Hometown Hero

Today, during the first game of the Red Sox's double header against the Rays, the broadcasters were talking about the emails they had received at Soxbooth. People from South Dakota and Wyoming invited them out to visit. They had heard from The Dakotas, Utah, Tacoma... even Portland, Oregon! "Of course," they added, "the fans in Portland are mighty proud of Jacoby Ellsbury."

True story! We ARE proud of our Jacoby! Of course, he isn't really a Portlander, seeing as he grew up in the town of Madras. But Oregon is small enough - and has produced so few Major Leaguers - that any connection with the state will do.

And Jacoby is Oregonian in a big way: Oregon-born, Oregon-raised - even Oregon-educated, as he stayed in-state for college (OSU). He's probably even more Oregonian than I am.

Oh, yes, we love him. Some members of my family - namely, the other "contributors" to this blog - went to Jacoby's welcome home parade in Madras in 2007.

Francesca took this picture. She was actually that close to Jacoby.

Apparently it really was a hometown affair; F and G say they felt a little out of place, like intruders. But what an experience.

Anyway, I thought it was time for a tribute to the guy who means so much to Massachusetts and Oregon - and all of Red Sox Nation. After all, he just had a birthday on Friday - he's 26 now.

So, Jacoby, this one's for you. Hope you have many, many more years of excellent baseball in your future.

And I hope they're in Boston.

Baseball on the Radio

Tonight, I'm listening to the Sox game. (As opposed to watching it.)

I used to listen to games all the time. That was mainly out of necessity: In Portland, before mlb.tv, there was only Gameday Audio and the occasional national broadcast. Other than that, if you were out of area, the Red Sox were not available on television. You could only listen to it over the radio.

In 2000, I spent summer afternoons, from 4 until dinnertime, upstairs in the stuffy study with a scorecard or my journal, listening to the Red Sox. Okay, not every afternoon, but a huge amount of them. It's a very pleasant memory. Sleepy warmth and good baseball - I especially remember a come-from-behind win on a double off the Monster by Nomar against the Texas Rangers. It was a sweet summer, except for all of the drama with Carl Everett and Pedro getting punched by Gerald Williams of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and barely missing a no-hitter against them.

Lately, though, I've been watching a lot more games. It gets cheaper every year on mlb.com, and it's nice to know what players look like, to see how they run, how they catch, what their wind-up or batting stance looks like. I heard about Jacoby Ellsbury scoring from 2nd on a wild pitch, but didn't see it - didn't see him play - until months after it had happened. Since then, I've preferred watching to listening.

But there are other benefits to listening to the games. For one thing, I like the announcers better. For another thing, you learn more. The announcers talk more - there's more color commentary and therefore more background information. And I like the commercials, because they're local - to Boston. It makes me feel closer.

Coincidentally, I was surfing the web today, looking for updates about the Portland Beavers, and found this Dwight Jaynes post about building a casino by the Rose Quarter. At first I shuddered. Can you think how horrific that would be? Whenever there's a concert at the RQ the traffic is insane. Imagine having concerts at the RQ AND a casino? And those horrible lights? And the very idea... I kind of agreed with Gov. Kulongoski when he refused to let a casino in Portland to fund MLB, even though I really wanted an MLB team. He was right: baseball and gambling don't mix, as Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose know too well. It was... in bad taste.

But then, while thinking about baseball on the radio, I remembered my favorite commercial: The Foxwood's Casino jingle. "Take a chance, make it happen/roll the dice, fingers snapping/Spin the wheel, round and round we go-o/life is short, life is sweet/grab yourself a front-row seat/and let's meet, and have a ba-all/at the wonder of it all" and then the background people chant, "Meet me at FOXwoods."

Scary, the things we remember, but I loved that jingle, and I was sad when they changed it. I would pick that to sing in a karaoke bar for sure.

And then I realized: there's one casino-baseball connection that isn't so horrible.

Kind of tacky, and really not something you want to associate with baseball.

But I think I'd rather have a casino and baseball than no baseball at all.

Putting the "Home" in "Home Run"

Today was the Minor League All-Star Game Home Run Derby, and boy, what a show.

It was easy to surpass expectations, because ours were relatively low. When the announcer said, "Who doesn't love a long ball?" the three of us looked at each other carefully. Sure, we love a Big Papi Dinger, or a the occasional grand slam that shakes you to your gut. Personally, I was always a big fan of the Brian Daubach come-from-behind shot.

But in general we're not big fans of the home run. They're a little boring. They're exciting, but it's kind of a cheap thrill. A showy, long home run does not seem like good sportsmanship.

The Home Run Derby, however, started with excitement and kept it going all the way through.

It opened with two local high schoolers. The first, Kevin Taylor of Sunset High School, neatly lined eight balls over the right field fence. Eight home runs ended up being the most of any player in the first round. One of these eight was powerful enough to just brush the MAC club balcony and win a free Oregon slider for everyone in the ballpark.

Kinda like that time another Oregonian, Jacoby Ellsbury, won a free taco for every person in the country. (But that's a different story.)

Taylor advanced to the second round, which has to be one of the greatest gifts a guy can get on his 18th birthday, along with Terry Evans (Salt Lake Bees), Portland Beaver Chad Huffman and Shelley Duncan of the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Yankees, who we soon recognized from certain MLB games between the Sox and Yankees.

This led to lots of booing from the stands (okay, granted, there was a little cheering, too).

The man behind me leaned forward and asked, "So, tell me, why does Portland hate that guy so much?"

"Well, because really, most of us are Red Sox fans," I replied, "or, at the very least, Yankee-haters!"

A quick consultation of wikipedia told us of Duncan's writing negative comments about the Red Sox in a 10-year-old Boston fan's notebook, in addition to spiking Tampa Bay's Akinori Iwamura. We booed with increased enthusiasm.

Taylor did not fare so well in the second round and was unable to get a single ball over the fence. Still, his total of eight was third only to Duncan (nine in two rounds), and Huffman (10).

Duncan started the finals and managed only one home run on four outs. His last at-bat sent a long, high ball out onto 18th Ave, just foul. I may be biased but I believe it was a fair call. Some viewers protested, but Duncan really went too far. In a friendly competition, he refused to simply accept probable defeat, instead staying at the plate and trying to convince the officials that the ball was fair, citing the fans who wanted to have seen another home run.

It draws an analogy, in my mind, to the players who do steroids in order to please a brand of baseball, a public, that relies too heavily on showy home runs. Cheating to please the fans doesn't make it any better.

He was an ungracious loser. You see, Yankees fans really think they have class - you can tell by the way the fans refer to the team's clean-cut image with remarks such as "Johnny Damon had to come to New York so he could learn to take a shower". (Easily countered by stories such as the Roger Clemens bat incident, your choice of A-Rod stories, such as swatting the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's arm, rumors of steroid use, and his alleged affair with Madonna, and Duncan's afore-mentioned spiking incident) They don't realize that they are mostly spoiled to the point of taking wins for granted and being terrible sports.

When Huffman stepped up to bat, he received a larger cheer and ovation. He hit one home run, then a second, and won the competition. (He hit a total of five, earning $500 in prize money.)

So: Local Boy Wows Crowd, Hometown Hero is Home Run Champ!

I complained the other day about an obnoxious Yankee supporter at Saturday's Fan Fest. I saw him again today, but this time with his leg in a heavy-duty splint. I wouldn't wish another bodily harm, not even a Yankee fan, but the combination of this sighting with Duncan's embarrassing performance gave me a pleasant thought to last me all evening:

Redemption is Sweet.

Baseball, Amsterdam Time - Part II

Or, How To Be A Nocturnal Baseball Fan


This entry is a little out of place here, because I published Part I on my other blog last October: dealing with baseball games at inconvenient times. If the game starts at 7.05 PCT, then I can get up at 4:30 a.m. and still catch the last few innings. If it's a day game, I can watch it here at 7 p.m. if it takes place on the West Coast, or 10 if it's on the East Coast - both entirely doable.

If the game starts at 7:05 on the East Coast, though (which happens a lot with the Red Sox), I'm pretty much out of luck - that's 1:05 a.m. over here.

During the playoffs, I'll go to bed at 8 or 9, get up at 1.30, and go back to sleep (hopefully) around 5. That adds up to a decent 6 or 7 hours of sleep.

That's only for the truly hardcore, though, the do-or-die (the playoffs). When I know I can't justify so many hours of baseball (for example, when there's a gauntlet of schoolwork to run over the next three weeks), I go for Time Difference Option #2.

The Sox are playing the Yankees this weekend, and no Sox fan wants to miss that. For Friday's 7.05 game, I set up my laptop next to my bed and watched the first inning (did you see Jacoby score on a passed ball from second base?! That's my boy!) while I wrote in my journal. Around 1.40, I turned out the light, but left the game on, and set my alarm for 3:40. The alarm would wake me up in time for the last inning or two.

I don't remember waking up for the ninth inning, but because of the sound coming and going for commercial breaks, I woke up periodically. I remember seeing the Sox were losing 4-2.

Next thing I know, it's 5:40, and I'm wide awake. I check my phone and see I've already re-set the alarm for the morning. I check the game. It's the top of the 11th inning.

It's like I have a biological Red Sox clock, or something.

Because what happens in the top of the 11th? The Yankees nearly score - but NO CIGAR!

And what happens in the bottom of the 11th?

That would be Kevin Youkilis. Yes, Youkilis happens. He hits a walk-off home run to end the game.

Can I get a boo-yah?
Then I rolled over and fell back asleep. I woke up happy, if not refreshed, because it's not a good way to get a good night's sleep. But it is a decent way to catch the game, if you happen to be an expat baseball fan.