Mmm...Grapes

"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."
--Galileo

Let's See...

Not much going on around here today.

Finished a great book last night -- The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk. Wouk didn't seem to be trying to be deep or innovative or to make a point about anything. It's just a damn good story very well told.

There's a guy in the basement making a mess in order to install some glass block windows. A mess and lots of noise.

Found a killer sushi bar last week while in Sharonville for some work-related training.

Ichiro's gonna do it.

Last night was Ruthie's turn to be in charge of our Tuesday night hang-out time. She elected to have us watch the WKRP in Cincinnati pilot episode from September of 1978. Remember it? Great show. There were people watching with us last night who hadn't been born when it first aired.

Ruthie's about ten minutes from starting to show.

Major League Baseball is going to try D.C. for a third time. Will they call them the Senators again? Will they magically stop sucking just because they're no longer the Expos? (I'm guessing "no" to both questions.)

Dividing the Plunder is playing Sunday night at Leo Coffehouse. They're worth your time.

It's gotten awful quiet downstairs; I'd better go check on him.

Good day, and may the good news be yours.

Hey Ma, Check this Out

Just got off the phone with Rob Knapp, the only friend left from my time in Michigan. I miss him. We played some phone tag a couple months ago and finally connected this morning for the first time in a couple years. We don't talk often enough -- I'm so lazy about stuff like that.

Rob and I spent a lot of time together when we were Freshmen and Sophomores in high school in Lansing, Michigan. Long hours spent listening to KISS and The Guess Who and playing Strat-O-Matic and blowing off Spanish homework. We were good for each other. Then in 1988 my family moved away. We're both in our thirties now and married; he with three kids and I with one en route. We've kept in touch in a kind of sporadic way, but it seems like every time we talk I realize that it's been way too long and promise myself I'll be better about it from now on. Maybe this time. You've heard that proverb about if you only have, like, four true friends, then you're doing pretty good? Well Rob's on my list and he counts for two.

At any rate, it was good to catch up, and now I have to go to work. Life does roll on, doesn't it?

The Thing About the Red Sox

Let’s get this out in the open. As a Yankees fan, I don’t generally spend much energy harping about other teams, (this is part of what it means to root for the greatest franchise in American team sports history,) but it’s September again, and the Red Sox are fighting for the division again. They have a very good team again and their fans, along with simple Yankee haters looking for somewhere positive to channel all their bile, are again hopeful that this will be The Year The Curse is Broken. And it may be. I’m rational enough about my baseball to recognize and admit that, curse aside, this Boston team is completely capable of making a deep run in the playoffs.

But here’s the thing. Let’s say that the Red Sox, who just a month ago were fighting for the Wild Card, storm all the way back and win the American League East. And let’s say that the Yankees don’t just lose the division, but crash and burn and miss the Wild Card and the playoffs altogether. Or better still, let’s say that the Yanks get the Wild Card, but are crushed in the ALCS by the Sox. And let’s further say that Boston goes on to beat a very good Cardinals team (or whomever) in the World Series and ends the Curse. I don’t expect any of that to happen, but let’s say it did.

It wouldn’t matter.

It wouldn’t change the fact that it’s been 85 years since they’ve won it all.

It wouldn’t change the fact that for the better part of a hundred years, that franchise and it’s fans have found their identity in not being the Yankees and that that’s an identity founded on failure.

It wouldn’t change the fact that a team who’s All-Time roster includes names like Foxx, Speaker, Yastrzemski, Rice, Boggs, and Williams has been mismanaged so badly over the years, from both the dugout and the front office, that they haven’t been able to win big. (There’s your curse.)

Or that they've been one game away from it four times. One game.

It wouldn’t change the fact that Dan Duquette let Roger Clemens get away when he still had multiple Cy Young Awards in him.

It wouldn’t change the fact that Carlton Fisk’s historic World Series home run didn't matter.

That Manny Ramirez is the worst outfielder I think I’ve ever seen. Worst base runner too.

That Bucky Dent had only hit four home runs in 1978 before the day he went yard in Fenway, and that the only reason that one mattered was that the Red Sox had blown a double digit games lead late in the season.

That Buckner let that ball get through him.

That Pedro Martinez tried to beat up a seventy-two year old man.

That Aaron Boon was a Yankee just long enough to hit the biggest home run of his life.

That Theo Epstein couldn’t get the ARod deal done.

That BoSox owner Harry Frazee sold The Babe to the Yankees for $100,000 to finance a show called No No Nanette (which flopped) and that Boston hasn’t won the World Series since. Pete Rose bet on baseball and has been punished with a lifetime ban from the game. Frazee gambled on musical theater, lost, and his baseball progeny have been punished with something similarly painful (except to those of us who’re enjoying it).

So hate all you want--we like it. Print your “Yankees suck--Jeter SWALLOWS” tee shirts and wear your “You Can Take Your 27 Rings and Shove them Up Your Ass!” hats with pride. Boo the Yanks ‘til your lungs bleed and cheer for the Boston nine with whatever’s left. Get all worked up about the prospect of actually winning the division (ooh!) and dream about winning it all. It’s kinda cute.

And it doesn’t matter.

1918

Hey

Anybody seen Punch-Drunk Love?

If You've Got a Minute

Here's a nice article on George Sisler.

Priceless

So the last remnant of my truck's tailpipe finally rusts off the other day (I'd been picking up pieces and throwing them in the truckbed for weeks) as I'm on my way to work. You can't miss the dragging and scraping when those things hit the ground. And just as that happens and I'm turning the corner, I see flashing lights behind me, and I think, can they really pull you over for a hanging tailpipe? (Dale says they can.) This was about something else, though.

It was a Hamilton County cop (that's what Dale is too,) not a Cincinnati cop, and I'm a white guy, so I didn't figure he'd shoot me, but I was at that point doomed to be late for work for the first time in five years. This bummed me out. Then things got worse.

He asks to see my driver's license, which I had at the ready, and proof of insurance, which I never did find. (It was in my glove box the whole time -- Ruthie found it yesterday.) Says to me, "You're driving with expired tags." And I said, "Really?" And he said, "Uh huh," and with my own driver's license pointed out to me my own birthday, which was two months ago. At which point it occurred to me that he was right; I had indeed forgotten to get new tags. I guess the excitement of getting a new license this year had distracted me from the tag thing. Nerts.

So he writes me a ticket and "suggests" that I get it taken care of that very day in order to avoid another ticket and possible towing. Which is great, except that I was on my way to work and wasn't sure when I'd find the time. (The work people don't care about stuff like this. It's retail, and there aren't any reports that deal with expired tags.) I decided that the best I could do was to take off for the BMV on my lunch break and hope to get it done in an hour.

Lunchtime comes and I drive responsibly to the BMV where they tell me that before I can get new tags I have to get an emissions test (here in Ohio, where the river bends, that's called an "E-Check"). This is problematic for a couple reasons. The first is the time factor -- E-checks take forever. The second reason is even trickier. First thing they do when your turn at the E-Check place finally comes (they take forever because the lines are long and slow) is hook a hose up to your tailpipe, and as you may remember, my tailpipe was, at that point, in rusty pieces in the bed of my truck. Nerts again.

At this point, the story gets much less amusing -- I dropped the truck off at the shop and found a ride back to work (thanks, Ma). By the time this is over, I'll have paid for the ticket, the new tags, the E-Check and the new exhaust system. What a pain. Pulled over for the first time in like fifteen years and it's not for being a bad driver (which I am) but for not having the correctly color coded stickers on my license plate. Somehow I don't feel like I got my money's worth.

All $500 of it.

Catching Up

Ruthie and I saw The Notebook over the weekend. For reasons I can't nail down, I'm a sucker for stuff like that. Loved it.

Happy Birthday Ruthie!

Book Report

Finished Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. It's brilliant.

Almost Famous

Watched Almost Famous the other night on the recommendation of one of Ruthie's friends from work. I had no idea what it was about, and therefore no expectations or preconceptions. It's good, and the big, swing-for-the-fences emotionally climactic scene at the end is set to Zeppelin's "The Rain Song" which is as beautiful as music gets.

Liked it.

Ichiro Watch

.379

Two more hits last night.

He also happens to be the best defensive right fielder since Clemente.

Have You Seen This?

Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez is in a Speed Stick commercial at the end of which the product is superimposed over a nighttime picture of a ballpark lit up by the kind of light towers that have dozens of bulbs at the top of each of them. Each tower has some burned out bulbs, but the bulbs of the most prominent one seem to be burned out in a way that reads, "E5." Error, third base, if you're scoring at home, (or even if you're alone).

Lest it go Unsaid

George Sisler, whose record Ichiro is about to break, was a wonderful baseball player. He's been on my Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame team for years.

Ichiro Watch

.379!

Five for five last night! Five more hits?!

223 for the season!?!

You've got to be kidding!

I love him so!

I've Been Telling The Ruth for Years

Everything happened in 1984.

The World I Live In

Last night, my wife asked me nicely not to pee on the tablecloth before her folks get here tonight.

Heard a Little Heartbeat

Kind of an anticlimax.

And...

Happy September!

Ichiro Watch

.371 with 212 hits.