Last Saturday I discussed the global economic woes that have trickled down to many American cities in the past year, including Bootleg City. The recession has led to crippling budget cuts here, and now there’s even more bad news — I’ve had to sell the Bootleg City Boutonnières baseball team!
The Bouts were a symbol of civic pride and, most importantly, gratuitous wealth, but I’ll be the first to admit that the games never drew big crowds outside of prom season. Thankfully, we were able to unload plenty of “I Went All the Way at a Bootleg City Boutonnières Game” T-shirts during that time.
I first tried to sell the French-sounding team to Montreal, the former home of the Expos, but after my bad joke two weeks ago about Quebec’s biggest city being “a desolate backwater” — and my refusal to pronounce the English translation of “boutonnière” without making the second syllable silent — negotations quickly broke down. Your loss, buttonholes.
(By the by, the Expos were the best team in baseball in 1994 before that season was cut short due to an infamous players’ strike. It wasn’t until four years later that fans’ goodwill in the game was restored with the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home-run race. Is it possible upper management encouraged them and other players, like Barry Bonds, to take steroids and display feats of superhuman strength so strike-jaded fans — not to mention their children, the next generation of stats hounds — would be lured back to the stands? Discuss.)
Eventually I was able to make a highly profitable deal with neighboring Tuxedoville: instead of buying the team outright, they’re going to rent it for each game. They have a strange way of doing things over there in T-ville, but you won’t hear me complaining.
Now that the Boutonnières are gone, all I have to offer you in terms of vaguely baseball-related entertainment is English pop-rock group the Outfield, performing at Harpos in Detroit in the fall of ‘85 and at the Caldwell Auditorium in Tyler, Texas, the following summer. (Trivia buffs, take note: “Turn and Run” is an early version of the song “Winning It All” from the Outfield’s 1992 album Rockeye.) Thanks once again to Matt Wardlaw for another fine bootleg. Even after all these years, “Your Love” still knocks it out of the park.
The other night I let Sophie stay up past her bedtime to listen to the last inning of the game between the Red Sox and Indians. One of the things I love about the Internet is the ability to listen to every Indians game with the Cleveland radio play-by-play announcers making the calls — it’s really kept me in touch with my hometown. Ironically, baseball was not a huge part of childhood in northeast Ohio; during the ’80s, there was little to root for when the Indians took the field. Oh, each year there was a glimmer of hope for the home team that lasted until the end of April, by which time the Tribe was usually in the basement of their division. In addition to the woes of the Indians, baseball was just never a presence in our house, which is strange, because if you ask my dad about the ’48 and ’54 championship Indians teams, he can rattle off players and some of their accomplishments. The radio was always tuned to music in our house, though, and I found televised games a bore. I took in the occasional game, but the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium was a dungeon: cold, damp and cavernous. It wasn’t a lot of fun to sit in the stands.
A winter chill crept into our sunny spring Sunday and we all donned heavy coats to go to a baseball game. Tickets to the World Baseball Classic between the United States and Japan had unexpectedly come our way, and we jumped at the opportunity for an early ball game before the regular season began. We didn’t expect much of a game, but at least it would be a good show. After loading into our old white minivan, we started the hourlong journey to Dodger Stadium with the sun still hanging on and the sounds of High School Musical blasting through the stereo speakers courtesy of Sophie’s iPod.
You are, of course, forgiven if you hadn’t. Heck, Saturday night on Channel 4 here in L.A. – the city that’s hosting the final two rounds! – the WBC’s first semifinal game didn’t even rate a mention on the 11 p.m. news, shunted aside by extensive coverage of UCLA’s humiliating exit from the NCAA basketball tournament and quick glimpses at the Dodgers’ and Angels’ spring-training action. (Never mind that Angels fans might have wanted to know that the club’s newest high-priced acquisition, outfielder Bobby Abreu, dropped an easy first-inning fly ball that opened the door for Korea’s 10-2 rout of his Venezuela team.)
HATE: The timing. March is a problematic month in which to play games that mean something – not just because of weather (most of the nation is still inhospitable to outdoor activity, limiting the tournament to friendlier climates or … yeccchhhh! … domes), but because this is the time when ballplayers traditionally are shaking off the winter rust and recapturing their timing at the plate, not diving for an up-the-middle grounder with national pride at stake. MLB commissioner Bud Selig says the WBC is in March to stay, but it absolutely needs to move — either to a midsummer fortnight when MLB takes a break (as the NHL does for hockey’s World Cup and the Olympics), or, preferably, to November. Sure, in the latter case the tournament would still be limited to southern cities, but at least the players would be in shape, the eyes of the sporting world would still be on baseball … and, most important, the sport’s owners might not have such a cow over potential injuries (see below). 
Alex Rodriguez is hardly the most heartbreaking name that’s recently been scrawled into the steroid-cheat record books, but he’s certainly the most relevant. By the time they infamously appeared before a Congressional committee a few years back, 
You’re probably clued in by now to my lack of sympathy for A-Rod’s predicament. So, Alex, you felt pressure to live up to your $250 million, guaranteed contract? Boo frickin’ hoo! And you gave up the juice as soon as you found out about your positive test, right about the same time baseball finally cracked down on chemical enhancements? Where can we pin your medal? (It’s not as though he gave up cheating, anyway. Between his pathetic attempt to knock the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s hand during the ’04 ALCS collapse, and his bush-league ploy of yelling “I got it!” while running the bases a couple years ago, to induce an error by Toronto’s third baseman, the man clearly has trouble stifling his instinct to get around the rules of fair play.)
A couple weeks ago, I planned a weeknight getaway down to Anaheim to watch the Angels play against their closest rival for the division crown, the Oakland A’s. We took the Metrolink train down from Union Station and stayed at a hotel within walking distance of the ballpark (incidentally, being a pedestrian in Orange County is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. The hostility you feel from passing drivers is about what you’d expect were you to walk around town wearing a “Registered Sex Offender” t-shirt. I’m surprised they even bothered to put in sidewalks when they built the roads).
I’d be willing to bet that McCain will prove himself the only Republican in the whole country who’s capable of getting through this entire election season without saying the word “Hussein” unless it’s got “Saddam” attached to it. (A shout-out to Eric, whoever you are: You’ve already lost this bet, based on your performance in the 