Back in November, I wrote about cheerleaders in baseball. As a red blooded normal American male, I find them nice to look at, but as a baseball fan, meh. Like crying, they don’t really belong in baseball, do they?

When I last wrote about this, it seems that when there are cheerleaders, it’s in Latin ball mostly. Turns out that’s not an exclusive thing south of the United States. I saw an article today talking about the cheerleaders for the Florida Marlins, The Mermaids. Heh. Given the community in the Miami area, it makes sense I suppose, but I can’t say I recall seeing them on TV. Not that I see a lot of Marlins home games, but you’d think they’d turn up somewhere.

What do you think of the concept of cheerleaders in baseball? A lot is written at places who write a lot better than I about what “baseball has become”. The game itself sometimes seems like a sideshow to all the other “stuff” that is going on in and around the park. A lot of teams have faux cheerleaders already – ushers that dance, groundscrew that dance, and the Rangers version of that, the “somethingorother six shooters” – girls that play games with the crowd, shoot t-shirts into the stands etc. They’re “fakey” cheerleaders.

When I was in Florida in March 2007 for spring training, the Phillies had Hooters girls (in full regalia) as ball girls. Ball girls are a bit different than an actual cheerleader, though. Makes you wonder at what point some major team will take the leap from all these “almost” cheerleaders to actual cheerleaders. I mean besides the Marlins.

Or heck, with JerryLand being built next door to our little ol’ ballpark, I wonder if we’ll be seeing the Cowboys cheerleaders at games now. I mean if you go to a Rangers game, which of these two pictures would you rather see live in person? It’s a harder question than you think. :)

It could be worse, though. It could still be “Rootin’ Tootin’ Ranger”. :)

Was looking through some pictures I’ve collected, and ran across this one of Johnny Oates. It always makes me laugh. Looks like an overly enthusiastic call to the bullpen. :)

Do you spend a bunch of time listening to mp3’s on your computer, or on your iPod or something like that?
If you do, you might want to check out a service called “LastFM”. It’s a social network for music fans. You install a plugin on your machine, and it keeps track of what you’ve listened to lately, and gives you reports based on your listening trends, what your friends are listening to, etc, etc, etc. I use iTunes as my primary mp3 player, but there’s plugins for Winamp and Windows Media player, too. It’s quite cool – I’ve been doing this for about three years now, and have quite a playlist history. Check out my profile page here.
Anyway, I’ve started up a group for visitors to this site. As I JUST started it, there’s not much there, so I’m hoping to get some of you to join the group, as one needs 10 members before it will generate any playlists. I think it would be cool to see what some of the readers of this site listen to.
There’s more info about LastFM on the Wikipedia page for it, and on their own site, too.

The annual Rangers Winter Carnival is on Saturday the 26th from 9AM to 5PM.
However, I have another personal obligation that day, and cannot attend. I have a free ticket for it that was sent to me by the Rangers which I cannot use. I’m therefore sticking it up here. First person who emails me and asks for it will get it.
All I ask is this. Please don’t email me unless you’re actually going. I’d want this to really be USED, not “I might just go”. Please don’t ask unless you’re honest to God planning to go.
It’s also good for $5 admission for others in your party (so says the letter that came with it).

Since all the Rangers fan sites seem to be crying in their coffee over the game last night, I’d like to offer a different opinion.

Thank you Eli Manning for not having your usual 4 interception game. And thank you Dallas for so many penalties. Enjoyed it.

You know, I love how the Rangers are “close” on signing people, but haven’t actually signed them.
Kazuo Fukumori was “signed” back on December 14th, but still technically hasn’t been finalized. They even paraded him in front of cameras with a uniform. What was with that if he wasn’t actually signed (technically)?
We’ve been “close” with Eddie Guardardo for a couple of weeks now it seems.
Then yesterday we are “close” to signing Jason Jennings.
And this morning we get word that we’re “close” on bringing back Jamey Wright on a minor league deal with an invite to spring training. (I thought he did better last year than a minor league deal with an invite).
Anyway, what’s with all these “close” deals? Are we that hurt for news that we report on incomplete deals like they’re done? These have all had stories on the Rangers official site, which for awhile there was actual, factual, completed news. Guess it’s turning into mlbtraderumors.com over there at mlb.com.

No, I haven’t quit. Still here. Just taking a break like I said I was going to in September to deal with my burnout issue.
I’ve already posted more this off season than I thought I was going to. :)

I rather liked this message from Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria which I read earlier this morning, so I’ve decided to replicate it completely on my site…
—-
Christmas is here again despite all covert and overt attempts to wish it away. The celebration in remembrance of the love of God in giving the Saviour to the world is so important, it cannot be wished away.
Though few human beings rejoiced at the birth of the baby Jesus, the Gospels tell about multitudes rejoicing in the heavens, about a bright star leading wise men to worship the new born king, and they also tell about the trouble his birth brought to those unwilling to have him as their Lord and King.
The incarnation is the divine condescension. The birth of Christ which we celebrate is the decisive divine intervention into human history. By it, history is measured and judged. Before the birth of Christ, all of history is categorized as era ‘Before Christ’ (B.C.) and since then, we have been in the era of ‘the year of Our Lord’ (anno domini, A.D.)
Today, multitudes of human beings join the angels to rejoice. Christians shining as light lead many to Christ and there still exists, great trouble among those who would not have Jesus. Efforts to turn Christmas into a mere holiday season continue unabated all around us. ‘Christmas Greetings’ are replaced with ‘Season Greetings’ as if it possible to have a Christmas without Christ. ‘B.C.’ and ‘A.D’ are changed to ‘B.C.E.’ (Before Common Era), and ‘C.E’ (Common Era) all in an attempt to conceal the fact that Jesus came to save an erring world from sin and eternal condemnation.
The cross of Christ which is the main reason we boast (Gal. 6:14) remains a stumbling block and a symbol of offense to those unwilling to receive God’s free gift of salvation. (Romans 9: 33) Under the guise of political correctness, symbols of Christianity in our daily lives and history are being challenged and subtly removed. All these subtle and calculated attempts of the non-believing world to mislead the unsuspecting believers and make them deny Christ should not deter us from celebrating for we are confident the efforts are bound to fail. As we celebrate Jesus’ birth this year, let us be mindful of the activities of the first celebrants; the joyous angels who while celebrating proclaimed the Good News to the shepherds.
We should also be bold to proclaim to an increasingly secularized world, the good news of the Saviour-born. We call on all Christians in positions of authority and indeed all ministers of the Gospel to vigorously resist attempts to remove Christ from Christmas and His centrality and importance in human history. We should be vigilant and avoid being misguided and misled by their seemingly innocent and socially acceptable philosophy. In being politically correct, we should not join in denying Christ his rightful place. Let all of us unashamedly proclaim the news of the greatest gift of all, the love behind the gift and peace the gift brings to all. Jesus the Christ is our Saviour, Lord, King and the best gift ever given by God to humanity. (John 3:16)
May God incarnate, give you true joy as you celebrate Him this Christmas and throughout the coming year.
Every Blessing,
Signed
The Most Revd. Peter J Akinola, CON,
Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of all Nigeria.

I know a lot of baseball sites run “open game threads”, where people watching/listening to the game can have immediate responses about what’s going on. I toyed with that a year ago, and decided against it – I don’t think I have enough of a following to pull that off. Having just a couple of posts in an “open thread” for a game is pretty sad.
Anyway, something that’s become more prevalent the last couple of years is sports game blogging. I’ve seen a lot of newspapers sports blogs do that kind of thing. Now for the most part it’s not individual play by play level of blogging (that’s what the aforementioned open threads tend to do), but there are generally a lot of reports from games anymore. I always wondered what the various leagues thought of that type of thing, as a lot of them (Hello NFL, and a wink to MLB) tend to frown on almost anything that they don’t control themselves.
To that I read this article tonight saying the NCAA wigged out and told people to stop liveblogging their games. At one point, they actually ejected someone from the stadium, and revoked their credentials. That seems a bit bizarre to me, even with some of the overly anal things I’ve read about the NFL doing.
It does make me wonder when the leagues might take a stance against that kind of thing. The article mentions the ejected guy’s lawyer arguing against the concept, claiming that it was commentary, not a simulcast, which would probably be in violation of something, although I’m no expert.
It probably won’t actually come to pass, but the concept of a league deciding that liveblogging is something to be stopped can’t be completely ignored, either. Go read the article, some nice food for thought.