Thursday, May 07, 2009

Post-Game 31 Thread: Say Good Night

NATIONALS 11, DODGERS 9

12 comments:

Orel said...

SF & SD won today. Dodgers lead SF by 5.5 games.

Dusto_Magnifico said...

at the moment i could care less about the rest of the division. as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the west is just crap. We should have our eyes on the bigger picture here... world series... and nothing less!!!

Steve Sax said...

At least we didn't lose the streak to the Giants.

13-1 still sounds pretty damn good. Let's get some gusto and kick ass this weekend, Dodgers!

Orel said...

We need to win tomorrow and Saturday, because Sunday feels like a loss.

Natalie said...

Home from the game. The mood was pretty quiet before the game in the stands. Everyone seemed more quiet than usual. After the first inning, though, everyone was full of pep. The rest of the game seemed like any other game. After the final out most people were talking about the bullpen rather than Manny.

MR.F said...

Love the new title.

Orel said...

Thanks for the report, Natalie. Guess that bullpen talk is a good thing, no?

NicJ said...

Thud! It was a punch in the gut straight out of the old Batman TV show, Technicolor starburst graphic and all. I had just got to work preparing for a day full of monotony and grouchy customers when I had decided to check the RSS reader on my iphone for my favorite blogs and new sites. As I sat there and waited for the crappy 3g service at my work to kick in it seemed to take extra long today. Finally, BAM, I read the headline “Okay, this is not good: Ramirez to be suspended 50 games.

I immediately checked the date, it must have been April fools day. No such luck. I checked another blog, “Ramirez suspended, more updates soon”. I thought I was dreaming or maybe someone had been playing a joke. I franticly flipped on the radio to find the nearest station of sports talk; sure enough Jim Rome was already telling Manny he had let the city down.

My heart sank, like a bottom of the ninth, two out, would be walk off homerun at the warning track. First thing I could do was text my girlfriend and mother, “Manny’s suspended for 50 games, PED’s”. It was one of the worst text messages that ive ever had to type.

The rest of my day I spent frantically checking my iphone for updates, I walked around work like a zombie, barely listening to clients with one ear while intently listening to my portable AM radio with the other. “How could this happen?” I thought to myself.

After work I took the long way to my mom’s house, my usual stop before home. I parked in the driveway and thought what I would tell my little brother what was going on with Manny. As you could probably guess that my little brother passed it off with a simple “that sucks”. Kids are resilient things aren’t they; to be quite honest with you I took it way harder than the ten year old. Hearing this news took me back to when I was ten and found out that Hulk Hogan never REALLY beat anybody.

I went home and slumped in my chair. My girlfriends cousin, who lives with us is an angel fan greeted me with one sentence, “At least you guys are still wining” It was of little comfort but still made me feel a little better, at least I root, root, root for the Dodgers, ya know? I typed my feelings away on the SoSG blogs and felt a little better.

What a day for a little league game. Let me tell you answering the question “what did manny do wrong?” to a bunch of 10 year olds sucks, big time. I also thought to the day before in which I was excitedly asking my girlfriend how was work. She works as a teachers aid and the school had baseball day to kick off there two weeks of STAR testing. She happily wore her new Matt Kemp t-shirt and said virtually every kid was wearing something with the number 99 on it.

After the I drove home listening to Vin Scully talk in the first inning. I broke down completely. I know there is an old saying in baseball that “There is no crying in baseball”. Sorry I had to break that rule tonight. Vin Scully talking up the dodgers was just too much for the open wound.

I listened to the amazing first inning capped off by my girlfriends fake boyfriend (she wishes) grand slam. I sat in my car in the driveway and just listened to Vin call the first three innings. My car at night was my little own sensory deprivation tank, allowing me to fully soak in Vin’s comforting voice. Now in the usual way of the dodgers they find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I was glad to see they went down fighting, I wondered to myself if manny was at home sitting by the TV cheering on the team as they went down valiantly in the 9th. Probably not, but a guy can dream.

So now I sit here typing my thoughts from this horrible day out on my laptop watching the my DVR of the game wondering what is going to happen next in Mannygate. Should I be mad, sad, disappointed? I have no idea. I keep thinking to myself, why? Then I picture the scene on an episode of MASH when Hawkeye blows up at Radar because he never asked to be anyone’s hero, I guess I play Radar in that scene.

No one knows what manny did, only manny knows. I guess superman has to be Clark Kent some of the time. Manny will serve his time for what he did and play again. The stigma will probably last forever. I know I can’t be mad at Manny forever, he is only human and humans make mistakes. I can’t be mad at the man who made my beloved city and team relevant again. I wont disregard last seasons magical close as some choose to do because he is tainted with “cheater”

I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect you to be Manny Ramirez.

I’ll be with you when you are back.

Fred's Brim said...

thank you, Nic. that's about 90% of how my day went yesterday, too, and you said it way better than I ever could. I consider myself a very even keeled guy (to a fault) but the Dodgers make me irrational on so many levels. I lose perspective when it comes to them, and the last 24 hours has gotten me all out of sorts. Right now i am mad, and I hope the team gets just as mad and says "F you" to everybody and takes it out on their opponents for the next few weeks.

Chappy said...

I was still so depressed last night watching the game that I turned in after the 5th inning.

Imagine my surprise when I looked up the final score this morning to see the Dodgers ended up losing by two thanks to the bullpen.

And so it begins...

Natalie said...

An additional thought on last night's game: I would say there were fewer Manny jersey's than usual, but still quite a few. Juan Pierre got huge cheers (for Juan) at the beginning of the game, but was getting lots of boos towards the end from my section in the LF pavillion. I'm pretty sure that had to due with the amount of alcohol consumption by that time of the game. Also, from conversations I heard around my section, the overall feeling towards Manny was more saddness, shock, and worry for the team rather than anger. I didn't hear anyone that was angry, but I only sat where I sat.

Orel said...

Beautiful, Nic. This is why we're here.