Baseball Toaster: Catfish Stew : Smell Like Canadians

Smell Like Canadians

2007-02-22 00:02

by Ken Arneson

And so I'm sitting here thinking I don't know what I'm doing with this module I'm programming--the concept of it is still too unclear in my head--so I just keep futzing around, not attacking it, just kinda waiting for some divine inspiration, so maybe I need to take a break and think about something else to reboot my brain, and my thoughts keep turning back to the fact that I got an email today telling me that my Oakland Athletics season tickets have been shipped and they're on their way and will be here in three days, and so I followed the FedEx link to track my package, and the tickets are being shipped from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which strikes me as being highly weird, except really, Saskatoon isn't really any further from Oakland than Kansas City, and would I think it was weird if the tickets were being shipped from Kansas City? Not really, since the team itself was shipped from Kansas City back in 1968. But perhaps it would have been better to get the tickets printed in Fremont, you know, so it would be a clever bit of foreshadowing.

But nope. Saskatoon it is. How did a company in Saskatoon win a bid to print tickets for Major League Baseball? I look up the weather in Saskatoon and it's 18 degrees F, which is quite unspringtraininglike. And I'm thinking, those Canadians who printed the tickets must think that baseball is a highly abstract concept at this point. Which is appropriate, because the most famous major league player who was born in Saskatchewan is Reggie Cleveland, and Reggie Cleveland is like an abstract concept to me, too. I mean, he's not Reggie, and he didn't play for Cleveland, so he makes no sense.

I read the reports coming out of Arizona (Dan Meyer lives! Bobby Crosby swings! Landon Powell and Joe Kennedy aren't quite so fat! Dan Haren looks like Bigfoot!), but they don't quite hit home yet. But three days from now, I'll have something tangible in my hands, something with weight and dimension and color, something to see, feel, touch, smell. Maybe the tickets will smell like Canadians, but they'll be affiliated Canadians, and they'll be real, and baseball will finally come alive once again.

OK, enough dreaming. There's some software that is slouching towards Arneson to be born. Time to go on the attack. Futztime is over.

Comments

2007-02-22 10:03:51

1. Aaron in RF

The most famous player to play in Saskatoon was probably Floyd Youmans, who was part of the Expos-Mets trade that sent Gary Carter to the Mets. He played for the Saskatoon Legends, which existed for half a season in 2003. According to wikipedia, "...most people were unaware of the games as there was not much advertising in the city."

So yeah, baseball is probably a pretty abstract idea for Saskatoonians. But I see that 2/3s of thew world's potash supply is located near the "Paris of the Prairie," so maybe this year's tickets are made of glass, soap or fertilizer.

2007-02-22 10:09:40

2. Aaron in RF

And in one of those bizarre coincidences of modern life, as I typed the above someone sent me a message offering bonds issued by... the Potash Corp of Saskatchewan.

If I were superstitious, I'd be thinking "buy."

2007-02-22 10:36:07

3. Ken Arneson

1 Notes from the Nat often complains about not getting any coverage in the local media, so a lack of baseball awareness seems to be the norm above the border.

I'm just happy that Rich Harden somehow broke through that and heard of baseball.