Tag: babes love baseball

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Some baseball blogs I follow

As a baseball blogger, I’ve begun to make a point in the past several months of reading other baseball blogs. Besides building links to this site whenever I leave comments (where I can offer insight, of course– nobody likes a spammer), I also find some of the material I come across fairly entertaining. Plus, it seems only right that if I’m blindly asking people to read my work, the least I can do is take five or ten minutes a day to follow suit.

Thus, I’ve started to build up a list of baseball blogs that I follow. If I ever get a blogroll going on my home page, the following links will probably be included:

Baseball Musings: The number-one ranked baseball blog for Google. This guy occasionally links me up if I write a killer post, send him a link (don’t bother offering him hastily-written crap, it doesn’t work), and the stars align. The reward is generally 50-100 extra visitors to my site.

Only Baseball Matters: A blog mostly on the San Francisco Giants by an extremely dry observer.

Extra Baggs: Another Giants blog, this one by their beat writer for the San Jose Mercury News.

Dear (Tommy) John Letters: Kind of like the Paul Shirley of baseball bloggers, i.e. another entertaining writer/sometimes athlete.

Babes Love Baseball: I learned of these ladies on Twitter when I did a search on baseball blogs. My ideal woman loves baseball so I was drawn in. I found that the writing on the site is sharp and well-informed as well.

DMB Historic World Series Replay: This guy knows a lot about the early history of baseball, occasionally can be found in the comments section here and was kind enough to give me a shout out on his site. Hence, I am doing the same.

My First Cards: I mentioned this guy (one of my regular readers) and his blog on 1982 Topps baseball cards in my last post, so I won’t be too redundant, besides to say I find this site fun and informative.

SPORTSADVISOR: This guy, another regular here, clearly loves sports and claims to have struck out Albert Pujols twice back in high school.

Giants Galore: Plug for myself. The group blog on the San Francisco Giants that I was tapped to be a part of has started to take off. I would encourage people to keep an eye on it, especially if the Giants make a pennant run.

This is by no means a list of every blog that I follow. If you are a blogger and feel I missed you, please leave a comment, and I will try to say something nice.

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Babes Love Juan Pierre?

I recently discovered a blog, via Twitter, Babes Love Baseball. Based out of Minnesota, the blog is similar to this site were it written by a female triumvirate; essentially, it is a paean to all things baseball.  Most of what’s up there these days seems to be re-posted from other sites, but in looking through their older, original content, a lot of it is sharp and funny (i.e. one of the ladies shows a picture of Madonna and asks why Alex Rodriguez would be attracted to women who look like Tom Petty.)  Hence, I’m following them on Twitter and have made a few trips to their site.

I was just re-reading the Comment section on their post that asked people what their walk-up music would be for at-bats.  I left a comment there recently, putting in a plug for the post I wrote on this topic last month, and I wanted to see if anyone had responded to it.  Lamentably, no– it’s not my best post, really.  But I did find something that spurred a thought.

Apparently, one of The Babes (their capitalization, not mine) used a Beastie Boys track in years past because it contained the phrase, And I’ve got mad hits like I was Rod Carew.  Hearing of this made me wonder other times ballplayers have been mentioned in songs, and — don’t ask me why — I thought of that Beyonce-Jay-Z single, “Deja Vu,” where Jay-Z raps, Used to run base like Juan Pierre.

When I first heard this in 2006, it sounded complimentary to Pierre, who had averaged 45 stolen bases a season up to that point, with 1,244 hits and a .303 batting average.  Were I a general manager, I’d have no problem making Pierre the first, second or eighth hitter in my lineup, or my ninth guy for an American League team.  In the three years since being rapped about, though, Pierre has struggled to maintain consistent playing time, even if his numbers haven’t changed all that much, and I find myself wondering if the following lyrics would be more apt:

Used to sit the Dodger bench after signing a $44 million contract like Juan Pierre

Used to get traded to the Chicago White Sox for spare parts in December 2009 like Juan Pierre

Used to have one home run in three years like Juan Pierre

In any event, I don’t think I could use any of this as walk-up music, even if Pierre may be amassing the quietest case ever for Cooperstown.  Crazy as that may sound, Pierre is 32 and somewhere between six and eight full seasons from 3,000 hits, if Chicago lets him start.  He also could finish with something over 750 steals and a .300 lifetime batting average.  And he’s probably one of about seven active players from the Steroid Era who I would bet didn’t do steroids, since he hit a total of seven homers during those years.  All this for a guy who I once read lived on hot dog packages and jugs of fruit punch while in the minor leagues.

That’s pretty solid.  Even Babes ought make note of that.