Last Updated on: 10th October 2013, 11:06 am
I stayed up until after 2 AM to listen to the Jays last night. I shouldn’t have. I should have gone to sleep earlier. It still would have been late, but it would have been some extra rest and I wouldn’t have had to se…that.
When I thought about turning in for the night, it was the 8th inning and the Jays had a comfortable cushion. My memory is a little fogged by tiredness, sadness and rage, but it was either 7-1 or 7-0. You know, the kind of score that means yeah, go to bed, we’ve got this one. Thanks for the support up to now.
But as I started to doze with the game in the background, I noticed something. They didn’t have this one. the bullpen that had been so reliable to this point just…wasn’t. A couple hits and a whole bunch of walks later, the Jays went from a possible shutout to losing 8-7.
I’m not sure who to blame, it was everybody’s fault. Shawn Camp bailed everybody out once, but just couldn’t finish the job. But him…at least he looked like he might have a chance. Rzepczynski, Dotel and Purcey…I honestly have no words. It was like watching a troop of Kevin Greggs, except none of them could ever find the strike zone amidst all the walking guys and making closing out a laugher look way harder than it needs to. Say what you will about Gregg and believe me I have many times, but at the end of the day he saved something like 37 games. These guys, to borrow a line from somebody on Twitter, didn’t look like they could have saved a Word document.
Honestly I’m not even sure why I’m writing about this. It was ugly. One of the worst pieces of baseball I’ve seen since that time I watched a Mets game by accident. But for some reason I felt the need to crack open a blank file and fill it up with something, and I guess this is that thing.
Wait, I remember now. Fuck intentional walks, and not just because one helped the Jays lose last night. I hate intentional walks! Maybe it’s because I’m not much of a gambler or maybe it’s something else I haven’t figured out yet, but they drive me up the wall and then back down so I can climb up again. To me it’s never a safe assumption that the guy who can hit always will, nor is it always a good bet that the guy who almost never hits won’t. It’s fine to do your best not to leave something up in a guy’s wheelhouse, it’s what you should always be doing. but putting a guy on base on purpose is just asking for trouble. If the guy you’re pitching to get to decides today’s the day he’s homering, that’s 2 runs on the board instead of 1, and you’re fucked. I understand why it’s done, it’s just not something I’d ever feel comfortable doing. Maybe that’s why I’m watching and complaining instead of making calls from the dugout, but that’s fine with me. At least this way I never have to be the one to call an intentional pass.
What else is going on?
I got a haircut this morning. I like it. I think I might take another blind guy cellphone picture later on. I might even post it here, but I know for sure it’s going to be my new Twitter photo. What, you don’t follow me on Twitter?Go fix that now!There, that’s better.
You know what’s great? Restaurants that open their outdoor patios at the first sign of good weather. Yeah, real scoop there, I know. Carin and I were lucky enough to find one open nearby on Saturday night, so we took advantage of it. Wings and beer in the sun with the Leafs on, it was great. That game could have gone better, but the night was nice.
By the way, my vote is for “that could have gone better” to become the new slogan for Toronto sports. Most of my favourite teams come from Toronto, but come on, history don’t lie. Besides, you know as well as I do that any other decent slogan we could come up with would have the word sonofabitchmotherfuck in it at least twice.
I suck at transitions, especially when I have to go from what I just wrote to what I’m about to write. So to hell with it, it’s new paragraph time.
Yesterday was a sad day for wrestling.
First came the news that“Sweet & Sour” Larry Sweeney had taken his own life.He was only 29. He’d been battling bi-polar disorder for years, but it seemed to have gotten much worse in the last year and change. A lot of people worried about him, and I guess for good reason. I can’t imagine how it must feel to think that you’ve only got one way out. It can’t be easy, and it’s a shame that illness becomes a death sentence for so many. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you think you need help you probably do, so go get it. Easy for me to say, but I’ve heard words very similar come from those who are surviving it, so I’m not completely talking out my ass here.
I didn’t see nearly as much Larry Sweeney as some people did, but I saw enough to know that he was something special. He was a pretty good wrestler, but what really set him apart from the pack were his promos. Damn he was good. If WWE were still a wrestling company and still used managers, he easily could have been this generations Bobby Heenan or Jim Cornette. Look him up, I’m sure you’ll be impressed. I may go look him up later just to catch up on some of what I missed.
Later the same day, news came down thatEdge is retiring due to the return of the serious neck problems that sidelined him a few years ago.I haven’t seen Raw yet, but apparently he made quite the exit speech that I’ll hopefully catch this afternoon.
An Edgeless WWE will be strange since he’s become such a fixture and usually has some of the better matches on TV and pay-per-view, but you don’t screw around with your health. Good on him for getting out, forced or on his own. He seems like a guy with a decent head on his shoulders who I bet will do well wherever he lands. I’d be surprised if there’s not a backstage or office position for him in wrestling if he wants one. The guys coming up now could learn a lot from someone like him. 13 pretty successful years in WWE and travelling the indies for years before, that’s a person who’s brain I’d want to be picking.
Am I out of things to say now? I think so. Well, I have to throw a leak, so there is that…not that you do or should care.
Ok, I think that’s really it. Well, other than I found out today that I know another Coors Light drinker. Seriously people, why? Are you afraid of real beer? Do you enjoy torturing yourselves? Are things that wretchedly awful tasting an improvement over the rest of your life? I don’t get it. To me drinking a Coors Light is like having sex in a canoe, fucking near water.
And now…I think I’m done. Yes, for real.