It seems that while the Camden Riversharks will be sending five players to the Atlantic League’s All-Star game next week, Lipso Nava will not be one of them. To all those who snubbed my namesake, I say a pox on all your houses.
You know you are pretty bad when, as a fan, your ineptitude is so great that even the AP mentions it in their game recap: “Rob Marchese, a 41-year-old businessman from Queens sitting in a folding chair in the first row in the right-field stands, fumbled away both Rodriguez’s and Giambi’s homers.”
I was watching the Yankee game last night on the tele with my friend Dave.
In the first inning, A-Rod hit one that just cleared the right field fence, the kind of homer Donnie Baseball made famous. The ball went right through the hands of a middle aged guy wearing a gray tee shirt, hit him in his shoulder, then hit his chest, then went through his hands again and bounced onto the field. The second he dropped it he made the biggest commotion, slapping the wall and flailing about because he knew he blew it – he had an A-Rod homer in his hands and lost it. I have never been close enough to even try and catch a ball but I’m always aware of the ball when its hit. Catching a major league baseball is just one of many little things on my life’s to-do list that I hope to accomplish. You just don’t get a second chance on something like that.
Or maybe you do. Like the very next inning. Sure enough, in the bottom of the second Giambi hit one in the exact same place. Sure enough, the same gray tee-shirted guy was there, in the exact same spot. And yes, sure enough, it went through his hands, hit him in his chest, then his arm, and then bounced back onto the field. Again, he made a commotion except this time it was more rueful, as if he knew the Fates were conspiring against him so what are you gonna do, right?
If you’d like to see photo evidence, click here.
Rob: you have the privilege of being awarded 15 minutes of fame due to incredibly poor fielding skills. To that I say, “mazel tov.”
After the jump, you can read what the NY Times had to say about it. It seems that everyone is talking about Rob…
From the July 8th Edition of the NY Times:
It was Rodriguez’s 22nd of the season, and it seemed to delight all but one fan, who might have had the most exciting night of anyone at the game.
The ball hit the 41-year-old Robby Marchese in the chest and the hands, but it fell back to the field. Marchese was crestfallen, slumping his body on top of the wall, his head down, for several seconds.
“I didn’t get all of it, but I got enough,” Rodriguez said. “I think I hit it to the fan in the gray shirt who almost got two balls.”
Marchese’s next chance was just an inning away. Jason Giambi led off the second inning with a liner to right. Casey Blake chased after it, and the ball deflected off his glove – and onto Marchese’s chest. Again, he dropped the ball.
“It didn’t hit me where it was supposed to,” said Marchese, who had never sat in that seat before.
“I’m going to be on SportsCenter for the rest of the week.”
The NY Yankees have announced they are building a new stadium in a deal worth around $800 million that is being almost totally privately funded. That means its coming out of George’s pocket, not yours or mine, for the most part which is a breath of fresh air. In a nice bit of creative financing, the stadium will be financed by 40-year tax-free bonds issued by a local development corporation created by the city and state. The Yankees will have to shell out about $50 million a year in interest payments but that cost has the nice benefit of allowing the yankees to pay significantly less in revenue sharing each year to the rest of Major League Baseball. Why fund other teams when you can fund the construction of your own stadium? Very smart and shrewd move guys, I applaud you.
I for one am thrilled by the idea. I love the current stadium and have loved (though not necessarily enjoyed – losing games suck) every second that I have spent in it. The fact is though that its old, it needs to be updated and it needs to generate more revenue that it currently does, especially if the Yankees are to remain the Yankees. So, a new stadium at some point to me was a definite. It just was a matter of when, where and how. So, when the stadium proposal was publicly unveiled, I was very happy to see that it contained lots of good details, like how the current stadium will be kept for the use of local amateur, high school and college leagues and how “not only will the new house retain the feel of the current ballpark with identical field dimensions and bullpen placements, but many planned features will actually recapture some of the original features eradicated by the extensive renovation that was done on the old stadium from 1973-75.”
When I was a kid, when Steinbrenner would rumble and threaten moving the team to NJ, I quaked in my little sneaks and prayed that moving day would never come. Over the years it was been a nagging fear and now I don’t believe it will happen. The Bronx Bombers stay in the Bronx. Period.
After the jump, check out pics of the new stadium.
Aerial view of Yankee Stadium from southwest
View of Monument Park and the Batter’s Eye ClubIt seems that a .309 batting average with 30 runs scored, 1 homer and 9 runs batted in is good enough to be added as a choice to the “Who has been the Riversharks MVP to this point in the season?” poll on the Camden Riversharks web site. The poll is below the fold so you’ll need to scroll down to see it.
Do me and everyone who has “lipso” as part of their name (whether first or last) a favor and go vote for Lipso today. He’s currently tied for the lead with 33% of the votes. I believe my faithful readers can push him over the top.
My friend Eric called me today to say, “Dude, Lipso Nava is in the Post!” Turns out, his new team, the Camden Riversharks, played the Long Island Ducks last night. The Ducks now have John Rocker on their team so they are getting tons of media attention, especially since he recently said: “I’ve taken a lot of [stuff] from a lot of people, probably more than anybody in the history of the sport. I know Hank [Aaron] and Jackie [Robinson] took a good deal of [stuff], but I guarantee it wasn’t for six years.” Um, how many burning crosses were placed on his lawn?
Anyway, the Post states that in the 7th inning, “Rocker started off well, going 0-2 to the first batter, Travis Anderson, before Anderson ripped a line-drive single to left. He then walked Kevin Jordan, throwing a one-hopper to the plate on ball four. He promptly loaded the bases when Lipso Nava singled through the right side of the infield to load the bases.”
Ah, the NY Post, the most eloquent of newspapers, where all the writers should win Pulitzers….
No, this isn’t an April Fools Day joke:
This sport is real, it’s growing, it’s specially designed for and by wealthy dorks and I knew it was only a matter of time for something like this was invented once the Segway was unveiled to the public.
After the jump, read the NY Times article all about this “sport.” Enjoy.
Thwack! Whir!… Whir? Segway Polo Is Born
By Josh Sens
NY Times, April 1st, 2005
WHEN Alex Ko and his companions took up polo, they made some subtle changes to the sport once enjoyed by ancient Mongol warriors, who are said to have played with the severed heads of their enemies.
Mr. Ko and his friends opted for a 6-inch-diameter Nerf ball.
And instead of horses, they chose to ride Segways, the self-balancing transportation devices first developed as a short-distance alternative to the automobile.
“It’s similar to real polo,” Mr. Ko said, “but without the manure.”
He was standing in the thick grass of Ponderosa Park, a shaggy patch of green in Sunnyvale, Calif., preparing to compete in a game that replaces the thundering of hooves with the whir of battery-run machines.
On the first and third Sunday of every month, Mr. Ko, 34, a mechanical engineer from nearby Santa Clara, organizes Segway polo matches with friends and colleagues, most of whom work in the Silicon Valley, all of whom belong to the Bay Area Segway Enthusiasts Group.
Their matches have some of the trappings of traditional polo. Players wear jerseys – actually, colored T-shirts – and use mallets to knock a ball into a goal. Score is kept. And there is an umpire, although players feel free to ignore his calls.
“There are a few guys who take it seriously, but mostly this is a big goof,” said Jon Bauer, 37, of San Francisco.
This morning’s contest pitted four against four. Mr. Bauer’s team wore blue T-shirts. Mr. Ko’s team wore yellow and included Stephen G. Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computer and the owner of seven Segways. He is respected, if not feared, on the polo field for his aggressive play.
“My swing feels off,” Mr. Wozniak said just before the match began. He whirled his right arm in a windmill motion and said that he was operating on virtually no sleep, having stayed up at a party and then to watch a movie until 8:30 that morning.
The teams lined up on opposite sides of the field and rushed toward each other when the umpire rolled the ball between them.
At first glance, Segways could be mistaken for large push mowers, and in the early going, as the players found their rhythm on the grass, the game resembled a frenzied act of landscaping. But near the end of the first period, or chukker, in polo parlance, both teams showed signs of organization, even fleeting hints of skill.
“You should have seen us at some of the first games,” Mr. Bauer said. “We were all bunched together. Not much passing. Very little strategy.”
Like the birth of polo, placed variously in Persia or India more than 2,000 years ago, the genesis of Segway polo is hard to pin down. Mr. Ko traces his own interest in it to the fall of 2003, when a Segway polo demonstration was staged during halftime of a professional football game.
“I didn’t see it,” Mr. Ko said of the halftime show. “But it sounded pretty cool.”
Jonathan van Clute, a real estate and stock investor from Sunnyvale, said he had stumbled onto the idea even earlier, while consulting at a software company. “I brought my Segway into the office so everyone could goof around with it,” he said. “And this one guy pokes his head through the door and says, ‘Dude, two words: Segway polo.’ ”
WHATEVER the case, in April of last year, Mr. Ko and Mr. van Clute met at Ponderosa Park and began to tinker with their version of the game. Mr. Ko fashioned a mallet out of plastic pipe. They tried different types of balls before settling on a Nerf. They adopted rules from polo, water polo and bicycle polo, another contemporary offshoot. They outlawed high-sticking, or the polo equivalent of it, and agreed to run their Segways on the yellow-key setting – one of three settings on a Segway – limiting the top speed to eight miles an hour.
“We’ve never had any serious accidents,” Mr. Bauer said. “But there have been some pretty spectacular falls.”
During the match, the prospect of injury seemed to heighten whenever Mr. Wozniak entered the fray. Despite sleep deprivation, he played with zeal, charging after loose balls, leaning forward on his Segway like a ski jumper searching for extra air.
Mr. Wozniak’s opponents attributed his fearless play to his competitive gusto and his fleet of backup Segways, not unlike a traditional polo player’s string of ponies.
“Woz is the only guy who’s always cranking his Segway at top speed,” Mr. Bauer said. “I think it has something to do with the fact that he’s the least concerned with damaging his.”
Most Bay Area Segway Enthusiast Group members own only one Segway, which sell for around $5,000. Although the stated mission of the group is to promote public acceptance of the machines, many members spend more time playing polo on them than proselytizing for them. Mr. Bauer, in fact, who lives in San Francisco, where Segways are prohibited on sidewalks, said that his was used only for the Sunday matches.
“I used to ride mine more, but part of me got tired of dealing with the negativity,” Mr. Bauer said. “You can’t use them on the sidewalk, and if you do, people are yelling at you. Or they’re thinking of you as a yuppie, which in a sense you are.”
This was not the dream of Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, when he rolled out the first model in 2001. Easy to ride and ecofriendly, the Segway was hailed as an innovation that would revolutionize the modern city.
Just how much has changed is perhaps evident in the transportation used by players to get to their polo matches. Most drive. Mr. Wozniak often shows up in his Hummer, hauling four Segways in the back.
If the Segway has yet to transform urban living, it has at least altered recreational sport, if only slightly. It is fitting that it has happened in the Silicon Valley, a region renowned for finding innovative uses for technology. Recently, Mr. Ko said, a group of Segway enthusiasts in Southern California has taken up Segway polo. But his hopes for an intrastate rivalry have not materialized.
“I don’t think they’re quite that organized down there yet,” Mr. Ko said.
At Ponderosa Park, meantime, the match wore on. In the third chukker, Stuart Moore, 39, of San Jose, notched an impressive goal, moments before taking an impressive spill when his Segway bumped wheels with Mr. Wozniak’s. Mr. Moore hurtled headlong onto the grass; his Segway rolled on poignantly, like a riderless horse.
The score was tied in the fourth and final chukker when Mr. Wozniak shot at goal and raised his arms in triumph. The umpire, Chris Knight, 16, of San Francisco, ruled that it went wide. But Mr. Wozniak and his teammates paid no heed, exchanging high-fives with their mallets. The goal stood.
Other things happened. A player’s shin was bruised and another took a glancing blow to his helmet. The blue squad tried a last-ditch comeback. But as time expired, the score was 7 to 5, in favor of the yellow team. The players left the field, laughing and giddy. They were still full of energy, but their Segway batteries were running low.
…stream of consciousness style. Jessie just IM’d: “can you think of a great sports moment form late 80s early 90s? – going to a meeting – im me if you think of one.” I immediate replied: “how late?” and she then wrote “when we were 10-14ish.”
This is what I came up with as quickly as possible off the top of my head:
* olympics in 88 – greg luganis cracks his head open and still wins gold
* 92 – dream team, nba – jordan, magic, larry legend
* 89 – earthquake during WS
* i think it was in 90 or 91 when the islanders won a 4 OT playoff game – that was awesome
* NY Giants winning the super bowl in 91 with Scott Norwood missing the field goal – that was awesome too
If you want to add to the list, post a comment
I’ve heard from my good friend Mike Perlish for years now about how great, shiny, rich, amazing, etc Dubai is and from the research I’ve done, in this case he is not embellishing. For instance, take this beautifully designed hotel, the Burj Al Arab, which looks like a giant white sail bursting up out of the sand. I think it’s the only 6 or 7 star hotel in the world, I know he stayed there and the cheapest room I could find just now was for $817. It’s also got a helipad jutting out from the side:
“Standing 321 meters high on a man made island, the Burj Al Arab has a helipad which is situated 211 meters high, covering a surface area of 415 square meters.
In case the picture above doesn’t say 1000 words, it was converted into a tennis court earlier this week for the Dubai Tennis Championships.
Andre Agassi and Roger Federer had a friendly volley on it and neither of them fell almost 900 feet to a grisly death below. The link above takes you to Fox Sports which has a 14 pic slide show. Check them out… they’re sick!
Via Chris
I can’t believe that someone has the name Lipso Nava. Not only is there a guy with the name Lipso, but this career minor leaguer is one of the leading batters in Venezuela’s Winter League. If his email address was his first name, first initial of his last name it would be lipson@weird.com. As it is, his name sounds like a family festival I would go to each December or a genetic condition that may be passed from one generation to the next in my family. He is now also my new favorite baseball player on name alone, supplanting JJ Putz, a relief pitcher in the Mariner’s organization.
I first heard of him in an ESPN article about how dangerous Venezuela is for baseball players. “Career minor leaguer Lipso Nava gave himself up for dead when a gun was pressed against his temple by a thief who demanded Nava’s new Hyundai Elantra.” I feel for him and his family, not just because he is my namesake. I’m hoping to meet him one day – hopefully he’ll back in the US soon playing nearby so that I can get a picture, his autograph and who knows, maybe grab a beer with him.
In the news today:
Rangers removed the ice-encrusted bodies of two other hikers who died on the peak in an unexpected early blizzard in the Sierras. The deaths occurred on El Capitan, a forbidding granite mountain at Yosemite National Park,
The two deaths created a gruesome sight for a helicopter crew that managed to fly close enough Wednesday to spot the bodies, which were blue and dripping with icicles as they dangled from their ropes about two-thirds of the way up the precipice.
To retrieve the corpses, rangers rappelled down El Capitan, put the bodies into yellow mountaineering bags, and carried them on their backs hundreds of feet to the summit.
The two victims – an unidentified Japanese man and woman – had been ill-prepared for the weather, a ranger said. They also had their arms around each other, probably in an attempt to keep each other warm.
I can think of a very sad 2 person play that could be written about this tragedy. Such a sudden storm of sadness.