IdahoBert

I accomplished one positive thing on Facebook today.

Yes. Identifying your own fate and sense of self with a sports team has an exclusivity to it that nurtures as much as it disables. If it can propel you to the stars, it also has to propel you into genuine misery. There’s something deeply tribal about it.

Cheers. Glad for you. In May I will be closing in on eight years. One of the ways to avoid getting older is to hang out with younger people, which is something I do, although nobody gets my jokes. They just don’t get my subtle cultural references, although I get to pick up theirs to a certain extent.

Last year’s historic uptick was amazing. A lot of things fell into place almost miraculously, and I doubt that it’s repeatable. Other teams last year didn’t see the Tigers coming and now they do. Granted, a lot of these young guys may blossom making this fear unnecessary A lot of heavy lifting occurred on the ground last year and yielded great results. It certainly wasn’t all due to taking flight on angel’s wings. That last part of the season surge happened due to grit and willpower and a lot of thoughtful intervention and coaching but I can’t help but feel that right now this is a 77–85 team without something dramatic occurring.

It pisses me off to hear that. I have several sets of friends who lived in Idaho and then moved back to Detroit and while they were in Boise, we had a lot of things in common and we stay in touch and some of them are pretty gutted out by this loss of the Lions. So although I can’t go all Bill Clinton and tell people that “I feel your pain“ I sort of do. This matters to people I know and care about so it matters to me, even though it isn’t happening to me with the same gravity.

As a person who’s never lived in Detroit, but who is a lifelong monogamous monotheist worshiper at the altar of the Detroit Tigers — for which I have an affinity that no other team or past time can ever equal or exceed — I’m sorry that the Lions lost such an important game and that this amazing transcendent season ended on such a sour note. The Tigers literally dazzled me and changed my life as a child for the better and that can only happen once. So I’m just a bandwagoner to every other sport and every other team in existence — even Boise State. Still, following the Lions this year gave me great joy and it was nice to feel included in the broader spectrum of your various loyalties if only for a while.

We need to score quick touchdown on a turnover.

This is just the Lions doing an entertaining Todd Jones imitation. When the game is over, we’ll be so happy with a hard earned victory we’ll be turning cars over and setting fire to them. Strangers will embrace each other on the street and declare their undying friendship. It’ll be much better than just cruising to an easy win.

You may ask yourself, "Where is mybeautiful game?" You may ask yourself, "Where does that highway go to?" And you may ask yourself, "Am I right, am I wrong?" And you may say to yourself, "My God, what have we done?"

The uniform patch on the A’s new uniforms. I love it when a plan doesn’t come together, and the oligarchy is shamed. Eventually, being a master of every universe you encounter doesn’t work.

I did it correctly so well 40 years ago that his face turned beat red. He was jumping up and down and scanning the seats for the culprit and being the pseudo intellectual I am I shouted out “He thinks we’re all guilty. It’s like a Kafka novel!“ Which actually got a rise out of a few people in the stands. I mean, after all, it is baseball and attracts a higher class of people. It’s not a tractor pull.

Ah, you’re right. I’m pretty sure I did the insult correctly 40 years ago, but my memory failed me just now. Thanks for clarifying this sacred memory.

That is actually a very instructive find, so thanks Lee.

I’ve already mentioned this, but I will admit once again to being a blue bleeding Dodger fan for ONE season. But my defense is that I was living in Tucson, Arizona, and it was the only way I could follow baseball on local radio and I was recuperating from a serious motorcycle accident and zoned out on pain medication and unable to leave my bedroom so it was like being in jail and listening to Vin Scully was better than looking at cracks in the wall. It was a pretty exciting season too. It was Fernando‘s first full season after his rookie year in the strike shortened ‘81 season and I was pretty upset that the Dodgers finished one game behind the Braves for second place in the West Division. But I don’t despise the Dodgers even now and since one of my daughters lives in LA and goes to Dodger games on occasion, it’s not like I’m going to rain on her parade, but I sure don’t go out of my way to root for them myself, although I was fine with them beating the Yankees last year. If it’s Dodgers Yanks again I guess I’ll be rooting for the pinstripes whether I like it or not.

I was aware of Bill Lee and how he had fun with Don Zimmer calling him chipmunk, so when Zimmer was a coach for the Cubs and they came to Tucson to play the Indians in spring training at Hi Corbett Field in ‘84-‘85 and far from the field I shouted at Zimmer “Hey chipmunk how’s it hanging today?“ He was royally upset and he almost had to be restrained. I didn’t realize how stinging Bill Lee‘s taunt of him had been and how Zimmer took it personally. I chuckled about it at the time and then pretty quickly felt it was kind of gutless of me to take a cheap shot at a guy from the cheap seats no less. And I can’t really chalk it up to youth because I was in my early 30s by then, but it was a lesson learned and I’ve never again been a gutless twerp who shouts stuff from the stands. The fact that I drank six Miller Lights and I’m not much of a drinker is still not a good enough excuse.