April 13 was Miss Danielle Sanzone’s 24th birthday. All she wanted was Johnny Damon to be her very own. Since she couldn’t have the real thing, her friend and my housemate, Laura Fox, went ahead and made her a cake version of Damon, which wound up as dessert after a dinner of homemade sushi last Saturday. Johnny was much more attractive than the fish that was fileted by George and Danielle for sushi, also known as “The Fishgina.” Johnny even looks particularly like a certain savior when lit up with candles. It was a delicious cake with chocolate sprinkles for the beard, cream cheese frosting for the jersey and skin (blended with some red for the perfect tint), and chocolate frosting for the hair. I was lucky enough to eat the nose and mouth.
And for an added bonus – The Fishgina!.

Well, Johan Santana pitched a two hitter today — the kind of pitching performance we’ve come to expect from a man who hasn’t lost since last July. But unfortunately, those two hits happened to be two homeruns. And even more unfortunately, the Twins only mustered one run against Bartolo Colon. And thus, Santana’s 17 game winning streak ended today.
Coming soon… pictures of the Johnny Damon cake.

Should I ever run into Chris House, I must remember to thank him for (allegedly) taking a swing at Gary Sheffield on April 14 and getting his season tickets revoked. Because you see, that left those tickets available for purchase at the Day-Of-Game ticket window at Fenway today (er, yesterday, according to the clock). And after taking the afternoon off of work and doing a book of logic puzzles while sitting in line for three hours, I got two of those revoked tickets for face value. And let me just say, those were some nice seats. Had I been willing to risk getting thrown out, I could have leaned over and touched some Fenway dirt. (Just for the record, because she’d want me to clarify, Melissa Cain sat in House’s exact seat, according to the fans around us.)
Once inside the stadium, Melissa and I ate a couple of Fenway Franks, watched some batting practice, had our picture taken for the “Fanfoto” section of the Red Sox website, and I bought myself a program wherein I meticulously kept score of the game, right down to the pitch count of every at bat. Now, some might say that the play of the game was Miguel Tejada’s homerun in the top of the 8th that put the O’s up 9-8. Or perhaps it was Javy Lopez’s follow-up homer that extended their lead to 3 runs. Red Sox fans might say that it was Manny Ramirez’s 3 run blast in the bottom of the fourth. But I beg to differ, for entirely biased reasons.
In the first at bat of the bottom of the second, with a 1-1 count on him, David Ortiz hit a double into the right field corner that started a five run Sox inning. Sammy Sosa went racing after it, and as the television cameras filmed him scooping up the ball, also visible in the shot were two attractive MIT alumna cheering behind him. That’s right, folks. For the first time in my entire life (that I know of) I was on TV while attending a baseball game. And when they showed the replay in the stadium, I was up on the jumbotron, also a first.
Of course, it should be noted that one of the side effects of the Chris House incident appears to be an increase in paranoia and anal-retentiveness of the security in the right field box. The two gentlemen sitting to Melissa’s left were thrown out in the 8th, essentially for being drunk. Although they were slurring quite of few of their words, they weren’t being particularly rowdy — in fact, I found them to be rather polite drunks. But the security guard still wanted to come over and check on them. The guys were a little upset about this and began flipping off the security guard each time they stood up to do the wave. Seeing this and having none of it, he came over and sent the fellows home. At least two others sitting near us were ejected as well, even though I never observed anyone interfering with the game or starting a fight.
Despite the security, it was still one of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had at a ballpark. But I can’t help thinking that it would have been even better if we had been leaving the stadium to “Dirty Water” instead of “Goodnight, Sweetheart.”
Oh, and just for the A-Side gang, one of the birthdays that flashed up on the Jumbotron tonight: Manny Ortiz.

If you think that there is any chance that your genes will produce a professional athlete, don’t give him or her a name like Lew, Pooh, Sue, etc.
Everytime Lew Ford comes to bat for the Twins, I think the crowd is booing him. The same used to be true for former Minnesota Timberwolf Pooh Richardson.
I’ve never known a famous athlete named “Sue,” but I’m sure it would be the same.

Growing up, my sister and I used to play “apple ball.” The basic premise was that we’d take the apples that had fallen off of our apple tree, and thus were unsuitable to eat, and pitch them to each other. We’d then try to hit them into the marsh behind our house. Mostly we wound up shattering the apple and spraying applesauce into the yard. But, oh well.

Last night I discovered yet another variation on baseball that results in shattering the ball, albeit more dangerously. It works like this:

• Get large blocks of ice for carving.
• While carving the ice (outside, preferrably), let the large chunks of ice that fly off gather in a pile.
• Get an aluminum pipe.
• Clear out the area of any unsuspecting passers-by.
• Have one person pitch the baseball to softball sized ice chunks to the person holding the pipe.
• Watch as the ice shatters when it connects with the pipe.

As an aside, try to avoid having the ice shatter into the batter’s face. That stung.

Having just listened to the Twinkies beat the Mariners on “MLB.com Gameday Audio,” I’ve discovered a few more advantages and disadvantages…
Advantages: Getting to hear John Gordon’s voice announcing the game. He may not be the greatest announcer ever, but his voice is home to me — and would be more so if Herb Carneal was his partner. (Dad, does Carneal he only do home games now?)
Disadvantages: No commercials. Now, this might not immediately sound like a disadvantage, but it’s kind of weird to listen to a Twins game and never hear “You’ve got a lot more going for you with Hank, Hardware Hank!” or the catchy jingle for Treasure Island Resort and Casino. (I suppose Treasure Island is the Minnesota equivalent to Foxwoods.) Also, the dead air that they run instead always makes me worry that my connection has died. Oh well, I suppose I’ll get used to it.

My father sent me this… a blog to balance out Singapore Sox Fan, I suppose.
www.bat-girl.com

I just spent $14.95 on the MLB radio subscription to the 2005 season. Now I can listen to any major league game I want. I considered dropping $80 on MLB.tv, but there’s all sorts of blackout restrictions that would basically prevent me from watching any Red Sox game live. And since it’s based on the address on my credit card at the beginning of the season, this would apply even after I moved to Michigan. So radio it is.
The advantages? I just got to listen to Mariano Rivera blow a save in the 9th while at work. And I get all the vocal inflections that a sports.yahoo.com or espn.com updating box score doesn’t get you. Not to mention that tonight I will probably fall asleep to the end of the Twins-Mariners game.
The disadvantages? Well, maybe not a disadvantage. But as I was chatting with Harvey, I swear I heard the announcer say that Millar got a hit. But it turns out I heard wrong – it was Mueller. Or maybe the announcer said it wrong. In any event, the radio broadcast doesn’t allow me to check. So now I’m both listening and keeping the sports.yahoo.com window open, just in case my obsessive compulsive desires to look up statistics take over.
Oh, and the other disadvantage? I just heard Derek Jeter hit a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth to end the game. Damn him.

Well, that was not the game I wanted to spend my evening watching. Although I’ve got to say… Hideki Matsui is one heckuva ballplayer. He made the defensive play of the game by robbing Millar of a homerun in the 3rd and followed with a homerun of his own in the 8th. Yankee or not, I both respect and slightly fear the man.
According to the Red Sox post-game show, these were the two positive things that came out of this game:

• No one got hurt
• The Sox got to use their bullpen.

These were the only positive things that came out of this game?!?! Let’s hope for better things in future games.
Tomorrow, the Sox and Yanks take a day off. But the Twins, winners of this year’s Mayor’s Cup, open the season with an afternoon game in Seattle… which means 5:05 on the East Coast. Brad Radke’s set to get the start against Jamie Moyer.

Today is baseball day. Not only are the Red Sox playing the Yankees in the season opener, but WGBH is commemorating the day by showing the Ken Burns miniseries Baseball. I own the soundtrack and the companion coffee table book. One of these days, I’ll buy the DVD.
I’ve seen coverage of major league, minor league, negro league, and even the AAGBPL spanning from the 30s through the Dodgers and Giants move to California. And I’ll continue to watch until the first pitch of the 2005 season. And in the meantime, I bring you this vignette from somewhere in the mid-90s…

Move!
For four years, I played in the 13-16 year old age bracket of the Plymouth-Wayzata rec league. Once again, I was generally the first baseman, a direct result of the fact that I couldn’t throw, I had a solid glove, I was fairly tall, and mostly, I knew too much about the game and had too much of a big mouth to sit in the outfield picking daisies. My big mouth on the ballfield was sometimes entertaining and sometimes got me into trouble. But mostly, it was just how I liked to play.
In one particular game, the first base coach for the opposing team was somebody’s older brother, a member of the varsity baseball team. He was pretty cocky and I got the feeling that he was only helping out his little sister’s team because his father, the head coach, was making him. Needless to say, he didn’t think much of me or my team.
Early on in the game, someone hit a foul pop up to the right side. I turned to make the catch, only to find that this cocky-older-brother-coach was standing in my way. “Move!” I screamed, but he barely took a step. I tried to maneuver around him, but I didn’t get to the ball in time and I missed the catch. I was fuming – if I was going to miss an out like that, it was going to be my fault, not the fault of some supercilious high school jock who thought he was better than me just because he had a letter jacket.
Not exactly lacking in arrogance myself, I turned to the guy and told him that if another foul ball came to that area, he better move or I was going to move him. He rolled his eyes and said nothing. And that pretty much sealed the deal – this guy had it coming.
A few innings later, another pop foul was hit to the right side. Again, I went for it and noticed that the guy was once again not moving. “Move!” I yelled, again, a split second before I rammed him with my right shoulder while my left arm stretched out and made the catch. The schmuck fell over onto the dirt. With the ball proudly in my glove, I turned and looked at him.
“I warned you,” I said. “Next time, I’d move.”