Grass Patterns in the Outfield

Well... with the start of baseball season you begin to think about the little things that make baseball great.

• The little helmets filled with ice cream
  
  
• People filling out box scores and struggling to know what to do when a team bats through the line-up


• The impeccably good accuracy of peanut ushers


• Seeing a fan camped under a foul ball, boxing out the sweaty guy with mustard stains on his shirt, only for it to doink off his hands and the stadium boo-ing (not singling anyone out... but there was a remarkably similar instance involving my roommate last season)
• How teams pay homage to St. Patrick's day by wearing Green hats, jerseys and chalk the lines green.

It signifies the start of spring, the beginning of summer and the familiar chatter of a stadium.

For me, i immediately think of Dodger/Doyer Baseball and many many afternoons and nights spent at Chavez Ravine rooting on Dave Hansen (HOF utility infielder... I made up the HOF part) and Kaz Ishii as they battled to entice LA fans to come early and stay late.

It also brings me back to my days of North Venice Little League where i played as a catcher for the minor league St. Louis Cardinals (Coached by Richard Page) and the major SF Giants. Let's just say that i made benito santiago's arm strength look whimpy.

While playing at North Venice, i mowed the three fields and always wanted to make patterns in the outfield.

I think the grass pattern in the outfield is very much under-utilized. The Red Sox and Mets do it all the time (pictured below). It serves no purpose other than make the blimp shot really really cool.

But, if you take a deep dive into the patterns, you realize its a work of art. Mainly because they are working with a canvas which is 90 feet x 90 feet. Think about what Van Gogh did with a canvas which was 36 inches x 48 inches.

The primary question that i have is: How do they make it look SO good when they are SO close and its SO big??? Is the grass cut in different lengths to make the designs or is it cut in a different direction?

Editors Note: This is when I get quasi-weird and relate it to business.

Is it outside the realm of possibility, that teams will convert this into sellable inventory? When teams become a sponsors, they can put their logo in the infield grass? Imagine the McDonald's Arches or something like that.

PS... I think its slightly funny that I inserted an "editor's note" as I am the Editor. Somehow I felt like it would bring a little more credibility to my disclaimer.

Side note: I think after this week, im going to reduce the frequency of my blog to one to two times a week and send an email when i post. Still trying to figure out how people can sign up to receive an alert but not trying all that hard. Send me an email if you want to be on the distribution list.

Lunch and Water Coolers

Well... I dont really care what anyone says but lunch is by far the most important meal of the day.

I can understand why it is so underrated and frequnetly overlooked. It is a meal that gains appreciation over time. This conclusion came to me only since i joined the work force.

Lunch serves mutiple purpose beyond just stuffing your face with food.

1. It serves as the natural break in the middle of your work day
2. It provides a widely accepted reason for the daze you are in for the 30 minutes after lunch (i.e. Food coma)
3. It provides a reasonable exit strategy to avoid important meetings (sorry, i cant make that meeting. I'm having lunch with someone outside the office).

While people always talk about the water cooler talk, i think the lunch table talk has more substance behind it. How in depth can you really get at the water cooler? Lunch is an hour of time to talk about whatever. At the water cooler, you only have a tiny dixie cup or one of those cones to fill up. That can't be more than 5 ounces of water. SIDENOTE: Why the Cone? Never understood that... I have only seen ut work at The Apple Pan

If someone was doing an efficiency study, priority #1 would be the water cooler. Why are the cups soooo small? Don't you think they would provide at a minimum 12 ounce cups which will quench the thirst but not result in frequent refills???

Just a thought...

Day 1 etc...

Well... what i realized after Day 1 is that i am probably going to start most of my blogs with "well..."



So i had a clocks widget that didnt really function at work but now that i'm home i pretty much realize its garbage.



The benefits of the Blog:

• I can say what I want...


• The content of my blog is whatever I want...

Thus, here is what i'm think about right now...

As we start baseball season, we have to recognize change. The Dodgers have recently switched their Spring Training facility from Vero Beach, FL to Glendale, AZ.

Here is a youtibe video from the AP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3lutF1HfNw&eurl=http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=tdi.closingBell&utm_source=cb_email&utm_medium=email&utm&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy!

The Office Life Style

As I sit at my desk, and stare at my picture of the Ohio St cheerleaders running across the Super Dome field with flags spelling their school, O-O-H-I, i wonder what i can do to make my desk a little bit more fun without a visit from HR.

Is a massage chair appropriate?

Could I watch Family Guy on my second computer?

Can I replace my lower filing cabinets with a cooler filled with.... errrr..... Diet Coke?

Should i set up a meeting notice every day at 2:30 and check out the freeway congestion in LA on sigalert.com?

Maybe, i can cut pictures out of a national geographic and make a jungle scene.

Ultimately, i think enjoyment in a cube lifestyle is directly correlated to the amount of sun in the office space. My building hardly has any and the long endurance/low sun foliage that they have on the counters is slowly turning yellow.

Im pretty envious of Reg, who you would assume to work in a funny environment, seeing that he organizes comedy shows. Or Mitch that plays tic-tac-toe on the white board and call it work. For everyone else, you know what i'm talking about.

Well, i guess that is the life style... no sun + TPS reports.

My First Blog

Well... I'm from the West Coast but now live in New York with friends all over the place.

Thus, I figured, I might as well start a blog so that the people that want to know what I'm up to can easily do that.

The content:
Who knows? It can be anything from what I'm up to now, to how the Lakers are up to, to the rent in New York, or how dirty the dishes are in my sink. I could even blog about the rising North Korea crisis and their launch of their "satellite" missile.

Frequency:
I guarantee that there will be at least one post per week by Wednesday. There will most likely be more however sometimes i get busy or sometimes i get lazy.

Look for more to come!