The Pete Rose and Decline of Major League Baseball

18 years after accepting a lifetime ban from Baseball - yet denying any wrongdoing for most of that time - Pete Rose finally admitted to betting on the Reds "every night"

( http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6570162 )

Give the guy credit at least. He never gives up! Boy, he held out 18 years. He must be on some sort of slow disclosure schedule. Wonder what we'll find out on his deathbed. That should be good. Anyway, the point is I'm sure he was betting all that time because he just 'wuved his wittle weds so wevy wevy much.' I mean the guy was just so darn passionate about winning that he bet money on the chance the Reds would win every single night. After viewing his managerial record, I guess that's not a terrible bet - the Reds won 52.5% of the games Charlie Hustle helmed - not a bad betting percentage over the long haul, which I'm sure Good ole' Charlie knew a long time ago. Sure did Hustle, didn't he?

Nowadays he can be found camping outside Cooperstown selling signed balls.

Maybe we should just go ahead and let him back in. Forget about respecting the game. Forget about dignity. Forget about adhering to the last wishes of a dying man (That man would be Bart Giamatti - who, by the way, is the father of Oscar Nominated actor Paul Giammati. And if you haven't seen Sideways {or if you saw it awhile back and found it overrated} I recommend checking it out. It's quite good. That Alexander Payne sure knows what he's doing.)

Bart Giamatti: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Bartlett_Giamatti
Sideways: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375063/

Anyhow, yeah. We should just reinstate Pete Rose now. It's gonna happen anyway eventually, right? It all happens in the end. Just look at naming rights on stadiums. No more Comisky Park, or Candlestick Stadium. Now it's all Gillette and Enron or whatever. As a Mets fan I was actually holding out, but yeah, welcome to CitiField in 2009.

So let's let Rose back in. And go ahead and let in Mark McGwire into the Hall while we're at it. That juicehead. That coward. No, Senators, he's not here to "talk about the past." Yeah, well then what were you there to talk about, Mark? How your retirement's going? Catching many fish these days, buddy? Whatta jackass.

Oh, and then there's Sammy Sosa. How well do you think he's gonna do this year? I'm willing to bet a paycheck (the phrase Tom Glavine used convincing Mets rookie Phillip Humber how Humber was sure to help the team in some way this year - nice, right? My paycheck ain't as hefty as Tommy G's, but it's still a nice sentiment) - So I'll bet a paycheck that the following things will happen:
1. Slammin Sammy will have a major physical breakdown cutting his season short only...
2. after he starts the season slowly, never getting his BA over .220 and he will...
3. disappear and we won't hear from him again till his 5 year waiting period is over and his Hall vote comes up. (which, now that I mention it, is probably a good idea for this "comeback" in the first place. He probably figures - or at least his handlers have told him - that in five years from now all this sterioid hoopla will have come and gone and a guy with 588 HRs is a definite Hall of Famer. Well, guess what Sammy? I'll still be here! And I'll remember! You broke my heart, pal**. Me and millions of other kids who lived and died with that great homerun chase of 1998.

So any takers on the bet? Rose, whattaya say? Come on, Chucky, it's a lock!

**I remember it well. I had an internship with a Communications Company up in Buffalo, NY - okay, I wasn't exactly a "kid", so what. The weird there was this secretary there telling me how she was rooting for McGwire over Sosa because it wouldn't be right if a 'spaniard' broke Maris's record. I didn't quite have the heart to tell the prejudiced pig to eat her words and ask her just who the hell she thought she was assuming I was as racist as her (and not to mention that Sosa was from the DR, not Spain) but I let it slide, because the homerun chase gave me and this ignoramus something to talk about - it created a bond between us that we'll always have. That's what sports do. That's what baseball does. So what if they were cheating? So what if kids all over the country are starting to use steriods now like it's smoking freakin pot. So what if we're saying, "it's okay to cheat -as long as you make the most money for everyone involved" Let em all in, I say! Just make sure you turn off the lights on your way out - of Hewlett Packard Park, or whatever the hell they're calling it now.

On the other hand, no one's let Shoeless Joe, or any of those other cheaters from the 1919 'black sox' scandal, so maybe there is hope.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

thanks
MaWa



"I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball." Pete Rose

Independence Ave

I don't leave the house very often. Even when the opportunity presents itself, like today for instance. I have the day off, and I may even start out with some pretty interesting plans. But what normally happens is, I find some way to pass the time. Usually in some sick, perverted manner. That hasn't been the full case today, so far exactly, but it's only 1 pm, so I've still got time.

I'm still on call 24/7, but being that in the line of work I am currently involved in (I'd rather keep it quiet for now) if nothing happened on Friday night, chances are nothing's going to happen Saturday. Saturday night, on the other hand, is a different story. I'll sleep light tonight. Especially after a full day of sitting around the house making excuses not to go outside.

The good news (or not-so-terrible news as it were) is that I caught Dazed and Confused on cable. It's a great film, a classic high school movie made in the 90's but up there with the best of the 80's HS flicks: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's also got some of that American Grafiti, I Vitelloni multiple story lines/coming of age thing to it. The bad news (there's always a flip side) was that it was on basic cable, so commercials every six or seven scenes really made it tough to maintain concentration. I got sidetracked and starting surfing the web a bit, but caught enough of the ending to be satisfied.

The thing that struck me this time around was the ages of the actors. They all seem older than the parts they were playing, especially the freshman - some of them anyway. I'll check into that and report back later on.

Kansas City

Hopefully, I'll figure out my password soon and be able to document my time here in Kansas City.

So far, I can say this: There's a lot of space and not many people. It's hot, but it's not humid. There's a lot of music, especially in public places. There was music going on last night (Thursday) somewhere outside until about midnight and it's the same tonight. Not to mention a live band downstairs today at lunch, blasting some blues all over the downtown metropolitan Kansas City area.

A lot of Mexican places on Southwest Blvd. Been to one so far, Margarita's. It's like Mexican food only they left out the Mexican part. Oh well, can't win em all...just ask the Pistons.

Other than that, not much to report on...yet.

mathias out

manic sunday

I keep telling myself that an addiction to watching sports is ruining my life. Then the weekend comes and there's NLCS and ALCS games, college football, the Jets on Sunday...and I find my ass glued to the couch once again, waiting for Monday morning to bring a new week so I can have yet another reason to hate myself again.

Without a job, the weekends mean nothing. That's been established (see: Claypool circa 1993). However, the stress felt during the jobless week still exists, through behavioral patterns that exist in society and have been burned into each individual. Even to the most guilt free of procrastinators does the weekend bring some sort of refuge. It is really only then that the lazy can feel good about not getting things done. Because its the only time (besides Thankgsgiving and some other Holidays) when everyone else seems to be subscribing to the same rules of the game.

Enter sports. Baseball games that were once a little over two hours now average close to four. The tv volume mysteriously increases to brainnumbing levels during every commerical break. "TV timeouts" that are now built in to every major US sporting event, occur roughly every five minutes. Football games that mysteriously slow down in the second part of the fourth quarter and the next game, "bonus coverage" is always at a climactic moment when they pull the switch, right before you can pull yourself off the couch and make a getaway.

I should be getting better. With this knowledge should come action. I know I have a probem, that I admit and we all know that is the first step. The second step awaits me. But last night, as the White Sox beat the Angels again, drawing one win closer to the World Series, I flipped over to NBC, and they had Nascar on.

Nascar. The most popular spectator sport in this country. How could that be? Its a bunch of cars racing in circles for three hours. Where's the excitement? Where's the drama? You can't even see teh expression on the "athletes" faces...

Yet there I was...being pulled in. I knew that it was the wrong thing to do. My finger hovered over the power button on the remote. All I had to do was press down. But I didn't. I wanted to see the pink car sponsered by Target make a move. I found myslef rooting for it to pass that other car and take sole possession of third place...

Ah yes, sports. My worst enemy. My best friend. The conflicted man sits on his couch. Just another manic Sunday.

rainy days

Now for the first time since July, I have internet access from my home computer in my office (my bedroom, but hey, I got a desk and a lamp and a plant and now, once again, internet access) So here I am, connected in NYC, uptown baby.

It's been raining all week. This is the most rain I remember seeingat one time. Funny thing, when it started, it seemed like an Indian Summer rain, but now the Autumn seems to have caught up to it and the chill is in the air. Winter is round the corner, no denying that. That's a comforting feeling, the fact that the seasons will continue to happen like it or not. A comforting feeling sort of like when you're running late for the school bus as a kid. When you're heffing down the sidewalk, backpack weighing you down, brown paper bagged lunch swining in the wind, hitting your thigh with each step, PB and J starting to seep out the bottom, the fear of death in your heart and tearas welling up in your eyes as the bus starts pullin away...Yeah, that's the comfort I'm talking about. It's easy to forget as a kid that the bus will be back in just one short day.

days are short

It's taken me close to two hours to figure out how to create a new posting on this thing. You damn well better believe I'm about to be writing sump'in.

Here was the deal: Somehow, in my impatience to start a blog way back in July, I created not 2 or 3 usernames, but 7 usernames, that's right seven, all being of course variations on my name, nickname, surname and christian name combined with birthdays favorite numbers, days of the week etc and my blog was only listed on one of those dashboards. Of course it was the seventh, but the process of elimination it took to figure that part of it only lasted 2 or 3 minutes. It was the instant feedback based on the email I sent that clued me in to the fact that a person could have different accounts under the same name and passwords.

So in toto, the instant automated email message turned out to be my savior. Usually my worst enemy, the thing I dread most in this world other than stickers on fruit (and in the past, during my smoking days, gum in ashtrays) turns out today to be the end all be all answer to all my problems. And now that I can access my blog again, what do I do? When I have all this space for free and this platform to which I can scream my cyberlungs out until potentially the entire world can read, what do I have to say?

Thank you, blogger. Yes, thank you for the opportunity and keep doing whatever it is that is causing this to become what it is actually becoming. (Maybe it's not a great thing, for in a not too distance future, I see myself possibly never having an actual conversation with another human being again, but that's a topic for later blogging.) Now that I can post new thoughts, you best believe a postin I will be doin'.

testing

I'm not really sure why I'm doing this or what will become of it but I've heard for a while about how blogs are all the rage and I just read Leo Kau's blog and I went to the website and saw how easy it is to create one so here I am!

It's amazing how hard it was to come up with an available username. How many Mathias Walsh's are out there? How many mawas? Millions, it seems. Millions.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm pretty tired, and I'm guessing you are too. It could be the Benedryl I just took, or it could be that I haven't been sleeping well of late, but either way, I feel a strong nap coming on. I really shouldn't. I should get to work on editing this corporate video that's due on Friday. I've got a corporate video due on Friday and I'm starting a new job on Tuesday. We just shot the thing this passed Friday, so as you may have realized if you've done the math, a nap probably isn't the best idea in the world right now.

I'm excited to see how this blog thing works out. I'm not going to tell anyone about it for awhile...see what happens.