No doubt you’ve heard about Paul, the World-Cup predicting octopus — correctly selecting the fate of the German World Cup team throughout the South African tournament.

Well, I was wondering if my dog, Mazzy, had any prognostication skills in selecting the winner of Twins games.  Before Saturday’s game (July 10), I put down two snacks, one I designated for the Tigers and one for the Twins.  She initially ran toward the Twins snack, sniffed it, and then passed it over for the Tigers snack.  Things didn’t look too good for the Twins… and sure enough, the Twins went out and lost 7-4 to the Tigers — with another starting pitching performance so bad that Mazzy would roll in it.

Mazzy’s record was 1-0 in predicting Twins games, so far.

So now I’ll be recording her predictions, posted before each game.  The most recent predictions are at the top.  I’ll keep this going until she gets one wrong.

UPDATE 7/15:  Mazzy gets one wrong.  White Sox win 8-7.  I think she properly envisioned the events of the game.  It’s just that I forgot to tell her about the “balk” rule.   Oh well.  Experiment ends.

UPDATE  7/14 :

Mazzy got last Sunday’s game correct.  She’s now 2-0.

The video below is Mazzy’s prediction for the first game back from the All-Star Break — White Sox at Twins.  Mazzy predicts a Twins Win.  Sorry about the sideways video.  I didn’t think it through, that YouTube would only support horizontal video.  Mazzy says “Go Twins.”

UPDATE 7/11:

So this video is her prediction made before Sunday’s game (July 11, 2010) between the Minnesota Twins and the Detroit Tigers — posted before I know it’s results.  Let’s hope she’s right and the Twins world has a little something to wag their tails about before the All-Star Game.

[NOTE:  I swear I already had this written, with just some clean up to do earlier in the week.  The subject matter meant it needed to be posted sometime during the World Cup, but the Cup was continuing for another 3 weeks – no hurry.  But then that Posnanski guy, in the middle of a post about the US-Slovenia tie game, drops this line:

Michael Bradley …would …deflect the ball into net for what soccer fans like to call “the equalizer.” I tend to think we should try to fit “the equalizer” into our baseball lexicon as well — it’s just better than “tying run.”

…which is just about the opening segment of this post.  Oh well, I’m going to go with what I had written.  Poz beat me to print and he’s got the influence that just might make ‘equalizer’ a baseball term.  So listen to that Posnanski guy -- henceforth, it's not a tying run, its an equalizer.]

It all began the first time I learned of the phrase “equalizer.”  Though, I’m sure it was spelled “equaliser.”

That’s what started this thought that baseball could stand to import some of the lexicon of soccer.

Baseball calls the run that ties a game the “tying run.”  Soccer (in English speaking soccer circles) calls the goal that ties a game the “equaliser.”  I’m no monarchist, but the Brit soccer term is so much better than the American term.  It has as much chance as the U.S. converting to metric, but I’d like baseball to pick up a few terms from soccer.

About the only thing I know about soccer is from my frayed memory reading Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch”a decade back.  But since I learned the word equalizer, I’d been on the look out for other words that baseball could adopt.   My list was pretty short – 2 of the terms below, “clean sheet” and “in aggregate” had been stashed in a notebook somewhere over recent years.  But with the World Cup coming around, I dug through a hand full of web-sites that tutor newbies in the lingo of soccer to see if there are other terms suitable for use on the baseball field.

And no, I won’t call the baseball field a “pitch.”   Baseball already has a meaning for that.

My proposal for terms from the language of soccer to be added to the lexicon of baseball:

Equalizer is a tying run (only appropriate to use the Americanized spelling for baseball). As in “Carl Crawford represents the equalizer out there at second base.”

A Clean Sheet in soccer when a goal keeper keeps the other team from scoring.  It’s analogous to baseball’s very suitable term “shutout.”    The term “shutout” can still be reserved for the individual pitching accomplishment. To make room for soccer’s cool term, I propose baseball to adopt the term “Clean Sheet” for a team shutout.   A Clean Sheet is attributed to a team – the starter, the relievers and the defense.  All shutouts are clean sheets, but not all clean sheets are shutouts.

In determining the winner of a series of soccer matches (i.e. a home and away series), it can often come down to who scores the most “In Aggregate” (i.e. total goals) in the series.  Even though baseball resolves all of its games into wins and losses, making the term meaningless, I’d like to see in aggregate results for a series – just for bragging rights.

In the World Cup, when one tournament pairing of a group of four is stocked with good teams such that some otherwise deserving team is going to be held back from advancing (only 2 teams emerge from each group), it is called a Group of Death.  The group of Brazil, Portugal, Ivory Coast, and North Korea has been pegged as the Group of Death for the 2010 World Cup.   From now on, in baseball, the AL East will be known as the Group of Death.

Conversely, the least interesting grouping of teams is called the Group of Sleep.  In MLB, it varies from year to year, but I nominate both Central divisions for MLB’s Group of Sleep.

In soccer, a game against a cross-town rival is called a Derby.   That’s a way-better term than baseball’s “natural rival” arrangement used in interleague play.  From now on, the annual interleague match-ups between (typically) regional teams shall be known as “Derbies,”  as in “The A’s and the Giants are playing their derby this weekend.”

In soccer a Golden goal is an overtime goal that ends a match.   I’m still fond of the recent (if overused) development in baseball as referring to game-ending events as “walkoff” events (i.e. walkoff homer, walkoff walk, walkoff balk).  Still, I’ll go with this and say that a “walkoff hit” and a “golden hit” can be used interchangeably.

I’m lifting this definition straight from the “soccer-training-info.com” website.  The site defines  “Handbagging” as “when players are fighting on the field but just throwing soft punches or slaps, like old ladys throwing their handbags.”  I can’t wait for a baseball announcer to broadcast that there has been a bench-clearing handbagging.

Wikipedia defines “Lost the Dressing Room” as a soccer term used to describe “the situation where a manager of a club is seemingly very near to being sacked. The team will invariably be struggling on the pitch, the manager will be under a lot of pressure and the signs may be that he has lost the faith and respect of his players.”  Chang the word “sacked” to “fired” and the term is instantly transportable to baseball, describing two or three managers even at this moment.

If you have other terms you’d like to export across the pond or across the soccer/baseball divide, suggest away.

The following are websites I used to learn about soccer terms.

http://www.soccer-training-info.com/soccer_definitions.asp

http://www.gq.com/sports/guides/201006/world-cup/soccer-terms-group-of-death-cheat-sheet

http://www.firstbasesports.com/soccer_glossary.html

http://www.shoebacca.com/resources/glossary/soccer.html

Today’s blog post is really just an expanded Tweet with links and a Posterisk.

Baseball Disaster Movies : Towering Inferno (Target Field has a small fire), Earthquake* (Petco Park has a small trembler), Poseidon Adventure (the Mariners 2010 season).

* Disaster movies were a staple of my movie diet for a certain period of my youth.   And there was no movie that I more eagerly awaited than Earthquake.  It was advertised as being available in “Sensurround” which was supposed to be something that would shake theater seats during the earthquake moments in the movie.  Maybe it worked well in the “select theaters” that got the full technology, but in my small-town theater it felt like nothing more than the projector guy turning up the bass for a few seconds.   And even with only 10-year-old standards to uphold, I thought the movie sucked.  One of the biggest disappointments in my personal cinema history.

YouTube has the only image I can find of the Target Field fire of Sunday night (6/13/2010).

Umpire Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game reminded me of one of my favorite snippets of sports writing.  It was by King Kaufman, the former sports writer for Salon.com.  Kaufman described a blown call by Jim Joyce on a Mark Bellhorn homerun during Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS (the “Reverse the Curse” Red Sox pulling even with the Yankees).  In that game, Jim Joyce had the good fortune of the other umpires gathering and overruling his initial missed call.

Here is Kaufman’s account of the 2004 game:

Bellhorn’s fourth-inning homer was originally ruled in play. The ball had hit a fan in the front row and dropped back onto the warning track, but this was missed by left-field umpire Jim Joyce. And then Red Sox manager Terry Francona asked Jim with his eyes to ask again yes and then he asked the other umpires would they yes to say yes and first the umpires put their arms around each other yes and fans’ hearts were going like mad and yes they said yes it was a home run yes.

When I read it back in October 2004, it took me a few moments to figure out what Kaufman was doing.  It wasn’t until I looked at the name of the umpire that I figured out he was riffing on the end of Ulysses.   I loved that Kaufman never bothered to explain his joke.  If you got it, you got it.  If you didn’t, just keep on reading.

I read Kaufman religiously after that, just looking for that kind of stuff.  I miss you, King.

Here’s me riffing on King riffing on Joyce for tonight’s missed call:

And then Galarraga asked me with his eyes to ask again yes he was out and then he asked me would I yes to say yes he was out and first Cabrera put his arms up and then drew them down to his crotch and Jim Leyland’s heart was going like mad and yes I will yes I said he was safe Yes.

Very Well Then Goes to Target Field

I’m back in the Pacific Northwest after meeting three of my brothers to check out a couple games at Target Field. We brought good luck to the Twins, who exorcised a demon or two by beating the Yankees on Thursday evening, and holding on to beat the Rangers on Friday evening. Two short-sleeve weather evenings that delivered on the beautiful promise that is outdoor baseball.

Some quick thoughts on the trip:

• I’ve been to many baseball stadiums – new, as well as well-established – and one always knows from far away where the stadium is. Stadia aren’t usually subtle. At least from the route that I approached Target Field (Rod Carew gate) I thought I might have arrived at a museum or something. I walked around the outside and got a few other angles, and I was intrigued that TF does not have the isolated brick fortress feel of most stadiums. Yet, as soon as I crossed in through the gate, suddenly, there’s a baseball field below – all that familiar dirt-diamond and green — and the surrounding structure that must have been built like a ship-in-a-bottle to fit it in its place.

Beautifully done, all.

• With Thursday’s pair of home runs, Jason Kubel moves to within four of the title in the Great South Dakota Home Run Chase.

• My brother got caught in an odd little trap in the stadium’s beer policy. He chose Hrbek’s to buy last-call beers for us before the sales were cut off at the end of the seventh inning. He was racing against the clock (well, in baseball there is no clock, so he was racing against the outs) to buy the allotted two beers – one for him, one for me waiting back in my seat. He had the transaction complete and beers in hand – which would count as sufficient for any beers bought on the concourse – but between the time he left the bar counter and got to the door at Hrbek’s, J.J. Hardy flipped a ground ball to Orlando Hudson for the third out of the seventh. The security guard at Hrbek’s stopped him from leaving – no beers go out of Hrbek’s after the seventh inning. I was wondering where my beer was and why he never came back to the seats. A text message told me to meet him at Hrbek’s after the game.

Sometimes I think my brother fits closer to that type of fan who goes to the game to drink beer and be social – where Target Field is a pub with an expensive cover charge. So he was fine watching the end of the game on TV from the bar and meeting new friends there.

• Sometime over the weekend, I overheard that the front office had the field crew do a rigorous investigation of how the squirrel that interrupted Tuesday’s game got onto the field. The Twins don’t want there to be a chronic squirrel problem at Target Field. I just want to recommend to Target Field’s groundskeeper that I know someone who’s perfect for this job.   Please give a call to this guy.  His name’s Carl.  He’s got good experience with this type of thing.

[Updated 7/25/2010 -- Jason Kubel hits a grand slam against the Orioles today.  With the home run, he takes the lead in the Great South Dakota Home Run Chase for the first time.  The latest stats below.]

Here is the updated South Dakota HR count:

Original Post dated May 17, 2010 follows:]

After Jason Kubel’s grand Grand Slam on Sunday, I decided to go see how the Great South Dakota Home Run Chase was going.    I know Mark Ellis is the record holder for native sons of the Mt. Rushmore State and was wondering how Jason Kubel was doing in advancing on him.  I was surprised to see how close things were — just 6 Home Runs separating the two after Jason’s big homer.  Apparently, I hadn’t checked in a while.  I know it’s hard to believe, but I must have had better things to do.

But now that the buzz is beginning to gather from Aberdeen to Sturgis, I present to you the race as of end of baseball day, May 17, 2010:

               From   To    PA  HR 
Mark Ellis     2002 2010  3605  80 
Jason Kubel    2004 2010  1988  74
Dave Collins   1975 1990  5507  32

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/18/2010.

As a Twins fan, I am pulling for Jason Kubel, the boy from Belle Fourche, on this one.  Mark Ellis, the pride of Rapid City, still has the lead.  But  Jason has going for him both the first derivative (velocity) and the second derivative (acceleration) on this home-run projection, and should pull into the lead sometime soon.  Mark is still playing (well, once he comes back from the DL)  and maybe this could see-saw back and forth a bit, but I think he’ll have to turn over the crown to Kubel for good sometime soon.

You have to admit, this is the Golden Age of South Dakota Home Runs.   Until Mark Ellis came along, the career home run leader from a native South Dakotan was 32.    The Grand Total of home runs by a South Dakotan (as of the original date of this posting) is 227.    Marquis Grissom hit that many just by himself.    Howard Johnson surpassed that total.

I believe that by the time Jason Kubel’s career is over, he’ll present South Dakota with a formidable record for the state home run king.   But, for the mean time, that’s a pretty wimpy record.

Now, up there in North Dakota — South Dakota’s fraternal twin and my home state — they know how to hit some home runs.   With less than half the representation of Major Leaguers (15 native NoDaks to 36 native SoDaks), the Northern friends have 358 homers.    That’s Yogi Berra territory.  A couple more dingers by all-time North-Dakota-Home-Run-King Travis Hafner(166 HRs),* and the Great State of North Dakota will pull even with Gary Gaetti on career home runs.

I’ll note that we are coming to the end of the Golden Age of North Dakota Home Runs, with Travis Hafner appearing to have his best days behind him and Darin Erstad (124 HRs)at or near retirement.  Before those two, Ken Hunt held the record of 33 (still a step ahead of  the classic-era South Dakota record).

* No, it’s not Roger Maris**.  Roger was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, but grew up in North Dakota.  Roger is third on the Minnesota list w 275 HRs, behind Dave Winfield (465 HRs) and Kent Hrbek (293 HRs).  State total 2650 HRs w/ 153 MLB players.

**  My mother went to high school with Roger Maris at Fargo Shanley High School.  I shook his hand when I was a wee kid at my mom’s 20-year class reunion.  I remember on the way to the reunion, my brother exclaiming that Roger Maris was going to be there.  I asked, “who’s Roger Maris?”  My brother laid into me.  ”You don’t know who Roger Maris is?”   “He’s the home run record holder, stupid.  He broke Babe Ruth’s record.”   I was no dummy.  I knew who Babe Ruth was.   But, by shame, I got a baseball lesson.   I recall “Mr. Maris” (as I called him) to be very nice.

Until the nationwide excitement settles down, I’ll try to keep the Great South Dakota Home Run Chase up to date.  (Or maybe I’ll figure out how to have the stats update themselves.  Anyone?)

Ozzie loves talking about rats.

Ozzie and rats.  No, I’m not talking about Black Sabbath.  (Hold it, that was “bats”, wasn’t it?)

Ozzie Guillen – the White Sox manager – slighted the Metrodome the other day, suggesting it to be rat-infested.  The baseball doesn’t seem to be carrying well in Minneapolis outdoor spring baseball and when Justin Morneau’s deep center field shot died at the warning-track in Tuesday’s Twins loss to the Sox, Ozzie quipped, “In the old place, that would have hit some rats.”

Last year, Ozzie disparaged Wrigley Field as rat-infested.

This year, it’s the Metrodome.

Of course, we’re all in love with the new place (I’m flying in for a look over Memorial Day).  So let’s kick the old place while it’s down.  Of course, the Vikings still have to play there, but that’s football.

I shed no tears for the old Dome.  But, now that I know about them,  I am concerned about the Metrodome Rats.  They have some serious re-adjustment to do.    They’ve lost 81 days of fans leaving behind French Fries and sunflower seeds and scraps of Dome Dog buns.

There’s still Gopher baseball and truck and tractor pulls.    But there is a serious reduction in the sustainable concession-food environment at the Dome.  The rat population there is based upon an expectancy of fattening up in the summer baseball season and surviving off the fat and occasional Vikings game though the winter hibernation.    The Metrodome Rat eco-system has been severely altered.

Expect hard times for the Metrodome Rats.    The population level there will have to adjust, which is always a painful process for an animal colony.

But I’m not too worried for them.    Rats are what conservation biologists refer to as “weed species” – those species able to adapt and thrive in disturbed environments.  (Starlings, pigeons, mule deer and humans fit well into that description).    So, the rats have been challenged by the switch to the new ballpark.   But I can safely assure you that those pitter-patter sounds you hear beneath the bleachers when you attend your next Vikings games will be those of a in tact, if somewhat reduced, Metrodome Rat population.

And, as for things at the perfect new immaculate ballpark: Don’t worry.  All is well.   But did anyone else see those Metrodome Rats clinging to the Twins moving vans  when they set sail from the Dome?   Just like the velociraptors clinging to the supply ships departing Jurassic Park?

No, I didn’t either.

Sometimes you read a couple things consecutively and the first thing you read colors how you perceive the next thing.

This morning I read in the Pioneer Press about a low-grade dust-up between the Twins-trust and Pat Neshek regarding Neshek’s finger injury. The Twins were about to send Neshek to Rochester to clear room for Wilson Ramos to come cover for Joe Mauer, when Neshek invoked his right to go onto the Disabled List instead.     The Twins were surprised by the request and were not too happy.

In the words of the Pioneer Press, the Twins  “were unaware of Neshek’s ailment because he had not sought treatment recently.”  I’ll give the Twins enough credit to know that they weren’t truly “unaware” of the ailment, as Neshek’s finger had kept him sidelined for 10 days and in his second outing back blew a save by walking one batter and plunking the next.    However, they appeared to be trusting Neshek’s assessment to them that things were fine with the finger.

You see, Neshek had told reporters on Wednesday that his finger felt the best it had since it began hurting.

But on Sunday, after going on the DL, Neshek said his finger hindered his ability to grip the ball, but that earlier he didn’t want to make an excuse for his poor results.

I had read the Neshek injury saga right after reading Malcolm Gadwell’s excellent (as always) piece in the New Yorker about Operation Mincemeat – a World War II misinformation initiative that perhaps deked  the Germans into fortifying Sardinia and Greece while leaving Sicily underprotected from the Allied invasion that landed there from North Africa.    Galdwell uses the incident and others to demonstrate the limited value (and sometimes the liability) of espionage because information is hard to verify, those who do the verifying may have their own agendas, and that interpretation of espionage information is inherently ambiguous.

So I was thinking all “spy-vs-spy” by the time I read the Neshek news.

The Neshek injury confusion is the latest Twins version of the classic sports tension of trying to assess a player’s injury.  The Twins had a similar incident last year with Glen Perkins which has left some lingering hard feelings on both sides.

Injury assessment is difficult.   The player doesn’t want to complain, and above all wants to play, especially if demotion to the minor leagues is at issue.  Therefore he might not be the most objective judge of whether he should play.  Yet, he’s the one with the most important information  – that is, the information contained in his pain sensors.

Teams on the other hand have been known to frown upon those who don’t play through pain.  And if a player does report pain, it creates the dilemma of grounding him unnecessarily on one hand and having plenty of blame if you play the player and he aggravates the injury.

And after having just finished reading the Galdwell article with all its agent/double-agent overtones, how to interpret what a player is saying or not saying about pain doesn’t sound too different than interpreting intelligence information.    Now that I think of it, “Ron Gardenhire,”  ”Rick Anderson” and “Bill Smith” — don’t those names just sound like they belong with James Bond in the British Secret Intelligence Service, right there with James Bond.   And “Neshek” — well that sounds vaguely KGB, doesn’t it?    I imagine discussions like this deep in some war room of Twins Central Intelligence beneath Target Field:

Gardy:  Neshek says his finger is fine.  Let’s send him to Rochester.

Smith:  Players, they’re always trying to hide their injuries.  By saying it’s fine, Neshek finger isn’t fine.  Let’s put him on the DL.

Gardy:  But if Neshek knows that we know that players lie about injuries and he wants to lie about his injury, then he’d certainly tell us that it was fine so that we’d think it isn’t fine, just so he can lie to us, when it’s really fine.  Let’s send him to Rochester.

Smith:  Neshek would surely know that we’d know that he knows that we know that players lie about injuries and therefore, when he said he was fine, he …

Anderson (entering room):  Neshek just told me he wants to go on the DL.  He says it’s his right.

Smith:   He wants to go on the DL?  Does that mean his finger’s fine?  A hell, let’s just put him on the DL  I’m just tired of thinking about it.    Now, what do you think that Mauer guy’s trying to pull one on us when he says his heel hurts?

In honor of Target Field’s opening season.

This season, I want to create a movement in baseball.    One that twirls like a dance floor in Vienna – in perfect three-quarter time.    I want baseball to waltz.

I don’t want a craze.  I’m not talking about a mass-Macarena type of stunt – using baseball crowds to further a national fad.   I want a long-lasting rethinking of baseball’s long-established theme song,  Take Me Out to the Ball Game.  It’s already a sing-along.  Now I want it to be a dance-along.

For years, on the rare occasion of a baseball date, I have grabbed my partner (usually surprised) when the organ music starts and we have carefully danced in the peanut shells in front of our seats during the seventh inning stretch.  Take Me Out to the Ballgame is a waltz, a rare step that even I can figure out.  So it just seems natural that people would want to dance to it.   But like all things related to my dancing, no one has taken my lead.  I don’t see baseball fans gliding through the aisles.  My idea has yet to catch on.

Harry Carey in his drunken sloppiness made the song a crowd-swaying drinking song.  Replace the disposable plastic cups with steins and you could be at a Munich beer hall (with foul poles).  I love the idea that such a grand sing-a-long exists, at any baseball stadium, anywhere.  Now, let’s add the twist – or the twirl.

My reform will come about only by an organic movement, and an organist movement.  First, the organists.  Pick up the tempo a bit.  Or you’ll be replaced by a string section.  Come on, it’s baseball, not a funeral.

Next, the organic movement.  This is where you come in.  You, reading this. Dance.  Grab your partner and dance.     A baseball stadium at the stretch is a place full of joy.  Dancing should be on the agenda.  But hey, keep it a tame joy — it’s a tight spot you’ll be dancing in.  Safety first.

Finally, the third step for the three-step is to spread the word.  If you blog, consider a link.  If you Tweet, Tweet the news.   Use your social networking and your social graces.   See if you can get the baseball loving world to dance.    Create the critical mass, that beautiful dancing cheek-to cheek critical mass.

I’ll know it went viral when I look up from my dance partner’s eyes during the seventh inning stretch, and see my vision.   The whole stadium twirling.  Cubs fans and Cardinals fans all halting on the hesitation step in perfect unison.  Right after the “and cracker Jack” line, the whole place reversing spin together.  Couples falling in love again.  Strangers meeting.   Brothers comfortable enough with each other to dance, albeit at arms length.

Take me out to that ballgame.