John's posts with tag: baseball
|  | For the hell of it, I was checking Amazon.de to see if they have baseball equipment, since our local sports store has stopped carrying anything (though I did get a couple gloves dirt cheap on the closeout).
Amazon.de does, in fact, carry baseball stuff. However, their "Better Together" feature -- Wird gern zusammen gekauft in German -- is, uhm, interesting. Amazon even helpfully lets you order both at a discount.
Yup. German baseball apparently requires pepper spray. (Presumably for the umpires.)
Meanwhile on the "customers also bought" list are such items as tear gas canisters, ski masks, black US Army ballcaps, and black leather gloves.
Baseball is such a wholesome sport for kids, don't you think? |
(If Em were around, he'd no doubt gloat at my son's choice of ball club.)
Just watched the Twins blow it against the Chisox and get swept for the first time since forever. Who the hell gets swept in a series? Cripes.
This season just sucks for me. Of the three of "my" teams, the Reds and the Nats are both plumbing the depths of their respective divisions, while the Twinkies are in second place, but below .500 and with wobbly pitching. Yeah, they come from behind a lot, but they also blow it a lot, as they did just now.
I get e-mail alerts whenever a game ends of any of those three teams, and I swear it's like I never see a win. Frequently all three lose.
The Reds also apparently got destroyed by the Marlins (whose stadium was once again pratically empty -- wtf?). Nine to two. Ouch.
Cripes. I finally get baseball on TV last year and have had nothing but misery to watch. *sigh*
Caught the opening game with the Braves on tape delay on NASN with the kids, and though we missed the opening innings (where the Nats jumped ahead 2-1) it was a great game -- great way to break in the new stadium, particularly with Zimmermann's walk-off homer to win the game 3-2.
While Gloriana was decked out in her Nats ballcap and was swinging a Nats kiddie bat, the Confessor interestingly enough didn't want to wear his Nats or his Braves gear...until the Braves tied the game on an error by the Nats catcher and sending a runner home, when I asked him out of curiosity which team he wanted to win. The Braves, he said. (Em is now grinning ear to ear.) Shortly after that, the Nats got the winning run, and he was a bit unhappy about it...oh well, kid, welcome to baseball. :-)
Meanwhile over here in Krautland you can buy fashionista MLB ballcaps at the local sports store (I say fashionista, because they aren't actually in team colors -- they're either black with a white logo or beige or some other color). So they have gear for the Yankees, lots of it (surprise surprise), plus the Braves and the Indians and the White Sox. (Presumably all this because of rappers -- and the young whippersnapper Tchermans are imitating them, not turning into budding baseball fans.)
But they also have one team's ballcaps that actually are in their real team colors. One team and one team only. Which one? The effing PHILLIES.
What. The. Fuck?! The shittiest team in baseball history? The team that was the first to lose ten thousand games? So they sell these ballcaps so some poor young unsuspecting German can prove how clueless they are about baseball?
Ach look, I heff bought zis totally kewl ballkep und I em really kewl! I heff ze Fillees on my kopf! Ja ja! I em goink to show all my friends how kewl I em mit zis Fillees ballkep! Ah! I am lookink on ze Internetz on ze standinks to see how ze Fillees are doink und OH MEIN GOTT I EM SUCH A DUMMKOPF!
(Yes, I know, some rappers wear Phillies gear. But still, that was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the caps. :-) )
Somewhat oddly, the Confessor has decided to root for the Atlanta Braves. Not too sure why, really. On NASN we don't have too many games to pick from, and it happens that they have shown some Braves games, and he decided to root for them. So now they seem to be "his" team, even though I'm not a Braves fan -- and his American babysitter is from Cleveland and an Indians fan, so she's a bit nonplussed. ;-) So he's going around saying "Go Braves" and even already does the tomahawk chop. Really odd. I have no idea where he got it from. He's got a Nats and Twins ballcap already. Guess I have to get him a Braves one. What's really sad is that the Braves lost each game we've watched, and the game we saw today (tape delay) they got bombed by the Red Sox, 11-0. Even by the time we tuned in in the bottom of the 2nd, it was already 7-0. Yowza. (We did see Sosa's 600th homer -- NASN cut away for Sosa's at-bats.) And I have yet to see a full game by any of "my" teams -- Nats, Reds or Twins. I did see part of a Nats-Orioles game earlier this week as a fluke (NASN had a satellite feed problem and was showing it on tape delay instead, then cut away to show the scheduled game). Oh well. But the kids are already getting into baseball a lot -- funnily enough, the Confessor is already calling out "HOME RUN" on practically every hit. :-)
Yeppers, Ethelred finally went out and got the set-top box for digital cable on Saturday (set me back EUR 120, but oh well), and went to the cable company today to get the SIM card for it today. I only ordered the English-language channels (scroll down to the UK flag), and among them is NASN, North American Sports Network. And this means... BASEBALL! The funny thing is that I mentioned this to the Confessor, who really has no way of knowing what baseball is, except for a couple pictures from some of his books (such as Go, Dog, Go!, where in one picture the dogs are playing baseball) and of course the Nationals and Twins ballcaps he and I both have. I also have an autographed ball that I got once when I was in the hospital (some Twins players came by for a visit). But other than that, he really can't have a clue what baseball is.* Yet he's been apeshit about wanting to see baseball on TV, even more than me. All evening as I was setting up the set-top box and re-cabling everything (which is pretty complicated, given all the stuff we have), he was excitedly going on about baseball. Unfortunately, the SIM card still hasn't been activated by the cable company, so no baseball as of yet. *sigh* Meanwhile, when he's older, there is a small baseball club in Hannover, the Hannover Regents...but unfortunately they play at noon on Sundays, which means skipping church. *sigh* But hey, after years of missing it, I will finally be able to watch baseball on TV! w00t! * - He does know football, because I have Madden 2003 and Madden 07 on the PS2 and play them sometimes. He also has a kid-sized Rhein Fire football.
| |
