Sports

The Boston Globe bought (original) the Boston Dirt Dogs. I guess this means that there’s been a truce on one front in the sportswriters vs. fan site war.

The eloquent Bill provides his own Kaiju review, which touches on all the Lovecraftian elements I ignored. Plus he opens a much needed discussion on the subject of Super Wrong, and how Super Wrong’s valets failed to do right by the budding superstar.

I girded my teeth. I gritted my loins. I ventured out, bold and unafraid, into the strange world where art students meet wrestling and nothing is safe; where every entrance theme is J-Pop; where the heels are square and the faces are from Mars. I did it — for Johnny. I dunno, man. It’s like wrestling, but they wear big Japanese monster suits made out of foam rubber. And it happens in my city. Like I wasn’t gonna get down to a show eventually. ...

A few days ago I was listening to Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball) on the morning sports show on WEEI. He didn’t say anything deeply surprising, but he did mention that he’d run into Bill Belichick at his agent’s office in New York the other week. Apparently, Coach Belichick is writing a Moneyball-style book about football — no surprise, since he takes the same value for money approach as Billy Beane. I’m looking forward to it, assuming he successfully navigates the publishing rapids.

If you’re a Red Sox fan who’s wondering why the hell Mark Bellhorn is on the team, this article may help. His unintentional walk percentage is tenth in MLB; if he could hit, he’d be dangerous. Doesn’t make him a starter (unless, say, Nomar’s on the DL) but it explains why he’s out there right now.

I caught Miracle this afternoon, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. The acting was great, and the semi-final game against the Russians is enough to support the fairly bland script. If you don’t like sports, there’s nothing there for you, but if you do like sports it’s one of the great stories. The hockey is really well filmed. Couple of bonus points for the reaction shots of the Russians after the game. They look human and their pain at losing is clear. Beat the hell out of Rocky IV.

Last night was an important turning point for the Celtics; they started Brandon Hunter, the second round draft pick, and he responded very well. (6-12 from the floor, 9 rebounds). Up until last night, John Connor had been giving people more or less the same minutes as O’Brien. It looks like that’ll change now. However, he did have 15+ games with the team before then, which means we can compare apples and apples as far as his coaching and O’Brien’s. And boy, the result is illuminating. ...

This (original) is in no way going to be good for me. I can tell.

Adriaan Tijsseling posted a comment about an hour after I bitched about ecto (original) and offered to help. So kudos; that’s good support. If I’d read the help files, I’d have found the support email address, albeit it doesn’t appear on the ecto home page. Good things about ecto: Textile (original) preview support. Customizable HTML tag insertion. Per-blog default settings. Debug console. Things I don’t like as much: Can’t see the continuation and the main entry in the same window. Still somewhat confused about the local copies vs. posted copies of any given entry. Current blog should be displayed somewhere so I don’t have to guess/remember. No free beer. ...

So as I’ve noted before, Curt Schilling is answering baseball questions over on the Sons of Sam Horn board. Good for him, I said and say. However, he doesn’t want anyone quoting what he writes there. That is what we in the business call a can of worms. It opened up wide this week. David Pinto quoted Schilling’s SoSH thoughts over on his blog. The guy who runs SoSH, Eric, told Pinto to take them down in no uncertain terms. Pinto did. Others (original) became upset at SoSH. ...