The San Jose Giants won the California League championship last night at charming San Jose Municipal Stadium, defeating Lake Elsinore 7-1 to take the best-of-5 series 3 games to 2. It was great fun, and Turkey Mike's barbecue was awesome as always.
The Washington Nationals played the Florida Marlins in Miami earlier this week, and about 400 people showed up. The "crowd" was all but invisible in the 75,000 seat stadium. It was so quiet that the umpire could hear a fan heckling him and threw the fan out of the park.
Coco Crisp is a player for the Boston Red Sox baseball team. Mariner Moose is a mascot for the Seattle Mariners. As part of his schtick, the Moose drives around the field during breaks on an all-terrain vehicle, like many mascots. But a few days ago, the Moose's act went horribly (or perhaps hilariously) wrong. As he zoomed past the Red Sox dugout, the wayward Moose clipped Crisp and nearly knocked him down.
Crisp wasn't hurt and was good-natured about the accident. Boston pitching coach John Farrell yelled at the Moose. But the best comment came from Boston manager Terry Francona: "I got enough to think about – left-handers, right-handers – let alone a fucking moose on a fucking motorcycle."
Part of the bizarreness of this event is due to the fact that both Coco Crisp and Mariner Moose sound like the names of cartoon characters. And let's remember that this is not the first bit of player-mascot violence in recent memory.
(While doing a massive cleanup project on my home office recently, I came across lots of stuff that reminded me of good old times: friends, family, work, sports, et al. I tend to save those kinds of things, because I enjoy the memories that come back when I look at them. So I tossed them [gently] into a box or three. And once a week or so, I'm going to pull one out and subject you to a story about it. This is the first one of those.)
The Colorado Rockies were a National Hockey League team, mostly forgotten now. The Rockies played in Denver for 6 seasons in the late 1970s and early '80s. Their wacky logo was a mountain carved out of the Colorado state flag. They were spectacularly unsuccessful on the ice, making the playoffs only once in those 6 seasons. The Rockies are known for having employed Don Cherry as head coach, and for being the first sports team to use "Gary Glitter's Rock & Roll, Pt. 2" regularly at games.
Despite their generally crappy play, Barbara and I used to love going to the games. For part of their run, Barbara was the assistant public relations director for the Denver Nuggets of the NBA, who played in McNichols Sports Arena, also the Rockies' home. Because of this connection, Barbara could get into the Rockies games, and she was able to sneak me in also by getting me this pass:
Eventually, Cherry left the team, the team left town, and a perennially crappy baseball team stole the name.
It's fashionable to have a curse on your team in baseball nowadays. So I'm inventing one here for the Colorado Rockies: The Curse of Don Cherry. Rockies fans, you're welcome.
For six years in the 1970s and '80s, Denver had its first National Hockey League team: the Colorado Rockies. I was a fan of these Rockies. The team, let's say, was not very successful on the ice. Its greatest accomplishments were (1) becoming the first team to use Gary Glitter's "Rock & Roll Pt. 2" (also known as the "Hey!" song), and (2) having crazy man/folk hero Don Cherry as coach.
But Cherry was fired, somewhat controversially, after just one season. And when he was canned, it can now be revealed for the first time, he laid the powerful Curse of Don Cherry on the Rockies. Consider:
Fortunately for the Rockies baseball team, there's an easy way out of the curse: they have to change their name, preferably to the Denver Bears.
Like many baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants have "heritage night" promotions as a way of selling group tickets: Irish night, Italian night, et al. The heritage night usually includes some kind of custom-made collectible, such as a t-shirt or hat. At last's year's Jewish Heritage Night, Rabbi Yosef Langer of San Francisco became a unique cheerleader for the Giants, as he earned the nickname Rally Rabbi. For this year's Jewish Heritage Night, the Giants have turned Langer into the Rally Rabbi Bobblehead. Everybody who buys a ticket in the Heritage Night section will receive a bobblehead. L'chaim!
Yesterday Jess and I went up to the ballpark for the All-Star Week Home Run Derby. As expected, the place was a huge party and an absolute zoo. For year, fans have anticipated this event at Pac Bell Park, waiting to watch as left-handed hitters (such as Barry Bonds) splashed homer after homer into the waters of McCovey Cove just past the right field wall.
Well, ha ha. Bonds decided he didn't want to play, and all the left-handed hitters were eliminated early in the competition. The result: not a single homer landed in the water.
Despite that, the event was a lot of fun. Jess and I were on the portwalk during batting practice before the derby. The portwalk was jammed with people, and McCovey Cove was filled with kayaks and other craft. Every time a ball headed out of the park, the folks up above us in the park would shout and point, and pretty soon, the ball would come flying over the wall and into the water, where madness would ensue as kayakers and boaters dived into the water for the ball.
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