Cricket bats

I have spent a few" handles" of beer listening to the merits of cricket. Last night at poker I had the fortune to ask English Brett " What is a cricket bat made from"? He told me "Yew trees", he expected me to understand.
I told I would look it up.


Uses for yew trees
Yew is a resilient tree which will tolerate a lot of shade and withstand smoke and

salty winds. Yew wood is amongst the densest of all conifers and is elastic so was

once used for making long bows, spears and dagger handles.

An important anti-cancer drug is produced from yew hedge clippings.


Cricket bats are no longer made from springy yew wood.

Yew wood is a slow growing species in the U.K.. Perhaps it not grow commercially.



Could the elastic qualities of yew wood baseball bats be marketable?


What are the MLB rules for wood types for bat construction?



After a five minute search....



Did you know there is a baseball research institute?

After May 2006, they have approved which bats and balls can be used in MLB.

Detroit and the Yankees

While getting a haircut I watched the first two innings of the game. Polanco committed an error in the second. He caught the ball at the second base position and threw it to first. They called the runner at first safe. What did he do wrong? Perhaps I should call a baseball fan. If BretT could afford a phone I would have called him. He is probably in a library somewhere, reading Spainish comic books.

The hair cut was bad, the neck rub was fantastic. The girl kept looking at me like I was supposed to ask her out...

A quick google says Polanco threw high to the plate after getting a bouncing ground ball a runner scored.. but I think he caught the ball and threw to first avoiding trying to tag the guy running to second. He didn't get the guy at first, cause he didn't catch the ball.. What was the error? ?

baseball update

amazingly, the shiretowners are now playing .500 baseball, ranked 5th. fuck yeah!

2 months ago we were mired in last place 30 some games under .500.

granted the field is tight and among the middling teams, such as ours, rankings change week to week.

8 weeks to play, lotsa baseball to go.

for the moment, though, our heads are above water.

5 games over.500. i'm having another beer, dammit!

round 2 this week against bread's lineup.

hope he's got his nose in those law books,

or lost in some god forsaken costa rican jungle.

but he's not, i know, he's devious and planning my destruction.

the shire must vanquish such evil!

"this guy thinks he's running a baseball team." - my darling sandstress

i have been sucked into the vortex of fantasy baseball! these last 2 weeks (has it only been 2 weeks?) i haven't been able to be on line and not find myself perusing the free agent pages, looking for that one pick up who's going to save my ass, that one arm that's gonna be the next dominant starter, delivering strikeouts by the wheelbarrow load with an era so crystal clear it sparkles, and a whip, a whip lower than kevlar's pants on a special ktv night. do i play this guy who's been struggling? (joe hole in his bat crede) striking out 3 times a day for a week or do i stick with him because tomorrow, tomorrow he's gonna break out of his slump and have a monster day, and christ i'd hate to miss out on that!
it's consuming me. it's so addictive! all sports have stats but no sport has stats like baseball stats. you can scroll through them endlessly looking for that edge, that holy grail, the lightining rod that will make you look like a genius manager. i haven't read stats like this since i collected baseball cards as a kid, so much so that i've been neglecting the blogs, not only writing for them but even reading them.
in an effort to seek help, i went to fubar yesterday to talk to the barman, who also happens to be in big ell's league, along with bread and pimp, concerning time management and fantasy baseball... d-wayne told me that he has 8, count 'em, 8 teams in different leagues and that i'd get used to it. every newbie spends hours staring at numbers and after awhile it won't be such an addiction... for the sake of this blog in particular, i hope he's right 'cause for the time i've been putting into it, while wonderfully intriguing, my rewards have been miniscule... just ask d-wayne, whose squad spanked my guys last week 11-3 with a tie. this week seems better and i may actually pull out a draw against my opponent... i need pitching help and i need some of my hitters to come around are i'm gonna dump their asses! that means you, joe crede! you too frank thomas you 9 million dollar oh-fer mofo!

more later.

oh yeah, kevlar has been really vain about his hair lately. more on that later too.