Daily Archives: October 28, 2009
Allow me to briefly indulge a high-school football memory:
It was the fourth quarter of the homecoming game my senior year, and we held a comfortable lead over the cupcake West Hempstead team we scheduled for homecoming every season. Nevermind that it was due to be our first win of the season and only the fourth in the three years I had been playing varsity football; I was having the time of my life.
Our coach swapped in a new defensive end, a pothead who didn’t play much. He was supposed to bring the defensive playcall with him, but that was apparently too much for his memory to bear.
While the huddle gathered, I jogged to greet him.
“What’s the play?” I asked.
“Oh, s@#$,” he said, looking bewildered. “But yo, Wurst is having a party.”
I chuckled and approached the huddle.
“Forty-two, outside, Cover 2, red dog,” I said, improvising. “And guys — there’s a party at Wurst’s house tonight.”
What a leader I was that day! And what a fun-loving gang of hooligans we were! Just laughing and partying and keeping it loose. That was a team with chemistry.
Of course, the next week, while losing by double-digits, I got into a fistfight with our starting runningback on the sidelines. And after the game, instead of partying with my teammates, I went to the movies with my parents. I was ashamed to be seen in public after the stomping we took.
In the coming days, lots and lots of people are going to talk about A.J. Burnett and his whipped-cream pies and how the Yankees succeeded because they were able to stay loose in the clubhouse.
But that’s not really it.
When teams play well, the players have fun. Almost always. Baseball players become professional baseball players in part because they really, really enjoy playing baseball (even Carlos Beltran!). And to win consistently at the Major League level must be an unimaginable thrill.
So of course the Yankees nailed each other in the face with pies after games. And of course they appeared to be enjoying it. They were enjoying it, and they deserved to. They were that good.
But they were enjoying it because they were good, they were not good because they were enjoying it. Does that make sense?
The Yankees had a team full of All-Stars that were lucky enough to stay healthy. They replaced Jason Giambi with Mark Teixeira and revamped their rotation. That’s why they won, and so that’s why they had so much fun.
No one gets pied after losses.
Look: I’m not dismissing the element of team chemistry altogether. I’ve worked in groups, and obviously I recognize that it’s a much more pleasant experience while everyone’s getting along.
But is there a way to construct a group to ensure that everyone gets along? I doubt it. In fact, I’d bet the best way to secure the best possible clubhouse would be to put together the best possible team.
That’s what the Mets need to do this offseason. They must put together the best possible team for 2010 that does not prevent them from winning in 2011 and beyond.
And that’s all. There’s no need to go out and acquire good clubhouse guys or team leaders or pie-throwers. If the team wins games, there’ll always be someone to throw pies.
The heroic bastions of good will at Taco Bell have announced that this year, instead of the popular “Steal a Base, Steal a Taco” promotion from years past, Taco Bell will provide a free Black Jack Taco to every Taco Bell guest on Saturday between 6 p.m. and midnight, while supplies last.
Amazing.
Debate rages over whether Taco Bell is providing free tacos to celebrate Halloween or to celebrate the World Series, or if Taco Bell is just providing free tacos because the restaurant chain is dedicated to ending world hunger, one taco at a time.
The Black Jack Taco, if you were unaware, is like a regular taco, but blacker. It also comes with delicious pepper-jack sauce, familiar to lovers of the now-defunct (but still usually available if you just ask) Cheesy Gordita Crunch.
If you live in the vicinity of multiple Taco Bells, you can probably figure out a way to get several free tacos out of this. In fact, you can probably figure out a way to get several free tacos just by returning to the same Taco Bell in half-hour intervals on Saturday.
But please, don’t take advantage of Taco Bell’s generosity. Taco Bell did this for you. And think of all that Taco Bell has done for you in the past. Repay Taco Bell by purchasing other menu items while you’re there.
In one of my earliest non-sports posts here, I weighed in on Justin Bieber, a young pop star I had never heard of before he showed up to play for throngs of 10-year-old girls at the Today Show studio near my office.
Anyway, I trashed him a bit, assuming he was just some run-of-the-mill record-company lackey selected for stardom for his looks and charm.
I have since learned from a source with inside knowledge that Justin Bieber is actually something of a savant in both music and weirdness. Apparently the reason Bieber’s Today Show performance was underwhelming is that he had never even rehearsed the song with his live band, but decided on a whim to play it instead of the song he had prepared. While dancing. With no backing track.
I’m also told that he is, as I suspected, closely handled by managers and mother, but mostly because he’s prone to saying particularly bizarre and downright inappropriate things. And apparently in a recent trip to MTV’s studios, he was given a Rubik’s Cube with which to entertain himself, and promptly finished it and launched it at his manager’s junk.
So maybe Justin Bieber is pretty rock and roll after all. Good luck with that, Justin Bieber. Your next challenge is to actually make worthwhile music.
Bury your head deep in the sand.
Anonymity is a virtue in this day and age.
A Philadelphia woman was arrested for offering sex in exchange for World Series tickets. Sometimes you don’t need a punchline.
Even though Doug Glanville roots for the Phillies, I generally enjoy reading his op-ed pieces in the Times. He comes off like a true, hardcore, nerdy baseball fan like myself, and one that just so happened to be good enough to make the Major Leagues. It’s only when he actually starts breaking the game down and advocating Marlon Anderson that he gets a bit bothersome.
The Mets will won’t will won’t pursue John Lackey. This is going to be an especially frustrating year of hot-stove nonsense, I think.
Today is the day every paper in the country runs its position-by-position World Series breakdown and picks which player at each position gives his team the edge. I still don’t get it. The shortstop doesn’t ever face the other shortstop, right?
