Here's the new pic. Taken some time very recently. On the pitchers' ball/strike board on the right, I'd guess that says Matsuzaka. His total is 10, his strikes are 6, and his percentage is 60. (Could be 8 and 80.) So it's the first inning of a Dice game, which appears to have a setting sun, making it a 7:10 game. The board looks like it's the HD one with the current font, which would make it a 2011 game. (Logos on tarp also match 2011, it was clearly different in 2010.) Figuring it couldn't be too early in the season, since it would be almost dark in the first inning, I started with Dice's latest game and looked at the pitch-by-pitch. May 16th vs. Baltimore. 7:10. Sure enough, 6 of his first 10 pitches were strikes. And the 10th pitch was a double by Derek Lee, which means there would be a pause in the action there, making a picture more likely. However! April 29th vs. Seattle also fits the criteria. I thought I was stumped right there--how do we decide between those two? Sunset was 8:00 for the May game and 7:41 for the April one. Could be either. But the weather clinches it. In the April game, it was 70 degrees. In the May game: 48. Lots of windows open at the press box level, and that just seems like more of a 70-degree crowd than a 48-degree one. Lots of people in the chairs downstairs already. And the 48-degree night was also a rain-soaked one. I don't see any sign of that here. (Also, a Friday night with Ichiro in the house means more total pictures taken than a Monday Orioles game.)

So my final answer is: Friday night, April 29th, Red Sox vs. Mariners, top 1st, no score, Daisuke Matsuzaka pitching against Chone Figgins, just threw ball 2 for a 2-1 count.

But I am still worried that could be a white jersey in the dugout--and we wore the red ones that night. But maybe it's the white pants of someone sitting on the front bench up against the protective screen. I'll just tell myself that.

*******

And here's something I never noticed until now, for some reason. If you look at the championship flags there behind home plate, you'll see that they "left room" for the next banner. There's way more space to the right of 2007 than there is to the left of 1903. However, if you look at pictures taken after the 2004 banner was up but before the 2007 one was, you'll notice it they all WERE evenly positioned left-right. So when they added 2007, instead of having to move every banner slightly and adding one, they just moved all of them one space to the left, only having to crate new "holes" for 1903 at the far left. So it was done mainly for convenience--much easier to move them all over one spot, but if you choose to move them left, you get that whole "space left for the next one" effect. Now the question is, when the next one comes, will they all be even again, or will they make a whole new series of holes JUST to keep the "room for milk" theory alive? We'll find out in 2012. I said we'll find out in 2012.

Without Derek Jeter or his parents to show between pitches, Fox has turned to a new egregious target: Fans with their hands on their faces! Obviously they've been showing the dramatic fan-shots for years now (does anyone want to see this?), but in the Tigers-Rangers series, I've noticed their criteria seems to be "put hands on or near face, get on TV." It's reached the point where it's either an inside joke among the producers, or Fox is just planting these people for effect.

Last night in the ninth inning, Kim and I turned on the game, and I told her to watch for it. Sure enough, the next EIGHT people they showed--in the span of about a minute--had their hands to the faces. A minute later I jokingly said, "uh, hel-lo, we haven't seen a hand-facer in a while...," but before I could say "while," they cut to another hand-facer.

So while what really stinks is just how often they show fan close-ups, often risking missing pitches (they almost missed the last out of the game last night!), at least as fans (who don't care about the outcome) we get to watch for and track the hand-facers. It really is amazing. I'm not sure if TBS plays by the same rules for the NLCS, but definitely watch for it in the next ALCS game.

Still looking for people for the WS contest--scroll down. Thanks.

We'll do it the composite linescore way. You pick a league and an inning. Whoever picks the league/inning with the most runs for the whole series wins. (Ninth inning gets runs scored in ALL extra innings for that league, but remember, that half-inning might not be necessary in some games.)

So your entry should look more like this: "AL 6" or "NL 2" and less like this: "monkey butts! monkey butts! my hair is on fire!" Put your pick in comments--make sure you don't take something that's already been picked.

Again, this is for the World Series, which starts in 6 days. I figure get a jump on it now so we have a better chance at getting a full 18 contestants. Prize(s): Don't know yet. Will announce later. Good luck/skill!

Here are some pics from Sunday, compared to ones I posted about eight months ago. Note: I didn't get a new camera, I just got some blue skies this time.


The new 1 World Trade looking south to north. It's now way higher than new WTC7 which you see to the right. It's at around 85 floors right now, over 1,000 feet high. It's supposed to rise to almost 1,400 feet, with a 400-foot spire on top of that.


From the east, then and now.



From the west, then and now.



The whole site from the west. At left, base of building 1. At right, you can see how much height building 4 has gained since January. (Right behind that building is Zuccotti Park.) And to the left of that, the museum isn't just a weird skeleton anymore.


This is a close-up of the reflecting pools. Hard to tell, but the waterfall is running all the way across this pic. To get into the memorial, you have to reserve a pass online, so I guess it's pretty popular.

Another shot of 1 WTC from over by the water. One issue with this building may be the glare on the lines that run up it dividing its faces. And since there are eight instead of four (at its mid-point it's an octagonal building...weird) you have twice the chance of being blinded.

Bonus: Three Statue of Liberty shots, with those reflection stars on the water like at the beginning of Splash.

The Yankees are on the same five-year path that the Red Sox started two years earlier. Check it out:

Red Sox
2005: lost round 1
2006: missed playoffs
2007: won World Series
2008: lost ALCS
2009: lost round 1

Yankees
2007: lost round 1
2008: missed playoffs
2009: won World Series
2010: lost ALCS
2011: lost round 1

Let's hope they stay on that path and miss the playoffs the next two seasons.

Looks like some shit went down last night in Boston, as cops beat up protesters for no reason. Including medical people who were trying to help the injured!

And today in NYC, protesters are marching on the Upper East Side, going around to homes of various gazillionaire CEOs and stuff. So my plan really DID happen! My fantasy, now reality, from a year or two ago was to show up at mansions just to be visible to the ultra-rich. As of Sunday, we were proverbially standing at the door of the mansions; as of today, it's literal! I've had no luck finding the original e-mail I sent out to friends about this back then. I'm gonna ask them to see if they saved it.

Zuccotti Park (aka Liberty Square, Liberty Plaza, home of Occupy Wall St.) on a near-90 degree mid-October Sunday. This time Chan went down there with me. Got this shot from the eastern end of the park which should give a good indication of how big this thing is--considering it's within the boundaries of a half-acre space.

My kind of protesters: Do your thing all day then sleep till 2:00.

It's like a tiny city in there. Here is the "comfort station" in the middle. You don't realize all the stuff you have in your medicine chest till you try living outside for weeks.

I felt like the cops had a bigger presence today than yesterday, and/or that they seemed closer to some kind of breaking point. This is taken from the park, and shows how they've got their own occupation going on, across the street. They asked us to move farther behind the barriers that surround the park. We had incorrectly assumed that merely "being behind them" was law-abiding enough. I don't know, maybe they were just looking for stuff to do, since the protesting is peaceful.

They even have this monitoring thing that moves up and down and films the park. And as you can see, the cops had plenty of time to stand around. One cop seemed to be having a ball, taking pics of stuff with his phone and then giggling and showing his cop friends.

I was so pissed at Bill Maher the other night for saying "get rid of the bongo drums" (along with some other things I'm sick of hearing about this movement). What harm is drumming gonna do? Oh, the assholes in suits won't "take them seriously"? How about we start telling them to stop wearing suits because we don't take them seriously? It's just like when baseball fans say to end the season early because football has already started, instead of saying this is OUR season, if you don't like it, move YOUR season back. People get pressured by their enemy so easily, it's terrible. Bill Maher, a pot-head, pressured to tell other pot-heads to straighten up and fly right. Fuck that. I love Maher and agree with 90% of what he says, but he's a guy we need to be fully on board with this, not repeating the other side's claims of what's wrong with it.

The status board. An interesting read. Especially since it tells the occupiers to be quiet at night and respect their neighbors--I have read some complaints from neighbors, but it could be a another case of the media finding 2 people with complaints out of 1000, and writing an article called "neighbors pissed at protesters."

Geraldo tried to keep the occupation a secret, but now he's opening the vault. Wah-wah..... I had to explain that joke to Chan. He came to this country post-80s so he missed out on most of the shit I talk about today. To his frustration, I say:

Which is another thing he wouldn't get, because he doesn't have time for this Internet meme reedit 2000s stuff.

View from the western end of the park. Went to the 2nd floor of the BK lounge across the street to get this shot. I have to say, though, just being at the top of the steps on the eastern side makes for a better shot, since you're as high as you can be without being above the obstruction-causing tree-line, like I was here.

So then we walked around the new World Trade Center site, which is right next to this park. Pics of that will be in a different post. Did I mention it was like the most beautiful day of the year? Short-sleeves, all the way till dark. Easily. Even for wusses like me who call to the sweatshirt-pen at the first sign of Mother Nature losing a few degrees off her mercury ball.

A plane started doing some skywriting over the city. It said "...OUR" and it did L... E.... A.... S.... E. We were all confused. I suggested it was some very rich person reminding himself to renew his lease. Would that be breaking the Skywriters' Code? Anyway, a little later, it started again. This time we looked up and saw CHAN! They weren't done, though. It became LAST CHANCE. Okay, now we knew it was some ad for some store going out of business. I now suggested they could have stayed in business by using some of the thousand dollar bills they had lying around that they use for writing messages in the sky over New York City. Then later, a final message. N... O... W.... and at that point, we didn't give a crap what was left, so we went to Shake Shack.

Later, during a 60-block walk back to Chan's apartment (on which I predicted the exact time we'd get home using my Manhattan Grid Math as usual--Chan is now so impressed with my skills that HE suggested I do it), a girl passed us, and was saying to her friend "it said LAST CHANCE" while showing the friend her phone. Okay, so people were talking about this still. Then we got home and channel 4 news (after talking about OWS first, woohoo!) brought up the skywriting too! Turns out it was an art thing that mocked ad slogans. Okay, I'm happy with that, whatever. What I'm not happy about is that the Daily News also covered it, and has it as their top story, acting like it horrified the city and made everyone think terrorists were at the helm! Such bullshit. All the people around us watching these letters in the sky were just waiting to see what it would spell out. It was hardly War of the Fucking Worlds. We all figured it was an ad, you know, like EVERY OTHER sky-written message you see. Not one person showed any sign of unease, tension, terror, or anything else besides "Okay, I'm watching, this better be good because you're writing those letters really slowly and I've got three utterly meaningless texts waiting for me down here." Also, duh, if terrorists are gonna WARN you about an attack, they're going to use methods a little more modern than skywriting, don't ya think? Gee, how can get a message across to EVERYONE in 2011? There's only one way! It must be WRITTEN IN THE SKY! I know the first few letters will blow away before the message is complete, but that's all we've got, dammit!

Before our long walk, we ended up sitting on a bench along a concrete path in Madison Square Park playing a game I invented. We count the number of males who walk past us, versus the number of females. I had girls, Chan had boys. First to 25 wins. We had to lay down some ground rules:

1. If someone walks by, then reverses direction and passes again right away, you only count them once. This avoids getting 2 points for someone making a quick trip to the garbage can next to us. However, if someone is walking to one end of the park, then comes back and passes by again, or is simply doing laps, they are counted every time. This avoids fights over whether someone is a repeat.

2. Babies do not count because the sex may be hard to figure out. The first time a baby went by, it had a pink dress on. I insisted we should count that as a female, but Chan said, "no way, my mom dressed me as a girl!" After I stopped laughing my ass off, I agreed to the "nothing that can't walk counts" rule. (Chan later specified he was only dressed like a girl once.)

3. No affecting the game. If the other guy is one person away from a win, and has a mark headed toward us, you can't stand up and start screaming obscenities, causing the person to rethink their route through the park.

I took women just to make Chan be more willing to play, figuring females were the underdog in a park with night falling. My theory was right, as Chan took game one, 25-16. After the board was cleared, meaning no one was headed directly toward us, we started up again, and this time it went down to the wire. We had fantasized about a photo finish, and we actually got one. It was 24-24, and a woman approached from the left. But she was on her phone, doing the "stand, walk, stand again" thing, totally in her own world. She stopped five feet short of us and finally seemed planted. So it would be up to someone else. A mom, dad, and daughter headed our way. The daughter came through for me, walking just ahead of her parents, crossing the line first and giving me a 25-24 win.

Chan took game three 25-22 before we got outta there, so he was the champ. It was funny how the game turned us into inadvertent pervs. Women would head toward us and I'd go "The ladies are comin' through for me to-nite!" or "awwww yeah, look at what's strollin' this way...." Even funnier was Chan doing the same thing to dudes. I almost felt like the Lovitz/Hanks SNL characters. "Look at what we have here...." (Of course we weren't doing this at full volume, but some people probably wondered--others were just confused at why we appeared to be listing off numbers.) It also made us become irrationally hateful of strangers: "Why would you come out here right now?!" "Who told you to take this path?!" "Who brings their kids out at night?!" And I don't know if this will happen where you live, but we did have a few controversial people. There was one person who I honestly couldn't say what gender they were. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But we've got a game going here!