Categories
2020 Election Politics

For What It’s Worth

Elizabeth Warren, seen here preparing to end Mike Bloomberg’s whole career (not really but DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT?!?!?!).

Can we stop with the revisionist history already?

Over the entirety of this election, we have been told exhaustively that the Democratic field is too far to the left, they’re alienating moderate Democrats, scaring away older voters with SOCIALISM.

People do understand that what the Democrats are doing is similar to the way the GOP field of 2016 cannibalized themselves, right? That the nomination of Donald Trump was far from a straightforward thrashing of the Republican establishment? That many of the same pundits telling Democrats to ease down the leftism chided the Republican Party for going way too right-wing?

Funny, how did that election end up again? Oh, yeah, they won. Despite the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton won 2.7 million more votes than Donald Trump, the election ended with the GOP controlling the House, Senate, and Oval Office.

All because Trump played to his base while the Democrats fractured over perceived primary rigging and apathy towards an unpopular candidate. Plus no one really thought Trump would win, including the now former head of the FBI.

Fast-forward to today, and you’ll see that Democrats are divided again. Some want more middle-of-the-road voices like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar to be at the top of the nomination. But a huge following of progressives (myself included) want to see Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren take the lead. As mentioned in the last post, a frightening amount of your uncles on Facebook think that Michael Bloomberg, a moderately decent to underachieving mayor of NYC with a history of sexist and racist skullduggery and acquiescence to pressure from foreign powers, is the savior of the American People with his bold promise to charge the rich taxes they should already be paying and giving Obamacare the public option that was originally proposed by the 44th President during his 2008 campaign. Something Bloomberg has in the past criticized. A lot. A Republican in the guise of a Democrat wanting to make enough changes to satisfy the plebeians in exchange for the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. To give the former mayor credit, he did call for a public option before the law’s eventual passage. In that respect, Bloomberg may be closer to the left than some Warren supporters like myself would care to acknowledge. On the other hand, the man called Bernie Sanders a communist on live television. So, there’s that.

Yes, it’s a fractured field, and there’s far too much hostility between fellow Democrats, progressives, and liberals for my liking.

But this needs to be done.

It’s the tearing off of the bandage that needed to happen in 2016. The biggest difference now being that we know exactly what this gutless administration is willing to do to consolidate its power over Congress and the courts. We now have seen a possible preview of the worst-case scenario: a President implementing cruel, inhumane policies that hollows out the very social services he promised to protect and then lie nonstop about the opposing party to obfuscate the truth and bend reality to his whim. A man who will stop at nothing to retaliate against any perceived enemies. A con-man making money off of the Secret Service security details bequeathed to him as President. A strongman who loves other strongmen and continues to poison the well with our actual allies in Europe and elsewhere. A man who will do any goddamn thing his GOP cronies want him to, a rubber stamp for Mitch McConnell’s wet dream of making poor people suffer slow, painful existences.

There’s much more at stake now, thanks partially to the same progressives who actively sat out of the general when Bernie didn’t get the nomination.

And of course the millions of eligible voters who sat with their thumbs in their asses as a literal fascist walked into DC under at-best dubious conditions while a known enemy ran interference on social media and within our very government.

This election is the last election that will mean anything quite frankly. If we fuck this one up, we may not have another actual free election. This isn’t fear-mongering. The Senate decided the impeachment trial well before the House finished officially impeaching. They acquitted without so much as a whimper, no attempt to discern more evidence that would have pointed to obvious if not irrefutable guilt.

They do not care about this country.

They will swan dive with this megalomaniac into the fiery pits of Hell before letting a Democrat have a chance to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg with a non-Federalist Society-approved neo-con apologist.

Vote Blue No Matter Who is the motto I’ve been living by in an attempt to keep my sanity. The trouble is that I’m just afraid that no one else in America is on the same page. Ironically, it’s the establishment that scare me more than the purity-testing Berners and Bernettes on Twitter (assuming they aren’t troll bots).

When discussing Bernie Sanders’ chances on MSNBC, former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer said in the same breath that while she considers the candidates all progressives, she reprimanded Bernie for being “too angry”. As if the largest inequality gap in our country’s history is something to be cheery about? That our current trillion-dollar deficit and stagnation of wages for the last 40 years is something that shouldn’t piss someone off?

Keep in mind, Senator Boxer is a Democrat from California who never has to worry about being re-elected to office again. So, with nothing on the line, this veteran Democrat just shat out something I would expect from Jennifer Rubin, or some other Never-Trumper Republican who wants the Democratic nominee to be the ideal surrogate GOP candidate from their list of potential 2020 hopefuls they dreamt up before November 9th, 2016 happened.

People, like Joe Biden, who simply believe once Trump is gone, we’ll be back to the good ol’ days when Democrats and Republicans simply disagreed on superficial issues of small vs. big government all while accepting the same contributions from the hordes of lobbyists sent in by corporate giants seeking to buy the U.S. government’s soul.

If it’s not the perennial fence-sitters throwing wrenches into the process, it’s progressives who want to die on a hill fighting the good fight. The ones who voted for Kremlin stooge “Dr.” Jill Stein, or renown Mensa member Gary Johnson. The ones who brayed on about how Hillary was the same as, or even worse than, Donald Trump.

Maybe four years, two massive political scandals, hundreds of thousands of illegally-detained migrants, a carousel of unqualified sycophants, yes-men and women and one whole-ass impeachment later, their perspective has changed a bit.

It’s the only thing that will save us.

Categories
2020 Election Politics Sports

It Matters What Side You Take

The chop is racist.

You know the one. The stupid ass tomahawk chop you’ll hear in Atlanta, KC, and FSU.

The drum music, “dum-duh-duh-duh, dum-duh-duh-duh, dum-duh-duh-duh, dum-duh-duh-duh……”

The war chant, “whoaaaaaa whoa-oh-ohhhhhh, whoa-oh-ohhhh ooooo whoa-oh-ohhhh…”

It’s run-of-the-mill, standard tomahawk chop. If you’ve grown up with either of these teams, and if you’re a fan of these teams, you don’t really care too much about this. It’s like second nature.

Likely, the few Native Americans you’ve known have always told you that it’s “not a big deal,” or no one necessarily cares because it’s not “that bad”.

Let me let you all in on a little secret: it absolutely matters, and chances are, we do care.

No, not talking about being a Native American – I’m not.

I’m talking about being told that I look Jewish.

Someone making a crack about Jews being great with money, or being nerdy little momma’s boys, having no athletic skills whatsoever, somehow being connected to show business…

Shit like that digs at you, pricking at your subconscious every so often, reminding you that you aren’t really like everyone else.

You’re one of them.

It’s fun being the token. It’s also infuriating. But you don’t bring up every instance of disrespect, instead picking and choosing when to fight. That’s life as a minority.

I’ve never been called a sheenie, kike, heeb, anything like that to my face.

The worst I ever got was in high school when one of the idiot kids I sat with at lunch farted, and when I covered my nose with my shirt, the fuckstick said, “What, you afraid of a little gas?”

I’m lucky though. Other people get it way worse.

At the very least, we don’t have a team playing the dreidel song as a rally cry.

We’re the center of every conspiracy theory, but we at least have some really famous motherfuckers in Hollywood not named Harvey Weinstein and other shitbags you’ve seen in the news.

Anyway, where was I, oh yeah the chop is racist. And honestly, it matters if you think it is or isn’t. There’s no such thing as neutrality. At some point or another, you have to take a stand.

It absolutely matters what side you’re on.

You’ve likely been in the middle of two friends arguing about something, and may have cried out a phrase along the lines of, “I’m Switzerland, leave me out of this,” a way of indicating you haven’t picked a side just like the peaceful little mountain nation with all of its Alps, and chocolate, and whatnot.

Too bad that metaphor is completely false.

One fun fact you may not know about the Swiss is that during World War II, while they didn’t take an official side, they refused to accept any Jewish refugees trying to escape the grasp of the Nazis. Multiple Swiss banks retained valuables the Nazis took while plundering, and looting wealthy European Jewish families. Everything from priceless artwork, family heirlooms, clothing, jewelry, money, etc…

Top officials within the Third Reich, from Gestapo founder Hermann Goering to head of the SS as well as Hitler’s bodyguard Heinrich Himmler, entrusted their ill-gotten gains to the Swiss because their banks were notorious for their discretion.

After the war, these banks were so dedicated to their Aryan customers that they refused to relinquish the plundered loot to the likes of Interpol, the Hague, Mossad, and other agencies seeking to reunite families who survived the Holocaust with their priceless belongings, memories of a time before the they became victims.

Before Kristallnacht.

Before the camps.

Before the final solution.

These same Swiss banks have continued similar practices with regard to terrorists, crime syndicates, dictatorships, and proxy groups acting on behalf of bigger, more nefarious forces, hiding money from international authorities.

While they never sent a single troop into battle, and have briefly done so only once in its modern history, the Swiss have been complicit in covering for some of the worst of the worst humanity has had to offer.

And yet some of you may be learning this for the first time right now.

When the rule of law takes a backseat to personal agendas, everyone but the criminal suffers.

When Donald Trump “survived” the “GREATEST WITCH HUNT EVER SEEN”, America lost. Badly.

When the pharmaceutical companies got to dictate how the Affordable Care Act would be rolled out in conjunction with their abilities to conduct business to seemingly a dodge a price clampdown by the government, no-one but the executives of Pfizer and many others won.

Whenever a billionaire buys himself onto a debate stage in the middle of a primary, gaining support after carpet-bombing multiple states with campaign ad after campaign ad while disparaging any candidate willing to call for the self-indulgent top-of-the-top of the economic pyramid to pay more taxes than they do now, it’s the billionaires who benefit, not the people.

For too long, America has become a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. With the rise of yet another Washington “outsider“ from the city of New York with a war chest of unlimited spending brought to you by the fine folks of the Supreme Court, Democrats are starting to fool themselves once again, falling for the same traps they mocked Trump supporters for diving headfirst into during 2016:

“He’s a self-made businessman.”

“He’s the American dream.”

“He can’t be bought.”

“He’s running with his own money, so he answers to no one.”

“He cares about us.”

“We’re not going to get anyone who can unite the country like him.”

All of the same tropes now being parroted by folks on the “liberal” side of the aisle, all the same gag-inducing drivel touted by the current troll factory on the right.

It’s almost like the DNC is trying to tell every progressive that all of the conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton were true. Like they don’t even care that the new centrist darling is as racist, sexist, and autocratic as the current villain on Pennsylvania Avenue. Like it’s never been about truly delivering on lofty promises, swinging the pendulum in the direction of working-class, blue collar factory workers, single moms, black and Latino voters, the LGBTQ+.

It’s as if they truly do not give one iota of a single fuck about the will of the people.

I have reiterated ad nauseum about my wanting to get rid of Donald Trump at any cost.

I didn’t think I literally had to consider the possibility that the Democratic Party would flirt with that any-cost approach. With the current crop of talent i.e. Warren, Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Senator Salad Comb, maybe. But not with Mr. Big Gulp. Not a literal, honest-to-G-d-as-recently-as-the-last-election-Republican former mayor of New York City.

At least it’s not Rudy?

At any rate, we’re on a suicide course.

Depending on the next few months, America may finally outsmart itself for the last time.

Or, hopefully, Bloomberg ended his campaign with that pathetic debate performance.

Can it be November now?

Categories
Blogs The Game of Life

Well, fuck.

I figured I’d be at least 63 before I’d be writing about the passing of this man. Un-fucking-real.

This is bizarre. I mean, this is fucking surreal.

There’s certain moments in the course of history that stop you dead in your tracks, when you just don’t know exactly how to react. Usually, it’s monumental tragedies. I can recall only one time I was stunned by something joyful – 2010 Stanley Cup Final, Patrick Kane’s game-winning goal in double overtime in Philadelphia. And that was honestly one of the last times I was sent into jaw-dropping silence. That was 10 years ago.

I wish that I was stunned into happiness instead of what I felt yesterday.

I was watching a YouTube video on my phone when my best friend called. I pick up the phone, say hello (as you do), and the conversation goes like this:

“Kobe’s dead.”

“What?”

“Kobe is dead”

**long pause**

“Kobe BRYANT?!”

“Dude, what other Kobe is there?!”

Growing up a rabid Chicago-sports partisan, I was sort of raised to look down on certain players and teams. Michael Jordan was the greatest player of all time. Anyone who acted like or maybe even claimed they were better was automatically on my parents’ shit-list. And in turn, they were on mine.

Kobe was one such player.

Of course, there were the other issues. The so-called diva personality, the purported me-first attitude, the cockiness, brashness…

And then of course the victories. All of those championships. Never ever losing. Seemingly always on SportsCenter celebrating another title.

In American sports, and perhaps this is the same across the globe, if you see someone’s face too often and they’re not on “your team”, you begin to resent the prick. See? Not “the guy,” “the dude…” It’s immediately more hostile: “prick”, “fuckhead”, “asshat”, “asshole”, “bag of diseased dicks…” OK, that last one may just be me. But nonetheless, that’s the type of visceral reaction you tend to have towards famous people you don’t like. And then heaven forbid something happens off the field/court/ice/the arena to make said person look like a genuine piece of shit, and then your contempt can turn into straight-up hatred.

Of course, that was the infamous rape story back in the early 2000’s. And yes, it was never proven 100% for sure that Kobe did such a thing.

But tell that to my 12-year-old self. And the teenager/young adult in the years following.

If I’m being completely honest, I don’t know how much I really like him even now.

But hearing other people laud and praise him, grieve his loss, remember him so fondly, coupled with distant footage of a burning helicopter and bunches of first responders wearing an eerily similar shade of yellow Bryant sported as a Laker for 20 years…

The sadness begins to consume you. The emotion overtakes you, immersing you in grief not so much for the man himself but for the people who adore him.

Maybe it’s just my empathy. I’ve always been pretty empathetic.

When tragedy strikes, I tend to drown in dread, especially with truly upsetting moments in history the likes of 9/11, the Challenger disaster, Hurricane Katrina, etc.

I hate suffering. And really, who enjoys suffering? Like watching people be wiped out of existence, or being subjected to the harshest of humanity’s darkness. Perhaps a sociopath.

In particular, I hate tragedy. I hate when bad things happen to undeserving people. Kobe Bryant was no saint, but to die right after the birth of his fourth daughter at only 41, merely beginning his post-sports life, it’s just tragic. Men like Trump can continue their miserable existences doing nothing but ruining the lives of countless millions, but a guy like Kobe can’t fly his kid to her basketball game in his helicopter without it falling out of the damn sky.

At 41.

I could look like a massive douche for writing about a guy who I honestly didn’t like all that much.

But I only truly disliked Kobe the player. I didn’t know enough about Kobe the man, the father, the mortal flesh-and-blood human being to have an actual facts-based opinion on him.

I do know that no one should have their life cut so violently short. Certainly not along with his 13-year-old daughter, leaving his wife and three other children behind while ALSO devastating two other families that we know of.

As of this writing, three of the nine total victims are yet to be identified. I pray to G-d those others weren’t Gianna Bryant’s teammates.

No matter how you look at it, this is devastating.

I only hope that in some way, any possible way, some good will come out of this. I don’t have a single idea what type of good you could get from such heartbreak, but hopefully it’s anything.

Even if it’s something as simple as for one day at least, everyone appreciates their loved ones a little bit more, hugs their kids and spouses tighter, spends time with the people that matter.

In the end, that’s what we all want.

Rest in peace, Kobe and Gianna Bryant, Christine Mauser, John, Keri, and Alyssa Altobelli, and the yet-to-be-named others lost. And condolences to their families, friends, fans, really everyone who’s been touched by this horrifying final chapter for the lives ended far too soon.

Categories
Baseball Blogs Politics

Cheater’s Proof

Former Astros’ Manager A.J. Hinch, likely saying how much his team is TOTALLY not cheating right now…

Reading Bernie Twitter is like trying to pass a kidney stone simultaneously through your dick and asshole. It’s the equivalent of being diagnosed with lung cancer, liver cancer, anal cancer, and brain cancer all at once.

It’s the lone reason I will not vote for Bernie Sanders unless I am compelled to do so in the general election.

The Democratic debates have been annoying to watch, but not for the reasons the pundits will tell you, things along the lines of “tHeY dOnT HaVe A mEsSaGe” or “ThEy CaNt cOnNeCt wItH tHe PeOpLe” or whatever bullshit double-standard nonsense they’ll say about the people who are acknowledging reality right now.

It’s because literally every question asked is a GOP talking point designed seemingly to make every answer disappointing, out-of-touch, or trivial. I mean, they literally asked Bernie how he could carry out his Medicare For All plan “without bankrupting America”.

AS IF THE CURRENT $23,169,812,958,839 NATIONAL DEBT ISN’T BANKRUPTING AMERICA RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

If you ask some folks, this is the face of evil.
A former Republican, turned into a progressive after actually, you know, reading insurance cases. PURE EVIL.

It’s this type of questioning that discredits every word a Democrat can say. While Orange Hitler is braying about flushing toilets and discussing light bulbs for some reason to his mouth-breathing fan base at his Nazi Cosplay Rallies, the media is holding Dems to the fire as if they’re the REAL arsonists. They’re treating the Democrats like they were the fucks who spent us into the recession, gutted our social services, and took a fat shit on the working class of this country. Because, you know, Democrats had soooo much control over State legislatures over the past 10 years. It’s not like the 2018 election was historic for the amount of State houses the Dems flipped or whatever derrrr MEDICARE FOR ALL IS SOCIALISMSISMS YOU FUCKIN SNOWFLAKE COMMIE FUX!!!

It’s this type of serious line of questioning for the sake of “being responsible” that makes Trump able to do whatever he fucking wants.

These moderators on these tone-deaf networks refuse to flat out call the piece of shit out on his shitbaggery, and thus make the Dems look like hapless children tripping all over their own feet.

Meanwhile, the Senate is holding a trial over whether Donald Trump withheld congressionally-approved military aid from a key ally in exchange for alleged proof of crimes committed by his “likely” opponent, Joe Biden. Something that has been confirmed by the unending amount of evidence piling up by the day.

None of this actually matters in our current society, of course. The Republicans dearly want to hang on to their power in the Senate and White House so that they can continue to litter the judicial system with pro-corporation, pro-worker suppression, pro-life, gay-hating sycophants with lifetime appointments and ruin people’s lives long after these pre-historic mudfuckers finally shit out their last breaths. They will tell you that this is all to help save America from the liberals, but it’s really to just kill off those who would use their voting rights to send these craven, corrupt vultures packing.

Behold, what really happens when a turtle interacts with toxic waste.
Cowabunga, dudes.

Conservatism once used to allegedly mean more than just propping up the status quo and sucking the life out of the many to sustain the vampiric few. But those days are ancient history. We now live in a world where human beings can inflict maximum carnage on the most amount of people without even using a lethal weapon. They just need to purge voting rolls, pass a couple poison pills disguised as legislation, and cut every welfare program humanly possible, and an entire generation gets pummeled out of existence.

No accountability, no repercussions, no problem.

This is unless you happen to be a GM or manager connected to the Houston Astros right now.

Ironically, Major League Baseball seems to have the moral high ground on our politicians (stop laughing it’s actually true). The league that has in the past tacitly approved of gambling, whoring around and the occasional performance-enhancing  drug (steroids and cocaine among a litany of others) dropped the sports equivalent of an atomic bomb on Houston for using surprisingly brilliant technologies to steal signs – mostly pitch calls – over the course of their 2017 World Series championship season and beyond. Everything from wearing buttons that would buzz if the opposing pitcher was throwing a fastball, etc, to using cameras to look at the catcher’s hands and then either whistle or bang on trash cans to communicate what pitch was coming.

Not bad for a bunch of dumbass jocks, if you ask me. But it’s also very much cheating and very much wrong. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter experts profess their outrage over the fact that baseball is punishing something allegedly everyone does, with one Philadelphia sports radio caller to go so far as to say we would all be speaking Japanese if we didn’t steal signs in WWII.

Because knowing if Yu Darvish is going slider or changeup is apparently as important as defeating fascism.

So, yes, that comment would likely draw the statement, “Then WHY do you care if they cheat?!”

I mean, I’d like to have my baseball be a little more than just one team figuring out stupidly complex ways of stealing another team’s signs and therefore knowing everything that’s coming. If the other team tips their signs, then fair play. And if you steal signs from say the opposing dugout or third-base coach, that’s literally what I tried to do with my rec league teams. That’s gamesmanship. That’s trying to gain an upper hand, but it’s definitely within the rules of engagement.

Covering your body in bandages with little buzzers or whatever the fuck requires no skill, no patience, and is proof that your guys are so insecure about their skills that they have to game the system just to know if Sonny Gray is throwing a goddamn two-seamer.

Does this make me a crotchety old man? I don’t honestly give a single fuck if it does. But if you can’t play ball without needing to go all 007 on everyone’s unsuspecting asses, forgive me if I’m not impressed.

The same goes for that monstrosity staining the Oval Office with Cheeto dust and chicken grease.

If you can’t win an election without literally breaking the fucking law, maybe you shouldn’t be President in the first place.

Categories
The Game of Life

Thoughts on a Dreary, Rainy Day

Boy, the sky is grey.

The South is about to get pummeled by yet another extreme weather front, which will likely lead to millions of dollars of damage across small-town America and other places where taxes are considered state-sanctioned Satanism (no offense to Satanists, it’s merely part of the metaphor I’m going for here).

But that’s not what I’m really thinking about.

I’ve promised to make this blog about sports and politics, and it will be. But all of the writings I’ve submitted so far have to a large degree been personal diary entries about my life and current state of mind. I’m slightly devastated by my lack of a career, the lack of a love life, the shell of a social life, and the fact that I’m pushing 30 and still living at home. I’ve been assured by numerous people that millennials are all in the same boat, but it doesn’t make it any less depressing.

There are multiple women whom I’ve had (and in some cases still have) crushes on over the course of the year, one of which is seriously committed to her current relationship. But in all of the time that I have been single, and it’s been quite a long time now, only once have I ever been with someone where I was attracted to them as much as they were attracted to me. The rest have all been one-sided miss-fires and mostly fruitless pursuits.

Oh, for G-d’s sake, this fucking grey sky can seriously go fuck itself. It was grey all last week and after a couple of days of sunshine the sky decides, “Hey, pal, you’re getting too much hope again. Lemme take care of that…”

I may well just be writing to hear myself talk at this point. I mean, I’ve got two blog followers now! Y’all know who you are. So, I’m just a few persons away from my originally targeted audience of “three or four” dedicated readers.

Barstool, I’m coming for your candy ass.

In all seriousness, being a writer/broadcaster/journalist in your late 20s right now is hopeless. Any work you’d like to do pays less than nothing, and the jobs that do pay require that you eat shit for a decade before even being the runner-up for said paying job.

Couple all of this with my type 2 diabetes, constant fatigue from eating foods that exacerbate said fatigue, all while battling anxiety and depression, and it’s not a shocker why I’m in such a state of morose that I don’t wish to leave my bed.

I’ve concocted the perfect Misery Margarita of Ultimate Sadness. If I could bottle this, I wouldn’t because even my worst enemy wouldn’t deserve such a tortuous libation as this. Especially since that worst enemy is myself.

I wanna find my life, my love, my future, my calling, and my story.

But when the clouds are blocking out the sun, it’s impossible to peer through the night.

Here’s to praying for daybreak.

Categories
The Game of Life

Leave The Past In The Past

“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.”
OK, not that melodramatic but you get the sentiment…

Some moments are better left in the past.

There’s little need to re-open long-forgotten wounds.

Originally, this post was going to be a recounting of an embarrassing time in my life that I believe has haunted me throughout my adulthood, and perhaps it has.

I was bullied relentlessly in middle school by a closeted little asshole who decided that he needed to “defend the honor” of a vain and frankly not nearly special enough girl I had a massive crush on by harassing my socially-inept 13-year-old self, calling me a stalker, creepy, etc.

I was going to agonize over this little Napoleon’s insults and how I feel they’ve latched onto the roots of my deepest darkest psyche. But to be honest, before I started having a recent flare-up of anxiety attacks, I hadn’t thought of the little coward in more than a decade. This little shit grew up to be some sort of entertainment something, from what I gathered in a very light stalking of his social media, and grew a few inches taller than me now. And yet, he’ll always be that vapid, obnoxious little putz to me. Our lives have diverged in opposite directions. And unless I seek little Napet out (nah-PAY), I’ll never see that cocksucker again.

So, there.

It’s not worth hanging on to this anger, trying to figure out what made it “all go wrong”. We too often try to diagnose our current lives with shortcomings from years gone by, when we were younger, less knowledgeable, altogether different people. The truth is that these experiences made callouses in our minds, helped us grow into the people we’d become later. But ultimately, there’s a good reason I haven’t thought about this all too often.

Time may not always heal, but it certainly numbs. It dulls the aches, it soothes the irritation, it covers up, scabs over, and like all things eventually breaks off and dissipates into the ether.

I’ve had rotten luck with women, but it isn’t thanks to some middle-school pissant that isn’t even a footnote in my story. It’s because I’ve been afraid of rejection.

Indeed, this probably afflicts most of us in the world too shy to step out in the spotlight, figuratively or otherwise. We introverts love our comfort zones, our “safe spaces” (break out the avocado toast and pumpkin spice lattes now). But that’s the human condition, isn’t it? Wanting comfort. Craving acceptance. Facing rejection. Getting steamrolled by douchbags. We eventually get back up, brush ourselves off, and keep moving.

I wish I could say that I’ve been able to put all of this shit behind me, but let’s be honest here: the fact that I’m even willing to put this into a document that will eventually be read by all three of you out there shows that no, indeed I still have some growing yet to do.

Maybe this article is more trying to convince myself that I believe what I’m saying. Maybe it’s just me bashing out words while watching Jim Cornelison absolutely KILL the anthem as he always does.

After decades of dealing with anxiety, depression, etc, I’m starting to understand that while history helps us avoid making the same mistakes, it doesn’t govern our every move in our current lives. And if it does, you should stop and say out loud, “Fuck outta here, I have a life to live, motherfucker.”

Best not to say this to the barista at Starbucks. Or the cashier at Wendy’s. Or your dog/cat/whatever your pet is.

Just remember that life is not over until it’s literally over. There’s always time. No matter how much it seems like it’s said, done, signed, sealed, and delivered, it isn’t.

Categories
Baseball The Game of Life

Baseball Is Wasted On Idiots

UGA Baseball Game at Foley Field, April 2010

I can’t trust somebody who says Bull Durham is unrealistic.

At my undisclosed job in an undisclosed location in the South, I have a boss who fancies himself an amateur film critic. There are a couple of folks in the office who love discussing movies in rich detail beyond just the plot. They analyze the composition of films, the cinematography, the brilliance of Roger Deakins, among other topics – including how Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice turned the Caped Crusader into a meat-headed roided-out mass murderer while simultaneously rendering Batfleck unable to determine that the White Portuguese isn’t a goddamn alias but a ship docked in Gotham Harbor (this was a real conversation).

One day, my boss Siskel and another self-styled Ebert were talking about the 1988 classic starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins in their prime. The details aren’t important, but a few lines stood out.

“The Annie Savoy character is just obnoxious,” Roper-lite said. “And I don’t find the movie that realistic to how baseball actually is.”

“Yeah, I don’t get the sense that this is what baseball is actually like,” remarked Siskel, agreeing that the film didn’t capture the essence of the game we all love.

Now, I make these two out to be overly pompous and high-brow but in reality they’re quite smart men with dumbfounding opinions on one particular film that I (and the majority of actual baseball players) happen to adore, but whom I otherwise respect in terms of their baseball and movie fandom.

Then again, I did work in the minors for seven months.

I know enough to say with confidence that Bull Durham, while still Hollywood, isn’t too far off the mark.

During my stint in the minors deep in the heart of #MAGA Land, I lived the life of a poorly paid “assistant” which meant I was an intern with a monthly stipend. I barely made enough money to cover the rent on an apartment that was actually one elderly couple’s moldy basement with an infestation of crickets. Of all the insects in the world, I wish I had kept them in exchange for the current roach issues I deal with today.

But I digress.

My brief time in the league gave me an insight into the game that I had dreamed of gaining access to from the time I could start walking. And what I found was a lot of that same wonder I enjoyed while watching baseball with my father during my youth.

I also learned that the game I hold so dear is wasted on the saddest bunch of dullards one could possibly think of, and worse.

My boss was from west of the Mississippi, where he had worked before arriving to our club. He’d had experience working on the west coast, so ownership brought him in to run their newly-acquired team. He was a solid guy, generous with buying his employees drinks at company outings, and was (is) a generally decent man.

He was also a fucking jag-off of a manager.

Anytime I saw him at his desk, he’d be in the same position: feet up, chair leaned fully back, staring at his phone. Now, it’s safe to assume he was reading emails and important notes from meetings, phone calls, etc. Along with his tendency of swearing like a sailor, it just gave off the wrong vibe, a message of nonchalance that never sat well with me. I believe the main problem with Popeye was his brash swashbuckling style rubbing the locals the wrong way. These fans, if you could bestow upon them such a moniker, had an issue with getting rid of general admission seats in favor of new numbered assigned seating throughout the stadium. Despite being literally cheaper, they complained.

The team toyed with the idea of changing the name of the club ahead of a redesign. Merely flirting with re-branding nearly caused a…

Well, let’s face it, these “fans” were too fickle to care that much about the colors or the team for that matter. The Facebook comments on our post announcing the name-change poll were hilariously over-the-top, but it wasn’t like the office was getting inundated with a steady stream of death threats. And that’s precisely due to the fact that the city didn’t really like the team. Never mind that a local college was buying up acre after acre of the town to re-fashion in its own image. The people who went to the stadium bitched and whined and moaned about the change, claiming that it was all a cash grab, trying to rob them of their hard-earned money. The most venom we received was from a season ticket holder who was offended that our on-field MC had her hands folded behind her back during the National Anthem. She wasn’t even kneeling, but this woman would have you believe our colleague was Che Guevara. This was the type of unimportant shit that riled up the natives.

I concussed myself running on the slick tarp at the end of a miserable rain-drenched week of rainout after rainout after rainout. I missed the entire weekend thanks to this poorly-timed (and incredibly mild) brain injury. But with an attorney in the family, I was advised to take worker’s comp for the lost days of work.

Popeye didn’t appreciate this.

“Are you SERIOUS?! Really? How much?”

To be clear, the team was insured. This wasn’t coming out of his pockets, and even if it did, it wasn’t more than a thousand dollars. On the whole, I didn’t even cost $7,300, worker’s comp included. I was paid a fixed income of $750 a month, no minimum wage or overtime during the 8-12 hour days on homestands or the regular 9-5s when the team was on the road. I was but a drop in the bucket for this small-town club with brand-new bigwig owners of multiple minor league franchises across several leagues and sports. What I cost was never in 1 million years going to sink the team.

Yet, as I live and breathe, I’m convinced that Popeye never forgave me for this.

I didn’t do myself any favors, I’ll be the first to admit. I often hid away in the press box fixing the comedically-horrendous WinAmps music library that hadn’t been organized during its possible 8-10 years of use. I was relegated to such duty though thanks to the concussion. So, in the end, I was damned if I did or damned if I didn’t. Physical labor made me a liability. The lack of physical labor made me expendable.

I had a shit attitude after months of this dragging on, working long days and getting nothing but the opportunity to look at a beautiful mountain range in the distance every day at work. I’d also inhale the stale musty stench of our offices with tones of wasted dreams mixed with sweat and a je ne sais quoi not all that dissimilar to the at times bumpkin-y backwoods feel of Bull Durham.

I don’t portend to be the smartest guy in the room, nor do I think that I have an otherworldly in-depth knowledge of the game and how it works. Then again, I have an adequate grasp of basic math.

When I started that season, our office had a secretary, two salesmen, a groundskeeper, the general manager, promotions director, concessions manager, and a ticket office manager/assistant GM, the latter two of whom crossed paths with Popeye before. We also had one broadcaster, and one clubhouse manager with Popeye as team president. Along with the full-time staff, we had seven interns (myself included) and our aforementioned Communist of an on-field MC/team reporter.

Before the first game of the season, the secretary was fired (Ms. Guevara became her successor), and the groundskeeper resigned.

Mid-season, both salesmen left for greener pastures, and were replaced by two new guys.

All but two interns returned for the following season.

As of this writing, only Popeye, one accounting intern, and one of the mid-season sales team replacements remain. The rest, long gone and replaced (in some cases twice) by new successors.

I don’t blame Popeye alone for the state of that team. It’s not like he could magically wave a wand and make Minor League Baseball affordable for its employees – players included. But the fact that the entire office was purged in less than five years proves my point.

Baseball is wasted on idiots.

Crash Davis knew this.

Nuke LaLoosh is a young buck with a “million-dollar arm and five cent head,” as noted by Robert Wuhl’s character, Larry. Having caught the pitcher throughout the season, a frustrated Crash tells Nuke that he doesn’t respect himself or the game. “You got a gift,” he laments. “When you were a baby, the gods reached down and turned your right arm into a thunderbolt. You got a Hall-of-Fame arm, but you’re pissing it away.”

The brash LaLoosh shoots back, “I ain’t pissing nothing away. I got a Porsche already.”

Too often in this game, people look for the Porsche when they need the wherewithal to understand the Honda Civic they’re driving in the first place. That’s pretty much the current state of baseball.

Over the past month, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred as rattled his sabers, threatening to shut down 42 Minor League clubs, and even to spurn the entirety of MiLB altogether. Keep in mind that as of now, teams can call up prospects from the minors by selecting and purchasing their contracts at affordable rates. They don’t have to deal with posting fees as seen with Japanese players looking to cash into baseball’s dominion in the States. They seldom get much push-back from agents or other interested parties. They make the call, the kid comes up from Iowa, and he suits up for however long the team needs him. They send him down, and until he runs out of options, the team can do so freely as often as they want.

There is no telling the damage Manfred’s myopic power grab would do to this process. Sure, the current guys in the league would mostly be fine. But when it’s time to usher in young players who’ve paid their dues, how much will it cost the big club to call them up? At what cost does baseball consolidate power for the ease of ownership? In what universe does rattling the cages of these small-town clubs in flyover country benefit anyone but Manfred and his cronies? It seems like a whole lot of fuss over something that works well enough.

Why nuke it all?

Towards the end of the film as Crash comes back to Durham after finishing his season elsewhere, Annie narrates that the world, baseball being implied, “…is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.”

I read this to mean that fools and blowhards seem to have their pick of the litter in life. Baseball is life – it’s unpredictability, the ups and downs of a nine-inning contest or even the months-long slog of the season, the constant reminder that what comes up must come down. And in life, it’s as though the folks who take their existence for granted are propped up by the labor of those who care.

Perhaps baseball isn’t my calling. Maybe I’m too self-aware for my own good.

But if Bull Durham isn’t realistic, than reality is Hollywood fantasy.

Categories
New Year Resolution

New Year, New Decade, New Blog… Same Ol’ Me

This isn’t really supposed to mean anything but I guess this is prescient? Cogent? I don’t know…

I’m unsure how to begin this post, to be honest.

I’m trying to come off as philosophical yet impatient, to convey that I’m still stuck in neutral. Still trying to find my footing. It’s a little more than slightly obnoxious that at this point I’m still nowhere closer to achieving my goals than I was coming out of high school ten years ago.

If it were my choice, I would be writing a throwaway press release for one of the 160-odd MiLB franchises sprinkled across America. Instead, I’m writing to myself and the three or four people who’ll read this.

We’re facing a really tough time as a country. We resemble less the United States of America and more the not-so-long-dead fallen regimes of Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s New Roman Empire, or Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich.

All fascists, all dead.

And yet, 70 years since the first full year of the bloody conflict that resulted in the deaths of millions of men, women, and children – whole generations wiped out in little more than half a decade – we find multiple hosts of fascism scattered around the globe. If not fully fascist, they certainly don’t mind toeing the line between democracy and authoritative autocracy. The most agreed-upon culprits lie in Russia, Turkey, Brazil, and North Korea. But as more children are jailed on the southern border in remote tent cities awaiting a trial that is never coming, all for daring to flee their homelands riddled with their own caudillos, duces and führers, you can safely add the land of the free and home of the brave to the list.

Don’t be fooled. If it weren’t for the Constitution, America would be a theocratic hellhole with Donald Trump as its chief imbecile in charge. The man is goaded on by his cultist fan base and spineless corporate shills in suits and ties, braying about the ills of taxing their overlords to pay for socialized healthcare while allowing this tangerine republic to play G-d with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans in need of help. Stacking the courts with rigid right-wing jurists seeking to put their puritan stamp on a nation designed to be immune to such short-sighted idiocy.

We are ten months away from the nexus point of American history. We’ll be voting whether to let a man who attempted to strong-arm the president of an ally into forking over non-existent dirt on a potential political opponent back into the White House. The implications meaning essentially that if he wins, the one tool the Constitution gives us to throw out a lying, self-serving scumbag from the White House will be rendered irrelevant. And all because too many Americans are willing to buy into a reality that never affords Republicans to be wrong, that Democrats are godless, angry socialists seeking to destroy America from within, that emaciated migrants are actually blood-thirsty invaders seeking to kill white Christian America with extreme prejudice. And the majority of Americans who can do something about it have been so disillusioned by years of do-nothing doorknobs in the capitol wasting their times in office consolidating the power of the ultra-rich at the expense of the people that actually keep America afloat.

And, in short, this constantly weighs on my mind. It’s no wonder I can’t get a job in baseball. Especially if it means that I once again wade into the middle of Trump Country for at least seven months of what will be the longest, angriest, foulest campaign cycle in American history. I just don’t think I can stomach another year surrounded by people I cannot stand with.

In private, I’ve said this a thousand times, but I’m laying it bare now. If at this point, the first of January in the year 2020, you are still a supporter of Trump, the GOP, and what they stand for, you either aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing or you simply don’t care.

That is a line in the sand I’m willing to draw for the next 12 months and beyond. It’s too important to stick with the party you’ve been told lobbies for “real Americans” over the course of your life. It’s time to put these lemmings into cages, lock them into prisons for poisoning the environment: natural and political alike.

If this sentiment leaves me stuck in neutral in terms of my career aspirations, so be it.

I recently heard on a news report that setting unrealistic New Year’s resolutions can be damaging to one’s psyche. So, instead of making a goal to lose 50 pounds by the time of one of my dearest friend’s wedding in May, I decided my resolution would be to not have a resolution. To live each day for that day. No, I’m not going kayaking in Yellowstone or traversing across the Himalayas anytime soon. But I’m not going to sit silent and watch bad people continue to do terrible things in the name of me and my family. If that means writing a blog that intersects between sports and politics, then that’s my battleground.

This is who I’ve been for the last decade anyhow.

Why should I change?

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