I know, this is becoming a baseball blog, but no one is complaining, and I don’t have anything else I feel like writing about. Many sportswriters are up in arms over Barry Bonds not being on anyone’s roster. Many people argue that he had a very productive offensive season last year, and would surely help someone this year, especially an AL team in need of a designated hitter. Many go on to accuse baseball of colluding to not sign Bonds. Oh, they say. It’s not possible that no one could overlook the off-field problems and sign him. I think this is absurd. If you only evaluate the cost/benefit of Bonds’ bat in your lineup, then certainly he is valuable to many teams. This would suggest that teams are colluding, although it certainly wouldn’t prove it. But what about the rest of it? What if he goes to jail? How will the fans react? I would rather the Orioles not win another game this year than sign Bonds. You can’t measure his impact on the team by only looking at his bat. And most of the other things he brings to the table are really, really bad. He does seem to boost attendance, which saddens me. I’ve never seen him play, and I’m glad. I realize that my opinions here are influenced by the fact that I hate Barry Bonds and the impact he’s had on baseball. I know he takes probably more than his fair share of the heat for the steroid problem, but he’s brought a lot of it on himself with his attitude. I don’t want him to set foot on a baseball field ever again. I don’t want to read articles about him. I don’t want him in the Hall of Fame. If it does turn out that the owners are colluding to keep him out of the game, fine. Punish them appropriately. But to ignore the mountains of negative baggage he brings with him when imagining why a team might not sign him is irresponsible.
Author: Jon
I’ll take that
The Orioles were rained out last night. Any night on which they do not lose, I will take as a victory. I suggest you, fellow Orioles fan, do the same.
THIS HAS TO STOP
Someone found my site searching for “jason varitek nude”. Now, I don’t know how Google decided that I’d be a good result for that. This is the first time I’ve ever used those three words in the same post. I guess I shouldn’t complain, since the person who found me that way was a first time visitor. But he or she didn’t stay long, so I don’t expect I’ve gained a new reader. Since there are not, nor will there ever be, nude photos of Jason Varitek (Or any member of the McCain family) here, perhaps this is not the right destination for people searching Google for those things. I mean, seriously. My mother and my mother-in-law read this. There are not going to be nude photos of ANYONE at Complaint Hub. Ever. Do you hear me, Google?
I complained too soon
Box Score The Orioles came back to win last night! Despite Cabrera allowing two runs and then leaving the bases loaded with no outs in the fifth, my new hero Randor Bierd got them out of the jam. He allowed an inherited runner to score on a double play ball, and then got out of the inning. Then Aubrey Huff came through with a home run in the sixth and a go-ahead two run double in the bottom of the eighth for a 9-6 Orioles win! Wow! I might have watched the game, but the Celtics were on TV (Winning their 60th game), and I wouldn’t think of denying the wife her Celtics. Meanwhile, if the season were only two games long, I would be totally wrong on Brian Roberts having an off year. You can’t ask for much more than a .600 batting average and 1.950 OPS (I know, small sample size, I don’t care). Anyway, nice to see the Orioles get a win. In other baseball news, if you read Fire Joe Morgan, you have probably heard their views on David Eckstein. If you don’t, you can read them here. I hope to see an article from them today about how Eckstein managed to score using nothing but grittiness and his monstrous, monstrous heart. Eckstein has nine at bats this season. In eight of them, using his bat, he has managed to get zero hits, one strikeout, and hit into two double plays. But in his first at bat last night, he used his “intangibles” and made Jason Giambi commit an error, allowing Eckstein to reach first base! I didn’t watch the game, and the ESPN box score doesn’t specify, but I suspect that Giambi was mesmerized by the dirt on Eckstein’s uniform, despite the fact that he was the first batter of the game. He was so mesmerized that, when Eck weakly hit the ball towards him, Giambi just didn’t pick it up. Now safely on first, Eck really began to shine. It doesn’t show up in any “numbers” or “sabermetrics”, but it was really Eckstein’s heart that allowed him to advance to second base on Shannon Stewart’s single, and his keen baseball sense that sent him around to score on Alex Rios’ single. The other two batters had little to do with it. Edited to add: They posted about Eck, but not about his gritty grittiness grittying a run.
Fire Daniel Cabrera
There is NO EXCUSE for five walks in four innings. Looking at Daniel Cabrera’s career stats is an exercise in frustration. In 2006, for example, he struck out 157 in 148 innings. But he led the league in walks allowed and wild pitches. In 2007, he repeated as the league leader in walks. He capped it off by also leading the league in runs allowed and losses. A friend of mine who plays baseball (amateur, but competitive) says Cabrera has the best stuff he’s ever seen. If you pick through his individual outings, you’ll find some games where he was absolutely unhittable (here, here, here) and some games where no one had to hit him, they could just wait for the walk (here, here, and shudder here). He is obviously an immensely talented pitcher, but at nearly 27, he’s probably not going to suddenly learn control. Unfortunately for the Orioles, the rest of the league knows that, too.
Nike fails the internet
Gizmodo points out that Nike is offering their little running companion device without the iPod starting April 10th. This is good news to me – I’ve been wanting something like that, and didn’t want to spend $200 on a wrist-mounted GPS. $60 is a more reasonable investment. Gizmodo didn’t include a link to Nike’s site, but just copied the press release or whatever it is. I didn’t really read it. So I went to Google and looked up “nike+”. The first hit is the right one, but it’s very, very wrong. Look, Nike, I understand that you’re all about selling your image, not just shoes that I can’t wear because of the high arches and workout clothes that aren’t any better than generic knockoffs from Target. But I’m pretty sure you’re still in the business of taking money in exchanged for goods. I can’t be positive of this fact, because at no time did your website ever suggest that you have products that may be purchased. It hints that there are methods for possessing Nike products, and that you may (nay, should) already possess Nike products. Seriously, Nike, for the amount of money you pay Tiger Woods for six seconds of looking at a camera, you could have a credible online store where customers could give you money and you could mail them products. I will bet you a bazillion dollars that Amazon would make one for you in exchange for some sort of exclusivity deal. I will bet you two bazillion dollars (that’s bazillion with a b!) that a twenty minute search of Craigslist could find you dozens of web developers who would do it for a dozen pairs of shoes. And they would do it without the hideously awful navigation that you currently have on your site, too. If your site contained a “Preorder now!” link which would take my credit card number and my address and send me your product on April 10th, when you release it, there is a good chance I would have given you $60 today. I’ll probably still give you $60 later. But now I’m going to be annoyed about it.
Oh, great, another infielder who can’t hit
This article caught my eye because Alex Cintron was my shortstop in MLB 2005 for the Gamecube after I dumped Tejada – the game decided his skills were declining, and he cost too much money. And now the real Orioles have signed him. Well, great. At age 24, this kid looked like an up-and-coming star. He hit .317 with a 112 OPS+, which are pretty nice numbers for a middle infielder. Unfortunately, he’ll be 30 this year, and his numbers haven’t even approached average since that season. I suppose he’s only expected to back up one of the two kids (Fahey and Hernandez, neither of whom can hit, either), but it seems to me that Cintron doesn’t have the ability to be a good backup, or the experience to be a good mentor.
Dinner and Drinks with Charlie Stross
I got to meet Charles Stross! And drink good beer! I dragged the wife down to The Brickskeller last night to meet the author and his wife, and an eclectic group of local fans. It was a little tough for the wife, since they now have a bunch of Bell’s Beer on hand. But it was less tough than it could have been, because they were out of most of it, including the Hopslam they claimed to have on tap. But it was fun. He signed my copy of Halting State. I wasn’t sure which book to bring. I could have done what one person did, and brought everything Charlie had ever published. But really, the marginal utility of each subsequent signature is pretty insignificant. I thought about bringing Singularity Sky, which I really enjoyed. Or Accelerando, the first of his that I read. But I have both of those in paperback. And my favorite of his, Iron Sunrise, I apparently don’t own at all. I guess I must have gotten it from the library. Anyway, I finally settled on a nice hardcover, and I’m happy with my decision. Plus I got this great picture of him. Didn’t get to talk to him much, but that’s okay. Not sure what I would have said. The conversation mostly centered around Charlie, talking about writing and politics. He says he’s not writing any more in the Iron Sunrise post-Singularity universe, which is too bad because I really like those stories. He related some stats on the death penalty that suggest we shouldn’t be killing people. The wife and I talked to his wife about beer – she was looking for weird American stuff they can’t get back home in Scotland, which is exactly my attitude when traveling. I will never understand those who travel abroad and want hamburgers and Budweiser. It was a good night. We got a little wet walking home, but since this was the warmest day we’ve had since last summer, and it didn’t rain too hard, it wasn’t too unpleasant.
Small site problems
When I switched from WordPress to Drupal for this site, I went to great lengths to try and keep all the old links working. I clearly didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked. Every day, people follow internal links that Drupal doesn’t recognize. If you click a link here at Complaint Hub (other than the Home link at the top) that takes you to the front page of the site, it’s probably a broken link. Feel free to leave a comment on the page that had the link and let me know, and I’ll fix it.
Trying to write about something other than baseball
So, I’m trying to think of something I want to write about rather than rehash yesterday’s Orioles game. No one wants to hear about it – O’s fans will just get depressed, and the Rays don’t have any fans. Maybe the players’ mothers. Anyway. So I thought I might write about Quacker of the House Nancy Pelosi advising the President to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies to protest China’s all-around unpleasantness, but then I was reading the article and my eyes started to glaze over. No one cares what advice Nancy Pelosi has for President Bush. She’d be more likely to get a reaction out of a large rock. Then I thought I should say something about IBM’s temporary suspension from getting federal contracts for some horrendous thing they did to EPA that no one will explain. This is huge news, but until we get some more details, it isn’t all that interesting. Or maybe it’s not interesting because my mind is refusing to grasp the massive incompetence or malice necessary to actually be disciplined by the government at all. But really, the most exciting thing about today is that I plan to go meet Charles Stross at the Brickskeller tonight. He’s one of my favorite authors, and he’s in town for something or other. He claims he’s trying to fend off jet-lag, but anyone going to a place with a beer list like this is merely fending off sobriety.