SB Nation User Blog: Officer Dibble

Saturday Red Sox tickets up for grabs

Officer Dibble — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:11:43 -0000

With a new baby, I think it might be pushing it to try to take him to two games this weekend, so I have a pair of seats available to Saturday's game, if anyone is interested.

The seats are located in Section 529, row T...which is under the underhang just on the first base side of home plate.

I really like these seats...you get a good view of the scoreboard and the river and there's usually a nice breeze. Face is $29 each. Any takers?

New Good Luck Charm

Officer Dibble — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:52:30 -0000

I just wanted to say that I have managed to watch 2 games in the hospital with my now 4 day old son, and both of them are wins.

I'll take that winning percentage.

So I have to nominate my boy as the official Good Luck Charm for the Reds as long as his newborn luck holds out. Can someone give me a definite answer as to how long a newborn's luck is supposed to hold out? :)

Here is a picture of the beautiful boy:

via farm4.static.flickr.com

Gotta go back to sleep now. :)

New details on Dernell Stenson's murder

Officer Dibble — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:22:39 -0000

I don't know if any of you have been following this, but this is a fascinating read.

http://www.oxfordamericanmag.com/content.cfm?ArticleID=302&Entry=CurrentIssue

As you might remember, Stenson was a Reds farmhand in the AFL that was brutally murdered in a carjacking a couple of years ago.

RIP Dernell.

Now I don't feel so bad

Officer Dibble — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:10:31 -0000

I have been sitting around since yesterday afternoon, sucking my teeth over the lack of deadline deals by the Reds.

But this morning, I came across the details (courtesy of Jason Stark) on what might be the worst trade since, well, The Trade, at least...maybe worse.

You might have heard that the Pirates got Matt Morris from the Giants. What absolutely stunned me was that Stark wrote that the Giants were offering to pick up major amounts of Morris' salary (9 mil) just to get rid of him for a bag of batting practice balls.

The Pirates apparently swooped in, offered them a decent prospect, a PTBNL, AND picked up all of Morris' salary.

Wow.

Suddenly, Wayne looks positively competent.

Saturday's Game

Officer Dibble — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:39:03 -0000

Hey! I am one of the Power Pack fools that have tickets for all three games this weekend. And although I love the Reds with all my heart and little mind, I cannot make the trip from Columbus three days in a row...so that means I have two tickets available for Saturday night's game.

These are good seats...upper deck...section 521, row K. Right behind home plate on the third base side. I would be happy to let them go for face value ($18).

As I said before, I am in Columbus, so if you are from here, we can meet up, or if you are in the Cincy area, I will be at the game Friday night, too.

Any interest?

Did I mention that we're playing the Indians? :)

Game Thread - Bats Club Clippers

Officer Dibble — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:31:41 -0000

For any of the lucky few that got to go to the game this morning, here are some random observatiosn...

Perhaps the others who went can chime in with some of their own.

* Paid five bucks and got a box seat toward the home plate end of the Bats dugout in the first row. I paid more for the dogs and lemonade than I did for the ticket and parking. Apparently, they run 2 for 1 promotions for these afternoon specials. WOOHOO!

* Homer was, in a word, unhittable. He allowed one hit in 5.2 innings, struck out 7. The one hit he allowed was a popped up bunt that went over his head and landed between the mound and the second base bag. Only two balls were hit out of the infield all day against him. Awesome performance.

The rumor that they started passing out ironing boards in the Columbus dugout was sadly false. It wouldn't have mattered.

Homer got lots of PFP during the game, and it did not all go so well. The first batter of the game, he committed two errors on the same play when he misfielded a bunt and threw it into the camera well behind first base. That runner scored.

Homer redeemed himself by getting that run back and tacking on another when he whipped a 2 run single.

Homer has a weird pigeon-toed batting stance. Front foot is angled in, and it looks like he has both heels almost off the ground.

Homer was dealing it. Fastball was clocked on the scoreboard at 96 in the 1st, 95 in the fifth, but he was working mostly in the 91-93 range. His breaking pitches were coming in at 76-78.

Speaking of the breaking pitches, he clearly needs some more work on them, but not as much as you might think. He started off a hitter with one for a strike, and threw more than a few others in there to keep them off stride. He did bounce a few, though.

* Joey Votto = professional hitter. They didn't want any part of him. Went 2 for 4 on the day with 2 R scored.

Earl Snyder = not a professional hitter. He looked baaaad on a couple of ABs there, but he did hit a 2 run jack before I left.

The 6-7-8 hitters for the Bats were not striking fear into anyone's hears. Their BAs were like .178, .144, .125.

Bellhorn can't hit for average in the monors, either. .244 was the gametime tale of the tape.

Maj came in and got the last hitter for Homer. I left during the 7th inning stretch, having seen all I came to see.

All in all, a great game. Glad I took the time to go see them!

Should I or Shouldn't I?

Officer Dibble — Mon, 21 May 2007 22:01:33 -0000

I am waffling with a major dilemma.

Homer is apparently being reinstated from the DL to pitch tomorrow here in Central City against our beloved Junior Mints/Nationals.

I have a chance to see Votto, EdE, and Homah.

The dilemma? The game is at 11:35 am, so I'd have to miss a half day or maybe more, depending on how nice the day is.

So should I go?

Did anyone else notice?

Officer Dibble — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 17:17:56 -0000

I know there was some mention of this in the game thread that I shamefully did not participate in, but what the heck was up with all of the "creative" (aka "unwatchable") camera angles they were taking in last night's game?

Bad enough that we have to listen to Mr. Sunshine rail for nine innings about how awful the Reds are playing right now, which is not very joyful except for the fact that my girlfriend and I make wicked fun of him at almost every turn.

But then we have to look at things like how the last play turned out. tHommy calling it, and a play at the plate that you couldn't see until like the third replay. (Way to almost screw it up, LLM...just saying)

And this was not the only instance...a BP strikeout was shown with a closeup of his face and nothing in the area code of the strike zone being shown. I also seem to remember a Lieber bunt that was being shown with a camera that was about halfway down the 3rd base line at EdE's back.

What the hell is FSO smoking now?

And do I have to look fondly on the days of George and the Creeper? I don't want to be so down on tHommy, but he really needs to back off on the criticize-o-meter a little bit, because he is beating us over the head with it every freaking at bat.

/rant

Pavano to Start Yanks Opening Day?

Officer Dibble — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 15:34:21 -0000

This may be the funniest headline I've seen all year.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070325/SPT0401/703250454/1072/COL09

It links to a wire story that talks about the injury to Wang and never mentions Pavano outside of the headline.

Personally, I think Ron Guidry has a better chance of starting Opening Day than Pavano, but maybe that's just me. Is Whitey Ford still alive?

Fantasy League Help!

Officer Dibble — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 05:01:12 -0000

While I am on my diary writing binge, let me throw this out there...

While we are all nervously awaiting the resurrection of the RR Yahoo league, I have just found myself in a bind.

My longtime fantasy league has just suffered an abrupt departure of an owner. We do not often get open spots in our league, which has been in continuous operation since 1986, but we find ourselves about 3 weeks from our draft with an open franchise. I will spare you the piffle about how great our league is, but it is a lot of fun for us...as much for the social aspects as the baseball.

If this sounds remotely interesting to you, a couple of things that we are looking for in an owner...

You would be roughly located in the Columbus metro area (we have an owner in Urbana and another in Dayton, so this is very loosely defined)
You can make the draft in Columbus on March 25th
You plan on being an active owner (it is a daily transaction league)
You like playing in a league that more socially oriented than monetarily oriented (we do charge small fees and have a small payout at the end of the year, but it is not about the money for us)

If this sounds like you, then I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment here on the board or drop me a line at my listed email address and we can chat about the details.

Help! :)