the sloppy copy

Hey – wake up!

Wake up!

Wake up wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!

DUDE!

Are you up? Good, you’re up.

Hey, yeah… last night – I just wanted to tell you that everything’s gonna be fine. It’s – seriously! – it’s gonna be okay. It was just a one-time deal, alright?

I mean, I thought you’d maybe be, like, upset about it. But seriously, man – it’s okay. It happens.

Do you even remember? I wasn’t sure if you’d remember. We were both pretty drunk. I mean – everyone was pretty fucked up, haha.

So yeah, you remember? Okay. That’s fine. Wasn’t sure. How are you feeling? I mean, I guess we could… talk? About it?

Or not. We could just not talk about it. That’s cool, too.

But – really – really, dude. These things happen. I mean, I think about it now, and it probably wasn’t a big deal. Overall, I mean. We can work through this. Right? Together.

See, personally… are you disappointed? I’m still a little disappointed. It just – that’s not really what I was expecting, going in. I mean, I really just built the whole thing up. Like – this was gonna be the night. It was gonna be fuckin’ glorious, dude.

And then… well, you know.

So, the whole reason I came over – I let myself in, is that okay? I figured it was cool – the whole reason I came over… I just wanted to check in, see how you were doing. Handling the whole thing. Because I was thinking about it, and I kinda figured we could, you know, just pretend like last night never happened. Like none of that stuff actually, you know, counts. Does that sound cool?

Okay, awesome. So… let’s agree to move on, forget about Thursday, and we can start fresh tomorrow.

I mean, we lost one game – so what? Three more wins, the Series is ours.

Sometimes I think I should have stuck with psychology as a vocation, but only if I could study arbitrary topics that interest me: Why white people give their children names like Paxton, for instance, or why some folks think that neck tattoos are a Good Idea.

More than that, though, I would loooooove to know more about sports superstitions: that great big crazy casserole chock-full of anxiety, fear and magical thinking.

The realm of baseball superstition is a vast domain, ruled with an iron fist by King Inside-Out Underpants and his Playoff-Bearded coterie. It’s a crazy little club where bats are tapped at precise angles at the plate, foul lines remain untouched (or in some cases, deliberately touched) and it’s a no-no to openly mention a No-No in progress.

This bracelet is Unlucky. This one is safely stowed away during games.

But this weird little world is not an insular one; we fans of baseball are big ol’ nutbars ourselves. If one happens to be picking Twizzlers out of their molars when one’s team scores or produces a great play, you’d better believe that the Twizzlers’ll be out for the rest of the game, at specific intervals, in order to guarantee a repeat performance.

A particular shirt, hat, undergarment or set of shoelaces might also be deemed “lucky.” And because everyone knows that soap is Luck’s Kryptonite, said garment must not be laundered – perhaps ever, but at least for the duration of the series/season/playoff stand.

This bracelet is Lucky. It must be out during games.

I personally know a few who will not wear team colors on game day, but these dieharders are far outnumbered by the red-wearing masses of Cardinal Nation. While most of these folks are likely wearing red to support the home team (and not superstition), I challenge you to find even a handful who wouldn’t feel a little off for not wearing Cards gear to a game.

Here are a few fun articles I’ve found on the subject:

10 Great Moments in Baseball Superstition History (The Seattle Times)

13 Baseball Superstitions 

Famous Baseball Superstitions

All of these came from a perfunctory Google search. It’d be relatively easy to spend a ridiculous amount of time on the subject (dissertation, anyone?).

Juanita sometimes complains that Hermano texts me much more often than he texts her, but
1) this is not true, and
2) our text exchanges lack context, complete thoughts and a point.

Exhibit A: an exchange from last night (keep in mind that the initial text was completely unprompted):

Brother: Bieber Fieber

Julie: Bieberitis

B: Biebonic Plague

J: Biebephylis

B: Scarlet Bieber

J: Bieber Simplex II

B: You win

First, the phrase “thought through” is kind of hard to read. And type. In my brain, it sort of smushes together as “thththththouououououghghghghgh.” Uh, anyway.

Second, I just read this, and felt the need to refute it in the quickest, most slipshod and groundless way possible: with an indignant response that makes up for in passion what it lacks in factual support.

If you don’t like clicking links,* the article is from The Business Journals’ On Numbers blog. According to their “analysis” of some “criteria,” St. Louis is the fifth-best in baseball fan support.

Fifth best? 

You gots to be fucking kidding me.

Number one? San Francisco. Okay, okay. I get that. Last year’s World Champions and all. Still riding the wave. Plus they’ve got one-quarter of Mystery Incorporated on their pitching staff** – I could get behind that.

But number five? Behind the Twins (fine), then the Brewers (ugh, fine), then – and this is where I really become irate- the Phillies. Yes, you read that right. Philly is ranked ahead of St. Louis for the “best fans in baseball.”

Philadelphia:  Where the fans vomit all over each other, throw glass bottles and batteries at an opposing team… and their own player!, and run around on the field til they’re Tasered.

Keep it classy Philly.

you cannot tell me that this is not a picture of some of baseball's greatest fans. Here, my parents sport their custom-made jerseys of Cards greats Julian Javier and Joaquin Andujar.

Granted, the article relied more on hard numbers and less on empirical, observational, evidence. They took a look at:

Average attendance.
Fifth-best? Still find that one hard to believe. But consider the breadth of the Cardinals’ fan base: prior to Colorado’s debut in the ’93 expansion, Cardinal Nation reached clear to the Rockies (reports are that, on a clear night, you can pick up a KMOX signal in Denver and I believe it. When my brother lived in north-central Minnesota, he could often pick it up in his car). With fans from Kentucky to Utah, they can’t all possibly make it each home game. Were this an age of teleportation, I’d postulate that our attendance at Busch Stadium would reach max capacity every time.

Percent of Capacity.
I’m just going to say that surely there is a computational error here, and that absolutely no adjustments were made for each stadium’s total capacity. I mean- of course they will come close to a sell-out when your place only holds, like, 40,000 fans.***

Attendance per win.
It is no secret that the Cards’ record this season belies how far we’ve advanced in the playoffs (NCLS? Seriously? Someone pinch me).  In 2006, we were 83-78, and we all know how that season turned out. So yeah, whatever.

Attendance per 100,000 residents.
Not fair. Are they counting “metro areas”? If so, helloooo! Ours includes two frickin’ states. And besides, the actual City of St. Louis has a population of approximately 79 people, compared to the St. Louis / St. Charles / Jefferson / Madison / Et Cetera County population of 9281 million-billion (Fact).

As you can VERY CLEARLY see, this “statistical analysis” is a load of horse-hocky. In the spirit of some lively scientific back-and-forth, I’d like to offer my own study, based off of carefully-noted anecdotal qualitative evidence.

Please, dear Reader(s), stay tuned.

* If you don’t like clicking links, I fear you don’t like this blog very much either.
** I’m casting Tim Lincecum as Shaggy and Brian Wilson as Scooby. Thoughts?
*** It’s been awhile since I took a statistics class. I realize this makes absolutely no sense.

The morning of my second day in Tulsa (I’m home now – you figured that out, right?) was hypothetically spent leaving teeny little notes all around Carynn and Jer’s apartamento.

Luckily (for her), Carynn took a short work day and was back before I could break anything (anything else? I’m sure I left some sort of damage in my wake and she is too nice to tell me hasn’t figured it out yet herself).

And then we got tattoos.

Have you ever looked through the binders of designs at your local tattoo parlor? I encourage you to do so. No, wait: before you go I want you to think up the five most bizarre, obscure, just-plain-fucking-weird things/people/characters your little brain will allow. Dino from The Flintstones? Or perhaps Dino from The Flintstones sipping from a little dino-flask, holding up a little dino-middle finger?*

Have you got your five ideas? Do you think you’re being original? Think again, Ace. Some weirdo creative type has already thought it up, printed it out, and stuffed it into a greasy sheet-protector for your perusing pleasure. Seriously: pages of Dennis the Menace? Really, people? Really?

yabba dabba doo, motherfuckers.

After our ink-adventure we stopped by the liquor store (I know some folks do this in reverse order, but there’s always next time) to pick out some pre-mixed margaritas (FYI: tattoos + margaritas = tradition) to go with some tasty soup Carynn planned on whipping up for din-din.

Sidebar: Have you ever tasted fire? Have you ever tasted fire in soup form?

Oh, nononononononono… that’s not related at all to the DELICIOUS meal she so lovingly prepared for us. I swear (after I regained feeling in my tongue and mouth-regions) it was good.

It’s just how I imagine it would feel to give Satan hisself a good lick-down.

But no, seriously: it was a good day.

*I actually didn’t see this one, but I’m sure my boy Psycho would have drawn it up for me.

…but first a few interjections:
1. Typing this on an iPad- holy poo this is neat!
2. My blog looks flippin’ awesome on the iPad.
3. Can’t get used to the autocorrect. Tried to add some extra syllables to the aforementioned “awesome” but it kept changing it to “sewer me” WITHOUT my permission

Back to business:
I’m leaving in about two hours and have about fifty thousand more things and people I want to see. More about that in another post, when I can misspell whatever the heck I please.

Excuse me, did I SAY that I wanted those Is capitalized????

Life is rough, let me tell ya.