One New York Life

Wagner Valley Brewing: Sled Dog Trippelbock

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
ABV: 10.0%
Type: Bavarian (style) Lager
Awards: Triple Crown Winner

• Gold Medal: World Beer Cup 2004
• Gold Medal: 2004 TAP NY
• Gold Medal: 2003 Great American Beer Festival

What They Say: This traditional Bavarian style lager is brewed in early winter and aged until our annual release in mid-spring. Its dark mahogany hue is visually enticing & represents this bold, heavily bodied complex bier. Flavors are intense & chewy, with molasses, caramel, & lingering dark sugars that are incredibly smooth & creamy yet humbly complex. This special brew towers with alcohol that is enhanced by modest carbonation.

Why I Picked It: This is the fifth and final beer from Wagner Valley Brewing. I didn’t actually purchase this beer when I visited the brewery. Instead, I eventually ordered form their website as a throw in when PLR and I bought some wines for delivery. Wagner Valley’s delivery was prompt and efficient. They got the bottles in the mail the next day and I received them two days after I placed the order. Granted, this is shipping within NY, but it was out the door more efficiently than even Amazon.

–

Presentation (5): Only sold in 750-ml bottles, Wagner goes with a wine-shaped bottle with the dark-glass. The label is a simple image of a husky dog. The image is kind of generic, but I like that the beer has a mascot. 3

Originality (5): There aren’t many American breweries that do Trippels. There are even fewer that do them well. This tripel is full of the heavy, sweet, robust flavors usually reserved for porters and stouts. I find it intriguing before opening the bottle. 4

Body (10): One of the few beers I’ve ever had that smells sweet without smelling yeasty. It pours a beautiful dark amber with a minimal tan head and little lacing. The bottle describes the carbonation as “modest” and I’d have to agree. The carbonation is perfect for the complex flavoring. Obviously, the brewery wants this beer to linger in the mouth for a bit before swallowing. The carbonation is mild enough to not shut down the tastebuds while active enough to enhance the complex flavors. It also manages to be crisp and refreshing amongst all the heavy flavors. Body and flavor match perfectly. 10

Taste (10): Immediately evident are the heavy molasses and caramel flavors. Full-bodied doesn’t even really begin to describe it. The sweet, delicious, lingering sugars combine with just enough bitterness to balance this beer in to one of the most complex things I’ve ever tasted. I could argue notes of maple, molasses, sugar, caramel, and chocolate — but I’m not positive what, exactly, I’m tasting. As someone who doesn’t much care for extreme bitter hoppiness, preferring sweet flavors and malts, this is fantastic. It manages to pull off all this complex sweetness and bitterness without being dry. I don’t even know how that’s possible. 10

Efficiency (10): This is amongst the smoothest Big Beers I’ve ever tasted. The 10.0% ABV is masked both under a smooth sweetness that’s both awesome and dangerous. The buzz kicks in within half-a-pint. The knock here is its limited availability. Wagner Valley’s limited distribution range means Snobs not local to Lodi, NY are looking at over $30 per bottle. My bill for shipping from Lodi, NY to New York, NY was $31 after tax, shipping, and bottle deposit. Add two points to this score if you’re a Snob within Wagner Valley’s small distribution zone. 8.

Versatility (10): Helping to prove this beer’s versatility, it comes with a recipe tied around the neck. This is a beer you could honestly give to a person who claims to not like the beer. I WISH I was in a position to be able to purchase this on demand and I BEG the Wagner people to find a distribution outlet in the city. Please call Whole Foods. I visited — you must be organic-ish. 10

The Snob Sez: It’s hard for me to tell anyone to spend $30 on a single bottle of beer. Honestly, there are likely equally as efficient options easily available and local. However, if you’re also a wino looking to try something different, grab this along with Wagner Valley’s award winning Riesling and fantastic Cayuga white. Go directly to Wagner’s website and order this. You will not be disappointed. It did not quite knock Blue Point’s Toasted Lager out of the top slot, but it’s closer than anything’s ever come. If I lived in Central NY, I might have to readdress the score.

Final Score: 45 (of 50) — Great beer.

To borrow the term from that 60-year removed Brooklyn team.

In the last week, JJ Putz has been shut down, Billy Wagner was shipped up to Boston (to find his wooden leg), Johan Santana and Ollie Perez have undergone minor surgeries to get ready for next season, and Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel have gotten the golden “Vote of Confidence” from ownership. All of this seemed part and parcel of the team raising the white flag about a week after I did.

At the moment, I’m trying to convince myself that the state of the team isn’t THAT bad. It’s difficult. It seems like the franchise is in terrible shape. The owners lost money in the Madoff scheme. The stadium was horribly overpriced and will now deal with falling attendance. There’s a rumor Minaya won’t be allowed to spend up to this season’s payroll. The farm is in terrible shape because the vice-president of minor league development was too busy challenging his players to fights to notice they, mostly, sucked. I’ve read columns talking about “calling up the kids and seeing what they got.” People, if there were kids to call up do you think we would have begged for Anderson Hernandez back from the Nationals or be playing Cory Sullivan in the outfield? We took a look at what the jewel prospect had. It wasn’t much.

The thing that settles me down a little — and what should settle insane Mets fan down — is that the team Omar assembled was in first place in May. Then Carlos Delgado started the flood of injuries and here we are. Omar’s team was in first place with a third of the season down. Omar’s Plan B team was in striking distance with half the season remaining. Omar’s Plan F team is in last. Anyone who thinks that should earn a firing is crazy.

My favorite west coaster recently penned a column talking about baseball’s dwindling African-American fanbase. When I was on the fourth paragraph of my own comment, I realized I had started a column. This isn’t meant to be taken as a response to Cam’s column… more of an expansion.

Cam’s marketing thought was this: Major League Baseball’s inability, for example, to market the early ’90s version of Ken Griffey Jr. is one of the most egregiously inept promotional failures in business history. Since lessened by the 1994 strike, steroids and Junior’s own star-crossed career, there simply hasn’t been a player more universally loved whose appeal stretched across to any ethnicity like The Kid. Baseball, however, was content to let Nintendo and Nike to their dirty work.

This is the first of two excellent points. But the above represents just a portion of baseball’s marketing issue. Really, baseball as a whole has never never quite figured out how to market themselves nationally. People just don’t watch national broadcasts unless it’s their own team. It’s an issue unique to baseball. The NFL only has national broadcasts. The NBA on TNT routinely doubles up baseball’s national broadcasts. It takes baseball’s two largest markets meeting in August to get to a 3.5 — roughly equivalent to an episode of WWE’s Monday Night Raw — and that was ESPN’s most watched baseball game since the same two largest markets met in September of 2007. Why the malaise?

Baseball is the only game played every day for six months. As a National League fan I spend, on average, 2:40 per day with the Mets. American League fans spend a little more. I watch baseball on my own team’s channel with my own team’s announcers. I’m as spoiled with Gary Cohen, one of the best radio guys ever, as Dodgers fans are with Vin Scully. When I, as a viewer, get comfortable with SNY’s terrific, slick production and excellent booth — it annoys me to watch another channel’s broadcast. To watch a national broadcast, baseball wants me to spend another 3+ hours with two different teams listening to a play-by-play guy who can’t sniff Cohen’s microphone? What would motivate a fan to spend six hours of any day watching anything? Even worse, the length of national broadcasts are absurd.

In days of yore, guys who walked instead of hitting were considered bad offensive players. Guys swung at bad pitches. In the modern day, we put as much stock in “pitches per plate appearance” as batting average. Like football, every rule change in the last thirty years has encouraged offense. The pitching mounds have been lowered to help the batters. The strike zone has been narrowed to help the batters. In the American League, an extra batter was added to the line-up. A ball that might be scuffed is removed from play. Non-Latino players are taught from a very young age to swing at only the pitch they want and to get on base by any means necessary; the apex of this being last week’s Yankee/Red Sox game in which Nick Swisher — with a 1-0 count, men on 2nd and 3rd, and 2-out — tried to talk his way in to an HBP and leave the stress for the next guy. After all these rule changes, all to benefit the offense, baseball finally took a step back and realized what they’d done. Baseball doesn’t have a clock. By empowering offense, baseball made it harder to get outs and added 45-minutes to the average length of a baseball game. According to a 2003 column in USA Today:

Games lasted 2:52 in 2002. As recently as 1983, the Elias Sports Bureau reported games averaged 2:36, while games 60 years ago took an incredible 1:58 to complete, according to The Sporting News.

Some of the additional time is obviously induced by television breaks, but instead of addressing the problem with real rule changes, they tried to quicken the game with inane, unenforceable rules like the 12-second pitch clock. With this extending of the modern game, a good fan will spend 15-20 hours per week watching their team. A really good fan will watch their team’s half-hour pregame, the game itself, and their team’s hour long post-game. Baseball wants its fans to watch that and, in addition, another three hours watching Joe Morgan dissect a Dodgers/Giants game that, at best, means almost nothing to me as a National League East fan or, at worst, means absolutely nothing to an American League fan? There is nothing to draw me to watch a meaningless baseball game. This ties directly to another one of Cam’s points:

It’s been my experience that African-American sports fans – including myself – gravitate towards larger-than-life personalities. Baseball, on the other hand, insists on checking personalities at the door. This wasn’t always the case as talents like Reggie Jackson – and even non-talents like Ken Harrelson – roamed America’s ballparks with impunity. [...] I’m not suggesting that baseball become pro basketball, but when Eric Byrnes’ superfluous hustle and Nick Swisher’s kamikaze redneck schtick pass for personality across rosters eager to emulate Kevin McReynolds’ mood…well, yeah. — Strikethrough mine.

In addition to the checking of personalities — the number of must-watch players in baseball is infinitesimal. None of them are position players. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, watches a national broadcast for a position player’s five plate appearances. There were only two games I went out of my way to watch this year: a Tim Lincecum start on Fox Saturday and Pedro Martinez’s first Phillies start. In neither case was it about their personality but instead the chance that they’d do something memorable. Maybe a dozen pitchers at any given time are on this highly mutable must-watch list. Dontrelle Willis in 2006. Edison Volquez last year. Zack Greinke earlier this season. Roy Halladay, Randy Johnson, and Johan Santana always. Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens until their recent retirements. This is what baseball totally misses. They spend so much time worrying about offense and promoting their hitters that they forget there are only two guys on the field involved in every play. Shouldn’t these guys be the focus of promotional campaigns? Shouldn’t these be the guys Fox or ESPN grabs for the national broadcasts? On Saturday May 9th, 2009, a 6-0 Zack Greinke went up against Joe Saunders — right smack in the middle of Greinkemania. The week before, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Instead of choosing to showcase Greinke on THEIR OWN NETWORK, baseball instead decided to show a Reds/Cardinals game featuring Kyle Lohse and Aaron Harang. This is where baseball marketing fails. Fans missed out on an 8-inning, 5K, 1-0 loss for Greinke. Instead, they got a generic Reds/Cardinals game in which Albert Pujols went 0-4 with 1K. Fans who watched the MLB Network broadcast got 5 minutes of Pujols when they could have gotten 8 innings of Greinke and 9 innings of Saunders.

Unfortunately, baseball is the most resistant to change. The absolutely easiest way to speed games up is to eliminate the DH, reinstate the letter high strike, and not allow batters to step out in between pitches. But, if anything, the National League will likely adopt the DH in the coming years. It’s this romantic feeling of baseball’s unchanging, constant nature that makes it so resistant. It’s the only sport that caters to crusty old men. Indeed, it’s the only sport where “crusty” is badge of honor. It’s the third and final thing that hurts baseball marketing and something they, by and large, can’t acknowledge — their fans are becoming smarter than the guys paid to write about the sport. A 12-year-old fan with a concept of division and a Internet connection can get a dump of his team’s statistics for the last century. If he happens on the right website, he can discover why a sacrifice bunt is a stupid play unless a pitcher is batting. But baseball, because of its crustiness and desire to get people off its lawn has a dogged insistence at holding on to its fallacies. Besides that, writers have a dogged insistence of repeating platitudes over and over. In August 10th issue of Sports Illustrated alone:

• Joe Posnanski writes an article about David Ortiz, talking about how no one can believe he did steroids — except everyone can absolutely believe that he did steroids.
• “Who’s Not, Who’s Not” asks if the “Home Run Derby Curse” has struck Brandon Inge since he’s hit .180 since going 0-10 in the Derby. It seems far more likely to anyone with a hint of sense that Inge, who’d been hitting .268 with a .515 SLG before the break, just recalled he’s actually Brandon Inge — a career .238/.307/.398 hitter regressing to, well, a .238 hitter — and had no business slugging .515. Do you know what the odds of one out of ten players slumping after the Home Run Derby? Pretty good.
• Joe Sheehan implored his readers not to be fooled by the Phillies addition of Cliff Lee — that the Dodgers are still the class of the National League based, I guess, the 4 extra wins on their record at the time, their 4-3 advantage in the head-to-head series, and their 3 extra wins against the AL. Never mind Clayton Kershaw’s innings/start average and Joe Torre’s penchant for destroying his best relievers.
• Lee Jenkins penned a three-page article about Pablo Sandoval and longing for the days of the bad-ball hitter. Never mind the fact that both Nomar and Vlad have shown us exactly how well bad-ball hitters age. He also gives us the following gem: Across the Bay Bridge from Oakland, the Giants have countered Moneyball with Sandoball. They rank last in the majors in walks and on-base percentage but were tied with the Rockies for the National League wild-card race, thanks largely, of course, to a pitching staff anchored by Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. “We don’t have a lot of what I call ‘professional hitters,’” says Giants hitting coach Carney Lansford. Not mentioned is the fact that the Giants are the 2nd worst team in the league at scoring runs. The only team worse is the Padres who, and I can’t confirm this, fill out their lineup card based on a raffle held during batting practice.
• Gary Smith writes six pages on a kid from South Africa who grew up on a ballfield and, when he arrived in the Pirates’ system, was actually not an over-entitled ass.

Combine all of this together — the lack of any effective national marketing, the active decision to market to old men, dismissing any idea of marketing to children, the refusal to acknowledge that old platitudes are wrong, the active lengthening of game, athletes who are increasingly difficult to root for, writers who willfully ignored the steroid era deciding to now crush the league for not preventing it, and just refusing to come to grips with the modern day — and baseball is leaving a mess for the next commissioner to inherit. He’s going to be left with a system in which some of his teams can’t afford to field a major league roster because Tom Hicks’s A-Rod contract broke baseball. Mostly, he’s going to inherit a league that’s been marketed to the wrong people for far too long. He’s going to find himself in charge of a league with a dearth of fans under 40 because the previous commissioner thought it more important to cater to ancient newspaper writers then young fans. He’ll be in charge of a league that has blindly refused to address new technologies — in which baseball-reference.com and Cot’s Baseball Contracts are more viable sources of information then the league’s own homepage. And, quite possibly, he’ll find himself in charge of one of the last, most visible Good Old Boy networks in the country.

I don’t know, exactly, how to fix it… but I know the entire sport feels like it’s on the waning stages of a bubble and that’s not a good place. During the steroid era nobody asked any questions because nobody asks questions when everyone’s making money (see also: Banks). Right now, they’re still not asking questions.

When they’re forced to ask them, it might be too late.

Saranac Black Forest

Brewed By: Matt Brewing Company
Brewed In: Utica, NY
ABV: 5.3%
Type: Bavarian Black Beer

What they say: Saranac Black Forest is a delicious Bavarian Style beer with a caramel malt sweetness, medium body, and our trademark rich creamy head. Look for the delicate brownish-red color. Until recently, Black Forest was served exclusively on draft. Enjoy.

Why I picked it: Beer four in the six-part Adirondack Trail Mix sampler. As I last week, it was either Black Forest or Black & Tan that was my first favorite microbrew.

–

Presentation (5): I find it funny that the “Black Forest” beer offers neither a black label nor a particularly dark forest on their watercolor. I mean, if your thing is Adirondack landscapes on the labels, don’t you think you could find one that better represents a “black forest”. 2

Originality (5): This is another tough rate. This beer has been around as long as I can remember. And really, I don’t know what it is. It’s a Bavarian black beer called “Black Forest.” They don’t claim it’s anything, so it’s tough to rate against similar things. On the other hand, shenanigans on their “until recently it was only available on draught” nonsense. Granted, I haven’t spent much drinking time in Saranac’s Central New York wheelhouse, but I’ve never seen it on draught anywhere. Besides the point, I’ve been drinking it out of the bottle for damn near a decade. It might be time to upgrade the bottleneck blurb. 4

Body (10): It takes a little suspension of disbelief to accept the “red” or “rich, creamy head” mentioned on the bottleneck. It is barely red and the head, while creamy, isn’t very persistent. However, the body is surprisingly smooth for the darkness of the beer. It’s a bit out of the ordinary for a beer that blocks light. Not tremendously thick or filling and quite pleasant for the flavor. 8

Taste (10): This brew tastes like it’s nearly all malt with only a pale hint of hops. The caramel flavor mentioned in the blurb is evident and, as per usual, a pretty excellent flavor when combined with heavy malts. The one drawback is it’s right on border of being too sweet. Not a problem in a sampler pack, but maybe a problem in a full sixpack. 7

Efficiency (10): The beer’s malty sweetness is great but, as mentioned, a sweet flavor and a low ABV doesn’t lend itself to efficiency. This beer would be an excellent draught but despite their insistence, I’ve never seen it. The 5.3% doesn’t knock my socks off in efficiency terms, but it doesn’t suck. 6

Versatility (10): Much like the Black & Tan, I don’t know what I’d use it for. The pairing information suggests Mexican food and chicken dishes, but I don’t get that. If there was more than one in the sampler, I might have tried to turn it in to a steak sauce. I don’t want to be down on this beer because I do really like it but I just couldn’t see myself ever getting a sixpack of it. I love one or two, but I couldn’t see myself spending a night with it. 5

Final Score: 32 (of 50) — Good beer.

In part three, Chuck presented with an ace in the hole. The unanswerable question.

Chuck
Name one other HOF caliber pitcher you think Moose would beat heads up in a big game. Maybe we could discuss Glavine or Phil Neikro.

Unfortunately, as a reasonable human being, I had to respond to both this and his previous e-mail.

Tom
@Chuck: 0 Rings even though he went to the playoffs in 9 seasons – don’t tell me this doesn’t matter when he went to the playoffs in 9 seasons won 0 WS and only got to two when the teams he pitched for were often the favorites coming into the series

Also — I invite any of those in the “against” camp to answer Pete’s question. “Had he returned this season and next season, won 15 games in both seasons, but was not better than Sabatha or Burnett, but had 300 wins, would he be a Hall of Famer?” Because if the answer’s yes then he is in right now.

Chuck, in his patented way, chose to ignore most of the e-mail.

Chuck
No brainer. Johnson over Moose. Did you watch the 2001 WS or the 2005 ALDS? Actually as a Mets fan you probably didn’t?

Chuck has a very odd way of using “you’re a Mets” fan to make a point. Even when I’m arguing in favor of a Yankee. I don’t quite understand this, but it seems to be some kind of Yankee defense mechanism.

Tom
2001 WS — the one where he had a bad game 1 and a game six where he gave you 8 innings of 2 run, 10K baseball while your offense couldn’t scratch out a run against career 4.50 ERA Miguel Batista? Yep, saw it. Clearly Sterling Hitchcock was deserving of the win in that game.

I guess bad post-season starts are grounds for dismissal? G-bye Glavine, Smoltz, Maddux, Pedro, every pitcher ever.

Mike
You mean the 2001 WS where Moose had his ring all locked up until Mariano Rivera BLEW THE EFFING WORLD SERIES?!? The World Series that Moose had no hand in losing? The World Series where your golden boy Andy Pettitte put forth a game 6 effort, where the series could have been won, by getting dismantled in a 20-1 drubbing? Don’t drop ‘as a Mets fan you probably didn’t’ on anyone either. Bottom line every argument about him doesn’t factor in anything he did in Baltimore, when he was clearly in his prime. What he got paid is absolutely meaningless. I can throw out a list of guys who haven’t lived up to a contract, including Randy Johnson who got a huge extension to be a Yankee, promptly becoming mediocre.

He’s going to get in. You can revile him because he dared be on teams that didn’t win rings due to people he had nothing to do with and isn’t a ‘Real Yankee’ like effing Luis Sojo or something. He wasn’t better in his rotation than a pair of known cheaters in Clemens and Pettitte. He wasn’t good enough to make sure that everyone else in Baltimore came though with offense, or good enough to make sure that the Jeffrey Maier call was correct. How dare he only pitch a career ERA under 4 with 270 wins and a career winning percentage of .638 which would have been higher if he played on better teams or got some better luck with the offense given him on a nightly basis. As far as taking him against a ‘big game’ pitcher of the era, the only guys I wouldn’t take him over are Schilling and Pedro in his prime. That’s it. I will take him against anyone else you can name.

Chuck
Okay I refuse to discuss this anymore. This will never happen. If Moose wants to go to the Hall he should buy a ticket and hop on a bus to Cooperstown. Not worth the hour of my life I’ve lost discussing this.

With Chuck successfully defeated by logic, reason, and having an indefensible position — only one dragon was left to be slain.

Mark
@Hulse: again, nothing in this argument says he shouldn’t be in the hall.

And Pete, if he sticks around and gets to 300, does that get him in? Dunno. Maybe. Is 300 wins as meaningful now that remaining a starting pitcher until you’re 40 as impressive? Maybe. Guys get less starts than they used to, but they play longer and they have more reliable closers to save games. So maybe it evens out. But it doesn’t matter, because he didn’t get to 300 wins, so there’s no real need to consider it.

Next, we try to take on Mark’s argument.

As a Superman whore, there’s no good reason I never got in to Smallville when it debuted. It must be that I was still in college and my little 12-inch TV/VHS combo didn’t really get much use. I went through a period between 1996 – 2005 where I just didn’t watch new shows. Then I moved in with a guy who worked for the cable company and we became part of DVR field testing. Smallville’s debut falls in that gap and as a staunch believer in not starting shows from the middle, it got placed on the back burner and forgotten about. At some point, I must have put the first season on the Netflix list. I rarely, if ever, check my Netflix list because, you know, there are really so few surprises in life.

The set-up, as everyone probably knows since it’s been on TV for nearly a decade, is Clark Kent’s life as a high school student in Smallville, Kansas. As far as my Superman experience goes (and it was extensive in my comic book phase — Superman being the only DC books I followed) I know nothing about his life in Smallville except his parents were already old by the time he got to Metropolis and Lana Lang was his high school sweetheart. I know his powers developed young and his parents did their best to hide it from the world. The show added a new twist on the Superman/Lex Luthor dynamic — that being they were friends in Smallville. DC liked this twist enough that they adopted it as one of the canonical origin stories during Infinite Crisis.

The Good

• I absolutely love the early dynamic of Superman and Lex Luthor being friends at a younger age. The beginning of the season places Clark as a freshman in high school and Lex probably about ten years older. Setting aside the largely ignored relative creepiness of an early 20s Lex hanging out with a gang of “15-year-old” kids — the chance encounter that introduces the two of them and Lex’s inability to let something go unexplained turns in to this great, twisting relationship. Lex desperately needs to figure out how Clark rescued him from certain death while, I think, still trying to be Clark’s friend. I get the sense that Lex doesn’t actually know how to be someone’s friend, so watching that struggle is also fun.
• Michael Rosenbaum’s take on Lex Luthor is unbelievably awesome. Rosenbaum is given this character who most everyone watching knows becomes this incredibly evil person who orchestrates thousands of deaths. To take that character and make him not only somewhat sympathetic — but take him to the point where viewers can root for him — is amazing. In addition, he’s able to subtly remind viewers that they absolutely should NOT be rooting for him. There is a scene where he tells Clark about his younger brother Julian. Lex believes his father Lionel loved Julian the most and viewed him as a second chance to produce a worthy heir. At the end of the story, Clark asks what happened to Julian. Lex tells Clark that an infant Julian died in his crib. I don’t know if Julian Luthor was a part of Lex’s comic book canon, but I’m relatively certain that in the show’s reality it will be revealed that Lex killed his infant brother. Rosenbaum’s delivery makes that scene chilling. And the way he is able to keep Lex, who is ostensibly still a good guy, right on that border of being a bad guy is great stuff. Even with all the good Lex does in season one, the finale cliffhanger sees him faced with a decision as to whether to save his father or let him die, and I really don’t know what he’s going to do. Lex’s struggle against himself is as entertaining a storyline as Clark rescuing people.
• I’m sure there have been plenty of discussions about this over the last decade — but whomever chooses the music is fantastic. Music on a TV show can go one of four directions. It can be off the radar entirely (like Lost), serviceably good but not really noticeable (Buffy), so bad it’s noticeable (The Hills), or so good you notice (Smallville). Not only do they have a great knack for picking the right song for the right situation, but even knowing when to pick covers that fit the scene better than the original. For instance, this funeral scene takes Eva Cassidy’s version of Cindi Lauper’s Time After Time and it fits the mournful mood of a funeral much better than the original. Small things like making sure that love songs being played while Clark pines for Lana are sung by Greenwheel instead of Melissa Etherage. On top of that, they have a sense of humor. Clark’s father, Jonathan Kent, is played by John Schneider. Schneider, as people my age know, played Bo Duke in the Dukes of Hazzard. In one episode, Jonathan ends up in a car chase. The song on the radio before the car chase starts is Good Old Boys — The Dukes of Hazzard Theme. That, my friends, is awesome.
• One of the questions I always had about the show is how they would manage to put Superman in perilous situations. Really, Superman was never so much about saving himself as it was saving his friends — but still, it was a concern. We quickly discovered that, in this reality, his ship was accompanied by a hail of meteors (parts of his exploded planet, perhaps) containing green kryptonite. Also, the kryptonite doesn’t only weaken Clark, but ongoing exposure grants superpowers to humans. This creates the monster-of-the-week bad guys. Which leads to one my favorite comic book arguments: the nature of Krypton. I’ve always found Krypton’s properties too convenient to be coincidental. Under a red sun and made up of kryptonite, it contains the only two properties that render its residents powerless. Consider the fact that 1) Kryptonians were violent enough to eventually destroy their planet and 2) they become super powered under a yellow sun. If we assume that yellow suns are relatively common, and that the light from these stars morphs violent Kryptonians in to unstoppable super-beings, doesn’t it seem likely the rest of the universe would be absolutely terrified of them? Doesn’t it also seem likely that Kryptonians were specifically marooned in the one place where their powers couldn’t be used to conquer the universe? On top of all that, Jor-El was a genius. There’s no way he would have launched the boy’s escape pod randomly and hoped it hit the right location. Jor-El launched his son to the one place he’d absolutely be safe. So, not only did at least some Kryptonians know they were specifically marooned in a place to render them inert, but also what yellow suns would do to their physiology. Discuss.

The Bad

• The character Pete — or “Token” as we’ll refer to him him here — sucks. And sucks in a “it seems like the writers added this kid they wanted to develop who largely ended up on the cutting room floor” kind of way. Watching the deleted scenes from the early episodes, there was a ton of backstory and relationship stuff between Pete and Clark that was removed. It must have spiraled from there until Pete just kind of became this background Scooby who shows up to be funny once in a while. In one vein, I do understand it — the relationships between Chloe/Lana/Clark/Whitney, Lex/Clark, and Clark/Jonathan/Martha are much more interesting. I think the idea of Pete — Clark’s regular dude high school buddy — was a solid one, but I think it was a little ambitious considering all the other relationships they wanted to explore.
• Thus far, I’m not the biggest fan of Tom Welling. Everything that Michael Rosenbaum brings to Lex Luthor, Welling does not bring to Clark Kent. I understand that Clark is supposed to be boring because he is desperately trying to not draw attention to himself but Welling doesn’t do a great job at communicating it. His delivery feels a little stilted and he seems to have an emotional range that begins and ends at “longing.” Pass for now because it’s the first season. I’ll let him grow in to the role. I think it’s more pronounced because Rosenbaum is SO awesome with such a deep character that everyone else looks bad by comparison. Whereas Clark is a good guy who is always good, Lex is a goodish guy who will eventually be terrible. There’s a lot more to the latter.
• As mentioned previously — the show relies very heavily on a Monster of the Week format to put Clark and his friends in danger. What I find bothersome about this is Smallville, like Sunnydale, has this generally accepted thing where weird things just kind of happen, and people just kind of die, due to some combination of the meteors and Luthercorp’s passing relationship with environmental protection laws. People get strange powers. And, through all this, Clark’s friend Chloe — who is supposed to be the Lois Lane, investigative reporter type — never quite puts together that Clark seems to be involved in all these rescues and maybe there’s something going on with him, too.

The Rest

The show is essentially the Buffy format turned upside down. Instead of solving all the mysteries and beating the bad guys with the help of her friends while keeping the adults largely in the dark, it’s instead solving all the mysteries and beating the bad guys while his friends absolutely can’t know what’s going on and his parents are the only ones he can talk to. Where Buffy is about this girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders with the help of her friends, Smallville is about this guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders with no one to share it with. It’s a great format. And, even though the monsters-of-the-week borrow a lot from Buffy — the insect monster week, the invisible bad guy week, losing your powers for a while week — I can forgive it.

The only slightly odd thing about the show that I’ve had a hard time with — why does EVERYONE who gets a power from the meteor pieces immediately become a bad guy? I’m not sure if it’s a knock on high school, small towns, or human nature in general but, literally, all people who get a power turn evil. Granted, all the people who get powers are social outcasts who suddenly find themselves in a position to get back at everyone who’s ever wronged them. As a former high school social outcast, I feel like a super power wouldn’t have immediately led to a killing spree. Do we really all work under the assumption that every high school kid is one superpower away from becoming a serial killer? Maybe one or two could do something good with their power? Mix it up a little?

I love this show. I have no idea if I’m going to be able to plow through eight seasons in time to watch the final season live on WB, but here’s hoping.

10) I’m sure there will be a moment this month where I officially throw in the towel.

August 16th. David Wright placed on the 15-day DL with concussion symptoms.

And it is AAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL over.

Confidential to Bootleg: Minaya should survive the season. The team he put together was in first place in May. If he does get the axe, it’s painfully obvious scapegoating.

Shipyard Summer Ale

Brewed By: Shipyard Brewing
Brewed In: Portland, ME
ABV: 5.1%
Type: American Wheat Ale

What They Say: Shipyard Summer Ale is a traditional American wheat beer. With it’s [sic] inviting golden color, mellow malted wheat flavor[,] and less hoppy characteristics, it’s sure [to?] please those looking for a clean, cool taste sensation on long hot summer days. Available April through August.

Website: No different than on the Pumpkinhead review. Not remotely fancy, but informative. Everything I need is right there in front of me. Events featured prominently on the front page as well as a link to a blog where I can get recent news. Info on brewery tours. If I had one complaint it was that I couldn’t copy and paste the description of a beer on the “Taste” page because all the info changes on mouse over. Good stuff.

Why I Picked It: Tis the season when I look for summers that I’ve yet to try. In this case, it’s mostly because the Summers are soon going to start giving way to the Pumpkins and Octoberfests of the world. I’ve never tried (or even seen) Shipyard’s summer so it was high time to try it.

–

Presentation (5): I love this beer’s presentation. The label is bright yellow. The neck label, which took a second to place, has “cheers” spelled out in Maritime Signal Flags. The body label has the standard Shipyard logo accompanied by a lobster with a popeye tattoo on his claw sitting in a beach chair toasting a tall sail ship on the horizon. Is there anything possibly bad to say about it? I think not. 5

Originality (5): The summer ale idea is frequently visited, but a craft brewery has to have one. 2

Body (10): If you’ve seen one American wheat, you’ve seen all of them. This version, like most, has a simple golden color, strong carbonation, a yeasty odor, and a significant head. There isn’t a lot I can say here. The beer is an above average version of this style. Just enough carbonation to tantalize the tongue and the perfect thickness to both encourage consumption and refresh the palette. 7

Taste (10): They had me at less hoppy. The beer features a crisp, malty flavor with just a hint of citrus goodness in the background. Hardly any bitterness with no dominating hop flavor which I find absolutely essential in summer beers. Drying out the mouth on a hot summer day when all one wants is to be refreshed is stupid. Fantastic version of this beer and probably one of the best examples available. 10

Efficiency (10): Combined great flavor in a wheat beer and getting the ABV over 5% isn’t easy. I can’t give it full efficiency points because it doesn’t hit that 5.7% sweet spot, but it’s the closest I’ve ever come to breaking my own unwritten rule. 8

Versatility (10): I can’t pick something this beer wouldn’t work for. I could fill a keg or a cooler with this beer and everyone at the party, male or female, would be happy. It’s refreshing, delicious, perfect, and, while the ABV isn’t tops for efficiency, it’s absolutely in the sweet spot for being versatile. Right around 5.0% makes it a beer that’s acceptable to drink out without getting arrested on the way home. 10

The Snob Says: This is easily my favorite example of a summer wheat. It’s not even close and I loved Blue Point’s Summer (which I, surprisingly, haven’t reviewed). I’m going to have to check Sam’s to confirm, but as of now, easily the best beer of the summer.

Total Score: 42 (of 50) – Great beer.

Part 1.
Part 2.

Mike
So Don Drysdale should be removed immediately since he was never better than Koufax? I guess Glavine and Smoltz can also forget it since they were never the best pitcher on a staff with one of the 10 best pitchers of all time? We can also keep Schilling out since he pitched behind all-time greats Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez. I also wasn’t aware only his years in New York can be considered and that to make the hall you had to be a Dominant pitcher well into your late 30′s.

So, basically, he was as good as anyone he pitched with from 2001-2003, which says nothing to the fact that he was as good as almost anyone in baseball from 1995-2000 in his actual prime. Again, nothing in this argument says he shouldn’t be in the hall.

Chuck Returns!

Chuck
Moose is not a Hall of Famer. Period. End of story. As a matter of fact I can’t believe we’re even discussing this one. This is a joke right? Please tell me it is. ABSOLUTLELY LAUGHABLE and I’m a Yanks fan!

I could make the same argument for Pedro over Moose and dont compare Maddux, Glavine and Smotlz to him because they all have rings, Cy Youngs and were 300 game winners.

Pete
I guess we cannot induct Ricky Henderson this year. Nobody has retired his number.

Chuck
Pete the A’s will

All this talk of rings was getting to be too much.

Rob
Just want to address one thing… a ring for a pitcher depends on too many factors to hold that against him. First, his teammates need to score runs. He can pitch a no hitter for 10 innings and if his team doesn’t score he leaves the game with a ND. Second, the other pitchers need to step up as well. You get maybe 2 chances in a series to pitch, 3 if it goes 7. I don’t think a ring is as important for pitchers to make the hall as it is for position players that play every day and have a bigger impact on every game.

Chuck finally throws down the gauntlet. Playing what he believes to be his ace in the hole.

Chuck
Name one other HOF caliber pitcher you think Moose would beat heads up in a big game. Maybe we could discuss Glavine or Phil Neikro.

In Part Four, I’ll answer Chuck’s ace in the hole. I bet you come up with the same answer.

Current Record (As of 8/1): 49-53
June Record: 12-14
GB (NL East): 9.5 (Philadelphia, 4th)
GB (Wildcard): 6.5 (Colorado, 8th)

1) First off — when winning a $5/person Home Run Derby pool was the highlight of your month — you know it’s been a bad baseball month.

2) In addition — pretty much any month that opens with your team barely scraping out three runs over three games in the second most offense-friendly park in the league is going to be bad. It seems like almost an entire season ago now, but this when it appeared the Mets still had a shot at the division. As the month opened, the Phillies were still playing terrible baseball and they’d managed to tantalize the Mets with only a two-game lead. The Mets arrived in Philadelphia with a chance at the division. Then got whupped three times and left with their tail between their collective legs. These weren’t the games at Citi — where the team led early and the bullpen squandered it. These were just a bad team playing a good team. The Phillies went on to build a 10 game lead and the Mets went on to drop a series to the Nationals. It’s been a long month.

3) I find the people demanding the jobs of Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya insane. I’ll listen to arguments, but they have to be better than the laughable “he should have been prepared with a better bench for this” or “he should have made some stopgap moves.” Again, I ask, what stopgap moves fix up your two best hitters, two starters, and your 2nd best reliever going to the DL? Like — the Mets would be a .500 team right now and holding down the fort if only we had Mark DeRosa hitting fifth and Eric Hinske hitting 6th? Really? That’s your complaint? As for Manuel — I agree that the team plays sloppy baseball at times, but most of their issues occur on the basepaths. For that, I mostly blame third base coach Razor Shines who seems to operate with no rhyme, reason, or concept for the game of baseball.

4) If there is a silver lining in this cloud of crap, it’s that the Mets will actually be able to see what they have at first base in Daniel Murphy. Murphy played an adventurous left field to open the season featuring high-profile, game-costing errors. Mets fans, being what they are, immediately decided that he’s a terrible player and should be busted back down to Rookie Ball because, apparently, making a guy learn left field at the major league level is something one just “picks up”. Murphy was moved to 1B (he’s a natural 3B) in June and, finally, toward the end of July, he finally got comfortable at the position. According to SNY, he’s now leading the league in the fake statistic of “double plays started.” More importantly, over the last couple weeks, he’s found his missing power stroke, slugging over .500 for the first time since last season. These last two months will be a pretty good indication as whether or not Murphy is the first baseman of the future. As the organization sold him that way and an excuse for not needing the services of Manny Ramirez, he’ll get that chance next season anyway. Sorry Aubrey Huff — you’ll have to choose another large market team to fund your retirement contract… I hope.

5) National League thought — the American League, again, won the All-Star Game. This caused a minor meltdown amongst NL fans and more irritating superiority amongst AL fans. Look, y’all — the National League is not going to win an All Star Game so long as they only have six innings to get a huge lead. Then the AL manager throws Jonathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan, and Mariano Rivera in succession. We threw Heath Bell. HEATH BELL. I watched Heath Bell for a lot of years, and bully for him that he’s had a great first half in San Diego, but he’s a mediocre reliever having a great half. The fact the Padres didn’t ship him out for an absolute haul at the deadline is insane. He is 30 years old — his value, I promise you, will never be higher than it is right now. The National League is not going to win the All Star game until Rivera retires and the AL no longer has 3 dominant closers to get 9 outs while the NL uses guys like Billy Wagner, Eric Gagne, and Trevor Hoffman. Which means, hooray, I have at least 3 more years of listening to Bill Simmons podcasts where he talks about the superiority of the American League and how all AL teams would be 10 wins higher in the NL — even though the team that would play in the NL would be entirely different and would rely on things like “David Ortiz at first base” and “less batters.” If we’re lucky, we can also hear him continue to complain that baseball games are too long while promoting the awesomeness of the AL’s attendance-boosting gimmick that’s inexplicably stuck around.

6) Early in July they sent Ryan Church to the Braves for Jeff Francoeur, thus clearing the team of the guys who have spent extended time on the Jerry Manuel Shitlist. I didn’t understand this trade at first and, as has been well-documented, I was a fan of Ryan Church. But, the more I thought about it, the more I got on-board. At 30, Church is what he is — A .270 hitter with a little bit of power who plays a great right field. At 25, there’s still a chance the Mets’ system can teach him that he does not, in fact, have to swing at every pitch thrown to him. Someone should show video of Vlad Guererro and say “you’re not him. Stop it.” Church should be happy — apparently karma repays a player’s time on the Jerry Manuel Shitlist as TrapJaw got to catch Mark Buehrle’s perfect game.

7) In the closing days of August, like the last gasp of a horror movie monster, the Mets took 5-straight from the Wildcard leading Rockies and the Astros. Then, they promptly returned to Earth dropping three-of-four, at home, to the semi-terrible Diamondbacks. The Mets season, and really the last two seasons, can be summed up by their August 4th game vs. the Cardinals. K-Rod blew the save and allowed the Cards to tie in the top of the 9th. I turned the channel because I knew the game was over. The Mets do not get clutch hits late in games. They haven’t for the last two seasons. Did you know there’s only been three walk-offs in the new stadium this year? The Yankees had three in a week. I checked the box score later in the evening more out of habit then the presumption they won. I discovered that Sean Green HBPed in the go-ahead run before delivering a meatball to El Hombre who did what he do — mashing a grand slam to put the Cardinals up 5. My Mets.

8) As I mentioned earlier this year — the team’s chronic ability to get hits off of bullpen pitchers or to get anything past the sixth inning is something that has yet to be addressed. It hasn’t changed this season. All of their offensive numbers are down due to the injuries — but still, in the 7th-9th inning the Mets aggregate numbers are .240/.330/.363. It represents an 80 point drop in OPS from the 4th-6th. It’s a little thing that nobody talks about but it’s absolutely there — along with their .240/.274/.410 line with bases loaded. I don’t see it getting better next year either.

9) And as that short-lived five game winning streak was happening, I started talking myself in to the idea that it wasn’t quite yet lost. If they could put together a few more wins, maybe they’d start getting guys back, and we had a shot. I was talking myself in to Halladay trades. Then everything came back down to Earth. Really, I do kind of wish the Mets sent a haul of players for Halladay. Right now, there’s a moderately good chance the Phillies end up as, at least, the NL representative to the World Series. So, there’s an outside chance that the Mets, next year, will have to contend with a two-time World Series champion in their division featuring a 1-2 of Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee. And we’ll be responding to that with Johan Santana and……… Oliver Perez?

10) I’m sure there will be a moment this month where I officially throw in the towel. I might be there now but I feel like I’ll know it for certain when it happens. My boss tossed it in after the aforementioned Cardinals game. I’m still holding on to it, but it came really close after the Padres walk-off on Friday. But that’s a thought for another month.