ouch

Asterisk Nation

Oh, and this?

That's sort of what I felt like when I first read this:

So how did I feel exactly? How do I feel now, for instance? Funny you should ask.

I used to be really good friends with this girl I’ll call Angela. This was back in the days when I used the words “really good friends” to mean “I have a huge crush on you, but I will never do anything about it because I’m scared to death of commitment.” So yeah, about a month ago.

Anyway, Angela would tell me about all her hook-ups, and we’d do the whole “What do you think this means?” thing, and I would not be jealous in the least, because I was like the husband -- I was the one she talked to, instead of the one she talked about. And these other guys? They meant nothing. Except for this one guy who really, really, rubbed me the wrong way. Rubbed her the wrong way, too – she referred to him as The Toad. He had a girlfriend, and cheated on that girlfriend whenever he got the chance, and always made passes at Angela, and the more he did it, the more she said she hated him. She would make faces when he wasn’t looking, and when he was looking, she would insult him to his face, and say things like “There is not enough alcohol in the world to get me drunk enough to sleep with you,” and you know exactly where this is going, right? Of course you do. But I didn’t.

Two years later in casual conversation, Angela says, “God, that was even worse than when I slept with The Toad.” And if you listen really hard, you can still hear the echo of my jaw hitting the floor.

MATTHEW: [what the fuckity fuck?] You slept with The Toad?
ANGELA: [uh-oh] . . . yeah?
MATTHEW: Angela, how could you do that?!? You swore you’d never do that!
ANGELA: Well what else was I going to say? You hated him so much that I ---
MATTHEW: So wait --- you swore you’d never sleep with him because you thought I didn’t WANT you to?
ANGELA: No, because I KNEW you didn’t want me to. You had me on such a pedestal that I couldn’t, you know, . . .
MATTHEW: No I DON'T know.
ANGELA: Matthew. You were so totally in love with me. It was obvious; everybody knew it. I knew it. And even though I knew it, I couldn't do anything about it, except try not to hurt you. And yeah, I resented you for that. I resented you a lot. But I got off on it, too. I got off on the fact that I meant the world to you. I LOVED the fact that I meant the world to you. You had me on such a pedestal. It was heaven. So when the thing with The Toad happened, I couldn’t tell you. How could I tell you? It would have killed you. And it would have made me less that perfect.
MATTHEW: But you WERE less than perfect!
ANGELA: No. Not as long as you didn’t think I was. As long as you thought I was perfect, I felt perfect. Which is why I couldn’t tell you about The Toad.
MATTHEW: Which is why you lied.
ANGELA: And it was a small price to pay, for staying up on that pedestal. I had to lie, Matthew. If I told you the truth, it’d be like telling you there was no Santa Claus.
MATTHEW: I’m not six, Angela.
ANGELA: [sadly] All men are six when it comes to the Pedestal, Matthew.
MATTHEW: [shakes head while looking off into space]
ANGELA: How are you feeling right now? Tell me how you're feeling.
MATTHEW: [because hiding behind a quotation is the best defense ever] I feel like a guy standing on a station platform in the rain, with a comical look on his face, because his insides have been kicked out.

And that’s how I feel about the 'Roid Sox. The perfect thing I idolized is human. The moment that I treasured was fool’s gold. I am six and there is no Santa Claus. I am in love and Angela slept with The Toad.

As if Drew Barrymore in '04 wasn't bad enough

Thank you, Topps Baseball Card company, for (as my Cleveland brother would say) chitting in my Cheerios this morning.

Weekend Update

Nothing much happened this weekend (cough) Red Sox (cough). But seriously. When the best team in baseball wins the World Series, how surprising is that?
Yeah, yeah--I know. The surprise isn't that the best team won; the surprise is who the best team is. And why is it a surprise? Because we're all still thinking that these are last century's Red Sox.
In the old days, if the Sox were behind in a seven game series by 3 games to 1, Red Sox fans everywhere would prepare themselves for defeat. If the Sox had a 6-0 lead that suddenly became a 6-5 lead, we would prepare ourselves for the game to end as a 7-6 or even 20-6 loss. We would prepare ourselves for the worst. What we don't know how to do? What we've never had to do till now? Is prepare for the best.
And the best is what this young century's team is giving us. The old Sox found new ways to lose. These guys find new ways to win. When a 6-0 game turns into a 6-5 game, they come back and score three insurance runs. A cancer survivor who has three stolen bases all year steals third and scores on a sacrifice fly. A pinch hitter swings at the only pitch he's ever seen in this World Series and homers what turns out to be the winning run in the final game. I'm sorry. I'm not used to that.
But I can get used to it real fast. Oh yeah. As long as I don't turn into a Yankee fan and start expecting it. If that happens, you know who you are and you know what you can do to me, so do it, because I'll deserve it.
And speaking of the Evil Empire--how classless was it of Scott Boras to announce that Triple-A Rod is opting out of his Yankees contract while the game last night was STILL BEING PLAYED? That's like interrupting your ex-girlfriend's wedding when the priest says " . . .let him speak now or forever hold his peace" by yelling out "Yeah, well, I'm getting married next week--to somebody I met in a laundromat, okay?--so there!"
It's the same old Yankee mentality: they have to be the center of attention, or else they don't exist. They have to be in the spotlight, even when they're off to the side of the stage somewhere. I know, I know--it wasn't the Yankees who did this, it was Boras. So either he's got their disease or they've got his disease, but either way, it's the same all-about-me mentality.

And speaking of all about me.

Roger?










Listen to your wife.

Memes in Mudville

So now that the Rockies-win-streak story is deader than Viva Laughlin, what's the operative meme for this World Series?

1. Don't count your chickens. As Tom Boswell points out, "Three times a team has won Game 1 by 10 runs, the '59 White Sox, '82 Brewers and '96 Braves. All lost the Series."

2. When it's not the end of the world, it doesn't end. This is an offshoot of the Manny being Manny meme, and is perfectly and succinctly explained here.

3. AL = The Show, NL = AA. "Great pitching beats great hitting" should officially be retired in favor of "AL trumps NL" or "AL pwns NL."


4. 2004 Redux. Down by 3-0 in '04 against the Yankees, the Sox came back to win four straight and then swept the Series. Down by 3-1 in '07, the Sox come back and win three straight and now have a 2-0 lead in the Series. Nobody wants to say it out loud, so I won't. I figure the Rockies will take Game 3. But if they don't? There's only one meme left.

5. If the Red Sox can do it, how hard can it be? To which the only response is: if the Red Sox can do it twice, how special is that?

Smells Like Sox Spirit

I looked up "Statement" in the dictionary when I got to work this morning, and there was a picture of Dustin Pedroia hitting a home run in the first inning of last night's World Series game. So I'm guessing we're not going to hear a lot about how many games the Rockies have won in a row during tonight's game. Unless Tim McCarver says something like "You have to score runs to win games, and the Rockies know this." Or "It's the teams who come back to win, who win it all."
I don't know if it was the 8-day delay or what, but the Rockies looked totally out of their league, like a bunch of Revolutionary War soldiers with flintlocks suddenly coming face to face with a Thompson submachine gun. Every one of them had this dazed WTF/Get me out of here/This has gotta be a bad dream stare on his face. And meanwhile Beckett, chewing gum, chewed them up like they were grass and he was the lawnmower.


Because the Sox were celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Impossible Year team, Carl Yastrzemski was at Fenway; he threw out the first pitch, which Fox only showed in a brief replay because they had to cram thirty minutes of commercials into the 40-minute pre-game show. Whenever I watch a Fox-broadcast baseball game, I think back to the 2004 World Series. A reporter asked Stephen King, "Why did you bring a book to a baseball game?" and King said, "Because it's on Fox. I'll have plenty of time to read."

And speaking of commercials? I'd totally take the lap dog if Dragon Tattoo girl was part of the deal:

Weekend Update

Vampires Baby Vampires. Are you over Anne Rice? Are you tired of romance novels where the only decent human being a girl can find to date is a vampire? Are you sick of movies that put the sucker in bloodsucker? Then go see 30 Days of Night. No Byronic whiners here; the bad guys are evil incarnate, and they're all Russkis, some of them with gang tattoos. If this movie had been made 60 years ago, critics would have called it a Cold War allegory. The operative world being cold. Creepy, scary, and much better than the comic book it's based on.

Gone Baby Gone. Good really good. Could have been better (during which rewrite did "Angie Gennaro's character" become "Patrick Kenzie's appendage?") but the moral dilemma of the book is intact, even if compressing the convoluted plot into two hours results in a final 20 minutes that make your head spin. If you've read the book, you won't be disappointed. If you haven't read the book, this'll make you want to. And if you've never been to Dahchestah, this is just as good as going there.

Sox Baby Sox. Okay -- Matsuzaka only gave up 2 runs, not 4, and Ortiz' "little guys" didn't start jumping until my nails were bitten down to the second knuckle, but you know the Fates are on your side when infield singles take weird hops, umpires call opposing baserunners out when replays show they were safe, and opposing third-base coaches make inexplicable errors in judgment with the game on the line. The question now is: which team are the Fates going to be french-kissing for the next two weeks?

Nail-Biting in Mudville

It's 2 in the afternoon and I just saw Gone Baby Gone (more Boston authenticity in the first five minutes than The Departed had in 2 plus hours) and at the tail-end of the credit roll, Ben Affleck thanks Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, probably just for being themselves. They weren't themselves last night, but thanks to JD Drew they didn't have to be.

Tonight however is a different story.

This may come back to haunt me, but here's my prediction for Game 7 against the Indians. Matsuzaka is going to give up 4 or 5 runs. It's what he does. If the Sox can score 6 or 7 runs, they'll win. If they can't, they'll lose. And it won't be pretty.

Do I wish they'd saved five of last night's runs for tonight? You bet.

Do I hope they'll jump all over Westbrook in the first couple of innings? Oh yeah.

Do I think the Sox will win tonight? Yes.

There's Always Next Year in Mudville

The latest episode in the long-running sitcom that is Manny being Manny brings up an interesting question.

When did "There's always next year" become the same thing as saying "We don't care enough to win?"

When did saying "It’s not like the end of the world” become the same as saying "We're not going to play like we want to win?"

Isn't it healthier to put things in perspective rather than view the world as a series of near-sighted do-or-die hurdles? Or does this fall under the "110% Rule," which states that you're not part of the team if you don't say things that make no logical sense?

Me, I prefer the long view.

Agrees:



Would never hire me as his manager:

No Joy In Mudville

In the old days, when Red Sox pitchers gave up four runs a game, you could count on the 8th and 9th place hitters to score like six runs apiece, never mind the power hitters whacking the ball into whatever parking lot sits outside whatever stadium they're in.

Now? Now you yell at the TV screen "Swing at the first pitch strike, you morons!" and go to bed with your left knee throbbing because you sprained it pacing up and down your living room floor.

I remember when the Celtics were going up against the Lakers in the '85 finals and totally blew them out of Game 1, I mean laughably blew them out of Game 1, so much so that the game became known as the Memorial Day Massacre. Who ended up winning the series? LA, four games to two. During which I just sat there in front of the TV wondering, "Hey--what happened to that Game 1 team, huh?"

Same thing here. But it's not the Game 1 Red Sox that are nowhere to be found. It's the Game 1 Indians. Like good teams do, they learned from their loss and got better.

Which means, unless the Sox can do the same thing, we're looking at a Cleveland/Colorado World Series.

Joy in Mudville

I was in an upper west side bar Sunday night trying to have a conversation while the Yankees were playing the Indians, and the way the knot of Yankee fans around the TV were cheering every time a Yankee pitcher threw a strike or a Yankee batter got a hit, you'd think they had all just won the lottery.

A Cleveland pop fly? "Yankee baseball, Yankee baseball!" A called strike against Sizemore? "That's what I'm talkin' 'bout, YEAH!" An actual single by Damon? One woman starts screaming like she's delivering twins. "Imagine what she'll sound like when they actually score a run," I said to Ava. Five minutes later, I didn't have to.


Now I'm a Red Sox fan. This means that, while I am only casually acquainted with winning, I am intimately acquainted with losing. And one of the things that losers habitually do is cheer every little minor victory they see, because the big one is always out of their grasp. I know this because I've done it myself, for years. And I can see it in other fans. I can see it in Yankee fans. They haven't won the big one in so long, they go bazoo when they win the little one. (And for Yankee fans? "So long" is less than a year.) It's like your grandmother doing an end-zone dance when she wins two bucks on an instant Lottery ticket. It's kind of sad and nutty at the same time. You watch her and think, "Wow, you really don't know what winning is like, do you?"

Except that it's about losing. About knowing what losing is like. And that is something which is not in the Yankee Fan genetic code.

Back when I was turning 50, I started writing myself a birthday play, and as usual it turned into about fifteen different things at once, and maybe someday (not today) I'll turn it into a novel; but one of the things I did was give myself five monologues, one to start each act of the play. The third act monologue was about the Red Sox and the Yankees. Bear in mind that this was written in 2002, before the Sox beat the Yankees (cough) greatest comeback of all time (cough) on the way to winning it all.

ACT THREE, Scene 1

[Spotlight on Max. He puts on a Red Sox baseball cap and stares out at the audience.]

MAX: There are two kinds of people in the world. Yankee fans and Red Sox fans. A Yankee fan is a cocky, arrogant pretty boy who walks into a party expecting to be the center of attention; and if he doesn't go to the party, then it isn't really a party –- and don’t you forget it. Yankee fans never lose; they have victory taken away from them. They never say that the other guy won because he played the game better; they say things like, "We had a bad day," or "We made some mistakes," or "We didn't play up to our potential." If they were a bank, they would only give credit to themselves. And when they don't win like they're supposed to, then there has to be something wrong with the world -- not them. The Red Sox fan knows exactly the opposite. The Red Sox fan knows that the world, like baseball, is not about winning, it's about losing. The Red Sox fan knows that the world, like baseball, is a beautiful place where horrible things happen for no good reason under the wide-open eyes of God. It's a hard place, with hard rules, and one of the hardest rules of all is that the longer you play, the more you lose; but by losing, you know more about the game. And you appreciate not only victory, but the skill and courage it takes to continue playing. And you develop something that winners, and people who think they deserve to be winners, never have. Compassion -- for everyone except those fucking Yankees.

That was then. Now? Now I have total compassion for Yankee fans. It can't be easy, walking around like you're King Of The Mountain when you can't even make it past the foothills. It can't be easy, walking around like you're cock of the walk when you can't even get it up. It can't be easy, when the label you print out and wear, the one that says WINNER, ends up crossed out or covered with graffiti. My God, it's like you're a walking metaphor for America's place in the world. And I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Even a Yankee fan.

But I do want to point something out to all you brand new citizens of the real world.

When you lose in the first round of the playoffs three years in a row? It’s not stunning, crushing, anguishing, staggering, frustrating or tragic. When you do the same thing three years in a row? It’s typical.