Papua New Guinea beer update: Ichiro’s devious plan
The efforts of USSM fans to locatePapua New Guinea beer has so far been for nothing: no local beer seller has any of their beers in stock, it does seem that there is no North American distributor for them.
When I made my run around to the places I signed up to check, I felt increasingly like I do about the season: here’s this cool thing we can all do, it’s kind of silly but what the heck, it involves Ichiro and it’s funny, and in a way it pokes fun at our status as stalwart Ichiro defenders here. And it turned into something futile: there’s no way any of us here can get any of those beers, and we’ll have to live with the disappointment.
But no. That’s not it at all.
Ichiro knew.
He’s smart. He didn’t pick Papua New Guinea out of thin air, no. He’s spent enough time in Seattle, he knows there’s no SP Lager here. No, Ichiro wanted us to run up against this obstacle, to stare at it and think “well, I guess we give up.”
Because we have two choices now: we give up, or we find another way. Right now, we’re powerless, defeated, and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do. But there is. This isn’t trying to get to the moon in two days. These beers exist in locations and only need to be moved to somewhere we can affect a purchase. Ichiro doesn’t know how we’ll pull this off, but he knows it will happen, and he dropped this hint for an equally important reason.
Ichiro can’t come out and call for the fans to rise up and oust this inept franchise, to somehow make a change from the people who represent ownership on down. He may even have no idea how it could happen. He doesn’t know how a huge, angry, resentful fan base might pull this off.
But Ichiro has faith in us, in our ability to unite together to acquire crazy obscure beers where there are no local sources to be found, and from that, to go on and affect the larger, even more difficult changes we all know must happen here.
And in each of these victories, cracking open a bottle of potentially delicious beer or watching the franchise build a winning team around our favorite players, will be all the sweeter for having seemed impossible from where we stand now.
First things first: how do we import these beers, or get someone local with suitable licenses to import these beers for us?
On blame skipping two levels
How do you blame the players if you’re a GM? They’re your players, each of them the product of a long series of decisions that resulted in them being on the roster over a hundred other possibilities. No matter what the cause, either you’re responsible or the manager’s responsible.
I gave the manager the wrong players: my fault
I gave the manager the right players and they’re not doing well: manager’s fault
I gave the manager the wrong players and created a losing atmosphere where they underachieve: my fault
I gave the manager the right players to put together a winning, yay-chemsitry team, but they act like losers and lose: manager’s fault
If the players suck and the manager’s doing a great job, then the players sucking is the GM’s fault. If the players all looked like they’d do great but it turns out they’re all head cases who can’t work together, the GM didn’t do a good evaluating them (and the manager didn’t do a good job coping). There’s no way that an entire roster of 25 players came together spontaneously without intervention of the front office and decided to play horribly without management noticing or having some chance to influence the outcome.
And even if the GM put together a perfect team and the manager screwed it all up, the GM hired the manager.
More McLaren firing rumor mongering
According to someone who speaks regularly with Mariners people, McLaren possibly could soon be removed in coming days, perhaps as early as next week.
Um, that’s pretty thin. That’s deli “so thin I can see through it” thin.
If it is soon it’d likely be after the Angels series, before the next road trip.
Continuing ill-advised privatization of government threatens M’s fans
If you’re one of the many, many people who use the highly-successful Metro shuttles to or from M’s games, you should be aware that your federal government is about to screw you.
People who normally use Metro Transit’s special service to get to ball games, community festivals, and other special events should be aware that new Federal Transit Administration (FTA) rules could significantly restrict Metro’s ability to provide this service.
The rule change does not affect regular Metro bus service. The intent of the new federal regulations is to open up special event service to private charter companies.
Okay, well, theoretically, that doesn’t sound so bad. How would it work?
If Metro service for an event falls under the new definition of charter service, the agency must first contact private charter firms registered with the FTA to see if any are interested in providing the service. If any firms indicate they are interested, Metro will be precluded from providing the service and the private operators will be given the opportunity to negotiate with the event sponsor for the transportation service.
Holy crap that’s awful. So if you somehow manage to get registered with the FTA (and you know that’s going to be rigorous) all you have to do is say “yeah, I’m interested” and Metro’s shuttles are sunk. It’s you, your school bus purchased at auction, and the M’s.
Heckuva job there, James Simpson, though I’m sure you’ve been assigned some kind of denigrating nickname.
What can you do? More than you can about the team’s fortunes, probably:
Get after a national elected representative
Write your Respresentative
Write your senator
Or try our state legislature.
Game 51, Mariners at Yankees
Washburn the Sucktastic Jerk and his Personal Catcher against Wang. 10:05.
Look, I’m not going to lie to you — there’s almost a 100% certainty that this is going to be another ugly shelling, with Washburn testing his 85-87mph batting practice-quality fastball against a Yankee lineup that’s tasted blood twice in two games. Our only hope is that they’re exhausted after scoring 25 runs in two games.
25 runs in two games. Yeah.
Why not take a minute, walk over to the nearest well-stocked beer vendor in your neck of the woods, and help out in the quest to locate some fine SP Brewery beverages, official beer companion to your booing since Ichiro mentioned it?
Now we must come together as fans to find and consume beers from Papua New Guinea
“Usually I enjoy Japanese beer, but given the situation, if I was objectively watching the game, I wouldn’t care if it was Japanese beer, American beer or beer from Papua New Guinea.†— Ichiro
Being nothing if not devoted, near-slavish zombies who worship Ichiro here at USSM, I feel we must now carry out his will and find beer to drink while we cheer (and boo)(we boo with love). American beers are available at every corner mart. Japanese beers, still no problem. But as all good followers do, we must now take the words of our hero too seriously and locate places that carry the only beers from Papua New Guinea, all brewed by South Pacific Brewery Ltd:
– South Pacific Export Lager
– SP Lager Beer
– Niugini Ice (this is obviously lower priority, as chances are the others are a lot more drinkable)
From the SP site, this is what
SP Lager Beer:
Niugini Ice:
The ice beer has its own website “Devoted to the Niugini chillout culture“. Maybe that’s what we need to do: chill out.
So here’s what we need in the comments, so that I can put up a good tracking page for dedicated Mariner fans who want to make it through this season:
– confirmed sightings of these beers, with prices and stock details if you can manage it
– pictures of you with purchased SP Brewery products. Bonus points if you’re at Safeco Field (warning! open container laws mean you should probably keep them shut, though obviously… yeah) and super bonus points if you can get pictures of you, the can/bottle/etc with Ichiro. In fact, you’ll pretty much be my hero if you can get a picture of you, Ichiro, and SP Lager.
– other helpful information related to tracking down these beers, like “I called the SP Brewery and they’re distributed in Seattle by Esposito’s Entirely Legitimate Import-Export Business”
That’s it. We know SP Lager might suck. And I don’t want to hear that this is a stupid project, or Ichiro sucks, or anything of the sort. If you’re not on board with this noble endeavor, then I feel sorry that you can’t get on board with this potentially fun activity born out of this season’s horrible start. Please take your negativity elsewhere, because we have beers to find.
Thank you.
That sizzling hot youngster Vidro
Since being called up to replace Jeff Clement (who was called down to Tacoma as part of the team’s efforts to bring a PCL championship to the Sound) at DH, Vidro’s been blistering the ball. Blistering!
8-18 with a walk, two doubles, and one home run (!) — that’s a .444/.473/.737 line! Crazy!
That’s exactly the kind of hitting the team’s needed. Why did they wait so long to give him this chance?
Bavasi Blissfully Unaware Of Real Analysis
From Baker’s notes of a conference call Bavasi had with reporters a little while ago.
“This is not a field managerial issue,” he said. “John is doing a good job. Our performance is not related to his work. It’s purely related to player performance and underperformance and underachievement. Nobody had the nerve to pick us less than second place in our division. We were picked anything from first to second to wild-card. You name it. The expectations were a heck of a lot higher than this, based on any analysts’ evaluation of out players’ individual track records and their age. Their ages are such that they’re not all young guys that they’re inexperienced. But they’re not too old to believe that they would backslide. So, I think those expectations are realistic. They were and they are.”
My official prediction: 83-79, one game better than Texas, nowhere close to the playoffs.
PECOTA projections: 76-86, third place, nowhere close to the playoffs.
ZIPS projections: 72-90, third place, nowhere close to the playoffs
CHONE projections: 83-79, nowhere close to the playoffs
Hardball Times projections: 79-83, third place, nowhere close to the playoffs.
Lots of people had “the nerve” to tell you that you did a horrible job building this roster, Bill. Lots of people pointed out that this team wasn’t a contender. Lots of people told you that you that you had a roster setup for failure, with collapse potential everywhere. You just don’t listen to those people, because they’re nerds with computers who don’t understand baseball. Or something.
But you don’t get to rewrite history. We knew this team wasn’t good, and we spent the entire offseason trying to tell you that. You ignored us at your own peril, and you built a terrible baseball team for $117 million. That’s your fault.
And now, rather than learning from your mistakes, admitting that you have absolutely no idea how to evaluate pitching talent, you’re completely ignorant of how to value defense, you don’t know what kinds of hitters work in your own park, and realizing that there’s an entire school of analysis that could help improve the decision making of the club, you’re once again focusing on things like clubhouse leadership and character.
This is ridiculous. Build a good baseball team, and you won’t have to talk about all this psycho babble crap that you guys invent to try to justify your horrible decisions. Learn more about baseball than a blogger who lives 2,500 miles from Safeco Field and covers the team as a freaking hobby. I shouldn’t know more about how to build a baseball team than you, but I do, and that’s why you and your entire staff deserve to be fired.
Jose Vidro, your 2009 designated hitter
Not to be a downer or anything, but the M’s are showing every sign that they’re content to let their wretched designated hitter’s 2009 option vest.
He’s playing in three quarters of the team’s games so far, and that includes a stretch where he was out with back spasms. Over 140 plate appearances. His option almost certainly vests at 400 or 450 plate appearances. Assuming that as a fragile guy he’ll miss that much proportional time, he’ll still easily clear either of those marks and be back for 2009 at a cost of about $9, $10m, maybe $12m.
Maybe the M’s can’t move Silva, or Washburn, or Sexson, or whatever. But if there’s one thing they can manage to easily do in this horrible season it would be to ensure their abysmal designated hitter doesn’t return for next year.
Game 50, Mariners at Yankees
Silva v Mussina. 10:05 our time.
SP Lager: Official Beer of the 2008 Mariner Season.
“Usually I enjoy Japanese beer, but given the situation, if I was objectively watching the game, I wouldn’t care if it was Japanese beer, American beer or beer from Papua New Guinea,†he said.