don't quit, don't even quit.

so, that happened.

Remember this girl?

You would think, at the very least, that I would try and time things so that when I finally got around to stammering out, “Uh, you’re really cute and, uh, it sucks that you live in New York because, uh, I really like you,” it would not be during the same week that the Yankees were in the process of — gulp — winning the World Series.

But again, you’d be wrong. So, it’s a mixed bag. She roots for a baseball team that is now the World Champion Spawn of Satan, but, you guys, I really like her.

an entirely red sox preoccupied preview of the sixth game of the 2009 world series

—now, I uncomfortably dislike Curt Schilling as much as the next gay commie pinko liberal Red Sox fan who is grateful for his contribution to the 2004 World Championship but has, in the intervening five years, decided that his high-volume conservative politicking now outweighs his folk hero status, but. But!

The Phillies are already throwing Pedro out on the mound for Game 6; they should highly consider hiring probably-not-actually-beloved-at-all ex-Philly Curt Schilling to sit in the dugout, just to get the Game 6 at Yankees Stadium/The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty mojo going. I’m just saying.

Alternately, the Yankees could pay Grady Little to throw out the first pitch.

denouement

—well, I even changed into my lucky AROD SLAPS BALLS t-shirt when I got home last night in an attempt to capture some ALCS Game 6 magic, but it wasn’t meant to be. As we head into the World Series, sports fans, let’s all remember one thing: there’s 25 guys on the Phillies’ roster & 25 guys on the Yankees’ roster. The roster with the greater number of World Series champions is currently on the Phillies side of the diamond. So let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet.

Phillies fans chanting “Beat LA! Beat LA!” I’m in favor of beating LA in all sports, all contexts, but it feels … weird.

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I watched last night’s Twins/Tigers game because play-in games are amazing, but also because I thought it would be a lobster-in-the-lobster-pot way of aclimating myself to the ear rape that is TBS postseason baseball coverage. That did not work so well. There is no way to prepare yourself for Ron Darling, Chip Caray and Craig Sieger.

I never thought an announcing crew could have me begging for Buck and McSatan, but then in the top of the fourth inning, Gerald Laird grounded into a double play to end the inning and during the replay, Ron Darling said, “That’s good old-fashioned baseball!” Yes, Ron Darling, it’s true. A ground ball placed such that infielders are able to tag out two runners on the same play HAS RESULTED IN TWO OUTS SINCE 1876. YOU ARE CORRECT, SIR.

I would worry that Craig Sieger was blowing his wad early with that “someone’s junior prom orchid corsage jizzed all over my entire suit” ensemble, but I know better than to challenge the depths of Craig Sieger’s wardrobe, which I imagine is a black hole with a portal directly into the Ross Dress for Less in hell.

If you are like me, and you are currently spending a lot of time preserving peaches and tomatoes and apple butter for the winter (because you liked things better in 1876, when men were men and double plays were double plays) and you end up listening to large portions of baseball games on GameDay Audio in your kitchen, if this happens to be your situation, I highly recommend the Twins radio broadcast. Whoever announces those games is craaaaaazy. After the Orlando Cabera home run, I felt as though I had listened to him propose to, marry and consummate his union with O-Cab all while on the air.

But I digress. What a game, right?

BothTeamsPlayed Can either of these teams beat the Yankees? about 14 hours ago from UberTwitter

kelly_erin @BothTeamsPlayed Right now I’m not even sure either of these teams can beat each other. about 13 hours ago from Splitweet

So there’s that. And now the AL play-offs are aligned identical to their 2004 configuration, which is either a good omen or a sign of the apocalypse. Bring on the play-offs!

Anyone afraid that a Yanks/Twins & Sox/Angels ALDS reenactment is going to help bring about the apocalypse?

some notes on the last day of the MLB regular season

1. Here is the most amazing thing about Minnesota’s fight to stay in the AL Central race until the last day of the season: they are pinning it all on starting Carl Pavano on three days rest. Seriously. CARL PAVANO on THREE DAYS REST. That’s like realizing that you have a chance to come from behind in a presidential race if you get the reanimated corpse of Richard Nixon out stumping for you.

2. The Rays have to be feeling pretty shitty right now. World Series team last year, third place also-ran this year. But if they were in the AL Central instead of the AL East, they’d only be one game out of first place and probably have someone more formidable than CARL PAVANO ON THREE DAYS REST to start in the do-or-die game.

3. Ditto Texas. The Red Sox were totally on the verge of colossally fragging up the Wild Card and would probably welcome CARL PAVANO (ON THREE DAYS REST!) to their mess of a starting rotation right now, but the Rangers somehow still managed to suck more. You know what, though? If they were in the AL Central, they would have already clinched the division.

4. The AL Central sucks, is what I’m saying.

5. Fuck the Dodgers for denying us the possibility of two one-game play-offs and another amazing & spectacular collapse. I don’t understand the National League. The Dodgers were on the verge of possibly not making the play-offs, but they’ve also clinched the league’s best record.

6. I was listening to the radio broadcast of last night’s Sox game because Comcast hates me and refuses to reveal the mysterious portal through which I could access NESNPlus. Joe and Dave were talking about the Dodgers’ recent woes, and how they’d been getting absolutely no offensive help from Manny. I thought I would feel a little smug, but I just felt sad.

7. If you go to the Cardinals’ roster profile on espn.com, Julio Lugo’s 2009 salary is listed as “$0”. Why? Because the Red Sox are paying the entire fucking thing. I usually don’t have any quarrel with the Cardinals, but I am going to root against them in the postseason with a fever I usually reserve for Nazi Germany in WWII-era Oscar-mugging movies, because I never want anything good to happen to Julio Lugo ever again.

8. If the NL was not so terrible, I think the Phillies would be more widely recognized as a post-Series hangover paper tiger (see: the Red Sox in 2005). My theory is that they seem better than they are because the Mets are so horrible this year, but the Mets are just really, really, really horrible this year.

9. All of the playoff teams are actually starting members of their actual rotations today, which is disappointing. I wanted the Red Sox to start Nick Green.

10. Except for the Twins, of course. CARL PAVANO! ON THREE DAYS REST!

Just saw a family decked out in Angels gear walking the Freedom Trail. It was like being in a weird alternate universe.