Monkeyball is a friend and AN is a lesser place without him.

A tip o’ the cap to the original simian… hopefully he’ll return one day a more evolved primate.

mitch hedberg:

I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a large out of focus monster roaming the countryside.

then, went backed and searched for his last comment. February 17th, I think it was. Don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Can someone explain what’s going on here? Monkeyball is a huge part of AN and I hate to see him go.

SI: Jason Giambi Gets His Renegade Back On

the original o-cab renteria feud story.

more on o-cab’s reading habits:

Orlando Cabrera and Edgar Renteria are fascinating figures. Renteria represents the face of Colombian baseball, while Cabrera is the outcast. The desire to invest in the Colombian Professional League had been part of a renaissance for Cabrera that was spurred on mostly by his second wife Katie, a strong American from Boston who had forced a dramatic change of lifestyle on the once hard-partying shortstop. She also helped him grow intellectually (he was reading one of Ayn Rand’s tomes when I met with him in January), socially (he had become more conscious of his role as a representative of his country) and psychologically (he began to understand the ramifications of his family’s tumultuous history).

And only you could have done this. It’s weird, man. I got this random e-mail the other day asking of monkeyball’s whereabouts, and said sender mentioned that he was no longer listed among the elite. I honestly hadn’t noticed. I don’t often look down there because it seems awfully strange to see my name among the true talents of AN. To be squeezed in between monkeyball and baseballgirl made me nervous. Oh well, at least it’s not between Blez and, oh. Shit.

Monekyball was surely a reason for me to visit this site. In no particular order- and leaving out the rest of the front-page crew and game threads (which is reason enough to be here), my other reasons for logging on: FreeSeatUpgrade, PaulThomas, xbhaskarx, 74mk (Stop. Disappearing. Dude), and that workaholic Leopold Bloom (who I fear is working more simply because monkeyball is not here).

In fact any extended thread that includes two or more of the aforementioned (and yes let’s toss in grover and Nico specifically for humor’s sake); whether it’s about baseball or just about anything else, well, it’s enough to make me giddy.

Best wishes, monkeyball, wherever you are. You are sorely missed. No really, I have sores now. I think the doctor called them cold sores. At any rate, we’ll always have this. Hey, you don’t suppose…

Lastly FreeSeatUpgrade, if ever a DLD deserved a front-page slot, it’s this right here.

“Don’t judge me monkey.”

M’ball leaving, not this diary (it’s DLD HOF material).

I miss the days of McFood, monkeyball, Apricot and Ice Cream. I know some of them show up now and then, but it’s just not the same without them posting frequently.

I love the contributions of newish blood like PaulThomas, MARQUEZ67, and many others. But each day, AN becomes a little less familiar to me. For some reason, it seems harder to build the same kinship with others. I’m pretty sure all of my QsOTM were nominated by m’ball, and I know I nominated him for some. Will my annual preason seaview get a good response, or will it continue to dwindle? Is it even worth it to invest all the time with photoshop, if the sole purpose—to make people laugh—isn’t realized? I miss GOGs. I miss the time where I got all the inside jokes in the game threads. I miss QOTM diaries. I miss “diaries”. I miss tons of ANers that vanished or stopped posting frequently. There’s so much I miss about AN. I feel like a crotchety old geezer, yearning for the good times of yesteryear.

But in the end, I guess none of that matters. I won’t be able to stay away. Because there’s something I miss more than all of that: A’s baseball. And it’s back. And there’s still no better place to talk about it than AN.

Link.

Bye, ’Shines. :-(

i had been wondering too. Nico & Monkeyball were an amazing 1-2 punch – both incredibly witty, informed, and 99.9% positive – an amazing combination.

{bipedal salute}

Tejada, Giambi, Hudson, Haren…monkeyball.

Did we at least get some good blog/lyricist prospects back? I, for one, will start pondering a lyrical tribute. Maybe I can come up with something fitting.

I had wondered why the monkey wasn’t around lately but assumed he was on a vacation or something. I’m sorry to see him go.

WHO ELSE IS GOING TO BE ON THE BARTON TO THIRD BASE/FREE KRAUT BANDWAGON WITH ME????

We sign Cabrera, and Nomar, and lose monkeyball???

Maybe I’ll wake up soon and this will all have been a dream….

1. monkeyball’s departure totally blows.

2. On the other hand, maybe he won’t stay away.

3. Lots of other people who a) are awesome, and b) used to comment a lot, don’t participate anymore. That blows too.

4. I really shouldn’t care one way or the other, but I do. I never thought I was the sort of person who could/would develop attachments to pseudonymous, disembodied personalities, but I guess I am after all.

5. This DLD is fantastic.

that Ducscherer will be getting an MRI on his elbow, according to Slusser

…Team USA is playing the Yankees right now on MLB Network.

here

We can assume Mr. Shea will never be heard from again. Much BillyLove in the comments, one of which notes that Billy got Cabrera AND Giambi for what Sabean will pay Rentaroni.

Below is the sequel; here is my first ode to monkeyball, and here is the Oasis song they’re both based on.

Today, 74mk
Made a Wire joke for you
And now, the tributes continue somehow
In this DLD by FSU,
And since statheads like acronyms,
I’ll throw in VORP and FAQ,
Quit rhyming? Howwwwww?

All meat on a sandwich, whole wheat,
Should be garnished with free sauerkraut.
Kotsay was the A that liked to say
“Urban, say this but keep my name out.”
Half of the traffic on this blog’s
Made up of responses to you.
Quit rhyming? Howwwwwwww?

And all the monkeys’ blindfolds—well, they’re blinding
And still they type out insights and they’re rhyming
There are many posts that I
Would like to reply to
But I don’t know how

Listen to our hollers …
You owe most of us ten dollars …
Now one last poetic stall …
In this ode to monkeyball …

Hey monkeyball, thanks for giving me another excuse to make more attempts at poetry. Come on back now, you here—or if not, e-mail us and let us know where on the Internet we can gobble up and/or respond to your clever insights.

I always have mixed feelings about the time I devote to AN; I suspect that I’m more productive when I’m not here. On that note, I’ll envy the part of the world that you’re redirecting your AN time to, and I’ll try to be more productive my own damn self now that there aren’t so many of your comments to consider.

And I optimistically hope to see you again soon—after all, Anderson’s a Brave, right?

….

Well, that fucking sucks.

I’m going to miss him. I wish him well and hope he comes back at some point.

monkeyball decided to leave of his own accord. He was not forced out or eliminated at all. It was his choice to leave which I didn’t like but I also understood.

I’ve always appreciated monkey’s unique brand of humor and loved what he brought to the community. Hell I was the one who asked him to join the front page and I never took that choice lightly. Ever.

What happened was I asked all the front page writers to try and concentrate more on writing more descriptive headlines that include player names and even the team name so that it makes sense when the headline is fed into the Yahoo! page and FanNation and a bunch of other places our headlines wind up these days. It turns out that actually a huge percentage of people who see our headlines aren’t necessarily reading them on AN so the more cryptic headlines don’t make sense in google news, Yahoo and elsewhere. I don’t want to speak for monkey but I think that he felt like since he was volunteering his time here that he didn’t really want any “rules” for writing headlines which I can completely understand. In short, no one can cage the monkey.

I tried to tell him that wasn’t what we were doing and that the actual content of the stories would not be altered just that it made more sense to write headlines that would make sense elsewhere. I still wanted my poetic interludes. But it isn’t fair for me to expect someone who is donating his valuable time to this community to do things that he didn’t want to do. And I would never expect him to do so.

I hope he returns and I would welcome him back with open arms. But I also don’t expect him to do something that he isn’t comfortable doing. That isn’t right. And I’ve actually been meaning to get on the phone with him to at least tell him I appreciate all that he’s done for AN, I just haven’t had time. I will definitely make time soon.

I hope you’re reading this monkey. I personally miss you, man.

can pop up in unexpected places. I’m reviewing some new cds that were sent to the college radio station (whpk 88.5 fm, the pride of the south side) where I dj. One of the disks that I grabbed based purely on the cover art turns out to be by a band called “Gay Witch Abortion”.

To finish the joke: Back in 10th grade, monkeyball played backup ukelele on their debut 7".

Nomar Visits the Bay Area Alone

(Original lyrics can be found here

The Dodgers weren’t really doin’ so hot
Said the new sports agent to the old big shot
They’re dyin’ in the playoffs in the NL West
Nomar must get traded or forever rest

Hey, look Ma, here comes the Elephant Boy
In green and gold for his new employ
From LA, Boston, via Illinois
To the jungles of the old East Bay

His agent sat in the office alone
Staring at the numbers on his new iPhone
Wondering how a man could send a rara avis
To play in the shadow of big Mount Davis

(Chorus)

Nomar was sad, the whole season stunk
Stomper lost the Elephant’s trunk
Giambi caught the clap from a girl he now avoids
They were low on morale but they were high on…

(Chorus)

Now I still don’t know.

the A’s must have signed Garrett Anderson. Well, that’s a relief at least.

who actually DID want to “spend more time with his family”. Having a baby around the place can really change your priorities. At any rate, Primate, just because you’ve left the front page, it’s no reason not to hang out in the cheap seats with the rest of us, so I’ll hope to see you around.

MB disappeared right around the time the police shot the crazed chimp in Connecticut.

God speed, crazy monkey.

it’s my birthday tomorrow. So enough about Monkey. More about LB.

Take what kraute you have gathered from outside the fence"

My feeble ode.

Thanks monkeyball, and may it not be over.

And just because.

I got around to changing the A’s calendar at work to March today and Joe Effin’ Blanton’s on March. Now, I realize they gotta submit these things a little early, but c’mon. That was frickin’ July. Do the calendar people think to themselves, “Well, fuck it…it ain’t the Red Sox and it ain’t the Yankees, so who the hell’s gonna care?”