TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I’ve wanted to pick up and read a couple of Dodger/Giant history books for a while now. I’d been waiting to read about one as a reference in some other book but it hasn’t come up. So, I just picked one at random. I went with Brooklyn’s Dodgers by Carl E. Prince.

In the future, I need to be careful not to pick up a book by and for sociologists (I still love you Mr. and Ms. The Big Show) when what I want is a history book.

This is one of the few books that I actually gave up on. If you’re the type of baseball fan that finds baseball books by statisticians to be snooty and superior, you’d be blown away by the general snootiness and superiority of the author. Keep in mind, I like stat books and I thought the author was snooty. There were two and a half interesting chapters. The Jackie Robinson chapter spoke to how the other players and the borough accepted Robinson and how management dealt with those who didn’t (Hint: lots of trades with the Cardinals). The second explored the Dodgers’ and the women of Brooklyn. Surprisingly, it wasn’t about young Dodger players mowing through the daughters of Brooklyn. It more dealt with Walter O’Malley and Branch Rickey being amongst the first owners in baseball to reach out to women in the surrounding neighborhood to fill empty seats during day games. They were the first owners in baseball to realize the income potential in women’s afternoon free time and how they went about overcoming stereotypes about women who hung out at ballparks. The half chapter of interest was about the reserve clause. It included the “indentured servitude” speech that accompanies all stories about the reserve clause, but also outlined how the “overgrown boys playing a game” stereotype came about. It was something the owners actively spread through the papers to keep player salaries down. “Why should we pay these guys a lot of money when they’re just boys playing a game?” I’d never thought of that before.

Unfortunately, there were other chapters. Specifically, the parts talking about the macho male culture of Brooklyn and bars as they relate to baseball fans. Much like the “this is a lot of paper to tell me we need clean water” Sprint firefighter commercial, Prince spent an awful lot of paper to tell me that guys who didn’t have TV went to bars to watch or listen to baseball games, sometimes would get in to fights with fans of the other New York teams, and that baseball teams do a lot of posturing toward each other to throw opponents off their game. I just summed up four chapters in two sentences.

I did, however, take two things away that I look forward to seeing more of in future books. First, had the Dodger’s never left Brooklyn, their fans would be as annoying as Red Sox fans. Boston has this provincial “if you weren’t born here three generations ago and you don’t like the Sox, you’re not worth anything.” Brooklyn natives are like this, too, AND have accents that grate on outsiders. Second, the hatred between Dodger fans and Yankee fans would be on the order of the hatred between the White Sox and the Cubs. It would represent everything from borough pride to income levels — white collar vs. blue collar and everything in between. Extending that, the idea of having two teams in the same division in the same city is mind-blowingly awesome. If the Dodgers and Yankees hated each other and they only met maybe once a year, then the Dodgers/Giants rivalry, while getting much less press, must have been great. I can’t even imagine the extra bile and hatred that would exist between Brooklyn and Manhattan if they had a sports feud with each other. I know the Dodgers and Giants carried their rivalry all the way out to the west coast… what it must have been like when they were separated by 13 miles instead of 400 must have been something to behold.

I need to find books on the Dodgers not like this one. Strongest recommendation to avoid.

Last week was terrible, featuring only 6 wins against the spread and falling behind 8 games in both the cheap league and the expensive league. On top of that, I call out Cam and Joe and promptly fall in to last. Looking at this week, the spreads have gotten even more bizarre. I don’t know who is gambling on these games this year. The Giants as a 2 touchdown favorite? The Dolphins as a 2 touchdown underdog to the backup Pats? The Jets are a 9.5-point dog to the Cowboys with the Favre-on-Monday-Night factor. I’d like to think that everyone is doing crappy this year, but that’s just not true. Also to note: the only road favorite this week is Dallas… in Lambeau. Oy.

Sunday
Kansas City Chiefs +4 at Atlanta Falcons: This is the first of many point spreads this week that confused me. I know the Falcons aren’t good but the Chiefs get got crushed by Oakland and apparently has NO ONE on offense. Falcons cover.

Oakland Raiders +9.5 at Buffalo Bills: This was the first spread I looked at this week and was dumbfounded. Like, I understand that the Bills have been good the last two weeks and the Raiders have been questionable… but 9.5? Really? I’ll hate myself in the morning but I have to take them. Raiders +9.5.

Houston Texans +5 at Tennessee Titans: I recall that the team I could never pick correctly last year was the Titans. I’m happy to see this is carrying over in to this year. Titans cover.

Cincinnatti Bengals +13.5 at New York Giants: I find there to be something telling about my team when they are coming the reigning Super Bowl champions, won their first two games handily, are playing at home against a team who has put up a collective 17 points over two weeks against the Titans and Ravens, and I’m STILL really not all that keen on ever picking them to cover a spread this large. The worst part about this is that I KNOW they’re getting taxed because of the abuse they gave to the Rams last week. But I can’t take the Bengals. They are down a bunch of weapons, are on the road, and have no defense to speak of. Eli is getting the backup nod again in the Ms. L Superstar’s league and is staring down the barrel of being the most valuable Super Bowl MVP to ever be taken in the 10th round of a fantasy draft. Giants (ugh) cover.

Arizona Cardinals +3 at Washington Redskins: I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m only picking against NFC East teams with reasonable spreads when they play against other NFC East Teams. Redskins cover.

Miami Dolphins +13.5 at New England Patriots: Way, WAY too many points for what we know about these teams. There is not allowed to be a Patriot Tax when we still don’t know if the quarterbacks going to have random meltdown games. Dolphins +13.5.

Tampa Bay Bucs +3 at Chicago Bears: Back-up quarterback on the road, even if he’s Brian Griese, is not for me. Chicago covers.

Carolina Panthers +3 at Minnesota Vikings: The Vikings are better than a 0-2 team and I still have no idea what the Panthers are going to do. The Vikings are due for some good fortune here. Vikings cover.

St. Louis Rams +10.5 at Seattle Seahawks: Two bad teams in the Cheaterdome. I don’t even know if the Seahawks have enough guys on offense to SCORE more than 10.5 points, much less cover a 10.5 point spread. Rams +10.5.

Detroit Lions +3 at San Francisco 49ers: I’m gonna go ahead and assume the Lions are not quite as bad as they’ve been playing and will take the opportunity to beat one of the few inferior teams in the league. Lions outright.

New Orleans Saints +4 at Denver Broncos: I don’t understand this spread much at all. The Saints have not fallen so far after one loss to the Redskins that they’re a 4-point dog to a team that should be 1-1. Saints outright.

Pittsburgh Steelers (pk) at Philadelphia Eagles: I have no idea what to think about the Eagles at this point. There is no way they’re as good as they played last week. On the other hand, the Steelers only managed to put up 10 against the Brows. I’m almost immediately violating my own “Only pick against NFC East teams if they’re facing other NFC East teams” but I guess I’ll adapt it to “Only pick against NFC East teams if they’re facing other NFC teams.” This is also a good first look at how Pittsburgh is going to fare as one of the only difficult AFC challenges the NFC East teams are going to face other than each other. Steelers.

Jacksonville Jaguars +5.5 at Colts: The Colts lost their biggest asset on defense but the Jags appear to have no offense to speak of. Since I don’t expect Peyton to drop a 5 interception game in week three, there’s no reason the Colts should lose this. Colts cover.

Cleveland Browns +2 at Baltimore Ravens: The Browns SHOULD be able to bounce back this week. I though I learned my “always pick an 0-2 team playing a bad team in week 3″ lesson with the Dolphins last year, but apparently not. Browns outright.

Dallas Cowboys -3 at Green Bay Packers: I’m having a terrible time picking against the Cowboys in all situations this year. This also falls under my NFC East Rule. Cowboys cover.

Monday
New York Jets +9.5 at San Diego Chargers: I understand the spread. Vegas is banking on gamblers thinking “wow, the Chargers are going to be fired up after getting screwed last week.” They’re still dealing with LDT and Gates having some degree of injury and the Jets, honestly, aren’t that bad. I do know 9.5 is WAY too many points to have on this game. I guess I think the Chargers are going to come out and win this… finally… but the Jets will certainly be within 10. Jets +9.5.

5 points: Indy -5.5 over Jacksonville
4 points: Lions +3 over Niners
3 points: Redskins -3 over Cardinals
2 points: Browns +2 over Ravens
1 point: Chicago -3 over Tampa

—

I made a pact with myself last year that I wouldn’t take teams with points unless I thought there was some chance for them to win outright. I picked way too many underdogs and points this week so I would recommend this card to nobody. On the other hand, I wouldn’t recommend picking exactly opposite of this card either.

You may have heard of Buster Olney as a frequent “contributor” to Fire Joe Morgan. Olney is a writer deeply entrenched in classical baseball stuff — Wins are important, OBP is dumb, VORP is something evil dreamed up by people who hate the sport. In fact, the only reason I read this book is because my buddy Hulse told me it was very good. The Last Night Of The Yankee Dynasty tells the story of Game 7 of the World Series… only if it was dramatized with Lost style flashbacks giving you history on all the Yankee players. Olney takes the game, describes it inning by inning, and describes the players in building the dynasty and, ultimately, how it ended.

If anything, I was pleasantlly surprised at how engaging it was. I’m not a huge fan of Olney and I’m not a huge fan of the Yankees, but Olney describes the game in a way that anyone who is a baseball fan can get into. Unlike most Met guys, I’m not an active Yankee hater — though frequent-commenter Doug tells me that I IMed him after this game to goof on him which I don’t recall, but I’ll take his word for it. I remember this game primarily because it was the first championship game of any sport that I watched in a bar. Previously, all World Series games were watched in a college dorm room. This was the only World Series that happened when I was at RPI and the school isn’t really known for its jocks. In fact, only one guy I knew there was a baseball fan of any kind. My friend Matt and I watched this game at Peabody’s, a bar known for (at the time) being the only actual sports bar in Saratoga Springs, having the best wings in town, and being the place where we went on an unprecedented 4-hour run at a pool table. The book describes the game in such a dramatized fashion that two things happen 1) You start thinking this might have been the greatest baseball game of all time and 2) I really, really wish I could watch it again. Oddly, I can’t find it in the Yankees Classics rotation on YES.

As someone who lived in New York outside the Yankee thing, it’s also a pretty good revisiting of just how good those Yankee teams were. Like, as he was describing the 1998 team, I had pretty much forgotten how absurdly awesome that team was. I had forgotten it had taken them until late May to lose their 10th game and that they’d run away with the division by mid-July. I’d also forgotten how agonizingly hard Mike Piazza crushed the ball that led to the last out of the 2000 World Series*.

I’d also kind of argue with Olney’s contention that this particular World Series was the end of the dynasty. The Yankees would go on to win the division every year until 2007. I think you could successfully make the argument that the dynasty ended with Josh Beckett and the Marlins in 2003 or, even worse, with The Comeback in 2004. For artistic reasons, I understand why he chose this game — neither of those elimination games were particularly dramatic. In 2003, Beckett just made them look bad in game 6. In 2004, the doors were blown off game 7 by the 3rd inning. Only in 2001 did you have the added drama of most of the dynasty guys (Scott Brosius, Paul O’Neill, David Cone, etc) still on the team and playing in their last game, a gem of a game from both Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling, a team full of guys who were not expected to do much against this juggernaut, and, most damning, the best closer of our era giving up a crap hit to sneak in the winning run.

Recommended if you’re not a Yankee fan.

—-

* - cheated

I usually do the NFC east last because it’s the division I know the best but I guess since the division gets to open the season that I have to start with it.

Washington Redskins - O/U 7.5, LY 9-7: The Skins got a Wildcard berth by the grace of God last season. They “improved” by bringing in an over the hill defensive player and not improving their quarterback situation. Clinton Portis about 125 in runningback years (he’s aged 50 more years since my yesterdays’ picks column). They’re just remaining a team that’s on the cusp of being good. I just don’t see Jason Campbell as an elite, playoff quarterback and, until he proves me wrong, they’re going to hover around a .500 team. The one caveat to this is that the NFC East draws the NFC West and the AFC North this year. I’m having trouble buying the ‘Skins as a 9-win team this year but their schedule says otherwise. Over. 9 wins.

Philadelphia Eagles - 8.5, 8-8: To save myself time, I’ll just say what I said last year: The warranty on the “mobile quarterback” apparently expires at age 28. Donovan McNabb will turn 31 32 this November. This means McNabb either needs to change his game (difficult) or not get injured. They wisely let their good back-up go to the Bucs (which, I don’t know which decision was more inexplicable… the Buccaneers offering Rich Garcia $5M to “compete for the starting job” or the Eagles not using some of their $11M in cap space to keep him on board for McNabb’s inevitable injury. Now, the Eagles are looking forward to at least four starts by AJ Feeley or Kelly Holcomb. Most of their receivers have been in the league less than three seasons and they replaced Donte Stallworth with Kevin Curtis still don’t have a running game that aren’t Donovan’s McNabb’s shaky wheels. As McNabb declines, so does this team. Under. 7 wins.

Dallas Cowboys - 10.5, 13-3: Has there ever been a more celebrated team that hasn’t won a playoff game in over a decade? Unfortunately for me, the Cowboys have same schedule as the Giants and are sadly a more consistent regular-season team. The Giants win last year was made doubly delicious by the fact it came at the expense of the Cowboys in Dallas. There are images of last year I will have with me for the rest of my life. Wade Phillips’s post-game cry-fest is one. The image of stunned Dallas fans in the stands is another. It will never get old. I’m on the fence with declaring that the Cowboys are the official “team everyone is high on who will underachieve” for some reason or another. But, until the window closes on TO in 2010 or 2011, I just don’t really see it happening. Since they’re more consistent than the Giants I give them the regular season nod again and the over. 12 wins.

New York Giants - 8.5, 10-6: M’boy Bootleg took a jab at the Giants and asked how the defending Super Bowl champions can still be playing the plucky underdog/they don’t respect us card. Here’s why. Last night, I picked up Eli Manning, the Super Bowl MVP, in the 10th round of a 12 team fantasy draft — defenses and Kickers were going before him. The Cowboys, a team that hasn’t won a playoff game since I was in high school, is HBO’s feature team this year. The Jets, who had a 6-win season last year, are dominating the media coverage. Vegas, after marking the Giants as a six-win team last year marks them as a .500 team this year. This is how you play the “no respect” card as a reigning champion. Now, losing the 20+ sacks that Osi and Strahan brought to the table isn’t going to be easy — probably not even possible — but the Giants have an occasionally irritating tendency to draft pass rushers in the early rounds of the draft. They have the supply. The loss of Osi of Strahan move the Giants defense from “excellent” to “very good.” If you asked me to sign for a “very good” defense and a “consistently mediocre” offense, I would. On top of that, the Giants have another favorable schedule, skipping all the elite teams save for the Cowboys twice and the Steelers. They’re playing the NFC West (which may still be the worst division ever in professional sports) and the AFC North (and everyone who thinks the Browns are repeating their out of nowhere season is fooling themselves). That leaves their hard, non-division games as Pittsburgh and Cincy. That’s it. Lock of the season. Giants over. 10 wins

Division Winner: Dallas. Wildcard: Giants. Possible Wildcard: Redskins.

Apparently, I lied. I forgot I had one more in the hopper before moving on to a couple non-fiction. I’ll bury this posting on the weekend because I’m relatively sure people care less about these book reviews then Ms. L cares about the Mets.

The Silent Blade is the first book considered outside the “Legend of Drizzt” cycle and is, instead, the first book in the “Paths of Darkness” cycle. This seems to be the point at which Salvatore and and Wizards of the Coast realized they had about twelve marketable characters stacked up inside one ten book set and it was time to split them up. This book serves to do that and also serves as the fantasy world’s study of PTSD and how different characters deal with it.

On one side, you have Wulfgar whose spent the last six years being tortured by the demons. Not symbolic demons… actual demons. After being sprung from hell he’s mentally ruined. We find out some of the tortures visited on him — including being given illusions of freedom to the point where he believed he’d escaped only to watch his friends massacred by demons. He’s watched succubusses (hm… what is the plural form up succubus? Succuben? ZING!) assume the form of Catti-Brie and then turn back at the moment of passion. He’s watched the same succubuses give birth to his twisted half-demon spawn only to be murdered by Errtu. In all… he’s had a rough go of it. He’s not dealing with freedom particularly well — continually flashing back to his problems and putting his friends in danger.

On the other side, you have Artemis Entreri. Entreri was brought to Menzoberranzan to live with the drow where he discovered that, even though he’s spent his entire life tuning his senses and becoming the most finely honed warrior on the surface, he’s barely as talented as the lowest of drow commoners. Visiting Menzoberranzan allows him to look at himself in a huge mirror and he doesn’t really like what he sees. He returns to the surface realizing that Drizzt may have been right and the life he always led was kind of pointless.

By the end of the book, relationships have been reshuffled as the agonizingly long dance between Drizzt and Catti-brie and their maybe/maybe-not relationship continues… almost to the point of ridiculousness. At this point, the two have been “friends” for something like twelve years, including having spent six years together as pirate hunters on the Sea Sprite. All this time, the reader’s to understand that Drizzt longs for her. Six years on a boat and spending all their time together and nothing happened? Their relationship never progressed? Really?

This is a good book for what it is, as long as one goes in to it with very little hope of a resolution of anything. If anything, this book sets in to motion a lot of obvious stuff that the reader can infer from the last set of books. Drizzt and Artemis will fight again. Jarlaxle’s quest after the Crystal Shard. Wulfgar’s need of some alone time to deal with his figurative and literal demons. And the Friends’ return to Icewind Dale. It’s a table-setter for Spine of the World, The Sellswords Trilogy, and Sea of Swords. It’s pretty much designed to divide our main characters in to three different books and set them on their own paths. High time, too, as any more fights between Drizzt and Entreri are just overkill. We get it… you want to kill each other for metaphysical, philosphical reason.

As for the divergent paths… I’m curious to see if Salvatore has the ability to make his non-drow characters interesting — because to this point they’ve all been a supporting cast. Whether or not Wulfgar can carry a whole book on his own remains to be seen.

And now we’ll wrap up the little bit of storyline that wasn’t wrapped up in the last book. Unsurprisingly, this is the last book that’s considered part of the “Legend Of Drizzt” series. If the series had ended here, it would have been acceptable. The later books using these characters (Sellswords, Thousand Orcs) will hearken back to stuff that happened in this series, but these three-thousandish pages gives you one whole story.

At the beginning of the last book, Lolth convinced Errtu that if he protected Menzoberranzan from outside influences while she was otherwised deposed (by deposed I mean “not a god anymore) she would give him a prisoner to torment and whom he could use to end his banishment. When a monster is defeated on the Prime Material Plane, he can not re-enter the prime material plane for 100 years. The only way around this is to have the creature that banished him summon him. It is presumed this prisoner is someone Errtu could use to convince Drizzt to end the banishment. Then, Errtu would be able to re-enter the prime material plane and find the Crystal Shard… the evil artifact that keeps popping up throughout the series.

It’s been six years since the Battle of Mithril Hall. Bruenor and Regis have gone back to Icewind Dale because Bruenor thought he should give control of Mithril Hall back to his great-8x-grandfather. Drizzt and Catti’Brie have decided to help the world by joining back up with Captain Deudermont and the Sea Sprite (introduced WAY back in the Icewind Dale trilogy… one of the first humans to accept Drizzt) to hunt pirates on the Sea of Swords (The Forgotten Realms version of the Atlantic Ocean).

After six relatively peaceful years hunting pirates, Drizzt’s past finally catches up to him as he receives a message that his former nemesis Errtu is holding a captive. To retrieve this prisoner, Drizzt must end Errtu’s banishment. The quest to release Errtu is the first half of the book. The quest to put him back is the second half.

Both halves are pretty good.

I did find it amusing the lengths to which Errtu went to get Drizzt to unbanish him. It’s good to know that demons from the Abyss suffer from bad-guy overplanning as well. Errtu was holding a hostage and wanted Drizzt to unbanish him. Instead of just sending him a message to that effect, he sent a doppleganger to trick his boat into sailing to a deserted island that was full of zombies. On the island was a witch who delivered the team a riddle. The riddle sent them to somewhere else. Now, Drizzt’s the only mortal who can unbanish Errtu. Errtu really wanted to be unbanished. You’d think that he’d, I don’t know, not try to get Drizzt killed before the unbanishing happens. Bad guys, no matter what species, are kinda dumb. Also, in a level of transparency that approached daytime television, we spend 300 pages being told that the hostage is Drizzt’s father Zaknafein while anyone with half a brain in their skull are likely to realize it’s Wulfgar as he was dragged into the Abyss and all.

Long story short, Drizzt and company do manage to summon and unbanish Errtu who immediately retrieves the crystal shard that was buried under an avalanche in book four.

In all, it’s really a satisfying ending for a ten book arc. Very few plot-threads are left dangling other than Wulfgar’s lingering PTSD from six years of torture in hell and whether or not the friends will finally manage to destroy the Crystal Shard. In all, well done.

Complaints with the whole series, if I had any, were mostly with Salvatore’s writing style. He had a terrible tendency to have the friends only be saved by amazing luck and his inability to kill core characters. He also is not particularly good at describing battle scenes. It’s not easy to describe a sword-fight between two characters who are supposedly the best swordsmen in the world and it falls a little short. He also has a tendency to have events happen via a string of coincidences (Matron Baerne just happens to have the soul of an ancestor of one of the people Drizzt happens to meet on the surface). It’s OK to fall on this occasionally… other times it makes the reader roll their eyes. He also ignores his own mythology when it suits him. In the Dark Elf Trilogy, he specifically says that the third son of a drow house is sacrificed to Lolth. In later books, the Baerne clan has three sons (Berg’inyon, Gromph, and Dantrag) and no mention is made of the three son rule. Later still, we find out that there was another third son (who is certainly older than Berg’inyon as he is Drizzt’s age) who was, in fact, sacrificed. There’s also the inexplicable attitude shift of Drizzt’s sister Vierna Do’Urden (and Drizzt’s equally inexplicable reaction) simply to create a bad-guy even though it made no sense and stands out as one of the more stupid moments of the entire series.

There is one more book that’s not really a part of this series but acts as a springboard to split the series in two. One branch follows the good guys. The other branch follows Artemis Entreri who, until this point, was the bad guy. Before that… I need a break.

I go through spits and starts telling me I should leave New York City. Occasionally the destination in question is Boston, sometimes it’s Charlotte, for about an hour on leap day it was London — but usually it’s just back home. Sure, we may have come across as a little sketchy when Steve Carrell came to visit. But really, I honestly enjoy actual doses of nature instead of rigorously regulated blocks of nature.

When I was home last weekend, I discovered that one of my top five favorite upstate homes are for sale. I found it on Keller Williams’ website

1) The house comes pre-installed with an 800 square foot Man Room in the basement. The pre-installed man room is 50 square feet bigger than my apartment.

2) The house is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence anchored into stone pillars. Handy for keeping out both the riff and the raff.

3) The three acres of land sits directly on the Hudson River. I could, theoretically, create a slip and slide that goes directly into the river.

4) The house has 10 rooms. I could have a room just for my beer.

5) The estimated price on nearly 10 times the square footage with 3 acres of riverfront estate on a 30 year fixed mortgage works out to be a little less than $100 more than my current rent.

6) A 173-year-old house is almost certainly haunted and full of secret passageways.

The city is stupid. It would be really hard to turn that house down if I put in a bid for like $375k and they said yes.

As it’s been getting kind of serious around here for the last couple of weeks I figure it’s about time to lighten up for a bit and blow through the six-ish drafts of books and TV and movie stuff in my draft queue before getting back to depressing myself with our sham political system. Let’s even take a break from the fantasy novels that I’m relatively certain no one but me cares about.

I don’t remember exactly where I first read about Bill Jenkinson’s The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball’s Greatest Slugger. It must have been listed as a source to one of my previous baseball books. When I read the blurb about it on the NYPL’s website, I pegged it as a statistical study of Babe Ruth’s career numbers and, in particular, his 1921 season (not a typo… it pays more attention to his under-appreciated World Series-losing 1921 season in lieu of his World Series-winning 1927 season). When I read the “104 home run” title, I presumed it would be something about ballpark dimensions and such and be a distinctive study of tape-measure home runs and retro-fitting current stadiums (like… the Oakland Coliseum vs. Shibe Park, The Cell vs. Shibe Park, The Metrodome vs. Griffth Stadium, Fenway vs. er… Fenway) to see where Ruth would have wound up for the season if he played in those stadiums. Sounds interesting, right?

I thought so, too. Turns out, this book wasn’t that all. I don’t think. Really, I read the whole book over three weeks and still really don’t know what the author was trying to prove other than “Ruth Was The Greatest Baseball Player Ever.” The 104 home runs may have been referring to the ones Ruth was robbed of when he hit 500-foot outs or he may have been including the home runs he hit in mid-season exhibition games. Honestly, the argument wasn’t presented concisely enough for me to even figure out what the author was trying to say.

By the first chapter, I was pretty sure I was in for a long, long read. In the first 20 pages Jenkinson professes his love for Babe Ruth and his disdain for modern-day sluggers. He also tells us he spent something like ten years exhaustively researching every home run Ruth ever hit. Instead of going through box scores, he tried to find as many primary sources as possible and piece together an actual distance for all of those home runs. He looked for people who were at various exhibition and barnstorming games to get their stories and, in some cases, have those people show him exactly where home plate was in the game and where the ball landed. He then listed all these accomplishments.

Exhaustively.

A standard paragraph in the first few chapters was something like: Ruth then traveled to Philadelphia where he belted four homers against the Athletics. One of those is rumored to have gone 550 feet but my research puts it around 495. The Yankees were only up by three games on the Senators at that point and Ruth felt ill. But the Babe felt guilty leaving the team in such hard times. On the way to St. Louis they stopped off in French Lick, Indiana and played an exhibition game against the Church of the Assumption All-Stars. Babe put on a show that day! Can you imagine modern players not only playing in exhibition games but having 30 scheduled in as part of the regular season? Sometimes even on the same day as real games? When Ruth finally made it to St. Louis he was exhausted but he couldn’t leave the people without a show. He ate a dozen hot dogs and struck out three times but hit a triple off the wall 450 away.

And that goes on. And on. And on for something like 2,487 pages.

What I DID get out of the book were a couple of well-constructed arguments to defend the more dishonest claims made by Ruth’s detractors. For example, the oft-heard point that he’s over-rated because he didn’t face the best competition because the league wasn’t integrated. While the latter part of that statement is true, the former isn’t. Ruth was one of the few major league players who actually DID face Negro League pitching… playing in a fairly large number of games against Negro League teams. The book mentions the confirmed number of home runs he hit off Negro League pitchers (I can’t remember it). It’s not like when Ruth played Negro League teams he suddenly turned in to .094 hitter who slugged .188. Another well-constructed point is this: professional athletes really didn’t have the options then that they do today. If you were a professional-caliber athlete and wanted to make money in the 1910s or 1920s then you either played baseball or boxed. He draws this comparison to the current crop of Latin baseball players. If you’re an excellent athlete in the Dominican Republic, you play baseball. If you’re an excellent athlete in the US, you play whatever you feel like — and baseball’s probably a distant third option. A third point mentions that some of Ruth’s career numbers are hindered by the time. He spent something like 100 games over the course of his career suspended for doing crazy things like “barnstorming” and “not hating black people.” He was also frequently sidelined with things like chest-colds and the like and would miss five or six games at a clip with things such as “chest colds.”

To say I was disappointed in this book would be a gross understatement. I thought it was going to be a statistical analysis or something like that. It turned out it was just a baseball book designed to canonize Ruth and give a laundry list of his accomplishments. If anything, I spent three weeks to get a couple good arguments if I’m ever in an argument in which I have to defend Ruth.

Best sub-plot in the book was the description of Ty Cobb’s disdain and hatred for Ruth because of the popularity he gained by hitting home runs. Cobb insisted that anyone could do what Ruth did and, to make the point, hit three home runs in one game before going back to playing “real baseball.” Another fun story: Ruth was covering third when Cobb decided it was time to come in spikes up. Ruth tagged him with the ball. In the face. And knocked him out cold. Apparently Cobb never came in spikes up on Ruth again.

Not a particularly fun book to read, though. Recommendation to avoid.

The following clip is of Steve Carell on the Daily Show… of a segment he filmed in Mechanicville. When I talk about “my townhouse,” this is the town that it’s in. I’d like to say it makes the city (yes, the one square mile that is Mechanicville is, in fact, a city) look bad because they only film old people and drunks — but 90% of the city’s population is old people, drunks, and old people who are drunks. Ms. L and I often joked that we were the youngest people in Mechanicville with jobs and without kids. It really wasn’t a joke though.

I saw this originally the day after it aired. The bar that Steve Carell goes to is called Costanzo’s. I have ordered pizza from there but it remains the one bar in Mechanicville I have never had a drink in. Primarily because I’ve always thought it was kinda shady and, from the stories I’ve heard, it’s been shady since my grandma’s day. The bar is this far from my townhouse. It’s the closest to me and I’ve never gone there. Unfortunately, if I ever did happen to move back it’s one of the only ones left in town. The bar where my 30th birthday was held has shut down. Another has become a parking lot for a nearby motorcycle repair shop. A third is for sale. A fifth relatively historic one has been flattened and the land is stuck in a pissing contest between a-holes. A sixth tried to charge me a cover last time I was home and seems to be out of place considering the surrounding population. Not good times in the city of Mechanicville.

In my defense… this wasn’t my town growing up. Mine was the next town over.

Since I moved to Manhattan I’ve been sort of a reverse food snob. That is: I wouldn’t shop at stores like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s because I figured that it was for ridiculously stupid organic snobs who wanted to spend $12 on a head of lettuce. You know what else cleans a head of lettuce? Fuggin washing it.

Of course, that’s left Ms. L and I to shop at one of the other super market chains in NYC. Removing the sketchy discount places and overinflated bodegas where you’re just as likely to find a decent six-pack of beer as a can of Chef Boyardee that’s actually PAST the expiration date — that left two places.

In this corner, there’s Gristede’s (pronounced Gris-TEE-dee’s or, for purposes of this piece, Nasty’s). Nasty’s has been “feeding New Yorkers for over 100 years.” If you take a look at This handy map and take a gander in the bottom left-hand corner where there are two stores within two blocks of each other, my apartment is handily located smack in the middle of those two locations. These, by default, have become our primary super market. When we need a $5 gallon of milk or a $6.50 box of Cheerios… Nasty’s is the place to go. Nasty’s also has the irritating habit of carrying different things between the two stores. Nasty’s North has the better $12.99 per 6-pack beer selection, better produce selection, a bakery and deli section, and ground chicken. Nasty’s South has a better deli, less lines, and better meat.

In the other corner, there’s the Food Emporium, a Manhattan. The Food Emporium is much closer to what I’m used to calling a supermarket. There are two within reasonable distance from me. One is on the outer edge of walking distance (I say outer edge because I then have to carry the groceries home and honestly, kids, a gallon of milk gets heavy about halfway through a 20-minute walk) and the other is a subway ride away. The Emporium within walking distance has a great deli, good seafood, good produce, and a good selection of stuff. The Emporium in Union Square has the beer selection (which has slowly climbed in the last few months from the originally very reasonable $8.99/6-pack to the Nasty’s level $12.99/6-pack) and the prices in general have slowly climbed to be equal to Gristede’s.

As an obviously huge fan of local super markets, I continued to suffer through them rather than try something new. That’s how I keep it real, yo. Then something wacky happy. I stumbled upon the newest “how did it take this long for someone to do this” website at Beer Menus.com. The site’s goal is to get the beer list for all of Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s bars and allow you to both find a bar and see the beer list or search for your favorite beer and find what bars around you serve it. Great idea. Immediately, I tried to search for Sixpoint which is by far my favorite the New York City microbrewery. When searching for Sixpoint, however, a hit came up for the Bowery’s incarnation of Whole Foods.

Re-he-heaallly?

It turns out the Bowery Whole Foods has an entire beer store with growler stations letting you buy half-gallons of various NYC brewed beers. On top of that, there’s an entire beer store surrounding the growler station that lets you buy beer at actual reasonable prices. The growlers are $7.99 and the sixers are $8.99. Since we were there, we did our week’s shopping and guess what? Cheaper than both Nasty’s and the Emporium and even threw its hat into competing with Fresh Direct.

So, thanks to beer, I’m a Whole Foods convert. Is there anything alcohol can’t do?