Cubs win! Let's all write-in Theo Epstein for Prez!

(669 words)

Something happened late last night that convinced me to do something I never dreamed I’d ever do.

I’m not voting for Hillary.

Trump? Hell, no.

Third party? I’ll not waste my vote.

What are my plans?

I’m writing in Theo Epstein!

If he can in just 12 years vanquish a collective 188 years of World Series droughts between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs he can make ANYTHING great again.

Epstein, today 42, was just 28 in 2002 when the Red Sox hired him to be their general manager. Two years later the perennially cursed Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. Three years later, he won them another.

Inexplicably, the Sox let him go in 2011 (haven’t won since) and he was snapped up by the Cubs. All he did for them was end the longest and most fabled drought in sports history, the 108-year folly of the Cubs.

So this one man has now won two more world championships than all the vaunted New York Yankees teams have won this century.

Him negotiating baseball salaries seems a gross misapplication of genius.

Can you imagine what a man like that could do if he sunk his teeth into climate change?

Or health care? EpiPens would be cheaper than Tootsie Rolls.

Reporters last night were asking him if he thought the Cubs could repeat.

Idiots. A man this great shouldn’t be troubled with such piddling questions.

Someone should ask him where we all go when we die. He knows, I’m sure. It’s just no one’s ever bothered to ask.

I won’t say last night was the greatest baseball game ever. That honor goes to Game 7 of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates versus the New York Yankees.

But given the circumstances, it was the greatest baseball event I’ve ever seen.

The indelible moment for me was the goofy grin Kris Bryant had on his face as the last out dribbled into his glove. It was a tricky play and given him being a Cub immortal catastrophe could have ensued, but his joy and skill were transcendent.

And I could sense the entire country for the first time in years felt simultaneously good, happy. Glad to be alive.

Well, every one but the Indians and all their pitiful fans.

The national reaction bolsters my contention that anytime you feel like talking about politics you should instead talk about baseball.

Talk about Roberto Clemente, Satchel Paige, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. Suggest that the problem with baseball isn’t the games are too long; they’re not long enough.

And talk about the 2016 Chicago Cubs, a team for the ages.

They’ve given the whole country a happy lift when we’re all feeling poisoned by politics.

That Cub-love is an about face coming from me. Remember, it was I who wrote just last week in the “Cubs will lose” link below how much I hated them.

To summarize, I said they’d lose because of Steve Bartman and because of this one evil jackass with whom I nearly came to blows at a Pirate game back in 2008.

I put my soul-devouring hatred for this one jerk above all my Chicago friends, my fond memories of my visits there, and my warm regard for things like Olde Style beer and artery clogging deep dish pizza.

It diminished me. Our hatreds always do.

I’ll admit there were times I even dreamed he was dead.

He was an older dude with a cranky disposition. I imagined him choking on a sausage or being the victim of justifiable homicide over some neighbor hedge dispute.

But this morning even the mists of that hatred have been blown away in the wake of an historic victory. 

And I now realize even if someone did justifiably kill that miserable bastard, Theo Epstein could have resurrected him for the Cubbie celebration.

After what he did for the entire franchise, bringing back from the dead just one measly Cub fan would be a piece of cake.

Related …

Cubs will lose

I hate the Chicago Cubs

Who I’m liking in the ’15 MLB playoffs (hint: it’s not the Cubs)

Roberto Clemente, Mr. 3,000

Pirates should sign the late Ted Williams

The man Maz turned into a Communist

A great day for baseball … Let’s play 2! Or 3!

I play Centerfield

Hoping for Game 7 extra-extra innings

(665 words)

I’m thinking of DVRing tonight’s World Series game 7 and watching just two pitches every night until the game’s concluded about four months from now.

See, I like to savor my baseball.

No matter who wins tonight, I lose. I’ll be without baseball until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training Feb. 18 (that’s 107 days, but who’s counting?).

But I recognize inherent flaws in my plan.

First of all, I’d have to avoid all sports news or risk getting blindsided with a spoiler of historic proportions.

Second, I could be settling in to watch two pivotal bottom-of-the-eighth inning pitches in late January and find the whole ingenious project ruined when my daughter deletes the game to make room for a “My Little Pony” episode she’s already seen 79 times but simply must see again. 

Third, I’d have to stop going to the bar where sports talk dominates, and if there’s one thing I need to help get me through winter without baseball, it’s bar banter.

I think I’m drawn to baseball because it’s maybe the most sublime waste of time man’s ever invented. 

Each of the 30 teams plays 162 games. That’s 2,430 regular season games, with about 40 October playoff contests. With 25 men on each roster, that’s about 121,500 human interest stories right there. Some players win, some lose. Some perform heroically, some can’t hit the cut-off man.

Throw in a supporting cast of inept managers, drunken fans, horny groupies and gaffe-prone team announcers and it’s like reading the Bible while some unseen organist plays “Take Me Out To the Ballgame.”

It’s a cornucopia of meaningless conversation. That’s something I relish.

So many conversations these days are like warfare. The combatants concede no ground and will talk/shout until their opponent either submits or dies.

People involved in baseball conversations are more philosophical and enjoy sprinkling their insights with trivia useful to other baseball people.

And unlike nearly everything else in life, baseball is barely troubled about how long it takes to play baseball. Some see that as a flaw. They are mistaken.

It is a virtue.

A baseball game could conceivably last forever. That’s why when I tell I tell my wife I’m going to attend a baseball game, she knows there’s a chance she might never see me again.

This would be different from what happened two years ago to a 53-year-old father at a Denver Bronco game. He said he was going to the bathroom — and just disappeared. There was no trace of him. No call. No hospital admission. No suicide note blaming Roger Goodell for ruining the NFL.

Thankfully, he was found about 100 miles south of Denver, alive and unharmed, five days after the game’s final whistle. No explanations were forthcoming so we’re left to assume the lines to the men’s rooms that night were just really, really long.

It’d be different at a baseball game. 

The longest game I’ve ever attended was 16-inning marathon in 1997 when the Pirates beat — who else? — the Chicago Cubs. We were there for 7 1/2 hours.

We had no intention of leaving, even though MLB rules cruelly require the teams stop serving beer after the 7th inning. At the end me and my buddies congratulated ourselves for having stayed mostly alert for the whole thing with only a couple of brief naps.

I invite you to read the top link below to learn stories of what happened in 1981when two minor league teams featuring future HOFers Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs played a game that lasted 33 1/3 innings.

My dream is to attend a baseball game that never ends.

In fact, that’s in some ways my idea of heaven. The green grass, the crack of the bat, the smell of the popcorn and all that glorious ballpark humanity.

Maybe that’s what’s in store for tonight.

Maybe we’re all about to be treated to one of the greatest baseball games ever played.

That’d be great.

I just hope I don’t snooze through the end.

Related . . .

A great day for baseball! Let’s play 2! Or 3!

The last angry man(ager): MLB’s replay mistake

Priorities: Work or cheap beer baseball?

I cry over commercials (farewell, Cap’n Jeter)

Roberto Clemente, Mr. 3,000

Taking pregnant women out to the ol’ ballgame

The long, true story of my epic Game 7 pool match

When Sprawl-o-ween eats October

Only four more shopping days to Halloween. That means our Halloween tree has been up for three weeks.

As Halloween trees go, ours is modest. It’s about 4-feet tall, is decorated with tiny rubber bats, some Jack-O-Lantern tinsel and has funereal black boughs to match my mood as we enter the Halloween home stretch.

Growing up, I never knew Halloween was anything but a single day, B-list holiday. It didn’t mean as much to me as Christmas, Easter or any of the other candy-plus-vacation holidays.

I’d dress up like a cowboy or an astronaut and go out and haul candy home in an old pillow case.

I dressed up purely for the candy. I didn’t harbor any childish ambitions to actually become a cowboy or astronaut. Back then, my only ambition was to become a boy who didn’t have to go to school.

Times change. Today, Halloween has become a month-long Caligulian candy fest. It has me wondering if the American Dental Association isn’t behind the whole spread.

Of course, the kids love it. Sprawl-o-ween means all of October is studded with adults handing out cheap candy at banks, drive-thrus and at parties in grocery stores and even church basements where you’d think a pagan holiday that tips its hat to Satan would be tsk-tsked by the holy folk.

No sign of that. Halloween is harmless to all but the dour fundamentalists who view it as another unholy assault on all that’s decent in America.

So I’m all for that.

But I just don’t get how this of all holidays became so super-sized. How in this age of childhood obesity, wanton candy distribution has yet to be demonized is a mystery.

I suspect many adults revel in the holiday for escapist opportunities. There’s nothing wrong with that. Life can be such a slog.

Me, I need less escape and more normal. With the glaring exception of near-zero income, man, I’ve got it made. I enjoy ample bar time, have a wonderful and understanding wife, and the kids are still at a tender age where a single glare will cease their sass.

That’s hardly all. The Pittsburgh Steelers are 5-1, author Keith Richards and I are now colleagues, and no matter what happens on election day, not a single vote for Bush/Cheney will be tallied.

Given the way my life is turning out, I’m surprised I don’t see kids shuffling up my sidewalk dressed as me. You’d think being me would be more aspirational to many aimless youth than, say, dressing up as a fireman.

My seasonal grouchiness is in direct contrast to that of my ‘weenie lovin’ wife -- and that’s as dangerous a line as you’ll find in a family-friendly blog.

She loves Halloween. The tree was her idea.

I guess much of my pique has to do with bats.

Not the rodent kind, mind you.

The Louisville Slugger kind.

For the past few years the monster that has become Halloween has devoured my precious post-season.

There are just too many Halloween-related events when baseball is at its most sublime. And with each passing game, I’m one day closer to the baseball Siberia that coincides with the cruelest months of the year.

Take last Halloween. Val was invited one of those over-the-top theatrical Halloweens where every room is decorated and all the guests look like extras from a movie where everyone gets slain.

It sure killed me because it was held during Game 4 of the World Series between the Phillies and Yankees.

Val -- and I told you she was understanding -- knew my aversion to dressing up as anything but an underemployed blogger and went easy on me.

She got out some old cat whiskers, tail, ears and the like.

While she was a come-hither kitty, and I wound up being a real sour puss.

I tried to be nice, but was furrious, er, furious to learn people who are into Halloween are cruelly judgmental of people who are not.

They looked at us like we didn’t belong. They made us feel inferior. They wondered who’d let us in.

For the first time in my life, me, a white man with cat whiskers, knew what it was like to be oppressed.

The sting of discrimination stuck in my paw, er, craw.

Sort of like the Halloween that ate October.