Ephemera

It's May 22, and I'm alive! Talk about a hangover: imagine waking up the morning after you told everyone the world was going to end, like this Camping douche. Do you even bother getting out of bed? Then again, after the Red Sox and Bruins' apocalyptic chokes yesterday, I didn't particularly feel like showing my face today.

Oh wait. I never leave the house. Problem solved.

• Adrian Gonzalez came as packaged, and you can make an argument that he's the best player in baseball. I want to put a poster of him in my bedroom, like I did with Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs when I was a kid, but my wife vetoed the idea. She thinks it's "creepy."
• There an interview with me on Cheek Teeth, the blog for the literary journal Trachodon, where I contributed a poem in Issue #2. Check it out here.
• "Fuckin' A" might be the most versatile phrase in the English language: You stub your toe ("FUCKin' A!"); you hit a lottery ticket ("fuckIN' A"); your best friend tells you he found his wife in bed with another guy ("aww, fuckin' a, dude"); you find yourself reading this crap ("fuckin'a, what's wrong with me?").
• Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy compared Claude Julien to Grady Little in his column, and he's spot on. I'm worried about the Bruins. They have "choke" all over them, right now, and the perfect dipshit to watch it go down.
• Here's a video of my poem "Cracker and Me." I'm now a YouTube presence.
• Yes, I was one of the first and most vociferous naysayers when it came to The Red Sox pathetic start out of the gate. Yesterday, I was going to admit I was entirely wrong then last night Tito FranCOMA, thumb firmly up ass, watched as his bullpen gave up eight runs to the Cubs in the eighth inning, blowing a two run lead. Where was Bard? Papelbon? Do inter-league games not count anymore?
• I bet Arnold Schwarzenegger was rooting for The Rapture.
• Gregg Yeti kicks ass.
• I'm reading it again with my American Lit. class, and I have to say, The Great Gatsby is the great American novel. The older I get, the less I feel the need to dissect the book and can simply enjoy the story. That's the point of reading, right?
• Did I mention how impressed I am with Adrian Gonzalez? The other big acquisitions from the last two years---Crawford, Jenks, Lackey, Wheeler, Salty---not so much.
• There's nothing better than a Sunday afternoon nap. Had the rapture happened, I would've been shit out of luck. The Great Gatsby on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, life, even this sordid den of iniquity we inhabit here on Earth, is sometimes pretty sweet.

They're going to be fine (notes from an asshole)

Last night, I had the pleasure on sitting next to a Canadians' fan at the local watering hole as we watched the Bruins advance to their first conference final in 19 years. While the poor jilted soul haplessly cheered for the deflated Flyers, cursed Chara (because that's what Montreal fans do: whine and bitch and cry), and snorted in disgust as The Bruins drove the nails into the coffins, I grinned in the self-satisfied way that only an obnoxious New Englander can.

Let me preface this by saying, I'm not a huge hockey fan. As this guy rattled off the underwear sizes of each player on the ice---I'm guessing as a backhand pissing contest to prove me inept in my fandom---the Greatest Team in the History of Modern Civilization, the 2011 Red Sox were getting shellacked for the second day straight, a grand total of 20-2 in two games.

Plot twist: This dope was also a Red Sox fan.

So as The Best Team Since the Coining of the Word "Sport" was getting cock-slapped by the Twins, I couldn't help but bring up the parallels between 2004 Red Sox and the 2011 Bruins---the gritty underdogs, retribution, a post-season run that seems mystically destined.

Snort, snort, stats. "I'm fine with the Red Sox," he said, changing the subject. "I'm sick of people overreacting. They're going to be fine."

Which brings me back to the Red Sox of 2011, as opposed to the Dirt Dogs of '04. Watching this team lately has been like dating a schizophrenic. Every now and then we'll see flashes of the team that was advertised. For example, the eighth inning Tuesday night's game when Gonzalez and Papi went back-to-back after Lester was his usual bull on the mound. But then you look at the standings, and this team is 14-18 in LAST PLACE IN THE AL EAST!

I believe I am justified in saying that I am sick and tired of people telling me to calm down, looking at this team on paper and saying they're "going to be fine." It simply is not acceptable. It's not "fine" how this bunch of overpaid dandies is under-performing. And it comes down to one thing, the essential quality that any team worth their weight in shit possesses: a passion for the game.

This year's Red Sox have no fire on the field. Maybe they need a game where the benches clear, where Veritek feeds A-Rod a fistful of catcher's mitt; maybe they need a manager who will throw the bats at them in the showers, ala Bull Durham; maybe they need to start playing like athletes instead of employees; maybe they need to take a lesson from the Bruins and Tim Thomas and grind it out. Unless something lights a spark under these jerk-asses, I'm going to be sitting at the bar next to a paradoxical Canadians/Red Sox fan spewing stats and telling me the Red Sox are "going to be fine."

The lesson here for Red Sox fans is don’t be a Hab. Because until this team starts playing with a modicum of passion, and until we all start calling them out on it, we’re all complicit in the problem.

And, hey buddy, go Bruins! They're going to be fine.

Charlie says "Relax."

In a season that becomes more and more absurd by the hour, we find out today that Charlie Sheen---yes, Mr. Tiger Blood---said last night in an interview on The Sports Hub that Red Sox fans need to "relax." According to The Warlock, the Sox should start "duh-winning" any day now.

Of course, Charlie Sheen telling people to relax is akin to Tommy Lee telling someone to sober up, and, honestly, with the Red Sox currently sporting the worst record in the MLB, there will no relaxing for this cowboy.

Before I spout off about this overpaid pack of lolly-gaggers, let me start with a positive thing in this young baseball season---for me, at least. On Friday night, I received a Facebook message from my friend Chad, a guy I haven't seen since childhood, offering me "the impossible ticket" for Sunday night's game against the Yankees. Not only did Chad and I get to actualize lifelong dreams of seeing the Red Sox play the Yankees at Fenway, but Beckett threw his best ball since the 2007 post-season. Afterwards, I left Fenway Park elated, and despite a dismal record, I was brimming with optimism about this season's prospects. "I had them all wrong," I said to Chad. "If Beckett pitches like this, the Sox are going to be tough to beat."

Then came Dice-K, a guy who could ruin a vacation to the island of Ogygia with Calypso and her nymphs.

And then came last night's rusty nail on the chalkboard, a 3-2 loss where Lester threw well. Mercifully, tonight's game, with John "Big Game" Lackey taking the hill, has been rained out.

Now I can understand why people would tell us not to hit the panic button after the first week, but now, almost three weeks into the season, The Best Team Ever has THE WORST record in baseball. To overcome the deficit they've already created for themselves, they're going to have to play some near-perfect ball and prey for an internal collapse on par with their own from The Yankees. Tony Massarotti dices the numbers in today's article in The Globe, and it's frightening. I think I'd rather watch Tom Brady dance than a Red Sox game these days.

While it's not impossible to imagine The Sox coming back, it's fair to say no one imagined a train wreck of this magnitude so early in the season, and the odds already seem insurmountable.

So we're supposed to relax, right, Charlie? Suck my Adonis DNA, you douche.

Tossing and turning.

I can't sleep. I've seriously worked myself into such a fit about the goddamn Red Sox that every time I close my eyes and try to sleep, I hear Terry Francona's voice: "You have to stop trying so hard. You're forcing things."

Perhaps a small rant will serve the purpose of an Ambien. If not, it's time to take the train to the pharmaceutically-induced slumber station.

I'll start with the obvious: This is bad. This is really bad. Logic tells us that a team with this much talent will eventually start "duh" winning, so the cause for alarm should not be the fact that the Red Sox are "duh" winless in their first six games. That's not getting to the root of the problems this group of overpaid dandies are facing right now. They can make up six games. They can make ten games. A team with this much talent could get hot and tear up the American League like expected, but I have some serious doubts.

For starters, right now, the Sox look like the main characters in an ancient-Greek tale of hubris. They came into the season unprepared, and the fault for this lies largely on the manager and his coaching staff. When is Francona going to stop letting these guys "lolly-gag" (to borrow the term from Bull Durham) during spring training? They lost 10 games in a row during The Grapefruit League, but it seems the team figured they couldn't be beaten when it counted; they were too good. All of my cultural references and world views stem from one of the six Rocky movies, and right now, I keep thinking about Rocky's haphazard training before his first fight with Clubber Lang. And look at the results. Like The Italian Stallion, the Red Sox came into this season unprepared to play. They thought they were too good to lose.

Surprise, dickheads. Now you're 0-6 and going into a series with The Yankees where you're going to have to turn to John "Big Game" Lackey.

Which brings me to my next reason for being so dubious: Their starting pitching isn't nearly as good as its packaging. Yes, Lester is a bull, and he'll go out and almost always give the team a chance to win, and, yes, Buchholz has nasty stuff and he'll be competitive. But Lackey's a lemon, and Beckett is looking more and more like he's washed up (with only four short years left on his fat contract). And Dice-K...the guy is a fucking train wreck. Watching him pitch is physically painful (I get stabbing stomach pains). Without this much-ballyhooed depth in the starting rotation, this team is not only screwed this year, but for years to come---unless they can somehow trade Lackey and Beckett. I hope I'm wrong on this one, but I'm starting to think I'm not.

When this team takes the field for the Opening Day ceremonies tomorrow, they deserve to booed back into the dugout. Imagine if you went to work unprepared to do your job. Would your boss and colleagues cheer for you? Would they say, "Don't worry, it's a long life, and Tommy will be working here for at least another decade. He'll come around"? Would they?

You can bet The Pink Hats will be on their feet tomorrow, cheering and belting out "Sweet Caroline" with $150 dollar box seats, but that's The Pink Hats. There shouldn't be any noise at the ballpark, no celebrations and no cheering. This team is expected to win, and they should start doing their jobs before you cheer them.

But, again, I'm concerned that it's not going to happen.

Good night, Tito. I think I'll go to sleep now.

A Salty sack of suck

I know, I know. It's only been three games, and Red Sox fans need to chill the hell out. We're acting like the season is over, like the Greatest Team in the History of Civilized Sports is packing it up and heading for the gold course. I know. It's unreasonable and irrational behavior.

But let me ask you this: when have you ever, ever known a Red Sox fan to behave reasonably and rationally. Sure, the company men at NESN are telling us that all is well in the same breath they plug Creep Henry's Liverpool footsie team, but all is not well. All is far from fucking well.

While there are many facets of The Greatest Team in the History of Civilized Sports' first three games worthy of my ire, I'm going to concentrate on one, mostly due to the fact that this player's name on the line-up card makes zero sense to me. In fact, this player's name wastes about as much space on a line-up card as said player does in the batting box. The player is Jarrod "I Married My Cougar Gym Teacher" Saltalamacchia---nicknamed Salty, as Chocolate Salty Balls (see video above).

Theo Epstein has had a hard-on for Salty for three or four years now and has constantly referred to him as a big "prospect." But at what point---dare I ask---does a prospect who never produces become a bum? By the end of Sunday's game, when Chocolate Salty Balls came to the plate, I was wishing Doug Mirabelli was back. So I went and looked up Salty's statistics, and let's just say, they're sour.

Since his rookie season in 2007 with Atlanta and Texas, where he put up decent numbers, The Salt-lick hasn't played more than 90 games in a season nor batted above .255. Now I realize .250 is respectable for a strong defensive catcher, but seriously?

In the writing world, we don't have this latitude. No one says: "He has a lot of talent, he's just never written anything good" or "He can really write a great sentence, he just can't put them together in a paragraph."

Or how about the ugly kid who everyone keeps saying is going to someday fill out, turn into a beautiful swam, but never does. At what age do you throw it in and admit it's never going to happen?

Right now, the Red Sox have a giant salt sack of suck behind the plate and only our Captain, fallen cold and dead, in the dugout to replace him. After Texas finished their two-step on the faces of The Greatest Team in the History of Civilized Sports last weekend, the Red Sox are now in dire need of a big series in Cleveland, something to wash away the salty taste of the Snowball The Nation's received via Theo.

Should I start on the starting pitching now? It's too early to be this angry.

Play ball

I've long believed that Opening Day for a baseball fan's home team should be observed as a holiday. It takes hours of mental preparation for a true baseball fan to get ready for Opening Day, and due to the copious mental expenditure (as well as the necessary beer consumption), we're simply not fit to work. Whether you're a teacher, a lawyer, a CEO, an executioner or a porn star, your heart is not in your work. Although, admittedly, society will need some doctors, firefighters, police officers and bartenders to take one for the team.

This year I got my wish, and I have Opening Day off. However, in keeping with the ancient wisdom that advises one to be careful what they wish for, Opening Day in Red Sox Nation came with Mother Nature dropping one last Cleveland Steamer on our chests.

As I type, close to six inches of snow has already accumulated outside, and it's still going strong.

This isn't right. As look out the window, I can only shake my head. While I don't expect a lot from the weather (it is New England), it's now snowing in April. Seriously? This isn't baseball weather. This is all wrong. Make this stop. I hate you, winter! I hate you, you evil whore.

One of the many salvations offered by baseball season is supposed to be the symbolic end of winter. If you have never lived in a cold weather climate, you might not understand where I'm coming from, but winters are spiritually and emotionally exhausting. And where I live in New Hampshire, spring is almost non-existent. We go from snow to mud to summer. Therefore, the start of baseball is our spring, our season of rebirth. Instead of flowers budding, we have Youk throwing tantrums, Pedroia growing a comb-over, Buchholz getting uglier, and Drew waiting to be injured.

It's fucking bliss, folks!

Still, with the first pitch under five hours away, I have that kid-on-Christmas giddiness that even the snow can't steal from me. Later this afternoon, in Texas, will officially demarcate what I hope to be a long season of Red Sox dominance.

So I say, snow or not, spring starts today. Play ball, boys, and go Sox!

The damned Yankee glass

Now that Opening Day is less than forty-eight hours away, my blog is getting back to business, getting back to baseball. There's no more space for foolishness and frivolities on here. I'll be getting back to the type of in-depth analysis you won't find in your local news rags. I have tunnel-vision, a singular focus, laser beams, folks.

So last week I was at the local watering hole, the place where I like to watch the Sox games and provide color-commentary for people who want to punch me. I was watching Josh Beckett, yet again, confound Red Sox fans---confounding in the sense that no one really understands how or why he got that fat-ass contract when all signs are pointing to "washed-up." Between Beckett, Ortiz, and Drew's contracts, you could pay my tabs for the rest of my life, and I'm convinced, the money would be better spent.

I digress in this digressive post. So I was watching the game with Roger, one of my bar buddies, and we finished our beers at the same time. While I was bitching about Beckett, Sylvia, our ebullient bartender, slid us refills, and I happened to glance at Roger's glass.

"Nice glass, asshole," I said.

Roger, who was watching the game, looked at his beer. The damned Yankee glass. "What can I do? It's already poured."

Now, Roger had what we call a "two-choice dilemma." For some ungodly reason, my local watering hole has a pint glass with a Yankee symbol on it: the wretched Uncle Sam hat on the top of a bat that makes me want to puke in my mouth. In the past, when I've been served a beer in the offending pint glass, I've kindly asked to have it poured in a different mug, and if the bartender is not too busy, usually they'll accommodate my request. But the question stands: Why, in a New England bar, does such a glass this exist?

I inquired within. It seems that a customer, a regular, brought in the glass and requests to drink from it. Fair enough. Yet still, would this kind of offense occur in a local bar in New York City? In Albany? Hell, in Western Connecticut?

Growing up, Yankee fans in New England, like Beckett's contract, perplexed me. Pre-2004, I asked my father to explain the phenomenon to me. I was but a wee-child, a moo-moo cow. My dad told me his theory that Yankee fans who grow up in New England are losers in life, people who have such a deep-seeded insecurities that they need to attach themselves to perennial winners. It made sense. Now I can't tell you whether or not the Yankee fan in question, the owner of the damned glass, is from New York or not; however, in the words of "The Dude" Jeff Lebowski, his "unchecked aggression" will not stand, especially so close to Opening Day.

Before Yankee fans get their panties in a bunch, I do understand that the Red Sox have engaged in a vicious game of roll reversal this season and are now, behind super-creep John Henry and the gang in the front office, attempting to buy their own rings.

Hell, I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this anymore. Let's call it my post-modern post.

Roger drank his beer and ordered another one, and I drank mine and ordered another one. The damned Yankee glass still exists at the watering hole, and I've made it my raison d'etre (Is it sexy when I speak French?) to somehow break it before this season expires. Beckett and The Sox have sucked ass this spring, and I shaved a mustache.

Hell yes. It's baseball season. Is it time to have your oil changed?