Preemptive Strikes

Your 2009 American League MVP - called a couple days prematurely.
I just hope the Twins resign him, now. KG, Randy, Johan, Gaborik. This would be the most painful in my book.

**Update**

Keizo Konishi of Kyodo News can suck it. Mauer received 27 of 28 first place votes, the lone exception being the aforementioned moron, who somehow voted for Miguel Cabrera. Miguel Cabrera. The guy who was being held overnight in jail after his wife called the cops during the Tigers' final stretch run.

Kyodo News embarrassments aside, congrats Joe!

**Update 2** I thought this was pretty cool.

May 1: On his first swing of the season, Mauer lined a homer to left-center off of Kansas City's Sidney Ponson. (In retrospect, I'm really glad I attended this game).

May 7-21: Batted .418 with 7 homers and 21 RBI during a 14-game hitting streak.

May 17: Made one of the defensive plays of the year when he fielded a ball in front of home plate, bluffed a throw to first, turned, then dived to tag out the Yankees' Brett Gardner, who tried to score from second. (Highlighted in the above video).

May 21: Was 3-for-4 with a grand slam and career-high 6 RBI in 20-1 rout of the White Sox.

May 25: Named AL player of the week.

June 1: Named AL player of the month for May.

June 7-20: Batted .412 with 2 homers and 7 RBI during a 12-game hitting streak.

June 20: Shown above, he hit 14th homer off of Houston's Brian Moehler, establishing a career high.

July 8: Went 3-for-5 with a homer and 2 RBI in a loss to the Yankees -- but finally had enough plate appearances to qualify for the league leaders.

July 24: Went 2-for-4 with two homers in 6-3 loss to Angels.

Aug. 2-18: Batted .524 and with 7 homers and 19 RBI during a 15-game hitting streak. Posted a .952 slugging percentage. Raised batting average 30 points during the streak.

Aug. 13: Was 2-for-4 with a homer and 4 RBI in 5-4 loss to Royals.

Aug. 18: Went 3-for-5 with 2 homers and 3 RBI in 9-6 win over Rangers (below).

Sept. 13-14: Had back-to-back three-hit games in wins over Athletics and Indians.

Sept 18-Oct. 6: Walked 19 times -- six intentional -- over the final 17 games.

Sept. 19: Hit 28th, and final, homer of the season off of Detroit ace Justin Verlander.

Oct. 6: Won AL batting title. First player to win back-to-back batting titles since Nomar Garciaparra in 1999 and 2000.

Nov. 23: Won first AL MVP award.

I'm Excited

June 27th, 2010 at TCF Bank Stadium.

Ticket already bought. Gotta love the student presale.

TV Touchstones

The X-Files had episodes like "Triangle" and "The Post-Modern Prometheus." House had "Three Stories." The Office had "Casino Night." These are episodes that are landmarks in a series as testiments to what makes a show superb entertainment.

Mad Men has had a few of these in its first 38...but the season three finale, "Shut the Door, Have A Seat," should likely take it's place above any of them.

I'm no TV critic, so I'll leave any reviews to the professionals -- Alan Sepinwall, Maureen Ryan, Tim Goodman, Myles McNutt, and others -- but I'll just say this. That was quite possibly the most compelling 48+ minutes of scripted television I've seen.

39 long weeks until season four. I can only count the days.

Napalm In The Morning

Smells like victory.

Vikings: 38, Packers 26. Brett Farve TDs in season series: 7, INTs: 0.

My all-time favorite Vikings QB (that I've watched personally). Yep. I said it. Let's run down the other choices...

Daunte Culpepper -- Several years of guady stats and immense physical talent, but a penchant for staring down receivers, fumbling/throwing obscene amounts of picks when things went downhill, and proud owner of 41-0 in the NFC Championship game after the 2000 season.

Randall Cunningham -- Guider of the 15-1 Vikings team. Terrific season with 34 TDs. But let's face it...as good as he played that year, Moss was the story and everyone else fell in behind. This year, it's Brett's story with editing by Adrian.

There are no real other choices. Jim McMahon? Sean Salisbury? Jeff George? Gus Frerotte? Tavaris Jackson? Brad Johnson? Not even close.

Congrats Brett. Way to sock it to 'em.

Take It To The Bank

I spent some of my Halloween evening at the Gopher football game against Michigan State, held about three blocks North of my apartment at brand spanking new TCF Bank Stadium. The Gophers jumped out to a 14-0 lead in the first 1:53 and hung on from there to win 42-34. All in all, a very exciting back-and-forth game, capped off by an amazing final Gopher TD with a few minutes left in the game where our TE Nick Tow-Arnett caught a pass deep down the middle, got crushed and fumbled the ball into the air, only to have it go right into the hands of a waiting Duane Bennett who took it the rest of the way for the TD. Lots o'fun. For those who want to see a reasonable and more famous imitation, google 'immaculate reception' and/or get it on YouTube. There was a lot of good and bad for the Gophers. Weber threw for 416 yards and five TDs. That was good. The team set program records for penalties (17) and penalty yards (157). That was bad. There were long plays everywhere.

The stadium itself is definitely cool. It was pretty dang cold, but between standing in the student section, multiple clothing layers, and the various cheers, I managed to stay reasonably comfortable. The big video board at the open end of the stadium is absolutely awesome, especially compared to the pitiful screens in the Metrodome. The stands were about 90% full, which I thought was pretty good for Halloween. Most of the empty seats were the upper deck corner seats anyway. I didn't get to walk around the concourse much, but it's very different walking into a Minnesota stadium, going up the steps to the concourse, and still being outside. Very strange.

I hadn't been to a Gopher football game since 2007, and it was a fun (albeit temporary) welcome back.

Stranger In a Strange Land

Lately I've been a fairly large failure as a blogger. Sue me. Sorry internet. Since I last posted two Wednesday's ago, I've struggled on a midterm, spent a weekend grading other people's midterms, watched the Vikings blow one in Pittsburgh, watched the Wolves steal one in downtown Minneapolis, endured another epic fantasy football loss, watched a tremendous episode of Mad Men picked up Gopher basketball tickets, and taken stock of my life.

With the exception of the last, that's a fairly standard week. Regarding the last, I wouldn't go so far as to say there are problems, but thus far this has been an Autumn of discontent. My three classes and TA responsibilities are generally clipping along at a 75% rate. TA'ing is going fine, two of my classes are generally fine, and I only have one class to complain about, which sprung the aforementioned midterm on me last night. Bleh. All in all though, academically speaking things are okay. My first semester as an undergrad was undoubtedly more taxing, as I tried desperately not to crash and burn in a calc course while going to 8AM Spanish five times a week. Still, during these two months I've continually looked around and wondered what I'm really doing in the grad school realm. There are many reasons I am grateful to be here, and should be here, not the least of which is that currently in Aerospace, more school = path of least resistance and job = path of frustration. That's true. However, I see other grad students day in and day out who are more dedicated, more enthusiastic, and more inquisitive than I am. Intellectually, it's boiling down not to aptitude, which midterm results notwithstanding I still think I possess, but motivation and intellectual curiosity, which are beginning to wane.

When I got my Bachelor's I enjoyed quite a few of the classes. Not all of them, to be sure, but in general I enjoyed most of my Aerospace courses. Now, I don't hate any of my three classes, but they provide nothing that piques my interest. Part of it is that they're actually both more generalized with regard to actual Aerospace applications -- instead of looking at airfoil design I'm doing advanced motion and mechanics. General = dry to a certain extent. What the problem is, and has often been, is that even when I like something and enjoy learning about subject _________, there is never anything that I encounter that I couldn't live without. I was the quintessential kid who always changed what he wanted to be. In elementary school I was a Dinosaur nut, and so I wanted to be a paleontologist. In the seventh grade I thought about being an astrophysics, mostly because it sounded important. Then I switched to some sort of astronomer scientist type, and settled on Engineer/airplanes during high school. In college, I enjoyed my economics coursework. I have inherited some of my Dad's appreciation of history. I enjoy books, and literature, and sports, and media, be it TV/movies/whatever. I pay attention to politics. The list goes on. That's all well and good and I've always thought I've been a better person as a result of having a lot of interests, but my peers are by and large some pretty single-track people. They are often prospective Ph.D's that will immerse themselves into some type of groundbreaking research. They find tensor fields, and 1:1 surface mapping, and the Reynold's Transport Theorem interesting. On the other hand, they could care less about the Twins, about Mad Men, about reading for enjoyment, and they wouldn't bother with an Economics, history or literature course even if given unlimited tuition time and money.

In a very real sense, it feels like I've entered a world where I'm an outsider who can pretend to blend in, as it were. I don't think I like it. On the other hand, I didn't exactly have job offers flooding in either. What to do.

At least there's a hockey game tomorrow!

Wednesday Night Winner

I frequent a couple blogs of TV Critics, namely Alan Sepinwall and Maureen Ryan. Both have said good things about Modern Family, a new comedy on ABC. Since I had an hour to kill recently, I decided to give the pilot a shot via Hulu.

20 minutes in I was entertained if not blown away, and then the line of the pilot episode dropped. The newly adopted Vietnamese baby, Lily, is being introduced and Phil, the self-proclaimed 'cool Dad' (the guy in the middle of the above pic) looks at Daddy #1 and says "Lily...isn't that going to be hard for her to say?"

Now, that remark has special meaning for me compared to most of the viewing public, but it about put me on the floor because my personal experience tells me that Phil is absolutely correct. My sister-in-law is named Elizabeth, but everyone calls her Liz. Until I was about four, I couldn't pronounce the 'L' sound, and instead I turned it into more of a 'Y.' So laugh would be "yeah-eff." I can actually still remember the first time I correctly spit out "La," which is probably about the only time on record a person can recall that basica a portion of their lingual development. The L sound, along with words like "thick" seem to be especially hard for Asians to pronounce, and I have no good idea why, other than the movement required is similar. Such difficultly is also immortalized in Team America, where Kim Jong Il says "Heeerrrrrrrrrroooo."

Anyway, congrats Modern Family. By highlighting such a subtle yet hilarious aspect of Lily's heritage, you've won yourself a viewer.

Worst Weekend of Fantasy Football Ever

Celebrate post #700 blog.

Steve Smith, you're dead to me.

It's Called Efficiency

After years of buying numerous baseball caps which eventually became sweat stained, worn-down, and generally used up due to umpteen golf rounds and Minnesota's weather, I finally found a cap that cut straight to the chase: burnt orange coloring. It's like it comes pre-dirtied. Excellent.

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I still have about 75% of my grading left to complete, but I'm already more than ready for the Vikings-Ravens game on Sunday. That's going to be a doozy.

Oh yeah. Goddmanit Gopher hockey. 4-0 bagel to open the season in Grand Forks. What's worse is that Kangas actually played pretty well and it still ended up 4-0. Not an all around good effort from the troops. I might make an extended hockey post, but that won't be until after I attend a game, which will occur next Friday the 23rd. The Wild also lost 5-2 in Edmonton tonight, so right now on the Minnesota sports landscape it's Vikings or bust, with a chance of Tubby later in the Fall. We'll see.

First to Worst

Carlos Gomez, Joe Nathan, Phil (S)Cuzzi, Nick Punto, take some bows.

Crapola.

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Otherwise, the Wild are going nowhere but down, the Timberwolves are, well, the Timberwolves, and the Gopher football team won its homecoming game in Purdue but is due for the annual Ohio State smackdown. I guess there is the 5-0 Vikings, but this Sunday vs. Baltimore is the make or break game.

At least I have a midterm, two homework sets, and five inches of paper in homework assignments to grade.

It's a cheerful blog post, to be sure.