Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, August 26, 2011
There was the Swine Flu thread, so why not the Hurricane thread. Isn’t that right, New York Mets and the rest of the Northeast teams?
The New York Mets say they have postponed Saturday and Sunday’s games against the Atlanta Braves because of Hurricane Irene.
Both games will be rescheduled as a single-admission doubleheader on Sept. 8 beginning at 4:10 p.m.
Major League Baseball already had moved Sunday’s games at Philadelphia and Boston to Saturday to make them part of day-night doubleheaders. The Phillies play the Marlins and the Red Sox play the Athletics.
So to the primates on the Eastern coastal regions- stay safe.
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I asked him if the Yankees were at the end of a particularly long homestand.
How strong would the storm have to be over Baltimore for John Sterling and Michael Kay to be swept away?
-- MWE
Imma be pissed if all we get is drizzle.
Well it got my race tomorrow postponed until late September, so I'm none too happy about that.
should be fun.
Hope this whole Irene thing turns out to be no big deal.
I remember Manhattan being largely deserted during the work week for some early 80's Hurricane scare, and walking around in some medium winds and light rain, enjoying the emptiness.
Here's hoping that's all you get this time, as well.
-- MWE"
Hope that holds true. We were thinking of finding a pet friendly hotel in WVA for the weekend, but decided to stick it out in the Baltimore area.
Ummm .... what???
I think the Katrina thread was some of the best "work" ever achieved on BTF. I remember NTN God was reporting things on police scannners left and right that weren't being reported anywhere else by the media and countless others chimed in with info that wasn't found anywhere else. The fact that the hurricane was physically destroying the city was reported by the media. The complete breakdown in social order was reported through the various BTF posts much better than any big media source was reporting. It wasn't the first time, but it was one of the more pronounced times where I was much more aware of what was transpiring than my friends and family were due to this "silly little baseball site".
And from then on, they'll play GBA twice during every seventh-inning stretch.
I think/hope Bloomberg will be found to have overplayed his evacuation hand, but that beats the extreme alternative by a lot. #fingerscrossed
Red Cross/Katrina
I think the Katrina thread was some of the best "work" ever achieved on BTF. I remember NTN God was reporting things on police scannners left and right that weren't being reported anywhere else by the media and countless others chimed in with info that wasn't found anywhere else. The fact that the hurricane was physically destroying the city was reported by the media. The complete breakdown in social order was reported through the various BTF posts much better than any big media source was reporting. It wasn't the first time, but it was one of the more pronounced times where I was much more aware of what was transpiring than my friends and family were due to this "silly little baseball site".
Agreed completely -- you said this much better than I could. I was just as confused by Eamus's post. Eamus, please explain what you were getting at.
I hope so too. My daughter is a block away from the evacuation zone. She's also got plenty of booze, food and water.
I'm personally wondering what kind of vermin will come up from the sewers if NYC gets too much water. I personally can't wait to see the sewer alligators make there way to city streets.
ahhh--I lived in NYC for many years--the sewer gators are exaggerated (none are more than 7 feet--8 tops)
To be fair, I guess he's going after FEMA and I have no real love for FEMA. But NOAA is getting their funding cut too.
They're also much friendlier than you might expect. I had one let me pet it a little bit.
That's the thing about Ron Paul. He's not afraid to completely throw historical precedent out the window. Gotta respect that.
When cavemen rode dinosaurs and Rick Santorum was still a senator, he tried very hard to kill the National Weather Service. Fortunately, he failed.
By contrast, the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the Mississippi River "Great Flood" of 1927 featured a lot of federal involvement, especially from two departments run by future conservative Presidents: William Taft's War Department in 1906 and Herbert Hoover's Commerce Department in 1927.
I don't know what lessons to draw from that. The rebuilding of Galveston was a far-sighted, ingenious success, full of local thinking and private-public partnerships. But the responses to 1906 and 1927 were model national efforts, characterized by energy and activity. One thing I would bet is that Ron Paul has no real idea what he's talking about. He just assumes that "back when" the federal government didn't do anything, and it was a kind of pre-New-Deal Eden in the land.
A**hole. That kind of attitude is not helpful, and actually counterproductive.
That was because Pennsylvania's own Accuweather was one of the corporations that sponsored him, not because of any sort of principle.
Dud is all relative (even a tropical storm or a particularly bad depression can totally mess up your day, if not week or month), but yes, it does appear it will not be worst-case scenario that was earlier believed. Although, again, all relative. Much of the NE corridor isn't built as well for hurricanes, so what Miami or Texas could "take" might not be true for Philly, NYC and Boston.
BTW, surprised that nobody has mentioned that Nate Silver looked at how much a NYC hurricane could theoretically cost.
it ain't so much the wind, it's the water from flooding/storm surge. houston missed a death blow in 08 when ike landed juuuuust a little east of where it was originally supposed to. we would have been katrina v.2
- didn't nobody care real too much that ike pretty much destroyed galveston
make SURE you fill your bathtub full of water - it's to flush the toilet because the water pressure might could be off
prolly too late to get the fresh water, flashlights and batteries you NEED - and cell phones might not work neither
i got NO idea why people buy milk and eggs when they hear a storm is coming - no fridge and you can't cook anyhow - too hot
Typical liberal, if you hadn't created FEMA we wouldn't have to.
I'm not doing this as a political statement but more as a historical note, but FEMA can actually draw it's lineage to various other agencies, some of them created by Democrats (the Federal Civil Defense Administration and parts of the Bureau of Public Roads, for example) while others by Republicans (the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, as examples).
Where it continues to thrive as the commercial hub of Texas :)
it WOULD have been - the problem was that it took 8 years to build the seawall (interrupted by another hurricane) and have the ship channel reopened. over that 8 years the port of houston took over and so did port arthur
the galveston merchants didn't want to lower their prices to compete and well, that wasn't smart.
and next thing you know galveston isn't the center of the state no mo - i remember being told at one of those history tours that for a long time galveston was just behind NYC for immigrants coming (by boat) to america
Of course, as I reminded her, the East Coast takes large snowstorms pretty much in stride, whereas 2 inches here would shut things down like a nuclear blast. It's all relative.
Over the last couple of years I've read books on both the 1900 Galveston & 1930something Northeast hurricanes. Extremely sobering.
Down east looks pretty bad, but nothing like the Dennis/Floyd back-to-back wallops. New Bern got slammed by storm surges.
Storm track is hooking back to the west a little bit, which means that more land will be affected. Exit point back into the ocean has moved north to the NC/VA border (was originally supposed to be closer to Nags Head).
-- MWE
The fact that the Weather Channel is hyping "damage to dock in North Carolina" suggests not much has happened.
Funny video from Va Beach showing guys running around in front of the Weather Channel guy while he pontificates about the irresponsibility of it all.
I've chosen not to participate in the hysteria that's gripped the city of New York. I'm at work today in midtown, as usual, and when I leave later this evening I'll walk home in the rain rather than taking the public transit that they've already put into an unprecedented shutdown. When I go home I'll look onto the evacuation area that borders my street.
People have stampeded the stores, stocking up on enough non-perishable food, D batteries, and candles to last through the next 100 years of hurricane warnings. It seems just a wee bit of overkill. I understand why Bloomberg needs to over-prepare. But most of us don't.
Three deaths in NC reported so far, lots of reports of trees down, somewhere around 600,000 people without power in NC and VA.
-- MWE
Mike, I don't disagree that the three deaths are tragic, but given the media hype related to this event to this point the actual damage has been relatively low. Let's hope it continues.
During Smowmageddon back in January someone in Georgia (the governor?) claimed that Georgians buy up all the bread, milk, and eggs when it snows because the only way to survive a natural disaster is to eat lots of french toast.
Considering the storm hasn't hit the heaviest populated parts that it's going to, you might be a little dismissive. The real problem will be flooding, as the NE is completely saturated. Philly has already set the "wettest month of all time" record this month, 6-8 inches of rain might break the previous monthly record by as much as 50%.
(I learned this while stocking up on beer and chips.)
It's a good thing that essentials like beer are still available.
This was the reaction to Hurricane Katrina in its immediate aftermath, too. There's this perception that once you survive the heavy rain you're in the clear. The levees broke in New Orleans a day or two later and that's when hell broke loose. Likewise, the flooded rivers and lakes will come later with this one too (if they come).
Milk and eggs are some of the most deadliest (or a better term than "can make you really sick) foods (especially for little ones, old ones, and anybody with a weakened immune system) you can eat if they are stored or cooked improperly.
I've made not a single preparation for this storm, have purchased not a single extra battery or flashlight or candle or food item.
When I go home tonight I'll take a few steps in case we lose power: make sure there's ice in the freezer for a cold drink, charge all of my chargeable devices, and fill the bathtub with water. That'll be about 5 minutes of hurricane prep. Done and done.
(Yes, I consider myself above it all.)
You forgot to mention whether any of them are wearing white. This is very important.
It's rainy but otherwise calm here, ten miles north of Boston.
We'd never have guessed.
Now, imagine them in those same clothes but rain soaked!
I think he was saying it's ludicrous to declare this event over-hyped in the first few hours, not that this will scale to anything like Katrina.
This was why Hurricane Floyd was such a disaster in NC back in 1999. Hurricane Dennis had dumped a bunch of rain on the state a couple of weeks earlier. When Floyd came through the ground was still saturated and the rivers were still high, and the result was a record flood in every river in the eastern half of the state and something like $1.5 billion in flooding damage. You can't ever tell with a hurricane and rain. If it hits land and keeps going, you're usually OK. If it decides to just sit there and dump rain, you're not.
Considering that it basically hit America at category 1 and will be downgraded to a tropical storm well before it reaches NY I think the hype was on the level of "over".
This is what happened at NYC subway after just a particularly bad rain storm.
Imagine what even a tropical storm could do, especially a tropical storm THE SIZE OF EUROPE that could potentially go ALL DAY LONG.
NYC will have problems, but it won't be the doomsday scenario some had been predicting. Although it'll be really inconvenient for most everyone.
Of course, let's face it. We have no ####### clue what's going to happen. None. We can only guess.
I just wish it'd stop raining here in Boston. Stupid thunderstorms.
That video isn't very useful without an explanation of the circumstances -- where it was, how long the falling water lasted for, how many of the other subway stations were similarly affected, how much rain had fallen, whether the subway was underneath a particularly flood-logged street, etc.
I think all the comments here either are anecdotes, or consist of somebody saying "I am too smart to be fooled by the sensationalist media", so I would guess you are.
I was unaware that most people here were professional baseball players.
Also: Isn't it sweet that Ray has such great faith in NY's public infrastructure?
Care to pass on some of your tremendous knowledge, oh wise one?
I just hope his apartment isn't on the 80th floor.
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