09 May
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The Cheater's Guide to Baseball
"Derek Zumsteg should be ashamed to have such comprehensive knowledge of the history of cheating in baseball. Pete Rose gave me two to one odds this book would become a classic." -- Allen Barra, author of The Last Coach: A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant
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Buy Derek's book
The Cheater's Guide to Baseball"Derek Zumsteg should be ashamed to have such comprehensive knowledge of the history of cheating in baseball. Pete Rose gave me two to one odds this book would become a classic." -- Allen Barra, author of The Last Coach: A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant
Are we sure we shouldn’t be throwing in a frilly duvetco or lace linen instead?
May 9th, 2008 at 8:20 amIn a show of solidarity with Sexie, I’d also like to throw in a matching helmet.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:24 amYeah, I don’t get the helmet thing. C’mon, Richie don’t do that. You wanna fight? Get out there and slug him. I’ve been in a good half dozen baseball fights (I had a terrible temper growing up, something I’ve gotten control of the last 7 or 8 years) and never even thought of throwing my helmet at someone. Frankly it looked a little bush league. Especially since Felix decided that hitting Kinsler (?) was ok after he had hit a homerun.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:43 amOh, I’d like an orange towel please.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:47 amFight Night at the Safe!!!!!!!!!!!
Featuring: Boom Boom Sexson vs. (his batting av.)
The towel analogy is now just too perfect…
This is great, guys.
But where do we go from here?
May 9th, 2008 at 8:55 am“But where do we go from here?”
I have a variety of towel-related pictures
May 9th, 2008 at 8:57 amDo you have a shammy?
There’s an awful lot of suck to soak up. More absorbency would be nice.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:01 amDo you have a picture of a towel in flight? A dark teal towel headed towards a garbage can or toilet seems about right.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:02 amjust think of all the things we can entertain ourselves with, as the summer goes along ….
May 9th, 2008 at 9:07 amHumor does help.
Too bad we don’t have a Bob Uecker announcing…
May 9th, 2008 at 9:07 amI have a variety of towel-related pictures
But Derek, there’s like 130 games left. That’s a lot of towel pictures. Are there LOLTowels?
May 9th, 2008 at 9:07 ambuy from Amazon and save $0.04!
May 9th, 2008 at 9:08 amWhat, have you forgotten THE Towel???
May 9th, 2008 at 9:14 amIn the wake of the whole Buzz Bissenger blow-up (you know that if he hates sabermetrics, and he hates blogs, he must REALLY hate sabermetrically-inclined blogs), I find it hilarious to hear one commentator after another say “what a surprise that the Mariners are so bad, EVERYONE had picked them to be good this year.”
Everyone, that is, except for blogs that judged teams quantitatively. Score yet another one for the blogosphere and sabermetrics.
P.S. The results of your pseudo-Monte Carlo analysis that had the A’s as contenders isn’t looking so crazy anymore, is it?
May 9th, 2008 at 9:14 amI think we should chip in and get everybody in the M’s FO one of these, in M’s colors.
Or perhaps a set of posters? (I was going to suggest a couple in particular, but so many apply…)
May 9th, 2008 at 9:22 am.244/.305/368
Our team is Neifi Perez
May 9th, 2008 at 9:22 amhere you are
May 9th, 2008 at 9:26 amHeh. I have to laugh now.
Heh.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:33 amSometimes, the stats, and history don’t lie….and it’s painful to watch it come true.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:44 amFolks, no one predicted flat line death such as we are experiencing.
There is bound to be regression to a mean. So they will start losing by 7-4, 11-2, you know, decent scores.
Look forward to some great stories from Dave Niehaus during these long, long innings. Switch to the radio staring in the fifth.
And, hey, I have noticed Blowers just shutting up from time to time, especially when Dave says something remotely interesting. This shows a growing self-awareness on his part that can only end in his resignation in favor of his new career, heading up the insurance agency that has his name on it out there somewhere.
Putting a positive spin on revolving in our collective baseball grave . . .
May 9th, 2008 at 9:48 amSandmeyer just helpfully pointed out that the next three games are against right-handers with better records than the Texas right-handers who just shut out the Ms.
sigh.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:48 amoh, Blow already has that other career in hand …
May 9th, 2008 at 9:50 am-I always think of a white towel being used in this context. Not original but thats what I think of.
- I can’t help but think ground crew from the motion picture Major League, “Oh no! We suck again”
May 9th, 2008 at 9:50 amHonestly, I feel even worse for Dave and Derek than anyone else through all of this. This whole blog thing is A LOT of work and they put up with a good deal of crap too. Now to have the team just look completely helpless out there can’t make this anymore fun.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:53 amwell. how did I miss this last night?
May 9th, 2008 at 9:54 amFrom the M’s website and mlb.com…there’s an article, Clement at the plate. At the end of the article there’s a tidbits section: “Utility infielder Miguel Cairo is working on a hitting streak for the first time this season. He reached on a broken-bat single in the ninth inning in Thursday night’s game — the fourth and final hit of the game for the Mariners. … ”
Yes, that’s how bad it has gotten… O M G. Just because he finally got lucky he’s “working on a hitting streak.”
May 9th, 2008 at 9:56 amAnybody know the modern record for most innings without a run by any team? We have to have something to get excited about. Knowing the M’s, they’ll get a run one inning shy of setting a new record.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:57 amI’m pretty sure one is not a streak, but whatever.
#25
Yea, that’s the real reason Sexson threw down.
“Don’t bring Ben back! I can handle my business!”
May 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am27 - I have been trying to find that for a while … been searching. Maybe I will give KJR a call and find out.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:59 amHonestly, I feel even worse for Dave and Derek than anyone else through all of this. This whole blog thing is A LOT of work and they put up with a good deal of crap too. Now to have the team just look completely helpless out there can’t make this anymore fun.
Yeah, but there has to be a certain grim satisfaction in being right where all of the traditional media was wrong (and gave them crap about being overly negative to boot). Besides, these guys have been fans for a long time. For those of us that can remember games in the 80s where it was just you and a handful of your friends and something that only nominally resembled a baseball team on the field, and balls into the seats bounced around for minutes until somebody got over to that section to retrieve them, this is nothing. Of course, the overpriced beer was much cheaper then.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:01 amWell, Richie is going to be sitting out some games I’m sure, just as soon as the league reviews his helmet-tossing prowess, Maybe the M’s can re-sign Broussard, and then bundle him with somebody like Aumont to get Norton back from Atlanta. Seriously, doesn’t that sound like a Bavasi move?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:04 amBut at the same time the USSM and their work is literally the only thing keeping me going … and I get a lot of laughs up reading away.
You can’t enjoy the good without the bad …
May 9th, 2008 at 10:13 amI made an analogy earlier about the Mariners being a drug addicted friend, and how you root for them to hit rock bottom so that drastic changes happen.
Now, this forum is like AAA, where all of us suffering through what is sure to be a terrible season can come and at least get a little joy out of life (or at least the portion that is taken up by baseball.)
May 9th, 2008 at 10:23 amHey, where are the blue ones at?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:59 amAA? unless they so group hugs about auto safety at AAA
May 9th, 2008 at 11:14 amDerek, my anti-fandom is a form of fandom. I want the M’s to fail so hard they’re forced to accept that they just don’t have a clue about running a baseball team, so they’ll change their approach. Right now, I’m hoping they don’t score for 81 more innings. I have selected players I want to do well, but the rest? I want Richie Sexson to strike out fifty times in a row. I want Willie Bloomquist and Miguel Cairo to collide tomorrow when they’re playing 1B (!!) and RF (!!!). Is that mean? I don’t care. I’m also rooting for Adam Jones to win the MVP and George Sherrill the Cy Young. I want them PUNISHED.
Does that sound crazy? It just reminds me of 1982, that’s all. I was crazy then, too. I had this team pegged for 78 wins, and everybody was telling me what a pessimist I was. Now I don’t know if they’ll make it.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pmHi my name is John M. and I’m addicted to the M’s.
For better or for worse the M’s are my team.
I guess all of us are going through stages of grief.
Which are ya’ll on
I think I’m at denial
May 9th, 2008 at 1:54 pmThat game was the absolute low point of my career as a Mariners fan.
It was extremely distressing to see Richie throw a tantrum and try to hit the pitcher. Can’t even begin to say how wrong that is on so many levels. It was assault, it was bad sportsmanship and most of all it was juvenile.
And on top of everything else, the pitcher didn’t even actually hit him! In fact, the pitch wasn’t even that close to his face. Richie leaned out of hte way, but he leans out of the way of almost everything, even strikes!
I really hope the league throws the book at Richie for this bush-league move. And if they don’t, then the Mariners organization should. They dumped Mateo for hitting his wife, and they should do the same now with Richie for assaulting an opponent in a way that is embarrassing for baseball.
I don’t care how frustrated they are. They need to get a grip.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pmI think Mateo hitting so many bats squarely helped in the decision for his dismissal. Either way, I was glad to see him go.
With Richy, it’s been more of a love/hate relationship for me. Its so frustrating to watch him struggle for so long, but it makes you feel that much better when he finally does gets a hold of one. You have to asume that the “family matters” have a tonn to do with his behavior and we have all been in situations where we might react wrong. But it did look pretty stupid.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:30 pmJoser, thanks for the link to the posters on post #15. Thats been the highlight of my work day. Almost all of them apply to my work place as well.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:32 pmIt’s not nearly time to throw in the towel yet. The season is hardly six weeks old. I think that most of the guys we have will come out of their current slumps. The offense will come around here sooner or later. Our chances of catching the Angels(or Athletics, if the Angels fade first) are already looking bad, but the Angels currently have the 2nd best record in the game. I think that the wild card is a realistic goal right now.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:28 pmsealclubber (eeew), glad to help
May 9th, 2008 at 4:54 pmNo. Neifi Perez can play defense.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:42 am[long link]
May 10th, 2008 at 11:55 pmPS. I forgot to do the link thing right.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:56 pm