Hideo Nomo Has a Posse

Exhibit A, Manny Parra pitching for the Brewers in Miller Park, off-center camera.

Exhibit B, Clayton Kershaw pitching for the Dodgers (and more importantly, my fantasy team) in Busch Stadium, centered camera.

Which is better? If you ask me, and even if you do not ask me, my money’s on the centered camera. A lot of my money. It shows the shows the break of the pitch so much better and so gives a far better showcase for the craft/art of pitching, which to me is a huge appeal of watching a baseball game. The off-center camera sacrifices this and in so doing gives you a skewed view of things. Granted, ball clubs these days use pitch trackers and computer animations and such to show you these things, but this – in the most humblest opinion of your dear narrator – does not compare. Some critics might say the centered camera puts you too far from the action, but I just don’t feel that’s the case. Any thoughts?

Things Ichiro “Ichiro!” Suzuki accomplished since his rookie year in 2001 before notching his first major league walk-off hit last night versus the Toronto Blue Jays:

• Won MVP and Rookie of the Year awards
• Collected 1950 hits, 363 of which went for extra bases
• Started in the All-Star game every single season
• Won the MVP of the All-Star game in 2007, during which he hit an inside-the-park home run and generally just exhibited his characteristic badassness
• Won an AL Gold Glove every single season
• Lead the league in hits five times
• Set the single season record for hits with 262 in 2004 (during which season he also hit .372)
• Became the first Mariner to hit fifty hits in a month twice, and then thrice, during the same season, all of this in 2004, during which he set the single-season Seattle hit record of 56 in August- that’s a year, right there
• Notched the AL batting title twice
• Stole at least 30 bases in every full season
• Never batted below .303 during the regular season
• Once claimed he’d rather punch himself in the face than say he would like to go to Cleveland, which if you ask me ranks up there with the all-time baseball quotes

Congratulations on that amazing perfect game! And to you, Dewayne Wise, to you sir, THAT was a catch. Couldn’t happen to a better guy. I wish all pitchers threw as efficiently as Buehrle. Now I’ll have to learn to spell the guy’s last name without Googling it to correct my spelling.

Look. There are two types of people in this world. Those who indent their code with spaces and those that employ tabs. The prior group – uncouth, potentially violent, socially awkward, unbecoming to the eye, slovenly – are to be avoided. The latter – enlightened, generally esteemed, correct in their posture – are the people who you really want to be around, to learn from, to emulate. So maybe you use the editor vim to write code (and not emacs! of course not emacs!) and you want to convert all those nasty spaces to tabs whenever you’re working. I HAVE YOUR ANSWER. Put the following in your .vimrc file:

set noet|retab!

If you do not wish this to be a global, always-on setting (that is, if you find yourself in the pursuit of gainful employment having to coexist with these tabs people), you can simply run it while in vim by typing the same line after issuing a ‘:’ command.

GOOD LUCK, GODSPEED, and continue to fight the good fight.

Seriously, look at the poster. Doesn’t it make you want to brutalize something? The only thing worthwhile about this steaming pile is that it nicely sets up MARLEY AND ME 2: THE RETURN which features the zombified Marley rising from the game and tearing the faces from everyone featured in this one EXCEPT ALAN ARKIN for he is great, and really, I could watch Alan Arkin read tax regulations. I want Alan Arkin to be my father, therapist, best friend, confidante, lawyer, priest, coach, etc etc etc. THE MAN IS A LIVING LEGEND. Not to be confused with Alan Alda.

I am now shopping early treatments for MARLEY AND ME 2: THE RETURN. Inquire within. Serious offers only. This one’s going to kick some ass. Think Old Yeller meets 28 Days Later, people.