I Condemn The A-Roddian Heresy

[crosses self, crosses self, crosses self]

What's going on? I'm getting there in a minute, once I put my blog muscles back into use after I've spent an evening of alternately doing my homework and telling myself that I should. I've exhausted my profundity quota for the night with my dismantling of A-Rod over on Viva El Birdos, not as if that requires you to be profound, only stubborn and with a hide of steel. Reading back over it, I realize that I was way too nice to the little bitch. Especially since some other poster there was tossing around a sacrilegious idea. In his defense, it came from the spawning fount of stupidity, which is sports talk radio, and not from him.

The Crank Yankers, evidently realizing that their "buy up superstars" plan to win the World Series has been backfiring for the past few years, have decided that they're going to go in a rebuilding direction, starting with (reportedly) firing Joe Torre. No official word on it yet. I personally believe that this is incredibly stupid. Joe manages all those gargantuan egos as best as he can, and he can only work with whatever Georgie's cash supplies for him.

Okay. I'm getting to the blasphemous part. I don't know if the Yankees actually brought up the name or if some bored sports commentator had a spreadsheet in front of him and picked out a name at random. Whatever it was, it was heresy. They suggested a possible Yankees/Cardinals trade. To the Cards: A-Rod. To the Yanks: Adam, and/or Anthony Reyes and presumably, lots of cash.

I'm sorry. I need to continue this post in a moment. I just had an aneurysm.

If you're interested, this is what I said in relation to that idea. Like I said, I let A-Rod off the hook way too easily, but I'm tired of butting heads with people who think he's a superstar. You know how I feel about Adam. This is like, the worst of all possible trade scenarios. Fortunately, it's total hot air. There's no way the Cards are stupid enough to take on the Yanks' problem player. Right? And even if they do (God, let me die quickly) there's no way they'd cough up Adam to do it.

Grr. You stupid Yankers can never have my husband.

-----

Ahem. Anyway. I thought I'd try out some bloggery that doesn't have expressly to do with baseball, which I have not done much, and which is what I'll be doing once the season is over. (SOB! SOB!) So I thought I'd best dust off my life-bloggery skills, if you all really find that fascinating. (And yes, I'm aware that "you all" is limited to a goofy sixteen-year-old in Colorado. Hi, Gillian. If you're still reading, you little cretin).

Life here is well...different. I can definitely say that for sure. And at the same time, it's not too radically out of line. I still sleep and stay up late, and do homework, and my idea of a fun Saturday night is to hang out in my dorm, write, listen to music, and occasionally purloin a peanut butter sandwich. I am not a party person, and that is just fine with me. I've already made over 20 friends without having to make a spectacle of myself and doing an impression of the Cardinals after they clinched. (To see what I mean, please reference the post beneath this one).

I have activities. I have classwork and conferences and my usual trip to Bronxville, and I also have softball, which is going to be a lot of fun. However, I'm already foreseeing one little problem with that. Nothing major, and certainly nothing big enough to derail me from my desired position, first base, where I've been playing at pretty much every practice and where I dearly hope to stick.

It was just that we were playing a scrimmage game tonight (with eight girls, four on each team) and I realized that I don't quite fit the typical Sarah Lawrence athletic participant model. Let's face it, this is not a school for jocks. It is a school for intellectuals, nerdy intellectuals, slacker intellectuals, and nerdy slackers. Therefore, you can probably understand why we're practically going door-to-door and begging for participants.

Also, the SLC mantra is "go out, play, have fun, don't care about winning." There is just a little problem with this, as admirable as it may be. I DO care about winning. The other team was beating my four-girl team badly at the scrimmage (I think the score was something like 6-0 after three innings) and I was like, "This sucks. Even if it is a freakin' scrimmage game with not even a whole team to scrimmage with."

(In case you're wondering, I went 3-for-4, all singles, and picked a few out of the dirt at first base. Being flexible helps when you are corralling frequently wild throws from your third baseman/shortstop).

This being SLC, all the devoted athletes and competitors are on the team already, and everyone else is just out doing it for a lark...which is perfectly fine, but dammit, I hate losing. Part of the reason that the other half of the team was scoring 4 runs in one inning against our team was because we could not play defense to save our lives. Muffed grounders, bad throws, total misjudgments - you name it, we did it. In their defense, I suppose that's why we have all winter to sharpen up before we start playing actual games against other colleges.

Also, however, I'm having a moment of revelation in that I'm actually starting to understand one of the major, major baseball cliches: "Get a pitch you can hit and try not to do too much with it." If you're up there, have a good stance, not doing anything funny with your feet or hands, and have a mechanically sound grip, etc., then you have a pretty good chance of doing something. Gaah, I'm going to end up in that scene from Bull Durham, I just know it, which I am going to have to actually watch now that I am at college and can get R-rated movies whenever I want.

Speaking of movies, I rented several from the library. The Bronxville Public Library is very nice, with a decent collection, and the free-movie situation makes it ideal for a college student such as myself. But since Sarah Lawrence is apparently in Yonkers despite having a Bronxville address, it'll take a little while longer to get my card. Whatever, Westchester municipality planners.

On that note, I love Bronxville. It's a cute and comfortable little town with shops and trees and it's my personal weekend retreat from campus. It is, in fact, equipped with coffee shops - two of them, in fact, which was something that my dad was concerned about when we first came out here last year. There's Starbucks, which is always good, and then Slave to the Grind, which has the whole Seattle/Pacific Northwest vibe going for it and makes the world's best muffins. Cappuccino chip. Cinnamon streusel. Mmmmmmm.

I love my freedom. I like not having parents to nag me, and I like doing what I want (well, to some degree) when I want to. I can eat dinner, go to bed, wake up, go where I want, etc., and not have to answer for it. However, there is one really weird thing that I'm missing, aside from the usual home/family thing, and that is: driving. I'm serious. I really miss the days when I could hop behind the wheel and drive somewhere. Especially since my family apparently got rid of our two stick-shifts and got a freakin' automatic instead. Feh. Americans are evidently too lazy to drive manual-transmission, so they stopped making them. :( Yet another reason I can't wait to go to Oxford. ;)

There are also some aspects to college life that are quite interesting and probably shouldn't be written about here in case they were accidentally read by the person that is the subject of it. Let's just say that yeah, I want a boyfriend, and it'd be nice, and yeah, one of my hobbies is being uselessly horny, and yes, I have all sorts of X-rated imaginings that definitely cannot be written about, but I cannot imagine ever doing some of the stuff that people talk about. I mean.... eeeew.

What should I be doing? Finishing my piece for tomorrow's writing class. At least I got the reading done, although I probably should have written up my customary blurb about each story. Tomorrow, I need to re-read Spinoza, again, finish up Freud, read a few chapters in The Anglo-Saxons for history, and give my story to Joan at conference. And I should probably write up the blurbs before I fall behind. I live in mortal fear of doing that. I am also disgusting myself with my apparent habit of slacking off on the weekends, so I cram on Monday before my first class, which is at 3:30. It is nice not to have to wake up right away. I am opposed to morning people on principle.

Okay. It's 1:00 AM. I either need to do a little more homework, or go to bed. Butterfly kisses and rainbow wishes to you all. Or whatever.