Monday, April 24, 2006
Not dead! Honest! It's just that move-out is scant few days away (not to mention the final, and my last outing to the prison), and I deal with almost nothing so poorly as I do move-out and move-in. The worst times of the year here in BCRS land are move-out and move-in. I am not good with transitory periods.
I also haven't been seeing much in the way of Red Sox lately. Indeed, the closest I came was that game on I think the 21st, where Papi, Manny (finally!), and Tek all homered, and we STILL CONSPIRED TO LOSE, because Mike Timlin COULDN'T HOLD ONTO HIS GODDAMN BALLS (he's got 3, you know) and he MADE LIKE A BOMB AND EXPLODED.
What happened was that I was watching the Cubs/Cardinals game, idly waiting for the first David Eckstein=scrappy reference of the day, when who should phone but Beth, rambling excitedly about Manny and Papi hugging, or something, and homeruns, or something, and she's at the house of someone named Julia, and they have TiVO which is like the shining Holy Grail of electronics, or something, and OH MY GOD WHAT IS MIKE TIMLIN DOING.
Oh look, I thought idly to myself. Michael Barrett is beating himself up over letting that ball get by him. Ho hum. Wait. Timlin? What?
I fired up Gameday, which is slow as the molasses that once consumed Boston (100% of FACT!) but still better than nothing, and I stared in horror at the little graphics as Mike Timlin slowly but surely imploded before our very eyes like a timelapse video of an apple rotting down to a wizened little brownish core.
"There's nobody warming," Beth hyperventilated. "WHY DON'T THEY HAVE ANYONE WARMING HE'S ALREADY GIVEN UP A HOMERUN."
"Um." I eloquently replied. There's nothing quite like knowing apocalyptic baseball is going on right down the phoneline from you, but you can't see it. I checked the boxscore of the previous game. Wake had gone 8 innings, Tavarez had sucked copious polluted wind for a whole 0 outs, and Foulke had come in to put a quick end to the misery. So the bullpen should have been, if not well-rested, at least not decimated. "I dunno" was about all I could offer Beth, who by now sounded as though she was thrashing about in an epic battle with the Giant Squid of Exquisite Agony, from what I could tell over the phone.
Eventually the phone got handed off to Julia Whose House They Were At, and I rambled incoherently at her for a bit (hi Julia! I had a crippling cold and hadn't slept in like 2 days!), and then Beth took the phone back and said I was not allowed to make fun of her for Keith Foulke anymore because of the "flipbook" of photos I had taken of Brandon Inge on Opening Day. To which I respond: whatever, madam. Our seats were situated so that we HAD to be looking at Mr. Inge all game long. And he's cuter than Foulke. And has knees. And actually likes baseball. ("Oh, so that's how it is!" Beth responded to that last) Plus he wears high socks. Are you all with me, people?
So I'm pleased to note that we won today (yesterday), that Papi is getting into full-on "fear my jovial wrath" mode, that Youks is still hitting pretty darn well, that Clement got a nice little ego-boosting win despite not pitching spectacularly, that Papelbon continues to Save, making the pressure on him to not blow one just that much more ridiculously strong.
And can we talk about his mohawk for just a second? As near as I can tell, he reached a certain number of saves, and this somehow meant he lost a bet with Youks, and thus had to have the mohawk, um, created. Does that not seem to fishy to anyone else? He WON the bet by performing up to a certain level, and his reward is letting Kevin Youkilis, who LOST the bet by not performing up to whatever level they had set for him (a certain number of homers etc. I think), do whatever he wishes to his (Papelbon's) hair. In what Bizarro universe does that make sense?
The moral of the story, I'm pretty certain, is just to not bet with Kevin Youkilis, ever.
So, the schedule as it stands right now. Wood studio, packing, studying, panicking, and last day of teaching at the prison on Monday. Lunch with next year's roommate, shipping of several boxes, packing, studying, and panicking Tuesday. Biospsych final and probably all-nighter of packing Wednesday. Move-out on Thursday. Chilling in Southfield and nighttime Tigers game on Friday. Drive back to MA on Saturday. Attain coma-like state on Sunday. And then I'm back in the land of WEEI and NESN, and you'll all have to suffer a more oft-updated blog.Labels: baseball, Mike Timlin, MLB, rant, terrible
4:34 AM
|
|
