Baseballs

Baseball Blog

2007 season.

Is here.

Baseball Blog

Part 1 of 1

by Sammy Kaplan aged 13.

I decided I'm going to love baseball this year. Whenever there is a game on, I'm going to make every effort to watch every single pitch. It's been pretty tough so far, and as a result, the first week of baseball is complete and I have yet to see a full game on television. I've seen a few innings of the Yankees vs. Twins, a half of a game of Mets vs. Braves, and a few innings of the Phillies vs. Marlins. As a result I have no expert analysis at this time.

Interesting developments of the first week of baseball: A ton of games have been snowed out or colded out. Games postponed due to cold. One of these games was Yankees vs. Devil Rays. A game that probably should have been scheduled in Tampa. Detroit vs. Toronto or Cleveland vs. Toronto got snowed out because the game was not played in Toronto where there is a dome. Cleveland is forced to make up some home games in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is known for it's warm environments.

Interesting developments #2: I signed up for a fantasy baseball team. I do not know anyone else in the league. Greg was going to sign up for my league, but the league got filled up to quick. A day after setting up this league, my work decided to block the site, so I had to email Greg and ask him to put Big Papi into the starting line up. Fantasy Baseball is not my favorite Internet game. I much prefer that Dodge Ram challenge where you got to be the robot and punch the shit out of the truck. Or maybe it was another robot. It seems to me I never played the Dodge Ram Challenge

Interesting Development #3. Yankees fans are cheering for ARod and Pavano. But as Rey pointed out, "it's April". Rey hates ARod more than anybody I have ever met.

Known fact: Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball. Knicks have the highest payroll in basketball. It's amazing how important management is in the world of big business.

My idea: I think the Yankees have a good chance of missing the playoffs this year. I think the AL Central is going to get the wild card again (division has Tigers, Twins, injuns, and ChiSox). So the AL East will only be sending the division winner to the playoffs this year. And this Yankees team is no different from the past 5 teams, except they are a lot older. But then again, besides Dice-K, the Red Sox aren't really any different either. Except Curt Schilling has is own blog now. But even that is old.

My new favorite Yankee: The yankee set up guy. The guy before Rivera. Fawnsworth or Fansworth. Dude is about 7 feet tall and he throws 200+ miles per hour. I watched him in mop-up duty in last nights Yankees-Twins game. He finished doing his warm up pitches, shoved his index finger down his throat for no apparent reason, picked up the rosin bag, flipped it around for a bit, threw it to the ground, then licked the palm of his hand. Not a quick lick, but a really strange hand make out. Then he went on to throw 300+ mphs. Sarah commented that his pants were way too tight.

Side note: Got harrassed a little on the walk through the hood last night. 3 teenagers said "Hey whiteboy, your pants are too tight." Contemplated saying "why are you checking out my pants" but instead I just kept walking. Probably a little bit faster. Not really a whole lot madder.

Another story: Tired of Don Imus drama.

Baseball game of the day: Yankees vs. Boof Bonser of the Minnesota Twins. Greg goes "Oh you probably conflicted on that one". It is a tough one, but it's honestly win-win unless the twins win and boof gets a no decision.

Phillies: Man oh man. I thought they were going to challenge the Mets this year. While it is still early, I realized their lineup really isn't that good. Utley and Howard are great, but everyone else is a big who cares. And J-Ro should quit yapping. And my oh my let's not even talk about the bullpen.

Um. Cat acting crazy again. Very healthy though. Thanks for yer Euros.

No more sports for now.

Philly Film Fest in full effect. Here's one's that's caught's my's eye's:

The Book of the Dead

It's from Kihachiro Kawamoto

The Boss of It All

Lars von Trier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark) doing some non-depressing shit.

The Bothersome Man

Review calls it Kafkaesque. From Norway

Cartoons for Big Kids

A bunch of cartoons for Big Kids.

The Cats of Mirikitani

Doc. bout a street artist

The Oil Crash

Doc. on oil. Gotta be ok. Picture featured shows dude in a bathtub full of oil.

The Curse of William Penn

Documentary about how awful Philly sports teams are

Dante's Inferno

Cardboard cut-out adaption of Dante's Inferno

Dead Daughters

Hyped-horror from Russia. Would like to see

Hell's Ground

Zombie film from Pakistan. Probably viewed as a comedy in that wild and crazy country. Should be interesting if nothing else

The Living and the Dead

Described as "hallucinatory British gothic fantasia of death and psychological decay". Take out the word "British" and you have perfection.

638 Ways to Kill Castro

Could be very interesting or very boring. Like all movies

Sounds of Sand

I'm hoping a lot of pictures of desert.

The Ten

Makes fun of the ten commandments. Into this check out the Decalogue, if you have 3 months to kill. Although the Decalogue doesn't make fun of the ten commandments, it just intends to depress you

Ten Canoes

about indigenous Australians. Can't go wrong with that ever, unless it's Herzog's Green ants or whatever it was called movie.

30

Cross country movie. Always a good idea.

The Town that Was

Movie about Centralia, PA. I highly recommend this even though I haven't seen it. Centralia is a town that has been on fire for 40 years. As a result everyone has moved out except for 12 people. So awesome.

Warchild

Movie about war in Bosnia. Might watch this for a possible thesis.

VHS-Kahloucha

"Tunisia's premier amateur auteur filmmaker is portrayed with loving honesty and gut-busting hilarity in this thrilling documentary"

Wicked Flowers

Japanese. "Lynchian." About a video game that kills the people who play it. Sounds awesome.

Zoo

"This dreamlike, poetic film takes a surprisingly sensitive look at the bizarre but true story of a Washington State man who died after having sex with a horse in 2005.

flllLlllLflagged

A

I didn't do much of anything last night.

I didn't do much of anything last night.

Sometimes I think it'd be fun to have a car but I really don't feel much like spending a ton of money on gas and insurance or speeding tickets. And besides my job gives me a free transpass so it'd be kind of silly to get a car. The world is smelly enough without me adding more carbon monoxide into the environment.

I miss driving though. When I was cleaning out my book bag I found out the application I needed to fill out for joining AmeriCore. Or is it AmeriCorpse? I always get confused about it, but anyway, my friend Katy Coffey wrote a recommendation for me, and I had a bunch of other stuff filled out, but I didn't ever turn it in because I didn't feel like getting a medical exam. I think I was unemployed at the time and doctor bills were not something I wished to get. Spending money is a headache, especially if it's just for a job that is going to be cleaning up hiking trails in the middle of Maine. I mean that sounds fun and all, but I don't even like cleaning up my apartment. I'd probably just want to go into the woods and smoke a "jasper" and then reminisce about the time when I didn't hike the entire Appalachin Trail. I'm not sure what that has to do with driving. That AmeriCorpse program was only a 3 month deal, I'd probably end up in Philly afterwards.

greg: maine is cold, but stephen king is from there and john maine is cool.

I used to shovel horse shit for my mom at the barn with one of Danielle's friends. His name was Chris something and he was pretty funny. We divided up the horse barn in half. He would shovel his side and I would shovel my side. Once in a while I would pick up a horse poo and fling it at his side and try to hit him in the head. It sucked when he retaliated. But anyway, me and Chris rarely talked because it was awkward because he was a better sweeper than I was. I was pretty good at shovelling the shit, but when it came time to sweep the barn up at the end of the day, I'd get real pissed. Brooms and I don't get along. It put me in an awkward spot, because my mom was the boss, so I would get away with stuff. "Ma, I ain't sweeping, where's my 32 dollars for my 4 hours of work?" I'd then drive off and spend all 32 bucks at Freddie's Bar in Warwick. Greg went with me once but he'll never go back again because it's a pretty terrible place. Lots of old Warwick heads wandering around the place bragging about the terms to their probations. Warwick is a pretty strange town. Not a lot to do there. I remember those summers where I would work at Brock's house and bail hay. I was pretty good with all that farm stuff. Brock's was cool, it was only 5 bucks an hour, but beer from ShopRite only cost like 5 bucks for two 40s, so if I worked an hour I'd be fine. Besides Mrs. Brock's mom would bring out Raspberry Iced Tea and we'd drink it. Brock was a super good worker and he was allergic to the hay and he'd break out in all these nasty hives. I remember sometimes Brock would have other people working there and I'd know them, but I wouldn't talk to them either. I just would bail the hay, Throw it on the conveyor and want to get the fuck out of there so I can go to Freddie's or ShopRite and drink. I used to go get drinks at Mobil in Warwick. I love when people are like "Beer!?!?! At a GAS STATION?!?!?! Isn't that kind of CRAZY. I mean driving and drinking?" Something like that. I don't know though, you kind of have to drive anywhere to get beer unless you live above a beer store. PA drinking laws are stupid. I'll never get over it.

greg (Shop Rite in Warwick): heard its good, never been their much, to many warwick people, the one in chester was closer to the hood, i mean kings estates

greg (on freddies): I hate it, friggen warwick assholes go there, it should burn in a blaze and i would not waste my piss to put it out or on the ashes

I don't know. I don't really drink that much. There was a time I think when I was real bad. It was partly Eamonn's fault. There was that 4 or 5 month span where we drank pretty hard everyday including Sundays. We went to see that movie Orange County starring Tom Hanks son and Jack Black, and I remember we had to keep the streak going so we asked Brandon to drive us to some Chili's sorta place and we ordered Tequila shots and then went to the movie. That was pretty fun I gotta say.

I screwed up with the farm stuff once though. It was a Sunday and I was driving the front loading tractor around. Dropping off hay for the horses in the outside paddocks and what not. And I was in the indoor arena trying to load up some more bags of shavings. I wasn't really paying attention, so I was driving out of the indoor arena and I nailed the sliding door and it came right off the hinges. It made a loud bang, and Sammy came running. He looked at me like "How the fuck did you manage that?" It was pretty embarrassing. The gap that I had to fit through was about the size of a basketball court and the tractor was just a tractor, but still I got too close to the door, and at a mighty 5 mphs I nailed that shit right off. It turned out to be pretty pricey to fix it, but thankfully Doug hooked up the welding pretty cheap. I was hesitant around the tractors after that. Actually I probably quit and got the job with Here's Help.

Greg's Ma is flying up to his house for Easter. Good ol' Esther. She used to think Greg was crazy.

greg: Woot esther is comming to visit,

I'm tired of the world today. Saw a picture of my stepbro doing some protesting. It was a pretty crazy picture. I don't actually feel like protesting anything, but it was nice to feel real pissed off about stuff before. I bet my stepbro gets sent to Guantanamo Bay. I wouldn't be surprised. He'd find a way to get thrown out of there too. It'd be rad dope

greg: To quote Donald Rumsfelid, We are following the Giniva convention, for the most part."

So that's all I got to say for today. I don't really know why I wrote any of this at all. I don't miss Warwick much at all. Except maybe Pennings Ice Cream stand. The trampoline in my backyard. My 74 plymouth Duster with the Hatebreed stickers.

If you ever go to warwick, please visit:

1. The Post Office

2. Mobil

3. Mt. Peter (good blog later about it)

4. Pennings

5. Clocktower Video

6. ShopRite

Greg adds: warwick sucks, i know i lived their and i might would again mabye doubful, but the school riots and has a bunch of poor rich kids that think they have a hard life. Fuck warwick. its not worth blogging about