Thursday, February 09, 2006

we need to ask a question

When we think about whether there is such a thing as a rivercat and what the sacramento rivercats might be named after a phrase may come to our mind. The question, "what's up with that?". And the girl to answer our question can only be, of course, Lisa Heyamoto. We will email her directly.

For now, just read Dinger's bio. Did you know he went to De Paw University and majored in claw enforcement? I know at least one person who will think this is funny besides me.

13 comments:

Rosalitahead said...

Claw enforcement!
Mice cream cones!
The jokes just write themselves.

Anonymous said...

I don't know if rivercats really exist, but fishing catsdo and they are hella cute!!!

Anonymous said...

I've often wondered about what a Rivercat is. I've also wondered what a Red Wing is, a Bear Cat, a Packer, a Met, a Sox, or a Brown.

Where do pro sports teams get thier names from? Not that I'm complaining; just curious.

Anonymous said...

If you don't know what a "Red Wing" is you'll have some fun with google.

Packer = Meat packers. Wisconsin huge meat processing area.

Sox = based on an obsolete form of the word "socks". Really.

Anonymous said...

Now THAT is funny! Let's ask Heyamoto, our copy desk whipping girl! Do you think she will even answer given this community's history of abuse of her journalistic good name?! Maybe this is her chance to prove us all wrong.

Hey, I got an idea that could fill the void during some of those long-inning games and yield some undoubtedly creative answers to "What is a rivercat?": Ask any of the friendly senior citizen, retiree workers at Raley Field (Raley Spay-dium?!). These guys are great and instead of sitting at home watching bass fishin' on TV they've elected to spend some of their golden days working any of the number of important jobs at the ol' ballpark. The lucky ones run the beer stands; they were probably the high-powered executives during their real working days ... or maybe the guys who never worked! I asked one of them once the simple question of what beers they had, and that naturally led him down a 20-minute path about beer, pouring beer, beer distribution, etc. We finished our beers before he was done, and ordered another round! They got all the time in the world over there, so, go ahead, I dare you: Just ask 'em what a rivercat is! And maybe even bring a video camera!

-Dave

Stephen Glass said...

Any good copy desk worth its salt needs a whipping gurl. Preferably a reporter or columnist who has a nickname given to her behind her back by the denizens of the copy desk, one that's horridly mean on a least one level.

Anonymous said...

Becky pointed out to me that the last "What's Up With That?" question was "why do people run so many red lights?" - if that's what I was working with, I'd be happy as hell to get the Rivercats question!

miller

Anonymous said...

I always figured it was a tamed down version of River Rats, which is just another term for Sacramentans. River Park wasn't scared to name their team the real deal.

-michele

Anonymous said...

My Grandmother grew up in West Sac and briefly attended an elementary school more towards Woodland/Knights Landing. This would have been during the 'teens'. She and her siblings hated the kids from that school with a passion, mainly because they referred to them as "River Rats", which is an old timey cut down of Sacramentans. Also, have any of you ever seen a Sacto River Rat? They are as big as a dachsund and swim. Maybe that's what they were going for with naming Emily's swim team that. Big fierce rats who swim well. As to the "River Cats", everyone knows that the team is named after that hooverville of feral cats in Miller Park.

Ella

Anonymous said...

Hey, here is a neat picture of Sac's hooverville, which was by the side of the river, north of old Sac, near that weird big old abandoned building. What was that building again? You can see it in the background of the photo.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/FindingAids/dynaweb/calher/drobish/figures/I0031211A.jpg

What you can't see are the River Cats who run the place.

Ella

beckler said...

I learned about hoovervilles in Grapes of Wrath! But we'll let Heyamoto settle the question about the team.

Anonymous said...

> These guys are great and instead of
> sitting at home watching bass fishin'
> on TV they've elected to spend some of
> their golden days working any of the
> number of important jobs at the ol'
> ballpark.

Hey, I resemble that remark. The water temps are too low for bass'n so the next best thing is to watch it on the teevee. Having a dvr box is great though--I can record all the bass fish'n shows on OLN or Outdoor Channel while watching docs about Panzer development on the Hitler Channel.

President,
Sacramento Appreciation Society of San Francisco

Anonymous said...

We also know that Dinger has good taste in music, seeing as how he's not a fan of Cat Power!

And forget "What's up with that?" and just ask the people at the about the term's origin. They have a ton of local history stuff, including about the city's minor league baseball teams.