Wednesday, May 16, 2007

That Yankee fan I hate ...a blog at the speed of pod.

Giuliani, Rudy - right field, moved from center w/"Reagan Democrats." (The term that makes no sense 'cept Reagan used to Dem it too, & he never made sense, told America to "stop making sense"...so it makes sense in a non-sense way.)

bats: right

throws: right

dresses: right (Traditionally, when a gentleman is fitted for suit trousers, the tailor asks said gentleman 'on what side to do you dress sir?' This is the genteel way to ask a gentleman if his Douglass Fairbanks favors one pant leg more than the other. Rudy tells the tailor to 'add more fabric' to the right pant leg to accommodate 'It' - 'It' being called an 'It' because Rudy is not genteel enough to refer to 'It' as a Douglass Fairbanks. It being something that doesn't actually require more fabric to prove itself right. 'It' is the idea that he would demand more fabric for something that isn't there.)

The guy is a menace. I don't mean to sound exactly like the guy I think is a menace but that guy is a menace. Maybe worse.

It's hard enough for lefty me (who bats right, throws right, dresses however it hangs today) to root, root, root for the Yankees; friend G-maux calls them the New York Hegemony's - and he's right.

And such has it always been: the price of rooting for a team that almost always plays the right way is that they always put 'a good product out on the field.' It used to be like rooting for US Steel. Now it's like pulling for US foreign policy.

Maybe those have always been one and the same?

But I'm seeing an increasingly thuggish fan base that reflects the increasingly thuggish/entitled team America attitude.

Image: bald, neck-less pigheaded guys with the beady eyes wearing Yankee warm-up blue-shirts (Clemens on back) barely covering Miller-lite guts that overflow the Ram Charger with extra payload careening down the hill from the Grand Concourse; a truckload of Bernie Keriks making the noise of the brown-shirts who once overstuffed Folksvagen flatbeds heading for windows to break, books to burn: 'Get the fuhck-outa-hehr, we're from Staten Island and we luv the Yang-kees (clapclapclap) Yang-kees (clapclapclap)!'

Foam Yankee mini-bats hang from rear view mirrors. Foam Yankee cooler sleeves keep lite-lager chill. Foam Yankee number one fingers raise high to Yankee heaven. Lots of foam. Non-biodegradable foam. Foahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhm!

Not to foam on Kerik too much. Tough background. And you gotta get your pig-knuckles dirty if you want to take the stage in front of brand new precinct houses on SI.

But the Bern-ing issue (sorry) is the way Rudy used the guy, knew the guy took short-cuts, knew when to cut him out, cut him off at the knees, cut him out of the history books (my obsession of late, this erasure of history, the pave-over of the balanced view).

Rudy: 'Hey Bernie, when we do the photo-op walk through the cloud of 9-11, hang back? Maybe cover your face with a dust-mask. For your safety Bernie. Don't worry Bernie, I'll take care of you, always take care of you and who you are and... who are you again?

...and/or...

Rudy: 'Yes Brit (Hume), Mr. Kerik did a good job; I took the poor kid in because he's hardscrabble and what are you implying Brit, that the Mayor of America has ties to the ties to the ties? This sounds anti-Italian, anti-Dimaggio, anti- Rizzutto, anti-Pagliarulo, anti-Tino (even though he's Cubano); anti-Catholic, anti-religion, you anti-American! Take it back! Or. I'll. Make. It. Go. Back. Up. In. To. Your. Atheistic. Paganistic. Pinko. Liberal. Heahhhhhhhd. (In your pie-hole!) !'

All said with shining bald pate increasingly leaning forward, blood of Christ pouring from his eye-sockets, nose, ears, Dead/Red Sea mouth frothing, voice lowering to thickened, Satanic, burping 1-800- late-night advertorial octave. (Not that I have any idea what I mean by that.)

Put it this way. I agree with George McGovern: W. Bush is the worst president ever (WPE as they say in the beltway). He's a lower case g is for jr. The f-george who's just wrong. Wrong answer. About everything. Doesn't know from outside the circle of mediocre but rich. All the wrong crony/criminal-hires with bad ideas to make it badder (said in the faux-cowboy lingua franca).

But W is only a spokesmodel for the corp-fascisto matrix.

If I'm ever interrogated for having the wrong not right ideas, I won't see W in the room applying electrodes to the places that hurt most. Maybe Dicky C. would stop by to lear. Rummy to squint. Gonzales to transcribe my screams. Scalia to write the yea opinion from behind the mirror/glass.

But I'll definitely see Rudy at Hotel Guantanamo.

Dressed in SS-black. Big epaulets. Jodhpurs. Nazi monocle.

Shirtless Bernie by his side, wearing a hood that doesn't hide his identity very well; Kerik's fingers will flip the switch on the AC-Delco Diehard electrode power source. (I've got my tastes, admit to kinks, but this is not my scene mahhhn.)

And G-Rudy will say I asked for it.

Not to froth again too much on the shores of the Staten Island landfill.

Except yes let's do.
One more time.

Pause. Big breath.

If NYC had just let SI secede from the union, let Jersey take what's rightfully/ideologically theirs, then David (Dinkens) would have slayed Goliath (Rudy) again, and Giuliani would not have written the City History chapter that says "Mayor Dinkins was a well-meaning liberal machine politician from the 'shady' side of town who would not hire enough cops, fill enough potholes and kick enough homeless squeegy guys off the streets and into already over-capacity shelters to get this city moving yes-yes for big business (to make Soho a shoe fetish theme park that moves all the liberals to Park Slope) ."

The truth-ironies?:


1. Dinkens hired the cops Rudy took credit for.
2. Dinkens was in charge when cleaned-up trains ran on schedule for the first time since LaGuardia was hizzoner.

If New York had 4 boroughs not 5, Rudy's ascent would have ended in court (when he was the AG).

Maybe he'd still be in play as a Bush appointee.
Maybe not: Rudy was always more Ronnie than W. And W hates anything NYC.

Last licks: Dinkins put a Yankee cap on Nelson Mandella's head long before Rudy put one on his own head 24/7 to consolidate the Staten Island Yankee/Ram Charger vote.

We used to say: Free Nelson Mandella.
Now we say:
Jail Rudy & Judi(th).

For Estephan Page, Gmaux and Buzz (who said 'don't be so correct').

And Staten Island; not all bad. That ferry ride to the minor league park with the Hudson River just beyond the outfield wall is pretty sweet. The fans family-civilized...able to police themselves without Bernie.


Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Yankee monument-myths are meant to last. But sometimes even the flagship franchise of America tries to erase the past.

The Yanks sign Roger Clemens. The move to make. Not much choice really. His agents were in Boston last week. And the Yankees seem to be responding well to the knowledge that John Wayne will soon arrive with fresh horses.

But this move also reads as a sort of Mao-negation of seasons 2004 - 2006. We didn't give up Pettitte - so we didn't give up Clemens - who never retired. (Wait a minute, that's true!). We never tried to replace Pettitte with Vasquez, and then didn't try to replace Clemens and Pettitte by trading Vasquez for the Unit and adding Brown. On top of that, just for the record, Jeff Weaver didn't happen to us either. Or Pavano. Or Jared Wright. Or Esteban Loiza after trading Contreras to the Pale Hose of Chicago to realize his full potential. Or. Or. Or.

Perhaps the Yankees will go full-on-Stalin, Josef and just cut the era of the Unit from the books. Re-call all the yearbooks and scorecards of 04-06! Annul certain names and faces from Yankee eternity. Say 2007 is 2003 and we're back at Clemens, Pettitte and Mussina up front. (With only one '07 add-on: Chien-Ming Wang on the tip of the tip of the top. WANG ON TOP!)

Of course the Clemens signing could sure look dumb if Rajah pops a mammy. I'm 3 years younger than he is and I've got at least 5 body mammy's just waiting to pop-out. They've popped before. They'll pop again. I'm not Clemens, don't have access to my own gym, training team or dietary supplements (more on that later), but that Clydesdale has lots of surface area and bulk - plenty of spots to puh-woing: 'Crap! I'm 45!'

So maybe this should be the moment for all Yankees to say uncle, admit that it's good to re-load, less valid to nullify the real?

But it's certainly tempting to revise with magical thinking.

Given the option, I would have stopped the clock when Scott Brosius tied 2001 World Series game 5 by homering off the same Byung-Hyun Kim who gave up Tino's game evener of game 4.

Keep the clock on Brosius-time. Then no game 7 loss. No Giambi signing. No required overstock of first basemen to compensate for the Giambi signing.

And: IF we had lived in the Brosius time-freeze, we could have skipped those orange alerts built to buttress the faux run-up to a real War.

No 'Shock and Awe.'
No 'Mission Accomplished' carrier-deck BBQ.
No Abu Ghraib afterhours club.
No re-election (h-cup!) re-coup 2004.
Just no!
NO!
Down with the corporate monolithe!

I'm frothing again.
And you may not care for my politics.
All part of the dangers of revising history to suit personal tastes.

But the elephant in the room that really goes un-recognized is this: the luck well runs dry. And the baseball gods decide they really owe a solid to The Milwaukee Brewers.

Yankee fans have had luck and then some in the Torre/Jeter years.

The cycle really began when Rivera found that cut-fastball (Don't worry, he'll find it again.)

And Doc Gooden climbed out of the gutter long enough to jump-start the dynasty with a no-hitter - and stayed off the coke just long enough for David Cone's arm to be re-attached before Doc's fell off.

And Darryl Strawberry still had some sweet, sweet, suh-weet swings.

And the ump didn't notice that the kid in the stands (Jeffrey Maier) used his glove to shovel Jeter's long fly into an ALCS game-tying homer.

And Knoblach never had his throwing yips in a big moment.
And El Duque's boat stayed afloat.

And Jeremy Giambi didn't slide in 2001 because only Jeter would have been THERE to relay the throw because it's not in any playbook.

And that Diamondbacks closer threw the exact same pitch at the exact same moment two nights in a row.

And just when you thought the Arizona dry-heat had sucked the last wet out of Mo's Dynasty... there was...

Aaron Boone 2003. (Special thanks to Grady Little.)

And that's only a sampling of the good fortune the New York Americans have had.

Luck runs in cycles. And the lemons made juice overtime - perhaps as cosmic compensation to NYers for the events we call "THE events?" Yes, luck is a product of design. But best-laid designs do go Mercury retrograde. Then the all-star starters tweak hamstrings (thanks to a trainer short on Major-league quals?). And none of the saviors save - what if there isn't even one semi-savior in the whole Carl Pavano bunch.

The factor that really might empty the Yank luck-tank?

What if Jason Grimsley was right and Clemens and Pettitte are juicy-juiced?

*****Just just just and one more thing just just Just*****

Curt Schilling said: "He [Bonds] admitted he used steroids. There's no gray area. He [Bonds] admitted cheating on his wife, cheating on taxes and cheating on the game."

All good – except for the 'no gray area' part.
And the wife-cheating part - it's not germane.

It's that right wing thing where personal stuff gets hipocritically tagged on the professional misconduct radar screen. Murky territory.

Clinton got a hummer from Monica. And Bush the elder got airlifted out of a limo he was 'sharing' with his long-time mistress when Reagan got shot. Neither event was relevant to policy making. Which one was the greater security risk is debatable.

And Barry cheating on his wife doesn't have much to do with cheating to get to Aaron's magic 755. (Funny how time burnishes the olden with golden. I remember everyone said Hank's milestone # wouldn't resonate like Babe's 714. It does now.)

Not to say cheating is good. It isn't. And his cheating is certainly another symptom of his general badness. And I suppose that's Schill's truth.

But j'accusers always have their own issues - self-righteousness at the very least. That's really high on my list of evils. And the Limbaugh Schill wasn't so bold with the mouth under oath at last year's congressional hearings. He looked like one of those chubby, wheezing tobacco execs claiming they weren't aware that smoking kills.

Now, if the real John Law wants to get Barry on partner abuse, that it's own very different story. I have close to zero-tolerance for that kind of behavior – particularly from rich guys with 'roid rage.