Is everybody clicking on ads? BLOG IS NOT RICH YET. Perhaps a SNORG TEE or FILIPINO SINGLE is in your sites.

Perhaps you’d like to go to World Baseball Classic featuring Adamski Jonesenbacher? Yes?

Well Blog has seen that advertisement cycle through as well. Why baseball ads appear on Blog of Team is anybody’s guess … it’s not as if Team has done anything related to baseball since, oh, about Oct. 12.

STOP THIS HORRIBLE TROLLING WAYWARD O AND TAKE ON BIG QUESTIONS! There is, apparently, this fancy-pants magazine in New York called THE NEW YORKER that takes on big questions a lot of the time.

For example the seas are full of carbon molecules now, which is VeryVeryBad, and also you can sail from Boston to Vladivostok via north pole with nothing but a case of Pabst, a Brita and some Ostrich jerky.

But sometimes, as opposed to ANSWERING big questions, magazine ASKS them. After some meanderings related to Barry Bonds, and the brigade of steroid-popping louts denied first-ballot plaques in Hall of Fame, writer Ian Crouch moved toward biggest question of all.

[S]urely we’ll all get together next year around this time, when the debate, growing more tired at each pass, rages again. This raises another question, one likely already considered by some readers by now: What’s the big deal? Next to all the real glories of sports, not to mention the trials of life, how much does a baseball museum really matter?

And then there we are, waiting for answer!  When he starts mumbling about Abner Doubleday and about how Kim Basinger looked really good in “The Natural” and about how Spring is Coming. Dude. SPRING IS ALWAYS COMING! EVEN WHEN IT’S SPRING NEXT SPRING IS COMING!

This is where Wayward O comes in. Here is answer: We care because baseball is not an invention of necessity. It is not the stock market; it is not the Congress; it is not the agribusiness system; it is not the law, the newspaper or the city council. Those things we have because we need.

Baseball, we want it to be around. It is our great national bauble, the very thing that separates our institutions, the things that make life liveable, from our highest-flying flights of fancy.

Old Hoss Radbourn could barely fathom his life outside of baseball more than 600 years ago, not long after Neanderthal man was purged from gene pool. And today Nolan Reimold is looking ahead to 2013 season with the hope that he can finally put that bad luck wind behind him forever. These and other players regard and regarded game as we fans do: With wonderment that it exists at all.

And that is why, without getting into merits of individual players as they relate to Hall of Fame debate, people consider it to be a “big deal.”

Blog of DongClusters: R.A. Dickey! No. 20
Mets and Sandwiches: Cy Young!
Blog of DongClusters: Hope so

Oct. 11, 1986, Moustachioed: Image via USA Today

M’s and S’wch’es: 13Ks, nice. That puts him in 3rd place [MLB-wide; first in NL] for strikeouts I think. Crazy
Blog of DongClusters: Dickey’s balls are very hard to hit. Was at game few months back in which he one-hit [Team of Blog]

Sept. 27, 2012, Shorn: Image via USA Today

M’s and S’wch’es: And he doesn’t walk anybody! I love that, and even bought his autobiography. Hope he re-signs
Blog of DongClusters: Cot’s says Mets have $5m club option for 2013.
But that might be a tad insulting. Of course, how long a deal do you give a guy like that? 3 years / 45m?*
M’s and S’wch’es: If that subsumes his option year, sure
Blog of DongClusters: Yeah, that’s what [Blog] might do. Who knows though? Mets ain’t go no loot
M’s and S’wch’es: Yeah – did you see their Dickey promo?
Blog of DongClusters: No –
M’s and S’wch’es: They offered three-game ticket deals for remaining games he started, which should give him leverage. He can say ‘look at how many people bought the tickets for my games!’

Geopolitical implications, permanent: Image via I’m Keith Hernandez

Blog of DongClusters: Gotcha. Thought you meant like a video montage or some shit.
Yeah that’s cash on barrelhead
M’s and S’wch’es: They’ve gotten kinda desperate with the ticket promos. I went for free in Easter. They just gave out free tickets so they wouldn’t look bad in a nationally televised game
Blog of DongClusters: Oh on Easter Sunday?
M’s and S’wch’es: Yup
Blog of DongClusters: Damn. [Blog] thought they were drawing back then.
Rough times in Met land
M’s and S’wch’es: They did okay in summer, but right at the start of the season everyone was pessimistic. Lost Reyes, added no one and were coming off another bum year

* seems a tad high in retrospect. 3yrs/$30m?

Overall Billy Ripken was enjoyable during Saturday night Fox telecast, which Blog watched this morning after exiting no information zone.

[If you aren't familiar with "no information zone," it's zone out of town fans of Team must enter when Internet gets blacked out. In cases where Fox gets involved, it's even worse because you can't even go to bar and watch. Game was completely blacked out and could not be watched (legally) in New York for any reason or any sum. Incidentally no information zone also has its value - such as when you aren't able to watch game in real-time and don't want outcome to be ruined but that's another topic.]

Anyway Billy’s got a husky broadcast voice and something of a baseball man’s respect for game. He doesn’t like to talk about his successes, such as they were, and he doesn’t like to jinx no-hitters. He’s got some jokes and a decent eye for little stuff that takes place between lines.

But Blog doesn’t fully understand Billy’s concerns about interleague play and designated hitter. Here’s some what Billy had to say during last night’s telecast as Jason Hammel laid down a second, gorgeous sacrifice bunt in 7th inning:

“This is where the AL clubs are at a bit of a disadvantage,” Billy said. “[AL pitchers] just don’t [hit] enough to sit here and do it under these rules.”

With Hammel working a no-hit game at time, Ripken said Buck just wanted Jason to “get back in the dugout” as soon as possible and get rested for eighth inning. So, Billy reasoned, Hammel just wanted to lay down a bunt right away.  Lay it down he did. His second sac bunt of game.

Broadcasters had no comment after Brian Robert’s subsequent single scored two runners Hammel had moved up. Couldn’t they have credited Hammel with job well done?

Along with booth-mate Kenny Albert, Ripken also expressed concern about next year’s expanded interleague schedule saying:

“The DH is not going away. [...] I just don’t understand how this thing, moving forward, is going to work very smoothly.”

Here’s Blog’s reply: What’s to understand? What’s to not go smoothly? What, exactly, is problem? It’s an interesting wrinkle in sport. AL Teams must adjust and so must NL teams. In parlance of Internet: PITCHERS NEEDS PRACTICE BUNTS. And, without naming names, pitchers needs avoid bloody noses in process.

Anyway. Hammel’s fantastic outing was fantastic. Jason looked just as strong in ninth as he did in first.

Hammel gets game ball from Mark Reynolds
after final out of one-hitter, image via
Rupert Murdoch’s rotten media empire

It’s still very early in Orioles-Hammel era but already this trade is such a massive fleece and that doesn’t even include Matt Lindstrom. Last Blog heard Jeremy Guthrie was up to his old tricks in NL, giving up bucketloads of home runs. Good guy though.

Friday night, meanwhile, Braves’ home-team Peachtree TV announcers — Chip Caray and Joe Simpson –  were living in an alternate reality that became more and more divorced from actual reality as game went on.

They slapped fives, figuratively speaking, after Braves came up with a couple very lucky outcomes as Team was smashing hard-hit balls to no avail early on. Then they spent four straight innings whining about balls and strikes.

“You can’t hang it all on Derryl Cousins,” the announcers said after Tommy Hanson walked six and got pulled in fifth inning after a night where he was lucky not to give up eight runs instead of two.

Yeah no, really you can’t hang it all on umpire.

Anyway Friday night’s loss was unlucky.

In first and sixth innings Talkers of Chop also went on tangents about Team’s gear; at first critiquing color of Brian Roberts’ shoes (they’re orange, go figure) and then, later Team’s cartoony bird hats. Obviously it’s difficult to get worked up about this stuff — it even was pretty entertaining and funny after fashion — but it also was just a tad common.

Blog can see why Mets fans can’t stand that ballclub or that place.

Blog has room intellectually for explanation that doesn’t involve Ryan Braun incurring strict liability (or as baseball players say: ‘guilty until proven innocent’) for having banned substance in his system — but hasn’t heard it yet. Nor does Blog ever expect to.

So let’s leave that aside and talk about issue that has exploded all around Braun case and has been hiding in plain sight:

Braun’s Hail Mary appellate victory has brought cheating apologists out of woodwork, where they have resided over past five years or so, apparently biding time and waiting for opening to attack baseball’s drug program.

First, a caveat: I believe doping should be allowed in professional sports. — Jere Longman of the NYT yesterday

Not necessarily singling him out here, for there are many out there. But he’s very current and admirably blunt. So let’s be blunt:

These folks WANT steroids in game. They want athletes to use them and they want athletes to get paid to endorse them — since that’s what athletes would do, were steroids legal.

They want kids to buy them and try them, which is what kids would do in far greater numbers, were steroids legal.

They want to put clean players at a competitive disadvantage, forcing clean players on bubble of success either to start drugging or find a new career.

And they want coaches and trainers to become drug pushers, who tell young people that “you’re good kid, but you got to be better … and here’s how you do it.”

The Braun conflagration has emboldened them. So take Blog’s advice: If you’re talking to someone who is defending Braun, you might want to ask them whether part of reason they’re defending Braun is because they think steroids should be legal.

Also feeling bold these days are guys like Chris Narveson, the Brewers’ union representative. According to this story Narveson “was playing golf with fellow starting pitchers Yovani Gallardo, Randy Wolf and Shaun Marcum when he got the news” of Braun’s absolution.

I don’t want to comment too much. But put it this way: This isn’t the first time we’ve had issues with the people [in charge of testing] in Milwaukee. There have been other issues with timing.

It’s TESTERS who are at fault, according to Narveson. Ha. This is too rich. Narveson, NYT guy above and so many others clearly see this as a wedge to attack baseball’s testing program.

Braun, too, couldn’t leave well enough alone. He attacked the tester as well, leading to this line from Mike Lupica:

Braun made it clear on Friday in Arizona that he wants everybody and anybody to be on trial except him.

Blog is glad to read that MLB doesn’t appear to be taking this lying down.

Owners apparently are among few in baseball who haven’t forgotten finger wagging, lying, pretending not to speak English and horrible death of Ken Caminiti — among many other torpedoes that smashed into hull of good ship baseball over embarrassing expanse of Steroid Era.

MLB itself — so long regarded as greedy overlord — now occupies position of sensible parent trying to protect these greedy little piggies from themselves.

Brewers’ owner, who is in interesting position of having interests on each side of Braun-gate, defended his player Friday using very carefully chosen words. But he also expressed at least one sentiment that clearly was too hopeful:

With this now behind us, we return our focus to the ballpark

Not so fast dude. It’s not behind you. It’s all out in front of you. MLB might have to fight this war all over again. Your star player says system is “fatally flawed.”