The Rage Diaries

I'd watch these movies

Thanks to the largesse of our employer, Phil and I went to the All-Star fanfest on Sunday. While I was disappointed not to find any prints or even note cards of Michael Schwab's graphics promoting the game (and I am not about to pay $199.99 for one, thanks), my nerdly soul thrilled to the exhibits. The minor-league hats, sorted by MLB affiliate and by level of play, were delightful, and I got to establish old-coot cred by snorting, "I remember when the Norfolk Tides were the Peninsula Pilots. Hmmmph!" The one wall of "Women in Baseball" was unintentionally hilarious with its "Many women have been involved in baseball -- as owners. Also, Tom Hanks was in a movie about women who played baseball. Thanks, gals!" approach.

But the exhibit I have not been able to stop thinking about is the history of African-Americans in baseball.

No matter how much I read about it, I struggle to understand how people could be denied basic human rights and dignity based on their ethnic background and that was okay by "polite" society. It just seems so antithetical to what the United States is supposed to be. And to look at the racist attitudes of America's pastime, and to see what a great thing the Negro National League was in spite of a country and a culture that conspired to deny people their rights and dignity -- it is an overwhelming lesson in how closely the worst and best of humanity lay next to one another.

So we walked through the glass-fronted lockers that held wool jerseys and looked at the photos and historical accounts of teams. When we got to Andrew "Rube" Foster's locker exhibit, I read about everything he had done, then turned to Phil and said, "His life would make a great movie. Why hasn't there been a movie made about this guy?"

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder: why haven't we seen any movies about Negro National League baseball?

There is something cosmically wrong with a world in which there are movies about dogs playing baseball and college drips playing baseball, but there is not a single commercial effort devoted to the father of black baseball.

So when I read this morning's "Waiting for Action" in the WaPo, I thought of Rube Foster. Perhaps serious-minded people will say that there is nothing at all similar between the absence of movies about the civil rights era and the absence of movies about black baseball. But I think there is:

"Even though America has a huge export business in entertainment, movies about our own history often don't travel too well," says Edward Saxon, an independent producer who worked with Demme on "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia." Then you add race in. It's the received wisdom of Hollywood that movies with black themes and lead actors, especially dramas, don't travel overseas. And the exception [to that rule] doesn't get a chance to get proven much."

Bob Berney, the president of Picturehouse Films, wonders if that calculation "is still true or used as an excuse, or out of laziness. I run into that a lot: 'You'll never get international with a black cast.' But if you look at music, all the hip-hop artists appear to be huge in Europe and Asia and everywhere else. It's an issue that the more old-guard gatekeepers have, rather than the audience. Something is going to have to break through, and then once it does, everyone will say, 'See, it's not a problem.' "

Sometimes, it feels like we are not far removed from the country that thought it was okay to have separate-but-separate baseball leagues.

When comes the revolution ...

We're going to the Giants/As game in AT&T park tonight. It's a little weird to see my first As game of 07 in someplace other than the Coliseum, but I figure since it's a pre-season matchup, I can be flexible. This explanation might not fly with some of the people featured in the WSJ's "Opening Day" (Mar 30, 07) -- the folks who are devoted to keeping a streak of opening-day attendance alive:

David Hoffmann has made it to every Cincinnati Reds home opener for 24 years, with a few close calls. April 3, 2000, for example, was Opening Day as well as the due date of his wife, Nancy. So he dragged Mrs. Hoffmann to the game, escorted her to their upper-deck seats for five innings and a 45-minute rain delay, then walked back to the car, which was parked in a free lot a mile away in Kentucky. Several hours later, the streak safely defended, Nancy went into labor with their daughter, Ashlyn.

But this isn't an article about those crazy streak-setters. It's about how crazy streak-setters are getting screwed by two factors: smaller venues for teams, plus team organizations that are now reserving opening-day tickets for people who pony up for pricey multigame packages.

That sort of economic discrimination isn't confined to the MLB. Another WSJ article today, "Class Warfare at the Infinity Pool," details the ways in which resort and hotel guests are being made aware of the perks that come with paying more for your room:

Jacob and Susan Rooksby got a peek at the subtle class distinctions during their January honeymoon at the Paradisus Playa Conchal in Costa Rica, where they paid $800 a night for a junior suite. When they first visited the resort's main pool, dozens of sunbathers clogged the chairs, a volleyball game was under way in the water and a Latin-style band played American hits by the bar. Two days later, they stumbled on a quieter pool, where an attendant was circling with cold towels among the 14 or so guests. But as soon as the couple set down their towels, the attendant asked them to leave. "He said, 'Oh. I'm sorry but this pool is only for Royal Service guests,'" says Mr. Rooksby...

I've never stayed at a resort. I don't know if $800 per night is standard. But I can see being annoyed with being made to feel like a second-class citizen when a five-day honeymoon starts at $4000.

In any event, resort spokespeople in the article all stress how all guests are equal but some guests are more equal than others. Quoth one:

"You are paying more so you are supposed to be getting more," says [Puntacana Resort & Club] spokeswoman Paola Rainieri de Díaz. She adds that hotel staff will ask "refined" customers -- for example, those who arrive on a private plane or who have an American Express black card -- or those who look like they have been to the Caribbean if they want to upgrade at check-in.

I see this as a natural extension of the bargains-at-the-expense-of-service mindset that drives a lot of consumer market segments. Wal-Mart has already showed what people will put up with to get bargains. Now the luxury brands are exploring the opposite end of the spectrum.

Holy Toledo

Rest in peace, Bill King. You will be missed.

Gratuitous spousal promotion

Y'all already know that the husband's also weblogging. What you may not know is that he's turned into quite the expert on the Cactus League.

If you ever want to travel to Arizona, you should review his guide to spring training (part one, part two). Come for the commentary, stay for the photo captions.

How to tell the difference between a Cy Young award winner and a cat

Yeah, we named our cat after Barry Zito. And then Phil put together a primer so we can tell them apart.

Oh, so spoiled

One of the most delightful things about being an As fan -- aside from the joy that comes with watching them blow an 8-4 lead owing to baffling bullpen decisions -- is that the As play in NetAss.

(And yes, I realize that it's now McAfee, but whatever: NetAss it was, and NetAss it shall forever be. NetAss is what you get after sitting through God knows how many 13-inning games over 3 years.)

The As venue was fine for many reasons -- cheap bleacher seats, excellent concessions, the actual baseball games therein -- but I liked it for two big ones: it was on the BART line, and it was a 20-minute drive from our apartment. A 20-minute drive on surface streets, no less. Getting to weeknight games was easy: drive to BART lot in morning. Take train to work. Work. Take train from work. Exit turnstiles; go left toward NetAss instead of right toward car. Watch game. Drive home.

I should also point out that on the rare occasions when we went to games at PacBell park (again: don't care that it's SBC now; I'm officially getting cranky about these things. I'm off to tie an onion to my belt), getting to and from the games was also trauma-free, what with the stadium being about three blocks from my office and within handy walking distance to both BART and the ferries.

Public transportation is a fine, fine baseball enabler. I had never consciously clung to this conviction until I went to an Anaheim game last week, and then to a Dodgers game last night. And while I'm somewhat pleased to have attended games at three of California's five MLB venues in the last 3 weeks, getting in and out of two of those venues nearly gave me a heart attack -- and that's with reserved parking.

So, my nutshell review of the Dodger Stadium: when someone invents a way to teleport to and from the game -- or maybe hires some damn traffic attendants to control traffic after the game so the parking lot doesn't turn into a game of bumper cars, only with SUVs and the added complication of pedestrians aimlessly milling through the rare traffic opening -- then, I'll happily go all the time. Until then, I'll sigh and wonder why on Earth forces have conspired to keep Los Angeles from having anything resembling effective public transportation to and from publicly-available entertainments.

Musical baseball

Yesterday, I was blowing off steam after reading SEC reports and calculating percentage declines in same-store sales for a well-known retail chain, and posting on MATH+1 vis a vis my regrettable tendency to see Johnny Damon and instantly begin humming "Johnny Angel."

Only I make up my own lyrics about Johnny Damon. Many of them now have to do with his hair.

Damon isn't the one one who makes me hum. Whenever Jose Guillen comes up to plate, I end up taking the "Olé, olé, olé, olé, /olé, olé" chant that (European) football fans do and singing, "Jose, Jose Jose Jose/ Guillen, Guillen."

This is probably not what any of the people associated with professional baseball had in mind when they got it into their heads to make people bat to theme songs.

Some players are immune to songs. Barry Bonds is one of them. I've felt warmly toward Bonds as a player since reading a Sept 01, 02, NYT profile on him (the abstract is here and a copy of the article is here; you can also find it in The Best American Sportswriting 2003) that was deeply polarizing (one commentator wrote that it whipped up racist conspiracy where little existed; another wrote that it illustrated how Bonds is affected by media-institutionalized racism) and left me liking Bonds for his seemingly quaint belief that as a professional baseball player, his job was to play ball well, not to make people love him for himself.

I could be projecting my own convictions onto Bonds' approach to personality-driven media coverage, but I liked the idea that he was all, "Hey. I'm a ball player. Cover me as someone who plays ball." I also liked watching Bonds play.

In any event, earlier this week, I read another NYT piece, "On And Off the Baseball Field, Bonds Prefers to Go for Distance." (April 20, 04) And I only liked Bonds more.

Here's why:

"Barry Bonds makes minimal concessions to the baseball constituency," said George Will, the political commentator and prominent baseball fan. "He does his craft and he thinks that exhausts his obligation. It's cost him, and probably cost baseball, that he's made so few efforts to be congenial. But there is something to be admired in Bonds, in this sense: There is no shortage of American celebrities eager to pander, and here you have one who doesn't care a fig about pandering. There is a refreshing aspect to that."

Plus he's a pleasure to watch on the field. And thanks to what I don't know about his personal life, thanks to the lack of public image massaging that doesn't spring to mind when I watch him play, I feel like I have more mental space to simply appreciate watching a baseball player excel at the game.

I prefer to think of it as "baseball polygamy"

As Phil has already mentioned, we have the Major League Baseball Extra Innings package. He's also right about the fiendish catchiness of the Foxwoods casino jingle, but wrong about me leaving him: the scientist in me can't resist the chance to return to observational work, and he's basically set up a prime field study for me in our living room and our office. Who could walk away from that?

In any event: the baseball, she is part of our lives. We have weekend jaunts planned around Baseball Prospectus get-togethers or SABR meetings. Phil keeps me company as I recap by taking trips to Baseball Planet. I embarass myself in front of an entire newsroom by mangling "Angels We Have Heard On High" after a particularly puckish coworker offers to give away tickets to the Angels game tomorrow night to the first person who will sing an angel-related song. I don't even like the Angels.

I'm nowhere near as obsessive as the folks mentioned in Slate's "Baseblogs" -- and sweet fancy Moses, what will it take for California teams and their weblogs to get their due? -- but I was moderately interested by the inclusion of someone who is presumably laboring under the burden of someone else's obsession, The Baseball Widow.

My initial amusement was due to the whole idea of a sports weblog kept by someone who was not necessarily the one with the passion for the sport; it seems analogous to Phil keeping a weblog titled "Comics Widower." I should probably be irked that the sole chick blog in the piece is one which centers on the woman's relationship to a man who, presumably, puts the national pasttime before the nuptial pleasures (the blog disabuses you of that idea in a hurry), but I tend to save my feminist media critiquing for other issues.

However, if you do want to read more women who are into the baseball, you could do worse than to swing by Laurel Krahn's digs (she roots for the Twins, and writes about them from time to time), or to romp through Yankee fan Sarah Bunting's archives, where she writes about the sport with the brio of a true believer. (Start here, here, here or here.)

Baseball is a great sport for readers, period. This probably goes a long way in explaining why I've grown to like it so much.

Gimme some of that old-tyme East Coast bias

I became a baseball fan and a wife at the same time, by marrying someone who was passionate about baseball, and subsequently deciding that the only way I was going to get through the next 50 years without losing my mind was by making the effort to understand the game and why people love it. It's been nearly four years. I've gone from reading books in the bleachers to scoring the games.

I've also developed my own set of sports media biases. We usually watch ESPN's Sports Reporters on Sunday morning -- or rather, Phil tries to watch while I sit on the couch and do my Mike Lupica imitation, which mostly consists of me bouncing up and squawking, "Lupica! Lupica! Lupica! LupicaLupicaLupica!"

(I do love me some Jason Whitlock, though.)

And then we bitch about the East Coast bias of all the people on the panel that week. Or I make fun of Mitch Albom, and then we bitch about the East Coast biases. I understand there are logistic reasons why the West Coast doesn't represent on this show: sports writers are usually covering events, and it's hard to get from the Padres game in San Diego to the studio in New York; T.J. Simers has better things to do than sit in a chair and listen to "Lupica! Lupica! Lupica! LupicaLupicaLupica!"; the Sports Guy isn't an actual reporter.

However, the lack of West Coast representation on the show does leave one with the impression that the only sports teams that matter -- or actually play -- happen to be located up and down the I-95 corridor. This bias isn't just confined to Sports Reporters. It happens in print too, where George Vescey argues for the NYT that:

Baseball has evolved into two divisions — the American League East, and everybody else.

("In Baseball, 30 Franchises and Only One Rivalry," April 7, 04)

I realize he's writing for New York, but as someone who follows an American League West team, I can assure you that Oakland and Anaheim aren't holding hands and skipping through the outfield when they play each other. They're also not swaddling their players in coats made from hundred-dollar bills (at least, Oakland isn't), so I'm guessing that both distance and payroll make them less relevant than the big-spending Yankees and Red Sox. But I'm still a relatively new fan, who's under the impression that people turn out to see how teams play the game. I wasn't aware that the joy in baseball is watching competitive spending, and then declaring it the real rivalry in the sport.

On a less bitter note: for more sports fun, my favorite spot for sports commentary happens to be Idiots Write About Sports. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out why.