Just as bad as Marge Simpson giving out her preztels for free at a Springfield Isotopes game that happened to coincide with Communist Party Day.

Poor Whitey Ford!

Upon further reflection, I don't think Jon got the props he deserved for his "Mulled Whine" title. Despite the common wag among the slow-witted, there are good puns and bad puns, and that, folks, was a good 'un.

More than makes up for "ooh Don," which requires a mispronunciation to work.

Huzzah!

You forgot the Dodger's old Handgun & Hard Liquor night....

Then there was the St Louis Cardinals' GNC/Creatine nights in the 90s

2 - I thought Ooh Don just had a meter problem. Oh well: 1 for 2.

It was at the Pasadena Star-News that I learned that some people like puns for headlines. With much handwringing, after a big game by Devon White, I headlined a story, "Angels Have all the White Moves." And they liked it.

I've never turned back, though I do try to do better than that one. For one thing, I was afraid I'd cause a race riot.

Whenever my friend made a bad pun, his sister would jump in with the quip, "...and no pun included."

Ninja throwing star night.
Jart night.
"Is she really a lady" night.
Manager for an inning night.

I used to write punny headlines when an editor at my high school newspaper. Talk about wasting your time and energy - only the paper's advisor really got and appreciated them.

We use to say, "use a pun, go to prison".

The pun is mightier than the... Oh, never mind. Better get back to work before I poke someone's eye out with my hot, cross puns.

The 'don' in Udon rhymes with phone. But actually, yours is the more common pronunciation in the US. Same goes for futon. And by now they're both common enough words in English that my "purist" objection is probably misplaced.

In other news, I was just reading some of the Bronx Banter traffic on the Matsui injury. Someone points out that this is the first major injury to a position player in years (tho I suppose you'd have to discount Sheff's current mysterious wrist problem and Giambi's illness in 2004).

Not only does Steinbrenner buy an all-star team, but at least the hitters are always healthy. Not fair!

3 - I've always thought of that promotion as "ATF Night." First 10,000 through the gates get a pint, a pack and a piece.

The Andy Van Slyke blog is taking Tracy to task for playing the Al Downing "you never played so how could you know" card.

http://whereisvanslyke.blogspot.com/

No matter what happens to the Dodgers this year, I'll get as kick out of watching what happens in Pittsburgh.

11 - I'll worry about that just the second that Japanese generally start worrying about mispronouncing English import words. Manshon? Isu-kurimu?

14 Misproununciation is inevitable because the Japanese language does not allow for consonant endings except for the letter "n." However, the misuse of foreign words is really funny. A manshon (mansion) in Japan is a high rise apartment unit.

Who told you "mansion" was English? The Brits took that one from French.

Japanese, like most languages (but not English), has a very strict and consistent pronunciation guide. Each vowel and each consonant can only take one sound. So they don't have the huge variety of sounds that we have, the flat vowels, for example. And all words end in a vowel sound or "n," so they have a choice for "ice cream" of "aisu kurimu" or "aisu kurin," and figured the former was closer.

So, as far as I'm concerned, the language that does include more sounds ought to be the one that makes the effort on foreign/imported words.

More difficult that Janglish pronunciations, of course, are Janglish definitions. Manshon doesn't mean mansion; it means something like rental condo. They've adopted lots of foreign words and changed the meanings (e.g., "kaningu" [cunning] means "cheating" "arubaito" [arbeit] means "part-time job," and so on).

And of course, "Taimuri" [timely] now is a synonym for RBI.

Yeah, or what 15 said.

High-rise, eh? I always forget which is which. There are about 5 words for various sorts of rental housing, so I'll take your "word" for it.

Changing topics, I will state that I was very impressed by the season finale of "The Office". It was very nicely done.

It inspired me to dontate money to Afghanistaniaidsians.

17 Well, I misspoke a bit. Not necessarily a high rise, but an apartment. Most I saw were at least 2 story. What the Japanese call an "apaato" (corruption of apartment) is like a townhouse.

Padres are already ahead in Chicago, 1-0.

Gametime temp at Wrigley: 43.

The Cubs have Juan Pierre batting leadoff and Neifi Perez batting second.

18 Agreed. It didn't have the "oh man, this is painful to watch" parts that many episodes have, mostly because I think they pulled their punches on the "love triangle in Michael's mind" bit. That could have been made a lot more awkward and uncomfortable.

19 They also have "danchi" and a few others.

16 I love the English/Japanese hybrid words, like choberigu. Cho=extremely, very; berigu=very good. Of course the counterpart is choberiba.

18 - I think I've probably said this before, but The Office is the most romantic show on television today. I absolutely think that the Jim-Pam love story is one of the greatest in television history. And that's just in addition to the show's overall hilarity.

24
The Jim-Pam dynamic seems quite authentic to me. If I were Jim, I would have chickened out and been miserable the rest of my life.

23. Ha! That must be a recent one. Hadn't heard it.

24. Yes, very sweet. But now that the line has been crossed, it'll be more difficult to sustain the tension.

26 Using hybrid words has become "luchin" for Japanese. ;-)

I was sometimes Jim, but the Pams would usually mean it when they said I misinterpreted.

My wife said last night after the parking lot scene that Pam doesn't understand that you can marry your best friend - your spouse and your best friend don't have to be two different people.

There was a link a few days ago to a website where you could download the information to use foreign punctiation markings in our text; Does anyone remember where it was?

Jim Tracey is a never ending source of entertainment. Not true, of course, eventually he will be fired. But in reading what was posted about him above, I thought of a funny promotion he could do: Being constantly criticised for his managerial moves, why not have a contest to let one expert fan, such as ourselves, manage the team for one game? Charge a $100 entry fee (Money goes to charity) and draw one lucky name from the entries. Said person gets to make out line up and all the game moves. With the real manager's help and oversight for health and legal issues. Yeah, I know, Baseball probably has a rule against it, but the charity angle might persuade them to let it happen. The players also would have to approve it, but if the team is going along like the Dodgers last year and Pittsburgh this year, they'd probably be all for it, out of sheer boredom and maybe a desire to embarass Tracey. How man here would enter the contest???

26. I think how the writers deal with that line being crossed next season is going to be huge. I think that is probably one of the hardest things for a television show to do. I honestly can't think of a show that was able to be quite as consistently good after the tension was broken with that first kiss. The funniness should still be there, but that cute little undercurrent will have to be replaced with something. The look Pam gave the camera when showing the umbrella she was using to move the coatrack was priceless. I was almost hoping that Jim would just go and transfer, because that is probably what I would have done.

Sorry if this has already been posted, but here's a link to the rambling, meandering, slurring Rick Sutcliff video from the Padres game the other night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MT0JTwBehA&search=rick%20sutcliffe

It's gloriously terrible and amusing, and a little bit sad.

I found the link first at FJM.

28
Two of my best friends married each other. That was 17 years ago.

When they announced they were getting married, I was somewhat surprised, but then I went back and saw all these clues from their four years together in college that I had skipped over.

They're still happilly married.

28
I was sometimes Jim, but the Pams would usually mean it when they said I misinterpreted.

Fortunately for Jon, one woman didn't misinterpret and everybody lived happilly ever after.

Maybe some day, some where there will be RAP demolition night.

98 cents for your CD.

That's funny, my writing partner and I just wrote a humor piece about baseball promotions about six weeks ago (behind the TimesSelect wall, I'm afraid):

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00815FA38540C708CDDAD0894DE404482

34 - But I wasn't Jim in that situation. That's what was so fascinating. I did something akin to taking the transfer.

36 - Chris, I think we may know people in common. Al Higgins for one? Dave "Gruber" Allen? Leslie Caveny?

37

But my story was so quaint!

39 - Don't get me wrong - ours is a nice story.