Game Seven!!!!!!

Since I’m going to be as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, I’ve decided to keep an in game blog of my observations during Game Seven. I am doing this not because I think I might have some profound insight, but rather to keep me relatively calm by giving me something to do during commercial breaks and pitching changes..etc..

- Decent National Anthem. Some country singer I had never heard of with the good sense not to butcher the song and the upbringing that prevented him from wearing that God-awful hat while he was singing.

-Whenever I see Ken Rosenthal on TV I want to bring him home and build him a tiny little house to play in out back.

-I wonder if Juan Soto gets his hair cut for half price, since the barber obviously quit halfway thru.

-Adam Eaton is the type of guy I would hate if he were on any other team. What a pest.

-Max Scherzer looks like a really angry assassin. 97 mph in the first inning. Whoa.

-Pretty much can’t stand Bregman, so consequently love watching him make an out.

-I’m really, really surprised that Charlize Theron drinks Budweiser.

-Gurriel is tough. Hit a good pitch.

- Great catch by Soto. Now, lets get some runs boys!

-Altuve is great. How does he put THAT pitch into left field??

-I don’t want to jinx him but this umpire hasn’t missed a pitch yet. A huge improvement over the last two nights.

-Max is grinding.

-I vow never to enter a Taco Bell franchise for as long as I live just from spite for these stupid commercials.

-Let’s try hitting them to someone besides the pitcher.

-Greinke is dealing. Between him and Rendon they look like they are sleep walking through the game.

- Houston keeps leaving men on base. This could come back to haunt them. Trick knee is telling me that Washington can win this game the longer it goes on this close. But at some point we need to stop hitting ground balls to Greinke.

-Huge moment. Two on. Correa at the plate. Max needs to get out of this!! Just one run. We’re still alive.

-Good Lord. Greinke looks like the reincarnation of Cy Young. Our guys taking fastballs right over the middle of the plate and swinging at everything else. Totally off balance. Looks like we are going out with a whimper. So...I have changed viewing strategies and am now upstairs in the recliner, watching the game on the MLB app. A reverse rally cap of sorts.

-One of the most terrifying phrases any Nationals fan can hear? “Tanner Rainey now warming up in the bullpen.”

-Anthony Rendon, superstar...and now Greinke out of the game. Here we go.

-HOWIE FREAKING KENDRICK 

-And now the Astros bring in their wife beating closer in the seventh inning. 

-Corbin...the guy we could afford to sign after we got rid of Harper pitches two great innings in game seven. Yes.

-We need to get six outs, which would be much easier with a few more runs. Come on boys.

-That’s what I’m talking about!! Juan, Juan Juan!!!!

-Three more outs. Dear God in heaven, saints preserve us!!!!

- I swear, if Davey brings Fernando Rodney into this game, I might spend the rest of my life in prison.

-I will feel so much better about our ability to get these last three outs if we can score a couple more in the top half of the ninth. Bases loaded...I will never get to sleep tonight...YES!!! Adam Eaton!!!! I cannot believe what I’m seeing!!

- Ok...Here we go...three outs to get, four run lead.

ARGHGHHHHH!!!!! HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!

The High Water Mark of My Marriage

What a Series.

I could regale all of you with the intricacies of why this particular World Series has been so special, the clutch hitting, the stellar pitching, the dazzling defensive plays. But last night provided all the proof I need that 2019’s Fall Classic is an all-timer...my wife watched the game.

To those of you who don’t know, the beautiful and talented Pam Dunnevant doesn’t do sports. I can count on one hand the number of times she has watched any sporting event for more than two minutes at a time. I can tell the way she looks at me when I stomp around the house bitching and moaning about some horrible call or when I scream and fist pump like some lunatic after a home run, that she thinks I’m unwell. But, there I was last night, trying to change the fortunes of my team by watching the game on my MLB app upstairs on my iPad, when I heard my sainted wife let out a scream of her own. Juan Soto had just crushed a 96 mph Justin Verlander fastball into the cheap seats in right field, and before I could even let out a wild welp of my own, my wife could be heard woo-hooing downstairs. For a moment I thought, “Wait, is she ok? Was that a scream of pain...has she fallen??” Then a couple of innings letter I heard her yell, “Oh NO!! Altuve is up!!!” My wife was watching the game...by herself on the television downstairs!

At that point, I must admit, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more attracted to her. Never has my reservoir of affection been so filled to the brim, than when I heard my wife grasp how crucial it was that Jose Altuve was striding to the plate with two runners in scoring position in the bottom of the fifth inning. This would be the equivalent of me suddenly exclaiming, “Oh my gosh, look at the incredible consistency of that hollandaise sauce,” while watching an episode of The Pioneer Woman. So, the 2019 World Series has turned out to be a seminal moment in our 35 year old marriage. Oh, the remarkable, transformative power of October baseball.

To be fair, I must admit that she does occasionally watch sporting events. She likes figure skating....sigh. She also likes the Olympics, but only because that two week long broadcast is 90% heart warming back stories about the athletes and only 10% actually...sports. But, this World Series marks the high water mark of Pam’s engagement with sports...and I am loving it!!

Go Nats.

My Bad

So, my team lost game three last night, and since this is baseball we’re talking about, fans everywhere are making the necessary adjustments required to assure that this doesn’t happen again. See, in baseball’s post season, it’s not how well or poorly the players play or the managers manage. Winning or losing all hangs on fan behavior. More rational observers would refer to this as...superstition, but every real baseball fan knows better. How we behave, how we dress, even our choice of food or beverage can doom our team’s effort to failure. To quote that noted philosopher, Michael Scott, “We’re not superstitious, we’re just a little stitious.”

I had a premonition late yesterday afternoon that something bad might happen when I was on the treadmill at AMFAM and a buddy of mine, Bland Weaver, approached me with an irritated expression on his face. True, with Bland that’s pretty much his go-to facial expression, but nevertheless he seemed particularly put out with me:

Bland: I wanted to grab you by the throat and kill you this morning.

Me: Again? What did I do this time?

Bland: That blog you wrote.

Me: ??

Bland: You don’t write about your team in the middle of a hot streak, you moron! That’s the kiss of death. When they lose tonight, it’s going to be your fault. Thanks a lot!!

Then, I get home and my tender hearted wife suggested that since my buddy, Chip Hewette, is home alone this weekend while Lynn is visiting her mother, that we invite him over for dinner and watch the game with him. I agreed out of my unfortunately deeply ingrained notions of Christian hospitality. But any rookie baseball fan knows that you don’t invite a non-partisan observer into your house on game night during the post season! What was I thinking??

My third unforced error came later when I arrived home having forgotten that I was supposed to stop by the grocery store to pick up the fixings for a proper baseball meal of hot dogs and baked beans and home made Mac and cheese. Because of the late hour I made the critical mistake of agreeing to, “gasp”...order pizza instead.

Under the circumstances, it’s a miracle that the Nationals didn’t get blown out, that Anthony Rendon survived the game without a season ending knee injury and Anibal Sanchez does not require Tommy John surgery this morning. Oh... and that group text thing I set up for the first time last night between my brother, my son in law, and my buddy Al Thomason??  That’s never happening again.

A Beautiful Thing

Today is going to be crazy. I can just feel it. You ever wake up and think, uh-oh, something’s up? Yeah, me neither. But this morning it was like that for me. I looked at the small digital time display across the room, the one I now have to squint to read, and saw that it was 4:59. I noticed that Lucy had slept through the night without the need to go outside with the squirts. There she was, stretched out to her full length at the foot of the bed like she owns the place—which she kinda does. I patted her on her sweet head and said, “little Miss Lucy,” which reminded me of the nursery rhyme, little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her...which naturally morphed into:

An army led by Miss Muffet fails to arrive in Syria. Apparently there were Kurds in her way.

Once downstairs, I began searching for this morning’s jokes for my friend. Found a couple of decent ones:

How come the Hong Kong Police get up so early?

So they can beat the crowds.

Did you hear about the new movie they are making about a visitor from outer space who has three balls?

It’s called ET the extra-testicle.

What do you call a depressed vegetable?

A despairagus.

Then, it occurs to me that tonight the city of Washington will be hosting it’s first World Series game since 1933. That ballpark is going to be a madhouse. Win or lose, it will be an event. I will watch every pitch. I will yell at the home plate umpire for either A. Squeezing the strike zone or B. Calling pitches six inches off the plate strikes. I will bemoan each National batter who swings at ball four in the dirt. I will scare the be-jeezies out of Lucy every time I let out a wild shout whenever one of the good guys gets a clutch hit. I will delight in every gut wrenching moment, realizing that I may never get to see this again in my lifetime. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. Nothing that comes my way today will have the power to dampen my enthusiasm for tonight’s game, even the fact that I have to complete my Broker-Dealer’s annual on-line compliance questionnaire, an hour and a half slow walk through the hell’s half acre of the internet. I will persevere. I will forge ahead with confidence knowing that I hold in my hand a ticket to Game Three of the World Series. I will be sitting in the climate controlled comfort of my living room, eating something delicious and sipping my golden beverage of choice, firing off texts to several like-minded buddies. It’s going to be a beautiful thing.

Game One and My Sick Puppy

Poor Lucy. For the third consecutive day our girl has had the runs. At night that means she wakes us up two of three times a night whining to be let out. Afterwards, we have to clean her up. Not fun. Then, this morning she unceremoniously threw up a rather large chicken bone in the doorway of our bedroom. We are flummoxed by this since neither of us feed her anything but dog food. She must have picked it up during her late night ramblings in the dark. The odd thing about this is that she has no other symptoms. Her appetite is good. She seems energetic and even her nose is relatively cool and wet. But for three days, nothing but mud pies every three or four hours.

Needless to say, her condition made watching last night’s Nationals win in game one problematic. Lucy seems to have horrible baseball drama timing. Every time the bases were loaded, or every time a pivotal moment of the game would arrive, she would need to go outside to do her business. Invariably, when I finally got her back inside and cleaned up I would tune in just in time to hear one of the announcers exclaim, “What a play!!!!!” Thank God for instant replay.

So last night I’m texting back and forth with my good friend, Al about the game. He’s a big baseball fan like me so we have fun doing our own twisted brand of color commentary. Every now and then one of us comes up with a pretty decent line. Last night it was Al’s turn. When twenty year old phenom, Juan Soto, crushed his opposite field home run onto the train tracks in left center field, he fires this one out to me:

“Can’t give that ball a Jewish funeral ‘cause it was TATTOOED!!!”

Unfortunately, I was out on a potty run at the time and didn’t see it until later. But, Holy Cow, what a great line. I would pay just about anything to hear Joe Buck say that on national TV!

A Hard Morning

This morning was hard. I shared a few jokes with my friend. She laughed out loud at one of them and I got a coveted four face palms on another. But then I asked her how she was feeling...

My friend is a tough broad. She’s a successful woman in a man’s world. To become so, she had to be tough. Now with cancer it’s been no different. She takes everything it has thrown at her with grit, determination and a positive attitude that is sometimes hard to comprehend from where I sit. But this morning she offhandedly made the statement that her doctor says that she is now anemic, which means that her immune system, already weakened by the chemo, is now even less effective. Her doctor’s advice is that she should work from home instead of going into the office during flu season. 

Something about that revelation got to me. And in my usual ham-fisted way, I blurted out, “OK...if you get the flu, I’m lodging an official complaint with God!!” Her reply was, “I’m trusting him with all of it. No need to complain, my friend. He’s got this.”

When I replied with, “Yeah, but sometimes enough is enough,” she offered this matter of fact description of her condition:

I know...I have sores in my nose, hands that are so chapped they peel the skin off, blurred vision, no hair, constant diarrhea and sores inside my mouth. But, I’ve been reading Job and reminding myself that I’m still better off than he was. Also, there’s a guy at our church who is younger than me and has stage four cancer in his jaw and throat. He has been on chemo and radiation. I think he’s already quitting and they are going to call in hospice. So, I can still see positives in all this mess. When your group meets this week remember to pray for my husband. I think he’s depressed about all of this but would never admit it.

Whenever I post something about my friend, it makes me uncomfortable whenever people respond by telling me what a great “friend” I am. When people do that they are completely and totally missing the point. What’s remarkable about all of this is not some guy who sends texts to a sick friend every morning filled with corny jokes. What’s remarkable is the almost supernatural endurance, faith and toughness of a woman who is battling cancer with more honesty and grace than humanly possible. After that dissertation of horribleness she asks me to pray...for her husband.

It didn’t end there. Before I could summon enough composure to respond she changed the subject to...baseball. She and her husband are big Orioles fans, they drive to Baltimore three or four times a year to their games. But she’s become a temporary Nationals fan for the Series. “I figure the Nationals are as close as I’m gonna get to seeing Baltimore win a World Series, so GO NATS!”

Just like nothing ever happened. She signed off with, “Have a happy Monday, Doug!”

I have so much to learn about toughness, grace and faith, it’s not even funny. 

Heaven on Earth

Now that the Yankees have been eliminated from the playoffs and the world is now back to spinning merrily on its axis, I can get back to other concerns. Of course by other concerns, I mean finding and disseminating the absolute worst Dad Jokes known to exist anywhere in the free world. Like:

Have you heard about that new strain of lice that are resistant to conventional treatments?

They have scientists scratching their heads.

What do you get when you divide a pumpkin’s circumference by it’s diameter?

Pumpkin Pi

I keep asking what LBGTQ stands for...

But I can never get a straight answer.

You may have noticed, (or not), that I haven’t been writing as many posts here recently. It’s because of this bizarre novel I’m writing. I’ve never experienced anything like it. My two previous books took between 6 and 8 months to write. This one has been flying out of my head and onto the page at all hours— morning, noon and night for just under 2 months now and I’m almost done. My friend with cancer says it reminds her of her diarrhea—which I found hysterically funny. The fact that she can find humor in her circumstances is remarkable. Anyway, between watching post season baseball and writing this story, The Tempest has gotten the short end of the stick. I intend to remedy this at some point very soon. I wouldn’t want any of you jumping out of windows from the overwhelming disappointment of not getting your Tempest fix. On the other hand, I’m sure there are plenty of you who are asking yourselves the question, “How can we miss him if he never leaves??” A fair point.

Getting back to the Evil Empire, watching the Yankees get beaten in the postseason every year for the past decade or so has been something very close to what I imagine heaven will be like. But last night was something special. There was their 330 million dollar walking hamstring pull, Giancarlo Stanton, riding the pine...their golden boy Aaron Judge getting doubled off first base, and their wife-beating closer getting lit up by the smallest player on the field, Jose Altuve. I mean if that’s not heaven, what is???