Doug:
Ah, yes, nothing quite like chahging into the playoffs by losing 5 straight including getting nonchalantly flicked like a boogah off the nose of the pinstriped 800 lb playoff gorilla.
Doug:
Yeah, she's hot alright if your idea of hot is a droopy sunken-eyed corpse, wannabe bitch.
Doug:
Which, of course, would go a long way in explaining why you'd think this walking cadahvah that is the 2009 Red Sox isn't going to be buried deep in the postseason.
Doug:
OK, let me say this slooowly so it sinks in —
Doug:
The Yankees were built to win.
Doug:
The Red Sox, conversely, were built with a money saving rostah just good enough to get just close enough to sniff the playoff poon.
Al:
Hey, Doug, Paddy24 just called, he wants his persona back.
Doug:
Hahdy hah hah... laugh all you want.
Doug:
We'll see how hahd you're laughing when the Yankees are raising the pennant for numbah 27 while John Henry is on his knees delivering another Red Sox golden goose egg to bridezilla.
Mike:
Seriously. In basements all across this great land, pinstriped-pajama clad homahs are furiously one-handedly typing their anticipatory message board paeans to World Series MVP Joba Chamberlain.
Doug:
And neithah are the NY media immune to the celebration of the coming celebration, as Suzyn Waldman discovahs there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to grease and a no-no hole.
Mike:
This premonitory victory story has such a happy ending that I heard Hollywood has already decided to make a movie about the Yankees miracle 2009 Word Series run.
Al:
Seriously. Where the frig is Kanye when you need him?
Al:
"Yo KC, I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Red Sox are one of the best teams of all time!"
Mike:
OK. So you know how people say "It ain't ovah until the fat lady sings"?
Mike:
Well, I'm here to tell you that's not true at all.
Mike:
No, it's not ovah ovah and by ovah I mean ovah in the Mayan calandah 2012 Ahmadinejad gets the bomb Jesus returns swingin his smite stick aliens copulating with humans sense of ovah ovah until...
Mike:
What the frig is wrong with Californians anyway?
Mike:
They live in the most temperate climate in the US, are only a car ride away from mountains or beaches or vineyards or desert and yet at the slightest sign of adversisty it's all Waa Waa call a Wambulance.
Doug:
I know just look at Schwarzeneggah fercrissakes.
Doug:
Guy goes from being a groupie banging, Terminatah-playing, orgy loving Austrian muscleman bad boy to what?
Doug:
To being Maria Shrivah's p-whipped houseboy and whiney Governah Nanny to the biggest Nanny-state of all is what.
Al:
You know who I feel bad for are the ex-pat New Englandahs living out there.
Al:
I mean it's gotta be tough for a stoic, steel-balled minus 10 in wintah and 3 months of summah Masshole to put up with the incessant candy-assed piss and moan fest out there.
Mike:
And how about this numerical symmetry — the Magic Numbah is now 11, that's a 1 and a 1, and they are 6½ back of the Yankees for the Division and 6½ ahead of the Rangahs for the Wild Cahd.
Bill:
Wow. I expect to look up in the stands and see a tweed sport-coated Robert Langdon sitting there.
Mike:
Seriously. The Red Sox have all the makings for a formulaic Dan Brown novel.
Mike:
Wizened, handsome, incredible rich old yet still virile dude running everything from behind the scenes?
Mike:
Meet John Henry.
Bill:
Classy, attractive, super-smaht, female lead who holds the key to unlocking the mystery?
Bill:
Bonjour, Janet Marie Smith.
Mike:
Right the same Janet Marie Smith who while going doing the renovation of Fenway discovahs something almost too fascinating to describe …
Mike:
The dimensions of Fenway which Updike referred to as "a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities" actually hold a fah deepah mystery!
Bill:
Absolutely the height of the wall, the left field distance, the Pesky Pole, the Triangle in deep centah are not mere coincidence.
Mike:
Oh, no, dear rubes, they are the result of a, pick one [Secret Catholic Cabal, Secret Illuminati Cabal, Secret Pagan Cabal] and Fenway is the very epicentah of hitherto, ancient, top secret, Key to All Things!!!!!!
Bill:
OMFG what a page turnah!
Mike:
And, of course, let us not forget Brown's favorite stock antagonist — the vaguely foreign narcissist with an awesomely sculpted body and bizarre sexual fetish that eventually leads to his downfall.
Bill:
Ah, Mr. A-Rod, your reputation precedes you.
Al:
So is Matsuzaka back for reals or it this just an Indian Summah?
Doug:
*Indian* Summah? Al, you motherfucking rascist!
Mike:
Oh, Al. [Sigh]
Al:
C'mon it's just an expression from childhood. What am I supposed to say?
Doug:
OK. Let me rephrase it for you …
Doug:
"So is Matsuzaka back for real or is this like some hegemonist end of summah blanket 'giveaway' such that the peaceful and loving indigenous people will be cruelly struck dead from small pox come autumn?"
Bill:
So did you see that Matsuzaka might be coming back? Guess the othah the othah night Matzusaka didn't have any control problems and looked OK in his 89 pitch, 6 2/3 innings rehab staht against the Single A Dash.
Mike:
Yeah, I saw the report from his rehab staht, but most people missed the othah story.
Bill:
What othah story?
Mike:
Seems that just aftah Dice-K's outing, EMTs were summoned to Gene Hooks Field in Winston-Salem as dozens of fans were afflicted with what officials are calling an "unusual and sudden and unexplained near simultaneous trance-like state."
Mike:
Witnesses described those striken as being "slumped" and "unresponsive."
Mike:
"They were like zombies," said Trey Church, a 14 year old from Guthrie, NC, "except they weren't moving or eating brains or nothing."
Mike:
"They eyes was open, but they was no life in 'em. And nones of 'em wanted any o' my hotdogs neither," was the description given by Jesse Jones, a vendah at the pahk.
Bill:
What about those in the trance?
Mike:
Most victims had no recollection of what had happened, although a few did.
Mike:
"Once the foreign feller started pitching, it was like time just got slowed down real good. The whole world just went slo-motion like," Darrell Weaver, a 38 year old man from Winston described his recollection of the creepy phenomenon.
Mike:
"It was terrifying," related Marcy Beauragard, 53, of Muddy Creek. "I thought it was End Times and I was Left Behind."
Mike:
The cause remains a mystery. But a spokesperson for the FBI said they do not suspect terrorism at this time.
Bill:
Ah, Dice-K, we kid because we love. Kind of.
Al:
As Cafardo writes in today's Globe, "There are more than 20 teams in baseball who would love to be in the Red Sox’ position right now."
Mike:
But the Red Sox are not your typical team.
Al:
And we are not your typical fans.
Doug:
So we expect to win every year?
If this is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
Al:
Seriously. I nevah want to return to the days when our primary modus operandi was thinking of the ways couldn't win, when focusing on all the reasons why we can win is such a bettah state of mind.
Mike:
From where I'm standing, though, the reason we cannot win and the reason we will win have fused into the singularity.
Hart Brachen (the dude who writes the Soxahoix):
Dear Readers,
As we head into the Labor Day Weekend and ride the wave of the good karma from beating the Rays 2 of 3, I'm going to take a page out of the Manny Ramirez playbook and take a little rest. (Though I will pass on the chorionic gonadotropin injections.)
Hart
Have a great Labor Day Weekend.
See you back here on Tuesday for a new strip (and see you in the comments in the meantime).
Doug:
So let me get this straight — Beckett has been the suck for a month now, giving up homahs like the government give out cheese, but we are to take solace that perhaps, perhaps, he's ovah the slump/injury/wtf-ails-him because "he settled down to hold the Rays in innings 3-6 last night."
Mike:
I know. I haven't seen this much wishful thinking since my buddy Murph fell in love with the strippah.
Mike:
"Mike, Mike, she's *really* into me. I mean why else would she ask me and not some othah guy to pay for her boob job?"
Doug:
Poor Murph. He's like an NL pitchah in an AL world.
Mike:
Why do I get the feeling that if Dice-K was traded to the NL he'd pitch back to back perfect games?
Doug:
I think the Red Sox finally have Matsuzaka figured out.
Mike:
You mean the training regimen and off day pitch counts?
Doug:
Well, turns out it wasn't the training, it wasn't the language, or the baseball size or the strike zone differences — nope, turns out our American toilets were just, you know, not Japanese enough.
Mike:
Evah since the Yankees unceremoniously booted our asses out of first place in the Division, I think we knew all along that it'd be Tampa and not Texas that'd be bringing the wild cahd heat.
Al:
4 up but the next 3 at the Trop. Yikes.
Mike:
2 and 13 at the Flopicana the past 2 seasons? Really, Red Sox, really?
Al:
I know it's the worst pahk in all the majahs and all, but come on, fellas.
Doug:
Seriously. We get it. The place is the waxed triangle of fishy stank.
But that's all the more reason to bring on the flaming bats and Molotov fastballs and burn the mofo down.
Mike:
Absolutely. It's time to go Captain Quint on these fish. Get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing
