Commencing countdown (Five), engines on (Four)

By Blaidd Drwg

Roger Clemens, regardless of your feelings toward him, is a hall of famer. With 7 Cy Young awards, an MVP, 354 wins and 4600 strikeouts, I don’t care what he may or may not have taken. Roger Clemens is also eligible for the hall of fame in 2013. That should be an interesting vote seeing as there are 6 legitimate new candidates for the hall (Bonds, Clemens, Piazza, Sosa, Schilling and Biggio) as well as at least 5 guys that are returning and should eventually make the hall (and I am not counting Jack Morris who I believe is not worthy of being a hall of famer). Needless to say, the next few ballots are going to be very crowded and just about all of the 11 guys who are on this year’s ballot who should get into the hall all have steroid questions floating over their head. That is going to make things very interesting.

Flash back to a couple of weeks ago when Roger Clemens announced that he was going to pitch one game for the independent Sugar Land Skeeters. Clemens is 50 and has not pitched in a game since 2007. My first thought when I heard this was, “He is trying to make a comeback to reset the clock on his HOF eligibility.” It makes sense – if he pitches in a MLB game this season, it would reset his eligibility, making his first year on the ballot 2018 instead of 2013. The 2013 vote is stupidly going to be a referendum on steroids, with the tyrant old school voters trying to make a meaningless point. You also have at least 3 potential HOFers on each of the next 4 ballots after 2013, so things may get a bit more crowded. Pushing his eligibility back to 2018 creates a larger buffer for a shift in attitude, and hopefully a shift in the voting to the newer members of the BBWAA.

This is of course speculation on my part, but considering Clemens had a successful start in his first appearance and is planning on making another start for Sugar Land, I could definitely see the Astros, who have absolutely nothing to play for, signing Clemens and putting him out on the mound for at least one game in late September. Stranger things have happened.

The Bad News Bears

By Blaidd Drwg

bad-news-bears-cap2 — It is possible that the Newark Bears had these guys in the field for a recent game against the Capitales. It is independent minor league baseball afterall.

The good news: Newark Bears pitcher Mike Ness tossed a no-hitter and won 3-0 against the first place Quebec Capitales.

The bad news: The Newark Bears defense committed 6 errors in the game.

Yes, it is the Can-Am league and yes, neither team is loaded with major league talent, but 6 errors are inexcusable in a professional game (especially when 2 of your coaches are Ken Oberkfell and Tim Raines). The amazing part is the Capitales didn’t manage to score a run in the game, considering the Bears committed 3 errors in the 3rd inning (stranding a runner on 3rd). Also interesting was that the 6 errors were committed by 5 different players, with only the Bears 3B Tucker Nathans committing 2 errors.

Too Short

by A.J. Coltrane

From left to right: Matt Flynn, the recently departed Tavaris Jackson (he’s not dead, he’s just been traded to Buffalo), and new rookie starter Russell Wilson.

Flynn is 6′ 2″.

Jackson is 6′ 2″.

Wilson is 5′ 10″ +5/8″

Longtime readers may remember a series of posts I did looking at the heights of Super Bowl quarterbacks over the last 20 years. Those posts and research are now gone, but the result was: The average Super Bowl quarterback of the last 20 years stood 6′ 2″ – 6′ 3″. Wilson is a full four inches shorter than that.

Here’s a list all quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl. The only winner as short as 6’0″ is Drew Brees. Three time loser Fran Tarkenton was 6’0″. Len Dawson was 6’0″; he was the unfortunate loser of Super Bowl I. That’s the entire height-deficient list. 45 Superbowls = 90 quarterbacks, and three guys standing 6’0″.

Here’s the list of the all-time passing leaders. Find the shortest guy in the top 100. I don’t think there are any quarterbacks under 6’0″, even among the old-school guys.

I keep hearing Drew Brees comparisons as an example of a short quarterback who can be successful. The shortest listed height I’ve been able to find for Brees is 6’0″ — Brees is nearly an inch and a half taller than Wilson.

I’m belaboring this point: Unless Wilson is an outlier of truly historic proportions the Seahawks are barking up the wrong tree. I’d go with Flynn.

When Web Designers Attack

By Iron Chef Leftovers

There are plenty of sites where you can find people’s opinions, good or bad, about restaurants. I have been known to check out sites like Yelp to see the bad reviews of a place just to see the kinds of stuff that people are complaining about when it comes to a restaurant that I am considering going. Any places that have consistently bad reviews and people are complaining about the same things are probably places to avoid.

In many cases, if a restaurant is terrible, the owner probably has cash flow issues and is not paying staff, vendors, taxes, etc. A recent case of this happened in Pennsylvania at a place called the Italian Village Restaurant (which also appeared on an episode of Restaurant: Impossible).

While not paying your restaurant staff can lead to lots of whispers and anonymous angry tweets, not paying your web designer can be a sticky situation for a restaurant owner.

Recently, the webmaster of The Italian Village in Milmont Park (which was on an episode of Restaurant:Impossible) decided to replace the cheesy web presence of the restaurant with detailed lists of shitty Yelp, Yahoo, and Google reviews. The very best one of the batch suggested throwing the live accordion player in the dumpster because he “belittled people” who didn’t request “Irish Eyes” and “Happy Birthday.” Instead of negotiating with the spurned HTML jockey, The Italian Village went ahead and bought a new domain.

I guess that when you fail to pay your webmaster, you probably deserve having all of your bad reviews put in one place.

Crab Rangoon Pizza

by A.J. Coltrane

Inspired by a “greatest pizza in the US” type of show: It’s Crab Rangoon pizza!

For the uninitiated, Crab Rangoons are fried potstickers filled with cream cheese, crab, and scallions.

To make this into a pizza topping I combined the cream cheese with heavy cream, horseradish, shallots, and salt in a food processor. Then the crab was added and given a quick buzz to incorporate.

For the other “prep”, I coated wonton strips with a little canola oil and baked until lightly browned. (no pic, see below)

Glop — You can see the cooking aid to the back left. The lurid chili oil is to the back right.

topped — Mozz on cream cheese. White on white.

I lightly coated the top and bottom of the pizza dough with canola oil and par-baked it on a screen for 8 minutes at 500F. Then I added the cream cheese mixture and some shredded mozz and cooked for another 7 minutes.

fin — I took it easy on the chili oil initially to make sure it stayed edible.

After the pizza came out of the oven it got topped with the wonton strips and sweet chili oil (sriracha, honey, and lime juice).

The chili oil wasn’t too hot, so the slices got more of it.

It was no more work than a regular pizza, this one is going into the “making it again” file.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I like strange and unusual beers. There are tons of great beers on the market, but a great IPA is still an IPA and I pretty much know what I am going to get with the style. Experimental beers are a different matter. Places like Dogfish Head and Elysian (with their 12 Beers of the Apocalypse) are probably my two favorite breweries consistently putting out the odd ball stuff. We even have the Strange Brew festival in Port Townsend annually. There are plenty of misses when breweries try something completely different, but even their failures are worth trying since they are styles that are generally not really being done anywhere else.

I saw a post of the BrewDog website recently about a “collaboration” they are doing with Flying Dog Brewing out of Maryland, called International Arms Race.

From the BrewDog website:

When the team at Flying Dog threw down a gauntlet and challenged us to a battle collaboration entitled International Arms Race there was no way we were not going to take them on and show them who is boss when it comes to the brewing dogs!

The International Arms Race is a new type of collaboration: the brewing team from both Flying Dog and BrewDog set the parameters for the beer and the battle kicked off.

Both beers are dubbed ‘Zero IBU IPA’ and the challenge was to brew an IPA style beer using no hops: the hops are replaced with berries, herbs and roots. And we want you to judge who the winner is: Flying Dog or BrewDog!

I love the concept – and IPA with no IBU and using no hops! Unfortunately the BrewDog website does not mention any events for this in the U.S. and the Flying Dog website does not mention the competition at all. I would love to get to taste these 2 beers – a truly experimental IPA.

d1406a0127d4d07440b9ebf915730732_44363 — If I can’t get my hands on this beer, I would love to get a hold of the bottle. Maybe I can spend another 60$ on shipping beer?

Watching Paint Dry

By Bladd Drwg

I have no real love for MLS soccer – the play reminds me of schoolyard basketball, the skill level is marginal compared to watching any European team play and the officiating is downright atrocious. I did recently go see the US Open Cup final between Seattle and Kansas City and was treated to everything I hate about watching an MLS game.

Both teams looked flat and the Sounders looked like they were playing not to lose the game. KC was not much better and the bulk of regulation time was spent with both teams middling around in the middle of the field making bad passes and not really pushing any attacks. It was frankly as exciting as watching paint dry. Both teams had a few scoring chances, but in those cases they were generally created by defensive mistakes rather than offensive skill.

The Sounders managed to get flagged for 4 yellow cards in regulation – and in each of those cases, the card should have been awarded. The Sounders should have only had 3 cards – Alonso was going to be warned early on for an aggressive play but he kept walking away from the ref, and eventually pushed the official away drawing the yellow. There was only one play that I thought KC made that might have warranted a yellow, but the ref did not call it. There were a number of questionable calls on both sides of the ball but I don’t believe the handball that lead to a KC goal was a bad call (unfortunately GolTV refused to show replays on just about every play).

After going 90 all tied, we were treated to another 30 minutes of incipit soccer as KC practically dominated the overtime but could not mount much of an attack. For all you Sounders fans – yes, Ianni deserved his yellow in the 119th minute – he pulled down a guy that had no defenders between him and the goal; that is an automatic yellow.

After watching 120 minutes of uninspired play, we got to witness the soccer equivalent of kissing your sister – penalty kicks. For the sake of the setup – a goalie is supposed to start on the goal line and is not supposed to move until the player taking the kick strikes the ball; a rule that is rarely enforced except on the last kick. If the goalie moves before the ball is struck or does not start out touching the goal line and touches the ball preventing a goal, it is a rekick. If he does not touch the ball, there is no rekick, even if the player kicking the ball does not score. That is exactly what happened at the end of the game, leading to a 3-2 advantage for KC and the win. (Yes – the replay does show that the Sounders goalie did not start out on the line).

If you read Jerry Brewer’s account in the Seattle Times, you will get a very different perception of the game. Some of the “highlights”:

…after a grueling 120 minutes of tense competition, after drama, frustration and five decisive penalty kicks from each team, history succumbed to anger, confusion and allegations of biased officiating.
—
It was a spirited contest, as competitive as you want a title game to be. But when it was over, the Sounders were left miffed and unsatisfied.

If Brewer thought the game was competitive and spirited, I suggest he watch a Champions League final or a Euro tournament.

A slightly less biased article (and a much more realistic view of the game) was written by Jeff Carlisle on espn.com. It’s title? “Hard to watch, easy to love.” I think that just about summed up the game.

A Little Orange to Aid Digestion

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Photos By AJ Coltrane

I am finally getting around to posting the recipes from the Odd Bits dinner. I will be doing this in reverse order of how they were served, because the end of the meal is much less involved to write than the beginning was.

Honestly, I have no idea what to call this drink. The idea came from a wonderful book, Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas, by Brad Thomas Parsons. Bitters have intrigued me since I read an article about a year ago on how to make your own (which I still haven’t done). Bitters are basically an infusion of herbs and other flavors in alcohol and are generally used to enhance the flavors of drinks. They were originally sold as a restorative.

Early in the Bitters book, there is a recipe for a “restorative tonic” which I decided to play off of. Limoncello is an Italian liqueur that is usually served at the end of the meal, so why not use a bitters drink to do the same. It also helped that blood oranges were just coming into season, so I got a little creative.

The Software
Juice of half a blood orange
4 dashes Orange Bitters
4 Dashes Chocolate Bitters
4 oz sparkling water or club soda
2 ice cubes

The Drink
It is easy – in a highball glass, juice the orange, add the bitters and water or soda and give a quick stir. Add the ice cubes and serve.

Notes
I was going for a “chocolate orange flavor on this drink without it being oppressive. It is a light and refreshing and slightly fizzy drink with a hint of bitterness and chocolate notes at the end of the sip. A twist of orange peel would be a nice touch, but I wouldn’t really increase the amount of bitters in the drink without increasing the other liquids, otherwise they will overpower everything.

GNOIF, Trains, And Automobiles — The Recap

by A.J. Coltrane

GNOIF #5 Recap — GNOIF, Trains, and Automobiles. (Transportation theme.)

Games That Got Played: Star Fluxx, Forbidden Island, Lost Cities, Poo, Rocketville, Ticket To Ride Card Game

Games That Didn’t Get Played: Starship Catan, Robo Rally, Ticket To Ride – Europe

Rocketville was the big surprise hit of the evening — we hadn’t played it before a quick cram session earlier in the day, and the boardgamegeek reviews are Not Good. We had a lot of fun with it though. In brief, it’s a fairly simple card based bid/auction game where you’re trying to campaign to become the mayor of Rocketville. The premise really doesn’t have much to do with anything though… I think these two reviews line up with my take on it pretty well. The reviews are titled “Blame Avalon Hill (defending Rocketville)”, and, “Not Nearly As Bad As They Say”. Rocketville is recommended for 3-5 players. As one of the reviewers states: It’s probably a better game with three players rather than five, which would decrease the impact of luck on the outcome. It’s also a game that you don’t want to pay full price for — $10-$15 is about right; there’s not enough in the box to justify thirty-five bucks. None of that sounds too encouraging, but I’ll say it again, we *did* have a lot of fun with it!

The other surprise hit was a game that was purchased fairly recently — Poo: The Card Game. The premise is that you play as a monkey, and you throw poo at the other monkeys until you’re the only reasonably clean monkey left. There are Poo cards and Clean Cards. And cards like “Buddy’s Face”, which allows you to to interpose your buddy between you and the primate flinging poo at you. It’s a fun game with cute and silly graphics and tiny card text.

I’ve gotta quit scaring people away from Robo Rally if I ever want to play it again…

The boy cat was *very* excited with Rocketville. (He really thinks he fits in that box?)

Beer of the Week: Firestone Walker Wookey Jack

By Iron Chef Leftovers

To celebrate National IPA day on August 2nd, I decided to crack a bottle of Firestone Walker Wookey Jack, combining a couple of my favorite offshoots of the IPA style – black IPA’s and Rye IPA’s. It is a big beer coming in at 60 IBU and 8.5% alcohol and is available in 22 oz. bottles and on tap in Washington. My beer was from a 22 oz. bottle.

From the Firestone website:

Wookey Jack is our first foray into the dark outer world of black IPAs. Rich dark malts and spicy rye careen into bold citrus laden hops creating a new dimension in IPA flavor. This brew has been left unfiltered and unfined to retain all of its texture and character. At 60 IBUs, Wookey Jack is gnarly on the outside yet complex and refined on the inside.

This beer pours jet black with a cream colored head – looks like a stout and you would probably guess that if you didn’t know what you were drinking. You would definitely know it when you smelled it though – lots of hops on the nose with hints of malt. The initial sip brings roasted malt on the palate with some caramel which gives way to floral and fruity notes with just a smattering of hops. The finish fades nicely into a mild bitterness.

Pleasant to drink but the rye is lost in the mix until the beer warms slightly. At about 50 degrees, the hop finish yields to a strong hit of rye a few seconds later. Reminded me of toasted pumpernickel bread as it warmed, with the addition of hops.

The beer is enjoyable but it just feels like it is trying to be too much at once. I would love to see Firestone produce a Black IPA and a Rye IPA separately just to see what the part taste like.

Firestone Walker Wookey Jack IPA gets itself 3 Kashyyyks out of 5.