Fantasy

I’m in a half-assed, zero-stakes fantasy league. Even though the league itself is a relatively neglected joke, I’m in ninth place out of ten and 57 points behind the league leader. 

The main con of neglecting my team is that I don’t pay close enough attention to all the names in MLB and their real life performances. I continue to be disproportionately focused on the AL East and have major gaps in my overall knowledge of young up and comers, or really anyone that was never associated with the Red Sox or Yankees. Also, of course, I’m not proving myself to the guy who reluctantly let me in the league. 

I finally made an effort to move some players around and get on track, seeing as there are just over two full months of regular season baseball to go. At this point, it’s an issue of pride, not of overtaking the leader. I don’t want to be as pathetically far behind as I am now, but since there’s nothing at stake as far as losing money, I don’t care where I place, as long as it’s not dead last. 

It occurred to me that even leagues that require entry fees are very low stakes. For example, my friend’s $25 fee league only rewards just under $200 to the first place winner. Is it honestly worth obsessively following your league for half a year of countless games for such a small payout? Most anyone my age can earn that much in a single day. One gambling set-up that is far more logical and far less time consuming is betting on football every week. My friend and his group would each put in $5 every week and whoever guessed the most correct game outcomes took all. You didn’t have to obsess, just guess. I mean, $5 a week is hardly a tough loss. It’s better than being a scratch ticket addict. And when you win, you make back a whole football season’s worth of losses.

In my opinion, the guys who obsessively follow their leagues are as well aware as I am that the stakes ain’t high. It’s not about the money. It’s a male pride thing. They want to prove that they are ever ahead of the curve and know exactly how to manage a perfect roster. Guys spend tons of water cooler and lunch break time trying to one-up each other’s baseball knowledge as it is. Fantasy just brings a more blatant aspect of competition and small payout to the table. 

Now that football season is around the corner, I hear a lot of jibber jabber on ESPN about registering for fantasy football. I’m straight with that considering how poorly I’m doing with my favorite sport.

You Schmooze, You Lose

My Dad worked for a company in Boston that had a luxury box at Fenway for many years. Sometimes, he could only get 2-4 tickets for himself plus his family and friends, but because he was a division head, he sometimes got the entire box for certain games. Those ones were always the most enjoyable, although I still always opted to stuff my face with free food the first couple innings, then go “mingle with the commoners” the rest of the game. When Dad got to attend the 1999 All Star Game at Fenway, I expressed jealousy, to which he replied it would just be a boring shmooze-fest of suits.

Most luxury box games were high on shmoozing and low on game-watching. Many spectators, especially indifferent wives, would actually opt to sit inside with the AC blasting and watch the game on the TV isntead of the real thing right outside. Because I was so young during those years, there was never too much pressure to engage in cocktail party-esque conversation. But now that I’m an adult, I realize that other adults, like my father, get trapped, while I was able to roam free and go down to the general seating areas.

One thing I can’t help but be bitter about is that my stepmother has replaced me as the first person who gets an extra ticket in the era of my Dad no longer having the ticket “hookup.” Dad knows as well as I do that I am more knowledgable and interested when it comes to any sport, especially baseball, but spouse trumps daughter. That’s how the cookie crumbles. Another reason I think my stepmother gets first dibs is…she’s a better shmoozer. When I’m at a party, I usually just talk to the two or three favorite people there I already know. I don’t float around, politely making conversation with everyone. I don’t want to be one of those brides who has to spend her entire wedding reception giving everyone equal small talk facetime, without even getting a chance to touch the food or champagne. It ain’t my style.

The office that sent me to work at Yankee stadium last weekend is very casual and there are plenty of die-hard baseball fans working there. But everyone who attended the game besides myself was a girl or gay guy who couldn’t even pick A-Rod or Jeter out of a crowd. Watching a game with them reminded me of how unfair it is people get hooked up with such great seats through profitable companies while little kids and die hard blue collar fans have to sit in the nosebleeds. While kids sporting gloves squint to see the field clearly, you have crowds like mine talking about anything and everything but baseball when they are so close they can read the lips of players.

I am Red Sox Nation, Hear me Roar

The Sox are on a real dry spell – of hitting – and, more importantly, of posting W’s. The return from the All-Star Break always seems to mark a turning point in the season, and I don’t like what I’m seeing so far. The fact the Yankees have enjoyed a lengthy, still ongoing homestand while we have been on the road is partially responsible for their relative success. But something’s gotta give. Entire teams don’t slump. Plus, the Rays are back at it and silencing the mouths of everyone who had written them off as the “wait til last year” poster children.

The upcoming schedule will allow us to catch a break. But leading up to our next, four game series against the Yanks in early August, we will twice face the Rays on the road. I no longer feel any consolation in the fact we’ve owned the rivalry in direct competition versus the Yankees this season. There is no way in Hell we are going to push through four more away games without at least one L, so we’d better get our A game, or at least our B+ game, back by then.

Shaky Wakey on the DL

Red Sox Nations’ clamoring for Clay Buchholz is finally being honored, but at what price? I’m a pretty enthusiastic Wakefield fan, even though I need to OD on Xanax to watch him pitch, lest suffer an anxiety attack. We shall see how things play out. In other news, my infatuation with the Michael Vick saga continues, as his release from federal custody seems to be the number one story on Sports Center. Also, the chances the Sox score Halladay are slim to none in my opinion. Time will tell what the looming trade deadline has in store for us.

AL East Tied Up

I’m not diggin’ this post All Star mini-meltdown. Momentum is working against us, with the Yanks on a hot streak. This is the time of year I have to start blowing extra bucks on bar tabs, so I can catch every game that’s only on NESN.

In other news, since I’m not working today, I flipped on ESPN and effin’ football coverage is starting to take over. I like football just fine and think it really helps us all remain sane and stay off the Prozac during the winter, but it always irks me when obsessive football coverage overshadows baseball; especially in October. Being from Boston, a town where baseball is easily the dominant sport, it never fails to surprise me that football is overwhelmingly more popular.

A particular memory I have is my Monday night journalism class at Tulane in New Orleans. This was 2003, when the Saints were still kind of a joke, but the Monday sports section in the Times Picayune would cover the play by play of the Saints ass-kicking the day before every week without fail and baseball playoff coverage was limited to 2 or 3 sentences grabbed from the AP.

E! True Hollywood Story Baseball Wives

During the dry spell that is summer TV programming, I tend to DVR the crap out of Seinfeld and other go-to favorites. So I was somewhat psyched that E! had a “Baseball Wives” special. Overall, nothing too exciting or scandalous. Not the Jose Canseco’s wife-esque tell all I was hoping to sink my teeth into. The program stuck to pretty safe territory, profiling the wives of Cole Hamels and Jorge Posada, among others. The one thing I did take away from it was the struggle minor leaguers go through, financially and otherwise. Minor league ballplayers often have to rely on their wives to help carry the family’s expenses while they wait, often in vain, to get called up. The difference in lifestyle is immense. Yet another reason I need to see Bull Durham again ASAP.

To switch the baseball entertainment subject, I love the MLB network like many others, but there’s one program I just don’t like at all, which is Quick Pitch. The highlights are just too brief and don’t even give you a taste of the game. Hazel Mae is a comforting, familiar face to watch though.

One thing I love about the summer is the prevalence of great baseball documentaries during the peak of the season. I recently saw a fantastic HBO documentary about the history of the Dodgers and watched the more recent Ted Williams documentary Saturday. What struck me about the Dodgers documentary is how much you learn about Brooklyn and the rich cultural heritage of the borough. It enforces the idea that Brooklynites have a very strong sense of identity. The Williams documentary was great in that it didn’t make any effort not to portray the man as the grouch that he was. I loved the audio quotes they played back where he says “Goddammit” and “Son of a Bitch” every two seconds. Looking at the way Williams treated hitting is interesting in this day of steroid scandals. The man just studied hitting to the point of obsession and considering one of his nicknames was the Splendid Splinter, the skinny dude was not juiced and jacked up like most big hitters today. Of course, the frozen body thing comes up. The dysfunctional relationship between Williams and his kids kinda gives me creeped out goosebumps.

Start Spreadin’ the News

This weekend, I witnessed Mariano Rivera come out of the bullpen and heard Sinatra’s “New York, New York” three times each at Yankee Stadium. Worse than the Yankees sweeping the Tigers is the fact I engaged in multiple acts of Calcetines Rojos betrayal.   

One of my 800 part time jobs offered me work at the stadium over the weekend; work that came with three free tickets to the games. Having never seen the new Yankee Stadium, I was thrilled to do work that was, for me, paid leisure.

However, the gig came with strings attached. I was told we had to wear Yankees jerseys, as we were distributing satisfaction surveys about the new stadium. Consultant company reps working incognito as Yankee franchise affiliates. In the end, I got more of a polo shirt similar to the ones the “How Can I Help You” sign-holding customer service employees wear. The emblem of evil was small enough that my long hair could cover it fully. Not that that’s an excuse. 

Leading up to the weekend, I felt like I was selling my soul to the devil for a few extra work hours. Hey, I need the money. But this was the first official time, three times really, I donned the arch-nemesis’ gear. The only time I’ve seen a fellow Bostonian voluntarily wear Yankees gear was when a Northeastern student wore an A-Rod T-Shirt and a tutu on Halloween of 2004. Even that guy, I hope, stole the shirt from his New Yorker college roommate and didn’t actually give money to the cause of his hilarious costume.

Another reason I feel like I’ve gone soft is that I offered my unwanted Yankees shirt to my roommate from Westchester instead of burning it. What can I say? She’s a nice girl and offers me food when she cooks, something this undomesticated broad is incapable of.

It was interesting to see what Yankees fans said on their written surveys. Many rants and raves about the new stadium being a “money grab” and plenty of gripes about having their season ticket seats downgraded. There were many positive comments such as “This place is heaven on Earth.” But I found it ironic that, to the embittered fans, my Yankees polo shirt and I represented the selfish interests of the franchise. I believe in trying to preserve old ballparks and am thrilled that Fenway Park still stands. I didn’t spill my heart out about being a Red Sox fan to everyone, but I chose to blow my cover on several occasions.

Our comped seats were amazing. 100 Level every day with day one behind home plate, day two behind the Yankees dugout and day three along the third baseline. Seats my $0.50 average monthly disposable income after booze purchases doesn’t quite cover. It was certainly to my benefit that the prime seats aren’t selling and living above your means for a few days is always enjoyable.

One thing that irritated me about the new stadium is that everything is, indeed, a plug for brand promotion. It gets nauseating. One example is when the Yanks start using relief pitchers, they announce it as an “AT&T call to the bullpen.” AT&T even had a kiosk near the concessions, and if that isn’t mall-esque, I don’t know what is. Every baseball stadium makes shameless use of “brought to you by” announcements, but the overuse at Yankee Stadium was far from subtle.

An entertainment portion I couldn’t help but love was the 24 Hour Fitness “Flex Your Muscles” where the camera spans the audience encouraging them to flex. 24 Hour Fitness is Derek Jeter’s gym, but the guys you see flexing on the camera probably go somewhere more low end like Gold’s. It’s really just a display of guido gym rat toolbags from Long Island showing off how overly bulky they are. Cheese.

Part of the reason I felt like a bit of a traitor this weekend is I wasn’t very vocal about opposing the Yankees. I don’t have strong feelings about the Tigers, so I couldn’t genuinely cheer them on and my booing was more or less reserved for Johnny Damon’s at-bats. It felt strange to sit through three games not really clapping or exhibiting strong reactions to the plays. If it had been a Red Sox series, of course I’d have had plenty of Boston fans to cheer against the Yankees with, but I didn’t feel compelled to relish in every action that went against the Yankees this weekend. I also just couldn’t help but stand up with the rest of them when Mariano Rivera came out. It really is one of the coolest moments of the game, everyone knowing a win is within reach, rocking out to “Enter Sandman.” 

The funny thing about our superb seats was that the other people working didn’t realize what a commodity they were. The other part timers at my job are actresses who want flexible schedules and general theatre types who couldn’t care less about sports. Their indifference benefitted many others, though. On Friday, my friend who has nosebleed season tickets was able to get his whole group of six down to our area by the 7th inning. Yesterday, my friend and his buddy came up and my friend is a hardcore Yankees fan working in sports professionally. It was great for them to be so close they could see the players’ facial expressions and heckle both Yanks and Tigers about how they were performing in their fantasy league (one quote being “I’m giving you a raise next year, seven dollars!”) For me, it was nice to see Diva A-Rod have a mini-tantrum following one strikeout, not that his bat was anywhere near silent overall. His homers in games 2 and 3 were largely responsible for the wins in the low scoring games.

Game two was spent with amateur spectators. The actresses decided to stick around and spent the entire game commenting on the players’ looks, trying to start the wave (ugh) and trying to get on the jumpotron (groan). The funny thing was, nobody in the group knew I had a clue about baseball. Usually, when you get clueless girls watching games, they’ll have a go-to person to ask questions when they don’t understand a play or certain statistics. Because I am a girl, it seems everyone assumed I was as clueless as they and didn’t flatter me by asking for explanations and in depth analysis.

Yesterday was Old Timers Day. Among the many returning players, from Don Zimmer to Ken Griffey Senior to Joe Pepitone, was Bucky Dent, a man whose name still stings the ears of Bostonians. Of course, Mike Mussina pitched, which is ridiculous seeing as the man’s been retired for five minutes. It was kind of endearing to watch the really old dudes who are far further out of shape than Moose simply let the balls roll to them without charging them, though. And, yet again, watching the announcements of the former players really did make me feel the pride of Yankees fans to a point I had to consciously repel the influence on my own emotions.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable weekend, but the Sox did drop 2 out of 3, leaving a miniscule one game lead over the Yanks going into today.

P.S. I had multiple sightings of Kevin Connelly, also known as “E” from Entourage and, yes, he IS that short in person.

P.P.S. Also saw a random Baldwin brother, the one from “I’m a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here.” Kind of a novelty to have seats that are so good, you see the celebs up close. Didn’t see A-Rod’s new girl toy Kate Hudson, though.

Kickin’ it Old School Sox Style

The only blown lead in Sox history that exceeds today’s nine blown runs occurred in 1989. Choking of this magnitude is SOOOO Old School Red Sox. Happens to the best of us, but let’s not make it a habit.

After They Were Famous….

During the peak of my awkward tomboy years, when I was thoroughly in denial of puberty, I got really into the 1993 playoff season. Although I was a temporary/bandwagon Phillies fan at the time, I didn’t just fall in love with Lenny Dykstra and John Kruk, but the Blue Jays’ Roberto Alomar as well.

Time has passed and the other day, I had a “what ever happened to…” moment. I hadn’t heard much about Roberto Alomar since his notorious spitting at an ump incident so I Googled him. Yeah. He has full blown AIDS. I had no idea. I mean, when Magic was diagnosed with HIV, everyone and their mom heard about it. Somehow Roberto Alomar didn’t get as much press. Or the news broke during one of my stints living in a box (actually a boot, Italy, where it was easy to fall out of the loop). 

I was a tad saddened by the news. I’m guessing he was infected by a gross groupie when he’d had a few too many after a big win. But to top that and thoroughly put the nail in the coffin of my naive, 4th grader’s views of the ’93 World Series squad, I stumbled on a horror story about the current Lenny Dykstra. While channel surfing, I stalled on Real Sports, which was running a story about the trainwreck that is Dykstra’s financial situation. Apparently, he embraced the world of finance after being ripped off by someone who mishandled a large sum of money meant to be invested for his retirement. Not long ago, he was flying high and now, he is deeper into debt then Michael Jackson supposedly was. It wasn’t these superficial facts that got me; it was watching a thoroughly disoriented and bloated Dykstra awkwardly answer the interview questions. He was slurring and stumbling over his words, he must have gained at least forty or fifty pounds and he was virtually unrecognizable. Dykstra supposedly owes a whole slew of people money and is facing at least a half dozen lawsuits. He pretty much summed it up saying “those people are all full of shit, I don’t owe them shit.” Hmmm, Nails is meant to be seen, not heard. Well, not seen either in his current form. Dude needs to hit the gym.

Sometimes, I prefer not to hear about the extracurricular lives of my current and former heroes. Back in the good old days before reality shows and tabloids ruled the world, it was easier to turn a blind eye to the personal antics of your favorite movie stars and athletes. I generally think of baseball as an escape and having to be reminded that these players are, in fact human and not, for example, immune to HIV, is a tad depressing.

New York, New York

I’m gonna be honest. I love this picture you see everywhere of Yanks fans.