test blog 8

I stopped following this baseball season a while back. The 2019 Red Sox are not very good, and I'm perfectly happy to enjoy my first summer on beautiful Vancouver Island without them. But it's not just the lackluster Red Sox that are keeping me away. I'm disgusted and deeply saddened by the rule changes that MLB instituted in 2017, and even more by those coming in the 2020 season. These changes damage the very foundation of the sport. And, worst of all, they are completely unnecessary. Baseball America says the changes will " fundamentally alter  the way teams construct their rosters , as well as change the roles players may be groomed for in player development". (I've listed most of the changes below, excluding how players are compensated for the All Star Game.) Games are too long! Games are too long! (If we keep repeating it, we will make it so!) Supposedly baseball games are too long. Supposedly baseball games are too slow. "Young people" aren...

Thank you Alex Cora, Mookie Betts, David Price, Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers, Jackie Bradley Jr., Hector Velázquez, Christian Vázquez, Eduardo Núñez, and Sandy Leon! These nine players and their manager declined to attend the White House visit purporting to honour the 2018 championship team. The Trump White House could not be bothered to spell the team's name correctly or name the actual sporting event that the team won. The World Series is the oldest professional team sports event in the United States, having been played since 1903. (The Kentucky Derby is older. Hopefully all the horses know that Trump's policies constitute a war on animals , and also boycott the visit.) Earlier this year, the Golden State Warriors (NBA) expressed doubts about a White House visit, and the invitation was withdrawn. Ditto for the Philadelphia Eagles (NFL) after they won the 2018 Super Bowl. However, this silly headline , implying this is "nothing new", is false. Various individual p...

I finished reading this fine biography a while ago, but I've been having trouble writing about it. It was very good. If some parts were a bit too detailed for me (which is bound to happen if a biography is comprehensive), parts were thrilling, fascinating, sad, and very moving. There are many biographies of Jackie Robinson out there, but Jackie Robinson: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad is said to be the most accurate and complete. Rampersad, who has also written celebrated biographies of Langston Hughes and Arthur Ashe, was the first author to have full access to Robinson's letters and personal papers, and to be chosen and authorized by Rachel Robinson. The letters are very significant, as Jackie wrote hundreds of them, to Rachel and many others. For those who don't know, Jack Roosevelt Robinson was the first African-American to play major league baseball. It is often said that Jackie "broke the color line" — a strange euphemism, as if he broke the tape on a trac...

Let me set the scene. The year is 1946. The United States is deeply segregated. The birth of the civil rights movement that would begin as African-American soldiers returned home to Jim Crow, after fighting for democracy abroad, is still a good 10 years away. Newlyweds Jackie and Rachel Robinson leave their hometown of Pasadena, California, for Florida, where Jackie will become the first African-American to play organized, professional sports in the United States. When Rachel sees "whites only" signs for the first time in the airport bathroom, she takes a deep breath and walks in anyway, feeling scared, but proud and defiant. Neither Rachel nor Jackie had ever seen the heart of the Jim Crow South. They had no idea what awaited them. Despite her airport bravada, Rachel and her husband weren't allowed to board their plane. They were "bumped" from their scheduled flight, and the flight after that, and the one after that. They were also not allowed to purchase food ...

108-54 3-1 4-1 4-1 119 wins It was a magical season. Red Sox owner John Henry said it himself : "This is the greatest Red Sox team ever." In 2007, I dubbed the championship -- and the team -- inevitable . It stuck, and became the theme of our gamethreads. Last night I asked, "If 2007 was inevitable, what was 2018? What's the one word?" That word was unstoppable . My #YearOfTheMookie didn't extend to the World Series. In this round, there were so many unlikely heroes. Steve Pearce won the series MVP award, but my money was on David Price. He was brilliant. As was Chris Sale. And no one was more brilliant than rookie manager Alex Cora, who pushed all the right buttons to creatively manage his mix-and-match pitching staff. Cora's first act as Red Sox manager was to fly relief supplies to Puerto Rico -- "my island," as he calls it. Last night while receiving congratulations, he asked if he could bring the trophy to that island. Millions...

Last night, the Red Sox and Dodgers, and their fans, survived the longest World Series game in baseball history. Somehow I watched til the end and am still at work today! Joy of Sox (a/k/a Allan) says: The clock on my desk read 3:30 AM when Max Muncy hit an opposite field home run to left-center in the bottom of the eighteenth inning, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 win over the Red Sox. This was the longest World Series game of all-time, both by time (7:20) and by innings, smashing the previous record of 14, first set in 1916 when the Red Sox bested the Dodgers. According to a tweet from Stats by STATS, this game lasted 15 minutes longer than the entire 1939 World Series , when the Yankees swept the Reds in four games in a combined 7:05 [Times: 1:33, 1:27, 2:01, 2:04]. I had to work last night, rushing home at 9:15, annoyed that I had already missed 4+ innings. Ha! Allan got home from work at 12:45 a.m. -- catching the last bus of the night -- and was surprised and happy the game was still ...

2018 Red Sox To-Do List ✔  Win the division with unprecedented number of wins. ✔  Beat the Yankees in the ALDS. ✔  Beat the Astros in the ALCS. __ Win the World Series. __  Mookie Betts wins American League MVP award.

It is the Year of the Mookie. 108 wins. Eight games up. 11 wins to go. That is all.

If you're an app developer for MLB, or if you're with Roku or AppleTV, skip down to the final paragraphs! Because Allan and I follow an out-of-town baseball team, we subscribe to MLB.TV, and have done so for ages. As much as I dislike pay-per-TV services, being able to watch any baseball game at any time, with either the home or away feed, is amazing. Once we were able to do this by streaming, as opposed to through cable, the price went down and the quality went up. I've blogged many times about the wonder of the Roku streaming device, and how it solved so many issues for watching baseball, TV series, and movies. Last year, I learned that the Canadian streaming service CraveTV offers lots of Showtime and HBO content. Thanks to exclusive licensing deals, Crave is not available on Roku; it only streams on AppleTV. (You can watch on a computer or mobile device, but we don't like that.) So in order to get the additional Showtime and HBO content, we bought an AppleTV  devic...

This Red Sox team has been driving me crazy, seesawing between amazing and horrendous. I don't have a lot of optimism right now, especially after our dismal showing against Houston ... the team we meet in the first round of playoffs. Dear Red Sox, Please be amazing. Love always, A fan with no expectations

In between my infrequent posts, the Red Sox's postseason came and went. As Basil Fawlty says, blink and you missed it. It was a strange baseball season for Sox fans. In late June, it looked like another lost cause, and I drifted away, preferring binge-watching on Netflix to sitting through loss after loss. Then suddenly it all looked so possible. Boston got hot, Baltimore faded away. Forget about the wild card, we wrapped up the division with a tidy four-game margin. Then October comes, and the September Red Sox are nowhere to be found, the team back to its anemic June version. sigh The Sox's oh-for-three showing in the American League Division Series had me thinking a lot about the particular joys and heartbreaks of the game itself. Game 2 was a blow-out. Boston didn't show up, and there wasn't much suspense. But Games 1 and 3 were both close, and in baseball close games mean suspense, frustration, and missed opportunities. Game 3 was especially suspenseful, since it w...

Thank you and goodbye.

The Red Sox are cruising into the postseason, something I didn't think I'd see during the dog days of summer. Our beloved Big Papi is saying goodbye with a chart-topping season, fans all over the country enjoying a glut of Ortizmania. But truly, the most momentous baseball story this season is the farewell of Dodgers announcer Vin Scully. The man has been calling Dodgers' games -- solo -- for 67 seasons . And throughout, he's been setting a standard for excellence that no one else approaches. The Dodgers are my nominal "other team," but my love and appreciation of Scully has little to do with the Dodgers. I love baseball on the radio. As far as I'm concerned, it's the only thing radio is good for, but it's a perfect match. When I watch baseball on TV, I like to get the audio from the radio broadcast, and I've done that for as long as I can remember. My truly favourite radio baseball scenario is driving with Allan, preferably on a baseball road ...

Library smackdown ? Toronto Public Library vs. Kansas City Library, via Twitter .

The biggest surprise of the 2014 baseball postseason isn't the absence of both the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. It isn't the Kansas City Royals, playing baseball in October for the first time since 1985. The biggest surprise of the 2014 postseason is Major League Baseball's decision to put fans ahead of corporate contracts. After years of ensuring that baseball fans could only watch the playoffs and World Series if they subscribed to certain television providers, MLB has finally reversed course. The 2014 postseason is available to MLBTV subscribers through  a variety of providers and devices . A few days ago, I wrote a long, ranting post (available below!) about how MLB always puts corporate television contracts ahead of fans. When I started collecting links to complete the post, I was amazed to learn that MLB's policies had changed. I don't know if MLB was forced to do this in court , or if some smart young executive finally got them to understand that...

Dog, I am a glad this baseball season is over. And not only because the Red Sox finished in last place.

I recently read The Given Day , Dennis Lehane's novel about 1919 Boston, especially the Boston police strike , and the widescale rioting that followed. The book is an engaging hybrid of historical fiction and noir crime thriller. It deals with labour history, racial bigotry in both Jim Crow states and Boston, radical political organizing, and the United States during World War I and on the eve of Prohibition. It's also full of great characters, plot twists, and suspense. If you enjoy historical fiction, I do recommend this book. However, I'm writing about it to highlight something that bothered me, and to try to analyze why. The Given Day came to my attention through happy circumstance: the author used my partner's book Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox in his research. We were very excited to see Allan's name in the acknowledgments! (And because authors are listed alphabetically, Allan's name is listed right beside Howard Zinn's. Nice!) I edited 1918 , so I ...

Stacey May Fowles has written an incisive, biting, and definitive piece about shaming men who rape. I can scarcely quote from it (although I will), because every word is not only necessary but perfect. Please join me in reading this stellar essay, and in cheering for Fowles and every survivor of sexual assault, and in calling out every Josh Lueke we can find. May I add, too, that this essay explains exactly why I will never stop saying animal torturer and dog murderer every time I hear or read the name Michael Vick. A blog reader recently told me I should give it up because Vick has "done his time" and "expressed regret". To which I politely say: fuck that. Stacy May Fowles, " Josh Lueke Is A Rapist, You Say? Keep Saying It .": I know that a lot of us are well aware of what kind of person Josh Lueke is, and that rape is a very bad thing. We don't need reminders to be secure in that knowledge, nor is it likely we'll forget. But with all due resp...

I've recently returned from a lovely trip to Boston, filled with so many of my favourite things: friends, family, books , and baseball. I love Fenway Park, and I'm always happy to be there. On this trip, we saw three great games, two of them wins, so I was thrilled. The games were marred by only one thing: nearly constant propaganda for the US military. This is not an exaggeration. Throughout Fenway Park, as in many sports venues, monitors show a TV feed of the action on the field. Right now, between innings, the Fenway Park monitors show a continuous feed of advertising for the United States Army. During the game, the ads continue on a sidebar beside the action. Let that sink in a moment. The constant advertising crammed into every moment of the ballgame , and the constant linking of sports and the military , are now joined in this doubly offensive development. There is something particularly Orwellian about watching a baseball game while a constant stream of silent images of ...