Sitting beneath the pons asinorum

Bill:
So which Schilling will we see next staht: The one who gave up 5 runs ovah the first two innings or the one who came back in the next 4 innings to hold the D-Rays to 2 hits and no runs?

 

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Mike:
Based entirely on my gut, I think we'll see more and more of the good, if not great, Schilling ovah the remaining weeks. Now with Mr. Foulke, on the other hand, I'm fah less bullish.

 

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Bill:
Christ I know. The dude's getting totally hammahed by Single-A shoht season hittahs, but, you know, "the results are secondary" at this point.

 

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Mike:
Something tells me "Johnny from Burger King" is going to be keenly interested in results.

 

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Bill:
Unless Johnny is working at Burger King because he's an unemployable English major who dreams of attending the Iowa Writer's Workshop and one day getting a job at the Atlantic Monthly, for then he'd really prefer losing to winning.

 

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Mike:
Fercrissakes don't even mention that bullshit piece. The selfish prick wants the rest of us to suffah just so that his pussified senior editor sense of self can avoid "a palpable diminishment"? Gimme a break.

 

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Bill:
Yeah, you know, I'm very reticent to bring out the "not a true fan" scahlet lettah, but I'm ready to stitch it onto this guy Stossel.

 

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Mike:
Absolutely. I mean there are not too many requirements to being a "fan" beyond, you know, rooting for your team to win. It's pretty simple, really. Even the pink hat and jersey skirt fans get that.

 

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Bill:
Right. The last time I checked the lyrics went, "Let me root, root, root for the home team, if they don't win it's a shame" and not "if they don't win it's a wonderful bit of Aristotelian tragedy to remind us that life is a trial."

 

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Mike:
Poor fuckah sits around his office like a weepy Hamlet wondering, "Now what do we do?" … well here's a novel answer: Win anothah one! How's that fucking sound, Aristotle?

 

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Lift up the receiver I'll make you a believer

Bill:
Damn good thing the Red Sox won it all last year; otherwise, with the way this season looks to be headed, I'd be getting fitted for a death shroud right about now.

 

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Tara:
This season even the backup plans to the backup plans are falling apart … Now we get the news hot prospect and bullpen savior of daydream believers everywhere is being "shut down" with a fatigued arm.

 

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Bill:
Hansen was a long shot anyway this season, but still it was nice to dream. Now we don't even have that.

 

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Tara:
And if you were still holding out hope for Foulke, his own "maybe I'm just getting old" statements don't inspire much in the way of confidence.

 

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Bill:
Right, Foulke says he's "not a saviour." And Schilling's not a saviour … Jeez, they just don't make saviors like they used to.

 

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Tara:
Are you kidding me? It's gotten so bad even Schilling's personal Savior can't save him, not for all the pre-pitch cross kissing in the world.

 

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Bill:
Meanwhile, what the fuck did Giambi evah do to earn God's grace? The heathen is dying from a glandular disorder and wasting away from roid withdrawal one minute and the next thing you know he's the second coming of Babe Ruth?

 

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Tara:
I think God's tenure as a Red Sox fan was short lived.

 

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Bill:
Now if Bellhorn all of a sudden becomes the Lazarus of OBP while wearing Pinstripes, then I swear to Faust I'll renounce my agnosticism and become a full fledged devil worshipah.

 

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Tara:
That'll teach God a mofo lesson.

 

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Bill:
Note to Supreme Beings: Nevah underestimate the powah of a pissed off secular humanist.

 

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The heat is on

Marty:
Hey, Callaghan, are you channeling ol' Satchel Paige yet? Don't look back, Billy Boy, as something is gaining on you. Heh.

 

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Bill:
Jeez, you been quiet most this season Mahty. Didn't see you calling to gloat when you guys were getting swept by the Devil Rays.

 

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Marty:
Oh, how you misjudge me. I'm not calling to gloat. I'm calling to congratulate your Sawx … it's the second time in the last 21 games that the Sox bullpen did not give up a run. Whoo-hoo! What a fucking accomplishment.

 

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Bill:
But didn't you see, Mahty? One of the rookies, Abe Alvarez, was behind that yesterday. We've got some others, too, Delcarmen, Hansen, Pabelbon … But, that's right, it's been so long since you've seen a homegrown pitcher, you probably forgot such a thing is possible, eh?

 

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Marty:
Oh, right, the rookies and all you Sawx fans saying your little prayers each night that Papelbon will suddenly morph into a Roger Clemens circa 1986. Your dreaming would be kind of cute if it wasn't so pathetic.

 

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Bill:
Yeah, Mahty, but at least we've got some prospects to dream about. Your Yankees on the othah hand are like Stonehenge: They are old, they don't move, and no one is certain why they are there.

 

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Marty:
Oh, that's right, your prospects are so automatic that Gammons says Epstein is interested in picking up DFA'd Jason Christiansen … Let me get this straight, a crappy team with a crappy bullpen picks up a crappy reliever? Oh, I see, it's the ol' New England Crapbake!

 

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Bill:
So, Mahty, when Charles Barkley said, "Seeing Yankees fans up close for the first time is like waking up in a Brazilian jail," what do you suppose he meant?

 

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Marty:
Count the rings, bitches!

 

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Bill:
Keep counting, Mahty, you'll need something to occupy your mind come Octobah.

 

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Tattoo you?

Susan/Circle:
Well, that's it then. It's ovah.

 

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Mike:
Yep. Schilling, while feeling "normal," and showing good control in his first restaht, got cuffed around by K.C.

 

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Susan/Circle:
The rubbah game of the Red Sox' 2005 season has been lost.

 

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Mike:
Now the clock is ticking on the season – and on Schilling.

 

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Susan/Circle:
May as well just give up then. Jump off this rickety bandwagon on its invious path … Find a new cause celebre.

 

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Mike:
Absolutely. Just pack it in. Find something else to live for, you know, get serious and shit.

 

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Susan/Circle:
You are so fucking right. Time to shake things up. Life is too shoht.

 

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Mike:
That's it then, today I'm beginning my life long dream of becoming a meat eating vegetarian. Maybe I'll get a tattoo as well.

 

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Susan/Circle:
Good call. You know, some people are getting very creative with their tattoos these days.*

[*NSFW!]

 

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Mike:
Whoa Christalmighty! Who was that, Lord Voldemort's girlfriend or something?

 

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Susan/Circle:
Dude, bewayah the dakh mahk.

 

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Better late than never

Doug:
Everyone's favorite hurlah, Woozy Wells, managed to get it done this time.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, Wells is on his last day of antibiotics and back to good health just in time for Bob Yankee Watson to reject Wells' suspension appeal.

 

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Doug:
So Bob "Smack da Bitch" Ryan says these are gravy days for Red Sox fans. I'm feelin' it, yo …

 

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Mike:
Yeah, but that bit about how we are "being watched" kinda creeped me out a bit. I mean some days I feel like I'm being followed, like just out of my vision a pair of eye balls are watching my every move and listening to my every word.

 

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Doug:
Oh, shit, it's not just me then … I'd naturally assumed I'd been hittin' the hydro hookah to hahd and getting all paranoid and what not.

 

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Mike:
Speaking of hittin' it, did you see where there's 65 out of 490 girls pregnant in a high school in Ohio?

 

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Doug:
Christ, are you shitting me?

 

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Mike:
But wait, Dude, it gets bettah: The school's nickname is "The Trojans"!

 

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Doug:
No wondah nobody reads fiction anymore, the for real shit is so much nuttiah.

 

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We shall overcome

Bill:
I'm so glad that the musical void in my life has been finally filled: Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb have reunited.

 

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Doug:
Babs and Bee Gee boy together again, the Stones at Fenway, Joan Baez singing anti-war tunes … it's like I fell asleep and awoke into a life of one non-stop PBS pledge drive. The only thing missing are the Morning Edition coffee mugs and the "I brake for Daleks" bumpah stickahs.

 

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Bill:
We both know there's only one relic of the past deserving resurrection: The Dunkin' Donuts crullah.

 

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Doug:
Oh, dude, why'd you have to go and bring that up? You know a paht of me died inside when they dissed the almighty crullah.

 

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Bill:
Time and technology marches on. But, hey, it's not all bad. At least the Red Sox aren't living in the past.

 

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Doug:
No kidding, hiring the young and relatively inexperienced Theo Epstein as G.M. was the smahtest thing the club's evah done.

 

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Bill:
Since Theo took ovah in oh-3, the Sox are a run-scoring machine, leading the Majors in batting average, doubles, hits (4,491), on-base percentage, and slugging percentage.

 

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Doug:
Totally awsometastic. If I'm Theo Epstein, I'm phoning up the president of Dunkin'' Donuts and going, "Look, I brought you a World Series, now the least you can do to thank me is bring back the mofo crullah, OK? Jeez. Don't make me come down there and kick your anti-crullite ass."

 

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Don't hang me up just to let me down

The Red Sox manage to split the series with the whatever they are now called Angels (who has the time to look that shit up?) and hold a 4 game lead in the Division …

Steve:
Shows you how much fans and the media know about what's really going on behind the scenes with the Red Sox, as it was just last Wednesday, the 17th, we were told "moving [Schilling] back into the Red Sox' starting rotation isn't an option."

 

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Bill:
No kidding. I was shocked as the next guy on the news of his return to the rotation starting on Thursday in K.C.

 

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Steve:
Funny thing is, as shocking as it was when we first heard they were going to use Schilling out of the pen as the closer, this sudden back to the starting rotation announcement is more so.

 

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Bill:
Can't say I'm unhappy to see this little experiment come to an end … Despite the 16-5 record of Sox wins in games Schilling closed, I nevah had any sense of comfit, nevah a lights out feeling.

 

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Steve:
Even the dominant Herculean Schilling of last season would often take an inning or two to settle in, giving up a couple of runs in the 1st or 2nd, so in relief it was like the 1st inning every night.

 

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Bill:
I hope Foulke and his good doctors, be they of the knee fixing variety or, as I suspect (without a shred of evidence, of course), the head shrinking variety, have things back on track … too much more of this "no lead is safe" shit from the bullpen and I'll start to look like Mick Jagger.

 

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Steve:
You know, with Dinardo having quiet success at Triple-A, Papelbon going to the bullpen, and Craig Hansen inching his way up, this bullpen has the potential to make a marked turnaround

 

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Bill:
Considering last yeah at this time the Sox were five and a half back of the AL East lead, I feel pregnant with possibility.

 

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Steve:
I'm ready to board the Spacebus and blast into the October sky.

 

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On wings of wax and feathers

Doug:
You know of all the things as a kid that the mere mention of would scare me only one still works on me as an adult: "West Coast Road Trip."

 

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Bill:
Yeah, despite all the good memories from the Left Coast like Hendu in '86 and even last year's ALDS sweep, there remains a feeling of dread when the club jets into Anaheim or Oakland or Seattle.

 

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Doug:
I think paht of it is the drastic change in temporal routine, you know, games stahting at 10 O'clock and shit, just jacks my head all up.

 

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Bill:
Well, there's that, true, but there is also the memories of the West Coast melt downs, like the Ninja-Turtle-laced Clemens fiasco in Oakland or last night's 13-4 craptastic loss to the Angels.

 

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Doug:
At least last night they coughed it up early. Nothing worse than dragging your ass around the day aftah a 1:30 a.m. late inning hemorrhage.

 

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Bill:
Yeah, for the sake of worker productivity, if you're going to lose on the West Coast, lose early.

 

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Doug:
Anything to these Clemens and Damon steroid rumahs zooming around the web?

 

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Bill:
You know Clemens wouldn't surprise me much at all but Damon? Ohmychrist no! If any of the superlative twenty-five were caught juicing it'd forevah stain last year's pennant.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, if any on the transcendent and divine roster were found to have doped it'd be "Oh, OK, God does hate us after all."

 

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Bill:
Absolutely, It'd be a tragedy like Oedipus, "Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud."

 

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Doug:
Dude, you've got that right. I'd have no choice but to wear dark sunglasses and begin fornicating with whores.

 

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Bill:
Actually, in the story, Oedipus plucks out his own eyeballs after sleeping with his moms.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, well, to each his own. I'm not some sick ancient Greek man on boy lovin' maze building oracle consulting freak.

 

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Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard

Bill:
I'm neithah a doctah nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but if a guy is sick to the point where he can't hold down food and is severely weakened by antibiotics, maybe, just maybe, he shouldn't try to throw a baseball past Major League hittahs?

 

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Mike:
Jeez, no kidding. We are constantly admonished to piss our pants in joy for the so-called "gamahs" and "dirt dogs" who play through sickness and pain and have to have the ball pried out of their cold dead hands and shit but, really, if at day's end all the Calvinistic machismo just leads to a loss, what's the friggin' point?

 

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Bill:
And is it me or are the Red Sox like the most sickly team in the league? I mean on any given day it seems a couple guys are battling some form of near death malady.

 

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Mike:
Despite the front office's acumen with sabermetrics and key playah pickups, the simple concept of keeping the sick guys away from the healthy guys and thereby preventing the spread of pathogens seems entirely lost on them.

 

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Bill:
Well, these are the medieval Red Sox after all. The last team to integrate, the last team to cast aside the shroud of racism and anti-semitism … you can't expect newfangled ideas like covering your mouth when you sneeze and washing your hands aftah taking a dump to be accepted overnight.

 

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Mike:
When the bird flu finally arrives, this club is so fucking screwed.

 

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Bill:
Fortunately for now, Wells' upchuck had no effect on the standings as the D-Rays continue to plague the Yankees like an unlanced and festering boil on Steinbrenah's sagging ass.

 

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Mike:
The Yankees are now 4-9 vs. Tampa Bay. Sweet.

 

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Bill:
So much for the "mystique and aura" snake oil they've been peddling for years.

 

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Don't Cha Wish Your Team Was Hot Like Mine (Don't Cha?)

As the immortal Freddy Fender would say, what a difference a day makes, 24 little hours …

Doug:
Ortizzle fah shizzle!

 

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Mike:
Is Papi the greatest "clutch" hittah to evah wear a Sox uni or what?

 

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Doug:
If the good people of Cow Hampshah wish to replace the now fallen "Old Man of the Mountain," I suggest they commission an artist to begin cahving Papi's face out of the side of a granite outcropping post-haste.

 

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Mike:
Absolutely they should. People would top off their E-ZPass accounts and drive from all ovah to prostrate themselves before the giant granite countenance of the Beloved (and then pick up a couple cases of cheap booze at a state liquor store on the way home.)

 

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Doug:
And just because I know it makes Yankees fans shit their collective Hillary Clinton pantsuits when we say it … Ortiz and Manny are the greatest 1-2 offensive punch since Ruth-Gehrig!

 

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Mike:
And it's not just the Ruthian Red Sox offense that has smutty nosed Yankees fans kids whimpering "I see Red Sox people" when confronting reality. There's also the the homegrown young guns.

 

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Doug:
Papelbon, Delcarmen, Hansen … Can I get an oh-yeah, a hell-yeah, and a fuck-yeah?

 

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Mike:
All of the above. And, ad interim, the Devil Rays continue to make the 2005 Yankees their bent ovah croupade bitches.

 

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