Evan Longoria, Model of Consistency

Check out his stats from last year vs. this year...eerily identical in about the same number of games:


It bears mentioning that his ISO and BABIP are down, so perhaps it does mean there's been a little improvement. He IS making better contact with pitches in the zone this year. I expected to see more improvement in the strikeout rate, though.

But speaking of consistency, is there anyone more amazing than Albert Pujols? Extrapolating his stats by the end of this year, he will have achieved NINE straight years of 32+ HRs, 103+ RBIs, .314+ BA, 99+ R, and .955+ OPS, and some of those years came amidst a gimpy elbow. Absolutely remarkable. Even Mark McGwire had a full season where he hit only 22 home runs.

Epilogue: eBay

Well, I submitted my post to Consumerist, but they didn't pick it up. :-(

Then I heard back from someone in eBay's customer service department, and the moron looked at the wrong auction and claimed that I wasn't charged the new fees. I replied and pointed out the right one, and I never heard back from them.

Then eBay threatened to send my account to collections.

Enjoy your $7, because you're not getting any more from me.

Now I Know How Erik Bedard Feels

For a solid two years now I've been having some pain in my shoulder, ranging at times from a mild twinge to full-on doubled over agony. It generally doesn't bother me in my day-to-day life, but I always feel it when I throw. Not only the pain, but also the unsmooth, ratchet-y feeling of my arm (like those old Transformers toys) when I go through the motion. Anyway, you have some days that it feels fine and other days where it feels like your arm is going to fall off. But you can still technically throw, more or less.

So I visited the orthopedic surgeon today, and he suspects a labrum tear, "baseball's most fearsome injury" (they are notoriously hard to diagnose; they didn't find Bedard's until they opened his shoulder up). It's three weeks of physical therapy for me, and if it doesn't improve it looks like I'm going under the knife. I'd almost opt for the surgery immediately because my body's so bad at fixing itself nowadays. When I was a kid I'd eat whatever I want and then go out and dislocate all my limbs and rip ligaments crashing into trees, and everything healed up just fine. Now at the ripe old age of 28, everything's turned chronic. Chronic shoulder pain, chronic knee pain, chronic elbow pain, it's such a sad state of affairs.

Anyway, I went almost all in on Bedard this year, and the constant will-he-play-or-won't-he-play got tiresome. I feel bad that I got so angry, because we're pretty much brothers now! I hope to see Bedard flash his 95 MPH heater in the future--it gives me some hope that I will regain my blazing 70 MPH fastball.

Seriously though, the one thing that was really encouraging is how supportive the doctors are about fixing these problems. I guess you could live with the injury for the rest of your life if you kind of take it easy from now on, so I was half-expecting the doctor to tell me how stupid I was even thinking about surgery so I could go back to playing co-ed softball. And I guess I could always play 1st base. But I dunno, it would still feel like I lost something.

RIP, Game Boy

When I was a kid, I never really had any money. Now, I'm not complaining; it's not as if I lived amongst inner-city gangbangers, so in that sense I was certainly privileged, but I definitely never had any spending money. My parents were devout members of the Korean Church of Cheapassism and so allowance was out of the question. Chores were, of course, compulsory and not a source of income.

Anyway, around the late 80s - early 90s when I was about...I guess 10 or so, the original Nintendo Game Boy came out, and we were mesmerized. Up until that point, the only portable gaming we had had were those Tiger LCD games. They were kind of fun, but they were fun in the way that Sudoku is fun; kind of enjoyable on the bus, but otherwise, eh. The Game Boy changed all that...this was portable Nintendo! So I decided that I would try to save up money to buy one. I saved every penny I ever found, earned, stole, or swindled, and after about a year or so, I had accumulated a grand total of 36 dollars, leaving me about 60 dollars short. At that rate, I'd be drawing Social Security before I could afford the damn thing. It was time for plan B: complaining to my parents.

Now, my parents have been blessed with absolutely OTHERWORLDLY powers of resistance. I swear they were raised in a gulag or something. I know that if I ever have a kid and he/she so much as looks sad at the store, I'll buy out the entire fucking Toys R Us because I'm such a damn pushover. I got teary at the mall once because the other kids were getting nice toys and I was just getting a 99 cent plastic watergun, and so I came home with nothing. I even tried to get the watergun back in the end, but my mom was having none of it. And I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD! Anyway, the point is, they don't care when I complain. So I gave up and blew 36 bucks on candy and baseball cards and a hat from Wyoming. But I never stopped coveting.

Incredibly, that Christmas, my dad bought me a Game Boy for Christmas. I say my dad because I know my mom would have flipped out if she knew how much it cost. It was by FAR the most expensive gift I'd ever gotten from them (in fact, now that I think about it, it's STILL the most expensive gift I've ever gotten from them), and I treated that thing like it was my firstborn child. I never got a scratch on the screen (not a scratch anywhere on the body either), and I kept all the papers and box and even the original plastic. Yes, sort of like Steve Carell on The 40 Year Old Virgin. And yes, I got made fun of a lot for my OCD obsession with perfection, but it was mine, and it was my baby. Even when I grew up, I never was tempted to sell or trade it in. I kept it in the box and put it on a shelf in my parents' house so I wouldn't lose it while moving around.

Well, this past weekend my family had a yard sale. And of course, without asking, they sold it. For like two bucks. Even in strict monetary terms it should be worth at least $75, probably even $100, but I wouldn't have sold it for twice that much. It hurts to think that someone might be kicking around something I so painstakingly cared for.

Pennywise and pound foolish to their last breath, my parents, who traded $100 for $2, then had the nerve to chide me for spending $30 on my glasses.

District 9

I had high hopes for District 9, the Peter Jackson-produced, Neill Blomkamp-directed sci-fi film, and I came away impressed…mostly.

I came into the film knowing very little about it, and I actually thought at first that it would primarily be a horror thriller (which it most decidedly is not; primarily, anyway). But when the ginormous alien mothership settles right above Johannesburg, SA, everything snaps into place and you realize—this is going to be an allegory about apartheid and the infamous District 6. And it is, with mixed success.

The film is presented through a faux-documentary program and opens with an explanation of the aliens’ mysterious appearance, their confinement to District 9, and the plan to forcibly relocate them to another area outside of the city. The plan is overseen by the movie’s main protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe (played by Sharlto Copley, who does an admirable job guiding van der Merwe’s evolution from bureaucratic chickenshit to moral hero of the universe), and from the way the “documentary” subjects talk of him, you know an unfortunate fate will befall him in the end. But in between, the film struggles to decide if it wants to be Schindler’s List, Dances With Wolves, or Transformers, and ultimately settles on being all three, in jarringly distinct parts.

As an allegory, District 9 is…thinly veiled. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree that building awareness of such atrocities is a laudable goal, but as a filmmaker, I think that the art of your craft is making me appreciate humanity’s historical potential for evil, but without shoving it down my throat. But even worse, the film doesn’t really resolve anything—you’ll understand what I mean if you watch it.

With that said, the special effects are PHENOMENAL (you’ll think the aliens are humans in suits until you realize it’s not possible) and it’s surprisingly poignant and has some funny moments. Not perfect, but definitely worth the 10 bucks.