More for me than anyone who might accidentally find this blog

So on Tuesday, I started watching the election results at my dad's house, and for a while the only states CNN would call were Kentucky and Vermont, which meant the electoral tally was eight to three in McCain's favor, and my dad kept saying things like, "If this were a baseball game, we'd have to be worried," and "it's only the first inning," and, during commercials, "what're they doing? must be a pitching change."

I dunno, maybe you had to be there, and maybe you even have to be my father's child, but that crap kept me laughing every time, even as I freaked the hell out that we might elect another pair of maroons into office.

Not as good as Fenway, but I'll take it

Oh, internet! I finally got to see a Blue Jays game! Their last home game of the season, in fact! I have impeccable timing, and I decided to show up in Toronto on the exact day the Blue Jays were finishing their season. So I insisted that Allison take me to the Rogers Centre, and she was very obliging, and she didn't even yell at me when I got up to get the beer and then realized I'd spent more of my Canadian Monopoly money than I'd realized because of course I bought a super sweet hat with the old Jays logo on it as soon as we entered the dome. (It's so weird to watch a baseball game in a dome, by the way. Even with the roof open, it feels like you're inside--in fact, what it reminded me of was the University of Syracuse's gym where I got to see two games of the men's NCAA tournament a million years ago.) But it was so fun--I sure do love watchin' a baseball game in real life. And now I've been to one tenth of all the Major League Baseball stadiums!

Even better? The Jays totally murdalized the Yankees. Suck it, Yankees.

More baseball, minimal Sox talk

Once upon a time, the Toronto Blue Jays were good. They must have actually been better than the Yankees and the Red Sox at least one year, because I can just barely remember their being in the World Series against...the Braves? (Not because I was wicked young or anything, but because I was only marginally aware of baseball in the '90s. My dad was a Yankees' fan, and that's all I knew.) The one time I went to Cooperstown, I bought a Blue Jays hat, because I was obsessed with collecting baseball caps at the time, and I liked the logo, and it must have been the summer after they were in the World Series. (Did they even win? I do not know.)

Anyway, these days, the Blue Jays suck, despite the fact that they totally murdalized Boston the other day--that was painiful--and their logo is so lame now, with the angry bird and the letter J. Or is it a T? I don't know. Maybe it's both! How clever.

Ahem. So the point of this story is that I found this description of the team on stubhub kind of hilarious:

"The Blue Jays are a Toronto tradition. Their fans keep showing up to games despite the fact that the Yankees and Red Sox have been winning a lot lately. Whenever those two teams come to town, fans of the Jays get extra jazzed up and the whole community of Toronto rallies for the 'Outsiders.' This year, the Toronto Blue Jays are for real."

Mostly that last part cracked me up. The Blue Jays are "for real." (Not for fake.) Okay, so they're not in last place anymore, and they seem to always be able to beat the Yankees and the Red Sox (infruriatingly!), but this year is...not their year.

Also, I have been in Toronto twice this baseball season, and the Blue Jays were on road trips both times, so I hate them, because it is my dream to see a game in every major league stadium somehow, and they're making it really difficult for me. (I'm 2 for...30 as of this writing.)

Oh. The other thing: there were plenty of Blue Jays fans at the Rogers Center when the Red Sox were in town this weekend, but I could see and hear a sizeable portion of Red Sox nation there. It wasn't as bad as it is at Camden Yards, but... I think the Blue Jays fans might have been outnumbered.

I probably totally don't have that hat anymore, which is sad. It was fitted and all official, just like the players wore. They must have won the World Series--otherwise I'm sure I never would have even heard of them.

A League of Their Own

Did Dottie drop the ball on purpose? Discuss.

When forming your opinion (or backing it up or whatever), here are two points in the movie I believe are important to keep in mind:
1. At the very beginning, old lady Dottie tells her older grandson to go easy on his little brother and tells the younger to murdalize (as my little brothers would say) his older brother while they're playing basketball.
2. Somewhere in the middle of the film we see Dottie make the exact same play: she covers the plate; the runner bowls her over, and she hangs onto the ball.

What do we make of these things? I think it's pretty significant, too, that Dottie has the ball in her bare hand; it doesn't get knocked out of her glove by the impact--her hand opens, and it rolls out. That at least looks an awful lot like losing on purpose, but there is the nagging fact that she would be letting down an entire team of women she's obviously fond of after coming back for the last game of the World Series. She came back, so the game and the team must have been important to her.

But. Is her baby sister more important?

I still don't know what I've decided. Anyone have an opinion?

Jock crush!

So the Olympics are awesome, huh? Crazy baseball rules, scantily clad women... Let's talk about the latter, shall we? I finally caught some women's beach volleyball today, and oh, it was lovely. Now I have a new object of affection.
Nicole Branagh may have just blown the set for her and Elaine Youngs, preventing them from getting to the medal round, but that's ok. She is a babe.
The one match I saw her play, she did not impress me, but she made it to the Olympics so she must be pretty good.
She and her partner, Elaine Youngs, were getting kinda mouthy with each other towards the end--can you even imagine the pressure of playing in the Olympics to get into the medal round? Plus, they were playing against a Chinese team, so I bet it was crazy in there.

Oh well. Better luck next time, Nicole.

Have I even talked about baseball at all?

I do not think so. I have Twittered about the Sox, but that's about it. I'm sure that I'll have obsessive blog posts come October. Uh, hopefully. Seriously, where did the Tampa Bay Rays even come from?

But anyway, I don't actually want to talk about the Sox today. I want to talk about Olympic baseball. The U.S. is playing Cuba right now, and it's the eleventh inning, tied three to three, and apparently, brand new this year, in the eleventh inning, each team starts with runners on first and second and no one out, and they can pick where they want to start in the lineup.

What?

No, seriously, what kind of blernsball madness is this? This is, like, a fake rule. And Cuba just scored two runs because of the bonus base runners! Is this to prevent games from going into a million extra innings? Does that often happen in Olympic baseball? I've never even seen Olympic baseball before.

Also, where do the Olympic baseball players come from for this country? Not the major league. The minor league? College? I know basketball gets the pros, because it's not basketball season during the Olympics. Well, it is WNBA season, but they only play, like, what, twenty games? Because there are, like, twelve teams. No, I don't know. That's a horrible understatement. But anyway, the WNBA's season is shorter than the NBA's, so they can take some time off to go to the Olympics. But who are these baseball players?

This is madness. Starting the eleventh inning with two bonus base runners! Who came up with that?