Misfits & Rebels

according to wikipedia...

Kerouac invented his own fantasy baseball league when he was a child. He continued playing this game well into adulthood.

What?

And the fusion of two great things.

Tacos & Baseball.

This is the end of substance.

OH WELL. I GUESS IT'S WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR.

Man, that sucked. Diamondbacks didn't exactly play poorly over those four games, but they also didn't exactly play well. Lots of errors and mental mistakes (and a few calls that went the wrong way); you change all those and at least the Dbacks are still playing. But man, the last top inning against Corpas kinda optimized some of the problems w/ this team. Down by two, Chris Young hits a one-out double to start a possible rally, but then Stephen Drew pops out to the 2nd baseman on a 3-0 count and Eric Byrnes grounds out (and proceeds to slide into first!) to end the game. Demonstrating that 1) Stephen Drew still has some growing up to do (3-0 down by two, YR NOT BARRY BONDS - TAKE THE FUCKING PITCH) and 2) Eric Byrnes all-out-idiocy is going to get tired FAST. With both Carlos Gonzalez and Carlos Quentin having a chance to take his spot, I hope we eat his contract, because this year is the best we're going to get out of him.

Oh well. At least I don't have to spend as much time by myself in bars now. Weird vibe that...

DBacks v. Rockies Attendance

As there has been a little blather blogging about the various Colorado and Arizona fandoms (following a little ugliness and a late arrival by AZ's 98% of sellout crowd for a 5:30 start time game) it might be insightful to look at the actual NUMBERS.

Diamondbacks attendance this year: total of 2,325,249 w/ avg per game of 28,707
Rockies attendance this year: total of 2,376,250 w/ avg per game of 28,979

umm... those look about the same, no? and you look at the data going back for the past couple of years, both teams attendance patterns are fairly similar (and upward trending). You field anonymous young teams that are home grown while ditching overpaid "franchise" players like Larry Walker and Luis Gonzalez, a dip in attendance isn't unexpected. I predict that the fan bases of both these teams will get stronger as this core ages & improves.

A reason to cheer for the Diambondbacks over the Rockies.

"I don't want to offend anyone, but I think character-wise we're stronger than anyone in baseball. Christians, and what they've endured, are some of the strongest people in baseball. I believe God sends signs, and we're seeing those."

What the Fucked Up?

Everyone's favorite limited edition 7" pressing Canadian "hardcore" band Fucked Up has taken some interesting turns lately. Putting out a long winded 2xlp on Jade Tree, releasing a mix tape w/ professed love for c86ers the Shop Assistants (can't find a link to the tracklist), putting out a long winded PROG-HARDCORE 12" on home-of-Cause Co-Motion label What's Yr Rupture, and covering hip-for-now French House duo JUSTICE via VICE RECORDS. WTF?

Who are they targeting? Who likes indie-pop, techno, prog & hardcore? Unfortunately it would be someone like me (or most hipsters cool kids these days who have post-napster omnivorous taste). Unfortunately because these new paths, new directions, new fusions could be good, but aren't. Or better said the fusion is not inherently bad, just not successful because the songs are CRAP. So I'm not saying Fucked up needs to stick to 1:30 hardcore ragers, but if they wanna branch out they got to do better than they've done. The "Year of the Pig" 12" might be the least listenable piece of music I've bought this year (after the new Circle LP Katapult - how's that for hype/buzz leading to kill dick crap) and the Justice cover does nothing for anything. I wanna cut them some slack because they recorded some ragers, but when they jump in bed w/ Vice (which is fine, doesn't seem to have affected Black Lips, yet) but don't back it up w/ more raging good tunes, ummm, it's kind of a killjoy. (and to claim allegiance to mid-80's brit guitar rock and to stop at the shop assistants is a typical travesty of punk/hardcore branching out myopathy. Um, you think there might be some other good bands in that realm?)

oh yeah. Diamondbacks in 7. (can the baseball prospectus & espn & other prognosticator types stop using the d-backs run for various pro & con BS around the value/non-value of sabrmetrics? I haven't read it, but I imagine Men At Work is short on statistical analysis, and wouldn't that be a better ideal for sports (and especially) baseball writers?)

More BEISBOL

shitbox! read it here... THE DIAMONDBACKS ARE NOW ODDS ON FAVORITE TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES!

(don't know if the link will work, but postseason odds from baseballprospectus.com as of this morning)

---------- October 5 --------------------
 Win DS   Win CS   Win WS 
BOS  63.3779  33.7454  18.3451
CLE  70.6525  33.2108  19.0125
LAA  36.6221  18.8789  10.2515
NYY  29.3475  14.1649   7.2306
ARI  88.1299  48.7947  19.5415
PHI  12.5620   5.9838   2.8516
CHI  11.8701   6.3129   3.2755
COL  87.4380  38.9086  19.4917