138 thoughts on “April 29, 2014: Those Mini-Shifts”

  2. Presale

    The Replacements (and the shhhhh... The Hold Steady) -- September 13 Midway Stadium
    Presale Code: HOOTENANNY
    Presale Times: Wednesday April 30, 10:00a
    Where: First Avenue Web Site or Etix Web Site

    1. I am this close to convincing myself to buy a ticket and figure out travel later. Then if I can't go I can sell it.

      1. I am this close to doing the same thing. Dr. Chop has given me a yellow light. Do I speed through and deal with the consequences?

        1. If you can't stop in a safe and controlled manner, it's actually more dangerous to not go through the yellow.

        2. Throw caution to the wind and just do it. You could probably crash at AMR's house. He's got so many kids they probably wouldn't even notice the extra guy or two hanging around. (Sorry AMR. I kid).

          Scot, I wouldn't bet your paycheck on The Hold Steady being there but through this source I knew about the concert about a week in advance and the announcement about 4 hours in advance so take that for what its worth.

          1. Well, if the consolation is Replacements without The Hold Steady, I may still take the chance.

          2. It's only four! My wife (being a homeschooler and Catholic) has a lot of Catholic homeschooling moms for friends, and we have the smallest family of all of them that fall in that category.

            But yes, Magoo can crash here if nothing else works out (it may not be the most convenient), our guest room even has its own shower. We may notice you though. None of the kids are your height or swarthiness.

    2. I don't think I'll be able to make THS at the zoo, so I'm counting on your secret being true.

      1. I got the flashing yellow light. I am under strict instructions to be ready to a) not attend or b) leave in the middle.

        1. My experience with women is that that flashing yellow light is actually a very red light. Proceed with extreme caution my friend.

  3. I (hopefully accompanied by Mrs. Hayes) will be going to Seattle over the 4th of July weekend. I checked the Mariners' schedule, and it looks like we're going to be missing their return from a road trip – to face the Twins, no less – by one day. Dang. Safeco's one of my favorite parks. I suspect we won't be able to spend a day hanging out in West Seattle this trip, too.

    1. I'm on my way to Seattle in the middle of May, and it turns out that I'll also miss them by a day.

      1. This will be our third time out there since 2009. I'm not much of a big city guy in general*, but Seattle's become one of my favorite places to visit. It helps that my best friend lives out there, but even if he didn't, I'm pretty sure we'd try to travel there semi-regularly.

        * Come to think of it, the other big cities I like – Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, San Diego – are roughly similar by metropolitan area population though the densities are fairly different. I don't feel a strong need to ever go back to Baltimore, but I'd be curious to see how I feel about Pittsburgh & Portland.

        1. I was in Seattle for a SABR convention in 2007. That is one of my favorite cities to visit. I want to go back sometime when the Sounders are in town.

            1. If you're talking about driving through on the interstate, it'd be hard for me to think of a more poorly designed interstate for that. I-5 in particular is really bad. (I-90 isn't that bad considering it basically just goes along until it ends, but that can cause problems, especially since the stadiums are all at the end of I-90, so games can cause a lot of congestion.)

              When you drive south through Seattle on I-5, starting in the right-most traveling lane, before you get to downtown you have to merge three lanes to the left just to stay on I-5. And in the two miles or so before downtown, when the leftmost lane is the only through lane, there is a left exit off the interstate and then a left entrance on to the interstate. And most of the traffic from the left entrance wants to merge two-three lanes to the right within a mile or so. So, yeah, huge clustermess. Going north through Seattle on I-5 is basically the same problem, lots of lane changes just to stay on the road and it narrows to one or two lanes at some point. Almost seems like they would have been better off just building where the 405 corridor is and acknowledging that there really wasn't enough space through downtown Seattle to build a proper interstate road.

              But, you're totally missing the point if you're driving through Seattle--you're supposed to stay when you get here. 🙂

          2. If you have a choice on when you come to town for a Sounders game, I'd recommend aiming for July-Sep. Sounders games are always fun, but in July-Sep, you have really good odds of nice weather. Standing in the rain has its charms, but it's a little more fun to stay dry during the game.

            1. I'll talk to my buddy (a Sounders fan) and see if that works during our visit. I'm not a soccer fan, but I'd be curious to see an MLS game and Seattle's one of the places that would make the most sense to do that.

              If not, that's just more time to revisit Paseo, Mike's Chili, El Diablo, and Salumi.

            2. Oh, the sounders. I'll have to look at their schedule. Any other suggestions for a week
              Is of mostly night time activities in Seattle?

              1. Interesting restriction. I am like an old man now and aim to go to bed by 9pm, so I'm probably not the best person to ask about that. I'm not really a foodie, but there are plenty of places to get good food if you've got the budget for it. What area of Seattle are you going to be in?

                1. I'm staying downtown between the convention center and pike place market. I'm there for a conference hence the mostly evening stuff limitation.

                  1. That's what I was afraid of. I am also pretty bad with downtown Seattle. I go to Benaroya Hall quite a bit to see the Seattle Symphony play, it might be worth checking their schedule if you're into that. Pioneer Square nightlife has a reputation as a very fratboy-ish nightclub vibe. I've eaten here a couple of times, though. Decent-to-good food and the music provided kind of a fun vibe.

                    It looks like if you're going to miss the Twins by a day, you'll miss the Sounders, too. (Which is too bad, because I'm out of town that weekend and still haven't given away my two Sounders tickets for that day.)

                    If you don't mind figuring out the buses or walking a bit, you're pretty close to Capitol Hill. Be warned that it is hipster central there, but there is pretty good people watching. There's a Dick's Drive-In up there, which you can walk up to. It's an institution, but with all the foot traffic around there, you're bound to run into some unsavory characters in that area. I've never particularly felt in danger on Capitol Hill, but it's not the most wholesome place, either. There are also a ton of bars and places to eat up there, too. If you're looking to walk around and people-watch (Broadway and the Pike/Pine corridor tend to get more foot traffic than elsewhere), that's probably the best place near downtown. Downtown itself tends to be pretty dead.

                    Once upon a time, my friends and I went to a burlesque show down in the Pike Place Market, I want to say it was at the Can-Can. So, you know, that could be an option. There's a ferris wheel on the water now, but I think it is crazy expensive.

                    Sorry I'm not of more help. I'm better at suggestions for daytime and outdoor activities.

                    2. That list has a really liberal interpretation of what "Seattle" is. Tacoma is not Seattle, for instance. And Woodinville is Seattle like Woodbury is Minneapolis. Olympia is Seattle like St. Cloud is Minneapolis.

                      Anyway, most of those places are a pretty good haul from where meat is staying. The SoDo spots are potentially workable, and the Pike Place Market option could work, too. Hale's Ales and Jolly Roger are great spots, but Fremont and Ballard can be a bit tough to get to from downtown without a car. (They are cool neighborhoods, though.)

                      I used to live about 5 blocks from the Elysian in Tangletown. There is one in Capitol Hill, too, which is probably more accessible from downtown. I'm pretty meh on their beer, though they usually have a good pumpkin ale in the winter. For me, the Tangletown location suffered in comparison to the Burgundian, which has much better food, a big whisky/whiskey/bourbon/rye selection, and a pretty good beer-in-cans list, too. If you're going to Fremont, Brouwer's is kind of cool to go to, as they have a huge selection. (Tagline: "64 Beers on draft, Over 300 Bottles, Over 60 Scotches & Great Food") They are also usually pretty attentive to things like using the right stemware.

                    3. you're bound to run into some unsavory characters in that area.

                      We'll have to compare notes about unsavory characters after my trip. We had to install spikes on our steps because french quarter. We didn't realize that the softer, gentler vagrant would get the message, but the more hardened, aggressive bum wouldn't give a rip and would continue sitting on our stoop.

          1. Looks like New Orleans's metro is closer in size to Madison's (half as big as NOLA) than NOLA is to Seattle or the Twin Cities metro, which surprised me a bit. But NOLA's metro is still well over a million, so I'd call it a big city.

            I have just about zero interest in most of the American South, but NOLA, Memphis, and the Delta are on my must-visit list for the awesome culture (food & music!) and history.

            1. StL is a pretty good match for the Twins Cities metro-wise. I've always thought of StL city proper as a lot like StP though, what with the old money and old architecture.

              1. That makes sense considering StP & StL's histories as trading hubs and departure points for the frontier.

    2. I watched very little hockey in the early 2000s (in fact, I did not see the series following that one, nor did I remember which team it was against). That goal is permanently engrained in my mind, though.

      1. My parents live across the street from Darby Hendrickson's parents. My brother was in HS at the time and bought a whole bunch of window paint and decked out the front of the house in pro-Darby stuff and got himself on the news.

    3. I'm confused. Does that scoreboard say "ESPN"? I was not aware they acknowledged hockey's existence.

  5. For fans of morning baseball, the Red Wings are scheduled to play Charlotte at 10:30 this morning. They've got some wet weather there, too, so the game may or may not be played, but it has not been delayed or postponed at this time.

  6. ID the AU -- which Twins player (current or former) calls this his autograph?
    AU

    'hint' SelectShow
    Answer SelectShow
    4. 'Spoiler' SelectShow

      1. I'm lucky I don't live anywhere near the ocean, 'cause if I saw something like that, you can bet I'd be poking at it with a stick.

        1. See, you might have saved the town: do it early with a sharp instrument to keep it from exploding.
          Same as microwaving potatoes. Stab 'em first.

      2. and here I thought you were going to link to this oldie but goodie

        httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vmnq5dBF7Y

    1. Oh and if for some weird reason anyone doesn't like the song, just feast your eyes on this instead.

        1. She does have some great songs but I'm not Milt-on-Tilt Lady Gaga over Sharon Van Etten. I will say that she is quite dreamy however.

          1. I've never listened to her, but she's coming here in July? I think. I should probably try to check some of her stuff out and maybe go, but late June through August is already pretty packed for shows for me.

      1. Rochester was rained out, too. However, New Britain and Fort Myers begin at 6:00 central, and Cedar Rapids plays at 6:30. However, rain is also in the forecast for Cedar Rapids and Harrisburg (where the Rock Cats play tonight). Fort Myers, at game time, is supposed to be partly cloudy and 84 degrees.

        1. And the New Britain game is now postponed as well. Minor Details may be rather short tomorrow.

      2. Kris Johnson, the other player acquired from the Pirates (eventually) for Morneau, will get the start in the second game Thursday, if needed.

        Righthander Alex Meyer is the most intriguing pitcher at Rochester, but he won’t get the call for the doubleheader because he pitched Monday — and it was quite a start. The Twins’ top pitching prospect shut out Charlotte for six innings on two hits and three walks while striking out 11.

        Meyer has thrown 12⅔ scoreless innings over his past two starts with 22 strikeouts. However, he is not on the 40-man roster and Thursday doesn’t fall on his day to pitch.

        1. They haven't played a game in 3 days, they have a 8-man bullpen, and they need a 6th starter?! WHYYYYYYYY?!

      1. $2.5 million is the maximum allowed fine. Plus he urged the board of governors to force a sale of the Clippers. Well then, the new commissioner has put his stamp on the league.

        1. Its funny, the last NBA owner to be suspended, Glen Taylor, is chair of the Board of Governors.

    3. The tabloid headlines just write themselves:

      Silver pounds Sterling (or Ag £ for short)

      Sterling tarnished, rebuffed

      Sterling banned; fine: Silver

      Sterling-Silver deteriorates

        1. It's the George Costanza model: always leave them wanting more.

          (Life's been crazy, pal!!)

  11. Good news at Chez Hayes today: Mrs. Hayes was hired by the university's Agronomy department. I'm not sure I can contain the joy of saving for two retirements at the same time.

    5. just a few short steps away from being Part of the Problem instead of Part of the Solution!!!

      Congrats!

    6. Thanks, everyone. We're kind of hoping this is a sign things are turning around for us. Frankly, we really needed this.

  12. As part of my Ted Talks Tuesday lunch, I happened to watch the one below, and found it very interesting. A couple points that caught my attention:
    - if Jesse Owens was running on the same special track material with the same starting blocks, he would have been in second place only a stride behind Usain Bolt
    - of the 7' tall people in the US, 17% of them are already playing in the NBA

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0

      1. Sounds unlikely to me, too.
        Maybe "Have played professional basketball"? I assume there are retired players that haven't shrank enough.
        I'm trying to recall how tall my great-uncle-in-law is. He played in Europe. Maybe he's only 6'10 or something.
        Wonder if his sons are 7'. Both probably just short. Neither played basketball. The older son did in HS until he messed up his knee.

        1. actually, I do believe that 17 pct quote, at least as a first approximation. particularly with Rhu's 20-40 caveat.

          The curve shaped by the CDC's available statistics, however, does allow one to estimate the number of American men between the ages of 20 and 40 who are 7 feet or taller: fewer than 70 in all. Which indicates, by further extrapolation, that while the probability of, say, an American between 6'6" and 6'8" being an NBA player today stands at a mere 0.07%, it's a staggering 17% for someone 7 feet or taller.

          of course, the error bounds on such an estimate are large relative to the point estimate. Maybe there's 140 7-footers in the age bracket.

  14. monday is first monday. I may or may not have read a book this month (actually, I am reading a book). But now, through the power of the twitterverse, you can read a classic:

    1. I disagree with his point of two batting black holes being unreasonable while one can be okay. 8 Andrelton Simmons-equivalents might not be a workable team, but it would probably still be a good team.

      The DH totally needs to be adopted universally and interconferenceleague games increased.

      1. I kind of wonder about this point; I would hypothesize that there's a team-level tipping point between offensive and defensive value of a player. In the abstract, a team that is full of a single type of extremes (on offense, a player who K's every at-bat, on defense a player who botches every defensive play) would be unable to win. A team that is balanced between the two different types of players would hypothetically be able to win games, because they would have some players who could score, and some players who could field. Obviously that's not the way it works in reality, but I think the abstract demonstrates the principle. It doesn't mean Trueblood is right about where he sets the balance - in fact, he's probably completely wrong about it, as lots of lineups with several marginal players have success - but I think the foundation of his premise isn't completely off.

      2. I like the idea in principle that everyone hits and everyone plays in the field. (But no, I don't think it makes it super complicated for managers and I don't worship at the altar of the double-switch.) But in practice, there's no way for MLB to mandate that lower leagues play without a DH--you can't put the genie back in the bottle, essentially. Given that you're never going to take the DH out of HS and college, I'd just prefer to give in and have all leagues use the DH.

        1. I would be in favor of adding the DH to the NL if the rules were revised to allow the DH to hit for any one player regardless of that player's position.

          I absolutely do not want to see any more interleague, however. We already have way too much.

          1. I actually don't mind interleague play so much these days. I'd rather have a more balanced schedule and not so many games within the division. I think amending the DH rule as you suggest would be great.

              1. I did and I so dislike west-coast start times that the whole time I read it I had my fingers in my ears and shouted (to myself, quietly) "Na na na na I can't read you."

    2. I used to argue that the DH rule was a distinction that I liked between AL and NL. I've watched enough NL baseball in the past couple of years to say "meh" - pitchers hitting doesn't really add anything to my enjoyment of the game.

      It is helpful for me to picture how frustrating it might be if Gardy were to manage in the NL on a regular basis.

    3. This is where I disagree with him.
      This and unbalanced schedules.

      Split rules are cool. They could solve this problem by putting the Astros back in the NL where they belong and restricting Interleague to three weeks in May or June.
      At least he admits that good-hitting pitchers are a good thing. None of this "Bartolo Colon is embarrassing to look at," junk.

  16. mmm, Bookface datums.

    In 2009, Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski found that the two biggest use cases of online social networks, in order, were men looking at women they don't know and men looking at women they do know. And looking at photos constituted 70 percent of all actions on the sites. As one male fan of Facebook ogling told Amanda Marcotte, "On Facebook you can stare as long as you want to—nobody's going to get mad because it's not them, it's just a picture."

    So it makes sense that someone would write Badabing! a $1.99 iOS app, which combs your friends' photos to find "beach or pool pics" (read: women in bikinis), because normal creepy Facebook stalking is apparently just too time intensive. Reviews are middling, though (2 stars out of 5 for the latest version), so you might not have to delete all your beach pics until the app's image recognition algorithm improves.

    1. as great as that example is, this one is better:

      Kosinski, Stilwell, and coauthor Thore Graepel reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the model at use here can tell the difference between gay and straight men 88 percent of the time, between black and white users 95 percent of the time, and between Democrats and Republicans 85 percent of the time. Their research on how intelligence and sexual orientation are associated with liking different items lead to one of the finest paragraphs of academic writing I've ever encountered:

      For example, the best predictors of high intelligence include "Thunderstorms," "The Colbert Report," "Science," and "Curly Fries," whereas low intelligence was indicated by "Sephora," "I Love Being A Mom," "Harley Davidson," and "Lady Antebellum." Good predictors of male homosexuality included "No H8 Campaign," "Mac Cosmetics," and "Wicked The Musical," whereas strong predictors of male heterosexuality included "Wu-Tang Clan," "Shaq," and "Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps."

  18. Regarding my valuation statement on the clippers yesterday, Bill Simmons says they're worth $1.5 billion.

  20. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, a big hockey fan, shared a novel idea to watch Wednesday’s Game 7 of the Wild-Avalanche series even though it’s scheduled during the Twins-Dodgers game. “I’m going to challenge something early, get thrown out of the game and come in here and watch hockey again,” he said. “I love hockey.”

    1. I am working 4-12 or so tomorrow night. I am thinking that we may have a "technical issue" and may have to close early. Either that, or I just might have to keep a close eye on our bar patrons while the game is on.

      To be serious though, I would almost rather have absolutely no access to watching the game, than to have to try to work while the game is on all around me with constant distractions.

  22. Which division in MLB has the most teams with a positive run differential?

    'Spoiler' SelectShow

Comments are closed.