My Return To Baltimore

I've got a new album on Photobucket featuring pics from my quick trip to Baltimore in September. It was a double dose of nostalgia for me. The reason I went was to see a Baltimore Orioles-Toronto Blue Jays old-fashioned doubleheader -- "old-fashioned" meaning you pay for one ticket and see two ballgames (thanks to a previously rained-out game). None of that day-night separate-admission nonsense! So I bought a ticket on StubHub at a good discount below face value, and booked a hotel for one night.

The other part of my nostalgia was because I have a soft spot for Baltimore since I lived there for nine months in 2002 when I was selected for a special work assignment. The government paid for a furnished apartment and I got some per diem money for meals and such. I've been back a time or two since, and every time I go I like to look for familiar landmarks and see what's changed. Take a look at the album and photo descriptions for more about my trip.

Free bus service with a few different routes. Philly needs this.

Phils' Wild Card Hopes...

I just finished watching the Dodgers score 2 in the 9th to stun the Cardinals. What it does, besides LA and St. Louis now being tied for the last NL Wild Card position, is keep the Phillies within 3 games despite the Phils' disgraceful two losses against the putrid, worst-record-in-baseball Houston Astros.

I hate to say it, but although there seemed to be real hope going into Thursday, I think the Phils' chances of pulling off the miraculous comeback are almost dead now. They're a game behind the Pirates and a half-game behind the Brewers, thanks to those two losses to Houston. So with 16 games left, the Phils are back to having to pass four teams in the standings. And after St. Louis leaves LA, they have a week of games against those same lowly Astros (who just managed to beat the Phillies twice) and the almost-as-bad Cubs.

I do think it would be fun to see the Phils sneak in as the second Wild Card, beat Atlanta in the single-game Wild Card round and then beat Washington (if the Nats finish with the league's best record) in the Division Series, thus "winning" the National League East despite finishing in third place. But with each day (and each loss to Houston...notice how I keep harping on that? You can't lose to the worst team in baseball, you just CAN'T) it seems more unlikely.

Phillies 2012!

The season begins tomorrow in Pittsburgh. The Phillies go after a sixth consecutive National League Eastern Division title, on the road to a third World Series appearance and their ultimate goal, a second World Series championship in five years. I think there's a lot to worry about, especially early on with both Ryan Howard and Chase Utley out with injuries. If games are close because the offense is struggling, the Phils will need their bullpen to do the job and I'm not sure they're up to it right now. Then again, it seems like the bullpen has always a concern and somehow things work out.

They seem to have dodged a bullet by letting Ryan Madson go away and signing Jonathan Papelbon to be the closer. Madson had Tommy John surgery and is out for the season after signing for one year with Cincinnati. But if the guys in front of Papelbon can't hold leads for the monster starting rotation...anyway, although it's tempting (particularly for those national "experts" I love so much) to say that Atlanta or Washington or Florida Miami will overtake the Phils, I'm going to do with the Phils what I did with the Braves for all those years in the 1990s and early 2000s: keep picking them to win until they don't. So I present my picks for the divisions and wild cards (yes, two...ugh...). I again present my disclaimer that I don't have a deep awareness of what's going on with each team, so these are very uneducated guesses:

NL East
1. Phillies
2. Miami
3. Atlanta
4. Washington
5. New York Mets

NL Central: St. Louis
NL West: San Francisco
NL Wild Cards: Miami, Arizona
AL East: New York Yankees
AL Central: Detroit
AL West: Los Angeles Angels
AL Wild Cards: Texas, Tampa Bay

Mural-ity In North Philly

I've written about the Mural Arts Program and the various murals on walls around the city before. In the area near where I work, I was happy to find some more...

This one is on Broad Street, between Indiana and Glenwood Avenues. Amtrak and SEPTA trains run on the tracks above. There's a station nearby.

This is just east of Broad and Glenwood -- the outside of a fire station.

And further south, as you near Broad and Lehigh, is a mural of the legendary Jackie Robinson. At 21st and Lehigh, about 7 blocks to the west, is where Connie Mack Stadium once stood. Robinson, of course, played in Connie Mack Stadium when the Dodgers came to town.

Ballpark Rankings Update - O.co Coliseum

While I was in the San Francisco area I was able to get to an Oakland Athletics game. They play in what is now called the O.co Coliseum. O.co is the new name for Overstock.com. It's a terrible name but the sponsorship makes sense, since the whole Moneyball theory the A's operate on is based on trying to get quality players at a cheap price. Anyway, O.co is an old place -- older than the Vet. It opened in 1966 for the NFL Raiders and the A's moved in from Kansas City in 1968. So old that the men's room had troughs instead of urinals. I've taken a vow to never use a trough.

Being one of those multi-purpose places, the sightlines aren't so great in some areas. And even where I sat (seven rows behind the visitors' dugout; thanks for not buying up the good seats, A's fans), it seemed far away because there's a lot of room between the stands and the foul lines. That helps pitchers a lot, because foul pops that go into the seats in many places are easily caught here.

I stood up between innings of the game (in which the former Philadelphia A's beat Detroit, the day after the Tigers clinched the AL Central title) and circled around to take this video. YouTube is having issues again, or something, because the sound

A Ben Davis Sighting

I told you I had a baseball-related followup to my post on the Gay Community Night at the Riversharks game last week, and here it is: it seems that former major leaguer Ben Davis is a Riversharks player. He's a local boy (well, not so much a boy as he's 33 now), born in West Chester and a graduate of Malvern Prep, and was considered such a prospect as a catcher that he was the second pick overall in the 1995 Major League Baseball draft by the San Diego Padres. But he never turned into a star, and is mostly known for breaking an unwritten rule of baseball by bunting for a hit to ruin a Curt Schilling perfect game. (That's something I completely support, by the way, because the score was only 2-0 at the time and because Schilling is obnoxious.)

Now Davis, who hasn't been in a major league game since 2004, is no longer catching. He's spent the last two years trying to make a comeback as a pitcher. In last week's game he gave up 7 runs on 7 hits and 3 walks (plus the hit batter from the video I posted) in 3 2/3 innings. I had no idea he was the starting pitcher that night until I read the game recap at the Riversharks' website a little while ago. This year Davis is 2-5 with a 6.61 ERA. Opposing hitters are batting .337 against him with an on-base percentage of .390. Ouch.