A-Holes

When visiting MLB's site earlier today, their main feature photo caught my attention. It was Mike Piazza in an Oakland A's uniform, looking especially scruffy. It was a stark contrast to the picture I had of him in my head: clean-cut and donning a spiffy white Padres uniform. Thinking about it for a few moments, I realized the A's are the unsung bums of west-coast baseball. Boston tends to get all of the glory for fielding a team of long-haired, five-o-clock-shadowed, shit-stained-helmeted idiots. But this whole time, there's been an oft-overlooked team of nearly equally dirty bums nestled right in the butthole of San Francisco: Oakland!

Mike Piazza

Mike has shifted between the bearded and clean shaven look throughout his career. Yet when he hung it up with the Mets and booked it to San Diego, it looked like he was taking on the respectable, short-haired look for good. Think again, bat-man.

Barry Zito

It's nearly impossible to find a photo of this guy without long hair or some peach fuzz, but that's only because he's been with the giants for all of about five minutes.

Jason Giambi

It's taken some getting used to but now all I picture when I think of the Giambino is a chubby-faced deodorant spokesperson. He used to be one scary, hairy mo-fo. He prolly stunk too.

Johnny Damon

Seriously.

The Mets front office are a bunch of these...

"Thank you for participating in the online random drawing for the opportunity to purchase tickets to Opening Day and the Subway Series games to be played at Shea Stadium. We are sorry to inform you that your entry was not selected in this drawing."

- New York Mets Form email sent to unlucky lottery losers on 2/22/07.

"Fuck you," - John Revis 2/22/07


I know it's sour grapes. I was one of the people not "selected" for eligibility to buy opening day tickets and Subway Series tickets. The way it used to be worked fine. It was always survival of the fittest. Sometimes I knew I would not get through (e.g. "Real" Subway Series in 2000) and other times I would hope like hell and get quite lucky (e.g. NLCS '00 Vs. the Cards). There was nothing like finding out whe tickets went on sale and then doing everything I can to be one of the first ones to be waiting on hold for a ticket representative. This year that rush was taken away form me and a whole bunch of Mets fans. There are some apologists for this malarkey.

"This way the Mets are keeping the tickets out of the scalpers' hands." - Member of the Mets Message Board

Yes...dummy...because everyone knows scalpers are too busy standing outside the venue trying to sell their tickets to have an email address, or twelve.

"It is the best way for the Mets to sell their seven packs" - Another Douche Bag

Well the best way to sell the seven packs is to have some attractive games in there besides the fuckin Brewers on May 11th. Another way to make sure they sell is to put a good product on the field, which they have covered pretty well.

Ok I'm good now. Hopefully one of my other email addresses or one of my buddy's fifteen email addresses pulled through for us. Thanks for letting me vent. Stay classy.

My Name is Matt and I Approve These Hats

Ok, we've made a few posts in the offseason to keep this blog from being completely fallow, but now it's spring training, Daisuke Matsuzaka has his visa (I hope), Papi has a new truck, Manny's getting a new car, and J.D. Drew proved to the world that he has not one, but two arms attached to his torso. Now it's time to get into full swing as baseball fans, and I'm doing my part by writing about textiles.

Major League Baseball has announced a switch from wool uniform caps to high tech synthetic ones. By all reports, the new hats look the same, feel different. They are still manufactured by New Era in the 59Fifty 6-panel style that has become so familiar, however the new fabric brings with it some added benefits:

1) It wicks moisture away from the inside of the cap evenly for evaporation into the air. This means dryer, cooler heads will prevail on Sunday afternoons in Dolphin Stadium in the middle of July.

2) The underside of the bill will be black. This causes less glare when the player looks up for fly balls or fans with signs proclaiming themselves "Mrs. Wright."

3) The sweat band will be made out of the new fabric. See #1.

4) They won't shrink. This is the best part for me. I fall somewhere between size 7 3/8 and 7 5/8. Reason being- my head is probably a 7 3/8 or 7 1/2, but anyone with a dryer and a midget sweater knows that when you add moisture and heat to wool, it shrinks. So I buy hats that are too big, and wear them even though they're ridiculously far from fitting in the hopes that they'll shrink to fit my head. This has never happened. Not once. Not ever. Those hats now reside in my closet, but for some reason I like that better than buying a hat that fits, only to have it give me pounding headaches after an hour of wear one year later.

5) The dye won't bleed. Hat afficionados know that when you have a hat with a logo that's lighter than the rest of the hat, they will eventually fade and bleed until they match. I have many black or grey hats with whitish logos that are now almost uniformly brown.

6) They cost more. It's only a few bucks, but let's face it: You're guaranteed a hat that will fit you unless your head changes size (Barry Bonds, I'm looking at you), and that will look brand new after repeated wear and even (if you're that kind of girl) washing.

Here's looking forward to a fresh start with a new season.

Contract Negotiations

It'd be awesome if the way baseball negotiations were handled was if the player came over to the GM's office and a bunch of people on the GM's team had suitcases full of millions of dollars that they'd throw at the feet of the player by the handful, yelling "dance, monkey! dance!" And once the player begins dancing, however much money's at his feet is how much he gets.