How long is today going to take? I know how much time this is going to take, but is this going to be one of those things where an hour goes by and you don't even notice? I remember being in truly boring classes in high school and watching the clock go s l o w l y by, and thinking to myself "shit, when Rockford is on, it goes way to fast." We all wish life was all about watching Rockford. Actually, it is for some folks who's reason for waking up is getting the paper.
So, then, Twins.
Again, I can't stress this enough - winning the division is absolutely key. Another 4 and done series with New York isn't the kind of deal they need. Oh sure, it could be done, but isn't it easier when you get to play the Oaklands of the world and take a rest? One thing Loud Mouth McWriter won't mention is how depressed the Tigers are. They play and live in Detroit. So, once things go south, and it happens, it will drag you down. Of course, the Twins know the majority of their fans are just now dusting off that cap, realizing their new Twins shirt will have to be XXL, replacing the last one bough in 2002. But it could be worse. Actually, in some respects it might actually be even. OK, forget I even mentioned it.
So, then, Balance Bar
If I need to shit right away, I'd eat cold nachos for breakfast. Wash it down with room temp Hamms. I thought you were about nutrition and vitamins and whatever. Hell, if you're barely going to stay in my body at all, what is the point? Then again, yesterday's exercise consisted of a walk around the lot and parallel parking my car, so what do I know?
So, then, Cubs
Wow. OK, in three years you've become the worst team in the league. Took longer than I thought. With minimal optimism, I suggest a new manager. I suggest new starting pitchers. I suggest new people in the front office. Hmmm, this should only take 12 years.
The summary of everything you read is actually "bite the bullet." If the really hot girl just wants to ask you questions about TV for two hours, just go with it. You'll "get to know her" later. If the guy at Carl's Jr. forgets to give you the correct order of fries, ask for a refund instead. If your landlord is channeling your father, just drop off the check and run like you just robbed a typewriter store. If a guy with a mullet is actually playing the "Eliminator" at the bowling alley, laugh once you're outside. You heard him say "Dude, what the fuck?" to a mechanical arm.
Why? Because tomorrow, college football. Because Sunday, more parlay money comes in. Because there's actually a bar called the "Fox Fire Room" and you will go to it.
Shit, only 19 minutes later?
Friday, September 29, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
I'll Be Lonesome When I'm Gone
Play it on to the dawn.
The weasels are backing down. In the face of the Fear, they cower. All comers have been served. The melting vortex has consumed all but the Strong. And the Strong live here, in the blue.
God, Nick Punto might be the dumbest person I've ever seen.
They have absolutely no reason to be here. None at all. That sounds cliche, and boring, but I'm telling you, if you haven't seen them play this year, you've missed some low talent ballplayers. Besides The Baby Jesus and The Terror From Tovar Merida, there are few players on this team who have any discernable "skills". None of them are talented in any sort of metric, any sort of definition, by scout or stat. I think many of their games have simply boiled down to the opposition staring in disbelief as tiny children careen around the basepaths like kids with pockets full of quarters at the Chuck E Cheese.
They'll suck you in, this bunch, they'll give you something to watch, that's for sure. When God decided he needed someone to run down balls in centerfield earlier this year, Captain Ahab announced they were going to play every day like number 34, and that we wouldn't ever be wanting for more effort. But, christ in heaven, did he know what he was saying? Is it possible for a team to possibly play this reckless, this unhinged, and still maintain any semblence of sanity for a fanbase? I mean, 3 years ago we thought guys like Jones and Koskie didn't give a fuck about jail. Yeah, well, LIRIANO SPENT A NIGHT THERE IN SPRING TRAINING.
The Twins would be served just as well to stop playing right now and let us off the hook. We can't take this abuse, this violent shifting of emotions, much longer. We've invested too much, we watch the charts climb with organized nausea. But coming over the top of it, blanketing us, comforting the soul, is that ever present feeling of righteousness. Is this what Pious Pat thinks when he steps up on the stage of the 700 club? Bulletproof? The rest of the game seems to be happening beyond our fingertips, behind our Brainly 8 Ball. We float, as one, unflappable, eyes ever onward, smiling.
It's their fault. They put us here. We tried like hell to bail on this team, get back to work (for some of us, that meant back to "eating"), enjoy life and articulate. But that's gone now. We can only stare, glowing, into the magic that is happening on Puckett Place. And when the rest of the world asks us why we have that dumb look on our face, well, you'll have to excuse us.
We've been watching Punto all year.
We're starting to merge.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Torii's Nuts
are bigger than yours.
What? It's true.
(I'm incredibly sorry. I have nowhere to write about baseball, and... umm, the A's are good and stuff, right?)
The sloths are out in full force. They scour websites and hunt statistics, they do it all from their bedrooms, greedily devouring information and Kit Kats, in what they think is a noble quest for Ultimate Knowledge.
Many of them were left off the team in tee-ball because mom couldn't keep the Mars Bars in the purse.
I'm talking about these rogue writers, these bloggers of the current age. They give us a level of coverage that the lumbering beasts of mass media could never hope to accomplish. They provide so much insight, so much analysis of game events, and free! Oh, happy day! Little to no pressure, evidence-stacked posts, discussions that delve into every debatable point in the entire sport. Shit, some of them rock photoshop and put smiles on faces.
But eventually, bullies clean up the mess these geeks get themselves into.
It happens every so often, these sniveling grinches in the dark of their caverns, the faceless masses of human cast-offs, they go too far. They debate too much. They use too many statistics. Yes, that's right. There IS such a thing as too many statistics. There IS such a thing as subjective reasoning. And managers know more than you. They just do. They have played baseball for their entire lives, they know every single thing about the game. They are paid to fucking run the game, not comment about it. Managers in baseball are the smartest baseball people in the world. Writers are not smarter. Bloggers are not smarter. GMs are not smarter.
Oh, but don't we think that we could do better? Sure, well, that's natural. Let it flow. But if you dumb down this sport, if you make the entirety of your pursuit that unattainable goal that is the Ultimate Knowledge, you're not going to have any fucking fun. You and your online buddies can talk all you want about Torii's ankle, his situational hitting, his VORP, his Isolated Power, and all the rest. It won't matter. Because when he pulls his nuts out, two things happen. You were proved wrong, and the ball goes really far over the fence.
Doubt him. Yes. That's right. Woof any amount of bullshit you want. Throw the twisted numbers, claim to have "seen things". We've all done it. But my eyes, they lie. They lie and tell me that he's done, that the whole fucking team is done. They lie and tell me that everyone's tired, and it's just not going to happen.
But then that ball goes screaming over the fence.
The world of information is perfect, it is essential that it remain without fail. The only problem that ever occurs is human meddling. How can one possibly debate statistics? They exist as truths, how can you debate truths? Can one thing be true and untrue at the same time? No, but our little minds (made smaller by Li'l Debbie) bend and warp things to fit into our own agenda. The framework is there, we pass it through like a fucking credit card. So we can ALL go out on websites and read numbers and make the case for WHATEVER we want. That's not healthy. Debate in and of itself is not a good thing. The expansion of ideas, there's the money. Go after that. I appreciate what Bill James is doing, it is admirable simply because it is growing our knowledge system. It is adding another algorithm to play with, another corner of the grey exposed.
But you bloggers have all gone too far. You've done too much with not enough information. You've stopped going to games and drinking beers, you've stopped taking smoke breaks during the Twins' halves of innings during a Santana start (because, christ almighty, you know you want to be back to watch Him). You've told yourself that this is a legitimate way to watch sports, that your passive mentality in life can bear fruit in this pursuit of some sort of knowledge about baseball.
Ah hell, what the christ. It's probably my fault for paying so much attention to it. I just can't help the information I take in, it's like a spigot above my ears.
The nerds, they take over. They breed in themselves, molecules gaining speed and violence. The collisions create more, the laziness is viewed as a virtue.
I still raise a glass to this team and this town. They follow their boys, they care, and if I was comfortable doing this and only this with my time, that might be enough.
But goddamn it, when 48 is launching pigs into the September night, I could give a good goddamn if his range factor is lower since his injury.
What? It's true.
(I'm incredibly sorry. I have nowhere to write about baseball, and... umm, the A's are good and stuff, right?)
The sloths are out in full force. They scour websites and hunt statistics, they do it all from their bedrooms, greedily devouring information and Kit Kats, in what they think is a noble quest for Ultimate Knowledge.
Many of them were left off the team in tee-ball because mom couldn't keep the Mars Bars in the purse.
I'm talking about these rogue writers, these bloggers of the current age. They give us a level of coverage that the lumbering beasts of mass media could never hope to accomplish. They provide so much insight, so much analysis of game events, and free! Oh, happy day! Little to no pressure, evidence-stacked posts, discussions that delve into every debatable point in the entire sport. Shit, some of them rock photoshop and put smiles on faces.
But eventually, bullies clean up the mess these geeks get themselves into.
It happens every so often, these sniveling grinches in the dark of their caverns, the faceless masses of human cast-offs, they go too far. They debate too much. They use too many statistics. Yes, that's right. There IS such a thing as too many statistics. There IS such a thing as subjective reasoning. And managers know more than you. They just do. They have played baseball for their entire lives, they know every single thing about the game. They are paid to fucking run the game, not comment about it. Managers in baseball are the smartest baseball people in the world. Writers are not smarter. Bloggers are not smarter. GMs are not smarter.
Oh, but don't we think that we could do better? Sure, well, that's natural. Let it flow. But if you dumb down this sport, if you make the entirety of your pursuit that unattainable goal that is the Ultimate Knowledge, you're not going to have any fucking fun. You and your online buddies can talk all you want about Torii's ankle, his situational hitting, his VORP, his Isolated Power, and all the rest. It won't matter. Because when he pulls his nuts out, two things happen. You were proved wrong, and the ball goes really far over the fence.
Doubt him. Yes. That's right. Woof any amount of bullshit you want. Throw the twisted numbers, claim to have "seen things". We've all done it. But my eyes, they lie. They lie and tell me that he's done, that the whole fucking team is done. They lie and tell me that everyone's tired, and it's just not going to happen.
But then that ball goes screaming over the fence.
The world of information is perfect, it is essential that it remain without fail. The only problem that ever occurs is human meddling. How can one possibly debate statistics? They exist as truths, how can you debate truths? Can one thing be true and untrue at the same time? No, but our little minds (made smaller by Li'l Debbie) bend and warp things to fit into our own agenda. The framework is there, we pass it through like a fucking credit card. So we can ALL go out on websites and read numbers and make the case for WHATEVER we want. That's not healthy. Debate in and of itself is not a good thing. The expansion of ideas, there's the money. Go after that. I appreciate what Bill James is doing, it is admirable simply because it is growing our knowledge system. It is adding another algorithm to play with, another corner of the grey exposed.
But you bloggers have all gone too far. You've done too much with not enough information. You've stopped going to games and drinking beers, you've stopped taking smoke breaks during the Twins' halves of innings during a Santana start (because, christ almighty, you know you want to be back to watch Him). You've told yourself that this is a legitimate way to watch sports, that your passive mentality in life can bear fruit in this pursuit of some sort of knowledge about baseball.
Ah hell, what the christ. It's probably my fault for paying so much attention to it. I just can't help the information I take in, it's like a spigot above my ears.
The nerds, they take over. They breed in themselves, molecules gaining speed and violence. The collisions create more, the laziness is viewed as a virtue.
I still raise a glass to this team and this town. They follow their boys, they care, and if I was comfortable doing this and only this with my time, that might be enough.
But goddamn it, when 48 is launching pigs into the September night, I could give a good goddamn if his range factor is lower since his injury.
Friday, September 01, 2006
The loss of a friend
Often times when someone loses a family member, that is exactly as it is stated. When it's a friend, it's stated that way. That's not the case here. My brother Rik was a friend, a person who likely had more influence in my youth than anyone else, and someone who clearly made me the person I am. We're either related, or we were great friends from the start.
Why the two possibilities? Because he and I always like the same things. Same tastes in everything. Music, clothes, TV, anything. He'd introduce something to me, I'd like it. It was never otherwise. As a teen visiting for a while, or sometimes long enough to be enrolled at Jefferson, he easily could have been hanging out with neighborhood boozers, and he did. But not all the time. Before that would happen, we'd hang. At 4 years old, he would allow me to build a fort on his bed. At 10, he would tell me of late night thrills and what he told Maurie to get away with it. He'd watch reruns of the Gong Show with me even though he'd probably seen it before. At 15, he'd tell me of trying to make it in TV and video production, stunted by the "help" of dear old dad. He'd tell me of married life. At 20, he'd listen to my college problems, give me advice when I struggled creatively. At 25, he talked of his son. I told him how much it ruled to have a nephew named after Sid Vicious.
As I look back on it now, it's our similarities that will help me through the rest of our life. Each time I talked with him, I'd seem to get some sort of knowing reaction - he'd usually been through what I was going through, sometimes the exact same thing. And unlike people who just want to tell you what TO do, he'd say what he did, and leave it to me to figure out where to go from there. Our father has made all of the son's growing-up extremely difficult. I can only wish I was there for them in those "If you don't change your major to banking, I'm not paying for college" days. Being in California created distance, and I never pretended to be any closer than I was just because of the last name. But when I met Sid and we goofed around, with him singing Kiss songs (at age 5) while I played the drums, I had a brief flashback. It was me, at that age, point to a Led Zeppelin posted on the wall. "Who is that?" He'd tell me. "Can I put up a poster, too?" A small Superman poster went next to it, and he played more Zep for me.
It is impossible at this stage to try to step in, but all I really can do is be there for Sid V as he grows up as Rik was for me. It shouldn't be difficult. He's already a friend.
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