Category Archives: Words

Whoa, hold on

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IndoorDIRECT Inc., which owns The Restaurant Entertainment Network, has struck a deal with Taco Bell to be the first to install an in-store television network and free Wi-Fi for customers.

– DailyTech.com.

Look: It’s plenty cool that Taco Bell’s going to have free Wi-Fi in all of its stores by 2015, but back up a sec:

Did you say “in-store television network”?

Very interesting. How does one go about getting himself a show on Taco Bell TV?

I need to think on this. I don’t want to rush out a pitch and blow the opportunity of a lifetime.

Steal the bacon: No longer just a tantalizingly named children’s game?

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But this year, just as the U.S. is worrying about its own debt crisis and a possible “double-dip” recession, the price of bacon —that sizzling, smoky comfort food we most need during tough times — is expected to surge. The price of pork bellies, which is where bacon comes from, jumped to more than $130 per hundredweight (100 pounds), and some analysts suggest it’s going to top last August’s level of $150.

– Cindy Perman, CNBC.com.

A few people have sent me this story expecting I’d be concerned about skyrocketing bacon prices. But that assumes I don’t already have all the bacon I need for the foreseeable future in my freezer. And I do.

Suckers.

I wish I could say I stocked up in anticipation with an eye on the volatile pork-belly market, but truth is my parents gave me a huge thing of bacon for Christmas. Good stuff, too.

File under: Awesome stuff Bo Jackson has done

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Bo Jackson was on first base and we picked him off. He didn’t even try to go back to first; he just took off running to second. They threw the ball to me and we had him out by 15 feet. But Bo is still running at me full steam. I’m thinking, “You’ve got to get in a rundown, dude.” But he’s running like he’s going to run me over at the plate. I’m thinking, “What are you doing, dude? Well, I guess he’ll slide.” But then he’s five feet away and he’s still in full stride. And I’m like, “Holy s—, what the hell’s going to happen?” And I jumped back out of the way. And then he came to the base at full speed and went “pop!” — stopped right on the bag. He was safe, but they called him out because the ball beat him. That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I had the ball 15 feet before he got there, waiting for him, and he made me not tag him. He said to me, “Boonie, you know I was safe.” I said, “You’re right.” He just scared me.

– Bret Boone.

Awesome. Via Rob Iracane via Chitwood & Hobbs.

Always bet on black

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I mentioned Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds yesterday. They’re a fun way to keep the season in perspective, and they seem particularly valuable this time of year when assessing a team’s best approach to the trade deadline.

Anyway, the cool thing about the Mets’ playoff odds is they’ve slowly been going up over the past month or so. The not-as-cool thing is they’re still pretty long: 2.8 percent as of this morning.

What struck me today is that, if you’re looking to contextualize what a 2.8 percent chance looks like, it’s not terribly far off the chances of hitting any one number on an American roulette wheel. Technically 2.8 percent is about a 1 in 36 chance and hitting a 7 on a roulette wheel would be 1 in 38, but, well, close enough for jazz.

Of course, a roulette wheel is (in theory, at least) entirely random and the remainder of the baseball season is not, so it’s not a perfect comp.

Twitter Q&A-type thing

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That’s a really good question, and one I obviously can’t answer definitively. For tomorrow’s Baseball Show, I talked with Peter Gammons about the Mets’ approach to the trading deadline and he made several interesting points. I don’t want to scoop that here, but I’ll say this: He noted that no team last year took on as much money as Beltran stands to make after the deadline this year.

That obviously doesn’t mean Beltran is immovable, especially given the season he’s having. But how many teams in contention that need an extra bat in the outfield (or at DH) have the financial flexibility to take on Beltran’s contract? Plus remember that Beltran’s contract includes both a no-trade clause and a clause saying he can’t be offered arbitration after the season, meaning it could be harder to work out a deal and any acquiring team doesn’t stand to get draft picks when he leaves.

This could be wishful thinking on my part, imagining a scenario wherein the Mets determine they’re best off keeping Beltran around for the asses he’ll help put in seats for the remainder of the season. Or they could take on some of his contract and try to get a better return. But that doesn’t really answer the question.

Last year the Yankees gave up Mark Melancon and Minor Leaguer Jimmy Paredes for Lance Berkman. It’s not a perfect comp for a variety of reasons: Beltran is more valuable in the field but comes with greater injury risk and Berkman was in the midst of a down year by his standards. But maybe that’s a reasonable expectation: A potentially useful young arm and a marginal-at-best prospect? Or am I being too pessimistic? I’ll admit I suck at this.

As for Rodriguez: Gammons sounded pretty optimistic about the Mets’ ability to trade him, even despite all the money he’s owed. I’ll leave the haul part of it to him. You’ll have to tune in tomorrow for that. CLIFFHANGER!

So we’re looking for a surprisingly good sandwich that’s still not great, with a couple of exceptional elements but a couple that are holding it back. OK… off the top of my head:

The Mets are a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread with spicy mustard, with a single slice of incredibly flavorful imported prosciutto on there. Obviously the prosciutto here is Jose Reyes. Oh, and the cheese is really good too — a fine Havarti, we’ll call that Beltran.

The ham is a fine, thin-sliced Boar’s Head deli ham. That’s the rest of the lineup. It’s getting the job done but it’s not overwhelmingly awesome. The white bread is the pitching staff, and it’s doing the best it can with what it has and no offense to white bread but man, this sandwich would be better if it were on something other than plain old white bread.

The spicy mustard is Terry Collins. That strikes me as appropriate for some reason. Like all sandwiches, this would be better with bacon, or David Wright.

In truth, probably Madden. But that’s a boring answer, especially since I still play Madden today (BTW, the lockout did not seem to impact the undefeated 2011-12 Jets in my franchise mode).

I always played more sports games than anything else, so I’m going to give some love to Micro-League Baseball on the Commodore 64 — the nerdiest game ever invented. It was basically Moneyball before Moneyball; you didn’t even play the games yourself, you just put a bunch of stats into the computer and then let the computer play them out for you. But I created teams of me and my friends and pitted them against the 1927 Yankees and such. Ah yes, “my friends.” I swear.

How many people go on a roast dais? None of these people know me so they wouldn’t have anything funny to say about me, but if I’m picking I guess I should just pick the people I think are funniest since I’m going to be sitting there anyway so I might as well enjoy some good standup: Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, Jake Johannsen, Mike Birbiglia, David Cross, Norm MacDonald and Stephen Colbert.

 

Songs that rhyme “girl” with “world”

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In no particular order, but I’m starting with “Cumbersome” because it came on XM last night and got me thinking about how many songs rhyme “girl” with “world.” Also because that song’s particular instance of rhyming “girl” with “world” is, well, cumbersome.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I’m looking to make it one. So if you know of others, comment or email me and I’ll add them. A bunch of these came courtesy of the gentlemen of Das Brodeo, three of whom are currently driving from Florida to DC and apparently have little else to do besides sit around thinking about songs that rhyme “girl” with “world.” Also, after I already started compiling, I did a Google search and found a few I hadn’t thought of here and here, and got more from the good people of Twitter.

Seven Mary Three — Cumbersome
No Doubt — Just a Girl
Cat Stevens — Wild World
Aqua — Barbie Girl
Madonna — Material Girl
Brooks and Dunn — Rock my World (Little Country Girl)
Nine Days — Story of a Girl
Prince — The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
Jamiroquai — Cosmic Girl
Journey — Don’t Stop Believin’
Martha and the Vandellas — Dancing in the Streets
Queen — Fat Bottom Girls
The Beach Boys — California Girls
Billy Idol — Dancing With Myself
Cyndi Lauper — Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Billy Joel — Uptown Girl
Chromeo — Needy Girl
Notorious B.I.G. – Nasty Girl
Bruno Mars — Beautiful Girls
Pet Shop Boys — West End Girls
Violent Femmes — Please Do Not Go
Beatles — I Feel Fine
Led Zeppelin — Ramble On
Weezer — Cold Dark World
The Rolling Stones — Stupid Girl
2Pac — White Man’s World
Elliott Smith — Say Yes
Bob Dylan — Brownsville Girl
AM Radio — End of the World
U2 — Grace
Jay-Z — All Around the World
Mariah Carey — Your Girl
Ben Folds — Rent-A-Cop
Red Hot Chili Peppers — Californication
Green Day — Extraordinary Girl
Boyz-II-Men — Around the World
Black Keys — Psychotic Girl
Tom Petty — Century City
Elvis Costello — Party Girl
White Stripes — Fell in Love With a Girl
Dion — The Wanderer
Busta Rhymes — World Go Around
Black Sabbath — Sabbra Cadabra
Elton John — Island Girl
AC/DC — Girls Got Rhythm
Celine Dion — The Power of the Dream
Prodigy — Girls
Dead Milkmen — Punk Rock Girls
Snoop Dogg — Ain’t No Fun
Steve Miller Band — Quicksilver Girl
Gwen Stefani — Rich Girl

Narrative adjusted

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Sandy Alderson was pigeonholed early in his administration as a risk-averse executive who would strongly reject the idea of a mega-contract for any player, but specifically an injury-prone one such as Jose Reyes, who did not have the Mets’ general manager’s favorite asset: elite on-base percentage.

Alderson warned not to stereotype him, and that decisions would be based on information absorbed during the season.

We should have listened….

Translation: Alderson has learned to admire what Reyes does to such a degree that neither a minor hamstring injury nor the lack of elite on-base skills is dimming his ardor to keep the shortstop.

– Joel Sherman, N.Y. Post.

Oh what a story! Heartless, robotic, spreadsheet-crunching GM comes to town hellbent on trading a team’s lovable homegrown star shortstop, only to be won over by all the player’s intangibles in an effervescent, MVP-caliber first half. It reads like the treatment for Moneyball 2: Revenge of the Guys Without Manboobs.

Unless… unless… What if Sandy Alderson knew from the beginning of his tenure with the Mets that there is more than one tool with which to assess a baseball player? And what if talk of the Mets’ inevitable fire sale was overblown from the beginning?

Crazy. What kind of story is that?

Four errant stones dispatched the alpha to first base

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Our ancestors had to learn to trust their neighbors, and the seeds of our mutuality can be seen in our simplest gestures, like the willingness to point out a hidden object to another, as even toddlers will do. Early humans also needed ways to control would-be bullies, and our exceptional pitching skills — which researchers speculate originally arose to help us ward off predators — probably helped. “We can throw much better than any other primate,” Dr. Wilson said, “and once we could throw things at a distance, all of a sudden the alpha male is vulnerable to being dispatched with stones. Stoning might have been one of our first adaptations.”

– Natalie Angier, N.Y. Times.

Interesting. Back in college when I used to engage people in stupid pseudo-philosophical debates just for the sake of it, I often contended that baseball was the most civilized major sport because it was the one that least resembled a battle. I don’t really remember the particulars now — it was stupid, like I said.

But it turns out maybe baseball is some weird extension of a primal urge to cast off the alpha male from society by throwing stones at him, and the alpha male’s attempts to fend off those stones with a stick. Or something.

Good news is it doesn’t really matter how we came to baseball, only that we did. The rest of the Times article is pretty interesting too.

Following up

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Following up on Saturday’s post: As of right now, 37 percent of TedQuarters readers would choose Bobby Parnell to close games if Francisco Rodriguez were traded. Count me among that 37 percent, assuming the team is locked in to using one guy in a traditional “closer” role.

Parnell leads all active Mets relievers in ERA and strikeouts per nine innings. Plus he’s relatively young and under team control for a while, meaning a stint as closer in the tail end of the 2011 campaign would amount to an audition, where inserting Jason Isringhausen in the job would shed little light on the team’s future bullpen makeup.

Baseball Prospectus currently has the Mets’ chances of making the playoffs at 2.5 percent — a longshot, if not an insurmountable one. If you’re looking to be optimistic, the odds are better that the Mets make the playoffs in 2011 than they were that they would have missed the playoffs on Sept. 17, 2007. Crazier things have happened, in other words, and we’ve seen them.

But regardless of how voraciously the Mets will be pursuing that 2.5 percent chance, they should look to trade Rodriguez in the next few weeks. Though his loss will make any playoff hunt more difficult, Rodriguez has not been so overwhelmingly great that his absence necessarily precludes contention, and his much-maligned vesting option will make it more difficult for the team to contend in 2012 by limiting the front office’s financial flexibility this offseason.

Plus, if the Mets can trade him to a team that will not use him to finish games — one not concerned about his option — they might get back a player to help mitigate his loss in the short term and help them in the future.

Well-run teams can find effective closers on the cheap. Converted starters and scrap-heap acquisitions often pay huge dividends in the back ends of bullpens. The Mets should be able to replace Rodriguez’s production — or something close, at least — at a fraction of the price, allocating that cash to positions that spend more than 70 innings a season on the field.

Mets-related items of note

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Jose Reyes tweaked something in his left hamstring yesterday, which you probably know. From the very early reports, it doesn’t sound like it’s terribly severe, but then it almost never does from the early reports. So we’ll all sit here holding our breath and crossing our fingers until we know more, or until we see Reyes back on the field and healthy. Ruben Tejada is starting at shortstop today, with Angel Pagan leading off.

In less important and lighter news, Reyes was elected to start at shortstop for the National League All-Star Team, and Carlos Beltran made the squad as a reserve. The All-Star Game is a silly pageant, and though I’ve taken to blustering over individual selections in the past, it’s a bit of a fool’s errand. Due to the whims of the selection process, every year there are going to be several players left off the rosters better than several players included on them. It’s an exhibition.

The good news is that those of us who begrudgingly watch the All-Star Game will get to see that much more of Reyes and Beltran playing baseball this year (assuming they play). Plus it’s nice for them to get recognition — and bonuses — for the seasons they’re having.

On a completely unrelated note, the SNY Why Guys make the case that Bobby Parnell should take over as closer if the Mets deal Francisco Rodriguez before the deadline. I have maintained that the Mets should shop Rodriguez regardless of their situation in the standings to try to avoid getting saddled with his vesting option in 2012, but I’m not sure I’ve ever considered whom they should choose to close out games in his stead.

I think a case could be made for a couple different guys currently pitching in the Mets’ bullpen, but I won’t make any of them because I’m interested to see what you think. I only included active pitchers here, though if and when Taylor Buchholz returns he deserves consideration as well:

[poll id=”27″]