It Has Already Been Established That I Watch a Lot of Baseball in October OR Fun With Links!

Last night, Buck Martinez made a comment about Bobby Abreu, currently playing right field for the Angels paying tribute Abreu's early days as a member of our own Houston Astros, and the values he gleaned from the Astros' great players of the 1996 - 1998 heyday: Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, and... Ricky Gutierrez?

As incomprehensible as it was to me that Martinez would group Gutierrez (career homer total 38! career RBI total 357!) with probable Hall-of-Famers Biggio and Bagwell, I let it slide, because as a rule, MLB color commentators are known for being off-kilter, bad at their jobs, or generally insane. Most of them are former players, and they've sustained enough head injuries in their lives that the actual broadcast journalists who provide play-by-play know enough to blithely ignore the many batshit things the color guys say (see The Exception That Proves the Rule).

However, just moments ago, sideline reporter Mark Fine referenced Buck Martinez's comment, paying specific attention to the Ricky Gutierrez part, and speaking of Gutierrez as though he was one of the true clubhouse leaders of the late 90's Houston Astros.

For those of you who did not follow the team during that time, allow me to state, for the record:

No, he was not. Bags & Bidge were. Ausmus, kinda. Gonzo, maybe. Even crazy-as-all-getout Carl Everett, in his own crazy way (Everett should be an MLB color commentator, now that I think about it). Never Ricky Raccoon.

Now you know the rest of the story you didn't ask for.

All for now.

Be Prepared an 11:30 p.m. Eastern Start Time

Because it's gonna be Dodgers - Angels. I'm calling it.

It was obvious to anyone not wearing Sox GogglesTM.

All for now.

No New Information Here

This world is mean, and awful.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. I just want everyone else to be happy, too. But when you are faced with negatives everywhere, it clouds and challenges your ability to be happy.

I've been beaten, and beaten, and beaten some more, and I don't know that I can continue to hold out hope that success is possible for me. And unfortunately, it's a repeating cycle. You'll never win in a situation where they can already tell that you think you'll lose.

Maybe it's because I refused to approach success from a competitive standpoint. I didn't want to believe that it was "me vs. them." I wanted to believe that we all could win.

It's as though nobody else wants you to find real, sustainable happiness, because they're not sure there's enough to go around. They don't realize the greatest maxim of love, that the more you give, the more there is, which, surprisingly, I still believe.

God, I feel worthless.

Yeah, I Know I'm a Crappy Blogger. Step Off.

TBS, what the fuck happened? You've been so good, and then you pull this stunt? The MLB Playoffs are still baseball games, not an episode of Lost. Stop getting fancy with all your camera angles, and zooms, and crooked closeups, and just show us the game.

Also, do the Cardinals have a facial hair police? Because they SHOULD.
Dodgers are going to rock this series.

All for now.

Internet, Approve This!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the introductory number for the partially developed / never produced Batman: The Musical.

Wait, what’s that, you say? Back up? Glad to.

In 2002, a Batman musical was in development to be produced by Warner Brothers on Broadway. Keep in mind this was during the dark, dark ages of Batman when the last we had seen of the Caped Crusader in any real context was Schumacher’s Batman and Robin in 1998, which, according to many people, never actually happened.

This musical was a collaborative effort by Tim Burton, Jim Steinman, and David Ives. To reiterate:

Tim Burton – the maddeningly inconsistent visionary who can be so right (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood), and so wrong (Planet of the Apes, Batman Returns) with considerable aplomb.

Jim Steinman – former songwriter / producer for Meatloaf (Bat Out of Hell, and trust me, you can hear it in the song)

David Ives – genius playwright (All in the Timing, Polish Joke)

Interestingly enough, Steinman and Ives were the team that brought the Michael Crawford vehicle Dance of the Vampires to Broadway, which is the modern musical’s equivalent of, well, Batman and Robin.

How David Ives got mixed up in all this bu11sh1t, I’ll never know. Suffice to say, he did.

Anyway, Batman: The Musical languished in development for years, before finally, and thankfully being abandoned. However, Steinman has a website – Dark Knight of the Soul, where you can find five song demos. I’d love to discuss them all with you, but I’ll whet your appetite with this one, and let you visit the site yourself.

http://www.freewebs.com/batman_themusical/home.htm

Now, onto the song itself:

0:01 – Meatloaf Piano

0:25 – First lyrics are in latin. Classy move. ClASSy

I don’t know what you people think the citizens of Gotham City sound like when they’re singing, but if this isn’t it, then surely there is no God.

1:12 – On a serious note, this Salvation Army woman makes my pants tight.

2:17 – Looks like it’s gonna be a dark one tonight!

Then the Salvation Army Woman and a streetwalker join forces… now I know this is just a demo, so there’s only one voice singing, but still, this streetwalker and Salvation Army woman have disarmingly similar vocabularies. Could they be related in the play? God, I hope so.

3:47 – First appearance of the boy soprano (insert your own Robin joke here).

This goes on for a few more maddening minutes, plus more Meatloaf piano.

6:34 – the piano heralds the arrival of our hero, musical Batman.

7:01 – at long last, we hear the voice of our hero, and sadly, it could very well be Tom Wopat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wopat)

The lyrics become so Meatloafian I become convinced that Batman is wearing a billowy white poet’s shirt and he’s carrying a lacy hankie.

7:47 –“I Work The Graveyard Shift” – har har! So do all the unemployable white people who work at gas stations!

8:20 – Someone fails to finish re-writing his lyrics before he shows it to the Batman / musical crowd (a sizeable number, they can almost all fit in my house) for approval.

9:41 – This song is still going.

10:25 – Now, for some reason, the singing stops and the piano just takes off. Could it… could it be that musical Batman is now dancing? One can only hope. If he is, it’s some sort of lusty folk dance better left to a barn full of Irish immigrants.

11:18 – Now, Batman earns the audience’s approval by whining.

12:30 – Someone drugs Batman just as he is finishing the song, and you can hear him collapse on the piano as the song concludes, an inexplicable 12 and a half minutes after it first began.

I'm Just Gonna Say It

The Rangers were better than the Twins and Tigers this year, and yet one of the latter two will be in the postseason instead.

I think baseball is structured better than just about any professional sport, but this illustrates a glaring weakness in the playoff structure.

All for now.