Sleep Fast: The Orioles’ Insomniac Schedule

Posted on August 7, 2013 by The Chop

If Buck seems tired it’s because this schedule is running us all ragged.(Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

One of the most common phrases bandied about the Orioles’ clubhouse in the last few years is the somewhat curious term ‘Sleep Fast.’ It was first introduced to the Birdland lexicon by Buck Showalter when he arrived in 2011. Buck uses the phrase often in postgame interviews after night games and before day games, and it’s been picked up and repeated often by almost everyone who covers the Orioles, especially TV broadcasters Jim Hunter and Gary Thorne.

Originally it had a lot of people slightly confused, but we recognized its meaning right away as it’s a saying we hear aboard ships all the time. Life at sea is all about routine, and often that routine involves two sea watches and several hours of overtime, leaving little time for a full night’s sleep. If all hands are called during the time a sailor usually sleeps, it’s a sure bet he’s going to end up being awake for 20 hours and then having maybe 2 hours off before his next watch. And some joker is absolutely certain to remind him how tired he is by saying ‘sleep fast.’

The Chop hates sleeping fast.

Maybe it’s because we are predisposed to hate that phrase but in 2013 we noticed it seems to be in use all the time on Oriole broadcasts. It seems like every other day the team is sleeping fast for some reason or another. So we decided to break down the 2013 season schedule and this is what we found:

Sunday Day Games: 24

Weekday ‘Getaway’ Games: 7

West Coast Late Games: 9

Just Plain Odd Start Times: 26
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Sleep Fast Total: 66 Games

We’re not sure how this compares to previous years, but Jesus! 66 Games that don’t start in the 7:00 hour seems awfully high to us. It’s more than 1/3 of the season. This includes both home and road openers and a handful of games on holidays, but it also includes some getaway games that aren’t true ‘getaways’ with one team not going anywhere or flights that are less than cross-continental. It also reflects 15 Saturday day games, which is a growing trend that we do not approve at all. Day games are fine on Sundays but sitting in the sun all Summer really sucks.

We’re not sure if this year’s scheduling is just a bit of bad luck on the part of the Orioles, or if this is part of a larger trend across the Major Leagues in order to avoid double headers and maximize TV rights. With the team in the early part of an eight day road trip to San Diego, San Francisco and Arizona starting night games late and getaway games at 3:40 and 4:05, any fans who want to keep up are going to have to sleep fast.

Octoberfest in July? Just Say Nein to Season Creep

Posted on August 6, 2013 by The Chop

Like a lot of people, the Chop loves some Fall Seasonal beer. Not least because a Baltimore Summer is so hot, and so full of house parties and ballgames and cook outs and last-calls that it’s the only time we can actually embrace a cheap, watery swill like Boh or PBR. We just can’t choke it down in the Winter. Part of the reason why all those tasty pumpkin ales and marzens are so good is because we’ve been drinking on the cheap all Summer and are finally ready to buy a case or two of good beer.

But in 2013 we may just be out of luck. By the time the heat breaks for good in late September this year, it’s possible that all of our favorite Fall beers will be completely sold out, and stores and bars will be carrying Winter beers. There’s a name for this phenomenon: it’s called Season Creep.

It’s way too hot to be drinking Fall beer.

We’d noticed that Fall beers have been being released earlier than they once were, but when we found Sam Adams Octoberfest near Camden Yards in July, less than two weeks after the All-Star break we knew something was afoot. Sure enough, friend of the blog and Baltimore beer expert Brad Klipner confirms that most Octoberfest style beers will be available on shelves by this week, and some pumpkin ales are available as well.

And love Fall beer though we do, this is a bit ridiculous. The weather notwithstanding, part of what makes seasonal beers seasonal is the ingredients. Pumpkin ales traditionally come out in October because that’s when pumpkins are harvested because that’s when they’re in season. Only God can make a tree, and only the Great Pumpkin can make a pumpkin, and if you’re brewing your pumpkin ale with canned pumpkin pie filling then shame on you.

It’s entirely conceivable that if this trend continues, you could stock the coolers at your next fourth of July cookout with Sam Adams’ Octoberfest. We think this is absurd, but unfortunately the Boston beer company doesn’t agree. In a statement released to the Boston Globe they defended the practice of releasing seasonals months early, and switched from selling their Winter Lager to Spring Seasonal on New Years’ Eve.

Locally it seems like most Maryland brewers are holding back in this trend as best they can, and God bless ’em for that. But Sam Adams is the biggest little brewery and when they chart a course a lot of smaller fish are bound to swim in their wake. For our part, we’ll be voting with our wallet, and though it may be tempting, we’re going to be abstaining from autumnal beers until, well, Autumn.

Relay Foods: Delivering the Farmers’ Market to Your Door

Posted on August 5, 2013 by The Chop

Ever since we decided to give up our car almost two years ago, grocery shopping has been quite an ordeal at the Chophouse. Sure, we could go to the farmers’ market, but we’re not really a fan of being forced to go shopping every Saturday morning. And besides- while fresh local produce is great, we also need things like toilet paper, club soda, canned beans, and laundry detergent.

We could skip the farmers’ market and do all our shopping at the grocery store, but the logistics of getting all we need back home, as well as the crowds and loyalty cards and weekly circulars are an awful lot to deal with. And we still find we’re eating veggies from Mexico and China and making extra trips to specialty stores for gourmet or exotic items. This is why we’re quickly becoming addicted to ordering groceries from Relay Foods.

Our first order from Relay Foods. Tastes as good as it looks.

Founded in Charlottesville, VA in 2009, Relay expanded into the Baltimore market about a year ago and has dramatically simplified and improved our grocery shopping experience. Unlike other online grocery operations whose approach is sort of ‘Well, here’s our supermarket’s inventory. Go ahead and order something and we’ll throw it on a truck next week.’ Relay provides the best of all possible shopping experiences by teaming up with dozens and dozens of local suppliers of fresh produce, dairy, meats, gourmet soups and sauces, coffee and tea and even handmade prepared foods.

Not only is navigating the Relay website and filling your cart ridiculously easy to do, it actually gets easier each time you do it. We like to treat it like a digital supermarket, shopping by category one ‘aisle’ at a time. Sometimes we even ‘shop backwards,’ filling our cart with anything that looks tasty and then deleting items to fit our budget, or adding things throughout the week as we realize we need them.

But if you’re trying to shop quickly you can fill a cart on the fly by perusing Relay’s best-sellers, seeing what’s on sale, or reviewing your previous purchases. After getting a feel for the site you can even mark items as favorites and build specific lists- great for things like baby products or hosting friends for Ravens games.

Still not fast enough? You can even shop CSA style with two of Relay’s most popular items: the Virginia’s Bounty Basket and Local Tasting Box. Get one of each and you’re good for the week without getting off the couch.

And we mean that literally. With home delivery to Baltimore 3 days a week in a two hour window you never have to get off the couch. Delivery is a mere $10, which works out to being less than even the cheapest cab ride back from a supermarket. They also offer the option to pick up your order at one of three (and counting) locations around North Baltimore.

Want to save even more? First time users can click on the banner and save $30 on a $50 order. That’s like getting enough fresh, local ingredients for a small dinner party for twenty bucks!

With prices that are right in line with a grocery store or farmers’ market, and convenience and service that can’t be matched anywhere, the Relay van is going to be a familiar sight on our block from now on.

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We’d like to thank Relay Foods for sponsoring today’s post. For more information or to register and place your order visit www.relayfoods.com.

How to Use Apple’s Passbook App at Oriole Park

Posted on August 2, 2013 by The Chop

Recently we told you about How To Buy Roof Deck Bar Stool Seats at Camden Yards. The center field roof deck reserved seats are a great way to watch a ballgame in one of the best venues in pro sports, but halfway through their second season of availability most fans still don’t know about how to acquire them because the club doesn’t overtly publicize them.

Another new feature for 2013 that the Orioles have announced and not properly publicized is the use of Apple’s Passbook app for game ticketing. As a season ticket holder who goes to 20 or more games a year and an iPhone user this was of particular interest to us, but it wasn’t until this week that that we figured out how to make full use of passbook at Oriole Park, and we had to email the Warehouse specifically for instructions.

Adam Jones isn’t the only thing giving Mariano a headache. (Image: WCBS)

The easiest way to add tickets to passbook is to have bought them through the MLB at the Ballpark app, which is designed to integrate with passbook. We downloaded this app and played with it for a while, and made sure to take it to a game and play with it inside as well, and we can confidently say that it’s a useless piece of garbage. If it’s handy for buying tickets it’s because its sole function is as a platform to get you to buy tickets, and then once you have to tell everyone you know via social media and buy food and souvenirs inside the ballpark. But that’s no fault of the Orioles. That’s on MLB.

You can also add your tickets to passbook when you purchase them from the Orioles’ website by selecting the print at home delivery method and clicking on ‘print tickets’ at which time you’ll see a button to add them to passbook.

But Oops…

You need to be using an iOS device in order to do that. And since like most of the world you’re using your PC and you’ve already made your purchase you’re just plain out of luck, right?

Not necessarily. When you click “view and print tickets” (which won’t cause them to actually print) the Orioles will send you an automated email with a link to access and print your tickets. If you open this email with your iOS device and click the link, you’ll see the first screen above, and from there you can either print your tickets or successfully send them to passbook, which will look like this:

Alternatively, if you have an Orioles.com or MLB.com account and were logged in when you bought your tickets, they should be available for downloading and reprinting at any time by clicking the ‘downloads’ link in the Welcome! dropdown menu at the upper right of the screen, seen here:

It’s certainly not the most efficient system in the world for PC users, but this is how it’s done. We like to fantasize about a future world where digital ticketing is widely embraced by the MLB and anyone else who sells tickets and all you’ll have to do is add your Apple ID at the time of purchase for automatic delivery to passbook, but alas.

It’s also worth noting that if you forward your ticketing email to whoever you’re going with, and they are also an iPhone user they can add their ticket to passbook on their phone in case you are meeting at the ballpark and coming in different gates or different times.

But none of this solved our real problem, which was How do we add our season tickets to passbook? To do that, it takes a bit of work. The first thing you have to do is create an account at orioles.com/mytickets, which for some reason we can never access directly but always have to click through the link on the right at orioles.com/ocp.

Once you have a /mytickets account you have to fill up your ticket inventory, which is a fairly self explanatory but tedious process involving entering all your barcode numbers. Once that’s done though, you can select the games you want to add to passbook, click ‘print tickets’ and follow the steps above, accessing the automatic email from your iPhone.

At the end of the day the use of passbook seems like quite a bit of additional work to use a technology that’s supposed to make our lives easier, but it may be worth it in the end. After all, there’s nothing worse than getting down to the ballpark and realizing you’ve left your tickets at home.

Update: We’ve found that since we added our season tickets to passbook, we can only use passbook at the gate. Scanning our paper tickets results in an error message ‘see customer service’ on the ushers’ scanners.

Flicks From The Hill, Mondo Balto Tonight

Posted on August 1, 2013 by The Chop

Tis the season for free outdoor movies in Baltimore. July and August bring screening series’ to Fell’s Point, the AVAM, and Little Italy on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays respectively. The Flicks From the Hill series is our favorite of the three, and tonight they’re showing one of the Chop’s all-time favorites, Raising Arizona.

Not only is Raising Arizona the best Nicholas Cage movie, in our view it’s just about the only good Nic Cage movie. The film starts at dark, but we’ll be showing up early for a good spot with a blanket, a bottle and a basket.

But if it rains, or if you just so happen to prefer bad movies to good ones you can also head out to the Windup Space tonight for this month’s Mondo Baltimore.

If you didn’t get your fill of shark schlock with Sharknado, tonight’s feature is Jaws: The Revenge. Which was the third sequel and went straight to cable. Show up early to see a collection of the best shots of smart animals attacking dumb people.