Goose Gossage proves the term “douche bag” has no age limit.

Dear Goose:
I’m going to make this short and sweet. Are you kidding me? Dude, you were a CLOSER, arguably one of the most over-rated positions in the sports world. The starting pitchers of the early 20th century are rolling over in their graves with laughter–in their day a reliever was a scrub who couldn’t start and barely got into the game. They also would have called you a “punk” because of your facial hair. You know who invented your position? Statisticians–or “nerds” as you so eloquently called them.
You are in the Hall of Fame for 3 reasons:
A) you were a Yankee (ugh…probably the main reason as you only have to be really good instead of great if you spent most of your career in pinstripes.)
B) You had a handlebar mustache and a dumb nickname.
C) The closer position and statistics hadn’t been established yet. There are guys with almost double the saves that you compliled in a career who aren’t in the HOF and will never get in. You were simply in the right place at the right time.
Jose Batista’s batflip: This was one of the most iconic homeruns in ML history in a ALDS game 5. It put the BlueJays ahead and had (possibly) put an end to a very emotionally charged game that would put Toronto in the ALCS. Topps decided that it was so important that they immortalized it on a baseball card. It was an exciting moment. Jose Bautista is one of the most exciting sluggers in the game. Excitment brings in fans. Fans bring in money. Money is the bottom line. Bautista is in the entertainment industry, not the “raise your kids for you” or “act like you want me to act” industry. I doubt many fans were going to games or sitting in front of the tube clamoring for you to hold a 3 run lead in the 9th in order to pad your bogus statistics while sitting on your ass the whole game. Now that’s entertainment!
This blog is tired of arguing the bat flip and its racist connotations. Latin players do it all the time and it isn’t a big deal; it’s just as ingrained in their culture as live bands and vuvazelas. Latin players are more pervasive in baseball than ever before so they are going to bring their culture with them. Japan, a traditionally rigid country, embraces the bat flip. Baseball culture changes with the world and the world has always changed, physically and theoretically. Perhaps there is a racial component to some of your criticism, perhaps not, but I do know one thing: you would have been one of the players that refused to play with Jackie Robinson because that would mean embracing change.
To put it simply….you are a punk.

Ex-marine uncovers reptilian aliens who turn out to be A’s fans.

Ubbesk seems harmless enough.

Ex-marine Kyle Odom was arrested on Tuesday after shooting a prominent preacher twelve times in Idaho after claiming that the padre was in cahoots with reptilian aliens from Mars that have been here “long before us” have technology “millions of years ahead of ours.” These aliens had been harassing him for about two years after he contacted one during a meditation session. These hyper-sexual, paranoid aliens rule the Earth and have made President Obama their sex slave — a species of “amphibian-humanoids” that include dozens of U.S. politicians.

“The Martians came to Earth here before humans, live underground and bred humans so they can walk among us,” Odom wrote.

This blog was contacted by Ubbesk, the supposed leader of the alien species who wanted things to be cleared up.

“We have never contacted this man, Ubbesk said, and I have 4 witnesses that can tell you I was at a spring training game in Mesa on the day I supposedly contacted Mr. Odom.”

Ubbesk then went on to say that he has high hopes for the team this season and he is highly disappointed in the play of Billy Butler.

“The guy is a disgrace to the human species…I will never figure out why humans feel the need to consume so much pre-packaged crap.”

 

Hippy Harry and his Oakland A’s Spring Training report.

Harry was one of those flower children from the 60’s who hitch-hiked to Height and Ashbury from an Iowa cornfield and never left. The pull of drugs, sex, music and the radical politics of the time were an overwhelming factor for someone who loved people and having a good time. He met a girl named Darlene who was 19, had long blonde hair and was so with it that she could quote Karl Marx and roll a doobie at the same time. Harry and Darlene were on and off for about 5 years until she split with a Hells Angel from Lodi. This turn of event was an eye-opener for Harry and he realized that sub-cultures consummating into capitalistic entities do what they normally do–die off. Charles Manson hadn’t helped matters much with his shenanigans in Los Angeles and the hippies of the 60’s that had survived drugs and prison were blossoming into tax-paying citizens and looking for something else to do. So was Harry.
Harry eventually moved to the much cheaper Oakland side of the Bay and got a square job working at a Co-op grocery store. He also started going to baseball games at the Oakland Coliseum in the 70’s and the timing was perfect to mold him into a life long A’s fan. The A’s won 3 straight World Series and had great players like Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson and Sal Bando. He liked that these guys were brash, outspoken and had long hair and afros. These were his guys.
Harry is now 67 and lives in Petaluma, California in his “Château Relaxo.” I recently sent him to check out the A’s and the Royals during a Spring Training game in Mesa. Here is his report:
Mesa is an uncultured bubble community with no sense of inspiration–it is flat, hot, dusty and the only thing to do is eat, get drunk or cook meth. I checked into my hotel and decided to eat at “Connie’s” the diner next door. Now I know why I never see dead animals on the roads, they’re all in the restaurants. Talk about the heat. The damn pool water gets as hot as the outside temps. I met a sweet Mexican girl named Lola who was going to the game the next day. We drank rum, listened to the Eagles and talked for most of the night. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and promised to buy me a beer if she saw me the next day. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find someone like me in a crowd of only 5,000 people.
The next day I was a tad bit hung over, yet giddy as I took a couple of puffs off the pipe and downed a few beers in the parking lot. My Prius was gasping for air. Hohokam stadium is a smallish park that seats about 10,000 and has a majestic view of the sky. I live in a part of California that is so lush with greenery and downcast that anything wide open and infinite like this is a bit strange, yet it was pleasant. I have been an A’s fan for the better part of 40 years and had never been to Spring Training. Bucket list.
The vibe and weather were very relaxing and the mixture of baseball, sun and the night before had me falling into a sort of meditative slumber, and then I would jolt awake during every crack of the bat. I imagine it would have been quite hilarious from an outsiders perspective. Around the 4th inning I felt someone shaking me from behind. It was Lola. We went and had a few beers while walking around the stadium. She was a beautiful brown-skinned girl from the 70’s that came from a traditional Catholic family and didn’t look a lick like her age. She had strength, wisdom and a beautiful smile.
Oh, yeah. The A’s won 6-4 as my favorite player Stephen Vogt went yard twice. This vacation was turning out to be quite nice. That is all from my Spring Training report. Harry over and out.

Khris Davis, Noodles and Los Angeles

“Noodle Arm”

The man sits regally and casually; wearing old style European clothing. Perhaps I felt this way because I was sitting in a park that reminded me of Spain– buildings towering around us in order to block out the sunlight. A couple of hummingbirds zip by me; connected in a seemingly sexual position. What a strange sound. As my attention span carbon copies the urban wildlife I notice that the “European” man is staring at me. (This is also known as the “devils” work of double–sense deluding.) The man rises and quietly opens an aluminum walker. And it is a woman. She was simply waiting for her granddaughter in the outside smoking section of a train depot in the middle of Los Angeles.
I rub my eyes and grab a newspaper to pass the time; a rare and tragic event that I enjoy and makes me look like a moth-eaten antique.
FRONT PAGE: More cosmetic culture. An American culture that cultivates an idea of a free destiny within a firmly imposed but imperceptible and uniform attitude. Most people are confused by this dilemma and just choose the easy way out: make money and fuck everyone else. Who am I to judge? I’ve done the same with impunity and thought I was better for it. We learn to sleep at night with no guilt. Sometimes that sense of peace and safety is all we have to hold on to.
ENTERTAINMENT: Idiot hip-hop artists and their self-importance; a soon-to-be-dead genre because of its chichi and an unrealistic approach to self-impressions as well as economics, actors schlepping terrible movies that will be forgotten within weeks, the occasional mass-produced book review, artists trying to make money from David Bowie’s still fresh corpse etc.
SPORTS: The A’s have acquired Khris Davis from the Milwaukee Brewers. Left fielder with some pop and a noodle arm. So– the only weakness is that we wont get a 7-5 tag-out during a dink base hit; and at least I am slightly reassured that Beane (or whoever the hell the new G.M. may be) is at least trying to put a competitive team on the field in 2016 and not tanking like many other teams……although everyone knows if they start slowly, the FOR SALE signs will quickly go up again.
I fold the newspaper and lay it on the bench for future travelers. The thought fades as soon as it appears.

My mother hated Brian Fuentes

“Goddamn it, they put his dumb ass in there again… I’m going to bed!” my mother says as she jumps out of her La-Z-Boy and tosses the remote control at me.

“He might do it this time,” I say as the goon in question meticulously blows another tightly contested/hard-fought contest in the ninth. There is nothing worse in the baseball world than a closer who embodies a dumpster fire.

Mom by no means is a knowledgeable baseball fan, but she knows what she doesn’t like…and she didn’t like Brian Fuentes. I knew how she felt. It got to be frustrating sitting there for 3 hours and change just to see this big-eared, goatee’d goofball with a lame-duck delivery and an inflated contract desecrating your team’s chances of winning. It hurt even more to know that he was forsaken by the Angels, the terrible team from Orange County that famously sticks with terrible closers until the apocalypse freezes hell over. If that smug blockhead Mike Scioscia is fed up with a reliever than there is reason for panic.

I had been to the Oakland “Mausoleum” merely days before, proudly sporting my green cap with the gold, gothic “A” on the front. The night began with a few nips from a flask at the BART station and ended with fans staying after the game to verbally try to rip Fuentes a new asshole as he blew yet another save; becoming the physical incarnation of our dwindling hope as fans. I sat there stunned, quietly giving in to shikata ga nai: the Japanese habit of surrendering to fate. When the A’s finally released Fuentes (STILL paying that contract off by the way) my mother could only say with a dismissive wave, “Well, you can’t make chicken salad outta chicken shit.”

Dennis Eckersley and the ubiquitous baseball mustache of the 80’s.

Here’s Eck posing for Playboy in 1980.

America’s hipsters and post-ironic trust fund kids may be growing out their mustaches now, but baseball players of the 70’s had little idea of how their ‘staches (then considered masculine) were actually a cultural influence initiated by gay culture. Dennis Eckersley no doubt had one of the most famous mustache in Oakland A’s history, (besides Rollie Fingers) and unlike most players in the 90’s, kept the mustache until it became hip again and still wears it today.

Starting with the ’60s, when hippie culture and gay culture seemed to collide, facial hair really got out of hand, as gay beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his bushy face exemplify. In 1969, with gay liberation after the Stonewall Riots, those on the front lines were the drag queens without a hair on their faces and the hippie types who wanted to buck the establishment and had nothing to lose. Again it was the smooth and the hairy in perfect harmony.

Things started to change in the ’70s, as the proliferation of gay porn, the popularization of disco (a gay sub-culture) and an exploding gay culture gave birth to what is known as “the clone look,” which started with super-popular gay porn star Al Parker. You couldn’t swing a handbag on The Castro without hitting a guy with a mustache, and everyone felt the need to conform because not only was it a way to spot other gays but it was the beauty ideal, and something that was considered masculine. Gay icons like Freddie Mercury, the Village People, and John Waters were all known for their iconic mustaches.

A landmark film from 1972 was Deep Throat, which made perhaps up to $600 million (no one really knows the exact figures…probably not even the mobsters who backed it) and kicked off the era of ’70s “porno chic.” Along with the other major male porn stars of the time, like John Holmes and Ron Jeremy who made mustaches synonymous with sleazy sexual appetites, perhaps leading to their public decline in the gay community and lending itself towards a more “macho” mainstream appetite.

The 1990’s unfortunately became a fallow time for mustaches, which were associated with the past two decades and seen as cheesy and unhip. Now, of course, they’re making a huge comeback with today’s cool kids, who reach back for the circa-1900 look and who have a keen taste for irony since they can’t define their own media-obsessed generation by any clear materialized pop-cultural definition.

Gettin’ slammed at the ol’ yard.

People often wax nostalgic about baseball with its poetic and graceful nuances; and I understand the feeling as I often do the same– yet there is a darker, more ominous underbelly that isn’t quite as idyllic or sophisticated: alcohol.

Drinking is just as ingrained in the rich tapestry of the game as hot dogs, Cracker Jacks, bloated payrolls and greedy owners–just ask Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Harry Caray or Cleveland Indians fans on ten-cent beer night.

Before baseball became the voracious, obnoxious corporate entity that it has become today it was just a simple, no-frills place for the working-class to let off some steam and have a beer or three. Baseball represents a lot of different things to a lot of different people; and for some it isn’t always a wholesome night with the family that stands up, yawns and quietly leaves in the 7th inning. These are true fan testimonials:

–I was completely blasted, as well as pretty stoned during Game 20 of The Streak. I sobered up pretty damn quick though when the Royals started coming back!

–I drank a bottle of Jose Cuervo in the parking lot before a game. I was barfing into an empty Gatorade bottle all game and no one seemed to notice since everyone had their eyes on the field.

–My Dad looked out at the field in the 4th inning (we were both about 8 beers in at that point), and turned to me saying, “Holy shit, did you realize there’s a ballgame going on?!” We were still more sober than the girl puking on the subway on the way home.
I miss Opening Night in the late 70’s early 80’s when fans were crazy, there were fights and people going nuts for foul balls. I got knocked down 8 stairs at age 10 from the mob going after a foul ball…good times.

–We were swearing at the umpire and a row of 50-year-old duds told us to shut up. We all sat down, everything settled and we went back to watching the game. That’s when my buddy comes back from the bathroom and spills a beer down the back of one of these guys on accident. I thought it was going to be an all out brawl… They were livid and we couldn’t stop laughing.
Anytime I went with my dad and uncle back in the early 70’s especially the World Series in 74. I was 6. The bleachers were cheap and beer was sold in the stands.

–World Series…can’t remember if it was ’88, ’89 or ’90. I was in the old bleacher area walking back from the bathroom or something. I looked up on the grassy area way up top in the back, and ESPN had set up a place for their crew to sit, with cameras and everything. I saw Peter Gammons, Bob Ley and someone else. A few of us were looking up at them, waving, smiling, etc. Some REALLY drunk dude walks up to me and asks what we are looking at. I pointed up and said, “It’s ESPN, Peter Gammons and Bob Ley!” (I was about 11 years old so I was very excited). Drunk dude, yells up in a drunken slur, “Hey Peter!!!!…..” (who then looks down and smiles) “…Fuck You!!!!….” Drunk dude then hurls his cup of draft beer up right at them! Cops then come and pull dude away. It was pretty funny.

–For my 40th on a Friday night, I had a suite and my friends kept buying me double 7&7’s from the suite bartender and the Irish Bar. I was so drunk and not my usual, respectable self. My sales guy came by to visit and I was apologizing, profusely, for being inebriated. Half of my friends in the suite were Giants fans, the other half A’s fans and one lone Dodger fan. My favorite moment was when a friend walked into the suite stopped and said, “Whoa! There are Giants fans in here…what are they doing here?” I think I was hung over for the next two days but still made it to Saturday and Sunday games that weekend. That was the last time I drank that much at a game. Never again.

–My buddy started making fun of a drunk Giants fan throwing up in the parking lot before the game. We almost had to throw down with his friends when we asked if he “had too much of that championship champagne.”

–Once, I was in the bathroom near gate D and the guy in the stall next to me was plastered. He sang “We Are The Champions” by Queen until he threw up on the floor.

–One time I got kicked out of the bleachers for having a flask, but then came back through the season ticket holder line.

–The last time I went to the Coliseum the bleachers were teeming with rowdy drunkenness, sort of good-natured heckling, pot smoke and “e-smoke.” Strangers were handing me hot links, chicken and pickle sandwiches and falling all over me. Fans kept getting kicked out and booing the staff every time they hauled off some poor fool that was passed out or slugging whiskey. Some guy nodded off and barfed three seats away. I’m a Mariners fan so I was glad the fans would rather have a good time, smoke, get drunk, dance, barf and get thrown out rather than pick on me. And really, why waste your time on anything else–that’s some real shit right there. Beats the fucking Dodgers fans I can tell you this. Salt of the earth.

Carney Lansford, the universe and random thoughts.

After the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp by the sun; there will be worlds, stars, galaxies coming into being, and they will know nothing of a place called “Earth.”

–Carl Sagan

Sometimes when the stresses of life are getting to me I try to remember the above quote and how it applies to the meaningless of everything I do. I admit, sometimes it works, but mostly not.

The economic disarray, joblessness, and overall feelings of hopelessness in this country is akin to Karl Marx slapping me in the face and telling me, “I told you so.” I know that if I don’t kiss up to my boss–leading to an immediate termination–I could end up like one of the homeless folks that I see outside of my second story window. (I have nicknames for two: one is the “predator” because of his ass length dreadlocks and likeness to the alien in the movie of the same name, and the other is “Old Yeller” because he loves to drink beers next to the Starbucks garbage can and, well, scream at the garbage can before he passes out in front of it.) And as I’m daydreaming one day while being inspired by these gentlemen, my mind wandered to a time that had been long erased from my rotted cerebrum–a time when the only thing you had to worry about was school, when you were finally going to get laid and your measly pittance of a weekly allowance.

Carney Lansford was the third-sacker for the A’s during their dominating run in the early 90’s and one of my favorite players. His nerdy glasses and un-ironic mustache (I always thought guys did this because they had thin upper lips) gave him a comforting “cool dad” like quality. After tinkering a bit with batting stances, my 13-year-old self decided that Mr. Lansford’s hand jerky style was the one I’d mimic while rocketing balls off the cyclone fence intertwined with branches and leaves. (my cousin and I thought this made it look more like Wrigley) He was also part of the team that won the ’89 World Series, which was the last time the boys in green even came close to sniffing a title. (’06 ALCS doesn’t count as we were swept by the Tigers and weren’t even supposed to go that far) I sat there, lost in a myriad of unspoken emotions and feelings that had rushed to me in a fruitful and happy wave, and suddenly a burst of terrible 80’s classic rock comes pounding out of my clock/radio. Time to go to work. I must cut this story short, good reader… wage slavery calls.

“Campy” Campaneris proves that so called reality isn’t always truth.

When people try to figure out what to believe and explain why they do, they don’t spend much time thinking about the fundamental nature of truth, knowledge, or reality. As Shakespeare said, ‘there’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. Truth is difficult to define because as soon as you think you have it pinned down, some case or counterexample immediately shows deficiencies.

Bert “Campy” Campaneris is largely heralded in the baseball community for being the first player in modern baseball history to play all 9 positions in one game on September 8th, 1965. The feat was admired so much that comedian Will Ferrell even tried his own bombastic and barely funny version in Spring Training last year.

Now here’s where things get tricky: if Campaneris hadn’t “achieved” this feat the Athletics would have won the game that they eventually lost 5-4 in 13 innings. One run scored when Campy dropped a fly ball in right field, another scored when he pitched the 8th inning, and yet another scored when the smallish (5’10, 160) player was crashed into at the plate leading to another run and the D.L. for 5 days. If this accomplished anything in my mind it certainly wasn’t admiration from a baseball standpoint. It begs the questions: What is real? What is true? And is the reality of the world different from how we perceive and experience it in our minds?

Happy Holidays!

Hope you experience a most pleasant celebration of your planet’s winter solstice…and a most logical New Year. –Mr. Spock

I have post-capitalist ennui, but it all seems worth it as we drive the long windy road into the mountains. I hadn’t seen snow for almost 20 years. This is one of the disadvantages/advantages of living in California, you don’t have to worry about the weather too much as you go about your daily routines. We finally reach our destination–a beautiful two-story cabin deep in the woods. I had been admiring the look and serenity of the snow during the long trip and could finally touch it. My admiration for the substance quickly turned less poetic and became more biological survivalist theory as I tossed the stuff like a celebrity throwing out the first pitch. My hand was frozen solid.

My girlfriend and I decided not to celebrate Christmas this year–well, at least not in the traditional sense. Life had gotten in the way and the next thing you know we were thrown into the bizarre world of family, gifts of things we didn’t need, overindulgence of food we would never eat otherwise, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol in order to bring the gelatinous madness together. We didn’t even get around to the trivial task of buying a tree. Seems a bit silly….don’t you think?