Perhaps the Awesome-est Thing Ever

Try this.

Overstatement of the Week

Oh, by the way, I'm elated that the A's didn't hire Orel Hershiser's '88 Dodger-ass to be their manager. I couldn't stand the thought of raising a child in a world as perverse as that.

A Brief Foray into Indie Music Criticism

Heart + Sleeve = Death Cab for Cutie

Heart + Sleeve + Drum Machine = The Postal Service

Pain and Baseball

Ah, so it finally happened again. The zombie corpse of Kirk Gibson has arisen from a traffic and smog filled L.A. cemetary to haunt baseball once more, this time coming in the form of Albert Pujols.

I watched the conclusion of Game 5 the other night, and it was the kind of drama that makes baseball (and sports in general) so exciting. You can't sit there and say "Eh, seen it before" or "Oh, this plot is soooooo predictable." There is no plot. Just the sight of David Ecksteins slapping a ball into leftfield with two strikes and two outs. In Houston, I'm sure it looked more like the wheels coming off a big-rig at 80 mph. Then the walk to Edmonds. The big-rig is now jack-knifing. And then Pujols hit the gigantic-est homerun I have seen since Jose Canseco's moon-shot in the Skydome during the '89 ALCS. The big-rig is now engulfed in flames, rolling end-over-end, crushing all in its path.

And the stadium went silent.

And somewhere in Houston, a 9-year-old's childhood ended. Replaced with the pain and suffering that come with your team's failure on an epic scale. It's one thing to be bad year-in and year-out. But to get so close and then to fail so spectacularly can mean only one thing: God hates you. Not dislikes. Hates.

And I know. I can still vividly remember the arc of that ball off of Kirk Gibson's bat. I can remember my little 9-year-old heart hoping and praying that it would land harmlessly in Canseco's glove. But instead, it landed 20 rows up in the rightfield bleachers. And the A's lost the Series right there and then. There was no coming back. And it continued to haunt them - even their win the next year was tainted by the earthquake and Gibson.

Gibson!!!

They haulted that motherfucker out the ICU and put him right onto the field, didn't they? He was on crutches, bandaged head-to-toe, barely able to lift his arms. His homerun can be explained only by steroids, bionics, and a corked bat. I can't be the only one who remembers his bat exploding in a shower of cork and superballs, can I? Others remember the spent syringes falling from his pockets as he rounded second base, right? I mean, I shit you not, the man had to be rebooted at home plate.

That's who we got beat by. So I totally understand, Astros fans, if you're sitting around thinking "Best hitter in the game, sure, but you mean we got beat by a guy named Poo Holes? What the fuck?"