A fitting fairwell…

Quote from Curt Schilling's blog:

"If October 28, 2007, was the last time I ever wear this uniform, thank you," Schilling wrote on Monday. "It was an honor and a privelage [sic] to be allowed to play here."

No, the privelage was, ours'.

This week in baseball…

Dave Denby's right-- I've been a bit reserved lately.

My brain has turned the consistency of a hot dog bun on the floor of the Fenway bleachers, but here's some of the bullshit I've jotted down over the past few days:

Is that a fat little wooden cross around Todd Helton's neck, or a piece of petrified bear dung?

How did anyone actually get psyched up for the Rockies?

The "Black Pearl" pirate ship??!!! Absolutely the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life! Eighth graders play hacky-sack with more soul than that! Never in the history of sports have grown men done something as pathetic as this. Including the Super Bowl Shuffle, various Met handshake/celebrations, you name it. I pray to God they don't do this next season.

As sleeping pills rescued me from the clinching Game Four of the Series, I muttered (to no one in particular) that "I can only name three Red Sox players that aren't complete assholes. Manny, Dice-K, and Francona..."

I stuck up for A-Rod at least three hundred times in the last few years, but screw him. Exactly what kind of career is he trying to assemble? What kind of legacy? Is he going for a 0.052 approval rating? Is he planning to retreat into an innertube ride in Anaheim?

PS- To all Yankee fans that booed A-Rod mercilessly: you're not to blame. You never were.

Did anyone else notice Manny looking for other guys on the team to celebrate with after the Series, and nobody really hanging out with him? Did you notice that Manny didn't give a shit at all?

Joe Buck called him "Jose Lugo" at least once.

He also said something about Boston "removing their onus."

I'm secretly praying that they forget to make the bleachers "no alcohol" in the new Yankee Stadium.

Everybody seems to have forgotten about how badly the Mets screwed up this season!

I can finally wear my "Pavano" jersey in public now.

Now Red Sox fans might have a real reason to be scared coming to the Bronx. I'm predicting a 200% rise in violence at Sox-Yanks games next season.

Let's go Knicks!!!

Knicks redux

It's time to start talking about the Knicks again! As I sift through my pre-season notes, I realize that not much has changed at all. So, I'm recycling last season's opening blog.

[from October 14, 2006)

WICKED GARDEN 1: Lazy Knick players

Welcome to the first installment of Wicked Garden, where we'll be trashing the New York Knicks until April 18th (the last regular season Knick game a.k.a. the last game they'll play).

Let's start with the embarassment they called "first day of workouts." Isiah requested that all team members show up a bit early for informal workouts-- you know, to try to try get some team spirit going for the new season. I mean, it sounds like everybody's so excited to play for Isiah, right? So glad Larry's gone, right?

Maybe the letters were mailed to players' summer homes, or Isiah's secretary was too busy fending off sexual advances from her boss-- only four Knicks showed up. That's about the same number of guys that "showed up" for most games last season, on a good day. Of course, Frye and Lee were 2 of the guys that made it to practice... I wonder if Jalen Rose made it?

Who farted?

So the season's finally over. Who's to blame? Joe? A-Rod? Clemens? Tyler Clippard?

None of the above. You wanna know who's to blame for the colossal disappointments of the 2007 Yankees season? You really want to know?

We are.

We bitch and we moan every year about how this guy sucks and this guy makes too much money and this guy chokes, but we have it pretty damn good. Yeah, beer costs an arm and a leg (sometimes two legs) up at the Stadium, but you'll have a great goddamn time drinking that swill. We get our asses whupped by the Sox all the time, but it's pretty sweet when we do it back. In fact, it's pretty amazing just to have the NY-Boston thing going at all-- most fans don't have anything even close.

We've won 4 Championships since I've been actively going to 20 or more games a year. We've also been in the playoffs as long as I can remember. That's a lot of extra excitement and good times added on to an already long baseball season. We've been spoiled for a very long time.

We should all know by know that buckets of money can only do so much. We're not twice as good as a team with half our payroll, not even close! I accept the fact that we're a financially bloated team, and I often hope to see some of it translate onto the playing field, but I never have the unmitigated gall to demand the results that we pay for as fans! I demand the seat that I buy, the beer that I buy, and that's about it.

With a few exceptions, the guys on the Yankees do their jobs. Sometimes they do their jobs very well, and sometimes not very well. To suggest that one guy's slump has crippled the Yankees chance of winning a championship is insane. To suggest that a manager is somehow preventing his players from performing at their peak level night after night is ridiculous. Hell, I even blame myself every once in a while for a bad loss (which shoes was I wearing? was the hat on the bed? did i leave that light on for the whole inning?). It's all silly.

No team can win all the time. Our beloved Yankees come pretty damn close, so let's chill out and try to enjoy the good times when they come. Otherwise, what's the point.

But we do need some goats for the grill, so here they go...

1. Carl Pavano- the damage he's inflicted on the Yankees, both financial and organizational, cannot be measured. Like his statistics for the past few years, it cannot be measured. Just look at Beckett if you don't remember what we thought we had.

2. Jason Giambi- athletic cesspool.

3. Kei Igawa- we still have no idea what he is.

4. Mike Mussina- bad pitching and bad attitude.

5. Roger Clemens- I don't really care about this, but the $tats are $taggering.

6. Johnny Damon-He hasn't earned the right to talk about the Yankees anywhere near as much as he does.

My ambien's kicking in-- i'm going to bed.

Yankees 8, Indians 4

Honestly, I had a pretty good feeling about this one from the git. We got there in record time, marred only by a very long wait for a chicken strips basket five minutes before the first pitch. Our seats stunk, but so what?!

Our section (U-34!) was peppered with an entertaining assortment of freaks, weirdos and lowlifes. A girl to our left waved an enormous sign around ("Marry me, Jeter!") for the entire damn game. My favorite character was "Victor"-- a super-slick young man with a gold chain, earring, visor, bluetooth headset, and wet-looking hair. A classic middle-aged nerd was diagonally in front of me, with whom I shared two botched high-fives.

But none could compare the terrifying twosome directly in front of my date and I (row K, seats 5 & 6, to be exact). The miscreants were dead ringers for George Kennedy and Al Goldstein, respectively. The latter had one of the worst cases of dandruff I've ever seen, which he promptly scritched into my Diet Coke as soon as I sat down (I swear to God!). The back of his blue shirt looked like the bottom of a bag of pretzels. He kept taking his hat off and scratching his head.

Even worse was the guy's gaping buttcrack. First I was cracking up (hah!), then I was embarassed for the guy, and then I was just plain embarassed. I don't ever want to see anything like that again.

Not much else to say, although I did have a quick back and forth with a pathetic Indians fan, who scurried off shouting, "Fausto will be waiting for you on Wednesday!!" Maybe the weirdest "diss" I've ever heard.

I thought Wang was pitching tomorrow, but they have Moose up on yankees.com. I liked the Matsui batting 7th thing, but they'll probably screw that up all over again. We confirmed that we really only need half the guys to hit reasonably well to win, and maybe our pitchers to pitch reasonably half-well. Or maybe that will only work half the time.

Game 3 postscript

A few things I forgot to say...

I told at least three people yesterday that "all I want from Clemens is a quality start." On my way to the stadium last night, I realized how absurd my claim was. When wouldn't anyone be happy with a quality start from Clemens (or any pitcher, for that matter)?!As I thought about it, I realized that what I meant to say was that I'm happy if Clemens only lets up three runs. I didn't really care how many innings he pitched-- "limit the damage," as they say in Toronto. So I'd like to introduce a new term into the grand baseball lexicon:

A near-quality start is defined as any game in which a starting pitcher allows no more than three earned runs, regardless of the number of innings pitched.

I'll be using this as the new standard for most Yankee pitchers, both geriatric (Clemens, Mussina, etc.) and psychiatric (Igawa, etc.).

Oh yeah, I've been slagging the Yankees for years about their refusal to give anything extra at all to the fans (promotions, performances, BEER!). Last night was no exception. They just don't understand what the fans really want.

Is it really that hard to find someone to sing the anthem??!!! Preferably a local singer that people love?! I have nothing against the West Point Glee Club, or whatever the hell they were, but gimme a break! I felt like I was at a funeral, not a friggin' baseball game! They never get the sound for the ensemble vocal performances right anyway-- last night's feedback-drenched ordeal was typical.

Here are some easy ideas:
Jon Bon Jovi, Mariah Carey, Norah Jones (ok, maybe she's a Texas Rangers fan), Mary J Blige, Karen O... they'd all jump at the chance to sing the anthem at Yankee Stadium, right? The place would go nuts. I remember seeing Michael Bolton sing at a playoff game years ago, and it was fucking awesome!

aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How the hell is nobody throwing in the bullpen while Joba walks 2 guys, throws 2 wild pitches, and hits a guy???!!!! I mean, that was the definition of a pitcher being "in trouble." I can't take it-- someone's doing a shitty job here...