Backe v. Pujols

I had started to address this minor conflict a couple weeks ago (when it actually happened), but I got busy and left it alone for a while. Then the other day I was reading in Predictably Irrational about how people's expectations affect their perceptions, and it gave the example of sports fans who come to opposing conclusions about the same play. I'll hopefully post a review of the book at a later date, but until then, here's the entry I originally intended to create:

Yesterday's spat between Brandon Backe and Albert Pujols is barely worth paying an ounce of attention to, but I'm writing about it anyway. Sort of. What makes the argument interesting is not the argument itself, but the disparity in the reaction by two different fan communities.

We are more connected than ever, but it could be argued that we are also becoming more sheltered than ever. I was at dinner with one of my business school professors last week, and he told a story of a research project he was working on. It involved monitoring financial message boards to pinpoint the contributors who could most accurately predict the behavior of the market. Unfortunately, he found that there's not some sort of marketplace that promotes the best ideas; instead, there's a sorting into two diametrically opposed camps where people reinforce each other's (usually incorrect) prognostications.

The same can be said for the message boards at Bill O'Reilly and the Daily Kos, which have produced some pretty hateful talk, and unfortunately it appears to be true of the comment sections at baseball blogs. Viva El Birdos and Crawfish Boxes are two members of the SportsBlog Nation community of blogs, and they're the two baseball blogs that I read regularly. Here's some of the reaction from both comment sections on yesterday's altercation:

St. Louis:

• "Backe needs to do something in the majors before he starts talking"


• "Smart move dumbass...your team thanks you"


• "If it wasnt for this does anyone know who brandon backe is anyway?"


• "Fox had Backe mic'd for that game [game 5 of the 2005 NLCS] and all i remember before Pujols' bomb was his shrill squealing throughout the game."

Houston:

• "Calling up later to apologize is the bare minimum, but it seems like LaRussa's Cardinals are always involved in dirty stuff like this"


• "First, it was a malicious slide in an uncontested play at the plate. Secondly, Pujols is a BITCH and needs an attitude adjustment to wipe that arrogant smirk of [sic] his stinky fat face."


• "He should get dotted every time up. He's been due for years, dating back to ruining Brad Lidge for us.

Something in each blog's respective comments section reeks of lack of exposure to differing opinions. So in the interest of fairness, here are some comments to each team's fans:

To the Cards fans: First off, there should be no bitterness regarding Brandon Backe's crowing during game 5 of the NLCS. Remember how that ended up playing out? Pujols goes off the back window, the Astros get swept out of the World Series, and the Cardinals take it in five the next year. All things considered, I think the Cardinals came out pretty well. Let them "squeal" three years ago. No biggie. Secondly, maybe we can all admit that, were Tony LaRussa managing in the other dugout, there would be more than a couple aspects of his extreme fidelity to the unwritten rules of baseball that would anger us from time to time.

To the 'Stros fans: Take a lesson from Carlos Beltran. The guy wasn't the savior of the baseball world for the half a season he played for the Astros and then a complete jerk after he left. Similarly, Albert Pujols is not a bad guy just because he doesn't play for your team. We all root for laundry to a certain extent, but don't take it to the extreme. It's bad for the soul. If Pujols were an Astro, he'd be the greatest player ever, and if Backe were a Cardinal, he'd be the punk from your high school who sat in the back of the class and drew the logos of heavy metal bands on his binder. Also, calling the clubhouse to apologize is not the bare minimum; it's a pretty decent thing to do.

Washington, D.C.

http://pictures.thelauves.com/washingtondc0803

On March 28-31, we spent a weekend in Washington, D.C. It was Daniel's eighth trip to our nation's capital and Brandi's first.

Brandi arrived by way of a trip for work. She had events in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Adelphi (near College Park), Maryland. Upon discovering that the mascot for the University of Maryland is a terrapin (turtle), she thought that that was "so cute!" She finished with her work on Thursday and waited patiently for me to arrive---it was going to be a late night for me.

I was scheduled on a 7:55 flight from Austin to Dallas, then a flight from Dallas to Baltimore that would get me in at 1:10 a.m. Add on the taxi ride to College Park, and I was expecting to get in to the hotel at about 2:30 a.m. So I tried to stand by on one of the two earlier flights to DFW, and I got on the second of those two. This allowed me to stand by for a flight that would get me in to Reagan National at 12:20 a.m. I was the last passenger let on---not only did I not have to pay a change fee, but I also got to sit in first class for the first time ever! The taxi ride to College Park was long but not nearly as long as it would have been from Baltimore, and I was at the hotel by 1:00.

Our first event scheduled for Friday morning was a tour of the U.S. Capitol, given by the staff of our Representative John Carter. We got on the Metro in College Park, dropped off our luggage at our hotel in Foggy Bottom, then hopped on another train to the Capitol. Staff-led tours of the Capitol begin in the tunnels underneath the building, and when we got down to the basement we found a two-hour wait just to get in. This was a theme for the entire weekend---being in D.C. on the opening weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival meant being exposed to crowds everywhere we turned. We were advised that it would be better to tour the Capitol later, so we decided to take a trip down to the National Air & Space Museum.

The Air & Space Museum has an amazing amount of history from the last hundred plus years of flight. Among the exhibits featured there are the original Spirit of St. Louis, several vehicles from the early days of the space program, and the original Wright Brothers Flyer. The museum is also the temporary host for the Smithsonian's National Treasures exhibit, which includes the hat that Lincoln wore to Ford's theater, the original Kermit the Frog, R2D2 and C3PO, and the original ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (definitely Brandi's favorite).

We arrived back at the Capitol to find much shorter lines, and before no time our tour guide (currently a student at Texas A&M) was telling us about the history of the Capitol Building. We got to see the place that was originally intended to be George Washington's burial site, we saw the original home of the Supreme Court, we walked through the Rotunda and Statuary Hall, and we got to sit in the House chamber.

On the recommendation of our guide, we had lunch at Tortilla Coast, a Texan-owned TexMex restaurant that sits caddy corner to the House office buildings. We had some good food and some really good margaritas. Brandi was going to get a margarita, but when I noticed that a pitcher of margaritas cost less than two margaritas, I thought that getting a pitcher would be a good idea. Considering that I had slept three hours the night before, was getting over a cough (for which I was taking medication) and had no food in my stomach when we started eating at 3:00, it ended up being a great idea!

The next stop on our D.C. trip was a 90-minute tour of the men's bathroom at Bed Bath & Beyond. Since I wasn't feeling too well, we decided to come back to the hotel and take it easy on Friday night. We ordered 27 Dresses from our room, and I got to rest up and catch up on the NCAA Tournament.

On Saturday morning I got us breakfast at a Safeway located within the Watergate Hotel, and then we were off to get tickets to the Holocaust museum. With the crowds being insane all over town, we had to get there early before the tickets ran out. (Each ticket lists a time after which you are allowed to come back to see the exhibit.) After getting the tickets, we went to the National Gallery of Art. We saw numerous amazing pieces of art from the likes of Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, and da Vinci, and Brandi explained to me the difference between impressionism and all the other isms.

Our Saturday lunch was at a tapas bar. It was good, but among the items we ate was a particularly salty salad. It's also the answer to a trivia question---the first thing Brandi has sent back since we've known each other.

On our way to the Holocaust museum we wandered by the Washington Monument, which was hosting a kite festival as part of the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was amazing to see hundreds of kites being flown by the numerous people standing on the lawn of the monument. We got to the National Holocaust Museum at a little before 2:00, and it was extremely crowded. But it was amazing. The entire museum (which occupies a four-story building) is so well designed, and the visual elements used, from the construction of the museum itself to the Holocaust artifacts on display, were so evocative. The museum does such a good job of bringing together cultural history, religious history, and military history (the rise of Hitler, the history of antisemitism, the arc of World War II), and it packs an incredible emotional punch as well. It was an experience that I doubt either of us will ever forget.

We then walked by the cherry blossoms on our way to the Jefferson Memorial. Cherry blossoms can be found all around the city, but they are primarily located along the tidal basin. The Jefferson Memorial is one of my favorite places anywhere, and it was great to be with Brandi as she saw it for the first time. It's known for being a little more secluded, but it was super crowded on this day---it's pretty much the epicenter of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Our Saturday dinner was at Filomena, a nice Italian restaurant in Georgetown. We really enjoyed the atmosphere, but our food choices unfortunately left something to be desired. But it was fun to be in Georgetown on a Saturday night.

On Sunday morning we attended mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, which is within a block or two of Legal Sea Food and the National Portrait Gallery, our next two stops. Legal Sea Food was very good; it's a place Brandi has been wanting to introduce me to, and I really enjoyed it. They offered some interesting varieties of calamari as well as great fish and crab cakes.

The National Portrait Gallery is a place that I had never been, but we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It has portraits of pretty much every great American historical figure, including a room featuring all of the presidential portraits. The portrait gallery was also hosting Stephen Colbert's portrait, which was located above the water fountains and between the bathrooms. Remarkably, it had the longest line of people waiting to have their picture taken with it, besting George Washington's portrait by a factor of two or three.

Dinner on Sunday was at Old Ebbitt Grill, which is one of my favorite places to eat in D.C. The food was really good, and the atmosphere was great. The restaurant, which is a little over a block from the White House, has been a favorite of many presidents and is reputed to contain several of Teddy Roosevelt's personal belongings.

The walk by the monuments was something that I was looking forward to since we first arrived. We started by walking past the White House and then visited the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The thing that always gets me about the Lincoln Memorial is his second inaugural address. It sits to Lincoln's left (the Gettysburg Address is on his right), and it's just amazing to me the timeless wisdom he was able to inject into his speeches in the midst of such turbulence. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was, as always, sobering.

(Brandi is making me write that the temperature was under 70 degrees when we were at the Lincoln Memorial---hence the bundliness.)

Brandi's first time in Washington, D.C. was a great weekend for both of us. With our trip to New York in October, Brandi got to show me her favorite city, and now she's gotten to see mine.