The baseball blog, a week after the fact

Again so much to say and no idea of where to begin.  This blog could certainly be political in nature, I haven't done one of those in what seems like a millenia or three, and politics may pop up at some point, but I don't want it to be the focus of this entry. 

I guess I could start with the fact that tonight was the first night of the Eastern Conference Finals between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  Unfortunately I don't have the kind of cash that would get me into a game. not that they are grossly more expensive than say a football game, but the Penguins have sold out all of their games this year, the only seats available for most games are the 2000 or so that the teams holds out for individual game sales, and those are usually snatched up within the first 5 to 10 minutes that they are available for sale.  The team has placed a large screen outside Mellon Arena for people to go down and even if they can't get into the game, they can at least watch the game there, and while it may sound silly, they have drawn as many as additional 3000 to sit outside as well as the 17,000+ that actually have tickets to the game.  I was thinking of joining them this evening in viewing the game outside, but I was just too sore from volleyball last night to be bothered with trekking downtown for a hockey game when I could either watch watch or listen to the game from far more comfortable surroundings.

The Penguins did win, 4-2 and they now lead the Flyers in the best of 7 1-0 with game two coming up on Sunday night. Again I will post the video from Youtube once the NHL makes it available.  Given that they only have two series to worry about (the Western Conference Final between Detroit and Dallas the other) and only one video a day to edit down for highlights, hopefully they will post them quicker than they have in the past.

Another 5 cents to the change meter, so we are now up to $36.40.

The last of the leaving college students departed this past week, which made Tuesday, which is garbage day, also dumpster diving day.  I didn't see any major goodies unlike last year when Rich snagged the 17" flat panel monitor, but I did at least snag some more Coke and Pepsi points.  Plus Pepsi gave away a free song (5 points) on their page the other day (www.pepsistuff.com) so I have been adding to the Imeem playlist.  I think I am up to 23 songs now that I haven't paid for and last I checked, I still have enough points for another 5 or 6 songs that I haven't cashed in yet.

Sorry, I stepped away from the blog for a while, just needed a break, so I went about finishing off my last Pogo badge for the week, as they were mostly pretty easy this week, but by the time I finished my personal (15 jackpot spins in Casino Island Blackjack), I was sleepy and decided that I would turn in for the evening, and it is all global warming's fault.

So now that we all but have a Democratic nominee to run against the Republican nominee John McCain, a little reflection from someone that has worked the Dem side of the radio dial.  I am coming to despise the supporters of both candidates.  If Obama were to win a primary or caucus, the Hillary people would come out and talk as if it didn't matter, that those voters weren't in fact important and by redefining what a win was they were still very much in it.  I grant technically she is in it until Barack gets the magic number of 2025 delegates, but in reality with proportional awarding of delegates in the remaining contests, she has almost no chance of passing him in delegates won unless the superdelegates start smoking crack and rush to support her, which I just don't see happening.  That being said, the partisans of Obama were equally annoying in that any time Clinton won a contest, it was never because she was the favored candidate, but because the machines were fixed, or the media got the numbers wrong because they rounded to the whole percentage of the vote rather than tenths of a percent, even though they never asked for such a stipulation when Obama was winning contests.  Here in the great state of Pennsylvania, we were subjected to 6+ weeks of this stuff prior to our primary.  Usually the nominee is determined well before PA votes, so it was nice to actually have a say in the process that meant something, but after listening to the assclowns on both sides of the debate, I will be honest, I went in to my voting booth and wrote in John Edwards.  Nothing against either candidate, who I will vote for in November, as I prefer either to John McCain, but I was just so sick of listening to the whining of their supporters that I decided neither candidate would receive support from me in the primary.

And while I am on past events, I did mention a baseball game I went to a couple of weeks back.  Well I finally got to down;loading the pictures off of my camera last night, and now seems as goo a time as any to place them firmly on the web.

We will start with my friend Rich, who joined me in the festivities at PNC Park.  Little did I realize that this game was actually Rich's first visit to the new stadium, new being a relative term at this point, the stadium has been there for about 7 years, but since the Pirates have had a losing season every year in their new ballpark, it is easy to see why some people would opt not to go.  For the record, it was only the third time I had been there, Twice, including this instance, I had Lynn's season tickets and she wasn't going to use them, so she asked if I could find someone to go with.  The only time I have paid to see the Pirates was a doubleheader last year when Barry Bonds was coming to town, in what may very well have been his last appearance ever in Pittsburgh.  Steroids scandals aside (of which I might add he has never been convicted  or even tried for using) Bonds was one of the best Pirates back in the day, as a matter of fact, it was the year after the Pirates released him following the 1992 season that they have started their losing streak, having never posted a winning season since he departed.

This is the Roberto Clemente (6th Street) Bridge.  Prior to gameday, the city closes the bridge to all but pedestrian traffic, to make walking over to the stadium a little easier.  The original plan was that the bridge would be littered with vendors that the fans could walk through on their way to the park, but because this is Pittsburgh, that never came to be.  Mind you it is similar to when the previous home of the Pirates and Steelers, Three Rivers Stadium was built, and the plan was that the land beside the stadium was to be used for development of the city's North Side.  All that came from that alleged development however was a parking lot around the stadium. 

This is the view of  PNC Park from the Roberto Clemente Bridge.  Again you should take note that I didn't exactly have to fight off the vendors that were supposed to be on the bridge to take this shot, instead you get a pretty good view into the stadium in a most unobstructed fashion.

 

 

 

This particular photo has nothing to do with baseball.  The sloped roof building in the distance is the David L Lawrence Convention Center.  It is the largest "green" building in North America, and more of an argument for why environmentalism isn't all that good, as one person died trying to build it, and a couple of years ago, while moving stuff around inside the building for an upcoming auto show, a truck actually fell through the floor to the street below.  Thankfully nobody died in that instance, but if that is the by product of being "green", then give me all of the sooty, carbon based nastiness that nature will allow.  I need not take life and limb in hand just so I can feel better about my carbon footprint, and in a odd sense, building disasters such as this can most definitely be blamed on global warming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These three statues are located outside the stadium and are for arguably the three greatest Pirates of all time, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Honus Wagner. 

Outside the stadium they have a few activities that people can partake of, in this particular instance Rich was throwing a baseball to see how hard he could throw.  I thing it came up somewhere close to 60 mph on the gun, but alas, no Pirates scouts were around, otherwise they may have offered him a contract on the spot.  I decided not to embarrass myself, for fear I would get up there and throw something around 30 mph.  I am far better at video baseball than the real thing, so I will stick with my PS2, thank you very much.

Meet the team mascot, the Pirate Parrot. I am not sure how many people have worn the Parrot costume in the past, but I would imagine that it was more than one, as back in the 80s, during the baseball drug trials, one of the people named was in fact the Pirate Parrot as a supplier of fanciful narcotics to baseball players.  Yes, the baseball legacy around these parts is priceless.

 

 

I made a mistake in a previous blog, I said that the tickets would be for section 109, in fact we sat 6 sections down, in section 103, so our view into home plate looked a little something like this. I would blame my error on the section number on the simple fact that I did not properly do simple background research before putting cursor to blog, but since global warming is responsible for everything, it is global warming's fault.  Yes, this global warming thing may very well become a theme of the blog, at least for what I am labeling the Summer of My Discontent.  I learned from advertisers that having a catchy slogan can help sell things, so I am hoping eventually that my summer will pick up a sponsorship.  I was thinking something along the lines of the Alcoa Summer of Discontent, or The Summer of Discontent brought to you by Ford Motors, but as of yet, I have had no takers on naming rights.

 

Well, a little break there as I played a couple of baseball games on the PS2 and had to go to work.  I am getting more geeked about my baseball season, as I took 3 of 4 from Toronto who leads the division, and one from the Oakland A's who lead the Western Division, cutting Toronto's lead down to a game, plus I hit my 15th homerun with Joe Random and now have 73 RBIs, which means at current rate I have an outside shot at 100, I doubt I get it in my rookie season, but if I could get to 90 or so and get Tampa Bay into the post season, it would be a most excellent season for Joe.

Work was a little sucky to say the least.  This is the second Saturday in a row that I was scheduled, which means I have worked the last 14 days in a row, and with the radio station this coming week, you can tack 6 more days onto that total, plus I saw the schedule for this coming week and again I was stuck with Saturday, so I was staring at the real possibility of working at least 27 days in a row without a day off, not a pleasant thought. As a result, my plan this evening was to get my shit done as quickly as possible and get out of there, so I had the floor mats done early, the burners on the stove cleaned early, the soup table broken down, I was just getting way ahead of the game, which is all good.  Then one of the bartenders comes in the kitchen, don't ask me for a name, I make it a point not to get to know the front of the house on a first name basis, and while I am sweeping and mopping my floor so I don't have that to do later on, she goes and throw a tomato slice right onto the very floor I am cleaning, which needless to say, didn't make me all that happy.  She starts apologizing and I just picked it up and threw it into the garbage can, apparently not to her liking because she starts yammering that I threw it at her, which if that were the case it most certainly wouldn't have ended up in the garbage can.  Anyway, she keeps yammering and yammering, and I just look at her and say, "You know, you really need to shut the fuck up."  That didn't go over real well, and since the owner wasn't in, I guess she was in charge because she told me to go home, so I did.  You want to send me home early after working 14 days in a row, fine with me. 

Anyway, back to the trip to the baseball game. 

This is what I expected, the Pirates to be losing, as they did lose, though not as bad as the score would indicate here, they only lost 6-5.  Actually, they have now won 5 games in a row and are in danger of climbing back above .500.  Figures they can't do anything right, this close to the consecutive losing season record and what do they do, they start winning.  Bastages!!!!!!

 

 

After sitting for a while, Rich and I went looking for a place to have a cigarette, both of us being smokers and all.  You used to be able to go to the open air areas of the stadium and have one, but they have since killed that, nor can you leave the ballpark and come back in, once there you are in essence trapped for the duration, so instead of smoking we decided to take a walk through the stadium and this is what the ballpark looks like if you are sitting behind home plate. 

 

 

And this is the problem of taking pics with a less than professional camera.  As we wandered around to the third base side of the stadium, I thought it would be cool if I could get a shot of the city skyline behind the outfield wall.  The problem was that if I left the camera on normal settings (first pic)  the buildings were very hard to see, if I set the camera for night time shooting (2nd pic) the field washed out.  Very much a no win situation.

Lastly, as it turns out, it was also Fireworks night, which means very little to me, but for some reason is all the rage for some Pittsburghers.  I swear they set off fireworks in this town for the most inane of reasons, and yet whenever they do, Pittsburghers show up in droves to be amazed by the spectacle.  Something tells me they would be amazed by just about any shiny object as well, it doesn't take much to entertain the locals.  But since it was part of the event, here have some more photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There, that should give you plenty to look at.  Also of note, when I started this blog I said I would post the hockey video when it became available, and it has so it is already up on the page.  Lastly, I know I haven't picked an Asshat yet, well, I should say I haven't written about who the Asshat from last week was yet, but this blog is long enough without getting into that, so we are going to pass on it for the time being.  As always, you can blame it on global warming, I know I did.  In any event, it is bedtime for me, I have to work in a few hours.