Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Tonight, the Bronze Bombers' quest for third continues

Posted by el duque at 10:43 AM


29 comments:

KD said...

Don't forget about how Longoria cried about A-Rod playing. Whining about it being "not fair" even though arbitration is a hard-fought right negotiated by the player's union.

Go A-Rod. Beat the Devil Rays!!

September 24, 2013 at 2:56 PM
Don Drysdale RHP said...

Plunk Longoria.

September 24, 2013 at 3:39 PM
Bob Gibson said...

Put me in coach!

September 24, 2013 at 5:43 PM
Anonymous said...

OK, John M, I moved my thread, as you insisted. You Yankeebots must have ADHD since only the most recent thread can hold your attention. Hope you are enjoying tonight's game, justifying your support of the fascist Steinbrenner regime on the grounds of being "spoilers". Pathetic.

September 24, 2013 at 8:59 PM
KD said...

Yes. Pathetic is a good word for this game. season too.

September 24, 2013 at 9:57 PM
John Sterling, Voice of the Yankees, soon to be coming to you on WFAN, said...

Down five to nothing in the seventh inning in a meaningless game. Nothing better to do than check out the $@!@! blogsite that I should have sued years ago. Well, good thing that Suzyn is giving me a foot massage because I'm having a conniption over how you weirdos have mismanaged "my" site. What did you do, recruit inmates from the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica? These ranters and ravers are nuts! What happened to Alphonso? Where is Mustang? Don't make me drive up to Syracuse and urinate on your front lawn.

September 24, 2013 at 10:02 PM
Anonymous said...

John Sterling, an utter incompetent. I critiqued his "announcing" in a previous post, so won't waste my precious time here. Only imbeciles would contribute to a blog ostensibly devoted to John Sterling. Grow up and do something constructive with your desolate lives.

September 24, 2013 at 11:50 PM
Suzyn Waldman, imperious blackened-kettle noticer and subcriber to life subscriber to the International Bird Gazette, said...

"Only imbeciles would contribute to a blog ostensibly devoted to John Sterling. Grow up and do something constructive with your desolate lives."

Indeed.

September 25, 2013 at 3:08 AM
Suzyn Waldman, pissed-off computer-hacked mistress of play-by-play onomatopoeia, said...

That was not me! I've been hacked! I'd never spend that long using words when a "hmm" would do!

September 25, 2013 at 3:12 AM
C.J. Nitkowski, honors student at John Grossbard University, said...

Beware the bell, Suzy Q; it tolls for thee!

September 25, 2013 at 3:24 AM
KD said...

Hello John. Love your work! I too am missing Mustang and Alfonzo. I fear Mustang has been lost to that RAB blog, with all their lack of emotion and sabermetrics. Alfonzo is probably still practicing his famous reverse don't watch-don't comment JuJu. Unfortunately, this team is just too pathetic for JuJu to have any effect.

Tell Suzyn that we'll miss her.

September 25, 2013 at 11:31 AM
Anonymous said...

I'm flattered that I'm already inspiring imitators and impostors. The John Sterling critic imitator is pretty bad--strictly Vegas lounge-act quality.

The odd thing about this site is that is wants to have it both ways about Sterling--from its title on down, it mercilessly ridicules him but then professes undying loyalty and affection for this abrasive, clueless clown.

This self-contradiction bores to the heart of the Bizarro Yankee fan's dilemma: he knows that this is a second-rate organization that oozes second-rateness in every pore of its being, including the announcing booth. Yet this fan is loath to detach his suction cups from the brand-name nipple of his youth. No doubt this entails a lot of muck of ancestor worship, guilt about digging up one's family roots and moving on in life--who can account for the irrational tribalism of fan loyalty any more than like atavisms such as religious attachment, etc., all of which appear to manifestly absurd, even destructive, when seen through the lens of reason.

But reason, like all lenses, can distort as well we clarify, and it restricts our field of vision.No one is immune to the siren song, the alluring warmth, of tribal belonging, whether the home is family, religion, or sports team--and in America, the last is often more important than the first two.

I wonder whether the assembled wolfpack could stop howling long enough to listen to--and ponder--these words:

The crowd at the ball game

By William Carlos Williams

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut—

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly—

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought

September 25, 2013 at 5:44 PM
Thomas Paine said...

The rational and "reasoned" sports fan, now there's a thought.

September 25, 2013 at 7:29 PM
Anonymous said...

I guess you missed the point about reason having its limitations--flew right over your flat head, because you are determined to fight rather than reflect or have a conversation. If you can toss off a snide aside, that establishes your "superiority"--fine go revel in it, if it's that important to you.

September 25, 2013 at 7:56 PM
Anonymous said...

Further clarification for the terminally obtuse like "Thomas Paine"--I was at pains to point out that fandom and other atavisms seem absurd from the standpoint of reason but that reason has its limitations.

It occurs to me that the main point of these comment sections is not to encourage thought or reflection--real dialogue--but to serve as an arena of macho quip trading--a snark's paradise of can-you-top-this. Don't you guys ever choke on your own archness, especially considering that most of you aren't half as smart or witty as you imagine? I mean Thomas Paine evidently has a reading-comprehension deficit, but this does not deter him from leaping into the snark competition---and falling flat on his face, of course. So here we see another form of tribalism--the tribe of preening smartasses.

September 25, 2013 at 8:14 PM
Jean-Paul Sartre said...

Anonymous,would you be amenable to us giving you a moniker so as to be able to distinguish you from the others of that name? My thought would be "animus" as has been mentioned but hey make a suggestion. It makes the conversations difficult.

September 25, 2013 at 9:32 PM
Anonymous said...

My use of anonymous is the least of what makes conversations difficult out here--mostly it's the snider-than-thou quip Olympics that preclude conversation.

How about a new moniker for you? Might I suggest "Not Funny"?

September 25, 2013 at 10:18 PM
Pete Roget, bringin' the lex to lexicography, said...

Anonymous, you are the pinnacle of entertainment in my mind. I stumbled upon your "work" here by mere chance, seemingly, but there HAS to have been more going on in the cosmic scheme of things than mere luck when you decided to lower your standards and approach this gang of ne'er-do-wells in your enjoyable attempt to disabuse them of their collective Yankee fandom in general and their allegiance to Andy Pettitte in particular.

I haven't the most meager of stakes in this race but I applaud you for your continued (and, I pray, continuing) efforts to break through the silliness and--if I may say this in a metaphor which I hope does not leave your mind reeling at the memory of your lone misstep (we'll call it The Fellate Andy Pettitte Fiasco) of a few sunrises ago--slam the ship of cogency home to port.

I hereby drop any thought of the cease-and-desist order I considered invoking; I cannot state that I am pleased by your repeated uncredited resort to my work in order to seeming to strengthen the "case" (you even have ME air-quoting there) against your assumed inferiors here, but Billy Williams (still a doctor/poet up here, albeit with a slightly different way of looking at things) set me straight with the words, "I'm gonna bang him over the head with my fucking red wheelbarrow when he gets here, thieving bastard!"

But that's just Billy being Billy. You're still aces in my book.

September 26, 2013 at 12:56 AM
Anonymous said...

Another philistine tries to go to to toe, but misses the point.

I see the point of this blog--it's not about John Sterling, it's not about the Yankees, it's not about anything except pressing the force of ego: the person who feels he can condescend most flippantly, most merrily, walks away with the el duque "I'm Cooler Than You Trophy."

But you're not cooler than anyone--you're just a regressed jerk, caught in a cultural machinery of "cool"--pardon the scare quotes--that systematically crushes any hint of seriousness about anything. It's your very flippancy--or better frippery or frivolity--that defines your being. Without it you would lack a sense of identity, meaning--the meaning for you is the resistance to any meaning. That's our cultural moment. Even though you live and die with a bunch of drugged-up mercenaries hired by billionaire con artists, you can't acknowledge that beneath your icy ironic exterior your only real concern or attachment in life is to a corporate brand. Beyond that, nothing--no interest, no passions, no nothing. A void. But you circle the void, because you're cooler than Sterling, cooler than I, cooler than William Carlos Williams, cooler than cool.

Someone wiser than I put it this way: "The illusionists who shape our culture, and who profit from our incredulity, hold up the gilded cult of Us. Popular expressions of religious belief, personal empowerment, corporatism, political participation and self-definition [i.e., Yankee fan in this case) argue that all of us are special, entitled and unique [or superior, per this blog wolfpack]. . . .

" This relentless message cuts across ideological lines. This mantra has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We are all entitled to everything. And because of this self-absorption, and deep self-delusion, we have become a country of child-like adults who speak and think in the inane gibberish of popular culture.

"Celebrities who come from humble backgrounds are held up as proof that anyone can be adored by the world [i.e., Andy Pettitte or Derek Jeter]. These celebrities, like saints, are examples that the impossible is always possible. Our fantasies of belonging, of fame, of success and of fulfillment are projected onto celebrities. These fantasies are stoked by the legions of those who amplify the culture of illusion, who persuade us that the shadows are real. The juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by celebrity culture and our 'insignificant' individual achievements, however, is leading to an explosive frustration, anger, insecurity and invalidation. It is fostering a self-perpetuating cycle that drives the frustrated, alienated individual with even greater desperation and hunger away from reality, back toward the empty promises of those who seduce us, who tell us what we want to hear. The worse things get, the more we beg for fantasy. We ingest these lies until our faith and our money run out. And when we fall into despair we medicate ourselves, as if the happiness we have failed to find in the hollow game is our deficiency. And, of course, we are told it is."

Of course, the bloggers on this site are way too cool to fall into these traps. They merely lay waste their powers in ridicule--whether of John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman, Anonymous, Brian Cashman, Anonymous--to prove how far above the fray they really are, not realizing, of course, that they ARE the fray--the fray of the self-trivializing irony that is draining this culture of its last precious remnants of compassion or humanity--just not cool enough.

So you want to think that I carry a thesaurus around because you couldn't dash off posts like mine without the aid of one? That's fine with me--if I can help shore up your delusions of cool, to keep you circling the void, then I've done my good works for the evening.

I'll even give you a lullabye to caress you to sleep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMMAB3MNCKw

September 26, 2013 at 1:53 AM
Sgt. Krupke, ever so kindly, said...

One more post stuffed chock-full of nothing, Anon...and yet another usurpation of the work of others in exercise of your growing-annoying fetish to insult others while educating all of us regarding...what?

I suggest that perhaps your time would be better spent examining your insatiable need to enter places to which you were neither beckoned nor which seem to suit you emotionally. Your need to mistake your necessity in such locales is puzzling...although speaking for myself, I'd sure miss your crazy ass if you bailed.

As you can see, you create conflicts by virtue of your mere existence. But such is life; I find the endless pseudo-intellectual puling overloading your missives quite inspiring. After all, a fine direction can be had by avoiding a bad example.

In other words: don't go changin'.

September 26, 2013 at 2:33 AM
Anonymous said...

Not that it matters, but just for the record, I did not misuse the word "fellate." One wonders, though, why that one word is gnawing at your tormented psyche in the wee hours.

What's even more troubling is that you would obsess over my scattered ruminations to the point of perpetrating an earnestly worked-over, spit-and-polish commentary about little ole' me at one in the morning. Looks like you blew your cool after all!

Here's my advice to you, "Roget": go fellate yourself. You're obviously in dire need of a new hobby to occupy your time.

September 26, 2013 at 2:37 AM
Anonymous said...

Hey Roget/Krupke--your touching concern about insults seems curiously spotty--as spotty as your knowledge of the English language.

I don't lift from the works of others--I quote them. You can neither lift nor quote because you lack an animating idea that would drive you to do either. You passion is directly solely to berating me--oops, blew your cool again!

Tut tut.

And exactly who issued an engraved invitation to you to hold forth here? No one who doesn't suck the toes of lying drug cheats need apply? Sorry, Comrade Stalin, but the First Amendment still lingers on, notwithstanding recent efforts to annul the Constitution in Washington--but of course, that's probably of no concern to you either--just me and Andy Pettitte for the time being. How sad.

September 26, 2013 at 2:44 AM
Harold Lloyd, dipping toe into water, said...

"Tut tut"? "Comrade Stalin"?

Anonymous: PLEASE tell me you came up with those two gems yourself! They are golden! Absolute money-in-the-bank GOLDEN!!!!

We gotta work together! We just GOTTA! We'd really be big, and I want to get back to the big time!

I KNOW this can work! PLEASE just tell me you wrote that material yourself, that you can really enunciate for the camera, and that you're not afraid of heights! PLEASE tell me that!

September 26, 2013 at 3:07 AM
Anonymous said...

Still obsessing about me, Roget/Krupke? I hope this won't go on all night and that you'll get some sleep. Your straining so hard to condescend that you might wrench a back muscle and have to go on the DL.

Seriously--is your life really that empty? Are you really that devoid of self-esteem that you need to certify your self-worth in relation to the posts of an anonymous someone at three in the morning?

Give me your address, and I'll be glad to send you an Andy Pettitte bobblehead doll . . . and a dictionary, so you can avoid further embarrassment about such matters as the meaning of fellate. You really are kinda dumb, aren't you (there's a sentence in which all the words are bound to be familiar to you).

How's that new hobby coming along, fellate-boy?

September 26, 2013 at 3:18 AM
Pete Roget, fresh as the morning dew, said...

That someone as self-assumedly omniscient as you would consider this or any other hour "late" is amusing; that you might think beyond that foolish notion that somehow it is your words which keep me awake causes laughter here, for the sheer arrogance of your assumption that you might cause anyone on this planet or any other the loss of a second's rest. I imagine, given your bearing in the admittedly limited arena in which I have experienced what passes for your work, that people sleep quite soundly in your presence.

I will deign (how dare I, you must ragingly be thinking) to offer that my mention of your use of "fellate" re: Andy wasn't meant--as you well know and have made great tracks in your attempt at evasion--to imply that you didn't use the word correctly, but to allude (look it up) to the idea that your former protests of anti-homosexuality in other posts may have been (as assholes who SEEM A LOT LIKE YOU often precede or follow with *sarcasm*) a BIT hypocritical.

Turn that around, get defensive or seem smart or something, but please never go away, Anonymous. You had me at ad-hom...not the first time, I admit it, but you grew on me.

September 26, 2013 at 3:53 AM
Anonymous said...

Ah shaddup, ya dolt. You don't know the difference between air quotes (a hand gesture) and scare quotes (in print), your only reference for WCW is to the one poem of his that everyone has to read in high school, you don't know that "fellate" as used was a reference to the degree of devotion bordering on romantic passion,, not a derogation of homosexuality.

So other than having a tin ear for the English language, an oafish penchant for solecism, and an array of cultural references that wouldn't get you past 600 on your English achievement test, you're quite the raffish cool dude--but kind of a dumbass nonetheless. I do appreciate your strenuous efforts at self-congratulation and self-extenuation, though. As Goethe wrote,

Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.

Who strives always to the utmost,
For him there is salvation.

September 26, 2013 at 2:08 PM
Pete Roget, confirmed solecist, said...

Ah, great exulted Superman, again tipping your hand; throwing out the double-comma after "passion" (there's a very lowbrow joke there to be written if you find the time) as a red herring to distract from your usual nastiness regarding seemingly everyone else's thoughts.

I very much appreciate your Goethe lesson insofar as it gives me a much clearer picture of who I am dealing with: a philosophy groupie who sees in Goethe an imagined paradigm in which you "quote" (air, scare, whatever the hell you want to take it as; goodness knows it's all about you) the man's work while winding your way down the same interesting path as your idol. Good luck with the ending, pal. You'll need it--a little doltish birdie tells me it won't make you stronger.

I'll leave you, my great important friend, with one question: which array of cultural references would one need to access to achieve success on the English achievement test? I ask not to elicit a response but for the pure humor of it, oh great No Name; you--when not busily condescending to everyone on the planet--have devoted your many idle hours to a gigantic psychological house of cards which in the fast-approaching end will share the answer: none at all. It's all too perfect (like a single comma, maybe) not to enjoy, even from way down here in the gosh-darned dregs.

Stick that in your Google Translate and inhale! Cheers!

September 27, 2013 at 12:12 AM
Anonymous said...

First another tidbit of elementary enlightenment for you, the culturally challenged: the quotation is one of the most famous passages (not to you, obviously) from a work of literature, Faust, not from a book of philosophy. Goethe earned his reputation mainly as a man of letters, not as a systematic philosopher. I hope you can keep that straight, ignoramus.

Now, as a final courtesy to the lame and halt, let's briefly address your latest post: you're reduced to scrutinizing comma typos at midnight to salvage a thread or two of your flimsy, battered ego? Wow--do you ever need to get a life . . . and a competent psychotherapist, hopefully one who can prescribe a potent SSRI. You want the last word? Have the last word--I can't/won't waste anymore time watching you twitch helplessly in reaction to my every word out here. If I want a mosquito buzzing in my ear, I'll go take a walk near a swamp.

Here's what I make of your latest desperate, muddled effusions: You're one of the sickest, most corroded human beings I have ever encountered anywhere. I mean seriously diseased. Get some help before you do harm to yourself or another human being or other living thing.

Now . . . you can go nattering on incoherently here to your heart's content. Neither I nor anyone else will be here to read it.

September 27, 2013 at 3:10 AM
Anonymous said...

Oh--by the way: that should be exalted, not exulted, you idiot.

September 27, 2013 at 3:11 AM

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