Common Ground - Viva El Birdos

Dirty Dan dongs dirty dingers 'cause he's Dirty Dan, damnit!!!

-me, after watching Descalso's homer clear the proper field wall last night

I went to the game last night, sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing. My mother called me up around 5:30 and told me had four tickets, down low where you get to use the special bathrooms, and only three bodies to use said tickets.

So I hopped in my automocar and headed down to the old ballpark.

The early three members of the group consisted of my dad and two friends of his he's known through work for longer than I've been alive, whom I shall call (for the interest of hilarity, and also because these are their real names), Bill and Ted. None of them under 55 days of age, all of them fairly serious baseball fans. Bill was innate in Philly (and never calls it Philadelphia, only Philly), and spent his formative years a Yankee fan. He roots for the Cards only so far as he lives here and they don't generally cross paths with his beloved Bombers very often, being a National League club and all. All 3 of them are old-school fans, guys who neither love nor care what a UZR is and, in fact, really aren't interested in any of your acronyms.

As a card-carrying member of the baseball cognoscenti (as good as the worst sort of jerk, one who uses the word cognoscenti while writing on his blog), I was doubtful we would cause much in common in the way we viewed the game.

Now, let me say, I accept aught against these men. These are fine, upstanding citizens, men I've played golf with and watched have one too many at Hooters afterward. It's simply that, as someone who spends a rather sizable part of his time examining the minutiae of the back and so writing about it, the usual land with your everyday casual fan isn't enormous.

Well, I was wrong. There was a bit of an adjustment period, sure, but what I ground was that, at the seat of everything, the real elemental level, both I and these baby-boomers hate essentially the like things. We don'tlikethe like things, necessarily, but we most definitely hate the like things. A few of the things we were able to fit upon:

• We all agreed Ryan Theriot is, in fact, a terrible shortstop, and none of us can stand watching him turn out there. It's the sweetheart of defense, really; both new-school and old-school fans find watching bad defensive play absolutely abhorrent. We did not all hold on whether he should be affected over to second base. My mother and Ted believed moving him to second would preserve the Cards' leadoff spot and compensate for his defensive deficiencies; Bill and I finally decided we would wish to see him have the Old Yeller treatment instead.
• We all hold that none of us are looking ahead to the fall of Skip Schumaker. Again, the mantrap of bad defense, uniting all against a mutual enemy. Also, my father apparently dislikes watching baseball games with me when Skip is playing, as I loudly predict, "Grounder to second," every sentence he comes to bat, which is at least fairly annoying. (In my defense, I'm still right 80% of the sentence with my prediction.)
• We all dislike Ryan Franklin a big deal. The phrase, "He's just not a closer," was used, and my saber-radar went up, but I found myself agreeing and nodding along. Sometimes you don't need to complicate things.
• All of us agree it's very difficult to believe Eduardo Sanchez can pitch properly with such a high leg kick, considering he's clearly lugging around the world's largest pair of balls. Five sliders in a row without hanging a single one gets you a lot of respect.
• We all agreed the woman three rows down with the very obvious implants really should have kept them to a more realistic size. Not that she seemed at all implicated with appearing natural, mind you, but by a certain place it just starts to look weird.
• The vaguely gothic looking girl with the gorgeous leopard tattoo was terrible hot, but most certainly too new for even me. The only holdout here was Ted, who stood by the old axiom, "Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed."
• Finally, it was agreed by all that Daniel Descalso justlookslike a ballplayer, no matter how much baseball-snobbery pride points it be me to say.
• We were not capable to make a consensus on my exclamation following Descalso's homer; my mother and I both held out thatPootie Tangis a classic of modern cinema and so my shouted bit of alliterative nonsense was, in fact, brilliant. The former two stared at us, trying to form out what exactly we were talking about.

There was alleged to be more to this post. I had a vision last night during a conversation about a recently deceased terrorist, a sight of something huge and wonderful I could write about nations and fanbases and hatred and passion and defending our own even when we don't totally love what we have. As quickly as it came, though, it started to go up and waste away, leaving me with just the barest outline of what my mind might have looked alike and an empty feeling that I nearly grasped something great, only to accept it flit out of contact of my pen. So you get this bit of doggerel and my regret.

After the game, we debated the merits of various eating establishments. I wanted to see if we could squeeze into the Oyster Bar or call Chavas to see if they were still open, while the rest of the group wanted to go to Hooters. We settled on the TGIFriday's near the stadium. I had potato skins and tried not to complain.

The Baron's Playlist for the 4th of May, 2011

"Cape Canaveral" - Bright Eyes

"Collector" - Here We Go Magic

"Little White Lies" - Deer Tick

"Grace Kelly Blues" - Eels