Anthony Castrovince at MLB.com provides the full list of at-bat music for the Indians. Travis Hafner has four songs and they are all by Rammstein. Via BBTF.
Apparently Travis Hafner loves Rammstein
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From the Wikipedia: Tristan de Cunha
Tristan de Cunha was in the news a couple of weeks ago due to an oil spill, and my man Ted Burke tipped me off to its Wikipedia page.
From the Wikipedia: Tristan de Cunha.
Tristan de Cunha is the name given to both an archipelago in the South Atlantic and the main island of the group, the only one that is inhabited by people. The “big” island of Tristan de Cunha is nearly twice the size of Manhattan and, with roughly 275 residents, has about .02% of Manhattan’s population. Everyone in Tristan de Cunha lives in the largest city, Edinburgh of the South Seas — known locally as “the Settlement.”
The island is the most remote inhabited island in the world. It lies 1,750 miles west of South Africa and 1,510 miles south of Saint Helena, with which it is linked (along with Ascension Island) as part of a British territory. The territory is called “Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha,” which is pretty much the least clever you could possibly come up with for it. It used to be known only as “Saint Helena and Dependencies,” but in 2009 someone determined that the 275 people in Tristan de Cunha and the 880 people on Ascension Island deserved equal footing with the 4,255 people on Saint Helena.
Tristan de Cunha is represented by the governor of Saint Helena, which you figure must be something of a logistical nightmare because Tristan de Cunha is really hard to get to. You can only get to and from the island by boat and you pretty much have to boat to South Africa before you go anywhere. One boat trip a year connects Tristan de Cunha with Saint Helena and Ascension.
Of course, it’s probably not too difficult to govern a population that’s roughly the size of a suburban high school, especially when you figure everybody knows everybody and many of them are related. In fact, residents of Tristan de Cunha have only eight last names, seven of which came from its original 15 settlers. The eighth is Patterson, because a woman from the island left and brought back a husband named Patterson. The Settlement has one full-time police officer and one resident doctor.
The islands were discovered and named in 1506 by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha. Apparently he also wasn’t particularly clever, though I guess it’s hard to fault someone for naming an island group for himself.
The islands pretty much just sat there until 1810, when a guy named Jonathan Lambert from Massachusetts showed up, claimed all the land for himself and renamed the islands “The Islands of Refreshment,” which sounds like something from a Fruitopia commercial. The Wikipedia does not say how Lambert came to Tristan de Cunha or how many people accompanied him, nor does it provide any detail of the boating accident that killed him two years later in 1812.
It is at least a tiny bit suspicious that in that same year, the United States military began using the islands as a base for the War of 1812, which also lacked a clever name. In 1816, the British formally annexed the islands to prevent the French from using them as a base to help Napoleon escape from his exile on Saint Helena, which, as mentioned, is over 1500 miles away. The Wikipedia does not detail how that would have worked, exactly, nor why the most remote inhabited island in the world would be a significant upgrade from exile.
Oh, one of the other islands in the Tristan de Cunha group is called “Inaccessible Island.” The Wikipedia entry contains this gem: “Attempts to colonise Inaccessible Island failed.”
Historically, the island has mostly been used for military stuff. Until at least World War II, its currency was potatoes.
One time a prince visited Tristan de Cunha, and Lewis Carroll’s younger brother lived there for a few years. It is not a great place for celebrity spotting.
It is a good place for bird-watching, farming, lobster fishing and philately. The Wikipedia says that the sale of postage stamps to overseas collectors is one of the main sources of foreign income to Tristan de Cunha.
The smattering of people that live on Tristan de Cunha speak a dialect of English. Because three of the original 15 settlers had asthma, many Tristanians suffer from the disease, much in the same way many Amish have polydactyly. Tristan de Cunha’s flag features a rock lobster, which is also the name of a song by the B-52s.
Sandwich of the Week
At the deli, when people would come in and ask for an Italian hero, I used to always be like, “Aww, I thought I was your Italian hero.” I don’t think anyone ever even thought it was funny including me, it just sort of became vaguely Pavlovian after a while. Plus every so often it would really confuse and/or alienate a customer, and that’s a pretty fun thing to do when you’re 21 and you’ve been standing behind a deli counter for most of the summer.
Then it turned out it’s actually funnier when people order sandwiches that don’t sound like they describe Giuseppe Garibaldi. “Aww, I thought I was your Roast Beef and Cheddar.” “Aww, I thought I was your honey-maple turkey with bacon and muenster cheese on pumpernickel.”
The sandwich: Ham cappy, salami, soppressata and fresh mozzarella on a kaiser roll with oil and vinegar, from Park Italian Gourmet on 45th between 5th and 6th in Manhattan.
The construction: All of the things in the name of the sandwich, which doesn’t really have a proper name — it’s just what I ordered.
Important background information: This part of Midtown, as I’ve certainly griped before, is something of a wasteland for interesting food options. Occasionally a good truck will come through the neighborhood and there are a few notable regular carts, plus a few of the food-courty options in the Rockefeller Center concourse are decent. But for the most part if you want to find a notable and inexpensive takeout lunch, you need to do some searching.
Park Italian Gourmet is an oasis of sorts. It does not at all look like it belongs in Midtown, a couple blocks south of Rockefeller Plaza. It’s an old-school, no-frills type of place with a wide variety of Italian meats and a small hot-food area for parmigiana and such. It is generally what I recommend to people in the area looking to avoid the bland corporate food bar places.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Comforting, in a way. This certainly isn’t the most remarkable sandwich I’ve had or even the best sandwich I’ve had in Midtown, but it’s very solid. Tastes how a good Italian combo from a deli should taste: Delicious.
Soppressata, if you’re unfamiliar, is like a more coarsely ground salami. It’s maybe a tiny bit spicier and more peppery than its cousin, and equally salty. It’s one of my favorite lunchmeats, which is saying something.
In terms of the meats here, the ham cappy gets a bit overwhelmed by the stronger flavors of the salami and soppressata, so it mostly serves to add meaty bulk to offset the cheese — a valuable sandwich commodity, no doubt.
As with many good Italian sandwiches, the star is the mozzarella cheese. Fresh and creamy with its subtle milky taste, it is the perfect complement to the powerful meats. It’s weird; the meats are obviously more flavorful than the cheese, but somehow the cheese still feels like the focus of the sandwich. This is why people wrap mozzarella with pepperoni or prosciutto and serve it as an appetizer, I suppose.
Also, the deli-man at Park Italian Gourmet did me the favor of putting the mozzarella in the center of the sandwich, sandwiched itself by the meats. It meant every bite had a nice blend of meat, cheese and bread; there were no bread-and-cheese bites followed by meat-and-bread bites.
If I were making the sandwich myself I might have gone a tiny bit heavier on the oil and vinegar. The salami and soppressata are greasy enough to ensure that the sandwich could not be dry, but the tang from the vinegar really adds a nice kick whenever it’s present. I’m not sure what type of vinegar is standard at Park Italian Gourmet — I probably should’ve specified if I’m going to be so picky about it — but I would have preferred balsamic, a bit more pungent than whatever is here.
What it’s worth: $6.50. For a good lunch in Midtown that’s an absolute steal.
How it rates: Hmm. 81 out of 100. A really good sandwich but not a mind-blowing one.
Previewing Yanks-Jays with Andrew Stoeten
Watch as I try to bait Stoeten to say “Arencibia” and he doesn’t bite:
Jim Thome as Paul Bunyan
The Twins’ promos team puts Jim Thome in flannel and an awesome fake mustache and gives him a blue ox. Your move, Mike and Brett.
Absolutely nothing
One day in college, I slept late or had too much work to do or for some other college-y reason couldn’t make it out to a Georgetown basketball game at the MCI Center on a Saturday afternoon. I watched it from the couch in my living room, otherwise empty as my roommates were all at the game. I don’t remember the exact situation now, but the game came down in part to a goaltending call against the Hoyas. When it happened, I was certain it was the wrong call, and I stood and yelled and stomped around my living room like a crazy person.
Then they showed the replay. Totally goaltending. The ball had reached the peak of its arc and was on its way down when the Georgetown player swatted it into the seats. He broke the rules. Ref made the right call.
My roommates returned home a bit later and we got to recapping the game. They explained that from the student section they had a great view of the block, and they could say for sure that it was a b.s. call. I told them the replay made it pretty clear it was the right call but they didn’t believe me. They saw it with their eyes, up close.
There was no TiVo then and none of us really felt up to arguing after a Hoyas loss, jaded though we were by that point. I shrugged and they shrugged too, and soon enough we got to our usual early-evening Saturday habits of playing video games and watching The Big Lebowksi for the billionth time.
But I think about that a lot now when I talk to Mets fans, especially so early in the season.
I bluster on all the time about how our eyes can deceive us. In that afternoon, I have a pitch-perfect example: My roommates, smart guys with strong vision all, legitimately saw something that didn’t happen. I don’t think they were just trying to convince themselves of it so they could blame the ref instead of the then-miserable Hoyas for the loss. I don’t know the science behind it, but I’m pretty sure at some point in the pathway between the eyes and the conscious part of the brain some chemical bias altered reality and showed them a b.s. call.
We all do this all the time, I fear. We see things the way we hope to see them, regardless of if that’s the way they really happened. Mets fans certain that Mike Pelfrey is crazy watched him melt down on the mound again on Saturday evening, losing his cool and getting knocked around for 11 hits in five-plus innings.
Those of us who believe — or want to believe — Pelfrey’s early-season struggles are not mental so much as the byproduct of yielding too much contact watched a bunch of bloops and bleepers find holes and victimize the starter, the type of misfortune that tends to even out over time.
Some Mets fans somehow already know that Brad Emaus is not a Major League-caliber player, so when he whiffs wildly or dribbles out or botches a play in the field, they say, “See? Can’t you see it with your eyes? He stinks!”
Angel Pagan, doing all of the same things, gets the pass he earned by being an excellent Major Leaguer for the last season and a half. He is slumping; we know he can perform at the level so we see he is pressing or struggling or “just not seeing the ball well.”
Pedro Beato, we see, is fearless; he has the closer’s mentality. Bobby Parnell is lost.
You get the point, and it’s one I’ve already belabored plenty. I appeal to evidence more than appearances on this site because I am not a scout; my eyes are not trained to assess baseball players or teams, and even if they were I’m not certain I’d believe them. Most players look crappy when they’re playing crappily. Most players look awesome when they’re playing awesomely. We need lots of data to clearly distinguish the truly awesome from the downright crappy.
What we know about the current Mets is that they’re 5-11 and have endured an awful stretch. But 1/10th of the regular season does not provide enough meaningful evidence with which to draw any conclusions. Emaus and Parnell need more opportunities to show what they will or won’t do this season. Pagan and Pelfrey should be fine if they’re healthy. We shouldn’t go too crazy over Beato or Dillon Gee just yet.
This is all just a long-winded way of saying what I typically say: Absolutely nothing.
Walt “Clyde” Frazier owns these boots, obviously
The Knicks are in the playoffs. For insight on that from people who actually have interesting things to say about NBA basketball besides “OHHH!” and “WOW!” and “WHY IS NO ONE PLAYING DEFENSE!?” check out Tommy Dee and his crew at TheKnicksBlog.com.
And if you haven’t used up your allotment of Times articles for April, check out this feature about Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s wardrobe. Sadly, it is shorter than book-length and thus can not portray the full awesomeness of Frazier’s suits. It does have a photo gallery, thankfully.
Fun fact: Per Frazier’s Wikipedia page, he earned the nickname Clyde for wearing hats similar to the one Warren Beatty had in Bonnie and Clyde, which makes sense.
My bad
This weekend sort of… got away from me. It happens sometimes, especially when there are three Mets games in 24 hours, grocery shopping to do, burgers to barbecue, laundry to wash, etc.
Sandwich of the Week will come tomorrow. I ate a sandwich, I just didn’t write about it yet. My bad.
But hey, here’s a fun fact: In cookbooks and all over the Internet, people will have you believe you need to do all sorts of fancy things before you cook corn-on-the-cob on a barbecue. They’ll say you need to soak it first, or pull the husk off and wrap it in foil, or use some sort of special corn-holding device, or peel back the husk and spread some olive oil on the kernels then replace the husk. Variations on those themes, mostly.
Turns out it’s nonsense. Leave the husk on and throw it right on the grill. The husk will burn and blacken, but no worries. After about seven minutes, rotate it and cook it on the other side for another seven minutes. Take it off the grill and let it cool for a couple of minutes. Now the husk and silk pulls off really easily, and under it you find piping hot, delicious, smoky corn.
This might not be news to you, but in my house growing we always boiled corn-on-the-cob, even if someone was grilling the main course. But if you don’t have a dishwasher — as I don’t — you become pretty conscious of ways to conserve dishes, and this is a solid one.
I suppose it helps to start with delicious corn. Apparently corn is in season in Florida.
Also, the Mets finally won. So that’s pretty sweet too.
Photoshop fun
I don’t know about you but I think this would make for a pretty sweet, if a bit creepy, T-shirt. Also a good way to pass time at the office on a Friday afternoon:
Hot dog slideshow? Hot dog slideshow
Serious Eats has a slideshow of the best and most ridiculous hot dogs in Major League parks this year. Check it out. The Nationals are doing some pretty absurd things with hot dogs. I don’t think I’d ever be able to disrespect Ben by getting anything other than a chili half-smoke from Ben’s Chili Bowl while there, but I’ve got to admit the Banh Mi Dog is intriguing. Multiple stadiums are serving hot dogs with pepperoni on them. And the Diamondbacks have the Big Kid Dog, which features macaroni and cheese and fritos:
Link via Jonah Keri.
Tedquarters 