April 2008 – Page 5

Shorebird of the Week – April 3, 2008

Pedro Florimon waits on the pitch in a game last August. This 2007 holdover is my first Shorebird of the Week for 2008.

When a guy has his own personal fan club, somewhere along the line you have to name him Shorebird of the Week – so why not right off the top to start the year with a bang! My first SotW for 2008 is infielder Pedro Florimon, Jr.

The Dominican native is beginning his fifth year in baseball, having started with the Orioles’ entry in the Dominican Summer League in 2004-2005 and working his way up the ladder once he came here to the United States. While there have been several of these seasons where Pedro has struggled at the plate (in 2007 Pedro hit just .197 here in 111 games and 371 at-bats, along with .213 and .200 marks in his two Dominican seasons over 330 at-bats) obviously the Orioles hope to see the 21 year old return to 2006 form, where he surprised observers by slapping the ball around at a .293 clip (66 for 225 between Bluefield and Aberdeen.) Last year Pedro did establish career highs in at-bats, home runs (4) and RBI (34) and was fourth on the squad with 16 stolen bases in his first full campaign.

This year will obviously be a key one for Pedro as he’s now relatively close in age to the league’s peer group. No longer will he have the excuse of being a little younger than the competition and maybe in a little over his head. But if Pedro can pick up the average to a more respectable level, the departure of fixture Miguel Tejada at the big-league level means the Orioles may be looking for another long-term fix at short and Florimon could get some notice.

Shorebirds open tonight!

And to get you ready for the season, I have two items today. The first is a roster report that the team prepared and secondly, this evening I make the 2008 debut of my Shorebird of the Week. So if you want to know the players, here’s a scorecard. I added the jersey numbers based on meeting the players last night at a dinner the Shorebirds put on for interested fans. (It was good.)

Any good team is based around its pitching staff, and the Shorebirds feature a troika of talented southpaws that will anchor a youthful rotation. Twenty year old Tony Butler (who will wear #45), a top-5 prospect in the Mariners organization, comes to the Orioles system via the Erik Bedard trade with the ability to reach the low 90s and devastate opponents with a killer curveball. Zach Britton (#22), another highly-touted lefty, ranks among the top young pitchers in baseball. Last season, Britton went 6-4 with a 3.68 ERA in Aberdeen while racking up a better than 2:1 strikeout to walk ratio. A third lefthander, Cole McCurry (#23), went 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in Delmarva at the tail-end of the 2007 season. These three prospects are joined by a bevy of right-handers who should bring skill and depth to the roster. Zach Clark (#12), Joe Esposito (#33), Cliff Flagello (#29), Sean Gleason (#10), John Mariotti (#28), Mick Mattaliano (#47), Jeff Moore (#31), Luis Noel (#27), and Bryan Parker (#37) round out the staff.

At the top of the lineup, former Ohio State center-fielder Matt Angle (#25) joins Delmarva with great potential not only to reach base, but also swipe many extra bases during the season. Angle stole 34 bases in just 66 games in Aberdeen last year while reaching base at an impressive .421 clip. Kieron Pope (#17), another highly-regarded prospect, is ready to refine his skills and contribute to wins, along with fellow outfielders David Cash (#30), Calvin Lester (#5), and Joe Nowicki (#18).

The infielders feature a sensational combination of defensive agility and offensive prowess. At first base, 6’7” Joe Mahoney (#48) and 6’3” Anthony Martinez (#35) obviously bring great size to the field, but they also should wield powerful bats at the plate. On the other side of the diamond, Matt Tucker (#9) and Pedro Silveren (#1) will likely compete for time at the hot corner. Up the middle, infielders Ryan Adams (#3), Pedro Florimon (#2), and Tyler Henson (#4) are expected to share time at second base and shortstop. All three players, each younger than 22 years of age, look to build upon successful 2007’s in the Orioles farm system. Behind the plate, Wally Crancer (#24), Brendan Monaghan (#15), and Jordan Wolf (#19) will share the opportunities to catch and handle the young Shorebird pitchers.

The new manager is Ramon Sambo (#16), while Kennie Steenstra (#21) remains as pitching coach and former Shorebird Ryan Minor (#44) is the new field coach.

Of the 27 players listed on the opening roster, only four spent extended time with the Shorebirds in 2007. Jeff Moore spent much of the year here before being placed on the disabled list, Pedro Silveren spent the first part of the season in Delmarva before a demotion to Aberdeen, while both Pedro Florimon and David Cash return for a second full season. We also saw a little bit of pitchers Zach Clark, Joe Esposito, Mick Mattaliano, and Cole McCurry at the tail end of 2007.

Hopefully the squad can improve on its break-even record last season and win the first SAL flag for our town since 2000. We’ll find out beginning tonight at 7:05 p.m. as the Shorebirds open against cross-state rival Hagerstown.

Well, despite the on-and-off rain we got the game in…unfortunately the Shorebirds lost 5-4 in a 14-inning marathon that didn’t end until almost 11:30. Because of the late finish, tonight’s fireworks show will occur tomorrow night (April 4th.)

Ignorance is bliss

I got this note the other day from the Center for Immigration Studies and thought it was intriguing. But I was just seeing it as useful background information until Rush brought it up yesterday and juiced up my interest in commenting. First, here’s what the CIS has to say:

A new poll using neutral language finds that primary and caucus voters have little knowledge of candidates’ immigration positions. The results also show that voters often do not share their candidate’s position.

For results and tables, go to http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/voter_release_08.html

Among the findings:

Only 34 percent of McCain voters, 42 percent of Clinton voters, and 52 percent of Obama voters correctly identified their candidate as favoring eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants who meet certain requirements.

Of McCain voters, 35 percent mistakenly thought he favored enforcement that would cause illegals to return home, another 10 percent thought he wanted mass deportations, and 21 percent didn’t know his position.

Voters often held different positions from the candidate they supported. Only 31 percent of McCain voters had the same immigration position as he does. For Clinton voters, 45 percent shared her position; 61 percent of Obama voters shared his position.

This lack of knowledge, coupled with disagreements with their candidates’ positions, makes it very difficult to draw any conclusions about the fact that all three remaining candidates favor legalization for illegal immigrants.

Whoever wins the presidency will face significant opposition to giving eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants. Just 25 percent of Republican and 50 percent of Democratic primary/caucus voters said they would support such an effort.

Pro-enforcement voters have a greater intensity of views than supporters of legalization. Among Republicans, almost nine out ten who favored causing illegals to return home said they strongly supported that view; on the other hand, fewer than half of Republicans who backed legalization strongly supported that view.

This greater intensity also exists among Democrats. Of Democrats who favored causing illegals to return home, more than seven out of ten strongly supported that view; on the other hand, fewer than six out of ten who favored legalization strongly supported that view.

Methodology: The survey of 1,276 persons who voted in a primary or caucus was conducted March 12-13. The survey was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research.

I’ve known this for quite awhile, most people identify with a candidate based on their perception of him or her and not because of the facts about where they position themselves on issues. I’ve even fallen for that – does the name Ross Perot ring a bell? So this polling data doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Unfortunately, what it also points out is that we who are on the secure the borders and crack down on those who choose to break existing laws and enter the country illegally side are much more passionate in our opinion but aren’t looking at much of a choice this election while the amnesty doves are in like pigs in manure whether they really care or not. However, I do believe that the McCain numbers are skewed somewhat because Republicans who felt they were down to an inevitable candidate decided to vote for McCain in an effort to unify the party while holding their noses on the immigration issue.

Perception indeed is reality, but I will continue to make the effort to change minds and hearts on the issues I care about by presenting and adding my two cents where needed to reasoned arguments such as the one the CIS was gracious enough to send my way.

Yes, it was an April Fool’s joke…but it was noticed!

Judging from the readership numbers today, a lot of you read this morning’s post about the ersatz energy breakthrough. It has an interesting story behind it.

I got an e-mail from Bob McCarty about 10 days ago with his intention to pull the April Fool’s prank and asking if I would help him spread it. I thought it was pretty humorous and agreed, so I set it to come up later this morning because I wanted it to be not as obvious as if I’d placed it at 12:02 a.m. as he suggested. Then I wrote the parts around the blockquote just to give it a little more local flavor and hopefully a bit more believability. I’m not sure how the other bloggers who also helped out did their take on it, but hopefully they had a bit of fun with the spoof too.

Bob’s prank did get mentioned on the news.com website as part of a larger story about April Fool’s pranks, so he was excited about it. And what the heck, it hopefully gave us all a laugh after all the serious news about things like this Baltimore Sun story by Andrea K. Walker about a grocery strike averted.

So tomorrow – or later today, since this will serve as an early midday post – I’ll get back to other more weighty (perhaps a poor choice of words given my photoworthiness) topics. There’s a bit of a backlog of interesting stuff on my plate I need to get to.

Doing Joe two better

If you’re here because you followed a link, read on and you’ll get it. First, the title subject:

Regularly readers of Salisbury News will notice that Joe Albero does a “one year ago” post highlighting whatever was in the news that day a year prior. Sometimes it’s a nice reminder while other times we’d rather forget.

In my case, April 1st is my blogiversary (if that’s indeed a word) and tonight’s post marks three years of this personal writing odyssey. I shudder to think just how many words I’ve typed out over the time, my best guess from knowing the number and approximate length of my average post is roughly 600,000 words. There have been close to 900 actual posts here on monoblogue (this is post number 902 but not all have been posts, that number also counts a few pages I’ve created) as well as the 100+ I did for its predecessor blog called ttown’s right wing conspiracy, prior to buying my own domain name and server space.

What I’ll do this evening is link back to the other two anniversary posts as well as the “Introduction” post that started this whole process in the wee hours of April 2, 2005. (The Blogger account was created on the 1st though, so I celebrate on April Fool’s Day.)

In 2007, I called the occasion Blogiversary number 2. It’s amazing that I’ve cranked out almost 500 posts since then.

2006 brought what I called One year in the books. Man, that was post number 85 so obviously I skipped a few days in 2005-06.

And here’s the post that started it all, Introduction. Dig the color scheme I ended up with. It’ll be interesting to see my count this Friday because I still have my Site Meter active there and get 3-6 views a week.

I hope you enjoy the trips down my personal Memory Lane.

Also, I had an interesting challenge from Oceanshaman. I’m supposed to write a six-word memoir. So much for being verbose, eh? I already linked to the post so number 3 is accomplished, and I’m choosing to omit any items for number 2. In a moment I’ll get to number 4, but here’s the six words.

Marching to my own personal drummer.

I think it fits pretty well, don’t you?

Now the tough part, because some of the five I’d choose were taken. So I’m going to expand the range a bit with other regional bloggers.

David at Soccer Dad, one of my earliest supporters and provider of much-welcomed encouragement;

Attila at Pillage Idiot, who helped to start the Maryland Bloggers Alliance I belong to;

Mike Netherland at the appropriately named Mike’s Nether Land, a heckuva nice guy and fellow Harris supporter early on;

Elbert at That’s Elbert with an E, because he’s a frequent commenter who runs a real Delaware blog;

As for the fifth one, I’m going to cheat a bit and not directly link to it because it’s my daughter’s blog and hers is a restricted blog. But she’ll be interesting to hear from.

There, folks, is your fab five and it’ll be intriguing to see what happens when I refer back to this in a year’s time.

An energy breakthrough?

If we’re hearing news about a trucker’s strike today, you can thank the alert nose for news that Missouri-based blogger Bob McCarty has and writes about at his site, called (fittingly enough) Bob McCarty Writes. (By the way, he followed up on that yesterday with an opinion post.)

I get an occasional e-mail from him when he has a post he feels I might be interested in, and today he sent me word of an interesting scientific breakthrough. I guess I have to learn to do more than hunt-and-peck typing, but given the rates Delmarva Power charges this certainly would be worth looking into:

Researchers at the American Petroleum Research Institute’s Laboratory for Fuels announced today they have developed an economical means via which they can use the kinetic energy generated by users of computer keyboards to make a dent in the nation’s energy bill.

“The fact that many Americans spend eight hours or more per day typing on computer keyboards caused us to explore the feasibility of harnessing the energy being expended by computer users as they type,” said Dr. Isaac M. Postor, CEO at the St. Louis-based institute which receives a majority of its funding from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“What we found is that the typical American office worker executes an average of 20,000 keystrokes per day,” Postor continued. “When harnessed using the nanotechnology we’ve developed, that number of keystrokes can power a 60-watt light bulb for one hour.”

Not yet named, that nanotechnology device appears similar in size and dimensions to a typical USB flash drive and, in fact, plugs into a computer’s USB port, Postor explained. The difference, however, is that this flash drive features a thin cord protruding from one end which plugs into any standard 110-volt electrical outlet.

“In essence, small nanogenerators inside this device enable computer users to send electricity back to their utility provider and thereby reduce their power consumption by several dollars per month,” Postor added. “Since more than half of Americans use computer on a regular — if not daily — basis, this device promises to make a significant dent in the ever-increasing energy costs.”

Postor expects to be able to market the device at a suggested retail price under $30, meaning that most users will realize returns on investment within one to two years, depending upon the amount of time spent at the keyboard.

For more information, click here to visit the institute’s web site.

Let’s see, between doing two posts a day at monoblogue and the typing I do at my “real” job, plus the e-mails I send out to friends – yeah, I think I’m looking at a pretty handsome payback. We’ll see how Dr. Postor’s research works out in a year’s time.

Again, thanks to Bob McCarty for bringing this to our attention.