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When I was in high school, I took a creative writing class and one of the assignments was to write about a scene or place or event that evoked pure bliss and comfort and contentment. Then we had to take the same exact scene or place or event and rewrite it so that it achieved the opposite effect, evoking extreme discomfort and negativity.
That's kind of like how I felt yesterday.
After working past midnight on Friday night, I rolled out of bed Saturday and dragged my ass to work at 10am, finally retreating back uptown at 8:30.
It was a long and unpleasant Saturday, all things considered, and while I've never been a fan of the whole "getting a drink to unwind" thing (one drink never helps me unwind, and multiple drinks place me in a different sphere of drinking objectives), I figured my favorite bar would be pretty empty in the early evening lull, and I could relax watching the Yankee game with my favorite bartender.
That would have been vignette of "a happy place."
Unfortunately, the reality was my happy place was twisted into some cruel alternate universe realm where it was the opposite of relaxing.
Too many loud drunk people presumably left over from the soccer game, not enough quiet. Extremely humid. It was terrifying. My sanctuary from stress and burdens was rife with both of those things.
Oh yeah. And the 3-0 lead? Ceased to be.
And my favorite bartender who help the less than envious pressure of making me forget about my long work day? Eclipsed by the presence of my least favorite one. The one who doesn't watch baseball, yet makes a point of rooting against whoever the majority is rooting for. The one who firmly anchors himself in front of me whenever the Yankees struggle and wishes for nothing more than to witness me being upset.
Heaven became Hell.
The lead became a deficit.
Good AJ became Bad AJ.
And like the end of Primal Fear, when Ed Norton tells Richard Gere that, in fact, he wasn't pretending to be Roy, but that he was pretending to be Aaron, it's starting to look like there never was a Good AJ that lapsed into Bad AJ. But rather, it's Bad AJ that has anomalies of Good AJ.
Depressing beyond the telling of it.
And yet, I'm not mad at him for some bizarro reason. I don't know why. I really like him a lot. I just don't know. I feel like a parent who refuses to see the bad in their children, who believes that despite everything, they're inherently good and can change. I don't think it's denial. I think it's faith.
"There's no such thing as false hope. There is only hope." -West Wing
A.J. Burnett's struggles on the mound continued with his shortest outing of the season. The right-hander (6-7) gave up six runs and six hits in three-plus innings, walked six and struck out five. He's 0-5 with an 11.35 ERA in his past five starts.
"My command got away from me in the third. I had it early. I had unbelievable stuff. I had velocity, I had movement and I had a good hook," he said. "What it comes down to right now is the fact that I have to relax a little bit and have some fun out there. But it's hard to do right now."
Well, I'm glad the slump hasn't done anything to his confidence! He's a weighted inflatable clown that bounces back up whenever you punch it. I love those things. I hate clowns. Love weighted inflatable things.
He's had some family problems, his grandmother passed away, which I would imagine would be something impossible to place out of your mind no matter what you're doing. Girardi agrees and is sticking with him. Good call. 0-5 record, 11.35 ERA be damned. He'll get back. I know it.
All our runs came from the 2 hired guns, Arod and Tex. Which is something good to come out of the game. Tex gave us the 3-0 lead with his bomb in the first. Arod made it 4-2 with his fielder's choice grounder in the 3rd. The beginning of the game looked really, really promising.
My favorite part was how everyone was running out balls to first. (Except AJ but he gets a pass. He laid down a perfect bunt and then basically may as well have crabwalked to first. But hey, he needs to be safe. We don't want that magical 11.35 ERA arm getting compromised...)
Tonight's game is on ESPN. God help me. I'll be on a train to DC for the first part of it, but I guess since it's a national broadcast that means I'll actually get to watch it, but I doubt it. I have to wake up at 6 for more all-day market research, so all in all, the west coast week has not been very conducive to my game-watching. Or work-doing.
I'll leave with these thoughts:
1.) I watched some of the game at the bar, and the sound was off, so if anyone can explain to me why there was a random kid running out of the stands with a beach ball, fill me in.
2.) The Yanks are 6-22 when their opponents score 5 or more. Typically this would indicate bull pen problems. But I think it's more complicated than that...
3.) We're winning tonight. I know it. A good win, too. A morale-building one. A streak-starting one. It's not hope. It's certainty.
In terms of the game, James Loney drove in about 1000 runs last night in the 9-4 loss.
1 Comment:
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June 27, 2010 at 8:03 PM
I was there, I drove over 300 miles to get there. It was a "HOT MESS" --hearing the crowd chanting Yankees suck, and more specifically one token REDSUX fan doing waaaaay too much. I was thinking why are you here, is it really just to wish the Yankees to lose to give them bad mojo, I'm wondering if he knew that his presence was really wasn't needed cause AJ gives himself his own bad mojo. On top of everything else it was HOT HOT HOT and it's "Ghetto" where this stadium is located, not Oakland ghetto (I'm used to that) but "Bulevard Nights" ghetto. You can probably see clips of that movie on youtube and get the gist of what saying. Since when did "cholos" start watching baseball? Things that make you go hmmmmmm.
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