Keep In Mind This Occurred In Phoenix

It's not like you can switch into those costumes in the bathroom. The guy dressed up as Jerry Sloan even brought a clipboard to pretend to draw plays on? I'll bet you $50 the fella in the Hornacek jersey was the mastermind behind this. Come on, you're getting 5:1 odds.

The guy on the far right is either wearing a #26 Kyle Korver or John Amaechi jersey. Judging by the way he has his hand tenderly placed across his chest, I'm going to go with the latter.

You Can't Get There From Here

Ross at New Stadium Insider drums up another detail in the fine print about the New Stadium: Only those with Field Level tickets will have access to the Field Level area and concessions:

We have mentioned before that one of the most enjoyable aspects of going to baseball games is roaming around the stadium and checking out all of the nooks and crannies of the ballpark. Never before have we been to a ballpark that does not let fans explore the concessions on an entire level of the Stadium. We have been to Camden Yards in Baltimore, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia and Safeco Field in Seattle in the past few years and NONE of those stadiums have this policy.

I'm hoping there aren't any concession stands that are located only on the Field Level, so everyone would have access to everything they wanted to try, but if not, that's the Yankees' loss more than ours.

A lot of the people at the Field Level have the option of having food brought to their seats. Why do can't us commoners come check out the food options and walk around? It's not like people can get down to where the seats are. They are still advertising the availability of "Between the Bases" seats during Spring Training games and elsewhere. The Yankees continue to cater to the endangered species that is "Corporate High Rollers" while telling the average fan where they can stick their New Stadium experience.

Tucked away at the bottom of the Yanks initial press release was the fact that gates would be three hours prior to game time, so fans would presumably be able to take in some batting practice. Ross shoots that one down too. He finds here that "Guests are welcome to watch batting practice from their seat location".

Yup, hurry to the park three hours early so you can sit in your 400 level seats during batting practice and get a head start on getting ripped off on concessions. You wouldn't want to disturb those people in the Field Level, who aren't even going to be there yet.

Or you could just go to Stan's, Billy's, or the Bowling Alley. Your choice.

Looking Ahead

Trying to make sense of Matt Holliday's home/road splits yesterday got me thinking about next offseason already. After this year, the Yankees are going to be in the market for some outfielders. The contracts for Xavier Nady, Johnny Damon, and Hideki Matsui will all be expiring, leaving Nick Swisher, Brett Gardner, Melky Cabrera and possibly Austin Jackson if he makes some serious strides through the minors.

Those remaining all represent some pretty serious question marks. As a Yankee fan, I'd like to think that Swisher is due for a bounce back since his stats took a serious dip last year in what is ostensibly his prime (age 27) and had a BABIP of .249. Brett Gardner may be off to a nice start this Spring, but let's not forget that in 127 Major League AB's last year he had a line of .228/.283/.299, good for a 53 OPS+. In a year when Melky was supposed to step forward, he fell back significantly. Austin Jackson is still only a prospect, so planning around him being MLB-ready to start the 2010 season is quite foolhardy.

Back in December, Tim at MLBTR compiled a list of the free agents to be in 2010. I whittled it down to the most intriguing options, in my opinion. (The Scarlet B represents a Boras client)

Centerfield Options
Rick Ankiel (30) - B
Coco Crisp (30) - $8MM club option with a $500K buyout

Unless the market turns around Crisp won't have his option picked up the the Royals, but I'd rather have Count Chocula or Tony the Tiger playing CF. Ankiel represents the Boras Dilemma. If he has a great year, his price tag will be astronomical, if he has an average one, you aren't going to be too excited about getting him anyway.

I think we have to hope that either Jackson or Gardner pan out for that spot. They are both solid defensively, which is tremendously important, but they will have to prove that they can hit Major League pitching before I get excited about either of them manning center field.

Now, the Corner Outfield Options.

• Carl Crawford (28) - $10MM club option with a $1.25MM buyout
• Jason Bay (31)

I really, really, really like Carl Crawford, aside from his production (or lack thereof due to a torn tendon in his hand) last year. Each year from 2004-07 he had 11 or more HRs, from 46-59 stolen bases, and averaged almost 15 triples (!) per year. The Rays have a pretty well-stocked farm system and it wouldn't be all that shocking if they didn't spring for his $10M option. More on that here (from before Fack Youk's pre-Black & White borrowed picture policy).

I get the feeling the Red Sox will sign Jason Bay before the season is over, but if they don't, I hope the Yankees take serious interest. He gets slept on because he spent most of his career with the Pirates, but look at his numbers. He had a down year in '07, but the guy can hit.


More Boras Dilemmas:

1. Matt Holliday (30) B
2. Xavier Nady (31) B
3. Johnny Damon (36) B

Pass. Pass. Pass.


The Old, the Expensive and the Defensively Incompetent:

1. Bobby Abreu (36)
2. Jermaine Dye (36) - $12MM mutual option with a $1MM buyout
3. Vladimir Guerrero (34)
4. Manny Ramirez (38) - $20MM player option B
5. Magglio Ordonez (36) - $15MM club/vesting option with a $3MM buyout

Part of me would love to see one of these guys DH'ing, but the other knows that with the Yanks aging rapidly, there will be guys who need a break from playing the field from time to time. Is it worth overpaying for a top of the line hitter when their presence is going to take Jorge out of his rhythm when he has to ride the pine when he's not manning the dish? Maybe not.

Austin Jacks One

We just copyrighted that headline.

Don't even think about it, John Sterling.

It takes a lot to get me excited about about a Spring Training. This would fall under the category of "a lot".


Boom. A grand slam against the Red Sox by my favorite Yankee farmhand.

13 days...

I Knew It Was Too Good To Be True

When the initial reports of $6 beers at the New Yankee Stadium came out yesterday, I was thrilled. Even though they only serve schwilly light beer at the Stadium and it's miserably overpriced, it's a lot of fun to hike up to the upper deck and do some day drinking.

Frank, Big Wille Style and I put away our fair share of $9.50 brewskis last year (and $9 the year before) while sitting in our Saturday Package seats in Sec 7, Row M. Despite the fact that we got shut out of our Saturday games this year, I was looking forward to not getting bent over every time I ponied up for a cold one. I thought maybe they were throwing fans a bone because of the economy. Of fucking course not.

As always, New Stadium Insider saw through the P.R. bullshit and discovered that the beers they are offering for $6 are only 12oz, whereas last year it was $9.50 for 20oz. The price per ounce actually increased slightly (from $0.48 to $0.50). Guess we will still be packing a flask of Jameson or Johnnie Walker this year.

Furthermore, our resident Culinary Correspondent HowFresh Eats notified me that Citi Field's food options destroy those at the New Yankee Stadium:

Did you know that that Citi Field is completely outfitted by Danny Meyer? Shake Shack, Blue Smoke and several other spots. While we get Johnny Rockets and Hard Rock. That pisses me off to no end.

Ever heard of Shake Shack? HowFresh did some intrepid reporting on the location near my apartment a few months back. It is out of this world. Take a look at the what fans at Citi Field are going to be able to choose from. Now tell me you wouldn't take those options in a tenth of a second over what they've got in the Bronx.

Like Ben at River Ave. Blues, I'm just not that excited about the food options at the New Digs. I pretty much never ate anything from the Old Stadium (outside of the Stadium Club), but that was because the food was disgusting. They had a chance to start over but kept the same crappy holdovers, I mean... "Traditional Favorites" like Famiglia Pizza, Premio Sausage, Nathan's Famous and Carl's Steaks.

Some new additions sound pretty good, like the Latin Corner (Cuban sandwiches & burritos), Soy Kitchen (sushi), and Noodle Bowls, but I'm probably still going to opt for a quick sandwich from Lenny's and eat it on the subway ride up. When I go to Citi Field though... I'm bringing my appetite.

Doing Splits

I don't play fantasy baseball, but I would like to give you some advice if you do.

Let someone else draft Matt Holliday.

I'm guessing there is some sucker in your league that is going to have their perception skewed by his 2nd place finish in the 2007 NL MVP voting or Woody Paige's homeristic knob slobbery. Perhaps they remember the play at the plate in the 13th inning against the Padres in the 163rd game of the '07 season and subsequent World Series run and snatch him up in the first round. Unfortunately for them, he will now be hitting in the spacious McAfee Coliseum which would harm any hitter's offensive production, let alone someone with Holliday's home/road splits.

If you are a fan of any team with money to spend in the 2010 offseason, you may want to pay attention to this as well, because he will be a free agent (represented by Scott Boras) next year.

Five years is a pretty damn large sample size and those differences are staggering. I can see a player's slugging percentage varying dramatically from home to away based on the dimensions and conditions of other parks, but his average and OBP are both far lower away from Coors. As friend of the blog Simon said on GChat yesterday, he's is like Manny Ramirez at home and Xavier Nady on the road. Look at those guys' stats. He's dead on.

The good news for Holliday owners and A's fans is that his numbers on the road have continually improved throughout his career. Although he didn't have a particularly good year in 2008, his splits were the least dramatic of his five years in the league. That was both a function of his home numbers dropping (especially slugging) and his road numbers getting better.

On other astonishing nugget I found along while perusing his Baseball Reference pages was that his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) was .324 on the road, which is well above the league average (+/- .290). But at home... it's .382. Wow.

(Chart via FanGraphs)

That's not a single season fluke. That took place over the course of 5 seasons and almost 350 games. Granted, the better a hitter is, the better his BABIP will be, given that the ball comes off the bat of the best players the hardest, making it more difficult to field. That said, Manny Ramirez's career BABIP is .344, Albert Puljos's is .323 and A-Rod's is .327. Holliday's overall is .356.

Coors Field installed a humidor in 2002 to counteract the effects of altitude, but it appears as though BABIP is skewed higher in Denver. Todd Helton has a pretty significant home/away BABIP split (.358 to .313). Garrett Atkins (.351 to .279) and Troy Tulowitski (.330 to .302) do too.

It should be interesting to watch Holliday this season, and as fans of AL teams, we will have a few chances to do so. I'm still a little dumbfounded by these numbers, but all signs point to the former Rockie falling off this year with out the assistance of altitude. One thing is for sure though, no matter what happens, Scott Boras is going to be demanding way too much for him next offseason.

Either Way, The Answer Is "Yes"

I was reading through this post on the Blue Screen I noticed this ad widget on the side:

Soooo, which is it? I'm going to go with 117, because the only way you are going to get an average IQ of 84 among 53 people is if they are all six years old, suffer from dementia or are related to Kevin Millar. That or they messed up and 84 is really just Brandon Jacobs' score.

End Of The Road For Schil-do

As much as I would love to see him make a comeback and get tattooed this year, Curt Schilling is hanging up his bloody cleats for good:

To say I’ve been blessed would be like calling Refrigerator Perry ‘a bit overweight’.

That line brought to you by Rick Reilly.

Four World Series, three World Championships. That there are men with plaques in Cooperstown who never experienced one, and I was able to be on three teams over seven years that won it all is another ‘beyond my wildest dreams’ set of memories I’ll be allowed to take with me.

Let the Hall of Fame debate ensue. I say "no", but those who exalt clutchiferousness would probably beg to differ.

I want to offer two special thank you’s.

To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for granting me the ability to step between the lines for 23 years and compete against the best players in the world.

Jesus doesn't read your blog. He does read Fack Youk, though.

I guess this means he'll have much more time to devote to his political career and blogging efforts. How long until he's on the MLB Network? I give it two weeks.

Five Things

Friend of the blog Jorge Says No! checks in this morning with his recurring feature Five Things To Look Forward To In 2009 on the Yankees. Not all of them are things you will be looking forward to in a good way, necessarily, but they are on the horizon. Here are the teases:

1. Joba in the rotation...finally
2. What next for A-Rod?
3. Brett Gardner
4. A healthy Jorge Posada
5. CC

Head over and check it out. It will be a welcome break from all the Ace Dominico nonsense and serve as a reminder that in the near future they will actually be playing baseball games that matter.

14 days, 5 hours and 25 mins...

Was That The Last Flight Of The Conchords Ever?

It was the season finale and they ended up back in New Zealand.

I mean... SPOILER ALERT!!!!!11!!1!!!11!

Are they really going to move back to New York and start up Season 3? Will they continue the show in the Southern Hemisphere? I really don't think so.

Hopefully you got on board like Sampson and I did from day one and caught every episode, because if that show only ends up lasting two seasons, it will still be one of my all-time favorites. Regardless if you liked an individual song, especially this season, you could appreciate the effort they put into working it into the show and producing the video.

My personal favorites:

Tape of Love



"Another way that love is similar to tape,
That I've noticed,
Is sometimes it's hard to see the end,
So you search on the roll (search on the roll),
So you search on the roll (search on the roll),
With your fingernail (nail) (ail) (il) (l),
Again and again,
Again and again..."

Inner City Pressure:



"You want to sit down,
but you sold your chair,
So you,
You just,
Stand there"

"You know you're not,
In high finance,
Considering second-hand underpants,
Check your mind,
How'd it get so bad?
What happened to those other underpants you had?"


and The Girl With The Epileptic Dog:


"How’d you meet your lady?
I was going for a jog and she lost a dog,
I was runnin' in the area and she lost a terrier,
Was this about 20 seconds ago?
No about 23 seconds ago,
Ooh Whoa Whoa,
Oh no,
Oh no"

Guitar Solo Sunday (03/22/09)

We skipped this feature last weekend because things got a little out of control, but it is back and better than ever. I've got some great news for you folks... this one is not by me!

The honorable Smarty Barrett from Mass Hysteria was kind enough to prepare the offering below. It's pretty cool that he and HZMLS gave our site a chance despite the fundamentally opposed rooting interests of our blogs, and we are certainly happy to have them around. Check out their site when you get a chance. I trust you will find it most entertaining.

About the solo, Mr. Barrett says:

I opted to use a pedal because I wanted to mix in a different sound. Used a Zoom 505 and I flip to an auto-wah effect that I created myself. Played on my Epiphone Les Paul Custom with a Marshall amp. Certainly not my best work but it's something.

Without further adieu:

Jay: Awesome man. Sounds sick. I'll drop what you wrote below into the post. Anything else you'd like to add?
Smarty: Yeah. Fuck the Yankees. Haha.

There you go, boss. Fack Youk, too.

Because You Can't Put Blogs On Your Bookshelf

It might not have any Tolstoy, Dickens, J.D Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway or Nathaniel Hawthorne, but I'm sort of proud of my bookshelf.

If you took the time to look it over, you could probably find out a lot about me. It's a little skewed, because the entire left side holds roughly 19 poker books, but that was a big part of my life for a long time.

Dan Harrington, Phil Gordon, Doyle Brunson, Barry Greenstein, David Sklansky, James McManus and T.J. Cloutier taught me a shitload about poker, objective analysis, and life. Read Harrington On Hold 'Em Vol. I & II and you will destroy any home they will let you sit at it. Both Super Systems are packed with sound strategy for almost any variation of poker you have ever heard of. I would recommend Positively 4th Street to someone who had no interest in no-limit hold 'em because it is so beautifully written.

If you work your way right from there, you'll see a Matt Taibbi book, a dictionary, The Complete Encyclopedia Of Beer (actually quite incomplete), Running the Table, Why Golf?, In Search Of Burning Bush, um, another book (shut up, it was a gift)... John Daly's Autobiography, The World is Flat, New Rules, a Jimi Hendrix biography, Under a Wild Sky, The Devil's Teeth, The Last Voyages of Captain Cook, some Carl Sagan, The Hardball Times '09...

Continue East you'll find some Malcolm Gladwell, Harvey Penick, more Carl Sagan, Moneyball, Anthony Bourdain and Into the Wild. The Orchid Thief and The Heartless Stone are there too.

If a person has the inclination to put together a bookshelf, and you have the time to look it over, it will give you insights into their personality it would take months, if not years, to glean in conversation. Next time you are feeling nosy at someone's apartment, instead of looking through the pill cabinet, check out their bookshelf. It will tell you infinitely more about them.

I wish I had a blogshelf in my room. My bookshelf tells more of a history, while a blogshelf would represent a more current narrative. You'd see River Ave. Blues, the National Football Post, ShysterBall, Kissing Suzy Kolber and figure that I like the Yankees, football, intellectual baseball banter and that I'm an asshole. You might notice 538 and Floating Shawn and guess I voted for Obama. Schiff Happens would be kickin' it, along my most recent addition, HowFresh Eats. Those fellows can tell you about music, food and city living and do it right at my frequency.

Since there is no such thing as a blogshelf, and people don't usually look through each others RSS readers, all of those nuggets are lost to cyberspace.

Unfortunately, since I've started writing for this here site, I haven't even been tempted to crack a book. There's no time. At this point in my life, books are for vacations. My attention span is so frayed by RSS Feeds, Twitter, Google Analytics, Facebook, BitTorrent, and the other endless bounties of the internet that the commitment necessary to read a book is too daunting. I used to read books in the morning. Now, my Google Reader is overloaded and the first thing I do when I get up is reach for my iPhone and start chipping away at the unread posts.

Eventually, it might be unrealistic to expect to someone to read 400 pages on a single subject. Why would they? With an endless supply of constantly updated mediums, from which you can select the exact ones that pertain to you, it seems grossly inefficient to spend the time it takes to read a book. As an author, to dedicate months if not years and hundreds of thousands of words to any one topic is so far over my head, it's laughable. However, if you add up all the stuff I've written in this space since Christmas day, I'm guessing it would come pretty close to the length of a book.

But blogs are considered disposable. You coast through a post and it gets marked as read, never to been seen again, unless you so desire. Somehow, we pay $15 for a book, but a blog, which is by your side day in and day out, is considered worthless, monetarily. The argument has been made that since you don't read newspapers or blog posts more than once, you can't charge for them. How many magazine articles have you read more than once? People still pay for then AND they have ads in them.

Charging per post could never work, but blogs have to provide some value. Some are entertaining, some are educational, some funny, others analytical, most are current. Just because people are willing to provide them at no cost doesn't mean that they have no value.

What if blogs charged for their RSS feeds? Would it be worth $1 a month to me to not have to go to a site and check for updates? If you think time is money, then the answer is decidedly "Yes". I constantly hear people talking about the untapped taxable resource that marijuana represents, but it's not like the alcohol industry is dying out. With the foundation of the print media crumbling under our feet, I don't hear nearly enough people proposing ways to monetize the amazing amount of content being written out there on the Long Tail.

I'll put my money where my mouth is. Who wants my dollar per month? Craig, I've already told you I'd pay to read ShysterBall. River Ave. Blues, ditto. I would certainly have to pare down on the number of feeds I subscribe to, but the money those people would make from the subscription fees would make their content better. The best bloggers could make a living from writing and not have to work around a full-time job like many currently do.

You know why HBO is better than regular TV? Because in the late 60's Charles Dolan came up with the idea of a "Green Channel", to which people would pay to subscribe independently of their regular cable system. They had to overcome a massive churn rate initially, but look where the channel is today. 38 million subscribers. They eliminated the bullshit that an advertising-based system exists upon and got people to pay for the content.

Advertising is on the way out. No? You don't think so?

Do you have a DVR? I do, and for $10 a month every channel is HBO to me. I absolutely refuse to watch commercials, which is how they are supposedly "charging" me. The cable company is giving me the technology to basically steal from the channels they provide me. That is a sustainable model? (For the record, I was writing about this three years ago. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Anon.)

If you are like me, you are probably ahead of the curve and are only getting away with this because people who are older than us or less technologically inclined are still sitting through commercials. It won't last forever. People will still buy things without advertising. I pimp plenty of stuff in this space and don't get paid a dime for it. I'm just looking out for you Fackers and when I find something I like I feel the need to pass the word along.

People are so cynical that I don't think advertising makes much of a difference anymore. The communications are slicker, but our ability to tune them out far outpaces marketers ability to reach us. The only thing advertising is good for is awareness, but awareness does not equal purchase interest. Trust me, I work in market research.

I tune out advertising online and I'll take my headphones out during the commercial break on 1050 ESPN Radio too. I'm starting to listen to more podcasts like The Bronx View, KSK, On The DL, and the brand new Deadcast. In some ways, the content is better and there are no commercials. Stack those up and you are approaching a healthy portion of the work week. I'd pay for them too.

I'm not pretending to know where this is going. There are trillion variables and maybe people like Jeff Jarvis and Clay Shirky, who say charging for content will never work, are right. I'm not saying this for my own good, either. I've got a rough idea of how many readers we have and $1 a month from each of them wouldn't even begin to supplant my income, let alone our other contributors. I just think more people who have things that people value should jettison the free spirit of the internet.

Once upon a time there was Napster. Now there is iTunes. They found a way to bridge the gap between Wall Street and the Wild West, and on most levels, it works. There are ways to tame the internet, smart people just have to want to do it.

This Is Never Going To End

More tawdry tales from the Daily News:

Davis met Rodriguez in June of 2006 in a gym in Philadelphia, shortly after she opened a branch of her call-girl service in the City of Brotherly Love, sources said.

Davis told a friend the then-married Rodriguez asked her, "What are you doing tonight?"

I've gotta remember that one next time I'm at the gym.

That night, Davis told a friend, Rodriguez booked a two-hour "date" with one of her girls, who met him at the Four Seasons on Rittenhouse Square.

"He gave his real name," Davis told the friend. "The next day we found out who Alex Rodriguez was. The girl we sent freaked out. Her father (works for) another Major League Baseball team."

Hahahaha, he used his real name? Nice work, you marvelous moron.

Ron Mexico is already taken, but he could have gone with Juan Miami, perhaps? Leave your best fake name for A-rod in the comments.

In an e-mail exchange provided to The News by a former booker for Davis' Wicked Models, Rodriguez purportedly told Davis on Nov. 17, 2006: "Thanks for setting me up with Samantha. She was gorgeous. But she is not you. When can I see you you are gorgeous . . ."

Yeah, "gorgeous".

/vomits

She's gorgeous in that fake-titted, whorish, too much make-up, porn star way that just makes you want to take her home to mom.

/dry heaves

I'm sick of this already, so click through to read the pathetic [sic]'d conversations between the two. It's half hilarious, half disgusting and totally fucking mind-boggling when you consider that the asshole hitting on a madame of a whorehouse is going to make $32M this year.

I can't prove it to you, but I promise that if I was the highest paid athlete in any sport I would probably aim a little higher than trying to nail a hooker.

Some friendly advice for you, A-Rod... please buy a private island, stock it with hair dye, steroids, and a harem of muscly strippers/whores and fucking disappear forever.

Please?