We Are Going To Bat

State Farm, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, has announced a fiendishly complicated new charitable program described here.  The gist is that if you are willing to surrender a bit of privacy by signing up, you can then enter a weekly drawing and select a charity.  If (When!) you are picked in the drawing, your charity is a winner.

Oh, yeah - to compound the aggravation, you also get to play some mystifying video game in which you flail at a pitched baseball and win more entries if you hit a home run.  As if.

Anyway, if folks would go to the Human Services category and sign up for Americares, I would be a real star in Just One Household.  Thanks very much.

PS:  If anyone manages to even make contact with the darn baseball, feel free to pass along some pointers in the comments.

Comments

[Thomas Collins]

Done. And I won't even ask that in return you start a thread on BIG PAPI's Home Run Derby crown! See LUN. :-))

[Clarice]

I tried. I can't figure out how to sign up.

OTOH I have some News-- Jack Lew is taking over for Orzsag as head of OMB. He is a very nice , smart fellow.

[PD]

Speaking of baseball, George Steinbrenner has died.

[Thomas Collins]

Click the link in the third paragraph of TM's post. Then make sure the Category rectangle says Human Services. If not, click the down arrow button, find Human Services and click it. Then, in the Charity rectangle, AmeriCares will appear.

[Old Lurker]

"He is a very nice , smart fellow."

Two strikes.

Loyalty, Thuggery, Selfish, Irreligous, things like that are the more useful qualifications for working for this administration.

[pedro]

Done! Who pitches in that game, Mariano? I did get three home runs but only after whiffing seven in a row.

[Thomas Collins]

See LUN for a series of videos on The Boss.

Although I am a Red Sox fan, I think the Grand Old Game is more interesting when the Bronx Bombers are strong. During the time that CBS owned the franchise, it was something of a joke. The Boss brought the Bombers back.

[pedro]

Thanks for the generosity of spirit, TC. I think baseball would be much better if all owners had th enthusiasm of the Red Sox owners and the Steinbrenner family. Too many teams are happy to put out mediocre product and coast. Above all, George Steinbrenner was an entrepreneur.

[JM Hanes]

It turns out there's hope in the Official Rulz for anyone whose batting average leaves something to be desired. Looks like you can actually get maxiumum bonus points by "mailing it in." See Paragrah 3) method #2:

To receive the maximum of eleven (11) entries per day without playing the Go To Bat interactive game, hand-print your name, complete address, age and daytime telephone number on a plain 3” x 5” piece of paper along with one of the charities from the list provided online at: www.statefarm.com/GoToBat. You must also indicate your charity on the outside of your envelope in the lower left hand corner and mail your entry to: State Farm Go To Bat Promotion, P.O. Box 17165, Bridgeport, CT 06673-7165. Each piece of mail will be worth the maximum of eleven (11) entries and must be received no later than September 29, 2010. Limit one (1) mailed entry per person per day.

Just sayin'

[hit and run]

The game discriminates against left-handed batters.

I working on working up some outrage about it. We'll see how it goes.

[centralcal]

Jeesh - reminds me playing ball when I was a kid. Strike out! No home run. Boo Hoo.

[Stephanie]

Woo hoo for Brian McCann winning the MVP and putting the Natl League on top.

[Dave (in MA0]

The last time the NL won the All-Star Game we hadn't even heard the name Bin Laden and Lewinsky. Drudge was running an e-mail list, not a web site. People were using Windows 95 and NT 4.0 hadn't come out yet. Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL were competing for dial-up users.

It's been a while.

[Dave (in MA)]

MA0, LOL. (running off an Ubuntu machine while awaiting Dell's fix for my hosed Windows)

[cathyf]

Hey, Dave, when the disk on WonderBoy's 10-month-old dell crapped out last month he decided not to bother restoring the windoze partition.

[Replica Aigner Watches]

Your idea coincides with mine.and I think it's better.

[Thomas Collins]

Congrats to the NL and MVP McCann. My Nasty Stuff Award goes to ALer Jose Valverde. Those of us who made it to the ninth inning were treated to quite a one inning pitching performance by the Tiger reliever.

I thought Girardi should have pinch run A-Rod for Ortiz. I love Big Papi, and I realize he wasn't the tying run, but having seen Big Papi lumber around the bases all these years, I figured something not so good was going to happen with him as the lead runner.

In any event, I enjoyed watching the game with my son, although he kept sniping at my approval of the rule that home field advantage in the World Series goes to the team from the league that won that year's All-Star Game.

My only disappointment was that Rhodes wasn't called on to close it out for the NLers. I respect Broxton, but I wanted to see the 40 year older get a chance to close it out in his first All-Star appearance. I was happy to see that Scott Rolen seems to have overcome his injury problems.

[caro]

OK, there is no Americares in the Human Services list. In fact, the same list is showing up in all the categories. There must be a glitch. I await new instructions.

[caro]

JMH, thanks for the new instructions.

[hit and run]

Dang. I only got two home runs yesterday.

I demand to be allowed to bat left handed!

Discrimination is ugly in any form.