mailbag

Original subscriber Joe Strain floats me an electronic knuckleball from the other side of the International Dateline containing a link to a recent NY Times article on the private baseball life of proto-blogger Jack Kerouac . . . seems young Jack decided to stiff Strat-o-Matic and All-Star Baseball (remember Ethan Allen's game with the spinner and player discs?) by inventing his own game . . . Pancho Villa roaming centerfield, the crack of a toothpick as a marble is launched across the backyard, and more off-kilter stuff from the ol' dharma bum:
read NY Times article

Meanwhile, up here on Potrero Hill, avid reader Mississippi Burning threw me some high, hard cheese with a link to a yesterday's NY Times story on MLB ticket prices. Turns out that the piece focuses on the Giants "smart-ticketing" system . . . hate to play the Carnak card, but it was a week ago that this blog was referring to the Giants' "super-secret algorithm" for setting ticket prices and now, lo and behold, the Giants are discussing (with a level of smugness that would do Google proud) the use of an algorithm to achieve "dynamic pricing." Russ Stanley, the Giants' veep for ticket services, goes so far as to lament not jacking up ticket prices as Barry Bonds approached various home run milestones earlier in the decade . . . those greedheads deserve every bit of DOOSH that the Nation can throw at them:
read NY Times article

muchisimas gracias, guys . . . and keep 'em coming . . . this thing depends on collaboration.