All eyes in America were trained on their TVs yesterday! Or on their coffee tables, groaning under the nation's bounty of guacamole, chex mix, and blood-congealing trans fats. In any case, the action at the game was fast and furious, and there are almost too many highlights to be able to post, but your humble correspondent is on the case!

Continue reading this post »

Man, I get busy one afternoon and I miss a hundred great slapfight topics. Whose a bigger jerk, Guy Fiery or St. Anthony of the Windbag? Making fun of baseball writers for their steroid hysteria? Tebow pro/con? Retirement planning? I also note that about 2000 comments were posted after I left, so I get the hint. And it's OK. Keep holding out the good stuff until I go away.

Now, buried within all the topics I won't be able to argue with anyone about for a few months now, thanks a pile, was a little ray of sunshine. The Workers Vanguard Daily Californian reports that the Raleighs/Intermezzo people are moving forward with plans to rebuild their hallowed halls.

This comes as welcome news for business owners operating in the fire-struck neighborhood who say the blaze has resulted in revenue losses as high as 50 percent [...Amoeba Records owner Marc] Weinstein said December revenue for Amoeba was down 40 percent from typical levels, which he attributed largely to traffic routing that made it more difficult for pedestrians to access his store.

So far I've just recycled the post from yesterday's DBD, largely to passively/aggressively complain at you all burning my favorite topics yesterday and talking about me behind my back. But Pravda the Daily Cal has even better news today...

City of Berkeley May Waive Permit Fees for Intermezzo/Raleighs Relocation

The recommendation, authored by Councilmember Kriss Worthington, would not only waive permit fees for Raleigh’s Bar and Grill and Cafe Intermezzo — located on the ground floor of the building on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street that was destroyed by the fire over the weekend — but it would also cut down the time to attain a permit for relocation from an estimated six months to a couple of weeks, according to Worthington.

Thankfully, it sounds like Mr. Worthington has a selfish objective in all this which happens to align with mine exactly:

“Part of what motivates me is that if they don’t get relocated soon, customers will drift off to other cities and not come to Berkeley,” said Worthington, who was a regular customer of Cafe Intermezzo. “If they’re going to try to rebuild, that’s going to take a year or two. So, rather than having customers drift off and starting from scratch, they can keep their customer base.”

I too was a regular customer of Intermezzo, an occasional customer of Raleigh's, and I will beat a path to anyplace they manage to reopen that is reasonably close to campus or the BART stations. There are certainly plenty of empty storefronts around to choose from.... maybe some of you can suggest them? Cody's is still empty but I don't think they have all the plumbing and kitchen fixtures they need. Then again Intermezzo was probably working mostly on crock pots and so forth; I don't know if they baked bread on-site or not. Come on CGB, find Intermezzo a new home!

Today will likely be another skeleton crew DBD. Since so many seem to be working short hours or off entirely, and others seem to have daytime activities today that will likely keep you away from here, as a public service here are some TV viewing suggestions for 5 PM Pacific Daylight Time today, courtesy of DirecTV listings:

Continue reading this post »

Good news everyone, even though Steven Colbert revealed recently that the war on Christmas is over, you can still attend religious services on Christmas Day in San Francisco. Some of this was covered in yesterday's DBD, but since only a few of us are at work anyway, who cares?

Catholic: Old St. Mary's Cathedral is in the heart of Chinatown and is staffed by the Paulist order, who also staff Newman Hall in Berkeley. They'll have a Christmas pageant and midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day services are at 8:30 and 11.

St. Ignatius is the Jesuit church at USF; they'll have a "family mass" on Christmas Eve day at 4 PM, a "teen mass" with contemporary music at 8 PM, and organ/choir and mass beginning at 11:30 PM. On Christmas Day the masses are at 8 AM (organ- note it's a gigantic built-in organ, not a keyboard), 9:30 AM with contemporary music, and 11 AM with the choir.

Both of the above welcome visitors and tourists.

History nerds might like to visit Mission Dolores Basilica, which is the large church next door to the original mission which was built in 1776 (unfortunately the museum isn't open on Christmas) on Dolores Street (you knew that, right? And that it's part of El Camino Real?). They have posadas nightly at 7 PM through Friday. They'll have a family mass Christmas Eve at 5 with carols and bilingual (Spanish) midnight mass beginning at 11:30 PM. Christmas Day masses are at 8 and 11 and in Spanish at noon.

Another interesting historical option is the National Shrine of St. Francis in North Beach. When the diocese planned to close this church, the Capuchin Franciscan order of priests stepped in to staff it and keep it alive, thinking it important that the church dedicated to St. Francis in the city named for him was worth saving. And, after all, he is the guy credited for nativity scenes (aka creches), which he used to help illiterate medieval Catholics understand the story of the birth (not missing a beat, the Franciscans will have a live nativity at 4:30 on Friday). They'll have a Christmas Eve service with choir/bell ringers at 9 PM and Christmas Day service at 10 AM. Like every Franciscan-staffed church, they will welcome any visitors with open arms.

If you're in the East Bay, you can't go wrong with Newman Hall. If you never went while a student, it's worth a visit someday just to drink in the Brutalist architecture. They'll have 5 PM family mass, are singing carols at 9 PM, and Christmas Eve service at 10 PM. Christmas morning services are at 7:30 AM (the bleary-eyed parent post-present mass) and 9:30 AM.

Friendly reminder about 16th century history: non-Catholics are not "in communion" with the Church and are not supposed to take bread and wine (which is transubstantiated (lol SBN spellchecker) into the body and blood of Jesus). You can just remain in the pew during the communion hymn, many others will refrain for various reasons and no one will think bad thoughts about you.

Hopefully those of other faiths will chime in with recommendations for visitor-friendly services for their denominations. I'll take a stab at a couple of them:

Episcopalian: Grace Cathedral is atop Nob Hill and although I've not been to services there I'm confident they welcome visitors. They'll have a Christmas pageant with the bishop at 11 AM on Christmas Eve and "Christmas lessons and carols" at 4 PM. They'll also have choir, orchestra and so forth at 10:30 PM and note that "the church often fills up by 10 PM"*. On Christmas Day they'll have 11 AM service and there's a "contemplative Eucharist" at 6 PM.

Holy Innocents is in Noe Valley at 455 Fair Oaks Street, and I can attest to them as good people after attending Easter service there last year. They'll have a family service and "Do-it-yourself pageant with costumes provided" at 6 PM (but they suggest coming at 5 PM to pick a costume). They'll also have Christmas Eve "lessons" (is this an Episcopalian thing?) at 10:30 PM followed by mass with choir. Christmas Day services are at 10 AM. If you would like to take communion, I believe all are welcome to do so here, and you'll be invited to do so. I imagine it's the same at Grace but won't say so for sure.

"Methodist": Glide Memorial is another San Francisco institution. You'll know them from annual shots of their soup kitchen, or from the lines outside same you may have seen in the Tenderloin. Their Christmas services will be at 9 and 11:30 AM; I can't say for sure what they'll be doing there but there will be amplified gospel music and probably dancing and who knows what all. They list "Christmas Dinner" on the day's schedule from 9AM to 2 PM, and that means they will be feeding thousands of people (there's a link on the website to an online signup for shift work.. they're doing a breakfast on 12/26 too). I have heard that it can be hard getting in to help over holidays on short notice... if you are interested in serving on the holiday and get shut out you might try St. Anthony's Dining Room, which serves families and seniors at 10 AM and all comers at 11:30 AM every day. They might not allow you to serve without an orientation first; in either case note that Glide and St. Anthony's are open every day and they do not lack for customers. Come back in January.

Shaker: You are about a hundred years too late. This is what happens when a religion makes celibacy a tenet of faith for every member.

Jewish: Several new films are opening this week and SF's movie theatres await you. The Mission Impossible movie seems to be getting good reviews, amazingly enough. As for traditional Jewish Christmas meals, try House of Nanking in Chinatown or Eric's in Noe Valley. I'm sure others will have other favorites to suggest.

Also, the Contemporary Jewish Museum is open with free admission. 736 Mission St.

The Make Out Room at 22nd and Mission will be hosting "A Jewish Christmas", with Woody Allen films, DJs, and strip dreidel.

African Orthodox: I've never been, but the Church of St. John Coltrane has services every Sunday at 11:45 AM.

We encourage everyone to participate in the services by singing along, clapping your hands,and dancing. If you play an instrument, bring it.

Their website doesn't seem to have been updated in a while so you might call if you are seriously interested in attending on Christmas.

Drunkards/Hipsters: Bender's on S. Van Ness will have a no-cover country music show and $2 Schlitz beer. 9PM. Also see the above listing for the MakeOut Room and below for the Satanic Church. Alcoholics Anonymous has meetings at Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro (see below) at 12 and 7:30 PM.

Kwanzaa: Stupid reader. Kwanzaa starts on 12/26. There's a kickoff event with City College trustee Dr. Brenda Wade at 7 PM at the Westbay Conference Center, 1290 Fillmore (I think that's the big, nice new building) at Eddy.

Satanic Church: Karla Lavay's (yes, Anton's daughter) First Satanic Church presents the 14th Annual Black X-Mass at 9:30 PM (shouldn't the anti-mass be at midnight?) the Elbo Room, Valencia near 17th.

Teh Gayz (and everyone else): The world-famous SF Gay Mens' Chorus will be presenting "Home For the Holidays" on 12/24 at 5, 7, and 9 PM at the Castro Theatre. I couldn't come up with an official event on 12/25, but if anyone is interested in seeing how a Catholic parish can reconcile itself with the gay community, consider attending a service at Most Holy Redeemer. They'll have carols and mass at 9:30 PM on Christmas Eve and at 8 and 10 AM on Christmas Day. Restaurants and so forth in the Castro are kind of hit-and-miss on Christmas Day, some open and some closed.

-----------------------

*= Note there are a zillion Episcopalian churches in SF and each and every one of them will have Christmas services. Consider taking your custom to a more intimate setting.

Yesterday's open thread contained a great discussion of recipes and restaurant recommendations, but most of it happened at the right margin and was a bit hard to follow. At the risk of boring everyone, and in response to Barndon's requests for new fanposts in the same thread, I'm going to suggest a few places I like in NYC, and invite everyone interested to do the same. There were some discussions of favorite dishes too, and some surprisingly good chefs... so if you have a recipe to share or are looking for one, that would be great too.

Once a year or so someone comes along looking for advice for food around the Stadium or in NYC; if this works it might be a good resource to link to in the future. Or it'll be crap, and a moderator can delete it. Either way.

Continue reading this post »

Giants fans were stunned, and baseball fans everywhere were saddened. An electric, charming, handsome small-town Southern boy who keyed his team’s charge from mediocrity and frustration straight into baseball history would be lost for a year, perhaps never to play again. Was May 29 the end of an era that never really began just a year before?

Continue reading this post »

Yankee fans may remember Elijah "Pumpsie" Green as the doughty soul who became the first black ballplayer for the Boston Red Sox.  On July 21, 1959, Green took the field with the floundering Red Nex Sox in Chicago to play an inning at shortstop, finally breaking the "color line" in major league baseball.  This was a welcome surprise to many who had been picketing Fenway Park with signs like "We Want a Pennant, Not a White Team". And possibly an unwelcome surprise to others, like AL President (and former Red Sox manager) Joe Cronin who had once defended Boston owner Tom Yawkey's character by noting that Yawkey "has colored help on his plantation in South Carolina, takes excellent care of them, pays good salaries, and they are all very happy"(1). Or still-manager Pinky Higgins, who in 1955 said "There'll be no [epithet] on this ballclub as long as I have anything to say about it."(2)

Green tripled off the Green Monster in his first plate appearance in Beantown the next week. He went on to an otherwise unremarkable career, ending with a 17-game sentence stint with the 57-111 1963 Mets. Not much reward for being the first black man to wear a Red Sox uniform, and sadly his name is usually forgotten in baseball's busy self-congratulatory events commemorating the breaking of a barrier its owners erected themselves.

But like so many of us, he only found true greatness and immorality immortality when he came to New York.

Continue reading this post »

More than a few people got excited watching Darren Ford run around the bases last week, forcing bad throws and distracting pitchers.  Despite the malaise, once in a while some special talents are still on display.  Nate Schierholtz and his strong and accurate arm in RF. Buster Posey's head for baseball, great batting eye and sweet swing. Hopefully in the next few days Andres Torres will be back, displaying his fantastic range and golden (come on, MLB) glove in CF.  Maybe if they all display these talents at the same time, your mind will wander along with mine... what if the Giants had a single player with all six of these tools? 

The good news? They already have him. He'll be with the team on Friday. The bad news?

Continue reading this post »

61 years ago yesterday, Jackie Jensen pinch-hit in the 7th inning for starting Yankee pitcher Fred Sanford. The Yanks were holding a 3-2 lead over the host (and then 2nd place!) Washington Senators when Jensen legged out an infield single for his first career hit. Johnny Lindell moved to 2B on the play and scored after subsequent singles by Phil Rizzuto and Jerry Coleman (yes, that one).

The Yankees went on to lose to the Senators 5-4, and Jensen went on to star for a Boston baseball team not named the Braves. So why are you reading this?

Continue reading this post »

In a recent DBD, posters discussed the state of newspapers.  Let's see what's happening in the world today, courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner.  Japan struggles with nuclear meltdown and digging out from a cataclysmic disaster. American and European planes pound Libya. War continues in the Middle East. California lurches towards insolvency. What do the leading papers in one of the world's great cities have to tell us?

Continue reading this post »

While googling around I stumbled across the new website for the Far West League. Created by merger of a couple of other summer leagues, it will feature some old-time teams like the Humboldt Crabs (the oldest summer ballteam in the country, complete with Crab Grass Band) and the proudly-politically incorrect Redding Colt .45s. I'm sure many McC nerds have seen many of these teams over the years (and possibly even played for or coached some) but it appears this new mega-league will bring summer collegiate ball all over the state and into many of your very backyards.

Many of you might be most familiar with summer collegiate baseball from coverage of the Cape Cod League (and specifically Timmy's play there).  Summer collegiate leagues give college players a chance to escape the clanky plague of aluminum bats, and populate otherwise-empty college ballparks with real live baseball. I don't know how many players from the FWL teams have gone on to the majors, but many of them will certainly move on to the minors. You could see a future Modesto Nut or Jamestown Jammer, just down the street! Tickets seem to range between $5-$8 dollars with various packages that bring even that price down if you want to go regularly. Many of the games are broadcast on local radio or online so you need never go without a baseball fix.

Continue reading this post »

Like many (several?) of you, I've been wondering what athletes in the terminated programs have been thinking as they chew on their Thanksgiving meals and surely endure questions from every family member they see at a holiday gathering.

"We're all so proud of you, with your athletic talent and going to such a great university.  And then we heard your sport was cut.  What will you do? What WILL YOU DO?"  I envision it like all the senior year "what are you doing after graduation" conversations, except in this case it's with 18-20 year old kids who thought they had a few years to play their sport and go to school before having to face those questions, and in the case of freshmen not very long after they finished choosing among scholarship offers.

Continue reading this post »

Yesterday, one of Grant's highly paid professional sycophants suggested an "Off-Topic" post in which folks could post their, well, "off-topic" comments, thus saving innocent readers naively seeking baseball-related content at McC from seeing pictures of male orifices posted by moderators or finding out what time PiKA is leaving for Chico and with whom he will consume barbecued meat-related products.

As Natto pointed out, many SBN sites (especially those with high traffic) do something like this to keep the "content" free from the "chatter" or "raise the signal-to-noise ratio").  It's sound site management.  But I fear that which I love might be somehow negatively affected.  McC like San Francisco itself, is fantastic partly (or largely) because anyone can do just about anything just about anywhere at just about any time.  Like the three naked guys eating ice cream cones outside Harvest last Saturday afternoon.  But, again like SF itself, those who abuse their freedom to do anything anywhere anytime risk being publicly ridiculed or shouted down for doing so in a way irritating to the larger community (for example, like smoking a tobacco cigarette at a Stern Grove Country Joe and the Fish show and violating the sanctity of the medically-related cloud).  So I post this with a sad resignation that things like the epic Star Wars Marathon communal watching will not be quite as spontaneous (although I hope they will still happen in these OT threads, if they continue).  Natto noted in yesterday's post that OT fanposts are still totally fine, if not encouraged, for discussion on an off-topic topic (book reviews, Lost spoilers, etc.).

I'd like to suggest, as a topic for the off-topic discussion, that McC consider a daily post of this type, maybe along the lines of that at California Golden Blogs. Each day some poster puts up a topic, really just as a prop for discussion, about... well, anything.  It might be pictures from a hiking trip, or a brief story about a family event, or whatever.  It's not on forbidden subjects (i.e. politics, religion, or the Fodgers) and not "on-topic" for the blog (again, kind of hard for McC but probably not things about the Giants or baseball).  I don't think it's all that organized- whoever is on early in the morning that notices it hasn't happened yet throws one up.  Some are well-thought out, and some are dumb.  It doesn't matter that much, kind of like everyone taking a turn at karaoke. It probably shouldn't be posted before 12:01AM Pacific time, just so it can really be a daily link dump/OT thread. It's nice and anarchic if done in this fashion, which would fit well with the chaos here at McC in my opinion.

I'd also like to plead for a better name for the feature than "Off-Topic".  At California Golden Blogs it's abbreviated DBD. I expect Lookout Landing has a name for theirs, and I think the New Jersey Athletics' fan site has a similar feature with a tarp-related name. I hope, between discussions of sandwich fillers and Journey sing-alongs, that the inquisitive, enterprising, dirty minds of McC will come up with a good name for this daily collection of TWSS set-ups and lame recycled .gifs and llama pictures. Preferably something that will ensure Grant never, ever, ever gets a press pass from the Giants.

Now is the part where you start talking about recipes or GrahamCrackaLicka's mom or your Out of the Park dynasty or whatever else you people have to say that no one you have actual face-to-face contact with will talk about with you.

Hello pinstripers, pardon the interruption but I'm puzzled by a bit of Yankee trivia.  The Yankees have no walkaround-type mascots, and I can only imagine what the atmosphere was like in Yankee Stadium when Dandy was in existence.

I have read on wikipedia, and several places pasting the wiki article, that there were some food-related mascots in the 90's?  Is that based on any reality, or just confusion over the novelty beanies sold on MLB.com?  I lived in NY from 91-96, and I don't remember any, either in the media or around town nor do I remember seeing them at the Stadium.

Thanks for any recollections or embarrassing photo evidence you might have!