Duck Snorts

Posted on by David Smithson Michaels · Leave a comment

This is David Smithson Michaels, welcoming you back to another edition of DUCK SNORTS. It looks like Spring Training is getting close to the end, and Opening Day is only a few more weeks away. As players compete for those final roster spots, and managers work on their lineups, here’s what’s been happening in baseball the past few weeks:

A DUCK SNORT GOODBYE TO TWO BASEBALL WARRIORS: This past week, two of baseball’s most beloved veterans said goodbye to the game they love so much, one by choice, one not by choice. In Florida, Mr. Marlin Jeff Conine, an integral part of the team’s storied 1997 and 2003 World Championships, announced he would sign a one-day contract with the team and retire before an exhibition game against the New York Yankees. While the forty-one year old showed last year that he still had some sock left in his bat, I can respect his decision to leave the game, and wish him the best in whatever the future holds for him.

In sadder news, the Boston Red Sox, possibly caught up in dangerous post-World-Series drunken euphoria, decided that they would no longer need the services of long-time backup catcher Doug Mirabelli. As the catcher for wily knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, Mirabelli was an important piece of the Red Sox’s drive to Reverse The Curse in 2004. Without him, the Red Sox will be forced to use a catcher that’s not familiar with catching the knuckleball, which is a very specialized skill. Ironically enough, the Red Sox made this mistake before in 2006, letting Mirabelli go to the Padres and using unheralded catcher Josh Bard as Wakefield’s caddy. That didn’t work out so well, as the Red Sox ended up trading for Mirabelli shortly after the season began (ironically, for Bard and reliever Cla Meredith). History shows that this happened once before, so it’s likely it will happen again.

Worse, some teammates are distraught over their friend’s release. Because of his invaluable experience and tutelage, his leaving will be a shock that many of the team’s rookies and second-year players, including reigning ROY Dustin Pedroia and World Series hero Jacoby Ellsbury, might not be able to cope with. Even veterans, like Jason Varitek and David Ortiz, could find themselves unwilling to put forth the 110% they need to bring to the field every day. It’s also not out of the realm of possibility to think Wakefield might be so disenchanted without his battery mate on the team that he could potentially retire, decimating an already weakened pitching staff. It looks like yet another Moneyball team is trying to cut corners in their payroll by not paying for talent. If my predictions come to pass, then it looks like the Red Sox are going to end up paying a bigger price than they imagined, and will spend the 2008 season looking up at the Yankees like they usually do.

DESPITE SOME BAD TEST SCORES, YANKEES ARE STILL THE CLASS OF BASEBALL: Some teams just cannot get a break. In the past two weeks, the Yankees have had to deal with offering funnyman Billy Crystal an honorary start in a Spring Training game, fan favorite Shelley Duncan seeking payback against the Tampa Bay Rays for a bushleague home plate collision, and World Series hero Jim Leyritz visiting camp just months after being charged with DUI manslaughter and other misdemeanors.

When you’re the Yankees — the winningest franchise in all of professional sports — everyone’s looking to take a shot at you. Unfortunately, these shots nowadays are coming from the media as often, if not more often, than from competing teams. Newspapers, TV networks, even bloggers — there’s a certain responsibility that comes with having the ability to broadcast information and opinions, and it’s a shame that so many outlets are using their power to take down such a venerable institution as the New York Yankees. If baseball teams were as worried about the Yankees as reporters were, maybe some other teams would be in the Yankees’ position as the class of Major League Baseball. Either way, it’s something to think about.

PIRATES MAKE ANOTHER HUGE MISTAKE, SIGN IAN SNELL TO LONG-TERM CONTRACT: If there’s one thing that can be said about the Pittsburgh Pirates, it’s that they’re an organization that doesn’t know what it’s doing. With the hiring of new GM Neal Huntington and CEO Kevin McClatchey stepping down, it looked like the Pirates were going to right their ship (pardon the pun). The signing of 26-year-old starting pitcher Ian Snell to a long-term contract, however, shows that it’s just poor business as usual in Heinz Field. Signing Snell to a three-year, $8 million contract will go down with the long-term deals given to former Pirates Kevin Young and Ryan Benjamin as supreme follies. To buy out the arbitration years of a losing pitcher (9-12) when proven starters like Kyle Loshe and Jeff Weaver are available for the taking is a poor utilization of resources. The Pirates need to make moves that show their dwindling fanbase that they’re serious about returning the franchise to the days of Andy Van Slyke and Doug Drabek and Mike LaVallierre. Instead, it looks like the new Pirates regime is going to make the fans execute their own Operation: Shutdown.

CHAN HO PARK TRIES TO START INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT, RUIN BASEBALL IN ASIA: This weekend, Major League Baseball played their first ever games in mainland China. Unfortunately, an incident following the game threatens the sport’s health in one of the world’s most populated regions. After the first game — a 3-3 tie between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres — Korean fans tried to get the autograph of Dodger starter Chan Ho Park. Before he could sign any autographs, though, Chinese guards formed a wall between Park and the fans. Despite the guards’ insistence on not allowing the fans through, Park made like a prima donna, yelling at the guards to stand aside and let the fans through so he could soothe his ego.

Park is best known for signing one of the first ludicrous free agent contracts of recent history, earning over $13 million a year for 5 years from the Texas Rangers. Despite the responsibilities that come with such a contract, Park did his best to pitch his worst. As a result, it’s no surprise that he caused such a stir just as MLB was making onroads in Asia. This seems to be just a smaller example of the difficulty that Commissioner Bud Selig has had with the players since he first took office. Time will only tell what impact this incident has on the upcoming two-game series between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A’s. Here’s hoping that the Japanese government lets these two teams “play ball” without any more incidents.

David Smithson Michaels’ NCAA Tournament dark horse is Winthrop. Go Eagles!

2008 Season Preview: Los Angeles Dodgers

Posted on by T.J. Simers · Leave a comment

The Yard Work 2008 Season Preview cannot be stopped! Until it’s finished! Shake and bake! Today’s preview features hard-hitting Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers talking about the Los Angeles Dodgers with his Times colleague, Bill Plaschke.

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Bill Plaschke has written for the LA Times for over twenty years, twelve of those as a sports columnist. He’s been named National Sports Columnist of the Year by the Associated Press. He’s been nominated for a Pulitzer. He was featured in Michael Mann’s Ali. He’s a frequent guest on ESPN’s Around The Horn. And that smug sack of chins will gladly recount all this to you at the drop of the hat, using the same monosyllabic sentences he foists upon readers of his idiotic columns.

Despite being terribly allergic to stupid people, I performed a public service this past weekend and caught up with the overrated Plaschke at the Dodgers’ Spring Training facilities in Vero Beach, FL, to find out how wrong he’ll be about the Dodgers’ hopes this season. I made sure to bring extra ventilation masks, so I didn’t have to inhale too much of his BS.

I found Plaschke sitting in the stands during a pre-season tilt, his mouth mercilessly wrapped around some sort of cheesesteak sandwich, dollops of mayo and cheese sauce trying to blend into the floral print of his hideous Hawaiian shirt. If you told me the man’s one burp away from serious heart failure, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. So how much heart-clogging fat is that for you today, I ask him. “Just ask your stupid questions and go back to your hole, Junior.” That’s Plaschke’s cute little nickname for me, since he’s been at the Times longer than me. He’s quite a charmer.

So I ask him what he thinks about Juan Pierre‘s chances of starting this year. “If the Dodgers want to win, he has to start in left field. That’s all there is to it. Kemp and Ethier aren’t seasoned enough to do it. They still need time to learn their place. Last year showed that.” Wow, that’s a pretty long answer. I perform a mirror check on Plaschke to see if he stopped breathing. Sadly, he’s still conscious.

I give His Fatty Eminence time to slake his thirst with more sugar water, then try to find out his opinion of the pitching staff. Does he knows yet how he’ll rain on rookie Clayton Kershaw’s parade? Will he focus his keen eye on bad-mouthing Brad Penny again? Or will he save up all his impotent bitterness for some poor multi-million-dollar sap in the bullpen? He lets out a noxious burp before answering. “I don’t know, Junior. I was just going to follow your lead. With a pooper scooper.” Oh, Bill. Leave the comedy to those overpaid striking hacks you like to buddy up with out in Hollywood, would you?

So how about weighing in on how great Joe Torre is, and how he’ll walk on water to get these guys fitted for a ring? “It’s in my March 9th column, Junior. Try reading once in a while. Your eyes and your brain will appreciate the exercise.” But some of us have to do our taxes and clean behind our refrigerators. How about summarizing your pearls of wisdom for those of us that don’t want to read your drool, Bill? “He’s a living legend. He can bridge the divide that folky-olky Grady Little could not. And would not. You can’t work with Joe Torre, you don’t deserve to work.”

And how about those old overpaid farts, Bill? Like my good friend Jeff Kent? You feel any special ironic kinship towards them? “Why don’t you tell me what you want to hear, Junior? It’s not like you’ll take anything I offer at face value,” he blubbers incoherently, spitting semi-chewed chunks of green and red pepper at me. “You’ll find some way to twist my words to make me look foolish and back up whatever argument you have to support. To be honest, it’s kind of pathetic.”

Wait a second. Was that Bill Plaschke being honest? The guy that spends most weekdays yelling at his peers to score points with Tony Kornheiser’s shoe-shine boy? The man that used his column as an anti-statistical bully pulpit against former Dodger GM Paul DePodesta in the same way that William Randolph Hearst used his media empire to rally support for the Spanish-American War? To quote Dick Vitale: are you serious? This is rich, and I tell him as much.

He slobbers up some steak juice, and smiles at me. “I’m pretty sure you wrote some columns against GoogleBoy and his Excel spreadsheets, Junior.” Yeah, but there’s a difference between journalism and hackism, Billy Boy. Maybe one of these days, you’ll figure that out. I try to explain this to him, using flashcards and scratch-n-sniff stickers, but he waddles away. Says he has to go write a column about yours truly. I can already see what it’s going to say.

Some might say that TJ Simers is a respected sports journalist.

A no-holds-barred interviewer. The locker room’s answer to Mike Wallace.

I say he’s as bad for Los Angeles as DePodesta and his pie charts were for the Dodgers.

Billy, Billy, Billy. When will you ever learn?

2008 Season Preview: Cleveland Indians

Posted on by Jim DeRogatis · 2 Comments

Yard Work is proud to welcome back Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim Derogatis, who makes his first-ever trip to spring training to lurk in the bleachers with Trent Reznor, where he finds the Nine Inch Nails frontman sounding off about Josh Beckett, the Florida sun, and his brilliant new album “Ghosts I-IV”

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When Trent Reznor was nineteen years old, he drove from Cleveland to Tuscon, Arizona during spring break. Although most college-age kids would rather head to Florida’s beaches for sun, sex, and sangria, the future Nine Inch Nails kingpin spent ten days coughing and sputtering in the dry Arizona air. It was the price he grudgingly paid in order to see the Cleveland Indians play during spring training. “Those days were the calm before the storm”, sighs Reznor, “before I was gnawed at by music industry venom and MTV bullshit.” Here in the eighth row of the third-base side bleachers of the Indians’ Winter Haven ballpark, he sits hunched over a mustard-drenched hot dog with his scorecard and program balanced precariously on his knee. He stops to take a monstrous bite and begins to chew, never once diverting his steely brown eyes from home plate.

By 1993, both the Indians and Reznor had moved on from their respective locales. The Indians moved to Chain of Lakes Park in Winter Haven, Florida, which remains their spring home up to the present day. Meanwhile, Reznor holed himself up in Sharon Tate’s California mansion and dredged through some of the most unsettling times of his personal life. However, his career — and the play of the Cleveland Indians — was approaching stratospheric levels of success. The irony of it all is certainly not lost on him. The Indians gave in to the lure of beaches and bikinis, but it was ten years too late for Reznor, who was too jaded to embrace the hedonism that eluded him during his youth. But 2008 is a very different time, and the monkey of self-consciousness that he carried on his back in the mid-90’s has melted away like a Creamsicle in the Florida sun. “At one time, I cared about whether it was cool to be here”, says Reznor, grabbing a fistful of nachos smothered in cheese and sour cream, “but these days I couldn’t give a fuck about that. In that spring when I was nineteen, I didn’t care about what was considered cool or about finding Daytona Beach pussy. I did whatever made me happy. After that, there were plenty of years that I wasted my mind and body, but now I’ve come full circle.”

In more ways than one, Trent Reznor is out of place in Chain of Lakes Park. His dour posture, dark mop of hair, and long black coat stand in stark contrast to the colorfully dressed families of four in their matching Bermuda shorts and sporty visors. But even in eighty degree weather, with the bases loaded for Travis Hafner in the bottom half of the sixth, Reznor barely breaks a sweat. This late-inning clutch-hitting situation is nothing compared to the stress of promoting a new album — and it’s the latter task that Reznor is avoiding by being in Florida to begin with. He’s been posting updates on his website direct from “Hong Kong” and other exotic locales, but in truth, Reznor has been here in Winter Haven the entire time, quite literally “out of place” from where his fans and even his own management believe him to be. At this very moment, he’s supposed to be booked for a TV interview in Japan and yet here he is, Trent Reznor, the leader of the industrial rock revolution that swarmed alternative radio for most of the 1990’s, stomping his heavy leather boots on the bleacher seats while “We Will Rock You” blares over the ballpark’s dilapidated loudspeakers.

The new Nine Inch Nails album is a monstrous 36-track effort entitled “Ghosts I-IV”. This two-hour instrumental tour de force captures NIN in all their unrestrained, snarling glory. Effortlessly careening from their most radical sonic explorations to their most radio-friendly currency and back again, it captures this constantly evolving band at their visceral, psychedelic best. It is hard not to notice that the album’s swirling, menacing aura is an appropriate mirror for the turbulent political climate in America. “Ghosts” provides an honest assessment of the times we are living, more so than any other album that is likely to be released in 2008. So what impact did recent world events have on the creative process, I inquire, and how will this impact NIN’s music heading forward?

“Actually, politics bores me these days”, states Reznor matter-of-factly, “people care more about seeing Britney Spears flashing her snatch from the window of a taxi. They’d rather worry about that than about how fucked this planet is. So why should I subject the pain in my soul to the task of conveying emotions that people would rather ignore? I’d rather hang out here.”

Our conversation halts while today’s Indians squad, composed of an unusual juxtaposition of veterans and rookie hopefuls, snuffs out a rally by the opposing team. Between innings, Reznor continues his surprising tale about how “Ghosts” came to be. “About a year ago, I was messing around in the studio, working on a theme for [Indians star center fielder] Grady Sizemore , y’know, something for them to play when he came to bat. It was an exhilarating experience because I had complete and total creative freedom. I didn’t have to worry about pleasing record company suits or publicists, or really anyone other than me and Grady. The project just kind of took off from there. Before I knew it, I’d written 36 tracks.” Feedback from Indians players who were fortunate enough to hear the rough mixes was enthusiastic — maybe too enthusiastic. They urged Reznor to forget about baseball, and instead to funnel his efforts into releasing those themes as a stand-alone album. “At first I was hesitant”, admits Reznor, “but one night I got a call from [Indians reliever] Rafael [Betancourt], and he was practically in tears, telling me how ‘Hurt’ helped him recover himself mentally during his steroid-related suspension, and that all the boys supported me and wanted ‘Ghosts’ to be a widespread release.” The next night, he received another call, this time from Indians manager Eric Wedge. When Reznor expressed doubt about whether his record company would take to the concept, Wedge, who rates “The Downward Spiral” as his #3 album of the 1990’s (behind only “69 Love Songs” and “Maximquaye”) encouraged him to “do a Radiohead”, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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By now the game is complete, with the home team vanquishing yet another unfortunate rival. On the way out, Reznor becomes embroiled in a conversation with a mullet-haired, slightly overweight man wearing flip-flops and a neon green fanny pack. The tails of Reznor’s knee-length coat flap gently in the breeze as they speak. “We would have won it all last year if it wasn’t for Beckett” moans the Mullet Man. The Nine Inch Nails frontman nods in agreement. “Beckett is a performer that can summon a reservoir of black bile from the pit of his guts”, he lectures, “but he’s an inhuman, soullessly empty machine whose frayed back muscles will haunt his charred ego in 2008.” The two men appear to come to a mutual understanding on this point. After agreeing that the team will win their division by five games over the Tigers this year, they part ways with a simple nod and handshake. Afterward, Reznor leaves the small parking lot unmolested. Nobody recognizes him in Winter Haven, and that’s the way he likes it.

His plans for the rest of the day are simple. On this day, just like most other days here in Winter Haven, he’ll take a walk around nearby Lake Lulu, grab some food in the evening with former Stabbing Westward guitarist and current Cubs superfan Walter Flakus, and wake up at noon tomorrow before heading to the game in the early afternoon. Most industry insiders believe that beginning with the so-called “Bartman incident”, Flakus and his former bandmates sank into a depressive funk that has forestalled the highly anticipated Stabbing Westward reunion that fans have clamored for ever since their premature breakup in early 2002. Flakus has flown in for the week, directly from the Cubs’ spring facility in Mesa, Arizona. Speaking briefly on the phone with Flakus earlier in the week, he told me: “I’ve been experiencing some violent mood swings, and it’s been scary, man. But if anyone can keep me chill, it’s Trent.”

The tranquility of Lake Lulu serves as a peaceful and less windy counterpart to the Lake Erie shores that lapped at the heels of his turbulent childhood. Most journalists pigeonhole Reznor as a post-Columbine beacon of slum, which is hardly fair. Perhaps it’s true that if NIN had been around forty years ago, they would have played Altamont and killed the 60’s before the Hells Angels and the Stones had their chance. But here in Winter Haven, I was fortunate and thankful to view him in a different light, one that now seems closer to his natural habitat than does the dank solitude of his dimly lit dungeon studio. Trent Reznor is fighting a fresh set of addictions, and baseball is his perfect drug.

2008 Season Preview: San Francisco Giants

Posted on by Herb Caen · 1 Comment

To continue our Nobel-worthy 2008 season preview, we focus on the San Francisco Giants — and who better to preview this team than the city’s most beloved columnist (and inventor of the terms “beatnik” and “hippie”), Herb Caen? Ol’ “Three Dots” has been out of commission since 1997, but we are proud that he came back for this season preview.

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HEY THERE sports fans! I’ve been following our beloved Jints from my new place of residence, and I guess we’re all pretty broken up about how things have been lately…But in spring, everything looks green and new — except, of course our team. As our friend Willie G. of B’lingame says, “When your manager is the fifth-oldest fella on the team, you might have a problem!” Lovely guy, Willie…Early reports say that new acquisition Aaron Rowand is bringing a new “Warrior Spirit” to the Giants. He sure is full of vim and vigor. But aren’t our team’s biggest needs are calcium and fiber?…I could do this all day — and don’t think I wouldn’t — but I don’t want to bring on the mighty wrath of SF’s Grey Panthers. They won’t relish the idea of being linked with this bunch of hot dogs. (See what I did there? Ha ha, I still got it!)…Thirteen out of fourteen stat-heads surveyed pick this year’s team to finish fifth in the NL West. The fourteenth? Has ’em in sixth place. Ouch.

ASTRALLY, I kid the Giants, but I love the heck out of these scrappy battlers. How could you not love a team where the cleanup hitter has actually lost a footrace to a three-toed sloth?…Sorry to hear about Omar Vizquel’s knee surgery. Sure, he’ll be back on the field in April — but won’t this put a severe damper in his moshing?…Loving the move of Dave Roberts to left, so he can conserve the remnants of his considerable wheels. And with Randy Winn in right, our aged crew might just lead the league in “Stolen Bases by Guys Over 35 Years Old”…And let’s make sure we “shout out” good old Ray Durham, a class act who is still in competition to start at 2B. He better flash a lot of glove and shoe leather, considering his line last year: .218/.295/.343. That’s uglier than the “Last in Show” float at the Gay Pride Parade!

SPEAKING OF ugly, has anyone figured out why Bruce Bochy has white eyelashes on one eye? Goth-a-mundo!…Hilariously, Bochy is mentioned many times in Bill Lee’s memoir “Have Glove, Will Travel.” Our beloved/beleaguered skipper caught the Spaceman down in Venezuela during what was supposed to be a comeback bid by both players. Our buddy K. Gibler-Katsopolous asks, “If they got into a fight down there, would it be ‘The Fracas in Caracas’? Yes it would, Kimmy, yes it would…Actually, I’ve been around so long I remember when Bochy was mostly known for have an unfeasibly large head. Whether or not there’s anything inside that size 8 3/4 cap is another matter…It is being rumbled that Brian Sabean is on the hot seat this year. Apparently he only has six more years to turn things around on this bonny side of the bay, or he’s out on his proverbial sa-butt…Other rumors have Peter Magowan known in certain circles as “The Constant Gardener” because he spilled so much dirt about steroids. No, I don’t think it’s very clever either.

SPEAKING OF which: I guess it’s time to talk about the elephantitis in the room: Barry Bonds…The most prodigious home run hitter in the history of baseball is currently out of a job. This old scribe asks, “Why?” Surely it cannot be just because he is also the biggest jerk in the history of baseball — doesn’t Milton Bradley still have a job? (Yes, and stop calling me Shirley.)…Our correspondent Donna Jo Tanner, the kayakin’est denizen of McCovey Cove, reports that morale is low among her fellow(ette) ball-retrievers. What, no hope in the slugging percentage of a certain Mr. Brian Bocock?…Speaking of which: in a better world, it would be a pretty big deal that 6’5″ rookie Merkin Valdez is bidding fair to find a spot in the bullpen. I’m rooting for this kid — no one likes a big Dominican merkin more than me!

SHOCKINGLY, THE rest of our pitching staff has some youth and some talent to it. Michelle T. of Daly City emails, “Lincecum and Cain, and pray for rain?” Nicely done…Notice how I didn’t mention a certain former Cy Younger with the initials BZ? The City just isn’t feeling his Republican Surfer vibe. If he wants to win the “hearts and minds” of our fanbase, this lefty needs to be a little more, um, lefty. Maybe a foto-op with Barack Obama is indicated?…Word out of the Cactus League is that we finally have a heady youngster in the infield — speedster Eugenio Velez is hitting the ball all over the place and stealing bases like there’s no tomorrow. How long before we trade him to the Marlins?…Bochy is considering starting Eugenio at second or third. What, and displace aged hunk Rich Aurilia? Talk about the “hot corner”!

WELL FRIENDS, it’s time for me to slink on back to heaven. It’s been real, and it’s been fun, and it’s been real fun. You wouldn’t believe the bars up here — but no one up here slings a gimlet as well as the ladies at the Lexington Club in the Mission. I miss you all horribly.

2008 Season Preview: Cincinnati Reds

Posted on by Darren Baker · Leave a comment

The train keeps a-rollin’ here at the Yard Work 2008 Season Preview! Today we present to you the Cincinnati Reds, courtesy of America’s favorite bat-boy, Darren Baker.

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Hello my name is Darren Baker and my dad is famous World Series and Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker but he is now in the Reds who are in Cincinnati. Despite my dad being somewhere in Cincinnati which I think is in Europe near the boot I am still here in California where I live. I am eight years old which is older than I have ever been but I think I might get older pretty soon because that is what happens to you before you die. But I am here to write this because my dad plays manager for the Reds which is a team of baseball players that also plays in Cincinnati.

Last year the Reds did not do well according to my dad. He says that is because they relied too much on guys that clogged up the bases with walks and singles that do not go anywhere. One guy that does this he said is called Adam Dunn and I know I spelled his name right because I asked my dad to check. And he said yeah that is the mother flipping guy that can only hit home runs and take walks but is too slow to be any good but I am stuck with him until the end of the year or I can get him traded for a good player like that Melvin Mora. My dad said that when I play little league which I will do pretty soon he said I will not be able to get a grape slushie cone after the game like the other kids if I do not man up and get aggressive at the plate. So now I am practicing what my dad calls my bat control. I can make contact with pitches that hit the ground and pitches that go behind me. My dad is very proud of me because when he pitches the ball to me and it hits me in the head I just shake it off and rub some dirt on my head. Pretty soon he said I can start wearing a helmet which will be lots of fun.

My dad actually told me there are bunch of kids on the Reds just like me he said. He says their names are Jay Bruce and Joey Votto who sounds like a really fat and funny Italian Mafia guy. My dad does not like young guys too much but he says I am his little man so I know he likes me. My dad says that kids do not know how to play baseball the right way because they are not old enough to know. I heard my dad on the phone talking to some guy he calls Krivsky and I think this is the boss of my dad. He was telling Krivsky that he would prefer to play Scott Hatterberg and Norris Hopper instead because those are the types of guys he likes to play a lot of. I hope he gives the kids a chance to play some though because it is hard for a kid to know how to play the right way if he does not play. But I did not tell my dad that because he is usually right.

My dad is also excited because the team has a lot of young pitchers with what my dad calls upside. There is one pitcher he calls Brandon and another he calls Harang which I think is a real word and not a name and another that is named Homer Bailey and that is funny because I thought pitchers were supposed to not allow players to hit homers but when they hit one it will be like his name! My dad is also happy because he has this pitcher he calls his proven closer that he calls Cordero which I guess is his first name. My dad says he is making ten large which is a lot of large! I remember my dad talking to himself sometimes back when he was playing manager with Chicago when he thought I was playing with my Nintendo and he would talk about his proven closer in Chicago called Ryan Dempster and how he was not any good because he did not man up to bring it and throw like he was born with some. I do not know what that means but I am sure I am born with some and will bring it when I am told to man up by my dad. I hope that Cordero will man up for my dad and his ten large too.

I kind of remember spending some time with some of the young pitchers my dad liked in Chicago. I do not remember their names but my dad told me that I sometimes hurt them by pulling their arms really hard sometimes or getting them angry and making them throw more pitches than they should have. I am sorry about this Chicago so please do not hurt the Bartman for what happened. But Cincinnati does not have to worry about me hurting any more pitchers because I am too old to play around like that. I am going to spend lots of time instead with Ken Griffey Junior because he is a lot of fun. I hope that when I visit my dad Ken Griffey Junior and I can run around and he can give me piggy back rides and let me ride his leg like what my dad says is something called a big white-bellied tick. I am looking forward to that!

So to help me with this report I am writing I asked my dad to give me some stats to help me with this. My dad asked me what the flip do I know about stats and I told him it was something I heard about while spending time with him while he played baseball manager. My dad got really angry and snapped his toothpick in two with his teeth! He told me that stats do not tell you anything about baseball because baseball is not a numbers game. He said a numbers game is something that you do when you are an overweight Italian Mafia guy and not a real ballplayer. Numbers he said are what ruined him in Chicago because people were always talking about numbers of pitches and numbers of walks and it got him very frustrated when all he wanted to do was play baseball and spend time with his favorite little man. And not Neifi he said laughing.

He told me that the only number that matters is the number under the W which is wins. And that numbers do not get you wins because wins come from in here he said pointing to his boobie. And here he said pointing to his zipper next to the hole he burned into his favorite pair of pants that time we were going to Sonic for some cheesecake poppers and the cigarette he was smoking flew back into the car after he threw it and it ended up burning his bait and tackle pretty good he said after swearing a lot and making me promise not to tell mommy. He said that if I ever talk about stats again he will leave me on the side of the road with nothing but a wish sandwich and a pair of underwear to my name. Then he hugged me and gave me a raspberry on my belly and I laughed because it was tickling me. I love my dad very much and I think the Reds in Cincinnati will win lots of games and a World Series or two because of my dad.

Thank you for reading this by Darren Baker.

2008 Season Preview: Chicago Cubs

Posted on by Haruki Murakami · 1 Comment

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Continuing our stunningly comprehensive series, we are proud to welcome award-winning hipster-bait Japanese author Haruki Murakami. His novels include Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Shore; he has also published non-fiction and about one million short stories in The New Yorker. He checks in from the Cubs spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona.

I wake up in the middle of the night. Actually, it is not the middle of the night — it is 3:28 a.m. That’s not really the middle of the night, is it? Somewhat more like three-quarters of the way through the night. I mean, depending on when you get up. Personally, I’m an early riser. Always have been. Why sleep late?

I am in a hotel room in Arizona. I usually live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I am here to write about the Chicago Cubs baseball team. This is because a famous Japanese baseball player, Kosuke Fukudome, is now playing for the Cubs. Fukudome was a pretty big deal when he played for the Chunichi Dragons, a real star player. A lot of his Japanese fans were sad when he jumped to the Cubs, but I didn’t care. Why should I? If he wants to go to the U.S. and make millions of dollars, why shouldn’t he?

Because I can’t sleep, I go into the other room and turn on the hotel television. I keep it low so as not to disturb the other guests. I put on ESPN, but I don’t really watch it very carefully. It’s just the same old thing, over and over; this team beat that team, this pundit says this other team should have beaten a fourth team. Someone named Buster has very strong opinions about something or another. I don’t know any of the teams, really, and it seems pretty pointless. In fact, I end up putting the sound on mute and putting on some music. First, some Mozart, but that doesn’t really seem to suit the occasion. Then I play my favorite Beatles album, Rubber Soul. I play “Norwegian Wood” over and over, ten or twelve times. I love that song.

I don’t really know much about the Cubs, or the Dragons either as long as we’re talking about it. In fact, I don’t really understand baseball much. I know the basic rules, of course, and I’ve been to some games. But I just never got into it. But someone’s gotta shovel all that cultural snow, and I was the guy who answered the phone when Ward York called. Everybody knows that when Ward York tells you to do something, you bow quickly and do that thing.

Many people think Fukudome will be the most crucial part of the Cubs roster this year. The team hasn’t really changed at all from last year, when they won the NL Central and then got killed in the playoffs. The only new additions are Fukudome and a young catcher named Geovany Soto. And, since virtually every expert is picking the Cubs to go to the playoffs again, a lot is riding on these two players. Will they do well? Will they disappoint?

I have no idea, and by now it is 4 a.m. and I am hungry. So I decide to make some spaghetti. I like spaghetti; it is an easy meal to fix, and it tastes good. What could be wrong with that? I am just about ready to boil the water and slice the garlic when I realize that I am in a hotel room in Arizona instead of my cozy apartment in Cambridge. No spaghetti for me. I go back to sleep.

When I awake, the sun is blazing into my room. Time to go shovel that snow. I throw on my Levis and a Hawaiian shirt, and take my flat plastic hotel room key with me. On the way to the elevator, I walk past a man wearing a shabby sheep costume. At first, it seems like this guy I knew in Kyoto once upon a time, a guy who wasn’t really alive. Then I realize that this other guy is just an insane Cubs fan wearing a shabby sheep costume. Apparently this happens all the time.

I get to HoHoKam park and show my credentials. I am escorted onto the field by a beautiful young woman who says her name is Arabella. She has the most exquisite ears I have ever seen. I want to talk to her about her ears but instead I start thinking about Lou Piniella. He is the manager of the Cubs. What does a manager do? Tells his players to play well, I imagine, and yells at the umpire when he is convinced there has been a bad call. Other than that, I don’t know. Piniella looks like he’d be really good at yelling at umpires, or his players, or his cat. I bet if his cat peed near the windowseat, for example, Lou would give that cat the most blistering tongue-lashing it had ever received.

When I get done with this reverie, the girl with the perfect ears is gone. I look up and there is Kosuke Fukudome. He is swinging two bats at the same time, a neat trick that he must have learned here in Arizona. I am about to go up and talk with him but suddenly he is up at the plate, now holding only one bat. I blink and rub my eyes and suddenly Fukudome is on second base. Everyone is clapping and laughing except for the pitcher; he throws his hat on the ground and stomps off in a huff. His uniform reads “Lilly.” When I look back at second base, Fukudome isn’t there. Maybe he is just that fast; maybe he is a ghost; maybe he does not really exist. In any case, it is clear I won’t be interviewing him today.

I hear a curious “Woo Woo!” sound behind me and turn to see the Sheep Man again. I ask him what we should be looking for this year from the Cubs, and he replies in a very curious manner.

“Nobodyknowsifthiswholethingisgonnawork. SureRamirezandLeeandSorianoaredangeroushitters. ButTheriotandDeRosaandPiemakeforaprettyweakhittingmiddle. Zambrano’sarmmightfalloffandafterthatit’sasdeadlyassaringasonthesubway. RichHillisjustaguynamedRichHill. Soyeahthereareholesallovertheplace. StillweareintheComedyCentralsothereisalwaysagoodchance. UnlessyouareSt.Louis.”

Just as soon as he hissed these strange words, the Sheep Man was gone. Later, I came to realize that the Sheep Man doesn’t really exist, except on some other plane of reality that only I can access. Yet he lives on, in a way, in the form of all the tourists from Iowa who come to see their beloved Cubbies once or twice a summer, no matter what the team’s record is. With a revenue stream like that, and a guaranteed monster crowd showing up for every home game so they can see Jeremy Piven or Billy Corgan or Chaka Khan singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, these Sheep Fans are helping ensure that the powers that be will do just fine, even if the Cubs end up in last place every year forever.

Then I polished some animal skulls and met another girl that doesn’t really exist and spent a week in a big hole and heard an old soldier talk about skinning a man to death and heard the story of a wrinkled lady who made out with a teenage girl and then I had sex with the wrinkled lady. Then I lost my cat and girlfriend and looked for them both, met a runaway named Kafka who went back in time to help write the song that he was named for, spurned the love of an alien, held up a fast food place, met some psychic twins, and trafficked in some more Western pop culture references. Cubs will win 84 games and finish in second place.

2008 Season Preview: Boston Red Sox

Posted on by Stewart ONan · 1 Comment

In 2004, best-selling authors Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan teamed up to write Faithful, a day-by-day account of the Boston Red Sox championship season as experienced through the eyes of two diehard fans. Now that Boston has once again climbed to the summit of their sport, we here at Yard Work are proud to re-team these two literary titans for more Sox talk in today’s installment of our 2008 Season Preview.

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STEWART O’NAN (SO): Yeah, this winning stuff. I could definitely get used to it. 2004 was all nervous jitters and Pepto Bismol, waiting for that inevitable Red Sox Luck to come back and bite us. But through it all — the Vlad Guerrero grand capicola, Schill’s bloody ankle sheath, Bellhorn’s homer off the guy in the stands, A-Rod’s slap, Manny tripping the grass fantastic — the Red Sox did something they’ve never done before. They persevered. Hell, they thrived. It was like watching Crispin Glover finally ball up his fist and cold-cock Biff Tannen in the first Back to the Future movie. And after the roller-coaster ride of that year — and what a ride! — 2007 was a breeze. Down 3-1? Feh — we were down 3-zip to the Yankees. Rockies come back within a run? Meh — we were down twice against the Yankees, once with only one out between us and going golfing. I’ll admit it — when Little Papi threw that final pitch in Game 4, I wasn’t wringing my hands and cursing my god. Anymore than usual, anyway. No, I was strutting around. I was saying: “Here we are, baseball, the new dynasty in town, come and get us.” And it felt really good.

STEPHEN KING (SK): You know what was even better than see the Sox prevail yet again? Seeing the Yankees finally get the karmic comeuppance they’ve been asking for all these years. How great was it seeing those midges swarm Jacobs Field and nestle right into the meaty neck folds of the Next Big (And I Mean Big) Thing to hit the Big Apple? I swear, I’m not a violent man, but every time I turned on the YES Network, and I heard those half-dead choads go on about how this kid can throw 500 MPH and clean the Aegean Stables with a 16 ounce bottle of Poland Spring, it’s all I could do to keep myself from breaking into one of their homes and making with the wetwork. I’m talking about full-on splayed-out Hannibal Lecter slice and dice. High school. Dull scalpel. Earthworm.

SO: Yeah, and it doesn’t stop there. You see this thing about the new Joba? Hey, maybe we can wait until the old Joba actually becomes a bonafide Joba before we start giving out Hall of Fame plaques. Meaning that throwing all of twenty-four innings doesn’t mean all that much. I saw Matt Young pitch well for twenty-four innings once. I also saw a monkey write As You Like It by throwing feces at a Compaq laptop. Folks gotta realize that it’s those other hundred-plus frames that are the problem. Either way, I guess it shows how bad things are for the Evil Empire, when they have to rely on a bunch of unproven kids to pull their overpaid bacons out of the fire every year.

SK: Just to show you how stats and stats alone don’t mean a thing — this place claims that Joba’s ERA+ (which is some averaging ERA thing) from last year is 1192. Josh Beckett’s ERA+? 145. Guess who I’d rather have on my team?

SO: Becks straight from the tap! That guy, what a champ. A consumate professional, and a Dirt Dog like good old Trotter. He really stepped up last year and showed the world what he could do. If only Tommy Brady was as clutch. Watching him pitch in the playoffs was like, I dunno, someone seeing Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa, or being on set as Mel Brooks directed Young Frankenstein. He was beyond fantastic. (Sorry for all the pop culture references — been reading this great columnist on ESPN.com called The Sports Guy. HUGE Boston fan. I heard someone call him “the Stephen King of sports journalism.” You should check him out!) Between Becks’ pitching, and Mikey Lowell’s big bat, I think it’s safe to say that the Red Sox won that Marlins trade going away.

SK: Speaking of Lowell — he’s a real Red Sox guy. I’m so glad Theo & Company bit the bullet and brought him back, because he’s worth every penny. Just like Tek. Hell, even MORE than Tek. Not to disparage the Captain — without him, we’re playing all sorts of Rich Gedman wanna-bes. But Lowell’s leadership, his charisma in the clubhouse, all those intangibles — he could hit like Ted Williams’ frozen head, and he’d still be worth the whatever-million he’s getting. The fact that he can take folks yard (like a certain heavy-set Yankee phenom) just means he’s a steal at twice the price. Unlike some former National League players I won’t mention by name.

SO: Aw, Steve-o, you’re not talking about Drewpy, are you? Even after that HUGE olive loaf he bashed against the Cleveland Indians?

SK: Yes, it is he of whom I’m pissed off about, verily forsooth and all that. Everything surrounding him and his coming to Boston stank like wet rabid dog. I didn’t like it when they gave eleventy million to an injury-prone clubhouse cancer. I didn’t like it when his batting average resembled the blood alcohol level of a teetotaller and he walked less than an 8th place hitter in the NL. I didn’t like it when balls that Trotsky would’ve caught went over his head or through his rickety wickets. And I sure as shit on the soles of my Converse didn’t like it even when Mr. RBI Guy finally, after six months of clutch double plays and pop-ups, came through with a big RBI hit. The only way I could like this gentleman and his dispassionate style of play even less is if he was of French-Canadian descent and had a fastball that was straighter than Colin Farrell. (Hi there, I read ESPN.com’s Sports Guy too!) If John Henry can extend a coveted Red Sox Nation membership to one of George’s broken condoms, then he can surely issue that overpaid chump in RF a Get The Hell Out of Fenway Right Now card.

SO: Wow. Remind me not to ask you about Juilo The Lugo. Anyway, what do you think about our chances this year? I’m going to miss Schill’s presence in the rotation, and I hope Becks’ back isn’t shot, but I’m sure Lest and Buch and even Loco Tavares can do just fine in their stead. Manny being Manny is good for thirty-thirty (that’s thirty HRs, and thirty helmet-flips rounding third base), and Papi being Papi is good for half-a-century and all sorts of clutch godliness. Youk, Peddi Crack, and now The Mayor off the bench? I’ll be disappointed if they average LESS than five runs a game.

Also, count me in among the many folks that can’t wait to see what J-Ells can do for us over the course of 162 games, as much as I’m going to miss Coco Puffs’ defense and resplendant afro. And, while I’m here, kudos to the front office for holding their cards close to their chest and waiting for someone to come up with an offer that actually matches Coco’s worth. It’s not like the 3rd best center fielder in the game (behind only Carlos Beltran and Grady Sizemore) (OK, and Ichiro, too) (and maybe Torii Hunter and Vernon Wells and Aaron Rowand and that speedy guy on the Rockies and some other guys) will come cheap.

SK: Well, let’s do the math. The best pitching staff in the game plus the best hitting lineup in the game plus the best bullpen in the game plus the best manager in the game plus the best front office in the game plus the best farm system in the game plus (of course) the best fans in the game equals another World Series ring? I’ll buy that. And I’m sure someone at the Ministry of Yankee Truth is working double OT to try and put some pinstripe-positive spin on this incident involving a Yankee fan getting his just desserts and paint us fine folks in the greatest Nation in all of sports as the sort of boorish fist-first louts that lurk in the bowels of The House That No, No, Nanette Built. Hope that poor jerk gets hazard pay, too.

SO: Meanwhile, the Yankees will have to distract their fans with super-loud renditions of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” to make them not realize that they’re paying over twenty million dollars for a first baseman that hits like Carlos Quintana and fields like Billy Buckner, and another fifteen or so to a pitcher that can’t even remember how many times he cheated. Oh, and look whose fanbase is harping on that Red Sox scout misunderstanding. Figures they’d leap all over that tawdry little tidbit and ride it into a fake sunset. I can’t wait for the season to finally start.

SK: You said it, Stew-Bot. Boston (by way of Bangor), you’re my home. (Can someone get Ryan Adams or Vampire Weekend to cover this already?)

2008 Season Preview: Baltimore Orioles

Posted on by Scott Templeton · 4 Comments

Continuing our award-baiting preview of the 2008 Major League Baseball season, Yard Work is proud to present Scott Templeton‘s report on the Baltimore Orioles. Formerly of the Baltimore Sun, Mr. Templeton is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist currently contributing to the New Republic and the New York Times. We hope you enjoy his unique and enlightened perspective on our national pasttime.

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While millions of Baltimorians suffer the cool winter chill coming off the scenic Chesapeake Bay waters, the Baltimore Orioles frolic underneath the shining sun and chirping gulls hovering benevolently over Fort Lauderdale Stadium. But as these grown men run and play catch atop a field that fuels the dreams of children all across America, a stormfront slowly gathers in the distance, threatening to tear this once promising combination of veteran experience and youthful exuberance asunder, collateral damage in baseball’s never-ending war against the league’s orange-feathered stepchildren.

Earlier in February, the move that people around the team feared would come finally came — staff anchor Erik Bedard, one of the best young hurlers in the American League, if not all of baseball, was traded to the Orioles’ long-time inter-divisional foe, the Seattle Mariners. And what did they get in return for this dominant southpaw, a coveted trade chit during this past off-season? Outfield prospect Adam Jones, 31-year-old reliever George Sherrill, and three minor league pitchers. This after making a quantity-not-quality trade involving embittered and embattled shortstop Miguel Tejada. And now there’s on-again, off-again discussions regarding shipping off second baseman and team leader Brian Roberts for pennies on the the dollar to a perennial World Series pretender, the Chicago Cubs. Shouldn’t a team with this sort of talent be getting more players, instead of getting rid of the players they have, some members of the Orioles asked themselves? It was enough to make the team’s veterans sick to their stomachs.

Aubrey Huff signed with the Orioles prior to last season, seeing an opportunity to be part of a movement towards the top of the AL East, a lopsided division lorded over by the teams with the two largest payrolls in all of baseball. “I was thinking, you can take your A-Rods and your Big Papis and stick them in your jock,” said Huff over a piping hot platter of cheese fries after the day’s workouts. “I’ll take my chances with the guys that Baltimore had — Kevin Millar, Rodrigo Lopez, Jeff Conine, Kris Benson. These guys were salt-of-the-earth ballplayers. Guys that fought in the trenches for their spots. You give me 25 of those sort of guys, and I’ll win more often than not. But these kids? What do they know about winning? They’re too busy busting a nut in some girl’s mouth to worry about winning. I got stories about that Markakis that’ll put a crease in your baklava, and if I wasn’t the stand-up guy that I am, I’d spill my guts right here and now. Stupid [expletive] kids.”

For the O’s last year, the “not” occured with an alarming regularity, a regularity that disappointed both players and players’ wives. While Kris Benson was a key pickup prior to the 2006 season — stolen from the New York Mets for a now-bittersweet song — it was Benson’s beautiful wife, Anna, that some people joked made the acquisition worthwhile. I spoke to Ms. Benson via cellphone, shortly before her husband was invited to the Phillies’ camp as a non-roster invitee. As usual, she pulled no punches, offering bitter truths in that alluring out-of-breath husky croon of hers, channeling Marlene Dietrich by way of Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. “You know, I was so [expletive] happy when the New York Mess — oh, yeah, baby, that’s it — I was so happy when that [expletive] of a team gave us our freedom. I mean, [expletive], the Orioles were — oh GOD yes, right THERE — I mean they were pretty good once, right? Like, sometime after my great-great-grandma was born? And, yeah, I was looking forward to Kris giving me a tour under the bleachers, if you catch my — [expletive], did I say to take off the clips yet? Did I? That’s it. Get Mommy the mace. I said shut your mouth, gimp, and get Mommy the [expletive] mace!”

Disappointment was never an option for a team that bolstered their potent veteran core with off-season acquisitions that included the likes of Huff, Jaret Wright, Jay Payton, and Danys Baez. Sam Perlozzo, the respected skipper expected to build off the team’s 70-win campaign in 2006, was a casualty of the team’s misfortunes. He was let go after amassing a disappointing 29-40 record in the season’s first three months, epitomized by a heart-breaking loss to the Boston Red Sox on Mother’s Day. “I still can’t figure out how it happened,” Perlozzo says, sitting outside his modest Winnebago, taking sorrowful sips from a lukewarm can of Miller Lite. Up five runs to the eventual world champions with one out in the 9th inning, starting pitcher Jeremy Guthrie allowed Coco Crisp to reach base on his 91st pitch, thanks to an error by battery mate Ramon Hernandez. Sensing his young ace was running out of gas, Perlozzo pulled Guthrie, and the Red Sox struck for six runs.

“Almost every night,” Perlozzo said, “I wake up in a cold sweat, replaying the events of that game over and over, and I ask myself, is there anything I could have done to change the outcome of the game?” He pauses, wiping sweat from his upper lip and taking another swig from his beer. The can is nestled in a Toledo Mud Hens beer cozy. “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything I could’ve done. But, you know, given what happened with the Patriots and SpyGate, and given how the game turned out, I have to wonder if the Red Sox were taping us. Maybe baseball should look into that, instead of all this steroid business.”

Perlozzo’s interim replacement, bullpen coach Dave Trembley, saw the team right their wrongs momentarily and for a brief yet glorious stretch play ball above baseball’s Mendoza Line, the .500 mark. And then the stand-in became the leading man, and before the ink could even dry on the contract, the curtain came down hard on the O’s and their matinee idol. Only hours after reintroducing Trembley as the new official manager, the team celebrated on the field by losing to the hapless Texas Rangers 30-3. The last-place Rangers were the first team in 110 years of baseball to score that many runs. Slap hitting journeyman infielder Ramon Vazquez cranked two home runs, while unheralded rookie Jarrod Saltalamacchia blasted two of his own on his way to collecting seven RBIs. Four pitchers, including mercurial hot-headed phenom Daniel Cabrera, allowed at least six earned runs each. In previous years, such performances could be just chalked up to growing pains, necessary speed bumps on the road to future success. But now with Bedard gone to the rainy flannel confines of Seattle, it is up to Cabrera to finally take the wheel and become the staff’s ace and stopper. And he’ll have to do it without his beloved mentor, Leo Mazzone.

Mazzone, the highly-touted pitching coach for the Atlanta Braves, was brought in specifically to work with high-ceiling pitchers such as Cabrera, with the hopes that he would work the same magic he worked on such greats as Maddux, Smoltz, and Avery. Unfortunately, Mazzone’s frustrations with Cabrera, and the Orioles, were all too apparent to people that frequented his LiveJournal weblog, http://rockingroller.livejournal.com. In an entry dated September 8, 2007, with a mood of “perplexed,” and while listening to The Cure’s “Lovesong,” Mazzone typed the following:

This goshdarn kid, I have no idea how he even puts on his pants in the morning. Every dya I try to tell him, “strike one strike one strike one.” And every time he takes the mound its ball one ball two line drive up the gap five RBIs for jason tynre or some other hussling stringbean. And I try to tell him aagain and again strike one strike one. And he give s me those crazy eyes. The sort of eyes I got from that six-fingered nutbar that one time I took a swig out of his waterbottle by mistake (and like heck that was water). That “dont mess with me homles” look. its the same look I saw when that goshdarn coco crisp made him balck. Im happy that Pedroia didnt get too hurt by DC losing his goshdar n mind, but im really wondering what the hey Im doing in thsi place if I cant get anyone to listen to me. Im gonna call Bobby and talk about ity. I hope I dont cry like last time ;_; I hate sam SO MUCH right now. Were never gonna compete with the yankees and red sox, are we?

Unless things change in the near future, Baltimore’s chances of contending are indeed slim. In baseball’s eyes, Baltimore is one of the sport’s forgotten children, another casualty of war between the haves and have-nots. While the Red Sox and the New York Yankees foot bills that would bankrupt Bill Gates, the Orioles are forced to make due with a splintered fan-base (thanks to the popularity of Washington Nationals) and diminished returns on what was once the crown jewel of baseball parks. Combine that with the continued portrayal of Baltimore on TV and in the news as a city that’s home to more drug dealers per square inch than a hip-hop video shoot, and it’s a wonder that the team’s been able to be as competitive as they are. As it stands, the team is taking the field in 2008 looking to win 80 games for the first time since their AL East divisional title in 1997. And they’re going to attempt this feat without some of their most beloved superstars.

First baseman Kevin Millar’s contagious enthusiasm belies his 36 years on this Earth, but when it comes to shooting straight, he doesn’t pull punches. “You know, when they got rid of Tejada, I was like, well it’s about time. That guy, always running around, showing off his B-12 needles and what not. I don’t need that garbage in my face, get that out of here. That’s addition by subtraction. But Bedard? Come on, man, he’s like our only good pitcher? What the hell are we going to do now? I can’t hit three homers every game, and I sure as hell can’t throw straight. And now they’re talking about getting rid of Brian Roberts, too? I mean, sure, he juiced, but come on, who didn’t? That guy’s like our lead-off hitter! They better not ask me to lead off. I got a World Series ring, and I sure as [expletive] didn’t get it hitting leadoff. I got folks from all sorts of teams, teams that win a few games? They’re calling me, asking me if, hey, Kev, you wanna play for a winner again? You think my visit to Boston last year was just for kicks? Think again, broheems. Think again.”

One might think that such dissent and disinterest would be a worry for the team’s coaching staff or front office, or even their notorious owner, Peter Angelos. If they are worried, they’re aren’t telling the press. When approached for comment, the only thing this reporter received was an unofficial statement from an unidentified member from the front office. Here is the statement in its entirety: “Mr. Angelos — please do not dump full cups of coffee into your trash bin!! I tried this request with you before but you continue to ignore me and dump cold coffee into your trash bin!! It makes the bag wet and causes the bag to spill all over my new shoes!! Unless you are choosing to upgrade from the used WaWa bags you are making us use, Please do not do this again!!!” Only time will tell whether Angelos and the Orioles will learn their lesson.

2008 Season Preview: Kansas City Royals

Posted on by 1111111kcrtickets.com · 1 Comment

Welcome to the latest installment of Yard Work’s 2008 Season Preview. Today’s preview comes from a currently defunct weblog [concerts.1111111kcrtickets.com/blog] whose content we assume is free for us to cut and paste into our own online publication that we do not consider a “blog” in the slightest. We’re using an incongruous pic of good old Max Headroom to accompany this post because we here at YWHQ are all children of the 80s, and we love to show pic-linking Flickr-ignorant bloggers and message boarders that we have more to offer their shiftless asses than second-hand candids of Larry Bowa and Anna Benson. Also, The Lawnmower Man was garbage. Enjoy!

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Kansas City Royals – You Love Them!

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2008 Season Preview: Atlanta Braves

Posted on by Alexyss K. Tylor · Leave a comment

Welcome to Part Four of our continuing 2008 Season Preview. Today’s topic is the Atlanta Braves, and today’s writer explains who the hell she is in the very first paragraph, so read on!

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Hello there everyone. My name is Alexyss K. Tylor, and I am the author of the best-selling book, and host of the popular public access television show VAGINA POWER. As a native of Atlanta, and a long time fan of the Atlanta Braves, I am glad that Yard Work has given me this opportunity to educate the general public that might not be aware of the female experience through the prism of baseball.

You see, baseball itself is an extension of the male sexual experience, and through understanding what the man is attempting to express about himself through the hitting and the pitching of baseball, we can gain a better understanding of what it is like for a woman when she is continually tempted with the prospect of having a penis subjugate her power. Also, ladies, we all know the temptation to fall into lust — not love — with these fine athletes is near impossible to resist. If you’re going to fall into these traps, you need to know who’s got a real hard fastball and who’s got that played-out Viagra dick in their pants. Just ’cause they keep their pants nice and tight doesn’t mean their game’s tight, and you gotta realize that before you’re left behind with two kids and no money while playboy files off to San Diego and falls into that West Coast snatch trap.

First of all, the most important thing in baseball is hitting the ball. To do that, these physically fit specimen swing these large, hard, wooden bats at small little balls. Clearly you don’t need a PhD to figure out that the bat is simply a physical manifestation of a man’s PENIS POWER, and that the ball represents the ovum, which represents a woman’s fertility and innate VAGINA POWER. By hitting the ball, the man is subjugating the woman, denying her a place within the womb that is represented by the baseball glove, and trying his best to control her by the only way some men know how to deal with women — by saying “get your beautiful feminine aura off my dick”.

You can tell what sort of man a baseball player is by the way he treats the ball. Someone like Chipper Jones — a man notorious for fathering babies with Hooters waitresses that aren’t his wife — treats women the way he treats an old jock strap. He uses them up and gets rid of them as quick as you can. Ladies, you want to keep your distance from sluggers like him, Jeff Francouer, Mark Texeira, and Brian McCann. Some might things chick dig the long ball, but these chicks better watch out when it comes to these long ballers. Whatever they can do with a bat on the field, they can do with a bat off the field, and that’s only going to get you in trouble. One day, you’re a vibrant, sexual being, radiating all this gorgeous energy, and then one of these men is gonna break your ass down and make you into some sort of jelly-kneed sex addict, ready to drop your drawers and touch your toes for anything with a bump in the crotch. And a man with a real TV eye like Francouer is even worse, because on top of playing your clitoris like a bongo drum, he’s impatient at the plate, which can only mean he’s going to dump you out the back of his Maserati before you even asked him about satisfying your needs.

If you’re going to find yourself a man that will allow you to tap into your VAGINA POWER, then you want someone like new outfielder Mark Kotsay, or old first baseman Scott Thorman. These guys couldn’t get a hit if they were Tina Turner, and while you might think that means they’re impotent, the fact that they’re trying to get hits means they just need a woman that can show them how to get into what you might call a proper batting stance. Also good for a little stop, drop, and roll are the kids, like that Kelly Johnson. You know he’s got potential to just wreck a woman that don’t know what to look out for, but he’s also in the perfect state of young mind — the “premature penis position” — for some PYT to come and set him straight.

Now where hitting is clearly a penile extension, the act of pitching is purely ejaculatory. Even baseball announcers know this, when they talk about players throwing “seeds” — in the hands of the pitcher, the ball is clearly what scientists call the spermatozoa, trying to home in on the womb (again, the catcher glove). Some of you might wonder how the ball can represent two different things to the hitter and pitcher. To you folks, I ain’t got a damn thing to say, because if you’re asking this ignorant ass question, then you don’t know a damn thing about baseball.

Pitchers, unlike hitters, are more in tune with the flowering aspect of womenhood, so you know how it goes. Staff ace Tim Hudson is a man that will treat you right. If you want something that’s low on quantity but high on quality, Rafael Soriano might be the right man for the job. John Smoltz might, too, but you gotta watch out for those Bible thumpers, because they might try to play that rhythm-method game because rubbers offend Him, and you gotta cut that shit off like Lorena Bobbitt before you end up with a Smoltz in your belly. If he’s coming at you with the Our Fathers and all that, tell your man to wrap it up or take it outside. And, please, sisters, if you ever find yourself staring down into the eyes of that squat-faced Mike Hampton person, do NOT go there. Never mind that any full-figured woman would break that poor little midget after just five seconds — that boy hasn’t pitched any good game in five years, and for good reason! A word of advice: when you hear that so-and-so is suffering from a “groin pull,” that means he’s down with STD, and that’s all I got to say about that.

Now where it regards the actual baseball season, it doesn’t take a dummy to realize that the Braves are the team to beat. They were the team to beat when they were lead by that unfortunately beautiful brother Dave Justice (and while I’m here, what he did to Halle Berry was inexcusable, and I hope he lays some pipe in some NY barrio full of nasty ass crabs and worms that’ll make his trouser snake freeze up and turn sandy). They were the team to beat when had a rotation of Smoltz and Maddux and Glavine. They were the team to beat when they had skinny Andruw and Marcus and that Russ Ortiz with that fertility statue baby-mama gut. And I don’t care if the Mets got them Carlos Santana or Johann Sebastian Bach, and the Phillies get another MVP or ten, because to get to the top of the NL East, you have to go through Atlanta. And if you’ve ever tried to drive through Atlanta, you know that ain’t very easy.