Griping about the Royals

I don't follow the baseball season much when it is going on. I tend to like the history of the game more than what is currently going on on the field. Part of this I suspect is my inability to attach myself to teams.

Nonetheless, I do follow some players by default. I operate the websites delawarebaseball.com and hawaii-baseball.com which, in part, involves me tracking what is going on with current players who are natives of those states.

All this leads to my continued disappointment in the Kansas City Royals. I was really jazzed when they promoted Kila Ka'aihue to the big club. I didn't know what the Royals were thinking when they sent him to Omaha in the first place. It's not like the Royals have a ton of offense. I didn't understand why they played Mike Jacobs over him last season. Still, I thought that maybe finally the Royals woke up, saw that Kila was hitting .304/.466./.620 and saw that they had a guy who can draw walks and hit for power. I mean let's not forget that the last Royals player to hit thirty home runs was Steve Balboni. So they bring up Kila and what do they do? They sit him on the bench. Come on. What's the thinking? Has it been too long since you had the first pick in the amateur draft and you want to outlose the Astros?

Yes, it is tough since Butler and Guillen are probably the two best hitters on the Royals and they play first and DH which does block Kila. But then why bother? Why bring him up if you're going to have him sit.

My frustration, though, is that I'm checking the boxscore every day and he's not in there. I'd love to see him play more and finally get a chance. I'd love to see Kila dealt to a team like the A's or Red Sox who would appreciate his skills. I know, though, that it likely won't be long until he's back in Omaha, having his abilities wasted some more. Grrrrr......

Ex Libris

What a fantastic book this was. Ex Libris is a collection of essays by Anne Fadiman on the reading and writing of books. I realized as I was reading them that, despite my efforts and intentions, I am definitely more of a reader than a writer. Her essays on reading I understood even if I didn't exactly agree with them. The writing ones would have led me to look at her askance had she been telling them to me in person.

There are eighteen essays in all covering topics such as merging libraries upon marriage, the care and storage of books, big words, books and family and much more. Many of them are very funny inciting some definite laugh out loud moments. At times, there is a certain amount of arrogance on Fadiman's part, as if her and her writer husband and writer parents have experienced pleasure from books that the majority have not. My pleasures have certainly been different from hers - I have no idea what it is like to be married to a writer or to grow up in a house chock full of books let alone books written by my parents - but it certainly doesn't make my enjoyment less than hers.

It's the occasional lapse into holier-than-thou that prevents me from giving this a two star rating. A must, though, for lovers of books.

Stick Out Your Tongue

The other short book I picked up while I was waiting for my holds to come in could not be saved from an awful rating by it's lack of length. Part of me feels like I should appreciate this book more than I do because the Chinese government banned it. In the afterword, Ma talks about why it was and the problems he had with the government because of it (this took place eighteen years ago, the book was only published in English five years ago). Ma states that when he heard the news the announcer claimed that "this filthy and shameful work has nothing to do with reality, but is instead the product of the author's imagination and his obsessive desire for sex and money". That's actually what I got out of it.

According to the dustjacket flap, the book is about the travels in Tibet of a Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart. That may be. There are five chapters which come across more as short stories. There is no interlinking of the stories, no reason to think that they are all told by one narrator and the narrator is so minor, it wouldn't matter if he was traveling because his marriage fell apart or any other reason. There is one line in the fourth story which indicates that the narrator is no longer married. Other than that, there is no mention. No reflections, no discussion over why the marriage ended. Total throwaway line.

The stories themselves are bizarre, mystical and creepy sexual. In the one, a woman marries brothers but also sleeps with a guard protecting a phone line to a village. In another, a man has sex with his mother and daughter (who is the result of his dalliances with his mother. It's not a family tree, it's a family circle). Yet another has a woman essentially being raped as part of a Buddhist initiation rite. And much like the details of the narrator, the details of the locales where these stories take place don't matter all that much. Because of the mystical nature of them (are they dreams? are they reality?) they could take place anywhere where there are yaks and monks (about the only discerning features of the environment). You could make a drinking game out of this book where everyone has to drink whenever yak butter is mentioned. You would get drunk after about thirty pages.

I wanted to think that this book was banned because it took a strong political stance and brought to light injustices in China. Instead, it just made me think that the Chinese government has taste and morals.

New SABR Baseball Card Committee

If you've been holding out on joining the Society for American Baseball Research and are a card collector, hold out no longer. SABR now has a new baseball card committee.

I am in my twentieth year as a member of SABR and highly recommend it to anyone interested in baseball. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line.

Last Night at the Lobster

Darn budget cuts. Because of cutbacks, our book transport service now takes longer than it did to deliver hold requests from other libraries. So I've been waiting for some holds to come in and grabbed a couple of quick, small one-day reads to tie me over until the books I want come in.

The first was Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster. O'Nan wrote a book with Stephen King on the Red Sox called Faithful which I own but have not read. After reading Last Night I'm in no hurry.

Sad and pointless. That's how I sum up this book. The book is about the final day of a Red Lobster restaurant in Connecticut. The restaurant is being shut down because it has been an underperformer and the story centers around the manager, Manny. Manny is Hispanic. You know how I know? He uses the word abuelita every three pages. Otherwise, he could be anybody. I guess O'Nan wanted to be able to reuse the story if necessary. "You want the manager to be German? Let's see....Find, Replace..."

Manny is supposed to be sympathetic in that his restaurant is being closed. He, however, has been transferred to an Olive Garden where he will be assistant manager. He had enjoyed a fling previously with one of his waitresses, Jacquie, and he still longs for her. He's preoccupied with her since they will no longer be working with one another. It shouldn't really matter since Manny has impregnated his girlfriend and Jacquie is dating an illegal alien who is a semi-pro cricket bowler (really? In Connecticut?).

The last night of the restaurant being open most of the staff does not come in. Of those who do, some leave early with one storming off in a huff and breaking car windshields. None of it matters as a blizzard hits and only one couple eats at the restaurant in the final eight hours or so.

In the acknowledgments, O'Nan thanks his family for putting up with a year of Red Lobster talk. It seems like O'Nan spent a year talking to Red Lobster employees, found out how the restaurant works, got a few good stories from them with which to populate his, and then just cobbled it all together. Pointless.

Thankfully, it is a short book. If it had taken me a few days to read, I might have put it in the avoid category.

Updates and Derby aftermath

Well, my fear and loathing of Calvin Borel was appropriate as he took yet another Kentucky Derby in the wet. Darn him. I started the morning well by taking of four of six races in Beulah Park's final Pick 6. Well in the sense of picking four winners. Not well in the sense of not winning any money.

On the baseball front, after a delay in starting his season because of an injury, Josh Prince has been struggling at Class A Brevard County hitting .204/.259/.296 with three steals. He has been a little rough in the field as well.

Yu Darvish is having another fantastic start for the Fighters. He is 4-2 and third in the league in ERA at 1.96. His 67 strikeouts leads the league (in 55 innings) and he has surrendered just one home run.

I've returned to wine after a long hiatus. In the early 1990's I was really into Australian wine, got out of wine altogether, but based on Gary Vaynerchuk's influence have gotten back into it. I'm probably going to start talking about some of the wines I've had this year (I haven't had an awful lot).

A couple book reviews are backlogged and will be published this week. I almost have packages ready to be sent out. Think that about covers it.

Derby models

Right now it looks like rain for the Derby which will likely make a mess out of my models. This Derby is really interesting. Had Eskendereya been running it, he would have been the clear favorite. As it is, it looks wide open. So despite my love for Sidney's Candy, I think I may have to consider some other betting options.

I'm not going play by play like I did last year. Here's what I have as the probable odds (bold are horses where the models like better than the morning line):

99-1: Homeboykris, Make Music For Me
64-1: Paddy O'Prado
62-1: Backtalk
41-1: Dean's Kitten
35-1: Line of David
34-1: Ice Box
30-1: Stately Victor
29-1: Devil May Care
24-1: Awesome Act
18-1: Noble's Promise
17-1: Lookin at Lucky
16-1: Mission Impazible, Dublin
13-1: Discreetly Mine
12-1: American Lion
11-1: Jackson Bend
9-1: Super Saver, Conveyance
8-1: Sidney's Candy

I'm liking that the morning favorite, Lookin at Lucky, ranks ninth according to the models. Bodes well for me. I'm not one to question Bob Baffert (one of two bobbleheads I own is of him. The other is Torii Hunter) normally but you're really going to take the blinkers off your horse in a 20 horse field?

Super Saver looks like he could win because of lunatic Calvin Borel and the potential for rain. Definite upset potential there.

Dean's Kitten is a bit bizarre. Since when do the Ramsey's have a Derby contender not trained by Bob Baffert? And who thinks that a career turf horse is really going to take the Derby?

Update: I discovered a data error for Mission Impazible. The models have been rerun since this was first posted an hour and a half ago.