Author: Gary

If all goes like it has been this season, Barry Bonds should win his 6th MVP award. No other baseball player has won more than 3. This is not to say that other players probably didn’t deserve more than 3 (Ted Williams comes to mind), but for years there seems to have been some barrier where as there was reluctance to give someone the award too many times. Maybe it was just a fluke, but I think there was something more to it.

Prior to Barry Bond’s incredible 2001 season, he had won the award 3x already. To break the unspoken tradition of being limited to 3 MVP awards, you’d have to do something incredible. Barry Bonds sort of forced the issue by having, arguably, two of the best offensive seasons in baseball history in 2001 and 2002. His OPS (On-base % plus Slugging %) were 1.3785 and 1.3807 in 2001 and 2002. To give you an idea of how good that was, not only were they the 1st and 3rd best OPS seasons in history, only Babe Ruth and Ted Williams ever hit above 1.245 in a single season. Of the two components of OPS, he set the single season slugging record in 2001 (.8635) and the single season on-base percentage in 2002 (.5817), demolishing the former record set by Ted Williams in his amazing 1941 season when he hit .406.

So, Barry Bonds is a stud. I think that’s an established fact. He’s won 5 MVP awards (and should have won another one in 1991 when freaking Terry Pendelton won).

This season he is continuing his studly ways leading the major leagues in OPS again. His OPS is currently at 1.249, on-base percentage is at .515, and he’s slugging .734. Assuming everything stays the same till the end of the year, he’ll have a season which ranks in the top 15 in all the categories listed, he’ll pass Willie Mays for 3rd place on the all-time home run list, and will probably pass Babe Ruth for 2nd all-time in base on balls (trailing the guy who really should retire, Rickey Henderson).

The next closest player to Bonds is Albert Pujols, who by all measures is having a very good season. (OPS: 1.112, OBP: .437, SLG:.674) But, he’s not having as good a season as Bond. Nonetheless, I think there is a good chance he’ll win the MVP. Why?

1. Bonds will ultimately be compared to his last two seasons. The fact that this season is also one of the best in baseball history wont really matter becasue they’ll be comparing it to what he did last year.
2. Albert Pujols is up and comming. Bonds is old and will have tons of attention over the next two years as he breaks the all-time home run record.
3. Bonds has won 5 times. Lets share the wealth.

I hope I’m wrong, but I think that’s how its going to go down.

The other big Barry Bonds question is whether he is the greatest player ever. The fact that the question can even be asked is significant in itself. Bill James had placed Bonds just outside of the top 10 in 2000. Before he had his monster seasons in 2001 and 2002. I think it may already be safe to say that the debate for who is the greatest hitter of all time (formerly between Ruth and Williams) will now include Bonds.

Here’s the deal. I don’t use Microsoft Office anymore. It’s not some grand political statement, but rather a practical decision. I have several Office Upgrade CD’s in my house, but nothing I can put on my machine. Moreover, I don’t want to install Office because it tends to take stuff over and the alternatives are pretty good. I have Abiword and Open Office installed on my primary computer. The only complaint I have with open source office software is that the spell checking could be better.

For email, I’ve been using Outlook Express. It gets the job done, but there is nothing special about it. I need some sort of calendar software, but I don’t want to use Outlook. Outlook Express doesn’t have a calendar. Mozilla email doesn’t have a calendar program either. Any suggestions?

I just got finished watching The Pianist. Despite my earlier post, I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it before. It was very good and probably deserved to win the Oscar for best picture over Chicago. It did an excellent job of showing the despiration of someone trying to survive by any means necessary. The movie I thought it most resembled was Stalingrad. I’m not sure how many holocaust movies are left to be made. There are certainly more stories to tell, but I think that only so many can be digested by the public. You don’t want to wind up with movies like Swing Kids (worst Nazi move ever).

As I sit typing this on my laptop i’m watching Mishima, one of my favorite films and, I think, one of the most under rated movies ever. It was directed by Paul Schrader (writer for such films as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Last Tempation of Christ) and produced by George Lucus and Francis Ford Coppola. While written, directed and produced by Americans, the movie is entirely in Japanese.

The movies weaves parts of four of his novels, his past, and the last day of his life. The choice of set designs for the novels, the score (by Philip Glass of course 🙂 and the story are near perfect. Yukio Mishima is a really complex character (right wing, literary, homosexual, body building, death worshiping, and leader of a private army) A linear telling of his story just wouldn’t have worked. By showing his novels, you can better understand how he thinks, and better understand how he came to his end. Simply showing his last day wouldn’t never tell you how he got to that point. (what was his end? rent the movie 🙂

I went to a karaoke bar for the first time this week. It was sort of a farewell party for Jess who is going off to UNC for grad school in philosophy. It was an interesting crowd to say the least. It is prime hunting ground for people watching (and listening). I got to meet some interesting people who I’d otherwise probably never get to meet. I’d write more about the crowd, but its really a whole post of its own.

I got an Amazon package today and it contained three Philip Glass CD’s that I didn’t have. Etudes 1-10, The Orphee Suite for Piano, and Music in the Shape of a Square. All three were ripped to MP3 within an hour of me opening the box. (and no, I never share this stuff on Kaaza. No one would want it and I rip at 320k so the files are enormous anyway)

My love of Philip Glass’s music is something I don’t really share with anyone else I know. Its not popular music (although he was the musical guest on SNL once in the 80s). Some of my friends might tolerate listening to it, but I’m sure get no real joy out of it if I’m listening to it in my car.

I first heard music from Philip Glass about 8 years ago. I had heard the name before, but I didn’t know anything about him or his music. He is popular enough to get spoofed on South Park and the Simpsons, but not popular enough for people to know why he’s spoofed. I had purchased a classical music magazine at Barnes & Nobel that had an attached mix CD of recent classical releases. One of the tracks on the disc was “Le Domain de la Bete” from La Belle et le Bete (an alternate score he wrote for the 1947 Beauty and the Beast movie by Jean Cocteau). This was unlike anything else on the CD. This was unlike anything else I had ever heard. There was something very hypnotic about it.

I eventually decided to purchase one of his discs and going on nothing but the title and cover art, bought Glassworks. I was hooked.

Fast forward to today and I own pretty much every piece of music he has ever recorded, including pieces recorded by other artists. While part of my would like to evangalize his music to the rest of the world, a part of me likes the fact that I am a fanbase of one amongst people I know. Its like the indie rock snobs who only like bands that no one has heard of, but taken to the extreme. (I suppose I could go even further up the snob ladder by only talking about even more obscure modern composers….but even I have limits)

If you want to listen to Philip Glass, I strongly recommend working backwards. Get contemporary stuff then work back in time. Dont listen to anything recorded pre 1980 without having listened to more modern stuff first. His early stuff makes much more sense once you’ve heard is more recent stuff. His best stuff is what he has written for solo paino and for stage performance (film, opera, ballet). None of his symphonies have really grabbed me.

I’ve been to the gym almost every day now for close to three weeks. I’m not sure I can see a difference, but I can feel a difference. During the first week, my whole body was sore. I knew that was going to happen, so I just plowed through the discomfort and kept going.

There are lots of little aches and pains that I no longer have. Its hard to explain, but they’re just gone. Poof. The amount of weight I can work with is significantly more than when I started. I suppose that is to be expected as the largest marginal benefits will come from the first work you do. There is a chest press machine I was working with and I began lifting about 70 pounds, and today I was able to do sets of 10 at 105 pounds. That’s a 50% increase in 3 weeks.

I have lost some weight, but I’m not too worried about it, because unlike a diet, I’m also going to be building muscle mass. I know that if I continue this regiment, eventually there will be come visual change. There just has to. The calories I’m expending daily now as opposed to three weeks ago is significantly more.