Screwing in lightbulbs

So, checked the sites today. No Bruce call up. Patterson still on the roster. Fogg and Belisle, too, though the latter has been skipped. I guess rain is good for something.

I love these series with the Indians. I do believe there should be fewer interleague games, but I don't want to see these series go.

My first Indians game was in the late eighties at old Memorial Stadium. Talk about a dump. They were playing the A's led by the Bash Brothers, and well, there weren't too many people in attendance on that day. See, baseball is cyclical like that. You'll have your periods of winning years followed by periods of losing years. For the Reds, the winning years have far outnumbered the losing years since the end of WWII. Seems like we're poised to break out of these losing years soon unless Jocketty trades away our youth for some aging veteran hasbeens. What a nightmare.

Anyway, I went up to Cleveland in 2000 and saw the Reds play in what will always be called the Jake. That was when they sold out every game after that great run in the late nineties which culminated in that World Series loss in 1997. I watched that series while living in Luxembourg. You can imagine two women asking a bartender in a small town Luxembourgish townee bar in broken French to watch a baseball game, but hey, we had to do what we had to do to watch it. The grumpy old men in the bar found us amusing and stared most of the night while mumbling in Luxembourgish. That was the first time I watched the Tribe in the post-season overseas, the second being last October in Bulgaria. Hmm...maybe I should stay stateside when the team plays in October.

I'll be down in Cincy on Sunday to see the latest Reds-Indians series - it'll be the first time I see Voltron pitch. Then in June I'm going to Cleveland to watch the Reds.

Odds and ends...

As I was looking for the ticket stub from that Indians game at Memorial to double check the dates, I came across my 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas Rookie Card, once the most valuable of my collection at $90 and held in a four screw container to maintain its mint condition. The baseball card industry screwed itself by getting greedy and making the hobby something only adults with disposable income could afford to buy, and now that same card is being sold for around $40, still a good value for a piece of cardboard. All of the insert madness and the pre-rookie infant seat garbage that the industry started producing coupled with the explosion of "new" companies (most of which were owned by one of the big three, then four, then five) killed the value of cards as well as the fun of collecting. Do you know any kids who trade baseball cards any more?

Since my laptop died for good (not a hard drive problem, at least, but a problem with a crack in either the video card or the motherboard, something that will probably cost more to repair than a new laptop), I haven't been able to post photos or photoshops and am hoping Santa Claus breaks his stubbornness and brings me a new one now instead of in December. Santa's a Reds fan, right? I mean, he wears the colors. Except in Britain, apparently. You know, cuz Santa is an employee of Coca-Cola.

Also, don't forget to visit Let's Go Tribe for the other side's take on this weekend's series.
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