A grain of salt needed

Rosenthal says Dusty Baker asked the Reds about a contract extension, but "evidently the team is not yet ready to decide upon his future."

(via MLB Trade Rumors)

Also a bit on Mike Leake vs. Steven Strasburg.

I'll take the credit

I ate my last can of Skyline Chili last night in the hope that it would change the balance of the world and make the Reds win. It worked!

Nice to see Jay starting to hit some.

Pastaleaning Cabrera is just awful.

Remember that one game when Stubbs batted down in the order and actually got on base? Good thing we have Crusty Baker as manager so we can see what works and not do it that way.

Speaking of Crusty, when is Scott Rolen going to start batting cleanup? I remember when I used to hate that guy.

I really believe that Walt's put together a good team but this coaching staff is killing it.

I love Sundays when I can watch them live online for a mere $15 plus the cost of 1.5 liters of beer. It's a good way to fight the Sunday Dread that plagues each evening before the new work week starts, bringing the headaches and heartbreaks and general malaise of existence. It's tough working in the field of international development, because you never see the results of your work, as change is a long and painfully slow process, with periodic wars and conflicts setting you back or forcing you to restart from the beginning. Watching baseball helps like a crutch helps the walking wounded, but watching a loss feels like falling down and breaking all over again. A win is a painkiller, helping for a few hours but wearing off, leaving you wanting more.

Boy, wouldn't it be something to work for the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club.

PATHETIC

If I save all the receipts for money I spend on Reds baseball, do you think I can send them to the Reds and get a refund?

Come on. I spent $10 for a decent enough internet connection to watch the game tonight (or today, in Cincinnati time.) I also drank a liter of beer during the game at a four star hotel price. The only reason I came to this bar was to watch the game in the only place in Hamra (the cool district in Beirut, the real cool one, not the faux cool one called Gemmeyzeh) that has a decent internet connection in the evening. I spent the same last week to watch that pathetic game against Pitifulsburgh where the Reds were swept. I'll probably do the same tomorrow because day games (which are night games for me) don't happen that often, and though I do watch many of the games the next day on archive, it isn't the same as being live.

And I can't help myself - it's like I HAVE to watch them when I can. I'm willing to bet that if I were to put myself through a series of medical tests, doctors would discover that my need to watch Reds baseball results from the same chemical imbalance that causes addictions. And though it is painful and seems to give me no pleasure, I still watch.

I mean, what even happened in this game? Nothing. There was nothing memorable. The offense stunk as usual. Cueto wasn't too bad but had a few lapses in concentration. But the game was just...BORING. At least Janish got to play, and man, can you tell a difference at shortstop. Too bad he didn't get like eight hits in four at bats to make Crusty Baker notice him.

I posted it the other day, but I did want to reemphasize that there IS something good coming out of Cincinnati these days - my favorite non-U2 band, The National, has their new album streaming on the New York Times website. They just keep getting better and better. This album is incredible. Buy it May 11.

Take that, Codgers

So Mike Leake gets his first Major League victory and it turns out to be the first victory for any Reds starting pitcher on the season. Some thoughts.

It was nice to beat up on the Codgers for two of three games. I think I've given up on Harang, though.

I think Scott Rolen should hit clean up.

Orlando Cabrera is dreadful at shortstop. Pastaleaning Cabrera should be his name - he doesn't even bother attempting to dive.

I love it in the ninth inning with two outs when everyone stands.

Off with his...oh, what's the point?

I no longer have the energy to call for the beheading of yet another incompetent Reds manager, so you won't be seeing any Fire Dusty campaign signs. It's only two weeks into the season but it already feels like any July in the last decade.

In a few weeks the Reds will turn it around and we'll forget all about how it feels like the season is over right now. But a decade is a long time for the same old mistakes and the same old losing and we've been told to be patient for too long now. There's just no patience left. The Reds have no offense partly due to piss poor lineup construction and partly due to piss poor coaching and partly due to piss poor personnel. Look, you don't have to be a stathead to appreciate that people with low on base percentages at the top of your order don't get on base for your strong hitters to hit them in. You don't have to be a genius to see Brandon Phillips does not belong in the clean up spot. He's a good hitter but better suited for the lower part of the order.

Same old, same old.

Well, here's something new and good coming out of Cincinnati.
_

Why does Crusty Baker continue to use Mike Lincoln for more than one inning?

Time zones are funny things. You can be eating dinner somewhere and feel like it’s lunch time in real life. If I want to watch or listen to a Reds game in real time, it has to be a day game, which is usually 8pm my time. Otherwise, I have to wait until the next morning, and unless I tiptoe around the internet, the chances of finding out the outcome before I finish the game are pretty good. Now, if I could avoid Facebook, it’d be easier, but I have to use Facebook as part of my job.

But I CAN watch. If I put it on the lowest quality and watch in the morning before all the morons start playing their Farmville and using up all the bandwidth, the internet in my office is good enough to watch, which means that for a majority of games (i.e. night games), I can see them. This makes me very happy.

However, there’s always the recognition that this already happened, and it just isn’t the same as watching a live game. That’s why I was happy to find one café with good enough internet to watch. It was a joyous Sunday evening, sitting at the bar, drinking almaza, Mike Leake pitching well, the future looking bright, and the Reds rallying in the seventh inning. I was going to make this a Sunday evening ritual.

Then they turned off the internet.

See, in Lebanon, everything is about appearance. Everything is superficial. At 10pm, glowing computer screens are no longer considered ok for the ambiance. So I can either enjoy six innings and not see the end of the game, or I can go somewhere else and listen to the whole game.

So I was watching Monday’s game this morning, ending already blown thanks to Facebook, and see that Mike Lincoln blew Cueto’s W. Lincoln pitched well for one inning, but Baker never learns. At least they managed to win this one. Not a big fan of the ninth inning drama, either. On the flip side, if I were the Marlins fan, I’d be pretty upset.

Three more days...

The things I do for the Cincinnati Reds. Today I booked a reservation in a five star hotel in Nicosia, Cyprus so I could have a decent internet connection to watch Opening Day. I'm leaving tomorrow evening on a 20 minute flight for Larnaca, where I will spend the night before heading to Agia Napa on Saturday morning, a resort area with beautiful beaches and a few 16th century churches. The hotels for these three nights are so cheap that I decided to splurge a little to ensure a good internet connection for Our Holy Day. So Hilton it is.

I am drawn to wartorn countries, and one of the things I am most excited about seeing in Nicosia is the United Nations wall that divides Greek and Turkish Cyprus. Now, this is one country I have known very little about until recently. Basically this is what happened. The Greek and Turkish Cypriots used to live together across all parts of the island, though they hated each other since the Ottomans invaded in the 16th century. The British took over after the Russian-Ottoman War in the 1870s and there were various attempts by the Greeks to unite with Greece, which naturally pissed off the Turks, who began to advocate for partition of the island. Turkey invaded in 1974, the Greeks in the north were evicted from their homes and the Turks in the south moved to the North. The Turks declared independence but today only Turkey recognizes this so-called independence. Nicosia was divided, and it was just two years ago that part of the wall in Nicosia came down, allowing people to pass from north to south. I look forward to walking through this checkpoint.

At any rate, I look forward to finding products I can't get in Lebanon, as Cyprus is part of the EU and European goods pass freely into the country. I think I'll raid the duty free on the way back...

But back to baseball...Gonna be going back in time for the first two months of the season...back to listening to all the Reds games on the radio, but this time, it will be the day after they are played except day games. It shouldn't be too much of a problem to avoid knowing the outcome of the games before I hear them. Listened to yesterday's Spring Training game today - such joy! Baseball is here!

One week away!

The last week of Spring Training is upon us!

The only thing I don't like about being abroad is missing baseball. In the Middle East, the day games are like West Coast games, and in Lebanon, I can't even watch the games because of the crappy internet! But I'm going to Cyprus to watch the Reds opener. It's a 20 minute flight (but still have to be to the airport two hours early.)

Wish I could write something about the glory of Opening Day and the rebirth of spring, but I've had spring since January! Kind of takes some of the specialness out of it. It'd be like having Cadbury Eggs all year around. They're only good because you can't have them all the time.

I'm hoping Mike Leake wins the fifth starter's spot.

Happy Paddy's Day!

Just remember, the 1975 Cincinnati Reds were the first team to wear green uniforms in Spring Training.

Suck it, Bread $ox!

It was a tough process, but I managed to find and lug 48 cans of Guinness to a pub for this evening's festivities. The bar owner is nice enough to allow a party (but I had to get the Guinness to the bar.) (No, Guinness is not widely found in Beirut. But now I know where to get it.)

Redkees

I may be the only person in the entire Middle East who routinely wears a Reds cap and t-shirt. That being said, there is no shortage of folks wearing Bankee$ and Bread $ox gear. In fact, the guy sitting right next to me is wearing the big red B on his head right now.

I walked by a shoe shop the other day and there was a massive display of Bankee$ footwear in the window. I'm talking the whole window, men's, women's, and children's shoes, all with the infamous NY Bankee$ logo stitched all over the place.

Ugh. Really? Is that the best baseball can do? Pollute the already troubled Middle East with the stamp of imperialism? Isn't that NY the epitome of the economic system which has so incensed the have nots that they have taken up arms to defeat it?

I have to do that Reds cap thing Jamey Ramsey does on his blog. I'll get someone to take my photo in my Reds cap in front of some bombed out building or something.

Baseball, please.

Right now, I am staring out at the Mediterranean from an office window. It's warm, very warm, and the horizon stretches to infinity as it is prone to do over large bodies of water (very cold water, as I learned last weekend.) I seem to have everything here - beaches, snow-capped mountains, mounds of hummus and tabouleh, freshly squeezed orange juice, palm trees, a bar where I can drink as much as I want for about $13...but I have this insatiable hunger for something I cannot have. I want to watch a Reds game, almost to the point of desperation. Yes, it is February, and no matter where on Earth I am, the hunger arises at the same time every year.

I had a dream last night that I was sitting in a ballpark, in all of its infinite green, and I could almost smell that hotdogs and hear the pop of a pitch hitting a mitt. Nothing like it, that pop. As I sit here now, I can almost hear the humming sound of a fastball tearing through the air, and then...pop! Such a beautiful song.

This never gets old

I'll take one ticket for a dollar, please

A soccer team in England is using the Radiohead model of sales to boost attendance, and it's working.

When Radiohead released their last album, they did it without any record label and they did it online, using a pay-what-you-want way of selling records. It worked very well for them, and apparently it's working well for the English soccer team.

Reds fans often use the "it's too expensive" excuse for not attending games, and often attendance is embarrassing. I wonder if this pay-what-you-want model would work for teams that struggle to draw fans. There are too many games to make it work all season, but maybe for select days?

Then again, the "too expensive" excuse Cincinnatians use is just that - an excuse. It's not too expensive when you can take a family of four to the ballpark for less than $30 (that includes parking.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAH. HAHAHAHAHA. AHAHHAHAHAHAAH!!!!

Why am I laughing? Because it's 65 degrees here and you're all buried under snow! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I saw a little girl carrying a baseball bat and ball a couple of days ago. The sight of it reminded me that it's almost time! Now that the winter distraction that poses for a sporting event is over, focus will turn to baseball!

March 5 will be the test run to see if I'll actually be able to watch the games, as it is the first televised Spring Training game. Is the timezone in Arizona one or two hours different than in Florida?

Brief update

Ok, so it's tougher to update than I thought it would be. I'm getting sucked into this city and baseball is the furthest thing from my mind right now. Sorry. Will update soon...