Hey Omar, can we talk?
Sure thing, Carlos. How’s that knee?That’s what I want to talk to you about. I spoke to you about this surgery earlier this week, and I thought everything was cool.Yeah, definitely, sounds like something I’d say.But today, your assistant GM made it sound as if I went behind your back to do this. What the fuck?! If you had some problem with how this went down, why didn’t we just handle it internally? Why did you go after me in public, by proxy, and make me and everyone else on this team look bad?
I didn’t go after you, Carlos, my assistant GM did. But it’s clear that somebody pulled a real choke job here on the whole communication thing, and we’ll take care of that ASAP. Right after we work out that 7-year extension for Bengie Molina.
You’re responsible for this whole mess! Why are you talking like it’s somebody else’s fault?!
Carlos, you’ve never been in charge of a multimillion-dollar operation…I am a multimillion-dollar operation……so you don’t understand how this works. I am not responsible for the Mets. I am in charge of the Mets. Being in charge is not the same thing as being responsible.You’re right, I don’t understand.You see, people who are responsible are held responsible for their actions. If I were responsible for things, I would’ve been fired a long time ago. Remember that time we assed away a postseason berth in the last month of the season?Yeah, that happened two years in a row.Really? I have no memory of it happening two times. Then again, there was that one season where I took a lot of naps. You see, Carlos, only schmucks are responsible for things. Men are in charge. Men lead. They lead by standing there, immobile, staring straight ahead while their ship runs aground.How do you get to be in charge?You thrust yourself ahead blindly, like a bull in a china shop, barreling all your competitors out of your path. Other guys in charge will admire your spunk and grit and determination, and they won’t care that you have no idea what you’re doing, because they don’t know what they’re doing either, and they’re afraid to have anyone too smart or principled around them to make them look bad in comparison.Well, unlike you, my job is based on performance. In the big leagues, you can’t fail upwards and hope to be rewarded.You can’t? I assume you’ve met Oliver Perez.
DID SUMBODEE TAKE MY FUNYUNS BECUZ I CAN’T FIND THEMM
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter: El Gran Combo
Pitchers and catchers are a mere five weeks away, and it can’t come soon enough for me (even after last night’s hideous Carlos Beltran news). I am done with winter this year, at a record pace, and I’m normally a cold-weather guy. Or at least more of a cold-weather guy than a hot-weather guy. The sun is not my friend.
So from now until players report, I will have a daily bit of baseball-iana to get you through the rest of the winter. The inaugural submission comes to me courtesy of WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, via Give the Drummer Some. Yesterday, he put up his weekly post of mp3s, and it included a beisbol-centric jam by Puerto Rican musical legends El Gran Combo.
They’ve been around for almost 50 years and are probably the most famous salsa group in the world. This tune, entitled “El Caballero Pelotero”, is about exactly what its title states: a horse who plays baseball.
My Spanish isn’t good enough to translate all the lyrics to this song. Or even most of them. In fact, all I can really catch are the lines “jugaba a beisbol” and “los Yanquis”. But apparently, this horse was quite the hitter.
Still, it puts me in the baseballing mood, and I hope it does the same for you. In addition to the original audio below, you can also see/hear El Gran Combo playing the song with another salsa legend, Hector Lavoe, on YouTube (which I would have included here, except the sound is sub-bootleg quality).
Download here.
Blast that Infernal Steroid Era!
I admit that I used steroids for over a decade. However, I want to assure all my fans that I only did it to recover from crippling injuries that would have ended my career, not to inflate my majestic home run numbers. Of course, by lengthening my career, I also hit far more home runs than I would have otherwise and wound up inflating my numbers anyway. It was such a vicious circle!
If only I hadn’t played in The Steroid Era! Then all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided! I wish I had a mentor when I was younger, someone who would’ve told me that if I played in The Steroid Era, there was a very good chance I’d do steroids. Darn this era! Darn it all to heck!
Maybe you don’t know this, but when a baseball player reaches the majors, he has a choice of what era he can play in. I couldn’t play in The Deadball Era, because nobody hit homers back then and nobody wore gloves and everybody gambled. I thought about The Babe Ruth Era, but I’ve never had the stomach for bathtub gin. I thought about The Postwar Era, but you couldn’t go to the World Series unless you played for the Yankees or the Dodgers. And The Sixties weren’t an option, because the pitchers had too much of an advantage; I think the mound was two stories high back then.
I know what you’re thinking: How can you pick an era to play in? You see, MLB mastered the space-time continuum in 1975, thanks to a joint effort between NASA and Bill Lee. The principles are complicated and probably boring to the average layman. Suffice to say that the linearity of time is merely an illusion. I could have played 600 years in the future if I wanted to, in The BRX-797-0 Era, but I thought telepathic abilities would take a lot of the mystery out of life, you know?
So while I’m definitely sorry for what I did, I think most of the blame lies squarely on The Steroid Era itself. Perhaps this not-easily-defined span of time needs to do an interview with Bob Costas and explain itself, not me!
I want to thank all of the people who’ve been supportive during this difficult time. My family. Tony LaRussa. The entire St. Louis Cardinals family. And of course, all those baseball writers who urged me to unburden my soul. Your pushing, poking, and prodding gave me the strength to come clean. I’ll never forget you, but I will try to forget all of you weeping and gnashing your teeth because I just did exactly what you wanted me to.
In conclusion, I think the time has come to turn the page and once again start blaming the big black guy for all this unpleasantness.