OK, theologically speaking, one should never question God, especially over something as trivial as a football team.  But in a jovial spirit I can’t help but use those words for my feelings about the recent season and possibly career ending MCL tear of Cal Bear Tim Mixon.

So to repent of questioning God for trivial things I give this confession:

Tim Mixon: I’ll admit, there were times when I was a bit of a pessimist regarding your corner play.  I thought you gave up to many big plays… particularly when it was all that could hurt us.  But not only are you one heck of a corner, you’ve got a ton of heart.  I’ve heard the interviews with you, seen your attitude on the field and I know that your a stand-up guy who gives his all to the team.  Forgive me my pessimism and negativity. May God heal you and bring you peace.

Well the A’s continue to keep winning baseball games and are up to 11 games over .500.  But more important than that, I went to my first game of the year last night!

I left work just befor 4 PM to pick up Wendy and the boys.  We drove to Oakland from Roseville in 1 hour and 45 minutes, not bad considering it was rush-hour… although it helped that we were going the opposite direction for the majority of the trip.  After a 15 minute chat with my Mom, we left the boys with their Grandma and took my brother Brian, who had come to my mom’s house, to the game.  At the game we met Brian’s girlfriend Sarah, who had come straight from work via BART.  We all met up at the stadium at around 6:30 PM for the 7:05 start.

(Side note: the reason we went to the game was because it was Brian’s last day at his job before he took a new job, with a significant pay raise, tomorrow.)

The first order of business was to find “the big dog”.  I’m sure many of you have had the unsatisfying experience of paying $3.50 for a hot dog at a game only to find out you’ve received a cocktail wenie in a similarly sized bun.  Well, Oakland found a solution to the problem: the $6.75 big dog.  Sure it’s expensive, but it’s a dog that lives up to the name being 2 to 3 times the size of your average supermarket hot dog.  In stadium food terms, it’s well worth the money.

Next order of business was to find the seats.  Brian is a partial season ticket holder in the bleachers and was able to help me get us good seats right behind home plate.  You could really tell if the ball was pitched over the plate from our vantage point.  The harder part was telling if the ball was high or low.  Although it is usually a good spot for foul balls, none came to our section.

I had so much fun chatting with everyone that I didn’t pay as much attention as I usually do.  I did make sure to get in my usual “too high” comment for all of the home runs.  Overall it was a relaxed game despite it being fairly close.  The Texas Rangers openned a 4 run lead early and I think it got me into the “I’d better enjoy this game some other way than the score” mode early.  For some reason when two back to back homers in the bottom of the 4th by Swisher (3 run) and Payton tied things at 4, I didn’t switch gears.  The only point where I really got back into the game was in the bottom of the ninth when Huston Street almost blew the save.  Up 7-4 at that point, he gave up two runs.

The end of the game was an odd one.  With a pinch runner (running for Hank Blalock) on first, and DeRosa with a 3-2 count, Street struck out DeRosa while the runner tried to steal 2nd.  He was safe, but DeRosa had so badly missed the pitch that he stumbled in front of the plate and interfered with the throw by catcher Jason Kendall.  The home-plate umpire had no choice but to call the runner out because of the interference, thereby ending the game.  We’ll take it… particularly because Street was struggling and I’m not so sure he would have got the last out before someone could have singled the man on second home.

After the game got out at 10:15 PM we drove back to my mom’s house to pick up the boys before heading home.  Gregory (our oldest) had refused to go to sleep up in the guest bed and so was sleeping on the sofa next to his grandma while she watched the news.  We got the boys into the car and left just before 11:00 PM.

When we got home around 12:30 AM, we were exhausted.  The boys had hardly slept on the way home and had spent most of the trip in intermixed delirious giggles and whining with an emphasis on the giggles.  It was quite cute actually to see the two of them feed off each other.

All it all it was a fun night and worth the time, effort and money.  Congradulations to Brian on his new job!

I’m going to do my best to make this relevant to non-sailors…

There was a great e-mail exchange on a Laser sailing e-mail list this morning.  It started with an answer to my question about a recent vote for a change in the rules.  The North American class president replied:

No word yet, but ILCA is most likely still in the process of verifying memberships. Sherri was presented a list of North Americans who caste ballots and has returned the verification already. So, while I don’t know how they voted, I can say that 272 people from the North American Region caste ballots. Of these, one was clearly fictitious (Barry Bonds) and nine others are not members so will have their votes removed.

Which everyone knew was just begging for a reply about Barry Bonds.  So far we’ve seen the following:

1. I bet he might even try putting glide tape in his centerboard trunk! (note to blog readers: glide tape is illegal and very difficult to detect because it is hidden inside the hull)
2. Barry Bonds has simply been doing research on how to help Masters Laser Sailors recover more quickly from the pain of heavy air sailing.
3. I can’t wait for the grand jury investigation as to whether he purged himself when he said he didn’t realize Mylar (aka “the clear”) sails were illegal.  And I’m sure the owner of SailCo sails is not looking forward to the FBI sting. (note to blog readers: Mylar sails are clear)

Today, every I-A college in America started their fall practices.  Do you know what that mean!?!  It means, college football season is officially here.  True, there won’t be any games for another 4 weeks but when the players are practicing, the season is here.  So here is what you can expect from me:

1. The Cal look and feel will be back by Sept. 1st.  For those used to seeing my sports sub-blog with the Cal Bears look and feel at http://cal.thecrawfordfamily.net/blog, expect to see it back by Sept 1st.
2. I will continue to have a post-game analysis of every Cal Bears game this season.
3. I will continue to make weekly predictions for all Pac-10 games using the three metrics I used last season: winning percentage, Margin of Victory Delta (or accuracy) and Total Points Scored Delta (or accuracy).  I’ve found these to be good metrics to really really see how good someone can predict the games.  In fact, I’m going to expand it to be a game in which all Cal Bears fans who visit my site are able to participate.  Expect to see a post in the next few weeks with the link to where you would participate.  Think you can beat me?
4. As the season progresses I will give the various scenarios in a spreadsheet of who has the inside track for the top spots in the final Pac-10 standings.
5. A friend of mine and I have come up with a new computer poll that’ll be just as good at predicting the BCS teams as anything out there.  The best part is that it is EXTREMELY simple.  Expect to see a post about it before the season starts.

Well, as with all things college football these days, it’s more than just  performance that matters.  Publicity matters too.  In that vein the Cal Bears have released a website marshawn10.com to promote Marshawn Lynch as a potential Heisman candidate.  The key is to get people thinking about him early so that they’ll be watching during the season when he does his thing.

There’s great highlight video (although the production quality is a bit weak) on the site.  Go check it out.

Man, the Oakland A’s sure know how to mix pathetically mediocre with incredibly impressive.  They went into the All-Star break losing a bunch of games to mediocre teams.  Then they came out of the break by taking three of four from Boston at Fenway.  The A’s are the first team to do that all season and only the 3rd team (Yankess and Toronto being the others) to win a series at Fenway.

Go A’s!  Keep it up at Baltamore!

I don’t know how many of my readers use the cal.thecrawfordfamily.net/blog link to just get sports related blog posts (and the cal color scheme) but it no longer is working properly.  My web provider upgraded the blogging software and it overwrote all of my templates.  In fairmess to them, they told me to backup my templates with plenty of warning and I failed to do so.

I will try to get them back up and running next week.  In the meantime, I’m sure you’ll be able to manage seeing the standard look and feel of my full blog.

Down in the comments for my post about my new sailboat my brother brought up that I can’t have a boat named Fran. What is my wife Wendy to think?

While I agre that the boat needs a new name (what you can’t see in the picture is that the subtext to FRAN is “The Singing Wombat”), I think it is important to clarify what the name is about:

Fran was the man (yes man) who built the boat. He built it around 1990 and sold it to the previous owner, Gary, in 1993. Fran was an active IC sailor in the Bay Area and spent years helping Gary get up to speed in the boat. Fran also met with an untimely end (in the late 1990’s I think) and I believe that Gray named the boat after Fran after his death. Gary sold me the boat last week but I didn’t get the explaination of why Fran was “The Singing Wombat”.

In any case, consider this post the appropriate place to post comments with suggestions for new names. Already being considered is:

-Way to go HOLMOE! (Inside Cal Bear fan joke)
-Did you feel that puff? (On the bottom of the boat/hiking board so only visible during a capsize)
-Let’s see you try it (Same as above)
-BEARing down (Cal Bear reference)
-Tedhead (Cal Bear reference which requires “tie-dye painting” the boat)

Already suggested and not being considered:

-Not Fran’s (too disrespectful)
-Waterworld Sucked (no vulgarities and I never saw the movie)
-Slowboat (?)
-She got a Grand Piano (too crass)

I watched a clip of the Daily Show just after Dick Cheney shot his hunting partner. The host was complaining that it had been a slow news month until this beautifully wonderful story dropped in his lap giving him all the comic content he could ever want. In his words, “Thank you Jesus!”

Well, us Cal fans were given a similarly blessed gift recently when we found out that the person inside the Stanford mascot was fired from said job for being intoxicated while doing it.

Putting aside for the moment that I think they’ll have a hard time finding someone who’s willing to do the job while sober, I want to focus on the supposed mission of the Stanford band. As it says in the article about this “tragic” firing, the band spokesman Sam Urmy said, “We don’t want to risk our core mission of rocking out and bringing funk to the funkless.”

THAT’S their core mission!?!

Did anybody else pick up on this from the numerous times they’ve been subjected to watching the Stanford band? I’ve seen them more times than I care to remember and I think everyone who has seen the Stanford band perform can attest to the fact that not only did they fail in their apparent mission to “bring funk to the funkless” but that it was entirely unclear that to “bring funk to the funkless” was indeed their mission to begin with.

Hat tip to my brother.