So I Can Finally Go To Bed
After staying up late to watch the White Sox finally win the game against the Astros last night, my head is a little fuzzier than usual today. So, the real writing of the day has given way to blog ramblings and random thoughts.
HOUSTON, LIGHTEN UP!
Hey, we all know this is the first World Series game ever played in theGreatStateofTEXAS, but for God’s sake, in a close game, don’t look so WORRIED! I’ve never seen so many shots of people in the stands holding their breath in deathly silence, on the verge of tears and a nervous breakdown, when their team has the chance to win the game with one stroke of the bat. How many walks are the Sox supposed to fork over for you guys to show some life?!?
For a while, I just thought people in Houston had an overwhelming urge to sit on their hands and then smell their fingers. Then I blamed it on lazy Fox Sports directors who want to show us what a close game it is by broadcasting pictures of Desperate Texas Housewives and grown men looking forlorn in their rally caps. Maybe the Book of Revelations has some mention of the World Series, and those people were all devout Pentecostals counting pitches. Hell, Texans don’t show this much concern when their state executes retarded people. It’s a game, people! A game you’re going to lose, but still, a game!
NO MORE DRONING ON AND ON
Can’t wait for the Series to be over so we can stop hearing that annoying buzzing of the Killer Bees on the PA when Biggio, Berkman, Bagwell, Burke, Brando or Bullwinkle steps up to the plate. I mean, with fire ants, flying cockroaches, nuclear scorpions and whatever kind of surprise bug is mutating inside their chemical factories, you’d think Texans would be reluctant to embrace a lethal insect metaphor for their fave players.
ALL THE SINCERITY MONEY CAN BUY
Although I’ve never been there, Minute Maid Park, with its manufactured quirkiness, seemed to have all the character of a T.G.I.Fridays. The choo-choo train full of oranges looked like it belonged in a Nieman-Marcus Christmas display, the zigzag home run line in the outfield is a complete mystery, and the hill in the outfield was lifted from Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, which was built 93 years ago on top of a brick quarry. What are they going to do next year for that “quirkiness”, replace the bases with milk crates and car seats? Line the outfield wall with winos who can steal the ball and delay the game? Build a highway through the outfield so everyone can yell “Car!” to warn the players?
NO LIP-READING SKILLS REQUIRED
Thank you, Fox Sports, for showing the replays of Phil Garner and Carl Everett yelling obscenities at each other. For a minute, I thought I was watching HBO.
WHERE? WHO? BOURBON STREET?
Thanks also to the local Fox Channel for putting their talk-to-the-hoarse-drunks reporters in a bar called Bourbon Street in Merrionette Park. Gives the broadcast a Mardi Gras kind of feel, mostly because the crowd was 100% white. It also made me look up on a map where Merrionette Park is, and vow to never go there.
HOW DO YOU BUILD A BASEBALL FAN?
I’m the only one in our house who likes baseball (blame it on the Tigers of 1968), so through this postseason, I have kinda been on my own. I try and get my kids riled up, and while they do like to sing the “Go Go White Sox” song–and who doesn’t?– they don’t have the interest to sit through any of the broadcast. I’m making slight inroads on my wife, who will put down her book and come downstairs to see the last two or three innings. She got to see Konerko’s grand slam and Podsednik’s game-winning homer in Game 2, and I hammered home the fact to her that she just witnessed a little bit of history.
So last night, as the game stretched into extra innings, she watched a little bit with me. The game is tied, and the Sox keep walking batters and then putting out their own fires. About 11:30, she shows a little grown-up sense and heads to bed, but tells me that if she can’t sleep from the tension, she’ll come downstairs to watch some more. I figure she’s joking, but when Geoff Blum homers in the 14th and I cash it in at 1:15 a.m., who is listening to the game in bed, like a little boy sneaking a transistor radio under the covers? My ever-lovin’ wife! There may be hope for her yet.
I thought that the Houstonians were teary and praying because they couldn’t stand a blue state team beating them. It’s as if the End Times were coming before they had put plastic over all their windows.
Or maybe they thought the “attack” on Biggio’s wife was going unavenged.
I just thought Texans were supposed to be loud and tough. Were those all transplanted Cubs fans in disguise?
what i don’t get is why they have to start these games 1/2 way through the night (8 p.m.?)… i mean, how many californians are that intersted in a texas chicago matchup anyway?
besides… nothing important happens in the first 3 innings of a ball game anyway. +)
nice blog… i’ll have to check in more often!
Hollywood, CA:
As I watched the game through cigar smoke and snow (no cable), I was practically gleeful at the misery of a stadium full of tight-ass Texans. I wanted to tell that one woman on the cell phone, “It’s 7-5, can you fucking hear me NOW?”
With the possible exception of Austin, this repugnant “republic” that executes more humans than most (civilized) countries is loaded with pious white people who manage to cheer on their multi-racial team despite their disdain for the Emanicipation Proclamation.
This team — named for a cartoon dog — has not had a World Series win. Wah wah. Chicago baseball fans have seen droughts that make the Pecos look like a rainforest, so deal with it.
And remember Texans, Alaska is bigger (2X) — except for the hair — and size only matters when there something interesting filling up the space.
Kiss my ass George Bush, and keep your mother off camera behind the batters. One backstop is enough.
Go Sox!
I guess Barbara is better off there because, you know, there are no poor people in that section.
I couldn’t tell for the longest time if it was her or someone playing Quentin Crisp for Halloween.
Great account of the game, but a couple things:
1. Merrionette Park is a small SW ‘burb surrounded by Chicago proper and “Cemetery Row”. This area of the city happens to be overwhelmingly white. No surprise that the patrons are white. I wonder why you mention that. Do you feel the same about the white crowds that go the Lakeview Cub bars?
2. Uh…the game 2 walk-off winner was hit by Scott Podsednik, not Joe Crede.
I guess my garbled point was that Mardi Gras is an overwhelmingly white event in a black city, the same way most Sox bars are overwhelmingly white watering holes in a majroity black part of town. Not to say that Cubs bars are all that integrated either. But Sox games are more integrated than Cubs games, at least as it appears to me.
Scott Podsednik hit the homer? C’mon, quit kidding–he hasn’t any power at all.
(I will now sneak into my post and change that reference. Thx.)