Cup of Coffee

May 8, 2024: In A Minor Key

30 Comments

What ancillary job in a major sport would you like to do? For example, I think it’d be awesome to be a batboy or a ballboy in tennis or a part of the team that gets to blast t-shirts in the stands with a bazooka.

What would your minor role be?

30 thoughts on “May 8, 2024: In A Minor Key”

  2. I do public address announcing for local sports. I'd love to have a chance to do that at a big league level.

  3. I know a few people who did the hype thing, complete with t-shirt bazookas. They liked it for a temporary gig. I know a guy who was the main on-the-floor host for the Timberwolves for a few years (usually there’s a guy and a girl doing it) and he definitely loved that gig enough that he ended up nabbing the same one when he went to Los Angeles with the Clippers. He’s back home with the Wolves to some capacity.

    Of course, I was the mascot for the Yakima Bears in 2004. It was very fun but I’m a little old to keep up the enthusiasm like I did then. At this point I’d prefer to be Audra Martin, though that may not be as “ancillary” as you were thinking.

  5. I'd love to be the guy who writes the trivia questions and picks out the musical options and such for between-innings entertainment.

  6. I'm pretty happy with my usher gig, I get to wear the uniform and say I work for the team. I get to see games for free, hang out with thousands of other baseball fans, and help people have a good time and stay safe at the ballpark. But I always thought it would be cool to be the official scorekeeper for a baseball team, so I'll go with that.

  7. I’d love to be the guy in charge of incidental sound in the ballpark, just to eradicate “eVerY bOdY cLaP yOuR hAnDz” and some of the other generic audio hype inflicted on fans’ ears. Basically, I’d turn my position over to mixing the live organist.

    Or maybe I’d jus be thetballpark organist, but since I started learning piano in my forties, I think that’s not something to inflict on others.

    1. I don't know. I think it would be pretty funny to hear Chopsticks played during every rally.

      1. Thanks for that. It was hard to be an Albini apologist for a long time because of his incredibly hurtful language/band names/etc. Still, I'd heard that a lot of that was bluster from a smart guy that knew controversy sells.

        An old musician friend of mine always spoke so highly of his character. Addiction issues left her homeless and broke in the early 90's, and many of her industry "friends" abandoned her. Not Steve, who offered her emotional and financial support during those awful years. When she was finally sober again he gave her money for first/last month rent and deposit on an apartment. I know she is devastated by the loss of her friend.

      2. The list of amazing records he "engineered" is pretty staggering. Arguable career bests from artists as varied as PJ Harvey and Nirvana, through Joanna Newsom and Jason Molina. Also, the first Breeders album which doesn't get enough love.

  9. So with Willson Contreras getting his arm broken on a catcher's interference yesterday, I was wondering if there are any good leaderboards for catcher's interference. It seems like it used to be so rare that it's not even broken out separately from errors in any of player pages at bb-ref or the fangraphs fielder leaderboards. It must be in the play-by-play data because you can find it in the bb-ref game logs, but it's really tedious.

    Anyway, I figured I've probably seen Mauer catch as much as anyone else, and my memory was that catcher's interference was exceedingly rare. So I checked for Mauer, and he had one catcher's interference his entire career -- August 28th, 2005 at Texas. Ninth inning, tie game, runners on first and second with one out, and the CI loaded the bases. Next hitter singled to end the game.

    Contreras just in 2023 had three CI.

    So Mauer, career, had 1 CI per 33,305 catching PA and Contreras had 1 CI per 1,122 catching PA, basically 33 times more frequently than Mauer.

    Looking at the Twins for 2023, Vazquez had 1 CI, and in 2022 Sanchez had 1 CI.

    So with those handful of anecdotes, maybe it's gone from like once or twice per decade per team to once or twice (or more?) per year per team, but it'd be interesting to know the full numbers. I guess teams want the catchers to get as close as possible to steal some strikes, but that just works out as another argument in favor of automatic balls and strikes for me.

    1. Okay, so I also just checked AJ Pierzynski because I suppose Mauer is a HOF catcher and people might argue he's exceptional. As far as I can tell, AJ had 1 catcher's interference for his entire career (Placido Polanco on June 8th, 2009), and he had 69,597 catching PA.

    2. I just watched the replay of that. The batter and catcher were WAY too close to each other. I don't know if the catcher was up too far or if the batter was back to far (I had read that his back foot was out of the box). But that would seem to be the main issue here.

      1. When I had my ill-fated attempt at a catching career, the ump had to constantly keep pushing me forward because I was afraid of getting hit with a swing so I was inching back tiny bit by tiny bit with each pitch

      2. All the shots I saw had the batter's back foot always at least partially on the line, which I assume makes him in, since the only boundary rules I know about in baseball are such that partially overlapping = in. That said, he was effectively as far back as he could possibly be with some justification for being in the box.

    3. I guess teams want the catchers to get as close as possible to steal some strikes, but that just works out as another argument in favor of automatic balls and strikes for me.

      And today, there's an article in The Athletic about just that. It opens with these paragraphs:

      Weeks before Opening Day this season, Major League Baseball sent a memo to all 30 clubs highlighting a rise in catcher’s interference. The instances of catchers being struck by the bats of opposing hitters were rising rapidly. Catcher’s interference was called 94 times in 2023, nearly 20 more times than in 2022.

      What was causing the dramatic uptick? Catchers kept moving closer to the plate. In the era of pitch framing, teams deduced that the closer a catcher is to receiving a pitch, the better chance he has to “steal” a strike.

      It worked well enough that catchers kept shifting closer to the batter’s box. The memo this spring essentially warned teams to cut it out and move catchers farther behind the plate to minimize risk.

      Katie Woo interviews several teams about this, including the Twins:

      The happy medium for some teams seems to be self-monitoring. The Minnesota Twins, for example, monitor their catcher every pitch. It’s one of the primary in-game responsibilities of first-base and catching coach Hank Conger.

      “A good, tight setup generally speaking is better than worse, something you prefer. But it’s obviously to avoid not just catcher interference, but injuries, too,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think there’s a few reasons why (being closer) is helpful, but there are other times that we’re yelling at them to back the hell up to also be helpful, you know?”

      1. Good information there, thanks. 94 times in 2023 makes it 3 per team per season. 30 times more frequently than 20 years ago might not actually be that far off.

  10. Has anybody tried to pick up $25 tickets from Live Nation? Every show I click on is seeking for more than $25. Did they release ten tickets at that price or something like that?

    1. Yeah, you have to hit those pretty early as they are limited amounts. It’s more a hype thing for Live Nation honestly. Whodda thunk it?

      1. For me, it has the opposite effect. There's no way I'll pay $59 for a ticket that was advertised for $25.

        1. I bought tickets to see Charley Crockett in August through live nation and the endless advertising and add ons almost led me to just stay home.

  11. Official scorekeeper. Yeah, that one. I vaguely recall spending an hour googling around 15 years ago to see how one gets into that job.

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