Comic for Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

Posted: 8:15 am, Tuesday, May 20th

I was happy for two reasons about Lester's no-no last night. The first is that I enjoy no-hitters when thrown by Sox pitchers, especially Lester, in whom I've said as recently as Sunday I have less faith than Wake out there. The second is that I really kind of needed a strip between yesterday's and the one I had ready to run today, and this one came to me pretty quickly after the game. I hadn't intended to have Ron appear in the strip at all while he's out in LA, but I'm willing to break that for just today. After all, Lester threw a no-hitter. (And Tek caught his apparent record fourth no-hitter. For years, Ray Schalk was credited with one that the rules committee took away in '91, so the Captain stands alone, now.)

I.. believe it was John Lennon, no?

We've got some new Beck on the horizon. And... oh boy, it sounds like Sea Change part deux. Hm. Not sure if that's what I need for my summer playlists.

The Homeboy is outdrawing NFL teams right now.

I'm reading the first of the Master and Commander books right now - actually, I guess the series isn't really named... The James Aubrey books? The Patrick O'Brian books? Anyway, I'm reading Master and Commander right now. There's a lot of nautical terms that I've never heard before, and I'm just kind of slipping through them because I was reading on the subway without a dictionary, but I totally had to look this one up. And now that I see the picture, it's all, uh, actually pretty clear. Hooookay.

Alright, later folks. Why was it so much nicer in Minneapolis than it is in New York? Crikey.

bullfrog

CK -- Tuesday, May 20 2008, 08:40 am

Yay Patrick O'Brian! They're usually called the Aubrey-Maturin books, and I wouldn't worry too much about understanding all the nautical terms. . . . Whenever I came across a paragraph that used the words "mizzenmast" or "topsail" more than once, I skimmed along until we got back to the action and the characters, and I don't feel I missed anything, since it's the characters that make those books so good. MASTER AND COMMANDER is kind of a taster, where in retrospect you can see POB getting his sea legs, as it were; POST CAPTAIN develops Jack's and Stephen's lives on land as well as at sea, and in H.M.S. SURPRISE POB hits his groove -- and it's all reading bliss from there.

[/happy book burbling.]

I've got to tell you, CK, it's got a lot to live up to to top my previous book experience - My Posse Don't Do Homework.

/sarcasm

(Actually, My Posse Don't Do Homework was pretty good. And the title is appropriate. Just ridiculous.)

Holy crap I thought Mrs. Zero and myself were the only ones who inappropriately refer to Lester as Cancer Boy. I blame the Kids in the Hall on this one.

Zero

Hey, when's IPK pitching? heh heh eh

Obama-Prime would be my ticket of choice.

http://mightygodking.com/index.php/2008/05/19/vice-presidential-prognosticatin/

Didn't see you there, Zero. I think I started calling him that on my own (you know, after he recovered) and was emboldened by a Sox podcast I listen to.

I'm not sure if I love Kennedy or Igawa more. Two of my former coworkers have a bet on the over/under of Ws for Hughes, and I think it's quickly becoming mathematically unpossible for the over to be covered.

OK, Retrocrush liked the Indiana Jones flick. I'm feeling a little better.

I love that Igawa is soooo bad that the MFY had to tryt o make us believe that they thought IPK was 'cured' after 1 start and a relief inning in AAA.

Seriously, at this point, how does Cashman still have a job and get viewed so positively?

Zero

Igawa is much more fun because they spent so much money on him. IPK is just a jerk baby who got all pissy when him and his 8+ ERA were sent to the minors.

More important than that stupid no hitter, A-Rod returns tonight. Since 1996, A-Rod's first full year in the majors, there have been 20+ no hitters but he has only returned from the disabled list 5 times. A much more rare occurrence.

Ya know what's weird? I felt more than a little proud of Lester and his triumph. It's weird because I don't know him, don't follow his team, don't care about the Sox, and so on. I'm as far removed as anyone from Lester - well, among baseball fans, anyway.

And here's why. As fans we feel closer to baseball players than any other player. We can see their faces, and what's more, we can imagine that's us out there. Not so easy with football or basketball, where you must be physically gifted to succeed. Baseball is an Everyman sport, and we identify with the players. They're our guys, even if they are multimillionaire assholes.

Even those who hate the Sox should have felt a catch in their throat last night.

They should send the first pitch ball to the Hall immediately, Ted's Head. Nice find.

I think my favorite thing is that we're all for some reason cognizant of Kennedy's middle initial.

Oh, man, awesome.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/sports/baseball/20scorecard.html

I agree with the everyman part of baseball - I mean, clearly a good percentage of the dudes are physical outliers, but there's still dudes like Dustin Pedroia or Kevin Youkilis or just fast scrappy dudes like Jose Reyes who are just, you know, relatively normal-looking people. The basketball and football players on campus, you'd notice. I spent half of my junior year across the hallway from a baseball player and I have no freaking idea what the dude looked like.

I had just about forgotten America's best sportswriter was in Fenway last night, and then I hit up his blog.

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/05/20/fenway-and-no-hitters/

My favorite bit isn't actually about the no-no:

"Before the game, I sat in the dugout with Brian Bannister, and we talked about how soon the new/old Yankee Stadium would be gone, and this would be the last place left in the American League, the last old ballpark, the last real connection to Gehrig and Ruth and the Big Train and DiMaggio and Williams and Feller and Doby, the last connection to black and white moments, to Mel Parnell, to Bucky Dent, to Fisk waving it fair, to Perez seeing the slow curveball, to gods don't answer letters." (cleaned up a bit from his .html)

I'm thrilled with Lester's no-hitter. I had testicular cancer as a kid (back in the early 80's, just would just remove the testes instead of subjecting you to chemo like they did with Lance in the 90's). Not a fun period of my life. I'm thrilled that I've never had to endure chemo, especially after seeing what chemotherapy did to my father. He wasn't the same, even after beating intestinal cancer.

I check myself very thoroughly ever since then.

Having said all that, I'm shamed to admit that I wasn't watching the game (it was against the Royals, really, I wasn't expecting a competitive game), but rather to the NBA game.

Without getting into specifics, Maxim had a thing on 100 things every guy should know back my junior year of collitch. Several of us unsuccessfully learned the technique of one-handed bra removal; one of us caught the early signs of testicular cancer. Good work, Maxim! The, uh, one piece of good work.

In terms of the Walrus, it was Paul; you might want to listen to John sing about it in "Glass Onion" off the White Album...

Damn! My Beatles knowledge is nearly nonexistent. Now *I'm* the jackass.

There was a second piece of good work...