Cup of Coffee

February 28, 2012: Baseball Town

107 Comments

In some ways, I love it here. I don't see endless strings of dudes wearing Steelers jerseys promoting guys who make their living intentionally giving guys concussions. Out here, it's baseball. Diamondbacks gear outnumbers Cardinals stuff probably 8 to 1, at least, and baseball-related apparel unrelated to the D-Backs outnumbers the Cardinals stuff too. I see the occasional Yankee hat, like everywhere else, but for the most part this is an area where I can expect fans of just about any team (with the Indians and Reds pulling up third and second place, doubtless because they share a spring training facility here in Goodyear). Ballplayers come into the store on a regular occasion. There are games everywhere, all the time. I might "belong" in Minnesota because of the people there, but I can see belonging here too. Spring is an awfully exciting time for a baseball fan in Phoenix.

Tomorrow, the Phillies play the first spring training game against Florida State. A few days after that I expect to be attending a game at Goodyear Ballpark.

I'm officially excited again.

107 thoughts on “February 28, 2012: Baseball Town”

    1. I was wondering what the sentiment was here before they showed up. I see caps for a great many teams, so the month of spring training obviously has a great impact on people.

      I see Cubs gear on occasion, even here in one of the far west suburbs of Phoenix. Normally the shirts are spring training-related, too.

  2. so awesome:
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w68qZ8JvBds
    ¡viva la lo-fi!

    (here's the spec sheet for all you engineer nerds and/or computer geeks)

    1. A little off-topic, but Sheenie wakes up extra early every morning just to see Sven do the morning weather on KARE-11. She gets a perverse joy out of seeing how miserable he is to be forced to work that early (and loves the days when it's clear he went straight to the studio after a night clubbing).

  6. I just got tickets for my first ever spring training game. It isn't the Twins but at least it is baseball! (If the Cubs qualify as baseball.)

  7. So my rickety old Jetta is currently in the shop for what will probably be some very expensive repairs. I only paid $5000 for the car, so now I'm trying to figure out how much I'm willing to spend fixing it. Is it worth paying a third of its overall value to fix it, or is that the point where I should just give up and start looking for a new whip? I really like the car, so I'd probably get real sentimental about letting it go.

    2. Depends on what you're fixing- if it's wear parts, like suspension, bearings, bushings and whatnot but the engine and transmission are good, I'd say keep it.
      I may be biased though, since I bought a '96 Jetta for $1000 and then put $600 and quite a few hours into the front suspension.

      1. Oh it has a whole laundry list of problems. The most severe of which is that the gas mileage mysteriously dropped from about 23 mpg to about 9, and I have no idea why. The rest of the issues are with the electrical system, which is just a never-ending font of woe.

        1. 23 to 9? Yikes. That might be time to move on. How old is this thing? I thought Jettas got a little better mileage than that.

          1. It's a 2000. It still runs the same as ever, it's just chugging gas like a maniac. I'm hoping against hope that it's a simple thing like a busted sensor or fuel regulator or some other isolated part that can be easily replaced and suddenly make everything 100% again. But I don't really know very much about cars.

            1. easily replaced and suddenly make everything 100% again.

              In my experience, and I imagine yours and everyone else's, this is a statement that never applies to cars.

              1. Just because it has never happened before in the entire history of automobiles doesn't mean it won't happen for me now!!!!!!!

            2. The shop can figure it out from scanning it, but I'm guessing it's multiple things. Hopefully it's only multiple simple little things.

        2. Yeah, I think I'd move on from that one, that mileage drop smacks of something pretty serious. FWIW, I get about 32 mpg with my Jetta. I do have a few electrical gremlins that pop up every now and then, but nothing major so far.

          1. That's why I watch my gas mileage like a hawk. I find it to be an excellent indicator of things that suck. I get about 47-48 in winter and 50-52 in summer, which is one reason I love my car. I do go through headlights at a somewhat alarming rate, though, and the backlight for my heater controls needs a solid thumping to get it to turn on. I figure that's just a VW thing, though.

            1. Hmm, I assumed my heater controls had no backlight. I guess I just haven't thumped them hard enough yet.

    3. I may also be biased because I have a Golf that I have every intention of fixing the wear parts during its life span as the engine and transmission are currently great and, at 165,000 on the TDI, just getting broken in. I also love the car, so parting would be difficult.

      1. I wish my Jetta was a diesel, but it's a pretty sweet-running 2.0L as long as the distributor is dry.

        1. They're the best, even with the price difference between diesel and gas. My wife was none too happy that I bought a VW, though. She had a boyfriend in college that would make her go with him to the top level of a MoA parking garage with his Jetta where he'd meet other d-bags and look at each other's engines for three hours, then get mad at her when she acted bored. It took a lot of convincing her that I was not going to do that.

    4. This summer I had to put a new engine into a car I'd bought 6 months earlier for something like $3000. I've also had to replace the starter (thanks for the help dad!). But honestly, it runs really well now, and even though the total cost of those things was more than 2/3rds the original cost, if I had it to do over, I'd do it again.

      If it's fixable (and you can get that gas mileage back up), then the cheapest car is the one you already have. You never know what you'll get if you go for something new.

      1. Very true. Not having to transfer titles, mess around with licensing and get your insurance changed around is worth quite a bit, too.

        1. This is helpful advice. And the other thing is that on my budget, the only replacement cars I could afford would probably be even bigger lemons.

          1. That was like 75% of why I went with the "fix it" decision. But 6 months later, I'm glad I did. Plus, I got a warranty on the new engine, so any problems in the first 3 years are covered. You might want to consider warranties.

  8. I'm starting to look for a place to live for my new job starting in July in the Baltimore/DC area. Right now, I'd prefer to live in or near Baltimore, preferably toward the southeast or southeastern suburbs. I'd also consider Annapolis. DC area is possible too, but I feel like that might be somewhat of a headache with the traffic and all. Does anybody here have experience with this area? Right now I'm feeling overwhelmed with the number of options I have.

    1. The only advice I can give is to avoid anywhere from The Wire. (but I'm assuming you already knew that.)

    2. Ellicott City and Olney are pretty decent. Bowie and the city near College Park Community College are both closer to where I think you're going to be working, but both are terrible places to live. Other than that, I'm not too knowledgeable about Maryland suburbs outside of Montgomery County.

          1. Columbia is also pretty nice and closer than both Ellicott City and Olney. My uncle's family lives near Annapolis somewhere and I visited once. Seemed nice enough, but IIRC it was more expensive to be closer to the Bay.

  9. So, I mentioned it over on Spooky's site, but the wife will be induced on Friday due to some complications in the pregnancy. This is a lot better than it could be, but it's still a pretty far departure from the way we'd planned it (isn't it always, though). As always, thoughts and prayers are appreciated, and I'll make sure to come back with the stats once we know 'em.

    1. and as i mentioned over there, best wishes to the Z family. we need strong and healthy babies to fill out the roster of the upcoming WGOM little league team.

        3. 36 weeks should be alright.
          For my job, I'm often looking at low BW/Gestational Age statistics and some are frightening. But 36 weeks doesn't even get looked at.

  11. I was a little annoyed to not see Dicknbert here in the bottom ten, but then I realized Hawk Harrelson was also missing. If there truly are ten worse broadcasting crews out there, may God have mercy on our souls.

    1. I can't support those rankings, I'm afraid. The Diamondbacks are better than average, at worst, even with Grace being dead weight a lot of the time (and he still has charisma and enthusiasm for the game, so he's not a total load).

      FanGraphs isn't taking them seriously or anything, though, it doesn't seem. Probably just a time-killer since they're as excited for the season as we are.

      1. I want to see the rest of the scores before I pass judgment. I fail to see how any booth can be worse than the White Sox's.

    3. Those polls are going to be biased such that most of the people who vote on, say, Dicknbert are going to be Twins fans and most of the people who vote on Hawk are going to be White Sox fans. So a huge part of those rankings comes down to whether or not the broadcasters appeal to the home fans. A lot of these teams at the bottom (Dodgers, Phillies, Braves, Cardinals) have had very famous broadcasters in the past and if there's one thing people don't like, it's change. It also doesn't help that the new guys aren't really doing anything well.

      I have a feeling it'd be an awfully different set of rankings if users were somehow not allowed to vote for their home team.

      1. When I had MLB.TV a few years ago, I discovered that there were very few very good announcing crews. Most were mediocre and generic (where I would formerly place DicknBert who have continued to devolve to juvenile and petty). Now that Physioc and Hudler are somehow doing games again (haven't Royals fans suffered enough?), I don't think Harrelson is last anymore. Creepy Rick Rizzs also deserves a shout-out.

        1. The Mariners' crew is hard to rank because they swap broadcasters between the radio and TV crews halfway through the game. Why is this necessary? I have no idea. Anyway, I think Sims is pretty decent as a play-by-play announcer, and while Rizzs is creepy, he's also generally enthusiastic and that goes a long way with me. I haven't had mlb.tv for two seasons now, so I haven't heard Dicknbert for a couple seasons. Looks like it's going that way this year, too.

          I really, really, really wish more teams would go with a one-man booth, especially for TV broadcasts. The game is right there in front of us in pictures and sounds! How much do we need to be talked at? The Sounders had a one-man booth (Arlo White, who was stolen by NBC to do their national MLS broadcasts) the last three years and it was fantastic. Now that Keller retired (and has been hired on as a color commentator) and White was stolen away, no more one-man booth.

          Also, there ought to be a law against the three-man booth.

          1. I really, really, really wish more teams would go with a one-man booth, especially for TV broadcasts.

            I wouldn't know what to think about Scott Baker without Bert.

    4. Dick Bremer is not a bad play by play guy. He generally calls a good game, and has some great calls when it comes to tense moments. What gets me is that the dude knows a lot of baseball, but generally plays dumb to defer to Bert when it comes down to breaking down a play/sequence and Bert is dead weight when it comes to analysis.

      1. Yes, he is an enabler to the worst degree. If we had a knowledgeable color guy, I think we'd all be amazed at how much the broadcast would improve.

          1. He seemed excellent (mainly because he was replacing Bert and providing actual *gasp* insight). I think we would grow tired of TK fairly quickly (not as quickly as he would grow tired of explaining things), but as a changeup he was excellent for a week here or there. The problem is that DicknBert is just incredibly stale. They've now been together for almost 15 years and are completely on auto-pilot.

            1. There really is only so much you can say about baseball in real time game after game after game. If the two-man booth is unavoidable, it would probably be more tolerable if they rotated through color commentators so we got some variety over the course of the season.

  12. Speaking of cars...

    I just had to have four new tires put on. 377.52 dollars later I'm off to buy a new dishwasher. Since the good Dr. and I will be selling this house we're going to purchase a scratch and dent model. I'll be spending the rest of the day under the sink.

    1. Wow, you got a good deal. I wish I could get tires good enough for winter driving at less than $100/per tire. We put four new tires on my wife's Corrolla and paid like $600 or so, then promptly traded it in about a month later.

      1. I have a small automobile with no need for "snow" traction. That is, of course, until we move to WNY.

        Plus, you know, I'm not showing my ride off at the MoA, like you... /ikidikid

    2. I did the dishwasher installation thingy this summer. Our old dishwasher was installed when the house was built. Sometime after that, the owner put in a wood floor in the kitchen, in front of the dishwasher. I had to cut the legs off of the old one to get it out. Further, it appeared that the one we had bought (but was not yet delivered) would not fit. I measured that hole several times, went to the store, pulled out the display model and tried to figure out whether it would fit in the space (if I could just get it in, it would sit lower than the floor and it would be okay. I eventually determined that I had about a 95% chance of it just barely fitting. I had it delivered and it fit. With about a millimeter to spare.

      1. Yeah, I've found some interesting pluming behind my dishwasher. I'm almost done, but will have to get a little bit creative to finish.

      2. My sister's house had a dishwasher installed in an island counter that kept backing up. The discharge hose ran down through the floor, under the floor joists, and back up to the sink, so about 12-13 feet. For the record, dishwasher pumps are made to push the water from the dishwasher about maybe 3 feet up before draining downwards, and the check valves in there are not designed to hold back the amount of water a 12-foot long hose can hold. This was one of the more ridiculous home "repairs" the previous homeowner had made that I helped my sister remedy, but unlike the electrical wiring the dude had done, at least it wasn't going to kill anyone. The home inspector that signed off on that place for the mortgage loan really mailed it in.

        1. I'm fairly certain that your sister's home inspector moved to Texas shortly after he "inspected" her home.

    3. And I'm done. The installation was easier than I thought, and now I have the satisfaction of a super nice dishwasher for a fraction of the price because someone scratched the finish before I could.

  16. Kevin Love will will get his revenge on Kobe later this week.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C40CiDE6y6Y&feature=player_embedded

    No one, except Wes Johnson, leaves Kevin Love hanging.

  18. Wisconsin scored 16 points in the first half against the Gophers. six-teen
    sadly, the Goofs only scored 23

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