THE DEALERS RIDE THE SNAKE TO THE ANCIENT LAKE, ATTAIN NIRVANA, STILL LOSE 18-27

RECAP: 

"If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out."

---G. Brett

"Once I had a little game 
I liked to crawl back in my brain
I think you know the game I mean
I mean the game called 'go insane'"

---J. Morrison

                                                                       

   With playoff hopes dashed, we faithful Dealers rolled our old bones to Raimondi field with no other competitive incentive than to spoil the Oakland Beers' playoff aspirations, which honestly kinda felt like an afterthought compared to the meticulous plans we made to get properly & elegantly shithoused. Handcrafted ales in artisan bottles were emptied in the haze of marijuana smoke; corn whiskey was passed around as coolers overflowed with cheap beer; talk of psychedelics tickled our ears, and the game hadn't even started yet. There was even a keg hanging out by home plate that nobody even seemed to notice until it was time to play. By the end of the game, we were passing around a half-full bottle of Prosecco, because, dammit, we have class, and there was nothing left to drink. 

   Deciding to "pull a Joe Torre," John Segura proudly appointed Vincent Martini as acting manager for this game. In his first stroke of brilliance, Martini made himself the starter, a move I'd been insisting should've been made ever since seeing the kid pitch a shutout inning against the Beers a few games ago armed with nothing but moxie, chutzpah, and some get-up-and-go. How do you not put this guy on the mound?

Vinnie

   Starting Vinnie could've been a brilliant move had the rest of the Dealers decided to play a little defense. Strikes were thrown, balls were hit, errors were made, and a manageable 1-0 first inning gave way to an avalanche of scoring. It wasn't just The Beers, either. As the game progressed, just about every Dealer got a hit, I think. Tough to say, as this scorebook was clearly filled out by someone slowly changing into a werewolf. Numerals give way to tally marks, strange runes appear in lieu of the standard symbols, and upon further inspection, bite marks & urine stains are the only evidence that the later innings even existed. The metamorphosis was complete by the 7th inning, as indicated by the frantic, incomplete scrawls in that inning's "runs" column, and thenceforth any hope of sane scorekeeping was abandoned. 

Guess which inning the mushrooms came out.

   Anyway, like I said, there was lots of scoring. The Beers just scored more than we did, which is how winners are determined in sports except in baby sports like Candyland, competitive finger painting, and soccer. The McMicks (Crizz, Moss, and Toesy) had 7 singles, 5 RBIs, 2 doubles, and maybe one functioning liver cell between them. These wily, dirty, dirty Irishmen had all the RBIs according to the scorebook, which makes no sense, considering we scored 18. Furthermore, I'm not even sure Crizz, Moss, and Toesy are even Irish, but all white people look the same to me, so that's what we're going with.

Crizzle, Toesy, and Moss backstage at Dave Matthews Band

   To the best of my recollection, soon the game was out of control, mushrooms were hastily ingested, and things got weird. At some point Stonehouse came out to pitch. He did alright, but not great, I think. Who knows? All I remember is he hit me with the first pitch of my at-bat when I was peaking, and it's probably because I was grinning at him like a crazed asshole. I regret nothing. It's not every day you get to go head-to-head with an animated monster.

Stonehouse (as seen by me in the 7th inning)

In the 8th & 9th innings, the Beers put in their closer, that Eaton guy. Filthy sliders were served up with a side of smugness, fastballs zipped over the plate holding their upturned noses, and before long our season came to a close. It's not exactly how we planned to go out, but the simple truth is that we like to drink, we like to talk shit, and we like to play baseball. In that regard, this season was rife with victories of the good-time variety. You guys buying any of this?

Eaton, moments before giving up a knock to yours truly

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Vincent Martini; he pitched well, he got a knock, and he managed this team to one of the funnest losses of the season. Add the fact that he looked like the Raisin Bran "Two Scoops" Sun to me by the end of the game, and I'd vote for the guy for Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. Haha. Just kidding. That's a position you get not by acquiring the popular vote or the majority of the electoral college, but rather by assassinating your rivals, raping their wives, and stomping on the genitals of their children. I guess what I'm getting at is: if Vinnie deems it so, no child's genitals are safe from my size 13 boots.

Vinnie (shortly after the game ended)

PLAY OF THE GAME: Anybody remember any sweet defensive plays? I don't, but I do remember John Segura popping out to the Beers' catcher two at-bats in a row. Is there anything more frustrating? He didn't throw his bat and only cursed God for putting him in such a soft, frail body once! I was impressed with his restraint.

SHANE MACGOWAN DRIVE OF THE GAME: This one's tough. There were three doubles off of the bats of Crizz, Moss, and Jimmy. All were impressive, especially Crizzle's, which initially looked like it was going out. Then, there was Mickey's triple, which was fun if nothing else because of how rare triples are in this league, what with all the beer guts, arthritic knees, and bloodshot eyes. It's close, but this one goes to Hehewuti, Mickey's spirit animal, who decided to delay Mickey's trip until well after the game was over and he was home eating dinner. 

 Nice job, Hehewuti!

QUOTE OF THE GAME: 

"That grass sure is moving."

---Eric Rosen

It sure was, E. It sure was.

MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: I'm going with Jimmy, because he's another goddamned Irishman and could be part of the McMicks if only he had lighter hair. I'm guessing wildly here. I just see pointy noses and a lack of melanin when I look at most of you. Jimmy had a solid pitching performance, I assume, because he pitched a few innings. I dunno. I was staring at the different gradations and subtleties in the infield dirt during much of that time. I saw the nature of time & space, the impermanence of all things, and the majestic interconnectedness of all living things, leading me to recognize the futility in desire and conflict. He also had two singles and a double, which is a very Mossy thing to do. It's really nice that Jimmy finds the time to come out to the park, taking time out of his busy schedule scaring teenagers with blocks of cheese carved in the shape of his own head.

Jimmy (pictured here with a young terrified teenager)

RICHMOND CLEANERS FACILITATE OUR ENTRY INTO THE LONG NIGHT, 17-4

RECAP: There is a narcotic peacefulness to having your playoff hopes fully destroyed, similar to what I imagine the patients of Dignitas experience when the first drops of sodium pentobarbital hit their veins, or when a frantic parent is informed by Sylvia Browne that their missing child is dead. Closure. We're no longer sending out distress calls or desperately calculating our odds of survival; the plane has slammed into the mountain. We belong to eternity now. This blog is the black box.

Squaring off against the meaningless assemblage of unfamiliar faces that are the 2013 Richmond Cleaners, we knew that we'd be without our star pitcher, who was ill with food poisoning. (Ed. note to Flowers: cocaine is not food) Nevertheless, we reasonably expected to have a chance; the Cleaners are unpredictable. The entire team consists of guys who were looking for the bathroom at Boxing Room and mistakenly wandered into the kitchen while Boof was working. Some of them are monsters; most of them are shitty. In the first inning, John Segura neatly twirled himself out of a jam with a 3-2 curveball to strike out that nice guy with a goatee whose name I forget, and after Jimmy lead off our frame with a base hit, it was shaping up to be a real nice ballgame.

Like how this was shaping up to be a real nice marriage

Then everything kind of went to hell, as it so often does for us, with the Cleaners racking up runs and the Dealers failing to string together hits against a fairly unremarkable pitcher. (It was that guy of theirs. Not the monster guy with the Sharks hat or the monster guy with the beard or one of their crappy guys, but a sort of medium guy. Robby?) We had a few standout performers: Andrew Gomez (playing with a shattered wrist and no regard for his own health and well-being) raked three hard base hits, including a double. Jimmy did the same. Mickey's cousin Chris, an enormous Aryan ubermensch who was just visiting on a day trip from Krypton, had three singles and scored from first on Gomez's double in the bottom of the 3rd, an awe-inspiring display of speed that I hope to replicate when I get my first Rascal scooter. At 3rd base, Will Cornyn put on the most incredible defensive spectacle I've seen since Rafael Palmeiro's first congressional hearing. (More on Will later.) Despite all that, it's hard to dig your way out of an early ten-run hole, and by the sixth inning it was 17-4 Cleaners and we were pretty much done. There was, however, a completely awesome and hilarious coda to the game: Vinnie Martini pitched three scoreless innings, using his revolutionary technique of tossing balls over the plate with no windup and no neurotic impulse to impress anybody with his velocity. It was great. The little yinzer has the PCHL completely figured out.

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Will Cornyn, with NINE putouts at 3rd base. Cornyn was basically one third of an entire baseball team. He demonstrated his balletic range and coordination by cutting off several shots to the 5.5 hole, but my favorite play came on a Baltimore chop that bounced about twenty feet in the air. For what seemed like an eternity, Will serenely gazed up at it like an ornithologist on Valium, betraying no eagerness or anxiety whatsoever, and when it finally fell into his glove, he instantly whipped a frozen rope to first to nail the runner by a step. (ED. NOTE: It was actually an overthrow but this is how Sam chooses to remember it) He also went 2 for 5 with a double. After the game, I ran up to him and invited him back to my place to listen to Italian disco music and share a gelato. His face turned kind of green and he politely declined.

PLAY OF THE GAME: Tragically, I was peeing against a tree with my back to the field when it happened, but in the midst of his bravura pitching performance, Vinnie apparently snared a line drive comebacker. CATLIKE speed and reflexes, that boy. I also have to mention the fly ball that John initially misjudged in left field but then chased down and snagged like Torii fucking Hunter. Even when we're wrong, we're oh so right.

MATTHEW BRODERICK DRIVE OF THE GAME: For fearless, unbowed defiance, I'd like to recognize the back-to-back line drives Gomez and Jimmy hit off of Sharkhat Jockface in the bottom of the 8th. That shit was LOUD. I promptly stranded them with a strikeout. I don't know how they did it.

 Gomez

Jimmy

SHOUTOUTS: I'd like to thank Xavier Sotela for helping us out with his great, upbeat attitude, and for taking over catching duties when I got depressed and wandered off. And I'd like to thank our umpire, the guy who stayed and did his duty throughout this whole torturous, tedious game, my best friend in the world, the man I'd take a bullet for: Burt Reynolds.

(I think your mustache is sexy)

MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: Is Mark Moss dead or something?

STATS (CTRL+ TO ENLARGE)