Randy, Haladay, Chien

That's it, I'm starting to attend games. The one last night must have been unbelievable to witness. Even though the yanks lost, I think overall the game points to good things from Randy. One bad pitch. I know we signed him to get W's, but if you look at his pitches, they are crisp. His slider was looking unbelievable, and his location was pretty spot-on. It's a tough loss, but you can't look at the game as an indication of bad things. You have to treated everything in life as an isolated incident. It's when you start saying, "You're ALWAYS late," or "We just can't win!" that you run into trouble. The bats slept last night because it was a pitcher's duel. It happens.

I think Jeter is about to come into a stellar streak. A-rod, of course, has rode out his moment in the sun to his critics, who are now whining he doesn't get hits in clutch situations. Guy can't win. I'm REALLY interested to see how Chien Ming Wang pitches today. And for the record, all you Brown infidels, you can't ignore the fact that he pitched beautifully this past week. I think all these little kinks should have been worked out during spring training, but I'm very encouraged by the fact our pitchers are polishing their arsenals.

I think Chien is going to pitch a decent game today. I don't know why. I have a feel, though, that he's going to have Brad Halsey syndrome. Excellent opener in Yankee Stadium. Potential to get rattled in front of disapproving opposing fans. But what the hell do I know. I'm hoping for sick, unexpected brilliance from Chien. That would be hot like summer.

In other news, some chick from washington who I can only assume is the intern I so severely lambasted, is sending me hate mail about how my eyes are "different shapes and sizes." Kinda hurt my feelings, because while I knew they were different SIZES, my friends never pointed out they were different SHAPES. Bitches. That's the type of thing I want them to tell me about.

But the best part is that she's writing this mail under the pretense of being a dude. As if a dude would ever say, "Your eyes are unnerving." If a guy wanted to insult me, he'd attack my sports knowledge. That's just how it is. Since I've noticed the intern has made the rounds of googling herself, including a counterattack email to another blog, I feel a little ripped off I didnt get to relish direct email interaction.

My NY Post Immortal Medallion Collection display board is looking pretty cool on my mantle, next to my Rivera rookie card that I just bought. But on the other hand, I can't get past the fact that every time I look at that display board, I think, "I cannot believe I spent $3.50 every morning on buying one of those things." I swear to God, when I woke up this morning, I thought, "I'm so happy it's the weekend because that's 2 days of not having to pick up the medallions." Not that there's anything wrong with them. But every time I get one right before I get on the subway, I'm a little sad to part with those few dollars. And the worst part is, I have no qualms about dropping $80 on a night of drinking. At least I'll get to have tangible evidence of my idiotic spending habits with this Medallion thing. With the drinking, I can only hope I never see tangible evidence of it.

I'm going to an upper west side pub crawl in about 2 hours. The secret to avoiding "tangible evidence" is something I learned on my 21st birthday, when I managed to have 24 shots/drinks without ever throwing up. At all. (To be fair, I drank a shot or mixed drink every hour starting at midnight the second I turned 21 and ending at midnight. Very pragmatic. But still no small feat for a chick who weighs a buck and change.) The secret: Peanut butter sandwich. Power Bar. Right before you drink.

I'm serious. I don't have an iron stomach, I just have a stomach coated in Peanut Butter and protein.

Speaking of, time to prepare pre-daytime-drinking meal.

I think the real question...

at hand is: What would the Pope have to say about this?

Would he have taken him out? Or give him a second chance?

The Deadliest Sin: Gambling or Steroids?

"In gambling, the many must lose so that the few may win." -George Bernard Shaw

I once asked a tech support guy in the Apple Store what the over/under line was on how long it would take to fix my ibook charger, and if I could arrange a payment plan based on the money line. There's more money on my Foxwoods Casino card than there is in my checking account. And I may or may not have put point spreads on Connect Four games. (It can be done.)

So understand my stance on gambling generally leans towards the liberal side--because while my unorthodox blackjack methods may make me Public Enemy #1 at the table, I know no one's betting on ME. I can afford to live like an idiot, and I don't mean financially speaking. My teasers and parlays affect no one but a rich bookie and my bank statement. But while I can leisurely vacation in The Land of Gratuitous Risks and Gambles- athletes, coaches, and managers should be denied a visa here.

Admittedly, when I first heard of the whole Lenny Dykstra steroid/gambling drama, my first thought was, "They have a slow week pegging the pros so they have to resort to investigating happily retired players?" Does it really matter if he used steroids or not more than a decade ago? That's like pitching a fit at your high school reunion about how the homecoming queen ballots were fixed.

From the looks of things, it seems Lenny is going to get off relatively unscathed. Although should the investigation reveal he has in fact gambled on his team, he will be banned from the game. "Nails" may be nailed, a la Charlie Hustle style.

And for once, I'm taking sides with The Establishment.

It's been said that Dykstra is very reminiscent of Pete Rose, in ways that extend beyond casino controversies. Both players possessed a fierce drive and determination that was electric if you were lucky enough to witness it--this charismatic immersion into the game that made it seem like they just wanted to engulf the very dirt they were playing on. I know all about Pete's unparalleled hitting achievements. I know that Lenny Dykstra was the first man in major league history to lead his league in at-bats, hits, runs, and walks.

But that doesn't change the fact that I think gambling in sports is more deadly a sin than taking performance enhancing supplements.

There. I said it. Let the dropkicking ensue.

The way I see it, using steroids is like taking a test on "The Canterbury Tales" after having read only the Cliffs Notes. If you suffered through all the labor of actually reading that minion of Satan, you could feasibly come close to the same result. But the Cliffs Notes give you an intense, concentrated version of the book--it's the "juice" of literature. You're essentially amplifying and catalyzing your understanding and learning curve.

But gambling? That's like breaking into the English Department to find out what the exam questions are a week early. The playing field can't be close to leveled because you're operating on knowledge that no one else can possibly be privy to. And subsequently, it changes how you yourself prepare for the test.

I know, I know. The whole Pete Rose Debate is more hackneyed than Jeter's diving catch into the stands. Blame Dykstra for trotting out this one-two punch of steroids AND gambling. The best of both evils. And if we're talking about immorality in baseball, I'd be remiss in not calling out Pete Rose, who stole the English exam, got expelled, and then campaigned to be valedictorian.

When Pete Rose was placing bets on his own team, he had the luxury to rearrange the line-up, to dictate the stolen bases, the bunts, the pitching rotation. He was changing the face of the game to his own advantage, while the MLB and the oblivious fan continued paying his debts.

The bottom line: the fans and the MLB are coughing up the paychecks. Coaches and athletes are therefore as much governed by the game as a corporate executive is by his clients. When Dykstra was suspended for his heavy involvement in high-stakes poker, he affected the framework and dynamic of the rest of the '91 Phillies club. If I spent all night playing beer pong and then rolled up to a client meeting hungover and reaking of stale alcohol, I'd get an unpleasant talk with HR behind closed doors. Because while I can do what I want on my own time, as soon as it spills into what I get paid for, the hand that feeds me is going to pull rank.

Dykstra may want to someday eat out of the MLB's hand again. Maybe eventually he'll have a hankering to coach for the Phillies, but he should absolutely be denied this position in the same ardent fashion Pete Rose couldn't get by the bouncer at the Hall of Fame.

It's been alleged that Dykstra tipped off a bookie on certain 1993 Philly games, but this is ultimately irrelevant. For the record, it's dubious he could have accurately called each of the 11 games he supposedly predicted. Close to $100,000 in gambling debt is monument enough to skewed priorities. Dykstra may have been a severely sharp force on the field, but his gambling problems pale this to a certain degree. I'm not comfortable hanging my hat on someone who doesn't unequivocally live and breathe baseball.

Sure, there have been other ballplayers who have subscribed to questionable extracurricular activities. The Babe, the 1960's Yankees, Ty Cobb, the '86 Mets. None of them were exactly guys I'd take home to my meet my parents, but as far as I know, their habits never compromised the integrity of rivalry and competition. They weren't dipping their pen in the company ink. They didn't elevate themselves to a completely different stratosphere by adding another level of consequence to the game. (And by "elevate themselves," I'm speaking metaphorically. The '86 Mets don't count.)

I am, of course, operating on a very abridged, hypothetical, one-dimensioned perception of the gambling culture in baseball. There are undoubtedly countless cases I'm either not referencing, or that we're not even aware of. Be that as it may, it's like when Martha Stewart was indicted. Millions of CEOs do exactly what she did. But she got caught. And neither the Sensei of Flower Arrangements nor the number-crunching corporate weasels are any less guilty. And being Charlie Dust Ruffle couldn't and shouldn't exempt her from breaking the rules.

There will always be some X-factor that taints a player's stats, whether it's possible steroid use, diluted pitching in an expansion team year, or stadium perimeters. And there will always be an X-factor clouding a player's good name, whether it's a penchant for prostitutes, a surly demeanor, or a gambling problem. But what there will never be is a clearly defined line denoting what the sport can tolerate.

Is gambling in it of itself unforgivable? I hope not, since if that were the case, I'd be earmarked for early acceptance to the University of Hell's Burning Fires. But then again, I'm not the commissioner of any fantasy Connect Four leagues.

Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame? Negative. Should Lenny come back to coach? No. Because if nothing else, gambling proved that it was more than a habit for him: it was a detriment to his game. Will baseball ever be the idealized pastime it once was? I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe it never even was.

Lenny Dykstra might have run the gamut of sports taboos, but the greater crime the game must fend off is its spotty gambling culture. Baseball's greats aren't all Ned Flanders, but the price of admission to the Hall of Fame shouldn't be paid with house money.

This guy right here...

...is completely nuts

But since I have a completely skewed sense of humor, I think the funniest part of this story is the reasoning Frank Bolton gave for taking him under his wing. It's nice to know someone out there is using good old fashioned morals to make signing decisions.

There's just so much you could do with this information. For starters, imagine what the Pope would indeed do if faced with the decision on whether or not to sign Rocker. Can you imagine the new Pope being all, 'I'm not a substitute teacher, you can't pull a fast one over me. This serious business." And then softening a little and being like, 'Welllll...I guess God DOES have a weakness for manic closers from the South."

And THEN, reminiscient of the scene from Dumb and Dumber when Harry and Lloyd are stopping for hitchhikers...the Pope gleefully chirps, "PICK him UP!!!"

Actually when you think about it, the Pope probably WOULDN'T sign Rocker, because I'm pretty sure a few of Rocker's rants might conflict with the Catholic teachings. I can't imagine the Pope being wild about bringing on board to his team a guy who's spit out more racial and derogatory comments than the Confederate Army.

See, this is how bizarre that statement was. The fact that I'm actually considering the Pope's scouting preferences at 9:30am is testament enough to the fact that nothing about it makes sense.

In other news, we're blessed with another witticism of unsubstantiated arrogance from our favorite gimp pitcher.

Lou Piniella just wrote himself into my will with his response. On the subway ride over to work today, (which took about 90 minutes because of a "rare situation in Brooklyn") I was thinking about how I could make use of that comeback. Like if someone said to me, "Noooo, the O.C. is a repeat tonight, not a fresh new episode!" I could volley back, "Listen, what I forgot about the O.C., you'll never know."

I'm telling my dad about this one. He's always on the lookout for new shots he can use in online poker rooms. I'm being completely serious. I was giving him a few but they were more "my generation," I guess. Like that line from the Usher song: "Take that and rewind it back." He was looking for something a little more poetic and less sharp, I think. So finally I gave him maybe the cheesiest one of all. I can't even remember where I heard it, maybe a Babysitter's Club book from pre-teen years of something: "I'd continue this battle of wits, but I can see you're unarmed."

And Dad, being my Dad, loved it. I wonder if he used it. If he had, I'd had loved to be a [virtual] fly on that [cyberspace] wall.

Anyways, I've been bad about posting lately because I've been working til all hours. Actually, I think from now on, I'm using this "rare situation in Brooklyn" line as my go-to excuse for delays and being late:

"Sooo... pick you up at 8?"
"Umm...better make it 9. There's a rare situation in Brooklyn."

At least I THINK they said "rare." After about the 50th time they announced it, I may have started contorting the words into something that would entertain me more while sitting on a crowded subway amidst ipod-adorned corporate inpatients.

I consider myself lucky to be so easily amused. I'm working on a sports piece, so hopefully it will be done by the end of the day.

Softball game tonight! As my dad says, "KATN." Which means "kick ass and take names." Which he swears on everything is a phrase he invented. That and "Taking Care of Business." I'm not even kidding. I love that man. Who's better than him?

Don Larsen's Cousin & A-rod's Grand Slam

Don Larsen had a cousin, Phillip Hoose, and while everyone knows about Larsen's perfect WS game, the dismal season he was having prior to this is usually forgotten. But Phillip Hoose remembered his cousin's slump well, because it caused him a great deal of ridicule and problems at school. I guess little Phillip was sort of a dork at school, and the fact that he was obsessed with the Yankees didn't bode well for him. So when Larsen pitched his famous game, it helped out his cuz BIG TIME in terms of status at school. Everyone wanted to be friends with him, he was popular, self-confident, the works. And of course, what meant more to Hoose than all these celebrity perks, was the fact that he was so immensely proud that his cousin did something amazing.

Now scale that story down about 300 times, and that's how I feel about A-rod right now. I'm partly thrilled that my staunch defense of him hasn't been for naught, and partly thrilled that he's coming out in full force. Yeah, he's gotten htis and RBIs here and there so far, but this game is impossible to ignore. And no, it's not a big game, it wasn't a clutch situation, but A-rod's earning his paycheck. And along with that paycheck, earning the right to position himself among the game's best.

It's just one game. But every Yankee fan knows that every player needs that ONE GAME where a player earns his stripes. A-rod's got his. If there was ever any doubt that he belongs on that long-balling club, it's already evaporated into april air.

And it's only the 6th inning.

feast or famine

Again. I know, I just got back from spring training like a month ago, and I'm burnt out already. I think it's baseball season. Or maybe just my job. I didn't get home til just now, which means the rest of the week is going to follow suit. No getting out early any point this week, so I think it's going to be Week 2 of At Least 27 Innings I Won't Watch. Crap.

It doesn't help that the NBA finals are on this week. So basically, I roll back home from work, look at my list of things to do, look at my couch, and then decide I'll "wake up really early tomorrow to write a sports article." Not only that, but by the time I get back from work, I'm so fuzzy from staring at a computer all day and thinking about things like "randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled" studies, that I can't even fully absorb anything on TV. Like certain things will pop out, whatever the announcers I guess deem important.

My mom always says that sports announcers do to the game what movie scores do to films. "It's just this ultimately meaningless background noise that would mean nothing if it stood by itself. But instead it tells us how we're supposed to feel about everything." I never thought about sports commentators dictating my emotional sports involvement, nor I suppose did I ever want to actually think this could be true. But she's right.

I think I flipped on the channel and the announcer was all fired up about Nowitski. A safe bet for something to be fired up about I guess. I seriously cannot believe it's only Monday. I swear on my cat, if it I get out of work by 7:00 tomorrow, I'm jumping on the 4 train and heading straight to the stadium.

Someone in my fantasy league proposed this trade:
Giambi, Jermaine Dye, and D. Roberts, for Ichiro.

And i"m going to say no. For a few reasons, but to be honest, the number 1 reason is because I dont have the mental capacity to rearrange my roster to accomodate this. Simple as that. I mean, if he tried to trade me lew ford for ichiro I probably would have said yes, just so I wouldnt have to deal with it, and because it would be easy.

You know that part in Hannibal at the end when Hannibal cuts open that guy's skull and starts cutting pieces of brain out and throws them on a grill while Agent Starling looks on? That's how I feel right now. Like some kind of mixture of all 3 characters in that scene.

Everyone I know will be happy to learn that I've found a new inane game to become obsessively competitive about, quasi-replacing beirut:

That arcade basketball game.

There's a bar around the corner from me that has that, a pool table, a dart board, and board games behind the counter. I called my friend all excitedly, like, "I FOUND MY NEW FAVORITE BAR IN THE UPPER EAST SIDE."

And she's like ooh, whats it like?

And I tell her, and there's this pause. Then:

Were you really at a bar? Or did you go to Kids Wide World of Sports or something?

****

So now i have something new to catalyze my daytime drinking. Who has it better than me.

Proof it's THEM not US

Nothing but class here...what more could you expect for a defending champion?

My personal favorite pull quotes:


Blinding confidence and go-getter ambition from Aubrey Huff, after getting hit with the pitch that started it all:

"That's Yankees-Red Sox," Huff said. "We're the last team on their minds."

****

David Ortiz proving that if a career in baseball doesn't pan out, he could always do voice-overs for Sesame Street:

"That ball almost hit me in the head," Ortiz said. "That's dangerous. I think they need to stop the hitting thing."

****

Trot Nixon acting on the clause in his contract which mandates at least one "idiot" reference in press conferences, after any instance where the team clearly fucks up:

Nixon said someone poked him in the eye, which made him "furious." He wouldn't identify which player it was. "If I wanted to be an idiot, it could have been worse," Nixon said.

****

I know everyone hates how the Yankees never fight back against the Sox. And everyone is always like, "Those Yankee-Sox brawls! Oh, those 2!" As if we are talking about Betty and Veronica or something. But the Red Sox just suck. That's all there is to it. Their fans, their team. They're not "idiots" anymore. They're defending champions. They need to stop acting like Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game, gratuitously getting fired up just for the sake of it.

They may be world series champs, but to me, they're a joke.

The 2 aren't mutually exclusive.

An email with the subject "I think I am about to make your day" & etc.

My coworker sent me this absolute beauty and it is in the top 5 best presents I've ever received.

And I would be remiss in not sharing this with the rest of the world.

In other news, I went to an "80's Prom" theme party at some SoHo loft last night, teeming with investment bankers. I wanted to leave as soon as I got there, but if we're looking at the bright side of things, it was a crystallized reaffirmation of why I never hang out with "i-bankers." Every guy there was worse than the next. Beyond the fact they all thought my Yankee hat was part of an 80's theme outfit, they all do that unduly annoying guy manuveur of putting their hands on your back when they're talking to you. I was about 5 seconds from dropkicking every single asswipe who did this.

Spectacular catch by Bernie.

You know how in Roungers Teddy KGB eats Oreos as his tell? That's how I am with Twizzler Pull and Peels. Whenever there's like a proverbial light bulb going off on top of my head, it's a safe bet I'll have one of those stringly red ropes hanging from my mouth.

Sweet Jeter double. I wish I was at the game right now. But since I'm not hungover today, let's be thankful for the small blessings.

An addendum

I'm dropping my whole rant on the Sports Guy Intern after this, I swear.

So I call my sister, and we're talking about the intern contest, and she was like, "I can't believe you kept reading up on that thing after the first round. Did you forget how a finalist wrote in her essay, 'Im a cunning linguist with 36C's'?" Good point. She also ran with this, "I threw up in my mouth after that."

So I tell her that although a chick didn't win (we were both pretty terrified of the idea of some girl being rewarded for her "i'm a dude in a chick's body" philosophy), that the chick runner-up gets to still write for Page 2.

My sister shoots back: "WHAT?! She's not the intern, but she's going to write for Page 2?!? That's like running for Secretary of State and losing, so Congress says, 'well we loved your campaign, so we'll make you president instead.' I hate girls. I hate everyone."

yeah me and my sister may or may not be the same person.

grumble grumble

In old school Nintendo Zelda, there's this labyrinth thing that you have to get through, and when you walk into a room there's this creature who just says "grumble grumble," and the secret to getting past him is feeding him ENEMY BAIT. Awesome. Anyways, so ever since I first played that game when I was a kid, I started saying "grumble grumble." Just putting that out there.

And now the grumble grumble is referring to the fact it's friday night, 11:45pm, and I just got back from work like 2 hours ago. And now I'm too tired to go out. I did get a bonus this week though, which was hot like summer. So maybe I should just take my lumps here, and pass out, and stop grumble grumbling.

I'm half-watching Jerry McGuire. This movie makes me so uncomfortable. Like the type of uncomfortable that occurred when my sister at 16 years old rented Requiem for a Dream and watched it with my mom. My mom called me the next day and said she was so uneasy the whole time, so I asked her why she let her rent it:

"I thought it was a movie about boxing!"

Which basically is like answering "Why is there silly putty spread all across your apt?" with "I thought it was play-doh!" But maybe it makes sense a little, the idea of my mom wanting to watch a movie about boxing, because she's like surreptiously quite knowledgeable in sports. You wouldn't know it, but she rolls up randomly with hardcore sports trivia out of nowhere. Like the Silent Bob of sports. She is also inexplicably strong and has a bizarrely high alcohol tolerance even though she has about 1 bottle of wine a year. But the few times I've seen her drink, like when she'd be coerced into it by other parents during Parents Weekend at school, she threw back shots like they were Hi-C.

I still can't figure out why Jerry McGuire was such a good movie. I hate Rene Zelwegger, and just watching her makes me twitch. I just don't get why the plot is any good. Seriously, is "you had me at hello" that good a line? I've heard better. I think this movie is like a really paled sports version of As Good As It Gets. If that makes any sense. Actually, it REALLY reminds me of the last episode of Sex and the City. How Carrie ends up with Big in the end. How is this gratifying? They broke up and got back together every other season, and every time he said he was a changed man, he would dick her over. So how are we the audience to believe that after the final episode, Big didn't dick her over again? He definitely did. These are the questions I need answers to. Similarly, how is it gratifing that Jerry and Dorothy end up together? The best part of that whole movie was...I don't know. I was going to say the end zone dance in the final minutes but eh.

I am so damn tired. And I have so much to say about the conclusion of the Sports Guy's Intern Contest, but I think work has sufficiently drained me this week. I'll give it the old college try though.

Basically, every day Simmons gives me a new reason never to read Page 2 anymore. Now that only do I refuse to read his sports columns (intern contest doesn't count, back off, antagonists), but now he's allegedly hiring the first runner up in his Intern contest to write for ESPN. This chick, Theresa MacDonald, has earned a spot next to my old boss in the All-Star car wreck team. Not only does she look like Nikki from the Saved by the Bell episodes with Miss Bliss, but she tries so hard, that she makes Rudy Ruedicker look like a slacker.

I was so happy when I found out she didn't win, but that was only a fleeting moment of joy because now apparently, she somehow is getting to write a column for ESPN. But that's actually probably a good thing because I don't think ESPN.com has enough schticky Boston fan writers. And by "not enough," I mean that if there were anymore they would be legally permitted to develop their own form of currency.

I mean, tell me this isn't bitingly original work right here: (on an ESPN article entitled "86 Reasons to Hate the Red Sox") "Jealously rears its ugly head!"

How I supposed to ever cultivate a tolerance for RSN if there are people like Theresa MacDonald walking around? It's like how there are some judges who are especially hard on defendants apprehended for drug dealing or drunk driving, because the judge doesn't like the idea of his kids being on the same streets as these degenerates. I'm just not comfortable walking on the same coastline as this girl. This is the type of chick who I would probably destroy in college. Actually, this is exactly the type.

I was telling my buddy the other day that I've mellowed out in the last year or two, but there are certain things that will get me uncontrollably fired up, no matter what, no matter how old and mellow I get:
The Yanks
My family
Chicks

(And by yanks and family, I mean fired up in a very protective, defensive way. With chicks, it's more offensive.)

I wasn't like a "Mean Girl" who terrorized the losers. I was just unnervingly skeptical of girls who pigeonholed themselves as "just one of the guys! I can drink any dude under the table, I say 'fuck' a lot, I don't give a shit what people think about me, I just say what I mean, you know? I'm just crazy like that." Hate chicks like that. HATE. Because they are so transparent. There's always someone like this on the Real World. Some chick who is like, "I'm soooo not about committment." And then like clockwork [orange], she's sleeping with the frat boy from Texas in the first week and then crying ad naseum infinitum in her confessionals about how he flirts with other girls in clubs.

You don't find good looking girls doing this type of thing much. If they do, it is not to a sickening extent. Attractive girls don't need to perpetuate this whole "I'm like a dude in a chick's body!" mentality, because they don't need to.

Theresa MacDonald, of course, does not fall into said category of aesthetically appealing females. Boy, I'm being kind of harsh. What did she ever do to me? Nothing, I know. But that doesn't detract from the fact one day I will have kids who may have her as a busdriver or something. Plus, I can tell she is kind of bitchy. How, you ask? Same philosophy as above. My mom, sister, and I have talked about this. Pretty girls aren't nasty because they have no reason to be. They're not threatened by anyone. Ugly girls are bitter. The worst are girls who were once ugly and then became pretty, because they're trying to wreak revenge on the female race. So if you ever meet a hot chick on the street who starts sizing you up, rest assured she was once hanging out on the steps with Miss MacDonald during recess, gingerly nimbling on twinkies, compulsively straightening their glasses, and itching their poison ivy.

I just know these things. It's a gift.

Sangria and Wagon Vacancy

My dad goes crazy when he's in a big pool, like one of those $500 just to enter with a grand prize of like $25G, and my Mom says something like, If you win, we're redoing the driveway. Because he says as soon as you start planning what you're going to do with the money, you've already lost the pool. Jinxing it. So I'm going to refrain from talking about the stellar mood I'm in.

I had a really good meal last night, fusilli with chicken, sundried tomatos, and brocoli. AND SANGRIA. It's very tough to top a night of sitting on an outdoor 2nd floor balcony of a restaurant, watching the people on the NYC streets walk beneath you, while you knock down a pitcher of sangria on a weekday night in April when the weather is still 80 degrees at 9pm.

I'm glad Pavano came through last night. Didnt watch any of the game AGAIN. That's 3 in a row. Huh. I used to be known as the chick who didn't miss an inning. Well, actually, Crazy Yankee Chick to be exact. (If you've ever in a bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, mention Crazy Yankee Chick. Maybe you'll get a knowing smile. Or kicked out. Depending on where you go.)

I was talking to my coworker who very arbitrarily has somewhat astute observations on the Yankees without even being a diehard fan. We were talking about A-rod, (what else), and I was still sticking to my guns that he's the best player in baseball, despite this early showing. And he said, yeah well he's A-rod. He's an unbelievable player and a force to be reckoned with, but I bet you anything there will be someone else this year who puts up close to the same numbers as him, and who's making $8 million a year instead of 25.

And I thought about it, and he's probaby right. A-rod consistently puts up big numbers, but every year, there's some breakout player who will come close. I mean, who the hell ever heard of Beltran before last year? Or Brian Roberts this year? That drives me crazy. The whole Beltran phenomenon. My sister and I used to get into such heated arguments about it, like fights that culminated in her storming out. She was a big Beltran supporter, and I just couldn't hang my hat on a player no one gave much attention to until last year, and who's "big numbers" consisted of a .258 season batting average.

Everyone always says Yankee fans are bandwagon fans, and you know what, the way I see it, yankee fans are yankee fans. I'm not saying I like fans who stop liking a team when they're losing, but if a fan decides to "jump on the bandwagon" and then stick around after, say, the 2004 ALCS, who cares? It's like a corporation, we're always looking for new blood. And everyone knows Yankees don't condition their farm league. Yankees and their respective fans bring in older talent. That's how it is. So come jump on the bandwagon, pull up a memory. The more the merrier.

While I love fresh fan recruits, I refuse to jump on the player bandwagon. For a lot of reasons. Mostly because I hate how everyone on the Player Wagon acts like they got their first. "I always knew Santana was going to have a huge year!" Kinda like how ALL GUYS always always always have that unduly aggravating tendency to watch a basketball game, and then when there's a foul in like the 2nd quarter, they'll say, "Well, that's it. That's the game right there. Game over." AND THEN, say the team does lose, then they're all, "Well what did I tell you. Foul in the 2nd did them in." There's a 50-50 fucking chance you'll get that right. I could say after tipoff, "Done deal. There's the game" and still have a 50% chance of being right.

So this is why I won't hop on any player wagons anytime soon. I'd much prefer to find some random ass player and decide that he is going to be a superstar this year. Like Placido Polanco or Jeremy Reed. (Both of which are in my fantasy team. Everyone during the draft thought I was nuts for taking these 2 in like the 10 and 12th rounds.) OH JUST WAIT. We'll see who's laughing last. And when my weirdo players are bating .345 by the end of the year, I'm not letting any of you on my wagon. Unless you bring food and beer and a beirut table. (I have the ping pong balls and cups already on the wagon, no worries.)

Then I can be persuaded.

Branded cups

So when I was in college, every single thing I owned had my sorority letters on it. Everything. After I pledged, my room looked like a leprachaun threw up in it (because our symbol was a shamrock). My sisters used to make fun of me, saying, "You guys got cups made up if you went to get the mail." Which wasn't far from the truth. Every single occasion was a reason to have cups made up.

And now, an embodiment of the fact I'm not in school anymore (besides for the fact that, well, I'm not in school) is that every single last thing on my cubicle is branded with the name of the drug my account works on. I'm drinking out of branded cup, which sits on my branded coaster, and I'm taking notes with branded highlighters on branded notepads. It's ridiculous. I know I'm just getting these things because they're like leftover premiums or something, but I want to tell the account folks that they don't really have to sell me on the drug. Branded coffee mugs and baseball hats are a nice touch to my cubicle decor, but I'm pretty much all in favor of the drug that I work on.

In other news, my parents have taken to that whole "kill time while in the car by talking on cell phone" craze. They always used to make fun of my younger sister because she couldn't walk to the bathroom without calling someone in the interim. But my mom just called from the car, and basically she is the reason they made that whole no cell phone talking while driving law. Even if she's just talking to whoever is in the passenger seat, she loses focus on the road. I've definitely been in the car with her while she's telling a story, and when she loses her train of thought, the car just slows to a stop.

So she just called to say hi, and I hear all this honking in the background, and I'm like, what the hell is going on? So she says, "Oh nothing, everyone's passing me though. Oh 2 boys just drove up and gave me the finger." And then she cheerfully notes, "They're your age!"

I had to get off the phone because I was legitimately concerned she was going to roll down her window and say, Hi! I have a nice daughter who you guys would like. She loves baseball.

That's usually her "selling point" when she meets someone on line at the supermarket or something, and there's a "very handsome boy" there. "You would love my daughter. She lives in the city, and she's a big sports fan!"

My mom is the best. Seriously. Plus at least if she's calling me at work, she doesn't ask, "Did I just wake you up?" My youngest sister still hasn't caught on to the fact that I work. She'll call at like 2 and when I don't pick up the phone screaming things like, 'YO HOLLA SISTA!' and instead try to keep my voice to a professional "indoor voice," she immediately asks, "Hi did I wake you up?" Finally I said, "Ok. From now on, go by this general rule. Whenever you call me during the day from Monday-Friday, I am up. And have been for probably some time." Ah I shouldn't complain. It's a good day when you have your whole family calling you. You know how there's people have this really biting sense of humor? And then when they actually laugh at something you say, it means twice as much? That's how I feel when my youngest sister and my dad calls, because they don't call as much as my mom and other sister, so it's twice as good to hear from them! Even if they are setting me up with road rage ridden delinquents or "waking me up."

Thoughts while I'm waiting for work to land on my desk

So I'm just wondering something. It's April 20, and today is Don Mattingly's birthday. Did Donnie Baseball smoke a lot solely because he has the distinction of being born on 4/20? Realize I'm saying this all faceiously because I think the whole "oooh lets smoke it's 4/20" thing is just about the most idiotic idea in the world to endorse. I feel bad for Mattingly almost. I would NEVER want a birthday on April 20, just because everytime someone asked when my birthday was and I told him, I'd have to deal with 1 out of every 10 people saying, "Hahaha! 4/20!" And then I would have to dropkick him.

In my rankings of innocuously aggravating people, the 4/20 bozos are hovering right around the dingbats on the subway who listen to their ipods at full volume so that-despite the headphones-everyone on the train can hear every single last asinine lyric.

I was watching the Goonies last night because what else is there to do on an 80 degree night at 3 in the morning when you're tired of reading old press releases for Spring Break Shark Attack? And there's scene I'd like to call your attention to. When they're in the basement of the Fratelli's restaurant and they're trying to "get to the lowest point possible" so Mikey takes a shovel and trys to dig through the concrete floors. Here's the scene. We're all very luckily I have a photographic memory and procure this type of information at will, exactly for these types of emergency situations:

Brand: Mikey, what are you doing? You little...
Mikey: Brand.
Brand: Give me that. There's nothing buried under there.
Mikey: There is something buried under there, Josh.
Brand: This is the twentieth century, Mikey.
Mikey: The map says there's something buried under there. There's gotta be.
Brand: Come on, get off it.
Mouth: Look it! I've got an idea. Why don't we just pour chocolate all over the floor, and let Chunk eat his way through?
Chunk: Okay Mouth, that's all I can stand. And I can't stand no more!
(Then the water bottle Chunk's drinking out of starts wobbling!)
Chunk: I got it. I got it. I got it!
(And then the water bottle falls over and breaks. Those nutty kids. Hilarious hijinx abounding.)
Chunk: I don't got it.
Others: You klutz. (I LOVE it when people in movies say things in unison! For real)

Let me preface this with saying that since I have genetically passed on hearing issues, as in I can hear about 35% of what people say, I have to watch the tv with captioning on. So this wasn't as an astute catch as I wish it was: Mikey calling Brand "Josh." I had to look it up, but apparently Josh Brolin is Brand? Why does that name sound familiar? Was he married to Streisand or something? I don't know.

Also, this scene reminds me of baseball. I swear to God. There's something wrong with me. And this is why. The part when Chunk is being a KLUTZ. “Look it! I've got an idea. Why don't we just pour chocolate all over the floor, and let Chunk eat his way through?”? But Chunk had had it, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. (water cooler breaks...and scene.)

I feel Chunk’s pain right now. I held my tongue when 2 weeks ago, New York Press listed A-Rod as the 50th Most Loathsome New Yorker. Rolled my eyes all winter when Holier-than-thou Schilling and his congregation took shots at #13. Shrugged off all these ridiculous claims that the Yankees’ third baseman is a curse/overpaid/overrated. But now, in the words of the immortal Chunk, “Okay, Mouth, that’s all I can stand, and I can’t stand no more!”

I'm fed up. I mean it. I also stupidly decided to jump on this whole New York Post Immortal Medallions Collection thing. I'm such an idiot. Of course, now that I've started buying the little bastards at 3 bucks a pop every morning, I can't stop now. I guess it will look pretty cool when I'm finished, but I also know that when it's displayed prominently on my mantle, I will invariably hear from whatever visitor I may have over, "I can't believe you actually wasted your money on that." And I won't be able to say they're entirely wrong, too, because I'm spending $60 when all is said and done, and this is $60 coming out of the wallet of a girl who has volunteered for a spinal tap medical research study, so she can pay her cell phone bill.

You're killing me, Smalls...

Today was the second day in a row I didn't get to watch a single inning. Work is beating me senseless. Not unlike the way offense is beating the Big Unit senseless. I'm very, very confused. Not nervous yet. Even though my buddy pointed out that the only time the Yanks ever won a title with this kind of start was in 1977. <>

But then again, no one ever came back from a 3-0 deficit. Pretty soon Yank fans are going to be the ones adopting the "Gotta Believe" mentality.

I'm not even going to watch Sportscenter tonight. That's right, that's what I said. I hate listening to players talk about a loss. Of any team, but obviously least of all the bombers. Just once, I want to hear a losing player say, "The only reason we lost was because my horoscope said we would" or "You may think we lost, but if a tree falls in a forest...you know how that is" or "Loss, schmoss, there's 2 naked dancers in my bedroom as we speak. Who's the loser now, asswipe?"

I really like how Mariano (cat), whenever I'm writing, puts his head at the edge of the keyboard and sleeps like that. I love it. It doesn't matter if I wake up in the middle of the night to write something down, Mo wakes up too and jumps on the desk and puts his head right by the esc key in the upper left hand corner.

High and away.

Galvanizing my manic posts and ramblings

It's been a psychotic last week, so I decided to "wordsmith" my previous nonsensical posts into an actual story:
******

My boss is in the process of buying a new apartment, so he says to me, "A study once reported, the 3 most stressful things to do in life are switch jobs, move, or get a divorce." (Yeah, I think this is just how people in the pharmaceutical business talk. No claim can be made without a clinical trial to support it, I guess.) Then he goes on, "But I'm thinking for you the most stressful things involve a player getting traded, away games, and the playoffs."

He's not too far from the truth. As if the trials and tribulations of post-college life weren't taxing enough, baseball is officially making my head spin.

On Monday, I spend 12 hours in a conference room only to re-emerge to voicemails like, "Are you watching this game?? 9 to nothi--agghhh, make that 13! GRAND SLAM! I gotta go!" I can't keep up with this sport any better than my manic buddy could keep up with score of the Yankee's 19-run freak show.

Maybe "stressful" isn't the right word for it. It's more like the type of anxiety you get when you go to Vegas, and upon walking into the casino, you're instantly cocooned in a surround-sound system of ringing slot machines, billowing cigarette smoke, and a sea of eyes all darting around furiously. And somewhere at the core of all this, is the reason you're there: for the delirious rush of gambling, for the thrill of getting emotionally involved in something that may or may not pay off.

It's gotten to the point where I want to pull a Zach Morris move, like when he'd be on the throes of adolescent disaster, and he'd say, "Time out!"--hand gesture and all--and a convenient freeze frame would ensue. See, I have a vague feeling that some altercation occurred, involving a "steroid-ish" right fielder, beer, and an edgier version of Steve Barton. But I don't know all the details since I was still reeling from some story I heard about A-rod saving an 8-year-old's life.

What the hell was A-rod's PR rep thinking? I've heard of people like Tori Spelling popping out of the woodwork to donate their fingers to special ed children without hands or something. But I always thought that type of stuff was reserved as a last-ditch effort to jump back into the charitable limelight. Christ, A-rod's in the middle of a 3-game series in Boston. He needs publicity about as much as Britney's matrimonial life does.

Let the record show that I love A-rod. But more specifically, I love A-rod when he's screaming at other teams, when he's in the thick of verbal assaults, and when he's got that competitive yet unnerving Mike Tyson look in his eyes. I love him because he's not Jeter or Mussina or Hideki, and not trying to be. Because I can I picture him throwing his glove against his locker with enough force to wear down the leather. He's intense, and I much prefer this perception of him to the one where he saves little boys from incoming trucks.

Of course, I know this story isn't fabrication or anything, but I also know it's a completely fruitless, unnecessary, and--quite possibly--damaging human interest piece. It's like in My Cousin Vinny: right after the hearing, Ralph Macchio's friend asks Vinny why he didn't call any witnesses, and Vinny responds, "Stan, you're in a Ala-f*ng-bama. You come from New York. You killed a good ol' boy. There is NO WAY this case isn't going to trial." We're all elated some kid's life was saved, but this story would probably hold a lot more clout on Madison Avenue. A-rod, you're in Red Sox f*ng Nation. You come from New York. You didn't play for Boston. There is NO WAY you'll ever been respected there.

So after I finally get my head around this out-of-the-blue slice-of-life news byte, I realize it's the tail end of the Sox-Yanks series and we've come back to tie the score 5-5. And I begin to feel like the underdog lightweight boxer in the corner whose coach is icing my black eyes and pouring water down my throat, and then two seconds later I'm shoved back into the ring for another round of psychological brutality. Huh? We didn't win? Alas, there's no time to dwell on this, courtesy an incident in the outfield that spurred on enough conflicting stories to rival those of Kobe and his Denver girl.

But a day later, I finally get around to watching the dramatic right field cinematography, only to discover it's old news because the Boss has "issued a statement."

I know there are newsreels to feed and all, but come on, cut me a little slack here. I already live on the 5th floor of a walkup. I can't take this out-of-breath exhaustion from my favorite sport acting like it just swallowed a bottle of Stacker II's.

I should be grateful I don't have to see a "Winners Never Quit and Quitters Never Win" marquee on Yankee Stadium, which was the Boss's cunning resolution to a historic 22-0 loss last year. But "issuing a statement"? Is he the head of Homeland Security? I scanned his sputtering barrage of growls and couldn't help but see why other fans hate him so much. I always saw the Boss as this caricature, not a real person, kind of like Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Always shaking his fist at someone, but pretty much a joke that no one pays attention to.

Maybe I'm just overly defensive when it comes to the Bombers, but I felt like his criticism of the Yanks' losing streak was overtly disloyal. It'd be like a boyfriend getting sloppily drunk in a bar and yelling at some guy for hitting on his girlfriend. So right before the couple leaves the bar, the girlfriend goes back to the guy and apologizes for her boyfriend's behavior. Not cool. You're a team; right or wrong, you don't divorce yourself from your boyfriend/the Yankees because of how others perceive them.

But before I can properly mull over this new gem from the Bronx's New Motivational Speaker, it's 10PM on Monday night, and the Yankees just tied the record for the most runs scored in a second inning. Most days, I get into work at 10, check box scores for 3 hours, and then when an account executive rolls up and tells me my taglines have a tight deadline of one hour, I decide to open up Word and bang them out. The Yankees acted like someone reminded them to stop messing around on the Internet when they need to get work done. They didn't just break a losing streak with a 5-1 win. They scored 19 runs. This is absurd, that's all there is to it. Whether you're a Yankee fan or not, please admit this whole scenario is just laughable.

It's almost 2AM now, and I'm hoping for a bye day before someone tosses down the next baseball trump card. Maybe I can squeeze in a few hours of sleep before I wake up to breaking news that Steinbrenner used cattle prods to drive his team into getting their asses in gear.

I don't ask for much. Just to be able to watch a few games where the outcome of the game isn't eclipsed by another outrageous B-side story. It's a long marathon of a season, and I've already stopped about 6 times along the road to have Gatorade splashed in my mouth. Maybe this week will dial it down a notch, because while I love the dense dynamic of baseball, I don't think my heart or my sanity can sustain this pace all season.

None of us is as dumb as all of us

I don't mind working 12 hour days if it involves sitting at my desk and doing independent copywriting. Not that I don't play well with others. I'm just always like 5 seconds away from saying at meetings, "Enough brainstorming. I'll do it myself." I don't know where this arrogance comes from. I'm a copywriter surrounded by account executives who have been doing this for years. But 12 hours throwing ideas on a wall, sifting through clinical data with others, trotting out words like "tactical plan" and "messaging framework" and "positioning"...not my cup of tea. Fortunately, I swear to God I think I hit the jackpot with my boss. I went from working at a publishing company, where my situation there made "the Devil Wears Prada" look like working at a high school carnival. My boss at said publisher has the distinction of being in the driver's seat of my All-Star Car Wreck team. Speaking of the Devil...yeah, I know. They're fueling my fires in hell right now.

So I quit and now whenever me and all my coworkers go out for drinks, I'm without fail approached by at least 5 different people who strongly and adamantly affirm that my boss is the coolest guy in the world, and the smartest guy in the company, and they're so jealous I work for him. My mom says karma is coming back and helping me out after I suffered through 8 months working for the most miserable woman on the planet. To put things in context, when I went to Spring Training last year for vacation, and put up my Auto-Response on my email, I come back to work after a week to find that my boss had responded to my auto response with:

Scout-
I've tweaked the copy on your auto-response. Next time you go away, please use this message instead: "I will be away from the office from ((DAY OF THE WEEK! and date)), and will be returning ((DAY OF THE WEEK! and date)). Please contact Phyllis at ext: 8734 if you need immediate assistance."

You'd think my auto-reponse was something like WOOHOO!! I'm in Spring Training and you're not!! See ya in a week suckers! I think the only thing she changed was the dire need to assert the day of the week. The real straw that broke the camel's back was when she decided to "take over" an 80 page report I had been working on when it was 99% finished. "I think this project was a little too big for you. I'm going to take over from here."

I was fuming, and said as such. To which she responded, "have you ever though about doing something that involves less writing? You should think about PR. You're such a pretty girl, I bet you would do well doing things like that. And it would be fun! You could talk on the phone!" See, women know how to push other women's buttons.

So I left my job without any backup job, and luckily landed my current job within a week. And the icing on the cake was when she forwarded an email that went to my old work account:

Scout-
Please inform people of your new address.

Fwd msg:
May have something for you at the New Yorker if you're ready to leave medical publishing.
--PB

HA! Yeah the NYer job never worked out, obviously. But she doesn't know that.

So I leave work today and discover the Yankees won by 11 runs. The whole situation is just ludicrous. I'm still trying to get my head around it. 19 freaking runs. Madness. If I've said it once, I've said it 1000 times. Everything in sports trumps what came before it. It's like in the play A Winter's Tale:

What you do
Still betters what is done.
When you speak (sweet)
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy,and sell so: give alms,
Pray so: and for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too.
When you dance, I wish you
A wave of the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that: move still,still so:
And own no other function.
Each your doing,
(So singular, in each particular)
Crowns what you are doing, in the present deeds,
That all your acts, are Queens.

A new low perhaps? Comparing Shakespeare to sports? Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave, seeing someone use his immortal words to describe a baseball game. Well, either that, or he's rolling over laughing about this 19 run hysteria. I know I would be. You spend your whole life extrapolating humor from things like amensia and mistaken identities, and the most humorous thing you have to inspire you is the fact men have to make out with men on stage because women couldn't act back then. And now Shakespeare is looking down on the earth, "troubling deaf heaven with his bootless cries," muttering things like, "This is bullshit. I was born in the wrong century. This sports thing? Talk about a fucking comedy of errors..."

Wow. And I thought I was nuts....

It's one thing to roll your eyes at superfluous Rounders references, it's another thing to dedicate a site to firing the loser.

Don't know what to make of this, just came across it. At first I laughed, half because someone is even more insane than me, half because there are only 6 signatures here. And then I was like, aww who cares. My mom gave me a book for my birthday a few years ago, like one of those "Finding Happiness" or like Anna Quindlen's Guide to Life or something of that Mother-Daughter gift giving ilk. And there's a line in it that says, "Run your own race." While I don't normally subscribe to any kind of wisdom purported in books that during my time as Barnes and Noble employee I would file under Self-Help, I like this line. Which is why I finally decided the site is weird. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Run your own race.

Last night, some chick taps the guy I was talking to on the shoulder and says, "Excuse me, people are trying to stand here." As if me and the dude were flapping around and dancing and taking up 10 square feet of bar floor space, when in fact we were just standing at the anchor of the bar doing nothing but drinking Red Stripe. And THEN, THE PSYCHO HOSEBEAST TAKES ME BY THE SHOULDERS AND PUSHES ME BACKWARDS and says, "You too."

I was spitting nails, there was literally steam coming out of my ears. She had a backpack on. Not one of those Kelly Taylor early 90's purse/backpacks. I mean, a full-fledged jansport stuff to the zippers. And we weren't exactly in a bar that this type of dress was appropriate (not that there are many L.L. Bean themed bars in the Lower East Side. Or anywhere at all). But we were at one of those trendy bars that I got roped into going to where I was borderline concerned my sneakers would prevent me from getting in. Regardless. My sister said she would have punched her. Which she probably would have. I was actually about to go my standard non-violent approach. The Ghandi-style method of going up to her and apologizing for taking up so much space, and then suggesting that in the future, to avoid these types of real estate issues in bars she should either leave the backpack or start making some trips to the salad bar.

With chicks, that type of comment is fatal. I could have leveled her that alone. BUT i decided to run my own race, and just stare at her icily until she started getting uncomfortable and went to the downstairs part of the bar.

So I'm still trying to get my head around why she had a backpack on. I saw actually a few people last night sporting this look. I think there was some Grateful Dead cover band playing downtown. And for some reason, back when I was always going to those String Cheese, Disco Biscuits, Trey Anastasio, etc. concerts, everyone there wore backpacks. I didn't understand it then either. And I always felt like everyone there was looking at me like, who the hell is this chick? she's all showered and shit. My college roommate got big into following this band Brothers Past around, and she came home after a week with no shoes and with this skirt that looked like it was made from recycled middle school bathroom paper towels. Those stiff brown ones.

A backpack may have been involved too. We all figured she traded her shoes for the skirt. A la Dumb and dumber style:

"Just when I think you can't POSSIBLY get any stupider. You do something like this...AND TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF."

Maybe she was running her own race too.

An inspiration to us all

If franchise ownership doesn't work out this year, it's nice to know he can fall back on motivational speaking.

I don't know what's sadder. This outlash that I find-for whatever reason-incredibly disloyal, or the saccharine, embarassing marquee that still pains me to think about.

I can see why people hate Steinbrenner. I would be so livid if I was Torre right now. Yes, the Yanks are getting their asses kicked all around the east coast, but for Steinbrenner to publicly chastise his team...it's almost like when a boyfriend gets all hammered at a bar and starts making an ass of himself and gets overly jealous. So he starts telling some dude to stop hitting on his girlfriend. And then when the couple leaves, the girlfriend goes back to the dude and apologizes for her boyfriend's behavior. Whether the boyfriend/Yankees are right or wrong, you never divorce yourself from them. You're a team. I think when you're in a relationship, you have the other's back no matter what. I'm writing a story about this right now, so don't be suprised if I roll out this metaphor again...

Well, I could have used Steinbrenner's gems of inspiration yesterday when me and my beirut partner lost in the first round of the tournament. And in all fairness, it was completely my fault. Beforehand, I kept telling him, "alright, this is serious business, no screwing around. I mean it." And he was like, "Um okay well I've probably played in about 4 beirut games my whole life, so...I may disappoint you."

And then, of course, he hit all of the cups except one. And I just didn't come through. Fortunately he was like, "You're lucky Ive seen you play before, so I know this is just a bad day. Because otherwise, you know how much shit I should be giving you for talking such a big game..."

We did manage to walk out of the bar with a mini coors light football helmet he won in a raffle. And somehow I left with a Wilson football with all the team logos on it. Not sure how I ended up with that one though. I didn't win it in a raffle, and I didn't steal it or anything. I think maybe someone who won it didn't feel like holding it anymore, so he gave it to me? I have no idea. But now I have a nice football on my mantle next to my steinbrenner signed baseball, and my 1930's baseball mitt. A lovely memento of an overall outstanding day. Despite losing, the rest of the afternoon was stellar.

I'd rank it in my top 10 weekend nights of 2005 for sure.

My first softball game is tomorrow. I have a feeling I'm going to show up sometime around the 6th inning since it's about 40 minutes from my office and the game starts at 6. I don't mind though, because it's supposed to be around the same type of weather tomorrow.

Oh shit, that reminds me, I definitely said to my partner yesterday, "I think I'm just in a good mood because I'm twitterpated." And he was like "You're what?"

"Remember in Bambi when all the skunks and birds and stuff get all happy because it's the spring? And then the wise old owl says that it's because they're twitterpated, and that's what happens in the spring?"

"Um ok, yeah I think I saw bambi like 15 years ago, though."

Sweet Christ, I hate remembering vintage Scout-nonsense the next day. I have these Monday Quarterback Reflections it seems every Sunday morning. Twitterpated. What is wrong with me. And I wonder why people think I'm nuts.

I'm going to get Haagen Daaz. That's not a threat, it's a promise.

The Good, the Bad, and the Gorgeous Weather

75 degrees out. Just got back inside from lying out on my roof and listening to the Yankee game on the radio. So the game was less than satisfactory, but the weather is just unbelievable. So at least I got a nice tan, though if I was making deals, I would take getting a hellish sunburn if the Yankees won. I'm still not worried about them. Just annoyed.

I read this story about A-rod saving some 8yr old's life. I hate PR things like that. I'm sure he really did do something to that effect, and I love A-rod, but I love him more when he is a rough around the edges, competitive badass. And of course, this stunt is not going to make anyone say, "Whoa! I always thought A-rod was a minion of Satan! Didn't realize that he has a heart of gold to go with that amazing talent! Guess we were wrong all along about him... A-rod, indeed, is a true Yankee. And quite possibly, a true immortal being."

If I had my druthers, those type of life saving B-side stories would be reserved for Jeter. I like the A-rod B-side stories that involve gratuitous competitiveness and over-the-top intensity.

Do you know who I am? I'm Moe Green...

...I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders.

I'm playing in a beirut tournament in about 10 hours. I may be a little rusty since the last time I played was last weekend. When I was visiting my sister at G-town, I kept blabbering on to her friends about how they shouldn't listen to any alum who says, "The real world sucks!"

Which they shouldn't. Real world is awesome. Yeah I miss college more than Boston misses Pedro. But there's no homework in the real world. Once you're done with work, that's it. No work to do on the weekends. And it's not hard! In college there was always stuff you had to work hard at to learn and pass. The real world isn't challenging. You do what you know how to do. And you only have two things to worry about: bills and not getting fired.

Everything else is cream cheese. Cream cheese and weekend beirut tournaments for people who forgot they don't live in a fraternity basement anymore. Not a bad deal, at all.

I'm sad the Tank lost today. I missed most of the game (!!!!) because I went out to dinner with my friend. In an effort to find a temporary cure for my still troublesome sinus infection, we got Mexican food. And it put me in a good mood, though it didnt help my sinuses at all. There's something about having a spur of the moment dinner with a Mojito, tacos, and flan on a friday night, with your friend you just ran into on the way home from work, that is light and comforting.

Light and comforting but not effective in treating sinusitis. (Sounds like a pharma ad. The quickly read part at the end of the commercial that we in the business know as "fair balance:" "Mexican food is not suitable for all patients and is not indicated for the relief of nasal decongestion. Ask your doctor if chicken burritos are right for you.")

I am still getting double copies of ESPN magazine. This needs to stop. Not only am I not getting my free fleece, but I'm getting two copies of the same issue every month, and getting charged twice. This sounds like a Friends episode. The sitcom-like nuisance of simply trying to cancel one subscription and keep the other.

You know what I thought was weird? Opening day at Fenway was also Varitek and Nixon's birthday and no one mentioned anything about it. I only know because it was on my Page-A-Day Calendar. This is what I don't get about announcers. Not that birthdays are like Aflac Trivia questions. But I would think the captain's birthday would be of more human interest than say, I don't know, how many games the ump has called in the last decade.

The press box works in mysterious ways. Ok, me and Mo are going to bed. My friends wanted me to train him to play beirut and use him as my partner. But seeing as the list of people who like my cat grows shorter pretty much on a daily basis, he would probably clear out the bar in about an hour if I brought him tomorrow to be my partner. That, and he's only a kitten and can't play human drinking games.

Ok, I know I said I was done with Simmons, heretoforth known by his initials as well as the type of garbage he prints, but someone emailed this to me. Basically it was the equivalent of the fan swiping at Sheffield: to provoke me and get some kind of rise out of me. Nice. Which it did, of course, because I think I've gone insane. I'm like Chris, that guy on the Apprentice who gets all sorts of huffy and apopletic if someone so much as drinks the last of the Powerade. So yes, this did get me pissed off. Now the Yankees are getting railed for not starting fights?? This is lunacy. Plain and simple.

They can't win. If Jeter had charged the mound after getting hit with a pitch, you know what all the Boston fans would be saying?

"THIS JUST PROVES HE'S A PHONY, AND HE'S NOT REALLY IMMORTAL! IT WAS ALL JUST AN ACT. YANKEES SUCK."

No, he shakes it off. I guess BS's friend Jack-o wants some more bench-clearers, but I love the Yankees just as they are. They're not pussies. It'd be like BS going up to Tom Wolfe and wildly flapping his arms about how Tom Wolfe can't write for sh*t, and then BS knocking over Wolfe's bookcase so that it falls on top of him. Bestsellers flying everywhere. Do you think Tom Wolfe would retaliate against a writer for ESPN?

The Yankees won't knock over any bookcases.

They know that the Red Sox are beneath them.

****

Last night's incident also played into something larger that's happening with this rivalry. The Red Sox keep pushing this Yankees team around, whether it's fans popping right fielders at Fenway, Jeter getting plunked in the helmet for the umpteenth time, Red Sox players calling out A-Rod during spring training, Varitek nailing A-Rod in the chops or whatever ... and the Yankees keep taking the high road and not sticking up fot themselves. According to one of my editors, the Red Sox have plunked 68 Yankee batters since the start of the 2001 season (compared to just 36 Boston batters hit by Yankee pitchers), including a 5-2 advantage this season. Talking to my buddy last night, I joked how the way the Sox keep throwing at Jeter (intentional or unintentional) is vaguely reminscent of the way Cobra Kai kept going after Daniel-San, to the point I keep waiting for Mike Timlin to scream at him during batting practice, "What's the matter, Derek, Mommy not hear to dress ya?"

"I'm so tired of taking the high road," Jack-O complained. "This team has no [euphemism for something that guys have that girls don't have]. We're a bunch of [euphemism for something that you could also call a group of cats]. Seriously, how many times does Jeter have to be hit? Even tonight, Ortiz is leaning right over the plate and the Unit doesn't even dust him off. I'm embarrassed to root for these guys."

That raises a larger question: Where the hell is Steinbrenner during all of this? Twenty years ago, if Rivera didn't throw at someone after Jeter got nailed in the helmet, he would have questioned Rivera's manhood AND fired the pitching coach. Now his team has been bullied for a solid year, with no repercussions, and we're only six months removed from the greatest choke job in sports history. I'm really starting to wonder if George is in a nursing home somewhere and nobody has broken the story yet.

Sheffield started getting all WHAT??

Quite possibly the most intelligent line to ever escape from a New Englanders mouth, courtesy of 16-year-old Rachel...

You really can't argue with her airtight logic, especially not when it's so eloquently expressed...

35,000 fans in Fenway, the best eyewitness they have to the crime is a 16 year old with a questionable grasp on the English language. Point being, you should only refer to yourselves as "idiots" if you're doing it quasi-jokingly, and you have some modicum of intelligence to make it, in fact, a joke. But if the collective brain cell count of Massachussetts is roughly the same as their World Series Titles (ooh--count it, AND ONE), then the whole idiot phenomenon is bordering on sad and pathetic...

I'm just saying, is all.

So Nietzche once said, "if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty." And basically this applies to everything, including all this Sheffield crap. If everyone is writing/talking about Sheffield's selfish ambition to field a ball out of the hands of a paying fan, then no one is. "Makes for good copy," my mom emailed me. Now I'm starting to think that the reason the Yanks and the Sox are the two highest payrolled teams (DRINK! reference to payrolls) is because Selig is paying them millions to perpetuate the whole rivalry drama. Like a fixed boxing match or something. I'm imaging the two teams huddled in Selig's uber-secret bungalow, and he's slipping them bills under the table with instructions like, "That Artest thing was the best thing that ever happened to the NBA. What can you do to make it happen?" Tek and A-Rod put their hands up in a "Hey don't look at us" way, and protest, "We've got families to feed, we can't risk another suspension."

Giambi's out, since he's already pushing enough media hype. Jeter: can't ruin squeaky clean image. Bernie, too old. (For now. I suspect at some point there will be a bench-clearing brawl instigated when Renteria, in an effort to prove himself to the Red Sox, joking stealths away with Bernie's guitar. And then at his next at-bat, he uses the GUITAR instead of a BAT, as the Idiots in the dugout chortle and slap their knees. Those kidders! Mussina yells, "That's not a bat! I can't pitch to something that isn't regulation equipment!" Johnson replaces him while the bullpen warms up. "I'll pitch to anything," he grumbles. Bernie, slightly befuddled, starts jogging towards the batter's box to retrieve said bat. Bernie kicks Renteria in the shin, Renteria retaliates in vintage Boston-style by breaking the guitar over his knee and then staking Bernie in the chest with one of the broken shards. The fans go wild. Torre wakes up. Security is heightened at Yankee Stadium on Calendar night, for fear beligerent fans will make paper airplanes out of them and throw them at Boston outfielders.)

I just went outside to get air. I have on my Yankee jacket, (it's still a game day, I dont get why everyone thinks that if the Yanks lose, I'm going to sheepishly retire my jacket/hat). One of my office building's maintenance men said, "Can't believe you're still wearing that." So many things wrong with this statement. I got that alot after the ALCS. If anything, I wore my hat out MORE after the ALCS, not asking for trouble, but because I didn't want to feed any preconceived notions about Bronx fans being fair-weather and soft.

Maybe the highlight of my morning though was coming in today and having a different maintenance man come up to me and deadpan, "I hate those motherf*ckers." (And he didn't mean the Bombers.)

In other news, I basically swallowed whole a McDonald's egg and cheese biscuit, along with the hashbrown. They didn't even know what hit them.

My coworker comes up behind me this morning and says, "Hey, howd last night go?" And I turn around and mutter, "Thanks, jackass." But alas, he really didn't even know who the yankees were playing, or if they won.
"Oh. Um, did the Yankees lose or something?"
I have to remember that not everyone is as witty as those yankee-haters who trot out this line...and that sometimes, a coworker just wants to make pleasant conversation. That's sound advice right there.

I.O.U.

Consider this an I.O.U. for a post saturated with my usual rapist wit, analyzing the debacle in right field last night. I'm jut way too hungover right now, but I can't wait til I have a Burger King breakfast in me. My panacea.
I feel like hell this morning, I'd pretty much rather have my eyeballs spooned out than go to work today. And you know what? This, of course, is all Boston's fault.
You know, the Red Sox are making it very difficult for me to like them. It's one thing to win over my favorite team. It's a whole new ball game (DRINK! baseball cliche) when it's a matter of compromising my own health and well being.
Which I'd say this whole hangover thing falls under.
They just better hope a Croissanwich fixes all this. I'm not kidding.

Boston Fans Subscribe to Own Nicknames

BOSTON (April 14) – After being routed by their sworn enemy the Yankees, Boston declared April 13 as the date for the collective recognition that both the Red Sox franchise and their fans are, in fact, idiots.

The decision came after a 5-2 loss with Schilling fizzling out just in time for the New York bullpen to plug up Boston’s bats. Mariano Rivera, who accepted his faceious standing ovation at Fenway with hallmark charisma and grace, capped off the evening with a quick and scoreless 9th inning.

“I’m going to have a take a page from Schilling’s book when I say, ‘Nothing makes me happier than shutting up 35,000 fans in Boston,” said Rivera.

Sparkling middle relief performances from Sturtze and Gordon had Sox fans scratching their heads, with the dumbfounded confusion continuing as Rivera finished them off.

Said one Fenway Faithful, “I don’t get it. I thought we owned Rivera! Hell, I even said his career was dead after the second loss. I just don’t get it…”

Another fan echoed these sentiments, “What’s going on? I thought blowing 2 regular season saves in the first week of baseball automatically means you go from fame to shame!”

Despite this particular fan’s ability to rhyme, he later admitted. “Gosh, I guess we ARE idiots. And not in the fun-loving, jokester kind of way. Just plain old imbeciles.” Laughing, he went on, “Well, I’d guess we have to be to think we could ever touch the Yankees again!”

Boston officials met behind closed doors to discuss the future of the franchise image, as well as what type of reception Rivera should receive the next time New York plays in Fenway.

“We’re all a little shaken up, here” General Manager Theo Epstein remarked. “I think it’s important we focus now on exactly what type of public image we want to project. Are we still America’s underdogs? Are we idiots or defending champs? Is Rivera revered or mocked? These are the types of questions we’re hoping to have answers for by the time the 3rd week of the season rolls around.”

Bill Simmons, self-proclaimed spokesman for Red Sox Nation, could not be reached for comment. His wife, who prefers to remain nameless, did say that her husband was currently in "the lab, conjuring up a new spin to why the Yankees still suck."

As usual, Yankee players had little to say about the outcome of the game. When asked about what this suggested about the dynamic between the Red Sox and his ace closer, Manager Joe Torre commented, “Are you serious? It’s the 8th game of the season.”

The Yankees appeared to be nonplussed as they exited the stadium. Captain Derek Jeter shrugged off the game, as is typical for the eerily confident shortstop, “People keep saying, ‘Mo’s back!’ You know, he was never gone. God, he’s a future Hall-of-Famer. You’d have to be an idiot to write off his talent as anything less.”

And now as of April 13, Boston fans will officially accept that, indeed, this is what they truly are. Nothing more.

Just curious

Does anyone know what the money line is on the fact Boston fans will talk about A-rod going 0 for 5? Because clearly that was the defining aspect of the game. I'm just wondering. Since they don't have Mo as their headliner anymore...

6th inning

In all fairness, Schilling pitched decently. But not well enough to back up his penchant for talking a big game. To talk like that, you need to pitch a 1-, 2-hitter, maybe. Anything else, you're the same as the guy who calls his last beirut cup and then just hits the rim. (And then inevitably, his partner goes, "Dude, how cool would it have been if you had hit that?")

Also, shouldn't you outgrow talking sh*t after the age of, like, 27? I mean, geez, he's 41. When you're that age, your vocabulary should be dominated by expressions like "trousers," "slickers," "blouses," "cross," (aka "angry") and "slacks."

I guess Schilling's mom never talked to him ("stern"--there's another one) about using "expletives."

Sweet Christ, get the pine tar off your hats. You look ridiculous.

You know how there's rules against tattoos in the MLB? Because they're distracting? HOW DOES THAT RULE NOT APPLY TO BOSTON'S REPERTOIRE OF HAIRCUTS? It's like in Teen Wolf when Michael J. Fox wins all those games as THE WOLF, mainly because who wants to play man-to-man against someone whose body sweat is multiplied exponentially by a full suit of hair? How can you pitch to Johnny Damon? Poor Tanyon, it must be like pitching to a unicorn or something equally mythical and distracting and ultimately useless.

Mom: 1, Scout: 0

So my mom calls in the middle of the 3rd inning, and if you thought it was something really important that a call in the middle of the game was necessary, you'd be wrong. She informed me that she actually reads my blog once, and that I "shouldn't be using so many...um...expletives..."

She's probably right. Also, if you thought I wasn't 24 years old, you'd be wrong.

Back to the game. Who did these commentators sleep with to get this job? Because it's a safe bet they didn't reach the press box on their skills. Christ, I could do this:

On Nixon fielding a single from Posada: "What he did well was get the ball."

I have so many questions about this analysis. I'm not sure how much else was involved in that play, but apparently actually obtaining the ball was KEY.

2 RUN HOMER BY GIAMBI!!!

Surprised I didn't hear, "What he did well was hit the ball over the fence."

Between Pitches: A Story

Ahh love how baseball lends itself so well to allegorical societal divisions...

“All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” --Tolstoy

Casper appeared to be engaged in some kind of gummy bear appraisal process. He would select a piece from the bag and then would hold it up against the stadium lights. And then after inspecting it, though for what Dolores wasn’t sure, and once the candy passed inspection, he would throw it happily in his mouth. Between innings, Dolores would more carefully observe this ritual, and it wasn’t until the 5th inning that she concluded he was checking the color. It was also around this time that most of the 55,000 fans had come to the conclusion that the Yankees were going to lose the league series against the Red Sox.

“Can I have a red one?” Dolores asked, upon watching the 10-year-old boy examine and then discard a clear one.

Casper shook his head briskly, “Nope. I’m not giving those away.”

“You’re not giving them away? What are they, Rolling Stones tickets?”

“Huh? I’m saving the red ones for luck. And I’m throwing out the clear ones because those are the Yankees.”

Dolores wasn’t quite certain how the clear ones had been dubbed representative of the Yankees. But she was very much familiar with the unrelenting superstition that saturated the minds and hearts of Boston fans. So she didn’t question his motives. Dolores was lucky enough to acquire tickets to Game 7 of the playoff series, through a connection at the Big Sister program at the YMCA. Having just moved to New York after graduating from Amherst, she had no friends in this championship-spoiled Yankee territory, let alone any transplanted Boston fans like herself that she could bring. Except Casper, Dolores’s assigned Little Brother, who oddly subscribed to a fierce devotion of the Sox. Dolores wondered what his friends and parents thought of this. In New York, she thought, this was akin to dropping out of med school to follow Phish or something.

Their seats were in the third to last row of the second to top tier of the stadium, but Dolores could distinguish each player through sheer knowledge of their positions on the field. She squinted her eyes to blur the view, and they became amorphous shapes of white and reddish/grey on a geometrically perfect field.

“Let’s go Red Sox!” Clap, clap, clapclapclap. “Let’s go Red Sox!” From somewhere not too far from where they were sitting, someone had resurrected the go-to chant. Casper looked up at Dolores, and she smiled at him.

“Let’s go Red Sox!” Casper didn’t get up from his seat, but he made his hands into fists and began alternately pounding his thighs back and forth, without discerning the presence of any kind of rhythm to the increasingly loud chants. Dolores was always fascinated by how black people’s palms were pink. She watched his tiny fists, and the tops of them looked like cinnamon buns, swirls of black and peach.

“How do you start yelling something so everyone else does it too?’ Casper asked.

“Umm, I’m not sure. I think someone just decided to do it and then other people join in.”

“Can anyone do it?”

“I’m pretty sure. Want to try?”

Casper made some kind of indignant huff to indicate “Yeah, right.” But he made it with the type of muddled emotion that Dolores took to mean, “Neat idea, but I’m scared to do it, but I still want to look tough and cool about it.”

Which was fine, because Dolores was in such cloudy mindset right then that she didn’t herself even believe she could muster up the tenacity to motivate the ill-received Boston fans. There were patches of red jerseys scattered throughout the stadium, interspersed among the white and navy masses of New York die-hards. The Red Sox were an inning away from beating the Yankees, and nothing made sense to Dolores. She knew she should be spilling outside of herself, that feeling of being so happy that it’s almost like you’re frustrated with your body for physically confining your euphoria. It was like meeting a celebrity on the street, and you know you should be emitting some kind of radioactive glow of exhilaration. But the intangible boundary between “real people” and famous ones has been blurred, and it’s almost as if it is not even happening.

“Can I have a clear one, Casper? I’ll throw it out, I swear, I just want to see it for a sec.”

Casper gave her a look most people reserve to react to “Is it cool if I take the blame for you crashing dad’s Mercedes?” Confusion mixed with surprise, morphing into the “okayyyy-but-it’s-your-funeral” shrug.

Dolores held the clear gummy bear up against the stadium lights. It was a shapeless morsel, the edges melting against equally formless sights of fans on the opposite side of the stadium. Dolores thought about how, to those fans on the right field side, she and Casper and the left field half were the indistinguishable blurs. She gave the clear gummy bear back to Casper to discard, not before briefly musing that against the bright lights, it almost looked like a small ghost.

* * *

It was the first time Helen had ever left a Yankee game before it even ended. The Boston fans elevated their aggressive cheering with each inning, directly proportional to the diminishing hope of New York supporters. The riotous chants had become a cacophonous manifestation of the divided stadium, with cries of “Let’s go Red Sox!” combating cheers of “1918,” the battle cry of Yankees fans, referencing the last Boston World Series victory.

It was like a tug-of-war of screaming, and the pinstripe devotees gradually relinquished their momentum, so that the muddled shouts soon sifted into distinct Red Sox cheers. To lose like this, at home—it was worse than seeing an ex-boyfriend dancing with his new flame to the old flame’s favorite song. She could clearly make out the various groupings on the other side of the stadium, since Yankee fans had one by one gone from up on their feet, optimistic for a rally, to defeatedly slumping in their seats, debating their will to live.

Of course, the obnoxious Boston fans, inflated with adrenaline and hyena-like hunger for the inevitable victory, needed to be bolted to the ground to keep from floating away. It was the saddest thing Helen had ever seen.

Helen kept tugging on the brim of her baseball hat down as she left the stadium, mostly so could keep her head down and cry privately. She was still holding the bag of peanuts she bought, and upon realizing this, she began crying a little harder. Because three hours ago, she was on the brink of a historic night and now, she was walking away from Yankee stadium for the last time until next year. And because she hated how many peanuts were still left. I should have gotten a hot dog, she thought, because those are snacks specifically designed for one.

The eruptions from the game never dwindled, but they became slightly less abrasive the further she walked away. A banner on the stadium boasted “26 World Championships” with every single championship year listed. A century of pre-eminence etched on the wall that boldly separated Helen from the impending defeat. As she neared the subway, Helen glanced again at the imposing structure and what it held inside. And it was like she wasn’t even there at all.

The Converted...

I don't know what to make of this. But yesterday I went in for my chiropractor appointment (which-as usual-fixed my back for about 3 hours before it returned to being a mess of knots, spasms, and rock-like...things...up and down my trapezius). So my Dr. Mike, who's from Boston, starts in with his whole, "Oooh so howd the Yankees do the other day?" Hilarious. And I told him to back off because the stress is making my back situation worse, and he can't deliberately aggravate my condition because it's against the hypocratic oath.

Yeah, that's right, that's what I said.

AND THEN, he says, "I'm just messing around. Actually, I just converted. I bought a Yankee hat the other day. I'm a Yankee fan now."

!!!!!!

Ok, setting aside the whole "well he must not have been a true fan" argument for a second, this is just making my head spin. I can understand someone converting from being a Jets fan to a Giants fan, or arbitrarily becoming an Indians fan instead of a Pirates fan, or something. But this is like converting to Judiasm after to going to Catholic school your whole life.

How can you be raised one way and then all of a sudden just starting eating Kosher? (Well, actually my little sister did this when she dated a Jewish guy. And so whenever we went out to eat together, she always had to remind me, "Dont forget! Order the ranch on the side! AND make sure they don't bring it on the same plate!" I was very impressed with her devotion. No offense to the religion itself, but there isnt a man on God's green earth that could induce me to give up bacon, egg, and cheeses.)

Regardless. So there you have it. Dr. Mike is a Yankee fan. I have no idea why. My mom, of course, says, "Well I think he likes you and knows if he's a Yankee fan he'll have a better chance!" Spoken like a true mother trying to marry her daughter off to a doctor. She also knows my 3 rules. The 3 rules being the absolutely necessary, no questions, no exceptions parameters for any guy I date. And they sound simple, but trust me, finding someone with all 3 is a lot harder than it looks. As evidenced by the fact I've found all of 3, and 2 of them almost died from my cat (so I guess the 4th is "not allergic to Mariano Rivera."):
1. Makes me really laugh
2. Loves the Yankees and sports. Really loves them, as in feels an emotional connection to the game, and likes hearing all those B-side stories about the players. Just simply loves baseball. You get the idea.
3. At the end of the evening/hanging out/meeting him for first time, he has to say something to the effect of, "When will I see you again?" Yeah I dont know. Gets me every time, though.

So of course my mom is now like, "Well look at that he has all 3 now!" I don't think that counts, because doctors HAVE to say, 'When am I going to see you again?" So no dice there.

I trotted out my metaphor to my mom, telling her that I already have 162 dates lined up this spring. But I don't think she got it, as she said, "WITH WHO?"

You can understand why she'd be confused, though.

So moral of the story: Boston sucks.

Baby steps, ESPN, baby steps...

Sweet Christ, it's about time someone at that website decided to appeal to all those living outside the boundaries of RSN

A-Rod=Yankee Haters Scapegoat

I'm so tired of everyone getting all over A-rod. Not that I think he's a saint. He's not too friendly, and he seems a little rough around the edges, but he's competitive. Really, really competitive. And I love that about him. Yeah, maybe he made an error or two, but I have a feeling he's going to have the best year in his career this season. The guy is in a lose lose situation. If he acts like Jeter, he's phony. If he's devoid of pretense, he's an asshole. He's effectively getting railed for all the things he would get railed for if he didn't do. If that makes any sense. He's not Jeter, and he shouldn't be. Mickey Mantle wasn't Roger Maris. Arod, when all is said and done, will end up being one of the best baseball players ever. Unbelievable fielder, batter...it's just that his feats are eclipsed by Yankee Mystique, by things like Jeter diving into the stands.

I've started writing something about it, because well that's what I do at work when I get fired up and have no pharmaceutical copywriting to do. I'll print it when I'm finished, ideally later tonight, but it's getting late, and my ability to wake up has just disappeared. I bought another alarm clock today, so now my alarm clock count is up to 4. You can imagine the madness that ensues in my bedroom in the morning, with 4 different buzzers going off at staggering times.

Oh also, if one more Red Sox fan pushes this "buy your team" crap on me, I'm going to implode. Or else finally break out the big guns aka hard fast logic and tell them to fuck off because BOSTON HAD THE HIGHEST WORLD SERIES PAYROLL IN THE HISTORY OF THE SPORT.

Get up and throw baseballs at people?

MO is the coolest guy in the universe. Hands down. I'm going to go ahead and say I'd pay upwards of $10,000 to see Mo if he had, in fact, "gotten up and thrown baseballs at people." I'm laughing maniacally just picturing this. Boston gives him a standing O. He tips his hat, reaches into a messenger bag he has with him, and starts throwing his cutters at Red Sox Nation's heads. And then there's Posada yelling things off to the side like, "Mo! Over there! That guy's tring to get away!" And after he runs out of balls, the whole stadium is quiet. No one knows what to do, so everyone, including the umps, just stare. And Mo says, "What? I'm only human. I'm not a machine."
Enter Sandman comes on, drowing out the befuddled tears of Fenway park, everyone too moved by Mo's emotional outpouring to do anything else.

Ahh one can only dream...


BOSTON -- It was just a few minutes after the World Series championship banner had been raised in center field, but the Red Sox fans were ready to welcome the Yankees to Fenway Park.
One by one, the Bronx Bombers were introduced to the sellout crowd, and one by one, each player with "New York" across his chest was being booed.

Jaret Wright? Boo. Randy Johnson? Boooo. Heck, even Andy Phillips got booed.

Then came the most bizarre moment of the day. Mariano Rivera's name was called, and as the closer stepped out of the dugout, the crowd broke into a standing ovation.

Rivera, who blew two saves against the Red Sox in last October's ALCS, then blew two more last week at Yankee Stadium, laughed at the applause, tipping his hat to the crowd.

"It surprised me. I didn't know they loved me so much here," said a grinning Rivera. "It was nice. I enjoyed it. I had to laugh."

"I thought he was a good sport about it," said manager Joe Torre, the only other Yankee to receive some applause. "We all know Mariano. He understands this game. When you do well and they jeer you, you handle that. When they mockingly cheer you, you handle that. When people take time to recognize you, it's a credit to who you are and what you are."

Rivera has had an aura of invincibility for most of his brilliant career, but there have been questions raised over the past week whether he has lost something off of his trademark cutter, or whether the Red Sox are simply in his head.

Whatever the problem may or may not be, the right-hander has clearly struggled against the Sox more than any other opponent, suffering nine of his 23 regular-season blown saves since 2001 against Boston.

"That was classic," said Alex Rodriguez, who received the loudest boos of any Yankees player. "I never thought I'd see the people of Boston cheering for Mariano Rivera. That was a first -- and hopefully it will be the last time."

"You probably won't hear that too much anymore," said Derek Jeter. "It was funny. He enjoyed it."

Some players may not have taken the "cheers" quite as well as Rivera did, but the laid-back Panamanian simply took it in stride.

"I felt honored," Rivera said. "What was I going to do? Get upset and start throwing baseballs at people? You just roll with it."

Broken new year's resolution

So my new year's resolution was to have no bad days ever, and I broke it today. Roar. I had to go in work late because my sinus infection is trying to kill me. And then my beloved YankTank couldn't even get more than one run on the board.

While I should just cash in my chips and call it a night, I know I'm going to stay up late AGAIN and drag through work all day tomorrow. The problem with baseball season is that when games aren't on, I feel like I'm just killing time. Tomorrow? Will be just a day to get through until the Yankees play again on Wednesday. There's this Radiohead line:

I'm not living
I'm just killing time
Your tiny hands
Your crazy kitten smile

Just, don't leave
Don't leave

From a song, "True Love Waits." Signs I know it's time to get a life: when love songs make me think of baseball games. Ah who needs a boyfriend when I already have 162 dates lined up. I have a full dance card as it is.

Things I learned in Georgetown this weekend

1.) I can cure a sinus infection by eating toothpaste, compulsively spinning a basketball on your finger, or chewing gum
2.) I will never in a million years out grow beirut
3.) I could never live in a city that wasn't NYC. I wasn't even in Boston and I got my hat ripped off my head every 2 seconds.