Monday, June 15, 2009

Flag Day, name pronunciation, and other weekend notes

As you probably know, Sunday was Flag Day. I can't think of a better way to honor flag day than to watch a video of Rick Monday stopping a flag burning at center field of Dodger Stadium with Tommy Lasorda yelling expletives and with Vin Scully doing the play-by-play of the events.

I bet Tommy Lasorda knows a lot of expletives. Go America.

A .500 road trip is certainly an improvement. Mike Redmond was optimistic. But I'm going to guess that he was riding home commando either way.

Our bullpen has actually been pitching a little better lately. Every pitcher in our pen has a sub 4.00 ERA. Wait. Except Jesse Crain. His ERA? 8.15. If you were to make a Western movie about him it would be called "8.15 to Yusuck." I'm not saying we cut the guy, but he has no business pitching in a close game right now. Mijares should have been pitching yesterday.

I watch games on MLB.TV, so I always get the broadcast of the home team. Whenever we play a National League team I am always curious how many names of little known Twins will they mispronounce. But the Cubs crew did a pretty good job. There were no Punt Os, KuBELLS, or Booshers playing for the Twins this weekend.

And I know it's a bit hypocritical to rag on other announcers when they mispronounce Twins names when we have Bert Blyleven in our booth. While I understand how others find Bert's mispronunciation of names annoying, I find it wildly amusing.

Endy Chavez? Bert knows not of this name, "Endy." Bert knows the name "Eddie." Eddie Chavez it is.

And while I think it's funny when Bert pronounces names wrong, it's very irritating when Jon Miller pronounces names "correctly." That's fine if you want to enunciate a different syllable to make a Latin name more Latin, but you don't have to shout the "tran" in Carlos BeTRAN to make your point. It's a little pretentious and a lot annoying.

Speaking of pretentious name pronunciation, look who it is?


It's Dr. H.P. Whitt, my Intro to Sociologist professor! He too took great pride in pronouncing names in their native tongue. His pronunciation of Johan Peter Süssmilch was a class favorite.

Is President Obama's SCOTUS pick pronounced SOtomayor or SotomaYOR? Either way, with four long vowels in the name, it is going to take Northern Minnesotans about 20 seconds to say her name.

NPR is also really good at making me feel like an idiot by pronouncing names more properly than I. Sometimes it's just normal English words. Like the word "robots." They were doing a story on robots, which immediately got my attention, and the guy kept saying "robuts." Seriously, "robuts"? What a prick.

Anyway, back to some less grouchy stuff. It seems like Twins fans really traveled well to Wrigley. I pretty sure there were some Hammies that went to the game. Oh, by the way, "Hammies" is a name that I invented to describe those people that read and contribute to Alright Hamilton. Cool, huh? Wait, you think it's lame? Yeah, you're right. Nevermind. Anyway, any good Wrigley stories?

I've been kind of fearing that Joe Mauer might cool down a bit. Well, he hasn't. And it's awesome. The Korean pop sensation, The Wonder Girls, even wrote a song about Joe's torrid May and June. I don't have the full translation but it's something like: "I'm Joe Mauer and I'm so hot. At baseball and face looking sexy. Sideburns very much. Too easy with making hits."



10 comments:

JoeBraga said...

I am a big fan of Bert calling Garciaparra: "Nomar Garcia." Just lopping of the last half of his name...

Also, after the Twins traded Castillo and called up Casilla, Bert didn't know what the hell to do. "Alexi Cast- er Casitto... er Alexi C---... Luis, ummm, Alex Castino."

Jim H. said...

Dan Gladden called Endy Chavez "Andy Sanchez."

haasertime said...

Bob Casey was the best and most celebrated mis-pronouncer. It was fun because the acoustics are so bad in the dome, so when he screwed up, you had to ask yourself, "wait, did he just call Mark MacLamore Mack MarkLamore?" Or how he called everyone Jose a Jesse. Very good stuff.

I think we should be called Hammies only if we're drinking Hamm's. Which is often, so yeah it works.

Myself, Daymonster, Brex, tfrezac and lneuville33 were at Wrigley for Sundays game. It was great. I was worried about douchey cubs fans being douchey to us, but the douchiest people we saw there were wearing Twins garb. Go fig.

Daymonster said...

My only issue with Hammies, is that don't people call people that went to Hamline, Hammies? I realize they are Pipers (like Palin's daughter) but aren't they called Hammies sometime?

But if everyone else likes it, I think I can get used to it.

Daymonster said...

I just re-read my comment. It makes no sense. So I withdraw my statement.

soup said...

Really, they're the Pipers? Who knew? All I know about Hamline College is that they would really like you to slow down on Snelling.

I've heard Cubs fans complain about outsiders coming into Wrigley to be at Wrigley and not necessarily watch baseball. So I can understand that there is a certain douchability to visiting fans.

You Hammies leave such good comments. Still using it.

Daymonster said...

Soup,

I would argue that its mostly the Cubs fans: the Lincoln Park Trixies and the suburban cubs fans that go there to see hot chicks and be seen.

Don't get me wrong there are many fans that know, get, and love baseball at wrigley but there are far more that have no idea who Mike Quade is.

Also, it makes it a little more difficult to "follow" the game at wrigley. There is no permanent line up on the jumbotron to let you know who is up next inning and the PA system is not the best.

Plus those damn NL rules... whats a double switch? Is that when you change sides of the plate mid at bat? And the rover?

Anonymous said...

tfrezac2002:

I dig 'hammies' and Hamm's. Its easy to go to Wrigley and not watch the game. Because if you aren't at your seat, you can't see or hear the game. And with all the obstucted view seats, half the people sitting in the grandstant can't see all the action either. That, along with the fact there is an almost impossible to decipher score board means you have to pay very close attention to know whats going on. Something even I have found I have a hard time doing with out keeping a score card.

soup said...

If I were a die-hard Cubs fan, I would be pissed at all the other "Cubs fans" across the country. Most Cubs fans I have met think RYAN Sandberg should be in the HOF.

Daymonster said...

I lot of people don't know this but... Rick Monday beat me to the flag too.