Felix Halladay

During this recent post season, Jeff Francoeur offended generations of people’s private parts with his unattractive beard. Please don’t misunderstand us. We have nothing against beards or facial hair in general. What we have issues with is GROSS facial hair, particularly men who have furry woodland creatures growing on their faces! That being said, we were curious if you felt the same as we do about Jeff’s…hairy situation. Thankfully, of 9 people, 8 of you voted that Jeff should shave his beard “for the sake of the children.” 1 creepy individual apparently likes the fact that Jeff looks like Paul Bunyan. Jeff, if you’re the 1 person who voted in favor of your poor decision, you’re delusional. We love you. You’ve got a great arm and when you’re hitting, you’ve got some power under your belt, but jeez. No gustamos your beard. Stop pretending. You probably don’t like it either. It most likely itches and catches all of your meals.

Roy Halladay officially won the NL Cy Young Award on Tuesday, like there’s an f’n surprise. Did they even bother to vote on that matter or did they just hand it over to him? On the flip side of the coin, it was announced yesterday that Felix Hernandez of the Mariners won the AL Cy Young Award, beating CC Sabathia and David Price by a long shot. See? The Mariners can win things in the 2010 season! Yay! Felix Hernandez is the Super Hero of the Week for several reasons…all of them, we assure you, are good reasons and they make perfect sense. Let’s be serious. When have we ever NOT made sense? For starters, Felix won a Cy Young. Yay! Next, Roy has already been Super Hero this year and we’ve never even discussed Felix because he plays for a shitastic team. Also, he plays for a shitastic team and still managed to win the Cy Young (whereas Roy won his award playing for a jerkoff, yet talented team). Fourthly, we’re closing this week’s blog with a song dedicated to Roy and he can’t have everything! If that’s the case, we’d have to change our blog to www.royhalladay’stravelingbaseballbabes.blogspot.com. Our website address is long enough! Lastly, if we had made Tim Lincecum Super Hero of the Week, it would’ve not only been redundant (as his number is already retired on our blog AND he has an annual holiday in August, which is marked off on our company Outlook calendars on a recurring basis), but inappropriate as he did NOT win the Cy Young this year. Granted, he got something slightly sexier in the form of a World Series trophy and ring, but…that still doesn’t change anything.

Shockingly, the Marlins traded 2B, Dan Uggla to division rivals, the Braves in exchange for utility player Omar Infante and pitcher Mike Dunn. Money appears to be the main culprit for the Marlins unloading the All Star player, but nevertheless, we’re still a bit surprised by the move.

MLB Executive Vice President, Rob Manfred, said that adding more wild card teams to the 2011 season would be difficult because it would require a modification to the current labor contract, which will continue through the season? They’re more likely to consider this possibility for the 2012 season. Maybe they should just stop “thinking” because apparently when you pool the minds of selfish and rich dumbasses, you get brilliance like this. They need to stop comparing themselves to the NFL…unless of course, they’re considering instituting a salary cap and a better penal system like the NFL. Bud Selig has announced that a “special 14-man committee” will discuss the possibility of adding two more wild card teams in December during the winter meetings. Anyone else getting the sense that this terrible idea is definitely going to come to fruition whether we like it or not?

Finally, Hot Mama Erin's birthday was on Wednesday and we'd like to wish her a happy, happy birthday! Lurve you!

In honor of Roy Halladay, we leave you with a charming little ditty that goes as something like this: “He’s the hairy-handed gent, who ran amuck in Philly. Lately he’s been overheard in Florida. Better stay away from him, he’ll strike you out, Jim. We’d like to meet his tailor. Ah-oooooooooooooooh. Werewolves of Philly.”

Majoring in Foxwoods Economics

Since the Mets are still interviewing for a new Manager to replace Jerry “I Like to Stutter” Manuel, we asked if you’d hire us if you were the GM for the Mets. Much to our self esteem’s relief, no one voted for, “good grief. Are you insane? Hell no.” That’s progress. Maybe you really don’t hate us. Maybe it’s just a strong feeling of dislike toward us that you feel in the pits of your stomachs. The 6 people that did vote were split between being annoyed about being the Mets’ GM and feeling that we couldn’t possibly be worse than Jerry Manuel. Sweet. Pessimistic attitudes all around.

MLB announced this season’s Silver Slugger Awards last night (displayed American League/National League):
1B: Miguel Cabrera/Albert Pujols
2B: Robinson Cano/Dan Uggla
3B: Adrian Beltre/Ryan Zimmerman
C: Joe Mauer/Brian McCann
P: Not Applicable/Yovani Gallardo
SS: Alexei Ramirez/Troy Tulowitzki
OF: Carl Crawford/Ryan Braun
OF: Josh Hamilton/Carlos Gonzalez
OF: Jose Bautista/Matt Holliday
DH: Vladimir Guerrero/Not Applicable

MLB also announced the winners for the Gold Gloves this week (displayed American League/National League):
1B: Mark Teixeira/Albert Pujols
2B: Robinson Cano/Brandon Phillips
3B: Evan Longoria/Scott Rolen
C: Joe Mauer/Yadier Molina
P: Mark Buehrle/Bronson Arroyo
SS: Derek Jeter/Troy Tulowitzki
OF: Ichiro Suzuki/Shane Victorino
OF: Carl Crawford/Carlos Gonzalez
OF: Franklin Gutierrez/Michael Bourn

Worthy to mention is the fact that this is Ichiro Suzuki’s TENTH Gold Glove. DANG! While that certainly is an amazing feat, that’s really not what we want to talk about today. Let’s discuss how Rob Neyer slammed Derek Jeter earning his fifth Gold Glove. The essence of his rant is that this recent award is the 4th Gold Glove that Jeter didn’t deserve. Woah. Someone’s got some Jeter Hate living inside him. Okay, sure. Derek Jeter is definitely not the BEST defensive short stop. We can support that statement. However, it’s not like the Yankees have got Serena playing short stop for them. Neyer’s ranting got us thinking. If Jeter didn’t deserve the award, then who did? Serena made an Excel spreadsheet on company time that detailed the 2010 fielding statistics for all of the short stops in the American League. Then she removed any player that had less than 100 games under their belt. Next, on company time, via her corporate account, she emailed the spreadsheet to Lisa’s email (also a corporate account), who then, on company time, reviewed it. After checking it out, Lisa replied via her corporate email account that she felt that Serena’s potential was being under-utilized at her job and that it made her feel sad. Serena appreciated the support.

Once all that back and forth appreciation was done, we discovered that the qualifying 100-games or more short stops were as follows: Alexei Ramirez (CHW), Cliff Pennington (OAK), Derek Jeter (NYY), Yuniesky Betancourt (KC), Cesar Izturis (BAL), Elvis Andrus (TEX), Erick Aybar (LAA), Marco Scutaro (BOS), Jason Bartlett (TB), and JJ Hardy (MIN). Ramirez and Pennington have the most games with 156 with Jeter and Betancourt following closely with 151. Since these numbers are so close together, we decided to study these four men’s statistics more closely. Of these 4 men, Jeter has the highest fielding percentage with .989, followed by Ramirez, who has .974. Since of the 4 original men, they have the highest percentage, let’s turn the spotlight more closely on Jeter and Ramirez. Ramirez played in 1376.2 innings while Jeter played in 1303.2, so Ramirez had 73 more innings/chances than Jeter to make a mistake. To boil it down further, Ramirez had 249 put outs, committing 20 errors (12 of them being fielding-related, while 8 were throwing-related). Jeter performed 182 put outs, committing just 6 errors (2 of them being fielding-related, while 4 were throwing-related). Ramirez was involved in 101 double plays, while Jeter was involved in 92. Who is the worthy short stop? We don’t know, but looking at these numbers, we don’t think choosing Jeter was a crime against nature. Perhaps Neyer needs to chill out? Maybe drink a little Dr. L or Café Patron?

Baseball Notes:
The A’s acquired outfielder David DeJesus from the Royals in exchange for Vin Mazzaro and Justin Marks on Wednesday. You might be wondering why we chose to share this piece of news with you, considering neither team is very good nor are the players involved super stars. We chose this baseball note because Vin Mazzaro, easily the hottest man on the A’s, was traded to Kansas City, which might be slightly closer to New York than Oakland, but really not close enough. Why do the A’s hate us? We were specifically looking forward to the A’s/Mets series at Citi Field this season just because we were a) confident that the Mets would actually win and b) we were going to have the chance to take Vin out for some wings at the Main Event…and perhaps assist him in relieving his sore muscles. What the hell are we supposed to do now? Now we’re left with Craig Breslow, who is adorable and Ivy League-educated, but just not as cute as Vin. *sigh*

Jeff Francoeur officially became a free agent after he was outrighted from the Rangers' 40-man roster, cleared waivers, and declined his outright assignment. Despite all of this, it doesn't mean that he won't end up with the Rangers since they've cited his fantastic personality as being a great asset to the clubhouse. We're a little peeved with Jeff right now. First, he tortured us with terrible music at Citi Field and THEN he grew a giant phallic bush on his face. Is he friggin' kidding us? Did he not read our offensive facial blog? He's offending our private parts with that monstrosity. He's a good looking man. What the hell is he thinking? It's not like it was helping him hit during the playoffs! For Pete's sakes, he batted .125 this post season! That's hardly productive in any language. Even though Jayson Werth's beard was revolting, at least he performed at the plate! It wasn't sexy by any stretch of the imagination, but he posted quality numbers! Men, please never rock a beard just because you're capable of growing it. Always make sure that the beard highlights your sex appeal before committing to it. How many times do we have to educate you in this department? We're starting to feel like broken records here! Sheesh! 

The TBB spent the night at Foxwoods this weekend thanks to a lovely invitation from Maria. Maria scored the most amazing room at MGM Grand for a ridiculously cheap price. It had the sexiest shower we've ever seen and there was a phone next to the toilet. Not that we used the phone while sitting on the bowl, but it's comforting to know that if we were experiencing an emergency while conducting our personal business, we'd have a phone to call for help and/or the Ghostbusters. Therefore, Maria is our Super Hero of the Week! Needless to say, the TBB did not raise any money for our stadium tours this year, but we did learn a few things at Foxwoods, which we chose to share with you because you clearly give a crap: 

1. Putting your money on black for Roulette doesn’t always guarantee you a win. You might lose your $30 and it will suck
2. Just because the Indiana Jones slot machine is making noise and flashing bright lights doesn’t mean you’re winning. Always consult the most sober individual in the group before blindly and relentlessly hitting the “Max Bet” button
3. Having a bench and an enormous shower head in your shower is strongly encouraged
4. Your best score in bowling usually takes place when you have less alcohol in your system, with the exception of Maria, who actually improved as her beer intake increased
5. Your last $5 should NOT be put into the Village People slot machine. You should probably save it for something important. Like food. Or gas to put in the car so that you can get home
6. When one TBB has a gambling problem (Lisa) and the other TBB has a drinking problem (Serena), it’s probably a good idea to avoid the following places: Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun, Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, and OTB.
7. Sleeping on your purse/clutch might be uncomfortable, but it’s better than sleeping on the toilet
8. When betting on the Eagles/Colts game, apparently you should pick the Eagles

Hope these words of wisdom help you in your future gambling adventures. TBB signing off with Kenny Rogers singing, “We got to know when to bet black, know when you’re losing at the slot, know when to walk away drunk, and know when to run. We never count our money when we are sitting at the table. There’ll be enough when we lose and the deal is done.”

Hip Hip Parade!

Before sharing our eyewitness account of the Yankees Ticker Tape Parade, let’s discuss last week’s poll results. The turn out was pretty abysmal with only 6 votes. We’ll give you a reprieve this week because you were probably too tired from staying up all night, watching the World Series to vote. You better make it up to us next week. We want at least 20 votes (one for each of our handmade cancer ribbons…which is another story entirely and one we won’t get into here. Please see our Facebook page for more details). 4 of you agreed with us and voted for New York, the city that never sleeps. No one voted for Philly, which doesn’t shock us. What DOES shock us is the fact that New York did not win unanimously. 1 of you voted for Oakland, who didn’t have a chance in hell in going to the post season back in April and 1 of you actually voted for Dublin, a city without a baseball team. Don’t get us wrong, Dublin is probably a rockin’ town, but it still doesn’t have a baseball team, much less a team in the World Series. Besides that fact, how many of you are taking the day off from work to fly to Ireland to witness this imaginary World Series parade?

Now for the moment you’ve all been reading for: The Traveling Baseball Babes reporting live (or rather, post-live) from the 2009 Yankees Ticker Tape Parade. Bright and early, we grabbed Dunkin Donuts coffee and the 6:59 train out of Bellmore into Penn Station. Once there, we met up with Tech Support Sean and his trusty sidekick, Steve. Tech Support Sean works in the financial district on Fulton Street, so he escorted us on the 2 train to Fulton and left us at a prime position against a police barricade on Liberty and Broadway (which situated us approximately in the middle of the parade route) before heading back to work for a meeting. It was 8:00. He said he would meet us once his meeting ended. Please note: the parade was not scheduled to start until 11:00. As you can see in the picture of us on the train below, in addition to our Yankees gear, we rocked our Oral and Testicular Cancer hats!

There was continuous stream of photographers and news cameras while we waited. Since one member of the TBB (who we shall not name specifically) was supposed to be in bed with “stomach issues,” it was imperative that she not get photographed. In an effort to avoid being recognized, this particular TBB disguised herself as Angelina Jolie. We think it worked well, though no one asked her for her autograph which was a little weird. Maybe we were surrounded by a lot of Team Anniston members?
Initially, the crowd wasn’t too bad. However, by 10:00, it became impossible to move. Our fingers toes were numb. As you can see in the picture below, we had become on intimate terms with our surrounding fans just because of proximity. We became worried that the crowd would become too dense for Tech Support Sean to get through to us.
Time passed extremely slowly. Thankfully, the people with us happened to be very funny. One guy in particular called out repeatedly, “Where’s Jimmy Rollins? Game 5! Jimmy Rollins!” A beach ball was tossed around to keep everyone’s spirits up in the cold.
Bank of America was on the corner that we were stationed at. Not only was the entire staff standing at the windows the entire time (and most likely not fielding your customer service calls), but they continued to dump huge balls of shredded paper out of the windows. This isn’t something that they should be criticized for. EVERYONE dumped paper from the window, but they were not even creative or smart enough to pull the ball apart. As a result, fans below were literally pelted with chunks of shredded paper. A bit awkward to say the least. Another bone that we had to pick with them was the fact they also threw whole pieces of paper out of the windows (which alone, wasn’t enough for us to criticize them for). A girl next to us grabbed one of the pieces and looked at it. Someone’s account and personal information was printed all over it. Um, hello? Confidential? Shouldn’t that be shredded? The guys with us began cheering for TD Bank, which made us laugh.
Fans picked up some of the ball clumps and tossed it around the crowd. As you can see, we got the brunt of one particular clump.
Finally, at about 11:30, the first signs of the parade began to show near us.
At this point, it became extremely difficult to maneuver. Even though we were practically in the front row, we were still forced to pass the camera back and forth to get optimal picture positions. EVERYONE wanted to get good pictures, therefore everyone tried to jockey for the best spot. We could only get one arm up at any given time. Thank God we had Steve. He was our buffer between us and most of the people behind us. Had it not been for him, we may have been steam rolled and crushed against the barricade.
MVP Matsui and the trophy were among the first of the floats to pass by:

As the parade continued, we saw other assorted people that we didn’t know in addition to the players and their families. Brett Gardner followed Matsui shortly after, photographing us photographing him:
Throughout the entire event, people continued to throw toilet paper and confetti from the windows of the surrounding office buildings, creating a blizzard effect.
AROD apparently traveling on Jay-Z’s float, but we didn’t see him (perhaps he is the man in the jazz man hat and sunglasses?):
AJ Burnett and Jose Molina shared a float (though we only got AJ in our picture):
Nick Swisher offered us the Swisher Salute (which we failed to get a picture of as well):
YES game commentator, John Flaherty stopped by in a pretty sweet ride with his kids:
CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira were very enthusiastic and fun to greet as they drove by:
Derek Jeter got one of the bigger receptions by the crowd in our area, but that isn’t really a surprise:
We got a great shot of Andy Pettitte (if we do say so ourselves). Andy rode the float with Jorge Posada, who we were unable to snap a picture of. Both men were also a lot of fun to cheer on. They greeted both sides equally and had a lot of energy like CC and Tex.
Naturally, the man closing out the parade was none other than Mariano Rivera:
Before turning to leave (or try to leave), we took one last photo of the paper snow flakes filling the sky:
Shout out to Tech Support Sean who bought us lunch before sending us on our way to Penn Station. Steve was nice enough to escort us and wait until we boarded our train before returning to the Port Authority to grab his own bus back to New Jersey. We roll with such wonderful peeps in our entourage. We grabbed the 2:06 train back to Long Island. It was a relief to sit in the warmth after standing for four hours in the cold. The strangest parts of our bodies hurt! Our hamstrings and calf muscles were extremely stiff from being restricted for so long. Our knees were excruciating. Having played competitive sports her entire life, Serena had never experienced this kind of pain in her knees before. Our lower backs were crying too (presumably from standing). We finally pulled into the Bellmore train station around 3:00 completely exhausted, but ready to blog.
Last but not least, today’s baseball notes. Surprisingly, there’s a lot. A lot of nonsense. The Chicago Cubs are expected to bid for the 2014 All Star Game, which will coincide with the celebration of Wrigley’s 100th anniversary. Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols won the Hank Aaron Award for best offensive players in their leagues. Aaron himself presented Jeter with his award prior to Game 4 on Sunday. Pujols was unavailable as he was recovering from elbow surgery. We find this a bit perplexing. What does an elbow have to do with being able to stand on a baseball field and receive an award? Jeff Francoeur underwent surgery on a torn ligament in his left thumb on Monday. It is anticipated that he will be ready for spring training. In the bone head of the year move (Milton Bradley, you can now step down), the Philadelphia Inquirer has apologized for mistakenly running an ad in Monday’s edition congratulating the Phillies for winning back to back World Series titles. At the time, the Yankees led the series 3-1. Wow. That is embarrassing. In more Cubs related news, Ted Lily had athroscopic surgery to clean up debris (What IS that? Like scrap metal? How does one get debris within their shoulder?) and labrum fraying (which sounds extremely painful) in his left shoulder on Tuesday. He should be able to begin throwing again in four months. In true Plaxico Burress style, Vincente Padilla is recovering from a bullet wound in his leg after a target shooting instructor accidentally shot him on Wednesday. At blogging time, the YES Network announced that JJ Hardy was traded from the Milwaukee Brewers to the Twins for Carlos Gomez.

Billy Idol summarized the day best with his #1 hit, “It’s a nice day for a ticker tape parade!”

Baseball Happenings

I cannot believe how much has happened since yesterday when Lisa and I blogged during our lunch break. You'll be pleased to know that Lisa's heat rash has subsided and she's doing much better.

By now I am sure you've all heard about the Mets trading Ryan Church yesterday afternoon to the Braves for Jeff Francoeur and cash. Right now it may seem like the Mets have traded apples for apples since Church currently sports a batting average of .280 and 22 RBI's and Francoeur owns a .250 batting average and 35 RBI's. Both are solid defensive right fielders, but Francoeur's got the better arm. This season, he has 6 assists compared to Church's 3. This may not seem like a big deal, but for his career, Francoeur's got a total 65 assists while Church only has a total of 21. I'd like to also add here that Church has one more year MLB experience than Francoeur. If Francoeur can turn his cold streak hot, the Mets may have made out on the deal. Congrats, Lisa! ; )

Last night, Jonathan Sanchez threw a no-hitter for the Giants against the Padres, striking out 11. Not bad for a kid who, with last night's win, now has a 3-8 record. That's worse than Barry Zito's!

The American League still hasn't announced all of its Home Run Derby contestants yet, but Brandon Inge and Joe Mauer have finally confirmed that they will participate.

Tomorrow, Tech Support Sean, Brother, and I will be taking Mamadukes to Yankees Stadium for a tour, followed by lunch at the Hard Rock as a belated birthday gift. Will be sure to post pictures (but not too many because that will take away from my trip with Lisa to the stadium in two weeks). Pray for nice weather!

-Serena