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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Take me out
to the brawl-gameADMIT IT. You watched yesterday, or you wished you could. You were glued to the TV. You had your ear to the radio. You peeked in on the computer at work. You did this even if you don't like baseball (and who doesn't like baseball?). You had no choice in the matter.
What if it happened again and you missed it?
I know. It happened to me on Saturday. I watched college football instead. Which was great fun, until I heard about all the crazy stuff I hadn't seen.
What? For real?
So I wasn't going to be fooled twice.
And what did we get? A baseball game. A wonderful, beautiful, thrilling perfect gem of a league championship series baseball game.
Bo-ring!
Where were the fireworks? Where was the controversy? Where was the weird?
At the very least, Ben could have dumped J-Lo for being a Yankees fan.
(Or maybe he already had. It would explain everything.)
We're spoiled after last Saturday. Games worthy of Ken Burns aren't good enough anymore. Games that make boys get butterflies, games that make poets weep just won't cut it.
I've seen baseball. I prefer Yankees-Red Sox, Game 3.
What was funnier? That 72-year-old cartoon character Don Zimmer went Mr. Magooing after Pedro Martinez, or that Martinez's first reaction was to grab Zimmer by the head and plop him to the turf? Or, that radio guy Charley Steiner -- yes, that Charley Steiner -- when switching from play-by-play to blow-by-blow, thought Zimmer was Yankees pitcher David Wells?
Hey, round. Bald.
Pedro should have went with that. "I thought it was Wells." He could have gotten out of everything.
But he missed his chance. Instead, he's a villain, which, you get the idea, is just fine with him. There has been some debate about this, some clucking disapproval over how Pedro chose to handle the fact that an elderly fat man was attempting to go all Mr. Mandelbaum on him.
I say he was wearing a Yankees cap. He got what was coming to him.
But seriously, Zimmer, the old battler, eventually had to go to the hospital with a "strained left groin."
Of course.
I've had a strained left groin. It's a funny, funny injury.
(Painful, but.)
And then there was the incident in which a Fenway Park groundskeeper got into it with the entire Yankees bullpen staff, and the right fielder.
You can't make this stuff up. I've tried.
But no, back to the original question. The answer is "e," none of the above. The funniest thing about this whole situation was Roger Clemens' attempt to come off as the voice of reason, the elder statesman, the guy who had never, in fact, beaned Mike Piazza in the head or thrown a splintered bat in anger or made a cameo appearance in "Kingpin."
That made it all so perfect.
Sure, yesterday it was just about great baseball. But I have faith these guys will come through for us again. In fact, I dare not look away.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com
