The boy and his baseball

My son was draped over the fence on the first-base line, his arms hanging down and his baseball mitt secured to his left hand. Not even twenty yards from him, the pitchers in the New Hampshire Fisher Cats' bullpen sat on an aluminum bench next to a bucket chock full of the things my son wanted most in this world: baseballs.

For a 7 year-old boy, still half a decade away from discovering curves, the desire to procure a baseball in a half-filled AA ballpark was more than a whim; it was a desire, a passion, a visceral yearning. However, by the seventh inning, he had resigned himself to nihilism (something he gets from his mother).

"I'm not getting a ball," he said, which might as well been translated to: Life just doesn't work out.

"Keep trying, Owen," his mother encouraged. "I have a good feeling about this."

Still draped over the fence on the first base line, Owen waited.

Then, as life's vicissitudes took charge, Owen was tossed a ball between innings from a player warming up the right fielder. That player was Koby Clemens, the son of the newly-acquitted and regionally reviled Roger Clemens.

Growing up, I had a poster of Koby's dad in my bedroom. In 1986, when Clemens struck out 20 Seattle Mariners (still a dubious distinction given that it was Seattle) in a game, won a Cy Young and an MVP and took the Sox to the World Series, he might as well been curing lepers, turning water into wine, resurrecting from the dead. Like millions of New England boys at the time, I worshiped Roger Clemens with the dogged naivete of an 11 year-old boy, who was still a couple of years away from discovering curves.

Of course, Clemens' legacy in Boston---and as an athlete in general---would be poisoned by his arrogance, hubris and general douche-baggedness. Would I possess the same level of rancor toward the man had he never donned a pinstripe? Probably not. But when I was a boy, The Rocket was beyond reproach, a hero. And here, over twenty years later, his son, with a simple flip of a three dollar baseball, did the same for mine.

For the past two nights, Owen has slept with the baseball that Koby Clemens gave him. Of course, someday the baseball will be lost or discarded, like my Roger Clemens poster, but for right now, my son is exhilarated. And sometimes, Owen, life does work out.

Dirt Dogs vs. Princesses

At the start of this season, I hated this Red Sox team like a penis hates sharp objects. They were a bunch of overpaid, entitled princesses playing the game with the enthusiasm one usually reserves for a colonoscopy. It appeared that no lesson was learned after their epic collapse last September, and we were going to have another season of lukewarm millionaires yawning in left field.

Early, something happened that turned the season around: The princesses started dropping like flies.

For starters, John Lackey was sidelined in the off-season to recover from a speciously-scheduled Tommy John surgery, and there was much rejoicing. Ditto Dice-K, but he recovered quicker---probably free-basing radioactive rock or something---and is currently shitting the bed in Pawtucket, poised to shit the bed in Boston. During spring training, the $20 million uber-dud Carl Crawford broke his finger picking his nose, and no one knows if or when he'll be back. Then Andrew Bailey, their purported closer, got a boo-boo on his baby toe and was placed on the DL before he even threw his first regular season meatball. In the shocker of the new millennium, Jacoby Ellsbury pulled an abdominal muscle ripping a fart and he's gone, again, until after the All-Star break. And, finally, in what proved to be the Sox most fortuitous injury, Youk went down and paved the path for his imminent successor Will Middlebrooks to come up and rake in the majors.

Now, the Red Sox are over .500 for the first time this season, and they're winning with a patchwork crew of dirt dogs, who not only play the game hard but are utterly affable to boot. I'd almost rather see the current line-up lose the rest of the season than watch The Red Sox with the princesses from the infirmary win a pennant.

So let's take a look at the dirt dogs.

So far, Daniel Nava is winning over fans with both hustle and a hot bat. Carl Crawford can kiss my ass. Let Nava man the Monster for the next five years. I'm down. Then there is Ryan Sweeney, a wild card from Oakland who was packaged with Bailey. Sweeney, who has earned a role as an every day starter, has made some incredible plays in the field---i.e. the diving catch in center where he concussed himself---and he's been putting up the stats on top of it. The aforementioned Middlebrooks looks like the real deal, infusing the team with youth, while even journeyman like Marlon Byrd and Scott Posednik play hard, which is the antithesis of the Beer and Chicken Bitches. Even Salty has come into his own and is putting up All-Star numbers with a hearty dose of toughness to boot. If Ellsbury got a cut on his ear, it would've been a potential career-ending injury. And Mike Aviles, hell, he's made a nice case for himself as an everyday starter at shortstop. On top of it, although part of the millionaire crowd, Papi has his mojo back, and Gonzalez has shown some real character by volunteering to play right field. And Pedroia is Pedroia: the muddy chicken and a consummate gamer.

Given the Pink Hats and the way the team presented itself to fans last season and the first month of the current one, I'd forgotten what it's like to really root for the Red Sox. However, with the team they're putting out now, I'm hoarse from cheering in front of the television. But, alas, while they take their sweet-ass time to heal, the princesses will return, and the Sox will go back to being the team that Theo built, a watered-down version of the Yankees. When the princesses are healthy, the front office will demand their babies get to play, and Valentine will either comply or get fired, and we're back to the same flat baseball that resulted in last September's disaster.

But for now, I'm liking these guys. A lot. Like a penis likes soft and wet...forget it. You get picture.   

The Red Sharts

A shart: here's a quick explanation for those of you with too much elegance, class and maturity to know what I'm referencing. A shart, a word that combines the words "shit" and "fart," is often a gamble, a stare-down with the gods. When one sharts, the individual feels the need to pass gas; however, they also know if they go ahead and fart, there's a real chance they might shit their pants. Sure, sometimes it slips, completely beyond one's control, and the person is left feeling as helpless as a baby with a soiled diaper. And, in essence, the analogy is holds true. This, however, is not the type of shart I'll be using as the metaphor in this post.

There is a second type of shart. Here, the individual, in a bold act of hubris, believes they are above shitting their pants. They believe they are better than a person who shits their pants. They believe they are impervious to such shame. So the arrogant son of a bitch goes ahead, gambles, and lets loose. And what happens? They have a total and complete mess on their hands. They're utterly humiliated, and they stink of ass.

The 2012 Red Sox are a shart.
  
Let's begin with the hubris factor. If you remember back in spring training for 2011 season, Mr. Josh Beckett predicted his team---who would go 5-16 in September and top off the worst collapse in baseball history---would win 110 games. I will say nothing about the fried chicken and beer, nothing about the way the players took no accountability for their own bad behavior. It's a new season, and they have a chance to atone.

Nope. These arrogant bastards have come out this year and have played like a bunch of entitled teenage princesses. Them, shit their pants? No. Never. They're too good. They're too popular. They can fart wherever they damn well please with total impunity. They can fart at the theater, they can fart at clubs, and they can certainly fart on the golf courses. Hell, it'll never happen to them. And, if it does, so what? There's no humility on Yawkey Way these days.

Instead, it's the Red Sox fans enduring the humiliation. Due to the fact that there is zero accountability in the clubhouse, we're the ones standing in the center of room, dung dripping down our legs, running for the exits. We're the ones wearing bags over our heads, disgraced. We're the ones who hear the collective laughter of the entire baseball world as they hold their stomachs and point their fingers at us and our hometown team. Sure, being a Red Sox fan my whole life, there have been some miserable times---i.e. 1986 and 2003---but, honestly, this feels like rock-bottom. I have never felt embarrassed to wear my Red Sox hat in public, but these days, there's something slightly shameful, something that smells real bad.
   
So what is the solution? The solution is simple. Clean up the mess, throw away the old shorts and replace them with a new pair, and then move on with your life. In other words, start by dumping Josh Beckett, the ring leader, which will be difficult seeing he's a 10-5 guy. However, this will, at the very least, break up the player entitlement and bread with the fans. Hell, dump Buccholz, dump Papi, and dump Youkilis, too. Clean up the whole mess. This season, I'm sad to say, might actually be the Red Sox bridge year, the start of new beginning. Bring up Iglesius, keep Middlebrooks at the corner, get Lavarney some AB's, and start thinking toward the future. In a year or two, this will all be a bad memory. In a year or two, we'll start to forget about the 2012 Red Sharts. In a year or two, this all will seem like a bad, bad dream.

Douche-tards

Douche-tard [doosh-tard] noun. Slang: vulgar. A contemptible person who behaves as if he/she were retarded.

The word has been ringing in my head, repeating like a mantra as I've watched this despicable and disgusting entity that the Red Sox ownership has presented to Boston fans for the first fourteen games.

Douche-tards.

But wait! Fenway Park is a century old! There's plenty of "Sweet Caroline" singing to be done! Let's overlook the fact that the hucksters who own this team are selling the most expensive tickets this side of Yankee-land and pushing a sub-par product. Let's forget the fact that this is the same team who coughed up chicken bones, puked Bud Light, and died on us last September. Let's forget the fact that these guys should feel the need to atone for such a shameful display last fall by playing like there were rockets shooting out of their asses. Instead, let's have Tim Wakefield and Jason Veritek roll out Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky, wipe the mist from our eyes, and forget the fact that Bobby V.'s team is a hot fucking mess!

Douche-tards.

Here's the essential problem, and it's a problem that has reached epidemic proportions in our society: accountability. Why would ownership---the Crypt-Keeper, the Wimp, and the Uber-Douche---dump more money than necessary into a product the Pink Hats will buy anyway? After all, they have a soccer team in Liverpool to fund. Why should these players, with their fat avaricious guaranteed contracts, care if they win or lose? They should feel free to call out their manager, piss and moan, when someone criticizes them. Who gives a flying fuck if this team wins? There's the Fenway Park museum to take in, $8 beers to swill, songs to sing in the eighth inning, regardless of whether or not you've choked up a nine-run lead to a team that regularly summons bile. No one is accountable here. Winning is negligible. Bullpens, who needs them? Bend over and open your wallets, Sox fans, there's a centennial party going on.

Douche-tards.

Perhaps the most disheartening part of this debacle that continues to unfold like a Shakespearean tragedy is the fact that this is a team that is, at its core, utterly loathsome. While watching Kevin "Dr. Ass-Hat" Millar and Pedro muck up a toast (Did you know it was a world record? Hurrah!), prancing back and forth like drunken sailors on the top of the Sox dugout, the magnitude of what was happening hit me; it really sunk in: The Red Sox organization is in the business of peddling nostalgia. Win or lose, it's immaterial. Instead, we're going to shovel nostalgia down your throats and beg you to remember when "the good times never seemed so good." It's sad, really. Really sad.

Douche-tards.

Don't blame Bobby Valentine. Instead, let's turn the mirror on our selves. Blame the "fans" who continue to pay the exorbitant prices at the park. Blame the "fans" who tacitly condone losing, who could care less if Ryan Sweeney is batting in the two-hole, who want to sing their song and get on the T to beat the traffic after the game. The problem, folks, with the 2012 Red Sox is systematic, and we're all guilty.

Douche-tards.

Exactly.

Hangover Breakfasts and other news

I've been sitting on this information for a few weeks and now I'm happy to announce that my quasi-memoir, a chapbook of short prose pieces---flashes, short-shorts, burps, whatever you'd like to call them---titled Hangover Breakfasts is going to be published by Bottle of Smoke Press this summer. Hangover Breakfasts tells a loose narrative about the year after college when I lived on Lake Winona in Ashland, New Hampshire, and all the ensuing chaos and sadness.

Check out a sample from the book, "Headless in a Hole," published here on Blue Fifth Review.

Also, my new and selected poems, appropriately titled My Next Bad Decision, has also been accepted for publication by Artistically Declined Press. This tome, my best scribbles from the last decade or so, will be released at a date yet-to-be-determined. I'd guess it will be some time in late-2013 or 2014, assuming we're not all dead in December, like the Mayans supposedly predicted. If we all end up dying via some apocalyptic eruption on Dec. 21, then the book won't be released until 2015.

More news and plenty of Sox blogging to come.

Straight scorn

I still don't forgive them, and I'm not sure I ever will.

While the Superbowl is too painful to talk about---hence, my conspicuous silence following said event---I've decided to report earlier than the pitchers and catchers this season and start by saying this straight out: I hate these goddamn Red Sox.

I hate this team. Even watching Tim Wakefield's retirement speech, an event that would have/should have had me weeping like a widow yesterday, I couldn't fight through my utter disgust when The Keystone Cops (Beckett, Lackey, Lester) showed up in their shades and respective nightclub outfits, feigning to care about a fellow teammate---or someone other than themselves. I was surprised they didn't crack Bud Lights and split a bucket of Popeye's during the speech because, you know, they weren't required to do anything else. I would've thought that they would be winded six minutes into it and running to the clubhouse for cover.

Assholes, straight up assholes, that's what these guys are.

What you're reading right now, folks---and may I be presumptuous enough to say I'm speaking on behalf of all true Red Sox fans---is pure, unfettered venom. Yet, here's the thing: despite the fact that they've behaved so badly, used and abused me as a fan, I'm running back to them as always. Unlike these phony prima donnas on the pitching staff, I still care about the outcome of this season.

However, for the first time in my life, I'm questioning whether or not I'll be able to fully forgive this team for their lay-down-and-die routine last September. And there is nothing I can say about the lack of professional accountability that Mazz hasn't already said far more eloquently and articulately in his Globe column.

Here's what I would like to see happen, and this would serve as proper vindication:

I want to see the ownership---mainly The Crypt-Keeper, The Wimp, and The Dick---give out 35,000 free tickets on Opening Day to fans who can prove, via an extensive exam on the team and its history, that they ARE NOT Pink Hats. I want us all to tank up at the bars surrounding Fenway, where all tabs will be picked up courtesy of the ownership that has been ass-raping fans in ticket prices for the past decade. Then, tanked and belligerent, we will pack that shit-hole on Yawkey Way so that the players from last year's team will have to look us fans in goddamn eyes when they're announced on Friday the 13th of April with the team who took their playoff spot last September watching from the opposing dugout. As they're announced, we will boo their sorry asses like it is our job to jeer, just so The Beer and Chicken Shit Crew can see what it means to actually DO YOUR JOB! Finally, en masse, we will file out of the ballpark and leave them to play their home opener in an empty stadium.

Somehow, I doubt this will happen. But that's what it will take for me to forgive this team.

Either that, or they go out and win a World Series this year. That'll do, too.

I hate New York City

I hate New York City.

There, I said it. I hate the Yankees. I hate the Giants. I hate the Jets and the Rangers and the Knicks (although I don't follow basketball), and if I didn't pity them so much for having to live in their obnoxious older brothers' shadows, I'd hate the Mets, too. I even hate the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants for having their roots in New York City.

I hate the Empire State Building, mostly because I'm afraid of heights. I hate Broadway and musicals, mostly because I can never get past the plausibility problems of people singing and dancing through their entire days. I hate traffic and crowds and things that are overpriced and pretentious. Admittedly, using that line of logic, I should I hate Boston, too. But this isn't about Boston. This is about New York City. And I hate it.

And holy truck-load of shit, I hate it when my wife watches reruns of Sex in the City.

I especially hate the athletes who represent the New York franchises. I hate A-Rod and Eli. I'm pretty sure even New Yorkers hate Rex Ryan, but as a non sequitur, I hate The New Yorker, too. I hate Jeter and Fatty McGee (a.k.a Sabathia) and Jacobs and Nicks. Truth be known, I grew up a Giants fan, and I hate myself for that.

I hate the stupid way the crowd chants the Yankees' players' names in the first inning of each home game, and I especially hate the goddamn "Cruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuz" call whenever Victor Cruz makes a catch. I try to convince myself they're yelling, "Yooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk" and sometimes it works. But mostly it doesn't.

However, let me make this much clear: I do not hate the people who root for New York. In fact, I love them for hating our teams. It's what makes this coming Super Bowl so rich. It's what makes each of the 18 regular season Sox/Yankees games breathless. It's the reason a relatively meaningless Bruins/Rangers game on Saturday afternoon in January will still pack the sports bars. While it only takes ten minutes of listening to sports talk radio to realize some people use their allegiance to their teams as a platform for blanketed hate, make no mistake, those people---to put it bluntly---are complete fucking morons.

Listen, I have a lot of friends and family who are New York fans. One of my good buddies, who I lived with for a year, is a New York fan. My cousins and uncle are New York fans. I have colleagues who are New York fans. Hell, my agent is a Yankee fan. And the list goes on. So while I can understand the primordial need to want to see the opposing team not only stomped, but humiliated, it's nothing that should ever become personal. If you find yourself physically assaulting someone in the stands at Fenway or The Meadowlands (MetLife, whatever), or harassing someone on the subway in NYC or the T in Boston for wearing the enemy's hat or jersey, you're not a fan, you're a thug.

Yes, I hate New York City, but without it, I'd have a lot less to love.

Go Pats!