Cup of Coffee

July 11, 2011: Jason Morneau Day

113 Comments

The Twins head into the All-Star break at 41-48. Show of hands: who had that total before the season started? Okay, now who had that total six weeks ago?

Oh, and a programming note: for those without cable (and who care), ESPN3 is carrying the Home Run Derby tonight.

113 thoughts on “July 11, 2011: Jason Morneau Day”

  1. if someone can invite me to Google+, I have time to burn in my hotel room this evening, what with no interesting sports on TV tonight. thanks! (larsonmorgan -> sbcglobal DOT net)

            1. On of the perks of my job is that the peons have admin priviledges, so I run Chrome at work!

              1. my job is insanely protective of installing anything on their computers, but for some reason chrome can be installed with no foofaraw.

    2. Home run derby? I hope that's on ESPN3, I've watched it every year with CER since she's been born. Now that she's 8, that means that this'd be the ninth year.

      Yep, it's on ESPN3!

            1. Those miffed lyrics took me a while to place, and then I had to play the song to make sure that what I heard was correct.
              Sometimes, the incorrect lyrics can speak to you more, so, keep what's in your head if you like it.

              1. I'm pretty terrible with lyrics (I'm much more in tune with whatever's going on instrumentally), so I wasn't surprised I misheard them. Posting it wrong was a little embarrassing, though, since I like that song so much. I think "This is why I don't quote song lyrics." might become my default response for when I say something silly that I know I should have verified first.

  2. For those interested in real baseball tonight, New Britain hosts Binghamton at 6 central, Ft. Myers has a doubleheader at Brevard County at 4 central, and Beloit hosts Clinton at 7 central. Audio broadcasts of each are available through milb.com.

    2. I heard on the radio on the way home tonite that it's Bring Your Dog to the Ballpark Night out at New Britain - they are raising money for local dog shelters, etc. - have a special section set up for you and your dog, watering stations, etc.

  3. Did anyone else catch the 4ltr's meme on the Twins last night? Twins beat White Sox 6-3. 41 wins at the break is their fewest since 2000.

    Okay, is that the storyline of the Twins right now? Not that they've shaved 10 games off the AL Central lead since June 1?

    1. I very much doubt that anyone at ESPN even knows that the Twins have made up ten games in the standings since June 1. Ever since the Twins fell into last early in the season, ESPN has ignored them other than to say that Joe Mauer needs to stop being a catcher.

      1. As 1B: .600/.600/.600/1.200
        As C: .241/.302/.299/.601
        As DH/PH: .158/.238/.158/.397
        QED

        I wonder if we should be worried about his power and patience as 1B. However, if one is batting .600, you can probably let those things slide.

        For a reality check: he's hitting .306/.390/.333/.724 since July 1. I know it's an arbitrary cut-off point, so I tried to pick one that wasn't set by me (.764 OPS since June 26).

  4. Updated AL Central Odds:

    Rot American League Central To Win Moneyline
    221 Chicago White Sox +240
    222 Cleveland Indians +225
    223 Detroit Tigers +135
    224 Kansas City Royals +15000
    225 Minnesota Twins +400

      1. I think +800 or so. The Twins opened the season at +125 and went as high as +8000.

  5. AAA all-star game this week will feature The Original Groundskeeper. The wednesday game will be broadcast on the MLB Network, meaning nobody will see it.

    1. I just ran past it on Amazon- considered it for a moment, decided it'll keep until my wife gets it for me for my birthday in a month and a half.

  7. "Final Draft has encountered a problem and needs to close, robbing you of the six pages you just wrote. You can still see them - they're right here in front of you - but they're gone as soon as you click OK, which we're going to go ahead and force you to do."

    F*&^ing computers.

      1. I'd turned the autosave feature off for some dumbass reason I can't remember, but yeah, it should be retrievable. It's not.

        It's the one flaw I can find in Final Draft, which I love love LOVE most of the time.

        At any rate, it only took me 45 minutes to retype it. It's the most tedious thing possible, but since I'd already just done it, it wasn't that hard to do again.

        1. you don't compose at the keyboard? really? you write out the first draft longhand??!!! wowza.

          1. Oh, Heavens, no. You're joaking, right?

            Edit: Okay, maybe I see what you mean. By "retyping" I just meant I was writing all of what I'd just written and lost, from memory.

              1. Heh, I read that today. I suppose if there's going to be a Space Invaders movie, it might as well be written by the clown who did Transformers and G.I. Joe.

        2. Yeah, the flaw is that you can turn that off. Should not be an option. The user interface should just be such that you'd never for the life of you consider the fact that it cannot be turned off. Bad Final Draft.

            1. I wish Mac machines were less money, I'd love to run OSX. I'm considering building another computer at some point here, and if I do, I'd love to run OSX on it, I think that might be kind of fun to mess around with. Though it would also require a bit of work, and I'm lazy.

                1. Free time is something I have very little of these days. Patience as well. I think the worst part would be checking all the parts I bought to ensure they were compatible.

          2. I remembered: I turned it off because I was previously using a laptop with a track pad that couldn't be locked, so occasionally, before I knew what I was doing, I'd highlight an entire document and delete it. I didn't want to do that, and then have the AutoSave kick in.

            Turns out they have an AutoBackup that was just well-hidden, so I never needed worry.

    4. I had a long comment about Chuck James written on Saturday evening. I was just putting in some links, and EAR pulled the wrong cord out of the power strip to remove the fan. (A/C has been out for 10 of the last 11 days.) So I lost it all. Now I think I'm going to re-write it, flesh it out a bit, and make it its own post.

      Sometimes, when I've got a long comment going, I copy-and-paste into notepad, so that if it mis-posts (which has happened a lot less at the new URL), I've still got it. But even that won't save me if I have a sudden power outage.

      1. You're not the only person who does the Notepad thing. It's especially useful for Music Day LTEs, and oftentimes I'll copy/paste a longer LTE or reply into Notepad before posting, just in cass.

  8. I finally noticed the "Jason" Morneau title. I have not had my full pot of coffee yet today.

  9. My mother-in-law got me tickets to Saturday's game as a graduation present (and, as she jokingly said, a bribe to get us to visit). We rode the train in from the 'burbs, which was nice, and caught the Red Line at Jackson. Just opposite us as we boarded the train stood my mom & stepdad's neighbor from Winona. He and his family were in town for a weekend getaway and had tickets to the game. What are the odds we'd meet? Pretty neat (and despite sitting in different sections of the park we met them on the platform on the way out, too.)

    Our tickets had us about 30 rows up, right at first base. Thankfully, those seats were in the shade for the entire game, because it was pretty hot and humid. We sat on the outside aisle of the section, in a little cluster of Twins fans, which was nice. The sightlines were pretty good, but the chairs were a touch small and leg room only a bit better than what I remember from the Dome. Beer selection was atrocious - $7.25 for either MGD or Miller Lite. That's it. I even walked around a bit before the game to see if I could find something better (even a Goose Island 312 would have been okay), but there was nothing. The Polish I had wasn't too bad, though. Mrs. Hayes' $8 vodka & lemonade had maybe eyedropper of vodka in it. Maybe. She said her hot dog was better than the one she had at Target Field, which honestly doesn't surprise me. Our churros were pretty meh, not even particularly hot despite the stand being just two rows up from our seats.

    The park does look better in person than it does on television, and honestly I expected more fans on work release than I encountered. That doesn't mean there weren't any loud, obnoxious drunks, but it was less hostile than I thought it would be given the tone at SSS. There was one guy loudly screaming "Mauer, you suck!" constantly every time Mauer came up to bat. Loudly enough to be heard, I told Mrs. Hayes that telling Joe Mauer he sucks at baseball was as ridiculous as telling Wayne Gretzky he sucked at hockey. I'm all for heckling, but if you're going to heckle, choose things which are 1) funny, 2) original, and 3) are sufficiently accurate so as not to immediately eviscerate your credibility. Unsurprisingly, this was beyond the grasp of the Hoser hecklers in attendance.

    Despite the loss we had a pretty nice time, and I got to check another ballpark off my list. Given the right circumstances I'd go back again, but I'd say that even though we had excellent seats (which isn't the case for much of the rest of that ballpark) it was a thoroughly average experience, on par with Angel Stadium (which is significantly older). With a more hostile crowd I could see it being a below-average ballpark for Twins fans, even given the relative proximity to Twins Territory.

    3. In my experience, as the distance from the outfield bleachers increases, the number of loud, obnoxious drunks decreases. Your review of the park is right on, the Polish was my go-to ballpark food at the Cell.

      1. Even without toppings that Polish was pretty good. The fried onions on Mrs. Hayes' hot dog looked mighty delicious (onions don't always sit well with me, and are best consumed at home), very nicely caramelized and quite fragrant.

    4. Also, I am reminded that a Blue Moon or X Moon seasonal was only $6.75 at Coors Field last summer. So the price for MGD or Lite in Chicago was ridiculous, even for ballpark rates.

    5. dude, on the inside ring of the concourse you can find "premium" beer vendors every few sections. nothing to write home about, but you can grab tall boy heinekens and the like for about a buck more.

  11. An interesting post over at Andrew Sullivan's blog by guest-blogger Jonathan Rauch, about blogging.

    For people who want to read and think, which is still a lot of people, the worldwide web is an incorrigibly hostile environment. Thank goodness, it is already in the process of being displaced by the far more reader-friendly world of apps, which is hospitable to quality writing and focused reading, as opposed to knee-jerk opinionating and attention-deficit-disordered skimming. The blogging format, I believe, was an outgrowth of a particular technological moment, specifically the gap between the decline of paper and the rise of HTML5. Its heyday is over.

    There are a few great bloggers out there. Andrew Sullivan is one of them. But they're depressingly rare. If some strange magnetic pulse wiped out every blog post written since the format began, hardly anything memorable or important would be lost; and, after 15 years or whatever, it's too late to hope for maturation. The medium is the problem. The Web is great for shopping and research, but intrinsically lousy for serious reading and writing. Over the past decade and more, the most striking fact about the blogosphere is how little it has produced of distinction or durability.

    I quote it because I think he is making a ridiculous argument, confusing the low barriers to entry of the medium (thus allowing a lot of crap to be "published," albeit not necessarily read) with the inherent nature of communicating through the medium.

    Teh Interwebs have allowed a million flowers to bloom. Most, to be sure, are awful, useless weeds. But so what? Most published books are vapid, amateurish crap too. To argue that "the medium is the problem" is to completely misunderstand the medium. The web allows anyone to publish (or damn near anyone), to have a voice and raise a cry in the wilderness. But if you don't have anything to say, it's just as hard (or perhaps harder) as ever to build an audience by your bootstraps.

    The web is the "long tail" writ large. It makes geographically far-flung communities of interest like this one feasible and sustainable. We aren't writing for posterity -- we are chatting with our friends and making memories. But there is no reason why we couldn't at the same time support a vibrant writing laboratory. Indeed, there are significant "fan fiction" communities on the web now doing that very thing. Sure, pimple-faced kids and middle-aged dweebs trying to write the next Stephanie Meyer book or Star Trek book or whatever may not be anyone's idea of great art, but there is nothing like writing (and getting feedback from readers) to hone the craft of a writer.

    1. If the WGOM did not exist, I think many important things would be lost. Half would be the relationships with the people and half would be all of the wonderful writing.

      Thank goodness, it is already in the process of being displaced by the far more reader-friendly world of apps
      What the [heavily redacted] does this even mean? "I'm just going to copy what Apple says is cool and no one will hopefully notice!" Angry Birds, as fun as it may be, has nothing to do with writing. Ditto throwing in HTML5. Which doesn't exist (in name) anymore.

    2. Mr. Rauch appears to have confused blogging with commenting on blogging, as far as I can tell. When restricted to those who actually write to a blog rather than simply comment under a blog post, the vitriol is much reduced and the thoughtfulness is greater. That's not to say that all comment sections are bad (says the man as he types his comment), but that's where the trolls are.

      1. One of the national guys - Murray Chass, or whoever - has repeatedly used blog comments as fodder for his pieces, and he continually treats them as part of the blog.

    3. The web allows anyone to publish (or damn near anyone)

      I've set up my tent in the camp that doesn't believe in the "democracy" of the internet. When equal access is up for debate in this country you can certainly bet that the systems of power and capital are exploiting individual access in countries far less free than ours. Critics who argue the opposite by pointing to the coordination of the Arab spring on facebook are ignoring the imprisonment and torture of bloggers and facebook fans who organized these protests. We're treading closely to the forbidden zone here so I'm going to back up a bit.

        1. I'm not suggesting that the internet has solved or will solve all of the world's problems. But it is difficult to argue with the assertion that it has enabled lot of discourse and new or extended communities.

          1. I'm not suggesting that the internet has solved or will solve all of the world's problems.

            No, that really wasn't my point, rather I'm suggesting that giving a voice to the voiceless has been talked about since the printing press was invented. The internet has just increased the speed in which we receive / spout information and opinion, but hasn't changed the quality of said information. As the lines between advertisement, entertainment, and information blur we need to be able to ask the critical questions regarding the validity and usefulness of the information we're looking at. I'm certainly willing to cede that the internet has made interesting, new relationships and communities, but has a nasty side-effect of real life social polarization.

            All I'm getting at here is that we could have a good discussion over a pint or 2(2).

    5. I recently read this article about Ravelry, a large knitting bulletin board, and it looks like a large-scale WGOM, only about knitting, not the Twins. Plus it looks more useful, and less half-bakef.

      Part of the reason for the board's success is that it's stringently moderated, with a group of volunteers making sure that everyone follows a code of etiquette. But another reason is the brilliant way Ravelry has struck a compromise between disclosure and anonymity. Technically, people on the site are anonymous...you don't have to use your name or any other identifying details, and many people are listed only by handles. But as I've lamented, anonymity is usually terrible for online discourse; the less that people say about themselves online, the less inhibited they feel to act like jerks. On Ravelry, though, there's a powerful force that keeps people in line...knitting. Because everything you say on the site is associated with your profile, and because your profile houses everything you've knitted and want to knit (which, for many people, is more personal than a name and email address), members feel they have a strong stake in the site. For that reason, there's a strong incentive not to speak out of turn.

      And this:

      "When I was pregnant I joined a couple Web sites for pregnant women, and my immediate reaction was, 'These people are crazy!' I couldn't relate to them at all," says Jessica. "The people in the pregnancy groups on Ravelry, I get them—we have a connection via craft that makes a first impression, and that gets us comfortable enough to start talking about other things. You're adding a piece of yourself when you're adding something to Ravelry, and that's a big deal for the people on the site."

      1. Plus it looks more useful, and less half-bakef.

        I really love that this has entered the vocabulary enough that one other person has used it. If it continues long enough, it'll look less like I made a typo in the baseball league that I was too lazy to fix and more like I am a trend setter!

            1. Just get swype or Felx9. Then, it can be "that stupid, good for nothing auto correct Effect" instead.

          2. On the chat at StreamingSoundtracks.com, someone accidentally greeted everyone with "Mroning", and from that day on, "mroning!" or "mronin'" became a beautiful way of greeting people such that they knew you weren't entirely awake yet. I've even ended up using it with work IM's now. Not really that different than the advent of Rifding Hokme, now that I think about it.

      2. Ravelry is Dr. Chop's wgom. She's found a number of pretty awesome patterns on that site. I've found plenty of beer on this one...

      3. I've always considered having a handle to be different than being anonymous. Even if everyone used, say, their real name when posting comments in the Strib comments, there are so many different commenters that you can remain effectively anonymous. Having a small-ish community here at the WGOM, we're not really anonymous. If someone comes in and starts acting like a jerk, we know to ignore/shun them, so there is a pressure for people to behave well.

  12. the lady who cut my hair today must use hand lotion from Bath and Bodyworks. I can smell it in my hair.

      2. UPDATE comments SET comment_id=30000 where comment_id=25921;

        That would probably do it.

    2. I'm gonna get the plaques started tonight hopefully. Here's what I'm looking at posting:

      1,000 Can of Corn: I am not a math guy, but that's an equation I can get behind!
      2,000 Zack: I hope you're not WGOMing while driving!
      3,000 NBB: Su-Weet!!!1101!11
      4,000 Beau: I dislike footnotes. Sometimes you get so many footnotes on one page that a third of the page is just references, which is ugly. While reading articles myself, I tend to prefer the endnote style, especially if it's on-line (even better if it's hyper-linked!). Also, as MagUidhir said, some in-text citations are cumbersome. It's not always as simple as (Beau, 2008). Sometimes, it's (Beau & AMR, 2008) or (Beau, AMR, & brianS, 2008) with all subsequent mentions being (Beau, et. al, 2008). It's a pain in the neck to follow every rule precisely and as a reader it can ruin the flow, especially if the same paragraph has many citations.
      5,000 free: Muntie!!!! Welcome to the HR board
      10,000 sean: I've never used Vista, and your decision then probably was the right one. It's just that the XP, Vista, 7 progression reminds me of the 98, Me, XP progression. Not that I'm surprised, since every other release has been a dud and made people gun-shy about upgrading.
      15,000 twayn: Twins baseball...
      20,000 hungry joe: um... what?
      25,000 HomeDome: DONGER.

      I like how we don't have any repeats on the commenters.

  14. A little late, but your TJ archives for the day:

    -A year ago today, TJ was WISE BEYOND OUR WILDEST IMAGINATIONS: "Today, Delmon Young culminates the best half-season of his big-league career. Today, Young should be culminating the last half-season of his Twins' career." He then proposed offering _elm_n and Ramos for Roy Oswalt.

    -In 2008, TJ said a bullpen without Nathan "the bullpen would be a smoldering pile of ashes, and the Twins would be battling to stay out of last place. Without him, the Twins would have no one capable of closing games."

    -In 2003, he wrote an article about Kenny Rogers attempting to lure either Juan Gonzalez or Rafael Palmeiro into waiving their no-trade clause to join the Twins. I honestly never remembered those rumors at all.

    Not much else happening on this day. Just a bunch of nostalgic All Star Game crap from when he was the beat guy.

    1. TJ would have been in the conversation for greatest GM in history if he could have pulled off an _elm_n + Ramos for Oswalt trade.

  15. I just got back from my second climb with my vibram 5 finger shoes. Already, I can't remember how I did it without them. Thanks Andrew for the positive review!

    1. I improved 2-3 minutes on my 5K time with the 5 fingers. Different set of muscles involved, there.

      1. Yea, I can feel my calves from yesterday's run but I feel like I have better form overall.

        We got them for running, but they are absolutely amazing for climbing, as well. I was actually able to wrap my toes around a fingerhold for extra grip when I was going from a ceiling to the vertical face above it.

  16. NBB Chicken Saltimbocca:

    Heat some olive oil in dutch oven - toss in some fresh sage leaves and liberal batch of kale. Water from Kale will make a mess so cover. Remove carefully, set on some paper towels to sweat.

    Prepare two chicken breasts, pounded with side of plate until 1/4" thick.
    Dust with salt/pepper, then garnish with fresh sage leaves from the garden.
    Cover with thin slices of prosciutto.
    Fold the chicken breasts like a sandwich, then use a toothpick to seal.
    Drag in flour, then brown (patiently) in Dutch oven (le Creuset, mine) in some olive oil.
    As the game gets on, toss in some shallots, mushrooms if you have some. I threw in some capers for fun.

    Oncet chix are browned on both sides, add a scoche of chix broth, add some red wine (I used freshman homebrew Barola batch circa Oct 10). Reduce to about 1/2, then add some butter. Cut off liberal amounts of kale into the Dutch oven for healthy points, then cover - don't worry, they will reduce to nothing).

    Serve with fried sage/kale leaves and gravy from reduction. Multo bene.

    1. NBB: this kind of stuff is just taunting. You need to author a The Nation Has An Appetite about now.

  17. Hey spooky (or other WGOM editor) -- can you please check my Gamelog queued up for tomorrow? I'm going to be mostly incommunicado tomorrow, so I want to make sure it's ready to go. Formatting finally looks okay for IE; not sure about other browsers. Thanks.

  18. Three new headers today (making 22): one by E, and of course, two more by hj, who claims he's about to take a break. We'll see.

    I'm digging all three.

    1. two more by hj, who claims he's about to take a break

      pfft. you wish. the "one more" i was talking about before was not included in today's submissions. i'll get to it eventually.

Comments are closed.