Something affected him down in the desert

I knew it'd be a great weekend when Mike Piazza connected for a long three-run homer in the first inning of the Oakland Athletics' Friday afternoon spring training game against the Padres. After an inexpensive but turbulent flight down through Arizona's nastiest thunderstorm in months, it was the first highlight in a long weekend of pleasures in the desert.

Some others:
∙ The walkoff victory Friday, courtesy of Donnie Murphy.
∙ Bobby Crosby's liner over the advertisements beyond the left-field wall. I assume the ball is still rolling.
∙ Travis Buck's moonshot Saturday, at the Rangers' park in Surprise, Ariz.
∙ The pre-game tailgate Saturday. (The sluglike items in the photo are bacon-wrapped pork tenderloins, from a wonderful, magical animal.)
∙ The ninth-inning rally Sunday, despite the eventual outcome.
∙ Good times with my gracious hosts and friends, at home and out on the town. We spent some fine time at Four Peaks in the older part of Tempe, and at T.T.'s Roadhouse, a seemingly rebellious little joint in Scottsdale. (The Horse & Hound, maybe less so. Damn Red Sox paraphernalia....)

A few more photos are here. I'd share more of them, but as it turns out, I'm an awful photographer.


FMFM: Seven Steps To Heaven and My Funny Valentine, a pair of Miles Davis albums I'd skipped until now. Both are largely downtempo and ballad-heavy, but feature the roiling Ron Carter/Tony Williams rhythm section that adds tension to the proceedings. (Only the absence of Wayne Shorter keeps these from being considered part of Davis's "second classic quintet" period of the mid-1960s, with the estimable George Coleman doing tenor duty instead.) Where Davis frequently draws meaning from long notes, Carter, Williams and Herbie Hancock find a way to accent and subtly propel the music forward without undermining the leader's laconic statements or distracting from his very pure expression. Two very nice records that don't get much talk, but very much pointed the way toward his great quintet's future.