"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

(Re: post title, I'm sorry, but I just couldn't find any common theme that would tie all the below musings together. Maybe March Madness alone would have covered it, if it was read as figurative and not literal. It's a tough call. Whatever, I'm on vacation. I may not even separate independent clauses with commas. Throw up the tiki torches and dangle some participles!)

FLORIDA! On vacation! First time in a year! Which kind of just started since I spent the first 2 days here in a zombie-like state----a blanket term that covers "wine stupors" "jet lag" "sleepy sleeplessness" "tortuous fatigue." One of those blanketed terms may still be applicable, (the wine stupor one), but the rest have all been attenuated in one way or another, mostly via the wine stupor. Like an MC Escher painting.

And now it's like the sports' fan version of Godot. Spring training. Opening Day. There you have it, Mr. Hornsby. No more staring out the window all winter. The wait is over, sort of, since the first day of spring was a few days ago. The day I arrived in Florida.

(And to be sure, it's so good to see my parents. They're like my cat in that they inexplicably think I'm the greatest thing since DVR. It never ceases to fascinate me, this phenomenon of parents having genuine interest in everything about their kids.)

(Ok, once in a while, my dad will say, "Kris, I gotta cut you off. I want to take a nap and eat a meatball sub." I respect that.)

College basketball is going on, and ahhhh, it's so exciting because there are soooo many opportunities for upsets that will just redefine all preconceived notions about the cosmic order! I mean, #1 seeds don't lose EVER. And then when a lower ranked team wins it's just insane, because that just DOESN'T. HAPPEN.

I know nothing about college basketball. Or professional basketball, actually. So I went with the 2013 sleeper pick to win the whole thing: Duke. What, they're good. Right? I don't know, actually. I assume they are because everyone hates them. Not a lot of people have galvanized vitriol for teams like Iona or Bucknell or pretty much any professional sports team from Florida.

So I'm going with the sleeper pick with is actually now synonymous with rooting for the favorite, since everyone seems to just be waiting for these CATACLYSMIC upsets that NO ONE could have possibly seen coming. Wasn't it like a few years ago or something that all the #1 seeds were the final four teams? I liked that year.

In other news, I was in San Francisco a few days ago for work, and right before I'm about to walk into conference room for a big presentation/workshop meeting, my youngest sister calls me: "Um, Kris? Hi. I need advice."

Sweet Christ.

"What's wrong???"

"Well, I'm entering a contest to go to space."

Naturally.

Not that I WANT to send my youngest sister into orbit (not in the way I did maybe 20 years ago, anyway), but I think she's old enough to make her own decisions about space travel. To that end, I'm throwing my hat in the ring, and encourage you to do the same!

If for no other reason, think about the guest blogging potential, or even better, the live feed during a big Yankee game? I don't know how internet works, but I'm always slightly annoyed when I discover there are places that aren't wifi accessible, whether it's SmallTown, USA, or the laundry room in the building basement, or the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Thank God you can play Snood offline.


So, vote for Amanda! So she can go to space! (I need to read more about this contest. How is this kosher? I thought Double Dare was the only institution with licensure to send victorious kids to the moon.)


Ok, back to baseball. Sorry, that was even more Victorian-novel-esque digression than usual for me.

Oh, wait! One last round ball nonsense: Today Charles Barkley began one of his talking head segments with "In my analogous..." which was a cute blurd of analysis and analogy. Not that cute, though, since he really just meant analysis. (Calls for speculation.)

In the words of 5-year-old Ollie: "Baseball time!"

I can't go anywhere without being ambushed with a barrage of "YOU KNOW THE YANKEES ARE GONNA SUCK THIS YEAR, RIGHT? RIGHT?!?" Sigh. Seriously. No, they will not suck, because they are the Yankees. Geez.

Ha, actually, I met a guy on the plane last week. Hadn't even settled into seat, and then I hear, "Yankee fan? Me too. Die hard." Chatted the plane ride away from Los Angelos to Dallas, and because apparently the only people I ever interact with in any capacity are lawyers, I learn that Richard Yankee Fan From LA, Esq has a blog of his own.

Legal Blasts and Opening Day memories from baseball players, past and present. Check out his blog. Law and Baseball Anecdotes=My 2 favorite* things in the world. Man, I heart lawyer Yankee fans. A lot. (Alex R. heads that group.)

Ok so yeah, he was another one who had steam coming out of his ears once he started going about the Yankees' management and the decisions and the off-season moves or lack thereof. Far be it for me to argue with a Yankee fan, and far be it for a lawyer to ever concede a point, so I don't say anything, which is this: semantics.

They're in last place right now in their Grapefruit League, which is promising, right? Because it means that they're getting it out of the way? Or it means that they're just playing scrubs and letting the important people get rest? Do we still have important people? And by "important people" I mean Tubbo,com, Cano, and Jeter.


If I was going to err on the side of objective, however, I'd say the Yankees have a few obstacles, not the least of which is the fact they have an active lineup that is not really active. Or existing. Alex L. and I went through the order, which wasn't as difficult as the consensus has been making it out to be. I did stumble a little when we got to 1B and 3B.


I'm going to see a Spring Training game on Sunday with my WPB Baseball nemesis-slash-partner-in-crazy-fandom. Mets fan Jamie and I are heading to watch the Mets do work against the Cards, I've never seen a more devoted Met fan in my life. I'm not even kidding. I mean, there are lifelong Mets fans. But all of them are like, "Psh. The Mets. Those bums. I love them, but they're dead to me."

Jamie, on the other hand, is like the YES booth. "Bottom of the 7th, Yankees trailing by 13, and you're pretty happy if you're a Yankee fan right now, because you know that the Yankees have the Indians exactly where they want 'em." Non-ironically.

Also in the non-ironic bucket is this alky's apology for trying to blow up Wrigley:

(From Espn.com) A young Lebanese immigrant awaiting sentencing for placing a backpack he thought held a bomb near Chicago's Wrigley Field wrote a letter to the judge saying he drank "all day, every day" for months before the would-be attack. In a seven-page letter to U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, Sami Samir Hassoun apologizes and insists he has worked hard at becoming a better person, including by taking yoga instruction in jail.

This is why men are so f'n annoying sometimes. "Ok, ok, YES, I was going to blow up a baseball field, but I was drunk 24/7 for the whole winter semester! God. And it's not like I'm not sorry. I mean, I'm taking yoga classes, what more proof do you need that I'm moral??"

And finally, in morally indignant news, MLB has decreed that Biogenesis must hand over all their documents so that MLB can get to the bottom of the pesky steroids scandal. They SUSPECT that the clinic was giving out PEDs to players even though it violated their contracts. Is this a real lawsuit? I mean, why the hell would Biogenesis have any liability with respect to "knowingly violating a contract"?

Also, I don't know if MLB really has a right to patient records. And if this clinic had even a half-decent lawyer, I'd imagine that he could find a way to prevent warrant for records. It's a nice little pre-season PR move on MLB's end, I think. They can't possibly think that this is going to go anywhere.

Unless, the former clinic staff are all cashing in on whistleblowing, or maybe like in My Cousin Vinny when Vinny's all, "Man, I'd sure like to get a look at your files," and Trotter's like, "You would? Sure! You got a Xerox machine over there?"

Ha, MLB would be like, Um jk, nevermind. Just checking to see if you had 'em. Uh, good job. Carry on.

Steroids. MLB. Mild or bests. Geez, just make it legal. Same goes for not-wearing-seat-belt. Let them do whatever they want to their bodies, not hurting anyone else.

That said, bring on baseball. I don't care what state the teams are in, or whether it's going to be 14 degrees on opening day. I miss baseball.

“For last year's words belong to last year's language/ And next year's words await another voice.”-T.S. Eliot

Non vereor incertitudinem, quia spes est.



*I hate saying 2 favorite things. Or 2 of my favorite things. Or one of my best friends. Favorite and Best are superlative. But I didn't want to say "2 of my extremely well-liked, high-ranked things." 

Additionally, I'd be remiss in not mentioning that Richard's blog is not the first marriage of my 2 favorite* things. Ohyob's law office has also been integrated into the baseball realm. Cheers, "Tuns of Fun, Esq." Ohyob hates the Yankees, but ToF is one of the good guys.

I'm going to depart from baseball coverage to let everyone know about a cause that my family (particularly my sister) holds close to heart. It starts on a day that you all probably remember, but not for the reasons my sister remembers it...

On October 17, 2004, I remember watching the Yankees lose to the Red Sox which was the start of the 4 game comeback that broke every Yankee fan's heart and psyche and morale.

I remember calling my sister--then a student at Georgetown--prepared to have a heated game postmortem. When she picked up and started talking, the game was forgotten, as she told me about the real loss of the day: her close friend Dan Rigby has passed away when his offcampus house caught on fire.

Since then, a The Friends of Rigby Foundation has been established to promote fire safety in college housing.  Formed in October 2006, the Foundation seeks to establish a network of financial and organizational support to educate and assist students at colleges and universities in order to prevent this tragedy from happening again.

The primary objective is to build a connection between students and local firefighters as well as to provide such necessities as fire inspections, smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers in off-campus homes.

Every year, the Friend of Rigby host a charity gala around St. Patrick's day to raise money for this cause. This year, the proceeds from the event will be going towards the Point Breeze Volunteer Fire Department which was devastated during Hurricane Sandy.

I'm writing to invite all of you to attend this event. Every year I go trumps the previous year, it's really quite amazing. There's dancing, music, food, auction...and this year it will be held at Irving Plaza. See the details below. It would great to see/meet you there!