sit there and don't move

i forget what asian religion encourages stillness
so as to not kill any living thing including centipedes and ants.
that kind of seems impossible
unless you had someone to be at your service night and day.
because everyone has to go to the grocery store and hunt for some food.

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the brewers almost did nothing this off season.
they had one pressing need-fix the bullpen.
so they added starter/reliever gorzelanny,
reliever badenhopp,
and reliever mike gonzalez.

the trio replaces loe, rodriguez, and parra.
i have been forced to trust murphy's law
and believe that my current slip into a dull brain will pass
and one day i will be sizzling with ideas once again.

maybe the brewers pathetic relief experience last year was last year
and 2013 would have reverted to the norm.
mike gonzalez worries me.
badenhopp doesn't impress me.
gorzelanny is good enough.

all in all, change is good
and all three changes are very low risk in terms of money and length of contract.
the brewers have been criticized more than once for bad player development,
especially when it comes to pitchers.
other than ben sheets and yovani gallardo,
no brewers draft picks have matured into above average big league starters.
this year may be different.
mark rogers and willy peralta and mike fiers will all be given a chance.
fiers has already proven he is marcum worthy.
tyler thornburg may be given a chance as well.

i don't know if this is strictly a money decision
or the reality of the free agent crop not being that good,
or a new emphasis on home grown pitchers,
or a mixture of all three reasons.

whatever the reason,
it smells better than 3 year contracts of 14 million
to pitchers who know very little about the brewers.

i'm assuming there is a continuity in being on a particular team
with pitching drills and exercises and techniques and philosophies
the same from rookie ball to AAA to miller park
or maybe i'm living in a karate world
where there is a slow progression to higher levels,
but the essence of the master is present from a-z.

if i were a pitcher and was 22 and still hadn't established myself,
i wouldn't want to be shipped all over the place
with new pitching coaches and new expectations and new rules.
i'd want some kind of anchor and commitment
so i could develop at the normal pace and
not be all screwed up every year with new arm angles, new release points.

2013 looks to be safe for the brewers.
if the pitching flops, it'll be the typical pot holes for a young staff,
but i it works, the brewer's farm system won't be so easily mocked.

get your own baseball data

rogers sportsnet is in the midst of reliving the 1992 world series,
one game at a time.
in game 3 candy maldonado launched an opposite field,
half fly-half liner
into a drawn in atlanta braves defense.
oh yeh the bases were loaded and it was the bottom of the ninth in toronto
and the score was tied 2-2.

roberto alomar scored and the blue jays won 3-2.
the blue jays now lead the series 2-1
and that was 20 years ago
and i bet the vegas odds on a blue jays world series for 2013
are high right about now.
i like the way rogers arranges its tv programs in canada.

1992 was the first world series played on canadian soil.
dave winfield got the first hit in toronto's sky dome.
it was fittingly a turfy chop that sent pendleton racing back
and by the time the ball came down from flight,
even winfield at 41 years young was safe on first.
winfield mighta been 41, but pat gillick signed him as a free agent
and the guy drove in 108 runs.
that musta pissed off george steinbrenner.

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i like tim mccarver.
he knows what the fart he's talking about.
it's not just what he said prior to luis gonzalez jamming
that mariano rivera pitch over a drawn in infield to win the 2001 series,
but it's his advice on radar guns that i heard for the first time today
while listening to the 1992 world series.

"study the relationship between the pitcher and hitter," he suggested
"see how messed up the batter is on a fastball and
you'll know how fast it's going...real fast."

i see john axford's high fastball after one of his curves
and see the batter being noticeably late
and don't need to know how fast he's throwing.

in 1992 there were no speed read outs on every pitch,
no pitch trackers to know if it was really a ball or strike...
there wasn't nothing but the game
and i think it's under those conditions
where the next statistical breakthrough will emerge,
where someone tracks their own data.

museum mind

extreme weather is great
minus the flying objects that whack people in the head
and minus windshield factors that freeze people to death,
but if those two unfortunate realites can be avoided,
a good downpour can wash away all the used condoms and trash
or a legit snow storm covers it all up
and my mind forgets james shields being part of the royals new pitching staff
and remembers some older things that disappeared only for a while like
ellis valentine's throwing arm,
von joshua's name,
cecil cooper's crouch,
marc clear's jacked up stirrups,
chris bosio's temper,
or ryan raun's pinch hit homer from june of 2011
against florida.

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and as snow continues to dump on the northeast,
i still hear that sound of braun's "big fly."
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=15501147&topic_id=&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_15501147&v=3

the color of pine tar

those pitcher's mounds are something else.
hard to see them in the winter months with the ground covered in snow,
but even in the summer,
it's not really clear what's buried under there
and even if the stadium is gone
and dirt naturally not the same,
there is still a name or an event,
a carl mays,
his 29 shutouts,
abominable personality,
underhand delivery,
reputation for coming inside
and that one pitch that really got away
and sent ray chapman to his early death.

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carl mays became a scout for the milwaukee braves.
it was 1963,
he probably visited county stadium at some point during the season
or maybe not,
but either way,
mays was connected to the menominee river valley
where cooper waved his hands to guide the ball down down down back in 82
and deer sent easter egg sunday 1987
and one anonymous regular season game after another
including the end of days overlooking miller park's construction
and now jean segura will play shortstop.....
those degrees of separation are always so much fewer than we imagine
and all so terribly invisible.

harold baines and the walk off homerun

a christmas or new years get together
has a higher potential for a good time
with a little drinking or a lot and letting it all loose.

a get together also has a high risk of a nervous breakdown
or whatever you want to call it.
yeh, people freak out in crowded rooms.
these parties require a certain degree of calm or social skill
or whatever you want to call it.

it's a lot different than sitting around an apartment
in your underwear watching a regular season baseball game
on an old vhs recording from 2005,
especially when it's september 9, 2005 a friday night
and roger clemens lasts only 3 innings
and gives up 5 earned runs to the brewers
including jj hardy's 1st inning blast.
that kicks the crap out of  feeling lonely at a party among lots of people
because with baseball you're never really alone even if you are physically alone.
shit, this is getting existential.

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i don't know when the debate over "clutch" was born
and don't really care.
the argument goes something like...
give any major league player enough at bats in tight situations
and he will perform as he does under normal conditions.
a murphy's law sort of logic
not dale murphy, but some old science principle murphy.

i like jim thome because he looks like an efficient plumber
rather than some chiseled atlas who sniffs energy drinks.
last june, thome hit the 13th walk off homerun of his career
and that put him all alone as the all time leader in game ending blasts.

the list is a fairly normal one.
jim thome-13
jimmy foxx-12
mickey mantle-11
and then a bunch of people with 10
-stan musial, frank robinson, babe ruth, tony perez, dick allen,
harold baines, reggie jackson, mike schmidt, sammy sosa, barry bonds.

i'm partial to harold baines because he is my all time favorite player
and because i remember one of those walk offs.
it was in the 25th inning of the longest mlb game in history
at old comiskey park in 1984.
he hit it off of the brewer's chuck porter.

there's something about that list that is more than random
and more than murphy's law.
i'm not gonna call it clutch,
but you bet your sober statistical brain,
that the chances of these guys losing their cool
at a holiday party are next to none.

baseball's one night stand

i was handed the keys to a penske truck and instructed
to drive it out west,
to san francisco.
it was filled with expired skin creams.

that was a long time ago, but
i remember colorado and
and meeting some navajo indians outside coors field
one of em sipping a hair spray cocktail
and the others having a conversation about something.
two of us went to the game
and then to boulder
and then i took a detour to the four corners
followed by a long highway darkness that made las vegas
truly the city of lights.

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it gets me thinking of cc sabathia
and the brewers trading one of their hyped prospects,
matt laporta back in 2008.
and how lights out sabbathia was for the rest of the season.
11-2 with a bunch of complete games and flirts with no hitters.
the brewers won the wild card and
a couple of first round draft picks
when sabbathia signed with new york in the off season.

where is laporta these days?
how often does the window open for starving teams?
kansas city and toronto don't care about "depletion of a farm system"
and they shouldn't.

i don't buy meat because it has potential.
i buy it because i know it's good.
let someone else test taste and die with prospects.

double speak baseball

the spice girls song "the lady is a vamp"
could easily be sung by the sex pistols.
it's the same with any song.
take any lyrics and
turn them into rage or sap.

words are empty.
it's us humans who give them so much meaning.
for crying out loud,
ooooogah boooogah worked for how many cave man years?
we're not that civilised.

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i grew up or grew down listening to bob uecker.
i grew all around and stopped believing so much in science
or numbers or fancy explanations
and settled in for a good story.
it didn't and still doesn't matter if it's true.
i'll take imagination over facts any day.

i  knew one person other than my grandpa
who used double talk to confuse prom queens
and that was bob uecker spinning  milwaukee brewer yarns,
but then i met whip willis.