Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Back and Barely Functioning

I'm back from Arizona. Whether I'm recovered is another matter -- Jaime, his son, and I headed to los Angeles for a guys' sporting weekend that involved seeing a Dodgers game (Manny Ramirez's debut in LA, coincidentally) and going to Cowboys' training camp (Jaime and Ben are huge Cowboys' fans. I just wore a Pats t-shirt in hopes of antagonizing my way onto Hard Knocks.) But that means that I had four six-plus hour days of driving in a row, the last three with a massive sunburn.


Given my intermittent blogging ever since my summer started, I'm sure no one is waiting with bated breath for my next post, but later today I'll have thoughts on Manny, the Red Sox, LA sports fans, and being a stranger in a strange land in Oxnard. But the quick takes: We'll miss Manny but it was time to go and he's already electrified LA. The Sox will be fine. Everything you've heard about LA fans seems to be true. Say what you will, but the Cowboys' Brand is a pretty powerful and far-reaching one. More later.

21 comments:

Thunderstick said...

You know what else is pretty powerful and far-reaching...THE THUNDERSTICK!!!

dcat said...

I dunno. The last few times you've gone to that well i recall that a better description comes from this post's title: barely functioning.

dcat

Anonymous said...

i dont see the the fuss over baseball, american football and the like. It is o coincidence it is only played in usa, with the odd exception tojapan and canada, it is because the sports are, basically, average at best. Look at Football, not soccer, but football, it is played all the world round, and is the top sport in the majority of countries. In the world cup, well over 200 nations compete. In the world series, only two do. yes i know the world series was names after a newspaper, not the fact the world competes, but still, trhe point stands. none of your sports are any match for football.lol. Remember Derek, this is all in the name of friendly fun.

DANIEL MCNAY

dcat said...

Baseball is played in dozens of countries around the world. This is a simple fact.

I enjoy soccer/football. And in non-retardland sports are not a zero sum game. One can like both American sports and sports elsewhere. One can like both American football and rugby, as I do (and I have played both). One can like both baseball and cricket. One can like both soccer and that sport where they bash around a goat's head.

As far as the World Series goes, I'd happily retire the name, but the reality is that the best players in the world come to the Major Leagues and play baseball. No serious person thinks that the Major Leagues do not provide the best baseball in the world.

Of course soccer players tend to be flopping little thespians. And how's that England football record in the World Cup? You were not even born in 1966!

Thanks for David Beckham, by the way.

dcat

Anonymous said...

lol, yes, we have not won the world cup since 1966, but, only 7 nations ever have. Yes, you can like American sports and British ones, but we actually created Baseball, though we called it Rounders. Still i like basketball quite abit, though know little about it. Ofcourse i agree the american baseball players are the best in the world, there are very litle elsewhere.
Beckham is past his best. We gave him to you so you could soak up the last bits, we had all the juice, lol.
danny mcnay

Anonymous said...

i wasnt born in 1812, but im still proud of the war of 1812, you, a fellow histrorian, should understand:)

dcat said...

1) It is a myth that baseball is derived from Rounders.

2) Again, it is simply wrong to assert that there are few baseball players putside of the US. Facts matter, man. Know what you're talking about or stick to MySpace.

dcat

Anonymous said...

i've never been on myspace, lol.
a myth? well, weknow rounders was made first, that's a fact. So, the rules are almost identical in every way. Let's say, you were inspired, shall we?

dcat said...

Rounders wasn't "made first," so that's not a fact. The reality is that baseball historians in recent years have made a lot of discoveries about the nature of the early game of baseball. the Rounders connection, always tenuous, has been hugely discredited, and now the earliest roots of baseball can be traced back well before anyone ever imagined. The idea of an origination theory of baseball has largely been discredited -- baseball is part of a continuum of stick and ball games that people have played since time immemorial.

If you do not know what you are talking about, feel free not to weigh in.

dcat

Anonymous said...

i do know what i am talking about, :), rounders wasplayed before US independence, therefore, even if it orifionated in North America, which it didn't, it would still have been made by the British.

dcat said...

So now you know more about baseball than I do?

When was Rounders played? In his book about the origins of baseball, what does David Block say about the game's origins in "Baseball Before We Knew It"? Hint: he traces it well before Rounders, does trace it to northern Europe and also to Africa.

Enough, Danny. Once again, it's clear that you don't know that much about baseball. And that's ok. But if you don't know much about it, don't feel the need to weigh in. It is as simple as that. No one here needs your opinions on baseball, just as the very well educated people at the FPA don't need every thought you've ever had about why colonialism in Africa was a good thing. You're 15 and you claim that you are an expert on the Holy Roman Empire and on colonialism and now on sports. You also have claimed to be a historian. historians are people who write history professionally.

For the love of god, enough.

dcat

Anonymous said...

dont be pretentious, i know nothing of baseball,and i and indifferent to that fact. I know a lot about football and history, and for that i am glad. yes, i do not write about history professionally, but, i have three novels, and a few papers ready for when i am older.
All i know of baseball, is it's origioins.personally, i find it boring.

Thunderstick said...

You said in your post you'd be back later in the day with thoughts of Manny, so I reloaded your page every 2 minutes to see your thoughts. 9 PM...nothing. 11 PM...nothing. 1 AM...nothing. Finally I said "you know what, dcat doesn't care about his audience. He promises things and then doesn't deliver." Now I'm at work, exhausted from staying up and I still don't know dcat's thoughts on the Manny trade other than a throwaway "it was time to go" in his last post. No way is this place getting my vote for Blog of the year. Cyber Hacienda...here I come!!

dcat said...

McNabb --
Pretentious? You pretty obviously don't know what that word means. And you pretty obviously feel the need to respond to every little thing -- you are asserting that you know nothing about baseball while at the same time insisting you know about its origins despite the fact that I have pointed out to you hands down the best history of the early game which demonstrably refutes the rounders myth.
You are on the verge of losing commenting privileges here. And I explained to you quite clearly why the last coment on that post at the South Africa blog from July 2007 was the last post yet you insist on trying to comment. There is a fine line between engaging and pathetic. By insisting on commenting on a post that I have asked (and asked, and asked) us to close you are beginning to fray my last nerve. In shor: Knock it off. Or you'll no longer be welcome either here or there. I've indulged your insistence that you are a boy genius (please, where can I find your three novels?) but am growing weary of it.
be more judicious with your postiong or you will find that every comment you write will be deleted. You claim to want dialogue -- fine. Stop being an antagonist and show that you actually do care about discussion.

Thunderstick --
All in good time.

dcat

Anonymous said...

McNab. Ha, my ancestors in Scotland, in the middle-ages, were enemies of the McNabs, andthey would fight each other. In fact, the McNabs exacted a massacre upon clan Niesh,cousion of my clan, Clan McNay. In that massacre, the MacNabs, led by John McNab, decapated every man woman and child. Isn't that a coincidence.

dcat said...

McNab --
That is interesting, actually. Got to love old school Kaiser Soze-style vengeance. When it doesn't happen to you and yours, that is!

dcat

Anonymous said...

i do know what pretentios means, and i only feel it polite to respond. On the subjectof baseball, i again claim i know nothing of it, the same as practically the rest of Britain. All i know of baseballis where it came from. I dont like games like baseball or cricket.
yes, kaiser-soze style isgood, when it doesn'thappen to you, but it was, in a sense, to mine.
my interest in history began with my own family's. From then on, every subject that interested me,i had to know all i could about it.
The usual suspects is oneof my favorite films, along with Pulp fiction, Resevoir dogs,Amistad, Godfather, tHE Departed, etc.

Anonymous said...

also, on the zimbabwe blog, you may aswell delete all my comments. if the talk was ended premature, i would appriciate it if youleftit

dcat said...

My editor will not want me to delete an entire string of comments nor am I so inclined to do so. For one thing it would be more of a hassle than you may think. For another, you were not the only person who commented on that post.

I left my last word, explained how I continued to ask you to let the conversation (on a 13 month old post, btw) die, and only when you insisted on continuing the conversation did I delete everything that came after the last comment in which I made it clear that the conversation was done and then shut down all comments.

Let it go.

Best --
dcat

Anonymous said...

fair enoug,h if it will hastle you, i wont press it. After all, it isnot as if it is, nor should be , a primaryconcern of mine, however, the ageof the post should not matter. When people debate about thespanish-american war, they dont say we should not talk about it, because it happened over a century ago.
So, what have you published?

dcat said...

Right, the topic may be germane, but literally only you and I were reading the post, which is a lousy allocation of my resources and time!

I write for both academic and nonacademic audiences. If you go to the main page of this blog and look on the right-hand side you'll see links to a number of my opinion pieces and links to some other publications. Absent are scholarly articles and book reviews, but what is linked should at least give you a feel.

Best --

dcat