Around the Bases

No one topic to write about today, so let’s go around the bases:

FIRST BASE: GO GIANTS The San Francisco Giants beat the Rockies yesterday to pull even in the NL Wild Card race. This is a development we’re solidly behind. As has been written here before, we visited the lovely Jersey Shore last weekend for a gathering of gentlemen, one of whom is scheduled to enter matrimony this fall. Sprinkled among the Red Sox fans was one Giants fan who is a longtime friend, and who reminded us that the Giants have never won a World Series in San Francisco. I would wager that not many people realize this. Eventually, after some Anheuser-Busch products had sufficiently loosened the conversation, I asked this man how often he thought about Felix Rodriguez, who effectively cost the team a game six in which they were up 5-0. He said it was probably twice a week, and, but for our convivial surroundings, that is something that is Not To Be Discussed in the Bay Area. The only thing that’s worse, we decided, is discussing the tuck rule in Oakland. They’re… still angry, let’s put it that way.

Anyhow if it comes down to Giants vs. Rockies, the choice is clear. Tim Lincecum vs. Jason Marquis, the Giants’ classic unis vs. black-and-purple, PacBell/AT&T park vs. Coors Field, and San Fran vs. Denver. It’s a no-brainer, people. As CF would say, choose life.

SECOND BASE: MORNING JOE I often watch MSNBC in the morning. The host of its morning shoe is Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida. It’s a strange and curious match for the otherwise left-leaning network. I’m all for a sense of balance at networks, but I still find Scarborough provocative in the morning; it’s the difference between striking a balance for the network as a whole and on the show, or projecting neutrality. Scarborough isn’t a right-wing zealot by any means, but he does not project neutrality. He’s a solid Reaganite. The day after Senator Ted Kennedy’s death, the gang was discussing Kennedy’s life and Scarborough referred to Kennedy’s 1980 Convention speech as being one of the worst of his career, and did so in such a matter-of-fact way that I, who was not familiar with it, thought it must have been the conventional wisdom. I’m not sure the other people heard it, either, because they didn’t fight back, but in the days following, that speech was singled out as likely Kennedy’s best — or at least most important — speech. For his “the dream shall never die” rhetorical flourish at the end, though, the speech was a blistering broadside against Reaganite policies, and Scarborough seemed to be passing off his political opinion as fact to see if he could get away with it. Good for his agenda, but at 7:45 a.m., I’m not sharp enough to take stock of these things, and to be asked to do so seems a little odd at the (relative) crack of dawn, especially on that network. Maybe it’s all that Starbucks. At any rate, it’s still better than Fox & Friends, which was visited by friend of the blog 538.com and got a nice little writeup about its… Fox & Friends-ness.

THIRD BASE: WII ARE ALL MADE OF STARS So TGBB bought a video game system that involves a wireless remote control that you use like a tennis racket, golf club, baseball bat, or bowling ball to control the goings-on on-screen. So far there have been no incidents of throwing the remote through the TV, but the days are young, so to speak. But after a Friday night of “bowling” and “tennis,” another problem emerged: we woke up Saturday with an emphatically sore arm. To be fair, as some have pointed out, it is not necessary for any game to actually act out the on-screen events with full-body motion: you can do almost everything sitting down. In my defense, you kind of get into it, especially when you are enjoying Simpler Times, as I was, and you think you justlearnedOMG how to throw a strike every time by lining up on the left side of the lane and holding the remote upside down, only to find you cannot duplicate it. I DIGRESS. Anyhow there was only one recourse for all this, after a left-handed video-game playing solution went awry: we dusted off our dumbells and did some left-arm only exercises to make sure our growing body develops proportionally. As I wrote above in the Scarborough item, balance is important.

HOME: TEDDY VS. GODZILLA Over on Jeff Pearlman’s (The Bad Guys Won!) blog, he’s debating the merits of Teddy Roosevelt vs. Godzilla with a college friend. Our pick? Shockey, of course. Which is probably another post.