The SoapBoxers

On the eve of the Belmont Stakes, the trainer of I’ll Have Another has announced that the horse has been scratched and will not race.  The culprit is swollen tendon in a leg.

The horse racing industry has been in need of a shot in the arm, and I’ll Have Another’s attempt at history would have given it a huge boost.  The last time a horse won the Triple Crown was in 1978 with Affirmed.

Had Another been able to race in the Stakes and come away with a win, the financial reward for his owners would have been enormous.  Not just the substantial stud fees, but also merchandising rights.  There’s a movie about Secretariat – would a triple crown run by I’ll have another generated a multi-million dollar bounty?

I’ll Have Another’s leg woes are also bad for NBC, which will televised the race, and the companies who purchased advertising.  What could have been an electric event with millions of extra viewers will now become just another ho-hum race.  Not only will the race lack Another’s star power, but will also be without Kentucky Derby favorite Bodemeister.

In the end, this is the case of an owner and trainer putting the horse’s health ahead of possible financial riches.  We’ve seen a horse break down on the track in a big race – Barbaro – and it’s not pretty.  Perhaps I’ll Have Another could have girded up his loins for one last race and run into the history books.  Perhaps he would have race poorly and tarnished his image.  Or, worst of all, perhaps this could have led to a broken leg and sent him down the path of euthanization.

As much as I would have enjoyed seeing I’ll Have Another make history, I agree with the call by the owner and trainer in this case.  Better safe than sorry.  As big and powerful as these horses can be, it’s important to also remember that they can be very fragile.

Editor’s note: Peter Shaw is joining The Soap Boxers and will be writing a conservative political column the first Thursday of every month.  He replaces Squeaky, who will still write occasional articles, but on a less regular basis.  Welcome aboard, Peter.

Every election year I hear this phrase; “This is the most important election in our lifetime.” Sometimes you hear it’s the most important election since the Civil War. The recall vote in Wisconsin for Governor Scott Walker has prompted some people to say it’s the most important election ever. I am a political aficionado but the one thing I hate about politics are the emotional arguments. I don’t like being played by any candidate or cause.

I honestly believe the election of President George HW Bush, our 43rd president, was more important than this election in 2012. I believe the election of President Ronald Reagan was more important than this election. I believe the election of President Abraham Lincoln was more important than this election. In 2004 President Bush and other Republicans gloated that more people voted Republican than ever before. This claim is pointless since everyone knows there were more registered voters in 2004 than ever before. The real landslide was the 1972 election where Nixon won 49 states.

When President Obama tried to apply the Gospel of the Cross and the Golden Rule to same sex marriages he isn’t making a logical or theological argument. President Obama is playing on people’s reverence, love, and obedience to God. In the process President Obama is pitting Holy Scripture against Holy Scripture. I find this contemptible.

Recently the Department of Justice employed selective enforcement by not enforcing federal law titled “Defense of Marriage Act”. President Obama said this was done because the law doesn’t provide equal protection under the law. This interpretation of law is logical however it isn’t up to law enforcement to interpret but the courts. I find this unconstitutional yet preferable to President Obama’s emotional plea.

What needs to be done by every voter is examining their values and why they hold such values. Every voter should gain a deeper understanding of the issues and the institutions of our government and society. For example, we need to know why the state is involved in an ecclesiastical institution. We need to know what is life and when does begin? We need to know what made America great and why she is floundering. We need to know the real reason why the 2012 election is important.

I believe I have a distinct perspective on the issues because I always ask why. I naturally distrust second person sources. I make very attempt to approach every issue with a stoic, logical, and objective perspective. I will cover these issues and more in the coming weeks. I can’t tell you what your values are and why you hold them. I can share my understanding of politics, government, and society. Despite what Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats say, rhetoric doesn’t divide a nation. A diverse culture divides a nation. I hope my stoic contribution to our web magazine somehow narrows the divide between liberals and conservatives.

My name is Peter Shaw and I write for TSB web magazine.

Appel Falls Far From The Tree

Will Mark Appel be leaving The Tree behind and putting down new roots in Pittsburgh?

On the eve of this year’s baseball draft, many observers felt that Stanford pitcher Mark Appel (pronounced A-pell) would be picked #1 overall by the Houston Astros.  Appel and Georgia high school hitter Byron Buxton were 1-2 on most people’s draft board.

Many people had the toolsy Buxton ahead of Appel, but there’s always a risk/reward with high school players.  The Major League teams gets the raw material earlier, before a player learns so many bad habits.  But on the flip side, there’s a lot more opportunity for a player to simply stall in development or be overrun by injuries.  A college player is generally closer to a finished product.

When the Astros finally made their pick, it was Puerto Rican shortstop Carlos Correa.  Correa’s definitely a great player in his own right, and has a great narrative surrounding him (in a nutshell, hardworking parents sacrifice for kid’s dream, poor residents of his flood-prone neighborhood raise money for trips to tournaments).  However, he was generally considered to be a notch below Appel and Buxton – at best the third best player in the draft and probably a bit below that.

Mark Appel slid all the way to the Pittburgh Pirates at #8 – allowing the Bucs the chance to add him to a farm system that already includes stud pitching prospects Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon.

So why was the third best player picked with the top pick – and why did Mark Appel drop to eighth?

The Slotting System

For years, the commissioner’s office has advised teams on suggested bonuses for each spot in the draft.  However, this year there are penalties for exceeding the bonus recommendations.

How does it work?  Each spot in the first ten rounds of the draft is assigned a dollar value, with the number one picked being assigned a value of $7.2 million this year.  Players signed later than the 10th round must be signed for $100,000 or less.

Add up the amounts for a team’s picks, and that’s the amount they are allowed to spend on the players they draft in the first ten round rounds.  Each team will have a different amount – teams with high draft picks will have substantially higher amounts than those with worse picks.  If a player is picked at a slot valued at $1 million, a team could pay him $1.5 million … but they’d need to make up the difference on other players.  If a player does not sign, his amount is deducted from the amount the team is allocated.  In other words, if a team had a pool of $10 million and is unable to sign a player who had a $1 million value, they only have $9 million to sign their other draftees.

The penalties are steep.  Exceed the amount by just 5% and you pay a 75% luxury tax on the excess.  Exceed it by 10% and the tax jumps to 100% and you forfeit the next year’s first round pick.  Exceed the amount by 15% and you lose two future first round picks.

The Effect

Two basic strategies are likely to unfold.  The first strategy is like to make the first round pick based as much on signability as talent, and use the financial savings to sign later guys.  In the case of the Astros, pick a guy like Correa at #1 and offer him a bonus equivalent with the #2 or #3 slot.  They can save a million dollars or so and then picked some fairly tough to sign guys later in the draft (for example, Lance McCullers Jr. at #41) and pay them a bit more than the recommendation for that slot.

Conversely, if you think you are going to go over slot on your top pick, you can save money on the later picks.  For example, if you have picks 1, 25, and 42 you might pick the best player at #1, but opt for the 40th best guy at #25 and the 60th best guy at #42 and get those guys to sign for less than slot.

A possible third strategy would be to trade down in the draft … but draft picks can’t be traded.

The net effect is that the basic premise of the draft is broken.  A draft is supposed to be an efficient means for distributing a talent.  In a normal draft, the top player SHOULD be picked first and the 20th best talent should be picked (roughly) 20th.  With the new slotting rules, the “draft” really becomes more of a math logic puzzle than an actual draft.

A Loophole

In theory, the slotting is an attempt to keep teams with deep pockets (Yankees) from scooping up all the best talent by making it known that they’ll pay huge bonuses.  Studies have show that draft bonuses are actually a cost-effective means of acquiring talent (when compared to alterative methods such as free agency), but obviously most owners would prefer to keep bonuses as low as possible.

However, the system actually does create an unique opportunity for a team willing to pay the penalty.  As I understand it, the largest penalty is the two lost picks and 100% luxury tax if a team exceed the bonus pool amount by 15%.  That is to say, if you have a pool of $10 million, you lose two picks if you spend $10,150,000 or if you spend $20,000,000.  Other than the extra money paid in luxury tax, the penalty is the same.

If a team is pretty sure it’s going to go 15% over slot, they may make it know that they’ll pay way over slot in an attempt to get elite talent to drop to them – basically, shooting the moon and going WAY over budget. 

Let’s say that a team has picks 15, 41, and 48 in the current year’s draft.  The team has several emerging young stars and will likely pick very late in the draft for the next few years.  Let’s project them picking 23rd next year and 25th the year after.

The team makes it known that they will pay big bonuses for premium talent.  The top player in the draft falls to them at #15.  The sixth best guy falls at them at #41 and the 12th best guy falls to them at #48 – all because high demands from the players cause them to drop in the draft.  The team exceeds the bonus pool amount by a lot, and forfeits first round picks in the next two drafts.

Effectively, the team has traded picks 15, 23, 25, 41, and 48 for picks 1, 6, and 12.

Is this a fair trade?  Let’s consult a draft value chart (it’s a NFL-based chart, but the basic premise is similar).  Here are the values for each of the picks:

• 1 – 3000
• 6 – 1600
• 12 – 1200
• 15 – 1050
• 23 – 760
• 25 – 720
• 41 – 490
• 48 – 420

Picks 1, 6, and 12 are worth a combined 5800 points.  Picks 15, 23, 25, 41, and 48 are worth a combined 3440 points.  If you’re the Yankees, you pick those three top prospects, pay them, pay the luxury tax, and forfeit your first round picks in the next two years – because you’ll get more talent that way than by picking talent-appropriate players at each slot.

How to Fix the System

Clearly, I think the system is broken.  It’s fair, then, to ask me to propose a solution.  How would I fix the draft?

I think allowing teams to trade picks would make a lot of sense.  The current rule banning trades of picks (and draftees until they have been under contract for a year) seems to be in place merely to prevent General Managers from making huge mistakes.  Really?  These are supposed to be the best and brightest baseball minds.  Why do they need bumpers in their bowling alley?

If you allow trades, a team without a lot of money could still extract maximum value from a pick.  They might trade the #1 pick for the #15 pick and a couple of good prospects (or even a veteran who could contribute immediately).  The Yankees and Red Sox still might snap up a lot of the good young players, but they’d have to pay for them with talent (draft picks and players) as well as cash.  Currently, they can just throw money at players.

I’ve gone on the record many time as being opposed to any sort of caps on salaries, preferring to allow a free market to set amounts.  But if a cap must exist, I’d suggest an overall cap on player expenditures.  This means combining salaries for current major and minor league players, as well as bonuses paid to any draftees or foreign free agents.  Team A could decide to spend a big chunk of their allotment on draftee bonuses while Team B decides to spend most of their money on free agents – but both strategies would be equally valid.

Another thought would be to replace signing  bonuses with roster bonuses at the end of each season.  This would force a player to prove something before getting money.  However, the team would also be forced to make a commitment.  If they decided that a player wasn’t worth the roster bonus, the player would immediately become an unrestricted free agent.  We could call it the “fish or cut bait” clause.

The Bear and the Tiger

It was a “could be” storybook headline that ended up having a storybook ending.

Tiger Woods wins his 73rd career PGA sanctioned title at the tournament hosted by none other than the person that he has just tied– Jack Nicklaus.

Muirfield Village in Ohio is a very difficult golf course. Jack in his mind has tried to set up a tournament setting that emulates the Masters Tournament. They honor the giants of the game every year at the Memorial, paying homage to the all-time greats. The membership does not wear the Green Jackets, but they do were some pretty sporty (and I might add decent looking) metal grey jackets and blue dress shirts. The golf course is set up to standards that are very difficult including very fast greens, nasty rough, and demonic pin placements.

This also is the 5th time that Tiger has won this tournament. His high ball flight and ability to work magic around greens works for him very well at the Memorial. Truth be told – this is the best Tiger has looked in some time. He seemed in complete control of his swing, was hitting all of the shots he wanted, and was making a number of putts. By his own account on Sunday he “absolutely was striping it” and by now most of you have seen the incredible hole out late in the round.

This propelled him to an eventually 2 stroke victory, but unfortunately the chip-in is being over-hyped to the nth degree. The fact is that Tiger used to pull these shots with the regularity of vaudeville stage magicians pulling rabbits out of hats. Even Jack has piled on saying “under the circumstances, it is the best golf shot I have ever seen”. Easssssyyyyy Golden Bear. You have made a number of those shots over the years as well…so not sure I would say best ever.

NBA Playoffs

The two remaining series are well underway, and both have the feeling in their own respects of an Ali-Frazier heavyweight fight.

The Spurs and the Thunder have a nice back and forth series going. It is much more the case of the new kid on the block versus the grizzly veteran. It is poise versus athleticism. It is a total chess match of coaching, and it has been fun to watch.

While I have no NBA team allegiance, I must say that the more I watch Kevin Durant, the more impressed I am with how good he really is. I also still can’t believe Tim Duncan is still around. The guy seems like he must be 67 years old.

The Heat and the Celtics appear to be the more physical series based on what I have watched, a lot of fouls, a lot of smack talking both on and off the floor and a lot of crying to officials about getting calls or lack thereof. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the NBA actually officiate a game based on the rules of basketball, thereby forcing each team to play its last 5 bench reserves in an attempt to have anyone left to complete the game. With the hand checking, shoving, elbow throwing, wrestling, grabbing and any other description you can come up with, it is amazing that either team has any players left by halftime.

How I long for the more offensive minded days of Bird, Magic and Dr. J.

Of course the athletes are much stronger and more powerful than those golden days of yore in the NBA. Still the brand of thug-ball that seems to come out in the playoffs is something I could do without having to watch….but of course I am going to watch it anyway!

Until next time, stay classy Ogden, Utah!

One of my favorite political sites is Electoral-Vote.com.  The site is run by Andrew Tanenbaum.  Tanenbaum is perhaps best know for creating the MINIX operating system in the late 1980s.

In recent years, Tanenbaum has been hard at work projecting the winners of races for federal office.  Much of the focus, naturally, has been on the presidential elections.  The site does a lot of number crunching with survey numbers, and I generally enjoy the analysis and anecdotes.

A full five months before the election, Tanenbaum has a map of expected winners in each state.  He had Obama with 242 electoral votes locked up and Romney has 165.  The other 131 electoral votes, from twelve “purple” states, are expected to be in play.

You can quibble with the numbers a bit.  Tanenbaum admits to leaning left, so there may be some sort of liberal bias in his numbers.  However, at the high level, there’s no denying the truth.  There are 12-15 states that will be “in play” during the 2012 presidential elections.  The other 35-38 state lean so far one direction or the other that the state is a lost cause for one of the candidates.  Mitt Romney will not will Connecticut, nor will Barack Obama win Alaska.

The net effect is that the candidates will avoid those states entirely, or make only token visits.  Time that Mitt Romney spends in Connecticut is time that he could instead spend in Florida – a state that is in play and has 29 electoral votes up for grabs.

A lack of presidential visits likely won’t bring many Connecticut residents to tears.  However, beyond the lack of visits, there is likely to also be a lack of focus that are important to voters in Connecticut.  And it’s not just the conservative voters in Connecticut who won’t have a voice.  The liberal voters who will almost certainly propel Barack Obama to a victory in the state will also be ignored.

Quite honestly, the voters and issues in states such as Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, and my own state of Iowa will become much more important than the burning issues in California, New York, Texas – and, yes, Connecticut.  Even if a candidate feels strongly about an issue that it important in those states, there’s virtually no upside in championing the issues.  And there’s definitely downside.  You definitely don’t want to lose voters in Florida because you stuck your neck out for voters in Connecticut.

Those who champion the electoral college like to say that the process ensure that the large states aren’t given undue weight.  The thought is that if popular vote were used, a candidate could rack up huge vote totals in California, New York, Florida, and Ohio and make the voters in Iowa and Rhode Island irrelevant.

However, I’d argue that the electoral college process also picks winners and losers – it’s just a different set of winners and losers than the popular vote.  I’d also argue that the popular vote treats each equivalent bloc of voters the same.  A bloc of ten thousand voters in California would have the exact same influence as a bloc of ten thousand voters in Montana.  Sure, a politician can get more votes in California than Montana, but this is simply because there are more citizens in California.  Why shouldn’t a larger blocc of citizens have more influence?

The current process doesn’t pick winners and losers based on size, but based on degree of purple.  The more purple a state, the more important they become; the blue and red states become less relevant.   

Nanny state, nanny state, nanny state!!!! OK that should get my thought process out so you know what I’m thinking. It should also irritate a few people that don’t like the phrase nanny state. What does the phrase mean though?

A nanny state exists when a government enacts laws that are over protective. They interfere with our rights to enjoy life and our rights to choose things that please us. I don’t know why, but there seems to be an incredible insurgence of nanny state laws over the last few years.

First we have the west coast banning happy meal toys. Then we have the big push forcing McDonalds to include apples with all happy meals. Now we have the left coast trying to ban “sugary drinks” (ie soda) larger than 16 ounces. Seriously? What are people thinking? Are they saying that I’m not adult enough to decide if I want a Big Gulp from 7-11? I already know legislators are saying that my kids want happy meals only because of the toys and that I’m not parent enough to tell my kids no.

Mayor Bloomberg defends this action by saying that they’re combating obesity. The city has spent several million dollars combating obesity and this is their way of reducing consumption. The lower income group is allegedly targeted because they have a higher incident of obesity. By limiting the size of the soda containers, they effectively raise the price of soda. The result they hope for is that the lower income citizens will then not be able to buy as much “sugary drink” and thus lower their caloric intake. This is just another example of why we don’t want government involved in our health/healthcare decisions.

So what is the next logical move after large containers of soda is banned? I think the next logical step is for them to go after the restaurants serving hamburgers in NYC. Seriously, check these beautiful works of art out! I don’t know how Bloomberg can even for a moment consider banning soda but wouldn’t address these huge burgers covered in bacon, eggs and sauces; I’m talking fat city!

For those that know me personally, you know I’m a big micro-brewed beer fan. One of my biggest fears is that the government will now decide that I don’t need beer. I really love beer! I also really love cigars! The federal government has already been trying to ban the sale of mail order cigars. This would also eliminate walk in humidors, cigar marketing, cigar events/promotions, flavored cigars and other things that we likely need to “pass the bill” to find out what is in it.

So after all this, my fundamental question is this: Why do some people feel like we need to legislate everything to death? We have laws on the books that are totally unnecessary. If one law covers it, why create another new one to cover the same problem again? Why can’t people be left alone to live? Why does Mrs. Obama feel the need to dictate what I can buy at a fast food restaurant? Why does Mr. Bloomberg feel the need to regulate the size of soda that I can buy? Why do the counties in Colorado feel the need to insert a “use tax” on my vehicle registration?

I’m not sure why we’ve had this change toward regulating everything. I really hope that this is a temporary thought process and we can stop soon though. I still believe that we are a mature and responsible nation that can wipe our own noses and take care of ourselves. I hope that at some point the majority of our nation returns that same way of thinking.

Squeaky…

Rockies news

My Rockies swept a four games series from the Astros.  Coupled with the Brewers sweeping the Dodgers in a four game series, this means that the Rockies have cut LA’s lead from 14.5 games down to 10.5.    While that’s still a significant deficit, it’s a pretty big improvement – and a weekend series against the Dodgers provides the opportunity to make up even more ground.  Both teams will be without major stars, as Matt Kemp of the Dodger’s re-injured his hamstring and Troy Tulowitzki of the Rockies suffered a groin issue.

The Rockies exploded for 40 runs in the four games series.  Dexter Fowler woke up on Monday with a .237 batting average for the season.  By the time the day was over, his batting average was up to .276, thanks to seven hits in nine at bats (also a  walk and a sacrifice fly) in the doubleheader.  He had a homer and he won the nightcap with a walk-off triple.  I have to think that the walk-off triple must be one of the more rare plays in sports.  Most of the time the runner on first – who generally is taking lead – is going to cross the plate before the batter can reach third … and as soon as he crosses the plate, the game would be over. 

Fowler has been an enigma for years, mixing red-hot streaks with slumps.  However, he’s still pretty young (barely 26) and hopefully is coming into his own as a hitter.  At the moment, he is just a couple of plate appearances short of qualifying for the league leaders list (which requires 3.1 plate appearance per team game).  If he qualified, his .954 OPS would rank ninth in the National League.

When the series picked back up on Wednesday, teammate Carlos Gonzalez took the role of star from Fowler.  Fowler continued to hit – going 4 for 8 with a homer in the final two games of the series, but Gonzalez was an absolute monster.  CarGo went 6 for 9 with four homers.  The four homers were in consecutive at bats – three in Wednesday’s game and one in Thursday’s.  For the month, Gonzalez hit .351 with 10 homers and 26 RBI.  Gonzalez lead the league in runs (44), is tied for the lead in RBI (44), second in OPS (1.054), tied for second in homers (14), and is tied for fifth in batting average (.332)  and has also added 8 steals.  Like Fowler, Gonzalez is just 26.

Pujols Watch

Is Albert Pujols washed up?  Seems that there might still be some magic in his bat.  Pujols hit 8 homers in May (after zero in April), including four in a five game stretch.  Even with the horrible April, he’s still on pace for 25 homers.  It’s not a stretch to think that he can get to 30.

WTF?

Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy broke his hand in what can best be described as a freak accident.  While Lucroy was on the floor looking for a missing sock, he wife shifted a suitcase that was on the bed.  The suitcase fell and landed on Lucroy’s hand, breaking it.  His wife has been the object of considerable wrath from Brewers fans.  Seriously?  It’s not as if she ran down Lucroy intentionally with a car.  It was an accident.  These sorts of things happen from time to time.

The Draft

Baseball’s draft kicks off Monday.  This will be the first year of what is effectively a hard slotting system.  Each pick in the first 10 rounds is assigned a specific dollar value.  Teams are then assigned the total value of these picks, and this is the amount of money they can use to sign players picked in those spots.  They could opt to spend all the money on one player (and not sign the others ) or spread it around.  However, penalties from exceeding this cap are very steep.  Going 15% over the cap would cause a team to lose two future first round draft picks.

Picks in rounds 11-40 can receive a maximum of $100,000.  If there is money left over from the pool for rounds 1-10, this money can be spent on later later players.  For example, if $1 million is left, a team could give an 11th round pick $1.1 million.

I’m not a fan of this change at all.  Baseball’s draft has always been a case of each side having leverage.  Due to baseball’s draft eligibility rules, many of the top players often have the options of attending college and being drafted again in a later year.  Teams who are unable to sign a player receive a compensatory pick in a later draft.  At times, talented players slip down to teams with deep pockets, but this could be fixed by allowing teams to trade picks (so that they could extract maximum value from the pick by getting rich teams to bid against each other).

Who will be picked first overall?  USC pitcher Mark Appel and Georgia high school outfielder Byron Buxton are the names that pop up most often.  High school pitcher Lucas Giolito may be the most talented player in the draft, but a minor arm injury has scared some teams away (in any case, high school pitchers are a risky proposition in general). 

I kill people.  I do it for pleasure.  Rarely does a month go by without me killing someone.  Often, I’ll kill several people in the course of a single day.  My weapon of choice is a knife, due to the up close nature.  When I use a gun, it’s always a Glock.  Sometimes I’ll use other methods to kill.

I’m not a violent person.  The killing I do is within the pages of my fiction.  I first create characters, and then kill them off with just a few clickety clacks of my keyboard.  I’ll admit that I love writing murder scenes, and I think I’m pretty good at it.  An acquaintance once told me that a story of mine gave him a bona fide nightmare.  How great of a compliment – a story of mine actually made its way into his subconscious, where it waited for the opportune moment to scare the hell out of him.

In “real life” I’m a pretty mild mannered person.  I could never exhibit the type of brutality that some of my characters do, nor could I cut someone’s life short by plunging a knife into their heart.  When people learn that I write pretty violent crime fiction in my spare time, it often comes as a shock.

When I’m in a particularly mischievous mood, I comment that the murderous energy must come out of me in one of two ways – words or actions.  I choose words, simply to avoid the bloodshed.

My thought is that every person has a dark side.  At some point, the energy from the dark side needs to be releases, or it will build up into a violent climax.  My stories give my dark side a place to come out and play.  The dark side can maim and kill, without causing any damage to the “real world”

The Oracle of Key West, Jimmy Buffett, once said “Therapy is extremely expensive.  Popping bubble wrap is radically cheap.”  Like bubble, writing is a very cheap way to exorcise some internal demos.  It costs almost nothing to start.  Grab a pen and and a sheet of paper, and you’re good to go.

If you’re new around here, you might not know that I’m a huge baseball fan.  If you’ve been a reader for a while, you really have no excuse for not knowing.

I really feel fortunate to live in a time when there is so much modern technology to keep me in touch with baseball.  Sure, it lets me keep up on world news and the stock market, but let’s focus on what’s important.

The Old Days

When I was a kid, I was a fan of the Cubs (I was cured of this disease in my late teens).  I loved baseball, but my access to information was extremely limited.  We didn’t have cable TV, so the only time I was able to watch a game was when the Cubs were on national TV – a handful of games each year.  I did have the ability to listen to games on the radio.  I could almost always get the Cubs games, and often the Cardinals, too.  On a good night, I could catch the Reds from where I lived in eastern Iowa.  I’m sure I could have also picked up the White Sox, but even as a kid I had little interest in the American League.

Statistics?  There were box scores in the daily paper, but if I wanted a running total, I had to wait for the Sunday paper, which would list the league leaders in hitting and pitching (a long list).  I had to run my finger down the list until I found my favorite players.

The Modern Age

These days, I subscribe to MLB Extra Innings.  Although a bunch of teams are blacked out in Iowa (Cubs, Sox, Twins, Brewers, Cardinals), I have the ability to catch most games played by my Colorado Rockies – assuming that I have the free time to do so, and that the game gets over at a reasonable time (those west coast games are killers).  Such easy access to “out of market” games is a dream come true for a baseball fan.

If I want statistics, there are no end of sites that can give my up to date information.  The most frequently used app on my Palm Pre?  The “Baseball Live!” apps that constantly refreshes scores and allows me to quickly check in on any game.  I keep tabs on quite a few players (beside my Rockies,  I watch Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Matt Holliday, Adam Dunn, Albert Pujols, and a few others), so this is really handy.

I don’t get as much time to catch baseball coverage as I would like, and I spend a lot of time alone in my car.  Recently, I realized that it would make a lot of sense to load up on podcasts.  Since then, I’ve been listening to several hours of baseball coverage every day.  ESPN, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, Baseball America – if they’re talking, I’m listening.  It’s definitely far better than the options available on over the air radio during my drive times.

Of course, we can’t forget about Twitter.  I’m not a huge Twitter user, but I do follow a couple of Rockies players – Dexter Fowler and Eric Young Jr.  Both interact quite a bit with fans, and I’m come to become bigger fans of both as a result of what I see on Twitter.  EY occasionally retweets some nasty tweets he receives from “fans” (anti-fans), which let us see what they have to deal with at time.  Fowler seems to constantly be doing ticket giveaways.  Both guys are clearly enjoying playing a kids’ game.

Has your hobby been influence by technology in recent year?  What impact has technology had?

In early 2007, my house had a cable modem and a wired router.  Then one computer got moved upstairs, a wireless router was needed, and the network began to grow.  Here is what we currently have on our network.

That’s 7 devices sharing the network. In general, they play together fairly well. I haven’t noticed any issue with NetFlix due to the activity of the computer’s for example.

Naturally, those aren’t the only gadgets we have. Here’s a sampling of the others:

• Kindle – This is a previous generation Kindle with a keyboard.  It doesn’t need to use the WiFi network because it has built-in 3G.
• My cell phone(s) – I have a Samsung a777, but have actually been using my previous phone for a while now (because I broke the clip for the new phone and haven’t gotten a new one).  The phones can receive text messages, but that’s it.  Battery life, however, is through the roof (5-6 days).
• GPS – We have two GPS navigators.  The older model doesn’t have free updates and need to be plugged into the car outlet almost constantly.  We’re replacing it with a new Garmin that has free lifetime updates … and hopefully a decent battery.
• iPods – We bought two iPods years ago.  I used mine more frequently before I got the Palm Pre, but it’s been pretty much idle for the last several months.  The other iPod hasn’t had much use in a few years.  There’s nothing WRONG with them, per se … they just had their functionality included in other devices.  Our kids are 4 and 2 – maybe they’ll be using the iPods before long.
• Digital cameras – We have three.  We have a new Kodak and two older Samsungs (purchased in 2002 and 2007).  It makes some sense to keep ONE backup, but there’s probably not a need for two backups.
• Digital video camera – It was pretty cool when I bought it in 2003, but it has fallen way behind the technological curve.

What about you – what gadgets are attached to your network?