38 Pitches

So our youngest is now old enough to play sports. When I called him from my daughters game and said “Hey Pele! How was your game?”

I got this.

“Dad I’m stinking tired.”

It seems that there was much more excitement about the prospect of playing soccer than actually playing. The photo below was taken by Shonda and based on her description this photo is of Garrison trying to negotiate a rest break while the rest of the team ran around aimlessly kicking a ball to a goal, regardless of which goal it was.

Is it over yet?

Before you click on this link, understand the intent. It’s powerful and there is a message there. Senator McCain would never pay for something like this so make sure you are clear that this was not done by him or his campaign.

Whether you agree with the message or not that’s your right and privilege but when I get things like this I enjoy passing them on to people that want to see them because things like this make me proud to live here amongst people like this.

In this environment someone’s going to go off the deep end and rant and piss and moan, but don’t, I posted this because it’s a message lost amongst the loud noise being made by people screaming to vote for someone or push an agenda that says “remove the troops now” and “What we did was a mistake” and the many other things that in some way show disrespect to the men and woman that have made sacrifices for people they’ll never know because their Commander in Chief told them to.

It appears there is really no shot at rational chat about any of the previously mentioned topics. But in hopes that more people will vote, and vote informed, I thought I’d post links to some relevant material concerning the 4 people on the ticket this year.

You can check their voting records by checking the right hand side of the front page

Senator Obama

Senator Biden

Senator McCain

Governor Palin

At the very least if people are going to rant and rave and make claims, including me, there should be some actual fact behind it, and not ‘fact’ as printed in your local Party aligned newspaper or TV station. I think we can all agree that listening to the media ‘inform’ us about the candidates is as stupid as drawing straws for your vote.

I was right about one Yankee fan. They guys honest if nothing else. On the field in Yankee Stadium this is the fan that made life VERY different as an opposing player.

The thing is there was NO better place to win as an opponent, and no worse place to be when you got hammered. They are not nor have ever been shy about how they feel about visiting players.

Ya, it’s a sick world out there. How does this read? Can it read anything but sickening?

Thought I’d pass along an interesting email I received the other day.

“For everybody reading this, I can’t believe nobody pounds home the most obvious facts. First, last and forever, The US Congress has been controlled by Democrats for almost the entire Bush 43 Presidency. The President couldn’t even get a simple up or down vote on Federal judges for how long?

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ground the entire United States government to a virtual halt, obstructing most of what President Bush tried to do. If any of the idiots running their mouths knew anything about how government works, they’d be blaming congress for the petty, vicious obstructionism. Along with big media, that refused to report daily that practically every proposal sent to Congress by President Bush was defeated before it made committee hearings. Everything that was passed and blamed on Bush was only passed for political expediency of politicians in office.

What’s sickening is how many people actually believe that Bush is totally to blame. I’m not saying he didn’t make mistakes, Lord knows he made his share, but what Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” is now a punchline for all the self serving hypocrites in Washington. Of every party. “

EDIT:It has been since pointed out that the Republicans, not the Democrats, were in control for a majority of the time mentioned above. My how fast misinformation spreads. Be nice to see people calling out their own parties for doing this same thing. BTW please don’t use Wikipedia as a reference (though it is in this case much more factual on the topic at the beginning of the email than the idiot that posted this email, which would be me….)

A shout out to Mark Jacobs, the GM of Mythic. I can’t fathom (though I think I will someday soon) the anxiety of the guy leading a company less than 10 days out of launch of what will be the biggest MMO since WoW.

The beta is still fraught with glitches and bugs (though I am pretty sure the big one, a total crash of my computer after lockup, was caused more by my NVIDIA driver being out of date than anything. Though why in the hell is it so hard to get updated drivers for hardware now? I had to search all night to find the latest drivers and then only found them on a eurocom.com website??) but it’s coming along and I think they have done some incredibly new and very innovative things to the gaming space.

Let’s just put it out there now though, Mythic is the cats ass at PvP/RvR…

The system they put in this game has made me a huge PvP fan.

The UI is very clean, very WoW like (not a bad thing) but to me much crisper and cleaner. I’ve played almost every class now through at least 5-6 and enjoyed most all.

Public Quests? Very cool and to me the coolest part. I think they have, and maybe will, introduce much of the WAR world through these. The races and characters not in the launch will make appearances in the PQ imo.

Anyway, we here at 38 are wishing the folks at Mythic the smoothest and biggest launch possible. Every company that raises the bar in the MMO space only adds customers, that’s a good thing. Not to mention the bar for what’s acceptable gets raised a little higher for anyone following, and that’s a great thing.

Oh, and ya, as you might have surmised, I am likely retiring to semi-retiring from WoW when WAR launches. I reserve the right to change my mind, but I think WAR is going to be my game of choice until Copernicus is launched.

As to who is more qualified to lead this country for the next 4-8 years after last night?

People that have never served their country, or endured incredible hardship, or both, are the ones spouting “I’m tired of hearing about him being a POW..blah blah blah, yadda yaddda.”

Knowing Senator McCain I can assure you he’s being pushed to talk about this, no doubt; but please, even if you are tired of hearing about it, don’t diminish what it means. Continue Reading »

The first World of Warcraft Cinematic trailer set a bar that through today had been unmatched in my opinion.

With Warhammer Online receiving a massive amount of attention due to the lifting of the NDA in beta and it’s impending release I thought I’d offer up this.

The cinematic I just watched has raised the bar to a new level. This is, in my opinion, the best trailer, including Movies, I’ve ever seen.

At 4:31 I thought it might be too long but was left wanting more when it ended. I had some reservations about playing that are now gone. I’ll try it no matter what. Not because the movie is so cool, but because of the time and effort put into the cinematic that gives me hope the product will get the same love and attention.

Check it out here and how about that Squig Herder!

I was going to title this one “why we’re different” but I’m not from here.

This past week the New England area once again put itself on a pedestal with the WEEI Jimmy Fund Auction. Hoping beyond hope to raise an incredible 4 million dollars, you blew by that and almost topped 5 Million. When you consider ESPN does a nationwide fund raiser for Jimmy V that raises around 1 million dollars, well that’s just crazy.

Now you add the ‘little things”.

I’ve been a member of the SOSH community for a few years and a while back they took it upon themselves to raise money for a charity I am deeply involved in. This past week I had the honor of meeting the winners of the auction for a clubhouse tour as well as saying hi to the people that helped raise a stunning $63,091.80! This was basically done on an internet baseball fan forum.

Clears Cleaver and Kremlin Watcher both bid insane amounts of money on an auction to tour the clubhouse and chat for awhile. It was initially supposed to be one tour but the bid was high enough that both parties agreed to ’share’ the tour, so ALS won.

It’s what makes this place so different. I don’t know how much of a rush hanging out with me could honestly be but in the end that is not what matters. What mattered was that hard working Red Sox fans and good people ponied up their hard earned money to change the lives of people diagnosed with ALS, in much the same way hundreds of thousands of ‘fans’ ponied up 4.8 million dollars for the Jimmy Fund.

There will come a day in our lifetimes when cures are found, and being involved with these charities is a way to try and make sure that day is found before I have to hear those words “Your child has”, every parents nightmare.

Thanks again to everyone in NE and all of you rabid, obssessed and insane Sox fans at SOSH!

GOD BLESS EVERY ONE OF YOU!

First off I’d like to offer our deepest sympathies to the Trias family in Phoenix. Michael passed away yesterday of ALS. He was an incredible man who will be deeply missed.

I spent yesterday at Fenway catching up with most of the guys and having the honor and privelage to re-connect with some friends from Dana Farber and help out the EEI folks with the Jimmy Fund. Sat in on a panel with Ray Borque and Glenn Davis talking about playing here and winning, it was a lot of fun and there were some great questions.

The team looks fantastic and the change inside that clubhouse is palpable and tangible (if those two can go together?). Health and the Angels are the only two things I think can stop these guys from bringing home a world series title. I won’t discount Tampa, or any of the other AL teams but if this team stays healthy I’d have trouble seeing someone stop them come October.

Figuring whomever they match up with in round 1 they are up 1-0, because when the calendar turns you can toss the prior 6 months out and I’ll take Beckett over anyone short of Bob Gibson in October. Then I have zero issues with thinking it’s going to take some stud and a great game to beat Jon Lester in game 2. Should be interesting but I like these guys chances if they can stay healthy.

As for me, well my shoulder is getting better fast. Range of motion is improving greatly and pain is becoming less and less an issue. I’ve still got a rather lengthy amount of time before I decide anything.

My first thoughts a few weeks ago were that maybe I’d work to get healthy and shoot to try and make the WBC team, but I just don’t think that’s in the cards. Next I started thinking about the original plan of pitching the 2nd half of next season. Thing is, that urgency just is not there. I miss some things I didn’t think I would, and don’t miss many things I expected too.

As I stated yesterday the pendulum is swinging very heavily in the direction of it just being over. I’ve never sat around and not gotten ready to head to Florida, well not in 23 or so years anyway, so to me that will likely be the last real test for me and whether or not I want to put the time and effort into getting after it one more time.