Carney Lansford and the Cosmos

My middle school science teacher was a die-hard Giants fan. Our class listened to the ’89 NLCS game 5 clincher against the Cubs and Mark Grace on a portable radio while she scored the game on the chalkboard. (do these specimens of archaic learning still exist? and does anyone actually score a game anymore?) I pretended to read about black holes and sun spots while my eyes glossed over, staring at absolutely nothing with a slack-jawed bovine expression, my fingers tracing the hieroglyphs gouged into the wooden desk, blackened by grime. Someone had drawn a heavy metal logo and the words fuck this class on one of the pages next to a supernova. I stared at that primal expression for quite a while. I can’t really explain why.

“Yesterday we explicitly agreed to quietly do our work as long as we could listen to the game,” she said.

We knew that this was a faulty agreement as she was going to listen to the game regardless of whether we agreed to the shoddy terms or not–and besides, some of us weren’t Giants fans. I couldn’t give a toss about the Giants or the wonders of the cosmos at that time as I was more interested in girls and boobs–and not necessarily in that order.

We had spoken about Carney Lansford a few days earlier and his time with the Red Sox. Her boyfriend was a “Southie” from Boston; a second-generation working-class, red-haired Irish Mick from a long line of drunks, thieves, and lowlifes. He had escaped the sludge and went to some long-forgotten East Coast university, and he and his stoner buddies would go to Fenway Park on weekends where they had acquired an affinity for Lansford. Of course, she thought all of this was cute and clever and was terribly pleased by it.

smokes red Marbs and drinks Coors

“No offense Mrs. Carpenter, but besides Will Clark, your team just isn’t very likable. Rick Reuschel looks like a fat, middle-aged divorced dad and Scott Garrelts looks like a skinny, nose-picking dork.”

It was true. Both starting pitchers looked like the antithesis of an athlete but resembled the perfect working-class early 20th-century farm boy/sandlot/baseball player. Some fans–probably the nerdy, isolationist type–can get behind that “average joe” persona and root for them passionately, but in the era of super athletes like Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, I would always inexplicably choose the latter over the former.

“Let us not forget that your friend Carney Lansford looks like an accountant,” she said as she swallowed what was supposed to look like aspirin to the general viewer. A few classmates had theorized that she popped Vicodin on occasion because of her seemingly more “relaxed” state as the day wore on. This wasn’t a great choice as it ultimately led to bouts of throwing up in the garbage can.

A’s are stinkier than diarrhea so far this season.

This is not very far off from my actual reaction last night . I gave up after 3 innings of internal frustration and outward cursing.

In my opinion the writer is to be seen as a psychedelic trip of sorts: a creator of convincing illusions and bringing forth skeptical truths. There are no illusions here, however, only skeptical truths. “Super rookie” Sean Manaea was absolutely ravaged by the Red Sox last night. Mookie Betts led off with a homer and then Hanley Ramirez hit a bomb over the Green Monster among the menagerie of hits. Manaea skulked off the field after giving up 8 runs in 2.2 innings and at this point in his career doesn’t look ML ready. The A’s starting pitching as an undivided assemblage smells worse than diarrhea on a tin roof during a southern heat wave–and now I’m not sure if the team is going to be a summer respite from the dull and anxious day-to-day that most people call their existence as sentient beings.
I can only take solace in the Zen proverb, “Let go or be dragged.” I stop what I am doing , take a deep breath and ask myself, “What, in this moment, am I demanding?” There is still lots of baseball to be played…it’s only May for chrissake. All this is tumbling through my head as I am walking my dog in the largely Asian neighborhood I live in. Men take walks in the morning wearing suits and old ladies do seemingly useless calisthenics in the park. There are lots of windmills akin to a third base coach waving home a runner while walking backwards and synchronated hand claps. These sort of things drive my dog crazy and he barks at the gray-hairs incessantly while chasing squirrels and crows. I enjoy these morning walks, as does he, and he doesn’t let me forget it as he stares and paws at my face at exactly 7:00 each morning until we hit the pavement. What does all this mean? What am I trying to say?
It’s only May for chrissake.