Two teams, only one team of destiny.

(photo from Imago/zumapress.com)
Before the Women's World Cup began, the German team was installed as the prohibitive favorites to win. Instead, the final in Frankfurt will be the United States against Japan, a match-up that looked stunningly unlikely just two weekends ago. Both the Yanks and the Japanese lost their last matches in group play, and so had to face very tough quarterfinal opponents, U.S. vs. Brazil and Japan vs. Germany.

The U.S. beat the Brazilians and Marta on penalty kicks. This was a big win, but not technically an upset. When the Japanese beat Germany in extra time 1-0. This was a huge upset.

The U.S. women are ranked number one in the world, and this finally might be the time for Abby Wambach (white headband, far right) to be the star on a winning World Cup team. She was the Next Big Thing when the superstars of the nineties were retiring. The Americans won the Olympic medals during her tenure as the number one goal scoring threat, but not the World Cup this century.

(photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP)

It pains me to write this, but I don't think they are the best team on the field this Sunday. If size were all that mattered, the game would not be played. It's going to look like a high school team playing middle schoolers when the U.S. plays Japan, but after a few minutes it should be clear that the middle schoolers are really good. The press will focus on stars, and Homare Sawa is the big name for the Japanese, but the real story is how well they pass and maintain possession.

It's madness to compare a woman's team to FC Barcelona right now. Heck, it's probably a mistake to compare any men's national team to Barça, they are so crazy good. But expect the Japanese to put on a clinic on Sunday.

In the past two weeks, the U.S. lost to the Swedes and the Swedes were crushed by the Japanese. The U.S. has to hope for some kind of rock/paper/scissors situation or they are going to get run into the ground.

For any U.S. fans who stop by - and I am a fan myself, by the way - take heart in the fact that I suck at prediction. I thought the Dutch could keep up with Spain in the men's World Cup final last year.

Oopsie.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, there will be a big screen up in the Civic Center Plaza right across from City Hall where you can watch the game with a crowd for free. It's easy to get to on BART and it can be a lot of fun. My blog buddy (and real life buddy) sfmike has reported on the World Cup games there so far here and here.

I saw the Giants win the World Series there and it was a blast. The crowd probably won't be the same size, but it's the place to be at 11:45 a.m. on Sunday.

Hope to see you there.

Stuff I like: Ball FourPart 3: A short simple vignette. With obscenities.

A lot of the best stories in Ball Four are not the clever things Jim Bouton says (and he says several), but instead Bouton as reporter, re-telling the stories others tell him. Here are a few paragraphs that illustrate that point nicely.

In the bullpen tonight Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually early practice before the fans or reporters got there.

He'd go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, "My name is Ted fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball."

He'd swing and hit a line drive.

"Jesus H. Christ himself couldn't get me out."

And he'd hit another.

Then he'd say, "Here comes Jim Bunning, Jim fucking Bunning and that little shit slider of his."

Wham!

"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that shit."

Blam!

"I'm Ted fucking Williams!"

Sock!

Someone invited me to Google Plus.

And I accepted because, obviously, I am not wasting enough time in front of the computer currently.

I tried Twitter and Facebook, and they aren't habits with me. People keep asking me to be connected to them on LinkedIn and if I know a name I accept, but I have nothing to add.


Is there a social network for cyber hermits? Maybe that what MySpace has become.

Actually, I think writing a blog where I average about a comment a day is almost the perfect example of a cyber hermit.

Maybe I've found my true calling.

1960s Summer Dance Party 2011.

You Can't Hurry Love Diana Ross & the Supremes
Stupid Girl Garbage
Patricia Pérez Prado
This Old Heart of Mine Tammi Terrell
Just One Look Doris Troy
I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) The Four Tops
Time Is Tight Booker T. & the MGs
Picture Book Fresh Young Fellows
My Baby Just Cares For Me Nina Simone
Shop Around Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
Too Experienced The Bodysnatchers
Don't Bring Me Down Electric Light Orchestra

Bonus track: 54-46 Was My Number Toots & the Maytals

This season's dance party is for really old folks. It starts with the Supremes and then the DJ tries to sneak in a song less than twenty years old. Some unhappy customer complains about the hippie disco stuff, so the DJ goes even older school with the great Pérez Prado.

The average age of these songs is collecting Social Security, but I still love them all. Maybe because I'm an old coot myself.

Give it to me... one time. (HUH!)

Give it to me... two times. (HUH!HUH!)

Give it to me... three times! (HUH!HUH!HUH!)

Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme gimme...

C'mon, put your replacement hip to good use. Get up and dance!

Dodecagons, hexagons and squares.

The big blue and green shapes have twelve sides each, so they are dodecagons. The yellow hexagons and black squares should be more familiar.

I really like tesselations, as should be obvious to any regular reader by now.

Here's a close-up where none of the wooden table is visible.

Stuff I like: Ball FourPart 2: Jim Bouton and Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It's the rare person that would put Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' famous book On Death and Dying together with Jim Bouton's baseball diary Ball Four. Doing searches on both Google and Bing for the two names together, the only things they have in common is their best known books were published only one year apart, 1969 and 1970 respectively, and both books made the list of Books of the Century published by the New York Public Library.

So, forty one years too late, let me be that rare person. Kubler-Ross should have read Ball Four and Bouton should certainly have read On Death and Dying, because they both could learn a thing or two.

"Did you hear who died today?" In baseball parlance, that meant somebody on a major league club got sent to the minors. Jim Bouton in spring training worries about this on a regular basis. He knows he's marginal, even on an expansion team, and every pitcher sent down to the minor league Vancouver Mounties means his head has been spared from the chopping block.

But being sent to the minors isn't really death because there are way too many resurrections. No, the beginning of the book deals with the death of Jim Bouton's fastball and Bouton going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Early in the book, he hopes his new pitch the knuckleball will be a strong set-up for his fastball, putting hitters off guard. Every once in a while, he writes that his arm feels like it did four years earlier when he was still a guy who blew the third strike past over-matched major leaguers. He looks at other pitchers and thinks he has to be better than them, especially Steve Barber who never gets and work and is always in the training room. His anger and depression are mainly focused on his immediate superiors, pitching coach Sal Maglie and manager Joe Schultz, neither of whom has Bouton's complete confidence or respect.

Though he isn't cut in spring training, a few weeks into the season, Bouton "dies" and is sent to Vancouver. There he has success with the knuckleball, and finally he finds acceptance. His fastball is dead. He is a knuckleball pitcher, hoping to emulate the success of Phil Niekro and Hoyt Wilhelm. Someone tells him his knuckler moves faster than Wilhelm's, and he credits his old fastball technique for the difference, though he knows throwing a real fast ball hurts like hell and the knuckler takes almost nothing out of his arm.

The change in Bouton's attitude from the beginning of spring training to the time he is resurrected to the big leagues is remarkable, and the five stages of grief can be seen touching all the bases.

Stuff I like: Ball FourPart 1: Introduction.

I've been doing a lot of review recently, watching movies and TV shows I liked when I was younger, re-reading favorite books. This week, I was able to get Ball Four by Jim Bouton out of the Oakland Public Library, opening the pages again forty one years after it was first published. It was a must-read book for any teenage boy in 1970 who liked sports even a little bit. Two friends of mine from high school, Andy and Steve, sometimes check in on the blog. They both read it back in the day. We talked about it for weeks. I would overhear conversations in the hall and on the school bus between guys I barely knew, and I'd hear them repeat stories and jokes from the book. We didn't use the phrase "water cooler material" back then, but that's what Ball Four was for adolescent males in 1970, provided your parents let you read it.

The book is the diary of Jim Bouton recounting his 1969 season playing for several teams, both in the majors and in the minors. Sports diaries had been published before, but Ball Four was significantly different in two major ways.

1. Bouton had been a top pitcher for the Yankees, but when this book is written, he is nearly washed up and struggling to make the club on The Seattle Pilots, a first year expansion team. (The team didn't work out in Seattle and move to Milwaukee the next year, changing the name to the Brewers.) Most diaries before this were by stars or superstars on winning teams, often teams that won the pennant in the year in question.

2. Bouton told the truth. He told about all that he saw that he found interesting: the funny, the petty, the ridiculous, the crude. Like other adolescents loved Catcher in the Rye for its raw language, my friends and I loved Ball Four, not only for the jokes and new permutations of obscenities, but for the stories it told and the characters we met.

I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but it's a quick read and I should be finished soon enough, probably by the weekend. I can honestly say I am getting more out of it now with the gift of hindsight than I did when I first read it when it was fresh.

When I was a kid, I thought it was funny and I still do. This may be because my sense of humor is still at the stunted adolescent level, I can't be sure. Here's a way to test yourself. Sing the following lyric.

Summertime.... and your mother is easy.

If you laughed at that, you'll laugh at Ball Four.

But the big thing is that when I was a kid reading about the escapades Bouton the adult and his teammates, the emotional tug wasn't the same as it is now that I'm a man far past the age of thinking about breaking into the majors, reading the words of a man in the twilight of his career.

In any case, get ready for about a week of posts about Ball Four, a honest book about flawed people, including the author, disguised as a filthy, funny book about sports.