193 thoughts on “April 20, 2011: *cough cough*”

  1. Thanks to Twayn for pinch hitting last night. Since I missed my duties the Twins are still undefeated during game logs I write.

    You know, in case there is going to the a WGOM achievement for that sort of thing.

  2. For anyone interested, tickets for Rock the Garden went on presale to 89.3 The Current or Walker Art Center Members yesterday evening. It sold out pretty quickly last year, so I'd say get on it soon if you're interested.

    This years line-up:
    Tapes 'n Tapes
    Booker T. Jones
    Neko Case
    My Morning Jacket

      1. Not particularly thrilled with this year's lineup. Plus, that's the same night as my annual trip to the Hennepin County Fair to watch the demolition derby.

  3. Ryan Roberts went 2/3 with 2HR and a SB for ARI last night. So of course I had him benched. Turns out when I went to set my lineup today, there he is in the lineup. I guess when I activated Ubaldo from the DL, it moved me to Wednesday's lineup and I didn't notice. So instead I got a DNP from Jack Hannahan.

    1. So basically what you're saying is that Yahoo Fantasy sports sucks? (because I totally agree with that.)

  4. Minor league day game alert: New Britain hosts New Hampshire at 9:30 this morning, and Rochester is in Buffalo at noon. You can listen to the Rock Cats game here and to the Red Wings' game here.

    1. so New Britian plays at 10:30 their time...thats a heck of a get away day schedule

    2. The Red Wings game has been rained out. It will be made up as part of a doubleheader tomorrow afternoon.

      1. Unless they get some super-long extra-inning games here, the Redwings are going to average less than 9 innings per game.
        Might need to calculate ERA for the team using 8 innings in the numerator instead of 9.

  5. Thanks to AMR for introducing me to Ha Ha Tonka last night. They were a blast. I would heartily encourage anyone to take AMR up on his offer to see them next time they hit town.

    1. Glad that you enjoyed it. Upon reflection, that was one of the best sets I've seen from them. (Although it's not a huge difference, maybe like 10% better than what would be their "worst" - which in their case just means "least awesome.")

  6. Ok, I'm late, but I've made the leap over. No promises that v.2 of zooomx will be any better than v.1. Thanks guys for finding a hospital parallel universe to transfer the population. We wrecked our homeworld pretty good, but it sure was a wonderful home while it lasted.

        1. yup... SBG is right... I have always had 3 0's. The first time I had tried to use my ball playing nickname on line, "zoom" was taken. I tried "zooom" but it was also taken. Finally, I added the "x" in honor of my favorite cartoon character growing up (racer x).

          BTW- the "zoom" nickname originated from hitting 2 home runs my first game with a new fastpitch softball team I joined during college. It stuck as when I pitched, the other team hit the ball so hard that it would "zoom" over our heads and over the fence. 🙂

      1. nah, let's start talking about the WGOM that wasn't. i loved when slowey would get on from his mobile for the game logs on day he wasn't pitching. his insight and humor still makes me laugh. that sorority that posted the bi-weekly naked grilling feature was nice. oh, and that plug-in that let us download beer? amazing!

        1. I think my favorite was right after Joanna Newsom Week, when dozens of Citizens pulled up stakes and headed west to Nevada City, CA in an effort to profess their love to her, face-to-face.

          1. My favorite was during Deerhoof Week when Grandmaster Flash presented Bootsy with an honorary Grammy for Outstanding Achievement in VJing Arts.

          2. so, did you include a "______ will play me in the movie" clause when you signed over the rights? spooky, I would request that Gary Busey play me in the movie if it's ok with you. My wife says I look like him when I wake up in the morning. I know... nothin to be proud of, but you do want the casting to be representative right?

            1. I seem to recall we had a "Who would play you in a movie?" discussion at WGOMTW. It's worth having again. I'd like either Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play me. He's not as devastatingly handsome as I am, but we all have to make do.

        3. I liked it how Orlando Cabrera used to log in under an unassuming handle and then would encourage himself to excel at baseball in the gamelogs.

      3. Remember when the Pohlads had us all up in the owner's suite and Punto ran out that slow grounder to third without sliding into first base? That was cool.

    2. It's a SATA connector. SATA 2.0 and 3.0 are just updates of the standard and are backwards compatible.

      1. all right. this is what i was trying to refer to last time. this is what the docking station i have accepts, and what i want to try and convert my laptop hard drives to.

        1. That's going to be a bit more complicated. Some perseverance has led me to find one though. It's a 44-pin IDE to (I think) 40-pin IDE to USB adapter.

                1. When we go grocery shopping together occasionally Mrs. Hayes will mention an item to add to the list and I'll say, "We'll pick that up at X. It's cheaper there." Thankfully, she's more impressed that I remember that kind of thing than irritated that we'll be making another stop.

                  1. I do that as well, but it's important to take gas and time into context as well. I know a nice little store on the east side that I make sure to stop at if I'm over there, but the cost of gallon of gas and hour out of my day isn't necessarily worth saving $3 on a case of pop/beer.

                    I love it when I know I can get a better price somewhere and it's on the way home.

                  2. Strangely, when it comes to groceries she doesn't get annoyed ever. But then, we do most of our grocery shopping at Woodman's, so it doesn't come up all that often, either.

                    Speaking of which, I need to get over there and get some beer.

                    1. If your Woodman's has Summit's Gold Sovereign Ale, the latest in their Unchained series, you might want to think about picking it up. It's right up your alley.

                    2. I did look for an unchained, but didn't see anything. (this was the west side Woodman's.) I didn't look real hard though, as I was there to get the New Glarus IIPA for Spooky and Meat, and a 12-er of Huber Premium for the Brewer's game on Sunday.

  8. Yesterday I had a hell of a day, but there was one bright spot. When I got home I noticed it was a bit cool, so I looked at the digital thermostat, which read 61°. To the basement I went, where I could hear the furnace cycling on and off. I read the error code and called the people who installed it, and they gave me the description of what was wrong, and then told me how to fix it so they didn't have to come and charge me for an after-hours service. I've never worked on a furnace before, but it was straightforward and the fix was pretty easy once I knew what the problem was. When that thing fired up properly it felt pretty good; not quite the modern equivalent of building a fire to keep the wolves away, but close enough for a turd of a day.

      1. Yeah, the guy basically said "It's gonna cost you a whole pail of money for me to come over there. So why don't you do this..." If we have furnace business in the future, they'll be the ones to get it.

  9. I made a few changes last night and the site should be faster. I'm not sure anyone will notice. It was a high priority however, so now I can get back to adding plugins to restore missing functionality.

    1. not sure how sick you are of hearing this, but you've been doing an amazing job. i can't imagine how much has gone into building this baby up (same goes for SBG on the original).

      1. which reminds me. Shouldn't there be an entry in "WGOM Achievements" for "Founding Father" or "Patron Saint" or "Menu and Spiritual Advisor" or summat for SBG???

    2. The site is kicking butt still -- great job, sean.

      Someone suggested a while back of dropping the font size of the Recent LTE list so more appears on page (or lengthening the list, or both). Is this still an option?

      1. while we are giving sean things to do...is there a way to omit spooky's CoC content from the right-hand column (while leaving the CoC header & link)?

        that would allow him to make the CoC a "real post" when he feels like it (like, uh, yesterday?) without pushing the recent LTEs list waaaaay down.

        1. Apparently you stopped paying attention midway through the day because I did just that that day. If a <!--more--> is included then you can gab as much as you want.

            1. Mine, too. I drafted an email asking him why my "more" thing didn't hide it on the sidebar, and before I could send it, he'd fixed it.

      2. I shrunk it a tiny bit. Do people want it smaller? Additionally, I can make it list more LTEs. spooky set it to 25, but since the site has more content there is additional vertical room to fit more.

          1. Shrunk it more and bumped up the number of LTEs. I must've dropped it to the last 20, but now it's at 30.

        1. Thanks for the note; evidently I missed the discussion. From my understanding we are not in violation of copyright - is this more a netiquette decision?

          1. Yeah, it's a netiquette thing mostly, as well as "better safe than sorry" just in case some rights holder decided they don't like our usage.

        2. MagUidhir's note and link should be included in the "Behave Yourself" page. Or perhaps there should be a completely separate page linked on the top bar regarding images and such??

            2. so, is it possible to require text be added to the alt field before an LTE with an img tag in it be accepted?

    1. Moss concludes that there must have been 3.424 viewers this season, compared to the 2 from last season.

      1. Those 1.424 viewers were probably Hitman and his son, who I presume is only able to give 42.4% of his attention to the Wolves games.

        1. After SCB let his hair out we never watched a Wolves game again. Couldn't take the risk of the the calf getting too frightened.

    3. So the Wolves had more households tune in to watch their games than OKC did? The same OKC that finished 4th in the West? Good thing they moved from Seattle.

      1. I always felt their move to OKC was short sighted. They just don't have enough people there to support a decent sized fan base.

        1. Sometimes I feel like NBA is a synonym for short-sighted. They're obviously going to want to get back into Seattle at some point. This is the Jazz-Hornets/Hornets-Bobcats strategy at work. (And that's going really well, right?) The league almost seems eager to panic when attendance gets low somewhere because a team is really terrible, even if there is a large fanbase which will almost definitely turn out when times get better.

          Just in general, I tend to think most relocations in sports are a bad idea. It takes a long time to build loyal fans--you often have to hook them as kids--and low attendance seems to get blamed almost entirely on the fans rather than the management. I still think it was a bad idea for MLB to leave Montreal, for instance.

          If the NBA comes back to Seattle, people will come, but I doubt they'll draw like they would have had they just stuck around.

          1. That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. There have been some wildly successful franchise relocations.

            2. I guess I'm not sure which expansions were wildly successful, but I just can't help but think of examples like, say, the Giants and Dodgers. Sure, the Giants and Dodgers are really healthy franchises now and it made all kinds of sense to put MLB teams in San Francisco and LA, but in my opinion, the league would have been better off keeping those franchises in NY and creating new franchises in California, or even just taking a couple teams from the PCL.

              The Giants' attendance had been in decline since WWII, but they were only really given a 10-year window. Moving to SF gave the franchise an initial bump in attendance, but from about '65 to '75, the SF Giants had essentially the same nosedive in attendance that the NY Giants had from '45 to '55. It even turns out (as I find looking at the wikipedia article on the '76 expansion draft) that it was speculated that the Giants, Twins, or White Sox might be relocated to Seattle in '77. But, as is especially clear in hindsight, it wouldn't have made any long-term sense to move those teams from San Francisco, Minnesota, or Chicago. Since '76, the Giants have led the NL in attendance 3 times, the Twins led the AL in attendance once, and the White Sox hit second in AL attendance once, with a couple of third-place finishes.

                1. The Lakers needed to come from Minnesota to be a successful franchise? Sure, the NBA should have gone to LA, but they didn't need to come at the expense of Minnesota. I'd argue that Minnesota's NBA franchise would be much stronger now had the stuck it out back in the '50s.

                  So you suppose baseball is better with the Dodgers in LA than with the Dodgers in NY? The NYC market was clearly good enough for multiple teams, and baseball eventually re-expanded in New York with the Mets. I'd argue this was a really terrible relocation because even though there are millions of New Yorkers, in the time when the Yankees were the only team in town, they were able

                  The Rams to LA is another obnoxious relocation. The Browns were founded the year after the Rams left. Better to keep the Rams in Cleveland and give LA its own team. For that matter, it would have been better to keep the Browns in Cleveland and give Baltimore a new team.

                  To me, the only upside in relocation is if you're getting out of a market for good. Nordiques to Avs seems like a good relocation because I don't know that Quebec City is big enough (metro area of 750K) that the NHL would come back there.

                  1. I don't have a lot to say on this topic, but I'll just chime in to say that apparently there is a chance that if the NHL can't find a buyer for the Phoenix Coyotes in the Phoenix metro, that they could get moved back to Winnipeg. The Winnipeg metro is around 700k.

                2. I think ubes already handled the Dodgers and Giants. MLB "should have" expanded to the West Coast (as they did with the Angels) rather than relocating venerable franchises out of NYC, then re-expanding in NYC with the Mets, or relocating the Senators to Minnesota, for that matter.

                  The Rams from Cleveland to L.A. was a stroke of genius, no doubt. Because they were gonna get their butts kicked in the Cleveland market by the Browns, and that market probably wasn't big enough for two NFL clubs. But L.A. to St. Louis, just to replace the Cardinals (who had relocated from Chicago in 1960, then moved to Arizona in 1988)?

                  The problem is that relocation is a powerful weapon to have in the extortion toolkit for the cartels that are pro sports leagues. If you threaten to relocate a popular brand, you can probably extort more concessions/incentives out of the competing communities than if you simply let them bargain over entirely new franchises.

                  1. Would the Browns have done as well in Cleveland if the Rams had stayed? I don't know the story that well, but from what I can tell, the Browns weren't founded until the Rams left town.

                    It's true that the threat of relocation has certainly won sports leagues major monetary concessions from local governments, but that has to be weighed against the opportunity cost of, say, no NFL team in the entire LA market for 20+ years. Sure, the NFL probably (definitely?) makes more money from television rights than it does at the gate, but I'd guess there's a ton of corporate sponsorship money to be had in LA that you're not going to get somewhere like Jacksonville. I think if the NFL really wanted to, they could probably be a 40-team league. Off the top of my head, I'd guess LA could support two teams, Chicago could support another team, then you could add Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and maybe Raleigh-Durham, and somewhere in Oklahoma.

                    1. here, FWIW, is the first paragraph of the Repository article "History of the Cleveland Browns"

                      The Cleveland Browns were founded in 1944 by owner Arthur 'Mickey' McBride and head coach (and Ohio coaching legend) Paul Brown and started play in 1946.[1] At the time, Cleveland was home to the 1945 NFL champion Cleveland Rams, led by the NFL's hottest star, MVP quarterback Bob Waterfield, who was married to star actress Jane Russell. However, fans supported the Browns over the Rams from the moment they were created, and the Rams ended up fleeing to Los Angeles before the Browns had ever played a game.[2]

                    2. and an interesting bit of trivia that I did not know from the Rams' side of things:

                      On January 11, 1946, Reeves pressured the NFL to allow his team to relocate to Los Angeles and its 92,000 seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1946.[7] At the time, the NFL did not allow African-Americans to play in the league. The commissioners of the Los Angeles Coliseum stipulated as part of the agreement that the team be integrated. As a result, the team signed UCLA players Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, who became the first two blacks to play in the NFL, post World War II.[8]

              2. moving the Braves from Boston to Milwaukee seemed to be a success, but the owners of the Milwaukee Braves sold to a guy who pretty much wanted to move out of Milwaukee (if I remember history right)

  13. More tragedy in Libya.

    BENGHAZI, Libya — Tim Hetherington, the Oscar-nominated film director and conflict photographer who produced the film “Restrepo,” was killed in the besieged city of Misurata on Wednesday, and three photographers working beside him were wounded.

    2. Hetherington's work on Restrepo stands with the very best. Thanks, bS, for posting this. I'll be attaching the black steamer to our flag.

    2. No, I believe the all-dirt infield is one of Koshien Stadium's iconic features. No other park in the either the Central or Pacific League features one (generally, there are sliding pits for parks with turf or the normal grass/dirt combo). The only other NPB park with an all-dirt infield I'm aware of is old Hiroshima Municipal, home of the Carp until they moved to Mazda Stadium.

    1. I fear I'll be blacked out of this one. ESPN3 is already saying I am. Then again, after last night that may not be a bad thing.

  16. I feel old. I just now figured out what the cryptic CoC reference for today is all about.

    1. I'd like to be able to moderate my game log, whilst at said game.

      ‘Setting’ –> ‘Writing’->‘Remote Publishing’-> ‘XML-RPC’ and click on ‘Save Changes’

      Or if we're not doing that just let me know.

  18. I just published the page on copyright stuff. We may revise this a little, but it's a good starting point.

    1. out of curiosity, i was wondering exactly where the legal problem might lie. for example, posted images are generally trafficked from outside sites, correct? wouldn't any legal questions be the responsibility of the original hosting site, and not this one, since that is where the data comes from?

      1. How much are you willing to contribute to the legal defense fund to support that claim should sean the .org get sued? 🙂

        1. i mean this as an honest question. if dems the rules then i've no problem following it. i'm just curious of the legalities behind it. i find copyright laws, especially in regards to electronic media, to be somewhat fascinating.

          1. I would not want to have the lawyers in the crowd dispensing legal insight over the intertubes in such a way that might be constituted as "legal advice", but I think this is a topic that could bear a post.

            1. Agreed. I do think there is a debate to be had, but not strongly enough to provide a legal defense fund. So I am more than happy to comply with guidelines the community thinks best.

          2. Largely the concern is not the right-ness or wrong-ness, but the fact that there are "trolls" out there who could be tempted to sue or at least write nasty letters. Then regardless of the merits, it gets expensive.

            Both Moss and SBG have direct knowledge of intellectual property trolls who have sued irrespective of merits, and who then try to settle for nuisance value (which is basically a discount off of what it would cost to prove that you are innocent).

            1. Along those lines, my clients are always asking if "they can get sued for that." I always answer the same; "[a]nyone can sue anyone for any reason. The real question is whether we have a defense."

    2. Was this discussed somewhere off site? I'd like to see why this particular outcome came about.

        1. could you copy me? i'm curious as well

          jonelliot2323 [little "a" mark with a most of a circle around it] (google's main mail service)

        2. Perhaps in the morning. I think Moss's reponse was suffient to understand the point.

      1. Let me rephrase that looks weird. We should probably write a comment policy as well.

    1. There are apps that utilize that information. Apparently Nike uses one that can log your running miles. Moss might be tempted to use it for biking.

  23. did the 1918 Cubs throw the World Series?

    In a 1920 court deposition the Chicago History Museum recently put on its website, Cicotte said "the boys on the club" talked about how a Cub or a number of Cubs were offered $10,000 to throw the 1918 Series they lost 4-2 to the Boston Red Sox.

    1. So not only did the Red Sox go 86 years since winning the WS, but the last one they'd won may have been fraudulent?

      I'm not a believer in karma, but if true, maybe the Cubs now have a better "curse" to blame than the thing with the goat.

    2. It wouldn't really be surprising, baseball had a huge gambling problem in that era.

    3. That's incredible. The home run off Canseco's head is funnier than that sequence, maybe, but that's about it. Honorable mention to Raul Ibanez's route gifs that someone (Dread Pirate?) was posting last season.

      1. I feel like Rivera has the edge here. Canseco, while funny, was at its core a misjudged fly ball, albeit with highly unusual consequences. Rivera is mistake after mistake after mistake.

      4. What gets lost in that play is how bad the defense was. If they had caught the ball originally or thrown Rivera out at third, it would have been bad base running, but hardly remarkable. In fact, if the catcher had dropped the ball at home, which is not at all uncommon, it might have been known as the worst defensive play in the history of the game instead. I guess that's what makes it truly funny was how bad both teams screwed up on that play and Rivera was just the worst of all.

  25. things could get ugly tonight. Groundball pitcher, so lets put Kubel at first!

    LaVelleNeal
    #stribtwins lineup: Span, Repko (LF), Kubel (1B)!!!, Cuddy (RF), Thome, valencia, Hughes (2B), Holm, Tolbert (SS). Pitching: Blackburn

    5. LaVelleNeal
      Sorry, this was the lineup outside the clubhouse. Swap positions with Kubel and Cuddy.

      2. Tolbert, Hughes and Cuddyer in the infield for Blackburn. This can end only one way!!!1111!!

        1. Yes, with Blackie pitching so as to ensure the grounders he gives up are easy to handle while breezing to a 5-2 victory.

  29. Sean et al,
    I couldn't find a way to set up a new category.
    I think that there should be one for "Friday Music Day."
    Thanks much!

    1. i think one of the pushes is to reduce the number of categories. IIFC, categories will try to be reserved more for when it affects the formatting of the post, like CoCs or the daily music video. instead, we're going to focus more on tags (if i'm wrong, anyone, please feel free to correct me).

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