Pirates Fans Commiseration Song

After 17 years straight of lose lose lose, This Pittsburgh lifer picked up an acoustic to set the era to music with appropriate slideshow.

Excellent touch-points include losing their best players because they're too cheap and the trade for a broken-down Matt Morris.

CHINMUSIC! MAGAZINE Complete History Now Available!

Okay, that image is a different size than I remember. Sorry kids.

But the good news is, stuck in a box under the cement of ChinMusic! Central, was a box with around 30 copies of the FIRST ISSUE of ChinMusic! Yes, the Trevor Hoffman issue.

I thought these babies were gone forever. Didn't even have a copy for myself. BUT NOW...

I'm finally able to make the whole 7-issue set of ChinMusic! available in one package.

Interested? Have access to the PayPal? Upload $22 to PayPal using "store@chinmusic.net" and you will soon have every groundbruising edition of America's ONLY magazine devoted to baseball and bigrockaction.

Ghost of Clive Davis and the MTV Zombies

No real reason to bring this guy up, but having grown up during the Granola-rock nightmare that was the early-1970's, you store various tunes and images away, to only be unlocked by someone else's nostalgia.

In this case, it is the RIAA, or whomever is in charge of making sure we all know every song by Alicia Keys. THEY want us to know only certain musicians and a rotating roster of crappy, middle-of-the-road dusty old lite-rockers.

The 2010 Grammys --in presentation and accompanying advertisements-- were a host of tired old hits and 80's rehashes, followed by a chiding by some industry hack telling us illegal downloading is the reason music sucks so bad and all those underground groups can't get a break. I didn't catch if he was wearing a skull/crossbones "Home Downloading is Killing Music" t-shirt, but he might as well have been.

Further proof of the music industries' pathetic desire to cling to its coked and payolaed past was the Pinto vs. PT Cruiser crash known as Taylor Swift getting whacked over the nose with the warbling dissonance of Ms. Stevie Nicks herself. Sad to hear Fleetwood Mac anytime, especially 30 years after they were briefly relevant, but this was just plain mournful. Stevie had no business singing her own song under any circumstances.

But that's not all! If you looked at the faceless sidemen involved in this "dragged from the free and easy 1970's kicking and screaming-fest" you could clearly see the walking epitome of the James Taylor/Carly Simon/Jackson Browne/Linda Ronstadt earth-tone w' fringe-wear era: Seasoned session-hack guitarist Robert "Waddy" Wachtel.

Like G.E. Smith after him, Waddy could not be avoided from 1973 to 1978 no matter what. Saturday Night Live?...he was on it. No Nukes?...you betcha'. You didn't know WHAT he was doing; none of those milquetoast anthems to Gaia, or whatever, but he must have been doing something right. Right? Was it really just the hair? Was it that he didn't look as scary as his oft bass mate Leland Sklar?

60 Foot 6 Inch Pole

Ex-White Sox reliever and erstwhile Simi Valley punk singer Scott Radinsky (Ten Foot Pole, Pulley, Scared Straight) has just signed on to help right the sinking ship that is the Cleveland Indians, as bullpen coach.

Proving that he always took to baseball as strictly a day job, Radinsky is taking on a very workmanlike task, trying to make prospects like Jeremy Sowers, Aaron Laffey and Tomo Ohka (oh wait...he's a reject) into viable MLB rock studs.

Dock Ellis Last Laugh

We all miss Dock. He went too quick. WAY too quick.

BUt he left us with this, a fine legacy as the only man to openly throw a no-hitter (albeit with 10 walks) whilst tripping balls on LSD.

Please impart ANY tripping, frying, baking or swerving baseball tale you may have. WE WANT TO HEAR IT.

R.I.P. Preston Gomez - 1923-2009

There exists an echelon, a level of extreme standard quality baseball man; not quite a star, but definitely men who can be considered "Those Who Served." We're talking about those for whom the more knowledgeable fan would know at least one notable anecdote. Bucky Dent's Sox-killing homer, Ralph Branca's hanging heater to Bobby Thompson in the '51 one-game playoff, Ron Hunt's 50 times being hit by a pitch in one season...the game is riddled with these guys.

They aren't bums. They aren't legends. In most cases they are players who had a few above-average seasons, or at least had a particular talent. But forever they are known for that ONE instance; the one bit of trivia that will accompany (or hound) them throughout their lives, no matter what they accomplish. A couple more examples: Chris Webber's "time out," Joe Pisarcik's brilliant decision to blow off that "take a knee" jazz and try for a last second stunner, and of course, Fred Merkle's celebrated boner.

Original San Diego Padres manager Preston Gomez, a career baseball man in the truest sense of the word. He was a manager, scout, player, asssistant, ambassador...you name it. Peripatetic beyond the metaphoric to the possibly literal, Gomez was a respected lifer whose knowledge and manner touched several generations of players as well as fans.

But as with so many whom devoted their lives to the good of the game, Gomez will forever be linked to the night in 1970 -- the second year of the fledgling major league Padres existence-- when faced with either allowing his dominant starter to stay in for the 9th inning whilst pitching a no-hitter or yanking him for a pinch-hitter to try and get some offense cooking, he chose the latter. Of course, the sub rolled snake eyes, and the no-no was gone in the next inning, but for ages Preston Gomez' name was held as an icon of San Diego's short-sighted failures as a franchise.

Unfair, you bet. For although his career as a manager never dipped him over to the plus side of the wins column, it can safely be stated that his stature as a respected professional was what kept him employed throughout his life, no matter his managerial record.

As a Padres fan for life, I recognize the baseball world is tonight missing a man who gave his all to the game he loved. And for all the right reasons.

Hells Brews

You gotta think, with a legacy including 550+ saves, some impressive 9th inning moments and a few car dealership radio spots, a true TRUE Padres fan would mourn the loss of the most prolific closer in the history of the game JUST a tad more than the current "Holy shit, so glad THAT'S over with" feeling coursing through the veins of a healthy % of SD-ers right now.

But no, this is the 101 case study of the guest that wouldn't leave. Ozymandian in its poignancy, The Bell (Yes! Literally AND figuratively!) ringing on Trevor Hoffman's San Diego Padres career has been a long time coming and is quite welcome to any fan who actually had to watch his last few years. We loved him. We gave him cords and leagues of rope, but it JUST. HAD. TO. END.

He's the Brewers problem now. No more slow starts, blowing of the real easy ones (which for him constituted almost ALL of his saves), whilst embarrassing our already fragile-egoed burg on the National stage (World Series, All-Star games, playoffs, one-game-to-get-into-the-playoffs...), and lest any TRUE fan forget, the "We need a lights-out pitcher" 8th inning with no game on the line fiascoes. Sure, he could polish the pearl on the three-run 9th frame leads, but he also had a snappy knack for making you wonder why any manager would shove a guy out there whose fastball was slower than his changeup.

Mind you now, LOVE Trevor and all he has done for our Padres; giving us a modicum of stability, having an amazing 1998 (not counting any pitches to actual New York Yankees), giving his older brother a job...but you just gotta know when to hang it up. And Trevor hung his breaking ball up in the zone too often for me to miss him all that much at this point.

An Enjoyable Postseason, but.....

Thursday was one of the bad days of the year. The day after the last baseball game of the season. Oh the pain, the long cold winter of my discontent. I thought the playoffs were great, I watched almost all the games. I read a lot of net articles complaining about the timing of the calling of the game Monday night. I was watching carefully and thought they did it just about right. I like seeing nature disrupt the best laid plans of mice and men. Clearly baseball wanted that game Monday night to get played, and get to Tampa if needed, but when the rain comes, the rain comes. You do your best. While writers and talk show callers were complaining that the popup Rollins couldn't catch in the top of the 5th was proof that the conditions were too bad to be playing, no one seems to want to talk about how Carlos Pena, in the bottom of the 5th, caught 2 popups just as difficult as the one Rollins missed. Then with seemingly the World Series on the line ready to be called off in the top of the 6th, with 2 outs, Pena hits a low outside pitch to left and BJ (Bossman Junior) Upton scores the tying run, to stop anyone from even considering calling this game before it could go 9. It was dramatic. I watched over and over with the dvr, BJ steal second, then score. He never slipped. He was running hard, maybe slightly carefully, but he was awesome. The throw from Burrell was good, the slide by Upton was good, the game was tied. The weather was tough, but it was playable.

Somehow with these Rays especially, I feel like if these guys had come up 5 years ago they'd be on the A's. Upton and Longoria especially, seem like they should have been A's players. The league seems like it has caught up with Billy Beane on scouting. I hope he can reinvent himself again, cause it sure would be great to see the green and gold in the postseason again soon.

It was great to see all the A's guys in the playoffs, I couldn't help thinking these guys should all still be on the A's. Maybe some of them would still be A's if some of the other A's guys had been better and the wholesale rebuilding wasn't happening. There were 13 of them on 6 teams, not counting Ethier and Hinske. I counted Bradford, Pena, Blanton, Stairs, Dye, Swisher, Dotel, Kendall, Durham, Harden, Gaudin, Lilly, Kotsay. It is just proof that the A's have had a lot of great guys, and gotten rid of a lot of great guys.

My daughter Deedee, thought Bradford was bouncing the pitch off the mound into the catcher. He is so awesome, but he gave up the hit that scored the run that won it. I thought Maddon was outstanding, but it was a little weird for him to pinch hit for Baldelli on the next ab after he had homered, just to get the righty-lefty matchup. Also what was that reliever, J P Howell doing batting for the rays in the top of the 7th? I thought those were a couple of managerial calls which were questionable. All I really wanted was to see it go to 7 games, just string it out as long as possible. Just give me more games.

That's it, all done, the season's over. I don't know if it was that amazing in any respect except that it's baseball, the greatest game ever invented and proof of God's love for us. But now it's over and the cold dark winter takes over. I should not complain, living in San Jose. But after 5 months of nearly perfect weather, on cue, all day Saturday it rained. How am I ever going to make it to spring?