Sunday, August 20, 2023

SUGGESTION FOR THURSDAY: Treat it like a wake.

The 2023 Yankees are dead. 

While I have sat shiva (a number of times) I have never attended a wake but to the best of my understanding... 

1) People get drunk. (Check)

2) Tell stories about the dead. (Check)

3) Get overly sentimental. (Check)

4) The weakest among us will cry? 

5) A fight breaks out?

6) We all start singing. Y-A-N-K-E-E-S!

7) Someone gets arrested?

So, let's treat Thursday like the wake it wants to be.  

Should we wear black? Like I said above, never been to one... 

What else am I missing?


29 comments:

  1. Black is a good idea, if for no other reason than it will be a good backdrop for the placards that we intend to hold up, spelling out: SELL THE TEAM, HAL

    I joke not about this.

    It's also a good symbolic color. We can talk about how glorious the deceased was back in the day and how sad their last years were, feeble, dim-witted, making bad decisions. The main difference between Thursday's apocalyptic GAME OF THE CENTURY© and a wake is that we'll only whisper about the glory days and we'll all be screaming ab out the last few years.

    Too bad we can't all wear Darth Vader outfits. Or rubber, full-head Hal masks with blood on our hands.

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  2. It might be time for some paper bags.

    But please, don't get arrested.

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  4. I have done the head thing before (as previously mentioned here at some point over the past year) and the process was as follows:

    I selected a high res photo of the person I wanted to use. Made the necessary adjustments/corrections (1.5 times normal head size, color, clarity and contrast) and printed it out in color on heavy weight matte photo stock.

    Then I cut out both the photo and it’s matching shape in foam core and spray mounted them together, sealing the edge to avoid finger cuts.

    Finally you attach a paint can stirring stick to the back so you can hold it in front of your face.

    But we are seated so close to heaven that I doubt we will be noticed/picked up in any satisfying way by the denizens of broadcast media.

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  5. I'm thinking about Stump Merrill these days.

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  6. I say combine the two rituals, taking the best parts.

    I will be wearing a Hawaiian shirt, which is traditional at Hawaiian funerals.

    Does it count if someone at the stadium *outside* our section gets arrested?

    We could get the vicarious pleasure without the fingerprints.

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  7. @AA...responding from the last thread...

    It makes me feel like they should take all these players to the vet's office for examination. On second thought...maybe all their doctors are vets? Calling Dr. Quackenbush...

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  8. Dr Quackenbush is currently on a sabbatical - perhaps Roofus can lend a hand

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  10. We could all wear black Yankees jerseys turned inside out.

    Yeah - that sounds about right…..

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  11. I'm sorry, Ranger, Dr. Quackenbush is currently busy playing Rufus T. Firefly.

    P.S. Thursday's game will be in New York City. Since black is everyday wear here, people may not notice that we're at a wake. We could go more Goth, but then people will think we're all in a Dad Band. Or Bauhaus. If I had a Hawaiian shirt, Rufus, I'd wear it.

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  12. We could bring you one JM and you could change into it at the watering hole.

    I could bring my Hawaiian Yankees baseball cap.

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  13. I might dust off my "I Mooned Big Papi" T-shirt, still my fave baseball threads.

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  14. Maybe I’ll make up a BOOOOOOOOOOOne T-Shirt or cap and wear that

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  15. About last night…

    SS Oswald Peraza 3-5, 1 HR, 1 3B, 2 RBI, 3 R, 1 K, 1 SB
    C Austin Wells 2-6, 1 HR, 1 2B, 3 RBI, 1 R, 4 K,
    LF Everson Pereira 2-4, 2 HR, 2 RBI, 3 R, 1 BB,

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  16. AA, my Hawaiian Yankees hat is in Oahu. Could you swing by and pick it up on the way to the game?

    Due to numerous malpractice suits (lies, all LIES!) I no longer play doctor in public. However, late at night, in the privacy of...

    Theoretically, the Yankees could catch the mutts in the race for the bottom, by losing Thursday. The mutts would have to take 2 of 3 from the Braves. The Yankees are capable of losing every game for the foreseeable future.

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  17. BTR,

    If they call up Wells or Pereira tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll be pissed. Going to the SWB game on Tuesday.

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  18. Hey, Guys:

    This is an apropos thread for me to mention this: Three people have not picked up the tickets I transferred to them for Thursdays game:

         - TheWinWarblist

         - Ken of Brooklyn

         - Carl J. Weitz

    I sent emails to everyone with instructions how to get them. The Yankee system sent the actual transfer notifications. I sent a follow-up email. The horse has been led to water, time to drink up.

    If this is the first you're hearing this, please contact 13bit or me by email. Otherwise, please pick 'em up.

    Thanks.

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  19. I'll take care of this tomorrow LBJ. Bitty has my cell.

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  20. Wakes can be weird, wakes can be comforting.

    The last wake I went to was a few years ago. It was for the owner of a diner here in my town. I have been going to this diner for 32 years. The food is first rate. This morning, his 63-year old daughter, the current owner, took my order, cooked it, and served it.

    The wake was an open-casket affair. Above his head, resting on the satin pillow, were a pair of crossed spatulas.

    True story.

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  21. Ruf, you probably won’t have to worry!

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  22. The traditional Irish wake included picking the corpse up, dancing him around a bit, and pouring a whiskey down his throat.

    What can I say? We're a weird bunch.

    Do you think if he walked Stanton around and poured a whiskey down his throat he would come to life again? Worth a try, I say.

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  23. Since Hoss opened the can o' worms:

    Q: What's the difference between an Irish Wake and an Irish Wedding?

    A: One less drunk.

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  24. What's Irish and stays out all night?

    Paddy O'Furniture.

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  25. LBJ,

    I'd add, fewer fights and fewer subsequent arrests.

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  26. I made a comment a few weeks back using an old trope about the legendary Jewish thrift.

    I was encouraged to delete it.

    Chirp chirp.

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  27. Little different, Beauregard. The enormity of anti-Semitism in the world, and its endurance, puts it in a different category.

    Besides, I'm (half) Irish, so I can say it, under the unspoken laws of American ethnicity.

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  28. Not different at all, You’re wrong, and think hard about why.

    I like all targets open, nothing off limits. But when someone says they are off limits, and others aren’t… that’s some real pathetic hypocrisy. Not the kind of people I care to associate with.

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  29. Ah, c'mon, Beauregard! I'm not saying you're a terrible person—I just disagree with you.

    To start with, you really don't think that, in America, everyone doesn't say, "I can say that because I'm _____ (Black/Jewish/Italian/Irish whatever)"?

    I hear it all the time—and I think it's a pretty good rule.

    And let's face it: for some groups, in this time and place, it's different.

    The Holocaust is still in living memory. And anti-Semitism never seems to stop. When my wife and I were in Germany, we went to this lovely little college town where there was a street called something like, "The Street of the Jews."

    We asked if it referred to people taken away to the camps. Oh, no, we were told. That dated back to a pogrom in the Middle Ages. Then some Jews eventually settled in the town—and were killed in the Holocaust.

    Same thing with African Americans. Terrible as prejudice against all kinds of immigrants was—and I can quote you chapter and verse on the Famine, and the coffin ships, and the "NINA"s—no one else was brought over as literal slaves. And no one else has faced that level of prejudice since.

    You know, they used to have these ethnic vaudeville acts in New York. That's what the Marx Brothers evolved out of. The German was always bad-tempered (Groucho), the Irishman a drunk or saloonkeeper (Harpo), the Italian an organ grinder (Chico). They bantered back and forth, and got in shots at each other. Everybody laughed.

    But the stage African American got to insult nobody. And he wasn't simply temperamental, or cheap. He was alway lazy, shiftless, stupid, pretentious, superstitious, afraid of everything.

    You have a couple hundred years of that sort of thing in your society, it creates a different context.

    Anyway, that's how I look at it. I hope you'll continue to associate with us, cause you bring a lot to the blog, and I'd hate to see you leave over this.

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