My Completely Random Life

OH, THAT LEGACY OF LOSING

See, this is why baseball has it all over any other sport, for this very reason. It's the absolute pain and agony of going game after game, year after year, getting all pumped up on some kind of uber-meth high because your team is going to win it all, and then crashing down hard when it doesn't, usually blamed on some blasted curse, but in reality it's just baseball, or as Dick Enberg said several years back,

"Baseball has a way of finding you."

He said it after the Angel collapse of 1995 which is still on the books as the greatest regular season collapse of all time, in terms of games ahead (I still have to think the 1964 Phillies was easily as bad), and what Enberg meant was that no matter how far in front you get, if you have a weakness the game will find it and it will get you in the end. And we've just seen it again. Three days ago it looked like the Cubs were a lock for their first pennant in 58 years, and in case someone has been living with Osama in a cave somewhere, we all know what has happened, they have lost and done it in the worst way, coming within one game and five outs of the title, only to see it all snatched away from them and all in the time it took to say "There's a fly ball to the left field line, Alou may have a play."

Poor, poor Cub fans.

Of course, I would say that, as an Angels fan, since our Curse was beaten back and bloodied into submission last year when the Halos went all the way. There was a difference of course. No one ever seriously considered the Angels a threat to take it all last year, despite having much the same miserable existence as the Cubs. Really, the Cubs played well only one month of the season, the last, and surged past a weak field in their division and that got them into the Best of Five Round, where underdogs can and do win quite often because, as the Cubbies found out to their dismay, winning four games is much tougher than winning three.

Really the first round should be Best of Seven, but that would push the Series into the Thanksgiving season so it will never happen.

And to the extent that the poor sap who snatched the ball away from Alou in Game 6 will forever be villified as the living embodiment of the Goat Curse, it will be a long time before someone has the courage to stand up and say
A) Florida was the better team, and
B) We did come from 95 losses one year ago to one win away from the title this year.

That's the important point, the fact that the Cubs even had a shot, considering how god-awful they were a year ago, with roughly the same team. But that's what makes baseball so wack. If the Cubs had lost 90 games this year, no one would be boo-hooing about a lost opportunity. If they somehow faded in the last week, the Curse may have been called into question, but I have to think a more optimistic view would have prevailed. If they had lost to the Braves in the first round, it would have hurt because, of course, once you qualify for the post-season you have no choice but to go all the way, otherwise you are cursed, or something. Doing it this way, with a woeful Leon Durham twist to it, twists the whole thing clear out of perspective. You were there, you didn't get it, there's always next year. Good job anyway.

And besides, if you just look at the qualifiers for this year in the post-season you see that almost every team had some nominal legacy of losing - longtime or fairly recent - to shake off, a huge city of fans that year after year go, "Jesus Christ, I can't believe we blew it again!" Here's a rundown:

Chicago Cubs - Now at 59 years without an N.L. Pennant, and 96 without a World Series title.
Boston Red Sox - 85 years without a World Series title, the Curse of the Bambino and the ugly specter of Bill Buckner. Note that even if Boston can beat the Yankees tomorrow, their curse is only lifted if they go all the way. Winning the A.L. pennant means nothing.
San Francisco Giants - Standing at exactly 50 years since last World Series title, won while they were still New York Giants, meaning San Francisco is zero-for-forty-five. Don't think it's a big deal? You've never met my brother.
Oakland A's - World Series would be heaven - lost four straight years in the first round, and have lost nine straight title-clinching games.
Atlanta Braves - Won World Series in 1995 but never in a year when they've won 100 games, which they have done six years out of the last eleven.
Minnesota Twins - It's not baseball games they're worried about losing, but their entire franchise.
New York Yankees - Last pennant, 2001; last World Series title, 2000. That's a drought for George Steinbrenner, and if you can't get too worked up about it, well me neither but if the Yanks lose to their bitter rivals tomorrow you better believe heads will roll (hear that, Giambi?)

So that's seven out of the eight teams. For Cub, Red Sox and Giant fans, that's a lot of bad history, and it seems to only get worse if they make it to the post-season. And it's bad for the other teams but, to be fair, they've all got WS titles within fairly recent memories. That doesn't make it any easier if you lose though.

And the only team that has no legacy of losing, at least in the post-season? That's our heart-breaking sweeties, the Florida Marlins. And once again, this is baseball at its ironic finest. Florida has had one winning season in ten years, and it won the World Series. This is their second winning season - ever - and they're back in the World Series. To this point, they've never lost a post-season series.

It's sick isn't it? The Marlins are a team that probably doesn't have fans, you know what I mean? Who the hell would root for the Marlins? You never see anybody with a Marlins cap on, or wearing a Marlins jersey. Hell, almost nobody can name a current Marlins player, let alone their all-time leader in home runs (Gary Sheffield). There are no long suffering Marlin fans because there are hardly any Marlins fans to begin with. Yet, when they get to the Big Show, they play Big Time, where the other teams just stumble again and again and again.

So what this means is that even if the Red Sox do win they are still doomed. The Marlins have taken out the Giants and the Cubs so far, why not the Red Sox to make it a complete sweep of cursed teams?

MY OPINION IS MEANINGLESS
Not! Well, that's what I thought at first as I watched tonight's playoff game between the Red Sox and the Yankees on Fox. Suddenly they showed the results of one of those on-line polls that they do. This one was:

Who do you blame for the brawl?

The choices were:
Pedro Martinez
Don Zimmer
Manny Ramirez
Roger Clemons

Karim Garcia was not even listed as a choice, as Fox Sports had apparently absolved him of all blame in the matter, going so far as to make Clemons a more palatable suspect. The funny part is that Clemons got 13% of the vote, same as McClintock! Well, anyway, you can imagine how I felt about this, after my particular ramble and all. It durn near made me want to write a letter to the editor - or something!

So then I'm scouring the web, trying to find the actual photo of Zimmer going down, if nothing else, when I stumbled across this piece, by Michael Urban of MLB.com. who took the contrarian side of the argument. Urban states that Garcia "took unnecessary offense" of the pitch which started "A chain of events that followed one overreaction got Zimmer so fired up that he sought out and took a swing at Pedro." and then later "he jumped from right field into the bullpen late in the game to join another little dust-up. "


Kind of exactly what I said, only I added that Garcia was little more than a zit on the ass of baseball, or words to that effect. Urban didn't go quite as far, although it may be because he had a word count limit.

In any case, I found another online poll, this one at the MLB site, and Garcia is in it (it's at the bottom of the page of the Urban article) and I'm happy to say that he's a rock solid second place with 21% behind Pedro. Looking for a good laugh and an online message boards incisive commentary, I looked for someone with just as an inflammatory opinion as mine, with no luck. Rats.

But, man, for a second there I thought my completely random life was totally irrelevant.

IT'S A FAMILY SCRAP

Ironic newspaper ad of the week:

On page A19 of Sunday's LA Times, Albertsons supermarket took out a huge full page ad which contained this banner headline, in big blue print:

A History of Serving You Better.

Below that are three pictures on each side of smiling Albertsons workers - the deli girl, the flower girl, the pharmacist, the butcher, the baker, the produce guy - bookending a little public relations boasting by the chain:

"Other come. Others go. But Albertson's is here to stay! For years, we've proudly served the communities of Southern California. In that time, we've learned a lot. About freshness, About quality. About value and service. Fact is, we're here and always will be. At Albertsons, we're open for business."

On the same day the ad ran, the "proud" supermarket locked out their grinning model workers in a show of corporate solidarity with Safeway Corp, whose workers went out on strike.

Coincidence? Or canny planning? We riposte, you decide!

WHO THE HELL IS KARIM GARCIA?

No one else in the sports media is going to say it, it's up to your old fatihful Mr. P to set the record straight here and identify the primary culprit in yesterday's bashfest between the Yankees and the Red Sox, the one that culminated in what I will unabashedly admit has to be my all-time favorite non-Angels or Lakers sports moment:

Seeing the Gerbil, Don Zimmer, go down in a heap, face in the grass, as befits such a long-time loser as Zim certainly is, and has always been. And he has no one to blame but his own player.

But let's back up, in case there are people on this planet who are not already familiar with what went down yesterday in the hotly contested A.L. League Championship Series between the bitter east coast rivals.

The Yankees, as everyone knows, is team sports most successful all-time franchise, having won about 50 pennants or World Series, with a late 90s resurgence that make them the favorites to go all the way every single year. Everyone outside New York hates the Yankees, more or less, because of the brazen way they do business and their consistent unassailable success.

The Red Sox, by contrast, are baseball's most cursed franchise, with a close to 90 year legacy of failure that has confounded generation after generation of Beantown rooters, not to mention having the additional dubious distinction of being hated by just as many outside their city as the Yankees (which has almost everything to do with Boston fans ability to be thoroughly obnoxious frontrunners who see their dreams die year after year after year - I've seen them plenty over the years at Angels Stadium), unlike baseball's other cursed team, the Chicago Cubs, who at least are considered "lovable" losers, even as their own history of failure eclipses Boston's.

The Cubs got a bit lucky this post-season, drawing the upstart but inexperienced Florida Marlins in the second round, while Boston got the Yankees, who are under pressure from their own fans and owner to get back up to snuff - they haven't won a pennant since 2001, and haven't won the World Series since 2000. The Red Sox haven't won a World Series since World War 1. Another problem: the Yankees have a better team. But you have to play the games, as they say, and anything can happen.

And yesterday it did, because Red Sox pitching ace Pedro Martinez had one get away from him and plunk a Yankees batter in the back. It looked worse than it was, really. Plus, with runners on second and third and no one out, I doubt seriously if Martinez was looking for more baserunners in that situation. However, Martinez has a solid rep as someone who can and will plunk your ass without provocation, so when he hit the batter in the back, the batter, instead of just running down to first and taking his base, stood there at the plate and started yelling at Martinez, challenging him to a fight, trying to act bad-ass or whatever it was he was trying to do. The benches did not empty at that point, but a batter later, when Martinez got the next player to hit into a double play, the one he hit slid real hard into second base and took out the fielder, and that precipitated another round of finger-pointing and yelling, including Martinez yelling into the Yankee dugout and telling someone he's going to throw at his head.

So, okay. We've got a hard-nosed but brilliant pitcher getting in a little trouble and we have a Yankees player who has taken it upon himself to "start things up" and become a big macho man. Who was this player? Was it pretty-boy Derek Jeter? South Hills' own Jason Giambi? Guitar virtuouso Bernie Williams? Pesky Alfonso Soriano? Newly acquired Hideki Matsui? These comprise the "star" players on the Yankees, and if you threw at one of them they may or may not go ballistic, but the upshot here is that they are all veteran players and most of them, aside from Matsui, have been on the team for a while. But it was not any of these players that got hit and got all bad-ass and threatening. It was a journeyman outfielder/part time player named Karim Garcia. Which begs the question:

Who the hell is Karim Garcia? And what the fuck was he thinking anyway?

Garcia is a guy who started out on the Dodgers, couldn't make it, and has since bounced around the majors, never staying in one place very long, and almost never putting up any kind of decent numbers, except he got lucky and crash-landed on the Yankees this year and did all right as a reserve outfielder, sharing the role with a couple others. And he produced way better than that notorious stiff Raul Mondesi, so there you go. When you're as loaded as the Yankees are, you can afford to carry a player or two like Garcia, but he's also a guy that is easily expendable, and it's pretty certain that he will be riding the pine on some crappy team next year - or not. Now, he could easily be seen as a defender of Yankee Pride, or some other such bullshit.

But really what he is is a hothead that didn't have enough sense to run down to first, which started this domino of events that culminated in another meathead, Manny Ramirez, overreacting to a Roger Clemons pitch (as if Clemens wouldn't have plunked his ass in the head if he really wanted to), which caused the bench-clearing brawl that caused Don Zimmer, of all people, to come out and try to hit Martinez in the head only to be pushed head first into the ground. Zimmer has a metal plate in his head, which probably explains things, and he evoked much sympathy from the announcers, but come on, it's Don Zimmer for crying out loud, who has as much call to go after someone as Garcia does.

And by the way, Garcia went into the Yankees bullpen later in the game and stomped on a Fenway Park groundskeeper with his cleats. Real class act, this guy.

Everyone hates the Yankees, so much so that they develop a swagger and smugness that apparently rubs off on even the just-lucky-to-be-there utility players, who have as much to do with the Yankee success as I do. So a guy like Karim Garcia figures that Martinez ought not to headhunting his direction. I figure that Garcia is an imbecile that started this whole brohauhua, which mark my words will get 100 times uglier when the teams return to New York and which will have implications in the N.Y.-Boston rivalry for generations to come.

Fuck you Garcia, you're a nobody who's having a lucky year, that's all. But all people will remember is Don Zimmer going down, and mostly all of them aren't sick and twisted like me to truly appreciate it.