32 thoughts on “January 23, 2016: Ventura and Marte”

1. Interesting header image. I learned from this Hardball Times piece that the new CBA has instituted a ban on tobacco, regardless of its form of consumption, at MLB facilities. Apparently the ban includes total prohibition on tobacco use for any player not currently in the majors. I hope MLB has instituted a good tobacco cessation program for players, staff, and umpires. These days it seems that addiction to nicotine is treated differently (with greater social stigma) by society than addition to other chemicals.

   My grandfather, after a couple brief, unsuccessful attempts in the Nineties, finally quit smoking last year after being hospitalized for shortness of breath. When we visited him in December he'd been without a cigarette for six months – the longest he'd gone without smoking since before he became a regular smoker while in the Navy back in the mid-Fifties. I made sure he knew I was proud of his success and understand how hard it is to quit, even when your mind's made up.

   1. Anyone who's witnessed the brown stains on baseball spikes knows the dangers of secondhand dipping.

      1. I thought secondhand dipping was what someone did when they accidentally drank from someone's opaque dip bottle/spittoon of expediency.

         1. that also is a danger of secondhand dipping

         2. Dad's friend put his identical soda can next to mine as a younger child. Still remember that one quuuite clearly.

      2. As a birder, secondhand dipping is when your friend goes to look for a reported rare species and can't find it so you decide not to try, only to discover your friend was like the only person who didn't find it.

         Explanation	SelectShow
         "Dipping" is trying to find a reported rare bird and failing.

2. We're barely three weeks into 2017 and I'm already planning my third funeral of the year. Funerals are part of the job, and they can be satisfying in a way, but I could certainly stand it if I had fewer of them to do.

   1. My wife's dad died a year ago. In the last two months, the fathers of two of her closest college friends both died, and a third is deep into dementia.

      Sigh.

3. So I didn’t get around to anything like my top music for 2016 this weekend, because I took a quick look at open water on the River around the 169 bridge and found the second drake Barrow’s Goldeneye in the state for this winter, and the first one that was reported in a timely manner. This is a very rare bird for Minnesota, with disjunct breeding populations in Alaska through Oregon and Idaho, northern Labrador, and Iceland. They’re common on the west coast in winter, but might be one out of 1,000 or more of each Common Goldeneye in Minnesota.

   It was a lifer for me and for a lot of the birders who came to look for it. I spent Saturday afternoon getting the word out, and yesterday afternoon helping an out-of-town (online-only-until-yesterday) friend look for it unsuccessfully.

   

   1. In the picture, it's the middle-front one in the cluster of 4 to the left, with more black on the back and a crescent-shaped white spot on its face.
      I've been looking closely at every Common Goldeneye I've seen for the last four winters, to determine if any of them were this species.

      1. I thought I saw a cluster of goldeneyes in the West Hartford Reservoir lake along Farmington Ave. on the way back from running yesterday.

         1. On the east coast, you've got mostly Commons, but the Labrador-breeding population does regularly winter from the St. Lawrence to Cape Cod, with some frequency down to New York Harbor.
            No winter records on the Hartford Reservoirs, but a good number including a few this winter on the Connecticut River between Springfield, MA and the Windsor Locks.

4. Looks like the Dozier trade is done. He's staying here for at least half a season.

   1. You got me excited for a second. I read the "Dozier trade is done" as the Dozier trade is complete and that he'd been traded.

      1. I couldn't think of a way to phrase so the second sentence would be cut off at an ambiguous point.

   2. This will go down as the first big non-move of the new front office.

      1. I am pretty disappointed they didn't get something done, I'm not gonna lie.

         1. Hopefully the only alternative would've been "You traded Dozier for that!?"

         2. The problem is: Dozier > Forsyth. Forsyth = DeLeon. Dozier > DeLeon.

            1. The good news is it helps establish a market for a possible deadline trade.

               1. I seriously wonder about this, because with just 30 teams, with maybe as many as 2/3rds seriously competing for playoffs in a given year, and player performance itself being a variable, the market is in constant flux. I think it gives the Twins some ground for a baseline, maybe, but the fact that they didn't pull the trigger suggests setting a baseline wasn't a problem.

                  1. I'm hoping for something similar to Lucroy. A team's second baseman gets injured and needs an upgrade Right Now.

            2. This was exactly my thought.

   3. I'm fine with not trading him. I'm glad they listened to offers, but I'm also glad they didn't make a trade just so they could say they did something.

      1. ditto'd

5. dot-age

6. Hate practically on my doorstep.

   There also was hate crime-associated vandalism of a Sikh-owned Quiznos a couple of blocks from my house this weekend. Sigh.

   1. On the Quiznos thing, I got $5 that says they were targeted "because they were Muslim".

      1. Vandalism included the scrawled word "terrorists" on the building.

         I am pretty sure they weren't referencing the Indira Gandhi assassination.

7. The Wolves are going to have a D League team in Iowa
   With the Wild already having a team there (I believe the basketball and hockey teams play in the same arena), Des Moines is going to be Twin Cities South.

   1. They need to get Payne and Hill down there quick, before the Grizzlies relinquish control.

   2. Just need to flip the Iowa Cubs.

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