Bubba's

Mr. Hendricks and I took a little Labor Day weekend trip to Wisconsin to visit the American Players Theater again. This year we stayed in Mineral Point at Brewery Creek Inn, about thirty minutes south of Spring Green. On our way home from the show on Saturday night, we stopped into a charming little dive called Bubba's on High Street. It was one of three little joints open at the seemingly very late hour of midnight. It was like walking back in time to the eighties when bars were filled with cigarette smoke, loud and drunk patrons and even louder jukebox music. Bare bones, just a bar, an electronic dart board and stools. We took open seats at the end of the bar and a young man with shaggy blond hair and glasses, clearly feeling no pain, told us he wasn't the bartender but that he could get us a drink.

"I mean, it's okay," he shouted, leaning into the bar. "What can I get you guys?"

Foolishly I asked for a gin martini. I have had problems before with gin martinis, in more upscale establishments than this. Apparently there is some debate about what exactly constitutes a martini. According to me, an authority on martinis solely based on sheer number of them consumed, a martini is gin with a bit of vermouth, shaken violently with ice, then strained into a cold martini glass. I prefer a cucumber garnish because of the gin I favor, but an olive will also do. What will not do is gin shaken with ice alone and strained into a glass: that is simply cold gin. Additionally, martinis are not served "on the rocks." Anyway, these were the least of our worries.

The "bartender" looked a little taken aback, but valiantly continued on. "Okay, and for you?" he turned to Mr. Hendricks.

"I'll have a vodka martini with Grey Goose," he said. It was too late to stop Mr. Hendricks from mentioning Grey Goose, but again, this was to be the least of our worries. Our friend put on his best professional demeanor and soldiered on, consulting with the woman two seats down from me to see if the bar had any vermouth.

A moment or two later, the real bartender came before us. He looked much like the impostor bartender in that he was also a bit loaded and friendly. "I'm so sorry," he began, "but we don't even have martini glasses here. We're just a beer and shot joint. I'm really sorry, the first round is on me. What can I get you guys?"

We reassured him that he did not have to buy our drinks. "How about a gin and tonic, then?" I asked.

"Sure," he said with relief. He looked at Mr. Hendricks.

"I'll have a vodka tonic," Mr. Hendricks said.

"Okay, then. I'm real sorry," he continued to apologize. Both Mr. Hendricks and I reassured him that it was fine, don't worry, we just want a drink, it's no big deal, again, don't worry. He seemed mildly reassured and went to pour our drinks.

Mr. Hendricks could not resist the opportunity to smoke in a bar, something he hasn't been able to do in Minnesota for a year or two. So he lit up and we tried to catch the American League scores on the tiny television hanging in the corner above the bar. Our teams were doing battle this weekend, and because we were on vacation we did not see any of the four games. Later we were to discover that they split the series: the A's won two games, each by a run, and the Twins won two games, each by about ten runs. The Twins are going to have to do a lot better than that if they want to get to the playoffs, but I digress.

Our small, strong drinks arrived and we gave our bartender a very large tip. We sat and drank. When we came into the bar, it was loud, but the jukebox (I use the term loosely: an electronic contraption with a screen, etc.) was off. Within a few moments of sitting down, someone had spent a good deal of money solely on Tupac Shakur. The loud, thumping pound of the music vibrated the seats. It was hard not to giggle. I mean, Mr. Hendricks was the only person of color within a hundred mile radius, but the townies in Mineral Point couldn't get enough of Tupac.

As we drank, I noticed a handwritten sign near the old cash register, taped to the mirror of the bar. It was entitled, "Bubba's Shit List" and underneath said, "talk to Bubba or the bartender in order to remove yourself from this list." There were about eighteen names, with number one being Billy Bob. I am not making this up. Two of the names had been crossed off, so it was indeed possible to make restitution. But how? And for what? I was deeply curious, enough to ask the woman next to me.

"Hey," I ventured, "what's up with that list?"

She turned to me and smiled. "I know, I was just looking at that! I know those people," she said.

"Do they owe money?" I asked.

"Nah, that wouldn't get them on a list. I know Billy Bob. I wonder what he did to piss them off," she replied.

I introduced myself and Mr. Hendricks to Dawn. She was in her mid-thirties, a regular nursing her lite beer and smoking her cigarette.

"Are you from around here?" she politely inquired.

You had to give her credit. There was no way in hell Mr. Hendricks and I were from around here.

I laughed and said, "No, we're from out of town. But I'll bet you knew that."

She smiled and said, "Well, I thought so, but you know, I don't know."

Our chitchat died down and she turned to talk to the bartender. Mr. Hendricks and I pondered the possible meanings of being on the shit list, and what you had to do to remove yourself from it. I was dying to get a picture of the list, but thought better of it. Perhaps the other patrons would not find it so amusing to have outsiders documenting their little piece of heaven. The smoke now had become almost unnoticeable, Tupac was still hollering, and a bar stool either fell or was tossed over by one of the young women in the bar. There was a very slight ruckus, warning us like distant thunder, and suddenly it was time to go.

We stepped outside into the not warm but not cool late August night and only then could I smell the smoke in a cloud around me and in my clothes and hair. It was just like the eighties when I went to bars and drank all night (beer, not gin: thank god, I'd have been in rehab about four times by now) and shot pool and played the same songs on the jukebox over and over. But I rarely got drunk: that wasn't fun. I spent a good deal of my twenties with friends in bars almost every night of the week, but we would sit and talk and drink and I still made it to work the next day. I'll bet our friends at Bubba's do, too. Our twenties are very forgiving, aren't they?

The next day I told Mr. Hendricks yet another winning-the-lottery fantasy: I would buy Bubba's and whip it into shape. The bartender would be a huge African-American man and the waitress a beautiful lipstick lesbian. There would be booths and a small grill, so you could eat fries and chicken wings. There would be martini glasses, and a "J.D." (an appletini) would be all the rage. There would be a state of the art ventilation system, so the person next to you could smoke like a chimney and you'd never even know it. The jukebox would have only music from the eighties: Prince, Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Lionel Richie, all that sort of thing. I'd still call it Bubba's, mostly because when we were teenagers, my brother and I would call our mother 'Bubba,' and she hated it. There would be a portrait of her, framed, with her name underneath, implying the bar was her namesake. She would hate that, too.

Then after about a year, I would sell the bar back to Bubba, and he could run it right into the ground. Everyone would come back, smash all the martini glasses, destroy the leather booths and never repair the ventilation system. All would be well again.

This Week in Baseball 8/12/08

Baseball season is coming to an end.  When there's less than half the season left, when there's not even fifty games left, it is ending.  So it's sad, even though our teams have had a rough time of it.  The Oakland A's are long out of it, have been at least since the All-Star Break, when their rookie first baseman was having fun with friends and decided to test the depth of a body of water with his head.  Daric Barton is lucky to be alive, and it is amazing he's not a paraplegic.  Bob Geren, manager of the A's, said of course he was relieved Barton wasn't seriously injured, but also implied that his lack of judgment was concerning.  I now refer to Barton as "head injury," as in, "Head injury hit a three-run home run in the third."



The Twins are flaming their little matchstick light of hope, constantly one-half game ahead of or behind the Chicago White Sox (or, as Bert Blyleven says, "She-cago").  Last week I saw an afternoon game between the Twins and the Mariners.  An obviously worked up Blyleven ranted and raved about the lack of endurance and ability of starting pitching, and the resultant stress on the bullpen.  "People work hard at their jobs, and they work nine to five.  These guys are working nine to one!" he roared.  Apparently Blyleven pitched 280 innings during his first major league season.  Today if a pitcher tops out at 200 innings, he's considered a "workhorse."  He went as far as to call starting pitchers "sissies" if they didn't or couldn't pitch deep into games, and said that they didn't have "the guts" (when he really meant "balls") to finish what they had started.  Clearly someone had put a nickel in him, and his cohort Dick Bremer blamed it on the Seattle coffee.



It's disturbing to find yourself in agreement with Blyleven, he of the "Circle me Bert" fame and the endless commentary on cookies and cupcakes, but there I was.  I don't give a damn about the bullpen and its so-called "stress," but I do think pitchers need to pitch a lot more innings and throw a lot more pitches.  Pitchers are bulking up and breaking down:  don't forget that one of Rich Harden's many injuries was due to his reaching for his alarm clock.  These guys are barely men:  why are they injured all the time?  The workouts and the steroids might have something to do with it.  And I am not a fan of the "specialist" role:  Denys Reyes has that ERA for one reason only.  He comes into a game with men on base and proceeds to do his usual bang-up job of giving up a two-run double, yet his ERA remains perfectly intact.



Last night Glen Perkins was under a lot of pressure:  he just became a  new father; the bullpen had been exhausted the day before in Kansas City, blowing a two-run lead and then losing the game; and he was facing the third-place New York Yankees, who are still the Yankees.  Meaning that they all take a lot of pitches and for reasons that are not statistically understood, Bobby Abreu always gets on base.  But Perkins pulled it off:  he walked three but got out of it every time.  Perkins usually pitches well and then, according to Bremer "without warning" something goes wrong and he starts to give it up.  Actually, there is a warning: it's called the sixth inning.  But last night it came and went and Perkins pitched eight, count them, eight, shut out innings, then Nathan came and finished it off with three strikeouts.



Tonight it's Mike Mussina, also known as "Moose," for the Yankees and Nick Blackburn, another rookie for the Twins.  I hate to say it, but even if they Twins win the division and go to the playoffs, they won't make it out of the first round because they'll have to go through New York or Boston, and they usually don't go through them.  They crumple.  But I would dearly love to be proven wrong.  Go Twins!

Natural Woman

definition of natural:  existing in or formed by nature, as opposed to artificial



Patients of mine, both young and old, will argue the case of hormonal contraception with what I like to call the "natural" argument.  "It's just not natural to trick the body," they will say.  Sometimes the argument is simply that birth control pills are not "natural," as if the Mountain Dew or Red Bull they drink is.  This argument has the corollary of "hormones are bad," but that is a discussion for another day.



What is, indeed, natural?  What is a natural woman?  Can it be argued that any of us today resemble, at least reproductively, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers?  While I believe that there is nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to sex, I don't believe that my generation and younger are anything like our fore-mothers when it comes to reproduction.  We begin menarche younger and younger, for whatever reasons that may be found for this, and we also begin menopause younger (known euphemistically as the 'perimenopause').  We bear fewer children, if at all, and also begin bearing them when we are a good deal older than was thought possible one or two generations ago.  What was 'natural' to our great-grand-mamas was to marry in their late teens or very early twenties; to begin having children fairly soon after marriage; to breastfeed those children; and to start the cycle again, repeating every eighteen months to three years until they were exhausted.



I generalize, of course, but you see what I mean.  There is an argument that 'modern' woman is not 'natural' in her hundreds of monthly cycles, i.e. having a period every month instead of being pregnant or lactating for several months out of her life.  It's not considered 'natural' to continuously dance that cycle every month for years without pregnancy.  Today we want to be able to control nature, but somehow remain natural.  We want to avoid pregnancy until we are ready, and that may mean when we're fifty, and we expect that technology will be there for us.  We do not expect limits.



Perhaps it is my own aging that makes me realize how little control we have, and the appeal that fate holds for some has seemed a more and more reasonable stance.  We can maneuver out of its way, perhaps, but it always gets us in the end with irony and surprise, doesn't it?  So it was with me and my uterus.  A uterus, it should be known, that has never been pregnant.  An intact, never used, factory model:  vintage, in fact, at forty-five years of age.  I had decided in my dotage and in my desire to avoid being a middle-aged freak show (first pregnancy at forty-six!) that I would get the Mirena intrauterine device (IUD), and maybe, as an added bonus, get fewer and shorter menses, too, in my waning reproductive years.



Alas, it was not to be:  upon examination my uterus, that pristine, still in the package uterus, measured ten centimeters deep, too much to have the IUD placed.  To say I was speechless is an understatement.  I was stunned, and my voice rose with each succeeding, "But how can that be?  I've never BEEN PREGNANT!"  Most uteri (yes, the plural of uterus:  is it not wonderful?) measure between six and nine centimeters, though sometimes, a uterus that has housed many a pregnancy will sound to greater depths.  And then there's my uterus:  a virtual five thousand square foot house just waiting to gestate a fetus or three.



When the shock wore off, and after another contraceptive plan was made, I wondered if I had fooled fate or had been fooled by it.  Perhaps I was designed to have a passel of boys, each a year or two apart, running me ragged but kept in line most of the time by their father, who made them behave like angels once a year on Mother's Day.  Maybe I would have had only one child, after successive miscarriages, my uterus a large, cold room unable to keep hold of a pregnancy.  Maybe that big old uterus was waiting for ovaries that wouldn't, or couldn't, cooperate.  Maybe fate was wise and knew that a uterus that size didn't have a chance of recovering after delivery, and decided not to let me bleed to death.  Who knows what explanation there is for what seems to me to be an anomaly, this seemingly capacious and capable uterus in my never pregnant body.  For a minute I wished I was twenty years younger in order to be a surrogate, because even though I've never wanted to be a parent, I've always fancied that I'd like pregnancy and have always wanted to know what it felt like to push a baby out of my body.



So here I am, waiting out the last of my (supposedly) fertile years, with a wondrous uterus that never got her day in the sun.  I hope she's not taking it too hard.  I hope she still feels like a natural woman.

This Week in Baseball 6/12/08

Well, the last place New York Yankees (okay, they're tied for third/last with Toronto and Baltimore) are in Oakland for a three game series this week.  Let's start with the moustaches, shall we?  Jason Giambi has been sporting his for at least a week, and he couldn't look more like a seventies porn star if he tried.  Every time he's in the batter's box, I have to look away.  Last night their reliever, Russ Ohlendorf, also had the same gruesome caterpillar on his lip, and I'm sure it frightened the A's lineup as much as it did me.  How these atrocities are being tolerated by the clean-shaven protocol of the Yankees, I do not know.  Remember when the Yankees acquired lovable mop-topped Red Sox Johnny Damon?  The burning question was:  is he going to cut his hair?  And, more importantly, is he still going to look hot?  Sadly, the answer is no:  for a man who wore the Jesus look really well, once that hair was cut, you realized his good looks were in his long locks.  Poor Damon:  he just looks unremarkable now, like nobody.  He's no longer the cute guy with the dimples and great hair and, according to some, spectacular ass.  I think his long hair actually enhanced his ass, though I can't really explain how that's possible.  At least he just cut his hair, and didn't opt for the neo-Nazi buzz cuts favored by Rodriguez, Jeter, and Joe Girardi.  Yikes.  We know the Yankees are professional killers:  do they have to look like it, too?  The only look missing in the Yankees dugout is what is referred to as 'date-rapist' hair:  slicked back, eighties style, with stiff, crunchy hair gel.



Well, on to the games.  Chien-Ming Wang pitched the first game against Dana Eveland.  The A's had plenty of chances, and Eveland only gave up two runs, but the A's still lost 3-1.  Last night Yankees pitcher Darrell Rasner went up against Justin Duchscherer, who used to be a reliever for the A's and now is in the starting rotation.  Duchscherer baffled the Yankees through each of his seven innings, especially with his long, slow curve ball that tops out at about sixty-seven miles per hour.  The announcers said a few times that next to the curve ball, the fast ball looked a lot faster than eighty-four miles an hour.  And for once, the A's hitters came through and scored a bunch (eight, to be precise) of runs for Duchscherer.  He's now 5-0 at the Coliseum.  The A's got six runs off Rasner in the third, and the Yankees never really recovered but rallied in the ninth off of the A's relievers, especially Kiko Calero.  But the A's hung on, and won 8-4.



The Twins, on the other hand, finally won a game and broke their six game losing streak in Cleveland last night.  The first night C.C. Sabathia pitched a gem against the Twins, and they lost 1-0 to the Indians.  As much as I need to support my hometown boys, I do love the C.C.  I mean, I love that big man who loves to pitch complete games, whose presence is wonderfully palpable on the mound, who looks so serious all the time, but you know he's just like a big kid on the inside.  Last night Paul Byrd got hit around a little, and the Twins got their win.  The Twins continue to have fielding problems, or should I say more precisely, Delmon Young cannot seem to catch the ball.  I can't tell if he's just not very fast, or if he can't read the ball off the bat, but it feels like I'm watching him chase down fly balls every freakin' game.  I mean, Jason Kubel and his knees were better out there, for god's sake.



Both teams finish their series tonight, and even though Giambi probably hasn't shaved that moustache, and Delmon Young will miss at least one fly ball, I'll be watching.

This Week in Baseball 6/3/08

I know, I know, it's been far more than a week.  Well, let's just catch up then, shall we?  Last Friday, the last-place New York Yankees (the television announcers could not get enough of this:  they repeated it every chance they could and explained:  how often are we able to say that?) came to the Metrodome and split a four game series with the Twins.



Twice Alex Rodriguez was thrown out at third in two different games.  The first time he ran on contact of what turned out to be a not very deep fly ball, and was caught because he didn't make it back to second.  The second time he had already stolen second base, mind you, while his team had a lead, and then took off for third and was thrown out there.  Did he really think Hideki Matsui couldn't hit a single to advance him?  What a moron.



We were supposed to see reliever-turned-starter Joba Chamberlain last night, but his start was postponed and Andy Pettitte took the mound.  I cannot like Andy Pettitte, of course, by default:  he is a Yankee.  But let me just say that he is one handsome man:  all big features with an adorable dimple in his chin; big, pretty dark eyes.  Not too shabby.  Anyway, I cannot like Joba Chamberlain, either, again, because of the Yankee clause in my contract, and he was easy to dislike:  I mean, what's up with that name?  Joba?  What the hell is that?  So I read all about it on Wikipedia, and found out some things that make it harder for me to dislike him.  His niece couldn't say her new brother's name, Joshua, and it came out like "Jahba" and he liked it.  His given name is Justin Louis.  The name stuck and he legally changed it, just like John Paul "Boof" Bonser did who pitches for the Twins.  Secondly, his father is a member of the Winnebago tribe, almost died of polio as a child, and needs a scooter (which he named Humphrey) to get around.  Like I can hate him now!  I know it's reverse discrimination and frankly, I don't give a damn.



The A's have been playing much more like themselves lately, which is to say, losing.  However, there are some bright spots:  they swept, SWEPT, the Boston Red Sox, and they beat Detroit last night in the bottom of the ninth.  Bobby Crosby continues to concern me:  they announced during the game last night that he leads the American League with nineteen doubles.  Once again, in the not too great distance, I hear two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse gaining ground.  Mr. Hendricks joked that Crosby might be the MVP this year.  "We won't live to see 2009," I answered.  "Better cash out the 401(k) and the stock options, baby."  I was even more sure of it when Crosby hit the game-winning double.



Till next week.

This Week in Baseball 5/6/08

Well, it's been more than a week, but really, the last week or so is all I can remember of the multitude of games we watch or see bits and parts of while Mr. Hendricks' keeps his hand firmly on the remote control.  The A's, to every one's surprise and to others' delight, are playing better than .500 baseball.  So are, for that matter, the Twins, but their division has had a very slow start:  the Tigers are still having troubles (thank God they let go of Jacque Jones!) and the Indians' pitching staff still is shaky.  The A's salvaged one game from their series with the Mariners last Sunday, April 27th, and what a win it was.



Felix Hernandez, know as King Felix (one of the few nicknames you'll see here not personally bestowed by me), kept the A's off balance for six innings, striking out ten batters but walking four.  The Mariners announcers were yapping on and on about what a masterful performance it was, and that's why when it all fell apart, it was that much sweeter.  Not to dis King Felix, but really, walking four batters?  And he was already at one hundred pitches when he started the sixth.  He was doing a good job keeping the A's off the bases, but really, "masterful" it was not.  I've seen masterful, and it usually comes with the name of Johan Santana (god rest his Shea Stadium soul).  And the King was guilty of some poor showmanship:  when he finished the previous innings with a strikeout (desperately needed, I might add) he stalked off the mound pumping his fist.  That's like a batter standing outside the box admiring his shot to the seats.  Not nice, and be careful:  the next time up, the ball is going to be thrown at your head.  So when the Felix show began its painful but inexorable decline, it was delightful.  The A's won 4-2, after being shut out for five innings.  It was odd to watch Hernandez give it up, and to watch the manager and pitching coach watch him give it up.  I mean, the man had already thrown one hundred pitches.  Apparently, the pitching coach came to the mound and asked how Hernandez felt.  He said he felt good, and so he was left in to take the loss.



In a side note, I want it on the record that I adore Ichiro Suzuki.  I love everything about him:  his little sleeve pull at the plate, the way he's already running to first base as he swings the bat, the ballet-like fielding in center.  He floats over to the ball as if he were picking flowers or playing croquet.  Torii Hunter was wonderful to watch all those years with the Twins:  he was a movie star slash stunt man in center field, and it was dazzling to see him leap and dive.  Ichiro is a different animal.  He just gracefully appears out of nowhere, not even out of breath, while making a spectacular play look effortless.  Ichiro is quoted as saying something to the effect that sheer power doesn't impress him, but grace and intelligence does.



It has been exhilarating and frankly, a bit disturbing, to see the A's play so well this early in the season, and in this season especially, since they have been clear that they are "rebuilding" this year.  When teams say that they're rebuilding, you can count on frustrating games, disappointing losses, and infrequent wins.  A mere few weeks ago Bobby Crosby was batting .300, and I felt sure that I could hear the hooves of at least two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse not too far in the distance.  Now he's back to a .260 average, and it may be that the end of the world has been called off, at least for now.  The A's have been known in the past several seasons as a "second half team," so to see them racking up the wins so early is exciting, but also creates a little anxiety.  They're winning quite a few one-run games, or scoring late in the ballgame and winning late or in extra innings.  Last night I went to bed in disgust when Huston Street (Huston, I love you but you're killing me) blew a 1-0 lead.  He could not find the strike zone, and if I ever find out who kept calling that outside sinker pitch that none of the Oriole batters swung at, there will be hell to pay.  Anyway, they came back in the tenth and won it, but I was upstairs in bed; those west coast games are hard on the sleep schedule.



Tonight the A's continue their series against Baltimore, who personally I feel have one of the best looking uniforms in either league, and the Twins go to Chicago and play the Sox.  You all know my dislike of the White Sox, so I won't repeat it here.  Till next time.

This Week in Baseball 4/15/08

This week really starts last week, when we were at McAfee Coliseum to watch the Oakland A's on a brilliant Sunday afternoon take on the Cleveland Indians.  The A's had quite surprisingly taken the first two games of the series:  C. C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona were the starting pitchers and neither fared very well at all.  I was so excited to see McAfee Coliseum, and it did not disappoint, though Mr. Hendricks told me that everyone thinks it's a dump.  It is a shared field between the Oakland A's (baseball) and the Oakland Raiders (football) and only poor and/or stubborn cities don't have separate stadiums for their sports teams.  Additionally, McAfee is going to its rest in a few years when the A's build a new stadium in Fremont, California, so I wanted to see the joint before it went up in demolition smoke. 

"Baby" Joe Blanton (not his real name, of course:  I have a nickname for nearly every ball player I love and hate) was on the mound for Oakland, and Cliff Lee for the Indians.  Luck would have it that we were sandwiched between Indians fans, and they couldn't have been nicer.  Much more reserved than the blabbermouth wearing a Zito jersey who showed up around the fourth inning at the end of the row.  It was challenging to pay attention to the game with the sunny skies, brisk breeze, and good company.  It was also an unusual pleasure for me to watch major league baseball out of doors:  the Twins play in the Metrodome which, while never that appealing, really seemed like the ugly stepsister by comparison.  The A's lost, but we had a great time in the sun, Mr. Hendricks with his blue cotton candy, and my friend Zelda and I with our shared ice cream sandwich.  I even bought a sweatshirt with a zip front in the green and gold of the Athletics to wear on my walks when it's cold here in the spring and fall.

Back home I've had the opportunity to watch the A's and the Twins a little more closely, and, as usual, I have some complaints.  The A's beat the White Sox last night, but not after Huston Street, the A's closer, once again shaved years off my life as he allowed hits and a walk.  He finally got out of the inning, but not after much cursing on my part.  The Twins, on the other hand, blew a five run lead TWICE in their game against the Detroit Tigers, and I didn't even feel sorry for them.  First of all, you don't deserve to win when you blow a five run lead.  Twice.  Secondly, the Tigers have had a rough time of it, skunked twice in the last two games, and can't seem to get it together.  Granted, there are already injuries, but still:  these guys are great and I believe it's just a matter of time.  Thirdly, those Twins outfielders looked like all they did was chase balls around in the outfield.  Denard Span, who is playing right field while Michael Cuddyer nurses a broken finger, actually tipped a long (catchable) fly ball over the fence and gave Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez a home run.

So the Tigers won 11-9, and Jim Leyland may have felt a little sheepish about his "chat" with his boys the previous night.  Apparently, you could hear his voice through stone walls.  He told reporters it was none of their business when asked what he'd said to the players.  There's a story that he yelled at his former team, the Colorado Rockies, in the nude and while a clenching a cigarette between his teeth, with an inch or so of ash was hanging from its tip.  Paints a picture, doesn't it?  Today the A's are losing to the White Sox, and the Twins and Tigers play again tonight.

Why are the White Sox so unlikeable?  Ozzie Guillen, for one:  when he was the new skipper for the Sox, he was sort of colorful and had a devil-may-care attitude.  Time went on and more offensive and unbelievable things came out of his mouth.  Then he practically shamed to death, on national television, a pitcher fresh from the minor leagues because he couldn't bean the batter that Guillen wanted to punish.  So now he's just an obnoxious and ignorant ass, and he seems to like to have those kinds of players around, too.  A. J. Pierzynski is the first that comes to mind:  no one likes this guy.  However, I would have paid good money to see him in the clubhouse of his former team, the Giants, with Barry Bonds.  That's a tea party, my friend.  Juan Uribe:  looks so unhappy.  Some of the good guys are Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko and Jim Thome.  But overall, there's just a bad vibe.  And the television announcers are as annoying as they come, exclaiming, "He gone!" when one of the Sox pitchers strikes out a batter.  They just feel dirty and icky, kind of like the Yankees without the veneer of "professionals."

Till next week then.