Yankees 12, Twins 4

This was a game that--barring catastrophe--was over in the second inning, and precisely (again, again) the way the Yankees have to win.

Picture this: Yanks up, one out, 2-2. Then: single, single, single, run-scoring error, RBI single, RBI fielder's choice, RBI single.

Bingo: 6-2, with (thanks to Pettitte's eight innings on Sunday) a fresh--and suddenly effective--bullpen ready to come in at the first sign of trouble.

Speaking of which: whatever Girardi is giving that bullpen, pour me a double. It has been a constant source of amazement that a team with ten more dollars than God has been unable since, oh, 2000 to string together more than two relievers to bridge the chasm between the starters and Rivera.

As for the offense. Matsui is probably gone for the season. Posada is on the DL, not even (at this point) to DH, and who knows if he'll be able to catch when he comes back? Sexson is an emergency stopgap a pinch-hitter/defensive replacement at best. Betiment--no.

Which means? Cano needs to stay hot. Jeter (and maybe we saw the start tonight) needs to get hot in the 2-hole. Giambi needs his one or two home runs per week. Damon needs to stay well.

A-Rod needs to stay, well, A-Rod--and it may not hurt that, for now, the media seems to have moved on.

Molina doesn't have to get three hits every night, but would .230 kill him?

There was an article in today's NY Post (damn my invisible address bar) that compared this team to 1996's scratch-and-claw team. To which one might respond:

1. I wish!
2. With the trade deadline next week, to paraphrase Rick Pitino: Cecil Fielder isn't walking through that door. Neither, I think, is Graeme Lloyd. Or David Weathers.

As for scratching and clawing, we'll see.

Rasner tomorrow.
Then Moose.

Then, Boston, with Pettitte, Joba, Ponson.

Oh, to SunDevil Joe, Robbie-Boy, Jimmy, GSB, Chumley Felix, Golf Pal, Irish Trojan and of course Astro-Girl (among others), thanks for hanging around for my thousandth post.

Life with Astro-Girl

On our TV screen, this graphic, courtesy of "Sportscenter":

"Gates to have toe tested at the game."

Astrogirl: "They're testing people's toes at the gates? Hasn't this 9/11 thing gone too far?"

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Exhausted.

The number one rule of blogging is, "Blog for yourself first." The number one rule of writing is always, "Never bore yourself." Keeping both of these maxims in mind, when what I was writing became too much of a task, too much like homework, I simply stopped and moved on to the next thing, or laid everything aside until something interesting happened, and then started writing again.

That said, I was--still am--fired up for this Presidential campaign. Politics for the sake of politics is something that grabbed ahold of me when I was seven, wearing my "Nixon Now" button to school on election day, which button I won for being a "good listener" when some seventy-ish woman came by our class a ffew days before the Nixon-McGovern tilt armed with oil prints she unveiled, one at a time, to show us first the Pilgrims, then the Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. (It occurred to me then--and does now--that she rather skipped over the intervening 150 years, merely telling us that "As time went on, soon they (the Pilgrims, I guessed) gave way to their children and grandchildren." Any explanation in a storm.) At the conclusion of her talk, she said she'd brought some buttons, one for each student the teacher identified as "good listeners." I had come armed to this talk with some vague notion of the Revolutionary War and Thanksgiving (first grade had been in the suburbs of Boston, where one invariably choked on William Bradford and Miles Standish every November), but had--I suppose--sat spellbound for the entire hour. Still, it was with some surprise that Mrs. Chapman singled me out in front of the rest: "I think Joseph McDade was a good listener." Ordinarily, I would take this approbation as a badge of dishonor--my true aspiration was to be the class cut-up, a role I was to play to much acclaim in later years--but, c'mon: Nixon Now!

This past week, I was with much anticipation I awaited Iowa, then New Hampshire, thinking I'd type all night, at least to have my own record of the first election since 1928 in which neither a sitting President nor Vice-President is running. I planned Hillary skin-crawl moments (the manic smile, the cackle). I planned John Edwards drinking games (one shot for "mill," one for "Americas," plural). I wanted to bathe in the MSM's effort to prop up Mike Huckabee as the most likely GOPer to fall to Obama in November. I wanted, I wanted . . . .

Then reality intervened:

1) Santa Semester. One three-hour class in the morning, another at night. And how was your vacation? Short but lucrative.

2) The marathon. As in Houston, January 13, training for, me. With a huge assist from a sister-in-law. Problem is: once you train past ten miles, your weekly One Long Run becomes something requiring three days advance warning, in bed by ten . . . jump your distance, at intervals, to 14, 16, 18, then 20 miles, and, really, three days for every week are spoken for. The day before you run you eat, rest, and eat some more, and then sleep early. On run day you run. The day after you run you feel like crap, and recover. The day after that you catch up with your life. Blah blah.

3) The sharp shooting pain in my side that cropped up five days before the marathon (the complex term I'm searching for is "yesterday"), which pain may be a pull or a strain but certainly disrupted my life. Too much training? A bad spill? Muscles ribbing from my rib cage? Emily Dickinson wrote about pain knowing no universe but itself; in such a climate my books, my papers, my care about politics and sports were all set aside against the groaning effort necessary to hoist myself to a sitting position, and thence to the bathroom. Postpone the race? (My participation, until next year.) We shall see.

So, in the face of exhaustion, the world parades by, uncommented by me, for me. USC wins Rose Bowl! Steelers eliminated! Celtics 29-3! Roger Clemens . . . oh, I'm too tired. Goose Gossage enters Hall (aside from that Rose Bowl, the most gratifying moment of the past two weeks)! Cinco Paul--in a creative, strike-inspired outburst--writes Bubble Boy: The Musical!

Nine thousand movies open!

And Obama, Hill, Huck, Mitt, Mac, Fred and the Silky Pony make the first of the year so gratifying!


Oh, I'm going to bed.

Blue Jays 3, Yankees 2

Today: the marriage license.

Easy, or so we thought.

The Harris county website lists 1001 Preston, downtown Houston, as the location of the county clerk for such as what we wanted. So, this afternoon, it was into the car and into downtown, to the only portion of the metropolis, which extends into six counties, where parking is a serious hassle.

Zing--a parking meter a mere two hundred yards from 1001 Preston. Enough coins for 44 minutes.

Into 1001 Preston, a building I remember from my once-a-year trips to renew my car registration.

County Clerk, such as marriage licenses, three flights up.

Elevator, up to the fourth floor.

Big Sign: COUNTY CLERK RELOCATED TO THE SO-AND-SO BUILDING, MAY, 2006.

One year earlier.

And no change on the website. Or the building legend. Nothing but a woman sitting at a desk in an open front office, presumably for nothing but to serve as the first line of information for those who rely on the website and building legend.

"It's at the so-and-so building," she explains. "Down to the first floor, then go out that back of the building, then over to the blah-blah Street, then down to Caroline Street. The building looks like this."

In front of her on the counter, a laminated picture of the new building. Look over her shoulder, out the big picture window, see the exact same building, three blocks away.

"But nothing's changed on the website," I say.

Laughter. "You know," she says, "everyone says that."

So, out on the street. Unlike New York City's mid-town, Houston has no famous buildings to point out. Unlike San Diego, the weather is nothing to enjoy, except in October or the marvelous stretch between Valentine's Day and Easter. Late May, just sweat.

So, into the So-and-So building.

County Clerk, third floor.

Out the elevator, and arrow.

Information. Okay, information.

Astro-Girl: "How much money did we put in the meter?"

"Enough."

Ah-Hah! Below Information, a sign on the wall, and this list:

COPIES
Something
Deed something
Something
Marriage Licenses

So, end of the line.

Ten minutes, front of the line. The best line-related word: Next.

"Yes?" asks the woman, one of a dozen who seem, behind the counter, to be walking at the bottom of a filled swimming pool.

"Marriage license," I say.

She gives us the once-over. "So when were you married?"

"No," I say. "We need a marriage license."

"Well then you're in the wrong place," she drawls.

"But," I start, "It says . . ."

"Copies," she says. "Copies of marriage licenses that already exist. You need to go to the other end of the building, turn left past the elevators, then take a blah-blah turn and blah-blah-blah."

So, office number three. Behind us in line, after a few seconds, a pair of men.

"You know," I said to one of them, "the signage in this building is terrible."

He answered in a West-Indian dialect:

"What you be sayin'. I go to eighth floor they say fourth floor, fourth floor they say third floor."

Finally, after being ushered to a desk, presenting our driver's licenses, swearing that we had never been married before, were not married, and were neither delinquent in child support nor related by blood or adoption, 41 dollars later, the license was ours.

"There," the woman said. "That was easy."

Saturday. Three days to go.

Angels 3, Yankees 1

Actual conversation, on the way to the wedding photographer's.

Me: "So what street is this place on?"

She: "Either Chimney Rock or Fountainview."

Me: "Either? You mean you don't know?"

She: "Not exactly."

Me: "So how are we going to get there."

She: "Ummmm . . . by car?"

Angels 10, Yankees 6

So:

Astro-Girl and I are presently in the midst of the "what else can go wrong" marriage sweepstakes.

Our minister, who I've known for 15 years, met us on our college campus, a campus currently in the center of 20 acres or so of demolition: every building around us is being demolished, and God knows how many chemicals and poisons are being released into the air. Come to find, no one is taking it worse than the Reverend, who spent the balance of our last meeting excusing himself to blow his nose and/or hold his head in his hands.

"Oh, man," he said, then wiped his eyes. He bent over, face in hands. "Oh, maaaaaan." Sat up. "Okay, your vows. Oh, wait." Another tissue, another bugle blast that Prewitt in From Here to Eternity would have envied. "Okay, your vows."

It was then off to the florist, who had put off Astro-Girl four times before agreeing to meet near her store--and then arrived in some asphalt/warehouse sun-stricken hellhole that reminded me of the lot DeNiro used to photograph Pacino and the other cops in Heat. The DeNiro in Heat would have come in handy, actually, for breaking and entering, as the florist had locked herself out of her shop--something about her husband having one set of keys and she another, and how he was across town at a meeting, and she was here. I guessed some was truth, some fib--and some she probably didn't know. None of it was made easier by 1) the contract, flapping in the breeze, she kept urging Astro-Girl to sign, 2) the check she kept urging Astro-Girl to write, or 3) the florist's three children, who incessantly banged their fists against the inside windows of the florist's Four-Runner, demanding Chick Fil-A or somesuch.

The florist was nothing compared to the phone call Astro-Girl received from the Beauty Salon. Here was the story: the hair stylist Astro-Girl had used for years, the stylist whom she had lined up six weeks in advance to do herself, plus the matron of honor, plus the bridesmaids, all on the wedding day, had apparently endured an emotional fist-swinging break-up with his boyfriend, then had suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to Mexico. His mother and sister had cleaned out his apartment. He was gone.

So, while we wait for resolution . . . .

The Yankees and Astros allow 22 runs between them tonight.

Good night now.

Red Sox 7, Yankees 3

The game? Bah.

Now becomes an opportune moment to mention here what I've not mentioned before.

I'm getting married.

As it happens, in eleven days.

To Astro-Girl, of course.

Today Astro-Girl reminded me of her theory that, in her opinion, the NBA Lottery should work in the reverse system than it does. Never mind the teams, she said. What you should do is list all the teams in order--doesn't matter, alphabetical, record, reverse record. Then, a commission should be studied to pick the thirty best players.

Then, (can you sense her excitement?) the players' names should be put on ping-pong balls and drawn from the hopper, one at a time, for assignment. Atlanta, you get Yi. Boston, Noah.

And so on.

Okay. Some solace here.

As Bill Simmons has noted, has any team in sports had such buzzard's luck for the last two decades than the Boston Celtics? In the spring of 1986, coming off an incineration of the Houston Rockets (maybe the only 4-2 series ever properly described as a blow-out), the Celtics were primed for three more championships, maybe more. The frontcourt of Bird, McHale, and Chief was being called the best ever; Bill Walton had found the fountain of youth as Sixth Man of the Year (were there a Sixth Man of All Human History, he might have won that); Wedman and Sichting were there for off-the bench brio; DJ was the point guard/defensive god. Ainge knew what his role was: wait for the double team to kick in on the front court and drain three-pointers.

David Thirdkill could play defense.

Rick Carlisle was smart.

Greg Kite tried, at least.

And then there was Len Bias, the incoming rookie, who could do what none of the Celtics could do (play above the rim, with tomahawk slams if need be). Red Auerbach made it clear: as a forward, Bias would have to come off the bench at first, behind the power forward, McHale, and the godlike forward, Bird.

But nobody with that much talent stays on the bench for long. I envisioned Bias--no kidding--as a black John Havlicek, a swingman who could play forward or guard, who could score, rebound, pass, defend, whatever was needed.

Coach K once said there was one player in the history of the ACC who he'd put ahead of Len Bias.

Michael Jordan.

I believe him.

My parents remember Kennedy. John and Bobby both.

Not to diminish those awful days.

But I remember, for various reasons, four other events.

Belushi. The Challenger. 9/11 of course, the worst day in the history of the world.

And Bias.

I was home for the summer, home in the same living room where my mother had dug out the wine and toasted the Celtics' championship a few weeks earlier.

Bias had been drafted two days before. I was resting, getting ready for my evening's assignment as a night watchman at the Phoenix Civic Center. My senior year in college awaited--and so, I thought, did a string of Celtics's championships as Bird and McHale rounded out their brilliant careers and gave way to the new superstar.

My brother, Robby-Boy, called me; he was a lifeguard at a city pool and heard the information on a radio, and then called me.

"My God," he said. "You won't believe it. Len Bias died."

Yeah. Not that sports, in the end, mean much of anything, but that was the start. Walton's broken leg, Wedman's torn ankle, Sichting's catatonic (and career-ending) shooting slump, Magic's junior sky hook, the emergence of the Bad-Boy Pistons, Bird's bad back, Reggie Lewis's death, ML Carr, Rick Pitino, the Duncan lottery fiasco, the Vin Baker trade (this, courtesy of Bill Simmons) . . . . all of the preceding beat a path to tonight, where the two men who could have helped salvage this franchise were placed hopelessly out of reach.

Anyway, I'm getting married.

Zzzzzzzz (Respite from the Smelly Lounge)

Staffing week, maybe my last.

Staffing week, for a department chair in the type of college where I work, comprises 15-hour days in the run-up to each semester, and keeps me from my loves: a good movie, a good steak, and writing that keeps the black dog at bay.

I'm going to New York in March to deliver an essay about my teaching. Why the Composition Convention keeps choosing the most expensive venues in the most expensive cities (the Hilton on Sixth Avenue? Good gracious!; last year was the Palmer House in Chicago) escapes me. Would it kill them to hold their conventions in cheaper venues, like Lubbock, or at least cheaper-but-still-nice venues, like Austin or Memphis or Long Beach?

Anyway, what I've been thinking lately is that there should be more teaching, more writing, and a lot less of Staffing Week. Be that as it may, SunDevil Joe, Robbie-Boy, Astro-Girl, Chumley Felix, Cahill, I suggest we meet back here after the Patriots game on Sunday.

I'm back!

After four months of wondering why, I finally figured out why the address bar is so far beyond my means. I found it! I fixed it! Time to go back and be my boring self! So here it is:

A link to my great benefactor, The Irish Trojan.

Can't wait.