Nick Green the Dick Machine

How, oh, how did things that were once so good get so very bad? Was it not a week ago today that The Red Sox took it to Tampa with an eighth-inning rally, the Bruins wiped up Carolina in their backyard, and Big Baby Davis sunk a buzzer-beater to tie the series with the Magic? Here we are, a week later, and The Bruins are eliminated, The Celtics are losing bad in the first quarter, and The Sox just dropped a second straight series on The West Coast. Who, you may ask, other than some cruel God hellbent on afflicting terrible cosmic pain on New England sports fans could be responsible such malicious torment?

I, however, have an answer far more mundane.

That answer: Nick Green.

Yes, I realize that I recently went off on Julio Lugo, and for that, I am still unapologetic. However, after Nick Green's throwing era in the ninth-inning today that cost the Sox the game and the series against the Mariners, I am now blaming Nick Green for everything that has happened. Ever. The Bruins losing Game 7 in overtime? Green's fault. And if the Celtics lose tonight, you can thank Nick Green. The Holocaust? That was Nick Green's fault, too.

Let's not forget, folks, he was once a Yankee.

Listen, I don't have a life, so when the Red Sox lose because some pud-pulling ex-Yankee who looks like an android can't make a routine throw to first, I am personally and spiritually affected. Why, oh, why the hell did The Red Sox ever let Orlando Cabrera go? Theo, you should've looked into your crystal ball and seen the palsy twins, Green and Lugo, five years in the future. For making such a mess of the shortstop position and, by extension, my life, I fart in your general direction, Theo. You break my heart.

And Nick Green, you, sir, are a stinking bag of dog shit on the doorstep of fortune. You may think you're fooling everyone into thinking you're not a clandestine operative for The Evil Empire, but not this imaginary sportswriter. And now, sir, the three people who read this blog know, too. Consider yourself outed, asshole.

A whole Manny thing

While the baseball world weighs in on Manny Ramirez and the hefty 50 game suspension dropped on him, as an imaginary sportswriter, it would remiss of me to not throw in my own two cents and disappoint my legions of readers, a.k.a. the two of you who read this blog.

My two cents: I could give two shits. Yes, I'm a big fan of baseball and believe the game is truly of a thing of beauty when it is being played well. But seriously, enough is enough already. I am so sick and tired of hearing about these players and their steroid use. Does it put into question the integrity of the game? Of course it does. Not a single one of these bulked-up, shrimp-dicked retards could hold a candle to Mays or Aaron or Williams or Dimaggio, and the record books should reflect it with the ignominious asterisk. At the risk of sounding sacrilegious to the sport, I don't care about the records; I just like watching baseball being played. These guys aren't gods. They're athletes. And I realize that little kids look up to them as heroes. When I was a kid, I looked up to Tommy Lee. That didn't mean that I was going to end up doing every drug I could get my hands on and banging Pam Anderson...

Wait a second, I think I'm losing my point.

Oh, yeah, my point. Maybe it's time we stop apotheosizing these guys, paying them obscene amounts of money, and making their business our lives. Parents should impress this message on their children, talk to their kids and tell them as much. So these guys used steroids for a competitive edge. Does that make them evil human beings that deserve the public's soap-box derision? I don't think so. It makes them athletes with questionable integrity. Should that detract from the pleasure we, as fans, derive from watching a ballgame? Not for me. And let's remember, there are some 100 names in The Mitchell Report that have yet to come out. So if we're preparing for more public stonings, we need to remember that players on our hometown teams may very likely be next. And those players who have legitimately made it on their own hard work and talent will have the existential serenity of knowing it. That should be enough. Let's stop the witch hunts and speculations. Innocent until proven guilty, right?

Manny Ramirez is a moron. No news there. He will not be in uniform again until July. Don't vote him onto the All-Star team and move on.

The only player who deserves our public outrage for cheating and lying and being an overall dick is A-Rod, and that has more to do with his uniform than his steroid use.

An Imaginary Conversation with a Yankee Fan

Since 2004, I've noticed that tenor of baseball conversations with my Yankee fan friends (yes, I actually have friends that I pay pretty well to like me, thank you very much) has done an about-face. In case you missed it, The Red Sox beat The Yankees again last night 7-3 in the billion-dollar whiffle ball field, bringing the season series to 5-0 with the Good Guys on top. Anyway, below is an imagined conversation with a Yankee fan at, say, a copy machine at, say, 7:18 a.m. before I'm about to teach, say, a Joyce Carol Oates story to a group of seniors that would rather hang by their tongues than read anything else.

Me: Did you happen to catch the game last night?
Imaginary Yankee Fan: I'm tired of this crappy weather. The guy on WMUR said it's supposed to clear up later this afternoon, but when was the last time a weatherman got the weather right?
Me: Do you still think the Red Sox are going to pay for trading Manny last season? Bay hit another bomb last night. What was it you said? The Red Sox would be lucky to finish in third place?
IYF: It's only May. There's a lot of baseball left.
Me: True, but you said that last July, and The Sox went to the ALCS and came within a game of going to another World Series. Where did the Yankees finish in AL East last year?
IYF: Swine flu, man. What the hell is going on with the swine flu? I went to buy some hand sanitizer last night, and CVS was out.
Me: It looks like the Yankees plucked their bullpen from the Special Olympics team. The highest payroll in baseball, and they still can't get a bridge to Rivera, not that Mo has been particularly effective against the Sox.
IYF (face flushing): How many World Series have the Yankees won again?
Me: This century or last?
IYF: It's a long season. I'll talk to you in October.
Me: Great idea. In the past six years, The Sox have been to four ALCS series, won two pennants and gone undefeated in World Series games. When was the last time the Yankees won a World Series?
IYF: The Giants kicked the Patriots' asses in the Superbowl two years ago. You remember that one, big guy?
Me: I wouldn't call a highly improbable, once-in-lifetime catch in the fourth quarter an "ass-kicking," but you have a point. The Giants won. Still, I was talking about baseball.
IYF: Wait until A-Rod gets back.
Me: That's right. I forgot about the steroid-popping, man-titted, bitch-slapping cheater and his inflated salary. How many World Series have the Yankees won since he's been on there payroll? And Sabathia and Texeira are really tearing it up, too. When are the Yankees going to realize that buying an aging All-Star team year after year is NOT going to work. It seems like Steinbrenner's douche bag son is every bit the idiot that the old man was. Big Apples don't fall far from the tree, huh? That was clever. Right?
IYF: Go fuck yourself.
Me: It's always a pleasure.

The Bum

For those of you who have been following the Sox before they became sexy in 2004, who had a relationship with the team similar to a rocky marriage--- when things were good, oh man, they were good, and when they were bad, look out---you understand the irrational rage, the betrayal, the flirting with the concept of divorcing the team and finding another sport, say, arena football, to devote your love and attention. In my particular case, I usually choose one player on the team to focus all of my anger toward, a sounding board, a whipping post. Even after two World Championships, I still have my goat, and for the past two years, it has been $9 million dollar toilet flush that goes by the name of Julio Lugo.

On Sunday, I was watching the game against Tampa, and my blood pressure was slightly elevated, as it usually is during a Red Sox game, but stable. There were runners on first and third with one out (Carl Crawford probably stole all three bases then got back on the base path for shits and giggles), and Brad Penny was on the mound. There was routine grounder to Pedroia, a textbook 4-6-3 inning-ending doubleplay. But with Julio "The Loser" Lugo at the shortstop, nothing is EVER routine. Lugo muffs a feed that Stephen Hawking could have handled, the run scores, and The Sox go down and never catch up. I lose it. I start spraying f-bombs and insults like Dick Cheney firing at a friend's face on a hunting trip (man, I struggled with that simile), and my three-year-old son took cover under a blanket. Before I could apologize and tell him to never repeat what he just heard in front of his mother, the phone rings. It's my father.

"That fucking idiot!" he yells, eschewing your standard phone call greetings. "Why the fuck do they keep playing this guy?" Mind you, my father introduced me to the concept of The Red Sox Bum, the term I've adopted for these players, way back in 1986 when he would take everything out on the hapless Bob Stanley.

Now, the reason I bring this up is to give formal recognition to the players who have borne the brunt of my indignation over the past five years (to go back further would require a much, much longer post). So here they are, in chronological order, with the nicknames I assigned to them:

Grady Little, a.ka. Forrest Gump. While Tito Francona could take a dump on my bed and I'd simply admire its consistency, Grady Little was the cause of all of my life's stresses and problems during his time as the helm. A check bounces. Fucking Gump. A bird craps on my windshield. Grady Little fed it the damn worms. There was something about his languid Southern hick-ness that drove me up a wall. And when he left Pedro in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS...well, I'm not even going to go there.

Mark Bellhorn, a.k.a. Smellhorn. Again, one of the defining characteristics of a Red Sox Bum is the general demeanor of someone who can't fight back. Bellhorn struck out far too much for my liking. Was he instrumental in the Sox winning in 2004? You bet. Did I love him during that time? Yup. Such are the hypocrisies of Sox fans. Ironically, I still have a Mark Bellhorn keychain that was given to me as a gag gift. I still use it.

Willy Mo Pena, a.k.a. Willy Mo-ron. First of all, I was an Arroyo fan, and when the Sox dealt Bronson to The Reds for this walking steroid with the brain of a piss-drip, obviously, I blamed Pena. He was like the dude that dates your ex-girlfriend after you've broken up. Regardless of what he does or how nice of a guy he might be, you're going to dislike him. And Mo-ron, aside from hitting a few moon shots, did little to help his cause. From his fielding blunders to his gigantic whiffs at the plate, all-around, I blamed him for every game the Sox lost during his tenure, whether he played or not.

Which brings us back to Lugo, a.ka. The Loser, a.ka. Fucktard the Asswipe Douche. It's a rainy evening here in New England, and in a few minutes, I'm going to head downstairs and see if the Sox/Spankees game in the Evil Empire's billion-dollar whiffleball field is going to happen tonight. By the way, I just checked the line-ups. Nick Green is scheduled to start at short, but if the Sox lose tonight (if they play), I can guarantee you Lugo had something to do with it.

Where's A-Roid?

Already, a week of baseball has passed and I missed my imaginary deadline as an imaginary sportswriter. I suppose I should hold off on the paperwork to get my name legally changed to Scoop. I'm failing already.

However, for both of you who have subscribed as readers of my blog---already my sports column is going the way of newspapers everywhere---here is a bullet-list (in the vein of The Providence Journal sportswriter Bill Reynolds) of my impressions, thoughts, and my intellectually vacuous and retarded commentary on Week One.

• Where's A-Roid? Has anyone seen A-Roid?
• I didn't think it would be possible to miss Julio Lugo, but given Lowrie's performance at the plate so far, I can't wait for the ugly bastard to get back.
• I've always said that only assholes and rednecks use their initials in place of their first name. I believe that puts $160 million dollar C.C. Sabathia in the latter column. What does C.C. stand for anyway? I'm pretty sure it's Cheeseburgers and Chicken Wings.
• R.I.P. Nick Adelhart.
• My Yankee rants my soon become archaic, seeing I'd bet the house on Tampa to win The AL East again. After watching them play that first series, they're the real deal. Stacked. Evan Longoria might be the best player in the game. No joke.
• Where's A-Roid? I haven't seen him around.
• As far as the greatest rock and roll song ever written, I'd agree with my friend Cracker: it's "Thunder Road."
• C.C.=Chili fries and Cheesecake.
• Yesterday, while listening to the color commentator Eric Karros on Fox's Saturday baseball, it became apparent that any monkey with a microphone could get that job. While he tried to get all philosophical and metaphysical about Nick Adelhart's death, I felt pangs of vicarious embarrassment. Settle down, Socrates. But then he followed it with some illuminating baseball insight, such as "pitchers don't want to walk the lead-off hitter." Wow. No shit.
• I love watching Jason Bay play the game. Since Manny the Moron left town, I haven't spent a minute missing him. Honest.
• I've had the same essential haircut my entire life. That doesn't mean it's working for me.
• Best Easter joke I heard this week: What did the egg say to the boiling water? I'm sorry, I can't get hard. I was just laid by a chick.
• A-Roid, oh A-roid, wherefore art thou A-Roid?
• It seems every year more and more douche bags become Sox fans. Where were these assholes in 1996? Actually, I know the answer: Not at Fenway.
• Look for me on Facebook, folks. I'm a total Facebook whore.
• Seriously, has anyone seen A-Roid?

EDIT: I had a picture of A-Roid, but it got taken down by Big Brother of The Blog World. Next week, I promise nude photos of MILF's and the men who love them.

The Sportswriter

No, I'm not trying rip off Richard Ford, and, in fact---and this may be an offense punishable by castration in certain MFA programs---the novel bored me to point where I found myself measuring my pubic hairs mid-paragraph. Not poorly written, just not my cup of NyQuil.

Unlike Frank Bascombe, who dreamed of being a successful novelist but found himself moored as a sportswriter, it's always been my dream to be sportswriter, more specifically, a beat writer for The Red Sox. Luckily for me, I'm not a successful novelist, nor poet, nor short fiction writer, nor sportswriter, so in words of Dr. Dylan, I ain't got nothin' to lose. Close your eyes.

Let's do an exercise in guided imagery. Bad cigars. Do you smell them? Beer breath with a whiskey bump. You still with me? A Taco Bell burrito in one hand as I try to slip my other hand up NESN's reporter Heidi Watney's (above) skirt, and she clubs me over the skull with her microphone and security cuffs me. Yeah. The sirens howling. Now we're cooking with gas.

Indulge me, friends. Allow me to believe, for the next six months, that I'm a real beat writer, feed my delusion. Be my co-dependent, bitch.

Starting tomorrow, I will begin my uncensored column titled "The Yankees Are the Reason So Many Red Sox fans have I.B.S." Join me tomorrow, friends, as I explain over the next 162 games, why Mark Texeira was always The Chosen One to complete the Ultimate Yankee Circle Jerk; and why Jason Giambi was WAY too straight for the likes of Jeter, Johnny "Bone Boy in Whirlpool" Damon, and Alex "I Cheat, Pop Roids and Throw My Family Under the Bus, Fuck Hookers AND Their Madams, and Still Find Time To Give My Boys in Pinstripes a Handjob" Rodriguez; and why any writer worth their lick should give a little bit of love to the game of baseball.

Help me, friends. Make me feel like a sportswriter.

Happy Steak and Blowjob Day!

One of my good friends, who consistently feeds me fodder for these blog posts, kindly called to my attention that tomorrow is Steak and Blowjob Day, a day in which the man in a relationship is celebrated, as opposed to Valentine's Day, which is exactly one month earlier.

Ladies, be sure to let the man in your life know that you love him by buying/making him a juicy steak and giving him a nice, slow blowjob on March 14.

Wow! Steak and Blowjob Day three days before St. Patty's Day*. Pinch me. I must be dreaming.

(Note on St. Patty's Day: Although it is undeniably another amateur hour for drinkers, along with New Year's Eve and Cinco De Mayo, there's something about having a Guinness or ten on St. Patty's Day that is, dare I say, sentimental.)