The Great Debate

Admittedly, in these blog entries, I tend to tread in irreverent, sophomoric, and, sometimes, crass waters. Every now and then, however, it is incumbent upon the imaginary sportswriter to confront serious topics that explore not only the sports we cover, but the shadows they cast as both metaphor and microcosm of our shared human condition. Now, my friends, I'm about to step up to the plate (metaphor) and delve head first into a topic that not only affects baseball but humanity at large (microcosm).

That topic is the goatee.

This morning, after showering, in an impetuous fit of fancy, I decided to shave my goatee. Some of you may not see this as an issue of such colossal importance, and you might, I surmise, consider a bit of flaming fucking retard for treating it as such; however, please allow me to explain. I have kept a goatee since my mid-twenties, when I was a strapping young buck capable of anything, and with little exception, I have not messed with it. Hell, I'm a straight American male who likes beer and sports and porno: Why wouldn't I have a goatee? Then I heard on an episode of The Daily Show about six months ago that goatees have become a passe, so after six months of deliberation, anguish and sleeplessness, this morning I shaved.

(If you haven't guessed, I'm also a bit of a neurotic.)

However, since shaving, as I've been scratching my beardless chin, I've realized that baseball players have all sorts of goatees and facial-hair growths---unless, of course, they play for the Yankees, and if they play for the Yankees, the safe bet is they have no soul. So how can goatees be passe if some of our greatest American athletes continue to sport them? On the Sox alone, Kevin Youkilis, Mike Lowell, JD Drew, Jason Varitek, and Tim Wakefield have goatees consistently, and others flirt with them from time to time. Was the idea that goatees are passe an apocryphal one? If this is the case, should I grow mine back? My wife says yes.

So I submit it to you, my 12 readers: What are your opinions on the goatee? Let's get some dialogue going on this imperative topic. It's the All-Star break, so we have some time to discuss these pressing matters. I'm also posting a picture of my post-facial hair ugly mug for your examination. Do you agree with my wife? Should I grow back the goatee? Do you or does someone you love (or fuck) have a goatee? What are your thoughts? Post them right in the comments section.

Godspeed, my friends, and just a reminder, the Sox are up three games going into the second half.

On Holiday

I'm alive and well, my 11 friends who religiously follow my blog. I realize my week without blogging---I blog; therefore, I am---may have caused great distress in your life, but you can stop performing the self-flagellation rituals of Shiite men, knowing now that your imaginary sportswriter, your life-force, is back at work and has not seen an untimely and unholy demise. In fact, while you were checking my blog ten, maybe three hundred times a day, voracious, waiting for my next entry, I was on vacation.

I realize this is a baseball blog but, please, allow me to take you on a discursive sojourn while getting there. First, I want to talk about vacations, seeing they play such a prominent role in our lives. The Brits call them "holidays," which I believe is a better word. Holiday sounds--- phonetically, at least---much more fun and relaxing than "vacation," with its harsh and staccato v and hard-c sounds. So allow me to rephrase: for the last week I was on holiday.

Vacations. Holidays. Whatever. They've always conjured in me the image of a young Chevy Chase, playing a young Clark W. Griswold, speeding down the desert highway with his family in a station wagon, and pulling up alongside a simply delicious Christie Brinkley in a convertible, before she started slumming with Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl." Griswold is a man obsessed with vacations and having "a good time" on vacation, which was part of the reason I could never get into the idea of "going on" a vacation somewhere where you're supposed to have fun. To me, it seemed so contrived, so phony. I mean, you plan on having "a good time" months before you actually have the "good time." Isn't that antithetical to the whole spontaneity of fun? Are you supposed to arrive at the said destination, look around at the landscape, and say, "Damn, I'm having fun now." Do you see what I mean?

But I did have a nice time on my holiday, despite my neurosis about fun. My wife and I, her best friend Melissa, and our combined five kids, ages 4-10, rented a small cabin on a lake in Piermont, New Hampshire. Now, for many of you, I'm sure, the idea of being in an enclosed area with five kids probably more accurately describes incarceration than it does vacation, much less fun, but I was able to enjoy myself, mostly because I spent the entire week unplugged---no computer, no phone, no television. This meant---and pay attention, because here's how I'm looping back to baseball---I had listen to The Red Sox games on the radio and read my analysis in The Boston Globe the next day, and it was wonderful. For a week, that is.

There is something sweetly nostalgic about listening to baseball on the radio, reading about it the next day from the baseball beat writers, a.k.a. the lucky bastards who have my dream job. It evokes images of baseball back when the game was in its heyday, in 40s and 50s, back before it was despoiled of its integrity by money, steroids, and corporate America.

In fact, on a more personal level, it brought me back to a time when I was single, living alone, and the cable I was splicing off my neighbors was shut off for an entire season. It was 1999, and I listened to each game on the radio, sitting at my kitchen table and running down to the bar in seventh inning if the games were close then for the playoffs. While The Sox ended up beating the Indians in ALDS---remember Pedro coming out of the pen in Game 5?---and rocking Roger the Roid in Fenway before getting a good ole' fashioned an ass-whupping in ALCS by the Spankees, it was still a really memorable season for me.

Some of this nostalgia, I realized last week, was due to the merry frustration of listening to Joe Castaglione call a routine fly to left like it's Bobby Thompson's "Shot Heard Around the World," but it also had a lot to do with a feeling that baseball is better being followed either in the ballpark, with beer and hot dogs and peanuts, or listening to it on the radio, where the game plays out, inning by inning, out by out, in your imagination. Sure, I like watching Wakefield's knuckle ball dance in high-definition as much as the next guy, but in some ways, I'm a traditionalist, a modern Gatsby trying to recreate the past, and there's the irrefutable fact that I enjoy things seen through my mind's eye much more than I do those optical globes in my head.

Unless, of course, it's a young Christie Brinkley, and she's nekkid, in a swimming pool. On vacation.

The 10th Player Award Winner

Oh, irony abounds in my little baseball blogosphere.

Last week, I mentioned that the tenth person to follow my blog would be bestowed with the coveted Nate Graziano Tenth Player Award. We have a winner.

Ladies and gentleman, I am pleased to announce Mrs. Jaime Studd as the winner of The 2009 Nate Graziano Tenth Player Award.

A little bit about our winner: to begin, Jaime is my first-cousin. This is not the ironic part, nor is it nepotism, seeing half of the 11 people who follow my blog are related to me, either through blood or marriage.

Here is the bomb, and Sox fans, you might want to stop reading here: Jaime Studd, my cousin, is A YANKEE FAN!

If you trace its lineage, every family has their dirty, little secrets. Whether it is an illegitimate child borne of an inter-racial love affair or a distant uncle who lived out his life in an asylum after being arrested for masturbating at the zoo, trying to telepathically impregnate a female lemur, all families have dirty secrets. In my family, we have Yankee fans among us. But right here, right now, people of the world, I'm asking that we put an end to these secrets. This is 21st Century, and we live in a world that demands tolerance. Yes, I'm related to a Yankee fan, and I (sniff, sniff) love my Yankee fan cousin!

This brings me to another point, as I digress. The other day, I was talking to a friend...okay, I don't have any friends, so I was talking to a wino beneath a bridge and telling him how it is essential to the Sox/Yankees rivalry, the greatest rivalry in sports, that Yankee fans despise the Sox as much as we loath their team. It creates the inexorable passion that fuels both sides, establishes an ambiance where hostility and irrationality---it's a war, for God's sake---can exist with purpose. If Yankee fans were indifferent to The Red Sox and treated the games like they would a series against the Mariners, Sox fans would be pissing into the wind, full of futile bluster, every time the two teams met. In other words, if you've ever tried arguing with yourself, you've realized it's not as much fun as arguing with another person. In this sense, we---Sox and Yankee fans alike---must embrace each other's hate, celebrate our enmity, and press on.

Here's a non sequitur, but an amusing anecdote, nonetheless: Jaime, my tenth player winner, is also married to a Met's fan, a fine chap named Mr. William Studd. One night, during a lull in conversation at a bar, Bill lifted his glass and uttered the now-famous line: "Cheers to me!" Indeed, my friend, cheers to you.

Finally, seeing this past contest was such a raving success, I decided that I will also give out a 20th Player Award for the twentieth person to follow my blog, and the winner will receive a special prize, to be named later. At this pace, we should have a winner by, um, 2040.

(Honorary mention: Pee Wee. Cheers to you, too, Mr. Parker.)

MLB tributes to Jacko

Yes. I'm going there.

I was vacillating all day between whether or not I was going to tap into a new level of crassness---which for me really says something---and go ahead and make puerile Michael Jackson jokes the day after this sick, twisted man-child/pedophile died; or whether I was going to take the high road, conduct myself with a modicum of class and professionalism, display something akin to human decency, and let these jokes remain festering in the recesses of the warped mind of my imaginary sportwriter alter-ego.

So the decision has been made, and at the risk of inciting and alienating, perhaps, half of my nine readers (I'm pretty sure my wife, Liz, will not leave me over this, although there are hundreds of other good reasons ready for her to pluck), I now present to you, dear Reader, "The Imaginary Sportswriter's Suggestions for Ways Major-League Baseball Can Honor the Memory of The Moon Walker":

1. An expansion team called The Never-Never Land Underoos. They'll build a stadium on Michael's old ranch, and obviously, boys under 12-years-old get into every game for free. The uniforms will consist of classic underoos---The Hulk, Batman, Spiderman, etc.---and no one on the roster can be over the age of 19-years-old (manager included). Instead of a Rally Monkey or a Green Monster named Wally, the mascot will be An Elephant Man named John, who wears a canvas hood over his head and freaks out the little boys in the crowd. During the seventh inning of each game, aspiring musicians will perform "Bad" in falsetto, and I'm also envisioning a giant cutout of Michael Jackson, a sentry watching over the right field fence, and if a home run knocks the cutout in the area where the nose should be, the hitter wins a free pair of parachute pants. The Underoos, however, will probably struggle nightly with the decision of whether to pitch or catch. Yup. I went there.

2. A silver-sparkling batting gloves. When I think of a player to pilot the batting glove, only one name comes to mind: A-Rod. It would also allow umpires to get a good look at any of bitch slaps as he prances down the first-base line. Also, it would be a fitting tribute if players spun around and yelled "Oeow!" each time they adjust their cup in the batter's box.

3. The Michael Jackson Award. They seem to have post-season honors for everything. Why not a Michael Jackson Award for one player in either league, who has an exceptional statistical season and is noteworthy in one or more of the following criteria: A.) Was both mentally and physically fucked up by their old man, pushed so hard as a kid that the game is no longer enjoyable for them B.) Racial ambiguity C.) Displays bizarre, often baffling behavior on and off the field (although a 50-game suspension would have a severe impact when it comes down to the voting, Manny) D.) Has been acquitted of a felony they're clearly guilty of committing (perjury counts, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds) or E.) Dates/marries a celebrity female as a smokescreen for their true sexuality (um, Jeter). This award will not be voted on by the sportswriters, rather the imaginary sportswriters, i.e. ME!

Note: I now have nine people who follow my blog, conveniently the same number of players on a baseball field. I will, however, be giving special recognition to the tenth person who joins my blog. Seeing this is a baseball blog, you will the recipient of The Nate Graziano Imaginary Sportswriter Tenth Man Award. So quick. Join. Be a winner.

A formal apology to Nick Green

Dear Nick Green,

I'm so sorry and I would like to take this space on my blog to offer a formal, heartfelt apology to you for certain libelous and sophomoric remarks I made in post dated May 17, 2009, titled "Nick Green the Dick Machine." In fact, I'd like to address my offenses individually and beg your forgiveness.

1. You are NOT, as I said in the title of the post, a "dick machine." The reason I called you a "dick machine" was largely because of the rhymes with your name ("Nick" and "dick"/"Green" and "machine"). It was immature and completely meaningless. I mean, what is a "dick machine"? I've seen some contraptions on X-rated websites that might fit that bill, but they are certainly not you, Nick. I'm sorry.

2. You are NOT responsible for the Bruins and The Celtics losing in their respective rounds of the playoffs, thus ending their seasons. I know that now.

3. I do NOT believe you are a "clandestine operative" working for the Yankee organization to infiltrate the Boston Red Sox. I still think David Wells was, but I don't believe you're currently on the Yankee payroll. Sorry about that.

4. You NOT "a stinking bag of dogshit on the doorstep of fortune." Again, I was going for the alliterative effects. Whether you know it or not, Nick, I've been known to try my hand at poetry every now and then, but Robert Frost, I am not.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, "Isn't it strange that this imaginary sportswriter's letter coincides with my walk-off bomb against Atlanta on Father's Day." First, I don't know whether or not you're a father (I have two kids), but if you are, Happy Father's Day, Nicky. Do you mind if I call you "Nicky"? If you're not a father yourself, I'd like to wish your father, Mr. Green, I presume, a felicitous day full of peace and relaxation. Hell, he must be having a great fucking Father's Day, watching his boy play the role of "Hero of New England." He must be proud, and I'm proud of you, too.

Again, I am profoundly sorry and embarrassed for the egregious and flatly erroneous comments I made in my prior idiotic post. I was trying to be funny, and I was definitely, undoubtedly, NOT funny. In fact, I'm never funny, Nick. I'm just trying to compensate, rather overcompensate, for some deep-seeded personal insecurities and anxieties. I have issues, Nick. Some serious issues. It's best to pay no attention to me whatsoever.

In closing, well-done today, Nicky...I mean, Nick...I mean, Mr. Green (that includes your father, who, as I said, I hope has had a wonderful Father's Day). It looks like you're starting to really settle into your spot at shortstop, thus keeping that uber-douche Lugo in his rightful place collecting ass-splinters on the bench.

I love you, Nicky, in a platonic, manly way; although your Roman-esque good looks makes it very easy for me to understand how someone of the female persuasion would find you stunningly attractive.

Again, great job today, Nick.

Nate Graziano

Watermelon vomit, or why I'm still agnostic

Dear God,

I realize the necessity of dichotomies. Without evil, we have nothing by which to measure Your infinite goodness; without abject ugliness, we have no lens by which to view Your unimaginable beauty. However, God, there is no way for me to comprehend, rationalize, or philosophically legitimize the existence of this abomination of mankind. Because of this, I remain an agnostic, teetering on atheism. Because of this, I have been inexplicably spewing watermelon for the past two weeks.

Why, God? Why Pink Hats? If you exist, give me a sign. Make a Pink Hat wearing this exact atrocity spontaneously-combust in the right field bleachers tomorrow night.

Please. God. Why?

Yours truly,

Nate Graziano

Baseball musings (and other ephemera)

• Since the sweep of a certain group of luxuriantly loathsome peckerheads in pinstripes, thus bringing the season series to 8-0 (but who is counting, right?), I've felt buoyant and elated. That's the only way to describe it: buoyant and elated, like this guy above. And I'll feel like him until August, at least. Look at him. That's me.


• Just an observation I made after watching the Interleague games: The National League is clearly not as competitive as the AL. The Phillies are decent. The Mets are all right, and I guess the Dodgers are pretty good, but all of those teams would be eviscerated in the AL East. Sorry, Karl.


• The Sox are moving to a six-man rotation, and I'm suspicious. There was a time in baseball when teams went with four-man rotations. They gave the pitcher a baseball and let him throw until he was tired. The only other job I can think of where you can get that much time off is...well, teaching. Nevermind.


• Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids? No! Sammy Sosa! The next thing you know, we're going to find out The Bush Administration lied to American public when building their case to go into Iraq. Get out of town!


• Donte Stallworth got off light with a 30-day sentence for manslaughter. Very true. Let's face it: The American judicial system is unfair, elitist, prejudice, and often unjust, but I'd still rather be tried here than in Saudi Arabia. At least we're not beheading each other for farting in restaurants, or something similarly insane.


• Japan should be paying at least half of Dice-K's salary this year. And maybe Scott Boris can make up the difference. Whatever happened to the Dice-K who looked like he was going to impale himself with a samurai sword at his locker after losing a game? I liked him better.


• The Red Sox sold out at Fenway Park for the 500th consecutive game. Whoopee. It hard to remember the time before The Pink Hats and the fair-weather rich ran up ticket prices and chased out the old-school fans with the blessings of one Mr. Henry. Jesus, it sounds like a Dickens novel.
  
• I don't dance. When people ask me to dance, at weddings or bars or hoedowns in barns, I reply with "I don't dance." There are no exceptions. It saves me the pain and humiliation of trying to dance and others the trauma of having to watch it.


• By my count, the Yankees have at least two legitimate douche bags, according to the definitions laid out on the Hot Chicks with Douche Bags website. Congratulations Nick Swisher and Johnny Damon. You're both big douches. Big surprise.


• If you've voted The MLB All-Star Ballot more than three times, you should probably get thee to a therapist. Quick.


• If you're not happy with our life right now, try more fiber in your diet.