originally posted april 05, 2005

Instant Update: My offer for a condo in Highland Park was accepted. I'm going to be a homeowner. More info coming soon.

Baseball Mecca

Western Pennsylvania spring is upon us: on days like today you get 70-degree calm weather, while on others you get crippling snow storms. One thing's for certain: baseball season is upon us, and so talk of the Super Bowl year that could have been now gives way to talk of the over-.500 season that Pirates fans have been patiently awaiting for the last twelve years. I was lucky enough to start my baseball season earlier down in Florida with my family to check out Grapefruit League action. It's a baseball-lover's paradise.

Since US Airways was doomed when I bought my tickets in January, everyone had already used all their frequent flier miles to buy free tickets. I had to pay regular price for my tickets but I upgraded myself to first class. It was the first time I really got to enjoy it, and the three glasses of wine on a two-plus-hour flight really made the arrival that much more exhilarating. We had exceptional weather in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Fort Myers despite predictions of rain every day we were there. "If anything," I opined to my co-workers back in dreary 40-degree Pittsburgh, "it was too hot."

I saw four games in four days: Braves at Yankees, Pirates at Devil Rays, Yankees at Twins, and Astros at Yankees. At each game I was surprised by the number of "visiting" fans: for example, there were a lot more Pirate fans than I expected down in St. Petersburg. Some of the fans are transplants who retired in South Florida, but I imagine that many families make annual trips centered around spring training. I don't blame them. With the exceptions of the Yankees and Red Sox, virtually every team in the Grapefruit League has plentiful tickets available for $20 or less. You get to see the players right up close and personal, and of course you get to see the scrubs who suit up for a month before they're relegated to AA teams for the rest of the season.

Yankees fans, of course, were everywhere. Where they go, so do the Yankee-haters: we got a "Go Red Sox" greeting in our own hotel from a random passerby. Meanwhile it's easy to get star-struck. My mom found a very grouchy Reggie Jackson in our hotel eating breakfast; despite offending him by mentioning his recent car accident, my mom got Reggie's autograph on a baseball. We also saw Yankees pitcher Mike Stanton's Hummer H2 and second-baseman Tony Womack's Lamborghini parked at our hotel one night. After the game against Houston, we pulled our rental car right next to that Lamborghini on a major road, waving and shouting cheers at Tony. He smiled and waved back. There's a crowd of fans, mostly kids, who chase after players' cars as they leave the stadium. Nobody ever signs an autograph from their car at a red light, but it's fun to say you got within six feet of Randy Johnson without being yelled at or roughed up.

Here Come the Scrubs

Of course, no game would be complete without the scrubs. At most of the games we saw, there was not a starter left in the game after the 7th inning. (We were lucky to have arrived so late in the spring; earlier in spring training starters don't even last that long.) Folks like Robinson Cano, Felix Escalona, and Bubba Crosby aren't exactly household names, but they're trying their best to make it onto the 25-man roster. At one of the games I attended, Crosby was running like an absolute madman to show off to the coaches, advancing from second to third in a situation where a leading team would just be accused of running up the score. Bubba's a fan favorite and makes a strong case for his presence on the major league roster.

Obligatory Jeers and Steroid Crap

So 2005 is going to become the Year of Steroids. Jason Giambi, who came clean early during the steroid investigations, got wild cheers at the Yankees' spring and regular-season stadiums but chants of "Steroids" elsewhere. Many historians have already whipped out their asterisking pens, claiming that the amazing record-breaking feats have been performed by people who were cheating. I think there is some credibility to this: when an Olympian breaks a world record but is stripped of his medal for steroid use, the world record is reset to its original level. Of course, Major League Baseball has about the most lenient policy in pro sports:

First offense: 10-day suspension.
Second offense: 30-day suspension.
Third offense: 60-day suspension.
Fourth offense: 1-year suspension.
Fifth offense: Possible action by commissioner.

On Sunday night's opener, ESPN announcer Jon Miller rightly referred to this as a "five strikes and you're out" policy. Add on all the appeals and challenges that delay any of these suspensions, and you're talking about a policy that is almost as worthless as the old steroid policy. It's all lip-service with no teeth, just as worthless as any piece of corporate paranoia. Of course, most corporations don't have to answer directly to Congress when things go awry.

It was just painful to watch ESPN sideline reporter Sam Ryan badger the Yankees' and Red Sox's GMs about Human Growth Hormone and urine testing. The Sox's Theo Epstein didn't even look at Ryan, instead focusing on the game and reminding Ryan that he's focusing on the 2005 campaign. Let's leave the talking-head topics to the talking-head shows, of which there are several on ESPN already. It's baseball season, and I've resolved to pay much closer attention to the 162-plus games that matter.

Back to April 2005, or to the year 2005.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.