**For obvious reasons, I discount the first game played after 9/11, which I also attended. The Mets beat the Braves that night much like they did last night, on an eighth inning Mike Piazza home run, but it felt almost wrong to celebrate it too much at the time.

07.13

08:14pm: There is a small eatery near my place of employment, which purports to purvey Healthy Food. Its intended clientele is the weightlifting set, or so I assume, since it sells enormous shakes with supplements like creatine. But in reality, most of the people I see in there are just hassled office workers (ie, me) who want a small-ish lunch that isn't swimming in grease and guilt. They use whole wheat pitas, fat-free tomato sauce, low-octane mozzarella, stuff like that. How healthy it really is would be up to a nutritionist to decide. But since I eat there 2-3 times a week, and I've been able to maintain my girlish figure, I assume it can't be all that bad.

As remarked on above, this place is small, not really the type of joint you can eat in. It is also very popular and located in a high-population-density area. Plus, the things they make tend to have longer prep times than your average McMonstro Colon Plug Burger, so unless you order for pickup, it is not at all unusual to wait 15-20 minutes for your order. While doing so, you can stave off claustrophobia by staring at the wall of signed celebrity photos. Keith Carradine has shown his love, as has John Leguizamo, Cindy Adams, and Jane's Addiction. Then there are those Mystery Celebrities, who probably aren't famous at all but bullshitted their way into trading an autographed 8x10 glossy for a veggie burger.*

This afternoon, while I wait patiently on line to pick up my order, a harried woman enters. Upon seeing the length of the queue, she sighs loudly. This is not the kind of small sigh one exhales in the face of minor annoyances--this is a broadcast to the world that this woman is ANNOYED and someone, somewhere, should do SOMETHING about it. She turns to me--because these people always turn to me--and asks if I've ordered already. I explain that yes, I have, I called ahead. But she takes this to mean that I've ordered and am just standing around, rather than waiting on line to pay for my meal, and she charges up to the counter, ignoring me and the three people ahead of me. The woman is of a certain age, well-dressed, and her hair is dyed a shade of coppery-red not seen since the crazy hippie demons on the cover of Santana's Abraxas album. She is the Older Professional Woman--a woman who lives in an environment of Self-Perpetuated Hassle the way fish live in water. There is one of her in every office: The Woman Who's Been There Forever, The Woman Who Takes Three-Hour Lunches, The Woman Who Asks You the Same Question About the Fax Machine Every Fucking Day, The Woman Who What the Fuck Does That Woman Do Anyway? The answer: she doesn't do anything; she came with the office.

So the woman grabs a menu and studies it like a Talmudic scholar. By the time I reach the cash register, she is ready to order. The cashier, who I think knows me as a semi-regular customer, insists that I had arrived first. But since I'm feeling magnanimous--and I want to see the resulting chaos--I insist that the woman go first. She proceeds to make an order of such arcane detail that it sounds like prep work for a North Korean hostage rescue mission. The order can't be properly captured in words. It would best be represented visually in the style of MC Escher, with staircases winding in on themselves, waterfalls flowing up, in a land where the laws of physics are openly mocked and given wedgies.

Once the woman has completed Operation Delta, Strike Team: Lunch, I then try to pick up my food, but she almost immediately interrupts my transaction. "You use free-range chicken, don't you?" The cashier can't hear her, and asks the woman to repeat herself, so she adds another dictum to her query. "You use free-range, organic chicken, don't you?" The cashier responds in the negative, and of course, the woman is thoroughly annoyed. "Someone said you did!" she retorts. So rather than read the menu, or look at any of the signs in the place, she chooses to rely on the indelible word of someone for a bit of dietary information obviously of great importance to her. I'd hate to see what would happen if someone told her rat poison was tasty.

Predictably, the woman cancelled her order and walked out in a huff. I was free to make my purchase. She was free to head back to the office and yell at some unpaid interns, forever putting pilgrim-like faith in vague bits of information plucked from the air. A wondrous thing, faith is.

*For you ex-NYU students, it might remind you of going to the Waverly Diner and pondering the identities of the framed headshots that line the upper molding, just below the ceiling. A friend of mine posited that this celluloid population was at least 40% porn star.

07.11

12:52pm: Lord a mercy, what a Sunday. This week was the Kickball All-Star game at McCarren Park, which was basically just a buncha people from the different teams choosing up sides.* Three bands played on the sidelines, shaded by a very tall tree. During a set by the band Giraffe, a kickball flew straight at the guitarist while he was playing a solo. Without even stopping for one split second, the guitarist trapped the ball and kicked it back onto the field. Rock n fuckin roll! Also, the Turkey's Nest kept the local populace well lubricated with enormous beers and margaritas in to-go Styrofoam cups. Is this completely illegal? Of course. How do they get away with it? I don't know, and I don't care, because it means I can drink a 32 oz. draft beer while watching a kickball game and listening to awesome bands outside, and not have to worry about getting hassled by The Man (c).It's so very easy to get jaded and annoyed about living in the city, what with all the daily encroachments on your dignity, the neo-Puritan Bloombergian blue laws, the enormous price of everything, and the constant threat of CHUD attacks. But on a day like yesterday, I can forget about all that and be glad that I live in a neighborhood where it's possible to walk to an afternoon of cheap fun.

People who hate cities feel that way because, at least on some level, they hate people. They hate having to constantly interact with large amounts of very different human beings. They want to live in a suburban bubble with a very small, selected group of friends, family, and coworkers. This protects them from being confronted by maniacs yelling about Jesus on the subway, and rude douchebags screaming on their cell phones everywhere they go. But it also insulates them from anything fantastic. If you want to live near great things, you have to be able to tolerate, or fight through, the terrible. If you want to completely avoid annoyances, you have to be willing to accept a world without wonderful things, a completely mediocre universe. And if that's the way you wanna live, fine, but don't tell me it's better, or that people are truly meant to live that way. Me, I'll put up with subway breakdowns and raving lunatics to be able to enjoy the sylvan, drunken splendor of the Kickball All-Star Game.

Fifteen minutes ago, a lost looking young lady stopped at my cube--these types of people always stop at my cube. They must confuse my name for Information Desk. She asked, a bit frazzled, "How do I get out of here?" How do I respond? Christ, woman, I been asking myself the same question for weeks.

* Last weekend, at Shea Stadium, while filing out of the stands following a disappointing Mets loss, I saw a fan wearing the uniform of one of the kickball teams. This made the defeat much less painful.

06.23

05:59pm: Phil Knight deserves a special spot in hell, his entrails turned into strings for demonic tennis rackets, his legs ripped off and used as bats in an interleague softball game between Nazis and pedophiles, his eyeballs taken for pool balls in Satan's billiard hall, all the while with a shrill imp sitting on his shoulder screaming into his timpanic membrane JUST DO IT! JUST DO IT!

Knight, the head of Nike, already deserved some harsh karmic retribution for turning a blind eye to sweatshop labor, as well as helping to spread the hoary tide of conspicuous consumption across the globe, and in general doing his part to make this world a more soulless and ugly place by stamping the obnoxious SWOOSH into the brain of every living thing. But he has surely invited unholy wrath upon himself for, ultimately, being the man responsible for this.

Don't worry, I also wish a slow, chancre-filled death for the traitor who proposed this ad idea in the first place. Anyone who recognizes the Minor Threat album cover, and sees in it not an eternal symbol of youthful rebellion or memories of their own punk rock days or simply a kick-ass album, but rather a way to sell more sneakers, can not leave this planet soon enough for me. It is the kind of mind that holds nothing sacred, that believes that everything ultimately can be turned into a gateway drug for the blissful high of spending cash--that this, in fact, is the ultimate goal of all human activity. I swear by every god ever devised that if I were to meet you in any setting, and know that you are the hollow beast responsible for this abortion of my youth, that you will walk away with a mouthful of loose teeth--if you're lucky.

Who's with me?

06.21

04:22pm: I can't manage it every day, but when possible, I try to repair to the break room during lunch, to eat my meal in peace with the company of a good book. Right now I'm working on "Spanking the Donkey" by Matt Taibbi, a chronicle of his chronicles of the previous presidential election. Aside from having an awesome first name, Mr. Taibbi is a killer writer. Reading his stuff while at work is both edifying and depressing: the former because it's good to know someone is carrying Hunter S. Thompson's mantle without so much of his drug baggage; the latter because it's exactly the kind of stuff I could be writing at this very moment if my life had taken a different turn, if I had but world enough and time.

While enjoying my few moments of unmonitored peace, some tightwad dipshit comes into the break room to purchase snacks. The machine craps out on him, prompting him to bang on the glass ineffectually. Soon, a small committee of Tim Allens descends on the machine, each of them offering advice as to how to fix this quandary. All of the advice translates into banging and shaking the stingy machine some more. I recognize their voices. They are the Strange Tall British Men who helm one of our bigger publications. Their accents are universally northern, so that they sound like the Beatles; hearing them talk, you would expect them to jump out on the fire escape to the tune of "Can't Buy Me Love". Except that I'm sure the Beatles didn't scream and drop the c-bomb every time they were unhappy with a retouch job on a photo.

Though the beefeaters stand literally inches behind me, I don't dare turn around and look. I know that if I do so, they will ask me how to fix this machine. When you're a Big Shot, any non-Big Shot person in the vicinity is immediately called upon to solve a problem that involves getting dirty or using brute force. This is how I wound up being the de facto copy machine repairman/tech support guy in some of the smaller offices to employ me over the years. The last thing I want is to become Snack Machine Douche because a bunch of cheap limeys who pull in six figures can't be bothered to eat 50 cents and go to a deli to get a bag of pretzels.

I immerse myself in my Taibbi, focusing on the struggles of the campaign trail. Eventually, Dexy's Midnight Runners give up the Great Pretzel Struggle and I am left alone for a moment. But the silence is subsumed once more when a trio of interns takes up a table nearby. I don't have to worry about being accosted by them--they are far too fashionista to even notice me. Even though they don't talk very loud, however, they sit close enough that their conversation intrudes my auditory canal, making it hard for me to focus on my book. The girls discuss upcoming weddings they must attend, and of course, the crippling diets they're on in preparation for the Happy Event. "Do you ever get...cravings?" one of them asks, like she's sheepishly talking to her mother in a Summer's Eve commercial. The other girl reassures her, "Oh yeah, sometimes I just totally feel like having a hamburger, AND I HAVE ONE." This would be a killer sarcastic response, but the second girl's tone indicated that this admission was so NAUGHTY, so EVIL, oooh, someone should SPANK HER!

These girls encapsulate another, non-British faction of the office, which is the Girly Contingent. Real Sex and the City types, the kind who go nuts after work with a couple of apple martinis or mojitos and try get their hooks into a lawyer or someone else equally well-heeled and boring as fuck. The kind of chicks who will forever dot their I's with little hearts, who truly think feminism means being able to buy whatever you want, for whom Paris Hilton is a spiritual leader. People with these kind of sensibilities are responsible for the horrible layouts in some of our magazines, where it looks like a Crayola 96 box threw up on the page, and every conceivable color is used simply because it exists and it looks BRIGHT and FUN and OMG IT'S SO FUN TO BE PART OF THE MACHINE!!!1! Boxes of green on magenta? Three drop shadows, each a neon color so it makes your eyes tremble to look at it? A design scheme constructed by someone with attention deficit disorder? THAT'S HOT! (c)

I can only look to Mr. Taibbi for advice, and he summed it up well when talking about his experiences on the press plane that followed around Kerry:

From the very first moment I stepped on the plane, I knew I was in the presence of profound ugliness. It was a tangible, visceral thing that I was conscious of every minute, like cold air or a bad smell. It was not an amusing kind of ugliness, not kitschy like a Brooklyn social club full of mobsters. This level was a serious ideological threat to people like me, that is, small-time losers. But what exactly the source of it was, it was impossible to say.

Matt, I would trade your plane for my lunchroom in a heartbeat.

06.20

03:43pm: This Saturday I gave the best athletic performance of my life. The Mark Bar softball team had already secured a victory via forfeit, but the remnants of the conceding squad rounded up a few stragglers and felt like playing a scrimmage. Gracious in victory, we agreed. I was penciled in at catcher, pretty much as an afterthought. I used to catch in Little League and have not since then, but I must say that it's a lot like riding a bike--if riding a bike forced you to hunker down while having balls thrown at your crotch. I regained my crouch very easily, and actually caught 90 percent of the pitches thrown to me (in a game of boozy adult softball, this is a more than acceptable success rate). I was the second half of an extremely awesome double play--the batter popped out to the deep infield, and a runner on third decided to test our second baseman's arm and my glove by tagging up. I fielded an excellent throw and tagged the runner out with centimeters to spare.

But then came the ultimate face rocking moment. Tie game, top of the tenth, man on first and one out, and I step up to the plate. I'd already gone two-for-three with some decent cuts, but I had trouble hitting the ball out of the infield. This turn, I decided to open up my stance, thinking I was fancy and could do something like that. This was kind of like bringing your own professional grade cue in a velvet lined case so you could play pool in your friend's basement. Well, I guess I am fancy, because I knocked the pitch way down the third base line for a long, long hit. Keep in mind this is a public park, and there are no fences, so one can not hit a home run per se. You can only hope you hit it into the adjacent field, or that the ball keeps rolling into someone's picnic blanket or hollowed-out barrel barbecue. My hit was as close to a clean home run as you can get under these conditions--it sails far and long, then chops away with several big bounces. I thought home run all the way. The left fielder had a good arm, so he had a marginal shot at throwing me out at the plate, but I was running so I hard that I actually scaled the backstop after coming home. Later, we tacked on another run, and set 'em down in the bottom half to pull off a come-from-behinder.

I used to be a very good catcher, if I do say so myself, at least at the Little League level. But at some point I stopped hitting, and I couldn't progress up the ranks. I still don't know why. I think it was a combination of a) worsening eyesight abetted by intense reading; b) onset of overweight-itude that plagued most of my adolescence; and c) the classic batting ailment: overthinking. Always at the back of my brain, however, I've thought that it's something I should have pursued, at least for fun. I let self-consciousness and nerd defeatism keep me from doing something I really enjoyed--neither the first nor the last time this would happen.

Any illusions I might have about getting called up to the big show have been completely erased by the searing pain in my legs. Even though I'm in better shape right now than I have been for years, none of the exercises I do prepare me for crouching for ten innings. When I sit down or get up, I have to brace myself against something sturdy. When I walk, it takes me fifty paces to get up to a decent speed--if you can imagine trying to pedal a Big Wheel with a completely scuffed front 'tire', that's how my pins are operating right now. At the same time that this pain is a mark of my hard work, it is also the death knell for a naïve childhood fantasy. Perhaps if I stuck with it and stayed in shape, I could have caught for longer than I did. But it's a young man's game, and my legs tell me that I'm already too old for it.

06.08

12:55pm: I had to re-register this domain name yesterday. Turns out I've had this web site for five damn years already. OMG! LOL!!!!1! The domain holder (sounds like a major player in the RPG world) had lots of outdated, arcane contact information for me, so I had to tell them that they had my pager, telex, and smoke signal numbers wrong. Anywhoo, it's all cleared up now, and you can enjoy Scratchbomb.com in peace and tranquility once again.

Monday was another horrible work day, so long and annoying that I vowed once I left the 7 train I would purchase a tallboy from the local bodega and drink it as I forded Newtown Creek. Of course, as soon as the larcenous side of my brain hatched this plan, the law-abiding side panicked. See, I firmly believe that one is a law breaker or one is not. If you think you can get away with things, or you truly don't give a shit one way or another, you live your life accordingly. If not, you live in constant fear of getting caught up in the criminal justice system, even if your only offense is jaywalking. I belong to the latter category. Many laws that others flout with reckless abandon, I adhere to strenuously, more out of fear of Murphy's Law than anything else.

Foolishly, I heeded my Fuck The Pigs impulse. I did not get caught. I did, however, remember that I don't like beer in cans. And that I don't like Budweiser, period. And that walking and drinking beer at the same time is the expressway to heartburn. Plus, the bodega I went to must have been operating on half power this hot, humid day, because my beer was barely cold. I wound up taking only a few illicit sips on the Pulaski Bridge. All in all, it was a waste of my stomach and a hard-earned buck-fifty.

I got back to the neighborhood a little past midnight. Tired as I was, I needed to move my car immediately to avoid further brushes with the law. I walked down the last block of Green Street, a weird little block with abandoned shopping carts and wild weeds shooting from the ground, and I saw a potentially legal spot blocked up with a bunch of wooden garbage; old pallets and such from a nearby warehouse. So I cleared the refuse, throwing it on the curb and kicking it with my tired feet. But by the time I retrieved my car, I pulled up to the spot just in time to see an asswipe Honda Accord with Florida plates take the space I made. At the end of this very long day, pissed is not the word I'd use to describe how I felt. I managed to park not too far away, but this was an issue of principle.

So I did what all Americans seeking justice have done throughout the years: I stalked. Thoughtless Accord Man strutted--I swear he strutted, the motherfucker--from his car and down Green Street. He had a horrible hipster white boy fro, and his step was light and springy. He put his left hand in his jeans pocket, his over-washed novelty tee almost see-through white. I hated this man instantly, even more so when he strutted his Keep On Truckin' walk down my street. The thought that he could possibly live on my block, or even know someone on it, filled me with a deep and fiery rage.

But I'm better now, at peace with the world and its beings. So much so that I was able to create this beauteous Photoshop pun: Shea Guevara.

06.02

03:34pm: Last night, through serendipitous encounters and the generosity of an acquaintance, my Special Lady Friend (c) was able to partake in a tasting held at the home a professional chef and CIA graduate (Culinary Institute, not The Spooks). When I arrived home after a 15-hour day at the office (no, I'm not a migrant worker, and no, 'the office' is not 'an orange grove'), she described its every nuance in delectable, almost erotic detail. Each course--of which there were approximately 37--was accompanied by a different wine of subtle and exquisite vintage. It sounded like a scene from the warmup to a Roman orgy. Nubian handmaidens fed grapes to the diners between fork-bites. A dancing girl burst from the stomach of a roast boar. Eunuchs stood guard at the gates to keep the rabble away. It was the kind of meal, her description said, that made Louis XIV's courtly rococo look like Howard Johnson's.

At the time the lady was enjoying this sumptuous repast, I was in an office building kitchen, heating up a Lean Cuisine lasagna Florentine. Four minutes in our microwave heated the edges to dessicated pasta-plastic. The bottom of the container was hyperheated , so I had to carry the thing daintily with both hands (as if eating a Lean Cuisine wasn't enough ceding of my manhood in the first place). I've been developing a cold over the last few days, so I'd also poured myself a glass of water from the cooler, and was carrying the plastic cup in my mouth. I do stupid things like this all the time, because I hate to make multiple trips. This was the hour in which the cleaning ladies zip around the carpet with industrial vacuum cleaners, the kind that can turn cats inside out and make more noise than Concordes. Just as I was leaving the kitchen, I tripped slightly on a vacuum cord, and a tiny drop of water flew from the cup and landed right in the middle of my quote-unquote meal. I had no illusions about what kind of joys could be gleaned from such a dish, but neither did I wish to water down what little taste it had.

This was, as they say, the piss mayo spread on the shit sandwich that was my day.

05.26

02:23pm: Considering how much (virtual) ink I spend on the subject of the Great American Pasttime, I am considering dedicating a sub-blog for the purposes of commenting upon it, and the travails of the beleaguered Metropolitan Baseball Club in particular. At the very least, it would spare those of you bored to tears with the subject. Anyone who wishes to add their 2¢ on this subject knows where to find me.

For now, I will spare a few brief words on the subject of the Other Team, Los Yanquis, and two news stories involving them that I'm already sick of:

1: Alex Rodriguez Gets His Head Shrunk. I know that all the dough and success in the world won't save a person from depression or any other mental illness, so that's not what bugs me about this. If Rodriguez needs to see a therapist, fine. I shan't mock him for that alone (except, of course, if I attend another Mets/Yankees game; then all bets are off). But the tenor of his comments about it clearly indicate that he expects to be applauded for admitting this. I should no more praise him going to a therapist for emotional issues than him going to chiropractor for back trouble. You have a problem, you get it taken care of. You're not a fucking hero because you can talk about your emotions to a trained professional. Get over yourself.

2: Jeter's Catch Sorry, but this was not a great catch--it was unnecessary showboating. I have grudging respect for Jeter; much as I'd love to dismiss him as a pretty boy, he's a great player and a good leader on his team. But that catch was one that should easily have been made by the second baseman or the center fielder. By recklessly running for a play that wasn't his to make--and not calling it or waving off his teammates--he very nearly seriously injured Robinson Cano*, the Yanks' young 2B. Seeing it reminded me of high school gym, and those times when one hot shot jock would try to field every position simultaneously, because it's very important for the school's starting linebacker to show he can field a ground ball hit by the school orchestra's second tuba player. Jeter didn't do it out of malice--he just thinks he could and should catch every single ball. In the business world, it would be called micromanaging (a bad thing), but on the field it's called competitive drive (rah rah rah!). To me, it just shows that (a) Jeter has no confidence in the rest of his team's fielding ability, and (b) his leadership role has strayed dangerously into the territory of Messiah complex. Based on this play and the headfirst dive into the stands he made last year against Boston, I can see him this weekend against the Sox causing three broken ribs and a punctured lung on a routine bunt up the first base line. He won't be happy until he breaks his face on a runner's cleat or destroys his knees climbing the foul pole to rob a home run.

* Last Saturday, Roberto Clemente Jr., host of WFAN's Latin Beat, spent several minutes instructing the audience on how to pronounce Cano's name. This amused me greatly, so much that I've been repeated Cano in a hispanish cadence all week.

05.23

02:40pm: Has anyone else seen the ESPN commercial that shows a kid dragging a Cardinals blanket through all the stages of his life? If you haven't, it shows a dad wrapping his baby in a Cardinals blanket. Then we see (presumably) this baby as a toddler, running around his house using the blanket as a cape. Then we see the kid older, doing his homework in his bedroom, the blanket on his bed. Then, we see him playing drums in his garage, the blanket draped over the drum throne. Then we see him playing cards with his friend at some boozy party, using the blanket as a table cloth. Then, he's stuffing the blanket into a milk crate along with all his other possessions as he moves away from home. Then he's draping the blanket over him and his girlfriend as they watch late night TV. Then we see the boy-now-man wrapping the blanket around his baby girl. Then, he's pulling the girl, now a toddler, in a red wagon, as she has the blanket draped over her shoulders like a cape. The whole commercial is shot in a home movie-esque style, and has subtly sentimental music playing gently in the background. The tagline is WITHOUT SPORTS, WHAT WOULD WE HAVE TO HOLD ON TO?

Cynic though I am, every time I see that commercial I damn near bust out crying. Just describing it to my fiancée, I almost choked up--and so did she. I had to call her into the living room last night when it aired yet again, and we both were on the edge of sobbing. I don't cry easy, or even come close to crying easy. I'm easily saddened, but it takes a lot to make me cry. Usually, a groin-related injury.

You could not have made that commercial about any sport other than baseball. Football and hockey are too violent. Basketball is too showboaty. Golf is too frustrating/humorous--another, similar ESPN commercial shows a man trying to chip a shot out of a sandtrap, running over in his mind the myriad of confusing, contradictory advice he's been given. And NASCAR is too fast paced, and is also not a sport. You may enjoy watching it, and I certainly wouldn't be one to deny others a pleasure that kills no in the process (at least 58% of the time). But I'm sorry, the burden of proof falls on the people who consider turning left a sport, not me.

But only baseball has such sentimentality (= Daddy Issues) tied up in it. That's why Bud Selig and Co. got such a grilling on Capitol Hill in the steroids hearings. Not that they didn't deserve it, but only in baseball can a perceived threat to The Purity of the Game upset people so much. For many people, when you fuck with baseball, you fuck with their history, with their soul. Other games are enjoyed. Only baseball is believed in (in America, that is). Compare to football, which has had a jillion rule tweaks in the past twenty years without anyone batting an eye at all. Though now a much more popular sport, it doesn't have nearly the same burden of nostalgia--that lack of such a burden, in turn, is what allows the game to change, and is partially responsible for its current dominance at the summit of American sports.

During that dog and pony show disguised as a Congressional hearing, the sight of Mark McGwire ducking questions was absolutely pathetic. I kept thinking of his appearance on the Simpsons many years back, where he addresses a suspicious crowd: "Do you guys really wanna know the horrible truth about Major League Baseball, or do you guys wanna see me smack a few dingers?" The answer for most people, of course, is the latter. Give us stainless steel heroes who never falter, who gleam with promise and shit solid gold bricks. Personally, I'm able to continue enjoying baseball by knowing that it's full of human beings who do dumb things to themselves and others, that to demand saintliness of athletes when I expect it of no one else is preposterous. Most people don't see it that way. It's that dichotomy between ideal and reality that makes the sport such a darling of literary types. It's the only sport held up to higher standards than most people have for their gods. Hurricanes are acceptable. Sammy Sosa corking a bat is a blasphemy.

The ESPN commercial, at its core, is a manipulative thing, like all ads. But it works perfectly, because it plays on the idea of the Eternal, Blameless Game. If you know anything about baseball history, you know that it is neither, but it's the only game that thinks it is, that almost lives and dies on this notion. And the commercial works because, as the late Bart Giamatti wrote, "It breaks your heart. It's designed to break your heart."

09:51am: Up until yesterday, the coolest license plate I ever saw was on a silver Jaguar I spotted in the West Village, on one of those ancient, cobblestone, Victorian streets, where you expect to see Sherlock Holmes and Prince Albert conversing under gaslight with Jack the Ripper. It was one of those streets where it is eternally 11 am on a Sunday, well-dressed intellectuals sipping well-brewed lattes and completing another well-constructed Times crossword puzzle. The silver Jaguar was parked mere inches from a fire hydrant, because when you have a silver Jaguar, a $110 ticket is a mere pittance. The license plate: 3. That's it, in its entirety. What could better display entitlement and privilege than having a single digit license plate? If your license plate is one single character, perfectly centered on the aluminum, you surely have never even been to the DMV, waited for five hours for your plates, and had to pay the $35 registration fee by check. I saw that plate and knew, there went a man of distinction and class.

Then yesterday, while driving on the BQE, I saw a license plate that completely trumped '3'. I was making the mad dash from the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp to the McGuinness Blvd. exit, trying to zip across four lanes in roughly thirty feet of road length. So I'm amazed that I even noticed it, but then again, how could I not? Once I finally made it to the exit lane, I spotted the license plate in front of me said BROOKLYN. Great googly moogly! The street value of that plate must be incalculable. You know how many millions of Bucktown residents would kill for that plate? You could get Jay-Z to pony up seven figures easy, plus a stake Roc-a-Fella, and he might even throw in Beyoncé, just to get a chance to bid on it.

So who had this mystical emblem? Was it a pimped out Escalade? Was it a classic Cadillac? A maroon IROC with a two-tiered spoiler? No sir. It was a mid-80s Chevy Nova, baby blue paint faded into a pale gray. And it was driven by a large, bearded Hasid. Ownership of the plates, I'm sure, was as old as the car itself, probably dating to the time when the average schmoe could first get personalized plates. I wonder if this man even knows what he has. Surely he must garage the car, or else the plates would get stolen constantly, if no reason other than pure animal rage that such a shitty car has such killer tags.

BROOKLYN got off at our exit, which considering the large Satmar population in Williamsburg did not surprise me. I lost track of him somewhere near Meserole Street, where the battered panels of his minivan faded behind me, and me and my Oldsmobeast traveled under more pedestrian identification.

05.18

11:48am: This past weekend, thanks to the city of Philadelphia, I finally viewed a baseball game in a stadium other than Shea or Yankee Stadium. Citizen's Bank Ballpark is sandwiched on the southern outskirts of Cheesesteakburg between the airport and the Titty Bar District, and is part of a brand new Stadium District that includes an arts center and a new field for the Eagles, Lincoln Financial (wow, those Philadelphians must love banks!). The non-highway approach to the stadium takes one through the city's gray, derelict waterfront--imagine the industrial parts of Bushwick or Canarsie, but even more lifeless and spooky. From this direction, it's impossible to see the stadiums until you're right on top of them--suddenly, amidst the noise and haste of cracked asphalt, enormous stadium lights appear on the horizon. Amid the ruins of industrial Philly, they looked like two mighty oaks that had survived a forest fire.

At first glance, there appeared to be ample parking; lots surrounded the stadium. But all of the asphalt was marked with special directives. SEASON TICKET HOLDERS. PREFERRED PARKING. SPACES ERSERVED FOR FRANKIE AVALON AND FABIAN. I wound up parking on the lawn of a nearby Holiday Inn for the exquisite price of ten dollars. But Holiday Inn seemed the place to be, as everyone there was in dogged and blatant violation of the myriad of NO TAILGATING signs. Someone had even rented a U-Haul, out of which they served dogs, burgers, and lots and lots of foamy amber drinks that one could possible mistake for beer at the right angle.

We arrived at the stadium at 5:15 for a 7:05 first pitch. Why? Because I hadn't a clue what to do with myself in Philadelphia before a ball game. Mistakenly, I'd thought Citizen's Bank would be surrounded by fabulous sports imbibing establishments. Instead of Tug McGrandSlam's Home Run Drinkatorium, however, the environs were truck parking lots, airplane refueling bypasses, and more parking lots. But prior to the game, they open up a fun little area called Ashburn Alley, wherein the lucky fans get to spend their money well in advance of the first inning at souvenir shops, carnival-style games, and food stands. This area is behind the outfield fence, and offers an excellent, almost field-level of the proceedings.

When in doubt, drink, I say, and so the lady and I ventured to the second level of Harry the K's Broadcast Bar and Grill (no, really), where we had a few beers and watched the Phillies take batting/infield practice. It was a gorgeous day, and I'd never gotten to a game early enough, or had seats good enough, to enjoy BP. I was shocked to see members of the home team chat amiably with the visitors, the Reds. Bobby Abreu, don't talk to Felipe Lopez! I thought, He's your enemy! Also, Ken Griffey Jr. managed to shag balls in center without turning an ankle and going down for the season. Miracle!

At first glance, I lamented that there is no ballgame experience like this in New York. Aside from both of our ballparks being older than recycled dirt, there is an assumption on the part of both teams that one should simply drink lots of beer and squeeze your ass into a hardback seat. I don't think Shea would be appreciably improved with a Guess Your Pitch Speed Game, but having some sort of field-level area where fans could watch BP would be nice. I'm not sure about Yankee Stadium, but I do know that Shea employs armed guards and attack dogs with head-mounted lasers to make sure no one without a field level ticket even thinks about venturing down there.

But then the game started, and I found I just couldn't get into it. From our seats beyond the left field fence, the field looked tiny. Maybe it was the fact that I had no horse in the race, so to speak, whereas at a Mets game I sit on the edge of my seat, even if by some miracle they have a healthy lead (10 run gaps can evaporate quickly at Shea). Or maybe it was the fact that the stadium was half empty--not entirely surprising, considering it was a battle between two last place teams. But the crowd itself seemed not all that into it, either, which again was understandable to a point, especially after the Reds ran away with the game (eventually winning 12-4).

But I have a feeling that my apathy had nothing to do with the design of the park, per se, which was excellent, but rather its intended audience: families and their kids. I've never seen so many kids at a ballpark. Just down the aisle from us was a mom and dad with an infant on their lap--a remarkably well behaved infant, I might add. I found this endearing and cute, but it also took a bit of the edge off the game. There have been times at Shea when I've begged for the sloppy drunks surrounding me to disappear, so I could just enjoy the game in relative peace. But after attending a game in a mostly obnoxious-drunk-free stadium, I've come to realize that I must enjoy that milieu, because watching a game without them was like nine innings of Sominex. Two friends of mine who invited us to the game were a tad tipsy (Makers Mark + parking lot = fun!), and if they were in NY, their shenanigans would have raised no eyebrows. But in Philly, people glared at even their mildest epithets. I expected monocles to drop from tensed eyelids, for old dowagers to tsk and retort, "well I never!"

In New York, one is treated to a bevy of drunken land monsters who, if nothing else, bring an element of excitement and humor to the game-watching experience:

Drunken Bill James: Despite heroic intake of alcohol, can spit out statistics like a Univac. Projects stats so forcefully that no one dare contradict him.
The Slob and The Apologist: A small clumsy upper deck tornado of chaos, the Slob spills his beer everywhere within a three seat radius and kicks people in the shins and groin while getting up for more. The Apologist makes excuses for the Boor, begs forgiveness on his behalf, and in his forceful mea culpas manages to be even more annoying than his protégé.
The Heckler: Screams obscenities after every missed swing and surrendered base hit. Completely hoarse by the fourth inning.
Ethnic Heckler: His first language is not English, but because he wants everyone to understand him, he croaks broken swears in his adopted tongue.
The Sloppy Pugilist: Similar to the Slob, but when his friends warn him of his untidy ways, his response is, "I don't fuckin care, fuckin take on this whole fuckin section, mufuck." Usually ejected by the third inning.
The Equal Opportunity Racist: Glances quickly at each player's name, then formulates an insult utilizing some choice ethnic slurs.
The Social Calendar: Makes post-game plans during the entire game, mostly on a cell phone and at window-rattling volume.
The Defiant Auslander: Comes to see the rival team and sports their gear in full regalia. Beaten to a pulp and thrown down a flight of stairs by the sixth inning.
Billy Graham: Inveighs loudly against the evils corrupting the game, including steroids, free agency, the designated hitter, Jim Bouton, and batting gloves. No matter who is on the field, they are less than human compared to the sepia-toned stars of yesteryear. Sobbing into his beer by last call.
ESPN Scout: On every fielded ball, no matter how routine, screams, "That's a Web Gem! That's a Web Gem!"

05.09

1:15pm: I went upstate for Mother's Day, and my car died on the return trip. Luckily, it happened only a few miles from my mother's house. I was driving down route 208, which, now that I have overly stimulated City Eyes, seems really dark and creepy at 10:30 at night. None of the trees have bloomed yet, and the bare branches look scary-movie-ish when caught in car headlights as they sweep through a curve. Roadkill of varying size is not uncommon, everything from snakes and raccoons to deer. I noticed that a caution light was lit on the dashboard, a curious one I'd never seen before with a little battery and the angry direction CHARGE. Simultaneously, I had an SUV right on my ass, shining xenon lights so piercing that I could see my bones. Every single time I've have had serious car trouble, I've either been caught in screaming, relentless traffic--one breakdown each on the GWB and route 17 in Jersey--or had some jackass riding my bumper. It is a lesser known subset of Murphy's Law: if something can go wrong, it will, and in already stressful circumstances.

The car in question is actually my grandfather's Oldsmobile, one that he took great care of. He bought it new in 1990 and only put 60K miles on it since then. If the thing was ever driven over 55, I'd be extremely surprised. It had been running a bit choppy, but I thought that was simply due to a few months of sitting idle in his garage, and I vowed I would bring it in for an oil change soon, maybe squeeze it in between eating and sleeping one of these weekends.

But on this evening, the running of the engine transgressed 'choppy' and veered into 'fucked up'. It was barely climbing up the modest hills of my hometown, and I saw that the interior lights were quickly dimming. The radio reception grew staticky and then died altogether. As one thing after another quickly went wrong, I pulled out the greatest tool in a motorist's arsenal: self-delusion. With every successive sign that something was wrong, I convinced myself that it was only my imagination, that I was being paranoid. Or that maybe the car was in trouble, but if I just clapped my hands and believed ,I could bring it back to life.

The SUV behind me was not pleased. I thought he had his brights on, but then, annoyed by my slow pace, he turned his REAL brights on, and suddenly I could see through time. But I couldn't stop to wave hi to George Washington and Pol Pot, because my car was very quickly expiring. At the moment when I realized that I could resist automotive failure no more, it just so happened that I approached the local parish, the one that my grandfather faithfully attended for the last 26 years of his life. How many times, I wondered, did Grampa chug into St. Mary's for 10 o'clock mass in this car? Ironic, in that no-it's-not-classically-ironic-it's-merely-a-vaguely -interesting-coincidence-which-dumb-people-mistake-for-irony kind of way.

As I turned into the parking lot, the car died completely. This was unfortunate because I was literally in the middle of turning into the parking lot, and a dead car means no power steering. The car was actually in a 45 degree angle to the street, heading slowly but surely for a large ceremonial bell on the church's front lawn (no, I don't know why they have this thing either). It took all my strength to turn the car out of harm's way. I managed to aim the car for a regular parking slot, but once I'd aimed the car, I had to stop it, which was difficult without power brakes. I had to do a Fred Flintstone and drag my feet across the pavement to bring the car to a halt. The little hamster who turns the wheel in the engine block told me, It's a Living.

My brother came by to give me a jump, and I seriously considered trying to drive back to Brooklyn once the car was 'ok'. But when the car stalled two more times--once when I turned on the headlights, once when I put it in gear--it was clear this car was going nowhere without a tow chain attached to it. So I got a lift back to my Mom's house. We had an awesome GTA-type moment on the trip back, when the hood of my brother's car flipped straight up, completely obscuring the windshield. He told me to direct him to the side of the road, but I said, 'Nah, keep driving, it'll fly off. It always does that in Vice City.'

So I took the NJ Transit train back to the city this morning, for the first time in a very long time. The process is so much more automated these days. You used to be able to buy tickets on the train, and you still can, but now they encourage you to purchase them from automated ticket-bots at the station by saddling all on-board ticket purchases with crippling fees. And there's finally a (sorta) direct link to Midtown, if you make a brief transfer at Seacaucus. There, you have to enter your ticket into a turnstile machine, similar to the PATH train or the DC Metro. There's an ease to it, I guess, but it's also eliminated what was the greatest feature of Jersey Transit: fleece-ability. Once upon a time, you could save some dough by buying a ticket to Suffern, even if you were getting off several stops later. The conductors barely gave a shit, and if you thought you'd landed in the same car as a Do-Gooder, you would just move down a coupla cars. When I was in college, I would even go to the bathroom, change a shirt, exchange glasses for contacts, and voila! A real James Bond move to save a few bucks, but back then a few bucks was no small matter to me.

Another thing that has ruined commuter rail travel: the cell phone. Holy Christ, train travel has devolved from pleasant to tolerable to unbearable in a very short period of time, all because of the cell phone. Thanks to the cell phone, people scream non-stop for the entire trip, whole carloads of them. Some conduct business, some gossip with their friends, but regardless of its nature, the chatter is nonstop. The man in front of me this morning yelled at his secretary for 90 minutes. Meanwhile, he had some sort of Blackberry-type thing that blared out MIDI morse code each time he got a new email. Commuter rail, like the subway, used to be a place where people pledged to intrude on one another's personal space as little as possible, and to keep as silent as possible. Now it's an unending sea of noise and data. It did not, however, prevent me from a deep, open-mouthed slumber for my entire trip from upstate to Seacaucus.

The connecting train to midtown was very late. An older lady with two young children--I presumed them her grandchildren--admonished her charges not run around on the train tracks. "We don't play in New York," she said with prim finality. One boy said, in a snotty little boy way, "We're not in New York, we're in Seacaucus."

As I made my way out of Penn Station, I found myself in the general vicinity of an Unsettled Man. He was one of those sad, weird misogynists who seem personally and deeply offended by all women in his line of sight. He was not loud, but determined, grumbling in rapid-fire succession on the subject of whoredom. The other thing that struck me was that he did not seem like a derelict per se; he wasn't well dressed, but he clearly wasn't a bum either. He had a small bag and walked as quickly and with as much purpose as all the other commuters. Maybe he was a borderline schizophrenic on his way to a job. He boarded the escalator to 7th Avenue a few people in front of me. I exited to find a crowd of eager, beaming NYU graduates arrayed in purple robes. The Unsettled Man began harassing them, in a boisterous way, with the inscrutable chant, "C'MON KIDS! FOUR MORE YEARS! C'MON KIDS! FOUR MORE YEARS!" Then I thought, maybe this is this man's job. Maybe he's a professional street hassler. There are certainly worse ways to make your dough, I thought, as I headed to my own hassle.

05.05

6:58pm: No softball this weekend, which is a bummer. We played last week and though it rained on and off, and we got clobbered, it was still fun. The Mark Bar played against the cleverly-named Balls Deep, a team led by the commissioner of the league and packed with ringers. I needed a TI-85 to calculate how many runs they scored on us (pre-calc humor!). With no hope of defeating them athletically, we opted for subtle psychological ploys; ie, taunting them with scrotally-themed insults, like calling them the Nut Sacks and the Teabags. Their uniforms were baby blue, so Blue Balls worked quite well; this epithet seemed to irk them more than any other (too close to home?), but it did not prevent them from going yard batter after batter. My only solace was, by playing right field, I did not have to field any bombs tossed against their almost entirely right-handed lineup.

At the plate, I went 2 for 3, scored a run, and ended the game by needlessly barreling into the third baseman in the bottom of the ninth, just after he fielded a ground ball. I hoped my heft would dislodge the ball, and in the split second that I committed to acting like an offensive tackle instead of a base runner, I received brief glimpses of doom. I could seriously hurt this person and get sued. Or I could seriously injure myself, and spend many moons laid up in a hospital bed. Or, I could escape unscathed but spark a brawl between the teams, and wind up in jail. As it turned out, the third baseman was made of granite, because when my shoulder connected with his pelvis, I bounced right off of him and tumbled earthward, making a three-point landing in the damp dirt of the infield. Some laughs and a small dosage of humiliation were my only consequences.

When the team repaired to our sponsor to lick our wounds with beer, we discovered that our Hated Rivals were also drinking there. I initially took this as a slap in the face. Imagine if Johnny and all of Cobra Kai showed up at Mr. Miyagi's house for a drink. Would you stand for that? Well, you would if your team just lost by twenty-seven runs (give or take a dozen). And eventually, all animosity was washed away in a tide of good sportsmanship and alcohol. Blue Balls may have won the game, but we won the Good Sportsmanship award--which, as you know, is a bent bowling trophy from the Salvation Army with the word PUSSY scratched on it s surface.