Take Off!

Game 25 - Phillies

Mets 1, Phillies 0

Record 14 wins, 11 losses - 1st place

Last night I watched hockey. Specifically, game 3 of the Caps-Pens series. Now I have long conceded that I know nothing about hockey and I often annoy hockey fans by proudly proclaiming this fact. Its not that I dislike hockey. Seems like a cool sport. I give into my natural lust for violence now and then and hockey offers up ever lovin' spoons-ful of bone crunching violence about every 35 seconds. My aversion to the sport is based solely on my admittedly obnoxious ethnocentric idea that we don't import Canadian culture - we shove ours down their throats. OK, there was the brilliant John Candy, Dan Aykroyd and Mike Myers but it seems for every Canadian funny man who came out of the cold to make us laugh so hard we peed our pants, there are annoying Canadian divas like Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Anne Murray whose recordings were used at GTMO to break Khalid Sheik Mohammad. (For the record, I don't support torture.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yea, I don't really watch hockey because I don't want Canadians to think I dig something they hold sacred. I resist hockey even more this time of year when Caps fans (suddenly, everyone's a Caps fan) start asking me if I watched the game. I usually reply with something like, "yeah, that Zimmerman sure is on a tear lately." These new found canuck-ophiles don't know a two line pass from icing but now I am supposed to get caught up in "rocking the red?"

Last evening, a friend invited a bunch of us to watch the game at his house and although I had the urge to say "but first pitch isn't until 10:05 - the Nats are in LA", I decided its time to stop being such an annoying prick and just hang out with the guys, have a beer and make odd references to Bryan Trottier to bolster what little actual hockey knowledge I possess. That's poetic, isn't it. A baseball guy trying to stay relevant amongst a group of hockey fans hours after posting how you need 8 earned runs to beat my first place ball club. You want to read a good post from someone who knows a lot more about baseball than me and who happens to be a lot funnier and able to cram a lot more arcane cultural references than I? Go read Whit. You want to laugh at an idiot? Well, do check back from time to time. I promise to post more frequently that every 3 weeks.