The forcast is for rain, but I’ll be at my computer starting at 5 p.m., live-blogging either Game 3 or whatever crappy reruns Fox shows while we wait for the skies to clear.

5:00: The tarp is on the field. Joe Buck says “It is pouring and the wind is whipping around.” Great.

5:01: Fox puts the weather map on the screen. Buck says the good news is the rain is supposed to clear eventually. Some old guy says there’s every reason to believe the field will be dry in half an hour. I’m sold. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most people with 9-5 jobs, we umpbumpers like to email each other rather than do actual work. Today’s email topic: the MVP voting, and specifically Umpbump’s MVP selections.

Paul: So just looking over our MVP picks so far, i realized something - why aren’t there more MVP candidates out west? So far, the only one of us to mention a player west of Houston was Nick’s pick of Martin. We’ve had Pujols, Berkman, Han-Ram, Utley, Howard, Chipper, Beltran, Mauer, Pedroia, Quentin, A-Rod, Youk, Huff, Sizemore, Halladay, and Martin.

Sarah: well let’s think–the NL West sucked so hard you can’t really have an MVP from any of those teams, I think. While I love Martin, I don’t think he really had that kind of year—the obvious MVP on that team in the second half was Manny Ramirez, without whom they would not be in the playoffs. But Manny disqualified himself by being a dick. Then there’s the AL West. First, the Angels. Whom would you pick from them? Again, the player who has carried them down the stretch was Tex, a midseason acquisition. Their starting pitchers have been the season-long key for them, but I don’t think any of them has had the kind of year that could crack the position-player-heavy MVP. The Rangers had some tantalizing players, but a) didn’t make the playoffs and b) don’t have a real clear candidate. Bradley didn’t play in enough games (IMNSHO) and the sentimental fave in July, then-triple-crown threat Josh Hamilton, faded during the second half. I think we generally have an East Coast bias on UmpBump, but I also think the West is just weak right now in both leagues. :-/

Paul: I came really close to putting Hamilton at #4 on my list. I wouldn’t say he faded in the second half. He still OPSed .874, which isn’t that much worse than his first half. I just think the media stopped caring because it had ceased to be a novelty story.  And voting for Lincecum isn’t a terrible idea.

Coley: I didn’t vote for Hamilton because he played for the Rangers and the Rangers sucked this season. They finished 21 games out of first place and four games under .500. I don’t think a player’s team needs to make the postseason in order for that player to get my vote. But the team does have to be good, and the Rangers weren’t good. The Cardinals were good, they just got stuck in a tough division. Ditto the Astros.

Paul: Texas was -66 in run differential. Houston was -31. and yes, the al west sucked. but they still had to play al central and east teams. so i think the two cancel out. To me, there’s not that big of a difference between the two teams. Besides, the Rangers led the AL in scoring. It’s not Hamilton’s fault that the pitchers are terrible.

Coley: I don’t use run differential when I evaluate if a team was good or not. I use wins and losses. And I agree it wasn’t hamilton’s fault that his team’s pitching was bad. But the reality is good players on bad teams don’t get MVP consideration. That’s how we’ve chosen to interpret the word “valuable.” If you want to argue that we should reconsider our interpretation of valuable, I’m all for it. Frankly, I’d go a step further and argue that we should get rid of the MVP award and give a Player of the Year award instead.

Paul: Ah. Therein lies the differences. I didn’t pick who I thought would win. I picked who I thought should, and W-L records and the talent level of his teammates don’t factor into my decisions. If you disagree, that’s fine, not gonna argue.

Coley: I didn’t pick who I thought would win. I picked who I thought should win based on what have become nearly universal standards: that a player is awesome, and that his team is a winner. Again, I think the latter standard is silly. But it doesn’t make any sense to ignore it, when everyone with a vote thinks it’s important.

Paul: i think you’ll at least agree that conventional wisdom isn’t always correct. and if you personally think it’s silly, why can’t you ignore it?

Coley: You’re probably right, Paul. It does make sense to ignore conventional wisdom if you don’t agree with it. You’ll probably sleep better at night. But the price you pay for ignoring the realities of MVP voting is that your opinions may be easier to ignore.

Paul: touche.

So after all the speculation and theorizing about whether MurrayChass.com is a real site written by the real Murray Chass, who used to write for the real New York Times, Sarah finally had the brilliantly simple idea of just calling up the real Murray Chass and seeing what he would say.

Wisely mentioning that she writes for the Boston Metro and glossing over the fact that she also considers herself a blogger (preferring instead to refer to “websites,” which, after all, UmpBump is), Sarah said she had heard some internet chatter that the site was a clever hoax, that she’d been discussing it with some colleagues, and that in the end she figured she’d better go to the horse’s mouth.

Chass was very intrigued as to why people thought the site might be fake and peppered Sarah with questions about that, while not giving away any information. In the end, since Sarah works for a newspaper (”something that’s actually printed on paper,”) and since she actually called him (he did acknowledge receiving “some emails” asking the same question) he said he would confirm that it was really his site.

So in the end, UmpBump’s suspicions turned out to be untrue. But you know what they say in journalism: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

First, New York Times columnist Murray Chass took the buyout.

Then he started a blog, except he isn’t calling it a blog, even though it clearly is a blog (Wordpress is blogging software, after all).

The Big Lead was all over this story. Deadspin covered it too.

But we at Umpbump were a bit skeptical.

Sure, the site’s url is murraychass.com. But anybody could buy that url. There’s no guarantee that Murray Chass is in anyway associated with the website that bears his name.

The screed on the site’s “about” page is almost too intentionally-unintentionally-hilariously Chass-like to be true. Yet, if the blog is a fake, why hasn’t Chass stepped forward to say so?

We did a little digging through the site’s CSS code and found a name, Ryan, and an email address. Jackpot!

Alejandro emailed Ryan and asked if Murray Chass was really behind murraychass.com. Here’s what Ryan wrote back:

Alejandro,

I cannot comment on your inquiry. However, I’d be more than happy to let you know you should direct your question(s) to comments@murraychass.com for a more official response.

Thank you,

Ryan

We directed our inquiry to the email address Ryan suggested. A few days went by. And then this – a post on murraychass.com asking if “the folks at umpbump (do) not have anything better to do but wonder about the author of this site?”. Ouch.

The post concludes with this cryptic line:

Perhaps by now the umpbump guys have figured it out for themselves; they should be able to figure it out. If they haven‘t, though, they will have to wonder for a while longer.

We’re still wondering.

We’re wondering why Ryan promised to answer our question, but never did?

We’re wondering if Murray Chass even knows there’s a website out there that bears his name?

We’re wondering what it will take to get to the bottom of this mystery?

But one thing we’re sure of: we won’t rest until we know who is behind murraychass.com.

Stay tuned.

First of all, dear UmpBump readers, an apology is in order. We had a very heated exchange today with our hosting provider due to their decision to pull down the site.

As a result, we had to strip most of our sidebar links and other things (ie, like having two posts on the home page). Like my mom says, you gotta look at the positives, so we’ll be redesigning the site to increase efficiency and avoid database resource “over-use” (btw, any WordPress theme designers out there that want to contribute, let us know).

And now, as an apology for the downtime I present to you all this special video I came across today, featuring the beautiful HBW alumna Juliana Ramirez and a new HBW inductee, Leslie Holliday, wife of All-Star Slugger Matt Holliday, appearing in a beauty-at-the-ballpark special on the Today Show.

Très, très belles.

Yogi Berra lip balm, though? Talk about odd…

Umpbump goes both ways.

Wait. Let me rephrase.

Umpbumpers are givers and takers.

Still sounds wrong. One more time.

A collision between player/manager and umpire does not necessarily have to be instigated by the player/manager. The inverse still holds true.

There. Nothing sexy about that.

Anyhow, it’s true. While most of us think of an umpbump as an act committed by an angry player or manager, Tuesday night’s game between the Mets and Mariners proved that this is not necessarily the case.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Carlos Beltran takes a called strike that he thought was low and verbalizes his opinion to home plate umpire Brian Runge. In turn, Runge takes off his mask, approaches Beltan and says something back. For some reason, Runge then cleans home plate (which already looked whiter than a Kenny Loggins concert) while continuing to have a terse dialogue with Mets centerfielder. The new New York manager, Jerry Manuel, then runs out of the dugout to make sure Beltran doesn’t say something to get himself ejected. And then… that happened:

(NOTE: Crap. Video was removed from the site)

It’s clear from the video that Manuel wasn’t exactly having a friendly exchange with Runge from the get-go. But it’s also clear that Runge lunges forward and bumps Manuel in the chest. Understandably upset, Manuel reacts for one second before Runge decides to throw Manuel out.

Let’s repeat that again. The umpire bumps the manager. Manager reacts to the contact. Umpire throws manager out of the game. Makes total sense, right?

After Manuel’s exit, Beltran now is fuming at the way his manager was treated and again lets Runge know how he felt. And naturally, Beltran is tossed as well.

After the game, here’s what Carlos had to say about the incident:

“After what he did to Jerry I really got mad. Because he really bumped Jerry to get an excuse to throw him out of the game. I just let him know that that was weak. This is the first time that I’ve been so angry in my career and I feel like I have a reason. If I get punished for my actions, he should get punished for his actions, also, because that was horrible.”

And here’s what Brian Runge had to say:

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

Classy guy, that Brian Runge.

Video from SNY.TV via MetsBlog.

Not to be confused with girdle, I came accross this cool little tool that allows you to  render a bunch of words into an artistic text cloud. You can adjust colors, layout and fonts. Since we’ve got an unruly tag cloud ourselves, I decided to go with it and this is what I came up with:

The only caveat is that our two-word tags (like player’s names and two-word team names), were interpreted as spearate words. But it’s still interesting that “Mark” is the most common word in our tag database; it’s obviously a popular baseball name.

Too bad we can’t use the cloud above (or at least, a two-word version of it) for reals.

[Wordle]

If you haven’t noticed by now, we have a new button on our site. It’s on the right side of the page, between the “banter” and recent posts. Click it and add Umpbump’s new blidget to your blog or Facebook page!

What’s a blidget, you ask? It’s a widget for blogs! Clever, eh?

For the tech-deficient, this blidget is just one more way to keep track of what Umpbump is up to. It’s a little device that you can add to your site that keeps an updated list of all of our most recent posts.

What are you waiting for? Add the Umpbump blidget today!

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to become a fan of Umpbump on Facebook, or befriend us on Myspace.