White Sox: Winners for a day.

Zach's song of the week: "Flathead" by the Fratellis. I got home early one day, turned on the TV, and by some stroke of luck they actually had a video on MTV. I heard the song, immediately downloaded the entire CD, a bad habit of mine, and the song sucked me in. I get into music lulls when I'm not sure what to get next (The Shins' "Wincing the Night Away" is an example of a follow-up that I haven't loved yet) and this was a welcome jolt of power-pop.

Speaking of music, I was at the Braves/White Sox game last night. I like the concept of intro music. At last year's AUFL draft, we had intro music for each team in the first round, followed by intro music suggested by someone else for the second. I was surprised to hear "Epic" by Faith No More (might have been Craig Wilson). The intro music was very short, like three seconds, before the at-bat started. As for the game, it reminded me of one thing. Baseball is a tedious sport in a short-attention-span culture. The pauses are much greater than the actual action. I know this is the case in football as well, but things seem to be in motion all the time and the clock helps with the idea that time is passing and you only get so much. Maybe the reason why the tedium is difficult to handle is that the giant 100-foot jumbotron is constantly showing something. There are contests every half-inning. The Titans have something like this, where some poor schmuck has to find random people in the stadium, ask them a trivia question, and give them prizes. This works at a football game because it happens three or four times in a game. At the baseball game it seemed to happen nearly every half-inning. I think the reason why they do it is that the poor person has to actually try to get the answer right. In the six years I've gone to Titans game, a question has been answered incorrectly once. We like predictable happy endings, which explains the phenomenon of the chick flick.

The game itself wasn't too exciting. I did enjoy the result. Mark Buehrle, destined to get a Zito-esque contract this offseason, looked shaky in giving up a homer to Chipper Jones in the first. After that mistake, he was solid, pitching seven innings. In trivial matters, Buehrle and Zito had two of the four slowest fastballs recorded by starters in MLB last year. I'm guessing that Tim Wakefield made the list as well.

The White Sox seemed to want to win this game more than the Braves. The Braves used five pitchers, only two of whom will be major contributors this year. Chuck James gave up two runs in four innings and didn't seem tired. Podsednik and Thome didn't start. Alex Cintron played third while Joe Crede was the designated hitter. I was glad that they didn't play by NL rules, although Chris Woodward as the Braves' DH in the nine hole was amusing. In the seventh inning a guy wearing jersey 85 with no name replaced Jermaine Dye. I later found out it was Ricardo Nanita. He's not what you would call a major prospect.

Matt Thornton getting the save and Bobby Jenks pitching the 8th was interesting. I doubt it means anything.

The crowd was sparse, and there were a lot of White Sox fans, most wearing World Series gear. There may not be many of us, but we buy our share of merchandise. I did notice that most Sox fans didn't have player-specific stuff, while Braves fans mainly had Francouer and Jones jerseys. I still miss Frank Thomas.