Bambino's Curse

Winter Break

I had planned to do a final pre-vacation post this morning, but since I swore off mentioning the what's-his-name deal, I'm not left with much because it's still the numerous uno topic of the day.

So … I bid you adieu for now.

Be on the look out for audioblog postings filed via cell from a beach in Nags Head, NC.

Keep your Sox on!

SXSW Web Awards

Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter a site into the South by SouthWest (SXSW) Web Awards competition. If you have a site that launched during the calander year 2003 you are eligible to enter it.

If you recall, Bambino's Curse was a finalist in the weblog competition in 2002 (for sites that launched during 2001). I didn't win. I used to be bitter, but considering I lost out to the creator of MoveableType and TypePad, I really can't complain. That's sort of like getting beat by the '61 Yankees. (I do hate losing, though. Which is why being born into Red Sox Nation makes for some delicious irony not to mention sleepless nights.)

"He Who Must Not Be Named"

Just so you know, I'm officially dropping out of the baited breath crowd. Until there is some official, as in press conference covered by the national media, I will no longer engage in or otherwise discuss anything having to do with shortstop what's-his-face or shortstop what's-his-name.

I have to put a stop to it because it's killing me, a death by a thousand paper cuts sort of thing.

So I'm out. Call me when things are final.

You know every now and then some troll will leave a comment here saying "Get a life." Well, today is one of those days where I feel the trolls might be on to something. It's too easy to get carried away. It's is just a silly game, after all. Why and the hell do I care so much whether what's his name joins the team or not? What will it really change in the big scheme of things if the Red Sox win a World Series or never do?

Anyway, it's definitely for the best, considering my mood, that I'll be on vacation for a week. I'll be on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and while it's not Siberia, a wilderness totally cut off from the outside world, I won't be connected to the web and won't be obsessively compulsively hitting DirtDogs, SoSH, and ESPN thirty two thousand times a day seeing if there is any news regarding "the trade."

Nope. I'm just going to read. Like my vacation last summer, I plan to read a book, cover to cover, each day.

Here's what is on my list:

1. Rig Ship for Ultra Quiet
2. Paris Trance: A Romance
3. Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938
4. Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America
5. Among the Bears: Raising Orphaned Cubs in the Wild
6. Out of Sheer Rage : Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

You may note that not a single baseball book is on my list. This has nothing to do with my current pissy mood but rather is a deliberate, ongoing choice on my part. I try to read as little writing about baseball as I can because I don't want to risk being overly influenced by it. Unlike your typical baseball blogger who may harbor aspirations to become either the next Bill James or the next Gordon Edes (you know a baseball writer), I don't want to swing for that fence. For what it's worth, I like to humor myself in believing that one of the things that sets this blog apart is that it doesn't fit into that mold. So I read what turns me on: hurricanes, submariners, bears …

Union City Blue

Oh, oh, what are we gonna do?
Union, Union, Union City blue
Tunnel to the other side
It becomes daylight
I say he's mine
— Blondie

So I counted my chickens but it isn't like I did it before they hatched. Oh, no, they hatched alright. It's just that Nazi jack booted Gene Orza came and crushed each and every chick under his villainous heel.

You Gene Orza, you do not do any more, black shoe in which we've lived like a foot. Ach, du. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Crap. The whole stinking thing is crap. And I feel like crap, too. Not only is my stomach sour from Orza, but as it goes, some relatives rolled in last night for the holidays … Now the good thing about my father-in-law is that he is not a teetotaler. But the bad thing about my father-in-law is that he is not a teetotaler. Ladies and gentlemen I've got one killer of a hangover from far too much holiday spirit and I want to crawl into a spider hole and rot like a dictator on the run. Gone are those cavalier days of being 23 and keeping an extra set of clothes in the trunk of the car just in case I stayed out all night partying so that I could go directly from hedonism to work not stopping for sleep before shaving and changing in the employee bathroom fresh as a daisy and fit as a fiddle ready for work…

So all you fans who didn't like the A-Rod deal (and I won't mention any names but your initials are KYLE) please take this opportunity to tell me why it's a good thing that the deal isn't going to happen and why having Manny and Nomar on the opening day roster is the second coming of Christ? Seriously. Cheer me the f up.

Oh, and if you live in NY please go the rally at the Major League Baseball Players' Association's headquarters being organized in part by the DirtDogs.

Wright On

This is a good day to be flying high over the prospect of the A-Rod for Manny trade of which" [t]here is no precedent in the history of the game for players with [such] … being swapped for each other" (Edes), considering it's the Centennial Anniversary of man's first powered flight. (Apologies too all the Brazilians who may feel otherwise.)

Meanwhile, I like the way Ben Jacobs is thinking:

Let's assume the worst case scenario, that while the pitching has gotten better, the offense has gotten worse. If you think the offense will score 80 fewer runs, I don't think it's unreasonable to think the defense will also allow 80 fewer runs. That would put the Red Sox at 882 runs scored and 729 runs allowed. That would give the Red Sox a Pythagorean Record of 96-66 (their Pythagorean and actual records were both 95-67 in 2003). So even the worst case scenario, in my opinion, has the Red Sox improving by a game (Universal Baseball Blog).

If you missed it, check out the "audioblog" post below. This isn't something I plan to do very often but while I'm on vacation next week and off the grid, I thought it might be a good way to try and keep you (the readers) in the routine of coming to Bambino's each day. I know how easy it is to get out of the habit of going to a blog and then you realized months and months have passed since your last visit.

While it's easy to say "oh, it's not about the how many people come to your blog … I blog for myself … ", truth be told I think every blogger really wants to have the largest audience possible, certainly I do. And to that end, I don't want to lose a single reader just because I took a week off at Christmas.

Alright, in a totally off topic aside, I have to confess that I think The Simple Life is one of the most fascinating programs I've ever seen on TV. I'm not kidding. Yeah, yeah, on one level it's just another tawdry reality show, but it's also quite a bit more than that. I don't know if the producers/creators are doing it intentionally or it's just a coincidental artifact that the show is an enactment before our eyes of the Dionysian vs. Apollonian  world view that I refer to quite often.

The rich girls, Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, represent the Dionysian dynamic while the townsfolk are the Apollonian. Indeed, the girls play a role not at all unlike the coyote/trickster figure inherent to Native American myths. Like I said, it's fascinating to watch and a reminder that we all must remember we have a little bit of Dionysus, a little bit of Paris Hilton, inside us all and don't let the Apollonian  world of rules, time clocks, bills, and the like keep you from letting your inner Dionysus out from time to time. It's all about balance.

The Deal is Hatched?

I've told myself not to count the chickens before they've hatched because sometimes, you know, they don't hatch, but the Oracle of Framingham Brighton Heights has decreed that the A-Rod for Manny swap is 100% done.

And I trust the wisdom, mystical powers, confidential sources or whatever it is that gives Silva his Dionne Warwick powers to predict the future.

You want further proof that the eggs are hatching? A-Rod hasn't even been assigned a uniform number yet and already he's getting sullied by the Boston media:

… it seems virtually impossible for either side to walk away without a deal. Not now. Not after so much has been said and done. Not after Rodriguez pulled a Ramirez and OPENLY LOBBIED to play for another team while wearing the uniform of a club that awarded him tens of millions of dollars.  For all of the criticisms people in New England have directed at Ramirez, isn't Rodriguez doing the same thing? (Massarotti, Herald).

OK. I don't have any doubt that A-Rod is going to be a high maintenance prima donna similar to Manny; however, the comparison between Manny and A-Rod in this case is untenable. Manny said he wanted to play for the Yankees while literally wearing a Boston uniform, standing on the grass at Fenway Park all the while he was only an hour or so away from playing against the Yankees in arguably the most important Red Sox series of the entire season with the two teams locked in a classic and contentious pennant race.

To me that's quite a bit different than A-Rod saying he'd be willing to play for the Sox, especially considering all the speculation and talk taking place from folks like Henry and Hicks, not to mention the fact that A-Rod has a no trade clause in his Texas contract meaning he has to communicate to his agent that he'd be willing to waive that depending on the team involved and, of course, that information leaked out during the negotiations.

Now if A-Rod calls in sick to work and then is found in the Ritz-Carlton bar talking to a "friend" who just happens to be on the team he said he really wants to play for, then let the comparisons begin.

So more than a few fans are wondering how giving up two offensive stars in Manny and Nomar in return for a single A-Rod makes sense? Gordon Edes has the answer:

After the primary components have all been moved, Rodriguez to Boston, Ramirez to Texas, and Garciaparra most likely to the Dodgers, the Sox will set into motion a plan in which they will acquire a first-line outfielder who should help compensate for the loss of Ramirez, who for nearly a decade has been one of baseball's most productive righthanded hitters (Edes, Globe).

It's going to all work out. Have faith.

Sturdy As Potatoes*

How true this is!

… in Red Sox country, where some half-asleep folks might have awakened yesterday morning to US Ambassador Paul Bremer saying, "We got him," and concluded that the Sox' pursuit of Alex Rodriguez had finally been brought to a satisfying conclusion (Edes, Globe).

At least it does not seem it will take as long or be as difficult to pull off the A-Rod trade being that no one has taken to hiding in a spider hole.

Regarding such a deal, in the same story Edes concludes,

It won't happen before the official end of the meetings today, and it might not happen until next week, but the courtship of Rodriguez appears to be headed toward consummation.

I'm sorry to say I've crossed the line into imagining the so-called consummation of this deal that I can think of little else; indeed, if in the end we find the two teams were only engaged in foreplay and there is no deal, I'm going to be crestfallen and dejected despite the acquisitions of Schilling and Foulke. Yes, such a feeling would be totally irrational and unfair to Theo and company, but what' a guy to do after getting all revved up while playing footsie and everyone casting flirtatious glances?

So yesterday, Sunday, I'm reading the Washington Post's Sunday Book World section and I come across this little nugget about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes:

Hughes (and Plath, to a lesser degree) took their immersion in astrology and shamanism seriously … signs and omens that fill[ed] their poetry and darkened their lives … [Both poets felt] imagery -- both in poetry and in the occult -- opens the mind to the flow of meaning (Schoenberger).

The notion that imagery, especially the mystical kind, "opens the mind to the flow of meaning" relates quite well, I think, to my own fascination with "the Curse."

And with your mind open to the flow of meaning, here's another pull quote from yesterday's Book World that I want toss to you:

… when we reckon with the age of Shakespeare, we do well to remember that the man it celebrates belonged to a profession then held in low esteem, lumped together with "rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars." Thomas Bodley, the founder of the Bodleian Library, didn't want plays in its collections for fear they would "raise a scandal upon it." Literati of the time shunned playwrights or reviled them outright (Matus).

So these plays that are not revered as high art were thought of as trashy, pulp fictions in their own day. The same was true, of course, for opera. Keep that in mind the next time someone gives you a hard time for watching TV or waiting in line to see the next installment of Lord of the Rings.

Another Unbelievable Acquisition!

It takes a lot to to overshadow the Foulke signing and potential A-Rod deal, but capturing Saddam Hussein alive certainly does it, eh?

Today I'm of the mind that all things are possible!

… if the reports emanating from Gotham are to be believed, while the Sox have been following their offseason plans with military-like precision, the Yankees have been displaying an institutional dysfunction in which owner George Steinbrenner is operating at his megalomaniacal worst (Edes, Globe).

Celebrate good times, c'mon. Let's have a celebration.