Category Archives: Baseball

Baseball

Tommy Lasorda Takes His Ball and Goes Home

lasorda.jpgBaseball is America’s game! It doesn’t belong to the Italians or the Cubans or the Koreans or the Japanese. Especially not the Japanese! The very thought of them playing our game makes me sick to my stomach!

And the Dutch! God, I hate the Dutch! I hate tulips! I hate land below sea level! Screw them and their stupid wooden shoes! Those guys wear wooden shoes, right?

I feel so strongly about this, I’m gonna use my time machine. Oh yeah, I have a time machine. You get a free time machine whenever you’re inducted into the Hall of Fame.

You know who invented it? Don Drysdale. Not only are Dodgers the best team in the world, but they’ve broken the time/space continuum!

Anyway, I’m gonna use my time machine and get ridda every player I ever had who wasn’t American. Fernando Valenzuela, get lost! I know you won me a World Series in 1981, but I don’t care. Get American or get off my team!

Davey Lopes, cornerstone of my infield for a decade: hit the road! I don’t care if you were born in Rhode Island. That’s a foreign name, pal! I ain’t taking any chances!

Same goes for Ron Cey. That name sounds a little too Chinese for my liking. People used to call you The Penguin–penguins ain’t American, either. Get outta my sight!

Steve Garvey–probably American. But he went to play for the Padres, which is a Spanish word. Good enough for me! Scram, ya commie!

Once I get rid of all these un-American types, I’ll win even more World Series! Cuz my lineups won’t be polluted by these stupid foreign types! Those guys should stick to their own sports like soccer or bocce or whatever the hell it is those people play!

Then, I’ll go back to 1972 and warn Nixon about Watergate, and beat Woodward and Bernstein with a tire iron. No one takes down my favorite president! Nixon will be so grateful he’ll finally grant me my greatest wish: to see America’s official flower changed to fettuccine.

Then, I’ll go back to 1955 and make Jayne Mansfield fall in love with me. How? I have my ways. Most of them involve pasta.

Then, I’ll go back to 1933 and kill Hitler! But not before I find out where he hid the Ark of the Covenant!

Then, I’ll probably take a nap. Other than the time machine, sleep is the best way to escape this horrible, horrible modern world!

Baseball, Inappropriate Walkup Music 2009

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.09.09

santo-shea.jpgFor the original Inappropriate Walk Up Music post, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

* “Monster Mash”, Bobby “Boris” Pickett
In general, novelty songs = inappropriate walkup music. But I bet there’s some major leaguer who’ d come to bat to a Weird Al tune.

* “Brand New Key,” Melanie

* “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, Warrant
I love it when dumb guys try to stretch out. Like when a hair metal band best known for sexual innuendo involving pies pens a Southern gothic epic, and names it after a classic anti-slavery novel for no discernible reason.

Baseball, Inappropriate Walkup Music 2009

Inappropriate Walk Up Music: 03.08.09

santo-shea.jpgFor the original Inappropriate Walk Up Music post, click here.

Every day until Opening Day, Scratchbomb presents three tunes that are completely, unequivocally inappropriate for use as major league walk-up music.

These are not necessarily bad songs–although that
certainly helps. They are merely songs that don’t evoke the fear and dread one traditionally associates with the walk-up song. In fact, they evoke the exact opposite.

Imagine yourself in the on-deck circle. Bottom of the 9th. Down by one. Man on second, two out. You hear the PA system blare, The centerfielder, number 20… The crowd roars at the sound of your name. And as you stroll to the batter’s box, you are greeted with the strains of one of these songs:

* “Invisible Touch”, Genesis
Phil Collins is an example of an artist with an entire oeuvre that’s inappropriate for use as walk up music, with the possible–POSSIBLE–exception of “In the Air Tonight” (not that the Peter Gabriel-led version of Genesis would be any better; I doubt any batter would opt for “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”). I have a self-imposed rule for this project that I won’t select the same artist twice, but I may just have to violate it, because I can think of about 1200 Phil Collins songs that crack me up in this context.

* “Careering”, Public Image Ltd.
I guess anything from the super-dubby Jah Wobble-era PiL would qualify, but I find this song particularly creepy. But not in a way that would intimidate the pitcher. I imagine that if this song were played over a stadium PA, everyone in the crowd would feel weird and wrong and want to leave as soon as possible.

* “Poison Arrow,” ABC
This songs gets played a lot on an 80s/90s “modern rock” music channel on Time Warner Cable. It came on as I “watched” it last night, and immediately said to The Wife that it would be a good song to include here. She countered by wondering how it would sound as a merengue song–would that spice it up enough for the likes of, say, Jose Reyes? For the next 15 minutes, we riffed on this idea. The details are way too stupid to share, but I remember assigning the synth part to a seven-piece horn section, which would also sing the chorus. And there would be a four minute trombone solo.