I love this move! Baseball kicks ass.

I am getting up for work at 5am tomorrow morning so I can get out at 2:30, get to the light rail station, and be at the airport for my 4:55 flight. To FT. MYERS! Oh man, this trip wasn't even on my bucket list, that is how impossible I thought it was. The entire time I was growing up I tried to follow spring training ball, and naturally lost track until the final rosters were set, and the Home Opener arrived. It never even occurred to me that I could go until I got a job that paid me money. 2009 kicks ass!

I am already off topic. Yes, I am leaving tomorrow. That is not the point. The point is that in my nervous, spazzy, energetic attempt to fall asleep at 9:15 I found myself browsing the MLB section of ESPN.com. Not really a lot of interesting things there usually, considering America hates baseball now, but tonight I got lucky. I read an article that made me feel great about the nation's pasttime. SOME people are still thinking about this game the right way. Playing ball first, money second.

David Price is starting the year in AAA

I love this move. This guy was a stud down the stretch as a call-up. He did amazingly well in the post season. This team has every reason to ride this kid hard into the '09 season to keep the fans they got and show they have a future ace right now. Instead they are going to make sure he gets the innings and the fine-tuning he needs so that when he turns pro fulltime, he never looks back (a la Liriano).

Bravo, Rays. I have always thought of you as a hopeless perennial doormat that was destined to be forever vexed by the Fluke of '08 and the Curse of the East Division. I stand corrected. You might just be a legit organzition yet.

Baseball!

Don Johnson VII

Ever since I bought my 2007 Nissan Versa, better knows as Don Johnson, I have made a new mixed CD at every oil change. As I approach 21,000 miles and its corresponding check-up I am working on the track list for DJ:7. Usually I like a nice mix of upbeat pop music, danceable hip-hop, and rocking rock songs that rock. The one criterion that has connected each part of this album series is that the first track always has to do with cars or transportation in some way. For example, here are some examples for you to exemplify with.

DJ:5
Drive - Jonathan Coulton
Paper Planes - M.I.A
Shut Up - Black Eyed Peas
Show Me What You Got - Jay Z
Dancing Machine - Jackson 5
Where You Are - Jackson 5
What About Love - Heart
Alone - Heart
Never Let You Go - Steelheart
Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now - Starship
Holding My Own - The Darkness
Higher - Damn Yankees
I Remember You - Skid Row
Man Who Murdered Love - XTC
I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - The Jayhawks
Not About You - Jonathan Coulton
The Town Crotch - Jonathan Coulton
Make You Cry - Jonathan Coulton
2 Become 1 - Spice Girls
UnBreak My Heart - Toni Braxton

DJ:6
One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back - The Darkness
Girlfriend - The Darkness
Single Ladies - Beyonce
Disturbia - Rihanna
One More Drink - Ludacris
Kick Push - Lupe Fiasco
Got It From My Mama - Will.i.am
Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson
Beautiful Nightmare - Beyonce
Love Is A Battlefield - Pat Benatar
Rock'n'Roll - Eric Hutchinson
Knockers - The Darkness
My Name Is Jonas - Weezer
You Found Me- The Fray
Tearing Up My Heart - NSync
All I Have To Give - Backstreet Boys
Build Me Up Buttercup - The Foundations
Amy- Pure Prairie League
Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
The Hot Stepper - Ini Kamoze

I am really into making these CDs. I take the track order and all that stuff pretty seriously. Not "High Fidelity" seriously, but I still put a decent amount of thought into it.

I have gone through and just added in any song I have thought of for this next album and still only have 73 minutes out of 80 taken up. Many of those songs won't make the cut, so really I am short quite a few songs so far. I have around 700 miles to figure this out. If anyone would like to make a suggestion, feel free. Also, if anyone likes to sing/yell with the windows down and the summer breeze in your hair, you should come ride with me sometime.

SPOILER ALERT:
PS- The two songs that are absolute locks for DonJohnson 7 are "Punch You In The Jeans" by The Lonely Island, and "Toxic" by Britney Spears. There is another track that was actually the first song that got me thinking about this, but it is so awesome I am not even going to waste it by mentioning it here. It will be early on the album, and it would behoove you to find yourself in my car sometime in the next 3000 miles.

NO MORE SPOILERS:
I am WAY behind on my write-up of the Twins in 2009. I have a lot on my plate at work right now, as well as trying to get ready for Spring Training. I will probably push it back until I have sweet eye witness accounts from Ft. Myers. Sorry if anyone was looking forward to that.

Oh Ver Ray Ted

I recently read a blog written by James Gunn (horror film writer/director, and the former Mr. Jenna Fischer). He sat down with a few of his friends and hammered out a list of the 100 Most Over Rated Things Ever. This list was created on the foundation of establishing what the rating of anything currently was, and how much higher it was than it deserved to be. This is not a list of things that suck. It is a list of things with too high a rating from society at large. I think this was a fantastic idea. Listing 100 things that suck, but are somehow beloved in the mainstream would have been so easy, and so in fashion, that I really respect his distinguishing of a totally different kind of assessment.

Here a few excerpts from his list. He gave no explanation on any except his number one pick, which I disagree with on the sole issue that I don't think it's current rating is very high anyway, so for it to be overrated it would have to actually deserve a zero (which I believe is his exact belief).

89. SHREK
84. Yoga
74. Kevin Spacey
60. Porsches
51. Chiropractors
51. Chiropractors
39. Girl Scout Cookies
33. The Liberty Bell
17. Tom Hanks
11. Jon Stewart, post 2007
5. Jazz
2. Led Zeppelin
1. Unicorns

You can look up his blog if you want to see his unicorn argument. Speaking as someone on a dodgeball team called The Rainbow Unicorns, I think the current rating of unicorns is appropriate. I even think they may be underrated now that wizards and vampires have taken over the hearts of children. How about a wholesome fake creature instead of those devil worshippers, eh? Unicorns can't be played by a teen heart throb in a motion picture franchise, that is the problem.

Getting back on point, I recently started up an informal discussion about things I thought were overrated at a dodgeball tournament with the afore mentioned kickass team. We talked about it and threw some options back and forth during our down time between games. It really is a fun discussion. I am going to list a few things here, and hopefully those of you that have found your way to this blog will add to the discussion.

My Number One Most Overrated Thing Ever: DOGS
I do not hate dogs, nor am I in any way a fan. They are incredibly high maintenance, to the point of taking over the owner's entire life. They smell, they are loud, and they are attention mongers. They require almost constant supervision. They require assistance to relieve themselves. They attack visitors, and almost always go for the crotch. Save for that last point, they are exactly like a baby. A baby that will never grow up and begin taking care of itself, or even communicating with you in anything but grunts and eye contact. Ugh, why is everyone so in love with dogs?! They may be cool, but they are in no way deserving of the "everyone should love them or else they are heartless" level they seem to have established.

Other picks:
New Years- Seriously? Not that big of a deal everyone. You shouldn't be clamoring for fake reasons to celebrate and go crazy when the late November-December period is pretty much a constant pot luck/gift exchange anyway.

24- Do you know how many tortured heroes are seemingly unkillable, taking down bad guys left and right, and still have their own demons to battle? Jack Bauer cannot possibly be that great. The Chuck Norris set of jokes was cool because he is so old, on a canceled CBS series, and obviously an ironic non-idol. People seem to really think that Jack Bauer is like a badass Jesus. Come off it America.

Fantasy Football- This phenomenon has single handedly made the NFL the new national past time. Men with cubicle jobs and the women that want to bang them have all centered their lives around assessing injuries and potential yardage in the slot for a tight end (that's what she said). Professional football as its own event is not that impressive, and I think everyone can agree the rules get semi-ridiculous. In the era of 24-hour news coverage, High-Def broadcasts, and DVR the fans have almost more insight into the game than the players and coaches. Armchair quarterbacks are now keyboard offensive coordinators. It is kind of ridiculous, there I said it.

Pizza (american delivery style)- It's everyone's default favorite food. Everyone will eat it anytime. Why? Bread, sauce, cheese, all of low quality. It also takes about 45 minutes to get it once you decide you're hungry. I like pizza a lot, but sometimes I wonder why.

These are just a few of mine. Dogs and New Years I stand behind, the others were just for the point of instigating. Your thoughts?

The Diamond is This Girl's Best Friend: Baseball & Me

I remember sitting along the 3rd base line of my t-ball field at the tender age of four years old. I was batting 5th in our lineup, and I was talking with the boy who was batting cleanup. He was bragging about batting fourth, which even then we all knew was reserved for the power hitters. I agreed with him and said that he could probably be a DH he was so good (I was young and didn't understand that the designated hitter was created to elongate the careers of the washed up). He wasn't sure what DH meant, and so I explained the position of designated hitter to him, and went back to chewing the laces off of my glove.

I have always loved baseball. I have always to be a student of the game. I enjoy how the speed of the game is such that there is plenty of time to think everything through. I love its introspective nature and they way it is several solo efforts combined into a team performance. Most of my earliest memories are of Little League or Knothole Night at the Metrodome. It's been a life long love affair, but it has been a very dynamic one.

I spent many summer evenings running around my backyard diving after pop ups my Dad would throw just out of range. I imagined myself as Dan Gladden streaking across left field. I mastered catching a tough fly to my glove side, planting my right foot as I spun around and using my momentum to hurl in a powerful throw to my cutoff man, just like Danny. My defense was fine tuned. However, my tiny girl arms meant that I was never going to become an offensive force. Watching the Twins win the 1991 World Series as my idol landed on home plate swarmed by his teammates fed my passion throughout elementary school.

I played with the boys through the summer after sixth grade, long after most of the other girls left for softball. I played both softball and baseball that year to prepare myself for the transition. It was a rough summer. I played two years of slow pitch leading up to trying out for high school fastpitch. Again, offense was not my forte, and I was a defensive replacement for Varsity starting in 10th grade. I was a captain by the time I was a senior, but still batted around .210 every year with a load of sac bunts.

I was, and still am, a headcase out on the field. I mutter situations to myself. I talk through the outs and the runners, where the play is going. I would chatter in the infield, but stick to saying all the cliches twice ("Infield going one now, infield going one" or "Nice pitch Shooter, nice pitch," or my favorite "Here we go now, here we go"). Fastpitch isn't really anything at all like baseball in terms of the mentaliy of the game. The infield is so small and the action is almost entirely beween the pitcher and the batter. Walk-strikeout-bunt, that's it. Infielders had to be cat-like and outfielders had to have cannons.

I have played on at least one Adult Rec league softball team every year since. I like to say I have a 22 year career going, but it's been hard to think that I have anything to do with baseball anymore when slowpitch is all I have left. I still list my two favorite smells as baseball dirt and cut grass. Everytime I see a pyramid sun in the sky I know it means it is baseball season. This is the game that I have spent my life with, and it will always be my first and truest love.

I decided that after the year I had in 2008 that 2009 needed to be better. I needed to find something to focus my life on that was just for me. I needed a way to feel content and stable. 2009 is going to be a renewal of my dedication to my Twins and my sport. I went to around 25 games last season, and kept a book at a few, but wasn't engrossed like I usually am. I live across the street from the HomerDome now, and am recommiting myself. I am accomplishing 3 lifelong goals this year: I have season tickets, I am going to Spring Training, and I am going to watch my Local 9 play at Wrigley Field. I have put over a month's salary into this season so far, and the starters haven't even pitched 5 innings in a game yet. This is going to be my year.

I will write later on my views on the current roster for your Minnesota Twins. I will also share my philosophy on how the game should be played. I simply wanted to give a small, and not nearly as poetic as I had hoped, backstory on my baseball history. As you will learn soon enough, I value heart over skill everytime, so get used to getting an opinion that is backed by numbers almost none percent of the time.

Inaugural Blog

I have moved away from the archaic xanga site to this hip and with-it blogger site to continue my e-pursuits into discourse and discussion. All of the blogs that I read are on this site, save for the The Office cast members on myspace, so now I feel like I am a part of the e-community of e-procrastination again.

I used my former blog as a random mash of personal reflection, anecdote preservation, and the critique of the television shows that I like (primarily the now defunct Gilmore Girls). I think this weblog will steer away from being a whiny journal for my personal life and focus mainly on the skewering of the Four Things I Think About: Local Sports Teams, Television, Adult Rec Sports, Awesome Miscellanea. There will probably be the odd post about a crummy day, but for the most part I am using this as a way to get back into the semi-creative writing at a B- level that I used to crank out in high school.

This was my introductory blog. I will follow up shortly with a feature that, knowing my temperament, will most likely be a frequent column; What are my hopes and dreams pinned on now?