Tag: David Ortiz

Eat My Sports: Boston translation

It’s October 17, 2004, a miserable excuse for a Sunday. I’m tired as hell from my trip to New York, and its production night for Bryan McBournie and me at our college newspaper, The Tartan. We go in to start our layouts, and hardly say a word to anyone, people want to ask us if we’re ok, but even the non-sports fans knew that today was not the day to talk. Today is our death march. Today is what we have come to expect as individuals. Today we have our souls carved out again. Today is hell. Today the Red Sox get swept, and there is not a damn thing we can do but watch.

Normally when we go to our watering hole, BT’s, its all smiles. We know the bartenders, know the waitresses, and are occasionally rewarded for our patronage with a warm shot of house tequilla for free. Not tonight though. Even our most familiar bartender Todd has a grimace on his face when we come in during the sixth inning. He fills a pitcher of Keystone, hands us two mugs and forces a smile. McBournie and I sit in the semblance of a dining area that only a college “restaurant and fine dining” bar can offer. The game is on the big screen, it’s 4-3 New York, and we know were its headed, this is our fate as Red Sox fans. Doom. Elevated hope that eventually crushes even your will to want to even get up the next day. It’s sick that we get this way as fans, but we’re a different breed, and fate is a fickle broad. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Boston translation

You Missed It: There is no joy in Beantown edition

Hey, guess what? I’m about to head out for week-long vacation. It’s so close I can taste it. You know how that is, right? I’m just counting the minutes until I’m out of here. Anyway, if you were busy getting cash for your clunker, odds are you missed it.

How Papi got so big
There is no God. First Brady’s injury, now this. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003, when both were playing for the Boston Red Sox and on their way to becoming legends in the city. Boston fans are surprised because they are naive. And since we’re going for disclosure here, I was on performance enhancing drugs during the 2004 playoffs, and so was Bryan Schools. The more we drank during the second half of the ALCS and World Series, the better they played.

We should try this with Israel and Palestine!
You may not have heard about this, but apparently a black Harvard professor was arrested by a white police officer and the issue became a little tense racially. Luckily, President Barack Obama knew just what to do in commenting on a topic that had nothing to do with him, thereby making it into a huge issue. Predictably, they settled it with booze They got together at the White House, invited “Crazy” Joe Biden over and drank away the awkwardness. The bad news is that Obama drinks Bud Light and Biden doesn’t even drink alcoholic beer.

You might be a terrorist if …
A North Carolina father and several others have been arrested and charged in relation to what police say was a “violent jihad” terror plot. Authorities say Daniel Patrick Boyd, a Muslim who sports a bowl cut, known in the Muslim world as “The Holy Hairstyle of the Prophet,” traveled to Pakistan to plan attacks on American soil. In other news, I have yet another reason not to go to a NASCAR race.

Eat My Sports: Big Papi, at a curse-ory glance

It’s one of the big topics in baseball that everyone except for Red Sox fans, and the Red Sox themselves want to address. David Ortiz isn’t Big Papi anymore, and it appears to be more than just a slump, this problem just doesn’t seem fixable. But how? How does the man go from eating fastballs up then spitting them out over the Green Monster to being late on 89 mph fastballs? I’ll tell you why, and for Sox fans, it’s all too familiar, the man who basically broke the curse, is now cursed.

Don’t blame Ortiz, he didn’t do this to himself. It was done to him. 

In a conversation with Bryan McBournie last week during Boston’s 10-5 shlacking of Detroit, Ortiz got a two-run double, joking I said to McBournie “well, Papi’s got his RBI quota for the month now.” Then after having a week to mull it over, McBournie realized the truth and came up with a more than believable theory. What if the attempted burying of an Ortiz jersey during the building of Yankee Stadium in order to curse the building, then having the plan discovered, actually backfired and cursed our beloved slugger? Continue reading Eat My Sports: Big Papi, at a curse-ory glance

Eat My Sports: Early season report

For those of you who don’t follow baseball from early February through October, you wouldn’t know that the season is almost one-third of the way over with. It’s been a weird one, with the Pirates and Marlins contending early, the Rays already fading out of contention, and Roger Clemens not hitting on any underage country stars, yet. But if you have been living a sheltered life and have not been paying attention to baseball, here have been the top five stories of the early season.

5. The rise, fall and rise of the Yankees
No one can figure the pattern of this team out, period. One night they’re hammering a team for 14 runs, the next night C.C. Sabathia is serving up fastballs like his butler feeds him steaks with a donut glaze. The return of A-Rod has brought back some sense of normalcy, but the inconsistent pitching could pose a problem down the stretch for the Yanks. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Early season report