Playoff Baseball — Oct. 6, 2022 - Johnny Boy Marketing

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Baseball Gear-Grinders ⚾
Sunrise Woes 🌄
Heavy Pumpkins 🎃

There are a few baseball-related indignities in my home that, as the saying goes, grind my gears.

The first is that there is a state championship trophy on the mantel above the fireplace in our Humble Country Home with a gold-plated baseball player, bat in hand ready to crush whatever pitch may come, standing majestically atop the base. It is Wifey Poo’s.

This is maddening because, while Wifey Poo is amazing at many, many things, baseball is not one of them. In fact, so bad is she and has she always been at anything played with a round ball that she played just one season of softball — a season she forgot resulted in a state championship until she stumbled upon the trophy while cleaning out the basement last year!!!!

She remembers nothing about the season and is pretty sure her greatest contribution to the championship was maybe — maybe — earning a walk once.

Her husband, on the other hand, dedicated his young life to the game. He played it, watched it, lived it, gave a tendon in his right forearm for it and carries around a lump of scar tissue in said forearm to prove it. And while he won a league title and was named to several All-Star teams, he never — never — came close to winning a state championship.

This is a sore spot in our marriage made worse by that little gold bastard atop the trophy staring down at me every time I’m sitting on the couch.

The other gear-grinding thing related to the great game of baseball is that, despite my far greater love of the sport of baseball than Wifey Poo, only one of us has ever been to a playoff baseball game, and that person has boobs.

Now, this is not all my fault. Despite growing up a Yankees fan and people thinking that meant I was some front-runner who casually took the latest World Series win as ho-hum as someone ordering a bowl of soup, the Yankees absolutely sucked when I was growing up.

They won the World Series in 1978, when I was 4, then made the World Series in 1981 and were god-awful after that, until I went to college in Iowa.

My father was a fearful sort who eschewed crowds. It’s why, despite the fact that I grew up in the shadow of the City That Never Sleeps, I have seen so little of it and rarely experienced any of the amazing things that happened there. Never in a million years would he have ever considered taking me to a playoff baseball game. By the time I could make that decision for myself — or had friends whose fathers would make such a decision — the Yanks were garbage.

The low point? Glad you asked.

It was July 1, 1990. I was nearing my 16th birthday. En route to a 67-95 record in which they finished DFL in the seven-team AL East, Andy Hawkins pitched a no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox. Great news, right?

Wrong.

The Yankees lost that game. And it wasn’t 1-0 on some freak error. It was 4-0. The Yankees allowed zero hits to their opponents that game and lost four to freaking nothing.

In a 0-0 game in the eighth, Hawkins got Ron Karkovice and Scott Fletcher on infield pop-outs to second baseman Steve Sax. Sammy Sosa (yes, that Sammy Sosa) reached first on a fielding error by third baseman Mike Blowers, which, sadly, rhymes with “ow” and not “blow.”

Hawkins then walked Ozzie Guillen and Lance Johnson to load the bases, before Robin Ventura hit a ball into a gusty summer breeze. The ball glanced off converted-catcher-turned-left-fielder Jim Leyritz’s glove for a two-base error. Three runs scored.

Then, to really kick the Yankees fans in the balls, right fielder Jesse Barfield (we had lots of fun with that name as kids), misplayed a ball hit by Ivan Calderon, losing it in the sun before dropping it for another error, which scored Ventura.

Yes, that happened.

So yeah, I didn’t have many opportunities to go to playoff baseball games.

In 2019, Wifey Poo found cheap-ish tickets to a Cardinals playoff game against the Atlanta Braves and took Boy The Younger. It was a thrilling extra-inning affair in which the Cardinals scored one in the bottom of the eighth on a Yadier Molina single to tie the game to send it to extras. In the 10th, Molina hit a walk-off sacrifice fly, and the Cardinals won.

I experienced the thrilling victory by not experiencing it. I was at work.

Boy The Younger is 13. He’s gone to a playoff baseball game. Grrrr.

Even Boy The Elder has been to a playoff game, though it was in hockey. On the day his first real girlfriend broke up with him (I never liked her, so this was good news), he was there for Game 7 of the second round of the St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup run. In that game, the score was tied after regulation.

It was tied after the first overtime.

Then, 5:50 into the second overtime, Pat Maroon tapped in a rebound to send the Blues home a winner in what my son calls one of the best days of his life. I hate him for that.

So in my family, three of the Core Four have experienced playoff happiness. I have not.

That’s going to change.

Yesterday, I got tickets for Wifey Poo, BTY and I to go to Saturday’s Wild Card playoff game between the Cardinals and the Phillies. It’s not the Yankees, but the Cardinals are a fun team to watch, and they’re my hometown team, so I’ll root for them. It will be great to even the score with the rest of the fam in playoff game attendance.

Now what to do about that damn trophy?

I’ve written extensively about how working from home is not going to be a thing that sticks around. My new company is most definitely a work-from-the-office business. I knew that when I took the job. I am not upset about it.

But on a morning in which my half-hour commute turns into an hour-plus commute because people can’t handle the sun rising and it causes an accident or five? Yeah. That.

It is no secret I’m of the very strong opinion that Muricah is faltering and will soon cease to be a superpower of any sort. But I know we’re not there yet.

How do I know? Well, an upstate New York man set a new record by growing a pumpkin that weighed in at 2,554 pounds. What’s the connection? If you’re living in a country where people are recognized for growing heavy pumpkins, you’re in a nation that’s doing a-okay. I’m quite sure no one in, say, Sudan or Burkina Faso is getting hyped for the size of their produce.

WFH 4EVER? Not So Fast

It’s good to be the king.” Mel Brooks, History of the World: Part 1 I am currently sitting in an office that no one else wanted to fill. Two weeks ago, I started a new job with a company that had a zero-WFH (Work From Home) policy as one of the conditions of hiring. That,…

Playoff Baseball — Oct. 6, 2022

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