Several years ago George Carlin did a bit on chi-chi names. That is to say, he was commenting on the folks in the '80s and '90s who where departing from naming their boys conventional names like Robert, Michael, or George and going with trendy first names such as Ryan, or Kyle. Carlin particularly hated that one, and tonight I join him.
Kyle Kendrick is one of my goats of last night's loss to the Brewers. Not only did the guy allow baserunners, he made a horrible throw to first base that allowed the Brewers to take the lead in the top of the 12th which they held on to. Kendrick pitched like he wanted to leave for Allentown tonight. He absolutely sucked. I'd make him take the Chinatown bus to the Lehigh Valley! If they don't send him down, then he should become Blanton's roomie in the condo at 3rd & Indiana.
Kendrick wasn't the only goat last night. Somebody needs to inform Rollins that it isn't cool to go 0-5 with a walk. Somebody needs to tell him that the guy who bats second needs to be productive. Somebody needs to tell him that he is in his contract year and that the team needs him to play like that. Also, while somebody is talking to J-Roll [Editor's note - This might be a trademark infringement now], they might as well talk to Superstar.
Superstar, as you may have noticed, has stopped hitting. Coming into last night's game he was something like 2-26. Not acceptable for the Superstar. He is most irritating when he steps up to the plate and poses with his bat pointing to the right field seats. He must think he is Babe Fucking Ruth or something. Someone needs to tell him that he is not Babe Fucking Ruth and that we don't appreciate the high drama before he either strikes out or hits into a double play with men on base and the game on the line. Someone needs to tell him that he needs to learn how to hit in the clutch. Until he does, he needn't act so cool. He too can go to 3rd & Indiana.
I must acknowledge that I haven't written these guys off like I did last year - it is far too early for that. I will give them till Mother's Day and then, if they continue to play the way they are starting to play the past few games, I will drop them like hot potatoes.
You may have noticed that Raul came into last night's game sporting a lusty .236 average. You may have noticed that Francisco's average has been dropping like a Stuka after meeting up with a Spitfire in the skies over southern England. You also may have noticed that, once again, they lost the first game of a series. That is getting old. Blanton at least kept them in the game, but when the only guy doing his job at the plate is Polanco and when guys with chi-chi names like Ryan and Kyle serve up runs like they were jelly beans, I say it is at least time to put away all of the Kool-Aid and be prepared to jump on the Pirate bandwagon with the long suffering fan. With Doc taking the ball today against Randy Wolf there is always the chance for a win - we'll have to wait and see.
Ryan Braun should be ashamed of himself. Instead of hitting the Phillies the way he did last night he should have taken the night off and gone to his mother's house for a seder. If he had made mom happy instead of smacking the ball all over the Bank, we might have won the game. Shame on you Ryan Braun (Carlin was so right).
Happy Passover to all of you who are celebrating this holiday. If you are not celebrating, consider yourself lucky that someone who loves you didn't put a plate of the foulest food ever created in front of you. I am speaking of gefilte fish, of course. Seriously, it looks foul (like a gray turd), smells foul (worse than a beer fart), and must taste foul. I say "must" because I have never, to my knowledge, tasted even a tiny piece. I just know that I don't like it, and plan never to eat it. It is a disgusting part of a traditional Passover meal, but do I have a gefilte fish story for you.
Once upon a time ago when my mother would have the family to her house for the first night of Passover, she would make her own gefilte. None of that slimy jarred fish for her family. Nope, she made the stuff from scratch. To make "the good stuff" you needed two freshly killed fish - a carp and a whitefish. Back then there was a store not five minutes from her house that sold "fresh fish." For Passover, they had tanks of fish swimming waiting for their turn to be taken from their tanks to homes far and wide so that they could donate their bodies for the gefilte fish. The key to this story is for you to remember that this store was a five minute car ride and a ten minute walk to her house. This would have been an easy mission for my father, whose job it was to go fetch the fish. Including the time it would take him to park his car and bring the fish into the house the fish would have been dead for less than ten minutes. Sounds pretty fucking fresh to me.
My mother, however, had other ideas. She knew that the best fish were to be found at a store on Bustleton Ave. in Northeast Philly - a one hour trip the way my father drove. That's one hour up and one hour back. She insisted on sending him there for the fish, which would be dead a lot longer when they arrived at her house, and thus less fresh. We all tried to tell her that the fish from the store five minutes away would be fresher, but she would have none of it. Off to Bustleton Ave. he went, every year, until one year I was able to convince him that what he ought to do was to come over and hang out at our house, buy the fish locally about two hours later, and save the trip to the NE. He thought it was a wonderful idea, so on what was supposed to be his annual trip to Bustleton Ave, he came to our house in Havertown and watched cable TV (which they didn't yet have in the city of Philadelphia) and smoked a cigar (which he was not allowed to do at home). A great idea, like a lot of great ideas didn't work.
It was the tape the guy used at the local fish store to seal the package of fish that got us caught. They used plain tape, while the store on Bustleton Ave. used tape with their store name printed on it. She also claimed that the quality of wrapping paper the local store used was of a lesser quality. This was considered a capitol offense by my mother, and she told everybody who would listen the next night at the family seder that if the gefilte fish wasn't up to snuff it was my father they should blame, as she had tried to use all of her culinary magic to make it come out right. It was his fault.
While nobody likes to get caught after committing what they think was the perfect crime, it didn't work out too bad for my father. My mother was so mad at him that she didn't talk to him for days - in essence, giving him time off for bad behavior.
Except for reporting that the Philadelphia A's split a doubleheader on Sunday with "Balls" hitting a double that's about it for now. Later in the week, we'll take a trip on the Wayback Machine. Until then, take care and don't eat too much matzo lest you become one very constipated person.
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