It's not often that you can come away from a 3 A.M. viewing of ESPNews with enough moments to make me stop and say, "Wow. That was a really fuckin' sweet ESPNews." But anyways, what I enjoyed:
Julio Lugo getting a curtain call after his grand slam from the Fenway Faithful. He has been absolutely scorching lately, and Boston fans proved that you can be booed and torn apart in the press, but it is only out of love.
Josh Beckett just screaming at A.J. Pierszynski after Coco gunned him out at second base. The F word is included in this tirade at least once, along with a dismissive point of the finger. Gee, I wonder what A.J. did earlier to provoke this. I mean, it's not often you see another major leaguer who hates A.J. Pierszynski.
When they were interviewing Steve Nash about the NBA ref (Tim Donaghy) who has been gambling on games that he was reffing, he immediately broke into a huge smile and asked, "Was he doing Game 5 of our series with the Spurs?" Awesome. I'm sure Danny agrees with that one as well.
I also thought I would explain who is who on the links section, a la French from a few weeks back. He had plenty of questions of who my boys were, how long I knew said boys, and now Dustin Little in Seattle is inquiring.
Batting leadoff is Mike Dunphy, whose Daily Attitude Problem has quickly turned into a Bi-annual Attitude Problem, although you will hear plenty of his wisdom in the comments section. I have been friends with him since 2nd grade, although our friendship was probably stunted after that school year, when the powers that be at Ben Franklin Elementary decided we couldn't be in the same class anymore due to "Disruptive arguing" and "Excessive conversations regarding non-class topics such as sports." This information was brought to me courtesy of my 6th grade teacher years later. The really funny thing is that it is now a full 16 years later, and our friendship could best be described by the above two phrases.
Next is Dan Sondreal, my soon-to-be-roommate and the one who got me started blogging. I have been friends with Danny since 9th grade. He was the final piece of the South Middle School--Schroeder Middle School connection. Despite the reputation of Schroeder being a richer school, the majority of us at South were bigger assholes. When we arrived at high school, we were wary (to put it mildly) of becoming friends with that whole group of guys (Danny, Haley, Lane, Opp, Schneweis to a lesser extent, etc.) We thought Lane was an idiot (actually, we still do. Just kidding Lane.) We thought Haley was a bigger idiot, and we straight-up hated Danny. This is mostly due to the fact that during their blowout championship game win in 8th grade, he looked over at our bench (the starters, including myself, T. Nels, and Bergman had been pulled) closed his eyes and made a free throw. So it took a while before I accepted hanging out with Danny, but now he is one of my closest friends (Awwwwww.)
Next up is Lane Leedahl, who I mostly covered in the previous paragraph, which, to be honest, really spun out of control. I wasn't intending on giving a summary of 9th grade social factions, but whatever. Lane has been living in Lawrence, Kansas for almost a couple years now. Helping to convincing his wife Skye to go to grad school there was one of the Godfather-esque moves I made in anticipation of me moving there someday.
In the cleanup spot is James McAllister (no relation to the family in Home Alone.) He went to UND and was a fellow noonballer. He broke our hearts when he got married and moved to Texas last summer, and we are still trying to recover.
Batting fifth is the aforementioned Ben Schneweis. Although he attended Schroeder with the others, I played little league baseball with him, so I knew that he wasn't a complete douche. He is responsible for almost every piece of music I listen to that is isn't A) fairly well-known, mainstream stuff, B) rap music, preferably from the mid-90's, or C) the Spice Girls.
Next up is Dustin Little, about whom I can offer no more information that any of you don't know. All I know about him is on his blog. But I'm learning...
In the seven hole we have Chad Benoit, aka French. Resides in Boston; known of him since about December; and we are currently giving all you out there in BlogWorld a chance to watch a real friendship blossom. I promise that is the first and last time you will see the word 'blossom' in this space.
Last, and probably least, is Jon Godfread. Acquaintances in high school through Schneweis; a friendship was born out of talking shit during flippy cup parties (I was Shareef-Abdur Rahim: great player on teams that don't win anything; he was John Salley: mediocre player just along for the ride and collecting championship rings.) Jon-Jon was only in attendance when he wasn't off doing things like "playing in March Madness" or "getting dunked on by Luke Schenscher." When he moved back to town he became a fixture at the Manor, and eventually a roommate.
