New sketch, the WBC, SFA, and cabinet chaos

Masataka Yoshida homers against Korea, demonstrating that the Red Sox have criminally underused him the last two years

A few disparate things today...

• ITEM: I've Just Seen a Face! The sketch I was working on the other day is now finished and can be seen in the sketchbook.
• ITEM: Dig It! Kristi Noem got taken to the metaphorical gravel pit! May she be but the first of many to fall. Meanwhile, the nominee to replace her is quite possibly the dumbest person in either house of Congress.
• ITEM: I'm Only Sleeping! This week saw the start of the 2026 World Baseball Classic, which opened with games held in Puerto Rico, Miami, Houston, and Tokyo. Naturally, the ones I'm most interested in are being played in Tokyo and they start at 2:00am PST. So I've been even more nocturnal than usual, staying up to watch Team Japan live rather than wait and watch a recording of the game during normal waking hours like a sane person would do. And they've been really fun games, too! In the opener, Japan clobbered Taiwan in a fashion that was reminiscent of some softball games I've both played in and umpired in recent years: the 13-0 drubbing ended early by WBC mercy rule, and one 6th-inning single is all that kept Taiwan from being no-hit by the loaded Japanese squad. Last night/this morning was more of a fair fight, with the Koreans nearly matching Japan play-for-play until the home 7th, when Korea brought in Young Kyu Kim (one of their many Kims) to pitch with one on and two out and poor Kim couldn't find the strike zone. Which, to be fair, was rather variable. The home plate ump in that game—Todd Tichenor, who is generally well regarded as an MLB ump—was truly bad, not remotely consistent with high strikes, low strikes, edge strikes, pretty much nothing was certain unless it was down the middle. Even so, Kim was wild and walked Kensuke Kondoh and Seya Suzuki after intentionally walking Shohei Ohtani, forcing in the go-ahead run, then Masataka Yoshida delivered a 2-RBI hit to put Japan up by three. That was enough for closer Taisei Ota to seal the deal in the 9th with help from Ukyo Shuto, just into the game in center field after pinch-running in the home 8th, who made a leaping catch against the wall for the second out.
• ITEM: She Came in Through the Bathroom Window! Once again, the eligibility rules in the WBC are a little too lax for my taste, though I get the rationale. Players can be on a nation-team's roster not only if they're citizens or permanent residents of the country, but if one or both of their parents are/were citizens or were born in the country or if they would be granted citizenship if desired under the country's laws. That last one is mostly for Team Israel, basically if you're Jewish you can play for the land of King David. So we have, for example, three Americans playing for Korea (named Dunning, O'Brien, and Whitcomb) who have never lived in Korea but have Korean-born moms; a Great Britain team with only two British players; a Team Italy with only three Italians; 13 Americans playing for Mexico; and an entirely American Israeli team. The Latin American teams have no trouble filling out their squads (you'd think Mexico would be fine under stricter rules too), of course Japan is a baseball powerhouse, the Netherlands is well-stocked because of that kingdom's Caribbean territories, Canada has plenty of Canadians, Taiwan is stocked with their own pros, and, kind of a surprise, Team Australia is almost entirely Australian, save for a couple of guys born in South Africa to Australians. So it's improving, but between Team USA, Team Puerto Rico, Team Israel, Team Italy, and Team Great Britain, the tournament has basically five American squads out of 20. I'd say it feels like stacking the deck, but only USA and Puerto Rico have a prayer of moving on.
• ITEM: It's All Too Much! On a less pleasant topic, Kristi Noem may be out of a job, but ICE hasn't changed its ways. The new American Gestapo have a betting pool going at their El Paso area detention camp, but instead of picking winners of football games they're betting on which of the incarcerated will kill themselves. In addition to being unconscionable and cruel and spot-on emblematic of our current presidential regime, this is encouragement for these thugs to treat their prisoners—you can call them "detainees" if you want, but they're prisoners—even worse than they otherwise would. It's a low bar to begin with, but this is insane. More insane, I mean.
• ITEM: Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey! Alleged attorney general Pam Bondi has been subpoenaed to testify in Congress and there have been articles of impeachment filed against her over her coverup of the Epstein files. About fucking time. Bounce her ass out, then bring her up on charges. (I know it isn't likely to get anywhere real, but we've got to try anyway, repeatedly, and with many other Cabinet officials, preparatory to when we have a majority and can impeach Felon47 and his bearded bootlicker.)
• ITEM: Don't Let Me Down! Starfleet Academy has been surprisingly good, and dropped it's ninth episode this week. The season finale streams Wednesday night, and I'm looking forward to it—when the series started, I had no idea what to expect; could be good, could suck. But it's been largely excellent considering its target audience as a YA show. It's improved on the other streaming-era Star Trek series by having an apparent quality control process with scripts. The writing is better structured and when there are holes in the stories they're forgivable. Like in this week's penultimate episode, the villain's dastardly plan is revealed to be, essentially, a blockade of the reborn Federation of Planets; how this was accomplished stretches my suspension of disbelief, that's an enormous area of space to cover even with this post-Burn mini-Federation. But the twist worked, the story that plot point is in service of is valuable, the situation it sets up for next week's finale is compelling, so I forgive the implausibility. It helped that this week's ep was a Jonathan Frakes episode, Frakes in the director's chair always elevates the material. But, the real make-or-break for this new show will be episode ten. Will it continue to be solidly written and character-focused and maintain its themes, or will it take a page from Discovery or the first two seasons of Picard and completely drop the ball at the end of the season, wrapping things up in a sort of, "shit, we're out of time, I guess just shrug off what we did earlier and invent some deus ex machina that we can forget later?" I'd be more optimistic if Alex Kurtzman wasn't a credited writer on episode ten. At least he's just the co-scripter of the teleplay. (Am I too hard on Kurtzman? Is my bias against anyone involved with writing the JJ movies too strong? I guess we'll see next week.)
• ITEM: Get Back! Or, more accurately, go forward—we begin our annual 8-month-long social engineering trickery tonight, turning the clocks ahead an hour for no good reason. The tyranny of morning people continues, and we night owls are shoved to the ground in our grogginess and given the finger. Tonight's WBC game in Tokyo will now start at 3:00am, which is so much worse than 2:00am, because the Japanese are smarter than we are and don't do stupid Daylight Saving Time.

That's all I have for now. Umping this week was good, no highlights/lowlights to speak of. Back out there Monday evening.

 

Tagged Baseball, Sketches, Politics, Republicans, Star Trek, Daylight Saving Time, The Beatles, WBC, Posted on March 7, 2026 at 7:45PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Lennon & McCartney

I recently watched the three-part Peter Jackson-helmed documentary series "Get Back," a compilation of footage from rehearsal and recording sessions the Beatles had that eventually led to their final public appearance, the rooftop session in London. It's a great film if you're a Beatle fan, getting a look behind the scenes, as it were, of the band at the beginning of the end.

Watching it you can see things fray apart in real time, more or less, then come back together for a bit, then fray again, and the doc ends with things in a sort of limbo. We know that they go on to record and release another album ("Abbey Road") before the one they're making here ("Let it Be") is released, but we also know that the guy they break to meet with at one point, Allen Klein, is going to screw them over and ratchet up the conflicts that break them.

I'm not as well-read on the subject as plenty of other Beatle scholars out there, I lack some of the details in my understanding of what broke the fab four apart in the end, but I have a general sense of it and have occasionally wondered what the world would be like, or at least what pop culture would be like, had Brian Epstein survived. Losing their manager to a drug overdose—barbiturates and alcohol in a self-medicated attempt to deal with chronic insomnia—in 1967 put the band in new territory. Deciding to manage themselves was probably a mistake, and the frictions of a few years later when they were looking for a new business manager, the machinations pulled by Klein (the guy ultimately hired by three of the band), Paul's prescient refusal to sign on with Klein (John, George, and Ringo would later sue Klein for breach of fiduciary duty and misrepresentation), and so forth would not have occurred if Brian Epstein was still handling the band. The smaller issues of personal conflict had to do with their self-managing as well, with Paul as the most responsible of the four assuming a "boss" role he did not want that irritated the others. Much is made of the Yoko Factor, but as Paul himself says in the "Get Back" footage, frustrated at John's distractions they were really feeling the absence of a grown-up figure to tell them to focus. They missed Brain a lot more than they were annoyed about Yoko.

I always have loved The Beatles, and in particular I've always found John Lennon to be fascinating. Not in a "favorite Beatle" kind of way, but because he was such a complicated person. Coming out of a horrendous childhood with absentee parents and a mom with mental health issues, when he meets Paul McCartney John's a thoughtful but very angry, tremendously insecure 16-year-old kid with a wealth of talent and on the road to trouble. Paul comes from a much different background, he's from a stable family of relative means (relative to John, anyway) but equally talented, and becoming fast friends gives them both a needed balance. John was one of those kids that either had to grow up too fast or never had a real childhood, depending on how you look at it, and had to grow up in his 20s while being one of the most famous people in the world; eventually he got to a point of internal peace and happiness, but only after going through Beatlemania, a failed and unhappy shotgun marriage, loss of important intimates (Stu Sutcliffe, Brian Epstein), an overly-intense nearly all-consuming new romance that alienated people (including his young son whom he became an absentee dad to himself), heroin addiction, all the end-stage Beatle drama, estrangement from Yoko, and a year-long largely drunken "lost weekend" first. Associations with the other Beatles makes him more worldly, he explores cultures. Between that and meeting Yoko he gets overtly political. Ideologically he goes from writing the misogynistic "Run For Your Life" to writing the feminist "Woman is the Nigger of the World" seven years later. Ultimately, he finds his place as a stay-at-home dad to a new son he's determined not to be absent from. The evolution of John Lennon is rather profound and very human.

Anyway, the bulk of the third installment of "Get Back" is around the rooftop concert, for which there's a lot of video out there. There's a brief moment in one of the clips where John goes to hug Paul, and John grips Paul in a bear hug with an intense expression, very emotional, while Paul embraces John back in a more relaxed manner with a tender expression that appears more tired than anything else. It's fleeting, but it struck me as such a distillation of the bond between them as the end of the band neared. A moment that's so at odds with the public feud they'd have in the early ’70s, that really shows how that feud to come was based in pain and resentment at the other parties and outside factors that their conflicts were based in, because these guys really, deeply missed each other.

It was an image I wanted to capture, so I'm now trying to draw it. Here's an in progress snapshot of it, with the first two layers (6H and 2B pencils) only; it's going to require several more gradations, probably from 8H to 6B, maybe 8B, before it's done. Paul's still raw, it's not him yet, and I'm not getting John's expression right—he looks too calm. It needs something more around the eyes, I think.

Tagged The Beatles, Sketches, Posted on March 2, 2026 at 10:04PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Jazz it up a little

Sure, it's empty here, but just wait until late afternoon, when it will be filled with people lying around, spikeballers, dogs chasing frisbees, bikes, and lots of asshats playing soccer

Whenever I have an umpire shift, I file a report to the league afterward. Usually this is just a pro forma task, e.g. "No problems today, all is well," like one of Constable Odo's log entries. Sometimes it's more involved, like if someone got hurt or I had to eject somebody or there was a forfeit or something, but usually it's just "all good here," and I try to add in a little bit of color to keep it from being too dull.

Last night I was feeling a bit more creative, I guess, and put the earworm in my head of the Beatle song that had been playing in my car when I drove to the park to use in writing the report. Jazz it up some. Give the people in the office a laugh, or at least a smirk. Or maybe they're all Beatle-haters, I really don't know. Anyway, I think it came out pretty well, given that I "wrote" it in my head during the shift and on the way home while replaying the original a few times to get the cadence right. I reproduce it here for the edification of anyone who wonders what it's like to umpire at the Capitol Hill field which is usually filled with people when I show up, some of whom simply don't care about permits and reserved areas.

I give you The Ballad of Cap Hill Softball (apologies to John and Yoko).

 

THE BALLAD OF JOHN AND YOKO CAP HILL SOFTBALL

Arriving at the park at 6:40
Gear bin fully stocked thanks to Mitch
The weather is fine, people are strewn line to line
Clearing the field is going to be a bitch

Christ, you know it ain’t easy
I try to keep my tone light
But the rate this is going
It’s gonna be a long night.

The soccer guys are hostile as always
Occupying our center field
I tell ’em, “move back to play, your goal’s obstructing our way”
One throws our cones as if they’re weapons to wield

Christ, you know it ain’t easy
They always put up a fight
The rate this is going
It’s gonna be a long night.

We finally get our games underway
Twenty minutes behind our sched
A batter crushes a ball, as we are watching it fall
It nearly hits a lazing guy in the head

Christ, you know it ain’t easy
People just aren’t very bright
The rate this is going
It’s gonna be a long night.

Times like this I wish it was a rainy day
Fewer people causing havoc here
But when the catcher says “No jest,
Of all umps you’re the best”
It makes the troubles somehow less important, SWEET!

Had a call when there were two runners
Throw came in where I hadn’t planned
The infielder said, “hey she was out by a thread!”
I said, “the replay center says the call stands.”

Christ, you know it ain’t easy
Sometimes I don’t get it right
There’s just one of me out there
I don’t have Superman’s sight.

By the time the third game was ending
The good points well outweighed all the bad
Most of the players were great
They didn’t mind we ran late
All in all I think a fun time was had

Christ, you know it ain’t easy
I hope I don’t sound uptight
’Cause despite how it started
It was a pretty good night.

Despite how it started
It was a pretty good night!

Tagged Umping, The Beatles, Softball, Posted on May 21, 2024 at 10:45PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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That's not what the song means

So, Thursday night I had an umpiring shift over at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill. Not unusual, I generally do a couple of those a week out there. On this evening I found myself running late because of a traffic snarl on the freeway—someone had lost a barbecue grill out of the back of a pickup truck, so everyone was wisely slowing down and changing lanes so as not to collide with this tipped-over piece of outdoor cooking tech in the center lane, causing a backup of many miles—and I was hurrying to get to the field on time. Usually on a Thursday I have to park several blocks away. The league doesn't reimburse me for parking as a rule, so I troll for free spots in a very densely populated part of town. On this day, though, I lucked out—someone had just vacated a spot less than one block from the park. The opposite end of the park I needed to be at, but still. Seemed like a break and I got there in plenty of time to set up the field and start the night's games on schedule.

The games were good, mostly with teams I'd not encountered before, though I knew one of the groups from the first game of the evening. Good guys and gals, although some of them kept on nagging me about the conditions; the lights at the park are broken, only about 1/3 of them come on and it's pretty dark when you need to track a fly ball, but what good nagging me about it does is a mystery. For the most part the newbies were good folks too, I was even complimented by one of the guys who was impressed with my "fun differential" (which is a literal inside-baseball joke referring to last year's Seattle Mariners) while another offered to help me collect the outfield cones and another one was effusive about my getting out to call plays on the bases and making sure everyone knew what was what (I figure his prior rec softball experience might be in the city league I sometimes play in, which has some of the gawd-awfulest umpiring I've been around with guys that just stand rooted in place and quietly go "hup" when calling a strike that might well be over a batter's head).

Anyway, when the games were completed at 11:00 and I had packed up the gear, I had some pep in my step and walked the length of the park back toward my car, already plotting out the rest of my night. I have to stop by the league office on the way home to get a gear bag for Sunday's shift, then I'm going to pick up a couple of quick groceries from the one 24-hour Safeway I can think of, then go home, feed the cats, put up my feet, and watch the Mariner game recorded from this afternoon while I eat leftovers from Karen's cooking the prior night. I was humming to the earworm in my head of a Billy Joel song from his 52nd Street album, even though I hadn't been listening to that earlier, and was feeling pretty good.

Then I arrived at my allegedly lucky parking spot to find some other car parked there.

WTF?!

Had I parked illegally? Did someone tow my car? No signs for towing companies anywhere. The posted parking restrictions all expired at 6:00pm and I didn't arrive until a bit before 7:00. But it is Cap Hill, people are zealous about parking. I was kind of freaking out, but also kind of methodical.

I called a friend who has more experience than I do with navigating the parking of Cap Hill, but he had no answers. I called the towing company used by the city police when they tow illegally parked cars. Do you have my car? Nope, sorry. So, the police it is. Called 911—which I was surprised you are supposed to do in a case like this, but you are—and reported my missing vehicle and they dispatched a police unit to talk to me. Took a while for them to get there, a missing car can't be high on the priority list, but they showed around midnight.

Officer Chu was fantastic. Good-humored guy, looked over the site and confirmed, yes, a legal spot, no reason you'd have been towed, 99% likely stolen as it's an older car with no anti-theft stuff. Plus the electronic locks don't work reliably anymore, I have to remember to manually lock the doors, and honestly can't remember if I checked them all since I was hurrying to the field. Chu let me know that the recovery rate for stolen cars is actually pretty high in these parts (around 70%), unlike in other cities and other parts of the country where it can be puny, so I may well get it back before too long. He and his partner, whose name I did not get, gave me a positive experience with the Seattle police, which was reassuring but also made me wonder if certain of my friends would have gotten the same treatment given their ethnic backgrounds. I'm choosing to believe Officer Chu would be just as cool with them because, hey, he seemed like a good dude. His mustachioed partner, who knows, he didn't say much.

After finishing with the cops I made my way to the Cap Hill train station and barely caught the last train of the night that would take me as far as the Northgate station, after which I begged a favor of my only friend in the north end with wheels that I knew wasn't a freakish morning person (looking at you, Failor) and that didn't have to punch a clock in the morning.

Ultimately I got home. Way later than planned. But I still watched the M's game (good one, too). And scrolled through autotrader.com to see what I'm looking at as a monetary hit if I need to buy a new-to-me used car; looks like maybe $5-8k. Really bad timing on that, given my giant HOA assessment hit this month.

Ironically, there was a particular CD in the car stereo. On my drive down I had been listening to The Beatles' Rubber Soul. Beatle fen will know what the first track on that album is. And, yes, I might be a star when it comes to the cast of rec league softball umps, but no, car thief, I will not, in fact, love you. Bastard.

 

 

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, the police phoned me to say they had recovered my car near Harborview Medical Center, not that far from where it was stolen. Apparently it had not had its plates removed and was "in driveable condition," though no word on whether or not it is damaged. It's being towed to an impound lot now and I can call the towing company tomorrow to arrange to reclaim it. Hopefully there's not a big fee attached to that.

Tagged Umping, Cars, The Beatles, Softball, Posted on May 6, 2023 at 12:41AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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