World Series Giants!

Reading USA today gave me an insight of where the two teams in the World Series were made. Baseball has almost always enjoyed a unique position in sports. Early on it was deemed by the courts not to be subject to the antitrust laws that effect businesses and other sports. This means that teams can get together and exchange players and contracts without fear of being charged with conspiring to effect trade. Other sports are not allowed to do this.

Baseball has no cap on collective cost of teams. The New York Yankees can and do spend more than any other team in baseball. It does not always result in capturing a World Series or for that matter even being in one. Sometimes the best players do not yield the best results. Ask the Giants about the history of pitcher Zito. He is one of the highest paid pitchers in the major league baseball and he did not even make the playoff roster.

Each baseball season is a long one. The endless travel and athletes have to work hard to maintain physical abilities to keep them in the premier baseball league throughout the season. Its come down to this. They World Series. Can one team from the National League (the San Francisco Giants) beat one team from the American League (Texas Rangers.)

The Texas Rangers have never been to the World Series. Why? Because Texas as a whole is more focused on football. If you catch the Disney Dennis Quaid movie "The Rookie" the poor kids in small town Texas could not even buy basball socks mid 60s. They certainly have had a beautiful new park since the 90's. Still they were not fielding a competent team for World Series play until now. It takes an owner with clever vision to bring that about. They are here this year after clubbing the Yankees over the head.

So how did the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers get into the World Series. In both cases they traded and acquired a number of players at the trading deadlines and a parlayed them into a winning team. The San Francisco Giants are dependent upon their pitchers and have a park that is very pitcher friendly. the Rangers have invested in offense and scoring many runs with big batters. Their park is a pitchers nightmare but a hitter's delight.

In both cases, both teams traded to increase their strengths and build against their weaknesses.

Here is the rundown on how these teams were made.

Texas San Francisco

Drafted 7 9
Acquired in Trade 13 4
Signed as Free Agents 3 10
Selected in Rule 5 draft 1 0
Signed as amateur free agent 0 1
Claimed on waivers 1 1

Source USA today research


Despite this, the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers take great pride in the number of significant players they have developed through their farm organizations. As USA today notes,"both teams would not be their without wheeling and dealing that continued as long as the rules allowed."

The Rangers acquired high profile pitcher Cliff Lee in early July. The Giants fine tuned their bullpen at the July 31 trade deadline to waiver claims and deals all the way through August. Onlookers to the scene claimed that both clubs were headed to overkill in particular areas.

The major players in this shift and gamble were the Giants Brian Sabean and the Ranger's Jon Daniels.

The Giants manager Bruce Bochy said "I compare them to the Dirty Dozen. That's the way they they play, they've coalesced into a team that goes out there to win. Its nice to have a group of unselfish players who have one agenda and that is to get to postseason. There is no complaining. They have accepted their roles, which they probably were real happy (about).

The San Fransico Giants have won two games in their home park. The question remains can they do it in Texas? Or as my mother-in-law would say can they "mess with Texas."

: ) Pat

Making Photo Books

How do you share your photos?

In the 60's we pulled out the Kodak carousel projector when we had people over for dinner and we needed some after dinner entertainment. Slides were loaded in and photos were shared. Pet peeves were blank spots in the carousel when the screen went blank. Some people got tired and feel asleep and snored loudly after the dinner meal. The slide show became a poor way to share your treasured memories.

Affordable hand held photography followed. The audience could look in a more intimate setting the photos to be shared. The media was still 35 mm or newly invented "disks" and hand held photo albums. The photographer could share photos in any light with a friend or two without getting out the projector and waiting until dark to share the memories.

Slide shows made a come back when web pages were designed.When I was making them, I even figured out a code to put multiple photos timed through the webto make a slide show. The audience needed to be sitting at a computer however to see the photos that were displayed along with the text. The computer got personal photography back to the setting of commentary with the photos as slide show and photo albums had done before. The computer screen took the place of the projector. The computer screen usually made this photography more intimate and user interactive. Now people use facebook or twitter to share their stories and photos instantaneously. The sagas are short and the photos are quick and often poorly formed.

Dad has been real good about framing my favorite travel photos. My Epson stylus photo 1800 does a great job of cranking out photos that are 13 by 19 inches. We have been rotating framed photos of our trip and it is really great to have these beauties on the wall. Not everyone has a lot of wall space or a good framer. Wall space and big framed photos is another mode to share your memories.

Along the continuum back around the horn, personal photo books are starting to bring back the element that the photo album had. Their advantage is that the photo books are usually edited and contain a printed story in parts that many photo albums were missing. Again we are morphing into the stand alone from the personal annotated works of the 80's and 90's. They can be fingered with photos not being ruined by their display. They are more expensive but multiple copies may be made and shared.

I have just completed two personal photo books. Both of the books were printed by Apple directly from Apple's professional photography program Aperature 3. The product is shipped off electronically to Central Point Oregon and the books arrive in beautiful printed form in about a week.

There are other players in the photo book world besides Apple. Snapfish is a favorite vendor for my friend Tom who makes photo books of his light house quests. I see that Costco is also getting into the personal photobook business too.

Some books are hard bound and very large. My first one is of that nature. It is 23 pages of Glacier National Park in July. Some photos stretch across both pages. In this book because it is a photo/picture book without a significant amount of writing has no more than one photo per page. The second book that I made is a book that celebrates the various stops and attractions along the way. It is a much smaller book and it has some pages were two or more photos and considerably more text is used. I am going to make sure that all of those participants on the cruise will get a copy. It is softbound, smaller overall, and reflects more of the journey than the single subject Glacier Bay book affords.

I can hardly wait until the second book arrives. The Glacier Bay book I feel is a real success. After all our homes have only so much room for framed photos. Glacier Bay is truly a special place. Its magnificence can barely be shown in a book. I am hoping that the trip overall will be nicely annotated by the photo book.

Consider making a photo book with your latest trip photos.

: ) Pat