In this installment of Out With The Crowd, I talked with TN/baseball regular commenter — and level-headed Red Sox fan — BSD about Cherington agonistes, chicken tattletales, and stabilizing douchebags. We spoke on April 21 from the middle of a bottle of Malbec.

Sarah D. Bunting: BSD is talking to us about the Red Sox.

BSD: I don't know why, but yeah, we'll talk about 'em.

It is maybe little late to be asking these questions, but what was your favorite acquisition for the team in the off-season?

To be honest with you, they really haven't made any acquisitions in the off-season that I can speak highly of; I think the only guy that's actually done pretty well so far is Ryan Sweeney? That they got from Oakland, that was part of the trade where they received Andrew Bailey, who was supposed to be our new closer.

Ohhh yes. Okay.

And they also gave up a kid that everyone that's a Red Sox fan actually liked a lot last year, a young kid named Ryan Kalish, who they traded away to Oakland, to get Bailey, and also to get Ryan Sweeney to replace Kalish in right field. So Sweeney's actually been okay this year, but for the most part the acquisitions they've done this year have been nothing to write home about.

Okay, so that's my next question, is what's your least favorite acquisition from the off-season?

I mean, you make two trades, in which you're going to strengthen your bullpen: one of them, Andrew Bailey, gets hurt, breaks his thumb and is out for four months, he's supposed to be our new closer –

When is he supposed to be back?

Four months.

But when'd he break his thumb?

Like two weeks — since the beginning, like from halfway through spring training.

So not 'til the All-Star break.

Not 'til the All-Star break, at least. At the very least. So you have him, and then you traded Jed Lowrie to Houston, in another move that was supposed to strengthen your bullpen, and get Mark Melancon, and they've already sent him down to AAA, 'cause that's how good he's been.

Ohhh-kay.

He's already been sent down to Pawtucket. So, so far the acquisitions standpoint has not been very good.

Okay, so what about de-acquisitions, or dudes you got rid of that you were psyched about? What was your favorite dude that got shipped off or retired?

Papel-gone.

Ohhhh, Crapelbon!

You know, it's funny, it's weird to say that now, looking at the state of the Red Sox bullpen being so bad, at least he would have been a stabilizing force, but he was also stabilizing douchebag as well, so seeing him leave was not necessarily a sad thing on my part, plus they're gonna get some decent draft-pick compensation, in this year's draft, for him, so hopefully they'll be able to restock the farm system a little bit by his moving to Philly.

And was he actually that shit last year?

No!

I feel like he was shit the year before; I feel like it was 2010.

No, he kind of mirrored the Red Sox last year; they started off crap, then they went on a roll for four months, and then obviously last month of the season, everyone deteriorated and he was right there with them in regards to doing bad, and Daniel Bard, kind of the same way. He had a terrible September as well.

Okay, so by the same token, what is your guy you're missing the most? Your favorite absence or departure.

The guy we're missing the most — I know he had a bad year last year, but I still think Carl Crawford. Even on his…he had a bad year last year and he still batted like .260 or so? And you look at what's going on in the outfield right now, three guys who you didn't even know who the hell they were at this time last year, Johnny Repko ["actually Jason, and he went on the DL himself the next day" -- Ed.], Ryan Sweeney, and…I can't even remember the third one now, but at least Carl Crawford — oh, Jacoby Ellsbury! Well, Jacoby Ellsbury we're also missing; he's probably the number-one guy we're missing, now that he's hurt, but Crawford, if he had started the year this year, I think he would have been a little bit more relaxed, more used to Boston, more used to the media pressure and such, and I think he would have had a rebound year. So I actually miss him more than Ellsbury right now.

When is Crawford due back?

I think in about a month, or so. I think he's back down in extended spring training, working out and such, so I think he's only about a month away from coming back.

And then apparently — what was it, Marlon Byrd, you were just reading?

Right — update!

Breaking news!

Breaking news, right. … From what I'm reading on Twitter, and Nick Cafardo from, I think he's from the Boston Globe, is reporting Sox are close to acquiring Marlon Byrd from the Cubs. No word on what they're giving up yet, so, hopefully it's Andrew Bailey. And his broken thumb.

It's kind of amazing that the Cubs are already shedding talent in April.

Yeah.

At this point in the season, what is your biggest worry for the team?

The bullpen. The bullpen's the biggest worry, right now. Because still think the starting pitching is going to be stabilized; I mean, I know they haven't had the greatest start. Bard has started off pretty decently for his first time as a starter since college, Beckett's second start was pretty solid, Lester's been bad but I don't expect that to continue, Buchholz…hasn't started off too well, but I think he's too good of a pitcher for this kind of thing to continue. And dare I say it, Matsuzaka is gonna be making his first start in the minors in Salem this weekend, so he might be coming back in a month.

God, I forgot about that guy.

Yeah — and I think the fact that he hasn't lived up to his contract I don't think necessarily means he's been a terrible pitcher; it's just that he hasn't lived up to his contract. But I'll take him as a number-four or -five starter any day.

There was no living up to that contract, and especially the pre-contract — like just the right to talk to him –

Exactly. The negotiating rights.

Fifty million dollars –

I think it was eighty!

No, it's impossible.

So when Dice-K comes back, I think the starting pitching will stabilize, but the bullpen's just been horrid — again, losing Bailey, the horrid start by Melancon, you know, you have Aceves, who should be a middle reliever slash spot starter, now having to close out games, and the fact that he's not even happy about that, he wanted to be starting, all through spring training that's what he was aiming for, and now he's like, "Oh, you're our new closer."

Right — and all the psychological mishegas that went along with that as well, that can't be helping. But you just don't have the bodies, it sounds like.

Not at this point.

You're bringing people up from — forget Pawtucket, it's like —

It's all the guys from last year that everyone hated — the Matt Alberses and the Scott Atchisons that are actually trying to hold the fort down right now.

I think that guy used to be a part of the Met bullpen, which is not good.

Who, Atchison? Yeah.

So where do you predict your team finishing this year?

Right now, it's looking like fourth, to be perfectly honest with you.

"Thank God for the Orioles."

Yeah, well, the Orioles are actually better too! So, but I actually put Toronto ahead of them, Tampa Bay — I think Tampa Bay is actually the favorite. I think their pitching is that good, I think they're actually gonna win the East, and I don't mean that as a Red Sox fan having to be a Yankee-hater or anything, I just think the Yankee starting staff is a little shaky right now; I think Tampa Bay's is just so solid; I can't see many teams being able to outhit them too much. I like Tampa Bay a lot.

And the Jays can cause people some problems.

A lot of problems, absolutely.

So that's your prediction for the division also, is Tampa?

Yes.

I don't think I –

Was that the next question?

What, the division? Yeah — but I have to confess that I don't think I understand the new wild-card playoff one-game arrangement.

Right.

I might just have to go on Wikipedia and get my shit straightened out.

Right.

But do you think that that team is going to come out of this division? Out of AL East?

It could. But I think Cleveland could be a wild-card team; when you look out west, I think Oakland is better, I don't think they're great, but I mean, you pretty much take the West and say, "Texas has it."

Right.

You know, no one else really out there is that solid, so why couldn't a second team like an Oakland just kind of come in under the radar and creep into second — and because they're not playing teams like the American League East are playing like nineteen times a year within division, why can't they come out with more wins than the third-place team in the American League East?

Right. Yeah, I guess they could do; I feel like I've been hearing that the A's are super-bad, that they're, like, down there –

I think they're gonna be a surprise, actually. I do.

Huh. Okay. I guess we'll see; you never know, it's a long season. Who do you think goes to the World Series?

World Series, I'm going back to Texas again.

Okay.

I think it's gonna be the Rangers once again, and…in the National League? Although I don't follow National League as much, and I don't want to say San Francisco is going –

Following the NL does not help you predict this.

No, it doesn't.

You can say who it's not gonna be, but that's about it. Like, it's not gonna be the Astros! It's not gonna be the Mets!

It's not gonna be the Braves.

No, it's probably not.

No, they're not having one of their better seasons, to say the least. They've lost too many players. Although their pitching is okay, but –

And I think there's still something wrong with Jason Heyward; it really makes me sad to see.

Yeah, I mean, for all intents and purposes it could be the Cardinals again, who knows. I don't want to call a rematch, that would be absolutely silly. Why not the Marlins? I'm gonna go with the Marlins.

Interesting.

Yep, I'm gonna go with the Marlins. They added all those bats. In the off-season, they added a lot of players. Although you know what, the Nationals wouldn't be a surprising pick either, 'cause they've got good pitching now. And they've added a lot of bats, as well.

And they're sort of like where the Royals are allegedly gonna be in a year. Alllll those picks.

Mmm hmm.

Are coming up. Strasburg has looked pretty good so far; they've got…what's-his-nuts, attitude-problem hitting guy, what's that kid's name? Bryce Harper.

Bryce Harper, yes.

I mean, I don't want to hang out with him –

Sports Illustrated cover boy for, like, three years now? It's unreal.

Seriously. Okay, so your World Series is Rangers/Marlins.

I'm gonna say Marlins. Why not?

Why not. Any pleasant surprises so far this season?

The Mets!

…Okay.

Your beloved New York Mets! Playing — until today, playing really good fundamental baseball.

Well, they won, since the San Francisco Giants also failed to understand how to throw a baseball.

No, I'm gonna go with the Mets; I'm really really happy to see that they've had a really really good start. And can I say "really really" one more time? …I'm pleasantly surprised; I always thought their starting pitching was good enough, and now it seems like they've got these blue-collar hard-working kind of guys — um, not flashy, if you will. Not saying that Reyes was that kind of guy. Well, okay, yes he was, but you're seeing guys that are playing good fundamental baseball. Just looking at the dugout environment, looking at the dugout atmosphere! It looks like a dugout where these guys actually like each other and like playing with each other and are playing hard for each other. And you know, I'm not saying that they're gonna be one of the wild-card spots or anything like that, but –

They're not.

They're not, but they're playing good, and it's good to watch and I hope the fans start making their way out to Citi Field again. I hope to get out there a couple times.

Yeah, it's a good park, and I think once we get rid of some old contracts, like, I think we're finally done paying fuckin' Bobby Bonilla next year.

[laughter]

And you know, it depends — Johan is back —

Johan is back. Looks good.

Jonathan Niese I think has a chance to be a solid two or three starter, like, you know, in a real division.

Right.

Like on a real club he would actually be legit good, and there's some of the kids — like, let's face it, Duda and Murphy need to be traded to the American League –

Absolutely.

So they can Edgar Martinez their way into the sunset and we can get some fuckin' defense.

Yeah.

I wish they hadn't traded Pagan. It is what it is! I don't think it's gonna be that bad. ["I'm transcribing this after the Mets just got swept by Houston. Hargh." -- Ed.] It's gonna be bad. I don't think it's gonna be that bad.

And we just watched Mike Pelfrey throw eight really solid innings today, too.

Yeah. And then get NDed. That sucks. ["…HARRRGH!!" -- Ed.] Hey, Frank Francisco: don't do that to the head case.

Although today would be the Tejada/Nieuwenhuis combination of how not to play in the outfield/infield.

And the Terry Collins double-clutch. When I post this I will try to find a little animated .gif of Terry Collins.

Yes, that was a phenomenal reaction.

Trying not to shit his pants. Um, any un-pleasant surprises this season, either your team or someone else's?

Unpleasant surprises…ooh, wow. Hmm.

I don't even know what my answer would be to this one.

Yeah, this is tough. The fact that I've even said anything that is –

Braves, I would say. I mean, I don't think it's a huge surprise. It's just been unpleasant.

I don't want to — I guess I can say the Red Sox; I didn't expect them to have a great season this year, but four and ten, already, is really really bad. I mean –

Well, the Ellsbury thing has got to be –

It's so, I mean, that was a knife to the heart, from the start of the season forward.

That's not a good injury, for –

For the guy who, if the Red Sox won Game 162 last year, may have won the MVP. He was right there.

I think he got a lot of votes, too. I don't know how that finished, but –

Yeah, so, I mean, it’s not that I was expecting the Sox to have a great year this year; I was expecting them to be, you know, fighting for the wild-card spot? But the fact that they're not close to it right now is just really disappointing, the injuries and everything, and the fact that I've gone through all this not even mentioning how much I hate Bobby Valentine? That's the most disappointing thing — that I've gone this far without saying how much I hate Bobby Valentine already.

That is our final question…

Oh, what a segue!

"Dear interviewee, Tell the manager of your baseball club one thing."

Just one? You're limiting me to that much. Okay.

That one can be a bullet-pointed list.

Right. Here's what I would say to Bobby Valentine.

"Shut the fuck up."

Yeah, for one, shut the fuck up — okay, is that it? Was that my one thing?

I feel like you can get a lot in under that umbrella.

Well, one thing, first of all, make sure you sign a contract with a Boston radio station to do a weekly radio interview before you sign up to do one with frickin' Michael Kay on ESPN New York radio; that's the first thing that I would say to you. The second thing that I would say is, you are not Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 Miracle on Ice U.S Olympic team, and what I mean by that is this: supposedly he has alienated the dugout already, the clubhouse, he's got everybody lined up against him. But supposedly that's a managerial technique for bringing your team together and everything. Herb Brooks only had to do it for four months; you need to do it for — how long is your contract? five years? It may work for hockey in the amateur, Olympic sport; it doesn't work in professional baseball. That's what i would say to Bobby Valentine; you've got to be able to learn to actually communicate with some of the players in your dugout, and not alienate all of them, which you have already done so far.

Well, and being united against a common enemy is great, but that probably shouldn't be your field general, and extra innings — please share with us that Youkilis was Francona's stooge.

Yes. So apparently, from what I've heard, from my inside sources, i.e., things I've read on the internet –

"America's inside source."

Exactly. Obviously last year the Sox season culminated with this disastrous final month, and then when the season ended, every story was about "oh, they're eating beer and chicken in the locker room while the games are still going on" and such, and everything that I've — well, not everything, but the word that I have been reading about was that it was Kevin Youkilis who was actually the voice in Terry Francona's ear letting him know what was going on in the locker room.

The chicken tattletale?

Exactly.

Now was he tattling all the time, as things went on, or he tattled later?

I honestly don't know that; I don't know. But that was the reports that I've heard. And Kevin Youkilis might be the hardest-working guy on the Red Sox team, and the fact that when Bobby Valentine just called him out, Dustin Pedroia, who now basically is the unofficial captain of this team, was like the first one to rush to his defense, basically tells me that you know what, maybe the people in the Red Sox clubhouse really don't have such a thing against Kevin Youkilis. You know? So to call him out as being the person that's supposedly the snitch, if you will, just seems like a move right out of Larry Lucchino's mind.

It's one thing to be snitching to Francona, but — Francona's gone.

Right.

So I'm not sure how pertinent that is anyway.

Yeah, and it was made perfectly clear that Francona was gone yesterday when they introduced his name at the one-hundred-year Fenway Park celebration and he got a huge ovation, and then they announced Bobby Valentine and he got booed mercilessly — which basically just goes to show where the two of them stand.

I don't think Valentine is a terrible managerial choice in certain situations, but I think in this situation — like, I absolutely don't understand why he would go there, or why they would hire him. I don't get it from either side.

Can I go into the eleventh inning real quick? For one quick comment.

Yeah, sure.

My overall feeling, in regards to what's happened with the Red Sox from the end of last year to this year, and I'll make it quick, is in regards to how ownership has just botched everything, from the day that they let go of Francona to today. You don't let Terry Francona go and start bad-mouthing him immediately and leaking these stories to the press about how he's got a drug problem and how there might be women on the side. So poorly handled.

Then you basically hire a general manager in Ben Cherington, and the first move that he's supposed to make is to hire a manager, and Larry Lucchino oversteps him and hires Bobby Valentine.

That's some Wilpon shit, is what that is. I can tell you right now it's not gonna work.

Right. And then you go into this off-season and you make these trades that so far have not worked out in any way shape or form — you know, again, I was all for letting Papelbon go, but then you make these two trades and they're working out disastrously. It's not a good start for this — I look at it as, it's the same owners, it's the same president and everything, and yet I still look at it as kind of a new regime –

Because they're able to big-foot Cherington in way that –

Exactly.

That they couldn't bigfoot Epstein, apparently.

Exactly. And now they're getting their way, and now it's biting them right in the butt.

I feel that I should add, even though this is not my interview, that now that Papelbon is gone from the Red Sox, Andy Beckett — and Varitek retired –

Josh Beckett.

Josh Beckett…what did I call — why do I always do that?!

You did it last time!

I always call him "Andy Beckett." He looks like an Andy.

Is that a Shawshank Redemption name?

His name was Andy but his last name wasn't Beckett. What was his name? …Dufresne.

Dufresne!

"Dufresne! You're puttin' me behind!" Who is Andy Beckett? We're gonna look that up. The point is, whatever his first name is, that pube-chinned chicken-eating fuckwad has been promoted to my Most Hated Red Sock.

Now that Varitek has retired.

Andy Beckett is the Tom Hanks character in Philadelphia. BSD is a character his own self, and you can follow him on Twitter, @mikeyWMfree.

Times scribe Jonathan Mahler freezes my distaste for Bill Simmons in carbonite — SEE WHAT I DID THERE?! — in just three grafs

The 31 May New York Times Magazine profile of Bill Simmons is standard for that genre: "behold the rise of a snarker from the AOL farm team to" blah blah blah "gol-lee, a Melrose reference in a piece about the AL West!" blah. I have had the pleasure of seeing my own everyday work taskery transformed by a Times Mag journalist into a cutting-edge undertaking; it's the nature of that publication to confer consequence on its subjects, so I don't blame Simmons himself for the damply admiring description of how he marries sports commentary with TV references.

But while the hype isn't on him, buying into it is, and I get the feeling — from this piece, from others I've read about him, and from his own work — that Simmons is content to let people believe he's the first writer ever to use pop-culture references in or adjacent to sportswriting. Hey, maybe he is. It's definitely part of his brand, as is the forthright homerism about the Red Sox, but it's a frattily self-congratulatory brand that, while I've occasionally admired the writing and totally acknowledge the work ethic, I don't care for.

Credit to profiler Jonathan Mahler, though; he crams everything I dislike about Simmons™ into three grafs on the sixth page, starting with Simmons's apparent sabremetrophobia:

Simmons doesn't write much about baseball anymore — he has been turned off by the fetishization of statistics that now dominates coverage of the sport — but he still likes going to games. In late April, I met him and a couple of other guys for a day game at Dodger Stadium. The ballpark was almost empty. "That Giant thing was not good," Simmons said, referring to the recent beating of a Giants fan in the stadium parking lot. "Also, the team being taken over by the commissioner — not good for fan support."

I assume that the "fetishization of statistics" line is a paraphrase of Simmons and not Mahler editorializing about baseball writing, but either way, it put me in mind of Lee Siegel whining about LOLcats. I suspect that Simmons wouldn't characterize it as "fetishization" if he understood — or, more to the point, tended to get credit for inventing — the statistics in question. Instead, it reads the way it inevitably did with Joe Morgan: he doesn't want to learn new stats or formulas, and he resents the fact that his failure to participate is not then the end of them, that they continue to exist and even, because he refuses to learn about them, seem to "dominate coverage."

I'd actually like to know if sports coverage now is stat-heavier than, say, 20 years ago, simply by volume…but I don't think it is. The stats themselves have changed, but it's not like Jerry Izenberg painted a portrait of Wally Backman's batting average during a Cubs series using only synonyms for "mediocre," back in the day. He wrote something like, "Backman hit .193 against Chicago pitching." That's a stat. Get over it. "But baseball is about the stories on th–" I know. I agree. Stats have stories in them; Bill James, who is the grandfather of many of these stats, and who works in the front office of the Red Sox, has said dozens of times that he created various equations because the existing formulae didn't tell him enough about the stories he saw or heard in the stands. He wanted to make shooting the breeze concrete. There is poetry in math, and it takes 14 seconds to learn what VORP is and how it's calculated, after which brief time you can bust on the likes of, say, Derek Jeter with more authority. Get over it.

And in the second place, even if we concede that arcane stats have choked the life out of baseball writing, that only explains why Simmons might not read about baseball much anymore, not why he doesn't write about it. If he really believes WAR and BABIP have swamped the boat of baseball coverage, wouldn't he want to get down on his knees and bail with regular columns of his own on the subject, to counteract all the mathy poindexter goings-on? Or does he just not feel like he can write credibly on baseball without using them himself — which perhaps is why he dislikes them to begin with?

Or is it that, now that the Red Sox have completed their transformation from official team of the Vale of Tears to perennial powerhouse, he doesn't care that much anymore? Is he a foul-weather fan? Hey, that's okay, if it's the case. Rooting for a crap team is really really fun in its way, especially if you do love baseball for the stories, because nothing has better, more plentiful punchlines than a team whose ace is a knuckler who's almost my age. (For example.) (Sigh.) I get it. But just say so. Don't make it about begrudging ideas whose time has come.

Speaking of crap teams, if Chavez Ravine is empty these days, it's likely because the Dodgers have not played good baseball to date. Or…because we've had a cold spring. Or…because it's still a tough economy, and a family trip to the park isn't doable for lots of people, or because the commute to Dodger Stadium is an ass-tear, or or or. The Wilponigans with Madoff and that New Yorker article and whatever else don't have thing one to do with whether I make it out to Citi Field, and it's a different situation, but if I'm a Dodger fan, I'm more psyched to follow the team now that MLB took it away from the McCourts, not less. I feel certain I heard Mike Schur say as much on Joe Posnanski's podcast (which is a great listen — loose, lo-fi, and fun) when the power transfer first went down. Any Dodger fans want to weigh in here? Simmons lives out there, so fine, but the remark didn't seem to proceed from that. It didn't seem to proceed from any actual information; it seemed like just something to say.

Simmons spoke with more apparent authority on the subject of Sox fans themselves, and while he's perhaps a foul-weather fan of the team, he's an all-weather fan of other Sox fans. Marvel at the hypocrisy (or don't; it's fairly typical of him) as Simmons — attired in a clothing item that, while it doesn't necessarily indicate fratbaggishness, is certainly strongly correlated with it — harshes on a Dodger fan's kit:

Simmons, who was wearing camouflage shorts and a T-shirt, got a hot dog with mustard and we found our seats behind home plate. "How do you feel about a guy with his own name on the back of his jersey?" Simmons asked, pointing out a man a few rows in front of us in a Dodgers shirt, the name "Scotty G" written across the back. "It's like a double violation. You'd never see that a Red Sox game. He's everything you'd want 'Scotty G' to look like, too, with the slicked-back hair and blue sunglasses."

How petty is Sarah? This petty: I actually checked baseball-reference.com to see if "Scotty G" might refer to a current or recent-past Dodger. It doesn't, and I agree that putting your own name on a team jersey is sort of smurfy. What it isn't is noteworthy. You see it on kids at Citi all the time. The guy probably got it as a gift. So what?

What bugs the most, though, is Simmons snotting that you "would never" see that at Fenway. What Simmons (and Mahler) fails to point out is that you'd never see that at Yankee Stadium, either — because New York and Boston do not put player names on their jerseys at all, only the numbers. You see names on t-shirts sometimes, but not on jerseys, so "never" seeing that at Fenway is not so much a point of comparison — and what you do see at Fenway, among other things, is a bunch of bandwagon-jumping Chi Psi twats and their Dane-Cook-fan girlfriends wearing the green or pink red-B ballcaps and bugging out unironically to Neil Diamond. I have nothing against the Red Sox (except Papelbon), Fenway, or the vast majority of Red Sox Nation, but acting like that fandom isn't the host organism for a super-strain of asshole at least as virulent as the L.A. variety is ridiculous.

Oh, look. Here's that asshole now.

A little later, Simmons spotted a trio of heavyset women in tank tops and cut-off jeans shorts, drinking what appeared to be frozen daiquiris out of plastic Dodger cups. "Look, it's 'Sex and the City'!" he said.

If he'd come right out and said, "NO FAT CHICKS!!!1!!", I miiiiight have a perverse respect for him, but no. He tried to sneak it in there, and the reference is limp in the first place.

Whatever I've thought about his writing in the past, Simmons is evidently hardening into that self-regarding, incurious, middle-aged well-in-my-day blowhard who mistakes endurance for relevance and decibels for insight. He's a talented writer, but he's coasting on shtick, and if he's not interested in letting any new information or opinions in, why should we give a shit about the ones that come out anymore?

I took it on the road for Episode 3 — to God's Little Acre, New Jersey, where friends of TN Mike "BSD" Dunn and Janine "J9" Jenik-Dunn rolled out a fantastic spread of peanuts, Cracker Jack, and stinky cheese. I brought the slanderous remarks about former Blue Jays, failed Shakespeare references, incorrect assertions about DH trades, name mix-ups (as it turns out, there is no "Andy" Beckett), and compulsive references to Daryl Boston. Then I tried to 'ship Michelle Rodriguez with Ken Caminiti. Hope you packed a lunch!

Coming off the NSFW bench:

• Dickson's Baseball Dictionary
• the justified anger of Cleveland and Pittsburgh fans
• the Pine Tar Incident
• MLB Network's Top 50 Most Infamous Arguments
• Bill Cosby
• Curt Schilling
• Felix "the Run Fairy" Heredia
• Aimee Mann
• phantom bagpipes
• the Newark Bears
• Giant (Gl)ass
• a definitive explanation of pulling vs. opposite field…again
• Bob Uecker
• DUIs: a PR primer
• "the Poo Holes procedure"
• Mendozaaaaaaaaa!
• and a couple of sweet tunes from The Baseball Project and the Mamas & the Papas.

Enjoy the show, and please send your emails, comments, and team-related despair to bunting at tomatonation dot com. I've had a few issues with getting TSUP to show up on iTunes, but let's give it a couple of days, and then if it doesn't work, maybe one of you fine people can give me a quick clinic.

I'll tell you exactly what did it.

I'd bought Bean tickets to a Mets game for her birthday, and she kindly invited me to go with her. We arranged to meet up at our seats, and while I waited for her to arrive, I drank a beer and enjoyed the atmosphere. Between innings, the PA guy advised the owner of a white Jeep Cherokee to report to the parking lot because he'd left his lights on, and I thought three things: 1) "That's a funny kind of small-town moment." 2) "That would never, ever happen at Yankee Stadium."

3) "It's time to go back to the Mets."

So I did. I went back to the Mets.

I followed the Yankees for a long time, and I will still watch the team; I've got nothing against the Yankees, just like I didn't have anything against the Mets when I switched back in the day. The Yankees have a great team, and I've had great times watching them. The motivation is never the team itself.Back in the day, despite my many jokes about Gregg Jefferies finally breaking me, I didn't stop caring about the Mets because they sucked. I just spent far more TV time around Yankee fans, and if I wanted to watch baseball, I had to watch the Bombers.

Fortuitously timed transition, it's true, and when the Yankees first began winning back in the mid-nineties, of course I enjoyed it — walking around the city in October, all the horns honking, the other fans yelling out their windows, bonding with strangers over beer and Brosius.

I liked the Yanks when they sucked, too, though. In many ways, I liked the Yanks better when they sucked, because it made for more entertaining trash-talk in the stands, and because then, occasionally, briefly, Michael Kay and John Sterling and anyone else in either booth would substitute a discussion of that for yet another bromide about the proud tradition of Yankee baseball, yet another sonorous intonation of "Power…Privilege…Pinstripes," yet another reading of the Monument Park rosary.

It's the most famous franchise in American sport, it's won more championships than any other baseball team, it's probably got more Hall of Famers than any other team — good for them, and obviously I don't have a problem with any of that. It's that this is all you ever hear, the humorless recitative, the reading of the saints, and that's not really about the team either. It's about the institution and the brand, and again, it's an institution and a brand worthy of admiration and respect. I admire it; I respect it.

But I want to watch some baseball. Okay? I want to hear about baseball. I mean, the Mets have a pretty proud history of their own — most of which I can recite chapter and verse even now, having grown up with the team — but the difference is that Howie Rose understands what Tom Seaver is, a fantastic pitcher. A human being who played baseball really well. I suspect John Sterling of actually believing that Mickey Mantle invented the flush toilet in between 800-foot home runs.

And after all these years…I can't take it anymore. I watch a lot of baseball. I listen to a lot of baseball coverage, like, really a lot. I have to like the announcers; I have to respect their knowledge. It should not get to the point where I would rather watch the game in a bar because the bar will not have the sound on. It should not get to the point where, when both teams have a game at the same time, I switch over to the Mets and just leave the channel there. I would rather listen to Keith Hernandez narrate another Bad Ollie meltdown than to John "Who?" Flaherty cover a no-hitter — and Mex is my least favorite on that booth team.A season has 162 games in it, and I probably see or hear 145 of them; if I don't enjoy it, if I start getting my team coverage from MLB Network so I don't have to listen to Michael Kay, what's the point?

I've said many times before that you can't follow a team only because it wins. You have to care about the sport, because the day will come when your team sucks, and that sometimes goes on for a while, and if all you care about is the winning, it's a waste of your time. The Yankees sort of Mobiused that on me; because of all the winning they have done, and continue to do, it's now a waste of my time, because the coverage focuses so heavily on history and legacy. That team has become something to salute instead of embrace, and I spend too much time on baseball to feel like I have to whisper in its presence.

Look, it's a great team. Michael Kay is an irritant in the booth, but you can't say he doesn't work hard or serve the brand well. He's a pro. But the professionalism and the reverence and the meritorious service, and still with the "God Bless America"…it's like the old crack that says rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the phone company, although, really, it's like rooting for…I don't even know. The national anthem. The Holy Ghost, if the Holy Ghost featured pompous narration by St. Peter.

So, I've gone back to the Mets fold. I can still talk about the Yankees knowledgeably; I can still hate Jonathan Papelbon and enjoy his failures; all y'all Yankee fans, good luck, and you'll no doubt enjoy another trip to the postseason. I want to watch the season itself and not have it feel like a chore, and when I head for Citi on Saturday, I'll have a Mookie shirt on, 'cause he's #1.

Do you hate the same players now that you did when you were a kid — or have other players replaced the Rich Gedmans and Von Hayeses in the blackest precincts of your heart?

Who wins a dickfest: Dick Allen, or Barry Bonds?What if it's a douchefest?Who wins that?

Do you hate any players that you used to love because of comments they've made (or assy behavior they've engaged in) after their careers ended?

Have any of your hatreds mellowed into grudging respect?

Talk to me.Talk to me about baseball players you hate, baseball players your friends hate, baseball players your grandpa hated.Used to hate?Tell me.Want to hate, but can't? Let it out.I want to hear about the cherished loathings of baseball fandom, even if it's just you who hates the guy.

I also want to hear the ways, if any, in which the sharing of these abhorrences contributes to your experience of watching/consuming baseball.When you invite, say, Jonathan Papelbon to eat a handful of bees at the top of your lungs in the bleachers, does it make you feel a part of things?Does the ritual telling of Dave Kingman stories on the porch or at the bar contribute to your sense of being a baseball fan?

Or do you just want Dave Kingman to go very far away and take his iron glove with him?

No player too old or insignificant; no grievance too random or inconsequential.It's over a month 'til pitchers and catchers report, I've got a discussion session to plan, and I HATE KEVIN BROWN.HATE HIM.STILL.PUNCH A BEE WITH YOUR NON-PITCHING HAND, BITCHFACE.Haaaaate!

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