Copy of a copy of a copy

Sunday 9/27/26

I think sports fans in 2026 most enjoy being angry. That's the appeal to them. They'll usually know nothing about the sport they follow. How the game actually works. They won't know anything of that that sport's history or their team's beyond what they remember from their own lives. Most of what they have to say will take the form of complaining, most commonly about the officials. They almost all believe--have gotten themselves to believe--that every official in every game is "out to get" their team. There's no variance to their comments on the matter. If you follow along with a game thread, that will be a dominant theme.

People are joyless. Joy is one of those things that you can't have or experience or share, without other things being in place within you. People try and project contentment and blitheness--which is all lies and performance--but the truth is they are such miserable bastards. Chronically miserable. I don't mean down about the quality of their lives. That's different. I mean their demeanor, their "way," their fundamental coloring. And certainly their attitudes. Joyless.

Texas beat Tennessee. They were going to; Tennessee isn't that good. Neither is Arch Manning, as I've said. Don't draft him. If you draft him, you will regret it. Because you'll draft him with the expectation/hope that he'll take you somewhere great and be the answer to your problems, and he won't and isn't. This is not the guy. A Texas player sacked the Tennessee quarterback, and then stood over him and gestured like he was urinating on the field. Texas coach Steve Sarkisian--who is such a piece of shit--was then all, eh, it's fine, after the game. Sure. Look at college football. Great stuff you got there.

BC was actually up by 8 against Virginia Tech in the fourth quarter, losing in the end as you knew they would, as they always find a way to do. The BC quarterback isn't a quarterback. He's a running back. He has no business being a quarterback at this level. And he was by far your best player. I can't see him lasting the year--he takes hit after hit and already is always fighting to go back out there despite whatever injury he just suffered--so there is a good chance we'll see someone even worse soon.

The only reason BC was in the game was because of the weather. On a different day they would have lost that game by 30 easy. This is the best you got, Bill O'Brien? You don't have a quarterback who can throw? Isn't it crazy to think that this guy coached Tom Brady? Or Brady coached him, probably more like. Has any coach's career gone down the drain like O'Brien's in recent years? Someone will hook him up for a lot of money with a plum gig thanks to cronyism after this BC stint comes to an end. You can go to lowly BC and fail upwards from there. Look at Jeff Hafley. O'Brien gets paid millions of dollars a year to coach that team. Millions. For that. In front of nobody. What a world. Really got those priorities in order.

I love listening to all these idiot announcers say literally, literally, literally. In the booth, and the totally superfluous sideline "reporters." The woman who was the sideline reporter for the ACC Network for the BC-Va Tech game said that so and so's teammates would "literally run through a wall for him." Wow. You're so good at your job. What talent you have. Obviously that's why you have that job. And if you're a play-by-play announcer, you really don't know that it's "anyway" and not "anyways"? But hey, who would correct you--or even notice--in illiterate America? Besides: Language is fluid!

Does anyone want to win the AL West? No? Well, someone's going to have to. That "winning" will take the form of the season ending and the team that wouldn't have been in first place probably in another day or two will get to play in the postseason because there wasn't another day or two. Both the Astros and Rangers are 80-81, with the Astros holding the tiebreaker. So, for the Rangers to get in, they'd need to win today and have the Astros lose.

They might as well both lose. Seems like that would be fitting, with the Astros going to the playoffs at 80-82. The Astros are similar to Vegas or Florida in the NHL in that nobody likes them outside of their fan base. The Phillies have also done their best not to make the postseason. It's kind of funny to watch because it speaks to the low quality of play right now. This is what happens when baseball teams can't play baseball and the sport is a game of "throw as hard as possible" and "swing as hard as possible." Kind of ugly, isn't it? Uninspiring.

But you know what? I love this down-to-the-wire thing, even if this is a cheapened version of it, given what I'll call baseball's classical-like history. It's not "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" in 1951 right or the Red Sox going down to the wire at Fenway against the Twins in 1967. We're not talking fine dining, but rather a hardened hot dog off of that rotating cylinders meat-shelf thing at the 7-Eleven. It's what you're left with now, this remnant of previous glories. A faded copy of a copy of a copy. But you can still see the image.

What I also like and will definitely check out is the Red Sox finishing their season by playing at "home" against the Cubs in...Tampa...because of the storm. I love quirky things like this in sports and in life. Piques my interest. How the thing will look, sound, who'll be there. The feel of the game, the ball park. The call of the game. I suppose this makes things harder for the Red Sox by having to travel to Florida before flying to New York, rather than just going there from Boston and I bet the players want nothing to do with this game. I care more about this than today's Patriots game. I'll always care far more about baseball. Any Red Sox baseball game. The Red Sox' season could be over by Wednesday. I hope not. Really would like to see them get out of that first round.

You could make a lot of books about writing, about music, about publishing, about film, about this time period in history, from this record, which is itself the longest work of literature/book in history, and you could make a lot of books about sports as well. There could be the one big book, and then books made from that book, by theme or subject matter. You could have a book made from this journal that is a chronicle of a baseball season. Like this past one. Which would be more than a mere chronicle. So in that regard--well, somewhat--I did have a few loose ends I've been meaning to tie up.

Former Red Sox third baseman: to be fair to them, Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman--two players I'm plainly not a fan of--had good years, though there's a bit more to it than that, or less, I suppose. Devers did what he did in a lot of meaningless games. Those can be great for stat padding. His season also ended early. At the same time, that's the only reason he didn't hit forty homers. He had a legit chance to lead the league.

Bregman was ho-hum for a goodly part of the season, then caught fire. His recent injury--with his face being broken thanks to that foul ball he took while in the on-deck circle--was gruesome, and he deserves credit for being back out there. Personally, I'd rather have Caleb Durbin. I think he does more to help you win, even if he's not as "good." Does that make sense? Durbin is an old school ballplayer. He's a better fielder, he'll steal a bag, do something headsy on the bases, those little things that might not show up in a box score.

Also, I said that Sonny Gray would be my choice for AL Cy Young winner, though I realize he has no chance to actually win. The thing that gives me the biggest pause with own personal pick is that he's not even in the top twenty in the AL in innings pitched. I do feel, admittedly, that if he was out there more, he would have fared less well.

I see these other guys though...I mean, I just can't get behind a starting pitcher winning the Cy Young with 14 wins, never mind winning it unanimously. The 14 wins is more problematic than Gray's innings pitched, but they're both considerable blemishes. Part of me thinks that no starters deserve this award anymore. They don't do enough. Which doesn't mean I think it should go to relievers. Pitchers don't have the numbers anymore to deserve their own award.