Mugshot Purgatory: Boston BoSox
Posted by AMR on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Most people's least favorite team is probably the Yankees. I actually loathe the BoSox more. That said, on to the mugshots!
Twins' and BoSox's rotations really meshed badly, Friday's Tim "I need Mirabelli" Wakefield vs. Silva matchup doesn't look odd, but on Saturday it's, Julian "And if you ever even think of jumping over my car again, I'll close the fist" Tavarez vs. Santana, and on Sunday we see Curt "Obviously, I painted..with blood" Schilling vs. Ponson.
(Wakefield '07, '06; Tavarez '07, '06, '05; Schilling '07, '05, '02, '01, '00)
Can't leave this Tavarez pic alone:
(Tavarez '06, Gathright '06)
The rest of the Ro is Josh "à" Beckett, and "Rookie" Daisuke Matsuzaka.
(Beckett '07, '06, '05, '04, '02, '99, ; Matsuzaka '07, '06, '04, '00)
The Matsuzaka '06 is from the Seibu Lions in Japan. The '04 and '00 photos are from the Japanese national Olympic team. The pronunciation of his first name reminds me of the Book "Hello, My Name is Scrambled Eggs" by Jamie Gilson, in which Tuan Nguyen, a recently immigrated preteen has his first native friend rename him "Tom Win" because that's a lot closer. My guess is that someone decided we'd all be too stupid to pronounce "DISE-uh-CAY" so they through out the weak "schwa" sound and we're left with "DISE-CAY." But maybe, although every other instance I know of Japanese names transliterated for English readers has been very phonetic, maybe just this once, there is an unpronounced U smack dab in the middle of the name. [End rant.]
The two catchers are Jason "Captain" Varitek, and Doug "Wakefield's Catcher" Mirabelli.
(Varitek '07, '06, '05, '04; Mirabelli '07, '06)
Captain Tek's college mug is from Georgia Tech, where he was a teammate of Nomar Garciaparra.
My favorite BoSok is a certain Manuel "Manny" Ramirez, who has now missed two straight years of mugshot pictures, so MLB is still running the old 2005 out as if no one notices. But I noticed!
(Ramirez '05, '04, '03, '02, '01, '00)
Former Twin David Ortiz has found a little bit more success as a Sok.
(Ortiz '07, '06, '05, '04, '02, '00, '99)
The 2007 looks like Ortiz is dedicating his facial hair to the memory of Dustin Hermanson.
New additions to the team this year are former Twin J.C. Romero, J.D. Drew, and Hideki Okajima.
(Romero '07, '06, '05; Drew '07, '06; Okajima '07)
Should I assume that Okajima's first name is pronounced "HIDE-CAY"?
I could not find a single former Royal on the 40-man roster, but I did find former Royal Joe McEwing on the Pawtucket Roster.
(McEwing '07 AAA)
Their roster also features three pitchers who share names with more famous players, Matt Clement (15-day DL), Edgar Martinez (minors), and Javier Lopez.
(Clement '07, '05, '03; Martinez '07, '07AAA; Lopez '07, '06)
The second Martinez picture is from Pawtucket. Also, it looks like this is the same Matt Clement.
Here's a bunch of other active players and some associated older pics: Kevin Youkilis, Wily Mo Pena, Joel Pineiro, Coco Crisp, and Mike Lowell.
(Youkilis '07, '05; Pena '07, '06; Pineiro '07, '01; Crisp, '07, '06; Lowell '07, '06)
Pena's got a very big neck.
A bunch more: Alex Cora, Brendan Donnelly, Jonathan Papelbon, Kyle Snyder, Julio Lugo, Eric Hinske, Dustin Pedroia, and Devern Hansack.
(Cora '07, Donnelly '07, Papelbon '07, Snyder '07, Lugo '07, Hinske '07, Pedroia '07, Hansack '07)
Snyder looks like he's filling in where Arroyo left off, even though they don't look exactly like braids. Hansack was called up yesterday when Timlin was put on the DL.
Finally, here are some interesting-looking minor-leaguers. All AAA are at Pawtucket.
Craig Breslow, Manny Delcarmen, Craig Hansen, Brandon Moss, and David Pauley.
(Breslow '07, '07AAA, Delcarmen '07, '07AAA; Hansen '07, '07AAA; Moss '07, '07AAA; Pauley '07, '07AAA)
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Delcarmen got sent down for a shave.
Excellent work. HIDE-cay is a surprise for the Bosox so far. That Piniero '01 is a hoot.
No syllabic em-PHA-sis in those japanese pronunciations.
Delcarmen got sent down for a shave.
I've seen a bunch of teams do this, including the Twins, where the ML team doesn't restrict facial hair, but the affiliates do, at least for the preseason mugshots. Notice that all the other Pawtuckets are shaven.
Boof's Redwings mugshots are all bare-chinned. I imagine spring training roster moves transpire with the manager bringing the player a disposable razor along with the news that he's been optioned to AAA.
Excellent job as usual.
Is the Crisp picture from 2006 just a photoshop from his Cleveland days? Wondering based on the crooked hat.
Agreed on Piniero - that is the look we are hoping for if he comes into a close game to face Mauer this series.
Also like Clement's Cubs picture- looks like a teenager really excited to be here.
Don't have any J.C. pics from his MN days?
All in all, great work.
The Crisp - Bard - Shoppach - Riske - Marte trade was in January of 2006, so that is not a photoshop. Googling images, I saw a '04 Crisp with an even crookeder cap, but when I clicked through, it had been replaced with the '07.
Clement in that pic looks like a bearded Parent-Swap-Era Lindsay Lohan.
I thought I found a few Romeros from his Twins days and saved them to my files, but I couldn't find them again. I know there were some in the internet wayback machine database, but that takes me way too long to go through - it's an offseason project.
Also, the great thing about that Pineiro is that it came from (one of my best sources for pre-2005 pics), outsports.com, a gay sports-fan site, where they have used the MLB.com mugshots for their season previews. Apparently, Pineiro was the best-looking Mariner that season for the non-traditional male audience.
That site is where i found the fu-manchued M11. Also, whoever wrote that column had a crush on Jay Gibbons, as he was featured like 4 times.
Shows how "out of touch" I am. I always thought Jay Gibbons was one of the ugliest men in baseball.
...like Clement’s Cubs picture- looks like a teenager really excited to be here.
Or, the hash brownies just kicked in at Bonnaroo. The only thing I despise more than the Red Sox are their fans.
I think you guys have it wrong. To me, Clement's Cubs pic looks like an 80 year old grandma.
+10.
Caption Contest!
Varitek '05 - "Who is this guy? I ain't smiling at no #%@*!n' birdie!"
Schilling '02 - "Can we hurry this up? I gotta go, if you know what I mean"
McEwing '07 - "You laugh about the Royals, but if you had seen what I saw... (shudder)"
The Josh “à” Beckett reference is a sweet one, indeed.
Okay, has anyone ever benefited from a goatee more than Kevin Youkilis? I mean, seriously! Plus, Mike Lowell needs some help shaping that mustache.
I totally forgot about that sissy "punch" Tavarez laid down on Joey Gathright. Really, it was more of a closed handed slap. Nothing like when Chan Ho Park scissor-kicked that guy.
Is Craig one of the Hansen Brothers? Or maybe the next generation? And if so, when did he get contacts?
But maybe, although every other instance I know of Japanese names transliterated for English readers has been very phonetic, maybe just this once, there is an unpronounced U smack dab in the middle of the name.
I've noticed that announcers typically pronounce Akinori Otsuka's last name with a silent 'u' as well. The weird thing about Dice-K's name is, the 'u' in Daisuke is apparently silent, but his last name, Matsuzaka, is pronounced phonetically, with all vowels intact. Go figure. I'd love to hear an authoritive explanation on when the 'u' or any other vowel is silent when speaking Japanese.
for what it's worth, see this Wikipedia article.
I'd ask one o' my japanese politics friends, but I'm too lazy.
So it looks like my rant was misguided, eh? But what is an unvoiced vowel?
And does that mean that Matsuzaka's name has one?
And now I'm more confused than ever on how to pronounce some of my favorite Japanese musicians' names:
Nobukazu Takemura (Knob-Kazoo or No-Boo-Kazu? Tack-eh-moor-ah?)
Ryuichi Sakamoto (Ree-you-chee or Ryu-ee-chee?) etc.
Riow Arai
Ryoji Ikeda
Rei Harakami
Aki Tsuyuko
If I ran the Boston Globe, or even espn.com, or something, I would find someone to write an article about this. Not only would it be interesting for sports fans, but I'd have to think there are people out there who would just like to know more about pronouncing foreign names.
Anyway, something on unvoiced vowels which may or may not be useful:
and
From Brian's original link, the general rule seems to be:
I don't feel my vocal cords move when I pronounce the 's' or 'k' in Daisuke, so that would make them unvoiced, so that the 'u' would be a vowel between two unvoiced consonants, and thus the 'u' is not voiced. I think.
Following a similar line of logic, it seems like 'b' is a voiced vowel, and therefore the 'u' should be voiced.
This is certainly way out of my area of expertise, but that's the most sense I can make of the situation.
Not only would it be interesting for sports fans, but I’d have to think there are people out there who would just like to know more about pronouncing foreign names.
Who agrees with ubelmann on this? Not that I don't appreciate the substance of what he has written, I do. But who thinks that sports fans in general (or hell, Americans) really care about this? Maybe I'm a huge pessimist about our general curiosity/tolerance of other cultures, but my take is that the average American is not interested in such things. To their detriment, I might add.
To clarify, it's not that I think that the majority of Americans would care about this, just that I think there would be as much interest in such an article as there would be for a typical "variety" column in a newspaper.
Personally, I am always embarassed when I have a student in my class, or hell, a fellow grad student, with a foreign name that I can't pronounce. Maybe I'm a bit sensitive to this issue since I have a last name with a non-obvious pronunciation. It's not that I blame people who mispronounce my name (like I said, it's not obvious) so much as I appreciate it when they pronounce it correctly or at least bother asking how it should be pronounced if they are unsure. It's a respect thing, I guess.
Maybe I’m a huge pessimist about our general curiosity/tolerance of other cultures, but my take is that the average American is not interested in such things.
I can see where you are coming from. For instance, sports broadcasters often mangle names and it would seem to me a rather integral part of their job that they know how to pronounce the names of the players on each team. If they aren't interested in it, maybe there really aren't that many out there who do care.
Personally, I am always embarassed when I have a student in my class, or hell, a fellow grad student, with a foreign name that I can’t pronounce.
Foreign student? Hell! I'm at a loss as to how to pronounce about half of my students' names, almost all of whom are native-born Californians!
Interesting to me. But then, I'm a weirdo academic. My wife and I have had numerous "go to the dictionary" arguments about words at dinner. [a recent one revolved around the correct pronunciation of "Aesop"]
How hard is it to pronounce ubelmann?
So now tell me. Is that vowel combination like i in stick?
It's a consistent source of bemusement for me to hear Twins fans complain about announcers from ESPN or a network of another team who mispronounce the name of a Twins player, but, without any sense of irony, they love their Dick n' Bert and Gordo n' Dazzle. It's especially funny when they complain about Jon Miller's pronunciation of Hispanic names, although his accents are correct, because they're used to the Anglicized pronunciations of the home crew. Hearing "Guz-MAHN" when the Twins were on Sunday Night Baseball used to drive some Twins fans up a wall.
I don't know that people would be interested in why names are pronounced the way they are, but I think they would like to be able to pronounce them correctly. I've always wondered why the newspapers don't put a parenthetical phonetic spelling next to names that aren't pronouced the way they appear, especially names most people aren't likely to be familiar with. Space constraints, I suppose.
ESPN, to their credit puts phonetic pronunciations on their player cards. I like that.
I have spent a fair amount of time talking to people from China and working on Chinese language stuff. I don't speak or understand the language and I find it difficult to understand the Chinese people that I talk to because I have a hard time hearing what they are saying to me. I find language very interesting and especially pronunciation.
My wife, who spent her formative years in Japan, claims that the 'u' is pronounced, but is "bitten off" so that you can't really hear it.
I don't understand if that's the same as the Wikipedia article, but it's my effort to get an expert's take.
Look what I found:
I don't know the years. AMR?
Thanks SBG! The top pic is a 2003 (faded-out) and the bottom is a 2005 (dark background). If I remember right, the 2004 was then the one where he wore a red undershirt. (I think he was the only one on the team, it really stood out in the photo-roster on the back of the Gameday program.)
When I'm looking for these old images (I use google images for everything before the current year), I have a problem of diminishing returns, where I could put in an extra half hour to an hour for each player and maybe get a new mugshot for one out of every three players. This is exacerbated by teams with lots of fans (BoSox, Yanquis) where tons of images are put on fan blogs. Things were pretty easy for the Rays and Royals.
Hey, if you're going to want some of these missing mugs for possible use at a later date, why not put out a "bounty" list and let some of the rest of SBG Nation track them down for you? No need for you to expend all your energy on a select few difficult to find pics when you can put the power of the masses behind the search.