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—Earlier today Ashley and I were driving around trying to decide where to eat when I had the most perverse thought. “Let’s go to CiCi’s.” The words were in my head before I could stop them. Ashley guessed what I was thinking, though she only meant to make a joke. “That’s just what I was going to say,” I told her. “Let’s go to CiCi’s.” What could I have been thinking? The only time I’ve ever been to CiCi’s was a few years ago, shortly after they opened next to the Martins on Massey Boulevard. Granny and I went, lured by the promise of cheap and plentiful pizza. The pizza was plentiful — and pretty good. It was cheap, too. But they made you pay for it. There was a dude behind the counter who shouted “Welcome to CiCi’s!” in this big auctioneer’s voice every time someone walked through the door (which was every couple of minutes). Whenever a fresh pizza was served up on the buffet, this was also loudly announced to the entire dining room. Ever tried to have a conversation with someone in a restaurant where the staff is regularly shouting at you? Reason won out today. Ashley and I went to Pizza Hut instead. We were the only ones there when we arrived. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a couple and their two young kids were seated in the booth right across from us. Perfect timing. —They don’t make ‘em like Bid McPhee anymore. For my birthday a few weeks ago my Mom got me a book on the Baseball Hall of Fame. The most interesting chapters are the early ones, profiling the inductees from the 19th century. That’s always been my favorite period of baseball history to study — the early years of professional baseball, the National and American Associations, the young National League. Bid McPhee played second base for the Cincinnati Reds from 1882 to 1899, and might have been the greatest second basemen the game’s ever seen. He retired with a lifetime fielding percentage of .944, almost thirty points higher than the league average for those years. He recorded 6,545 put-outs, 6,905 assists, turned 1,186 double plays, and made only 791 errors in 14,241 chances. The numbers are impressive enough in their own right, but here’s what’s really incredible: for all but the last three seasons of his career, Bid McPhee played barehanded. —Varjak pointed me to a list on Movieline.com of five suggestions for the villain of the next Star Trek movie. It’s a pretty wacky list. Commander Kruge from Star Trek III? General Chang played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman? Shinzon? What the fuck was S.T. Vanairsdale taking and where can I get some? Whoever it is, the bad-guy for the next movie needs to be a great foil for Captain Kirk. And what two things does everyone know about Captain Kirk? That’s right: he loves pussy, and he hates Klingons. So the list is on the right track by suggesting a few of the guys with lumpy foreheads — it’s just that they’re the wrong foreheads. If the sequel continues to mine the classic Star Trek series for inspiration (which I think is a good idea), there’s really only one Klingon that deserves to face-off against Kirk, and that’s Commander Kor. Originally the villain of the classic Trek episode “Errand of Mercy,” Kor was not only an effective nemesis for Kirk, but he was the first Klingon to ever appear on Star Trek. It would only be fitting for him to be the first Klingon character featured in the rebooted film series. The original Kor was John Colicos, who reprised the role for a few Deep Space Nine episodes thirty years later. Colicos died in 2000, and would have been way too old for the part now anyway. Who could play Kor in a new film? I have no idea. Any suggestions? | |
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You have heard all the clichés before; the singing birds, the bright sun, the budding trees that announce the end of winter and the return of spring. But these things are so familiar to us that they are easy to overlook, so concrete, specific examples of what makes spring such a great time of year — of what makes life such a great time of year, and ain’t that some deep shit? — are always appreciated.
For instance, from yesterday:
As Mr. Freeze used to say on the old Batman show, Ha ha ha! Wiiiild! | |
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This has been an interesting week, what with the pirate rescues and coast-to-coast tea-bagging — and let us not forget the Yankees getting blown out in their first ever game at the new Yankee Stadium, how sweet it was, and Hulk Hogan threatening to slit the throat of his ex-wife on national television (more or less) — but it was an interesting week in history, too.
Two days ago in 1912 the Titanic sank, and on that same date 35 years later, Jackie Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Why not end the week on that happy note? Check out this video of Jackie stealing home during game one of the 1955 World Series, which the Dodgers went on to win in seven games. They beat the Yankees (who lost their first official came in their new ballpark yesterday — did I mention that already?).
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Crossing the campus of Shepherd University today, I looked to my left and saw the college baseball team practicing on the diamond. This time of year is spring training for them, too. The warm weather, the bright sunshine, and baseball are only a few short weeks away. Let’s all welcome them, these harbingers of spring — the green grass of the outfield, the deep brown of the infield, the satisfying smack of leather on leather, and the ping of bat on ball. No, they don’t use wooden bats in collegiate baseball. They’ve been swinging aluminum for my entire life and longer — the NCAA legalized metal bats in 1974, and they’ve never looked back. Since I was a kid, I’ve wondered why exactly high school and college baseball leagues allow their players to swing metal bats, knowing that the pros still use only wood. (Players in little leagues all over the U.S. have been using aluminum bats since the early 1970s, but I’ve never wondered about that; the answer is obvious: children need the performance advantages of an aluminum bat because they are stupid and incompetent.) It turns out how the NCAA switched to aluminum bats is actually an interesting and hilarious story. Back a way’s, in the summer of 1859, two fellows were sitting together under a shade tree in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. They lazed beneath the tree’s welcoming canopy of gently rustling branches, passing the afternoon with placid, inoffensive conversation, sipping mint juleps (as men of their station often did), until one of them propped himself up in his chair and said to his friend, “I say, old man, I do believe that if a squad of young bucks from my dear old Amherst were to play opposite a team from your alma mater in a game of base, it would be the most lopsided bloodletting since the Mexican-American War!” | |
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And to think I rooted for the cancer . . .
In an upcoming book by Tom Verducci, The Yankee Years, former skipper of the Evil Communist Bastards, Joe Torre, has some unkind, unflattering, and extremely gratifying things to say about his time with the team, specifically about Alex Rodriguez and General Manager Brian Cashman.
According to this MSNBC article on the book, Torre claims that Cashman betrayed him on several fronts during his time with the team. I for one find the suggestion that the general manager of a Major League Baseball team could be untrustworthy a little hard to swallow, but who knows? Anything is possible.
Most satisfying to me, Torre also tells Verducci that teammates dubbed Rodriguez A-Fraud, and that Rodriguez had an obsession with Derek Jeter — different than my obsession to abduct Jeter and break him on the rack in a secret dungeon, I am assuming.
A-Fraud. Heh.
If anyone has cause to rip into the Yankees (other than the players of the 29 other teams and the millions of fans of Major League Baseball), Torre does. During his tenure as manager, the team never won fewer than 87 games, never finished lower than second in their division, qualified for the postseason every year, and won the World Series four times. By any reasonable measure, Torre was an astounding success as manager of the Yankees. You would have to go back to Casey Stengel to find another skipper so dominant. Torre was fired (well, his contract was not renewed . . .) in 2007, following a season where the Yankees won 94 games and qualified for the postseason for the thirteenth consecutive year. George Steinbrenner considered this a failure.
Now that he is no longer in the cursed pinstripes, but rather managing the Dodgers out in sunny L.A., I feel a little more free to celebrate the accomplishments of Torre the manager, and acknowledge what a classy son of a bitch he is. I hope he rips the Yankees a new asshole in this Verducci book, and I hope it sells a million copies.
Good for you, Joe. I am glad the cancer lost. | |
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The last pro uniform Babe Ruth ever wore was sold at auction at the Louisville Slugger Museum yesterday. It was bought by an outfit called SCP Auctions for $310,500. Ruth began his major league career as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, was sold to the New York Yankees in late 1919 and hit more home runs by himself the following season than every major league team save one, and was traded to the Boston Braves in 1935 at the tail-end of the greatest career in the history of his sport before or since. But the uniform sold yesterday in Mission Viejo, California didn’t belong to the Red Sox, or the Yankees, or the Braves. It belonged to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
 It’s a brief and forgettable period of the Babe’s career that is never mentioned and that I was never aware of until today. Some baseball fan. Our yearning to mythologize our heroes leads us to omit everything in Ruth’s life between his three-homer game against the Pirates in May 1935 and the day, two months before his death, when Nat Fein took his famous photograph of a frail Ruth standing in his old Yankee uniform, leaning on a bat for support, at the 25th anniversary of Yankee Stadium. We don’t like to hear about the Babe’s many failed efforts to get a job managing a major league team, his long and painful struggle with throat cancer, or how he lost weight and could barely speak at the very end. We sanitize, generalize, or ignore all of that, and the Babe’s short stint as a Dodger along with it.
Babe was hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers as a first base coach on June 18, 1938. His uniform number was 35. Number 3, which he had famously worn in his last five years with the Yankees, was taken by rookie second baseman Pete Coscarart. The uniform sold yesterday was Babe’s road uniform, gray flannel with “Dodgers” lettered across the front in blue, and a patch on the left sleeve depicting the Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He wore it on October 2, 1938 for a double-header against the Phillies at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Dodgers won both games that day against the Phillies, the only team in the National League to finish with a worse record than they. With the season over, Ruth quit the team. Oddly enough, his final game as a player had also come in Philadelphia, on May 30, 1935, when he played one inning for the Braves before hurting his knee and leaving the game.
The Dodgers finished 1938 with a 69-80 record, 18½ games out of first place. Babe’s old team the Yankees finished that year 99-53 and won the World Series in four games.
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Phucking Phillies!
Taking advantage of an archaic, seldom invoked "the team with the most runs after nine innings wins" rule, the Philadelphia Phillies completed the postponed fifth game of the World Series, beating the Tampa Bay Rays by a final score of 4-3 to win their first World Championship since 1980.
 I know I said I was rooting for the Rays, but come on, I'd have to be a real asshole not to be thrilled for the Phils and their many long-suffering and well-deserving phans. Two of the finest people I've ever known — my great friend Varjak, and Joe Gruninger, the best boss I ever had — are Phillies phans, and I could not possibly be happier for them.
Okay, that's just a blatant falsehood. I could easily be happier for them. If they were Orioles fans, for instance, and the Orioles had won the World Series. I'd be much, much happier for them, and for me. I apologize.
But anyway, the Phillies did, they did it dramatic fashion, winning a close game that took three fucking days to complete, and they did it at home, in front of 46,000 packed into Citizens Bank Park. (I'll never forgive the franchise for not naming their new ballpark Philly Phield — I mean, come on!) Add to that the fact that the Phillies are the oldest surviving National League team to remain in the same town and keep the same name (in fact, they're the oldest surviving team to keep the same name and town in all of American pro sports), and this is pretty cool.
Sure, seeing the Rays go from worst to first would have been nice. But hey, as long as we ignore the universe outside the American League, they did go from worst to first! They beat the livin' piss out of the Yankees, anyway.
Speaking of which, this makes five consecutive World Series without an appearance by that hateful franchise which Varjak pegged when he nicknamed them the New York Evil Communist Bastards lo those many years ago, and eight straight Series since a Yankee victory. What a marvelous fucking time to be alive. | |
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Tonight the Philadelphia Phillies can claim their first World Series title since 1980 by winning the final third of Game Five, which was postponed, tied 2-2 in the sixth, two days ago on account of inclement weather (i.e. it was raining like a bastard up there.) Best of luck to them, but I can’t help but think they could have been celebrating their victory already, spraying each other with champagne, getting drunk, masturbating into the trophy when the owners aren’t looking (they all do it), had the club only had the foresight to establish a few ground rules there at Citizens Bank Park.Something like In the event of a World Series game being postponed due to inclement weather (i.e. it’s raining like a bastard up here), the Home team (which is us, the Phillies) shall be declared the winner. Done and fucking done. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 World Series Champion Philadelphia Phillies. When I buy my own Major League franchise (it’s bound to happen eventually), I plan to employ a similar strategy. In fact, my entire ballclub will be built around creatively contrived ground rules giving the home team an unfair advantage. This will allow me to field a competitive team without spending too much on payroll. In fact, these rules will be so lopsided in my favor that I’ll probably be able to throw a squad of male cheerleaders out there and still finish the season no worse than .500. In the NL West, that might be good enough for the wildcard! Here’s what I’m thinking: Any ball hit fairly by a member of the Home team that travels beyond the infield into the outfield shall be considered a home run. Pitchers playing for the Visiting team who are charged with a balk shall be immediately guillotined. Runs scored by the Visiting team as a result of a hit, walk, hit-by-pitch, error, or fielder’s choice shall not count. And just in case my team really, really plays like the Orioles: Regardless of the final score, the Home team shall be declared the winner. Unsportsmanlike? Sure. But I’d be the owner, so unsportsmanlike conduct would be tolerated, even expected. Go, Steves!
(I’d call my team the Steves.)
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The Phillies won the first game of the World Series last night. It's been 28 years since Philadelphia won its one and only World Series, so the Phillies winning this one won't break my heart. But I must confess, if I'm pulling for anyone, I'm pulling for the Rays.
For one thing, they've got the story. How compelling is their Worst-to-First angle? Add their rock-bottom payroll to the mix, and a Tampa Bay Series championship just sounds a lot more exciting to me than a win for the Phillies, no matter how well deserved, or how great the positive impact on Varjak's mental health.
I was born a Baltimore Orioles fan, so that's where my loyalty would lie if, hypothetically, the O's ever had a reason to keep playing following the end of the regular season. The Orioles haven't played in a World Series since beating the Phillies in 1983, and haven't even put up a winning season since 1997, so come most Octobers I have to consider a few factors before taking a rooting interest in one team or another. I generally think of myself as an American League guy, but it's not quite that simple. To better illustrate my process, I've prepared a flow chart.
I shit you not, I'd pull for a line-up of pedophiles over the Yankees. For me to root for the Yankees, they'd have to be playing a goddamn football team. | |
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For the second year in a row, and the third time in the last five years, the Boston Red Sox have rallied from the brink of elimination to force a deciding seventh game in the American League Championship Series. Last year they dropped games 2, 3, and 4 to the Cleveland Indians, only to roar back and win games 5, 6, and 7 on their way to sweeping Colorado in the World Series. In 2004 they played in the greatest League Championship Series in Major League history, winning four consecutive elimination games against the New York Yankees after dropping the first three, then went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals and win their first World Series since 1918.
 Tonight history could repeat itself yet again. The Red Sox are still on the brink of elimination. Thanks to a momentous come-from-behind Boston win at Fenway Park in game 5, so are the Rays. The winner of tonight’s seventh game goes to the World Series, where the Philadelphia Phillies have been waiting patiently since Wednesday.
I have my own theory about this. (I say it’s my own theory, but I’m sure it’s crossed the mind of every baseball fan these last few days.) I think the Red Sox are doing this on purpose. At some point after the completion of the division series but prior to the beginning of the ALCS, the BoSox and the Rays reached an agreement to ensure that the series went to a game seven, with the Red Sox coming back from a deficit to even the series after facing elimination multiple times. Tonight’s seventh and deciding game will be on the level. The point wasn’t to rig the series for one team to win; the point was to make the series as dramatic as possible.
Why would the Rays agree to such a corrupt bargain? They are the story of the year in Major League Baseball. The team with the lowest payroll is one win away from playing in the World Series. They have a shot at going from worst to first, which is always a thrilling thing to watch, whether you’re a fan of the team or not. What better way to qualify for the Series than by defeating the defending champions in a thrilling seven game ALCS? How depressing would it have been for the Rays to go down in four straight? How anticlimactic would it have been for the defending champion Red Sox to go quietly in a forgettable four or five game series?
Why the Red Sox would do this is obvious. I remember the 2004 postseason. I watched the Red Sox come back from a 3-0 deficit to win four consecutive games and take down the Yankees in that ALCS. Legendary. I remember the thrill, the sense of history when Keith Foulk fielded a bouncer from Edgar Renteria and lobbed it to first for the final out in game four of the World Series. The first World Championship for the Red Sox since 1918. The Curse of the Bambino, smashed. A great day for baseball. Celebrations swept across New England. Aged Red Sox fans, who feared they would die without seeing their favorite team win the Series, wept. Curt Schilling was canonized and Bill Buckner was forgiven. It was the most memorable postseason of my life.
Know what I remember about last year’s World Series, which the Red Sox also won? Checking the score online the next morning and saying, “Oh, good! They swept the Rockies.” Seeing the Red Sox come back to beat the Indians in a seven-game ALCS was the most exciting part of last year’s postseason, not the World Series. The Series in ’04 was a relatively boring four-game sweep when taken out of context — it was getting to witness history, Boston’s first championship in 86 years, that made it an exciting Series. There was nothing especially historic about seeing the Red Sox sweep their second Series in four years.
And there we have it. I recall the questions asked by commentators after that ’04 Series. “What now?” “What does it mean to be a Red Sox fan now that the drought has ended?” “Can the Red Sox be a compelling team without the ‘Curse’ to overcome?” The franchise had been defined by failure and suffering for most of the last century. How could they suddenly be winners? Now we know the answer. The Red Sox have found a way to rack up world championships while still giving their fans the anxiety and torment they’ve come to expect. Instead of steamrolling straight through the postseason, the BoSox place themselves at the edge of oblivion and fight back. Every time things turn against them, every time a player on the Red Sox makes an error at a crucial point or is victimized by a shitty umpire call, Boston fans can think to themselves, “Here we go again . . .” Then the Red Sox win against all odds and stomp all over the NL team in the World Series to make amends to the fans for jerking them around.
Or not.
I’ve been a Red Sox fan since I was in high school, so I’m not going to complain about another American League pennant and another World Series. But I wouldn’t kill myself if the Rays won tonight. I’d like to see a team go from worst to first. I’d like to see the team with the lowest payroll win the whole thing. It would be good for baseball. Even Varjak, who as a Phillies phan has been waiting for a championship since 1980, would probably admit that. (Wouldn’t you, Var?)
So tonight (and through the World Series, should the Rays win), I will engage in the ultimate act of fan cowardice: I will root for a good game. Go Red Sox. Go Rays. Come the Series, go Phillies. And God bless us, every one. | |
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My condolences, Chicago.
The Cubs lost to the Dodgers 3-1 last night, dropping their National League Division Series in three straight games, crushing the hopes of the longest suffering fans in sports for yet another year. Sure, the White Sox are still in it over in the American League, but their fans on the South Side have been relatively spoiled, seeing their team win one World Series in the last one hundred years instead of none.
Plus, Barack Obama is a well known White Sox fan. If Obama wins the presidential election next month — and he will, see — then the White Sox can't win the Series this month. It's excessive good fortune. The universe doesn't work that way. What have White Sox fans done to deserve not only their second World Championship in three years, but the Presidency of the United States? Not much, if you ask me.
The poor Cubs fans, though . . . it's a wonder they don't drown themselves.
One of my English professors has a brother who knows one of the owners of the Cubs, and he was offered tickets to the first game of the ALDS at Wrigley earlier this week. He couldn't make it because of a class, but was hoping the Cubs would make it into the NLCS and the Series, so he could blow off his job and attend then. Too bad for Dr. Tinkler. He should've cancelled that honors class. He could've seen the Cubs lose in person. | |
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Well, they gave it their best shot, but our local Federal All-Stars team was eliminated after the first round of the Little League World Series. They won two of their first round games, and lost one, and didn't qualify for the semi-finals. Still, they went out on a high note, defeating the previously unbeaten team from Lake Charles, Louisiana 6-4. They made it farther than any team of 11-12 year-old ballplayers from this county has in forty years, and they're still the goddamn Mid-Atlantic Regional Champions, so they're all winners in my book.
They are also, of course, a bunch of fucking losers. But that's okay. I'm not knocking them, just pointing out one of the great lessons baseball can teach children about the trying, miserable lives they will all struggle to lead in a vast and indifferent world. Even when you're one of the best there is at what you do, you're going to lose most of the time. This was a great team. Undefeated through the playoffs until their second game of the Little League World Series. That's a hell of an accomplishment. That's a hell of a ballclub. They weren't good enough to advance. The Little League World Series is a tough competition where only the very, very best (or very lucky) are able to reach the pinnacle of success.
Know what else is like that?
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Our local little league team won its first game in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania this morning. I find it necessary to specify "Pennsylvania," as there is also a Williamsport, Maryland. It's right down the road, as a matter of fact. But while Williamsport, PA is known as the object of many a young ballplayer's dream, their pint-sized Elysian Field, our Williamsport down here is renowned the racially-charged inhospitality of its residents, and . . . um, it's . . . big ass-power plant? I guess?
(Above hyphen misplaced per Varjak's suggestion.)
I didn't want to link to the Herald Mail's story, but the official Little League website is apparently not reporting on its most important annual event, so here you go.
Please pay no attention to the "headline here" notation at the top of the embedded video. Parasiliti's not writing the coverage, but apparently he's posting the pages. | |
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The Orioles have settled back into their customary mediocrity after a promising start, the Nationals sit comfortably at the bottom of the National League East, and the Hagerstown Suns, bless their hearts, are playing .400 ball and sitting fourteen games out of first place in their division in the South Atlantic League. But there is still a reason for baseball fans in this area to hold their heads up high and let their hearts swell with smug local pride that will drive our neighbors in the four-state region up a fucking wall. For the first time in forty years, a team from Washington County has qualified for the Little League World Series.  Our local paper, the Herald-Mail — the old gray lady with late-stage dementia — has the story right here. (It’s not written by Bob Parasiliti, so don’t be afraid to read it.) Here’s the story from Little League Online, with a bit more detail on the upcoming World Series. The Federal Little League All-Stars are the third team from Hagerstown to qualify for the 16-team international tournament in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and the first since 1968. The Federals won the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship by defeating Devon Stafford Little League 8-3 in Bristol, Connecticut last night. They were undefeated in both the regional tournament, and the local tournaments that preceded it. They will arrive in Williamsport with a perfect 14-0 record. The Federals play their first World Series game Friday night at 8 P.M. Eastern, facing the Great Lakes Regional Champions from Jeffersonville, Indiana. In addition to teams from all over the United States, the Little League World Series includes clubs from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Saudi Arabia, Guam, Venezuela, and Japan. Good luck, Federal. Have fun — but kick a little ass up there, too. | |
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