It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO SPRING TRAINING.
1. March 5, 2008
Jupiter--New York Yankees President Hank Steinbrenner today called on Major League Baseball to count all preseason games toward the Major League Baseball Standings.
"The people of Jupiter will have their voices heard," screamed Steinbrenner. "We will not allow the tens of thousands of fans who have attended these games in good faith to be told they wasted three hours of their lives."
When asked why the Yankees had reserved their position prior to the pre-season that the games would not count, Steinbrenner responded angrily.
"These are the games that matter. You cannot win the AL East without taking games against important rivals like Toronto. How could a game against Toronto not count, while regular season Red Sox wins against unimportant teams like Kansas City and Minnesota be allowed to count?"
Critics responded harshly to Steinbrenner's claim.
"Hank Steinbrenner wants to change the rules when it suits him," said Red Sox CEO John W. Henry. “He didn’t favor this change until it gave the Yankees a 1.5 game lead over the Red Sox.”
Steinbrenner also, reportedly has been lobbying heavily for the inclusion of “supergames” games that would not be won on the field, but would be determined by a complex formula.
“The supergames should be free to send whoever is the best American League prospect for November,” insisted Steinbrenner.
2. When Jose first posted the press release above, someone suggest that it was from The Onion. Immediately, Jose got incredibly paranoid, because he goes to great lengths to avoid plagiarism. He is the sort of guy who footnotes excessively, and feels obliged, when mentioning batting averages, to point out that he is not the guy who invented the stat.
But that’s how it is these days. With the proliferation of the internet and large numbers of idiots writing at great length, it is exceedingly difficult to write anything that has not been vaguely mentioned somewhere or conceived by someone else.
As a result, Jose gets paranoid, very paranoid. He gets paranoid not least of all because it is often unclear exactly what is plagiarism and what is not. Sure, it’s plagiarism for an academic or a journalist to use someone else’s words or ideas without attribution, but is it when someone in a different profession does effectively the same thing?
Is it plagiarism when someone throws a circle change without thanking Frank Viola for the pitch? Every time Bartolo Colon puts on a pair of 64-inch waist pants this year, should he have to acknowledge Rich Garces for developing the idea of pants with a 64 inch waist?
When an ump calls a phantom tag, shouldn’t he have to cite Tim Tschida? When a pitcher loses a playoff game to Jeff Suppan, shouldn’t he have to cite Roger Clemens?
These are serious issues, and Jose demands a Congressional inquiry.
3. Quick question: Do Hank Steinbrenner and Serb Prime Minster Vojislav Kostuncia have the same speech writers? Let’s compare:
Steinbrenner: "Red Sox Nation? What a bunch of (nonsense) that is. "That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans.”
Kostunica: “For the citizens of Serbia, for Serbia, there is no and will never be a fake state of Kosovo on its territory”
Steinbrenner: “This is a Yankee country. We're going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.”
Kostunica “We must focus on decisions of historic importance and annul once and for all any act of the separatist Albanians and confirm that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia"
It’s not precisely the same, it’s just that if Kostunica had said “"The Republic of Kosovo? What a bunch of (nonsense) that is. That was a creation of the U.S. and Europe, which is filled with Albanians.” Would it have sounded odd to anyone?
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO SPRING TRAINING.
Showing posts with label Tschida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tschida. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 5
Monday, September 10
Let's Go to The Video Tape
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Over the weekend Jose saw a nifty little indie flick called “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” about the battle to be the all time Donkey Kong champion.
In the film, challenger Steve Wiebe, a middle school science teacher breaks the Donkey Record set by Holyoke native and hot sauce Billy Mitchell in 1982, but the record breaking performance, videotaped at Wiebe’s Redmond, Washington home, is disallowed because it is a video tape of an uncertified machine. Also, because of corruption. It was like Tim Donaghy was refereeing.
Yet, when Wiebe breaks Mitchell’s record at Funspot in New Hampshire, a video tape sent in by Mitchell with an even higher score is played immediately after Wiebe’s record setting performance and is validated by officials as the true record. So in one case, a video tape is disallowed, while in another case it is allowed. The most remarkable think is that Tim Tschida wasn’t even the official making the decisions.
But Jose does not mean to relentlessly and needlessly summarize for you a movie that you should all go see. No, Jose is trying to make a point here. As it becomes clearer that the Red Sox and Yankees will both make the playoffs and a meeting in the ALCS becomes possible, we need to prepare for a Yankee bid to skip the ALCS games and send in video tapes instead.
Jose can see it now. The Red Sox show up for Game 1 at Fenway. The crowd is jumping, the national anthem is electric, but where are the Yankees? They are absent, too smug to even take the field. Instead, there is only a video playing on the jumbotron of the Yankees crushing the Orioles 15-2, or some such lopsided score. The officials consult and Tim Tschida rules that since there is no way the Red Sox would have gotten 15 runs off of Wang, the Yankees will be awarded the game.
Alternatively, Jose could see a situation where the Red Sox are up 3-2 going to the ninth and the Yankees demand to play a video tape of A-Rod’s game winning home run off of Papelbon earlier in the season rather than actually playing the inning.
Jose is not saying that this is going to happen. Jose is just saying that there is precedent and we should keep our eyes open.
2. Jose has thought a lot about the whole Michael Vick dog fighting thing this summer and it keeps bothering him. While dog fighting is brutal and wrong, Jose cannot help but think that there are a lot of folks out there who care way more about animals than humans. This is f’d up. For instance, Jose went to a Darfur fundraiser over the weekend and listened to Harvard Professor Samantha Power recount a story of why Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder had claimed that there wasn’t more interest in the Rwandan Genocide even as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. Schroeder, a smart lady, pointed out that her office got hundreds of calls on endangered species in contrast to the few they got on Rwanda. Nothing happened not only because of political cowardice, but because of the will of the people—the people cared more about animals that Rwandans.
Jose is not saying it’s necessary, but he would gladly let bald eagles clutching maces in their talons fight nunchuck toting whooping cranes to the death in order to stop genocide. If you care more about people than whooping cranes, call 1-800-GENOCIDE and tell your representatives to support intervention in Darfur.
There is one addendum to this though. Jose is not totally convinced that this is about animals in general rather than dogs in particular. People seem to really like dogs, way more than cats. And unlike ferret ownership, Rudy Giuliani does not regard dog owning as a form of mental illness.
So Jose asks you this: If Michael Vick was not running a dog fighting ring and instead was running monkey knife fights would he still be in the NFL? Jose says yes. While monkey knife fighting is only legal in international waters, as indicated by The Simpsons, it is not harshly punished in the U.S. In 2006, two Missouri men were arrested for organizing monkey knife fights, but did you ever hear about it? Nope.
3. In other news, contrary to published reports former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will not be visiting DRays starter Scott “Disputed Province of” Kazmir prior to this evening’s game. Sharif’s plan to visit Kazmir and advise him on taking a more aggressive strategy against the Red Sox were thwarted when he was deported to Saudi Arabia this morning.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Over the weekend Jose saw a nifty little indie flick called “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” about the battle to be the all time Donkey Kong champion.
In the film, challenger Steve Wiebe, a middle school science teacher breaks the Donkey Record set by Holyoke native and hot sauce Billy Mitchell in 1982, but the record breaking performance, videotaped at Wiebe’s Redmond, Washington home, is disallowed because it is a video tape of an uncertified machine. Also, because of corruption. It was like Tim Donaghy was refereeing.
Yet, when Wiebe breaks Mitchell’s record at Funspot in New Hampshire, a video tape sent in by Mitchell with an even higher score is played immediately after Wiebe’s record setting performance and is validated by officials as the true record. So in one case, a video tape is disallowed, while in another case it is allowed. The most remarkable think is that Tim Tschida wasn’t even the official making the decisions.
But Jose does not mean to relentlessly and needlessly summarize for you a movie that you should all go see. No, Jose is trying to make a point here. As it becomes clearer that the Red Sox and Yankees will both make the playoffs and a meeting in the ALCS becomes possible, we need to prepare for a Yankee bid to skip the ALCS games and send in video tapes instead.
Jose can see it now. The Red Sox show up for Game 1 at Fenway. The crowd is jumping, the national anthem is electric, but where are the Yankees? They are absent, too smug to even take the field. Instead, there is only a video playing on the jumbotron of the Yankees crushing the Orioles 15-2, or some such lopsided score. The officials consult and Tim Tschida rules that since there is no way the Red Sox would have gotten 15 runs off of Wang, the Yankees will be awarded the game.
Alternatively, Jose could see a situation where the Red Sox are up 3-2 going to the ninth and the Yankees demand to play a video tape of A-Rod’s game winning home run off of Papelbon earlier in the season rather than actually playing the inning.
Jose is not saying that this is going to happen. Jose is just saying that there is precedent and we should keep our eyes open.
2. Jose has thought a lot about the whole Michael Vick dog fighting thing this summer and it keeps bothering him. While dog fighting is brutal and wrong, Jose cannot help but think that there are a lot of folks out there who care way more about animals than humans. This is f’d up. For instance, Jose went to a Darfur fundraiser over the weekend and listened to Harvard Professor Samantha Power recount a story of why Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder had claimed that there wasn’t more interest in the Rwandan Genocide even as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. Schroeder, a smart lady, pointed out that her office got hundreds of calls on endangered species in contrast to the few they got on Rwanda. Nothing happened not only because of political cowardice, but because of the will of the people—the people cared more about animals that Rwandans.
Jose is not saying it’s necessary, but he would gladly let bald eagles clutching maces in their talons fight nunchuck toting whooping cranes to the death in order to stop genocide. If you care more about people than whooping cranes, call 1-800-GENOCIDE and tell your representatives to support intervention in Darfur.
There is one addendum to this though. Jose is not totally convinced that this is about animals in general rather than dogs in particular. People seem to really like dogs, way more than cats. And unlike ferret ownership, Rudy Giuliani does not regard dog owning as a form of mental illness.
So Jose asks you this: If Michael Vick was not running a dog fighting ring and instead was running monkey knife fights would he still be in the NFL? Jose says yes. While monkey knife fighting is only legal in international waters, as indicated by The Simpsons, it is not harshly punished in the U.S. In 2006, two Missouri men were arrested for organizing monkey knife fights, but did you ever hear about it? Nope.
3. In other news, contrary to published reports former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will not be visiting DRays starter Scott “Disputed Province of” Kazmir prior to this evening’s game. Sharif’s plan to visit Kazmir and advise him on taking a more aggressive strategy against the Red Sox were thwarted when he was deported to Saudi Arabia this morning.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
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