Opening Day came very early to our mixed-marriage household (I'm rooting for the home team, the Twins, while my husband still holds out hope for his former hometown boys, the Oakland A's) this year. Five in the morning to be exact: that's when ESPN2 was broadcasting the season opener between the Oakland A's and the Boston Red Sox, live from Japan in the Tokyo Dome. While I waited for the water to boil for coffee, I saw two seconds of costumed dancers on the field, and the guys in the A's dugout taking pictures with their little digital cameras: they looked so excited! We curled up under a blanket and watched while Matsuzaka quickly fell apart in the first inning, and my happy cursing began as Mark Ellis' home run ball flew into the stands: "Yes, you motherfucker!" I curse at baseball whether I'm thrilled or appalled; it doesn't matter. It's baseball, and so for me, that means I sound like a sailor. My husband (then boyfriend) and I were on our third date, watching the White Sox and the Twins in a beer joint. About halfway through the game I realized I really didn't know this person well enough to be shouting "motherfucker" and "Jesus H. Christ!" every fifteen seconds. I turned to him and said, "Is my swearing bothering you? Really, you have to tell me." He looked at me: "Were you swearing?" That may have been the beginning of a very short fall into love.
Anyway, the ESPN2 announcers were one of the targets of my wrath this morning: they could have easily been mistaken for Boston Red Sox employees. All we heard was yap, yap, yapping about Dice-K and his triumphant return to Japan, blah, blah, blah. Red Sox Nation (sounds a little Klannish, don't you think?) was in full force at the Tokyo Dome, so while the A's had "home field advantage," it sure as hell didn't feel like it. They briefly mentioned that Kurt Suzuki, the A's catcher, was having a homecoming, too: we looked at each other and said, "Do they know he's Hawaiian?" About two hours later into the broadcast, they mentioned that his grandparents lived in Tokyo and were at the game. They mispronounced the third baseman's name halfway through the game: "Hanrahan looks at a ball." Hanahan, you morons. Then we had to listen (or not: my husband, what with the Y chromosome and all, can tune anything out) to these jackasses talk to Captain Jackass, "Bud" Selig, Commissioner of Baseball. Don't worry: the tough questions got asked, and we were reassured by Uncle Bud that the steroid issue was all under control. He went as far as to say that steroids weren't a problem for baseball, but a problem of the general society: yeah, I guess if you're Roger Clemens' wife, but I can't recall the last time I used steroids. Oh, wait, now I remember: never.
I love baseball, but nothing drives me crazier: the pitches swung at and missed (especially first pitches!), the showy but failed dives that boot the ball further into the outfield, the blown save. It already feels like it's going to be a long season. The Twins let go of Johan Santana, even though Carl Pohlad is the eighth richest among baseball owners: I mean, when you're twenty-three million years old, how much money do you need, exactly? The A's traded everybody, and are "rebuilding." Billy Beane is legendarily known for his heartless approach to trading, so much so that when his wife gave birth to twins last year, some swag predicted they'd be traded before their second birthday. My husband says it's easy to root for the Yankees or the Sox, because they win a lot, and that's nice for fans: to actually watch a team win a good deal of the time. It's hard to love the underdogs, the bottom of the payroll, but we do. The Sox fancy themselves underdogs compared to the Yankees, but one look at their payrolls ($143 and $195 million, respectively, in 2007) and you see that the Sox are the Yankees, but with a soupcon of personality. They have Manny being Manny, and their beloved Big Papi, and their drama queen of a closer, Jonathan Papelbon (known in my house as Hannibal "Cinnabon" Lector: if you've seen him pitch, you know exactly what I'm talking about). But they're still a big money, big market team, and no amount of quirkiness will change that.
Spring is the beginning of all the sweet bitching and moaning. Like the sounds of snow melting, running into the gutters, I wait for the first time John Gordon, radio "Voice of the Twins", calls Emil Brown "email" Brown. Like the songs of birds returning, it brings a smile to my face the first time in the season when Dan Gladden says "Barry Bonds is everything that's wrong with baseball". Then there's the television announcers, Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven, who sound exactly like an old married couple who continue to stay together, just to spite the other.
I love baseball because I can love and hate people for no good reason,
other than I just feel like it, and there are no consequences: I'm
sure David Wright doesn't give a damn that I can't stand him, just as
I'm sure that Johan Santana couldn't care less that I'd leave my
husband for him. I love Nick Swisher (a tragic A's trade casualty) because even though he chews tobacco and dates a model/porn star, he was raised by his grandmother and because she died of cancer, grew his hair out for wigs for chemotherapy patients. I hate Alex Rodriguez, but who doesn't? I love Jim Leyland, manager of the Detroit Tigers, because he looks like he runs a tight ship and because his peers call this old fart "Jimmy." I love Orlando Hernandez because he is so pretty it hurts, can touch his knee to his ear during his wind up, and because Cuban ballplayers often destroy their birth certificates when they defect, will always be about seven or eight years younger than he really is. He's been in his late thirties for about ten years now (in Cuban ballplayer years, I'm also in my late thirties). I hate how ugly the Texas Rangers are as a team, but love their manager Ron Washington. I hate Carlos Lee. I love Huston Street's little box step of a wind up, but couldn't forgive him for blowing the save this morning.
Maybe it's easier to get all worked up about a game that doesn't matter, than rant and rave and feel powerless over those things that do, like the war in Iraq, SUV, and poor transportation planning. Yesterday it was announced that four thousand Americans have been killed in Iraq; they, whoever they are, can't even come up with a number of Iraqi civilians killed, but the estimate is exponentially higher. Why is it that people themselves are always supposed to be working at becoming smaller through starvation and surgery, but cars and trucks keep getting bigger? Why are bridges collapsing, and why isn't gas eight dollars a gallon like it is in Europe? You see, these things are far more challenging than realizing tomorrow is the second game in a three game series. With baseball, there's hope, even with the specter of the Borg-like Yankees and the "lovable" Red Sox: those teams usually get to the playoffs, but then, it's any one's game. All bets are off in October.
Just like they are in November.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
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