baseball

Looking back over the past year of Dodger- and baseball-related posts here on Celsius1414 or, heck, the last couple of weeks, it should be pretty obvious that the subject has become pretty popular 'round these parts. A glance at the tag cloud page confirms it.

I've been thinking of splitting off baseball content into its own website for some time now, and with the Hot Stove League in full swing, this seems as good a time as any to debut trolleydodger.com.

The Trolley Dodger website is a standalone blog dedicated to the Dodgers, affiliated teams, and baseball in general. There are a few posts there already, and while I won't be transferring any existing stories here on Celsius1414 to the new site, I am really looking forward to covering one of my favorite topics in great verbosity over the coming months. Given the events of the off-season so far, there should be a lot to write about.

Celsius1414 will continue on as always, minus the new baseball stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Here is some cool stuff, only some of which is tangentially related to American football. ;D

LED Football?!

Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts (now on ESPN LA) points to a nostalgia-inducing awesome thing: LED Football for iPhone, which is, as he puts it,

A replica of the greatest game ever, Mattel Handheld Electronic Football.

It's also free for today only.

The more you know...

Speaking of tweeting and football, Bob Timmermann informs us,

Little known Super Bowl fact: Because New Orleans is playing in the game, the NFL rulebook will be replaced by the Napoleonic Code.

Yes, yes I am!

"Inside the Dodgers" asks the rhetorical yet vital question, "Are you ready for some baseball?":

It's the last official day of football season, so get it out of your system now and get ready to start watching America's pastime.

Good gracious, yes!

Streaking Kings

The LA Kings have reached a franchise-record nine-game wins in a row and are going for 10 against crosstown rivals the Anaheim Ducks tomorrow. They're currently in fourth place in the Western Conference.

Blaming the victims? ;)

bikecommutenews tweets,

Cyclists on busy roads a nuisance http://ow.ly/14NvT #bikenews

which prompted me to reply,

@bikecommutenews Yeah, to me, it seems like the *cars* are the nuisance on a busy road, not bicycles. :)

Noteworthy

Slashdot mentions a blog post by a computer science student who sticks with a pen and paper instead of a laptop for note-taking during class, "My Classmates Are Taking Their Notes Digitally, But I Can’t Fathom How They Keep Up"

I noticed today that as I frantically scribbled to keep up with my philosophy professor’s lecture, there was an audible hum of typing in the classroom. It was the first time I noticed that I could count more students using netbooks than notebooks to take notes in class.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to take notes with a pen and paper. As I’ve discussed previously, the act of writing helps cement the lecture material in my mind better than passive listening does, and studies have shown that it’s not just me.[...] Still, I know that my old-fashioned ways are quickly going out of style.

My thoughts on the new baseball season at Trolley Dodger: "Open sesame!"

Does anyone else feel like this has been a frickin’ long off-season? Never mind the extra week of Spring Training thanks to the WBC (which was again a very cool experience), it feels like the end of the World Series was a really long time ago.

Continued...

Next time you starting wishing your favorite team's horrible owners would "disappear" for reals, thank your lucky stars you aren't among the fans of Manchester City. Their ownership makes the owners of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (for example) look like your favorite babysitters from childhood.

Of course, he's spending money, which puts him one up on the Devil Rays.

Via The Offside, "Arrest Warrant issued for Manchester City Owner"--

Thaksin Shinawatra is known to football fans as the guy who bought Manchester City earlier this year and who has opened his extensive wallet to lure Sven-Goran Eriksson and a bunch of new players. In the non-football world, he is known as the guy who used to be the prime minister of Thailand until he was overthrown in a peaceful military coup last September.

These two worlds might collide if Shinawatra is forced to go back to Thailand where he is charged with corruption. This could lead to him having to relinquish his assets in the UK, including his shares of Manchester City.

Check out the bicycle "crop duster" in use over in a Beijing softball field complex. :)

More on the story at Murray Cook's Field Blog, as pointed to earlier on Trolley Dodger.

It was three months ago, on December 21st, that I wrote a post called "Winter Solstice", the first post on the erstwhile End Pavement blog, save one. It's funny looking back, since the weather was quite similar to today's, though we've had at least one heat wave since then.

The last paragraph talked about the importance of Winter to the other seasons:

Spring would not mean anything if there were no winter. No matter what your particular religious beliefs (or lack thereof), no matter what festivals or feasts or traditions you celebrate this time of year, don’t you think it’s also important to recognize this amazing astronomical event? To celebrate these short hours of light, because they are so precious?

As I write this, the Vernal Equinox is arriving officially, marking the boundary between Winter and Spring. That is exciting to me for a number of reasons, but perhaps most of all because what I was looking forward to in December is again what I'm yearning for:

While I’m looking forward longingly to a season or so from now — to warmer hiking, to baseball games, to the bike training — it’s a good thing to appreciate what’s here already.

I haven't been on a bike since the accident, nor on a trail. My physical therapy is going well, though, with weight lifting that is slowly increasing. Last week I felt for the first time real progress -- feeling stronger rather than just less weak, an important distinction. So those things I was (and am again) looking forward to are closer than ever.

I can't wait.

You might surmise from the surname, and you'd be correct, that today is a special day for yours truly. As fellow Irishman Vin Scully said prior to this morning's first televised Dodger spring training game, "Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all, especially if it applies." :)

The Dodgers are wearing their traditional green uniforms and caps to commemorate the day, and have added green bases as well. There's a long history of celebrating March 17th at Dodgertown, which you can read about on Walter O'Malley's official website, in the feature "St. Patrick's Day Parties A Legend At Dodgertown"

I have a Guinness waiting in the fridge for later. This should be an especially tasty treat -- it'll be a celebratory drink, of course, but I also haven't had a beer since before the bike accident, not wanting to get too interactive with the Vicodin. A beer and the first Dodger game on TV for the year -- Brilliant! :)

There was an interesting story over on Slashfood a couple of days ago about how drinking habits in Ireland are changing to incorporate more wines and other fermentations, with a corresponding decline in Guinness sales. "Wine, instead of Guinness, for St. Patrick's in Ireland"

Guinness sales are booming elsewhere in the world, so nothing to worry about for next St. Patrick's Day. :)