Reduce-K

People don't like their higher emotions "reduced" to something else, by which they typically mean "explained", either at all, or by something less noble than the thing to be explained (the fancy term for that being 'explanandum').

So when someone says "you only love me because I remind you of your favorite tv show", or "you just say that because you think it will get you elected", the noble love or ideology is 'reduced' on account of explaining the base genesis of the sentiment.

I'd like to think Remy just loves the Sox. After a particularly stirring rendition of Sweet Caroline during Saturday's game (I think), Remy said something to the effect of "If that doesn't get you going, nothing will", and then added gung-ho-ly, "C'mon Sox!"

Bay then promptly ripped one off the monster, and Remy brilliantly punned 'Bay just sweet carolined it off the wall.' (At least I think he said that; maybe I misheard.)

In any case, passion begets punnery.

And tonight, in the Sox' dismantling of Scott Kazmir, leading to a blowout 13-5 victory behind now 17 game winner Dice-K, in a game for first place in the A.L. east, Remy was in a state. After Kazmir hit Tek with a pitch leading off the second, the ump issued a warning to both sides, thereby making the next HBP confer an ejection on the offending pitcher. Remy spewed and ranted, calling the decision "absolutely absurd", and accusing the ump of having "no feel for the game."

Remy was grumpy, with a capital 'grump.' After the Sox went homer, walk, and another homer off the Tampa southpaw to start the 4th, making it 7-1, Ellsbury, in classic Ellsbury form (see yesterday's post), ended up with what was called an infield single to first. But what it was was Kazmir running to cover first on a ball that took first baseman Pena off the bag, and then stopping a few steps short of the bag, allowing Ellsbury to reach. Remy, disgusted with Kazmir's utter disregard for all that is righteous, spat that Kazmir's head just wasn't in the game, and what was he thinking?, and then, seeing Kazmir look over to the Tampa bench for just a moment, decided to play 'projected thought-bubble'- 'Oh, take me out, I want out', he suggested Kazmir was whining to himself.

As I said, I'd like to think Remy just loves the Sox, and is pumped up for the pennant race. But really, I think he just needed a smoke. Ah, sweet reduction satisfaction.

Meanwhile, the Sox just reduced their deficit to Tampa to virtual nothingness, and plan to thwart the erstwhile young soon to be wild card leading Rays again Tuesday evening.

Lookout! Archetypes Everywhere!

Paul Byrd is 37 years old. Manny Ramirez, 36. Brian Giles, 37. Three ballplayers, each in the, ahem, autumn of his career, and during this year's trading season, three different archetypal responses to the inevitable.

Giles, on a last-place ballclub, vetoed a trade to the pennant contending Sox, citing his wish to remain near to his family in temperate San Diego. Giles' is the bourgeois response; seeking not to improve but to maintain, content with mediocrity, domesticity, and a steady paycheck as an everyday player.

Manny, it has become increasingly clear, is exclusively focused on maximizing his earnings. His is the capitalist denial of death response; just because we end doesn't mean profits have to, get whatever you can while you can because you can. So even though you can't take it with you, accumulation gets you a bigger tombstone.

And then there's Byrd. Remy, talking on Thursday about Byrd's excitement at being dealt to a winner, noted that though winning is always important for a ballplayer, first establishing oneself as a deserving big leaguer, and then getting a long-term contract, are priorities in the early years of a career. But when a player reaches a certain age, Remy waxed, and "those years pile up, and there aren't many left for you," the "more important winning becomes". This is the religious response; in old age, as the years draw to a close, Byrd eschews further personal gain, and discovers meaning and completion in a collective seeking something larger than themselves.

Remy quickly transitioned to discussing underage female Chinese gymnasts.

The cycle of life continues.

Texas is a AAA Battery; Sox' Energy Outlasts Rangers, 8-4

With the Sox up 8-0 in the 8th inning a day after giving up 17 runs, Orsillo cited "the old adage" that 'momentum is only as good as the next day's starting pitcher', suggesting, in so many words, that Lester's performance corroborated it.

Lester, pitching brilliantly through 7, had stopped the velocity, the forward motion of the Texas lineup. But I think I recall that momentum is mass times velocity. And the Texas' heavy hitters were still massive. And mass, among other things, is involved with (in some way I don't remember) potential energy. The Texas momentum, in an ill defined sense, was still there, latent, dormant, waiting to be unleashed.

So one batter after Don's hitherto accurate pronouncement, Kinsler rocketed a dong over the monster on a 3-2 fastball, making it 8-1, and then Young shot a liner to right on a cutter down and in. After Ellison's high chopper back to the mound yielded an Ellsbury single, Francona went to the ultimate momentum stopper, the immovable force, Mike Timlin (and his 5.23 ERA.)

Even Timlin's two championship rings didn't save him from boos after Bradley's 3 run blast and then Byrd's double employed some of the previous days' inexhaustible supply of latent momentum. Potential energy became kinetic, and the crowd became frantic, anxious, fearing the hidden potent forces that animate the universe might manifest, vengefully and angrily. And Timlin seemed as good a lightning rod as any.

(By the way, Benjamin Franklin was awesome.)

But Youkilis was a badass again, and the Sox offense generated its own force, and picked up another game in the WC race- now up 6- on the suddenly impotent Yankees.

Curses; Lackey's No-No Foiled by Magic Single

It's not criminal assault to stick an effigy with a pin if voodoo magic doesn't really exist.

But it's still not nice.

Despite betraying an odd view of the cosmos, Sox broadcasters Remy and Orsillo did their best to put a hex on John Lackey's potential no-hitter, which was indeed broken up with 1 out in the 9th inning of an eventual 6-2 Angels victory, their 7th in a row over the ragdoll Red Sox.

Repetitive to the point of ritualistic intonation, Remy and Orsillo uttered the magic word 'no-hitter' before Lackey had yielded a hit, violating the sacred taboo of no-hit superstition: never utter that which is happening in front of you (typically not a problem for Joe Morgan.) NESN even showed a graphic listing the pitchers that had "no-hit" the Sox since 1763. Never daring to speak these words during Sox gems, this was no accident; they were attempting to raise the dead, to cast dark spells, to curse the fortunes of the Angels hurler.

Of course, words don't do that. It's a primitive view of language that conflates meaning and causality; a rock may vibrate slightly in response to the soundwaves emitted by vocal chords, but it will not step aside because those soundwaves encode 'open sesame.' Or, as it's sometimes put, if an opera singer sings "shatter" and the glass breaks, it's the intensity of the sound, not the meaning of the words, that does the trick.

Though this makes Remy and Orsillo's hexing all the more ridiculous, it renders it morally ambiguous. They had malicious intent, but they stuck a doll with a pin. On the one hand, this renders the assault benign. On the other hand, not only are they mean, but they're dumb. I'm not sure which is worse.

Given that I just drank unattended rum and a bat hit the back of my head, I think I've changed my mind. Maybe Jobu made that curveball not quite reach the corner. Maybe the magic words pushed Pedroia's groundball just out of Izturis' range. Maybe the Sox can actually someday beat the Angels.

[sigh]

if you're scoring at home

From the Archive: May 2, 2007

remember that magic fastball I said papelbon had? well, he didn't have it tonight. no zip, as Remy pointed out, none of that last moment thwbbt, no command on any of his pitches, especially the slider, and predictable sequences. I hope he's not hurt.

and just to resurrect the broadcaster issue, I'd like to let everyone know how much Don Orsillo hurts my ears. I'm sure he's a nice guy, and he banters with Remy in a satisfactory manner, but he garbles English sentences like they were lottery ping pong balls. it hurts my ears. almost everything he says has some sort of absurd ambiguity or is a grammatical disaster.

I come replete, yes replete, with examples. tonight, for instance, he said that 'huston street is still just 23 years old'; what, he's still 23, despite turning 23 6 years ago? is he a slow ager? if what don meant was 'street's experience belies his age', he should say it in less dumb way.

also tonight, he said of mike lowell's uncharacteristically high error total that it 'is very un mike lowell like', when, i'm fairly sure, the more natural, and luckily, correct way to say that is to say 'its very unlike mike lowell.'

and he always says 'with which to work with', which, at the moment, strikes me like reading stage directions from a cue card out loud.

I mean, there's precision, and there's precision. (how's that for an epigram?) today, for example, I gave an exam in my class. a student walked in and saw that I was about to hand out the exams, and he said 'oh crap, we had a test today?' I said 'no, but we will have one shortly.'

maybe i'm getting a little pedantic on that one. but don is a broadcaster; he has an extremely high profile and desirable job, and he is paid to paint a verbal picture to complement the visual picture we see. I hardly think it is unwarranted for me to want someone to not speak the way johnny damon throws.

I have mlb.tv, with which I may see out-of market games. sometimes, at night, when the west coast games are on, I watch the dodgers, just to hear vin scully. he is a pure delight. he does the game alone- no color guy. He is a born storyteller and an aphorist, an astute observer of the game, with a radio voice and a sense for the dramatic. the guy has got to be in his 80s by now, and I can imagine him having been sharper calling the brooklyn dodgers, but he's still worth the price of admission alone.

and don't blame vin for saying 'behind the bag, it gets through buckner.' he just calls em how he sees em.

[Chris responded:]

Jonah, you as student of philosophy must be aware that people have been lamenting the degradation of english since before the days of Beowulf. I read a quote (which I looked for on google for about 15 minutes and couldn't find) from a philosopher several hundred years ago complaining about colloquial grammar. No one reads the king james translation now and says "these guys really had their language down!" So I choose to view don orsillo as an innovator, not deficient.

[My response:]

Although I had a fight with my dad on this issue a few weeks ago, wherein I mockingly sympathized with him by suggesting that its a profound disappointment that we still don't read cuneiform, or some other proto ur-language (I suppose that's redundant), there is something to the idea of correctness.

the back-and-forth, it seems, and I hope my brother the linguist will agree, is between whether language is normative or not; if language changes willy nilly with the times, then there's no such things as using language incorrectly. seeing it this way does, as you suggest, allow one to view Don as an innovator, an artist, really, who transforms the mundane workaday world of nouns and proper names- like 'mike lowell'- into magical adjectival flights of fancy, where how 'un-mike lowell-like' something is a quality of the events in our midst. this grammatical-cum-ontological transformation, like all great art, surely reflects the deeper reality that we in our quotidian stance fail to appreciate, unless provoked and prodded by the few great artists we are lucky enough to have among us.

Bassball

From the Archive: July 20, 2006

Remy apparently just got a fancy new big screen HDTV and sound system, and during the 5th inning he was telling Don how great it is. He asked Don if Don ever heard of a sub-woofer. Don said 'no'. Remy told him it was for extra bass, and he was watching CSI New York, and each time it made this great big 'whoof!', his dog ran away. 'It was great', said Remy, to which Don replied, 'so the whoofer didn't like the sub-woofer, huh?'

Sean Mcdonough, we hardly knew ye