My phone rang late last night around 0130. I answered groggily and my wife jumped out of
bed, thinking there was an emergency.
There wasn’t. A buddy who I hadn’t
talked to in four years was calling to chat.
In the span of those four years, he has gotten married, had a kid, and became
a fighter pilot, but he wasn’t planning to talk about all that. He wanted to talk baseball. He’s a big Oakland A’s fan, and I’m the only Orioles fan he knows, and he intended to talk smack about the A’s 11 inning
triumph over the O’s earlier in the night (the consumption of frosty beverages
probably contributed to his decision to call).
Besides merely lampooning the O’s and our failed scoring
chance in the 10th, he asked me why it’s been TWO YEARS since I last
contributed to TPHB. Apparently he’s one
of those Bastards fans who
compulsively checks for new articles and is perpetually let down by my lack of
effort. My secretary handles the bulk of
my fan mail, replying to every gushing note of praise with our form letter that
tells the reader to “Keep on slugging, pal!” with my signature stamped at the
bottom to give it a personal touch. In
cases like this when the stalker/fan has my personal number, I have to deal
with the peasantry myself…at 0130 in the morning.
The
last time you heard from me the O’s were stampeding to 93 wins and an ALDS
heartbreaker series against the Yankees in 2012. It was our first winning season since the
nineties, but a wildcard berth and a divisional series loss to the Yankees left me hungry for more. Humans are
greedy. Today we’re about a third of the
way through the 2014 season after another winning effort in 2013, and it doesn't
suck so bad being an O’s fan anymore. I’d
love for us to be better, but the bad old days are tentatively behind us. To bring everyone back up to speed since my last
inspired post, I've created a list of stuff that I currently like, spanning the
spectrum to stuff I currently hate. You’re
welcome.
↓ STUFF I LIKE
↓
-
Manny
Machado. He approaches the game with
hustle, humility, and preparation. Most
talented young guys these days miss the boat on at least a few of those
traits. More on that topic later, but
Manny approaches the game properly and he’s a joy to watch. His blown-out knee at the end of last season
was the absolute worst thing that happened over those 162 games. Let's hope he gets back his graceful excellence as the season progresses.
-
Baseball
GIFs and memes. I’m still not sure
if you pronounce it “meem” or “mim”. I’ve
used both in public and based on people’s normal reactions to both options, I
don’t think I’m alone in my uncertainty.
-
The Rays
are playing like the Devil Rays.
Tampa Bay is currently 24 – 38 and I’m loving it McDonald’s style. They’ve been annoyingly good for long enough.
-
Alex
Roidriguez has 0 at bats this year.
-
The Red
Sox outfielders are on pace to have the worst collective batting average (.215)
than any set of outfielders EVER in the 162 game era (53 years). I’m on the fence about whether or not Boston
is any good this season – they could always make a run. I’m still reeling from them bouncing back
from a 93 loss season in 2012 to win the World Series last year. Who the frick saw that coming?
-
The
Pirates are just slightly worse than the O’s right now. That’s how I like to keep things due to me and Mark’s perpetual Case
Race. I like the Buccos and I hope
they do just well enough to be one game back from the Orioles every year.
-
Soon to
be 34 year-old bopper Nelson Cruz currently leads the league with 21 home runs
and 55 RBI. We picked him up after
he served a PED suspension, and no one in baseball is questioning his
career-best numbers. People tend to look
back at the crazy home run numbers that McGuire, Bonds, and Sosa were putting up
a decade ago and say “How could we be so naïve?
Of course we should have known something was going on.” Well, guess what? We haven’t changed a bit. I hope Nelson hits 60 homers for us this
year.
-
The O’s
stable full of young arms. Over the
last, oh I don’t know, many seasons, we seem to have a group of golden-armed
youths on the brink of the big leagues.
There’s much breathless conjecture on whether or not we should
preemptively retire the newest stud’s number as a nod to his unarguable future
greatness, and then guess what? It don’t
work out so good, does it? Our young
pitchers have not panned out – we drafted Matt Hobgood 5th overall
in the 2009 draft, leaving Mike Trout on the board to go 25th (20/20
hindsight), and then Hobgood has trouble even succeeding in single A ball. Brian Matusz is just a bullpen guy, Jake Arrieta
is a Cub, and Zack Britton is our newly minted closer after Tommy “Give ‘em
hell” Hunter found out that throwing fast just isn’t good enough (who saw that
coming?). Kevin Gausman is a shaky
starter who bounces back and forth from AAA, and Dylan Bundy, the shining star
on the horizon, succumbed to Tommy John surgery even while we babied his
precious arm in the minors. Andy
MacPhail’s plan was ‘Grow the Arms, Buy the Bats’ – well maybe we don’t have
the green thumb required for pitchers because these flowers done rotted.
-
Bryce
Harper, Yasiel Puig, and Mike Trout.
These three young guys get more hype than a Kardashian wedding. I really dislike the tendency to lionize individuals
and crown them for potential actions rather than real actions (like giving the
Nobel Peace Prize to someone before they serve in any peace-giving capacity
#obamanation #boomroasted). As good as
these youngsters are, it’s highly unlikely that all three of them will achieve
baseball greatness, and they might as well realize that. Mike Trout is less of a show-boater than the
other two, who definitely need to simmer down with the swagger and show the
game some respect. Yeah, I sound like a
crotchety geezer, but someone’s got to protect the world from these kids with
their wild bat-flips and flashy head-first dives.
-
Twitter,
with its hashtags and such. A couple
years ago I signed up for a Twitter and tried to Twit some stuff. I couldn’t figure out when to use the @ and
when to use the #, plus I didn’t get the overall point of blasting my thoughts
out to the whole dadgum world, so I went back to writing blog posts…#YOLO
-
What in
the world got into the Blue Jays?
They’re hitting, they’re pitching, they’re taking your girlfriend out to
dinner, and no one predicted it (they’re currently 5.5 games up in the AL East).
-
Miley
Cyrus, Twerking, Selfies, Boko Haram, Justin Bieber, and the wholesale
destruction of western civilization.
The world’s a sad sad place – go watch that KONY 2012 video. Thanks for your selfless activism.
Sidenote: I really didn’t understand the
First Lady’s #BringBackOurGirls viral anti-Boko Haram message…she’s married to
the most influential man on the planet, instead of Twitting about it or
whatever, why not bring up the missing girls over dinner? I know it’s generally unpopular and distasteful
to cast aspersions on the First Lady, but I just thought that was really odd.
-
Brian
Roberts is a Yankee. This one hurts,
guys. It hurts real bad. My favorite Oriole of the Dark Decade
(2000-10) is Brian Roberts. He was an All
Star second baseman, a spark plug leadoff guy, and just a good baseball dude. I understand that he just wants to play and
the Yankees gave him a job, but he has to understand that I burned my B-Rob
jersey at the foot of my Cal Ripken Jr. shrine and mailed Roberts a dismembered
bobblehead voodoo doll of himself.
Thanks for the memories, B-Rob.
You’re dead to me.
-
The Derek
Jeter is Finally Retiring Love Fest. Wow,
let me take a deep breath. The end of
this season is gonna suck. I was hoping
this sorry excuse for a shortstop would get put out to pasture before I moved
back to the US so I wouldn’t have to endure this ridiculousness. And do you want to know what really grinds my
gears? These other baseball clubs who
are paying his retirement any mind. As
if his career positively impacted them.
Give me a motherloving break. The
Chicago White Sox gave him this worthless bat-bench earlier this year.
Why in the world would you as an American
League opponent bow down before this filthy Yankee and gift him with something
so pathetic? If I had been sitting in on a White Sox
organizational meeting and some chunderbucket brought an idea up about honoring
Jeter when the Yanks come to town, I would have busted his skull open with my Walkman.
I’m not going to watch the All Star game this
year. Derek Jeter will ruin it with his
awfulness. Good Riddance.
↑ STUFF I HATE
↑
~~When we seek to discover the best in
others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.~~
William Arthur Ward
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