Don't Call It a Comeback

Fourteen-hour days, with the faint promise of meager pay, can wear a person down and lead to blog neglect. But a headline like "Electrocuted Squirrel Causes Grass Fire," can ressurect a blog as sure as Jesus did Lazarus. Thus I sign off, having referenced both squirrels and Jesus.

Did I Just Hear What I Thought I Just Heard?

I personally try to listen to the Fox baseball announcers as little as possible. Thus, when something really "out of left-field" slips from their mouths, I'm never quite sure if I heard it correctly. However, during Game 5 of the ALDS I distinctly heard Tim McCarver or Joe Buck speculate that "Robinson Cano's happy to be playing in New York, because," unlike where he was brought up, "they have electricity and running water." The guy's from Dominican Republic--he didn't grow up in a yurt on the Mongolian steppes. Did anybody else hear this, or am I losing my mind (or option (c), all of the above)?

Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another.

I have never seen the way George W. Bush, fraternity rush chairman that he is, collects sycophants so clearly as I did this morning. In the released documents for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, she refers to W. and Laura as "the greatest" and, worrisomely, as "cool." Now say what you will about Justice Antonin Scalia, but I'm willing to bet that he has never described anyone with a phrase so insouciant as "cool" (I do like to imagine him and Dick Cheney blowing the shit out of some ducks and then saying "Cool" before bursting into Beavis-and-Butthead-esque giggles, but that's neither here nor there). Bush takes the Karl Roves of the world, convinces them they're part of his (shudder) cool little club, and then uses them for years. Later, they will be rewarded with political hack appointments. It's just all so crazy, but people really love this dope.

I am discounting Miers statements on Bush's birthday card that "You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect." As anyone knows, you should never trust what is written on the office birthday card. I'm sure she just threw that "best governer ever" thing out there because "Have a super great b-day" was already taken.

1-800-NYC-SAFE

Bit of a rite of passage over the weekend, with my first New York terrorism scare. I think it's positively hilarious that the Bush Administration admonished the New York authorities for raising a false alarm. How quickly they forget Tom Ridge and his color wheel. Or maybe what the Bushies meant was to critique Bloomberg and Company for their timing. The Administration learned long ago that a terrorism alert is only useful when there's an important election coming up. I mean, seriously, what amateurs. Because when we can't use terrorism to spread fear in the hearts of the populace, the terrorists win.

Laundry Day

You could sense it in the Red Sox fans as this week's ALDS wound down. It was a road they'd been down many a time. The Sox Nation followers I talked to just felt that this year's team didn't have it. I wore my old skool White Sox hat today and heard nary a heckle (though one person did mistake it for a Boston cap). I guess it's sporting to give a fan base that's waited 88 years a shot at the World Series. The faithful can always take heart in the fact that, should they go head to head in a washing machine, the red socks will always triumph over the white, resulting in a kind of pinky color.

Baseball in October

October is upon us once again and most everyone in baseball land has gone home for the winter. This includes, of course, the realm of fantasy. With a frantic barrage of homeruns in the final two weeks, my team, The Lefebvre Believers, managed to crawl out of the cellar and finish in 9th place out of 10. We got some good performances this season out of young and cheap players like Gustavo Chacin and Mark Ellis, laying the groundwork for next year's team. My faith in the respective shoulders of Richie Sexson and Eddie Guardado was not misplaced, and Placido Palanco turned out to be a fortuitous mid-season signing. Emily Dickinson said that hope was "the thing with feathers," but I prefer to think that hope is next season. (In the interest of proving myself not a complete fantasy incompetant, I did finish 4th out of 12 in my non-pay league. I guess that's what signing Michael Young, David Ortiz, Joe Mauer and Jason Bay will do for ya).

In the world of actual baseball, a difficult-to-locate prediction continues to haunt me. Google has failed to locate this article, but I distinctly remember Ruben Sierra, at the height of the mid-season Yankee mediocrity, predicting they'd make the playoffs. I remember writing it off at the time as the stiff-upper lip fantasies of a journeyman whose best days most likely involved a needle and Jose Canseco back in Texas. But who's laughing now? That's right, Ruben is. Damn you, game of averages! I think what bugs me about the whole thing is not the collapse of the Red Sox or the lack of parity in the AL East, but that I don't feel like the Yankees have a right to things working out. When Randy Johnson, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano and Kevin Brown all have old age catch up with them, how is it that the Yankees can procure an Aaron Small or Shawn Chacon to prop up their rotation? How, in a farm system pillaged over the last 10 years, can a better-than-average second baseman like Robinson Cano survive and prosper? It makes me think of the Chuck Klosterman musing about the U.S. government controlling the outcomes of every baseball season. Could it happen here? I'm expecting the White Sox and Cardinals in the World Series, but we'll see.