Sunday, June 29, 2014

Confest

How often do people check this site?  I'm about to find out, maybe.

Monday, June 30, is the semi-decennial anniversary of My Ticket Confession.

At 5:30 p.m., or nearby time of my choosing, I will be at The Barley House.

I will be delighted to introduce myself to any Confessor who drops by for the next hour or so thereafter.   

I won't have a mask on, or a bag over my head. 

No tricks.  I'll give you my real name, let you Ask Me Anything and might even answer.  But I hope we can just tahk Ticket.   If you would prefer not to identify yourself as a named Confessor, that is entirely up to you.

My sole request:  No photographs, please.

How will you find me?  I don't know.  I've never been to The Barley House.  I selected it because it seems Tickety, and because it is one of the many homes away from home – does he really have an actual home? – of one Michael Gruber, one of the very first patrons of this site, and its first commenter.

I could post a photograph, but what fun would that be?

I'll tell the barkeeps to direct anyone looking for The Plainsman to send him or her my way.  Hint:  I do not resemble Errol Flynn in "They Died with Their Boots On." 

Unless the crowd is too vast, the drinks will be on me, at least for awhile. 

Please, Confest-drink responsibly.

You are cordially invited to attend and raise a glass to five years of friendship.  

And to accept my personal thanks for shopping at My Ticket Confession.

*     *     *
ThePlainsman1310@gmail
@Plainsman1310

[Note:  Comment moderation is in effect.]

Friday, June 20, 2014

A Question for Acquisitive Confessors


If you, oh, say, call D&M Auto Leasing to investigate a new vehicle, do you tell them that D&M sent you, as Craig and George instruct you?

And there are other hosts that implore you to mention their names when you patronize a sponsor.

The reason they entreat you in this way is obvious:  They want the sponsor to know that their advertising with The Little One has paid off.  So they will attribute value to their advertising dollars and purchase more time on the station.

Tonight's question is:  Have you ever done it?  What kind of reaction did you get?

Friday, June 13, 2014

Random Quick Hits That Have Nothing to Do with the Distant Second-Place Fan


Back from my Very Important Trip Further West.

(1) Little quirky, unimportant things one notices about hosts:  Gordon mispronounces "insurance."  He puts the emphasis on the first syllable.  Without exception.

WAIT:  I see some folks say that "INsurance," is an acceptable variation, especially in the South.  Oh dear, what will the language descriptivists and relativists be permitting next?

Well  .  .  .  that's just wrong and anyone who is pronouncing it that way should stop immediately.  Especially the erudite Gordon.

WAIT MORE:  I've heard two people say INsurance today out on the plains.

Okay, okay, Gordon, I apologize.

(2) I like The Shake Joint's "Sports 303" or whatever their sabremetrics segment is called.  I was an early adopter of Bill James's Baseball Abstract, back when you had to buy it in a book with pages and glued bindings and covers.  Fascinating.  And, of course, there's the Moneyball stuff.

But I was puzzled by something I heard on the segment a couple of weeks back.  Jake and especially Sean were talking about the meaninglessness of the "win" in baseball as applied to pitchers' records.  Noting, correctly, that sometimes pitchers get wins even if they pitch lousily.

But it got me thinking:  In the long run -- couple three seasons, let's say, or the average term of a pitcher with a single team -- what pitchers are incorrectly judged based on their W/L records?  Which ones overrated, which ones underrated?

Let's take a longer run, a career:  Are there pitchers out there in the Hall of Fame who don't belong, or those who aren't there who should be, based on a mistaken emphasis on W/L records?  Are there pitchers who are undervalued in trades or free-agent salaries for the same reason?  Do modern-day general managers overvalue that statistic in building their teams?

Isn't it the case that in the mid-to-long run, undeserved losses and undeserved wins, under the current way of scoring these things, will even out, and that the W/L record of a pitcher will give a reasonably accurate measure of a pitcher's merit against others measured the same way?

But, as I say, I like sabremetrics and I think they're valuable, and I like the segment.  Heck, I like pretty much all of the The Shake Joint except for the current events stuff, which I can generally take or leave.

(3)  And while we're on the subject:  Can anyone think of any presentation in any medium whatsoever whose name contains two separate drug references -- and a pun?  I'll take one with two separate drug references.  (Before you ask:  The pun is "joint," which can refer to a marijahooster cigarette, or a destination of some kind -- like Spike Lee referring to his movies as "a Spike Lee joint.")

(4)  I'm trying to figure out the deal with the Whiskey War.  I thought maybe Gentleman Jack and Woodford Reserve were manufactured by the same whiskey conglomerate, but can't find any evidence of that.  (At the end of one of their ads, Danny states the name of some entity -- maybe a distributor -- that might tie them together.  I'll try to pick it up next time I hear one of the ads.)  One of you smart Confessors knows the answer to why these apparent competitors have commissioned a joint advertising campaign.  What's strange is that I find no other such campaign referenced on the authoritative Internets, nor really any particular pairing of these two products.

EXCEPT that I do see promotions where you can get a bottle of either of these products personally engraved.  But I can't find any other connection between the two UNLESS it's that they're both in kinda flattish bottles that can be easily engraved.

Confessor calling Danny to find out whether Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey
counts as a volley favoring Gentleman Jack
I'll bet there's a Confessor out there in the liquor distribution business who can answer this question, possibly staving off a conflict at The Ticket that threatens to split the place right down the middle.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

I Will Be Away from My Ticket Confession . . .


Don't you hate to get automatic replies where some jamoke tries to show you how important he is by activating some automated reply designed to give the impression that his employment has required his service away from the customary place of employment, with the result that he does not have time for your puny efforts to communicate with him?  You know Chris-Chris is checking email and voicemail with exactly the same regularity he did when his butt was wedged securely in his office chair, peering down at his smartphone as the Hertz van is preparing to dump his non-Gold-Club-having ass out at the rental counter.

Well, I'll be on the tony West Coast, don't you know, for the next week.  My assignment there is of the utmost importance and certainly reflects the esteem in which I am held by my Plainsmaster.

Please conduct yourselves with the dignity for which the legacy Confessor is known.

Confessor heeding Corby's and Danny's advice
to enlist in the Ticket Whiskey War