( 12:22 PM )
Hits From The Bong....Who's On First?
After reading last night's blog, I've realized that blogging while stoned may not be the best thing to do. Somehow, that sentence about baseball not being my favorite sport so my only allegiance was to.....well...baseball, lost whatever sense it originally made as my brain sent signals through my body, to my fingertips and out through the keyboard.
I guess I was trying to get to the fact that as I've grown up (so to speak) and learned about how to play the game, the game means more to me than the prism I view the sport through (the Yankees). So because my team is constantly winning, it's easy to be a fan. The true test will come when the Yanks finally face some adversity or when Steinbrenner fires Joe Torre and pisses me off for the last time. When one of those things happens, I think I'm prepared to drop the Yanks, and find a new team to follow to get my baseball jones fulfilled. So I don't know if that makes me a true Yankees fan, but I don't know what a true Yankees fan is and I never claimed to be one anyway.
Frankly, I stopped following baseball when I moved from Chicago when I was about 10-years-old. In fact, I hated the damn sport for the next 2 decades cause it always seemed to get in the way. Then one day, a junior A&R guy from Geffen Records invited my band to come with him to a Yankees game. For whatever reason, I was the only band member to show up. It was my first game ever at Yankee Stadium (not Dow Jones Stadium or Verizon Field, but simply Yankee Stadium), and I was so stupid and in awe that I couldn't find the "big bat" where I was supposed to meet him. If you drive by "the Stadium", it's practically impossible to miss "the big bat" - so I must have been stoned. Anyway, it was June '96, and we decided to get seats in the bleachers. For the next 3-4 years, I would only sit in the bleachers because it was the funest place on Earth to view a sporting event. If the outfielder dropped a fly ball, he'd hear about going back to the minor leagues, have his manhood questioned and his mother dissed for the next hour. If you walked into the bleacher section with purple hair, the bleacher bums would shout "East Village" at you for a minute or two. If you paid $15 to sit in the far, right field upper deck seats, you got harrassed with chants of "box seats suck." Catch a home run ball from the other team, you were much better off throwing it back instead of keeping your souvenir. If the guy selling Yankee gear walked by the crowd would do the carnival barking for him, but instead of "programs for sale" you heard "shit for sale." If Paul O'Neill hit a homer, he'd be greeted by a standing ovation when he walked out to his right field spot. And in the first inning of every game, the bleacher bums would shout the names of each Yankee starter until they acknowledged the fans with a quick wave (and yeah, we know you heard us Scott Brosius as you made us chant your name for 5 minutes before waving back you bastard!).
So how could you not follow the Yankees? So you start watching the games to see if you could catch any of the bleacher bum shenanigans. Then you get caught up with what Bobby Murcer and Ken Singleton have to say. Then the Yanks make the playoffs. You're in LA for the first series with the Rangers and can't quite figure out why baseball is on at 10am. But they win and make it to the World Series to face the Braves. A perfect match up - Joe Torre vs his old team, and the North vs the South again. Your team is down 2 games to none, so you don't even watch game 3. Then, being the part-time fan you admittedly are, you start watch games 4, 5 and 6 and laugh out loud as Wade Boggs rides around the stadium on a cop horse saluting the fans.
So I have no qualms about being a Yankee fan - I came to my pinstripes naturally. But I know they're baseball fascist, and if I hadn't come to them that way, I'd probably hate them. So I'm pretty sure I'll drop them when the appropriate time comes. Only being 12-3 in the middle of April (and as Walls noted a pansy schedule ahead), now is not the time to start following the 6-10 Mets.
( 11:42 PM )
Take Me Out To The Ballgame
Yankee starters 10-0. Matsui living up to his potential, only without the long ball. Rookie shortstop Almonte is making errors, but not costing the team games. Soriano is a playa. Jeff Weaver might have learned that he doestn't have to rely on his fastball to win. Bernie is starting out hot instead of cold. Serenity Joe. Moooooooooooose. And who knew Mondesi could still play? The only bad news is the bullpen, but Mo is coming back soon, so it should all be good.
Of course, when the Yanks stop winning I'll probably renounce them. Move straight over to the Mets if they're winning, or Cubbies if necessary. Since baseball is not my favorite sport, my allegiance is more to the game than to the team. So it's fun to be a Yankee fan in NYC. You have to take a stand in the city, so I stand with the century old, 25,000 world championship winning team!
No doubt. And watchout for the Brooklyn Baddazzes and Budders. They're gaining on you....No
( 12:12 AM )
I Just Want To See His Face
You know, I've got absolutely nothing to say, so just like Larry King, I'm gonna say it.
I can't believe I forgot to go buy the new White Stripes' Elephant album. If it's a quarter as good as White Blood Cells it's going to be the best album of 2003.....My boss told me I was doing a really good job today which was kind of weird because I feel like I'm barely treading water and I'm really afraid of screwing something up.....I'm on my 29th day of absolute sobriety. The longest I've ever gone before was 21 days. So to celebrate, I'm going to get stupid drunk on Friday.....Can't tell you how happy I am it's baseball season. I'm managing 2 different fantasy teams, and that's a good thing because I'll stop wasting time watching "Blind Date" and start wasting time watching "Baseball Tonight".....I put on Exile On Main Street last night and realized that every time I listen to it I get a little bit closer to being certain that it is the single greatest album ever recorded....which reminds me - I've been wanting to do a piece on the war being more of a crusade than an actual battle to free the Iraqis. As I thought about it on my way to work my mind drifted to thoughts of my own God. And I was pretty "happy" to realize that Keith Richards is the closest thing I have to a God in my life (not that I'm a non-believer, because I am. But I just can't get into all the different, self-righteous, man-made religions)....oh yeah, I heard a Brendan Benson song in some car commercial. Sooner or later, the rest of the world is gonna get it too. You read it here first!
Hey - since I never read USA Today, does Larry King still have a column in there?
|
