juney, get out of my brain

during the usual morning rounds i read this christopher derosa book review at bronx banter and was so delighted, made a mental note to repost it here. a blog or two later, i saw miss june had the same idea. :D

Allen Barra, Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries (2004)

Purchased for one chapter in which Barra takes aim at baseball’s big lie (that the Yankees have ruined the sport). A few writers have questioned this dogma – once apiece, for variety’s sake. There are some bloggers who see it my way, but Barra is, I believe, the only professional sportswriter to advocate my position on this consistently, and who really understands what a drag the big lie really is:

…you read about a Kansas City Royals fan in a restaurant yelling at Derek Jeter “You’re what’s wrong with baseball!” Derek Jeter is what’s wrong with baseball? That’s enough to make any reasonable person hop on a plane to Kansas City, find that guy, grab him by the collar and yell something like “You ungrateful jerk, you ought to feel privileged to be able to buy a ticket and see him play!”

[this chapter is] first about how the press bought into the line put out by Bud Selig in preparation for … negotiation with the players, and second, how the perception of Yankee dominance that resulted from that propaganda has unfairly tainted perhaps the greatest run of clutch play in baseball history.

Barra then goes on to detail all the “gutsy calls, clutch plays, and thrilling endings” against tough opponents that went into the Yankees’ odds-defying string of championships, and says, in response to the big lie:

… those of us who followed those seasons carefully and now remember them vividly will always know different…. [The Yankees] gave baseball a legacy of heart, grit, and professionalism that baseball could have pointed to with pride, much as the NBA did with the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls.

Exactly – what should have been celebrated and has to be respected was instead shat upon by envious fans and their various enablers.

warning: no baseball content whatsoever

but i'm so excited i have to tell everyone:

three o'clock christmas morning, fast asleep. no, wait. everso rudely awoken by my brother in the next room, screaming obscenities at his ex/not-ex (who is as psychotic as she is beautiful) on the phone. i fumble out of bed, get decent, and sleepily picture myself ripping the phone from his hands, telling her to stay away from him or i'm going to break her fucking kneecaps, and hurling said phone out the window. but by the time i pull some clothes on he's off the phone and down the stairs relating the latest to my parents. at the top of his lungs. so i stumble down the stairs to join in the fun and mumble something about waking me up and you need to break up with her. he says we ARE broken up, and i says you KNOW what i meant. i rub my eyes and i swear i hear him say something about hawaii, and i'm still on my anti-her roll and am all i TOLD you it was a bad idea to take her, and he's all NO, i'm asking you if YOU want to go. so i ask when, and he says the 30th through the 5th, and i say yeah yeah, okay and wander back up to bed.

so christmas morning he's on the phone with travelocity trying to change her ticket to my name and add one on for my baby brother. the place is being bitchy and he's in a bad mood, again, because he has to call delta now, and something dawns on me, and i'm all, when is this trip again? and he says thursday. THURSDAY.

i am wiiiiiiide awake now and going to hawaii thursday and have no idea where any of my warm-weather clothes are and no fucking way am i wearing a bathing suit i don't care if it's hawaii and god i haven't been on a plane since i was 16 and i can't find my fucking laptop charger thing and i have to talk to my boss about carrying over those personal days so i can save precious vacation days and my ipod is broken and i wonder if we can track down austen because i miss him and where am i going to get 1657897687687 spf sunscreen in new jersey in fucking december?

i'm kinda internally flipping out in an un-me worrywart feminine fashion and yet, who cares? i'm going away! i'll probably end up taking five days worth of clean underwear, a new ipod, and fuck the rest, i'll worry about it when i get there. hawaii hawaii hawaii!

god, i'm gonna miss el duque something awful.

i'm watching andy pettitte pitch in the '96 home opener and marvelling at all the scattered empty field box seats in the stadium. hmph.

oh andy. you and your big-bootied pigeon-toed self.

the pitcher puts religion first and rests on holidays

i wasn't a fan of the trade for you know who to begin with, and at this point i don't give a shit whether it goes down or not, but the dodger organization sure looks like a bunch of shady bitches right about now:

The Los Angeles Dodgers right now are as messy as a department store shelf after a full day of Christmas shopping. And the looming question is, by the time they finish cleaning it up and putting together their 2005 team, will owner Frank McCourt and his general manager, Paul DePodesta, have any credibility left?

If there is some sort of grand vision, it is not evident.

If there is a general direction, it is not discernible. [cbs sportsline]

quoth randy levine:

"The Dodgers reneged on the deal that was agreed to last Friday, unequivocally and with no contingencies except for a window for contract extensions and physicals... For some reason, the Dodgers over the weekend started to backpedal. Why they would break their word is only something they can answer. It sure is disappointing, and we'll have to think long and hard before ever doing business with the Dodgers again." [espn]

The Diamond Dude by Ogden Nash

In the life of this dandiest of shortstops
Fashion starts the moment sports stops.
Since he works for the Newark American Shop
Of which Mac Stresin is the Prop,
The wardrobe acquired by Phil Rizzuto
Is as tasty as melon and prosciutto.
Thirty-five suits and twenty-odd jackets
Proclaim he's a man in the upper brackets.
There are fifteen overcoats hung in line,
And twenty-five pairs of shoes to shine,
And as for shirts and ties and socks,
Philip has more than Maine has rocks.
The suits are neat and unostentatious,
But as for sports clothes, goodness gracious!
No similar sight is to be had
This side of Gary Crosby's dad.
Does this make Mrs. Rizzuto ecstatic?
No. She has to hang her clothes in the attic.

"I'm not the best player, but there are intangibles I bring to the clubhouse and to a team that are just as important as the stats on my baseball card." [kevin millar]

i know he just did NOT let the word "intangibles" cross his cretinous lips.

THERE IS ONLY ONE POSESSOR POSSESSOR OF INTANGIBLES IN THE AL EAST, SIR!

THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE

first skeletor huddy, then kleenex box head mulder. poor little barry.

"I told [mulder] I'm going to rake him when I face him,'' Hudson said with a laugh. "We already have a bet about which of us hits the first home run.'' [sf chronicle]

the idea of either of them batting at all, much less one facing the other, tickles me senseless. guess i'll have to start following those huckleberries in the national league after all.

Labels: birds on bat

BREAKING NEWS

God To Professional Athletes: ‘Please Stop Pointing At Me’

HEAVEN--In an unusual and unprecedented move, God, Creator of the Universe, publicly demanded that professional athletes stop pointing at him when they score a touchdown, hit a home run, dunk a basketball, or perform other athletic feats. God explained that pointing is rude and that a deity like himself deserves better treatment. “Please, please stop pointing at me,” God said. “Do you know how rude that is? Jesus, every time someone does something on the field they have to stop and stick their little fingers in my face. It’s nice that you're thinking of me, but I honestly couldn’t care less what you do on the field of play. Unlike your average sports fan, I’m not that easy to impress.” [the brushback]

roofle

found in the comments section of an rj-ish bronx banter post:

If Johnson does join the Yanks, I hope they give him #36, as a favor to all those people whose navy Nick Johnson t-shirts are growing stale in drawer bottoms throughout the tri-state area.
Posted by Murray at December 17, 2004 01:40 PM

so. welcome, randy? mazel tov? i guess? if i sound unenthused, that's because i am.

fret not, big member, o mulletted one. i'll come around.

in other news, i forgot how much i fucking love this song.

i'm sure everyone's heard the latest rj conjecture. my feelings on his acquisition are essentially the same as they were in july. as it stands, if it goes down, i will vomit up my intestines, go into a weekend long coma, and when i wake up, root for whoever's in pinstripes.

i'd sit in that santa's lap any day. *cymbals crash*

edited because i unwittingly stole shannon's joke. instead i will now knowingly lift a double entendre from that old eartha kitt song:

i'd let that santa trim my tree any time, mhm. *cymbals crash*

:D

stumbled across this in a nyyfans thread on bad baseball announcers:

Fox Sports -- you know how, every time you cut to Derek Jeter and he's standing around in short left, chewing his bubble gum or adjusting his cup or doing a little infield-dirt housekeeping with his foot or just generally minding his own shortstoppy business out there, you Vaseline up the lens so it looks like he's got a halo around his entire body and pipe in the sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" with the words "Derek Jeter" substituted for the "hallelujah" parts while CGI cherubs circle his head, and then he blows a little bubble and the little bubble has a halo too and McCarver's all "Derek Jeter blowing a bubble, ladies and gentlemen -- just a little bubble, a modest bubble, a bubble that reflects Jeter's well-adjusted and down-to-earth upbringing as the successful product of an interracial relationship, a bubble that says, 'I love America and also my mom'" while one of the cherubs alights on the bubble and begins to play the harp, and a stat pops up at the bottom of the screen telling us how many times Derek Jeter cured cancer with men in scoring position and McCarver's all "Derek Jeter doesn't litter, do drugs, return videos without rewinding them, or leave the toilet seat up. He cooks, does windows, goes to chick flicks without complaint, enjoys kittens and babies, can do the Times Sunday crossword in pen in under ten minutes, drives a sensible electric car, tips generously, and has no noticeable odor. He is, in short, a man without flaw. Did I mention that he's also extremely handsome?" and we cut to Queen Elizabeth in the stands, sword in hand, ready to knight him after the game as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir intones, "Aaaaahhhhh-meeeeeennn"? Yeah…that? Quit it with that. I mean it. He's a good shortstop, he's cute, and by all accounts he's a very nice guy, but stop slobbering on him, because it makes everyone hate him -- everyone. Even his dad is probably staring at the TV and grumbling, "Goddamn pretty boy." I don't think you even realize that you do that, but you do, and it's gross. Stop. [tomato nation]

guffaw

"The real laugh," said one AL exec, "is that [the sox] tell Lowe they don't like all his drinking and partying and then they go out and sign David Wells for two years!" [daily news]

karen is the bizzity bomb.



the yankee chicken owns you.

When the season was over, Martinez called for a meeting with Steinbrenner, but never did get an offer out of him. Deep down, Martinez always wanted to believe that he would be the beneficiary of The Boss' desire to cripple the Red Sox by signing him, but he wouldn't touch Martinez. Steinbrenner wouldn't have him.

The greatest showman of all appeared Monday night to have sold himself out of the best theater in sports for a dreadful, last-place existence with the Mets. His ego made him leave Boston, his greed brings him to Flushing and ultimately, his jealousy for everything he left behind will make him one miserable Met. From the searing heat of the Sox and Yankees, Martinez will be reduced to elbowing Anna Benson for mirror time in the Shea Stadium clubhouse. So, Martinez is the biggest star on the Mets now, which set against the Yankees-Red Sox, is like being the tallest de la Rosa brother. [the bergen record]

uhhhh

latching onto whatever bright side there might be, here's to hoping mel stottlemyre doesn't undo whatever good leo mazzone might have acheived with jaret wright. i'm still scratching my head over the womack thing.

Maybe he hoped the Balco investigation and his testimony would just disappear. Maybe he was assured of confidentiality. You can argue that a dirty game is being played by whoever leaked the testimony, but that shouldn't obscure the now public admission by Giambi, as reported in the newspaper, that he played first.

His health is more important than his baseball career and how people and history will perceive him. But if he wants to stay in the game, if he wishes to begin doing what's right, let him stand up and tell America's children that what he did was self-destructive and wrong. Let him lend his face and voice to a fight more important than his own. Let him for once be a bigger man, for real. [harvey araton]

no surprises, plz.

it's sad that he felt, somewhere along the line, that the potentiality of destroying his body and his career was worth some extra chemically induced bulk. maybe i should muster some indignation or moral outrage, but all i keep coming back to is how utterly pathetic it all is.