Did you ever think about the name of this column? Nah, I betcha didn’t. You probably just opened it up to this here page, read my rants, maybe tried to understand the inside jokes, and that was it. In fact, my dad sent me this e-mail the other day saying he liked my stuff, but was so-so on the inside jokes. ( In the same e-mail, he penned, “Now that the Mets are out of the playoffs, Armando Benitez is free to beat up his girlfriend.”)
The name of this column is “Now Batting for the Pink Team.” In all honesty, I wasn’t even at the meeting to decide this. My ertswhile friend and compatriot Matthew C. Hopkins decided it for me, and I’ve been too lazy to come by and change it. But sometimes, I don’t want to. The name implies a greater mission in my life. I am stepping up to plate for an entire generation of individuals who we shall refer to as “the pink team.” Are you on the pink team? Maybe you think that sounds a little emasculated for you. To those who argue this, let me say, Mr. Pink was one of the more masculine characters in Reservoir Dogs. So there.
But to those of you I do lead, this generation of pink team members, I am now stepping up to bat and making some admittances. I’m laying it all out. I’m a leader. I must.
First of all, I’m a hypocrite. I wrote an article in this paper about two weeks ago telling kids to go to Homecoming, and making fun of the tools who blare Nelly in Lot T and grab Miller Lite cans from each other’s high-priced sport-utility trucks. Well, on Saturday, I became one of those tools, grabbing Millers, Buschs, Nattys?all members of the Lite family?from trucks far and wide, from tools far and wide, from people I never knew but pretended to be friends with to get beer. I hate myself sometimes. I got wasted in the parking lot, missed the first win of the season and proceeded to make the worst decisions of my 20 years en route to losing something mere words cannot describe.
I do not deserve to lead you.
These are the times that try men’s souls, especially mine. Normally I’d look towards sports, but even that cannot comfort me. The baseball playoffs hath begun. ‘Tis a time of mirth and merriment in my life, but I can’t bring myself to enjoy it as much. Maybe it’s the kids who don’t understand baseball pretending to because the kid next door has a quarter keg in his kitchen. Maybe it’s the constant voices and music playing over the American game.
Here’s the recipe for effective watching of playoff baseball: You take four heads, throw in some baseball knowledge (a good test is, “Who’s Wilson Alvarez?”), add a large-size TV, some cheap take out food and perhaps a six pack or two. Shake and stir, rinse and repeat. You think when they decided baseball was America’s game, they decided it so kids could toke blunts, listen to Chicago and have a power hour as Mark Mulder throws his junk? NO!
Baseball is an amazing game, and playoff baseball is something you cannot miss. It is simply extraordinary. Every pitch means something. Every two-foot shift of the rightfielder’s feet could mean the difference between Tony Womack as NLCS MVP and Greg Maddux in the same role. When you’re chilling in New South during the day over the next few weeks, grab a copy of George F. Will’s Men at Work and read it. Every little strategy change that Tony LaRussa discusses in the first section is exponential when one foot can mean the difference between fame and infamy. This is where boys become men.
I had the chance to become a man last Saturday and go root on my Hoyas. But no, beer called. I feel like such a tool. But I am going to try and make it up to all of you. I am the leader of the pink team, after all. I’m going to be watching my Yankees?the team I grew up with, the team I still own the 1990 media guide for?dismantle the Oakland Athletics and their “Johnny Damon-type players” (?Peter Gammons), in my dorm room, with maybe two or three other heads. If you see me in lots of other places, stammering and stumbling, telling you stories of how many beers I have imbibed, slap me across the face and tell me to be real, like Ja Rule and J-Lo.
Egad, now I really feel like a tool.
