No, I don’t want some home made ice cream that Momma was shouting through the screen about from my “Good ol country home”.
I know that the “Bunt Cake” commercial is a joke.
Need some new ads, guys. Two three years with the same ad is pretty annoying, especially when you hear the same ones 3-4 times (or more) during one game.
Gaaaaahhhhh!
Edit: Gaaah! This commercial came on a second time within 30 minutes after I posted this!

Gotta love fifth place. Thing of beauty.

Saw an article come over my rss feed reader this morning from the website for Hank’s Homies, which isn’t updated very often, so the notice stuck out. Apparently the Homies are three years old now. The funny thing is I remember them in the upper deck around Section 340 or so before they moved to Section 5. I remember looking at ’em like “What’s with these guys”? They were just a row or two in front of me. I seem to recall getting annoyed when I couldn’t see because they held up their sign. :)

Anyway, they moved down to Section 5, and a legend was born. If you read their story, they recall again the story from May 2nd, 2004 when the entire stadium was wrapped up “SWEEP – SWEEP – SWEEP”. I agree with them, it was one of the best moments I’d heard in the park. To hear the entire stadium wrapped up chanting sweep was very cool. It wasn’t until later that I found out how cool it really was when I found out the Homies started it, and it was even mentioned on air in this audio clip by Eric Nadel and old radio guy Vince Cotroneo.

You can check out this quick video clip I took of them singing their chant when Hank was up the day I hung out with them on June 24, 2004. I couldn’t handle standing the entire game, I eventually ended up sitting down where my real seat was. But I had fun with ’em.

A lot has been written about Jackie Robinson this weekend, so I won’t try and tarnish that with my weak attempt at what Robinson was and what he meant. I do appreciate what he did, but feel unable to write words that would be worthy, so I won’t.
But I will say this. Heard tonight on Baseball Tonight that the Yankees have a memorial to Jackie Robinson out in their Monument Park in left field in Yankee Stadium. Now I know every team has something for Jackie Robinson in their park, but for most teams, it’s just a “Robinson 42” where their retired numbers are. And that’s fine.
But I thought the Yankees did something cool by giving him a place in their monument park, especially given the old history between the Yankees & the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Yeah, the Yankees were the only team that didn’t have an in stadium “something” for Robinson, but I think they made up for being last with this.
Here’s what’s on the plaque… “In becoming the first Major League player to break the color barrier, Jackie will forever be an inspiration with his grace, dignity and perseverance. His story and the stories of those who never had the same opportunity must never be forgotten.”
Here is a link to a wire story which talks about the memorial in Yankee Stadium. Check it out.

I don’t talk about stuff like this too much, because what more can really be said except “That sucks”. Don’t know what your religious leanings are, but I offered up a prayer for the victims of that fiasco when I heard about it.

Anyway, I was reminded tonight that there’s a sort of Rangers connection there. The guy whose baseball card I have displayed here is a member of the Virginia Tech Hall of Fame. VT did retire his jersey, but not his uniform number, which is something I can’t say I’ve heard of before. Anyway, there’s a nice (but short) writeup about Oates and Virginia Tech at this link at the Virginia Tech Hokies website. Check it out.

Also, the picture I picked I did because it’s the one that means the most to me. I’ve written about Oates a few times in the past on this site, but this baseball card is the one that meant the most to me as a kid. I always found this one a cool card, and I was glad to be able to get Oates to autograph one for me before he passed away a few years back.

As I’ve been offline sick for a bit, I was playing catch up this afternoon with my reading.
Read this post on USS Mariner where they slagged off the Michael Young contract extension, saying stuff like this:
…. defense has already degraded to the point that he shouldn’t be playing shortstop
Adam Morris’ response over at lonestarball.com was pretty well constructed, you should read it. It’s much better than my response, which would have simply been this:

But that’s the Philly boy in me, I guess. ;)

Here is an interesting article I picked up while reading USS Mariner this morning. It’s about how this guy is convinced Francisco Rodriguez was doctoring the ball during opening night.
Anyone else think this? I didn’t see it, personally. But it would give me another reason to not like him – His “K-Rod” is fingernails on a chalkboard for me. A-Rod is the only one that can get away with that, IMO. And don’t even get me started on “I-Rod” for Pudge. Gaaaaaa!

If you listen to Rangers games live in the park, then you’ll want to read this story.
Do you recall that late last season there was a 7 second delay instituted during Rangers radio coverage? If you listened to a game in the park it was fairly annoying. Outside of the park, not so much so, but the die hards who listen while they’re at the game (myself included) got pretty peeved at that. I recall Eric or Victor saying at the time it would be something that was looked at during the off season.
So a couple of days ago I got an email on my site from a visitor by the name of Elaine. She wrote me, asking this:

Say, Joe — do you know anything about the radio time delay broadcast that they had at the end of last year ???? Are they going to be able to do away with it ??? I take my “ears” with me to the game and listen to the broadcasters while watching the game and it is VERY VERY irritating with the delay

I replied back saying that I did not know the answer to the question. I honestly hadn’t thought about it since the season ended. But I decided to go to a good source I figured; I wrote Victor Rojas about it. Passed on Elaine’s question, and he wrote me back with this:

joe, you might have to call krld on this one to get the full explanation…but as far i know, we were told that all cbs radio affiliates will institute a delay on all broadcasts. cbs is concerned with getting fined by the fcc if something inappropriate goes out over the air.

Great. So it’s going to still be there, and it also seems like it’s not going anywhere either. Thanks CBS – you’re running scared of Janet Jackson’s boob again, I see. Sigh. This will suck while listening in the park.
UPDATE Apr 3: Turns out we’re not the only ones with this problem. A’s fans are up in arms about it as well, check out this post over at Athletics Nation about it.
I did call Chuck Morgan about it, as the last time I talked to him he mentioned the possibility of the Rangers broadcasting a live feed inside the stadium. He told me that won’t be happening, but did mention that the delay has been shortened to just two seconds for 2007. That’s not perfect, but two seconds shouldn’t be that bad. We’ll find out on Friday when I’ll be at opening day listening on my radio.

Check this video out of Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory throwing out the first pitch at yesterday’s Reds’ home opener.

I’ve got all the roster pages for the starting 25 set up. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with that as the season goes along. :) Less than six hours to go now!
In other site news, I’ve decided to remove the advertising banners from the site. The amount of money I was making from them was so small, it wasn’t even funny – on the order of less than $10 a month. I think I can live without that big loss here.