A Seattle listener turns on the radio…
“Hi, I’m Emerson Robbins. Of E.E. Robbins. We have the largest…”
“Please could I go one commercial break without hearing this idiot?”
“… engagement rings in the northwest. If you’re in the market for an engagement ring, and you didn’t buy from us, I can only think of two reasons. One..”
“I hate your radio advertisements and would like to punch you in the nose.”
“… or two, you don’t really care about her ring.”
“Don’t you insult me, I cared about her ring, that’s why I bought her a nice one.”
“How could it be the finest if you didn’t buy it from me?”
“Shut up shut up!”
“You must not love your wife.”
“Of course I do.”
“No, I don’t think so. The foundation of your marriage is a sham. If you’d only bought your engagement ring from my store…”
“I hope you get a case of laryngitis that baffles medical science.”
“Oh, the board of directors insured against that… we’ve got a whole vault of these commercials. Why, I could die tomorrow and you’d still hear my grating, sunny voice until the sun stopped burning hydrogen.”
“Why won’t you stop?”
“I have to tell everyone that we have the largest–”
“We heard you the first million times! Now shut up!”
“It’s obviously not getting through. You bought your ring elsewhere.”
“Because I hate you!”
“Maybe you were dropped on your head as a child. But I won’t rest until everyone buys their ring from E.E. Robbins, even if they suffered brain trauma as a kid.”
“I’m fine! I just hate you!”
“Why? Because at–”
“Okay, I give up. What’s it going to take? Do I have to blow up the vault of recordings, shoot you into space without a transmitter? Jam all the radio stations?”
“I might take a break if I knew you bought a ring from E.E–”
“Shut up! Fine! I’ll do it tomorrow! Now leave me alone!”
“Okay, but first, let me tell you about my brother–”
“No!”
“T-ball team–”
“No, go away!”
“All right, I’m going, I’m going. No guarantees on how long, though…”
“Whew. Finally I can listen to a half hour of music without…”
“This is Tom Shane. Others may imitate my radio ads, but…”
“Waaaaaaaaahhh-hah-hah….”
Ryan Anderson cleared waivers and was outrighted to Tacoma today. Now, this may cause some confusion, because most players who are designated for assignment and clear waivers have the option to elect free agency over taking the outright assignment to Triple-A, but since this is the first time Anderson has been outrighted, he does not have that option. He will be placed on Tacoma’s roster and it will not use his final option year. All in all, this was a good move for the M’s, possibly saving Anderson’s last opportunity to contribute to the M’s by not using that option this year. If Anderson can start pitching again this year (and, at this point, its about as likely as Bill Bavasi having Moneyball turned into a life size bronze statue and placing it at the entrance of the team’s offices), the team will be able to keep him in the organization next year by placing him back on the 40 man roster, preventing him from walking as a minor league free agent, and still be able to send him to the minors next year.
A bit confusing, but in all, this is good news. Not that I’m expecting Ryan Anderson to ever pitch for the Mariners, but the slim chance remains.
Speaking of building a stadium in Oregon… for the four of you who are wondering what happened to “The Fix,” I was having a hard time keeping up while I was writing my Prospectus 2004 stuff and I wasn’t getting much response anyway, so I took it down for a while. I’m still working on it, it’ll return at some point. As always, if you like something here and don’t want to see it go away, let us know.
From an interview with Rob Neyer:
OSC: What’s your take on Bavasi getting the GM position in Seattle?
Neyer: I have a natural aversion to people that may have jobs because of who they are and not what they have done. You wonder if he would be where he is if his name wasn’t Bavasi. His father was a major league executive for many, many years.
I have never heard people say great things about Bavasi but maybe that’s just because I haven’t been listening to the right people. In all honesty, I’m not all that impressed so far. The Raul Ibanez contract is going to be a problem, and the M’s were apparently more than willing to spend way too much money on a season of Omar Vizquel.
This from the Oregon Stadium Campaign website. The interview is mostly about baseball in Portland, but there’s some other interesting stuff in there as well.