Some Random Thoughts from Spring Training

I'll admit it. I've been an awful blogger the past couple of weeks. I'll spare you the excuses.

Anyway, now that Spring Training is a few weeks old, I've had a couple of thoughts that keep repeating:

• I wish the Yankees would do something about the fact that Derek Jeter is not going to be able to play shortstop for a whole heck of a lot longer. They've got a couple prospects at the lower levels, I think, but I would love to see if perhaps they considered trading some of their surplus pitching talent for a closer-to-ready SS...unless the kids the Yankees have in their system really are supposed to be that good...but, given that you never hear them mentioned in the nearly the same breath as Jackson, Montero, Romine, et al, that doesn't bode very well.

• Posada's been swinging the bat well. I wonder how many people remember that in last spring training, in the first game against USF, Posada hit a triple?

• I wouldn't worry too much about the pitching right now--and here I'm talking about the starting. All you need to worry about is whether or not they stay healthy. Don't go too much on Spring Training performances--remember how good Canó was in March and how bad he was in April?

• As the economy continues to collapse and enters downright scary-as-hell territory, I have to think that it might soon become very possible to see ticket prices, at least from fan-to-fan selling, come down a tad. Granted, no, you still won't be able to afford tickets for Opening Day, but the prices for the Cubs exhibition games, at least the ones I've seen, aren't too bad (until you consider that face value is 1923 prices, but we'll ignore that). I'm still hoping to magically land a ticket (or two) for Friday night, but I have to go to a conference all day on Saturday, which is a shame since I'd much prefer the day game.

• If you haven't seen it, PBP was mentioned on the New York Magazine website here the other day, under the appropriate named linked 'fanatic-blogs'. My inappropriate sense of self-importance grows ever larger.
  

You know you've been sports blogging too much when...

[it's 11.27 PM, so as long as I get this done in the next half hour I won't have broken my New Year's resolution!]

You know you've been baseball blogging too much when...

10) You hear "spreadsheet" and think baseball reference

09) Your best friend apologizes for only reading once a month...even though she doesn't watch baseball and hates the Yankees.

08) You hear that George Mitchell has been named US Mideast envoy and begin to think that 'Roid Rage would go a long way to explaining the endemic violence.

07) You look forward to the end of the second week of February not for Valentine's Day but for Spring Training...

06) You feel out of the loop because your phone won't let you mobile update.

05) You have, at any point in time, uttered the sentence "it's on my blog."

04) You have, at any point in time, ever live-blogged and had people follow the post through some or the entirety of the event.

03) You feel slightly bad for the fact that you will be unable to live-blog the Super Bowl because you'll actually be at a Super Bowl Party (what is this life and how do you have one?).

02) You've ever looked at your Technorati ranking.

01) You're so determined to make your New Year's blogging resolution stand that you come up with something like this.

Maintenance, January 09

I've done some editing to the blogroll on the sidebar.

If you have a Yankees-related blog you would like me to link to or if your blog has changed addresses and the correct one is not currently not on the sidebar, please email me at rebecca@puristbleedspinstripes.com and I will be glad to edit accordingly.

Please, however, don't ask me to link to your blog if you haven't updated since, say, 2007...

Pregame Notes 24 April 2008

The Yankees will go for the you-know-what of the Chicago White Sox tonight, but to do it, Phil Hughes will have to pitch much better than his stat line--though that would be very welcome, not just for the Yankees, but for the sake of my fantasy team as well.

Jorge Posada is out of the lineup for a day off, with Jose Molina getting the nod. Johnny Damon will DH so Hideki Matsui can play in left, while Morgan Ensberg will still play at third. Alex Rodriguez is back with the team, but not playing tonight.

The Yankees offense has had a decent showing the past three games, though the bullpen has left a lot to be desired. Given that Hughes likely won't go more than six full innings (maybe into the seventh), one has to hope that the bullpen can do what is asked of it today.

On a more personal welcome-to-my-life note, My law professor today made a remark about the Yankees getting off to a bad start.

He is clearly not a very big baseball fan, or, at least, greatly unfamiliar with the way the team started last year and is structured this year.


On a blog note note, I do feel I should make a brief mention of upcoming days when I will be unable to update this, so you will likely either get a guest post from Brent Nycz or someone else I annoy enough to do it, or no update at all. They are:

This Friday, I'll be at the Rochester Red Wings/Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs game in Rochester.

This Saturday, I'll be watching the Scranton Yankees up here in Syracuse; I should get back early enough to do some sort of post, but then again, last time I got lost and ended up where you don't want to be after dark.


May 9th and 10th is Graduation Weekend, so, for obvious reasons, I will not be around, and then, 21-29 May I will be "across the pond", doing it Italian style.

Some Notes From Today

1) What's wrong with this statement: The Yankees and the Rays, dueling in a scoreless game in the eighth inning, Rasner having started for the pinstripes...

[EDIT: So it's not scoreless any more, but it was when I started this post!]

2) So I get not calling Davidson and Western Kentucky getting lucky, but how the heck does my brother bet San Diego on a coin flip and I...don't? St. Joe's and Vanderbilt are killing me as well. As my brother said, "Madness? THIS IS MARCH!" (don't worry, he hasn't kicked me into a bottomless well...)

Also, when they do those studies about how March Madness costs millions in productivity, they need to study how many hours of productivity college students lose...

3) I know my posts have been sporadic of late; this week has been fairly tough academically wise and it'll get worse over the next few weeks before it gets better. Until it clears up, I do apologize.

4) Tampa's offering two tickets to opening day for $20. I am very, very tempted. However, on that note, I will find out around dinnertime tomorrow whether or not I have tickets to Yankees-Sox on my birthday next month. If I do go, I'll make specially sure to take some great photos.

5) Brian Bruney still can't locate.

6) Some of you have asked about "The Season". I am still working on it, and apologize for the lack of updates. There's a reason for it, but I don't want to get into it right now. Let's just call it a secret.

Moose 'N 'Pen: Notes from Exhibition Game #3

So, I did not catch today's game and thus the notes are second-hand information.

1) Apparently Moose struggled a bit in his second inning today. It's certainly much too early to draw any conclusions (see Ford, Whitey: Spring Training for details), but he is so far the only starter to have given up more than a hit in two innings of work. I am not worried at this point, because, well, it'd be un-optimistic.

2) According to the box score that was on my cell phone, Morgan Ensberg had a couple hits and a couple RBI. As did Shelley. It would be kind of funny if our 1B combined in the season for A-Rod-ish numbers.

3) Karstens pitched WELL. Don't count this kid out, he might be the 'sleeper' on the team, the guy that ends up being much more important than we realize.


***

On another note entirely: I have been hotly debating this for some time, and I still have mixed feelings about it, but I will likely start running ads. Well, an ad.

See, I do love not having ads, but there are a few reasons to run at least one. I don't want to get too detailed into it, but I'm hoping you guys will forgive me this little bit.

Anyway, the writing's not going to change. Not a bit. You'd probably have to shoot me first.*




*Except that the writing might change in that the more I do this, the better the quality.

Pfft, Groundhogs

Well, I mean, it's actually seven weeks until March 21st, so technically, yes, there are six more weeks of winter, but I mean, really, like the groundhog's ever right about these things...


Anyway, the Blog Plan for Spring Training is as follows--and I'll do my best to actually, y'know, stick to it:

Most of this month won't be too totally different than the previous ones. I'll try to do the once-a-day update thing, unless something totally news/blogworthy occurs, and of course, a celebratory on the fourteenth and updates on The Season every Sunday, for the few of you that read it. Oh, and I'll liveblog the Super Bowl, because, well, I can.

March, however, is gonna be all sorts of fun.

I'm going to do a team-preview-a-day, starting March 1st, in alphabetical order (so I can save the best for last and yet have a convincing argument that it's not favoritism, even if it blatantly is). Some of these previews will be fairly in-depth, some won't be quite so much, and the reasoning behind this is that a) Yankee fans are probably more concerned about AL teams than NL teams, especially AL East teams, and b) depending on the day and how much or little of coursework I've gotten done, I might not have time to fully research. I will, of course, do the best I can.


I probably won't blog every spring training game, but I'll do what I can, and, who knows, maybe attempt a live blog on a Saturday or Sunday for the heck of it.


So that is the grand plan, regardless of what any little furball groundhog has to say about it...

(I mean, does no one even ask Scooter what he thinks?!)

Finally February!

Wow.

You know, yesterday I thought there were about five or six more days of January to get through, especially given how cold it got last night, but I woke up today and I turned the calendar page...and right now, I'm about to do it again.

This time I'll go from 31 January to 1 February.

Sure, there's a lot of winter left up in Syracuse, but, as I'd tell myself as a kid, by the time we get out of this month, people will be pitching and swinging again.

I have to say, it's a slightly odd feeling, for a few reasons.

The first is that, even if the last month was kind of slow (until Tuesday), it was one heck of an offseason from a Yankees perspective: new manager, new coaching staff, A-Rod hoopla, getting Mo, Po and Andy to come back, the report-that-must-not-be-named, Santanamania...

Hard to believe it's only been three months. Hard to believe it's been as long as three months. I go back and forth.

It's an odd feeling because October 2007 seems like it was such a long time ago, feels so far removed from now, but it's really not.


On a more personal level, it's an odd feeling because it means the blog's closing in on a five month anniversary and (coincidentally?) 25.000 views. I can't describe the feeling, knowing that something I started more or less on a whim has grown into something that was good enough to survive the off-season.

What's more, I can't describe the feeling this past week has given me--and the irony of it all is that I'm a journalism school reject. That's life though, isn't it?


So now there are just fourteen days to go, and indeed, there are a lot of people already down in Florida or Arizona, and the potential of Spring is soon to be at its most vibrant.


Whoever said February was a boring month is probably just a college football fan.

Hello, World!

So if you're reading this, there's a chance you may have just hopped over from Pete Abraham's site, so if you're new I'd like to say 'welcome' and 'Let's Go Yankees!'

Feel free to click around; there hasn't been a ton of Yankee stuff of late, so if you're looking for Yankees-specific entries, use the sidebar to navigate.


If you've got your own blog and want a link, or if you just want to say hello, feel free to drop me a line at rebecca@puristbleedspinstripes.com



Only seventeen days, not counting the 28th (today) to go 'till Spring Training.



A bonus nugget for the regular readers: In March, I'm going to attempt a preview-a-day season preview, starting on 1 March with the Angels, and going in alphabetical order, so that the last one, on 30 March, the day before the season starts is the New York Yankees.

I promise, I'll try not to let school get in the way too much...

A Note About the Blogroll

Just a quick note--

As you may have noticed, the blog roll over on the side has gotten increasingly large.

I've got no issue adding your blog or site as long as it's relevant, and not R-rated, but I am counting on you to keep it updated on a fairly regular basis.

By fairly regular, I'm going to say, oh, at least once a month in the offseason and once a week during the season.

Sound good?



Meanwhile, while it's a great time to be a NJ Devils fan, Travis Zajac got his finger bitten by Flyers' player Darien Hatcher during tonight's Devils' win...

...now, I'm all for hockey goonage, but, uh, biting? For real?

Some More Blog Notes

Right then...

SportstalkNY is on again tonight, nine PM Eastern, click here to watch and listen live.

Our guests tonight are Ed Willes, author of The Rebel League about the World Hockey Association, and Mark Littell, inventor of the NuttyBuddy, but perhaps more famous for giving up the Chris Chambliss home run in game five of the 1976 ALCS (see last post).

As always, there is a chatroom at the site, and we take calls at 631-615-4799.



I'm off to see Enchanted this afternoon. Hope it's worth my $10.

Monday Midnight Melee (or something like it)

You know, I had no plans to watch the Ravens/Pats, but when I turned it on for the heck of it, Baltimore was up, so I kept watching.

I am not a Ravens fan. I am to the Patriots what I am (as a Yankee fan) to the Red Sox and, as a liberal, to (most of) the Republican Party.

yet I was gripped by what I saw: pure grit on the part of Baltimore. They weren't supposed to have the talent to hang with them, let alone the strength to nearly win it...but if it wasn't for a time out that should not have been taken, they would have had it won.

Even still, the last play echoed the Super Bowl between the Rams and the Titans a few years ago...so...damn...close...

You don't have to be a football fan to appreciate tonight's game.

****

I received this email from the folks over at WasWatching:

Not sure if you saw this, but, just in case, I wanted to share the link:

http://www.waswatching.com/archives/2007/12/did_project_p46.html

Thanks again for helping to get the word out on this one. I think it helped!

Regards, Steve
WasWatching.com


The link is worth a click. It's amazing what the fans can do when they band together. For any of you that found the P46 campaign through PBP and wrote accordingly, my thanks.


******

I have accepted an offer to participate in a weekly sports webcast; the link can be found here.

I have no idea how it will turn out, but tune in on Wednesday, at 9 PM, and see how it goes!


******

I'm sure most of you saw my posting on PeteAbe's blog, but in case you haven't, I found out today that I made a perfect score on the writing portion of my GRE.


It's certainly not a true test of my writing ability, but as someone that rarely tests well, I was elated by the news.



Catch you all tomorrow evening, maybe by then there will be some real news regarding Santana


We have passed 200 posts.

A Blog Note and Whatnot

Purist Bleeds Pinstripes now has a Facebook page!

Click here to go to it, and add yourself to the fan list...if, of course, you are a fan.

So, of course the Bonds news breaks as I'm in the airport, and the battery on the computer is dying, which I guess is the sort of irony that fills my life.

However, upon arrival in New Jersey, my father told me that Monday night he went to a dinner at which Jim Leyritz spoke.

I was a little jealous.

Okay, I was very jealous.

Again, such is my life.

A Game of Third Basemen

So I'm sitting here, reading my Victorian lit for class, and a completely unrelated idea pops into my mind.

As I seldom exercise patience, I found this one too hard to pass up.

Presenting the first ever Purist Bleeds Pinstripes Blog Contest!

A Game of Third Basemen

This is a contest to see which one of you wonderful readers can correctly guess who will be the main third baseman for the New York Yankees in 2008.

How to play:

In a comment, name the player (first name, last name, previous team if applicable) you think will be manning third for the Yankees in 2008. You need not post anything else, but you are welcome to post your reasonings if you wish.

Rules (Read these!):

1) You may submit only ONE name.

2) You may not submit a name already listed, so submit early!

3) The name you submit does not have to be currently active, or even have played professional baseball at all, but it will probably help.

4) Submissions are welcome until a trade is made or FA signed to the position, whenever that happens.


Prize:

The winner will get a prize, not sure what yet, but something Yankees-related. The more that play, the higher value the prize will end up being!

Change of Address, but not really.

Could this be? Could the Jets actually win a game?

(time elapses)
(Jets fail, Skins ball)
(more time elapses)
(Washington attempts long FG for win)

Nope. You know, the Jets could have a fifty point lead, and I still wouldn't trust them to keep it...

Anyway, that aside, some semi-important information:

Purist Bleeds Pinstripes can now be reached at http://www.puristbleedspinstripes.com or http://puristbleedspinstripes.com. You can still get here by the old .blogspot address, but this should be easier to remember.

At any rate, it feels so much more official. I like it!

Also, with the new address I also get a shiny new email address! So, while you're still welcome to contact me at rglass@syr.edu, the new official 'contact Rebecca' email address is Rebecca@puristbleedspinstripes.com.

Do yourself and those around you a favor, and don't try to say it five times fast...

Just Some Notes

The charity auction I mentioned here is beginning to wrap up, so if you want to put some bids in, you might want to think about doing it soon, here.


Over the past week or so I've added a few blogs onto the side-bar; all of them, including the non-Yankee ones, are worth a look.


My cousin is a big Dodgers fan, so I felt obligated to send him an email telling him to hide the Dodger's bullpen at all costs. Especially Scott Proctor.


I've been spending most of tonight working on The Season; it's been so much fun to write so far, and hopefully it will continue. The best part today, however, wasn't the writing, but rather when I realized that certain things I have planned plot-wise actually fit together very, very well. I won't get into any more detail than that, but suffice it to say I am extremely excited about this!

I love the weekend.

Who's Up for a Wild and Wacky Winter?

So I did some thinking and planning last night (which is really odd, because I almost NEVER plan), and this is roughly the plan I came up with to keep this blog occupied till Spring:

First off, LCS previews and recaps, and World Series preview and recaps.

Baseball news will be blogged-upon as necessary. It’ll be mostly Yankees news, of course, though anything earth-shattering will also make an appearance. I'm not interested in speculation, only in what actually happens, so don't expect to see will-he-or-won't-he posts about A-rod/Posada/Mo/Manager, but instead he did-or didn't posts.

I’ll also intersperse with updates on my own life as a university senior, but I’ll do these sparingly.

Other than that, to keep up with the idea of a-post-a-day-keeps-the-boredom-away theory, I have broken it down as thus:

Monday: Random Baseball Trivia. Not really going for the 'who hit 10 home runs in a week?', but instead things like 'so-and-so is allergic to pizza and danishes'. I'm actually not sure there is such a thing as a danish allergy, but it popped into my mind first!

Tuesday: Yankees’ Classic Moments. Sure, there might be those big home runs, but perhaps some smaller moments as well…

Wednesday: Weekly hockey, basketball and college bb update. I’m partial to the Devils, Nets and Syracuse Orange and I won’t pretend to be unbiased…

Likely these will be in some sort of standings-round-up format that Yankees Chick does so well.

Thursday: NFL Picks: picking teams by the uniform I like better, the city I like/hate more, whatever, really, except things that actually have to do with football. By the time this is over, spring training will be a week away! Or something like it, anyway!

Friday: You learn something new every day: I pick a baseball concept, rule, pitch or idea I don’t really understand, and figure out what it is. Topics to be discussed include: pitching from the windup/stretch, difference between a curve and a breaking ball, what the rosin bag really does, why bats break so easily, and whatever else piques my interest. If you have something you'd like explained, feel free to either comment or email me and I'll be glad to oblige.

Saturday: Profiles in pinstripes: tidbits on men who’ll be in Yankee uniforms and the supporting cast in 2008. I'll likely start with the guys we know will be in pinstripes next year--like Derek Jeter, and with those who will be with the organization in one way or another--the Bossman, Bob Sheppard, etc...

Sunday: Best part of the week. Baseball novel. Your first glance at the innermost recesses of my soul imagination! I'd describe this but surprises are more fun.



So, barring vociferous opposition, as today is Wednesday, I'll be back some time later with a weekly hockey update (as basketball and college ball have not yet started). Should be fun; the season's just started...

To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn...(State of the Blog Notes)

I feel odd making another post. I feel like the most recent one I made should be the last thing said until we know what's what, but judging from Steinbrenner's commenting-by-not-commenting, it might be a while and I don't want to leave you all hanging.


I need to say how overwhelmed I am at the response to my last post. It's not really the amount of people that commented, but, rather, what those who did said.

Some of the comments absolutely moved me to tears.

It's been an amazing summer, and it's all that more amazing because you all have been here to share the experience.

That said, for those of you that are interested:

The Yankees are done for October, but four other teams still remain. The Purist part of me will gladly cover the two LCS and the World Series, and the Yankee fan in me will be rooting for Cleveland and whoever plays better in the West.

How rare would it be for me to root for Boston? If Boston played the Mets, I'd root for the Mets.

I will also keep the NFL picks going throughout, watching that week number climb till at long last it's Super Bowl weekend...

After October is said and done, though, what happens is up to you guys.

I'm open for pretty much anything as long as it's appropriate.

So what do you all want?

I can keep it simple, with news and notes of off-season goings on, and nothing else.

I can do random weekly posts, like Tuesdays: Yankees' Classic Moments, Thursday: Random Baseball Trivia, Fridays: Hockey notes, Football picks...etc...

I can intersperse random updates about my own experiences as a Yankees fan or as a university senior.

I can run a serial weekly update with the baseball novel I'm working on...(this is a story in which the girly, 300 part of me decided that the team to be followed had to be named the Spartans. Just for the record.)


I can more or less do whatever you all want, as long as it's not rated worse than PG-13.


Just let me know, and hopefully I'll be able to make the winter a little less dark for a few people.

Mid-Month Report Card?

Okay guys, gals and gender unspecifieds!

So, it's been about half a month now that I've kept this going, which, for me, is a really long time to get anything going. If I last past the month, and right now there seems to be no reason to think otherwise, I think I'd be in the clear to call this a successful venture.

So I'd like to know what you all think.

How am I doing so far? I've never done a blog like this before, and I'd love to make it as entertaining as possible, so you, my loyal or just-stumbled-upon-this reader will want to check back...

What have I done well? More importantly, what should I work on? Do my pregame/game recaps work? Is there something of which you'd like to see more or less?

I'm a baseball fan, not a baseball journalist or scholar, and thus there are quite a few things I don't know, but I guess you can call it learning on the job. For example, I learned on Saturday the difference between pitching from the wind up and pitching from the stretch...

I know most of the readers here are from PeteAbe's blog; I'm curious to know if there are any who have come across this blog from Google or another site...


So yeah.

Let me know what you think.

This is like a baby and you know what they say: If you build develop nurture it, they will come!

A Quick Note

I turned comment moderation on last night because I wanted to be able to allow anonymous commenting, but moderation is a PAIN IN THE ARSE.

Thus, I have turned it off.

Your comments should now appear as they're posted.

Enjoy the game!