Today wraps up a half-century as it’s my first day of AARP membership eligibility. I don’t want to call it “the first half-century”; God forbid there would be a second one. Give me another 25 good years, then a few decent but declining years to wrap up the loose ends, then take me behind the barn and do what you have to do.
For about 40 of the 50 years I was a resident of the East Bay. I believe my father took my mother to Candlestick Park when I was very little. She damn near froze to death and swore she’d never go back and wouldn’t let him take the kids there either. But about the time I started playing sucking at baseball, a second major league team moved to the Bay Area and they played at the shiny new Oakland Coliseum, where the weather was much better. So I got to see the A’s pretty much right from the beginning of the Oakland days. When I was 11, 12 and 13 my favorite baseball team won the World Series three years in a row. Talk about a perfect age to have that happen. In those years all I wanted for a birthday present was tickets to Opening Night, when the latest World Championship pennant was raised on the center field flag pole while the players were lined up along the foul line. I knew there would be some rebuilding with new players coming along, but surely by the time I was 50 the A’s would have another 10 or so World Championships under their belt.
Ah well, four World Championships in 50 years isn’t such a bad ratio. The thing about zero Rose Bowl appearances in 50 years, though, now that’s just damned embarrassing. There will be some real tears of joy when that finally happens.
I’ll take a quick look at what’s burning on The Grill. The roster will be cut to 25 after today’s game and Slusser thinks Sogard wins over LaRoche, which seems to be the consensus conclusion (unless you ask LaRoche, I suppose). Also, we have a new 7-day disabled list for players who sustain concussions.
I’ll let mb and the rest of you add more links. My mind keeps drifting to those magic words:
Happy birthday you old bag of bones.
Damn, you’re old. How are you still walking upright?
Happy birthday!
It’s nice to get in on the ground floor of something. You’re an original Oakland A’s fan, man! How cool is that?
TWSS
… happy birthday! I’m not especially far behind you on the path to senescence — both in years and in birthday.
I think this will finally tip Sullivan over in favor of intervening on behalf of the Libyan rebels — I mean, look at that guy’s beard!
It would have been awesome if this had happened to YBMB — and they’d turned Oakland white.
mikeA bait:
… which is exactly what the prosecutor will allege.
“There’s another reason for me to hate clowns.â€
In college, I played squirmish for the Casual Septuplers.
At an average of about 10 years per World Series championship since ’72, we’re totally overdue.
Congrats on the first 50. May the next
50403025 bring you lots more green and gold goodness.Happy Birthday! :)
{nm clubs Bailey and Utley over the head}
Heh. WTF is the A’s problem there. The season starts tomorrow and they won’t DL him??
What you have to look forward-to.
Eatcher heart out.
And Happy Aarpday!
Too many DFWAS links today for me to adhere to my own rule.
Should I go with Greenspan? (nah, Sal would need to see more detail) How about Pawlenty? (nah, presidential candidate knows zero about fiscal policy = dog bites man).
I think I’m going with the world’s conservative parties. DFWAS.
Happy Birthday!!
Whoops
DFVPTATWTALW (Despair, for Verducci picks the A’s to win the AL West)
Yeah. I don’t like all this national attention. It sure jinxed the Niners.
Whoever wrote the AL West preview did a decent job. Nothing we didn’t all know before, but nothing egregious either.
OK, so I’m now a Robothal fan.
Oh, for Ba’al’s sake … now I have to be a fucking Fat Tony fan, too?
He’ll fit in nicely with George Will and Tucker Carlson in your pantheon.
wow.
“Nez Balelo“?
**bait
Oh, the irony that computers could go from causing Enron to writing front page blog posts.
I’m waiting for the robo play-by-play man who gets partnered up with Morgan.
… and Aliens.
Great tweet, or greatest tweet ever?
See you and raise you / salbait
I am not raised. But, if I needed to reraise:
(and yes, I’m shamelessly playing with my new toy)
(TWNMS)
Ceci n’est pas un comment
I feel the urge to read Proust and smoke a pipe.
In former Third Republic, Proust feels the urge to smoke you
Feh.
From the comments:
Apparently that tweet, whatever it was, was so awesome that it broke twitter.
Huh? It’s working for me.
I regularly have trouble accessing twitter pages — Slusser’s I never bother looking at except via the embedded links in her slumbeats.
NOTE:
I just enabled something called “oEmbed” in the comments. What that means is that if you paste a link to a participating website (or Twitter) ON ITS OWN LINE, FK will automatically do the embed.
For example, I’m going to paste a youtube link on its own line below, with no code:
See. Neat.
(this also works in posts)
Paste, what an embed code
Looking at oembed.com it appears the “participating websites” of interest would primarily be Youtube, Hulu, Vimeo and Flickr, in addition to Twitter. I’m not familiar with some of the other sites they list.
Yeah. That’s probably right, although my guess is it will expand over time since it looks pretty easy for sites to implement.
Anyway, should help us talk about tweets (since some people have trouble with the sites) and make video embeds a touch easier.
Mother, Mother Tahoe…
…made enough money to buy Squaw Valley,
It’s ALIVE!
That was cool!
Jimmy is excellent for long drives; the lively sing-along nature of his music is great for staying alert. In the living room late at night I still prefer an 18-minute “Sugaree” with nice long jams.
I departed Tahoe just before the spring training trip and moved down the hill into the Carson Valley. My landlord at Tahoe terminated my lease because he wanted to move into the townhouse I was renting. I wanted to stay in the area and in Nevada for the income tax issues, which limited my options at the lake, so I’m trying this as an alternative. I’m still a 20-25 minute drive from the lake, there’s much less snow and the rent is so much lower that next winter I can make that trip to see Jimmy in Anguilla along with the spring training trip for free due to the rent difference. And I have a great view of the valley and the surrounding snowy mountains. But, to be sure, it’s not living within walking distance of the lake.
Now about that I go for younger women part (yeah right).
Well, most of them are, after all.
I probably wouldn’t recognize Brandon McCarthy if I walked past him on the street, but I’m already a little bit in love with him just because of his Twitter account.
Srsly! His wife is pretty damn funny, too…
McChrist, what an ass clown
I kind of want to follow her, but I can’t decide if it’s creepy to follow a player’s wife on Twitter. She’s just so funny!
I’m just bookmarking her… I think if I was the wife of someone famous or semi-famous (famous enough to be followed by strangers), I would be creeped out by people following me unless I was also famous on my own.
Good plan. She only has 20+ followers, and I don’t want to give her the wrong idea about A’s fans. We’re not creepy stalkers… just passionate!
**-FK tailgate? **-FK tailgate
What the hell is that?
What goes on in Lot A, stays in Lot A.
I’m impressed by the fact that they put aside their enmity long enough to make shirts-versus-skins arrangements before beating the crap out of each other.
Sad to say, what with all the +/- 50 y.o.s around here, FK is probably the redshirts.
ptbnl bait
Roster finalized:
Cramer presumably in as long man.
Picked a bad time to pull a Knoblauch
It’s like Dot Racing, where the leader and apparent winner always collapses just before the finish line.
If you pull your knoblauch, someone else will be in as long man?
Don’t they need to make a spot on the 40-man roster?
Rosales -> 60-day DL
Yeah, Rosales to the 60 day.
Bailey, Harden -> 15 day DL
Outfielders: Crisp, DeJesus, Willingham, Sweeney, Jackson
Infielders: Kouz, Pennington, Ellis, Barton, LaRoche
Catchers: Suzuki, Powell
DH: Matsui
Bullpen:
LHP Blevins
LHP Breslow
LHP Cramer
LHP Fuentes
RHP Balfour
RHP Wuertz
RHP Ziegler
Rotation:
LHP Anderson
LHP Braden
LHP Gonzalez
RHP Cahill
RHP McCarthy
Four lefties in the bullpen certainly is interesting. On the bright side, we may never have to see Cramer in a meaningful game; on the not-so-bright-side, it may mean Bob is more inclined to ensconce Fuentes as “closer”, instead of using him situationally, as he should be used.
With that bullpen alignment, if Balfour is held back for closing situations, Wuertz is going to pitch in the 8th inning in every single game. There’s no way you can use three situational lefties in the bullpen (I’m not counting Cramer; doesn’t matter whether mop-up is LHP or RHP). I’m remembering the season the A’s opened the season with Magnante, Venafro and Holtz in the pen (Koch closing). Holtz almost immediately fell into total disuse.
Breslow shouldn’t just be a situational lefty. He’s allowed a 3.75 tERA and 4.00 FIP against RHB over the past three years, which suggests he doesn’t need to be shielded from them. Ideally, they’d have:
Co-closers: Balfour,Fuentes
Set-up: Wuertz, Breslow
Specialists: Ziegler, Blevins
Mop-up: Cramer
You’re still a young man, baby
Don’t waste your time.
Happy Birthday, Soaker!
You know what I’d like to have been able to see? Moneyball and Aliens.
Eh, they’re just enforcers of the unnecessary pedagogy cartel.
I think this calls for a UNSC resolution and a US-led bombing campaign.
Hunh. Giants going with Belt.
Ah, right: also HB to andeux!
Sacre bleu! Bon anniversaire!
I have no idea why, or how, that picture of me is there.
(Bo-Nano-Verse-Heir.)
Replaced your contribution.
ah, I get it.
lighten up, Francis.
Shhhh. I mean thanks.
Hirthy Bappday!
Happy birthday! Have you ever looked at the list of MLB players born on March 30? You’d think there would be a decent player or two in there by random chance, but wow, what a hideous pile of suck. Josh Bard was our best active player but the Mariners just cut him. We do claim Eric Clapton (66 today) and Secretariat (would be 41).
Yeah, pretty unimpressive list.
I knew about EC (and am a big fan of the Derek and the Dominos era). Did not know about Secretariat. That’s pretty cool.
Hoppy Birthday!
[hoists imaginary mug]
Happy Birthday!!!
OK, LB, I’ve reconsidered — I’m signing an executive order to arm you denizens of the secret Townsend threads.
Cool! Finally, a job!
My would-be Opening Day comrade having confirmed his flakitude, I find myself with an extra ticket should someone want to join me in the Value Deck.
I may be able to swing it – have to talk to the missus first and I’m in Pasadena right now, but if it’s not gone by the time I do …
Where is Pasadena going?
Journalism humor! I thought it was dead!
Journalism humor? I thought it was just “I’m nearly illiterate when I read too fast” humor…
Cool, I’ll stay tuned.
OK – I’m in.
Right on. I’ll email re logistics.
will you sit with me in the value deck, FSU? I’m up there, too…
Party in the ValuDeck!
Well, you know how firmly I feel about fans sitting only in their legitimate seats…
And Bloom does have a legitimate seat …
It’s quite large.
“And Leo’s getting Laaarrrrgggerrr.”
Start Weight Watchers Monday.
Welcome to the club, Soaker! And HB to Andeux too!
Happy Birthday to the half-centenarian. Or is it centurion?
And happy birthday to our resident mathemagician, too.
Happy birthday, Soandeux!
Odd news of the day: President Obama receives transparency award…”without disclosing the meeting on his public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.”
On the other hand, Mikhail Gorbachev presented the Glasnost award to Ted Turner today.
America’s Next Top
ModelEnergy InnovatorSeems like a good idea, but I don’t think that licensing costs (at the figures quoted) are the primary or even secondary barrier to technology translation.
Gotta love Braden:
Did anyone catch this one?
That’s hilarious
A’s reach a deal to broadcast on 95.7 The Wolf. I’m quite excited about this. I was so sick of the crappy signal on 860, having an FM station will be great.
W00t!
Slumbeat
Top Chef! Kind of sad that while Mike I had his mom, wife, and sister there cheering him on, Richard had only his uncle.
It was sad! He also made a mention earlier in the show like “I’ve got my wife, but other than that, I’m all alone in the world” or something to that effect. It made me think that either his parents have passed away, or he’s not close with them.
His mom definitely passed away earlier this year. He talked about it earlier this season. I think his dad was already dead.
Oh, that is so sad.
I know! But his wife was having their second child, so…he’s got a good family of his own.