Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Rites of Spring
"Tomorrow we'll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!"
-- from "One Day More," in Les Miserables, the musical
Les Mis is a pretty stunning musical. The songs are occasionally silly, the lyrics more so. But there's no denying its narrative propulsion. Certainly using Victor Hugo's novel as the base doesn't hurt matters, but the song that closes the first act, "One Day More," masterfully intertwines all the disparate plot threads and puts them in the same place at the same time. 50-odd people singing in a major key as loud as they can has a way of leaving you in the auditorium as the intermission lights go up going "Whoa..."
Even if the song is basically just about how tomorrow will soon be here, which is about as certain an occurrence as we can bet on. There's not much a lot of plot in the song, so the fact that you can wring a huge closing number out of that is pretty amazing.
I was thinking of this as I read the Republic's first D-Backs spring training article, this one on Matt Kata. It's pretty much a puff piece, as Kata dusts off a few bon mots from the Crash Davis Media Relations Guide ("team player"). But most of it seems to be written on the "spring training story" template that Bill Simmons discussed a few years back. If I had to fit Kata into the framework, I'd have to put him into the "Guy With Something To Prove" framework.
Frankly, the most useful piece of information from the article is that Cintron "has moved over to second base" -- that's news to me. I mean, it's not news that he played second, but I would have thought that the D-Backs would leave their options open heading into Spring Training -- does this make Craig Counsell backup shortstop? Does this make me backup shortstop? (I hope not, 'cause my UZR sucks.)
One more day… one day more!
*********************
Jim's mysterious post from earlier this week was clarified yesterday as he announced that he'd be joining the ever-growing group of Blez's SportsBLOGS as the Diamondbacks representative at the AZSnakepit. The news that Jim is also looking for a job, along with Blez's announcement that he was recently released from his job, would make me a little nervous about joining the SportsBLOGS universe, bad things happening in threes, and all that. (I'm kidding, folks. I kid because I love.) Seriously, I hope Jim finds something that he can live with and lets him continue to blog. I'm glad he got the recognition -- he's a fun writer to read and an astute observer of the team.
Plus, Jim's move means I'll soon be able to describe this blog as the "oldest continuously-operating-under-the-same-name Diamondbacks blog focusing on the major leagues." That counts for something, no?
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!"
-- from "One Day More," in Les Miserables, the musical
Les Mis is a pretty stunning musical. The songs are occasionally silly, the lyrics more so. But there's no denying its narrative propulsion. Certainly using Victor Hugo's novel as the base doesn't hurt matters, but the song that closes the first act, "One Day More," masterfully intertwines all the disparate plot threads and puts them in the same place at the same time. 50-odd people singing in a major key as loud as they can has a way of leaving you in the auditorium as the intermission lights go up going "Whoa..."
Even if the song is basically just about how tomorrow will soon be here, which is about as certain an occurrence as we can bet on. There's not much a lot of plot in the song, so the fact that you can wring a huge closing number out of that is pretty amazing.
I was thinking of this as I read the Republic's first D-Backs spring training article, this one on Matt Kata. It's pretty much a puff piece, as Kata dusts off a few bon mots from the Crash Davis Media Relations Guide ("team player"). But most of it seems to be written on the "spring training story" template that Bill Simmons discussed a few years back. If I had to fit Kata into the framework, I'd have to put him into the "Guy With Something To Prove" framework.
Frankly, the most useful piece of information from the article is that Cintron "has moved over to second base" -- that's news to me. I mean, it's not news that he played second, but I would have thought that the D-Backs would leave their options open heading into Spring Training -- does this make Craig Counsell backup shortstop? Does this make me backup shortstop? (I hope not, 'cause my UZR sucks.)
One more day… one day more!
*********************
Jim's mysterious post from earlier this week was clarified yesterday as he announced that he'd be joining the ever-growing group of Blez's SportsBLOGS as the Diamondbacks representative at the AZSnakepit. The news that Jim is also looking for a job, along with Blez's announcement that he was recently released from his job, would make me a little nervous about joining the SportsBLOGS universe, bad things happening in threes, and all that. (I'm kidding, folks. I kid because I love.) Seriously, I hope Jim finds something that he can live with and lets him continue to blog. I'm glad he got the recognition -- he's a fun writer to read and an astute observer of the team.
Plus, Jim's move means I'll soon be able to describe this blog as the "oldest continuously-operating-under-the-same-name Diamondbacks blog focusing on the major leagues." That counts for something, no?
Comments:
Appreciate the kind words, Stefan! Of course, I might just do the occasional post on BIaDH, purely to keep it active and retain my title. :-)
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: 10:35 PM
: 10:35 PM
