An overgrown fanboy jerk and the sister of a nun

I signed up for a table at the annual church flea market.  I’ve been wondering about how I could start to get rid of my boxes of old Red Sox junk, and this seemed to fit the bill.  I’m not a collector, per se.  Nothing I have is in mint condition or in the right packaging.  I’m just an overgrown fan that’ll ask to the autograph when the opportunity is there.  And sure, I’ll go and find the opportunity from time to time, as well.  (If there’s room I’ll just have to tell the story of chatting with Ed Whitson at a bar in rural Ohio – or the time I couldn’t muster up the courage to ask Gabe Kapler for an autograph after watching him dump gasoline all over himself and his motorcycle – or the time I got Adam Hyzdu’s personal cell number – or the time Keith Foulke wouldn’t stop yelling at me – or the time…)

So I have lots of stuff.  Programs, jerseys, books, autographed baseballs (including Johnny Pesky, El Tiante, Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon, Terry Shumpert, and self-proclaimed fanboy Stewart O’Nan among others), old newspapers, tapes of playoff games.  I also have piles and piles of ticket stubs and random odds and ends – a 2004 World Series pin, various bumper stickers, spring training roster sheets, dirt from Clay Buchholz’s no-hitter – stuff like that.

At a particular time in this transformation process, I truly thought that I could make some cash on those boxes in the basement.  I could post it all on e-Bay and watch the $100′s, $20′s, & 3.17′s roll on in as bidders across Red Sox Nation fought for a little piece of my vast bank of fan memories.  I thought that for just long enough to look on e-Bay to check out the posts.  What I found was ugly and shameful.  The sports memorabilia scene isn’t pretty.  I also saw that it was going to be a lot of work to make this fortune I envisioned.

Then I got a better idea.  I could post it on our local, neighborhood FrontPorchForum.com.  I could list the inventory and offer it free-of-charge to any Sox fan under the age of 15.  That’d be mighty nice of me, eh?  It’d be nice.  But it’d also be weird.  Imagine meeting up with this kid and handing over the boxes?  A nervous parent might be waiting nearby in a Toyota Camry writing down my license plate number and a general description.

The stuff just stayed in the boxes in my basement.  Without any ideas, I simply waited.  I waited until I saw the clipboard for the church flea market – sponsored by the “Lady’s Auxiliary”.  Hell, I could be an auxiliary lady for a day.  I could chat up all the church flea market bargain hunters while selling off my Red Sox childhood… (And adulthood… A bit too much of my adulthood, at that…)

Fun stuff, let me tell you.  A few things I learned: weird Red Sox fanboys don’t show up at the church flea market.  In fact, I sisn’t see any tan lines from wrap-around mirror shades.  Zero.  I saw no “2004″ tattoos and no backwards caps.  Which meant that every Sox fan that talked to me was likely to be of the old school, or at least innocent – shielded from the torment the new ownership inflicts.  There were white haired wives of men who grew up with Teddy Ballgame and then Yaz.  There were kids (who didn’t know it wasn’t cool to flea market yet) wearing Vermont Lake Monsters tees (A’s single-A short season) flipping through programs.  There were people who don’t like baseball interested in what all the fuss was about.  In other words, there were just regular people.

Needless to say, I didn’t sell much.  A few autographed balls went and I sold about 30 raffle tickets for a September game against Baltimore – (one ticket was sold to a woman who bought it for her sister, a Red Sox crazy nun in Massachusetts).  All told, my sales contributed about $100 to the church’s general fund.So I went home with two (slightly) less full boxes of junk.

Throughout the day I only needed to answer a handful of questions about my Pirates cap.  But those questions were hard.  How do you tell someone who last saw Fenway before the “600 Club” was installed about the whoring owners trying to co-opt the sentimental nostalgia that was, in fact, this person’s younger life?  How do you tell a kid wearing a little-league hat that she’s just being branded as an impressionable future share-holder in a multi-national capitalist power play?  You can’t.  At least I couldn’t.  I had to call it what it was.  I had to tell them that I am abandoning the team of New England.  I am turning my back on the team of our land and our fathers.  I am denying my people and my neighbors.  I am walking away.

The raffle drawing for the tickets happened toward the end of the day.  And of course, the nun’s sister won it.  I called her up and she was just as pleased as could be.  She’ll drive down to Boston to pick up her sister, the nun, for the game.  She told me to include my name and address when I mail the tickets so that her sister, the nun, could write me a thank you note.

I feel like a jerk.

Addition by addition

I’m not a full-on sabermetrics guy, but I like stats.  As a first -grader, I even had one of those calculator watches so I could figure out batting averages on the kickball field.  I also used to do fantasy baseball when we still called them Rotisserie Leagues; but I try not to get lost in the numbers.  OPS is a neat summative stat, but ZIP and CERA make my head spin a little.  I question the validity of many of these numbers.  They might be interesting, but strikingly few of them have any relevance in the moment of a two-out 1-2 count with a runner on second and a guy at the plate that’s been slumping just shy of an oblique strain.  Or if they do, I’m not willing to kill the part of my humanity that’s blocking my ability to see it.

That said, I do know enough about some of these stats to realize that the Pirates’ run differential is not good.  That -34 on the right side of the standings does not bode well.  And with a full quarter of the season completed, the Pirates’ record (20-24) might be the best thing about this team.  But there are many among us that continue to point out some reasons why we shouldn’t give up hope just yet.  The Pirates played the toughest start-of-season schedule of any team in the majors.  The pitching has been awesome.  There’s no way they can continue to hit this poorly.  Clint Barmes is better than this; he should be hitting at least .200 by September!   

I remember reading an article about why certain teams beat their run differential win expectancy.   The punchline was that teams with good bullpens can pull it off.  They might be able to add 5 wins or so by holding a disproportionate number of 1- and 2-run leads.  Blow-outs often start early, so they tend to even out.  But the close games go to the teams with solid 7-8-9th inning pitching.  The Pirates bullpen is good, right?  Is there some hope here?

There are a few problems with using this theory with today’s Pirates.  For one – the Pirates bullpen is more likely (than most) to be pitching against the opposition’s starters.  There’s a notion that, uniformly, starters > relievers.  (That’s why they’re starters…) Teams often talk about getting into a bullpen to have a better chance of piling up runs, but the Pirates offense just isn’t doing that.  No matter how amazing the Pirates pitching has been so far, opposing pitchers have been better – far better.  In fact, league pitchers are holding their Pirates opponent to a .612 OPS.  Again – not a stats guy but that’s really, really good pitching.  League pitchers are holding their Pirates opponent to 2.86 runs a game.  (And that includes 5th starters and mop-up guys…)  No news to anyone reading this – but the Pirates can’t hit.

The problem isn’t just at shortstop.  The problem also lives at first, second, thirdish, right field, left field, and behind the plate.  If this were last year and I was following performances like this in Boston, any one of these failing positions would be back-page headlines, non-stop radio whining, and uncomfortable interviews with the manager.  But in Pittsburgh, this year, this is happening at 6.5 positions.  From reading the articles and analysis, I’m getting the sense that this is historic.  (Yay!  History!)

The problem isn’t just Clint Barmes, and the solution isn’t just at shortstop, either.  The Pirates aren’t simply one hitter from their 82nd win.  Or are they?  How would a legitimate #5 hitter change the flow of this line-up.  What if we had McCutchen-Alvarez-Youkilis in the middle of the order?  What if Neal Huntington got all freaky and started scooping up American League DH types to stand on the field between at bats?  I still think the Pirates should have taken a run at Manny Ramirez.

I think it’s clear – the Pirates need to do something.  Simply sending Nate McLouth, Clint Barmes, the absent first-basemen, and the others packing isn’t a solution.  The team’s pitching is too good to give up on this team.  Calling up AAA guys will just make the team in Indianapolis worse… (HA!  Kidding…)  No really, calling up minor leaguers will give us more of what we saw at the end of last year: a bunch of guys trying not to get sent back down – trying not to make a mistake – rather than a team trying to win.

Make a run at Youk.  Pry Manny from Billy Beane’s sweaty little hands.  Throw some nutritional supplements and a couple of boxes of wet-wipes at a guy like Jason Giambi.   Forget the defense for a while!  Score some friggin runs.

From outcast to podcast

After my chance interaction with Neal Huntington this past November, I scoured the internet for more information on the guy.  I was really quite impressed with his baseball sense and general good nature.  I wanted to see if my conversation with him was a fluke (or worse - smarmy PR garbage akin to what we’re accustom to in Boston).  Well, in my search I found the Rumbunter Podcast (and found supporting evidence that Huntington is indeed a pretty smart and nice guy).  While absurdly profane and irreverent, Cocktailsfor2, Smitty & the other producer MVP Adam guy had insightful and relevant interviews, not only with the GM but with players, media types and the like.  Great stuff!

Well, they made the mistake of asking me to join the mayhem.  After an evening of non-sensical babbling, ignorance, and bitter resentment, the guys at Rumbunter Podcast edited this thing together in a way that’s actually entertaining and fun!  Way to go!

Enjoy!

The podcast: http://rumbunter.com/2012/05/07/rumbunter-podcast-the-pittsburgh-pirates-and-huh-the-red-sox/

Follow  @cocktailsfor2, @rumbunter and @edwordtoyourmom  at http://rumbunter.com

Another convert

So, I was at Buffalo Wild Wings yesterday with my son.  We were there as a consolation for him due to a brutal mercy-rule at the hands of the uggh powerhouse Yankees team in theShelburne Little League.  My son is on the Shelburne Giants, and I don’t mind at all what the Giants represent, either in Shelburne or in MLB.  In any case, there we were, with the 25 TVs at Buffalo Wild Wings.

I haven’t insisted that my son give up his Red Sox fandom.  He shouldn’t have to get involved in the messiness of stupid ownership who treat fans like idiots.  If they treat Red Sox fans like they are all 12 years old, well, he IS 12 years old. He is entitled to come to his own awakenings-about Santa and religion and politics and horrible adult behavior.

I’m divorced, and so I treat this divorce from the Red Sox the same way that I have treated my own. I have nothing negative to say about his mom-those are things for the adults to talk about.  As he gets older, we may have more in-depth conversations about what went into that decision, but he just needs to know we both love him. Likewise, he doesn’t need to know that the Red Sox fraudulently claim that they sell out every game, that they apportion many tickets to their preferred secondary ticket agents to rip off fans, that they openly work together with mobbed-up scalpers and corrupt police in the Fenway region.  He doesn’t need to know that Larry Lucchino plants stories to smear the reputation of his favorite manager, Terry Francona, or some of his favorite players.  He doesn’t need to know that the Kids’ Nation membership is a detestable recruitment tactic last seen when cigarettes were humped by Joe Camel.  He just likes baseball, and if the Red Sox are playing, we can talk about why they made a certain play, what to expectfrom certain players, and so forth.

Still, kids are intuitive. They know when things are going south: “How come the Red Sox never win at Fenway?”  “Why doesn’t anybody stand near Bobby Valentine?”  “Why don’t they look like they are having any fun?”  I say:  “Well, teams go through periods of winning and losing.  They still have good players.”  He’s not buying it.

So, Buffalo Wild Wings. Our order got messed up, so we were there longer than usual.  On their jillion TVs, the Celtics, Nascar, MLB channel, NFL, all represented. Thankfully, the audio was tuned to the Celtics.  But on several TVs, including one of the more prominent ones, they were showing the 17 inning Red Sox debacle.  Wow, a couple nice plays by Pedroia.  Wait, was that Adrian Gonzalez striking out on THREE pitches….by the DH???  That can’t be…IT IS…Darnell McDonald on the mound, high socks an all!   A three run bomb?  What did they expect?  Holy cow!

I was conflicted.  I felt bad for Dustin Pedroia.  I felt bad for my son.  But frankly, I was relieved to be out of that messy marriage.  I’m not going to get too personal, but it was kind of like running into your ex and her new friend.  Maybe he has a mullet, maybe he drives a Camaro, maybe he has had Botox and speaks Japanese (looking at you, Bobby V).    I mean, I don’t takeany joy in seeing things go badly.  After all, my son (and Pedroia) still have to be with these people half the time. But God, talk about unfortunatedecisions!  Separation is hard, and gloating is unbecoming.  I still have a place in my heart for you, and I want what is best for you-really, I do.

What I had with the Red Sox-it WAS a good thing.  I liked Cowboy Up and the long hair and all the backstory on all the players.  There were sad times and great times and we went through them together, the wholeregion, one with the team.  It was like we were all growing together—until we grew apart.  They slept with John Lackey, and I thought maybe we can still work this out.  OK, that Crawford charge on the credit card…pretty suspicious.  But really? You’re spending my money without even a thought toward our long-term future? You’re gonna rip my favorite Uncle Tito in public?  You’re gonna tell everyone about my chicken and beer fetish?  You’re just gonna openly mock me?  Well, I guess it’s time to move on.

Is my life as a Pirates fan perfect?  Heck no. I haven’t yet ordered MLB package because it is a complete rip-off, so I am relegated to online articles and box scores. It’s kind of like the match.com of baseball fandom.  I am cautious about getting too involved too quickly, and the whole thing is frankly a little discouraging.  Am I really willing to do this work?  What if it turns out badly again?  Maybe I can just be a liberated fan of the sport, without any allegiance.  My life is pretty good without that involvement. I can have a one-night stand every once in a while.  Pedro Alvarez!  Looks hot! Let’s do it….but I’ve gotta go to work in the morning, so don’t stay over.  Who needs it?

But let’s face it.   How much fun is it without the backstory, the shared experience of the mundane? The only thing that really makes it worthwhile is the intimacy.  So, if I am going to open my heart, I first have to let go of the last relationship, even the Schadenfreude.  Fine, I can go out in public with the Pirates.  It’s a new day.   Let’s go Bucs!

El Toro’s complex identity development

I’m just fascinated by Pedro Alvarez.  His story, at least the little I know of it, is the age-old human drama of developmental identity formation.  In a society that emphasizes the notion of self-determination, it is ironic that our identity development is so influenced by the expectations others have for us.  We see examples of this all the time.  In school, we are graded against teacher-driven standards and/or other students’ success.  At work, we are evaluated against externally-defined job descriptions.  In our families, we are the short son or the daughter that can’t cook – all relative to our taller, more culinarily talented siblings.

None of us are strangers to comparison.  As we enter new environments, we are compared to those already present- into a neighborhood, in a new social circle, into this world.  And so in this manner of comparison, we become defined initially, not as simply ourselves, but pseudo-unique ‘anti-someone-elses’.  If we stick around long enough, some of our talents (and foibles) begin to be noticed in their own right.  When the talents emerge but are not yet fully actualized, we begin to hear the word ‘potential.’  Hey – raise your hand if you’ve come to understand ‘potential’ as a curse?  If you’re sitting at your workstation with one hand raised, you’ve probably realized that when someone dumps the word ‘potential’ on you, it just means you are not meeting some (probably unstated) expectations.  Read: You can do better. 

Now there’s often a shine put on these statements – sometimes overt, sometimes implied.  On the surface, the ‘potential’ with a smile label says ‘I believe in you!’  But make no mistake, it’s a one-sided proposition.  The Other believes that one day, in some beautiful future, you will actually fulfil your duty to meet their expectations.  So when you’re the guy picked #2 in the 2008 draft and have $6M of someone else’s money coming your way, there’s an implication that you have the ‘potential’ to justify that very (very!) large investment.  You’d be wise to start meeting the boss’s expectations.

So what do we do in those situations (or our <$6M versions of those situations)?  Our responses start to define us – to others, and ultimately to ourselves.  If we respond well, I suppose we dig in and face the challenge.  We do all we can to justify the expectations others have put on us.  But… what happens when we start to ‘fail’?  How do we meet the inevitable adversity?  You know, when we don’t meet the deadline?  When we clearly disappoint the people around us?  What do we do when we have our own version of a .077 start with 10,000 strike-outs?  How do we face the potential reality of failing to manifest our potential for greatness?  How can we look in the mirror and accept the fact that we are not currently performing to the standard of excellence others have laid before us?  What if I’m not as good as everyone else thinks? What if I’m ‘That Guy’?  What if everything I’ve been working for all my life is for nothing?  What if I’m doomed to live on the list of 1st Round Busts from here on out?  If I can’t do this, what is my role on this team?  In this town?  In my family?  On this planet? 

I once wrote a song called ‘El Toro the Bull’.  (For those of you that don’t know Spanish, the translation is: The Bull the Bull.)  It’s about a poor-mannered flatulent bull of questionable parenting that doesn’t have any friends.  The fun part is that at the end of the song you learn that he’s pretty much an awesome rock star on weekends.

I bring this up my musical genius as a self-indulgent side note only in part.  This story does have relevance to our mohawked hero in black and yellow.  His talents are raw.  He mashes mistakes and strikes out a lot.  Plenty of men have left baseball with that description.  Some have even made decent, albeit limited, careers out of that skill set.  But I’d like to think El Toro offers quite a bit more than guys like Pete ‘Refuse To Go To the Minors’ Incaviglia.  I don’t see the arrogance and inflated pride that has hampered the development of lesser men.  In this latest tear, I see evidence of a man that is committed to moving on from his failures.  Maybe this is because Pedro realizes that he is no different than any other person in the world, let alone baseball, that has been saddled with ‘potential’ label.

Potential is indeed a curse.   It’s no different than stubby ankles or bad eyesight.  It’s no different than the cranky, fartsy bull of the excellent song I wrote.  But in the end, it’s only a label created by someone else.  It’s only relative to the expectations of others.  And when we shed ourselves of that constructed, arbitrary social burden, we can begin to find the rockstar within.  And what’s the first thing that defines the rockstar?  His hair, of course.  Pedro’s mohawk, the ‘Bullhawk’, may just be evidence that El Toro is in the midst of acceptance and growth – his accension to full humanity.  His rockstar is emerging only because his limitations have been made undeniably public and he has come through the other side.  Rockstars don’t rock because everything’s gone well in their lives.  Rockstars rock because of the depraved, hollow, alcohol-soaked lifestyle they endure on their way to stardom.  The first half of April was Pedro’s back-alley, debauched, small-stage, broken-down bus tour to the big time.  And it appears that the big time may just be this 2012 season.  K-dro and the Groundouts have left the building.  Let’s put our hands together for the main act!

Game on!

OK, OK.  I get it.  There’s less offense in the National League.  I get it.  Really.  Enough already.  Score some friggin runs!

Before I fully enter my (hopefully) 2-month distraction on ice, a few words on my first 5 games as a Pirates fan.  Quite simply, I’m feeling good.  Clearly this team doesn’t hit.  And when a team doesn’t hit starts off the season in a slump it looks bad.  But even with that, they took 2 of 3 from Philly and lost a couple close ones to some good pitching in LA.

<B’s-Caps memories.   I was at this game…>

And before I descend into the pure joy of playoff hockey mayhem, a few more words about the Boston Red Sox.  HA!  I find comfort in Terry Francona’s absence at the upcoming 100th anniversary celebration of Fenway Park.  Yes, the only living Red Sox manager with 2 World Series championships in team history will not be attending the 100th birthday of ‘America’s Most Beloved Ballpark ™’.  Francona acknowledged that someone had gone out of their way to make him look bad on the way out.  He said it’d be ‘hypocritical’ to show up and smile and hug everyone.  Gotta respect the guy – he values human dignity above pomp, circumstance, and pre-fab marketing parties.   In other news… ESPN reports that there’s still tension in the Sox clubhouse.  Boo hoo.

<Bruins dominating but tied 0-0.  Bad news…>

I’ll do my best to get into the baseball season.  But without any runs, it’ll be, uh…

<Best P.J. Stock fight ever … vs. Caps>

It’s pretty hard to focus…

Hockey’s just, kinda, you know…

 

 

Opening day vomit

Opening day is often a disappointment.  I spend all winter obsessing about roster moves, prospect potential, and tickets.  Then, inevitably, the first game is a bust.  Then there’s the stupid day off.  Then they play again.

While this year I’m going through this with a new team, the results have been similar.  The game itself today wasn’t disappointing at all.  I mean, how many teams can say they’ve lost 1-0 to Roy Halladay?  Probably 30ish?  The disappointment came when a) I couldn’t listen to/watch the 1st pitch due to my work schedule; b) by the time I could tune in, I couldn’t find a working live stream video or audio, and c) no one around me cared.  And now d) apparently I ate something bad today that’s painfully leaving my body at an alarming rate.

So the isolation of this decision will be something to get used to.  There aren’t any Pirates fans around here.  My baseball friends and acquaintances continue to treat me like I’m just kidding with them.  People look at my Pirates hat and ask me about the Red Sox all the time.  Today, I got a bunch of questions about opening day and the outlook for the Sox this year.  It felt good to honestly reply with, ‘I really don’t know.’  But for the most part, people don’t buy it.  Some smiles, a couple laughs, and then more follow-up questions about the Red Sox.  ‘No really, what’s going on with the bullpen.  They shoulda signed Pap.’  (BOOM!  That’s the poison bait right there.  Everyone knows I hate Jonathan Papelbon…)  A-holes.

Then there’s the Yankees fans.  They’ve always been intolerable.  It’s easier now that their team is largely irrelevant to the Pirates (other than their bloated payroll, inflated influence on league policy, and spending patterns that make free agents impossible to sign…), but there’s still something wrong with them.  There’s this Yankees fan guy that just smiles and chuckles about my hat every time he sees me and says stuff about the Pirates like they’re some mythical woodland beast.  ‘So, I hear they have a nice, uh, park? stadium? there in the Pittsburgh area?  And that guy? You know that guy, uh, McCracken or McClatchen, or something?  He hit like .320 last year, right?  Anyway, they don’t stand a chance beating the Phillies in the East.’  Yeah… Right?  Yup, that’s my baseball talk these days…

I guess I knew what I was getting into with this.  There’s no way to avoid the fact that I live in an area that has 7th-generation Sox fans and borders the state of New York.  Getting more comfortable with this means following the Pirates every day.  It won’t be hard. I love baseball, absolutely love it – the strategy, the difficulty, the play-by-play drama – nothing’s better. Given my difficulties today, I guess the first step is to figure out how I’m going to get free audio/video access on-line.  (Leave a comment if you have any helpful links. I can’t afford any packages and my TV still uses an antenna.)

Alrighty then.  Hey, you know what?! Championship teams often start 0-1!  Go Bucs!

A few tangents:

• I didn’t see Papelbon get the save but I can only imagine he did his trademark squat/crotch-pump celebration after the last out.  Jerk…
• Any Pirates fans looking to see a game a Fenway, let me know.  I have tons of tickets to get rid of.
• The dairy farmer that produces the milk for Shelburne Farms cheese in Vermont called Roberto Clemente ‘one of the best players of all time’ today.  He’s a Sox fan but you should buy his cheese.  It’s outstanding.  And he’s clearly a level-headed baseball fan.