Getting prepped

My office today before the kickoff of USA-Slovenia.

Ole, ole, ole, ole!

What a win by Mexico tonight. I went to watch Les Bleus chez Plagnol tonight, so it wasn't a jubilant atmosphere. The first goal was beautiful, especially because you have to understand the offside rule to fully appreciate it. The timing by Hernandez to break the offside trap was perfect, and he didn't panic when faced with a one-on-one against the French keeper, Lloris. Now I'm super nervous about the USA-Slovenia game tomorrow, working out all possible group standings depending on results. Bottom line is the USA needs a W.

On Abbreviations and Gambling

I'm trying to maximize interest in the World Cup by placing bets on it in various ways, including:

1. Taking the USA to beat England on Saturday at an actual bookie (I stupidly placed this bet too early, and got 9/2 odds. All the goobers here betting on England have run them up to 13/2.)
2. A sweepstake at work where teams are randomly assigned to people. I got Switzerland and Greece, so there's a fiver down the tube.
3. A fantasy league (still negotiating the amount).
4. A group stage bracket prediction pool
5. Hopefully some random side bets on various games being watched chez Carl on his giant TV.

In all the correspondence on these topics I've been told to abbreviate it as the CdM (Coupe de Monde) because apparently WC doesn't show enough respect for the game.

A new hobby

The Sanger Cricket Club plays in an intramural Cambridge league with other teams from University departments and similar entities. The level of skill is highly variable from former top-tier University and county players to complete amateurs.

I quickly adopted cricket as my preferred local 'watching' sport when I moved to the UK, and last year I lurked on the cricket email list and watched one of the matches, but never actually held a bat or ball in anger. This year, however, I decided to enlist a bunch of friends as encouragement to actively participate, and have thus been attending practices for the last couple of months along with four other Human Genetics newbies (one of us is actually a ringer, but the others have either never played (me) or last played as kids).

I'm still pretty terrible, but I've been really enjoying competing in a sport for the first time since youth soccer, approximately 20 years ago. All five of the HumGen boys were selected for our second match last week, so a bunch of other people in our department turned out to watch, since the home pitch is on the Sanger grounds (founding director and Nobel laureate Sir John Sulston insisted that the institute should have a pitch on site). In order to give the spectators a show, but to the detriment of our team's chances, Carl and I (pictured above) opened the batting.

I was super nervous as I stood in to face the first bowler, but after a couple of prods which rolled straight to the fielder at short mid-wicket I managed to slap a shot forward of square leg to the boundary (which scores four runs). Because it's a limited over game and since Carl and I weren't exactly racking up runs after the first couple of overs, I started slashing at pretty much everything and edged it to the keeper during my second over.

We managed to set a pretty decent total (149) after our 20 overs, so we took the field and put the game in the hands of our string of decent bowlers including two (Tejas and James) from the HumGen crowd. I spent most of our fielding innings in the doldrums of deep square leg and deep point, but did make a couple of decent plays at long stop. Carl made the catch of the game playing in cover, and our boys generally took wickets at a good pace. The opponents had only racked up about 100 runs with three overs to go, so our captain handed me the ball to bowl an over. My first two balls were nervously wide, but I settled in and managed to get through it while only yielding a few runs (bear in mind I was facing the very tail end of their batting order).

Anyway, it was awesome, and last night should've been my second appearance, but was rained out. More updates soon!

In the awesome names category

I can't help but giggle every time I see an Ashes headline about English bowler Graham Onions, like "Onions and Anderson rip through Australia". In related news, looks like the tourists are being thrashed in the first innings of the 3rd Ashes test!

Say it ain't so!

Big Papi on the juice!

Speedracer

The Sox won a nailbiter last night as Big Papi chugged home from second on a Youkilis single. After the game, Youk had the following to say:

“Even though Papi is probably
not running that well right now, he put it into second gear.”

I love how Ortiz's high gear is second, implying that he's cruising around in first at 5mph most of the time. Just like me trying to learn to drive stick.

Sometimes I wish I rooted for the Royals

I'm going to be in Boston for a week at the beginning of May, so I checked the Sox' schedule to see if I got see a game while home. Turns out the only two home games while I'm there are a Saturday/Sunday pair against Tampa Bay.

Both sold out.

An early May game against the Rays is already sold out? Geez.

Tito

Kyle Farnsworth threw a nearly 100 mph heater at Manny's head last night. After the game, Boston manager Terry Francona was asked about his reaction to the pitch:

Asked about the pained expression on his face when it happened,
Francona said, "I had gas. I was just glad it didn't hit Manny. A 98 at
your lips is going to hurt."

Suspicious

Last year at this time Gabe 'the Babe' Kapler was managing in the Sox minor league system. He came out of retirement, however, to play for the Brewers in 2008, and currently has four home runs in 26 at-bats. This is a dude who's mustered that many home runs in only two of the last seven seasons. Given his historical rate of one homer per 36 ABs (generous, since he's 32, now), there's only a half-a-percent chance this streak would occur by chance. Not impossible by any means, but he might want to cool it for a while before Senator Mitchell comes knocking.

Lie-rockets in flight

Jon Stewart had some amusing commentary on the Rocket's testimony before Congress last week, and I have a question of my own. What kind of weak-ass defense is it to claim that Andy Pettite "misremembered" their conversation about HGH, and that it was Clemens' wife who was juicing? WTF? Sure, that sounds plausible; I comment to my friend that my wife is using HGH and he misunderstands me to be confessing to blatantly cheating? How did he not get hammered more about this? Pettite is the smoking gun for me, because he has no reason to make up a story about Clemens, but has every reason in the world to protect his friend.

High comedy

From Edes' column on yesterday's Sox win:

Ortiz was still light on his feet after the game, dancing in the buff
back and forth in the shower room while singing over and over at the
top of his lungs the theme from "Monday Night Football."
"Dah-dah-dah-DAH, dah-dah-dah-DAH," sang Ortiz, apparently jacked up
that the team's fantasy football draft was about to commence as soon as
he could find a towel.

Ugh

Orioles colour guy as Aubrey Huff steps in against Schill:

Huff has faced Schilling innumerable times. [pause] 39 at-bats coming into this game.

Ugh.

They're no Don and Jerry

The Mariners' booth team last night (Dave Sims and Dave Niehaus) were pretty miserable. Sims has an irritating voice that he uses to spew out lots of grim baseball clichés. Niehaus, on the other hand, is just getting a little old to be on TV:

Niehaus: Well, Dave, I remember a classic game between Seattle and Boston that went 19 innings. John Olerud won that game with a home run. I forget which inning he hit it, must've been the 14th or 15th.

Sims: Um, wouldn't he have hit it in the 19th?

Niehaus: Why, yes, I guess you're right!

Jack Cox

The Jack Cox Cup is Oxford's interdepartmental cricket cup. A few of my friends play on the Medical Research team, and the games are held on the oval next to the University Club, which affords excellent game-watching opportunities from its outdoor balcony. A few of us headed down after work yesterday to drink a couple of beers and watch the game against the Geography department.

Robbo is pictured here after an excellent smash, and a few more photos are on Facebook. The good guys won, 104 for 3, after the Geographers went 102 all out.

Cano

Robinson Cano evidently had a problem with Mike Lowell in last night's Sox-Yanks game:

"He [Lowell] played dirty because he threw his elbow at me, but that's the game
of baseball," Cano said. "I have to protect myself any time I have to
tag somebody. I have no complaints about it."

Umm, actually, aren't you complaining about it right now? Isn't what you're doing the very definition of the word "complaint"?

"I've never had a problem with him before. Today he threw his elbow at me, but I never say anything."

Oh, you never say anything! How gentlemanly of you!

McCarver

This anti-McCarver tirade at FJM had tears rolling down my face. High comedy.

Qualitas

Mahiminator and I decided to grab a couple kebabs and an 8 pack of Bud and come into the office today to project MLB.tv in the conference room for the BOS-NYY game. So far not too sweet (currently in the 7th, 2-0 in favour of the forces of evil) but I had to mention a quality Tim McCarver moment.

Yankees' starter gets hit by a comebacker on the first play of the game and then Youk comes up to face him with Lugo on first (reaching on the aforementioned play). While everyone is getting reset to get back into the action McCarver spends two minutes ranting about how Lugo should run on the first pitch because the pitcher will be too distracted by his aching leg to pay attention to the runner.

"It would be funny if he threw to first right away," says Mahim.

First pitch is a pickoff at first; hilarity ensues.

Back to back to back to back

Just checked out the Sox 4-straight-homer-barrage on YourTube on a whim. Wow. I don't think I've ever heard Fenway go that nuts — by the time Varitek came to the plate it was nonstop noise, and then he goes deep! If you haven't seen it, cheggidout.

Also, the ESPN booth crew sucks.

For benoc

Quotation from Castiglione calling tonight's Sox game:

Manny's hit two balls to the walls...

You said it man!