We put the yong in yongquan

Bill:
While it's a relief to finally be rid of the burden known as B.K. Kim, I always had a soft spot for the guy, always hoped he'd do well … still do.

 

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Mike:
Poor dude lost his "chi" you know? Once you lose your chi you're so fucked.

 

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Bill:
No chance of a chi recovery in Colorado?

 

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Mike:
Oh, right. Sure. It's not like he's given up 8 home runs in the 18 games he's pitched at Coors or anything. He'll do fine in that mile high chi helpful Denvah air.

 

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Bill:
Well, you know what they say, "The dantien is where the chi finds its root - the yongquan is where the body finds its root."

 

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Mike:
What's that from? Kill Bill Volume 1? Kung Fu Season 1?

 

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Bill:
Neither. Route 1. Saugus. Kowloon fortune cookie. [Laughs]

 

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One year later...

Today marks the one year anniversary of The Soxaholix website …

From the author:
Hart here, just wanted to say thanks to all of you who've made The Soxaholix a regular stop on your travels through the blogosphere during the 365 days, 279 strips, and 1824 comments that have passed since Bill and Doug became the first characters to speak on March 30, 2004.

 

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From the author:
That first April the site clocked just over 15,000 page views which totally blew my mind. Who knew that a year later we'd be averaging just shy of 50,000 page views a month and be fans of the defending World Champs?

 

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From the author:
As one of the characters might say, Un-fucking-believable!

 

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Rider on Green Line:
Thanks so much, and I look forward to what the next year will hold for all of us.

 

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From the author::
And just so I don't leave you without a link, check out the first question in this quiz for Spankees fans. Gotta love it.

 

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Know when to fold 'em

Bill:
Is it me or is it fucking wee-ahd that the Globe chooses to insert the review Shaughnessy's latest book in the Sports section rather than the Arts and Entertainment section?

 

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Doug:
Yeah, no shit, isn't that some sort of collusion or something?

 

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Bill:
I'm writing the Globe's ombudsman on this one. Fucking unctuous bahstids.

 

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Doug:
By the way, are you going to read it, Shank's book?

 

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Bill:
Fuck yeah I am. By default I'm buying and reading every single book written about the 2004 season. That's what makes the Globe's playing fast and loose with journalistic integrity so infuriating. I'm already a consumer suckah for all things Red Sox, don't fuck with me by using the sports pages for blatant huckstering.

 

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Doug:
Admirable old man, but who the fuck has time for all that reading? Me, I'm going to wait until the comic version comes out … In the meantime, I'm going to be learning exciting stuff like how to fold shirts and shit.

 

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Our complicated world

Tara:
If you read only one thing this week, baseball related or otherwise, it should be the Bill James interview at SoSH.

 

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Mike:
No kidding. What I like best about James is how his baseball analysis leads to insight beyond the game.

 

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Tara:
Like how "the concept of 'professionalism,' has damaged our culture in so many ways"?

 

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Mike:
Absolutely. Or here's anothah, "Standardization destroys the ability to adapt." He's discussing the height of pitching mounds, but you can apply the same theory to education or battlefield tactics in a war.

 

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Tara:
And this is one for the ages: "The real world is vastly more complicated than the image of it that we carry around in our heads. Many things are real and important that are not explained by our theories—no matter who we are, no matter how intelligent we are."

 

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Mike:
It's like the Zen thing of a wise man knowing that he is not wise.

 

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Tara:
Absolutely … Hey, you heard the latest on our man Da Kine?

 

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Mike:
I wince reading through that list of injuries … makes Schilling's bloody sock seem like kid's stuff.

 

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Tara:
And Curt Schilling would be the first to agree.

 

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Atun Baby!

Susan/Circle:
So somebody please tell me that these Spring Training games with the Orioles are not an omen of a second consecutive season of getting pimp slapped by Baltimore ovah and ovah again?

 

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Mike:
Ah, Christ, not a protraction of the mofo Curse of the Edgar Allen Poe?

 

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Susan/Circle:
Speaking of Baltimore drunkahds, I see Sidney Ponson is in the news again.

 

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Mike:
That line from the drunk picking a fight with Ponson is effin classic: "So, you're the Aruban tough guy." [Laughs]

 

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Susan/Circle:
Yeah, you know, just to make sure he's not confusing him with "the Bahamian tough guy" or the "St. Kitt's tough guy" … it's tough to keep all these small Carribean island nation tough guys straight fercrissakes!

 

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Mike:
No kidding … Hey, didn't you just go to a birthday pahty at a sushi bah in Brookline?

 

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Susan/Circle:
Yeah, don't remind me. While I risk loss of membership to hipster club by admitting it, truth is I can't effin' stand sushi.

 

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Mike:
What about sushi bah waitahs? Is this you?

 

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Susan/Circle:
Yeah, you know me, all flirty and "pretty intelligent looking" and shit.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, and dude's being "mildly intrigued" is a shuah fiah way to get a chick interested in his sorry sushi bah waitah ass.

 

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Susan/Circle:
Sorry, Charlie, no tuna roll for you.

 

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Shakes are for fries

Bill:
Ah, Christ, this handshake idea is friggin' retahted.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, Wilbah pegs it when he writes, "This isn’t about sportsmanship. It’s about Yankee immunity in New England."

 

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Bill:
Poor lil' Spankees fans got their wittle teeny hahts bwoken. Boo hoo hoo.

 

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Doug:
And what kind of snot nosed kid lives in Acton and roots for the Yankees anyway? Fucking grammah school sycophants.

 

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Bill:
The other sad thing is this is yet anothah example of adults having to change their behavior "for the sake of the children."

 

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Doug:
Right, like Congress having to get serious about steroids because of the children. Omigod we have to protect the kids from this serious scourge sweeping the nation, damnit!

 

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Bill:
Remembah the good old days before the infatuation with building self esteem when kids were seen but not heard? When the fuck did that go out of style exactly?

 

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Doug:
I think that coincided with the advent of T-Ball, youth soccer, and the minivan.

 

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Bill:
It's way past time to reintroduce the The Three-Martini Playdate.

 

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Pass the salt cod

Doug:
Meet the new ball pahk, same as the old ball pahk.

 

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Mike:
Talk about a remembrance of things past … the Red Sox will become the first major league team in history to celebrate 100 years in the same ballpahk.

 

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Doug:
How about Trot Nixon's quote? "I was born and raised at Fenway Pahk. That's the best feeling in the world."

 

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Mike:
My eyes are tearing the fuck up. Trot Nixon, I love you, man.

 

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Doug:
You don't buy the aftah you've seen it a few times, the chahm wears off and you're stuck in an antiquated dump argument?

 

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Mike:
Nope. Nor do I accept the "the seats are so small only those who go to one game a year accept being cramped" bullshit. The seats are small but no smaller than coach class on a seven thirty seven. And fuck your knees if the seatback and tray table are not in their upright positions.

 

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Doug:
Fuck yeah. Besides don't we have some sort of obesity epidemic or some such shit going on?

 

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Mike:
Yeah, by remaining in Fenway, the Sox owners are just doing their paht to help out. [Imitating parental voice] "Now, Jimmy, you know you aren't going to fit your ass into a Fenway seat if you eat that entire pint of Chunky Monkey. Time to go outside and run around and shit, young man."

 

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Doug:
You evah see the old photos of fans at Fenway all skinny scrawny and wearing hats?

 

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Mike:
Absolutely. The new diet fad tag line around heah should be "Get skinny like it's 1912, dude."

 

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Doug:
Yeah, fuck your Atkins diet. Fuck your South Beach and Okinawan bullshit diets. We've got the wicked good 1912 Fenway Fan diet.

 

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Mike:
Eat your salt cod and brown bread! You'll learn to like it you Twenty First Century fat assed fast food gluttons.

 

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Remembrance of things past

Mike:
Damn, I cannot believe Opening Day is only 12 days away!

 

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Bill:
No, kidding. But you know what? A paht of me is sad to see the close of the post World Series honeymoon.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, once that first pitch is thrown in April, the 2004 season will officially be relegated to the past.

 

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Bill:
We'll no longah be in the moment but can only recollect the moment.

 

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Mike:
A la recherche dutemps perdu.

 

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Bill:
It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile.

 

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Mike:
The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

 

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Bill:
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of hotdog from a Sunday afternoon at Fenway …

 

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I'm only sleeping

Rider on Green Line:
Man, I so ovah slept this morning … I've got nothing.

 

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Bill:
Again? What are you turning into B.K. Kim or something?

 

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Rider on Green Line:
Heh. Who knew that in addition to Kim's othah problems, he sleeps so much that when he was still with Arizona they thought he had narcolepsy?

 

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Bill:
What a wicked wee-ahd little guy he is.

 

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Rider on Green Line:
So let's say a playah does have narcoplepsy and he takes some drug that allows him to stay awake long enough to play a game of baseball … Is that cheating?

 

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Bill:
You mean in the "performance enhancing drug" sense?

 

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Rider on Green Line:
Well, not falling the fuck asleep on the mound would be a serious enhancement as near as I can tell.

 

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Bill:
And what if a relief pitcher takes a beta blockah to calm his nerves before coming out with two on, two outs in the ninth clinging to a one run lead?

 

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Rider on Green Line:
Well we all know there are good drugs and there are bad drugs. Our government tells us so. And the government would nevah lie to us.

 

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Heady Times

Doug:
So I'm watching the steroid thing on C-Span and it's all Member of Congress, normal head, doctah from the N-I-H, normal head, baseball playah, comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head …

 

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Mike:
I know! Can you believe that shit? Are they really thinking nobody is going to notice how a comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head is, you know, weird and shit?

 

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Doug:
Yeah, it's just some fucking eerie coincidence that everybody in the room has a normal sized head except for the motherfuckahs who everyone suspects is a steroid usah?

 

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Mike:
So if one of these non-steroid using guys with an innocent and anomalous comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head crash lands into some remote paht of the Peruvian Amazon and is captured by the head shrinking Jivaro tribe, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the Jivaros?

 

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Doug:
Yeah, would they be all, wholly fuck that comically engorged and grotesquely misshapen head is going to release some motherfucking cowbell spirit?

 

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Mike:
Or would the Jivaro chief be all, fuck, we don't have the time or the equipment to shrink that bulbous fuck of a head … Leave the head, we'll just eat his entrails and what not?

 

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Doug:
And if you cannibalize a body built on 'roids, does it taste different than a clean human?

 

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Mike:
All I know is if Mark McGuire was captured by the head huntahs, he'd be crying his eyes out.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, but unlike yesterday, at least those teahs would be honest and not a total fraud show.

 

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