow between my feet. And while I agree that stadium prices in general are out of control (25 bucks to check out the craftsmanship on top of the right field foul pole. In Pittsburgh, the same $25 allowed me to almost reach out and measure the tilt-angle on Matt Lawton’s hat.), how can anyone bitch about how much it costs when every half inning you’re out of your seat trying to keep a kid quiet with another $6 box of popcorn? And the group that brought the newborns in, who’s age might have totalled two months between them? Yeah, nice move there.
One more gripe, I remember the days when you could buy a program at a game and actually find relevant information. Anymore, you’re lucky if you can find an opponents roster in the scorecard insert. Maybe this is part of the reason I sold my $5 program for $20 outside the gates after the game. (A move I might slightly regret, only because I never did flip through the program to see if there might have been something worthwhile. But if I could get a 400% return on all the programs I own that are gathering dust and cobwebs, I’d be doing all right for myself.)
Lastly, I’m working my way through Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Apparently Dan has already tossed this in the “meh” pile, due to the “smugness” of the author, and I can’t say as I totally disagree. I guess I understand that you need so many words to fill a decent book, but there’s alot of repetition, or at least expanding on thoughts that don’t need expanding in this one. And if I’m reading a book about the intricacies of putting together a winning ball club, chances are I already know that home runs are also called “dongs, jacks and big flies”, I don’t need two sentences explaining that.
What I’ve gotten out of it so far, about 60 pages in, is that Lewis had a decent idea, then piled about 4.5 pounds of shit to fill the five-pound bag. It’s interesting, don’t get me wrong, but there’s alot of filler material that I find myself getting lost in quite regularly. Maybe when he gets through the setup for the history side of things, he’ll cut to the chase, but thus far, I can honestly say I’m not as impressed as I thought I’d be.