Leading from behind

Doug:
To all of those Sox fans who still believe that this club is just going through a bad spell and that come Octobah we'll look back at the staht of the season and laugh...

 

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Doug:
I tip my cap to you...

 

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Doug:
You are Gallant to my Goofus...

 

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Doug:
You are Malia to my Bristol...

 

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Doug:
You are Boston Rob to my redneck Ralph...

 

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Al:
Hey, it's not so bad. Lackey would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky .158 lifetime hittahs.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, in Lackey's words, "Everybody’s had success with him in the past."

 

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Mike:
Ah, "Paging Dr. Jung... Dr. Carl Jung you're need in therapy."

 

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Mike:
Seriously. Is that textbook projection or what?

 

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Doug:
To use one of my grams favorite expressions, Lackey is about as useful as tits on a bull.

 

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Al:
Christ, I'd take tits on a shemale right now.

 

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Mike:
But, you know, let's remembah Lackey's dealing with some personal stuff.

 

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Al:
So I've heard — "Everything in [his] life sucks right now, to be honest with you."

 

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Doug:
Well, it's time like this when we can thank our good fortune to work in fabric covered cubes, living paycheck to paycheck, and burdened with credit cahd debt...

 

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Doug:
Because, you know, making $16 mil a year is teh suck.

 

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Comments

[soxinsix]

I switched over from watching the end of the Celtics season just in time to see Lackey give up walk, walk (run scored), single (2 runs) and quickly turn a 4-3 game to 7-3 game over. Perfect segue from one disppointment to another.

[Welkah]

He's like if Mike Timlin were a starter.

Everytime I hear Black Betty I think oh shit here comes two walks and a two run double.

[louclinton]

whatever the question is, Lackey is not the answer.

Unless..

The question is: who on this staff most reminds you of Matt Young?

We are living in a cacotopia of our own design.

lc

ps wb, hb

ly,lts

pps Shucky Ducky, Quack Quack

[Steven Rockwell]

You don't understand; all that money is irrelevent to him. He'd gladly play ball for free. The money doesn't comfort him at night. You have a better life or something. Insert pithy saying here about money said by rich people to non-rich people.

I remember when Roger the Rocket resigned with the Red Sox (87 or so) and one of the talking heads on TV asked him why he held out for however much money he ended up with and he said he deserved it because he did such an important job. My mother, the Neonatal Intensive Care nurse who only keeps sick babies alive and who will only make a fraction on what he made in her lifetime, was livid. To this day, she hasn't forgiven him.

The point is, yeah Lackey has a crapton of money, but he's still a whiney little bitch and Ol' Rog may have all that cash but he's always going to be a cheating asshole. Or, in haiku:

Throw a ball, get paid
Got 99 problems but
Joy ain't one of them

[pseudosanity78]

The one benefit of living in the future is I can sleep through this sort of douchecanoery. Doesn't always make for the best wake up call, but at least I don't have to slog through the torture. urg.

Random thing about today's strip, you call your Gram, Gram also. Though mine has only taken to swearing in the last couple of years. Her current favorite phrase? 'Oh! Get the f*ck over it!' Endless hilarity ensues/

[Bob]

Pitchers who come to the AL East from the AL West just don't seem to fit in. "Those damn foreigners!"

[DaMan]

The guy's wife is ill--no amount of salary can relieve that stress. It's OK to despise his pitching--I do too. But let's not go over the line here--c'mon, we were all legitimately saddened by the death of HB's dog a few months back. We ought to show some compassion (or at least constraint--tits on a bull when someone's wife has breat cancer?) regarding Lackey's personal problems.

[h.b.]

Damn. I didn't know much about his wife's illness.

Does make the tits thing a bit off. (But probably no worse than when the characters made fun of Derek Lowe's cancer, the dead Pope or John Kerry's daughter, but that's another story.)

See why doing these strips isn't easy?

I picked a wrong topic on the wrong day to resume posting. (Good thing I didn't pick today to stop bogarting the chronic as well.)

Which reminds me, I have to interview a guy for work at, no shit, 6am tomorrow, so it's unlikely there will be strip. (Unless I can rent a shemale and a sunset to replace me for the day.)

[Natalie]

Oh, shemale- am I the only one thinking of Arrested Development right now?

I echo pseudo re: living in the future. The only bennie (other than the chronic) to being in AMS this week is I got to skip last night's abortion. I am seriously, seriously, seriously concerned this season has already set in a pattern that will find us at its end in 4th place. Muthafucka, please let me be wrong.

[Jason O.]

The sanctimony coming from Daniel Stevens is rising faster than the water in Vicksburg.

At the end of the day, we know your Mom's a saint, but millions of people won't make an informed choice to pay money to see what she does.

Your Mom chose that profession, and all the associated details like compensation and long work hours, stress, etc.

There are also many more people who could do your Mom's job than could do Lackey's.

For more, see and skip to distributive justice section:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/

[Jason O.]

oops that's steven rockwell, pardon me.

[yazbread]

Steven - I'd pay money to see your mom at work. It would be fascinating and awe inspiring.

[soxinsix]

Ditto yaz. My son spent nearly 3 weeks in the NICU after being born 6 weeks early and we almost lost him at one point. He is alive today because of the efforts of those NICU doctors & nurses.

Now he gets to suffer alongside me watching Lackey pitch.

[Steven Rockwell]

It's not sanctamony. She chose her profession and its pay, but let's face it: baseball players are entertainers. At no point does any sports figure, movie star, or musician get to justify the obscene amounts of money they are making by saying what they are doing is just that important. Roger Clemens wasn't curing cancer, stopping world hunger, or even inventing the longer lasting light bulb. He was throwing a ball in a kids' game. I'm glad he was able to convince you and me to pay him good money to watch him do what he did, but it wasn't in any way, shape, or form important.
.
As far as Lackey goes, I feel for his situation, but like they say in the military, "the effective range of an excuse is zero." Dude's paid an incredible amount of money to pitch. He just isn't doing it right now. Everyone one of us has seen a co-worker with home problems let their work slip and be told by a boss to get it together or find somewhere else to work because the home problems are affecting the company. Baseball shouldn't be any different.
.
At least with all the cash Lackey is making, he can afford the good medical care, so there is that. How many of us could just write a check to cover a year's worth of chemo and know it won't bounce?

[COD]

Damn, I wasn't aware that Lackey's wife is fighting cancer. She is a UNH girl, and apparently a big part of the reason that Lackey signed with the Sox.

Can we have sympathy, and blame her for the albatross of his contract at the same time?

[sonomasox]

Wow, I think we just nailed topic #18!!!

Will we get to 20 before the Sox do? Discuss.

[Jeff in NC]

H.b., perhaps it wasnt the nice thing to say, but face it, Lackey is not in fact any more useful than tits on a bull. No matter the reason. Facts is facts.

And given that my third son is alive today becuase of the efforts of a few NICU nurses, I would gladly support a way to pay them for what they are truly worth and not just what we as a society can get away with. Same for teachers, police, and any other profession that actually contributes real tangible benefits to us all. Liberal spread the wealth crap? Maybe. or maybe I just think we should be happy to pay for what we get and in the case of Lackey, that would be about $2.50.

[Jason O.]

Great illustration of Nozick's point: The subjective opinions of people as to the "proper" salary for the "tangible societal benefits"** of a neonatal nurse, if implemented as law, must lead to an infringement of personal rights.

**What neonatal nurse does is great. Dikembe Mutombo has spent millions of dollars improving the medical care of hundreds of thousands of people in the Congo. He couldn't have done this without being paid "obscene" amounts of money.

Furthermore, I'll bet that a lot of John Lackey's fortune will eventually fund critical research to find a cure for his wife's affliction.

Trying to pick winners and losers based on what's "fair"? Not a good idea.

[DaMan]

hb--Thank you--I'm glad to know that you were unaware of the issue. By all means keep up the Kerry/Pope/anything off color you think of jokes. You run one of the best sites around, so you are due for a few mulligans (or shemales).

COD--Yes on both counts!

[Kaz]

"Christ, I'd take tits on a shemale right now."

Aw, come on! What?! No link??

[Steven Rockwell]

Who said anything about fair? I'm not in the least bit upset that a ball player makes more than a cop or a nurse or a teacher or whatever. Bully for him if he can get what the market can bear. He has a rare skillset and the ability to put butts in seats. What grinds my gears is the attitude among many celebrities that they deserve what they get because what they do is just so damned important. They're entertainers. They aren't doing anything on the level of importance as a civil engineer or a telecommunications researcher or a prison warden or any number of other jobs that must be done in order for us to have a modern society. I'm glad ballplayers can get the dollars they can out of us, but if every ballplayer in every sport dropped dead right now the rest of us would be just fine.
.
If you play sports for a living, get what you can and be grateful for it, but don't for a second think what you do is that important.

[yazbread]

Just trying to change topics to ensure that Lackey does not become a 'topic'. Celtics look to be a second division team for the foreseeable future. Also hoping that the B's layoff does not derail what might be a run to the Cup.

[Harwich Rich]

Haven't the lightning had more time off??-I'm just sayin'

[hammo]

Re: entertainment and the importance of same, versus a nurse, policeman, engineer, etc., life is not worth living and a society not worth building and maintaining unless there is some diversion from its problems. Entertainment is extremely important to a society, and the best entertainers are compensated best. An athlete or a movie star or a pop singer can entertain, inspire, and offer sweet (temporary) relief from life's burdens for millions at a time. I think that's damn important. Lackey's bed-crapping actually adding to our collective stress levels is another story, but e.g., Zombieland has given me countless hours of enjoyment in the past year and a half, and for that I think Woody Harrelson is a very important person, and should get his millions.

[buckner was framed]

so, in summary then, can we all agree that we would pay good money to see tits on a NiCU nurse? And that it would be damned important?

[Steve in MD]

I think we can all agree the Rocket is an asshole and a fraud, so I don't take him to be the norm. Since the 9/11 wake up call I've heard hundreds of pro athletes recognize that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coasties, police, fire, EMS, nurses, etc. are the real heroes and that they do, in fact, play a kids game from a living.

[Bob]

All this talk of salaries relative to the greater good is nonsense. Case it point: I'm a copywriter. I write ads and commercials and such for a living. It's only right that I should be paid far more than a nurse or cancer researcher, because my job is just so damn cool. But then I look at cancer research salaries, and some of them do better than me. Is that fair? Of course not, but I deal with it.

[TimW (No, not that one)]

The thing about athletes, no matter how much they get paid, they asked for the money and somebody told 'em yes. If I told my boss I wanted $150,000, he'd have security escort me to a hole under the front porch before they lit me on fire and fed my bleached bones to goats. But if a pitcher asks for 1000 times that, and his boss says yes, well, there you go. I have no beef with what any ballplayer makes.

The sad thing here is, I used to really love watching Lackey pitch for the Angels. Now I'd really REALLY love to watch him pitch for the Angels.

In the meantime, my every sympathy to him and his family...but, dude....

[yazbread]

I am always willing to entertain offers to change jobs. But before I talk to anyone, a $50M fee must be paid to my manager/wife.

[Kaz]

Sorry, Bob. I'll stop mailing my paystubs to you with the phrase "How 'bout dem apples?" written on the front...

[beth]

I wasn't aware sufficient amounts of money could make miscarriages and breast cancer not matter.