Kevin Baker's book is here!

Kevin Baker's book is here!
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Sunday, July 17, 2016

We Did Our Best



I fell asleep for most of the game.  A neighbor had come over with some of that, " single malt" stuff.

I never know what to call it.  It seems demeaning to call it scotch.

All I know, is that you drink it neet ( neat?).  And you want more and more of it.

When I looked up, we were down 5-1.  Then, things got really exciting.

The Yankees had no baserunners and made no threats, but Chase Headway  ( by this point, I dont even want to get his name right ) launches a solo homer to right center.  A Ballentine Blast.

Whoopee.

The Yankees had fulfilled their two runs per game allotment,  and quietly, meekly, went to bed.

Hal, of course, is still wildly optimistic and upbeat about this team. He and his genius management team have done too much to build this fine example of a team, that he is not about to look negatively on our prospects.  Nor is he about to spend any money which, by the way, he has never done a single thing to earn.

If I had been in school with him, I absolutely guarantee I would have punched him bloody.

Joe Girardi is getting that same look Dick Kotite used to get when he realized the Jets were soon to be 2-12.  His eyes begin to look like those of a fish.  Everyone is looking to him for answers, but the cupboard is bare.  An empty head.

And now Joe's head swivels, as if he is looking to see or find something that can change things.
It is the swivel of desperation.

Even in his dreams, he can only find Mel Hall.

Keep on this track, and we have a shot.  If the Yankees win today, Hal gets to pretend that other kids still like him.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I THINK IT'S "NEAT"..... THIS POST WAS GOLD.... LAUGHED THROUGHOUT.....BEATING HAL BLOODY IN SCHOOL, AND JOE G. LOOKING LIKE A FISH.......THANKS FOR THE LAUGHS, BECAUSE WITHOUT THIS WEBSITE, I THINK I WOULD HAVE HUNG MYSELF ALREADY.....

Alphonso said...

Me too.

JM said...

Fun fact from Elias Sports that I heard on news radio 1010: the Yankees haven't scored in the first inning for 20 games. I think they said one more and they beat the record--held by the 1967 Yankees.

We have a shot.

Local Bargain Jerk said...


Here's my rant.

I went to that miserable, meaningless, torpid, piece of shit excuse for a baseball game yesterday. I went with my girlfriend, who couldn't care less about baseball and a guest of ours from Russia who'd never been to a baseball game. I thought it would keep their heads in the game if I taught them how to score.

That's a good plan, except when you find yourself saying over and over, "Ok, that's a 6-3. Ok that's another 6-3. Ok, now that's a flyout to 7." Over and over and fucking over.

Seated next to us were 3 doughy older people from metro Boston. They were all decked out in their shitbag team regalia. I decided to be polite.

They were 3 of those provincial, parochial, insular, and annoying New Englanders who think their way of life is the bee's knees and all the rest of us don't have a clue. You know the type I mean: the kind who believe that meaningful life doesn't exist outside their stupid I-495 bypass. They showed up with a fucking superior attitude and were dissing everything around them.

Right from the get-go, I knew we weren't going to be able to see anything in front of us that would allow me to make a spirited defense of The Yankee Way.

So I decided I'd just be friendly, versus trying to give them grief. Early on in the game, Pedroia came to the plate and I said "I hope you guys don't mind, but I'm going to stand in front of you during Pedroia's at bat." They looked at me and said, without any hint of levity or friendliness, "Why not? Everybody else is." The bastards were serious.

I decided not to speak to them after that. In the 7th or 8th of the horror show of a game, the patriarch came back with a load of cheese fries. When it comes to ballpark food, I'm not into anything other than a couple of dogs and maybe a bag of peanuts. I'll tell you, however, this guy's cheese fries looked pretty darned good. His wife even said, "Tom, those look good." And, rather than deigning to say ANYTHING positive, this pathetic little Masshole dweeb said, with his pathetic little Masshole sneer, "Well, they'd better be good. I had to walk 16 sections just to get them."

All this from 3 superior-as-all-hell Massholes. People whose team plays in that pathetic little shitbox known as Fenway. You know, the ballpark that looks like it was put together by the Little Rascals. Where, on steamy August nights, if too many guys flush their urinals all at once, they all overflow and sheets of piss run out the door across their uneven promenade. And after walking through the piss back to your seats, you have to sit sideways to fit your legs in. The place where the beer comes in 16-ounce cups only.

It hit me then that these 3 dipshits had no interest whatsoever in watching the game. They had taken their little tour bus down to Yankee stadium and their sole mission was to gather evidence and war stories to bring home to bitch about to their like-minded, provincial, parochical, and insular little Beantown friends. I could just hear the patriarch saying "An I hadda walk SIXTEEN freakin' sections just to get some friggin' french fries and all the people were doin' was standin' up and blockin' our view and it was so bad the guy next to us even joked about it."

And, the whole time, I'm trying to convince the two people who I went with that it's fun to watch baseball.

While we sat in front of a field on which nothing fun was happening.

The game utterly and totally sucked. Three up, three down, no hope, no nothing.

Headley's solo home run in the 8th was "whipped cream on horse shit", as my friend's dad used to say.

It was hot. It was humid. The Yanks are in a torpor but I fully expect the listless bastards to pound the Sox tonight 16-2. Why? Because it will allow that fucking clown Randy Levine to say, "See? We're buyers!"

We went out for dinner after the game and I had way too much to drink.

Grrr.

Alphonso said...

And you called it right,too.

Ken of Brooklyn said...

BRILLIANT LBJ!

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