Wednesday, October 31, 2007

<33

Love.

Love of each other, love of the fans, fans' love, love of the game, love as one gigantic baseball family - love was the theme of this 2007 team and season... love is what got us here:


...And that is all I have to say. It doesn't feel any less good the second time around, especially with a team like this.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

like "high fidelity" for jocks

Still victory-high from last night. Like Jackie said, "Basically, Josh Beckett can get sex whenever he wants now, huh?"

In other news, Goddamn Maggie linked to a Deadspin post this morning and so help me God, I'm reading again. This is like a relationship of abusive neglect. Christ.

Anyway, that's important because Deadspin's where I picked up this link:

Cleveland Indians' greatest hits, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, 10/2/07

We asked Tribe in-game entertainment manager Annie Merovich to pass along what your American League Central Champion Cleveland Indians (we know, we know; we just like hearing that) want to hear when they step to the plate.

Most of it is fairly predictable rap-metal eardrum-searing shit, but apparently, pitcher Jeremy Sowers enters to Wilco's "Pot Kettle Black." I barely know who Jeremy Sowers is and his MLB.com picture makes him look like a Victorian poet in the late stages of consumption, but the fact that he enters to a song off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot makes my coal-black indie-bitch heart simply soar. The fact that he actually completed his poli sci degree at Vanderbilt doesn't hurt, either; what can I say, I'm a big snot about higher education.

Anyway, Chickball's way ahead of everyone else, as usual, because Back In The Days Before We Had A Website And Just Talked At Each Other A Lot, everyone had to pick their own personal MLB at-bat song because my sophomore-year AIM away message told them to. The playlist was lost when my old IBM, Screwball, died an inglorious death in December of 2005, but both Pam and Beth picked Cake's "The Distance" off Fashion Nugget. Hey, we have good taste.

A few years ago, some obscure website did a feature on entrance songs around baseball, and I'll always remember that Barry Zito insisted on coming out to Incubus' "Megalomaniac," but only if it was cued up exactly 37 seconds in. I might not have a Cy Young award, but I am arrogantly bizarre, so I've always maintained that my at-bat music would be a minute and four seconds into Ben Folds' "Rockin' the Suburbs," right after the first major percussion crash. But these days, I don't know. I was twenty then, and I'm twenty-two now.* I mean, it's still a good option, but part of me wishes I played right field for the Boston Red Sox just so I could walk into the batter's box to the tune of Bikini Kill's "Strawberry Julius." There's something delightfully perverse about juxtaposing my outer baseball fan and my inner riot grrrl that appeals to me. Plus, if I didn't tell Papelbon that it's part of an overarching latter-day feminist manifesto, he'd probably mosh to it.

It's a delicate balance to strike -- something personal, but something that fires you up simultaneously. You can't go on heart-pumping cardio music alone; otherwise, I'd be entering to the sweet sounds of Electric Six's "Gay Bar," to which I choreograph elaborate dances while enthusiastically cleaning my kitchen. At the same time, I totally agree with Bono that the string arrangement on The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" is fact and proof of angels in Heaven above, but I don't want to be getting emotional goosebumps before I try to crush a Chien-Mien Wang change-up into the bullpen. It's hard, y'all. I totally get why Varitek's been entering to the same shitty Three Doors Down song for, like, seven years now.

That said, I think I've got a Top 5:

"Rockin' the Suburbs," Ben Folds
"Strawberry Julius," Bikini Kill
"Talk to Me, Dance With Me," Hot Hot Heat
"Mass Romantic," The New Pornographers
"Time Running," Tegan and Sara

(Yes, I know I have the musical tastes of a stereotypical thirtysomething lesbian. I am okay with this.)

So how about you, dear readers? What are your batting songs?

* -- everyone who understands this reference gets a weekend pass to Motherboy XXX and a coupon for one free frozen banana