One good thing about the rambing excerpt is this quote from Mark Twain:
Base ball, which is the very symbol, the outward, visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.For a climax, Josh Ostergaard rushes and struggles to make a raging, tearing, booming point no one ever thought of before:
The Yankees have all the money, so they buy the best players and win the most games, keeping the rest of the league weak, ensuring they will earn more money. Teams like the Royals remain terrible for generations and are unable to keep good players, who leave for wealthier and better teams. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.Remember, Yankee owners are rich and evil, and owners of other teams are poor. Say what you will about the Josh Ostergaards of the world, they really get it.
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Are things finally getting to Eduardo Nunez? Last week he sent this tweet:
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Finally: you're the Yankees. Attendance plummeted last year, embarrassingly. How to recapture respectable numbers in 2014? Not this way:
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39 comments:
I shouldn't say it. I know it's wrong, it's horrible, it's just unforgivable. But...
Maybe he's just Joshin'.
Ow.
Whoa.
Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
For your penance, say three Hail Marys and drink six Buds.
But DO NOT drink those six Buds at the Stadium. That sixpack will set you back about 70 bucks, with tips (we evil, rich Yankee fans always tip. It assuages our conscience to toss dollar bills at vendors.)
John M with a featured post? The Marv Thronberry of the comments columns? Looks like Brian Cashman isn't the only one with a predilection for dumpster diving.
Yankee hating is synonymous with Red Sox loving. If you're a Yankee hater, no doubt you're a racist too. Some team had to be the last to integrate. Some team had to refuse to hire blacks to even sell beer for years after integrating on the field. It just happened to be your team, assholes. Gerald Ford said Japanese internment was wrong and a national mistake in 1976. In 1988, victims were given some economic redress, now totaling $1.6 Billion. Yet for black people, Fenway was still the 1940's until 2002. “It just didn’t seem to be a place where we would be well received. It didn’t seem to be a place that was necessarily safe in the ’70s and ’80s.” one of them told Boston's PBS station WBUR, the same person noting they have "seen a change in the past 10 years with the new ownership."
The Yankees supposed history of racism towards the Japanese is tied to a mere year overlap of ownership during the greatest war ever fought and seventy plus years in the past. The Red Sox bigotry still fresh in many minds and decades long.
http://www.wbur.org/2011/07/27/urban-fenway
The greatest war ever fought? A contradiction in terms. Some 60 million people died during that cataclysm, 20 million in the Soviet Union alone. I'm quite sure that your distance of several decades from that slaughter accounts for the benign haze through which it filters into your perceptions. All you have to do is watch the film The Thin Red Line or read The Iliad to get a feel for how war reduces so-called human beings to sadistic, feral beasts.
May you never find yourself or one of your loved ones lying on a patch of ground with his/her guts hanging out, crying "mother," all on behalf of a grab for land, resources, or glory. And forget about ideals--wars are never fought for ideals, notwithstanding what your fourth-grade teacher might have taught you.
So you've never been in or near a war, obviously--and most likely are not an African American either. Your parsing of degrees of difference between the Yankees and Red Sox in integrating blacks into their organizations is likely to have meaning only for a fan who places loyalty to a corporate brand over ethical judgment--the essence of the PR-debased mentality of America the Not-So-Beautiful.
Excellent historical perspective, Generals. Was this guy trying to chase away Tanaka? Won't work redsocks. He's ours.
C'mon, anony. Be fair. "great" doesn't mean totally awesome unless you're a teenager.
Hey Yankees! Take the Yankee Fan Challenge: Win More Games in 2014 Than You Did In 2013! If you accept the challenge, sign Drew NOW!
Remedial English lesson for KD (Kinda Dumb), courtesy of Merriam-Webster:
THREE KEY DEFINITIONS OF "GREAT":
eminent, distinguished (a great poet)
chief or preeminent over others —often used in titles (Lord Great Chamberlain)
markedly superior in character or quality; especially : noble (great of soul)
"Kinda Dumb"? Seriously, Nonny? Who are you, Bob Matthews? Should we expecting mentions of the Boo Jays next?
Whatever. Enjoy your "sammich" at lunch, little girl!
Well . . . we have an official self-appointed house sexist, proudly baring his crudities about women. He thinks it's the ULTIMATE PUTDOWN to call someone a girl. What a jerk!
He's just jealous because Rachael Ray is more intelligent, engaging, and successful than he is--and way richer.
Down, pit bull--your slobber is showing again. But I'm sure your illiterate comrade Kinda Dumb won't mind a bit--he'll probably think it's REALLY COOL.
By the way, Sexist Dog, "humanesque" is not an English word--in your case just a vile neologism of contempt that impllies that a successful women is sub- or semi-human. That's not a patch on Hitler's animadversions against Jews!
What we see in SD is obviously a grotesque study in corrosive self-contempt, born of a lifetime of rejection by women, who know a nauseating creep when they see one. Good for them!
Nice work, "caninesque" SD--you and your "cretinesque" confederate KD make a lovely pair, and very touchingly so, since obviously no one else would have either of you.
In his comment above, Anonymous was being a trifle douche bag-esque. Con queso.
Darn, that was easy!
Anonymous, your ad hominem attack on Rachael Ray was very hurtf ... oh, wait ...
(Sorry, bro. Didn't mean to steal your usual defense like that.)
Note that there's one compulsive flamer on this list who has never posted a comment about baseball or the Yankees but lives only for the pretext to disgorge his sickly green malice, flecked with Normanbatesesque hatred of women, at whatever anonymous target drifts into view. I hope his mommy's cutlery collection is locked safely away.
The Internet in general is a lightning rod for dementia. Who ever thought an innocent baseball blog would attract such a hopelessly diseased specimen?
el duque should offer free showers at the nearest health club for anyone who has just read one of this psychotic's posts.
Now you're getting it! Still wouldn't hurt you to cut back on that daily breakfast of three brimming bowlfuls of adjectives, but you're definitely getting it! :)
Which adjective is gnawing at you today, Norman? "Humanesque"? "douche-bagesque"? Unfortunately, there are no adjectives adequate to convey your rot, your protracted public torment, played out on an innocent little baseball blog.
Believe me--you have MUCH bigger issues to worry about than some anonymous commenter's lexical stats. In fact, why do you even hang out on a baseball blog? Surely there's a warm embrace awaiting your sly barbs at some other blog, like Slavering Misogynists Anonymous or the Oscar Wilde . . . NOT . . . Society.
Do you ever even watch a baseball game, or do you spend the entire day chained to your laptop, lunging at every opportunity to twitch at some faceless target like a helpless lab rat, churning with hatred for your Mommy and the women who won't have sex with you? I bet you'd really secretly like to do something VERY NAUGHTY with that chipper, zoftig Rachael Ray, wouldn't you, Norman?
Let's all watch now while this tormented little vermin twitches again. Go ahead--TWITCH, vermin--I command you to twitch again.
Negativity just festers in you, man. How'd you ever get to be my friend?
That was very good. Now twitch again like a good little rat, and keep twitching until I tell you that you can stop. This will be by last visit to this thread, so you may end up twitching by yourself, in your little maze, with no one reading. So I'm expecting you to twitch on the honor system. Now twitch!
Anonymous: I either owe you an apology or a tip of the hat as the funniest intentional humorist I have ever read. Maybe both.
I've shown up here under a bunch of names and said a bunch of stuff, and a lot of it has been directed your way. It was all meant in a joking, ball-busting way, as I assumed an awful lot of stuff on this blog is meant. If you really are hurt by anything I said or any way I portrayed myself or anything else, I am sorry. I really, truly am sorry if that's the case.
I'm led to say this because of one of the questions you asked a couple posts ago, about whether I actually ever watched baseball games. The problem to me with a question like that is that it's almost impossible to answer with any provable sense of authenticity these days. I actually spent part of the last few hours trying to figure out how to respond to it in a way that might show I give a shit about the game without being something that anyone might easily access on the internet as "evidence". I offer you these two things out of friendship:
1) I remember listening to WFLC the night John Denny fought Reggie. I clearly remember #44's words in response to Fran Healy's question: "if you want to intimidate, come on; let's go."
2) There was a Yankee game against Toronto in 1982 (maybe 1983) in which the right side of the Yankee infield ran back and crashed into the Yankee right fielder. I don't remember much more than that suddenly a bunch of Yankees were on the ground. I think one of them got hurt, and my mind, old and slow now, makes me think that one was Willie. I'm not sure and only offer this up as something which I don't think is covered anywhere on the internet but yet which any Yankee fan alive at the time probably holds in their mind at least somewhat clearly.
You might wonder why I haven't mentioned anything more modern-day; it's because I admit that baseball doesn't mean as much to me as it did then. It saved my life when I was a kid, and it can't mean more to a person than that. And shouldn't. Hell; my senior quote was, "How 'bout them Yanks?" I swear on my life that that's the truth, and I also swear that as years pass it feels a lot more healthy to just enjoy the games for what they are than to care as much as I did then. I cared too much. I cared enough that after I'd seen them go 0-5 in games I attended in person I never saw them in person again. The infield/outfield crash...George Frazier breaking Damaso Garcia's wrist...I was there for them, and way too much other bad shit to feel like my presence would help the cause.
So Anonymous: that's what I have to offer you in my twitching. I've loved the Yankees all my allegedly perceptive life but have stayed away sometimes out of care. Maybe misplaced care, but that happens. I'm far from perfect and misread plenty but you got me thinking and so there you are. If you were truly hurt by what I said I'm sorry...but I hope you read this and high-five yourself and say, "I got him!" because if you meant to get me you certainly did. Like I said, my hat's off to you.
Either way I won't be bothering you anymore. You win. Twitching done.
PS-Zoftig ain't a bad thing. :)
I know I promised not to return to the thread, but I peeked anyway.
You did not "hurt" me--you hurt yourself with your ugly sexist blather--that's what really triggered my ire. In straining to sound smart, you ended up sounding crude and stupid and callous. I was appalled at your drive-by sniveling barbarities, so symptomatic of this age of free-floating snark.
If you're sincere in your latest sensitive-guy persona, then you owe only yourself an apology. I could give a shit--I was only trying to hold up a mirror to you. I'm glad to see that my efforts achieved their intended goal;
I'm glad that I've managed to humble, for at least a moment,one of the Internet's dime-a-dozen cowardly snark addicts and prod him to reveal something resembling a human face behind the masks of studied contempt.
I still think you're a jerk, a snarling poseur, a half-educated fop. You come off as a snide asshole even when you're bursting a blood vessel trying to sound sincere. Sadly, I can assure you that you're not half as smart as you imagine yourself to be; real intelligence presupposes powers of empathy and imagination that are glaringly lacking in your witless scattershot frippery.
If you don't really have a contemporaneous interest in baseball but are out here only for blood sport, you could probably find more satisfying outlets for your seemingly bottomless reservoir of bile.
I've been watching an interesting French series on Netflix called Les Revenants (The Returned)--the central them is the yearning for redemption--a yearning so intense that it can thrust the dead back to life to attain it. If you've learned that there are more important ways you can be spending your time than degrading women and striking endless poses on the Internet, then perhaps you have felt a glimmer, however faint, of your own awakening.
And if you want to read something quite moving and penetrating on the redemptive powers of baseball, you should read the following:
http://www.baseballfeelings.com/2011/02/baseball-feelings-were-invented-by.html
Anonymous: Either you had (or have) the best curve on earth, or you respect the guy who does (or did).
Thanks for the heads-up on the website. Any site that almost starts with EB White's stepson includes at least by proximity two of my favorite authors...and that doesn't include KW's garden books, which I've never read but knew of beforehand.
I talk too much; blast me with all the adjectives you need to use.
But thanks.
(I'm sorry but I, like you, peeked, too.)
You're hopeless. Can't resist bring a disk every time you post.
I was not recommending the site necessarily--just the Angell essay.
Any flame addict who perperates the adjectival redundancy "brimming bowls"--not to mention atrocities like "humanesque"--had best dismount from his high horse to munch on some humble pie.
You're starting to bore me. Go play the haut litterateur and snotty style sold with some pup who's not on to you. KD might make a nice rapt audience for your ravenous puny ego.
Make that "being a dick" in first sentence. Autocorrect strikes again.
Redundancy was brimming bowlfuls. No more phone typing for me.
Style scold not sold.
No man, you can bring a disk all you want (and edit it all you want) but I will not bring a disk to you. I thanked you for the link and I meant it.
Some people need some kindness in their lives; it doesn't matter if I like those people or if they like me; sometimes someone screams out with the voice of a banshee but reveals a need. You seem to be one of these people, Big A.
Doesn't mean I'd want to watch your pets for you if you go on vacay or anything; certainly doesn't mean I want to be friends (as if). Just means I appreciate you, even if you did take my joking curveball references (The pic, I am quite sure, is Mr. Rik A. Blyleven, former possessor of a great hook) as a personal assault. I meant them in no such way.
Correct me and bitch about me all you want; it's cool. Anyone who corrects and clarifies (maybe redundant on my part; you'd know) a post addressed to someone who's starting to bore them THREE TIMES is...I'll be charitable...no; I'll be honest and say that person is almost as screwed up as me.
Whatever. It's cool. I appreciate what I imagine your frustration must be in a world so imperfect, I thank you again for the Angell article heads-up, and I promise you that you are no disk to me.
I corrected the mistakes as a courtesy, asshole--these were not minor typos--autocorrect had made a hash of the words and changed them into something entirely different and completely nonsensical. I was doing this on a small phone, so I didn't see the errors all at once, so I had to correc them one at a time. To you the courtesy of correcting a major mangling of copy is a sign of being screwed up. That's all we need to know about you.
You're a pitiable churl. I doubt that you have much of a life. No human being--especially not a woman--would countenance your delusional megalomania and surliness for more than two mintues.
If nastiness and perversity were precious metals, you'd be a billionaire. As it stands, I'm quite sure you're a pathetic failure and recluse, living mainly on family mone if any, no doubt rotting from alcohol abuse, and on the countdown to stroke heart attack from hypertenion. All the signs of bulldog tenacity in malice and hatred are popping like flashbulbs all over your demented posts.
Of course, you dodge the substantive point, which is that, notwithstanding your Strunk and White baby writers' strictures, your prose is junk--an exercise in strenuous smugness, nothing else, devoid of the conviction and passion that animates good writing. But conviction and passion are impossible for a corroded misanthrope.
Chronic smugness is a pose, not a style--it's the PED that fills the voids of intelligence, authenticity, or expressive nuance. A one-man repellent for all the foregoing,you strike a poses instead--that's all your posts are--doomed forays into ego rehab. only idiots like KD will find this ghastly spiritual effluvium to be fragrant--but that's the level of your admirers.
Consider that you, who knows nothing about baseball, spend countless hours on a baseball blog, desperately poised to initiate verbal combat with phantoms just to scratch your manifold itches of spite you harbor against no one in particular and everyone.
KD is the Doofus of this list; John M. is its Professional Mediocrity, and you are its William F. Buckley--your only real vocation is Pompous Sneering Ass.
You shouldn't plaguing a baseball blog--you should be getting some help. I hope you will stop poisoning this list and seek some professional counseling.
Now . . . this is the last sentence I will ever direct to you. Life is too short to spend precious minutes on suicide watch for someone's wasted life.
Anonymous: you impugn my character by offering me as a comparison to as common a bunch of intellectual rabble as this Blyleven seems to be.
Notwithstanding his decrepit verbal posturing and oh-so-transparent attempts, this beastial thing you lower me to in analogy possesses not a whit of my charm nor a smidgeon of my style. Indubitably he might recline in a chair in a manner somewhat reminiscent of mine but I assure you that the excrement you so boldly launch as my equal in no imaginable way approaches my intentionally convoluted distillation of humdrums; nor is he a challenge to my blinks-per-second record when the scalding sea of light is upon him.
To recline and blink and remain obtuse is my way, assuming opacity is out of the question. To weigh this fool's words and find within your shamefully abused mental tendrils that his "work" and my canon lead the two of us to be entwined in any way is beyond insulting to me. I might possibly accept such a charge from the likes of Bozell, Senior; in that case there'd be sense enough behind the accusation that it might cause me to not only accept it but to wonder over it. But you are no L. Brent Bozell Senior, sir; and no amount of indignant puling will now save you from my wrath. You have soiled my legacy with your comparison, and for said transgression you will pay: I am the now ever-blinking eye in the sky, and like the sweet chorus of the wonderful Alan Parsons Project turned ironic: I am looking at you.
You thought Blyleven was an irritation? Hee-hee, as those you underestimate feel enough to type. You only now begin to have your hands full of difficulty. Count your blessings and cherish your life as it's been experienced thus far. The past will be something to cling you'll soon pay great sums to cling to.
A small handout of advice to you, offered as a hunter might feed a fox before a hunt: the last sentence holds no mistake.
Hark! The hooves of horses, I hear! Away; and you to your own devices.
Anonymous, you have awoken the Kraken> the ghost of WFB,,,, be afraid, very afraid!
Unless of course this is you, then be DOUBLY afraid, BwahHaHaHaaaa!!!!
Doesn't anyone have anything to say about me?
i've been lurking on this site for a long time, never posted a comment. just wanted to say that someone needs to put that w. f. buckley guy out of his misery. maybe el duque can cart him along on a future expedition to denmark or someplace where euthanasia for humans is legal--unless w. f. has the good sense to do it himself. wotta sputtering loon! lol!
Jeff: so you never posted (and seem to take some hands-off childish pride in so not having done) on here...and the very first post you offer, on a website ostensibly about the Yankees and their fans, is that another poster should be done away with by either her or his own hand or those of others?
If you're being honest and that's the real train of events I suggest you examine yourself a little; your hostility toward that which you don't understand is very clear.
Get over it. Don't go to Denmark or wherever and get yourself offed. Just get over it.
Jeff: You're talking like Pledge did right before he bailed on our session last fall. He took the thirty bucks I gave him for booze and headed for the hills. The fucker owes me three sessions, two sides apiece. I'm trying to get him on Columbia but the only offer I have is from the bunch who make those records that scratch like a kitten and melt like candles...outta Milwaukee or someplace. Not sure of the label other than it ain't Vocalion, and sure as hell ain't Okeh.
But you know all this, don't you, Jeff? You are Blind Lemon Pledge, acting pissy about WFB so as to draw me from the trail.
And you know what? That's okay. I love the anger, man! Anger leads to art!
But while your art is gettin' fomentin', cut the "Jeff" shit out. You're a talent, no doubt, but not a great one. Blind Blake kicks your ass 80 years later from wherever the hell he is now; Blind Boy Fuller comes close. So cut your accusatory shit about Yankees fans. They know Mike Wallace from Mike Wallace, and both of them ain't Mike Griffin; don't fuck with them. Get over it, grab your glasses and your axe, and get in the studio NOW!
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