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

Sans punch.

But the sound wasn't sad! Why, this sound sounded glad! Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small, Was singing! Without any presents at all! He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same!

YEAH, Baseball Season came just the same. (Pause, I guess.)

Spoken like a fan whose team just lost opening day? Yeah, I'll sign off on that. Semantics. Baseball came just the same. The Yankees may or may not have actually showed up, but the season did. So, there's a start!

Ahh, in the words of M&M:


Sorry about the delay. I got out of work at a normal hour, so this time we can blame the washer and dryer, because of that whole not-being-able-to-sit-down-and-start-something-if-I-know-I-have-to-get-up-in-30-minutes-to-put-clothes-in-dryer phenomenon.

So, the Yankees lost opening day. Tubbo.com got knocked around like a poodle on a surf board during Sandy. Lester acted like pre-KFCgate Lester, cleansed of the Beckett tumor. And the Yankees, the ones I recognized, lost to the Socks.

(I toyed with the idea of making a losing socks in the laundry/losing to the Socks corollary, but decided better of it. But it's also still very early in the post, so who knows.)

I watched the game in the big conference room on the big tv, which I like doing (if I have to) because I kind of get a kick out of the staccato parade of coworkers that wander in, the constellation of reactions to the scene that range from genuine interest ("score still 0-0?? Have to run to another meeting in a minute, maybe I can be late..") to bemused curiosity ("so...this is like...your big holiday?") to genuine disinterest leveraged into disingenuine Yankee taunts ("THE METS ARE PLAYING RIGHT NOW, TOO. THEY'RE ACTUALLY WINNING, CAN WE WATCH THEM INSTEAD. THE YANKEES SUCK.") to a project manager, who wants to throw hydochloric acid on any and all institutions and events that detract attention away from a job folder. I mean, as they should.

And then there's last year's Rookie of the Year, finance Matt, who became this year's Opening Day MVP, by virtue of the fact he was the most benign Mets fan as well as the soon-to-be party to my first game of the season. His first game at Yankee stadium. My first game back in GNH. April 12. Orioles. Left field bleachers. Also probably will mark the last day Matt will be in the "people who hang out with me on purpose" category.

Yeah, ok, but today. Here we go:

The Red Socks are being called a revamped line-up. This is what you call the winning side of a match-up where long-time fans recognize an embarrassing percentage of their roster.

The Yankees are being called "barely recognizable." In fairness, they seemed very recognizable since the last time I saw them play. I mean, pretty much in lock-step with what they trotted out for Game 4 ALCS, an 8-1 loss, where Round Boy was fat but not good. And the hitting wasn't even fat, it was just not good. Un-phat.

(I visited this college en route to Mardi Gras once, and they spelled Women with a y. Something about the word "men" being in it. Similarly, there's phat. I can't decide how I feel about this practice of changing spelling rules on the basis of connotation. I'll formulate a more robust opinion once I try my hand at it.)

Laundry time. Again. This is the 3rd time the dryer is being run. I'm starting to thing it's drying my clothes a la some Fred Flinstone-esque laundry apparatus. Like a brontosaurus sneezing or something?

The Yankees have also been called "punchless" which was a popular qualifier for them last year. They had no punches today. If you read all the coverage on the game, you'll find that the off-season has really cultivated an interest in "painting the picture." I empathize, sort of. Like all these writers going off antibiotics and being allowed to drink again. For example:

The Red Sox scored three times against a mustachioed Joba Chamberlain.

Mustachioed. Yes.

Good work, Justin! Why are you mustachioed? It's like he got so fat (with an f) that the cells in his body were like, "WE HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GROW! WE'RE AT MAX CAPACITY!" and then the follicles said, "We're on it" in a Jimmy Chitwood deadpan.

Also, stop Tanyon Sturtzing the shit out of pitches, please.

Youkilis was cueballioed, in the sense he unmustachioed himself, because he's trying to fit in. Good move. He had a hit. Also, good.

Actually, let's look the box score.

Most of the punchless Yankees had hits.

Nunez didn't, because he never does what he is supposed to do. Usually that comes in the form of errors, but today he brought out the special silverware for opening day and just went hitless instead.

Vernon Wells was without punch because he's aboutn 93 years old.

Ben Fransisco blanked but I have literally NO idea who the hell this guy is.

Lyle Overbay also nothing. Seriously. That wasn't a joke, Lyle Overbay was actually signed. I honestly thought that was a rumor that was going to be dismantled on snopes.com.

Super Mario had our only ribbies.

And the Red Socks beat the Yankees. They left 13 men on base, Yanks left 9. Wasn't that impressive a game, outside of Lester being decent. I guess. The bad guys' ribbies came from Iglesias, Victorino, Pedroia, Ellsbury, and Bradley Jr. How pissed is Pedroia right now that there's some Endy Chavez version of him stealing his thunder?

Not as pissed as Cano is that couldn't Kobe Bryant the team into a win with a "Aight, lemme take care of shit, just give me the ball and get out of my way" swing of the bat.

Welcome back, baseball!

In the interest of illusive corollaries, I'm drinking nothing but Hi-C tomorrow. You understand.

Hey, and for the record, I'd like to establish myself firmly in the position of the following:

(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!

Yesterday, I got an email from coworker All-Star Alex, who is the greatest.

Subject line: blog fodder.
Email body: This.

Cheers to Alex for making me stutter out gobbledy gook gibberish at 6pm to no one in particular. (Few things are more frustrating in life than the frantic-head-whipping-around-looking-for-someone-to-commiserate-with-only-to-realize-you're-gonna-have-to-let-this-one-register-in-private-and-save-for-later-story-telling situations.)

Does anyone remember when Johnny Damon came over to play for the good guys? I mean, yes, of course everyone remembers his acquisition. I'm talking about his attitude post-acquisition. I remember when Boston was playing the Yankees for the first time after the deal, and they idiot losers from the Beantown bench, were trying to get Damon to come out with them while they were in town. And Damon was all, "no, thanks. No time. I'm with the Yankees now."

Which some may see at Benedict Arnold-y, but people who see it like that are people who don't understand the concept of business ethics.



YOU JOIN A NEW TEAM...you're ON a new team. That's how it works. You're not a Red Sock anymore. Get over it. Or don't play. Or, to take a highly controversial and hotly contested page from my mom's book: "Either do it with a good spirit, or don't do it at all." (Never a good idea to offer a reluctant child or husband anything with an opt-out clause of "not doing it at all.")

But, in this case, that's what I want to tell Youk. So far, not so impressed.

"I'll always be a Red Sock," Youkilis said. "To negate all the years I played for the Boston Red Sox, and all the tradition, you look at all the stuff I have piled up at my house and to say I'd just throw it out the window, it's not true. Those were great years in Boston. One bad half-year doesn't take away from all the great years I had there." (courtesy espn.com)

Actually, my favorite part of that article is when they're talking about the famously feuding couple, Joba and Youk.

"Although Chamberlain said the two have exchanged text messages, they have yet to speak face-to-face."

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAH! Amazing!! How has no one pulled the LUDs for their cells yet??

"wuts good yo"
"sup"
"ur shits seriusly staying hear?"
"word."
"ur fucking dead at the plate."
"fat motherf-r"
"boston bitch. ROTFL."

I read once that Joba sends like 200 texts a day. He was really proud of it, like how he texts faster than he pitches. Because, you know, that's what the Yankees are paying him for. The dexterity of his sausage fingers against an iphone keypad.

I mean, I'm assuming he has an iPhone, but I really don't see how this ia physically possible, since I'm imagining that texting on those confetti-sized iPhone keys, using fingers that could double as inflatable bowling bumpers...is probably something akin to this:




Anyways, so Youk is already pissing everyone off. He's going to get bitchslapped so fast that Joba won't even be able to text about it in real time. Seriously. I kind of wouldn't be 100% averse to a Full Metal Jacket type of beating here, just to send Youk a message. And anything that involves soap wouldn't really be a bad thing for him, either.

Get over it, assclown. You're in New York. Shut up and play.

THERE YOU ARE, HAT!

REUNITED AND IT FEEEEEEELS SO GOOOOOOD!

"THE HAT" is back in my clutches. After 2 years of searching endlessly for it, hours every day googling every avenue possible, contacting the manufacturer, begging random strangers to let me buy it from them...it all came to a glorious conclusion yesterday, right in time for Pitchers and Catchers Day.

Which means I am awarding a preemptive season MVP to PinnacleHeadwear.



My hero.

 They didn't even have this hat in their store, they generously went through their warehouse and dug it out for me. It was an act of an angel.



I got a good feeling about this season.

Delaware Ave.

Mariano Rivera was being very brave.

I was at Dorrian’s last night and talking to bartender Mehlman about how this season isn’t exactly inspiring the normal degree of WOOHOO-ness as baseball season for Yankee fans typically does.

 

And there’s Chris Stewart, who I like(d). I did until he basically told us 2 days before pitchers and him/Cervelli report to camp, “I’m gonna do the best I can and all, but like don’t expect much hitting wise. Seriously. Like, I’m not gonna hit at all pretty much.”


 
Yep, that’s how it works, Chris! I’d love to have him in the office. “Um, boss? I see NOTHING in my job description about having to stay past 5. I mean, I’ll see what I can do. But that’s extra.”
 
 
 
But he is right. I just have to tread lightly because someone else I know (cough..Laur…cough) may have significantly dissenting opinion on the matter.








So, there’s that. Arod, you make it very difficult for normal people to defend you. I can roll my eyes at the whole steroid thing because, good grief, we get it. You did steroids. We know. So did the rest of the world. You weren’t on steroids in 2009, though, which is all that matters to me, since that was the only time you really mattered to the Yankees, contribution-wise.


Yeah, so how much does it suck to be a Yankee decision-maker right now?

(STOP. I’m already hearing, “YEAH, POOR GUYS RAKING IN SO MUCH MONEY BLAH BLAH ETC. Just..stop.)

I mean, look at what they’re up against:

 
 
 
 
 
 
(Hilariously, the Rockies were like, “Umm why don’t you just be our hitting coach, mmkay? How about that?” And Giambi said, “Nah, I’m good!” Kind of like in My Cousin Vinny when Vinny’s all, “Maybe it’s time for a thicker pair of glasses,” and 84-year Mrs. Riley says, “No, no. I think they ok.”)
 
 
 

 


 
 
 

 

Omnia fore bysso baseball est tergum in animabus nostris iterum.