Summer 2009

We lounged almost daily on Santa Monica Beach, preferably on the less touristy north end of the pier, and we more or less happily stayed on our small, lapis-blue viewing parcel in this big, enigmatic galaxy of a city. What I remember from that summer is that she would always fall asleep around 3, a little tipsy, gliding carelessly from an imagined world into the subconscious one with a paperback on her face in a dreamy malaise. I could be wrong, of course, because memory has a way of outstripping reality, but before me is a scene that is somewhat framed and ready to bring to light.

When I begin liking someone I suddenly become concerned and aware of the mushiness effects of my words, she said, and it’s bad luck to whisper that you’re happy. That club last night was too dark. I bet it was to hide the seediness and the shit on the floors, although I suppose it makes people look more attractive if you can barely see them.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to slide into fragmented speeches without the slightest indication of topic change or beat of silence–it was as if she needed to blurt it out before it was forgotten forever. She was also very modern, which is to say a whip-smart, curious, and handsome bottle-blonde who embraced quasi-mysticism as a form of rebellion against technological overload and a generally uncaring world. Her psyche was thoroughly more contemporary than mine–awash in magical thinking and new-agey nonsense without a hint of cynicism, whereas mine was sober-minded and open to hard truths. The makings of an impractical, doomed relationship.

She was lying on her stomach and clinging to the revolving earth on the day I fell in love, assumably because she got the high score on the Mrs. PacMan machine tucked away in the very back of the costly Mexican restaurant (amongst ogling busboys who made off-color jokes about gueros.) at the very back end of the funky-smelling pier–even though I probably shouldn’t have given in so easily. She bought me a newspaper because I love the texture of the archaic things people derive pleasure from but never talk about. The newspaper told me that a baseball team had drafted Grant Green, passing up the modern-day Mickey Mantle whose name pays homage to an oily fish that grizzly bears love to bite the heads off of and is particularly tasty with garlic butter. It certainly didn’t seem odd at the time.

A moment of bravado (and a message to the Angels) as the last month of the season kicks in.

Is it time to panic? Was it all wishful thinking? Do we have a rational chance?

I’m not sure if I wrote about the following experience on this blog. (I tend to write in the grand tradition of self-absorbed blow-hards…the tediousness still exists to this day.) We live in a world full of holes. That’s always how it seems with thoughts that transition into stories: one minute there’s nothing, and the next minute it’s there, already sitting inside you. Memories…

I was a bad kid. Juvenile hall and all that shit. My mom sent me to live with my grandparents when I was 16. I moved from Northern California to the southlands of Orange County. My grandparents  ran a motel in Buena Park, Ca. not but 5 miles or so north of Anaheim. Grandpa and I used to go to Angels games now and then to see the likes of Gary Gaetti, Jim Abbott, Mark Langston, Chili Davis, and old man Jimmie Reese. (Babe Ruth’s roommate) Jimmie was an honorary coach because of his age and stature, and he would sign autographs and answer any questions the young kids had about baseball.  I loved it and would ask him casual questions about the Babe. We were Oakland A’s fans until the grave, yet we were baseball fans overall, so we took what we could get. I had nothing but great memories of the “Big A.” Mind you, all of this happened before the new ownership, the condescending attitudes, bloated payroll, self-righteous disdain and that idiotic Disney rock pile in the left/center field. (Now everyone in the “real” Los Angeles area makes fun of the Angels because of their unfortunate name and “intellectually inferior” suburban plight.)

The recent collapse by the Oakland ballclub has thrown the fan base into a bit of a controlled rage. The Anaheim Republicans recently swept us in 4, putting us into that unfortunate abyss of Wild Card hell.  But…as every Oakland fan woke up on Saturday; no doubt bleary-eyed/ hung over from the festivities of Labor Day from the day before…..we decided to sign Adam Dunn.  Adam Fucking Dunn. 

The rest of the league laughed at our desperation! Not ONE team wanted him at the trading deadline. Dunn was a has- been. A steaming pile of crap on a junkies’ ball sack. The limping, lame orphaned dog that everyone wished would be put out of its misery. The cyst on your ass that you never noticed until it bleeds through your pants.

Our kind of guy. 

Dunn hit a homer in his first AB as an Athletic on a hot, sticky day at the Coliseum on Monday afternoon; not a moon shot , but a moment of hope. This was a meaningless homerun in the baseball world, yet to Athletics fans it was akin to the battered and bloody boxer that had recently been knocked down in the 12th round. Yet, in this story the boxer gets up…again, as he had done so many times before….and he says, “I’m still here….let’s get it on.”