First game a the series. Boston's behind 9-3. Yanks are winning. My fookin' Irish is up.... Maybe this'll calm me down..
YouTube - Dropkick Murphys - Shipping Up To Boston - Video
Friday, June 1, 2007
It was forty years ago today...
That The Beatles released what some argue is the best rock and roll album of all time: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. June 1, 1967. Remember what you were doing on that day?
If you don't, you might not have been born yet.
If you don't you might have just been caught up in the spirit of things. It was, after all, the beginning of The Summer of Love.
That summer was the last one I'd spend in my hometown in western, Massachusetts. It was the summer of the Red Sox " Impossible Dream. " A summer of hatred in the middle east. Here, it was The Summer of Love, a virus of the heart that was first experienced out west, then spread east, where I and my friends caught it.
Young men and women my age were drawn like lemmings to the state of California. At least our thoughts were pulled there. The city we wished to be in? San Francisco. We wanted to grow our hair long and plant flowers behind our ears. We weren't the most ambitious of 20 year olds. The only position we sought was the lotus position.
I'd taken a doctor's advice ( Dr. Timothy Leary ) and dropped out ( of college ) in the spring of that year. I knew what I wanted to drop out from, but had no idea what I wanted to drop into. I had no plan. No road map. If I'd had a resume, its legs would have been shaking, its feet tap, tapping to the beat of an indifferent drummer. But I had no resume, because I had no experience, other than going to school.
All the sheets of paper in my pad were blank. I was reckless and feckless. Like a prisoner plotting his escape, I used to sit at the window of our apartment on Main Street and stare off at the blue/gray walls - those mountains that surrounded the town in which I'd grown up. And was now growing out of.
I wasn't alone in my desire to hit the road and head west. " Are you going to San Francisco? " was the lyric each of us was hearing over and over, echoing off the pale green lathes in the factory where we all worked that summer.
Tom, Freddy, Larry and I worked at Stanley Home Products, the largest of several mills in Easthampton. It was boring, mind numbing work, but it was honest work. The kind of work many of the parents of the kids our age had done all their lives. Much of the work we did was done away from the din of the machines and the production lines. As we toiled for the minimum wage, we talked. About jazz. Existentialism. The War. A new band called The Doors. Rock-solid, well known bands like The Jefferson Airplane.
The Doors. Jefferson Airplane. San Francisco bands. The music they played was like siren song, pulling us in a direction we knew, just knew was the right one.
Summer jobs don't last forever; there is an escape clause called September. We knew this, and the subject of many of our late summer conversations can be summed up in two words: What next?
All of us were college kids, but none of us planned to go back in the fall. As the days grew shorter and the shadows cast by the mountains grew longer, we planned our escape. How would we get there? That was easy, a no brainer. All summer Freddy had been driving around in a big, black hearse he'd got cheap back in the spring. The hearse. That's what we'd hit the road in. Maybe the radio would be playing some Grateful Dead tunes as we rolled out of New England. We'd open the windows and turn it up loud.
What could be more groovy than that?
But the best laid plans and all that. We never went to San Francisco. Our summer jobs ended and we went different ways. I joined the Air Force. I don't know what my friends did. That was 40 years ago. It was The summer of Love. And Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had just been released.
That The Beatles released what some argue is the best rock and roll album of all time: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. June 1, 1967. Remember what you were doing on that day?
If you don't, you might not have been born yet.
If you don't you might have just been caught up in the spirit of things. It was, after all, the beginning of The Summer of Love.
That summer was the last one I'd spend in my hometown in western, Massachusetts. It was the summer of the Red Sox " Impossible Dream. " A summer of hatred in the middle east. Here, it was The Summer of Love, a virus of the heart that was first experienced out west, then spread east, where I and my friends caught it.
Young men and women my age were drawn like lemmings to the state of California. At least our thoughts were pulled there. The city we wished to be in? San Francisco. We wanted to grow our hair long and plant flowers behind our ears. We weren't the most ambitious of 20 year olds. The only position we sought was the lotus position.
I'd taken a doctor's advice ( Dr. Timothy Leary ) and dropped out ( of college ) in the spring of that year. I knew what I wanted to drop out from, but had no idea what I wanted to drop into. I had no plan. No road map. If I'd had a resume, its legs would have been shaking, its feet tap, tapping to the beat of an indifferent drummer. But I had no resume, because I had no experience, other than going to school.
All the sheets of paper in my pad were blank. I was reckless and feckless. Like a prisoner plotting his escape, I used to sit at the window of our apartment on Main Street and stare off at the blue/gray walls - those mountains that surrounded the town in which I'd grown up. And was now growing out of.
I wasn't alone in my desire to hit the road and head west. " Are you going to San Francisco? " was the lyric each of us was hearing over and over, echoing off the pale green lathes in the factory where we all worked that summer.
Tom, Freddy, Larry and I worked at Stanley Home Products, the largest of several mills in Easthampton. It was boring, mind numbing work, but it was honest work. The kind of work many of the parents of the kids our age had done all their lives. Much of the work we did was done away from the din of the machines and the production lines. As we toiled for the minimum wage, we talked. About jazz. Existentialism. The War. A new band called The Doors. Rock-solid, well known bands like The Jefferson Airplane.
The Doors. Jefferson Airplane. San Francisco bands. The music they played was like siren song, pulling us in a direction we knew, just knew was the right one.
Summer jobs don't last forever; there is an escape clause called September. We knew this, and the subject of many of our late summer conversations can be summed up in two words: What next?
All of us were college kids, but none of us planned to go back in the fall. As the days grew shorter and the shadows cast by the mountains grew longer, we planned our escape. How would we get there? That was easy, a no brainer. All summer Freddy had been driving around in a big, black hearse he'd got cheap back in the spring. The hearse. That's what we'd hit the road in. Maybe the radio would be playing some Grateful Dead tunes as we rolled out of New England. We'd open the windows and turn it up loud.
What could be more groovy than that?
But the best laid plans and all that. We never went to San Francisco. Our summer jobs ended and we went different ways. I joined the Air Force. I don't know what my friends did. That was 40 years ago. It was The summer of Love. And Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had just been released.
The Red Sox are playing the Yankees tonight. It should be one heck of a show. Boston/New York games are always special, but tonight's game, and this three game series could be one to write home about.
Why? you ask. Aren't the Yankees about 75 1/2 games behind the Sox in the standings? Well, not quite, but they're lagging behind The Hose like I'd be lagging behind Bill Rogers in a marathon.
The standings aren't the point. This is only June 1. Anything can happen between now and September. In 1978 the Red Sox had a 14 game lead over the Bombers, and guess who won the pennant?
Bucky Dent.
Bucky Dent? For you readers who aren't baseball fans, that probably sounds like something an auto body shop might be asked to bang out. The words " bang out " are fitting. Because that's exactly what a 78 Yankee player name of Bucky Dent did - bang out a homer to win a one game playoff contest to decide which team got the World Series tickets.
In Red Sox Nation, the anniversary of that blast is a day of national mourning.
It's June 1. It's not about who's gonna end up winning it all at the end of the season. It's about A-Rod.
A-Rod? you ask. Is that another motor vehicle reference? Is that like, say, a Hot Rod?
Nope. A-Rod is Alex Rodriguez, the Yankee third baseman. He's the highest paid baseball player in history. Makes something like $123,987,843,345,876,123,921, 988,765,000 a year. Give or take a few billion.
Nobody likes A-Rod. His wife liked him. Until yesterday. Everybody, except his wife, loathes him because he makes all that money for playing a game. His wife loathes him because of that picture she - and everybody else on the planet - saw of him yesterday. Him and that " buxom blonde " walking out of a Toronto strip joint together.
I was listening to WEEI ( Or as I call it, W Aye Yi Yi ) in Boston this morning. It was a sports talk show on which two guys say provocative things designed to get other guys to call in and make fools of themselves. They're very good at it. Not the hosts - the guys who make fools of themselves. This morning the topic was, of course, A-Rod.
The talk show hosts wanted to hear ideas for tonight's game. What kind of chants can we come up with when A-Rod's at the plate?
Among the bright ideas was:
A-Rod!! A-Limony! A-Rod! A-Limony!
I know. Pretty stupid. But what do you expect? This wasn't NPR's Talk of the Nation and tonight's event in Boston ain't gonna be held at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Will I be watching tonight? You betcha. I cannot wait. Gotta go.
I'm working on what I'm gonna be chanting when A-Rod walks up to the plate.
Why? you ask. Aren't the Yankees about 75 1/2 games behind the Sox in the standings? Well, not quite, but they're lagging behind The Hose like I'd be lagging behind Bill Rogers in a marathon.
The standings aren't the point. This is only June 1. Anything can happen between now and September. In 1978 the Red Sox had a 14 game lead over the Bombers, and guess who won the pennant?
Bucky Dent.
Bucky Dent? For you readers who aren't baseball fans, that probably sounds like something an auto body shop might be asked to bang out. The words " bang out " are fitting. Because that's exactly what a 78 Yankee player name of Bucky Dent did - bang out a homer to win a one game playoff contest to decide which team got the World Series tickets.
In Red Sox Nation, the anniversary of that blast is a day of national mourning.
It's June 1. It's not about who's gonna end up winning it all at the end of the season. It's about A-Rod.
A-Rod? you ask. Is that another motor vehicle reference? Is that like, say, a Hot Rod?
Nope. A-Rod is Alex Rodriguez, the Yankee third baseman. He's the highest paid baseball player in history. Makes something like $123,987,843,345,876,123,921, 988,765,000 a year. Give or take a few billion.
Nobody likes A-Rod. His wife liked him. Until yesterday. Everybody, except his wife, loathes him because he makes all that money for playing a game. His wife loathes him because of that picture she - and everybody else on the planet - saw of him yesterday. Him and that " buxom blonde " walking out of a Toronto strip joint together.
I was listening to WEEI ( Or as I call it, W Aye Yi Yi ) in Boston this morning. It was a sports talk show on which two guys say provocative things designed to get other guys to call in and make fools of themselves. They're very good at it. Not the hosts - the guys who make fools of themselves. This morning the topic was, of course, A-Rod.
The talk show hosts wanted to hear ideas for tonight's game. What kind of chants can we come up with when A-Rod's at the plate?
Among the bright ideas was:
A-Rod!! A-Limony! A-Rod! A-Limony!
I know. Pretty stupid. But what do you expect? This wasn't NPR's Talk of the Nation and tonight's event in Boston ain't gonna be held at the Museum of Fine Arts.
Will I be watching tonight? You betcha. I cannot wait. Gotta go.
I'm working on what I'm gonna be chanting when A-Rod walks up to the plate.
I try not to, but it's hard. It's an addiction. I've tried to cut down, but I fail every damn time. I am, of course, talking about watching Cable News.
Just watched a story about National Spelling Bee champion Evan O'Dorney. He's 13. I didn't catch the whole segment ( I said I'm trying to cut down, remember? ) So I don't know what he spelled to win the titul.
That's a joke.
All through the segment, I'm thinking, God wouldn't it be great if beneath the kid's image on the screen appeared a caption in which a word was misspelled. Something like:
13 Year Old Wins National Speling Title.
That didn't happen. But in the very next segment - there wasn't even a commercial between the spelling bee story and this one - they showed Hillary Clinton making a speech today. In back of her was a banner on which the word " Tomorrow " was spelled " Tommorrow. "
The anchorwoman did point out the misspelling, but she didn't connect it in any way to the previous story. Didn't segue into it, by saying something like:
" And speaking of spelling... "
And didn't refer back to what Evan had just accomplished. I know, I know. It's my own fault. I shouldn't be watching this crap.
Just watched a story about National Spelling Bee champion Evan O'Dorney. He's 13. I didn't catch the whole segment ( I said I'm trying to cut down, remember? ) So I don't know what he spelled to win the titul.
That's a joke.
All through the segment, I'm thinking, God wouldn't it be great if beneath the kid's image on the screen appeared a caption in which a word was misspelled. Something like:
13 Year Old Wins National Speling Title.
That didn't happen. But in the very next segment - there wasn't even a commercial between the spelling bee story and this one - they showed Hillary Clinton making a speech today. In back of her was a banner on which the word " Tomorrow " was spelled " Tommorrow. "
The anchorwoman did point out the misspelling, but she didn't connect it in any way to the previous story. Didn't segue into it, by saying something like:
" And speaking of spelling... "
And didn't refer back to what Evan had just accomplished. I know, I know. It's my own fault. I shouldn't be watching this crap.
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