.

BERKELEY 8 MISSION STEET 5: DEALERS HANG TOUGH WITH FIRST PLACE NEWS, FALTER DUE TO UNDIAGNOSED DIABETES

"I've known Gordon Popadiuk for a while now and the two

most important things about him: can't grow a beard

and cried during the Seinfeld finale."-David Blanco

RECAP: Sorry for the long absence, gentle readers. Consider this post your Chinese Democracy.

I woke up in a happy mood just a half hour before first pitch, knowing that I had only a five-minute commute from my house to Willard Park to deal with, in addition to the fact that I rarely bother to shower or brush my teeth. I live in Berkeley. Deep in News territory. I'm constantly running into Benny Rangell. One time he was coming out of a hardware store ominously holding a broom. Another time he was ominously driving a Volvo. I've drank Bud Light Strawberritas at Jeri's house.  I think I fucked David Blanco in the toilets at the White Horse once. Point is, I know these people. By some prior arrangement it was a turn-back-the-clock theme day, with the News wearing their old Hard Bargains shirts (well, like four of them were) and the Dealers wearing our old Egypt '84 jerseys, in a deliciously sarcastic homage to long-alienated founders Mike Harkin and Adam Stonehouse. Staff ace Jimmy McConnell took the bump against staff member Brian Huey, and after we nearly scored in the top of the first, I stupidly called for a fastball to the giant-haired robot called Delancey, who flipped it over the 120-foot fence in right for a two-run home run. That made it 2-0 Hard News. We clawed back to tie it at two, thanks to some clutch hitting by enormous sex bear Andrew Gomez, while Jimmy struck out many fools. The game zipped along into the seventh when, with the News up 4-2, we rallied to tie, the key hit being an enormous RBI double by aforementioned sex bear, followed by an RBI infield hit from Mark Moss that elicited some operatic whining from the News when Moss was called safe at first. In the bottom of the 7th, Brian Huey took appalling revenge on us with a two-run opposite-field gapper to right-center. (Side rant: who goes to third base for the final out of an inning on a comebacker to the mound? What is that?) In the top of the 8th, the handsome and Europeanly-named sock iconoclast Rafael Rangell came in for the six-out save, promptly loading the bases for the handsome and hillbilly-named Mexican Jesse Edwards to hit into an RBI double play. With the tying run at third, Mickey Thoms came up and smoked a pitch to center field, right at some guy, probably Delancey, who was completely and creepily ubiquitous that day when it came to defense. The bottom of the eighth saw some ugly defense, as Jimmy recorded about nine would-be outs but the News tacked on two runs, and we went into the ninth rather demoralized, despite John's soothing screams. Spoon worked a brilliant walk, I fouled out to fucking Delancey at first base despite the fact that my ball apparently hit the backstop which neither I or the umpire noticed, Gomez smashed a hard grounder to fucking Delancey for the second out, and then Moss lost a tough battle with Rangell to strike out and end the game. The News stoically packed up their gear and went home, while I fought off a panic attack and surreptitiously collected everyone's empty Tecates. For the money.

FORD RIGHT CHOICE: The 6-4-3 double play we turned on the News that they whined about

DAN UGGLA DRIVE OF THE GAME: Gomez's double to the deep, geometrically frustrating part of center field at Willard. We all thought he was going to be flipping dingers over the chain-link monster in left, but I guess that's Crizzle's deal. Yeah, that's right Andrew. It's called stirring the pot.

BRANDON HICKS PLAYER(S) OF THE GAME: Gotta split this one between Gomez, for bringing the lumber (and his solid, mistake-free first-basing) and Jimmy McConnell, for his second consecutive superb start against a good team. Dude is donating his arm and probably his mental health for these agonizing losses, so let's get him a win one of these days.

DOG OF THE GAME: Roux, babe magnet

MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: Mark Moss

GORDON POPADIUK OF THE GAME: 'Thanks for being so honest about not tagging Mickey. I bet your hair smells nice

QUOTE OF THE GAME:

"You wanna quit lookin' at me, fruity? I don't

play butt darts. I love the ladies."

WE'RE STILL FIGURING OUT STATS BUT

FUCK IT YOU KNOW YOURS AREN'T

THAT GREAT

BROWN REASON TO LIVE: DEALERS 12, CLEANERS 9

RECAP: Aren't we full of surprises? Like an abusive deadbeat boyfriend who takes you to The House of Prime Rib for Valentine's Day (Hello TREVOR you left your Alien Ant Farm CD in my DVD player again), the Dealers do just enough every once in a while to keep your loins twitching. Sunday's game was difficult to even locate, as the venue switched from Potrero Hill to Glen Park Playground to St. Mary's all while I was riding a transbay BART train full of drunk Bay to Breakers people dressed as bananas/Ron Burgundy/sexy sea captains. Everyone looked a little green around the gills when I got there (Spoon in particular, sitting quietly with that Dick Cheney countenance he gets whenever the absinthe was flowing the previous night), and the first inning was completely horrible. We went down in order to the ironically named pitcher "Smiley," then gave up a total of three runs with a series of embarrassing errors. The next two innings were also pretty bad, as Frowney continued to dominate and the Cleaners piled on some more unearned runs to make it 6-0. We rallied for five runs in the top of the fourth, loading the bases then bringing 'em in with a Rosen single, a Moss walk, a Segura FC, and a clutch two-run line drive from Jimmy McConnell. Abraham shut the Cleaners down in the bottom half, then we took the lead in the fifth with a three-run smash 'n' grab that included a deliciously unexpected Crizzle bunt (don't do drugs, kids).  Abe pitched another scoreless inning, then Jesse came on in relief and was absolutely nails, strikin' out fools and icin' bros and sippin' lemonade in the dugout in an old rocking chair next to his shotgun and his bloodhound (bloodhound name: Ryan Barko).  We padded our lead to 12-7 before things got hairy again (of course) in the bottom of the 9th. The Cleaners pushed across a run and had two runners when Spoon took a grounder at second and seemed to tag a dodging Steve Kerwin to end the game. "He's out" 

became "He was out of the basepath" became "Do you guys really want to win like this?" became "Okay, FINE" and we agreed to pitch to another batter. Boof promptly clocked a base hit, and as Jimmy took the relay from the outfield  and the runner who was on second rounded third, I prepared for a collision with that legendary neck-tattooed puncher of cops: Louie Rappoport. No wait, it was Cameron, and the throw came in hard but slightly up the first-base line, requiring me to lunge balletically across home plate and tag him on his chocolatey thigh. BOOM! Second win of the season (fifth win of the season if you count the ones we fucked up and lost). 

RYAN GARKO PLAYER OF THE GAME: Forgive me if I sound banal or calculated, but that was such a complete team effort that I feel this honor should be shared by all of us. Looking at the scorecard, there are so many multi-hit performances...YOU'RE ALL WINNERS. Except me, I just sort of drank your beers and ate your discarded sandwiches while going 1 for 6. They were delicious. Thank you all.

RYAN GARKO PLAY OF THE GAME: Remember that Martian tornado of red dust that kicked up in the third inning while the Cleaners were batting? How about Mark Moss's diving snag of that line drive to get us out of that nightmare? I'd also like to commend JPS for his outfielding, which included one of his classic acrobatic diving catches of a ball hit right at him, and that bomb in the ninth which he played perfectly. Also, there was a play at the plate. That was pretty tight.

RYAN GARKO DRIVE OF THE GAME: I'd say maybe it's the Molly twins, Crizzle and Moss, going against typecasting and bunting for base hits. I know we have a rep as a hard-swinging power club, but maybe small ball should be our new look?

RYAN GARKO SPIRIT AWARD: Welcome back, Andrew Gomez! You'll be cranking dingerz again in no time. Right now, you run like old people fuck: in a way that appeals to a small niche of the pornography market.

RYAN GARKO MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: Mark Moss

POSTGAME ALBUM OF JOY:

he's trying to hail a cab cuz he's so high he thinks

it's 7:45am (not pm) and he has to go to work

<3

NEXT GAME TUES. MAY 27th 6PM CROCKER AMAZON

VS. THE BERKELEY RUSE

LEFT MY PHONE AT TACO LOCO

A MULATTO AN ALBINO A MOSQUITO MY LIBIDO

SUnzEt NObLE$ DrOp $uPrEme MaTheMaTiX oN DeAlerZ 13-4

RECAP: lol I bet yall thought u'd be gettin sum ghey rap about how yall tried good from dat chickenhead dik-rider sam bull but this is lil C MURDER #44 Pain Crosby dats right I haxxored dis blog cuz dave gardiner who iz sort of like the D.O.C. of computer people tol me most ppl's passwords are the numbers "1234" or the name of their cat now I be takin over da airwaves like Pump Up The Volume cept ya know with blogs and the internet n shit. Last wenzday my moms said I could have the pu$$y wagon back if I made sure to stop rydin tha clutch and leaVin cum all over da backseat so I said deal and gardener and matoes and I rolled up to Cocker an hour early so we could do donuts in tha parking lot while sippin Crooked I *sound of a needle scratching a record*

Sorry folks, I don't know what happened there.

Anyway, this'll be a quick one because I'm tired of the monotonous self-flagellation that customarily follows a Dealer loss and it happened like a week ago, anyway. Sorry for the delay - I had a full weekend of umpiring, which made me want to self-harm, and today I was in mourning for H.R. Giger, who was going to design uniforms for my expansion team next year, the Berkeley Penis Skeletons. The first half of the game was rather cool - 3-3 into the fifth, Jimmy matching talents with Dave Gardner, who flummoxed us with his ancient Chinese martial arts style known as "Clever Sloth." We countered with the modern South Korean taekwondo spinoff "Flailing Monkey" and it made for a fast-paced game until, with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth, the Nobles' new beard guy (of whom Craig Matoes is fanatically jealous- I heard he plans to patronize Shane Crosby's fledgling murder-for-hire business) laid down a BUNT. It worked for them, and proved to be a bit of a turning point - "opened the floodgates," to coin a new aquatic engineering metaphor - our only major chance after that was a bases loaded situation when I hit what admittedly looked like a double play ball to short and Crizzle sort of plowed right into the shortstop, eliciting much laughter and many sighs of affection from the 4,000 single girls in the stands. The Nobles ended up winning 13-4 when the lights went out right as Craig Matoes released a pitch, which is an event I've been anticipating with unseemly voyeuristic arousal. Unfortunately, no one was hurt.

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Can we agree that, even though the Nobles managed to get him out, Mr. Eric "Spoon" Short has been a goddamn assassin at the plate lately? He waits on those breaking balls so patiently and serenely that one of these days I expect him to break the cycle of Samsara and leave this vale of tears as a beam of pure energy (same thing happened to Spencer back in '12. I miss him.)

DRIVE OF THE GAME: Crizzle had a double. That was p. sweet.

PLAY OF THE GAME: Mickey-Hamilton-Rosen double play hell yeah! I thought Thoms was gonna take it himself but I didn't reckon on Toesy's wicked fast transfer and rocket arm. Let's see more of that.

Also, Crizzle dove for and caught a shallow fly ball that was also p. sweet

STRAY OBSERVATIONS: Big thanks to Chris Thoms for coming out, hope you can make it to more games, you got big shoulders and you're nice...Anyone think Bill "Curious Yellow" Sandberg is having lots of ill sex in his tour of liberal-minded Scandinavia...Do the Nobles actually have a guy called "Reich" now because comparing people to Nazis is my passion in life...Defining romantic/disgusting image of 2014 is the constellation of glowing iPads and phones in the Nobles' dugout after the lights went out...Big thank you to Andrew Gomez for coaching third PAY ATTENTION TO HIM YOU UNGRATEFUL SHITS HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING...I get super sad when Lil C Murder doesn't get playing time but I realize he's probably busy jockin hoodrats on worldstarhiphop...Dave Gardner is a hobbit...Charlie Ansanelli cut the sleeves off his jersey verdict: baller


MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: Jesse Edwards

I'VE BEEN SLACKING ON IMAGES SO HERE'S ONE:

"rah rah politics i'd like to ask mr. mayor what he

plans to do about this overcast weather blarg i am a butt"

NEXT GAME SUNDAY @ CLEANERS PROBABLY

AT BIG REC IF I KNOW THEM

STATS TOMORROW

I WISH I COULD EAT YOUR CANCER

WHEN YOU TURN BLACK

MITCH BEATEN: DEALERS COME BACK AGAINST BEERS, ALLAY FEARS OF WINLESS YEAR, ENJOY JORDAN'S TEARS

RECAP: Saturday brought a showcase of genial futility to Potrero Hill Rec Center, as the addled 0-4 Oakland Beers met the rattled 0-4 Mission Street Dealers in a battle to see who would be saddled with the title of "2014 Daly City Brians." Our squad was somewhat anemic, as Mark, Crizzle and Toes were off getting drunk somewhere scenic, although I won't be too hard on those bros, lest this blog entry devolve into polemic. Jimmy McConnell, New Romantic crooner with talent to burn, took the mound against his former team and Jameson Kern, a punky guy who throws wobbly pitches that just sort of die. Throughout the first five it was a seesaw affair, the lead changing hands while lice frolicked in my hair, the Dealers scoring once and the Beers scoring twice while the lice laid eggs that looked like small grains of rice. The Beers took a lead of siete to seis, and I daydreamed of punching Stonehouse in the face, though my resentment did prove to be quite premature, when the Beers tacked on seven-it was hard to endure. 14 to 6 the Mission boys trailed, and it looked like the Dealers would once again fail, when our hitters decided to put up a fight, in a rousing display that made my pants tight. Spoon doubled, Mick singled, I got hit in the shoulder; John singled, Abe walked, we all got older. Jimmy got a hit, and Rob strode to the plate; a single soon followed for the man called "F8." Spoon got on again and I came up with 'em loaded: I lined out to center and my liver exploded. The inning was over but the Dealers had life; Jesse pitched well, did you know he's my wife? In the bottom of the 8th, we made another ruckus; their closer came in, ready to fuckus. Bases loaded, down three, Mitch Eaton and me; I respectfully filled my jockstrap with pee. I swung with great effort and sent the ball soaring; four feet down the line, because baseball is boring. The dribbler worked out, and after Mickey FC'd, Eric Rosen came up like Judas of Galilee. He went down 1-2 and then smashed one dead center: into Chad's glove the ball seemed to enter. But then it popped out, and the bases were cleared; big hits against Eaton are shocking and weird. Into the 9th, the drama still thick: runners on the corners, a batter with no dick. Kristina lined her first pitch to the gap; J.P. dove and caught it then took a quick nap. Charlie came up as Oakland's last hope; he fouled out to first and the Dealers were stoked. Victory at last, for the blue and the gold: mighty and brave, alcoholic and old.

JORG HAIDER DRIVE OF THE GAME: This blast was described in the verses above, and it could only be Rosen, from New York with love. Swings like DiMaggio, heart strong and true; what can I say, I love that big jew.

GREGOR BLANCO PLAY OF THE GAME: John P. Segura, plucky and spry; playing center field, don't ask me why. Melendez's liner made us all hold our breath; John hustled over, high on crystal meth. He dove and he caught it and he leapt to his feet; the runner on third beat a hasty retreat. I salute our captain with this purple ode: did you know he lost his virginity to Depeche Mode?

MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: For this award, the criteria's vague; it began as a joke and now it's a plague. Jesse and Mickey can share it this day: they hit and they fielded and Mark was away.

QUOTE OF THE GAME: that tortured noise Will Cornyn made when I showed him my belly; he acted disgusted but I think he's just jelly

SPOON: FIVE FREAKIN HITS just cum on my tits


ANTHEM OF THE GAME: 

STATS 

CLEANERS 9, DEALERS 7: DEALERS JUMP OUT TO EARLY LEAD, REMEMBER THAT THEY'RE THE DEALERS

"Your guys' kid is going to have a blog dedicated to Flogging Molly."

-Elias Perez, bizarrely insinuating a romance between

me and Cameron from the Cleaners

The legendary English actor Charles Laughton, star of early talkies such as The Private Life of Henry VIII, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Barretts of Wimpole Street, liked to eat shit.

"Bowers brought over a young man to Laughton’s house, and Laughton proceeded to carefully wash crisp lettuce leaves and tomatoes and place them on two slices of bread while the young man was told to strip completely and perch up on a counter top. He put the sandwich on a plate and grabbed a pot. He told the young man to follow him, and they were gone for 15 minutes. When they came back, Bowers could see that the lettuce and tomatoes had been smeared with a light brown substance. Bowers writes, “It looked like gravy or peanut butter or some sort of sandwich spread."

Unlike Laughton, the 0-3 Dealers took the field against the scat-brown Richmond Cleaners looking to break this habit. The consensus that's built up around the Cleaners in the past few years is that they're alcoholic Irish construction workers who are short on talent but periodically recruit ex-MLB prospects to pitch for them, possibly for money. To their credit, we haven't seen many of those guys this year, possibly because the Cleaners ran out of money. Taking the mound against Jesse was Steve Kerwin, an OG PCHLer and Good Guy who has never been known to tuck his t-shirt into his baseball pants. Jesse, who wears tight black jeans on the mound as some kind of encoded sexual signal to somebody (me) easily dispatched the Cleaners with three weak ground balls in the top of the first. In the bottom half we jumped on Kerwin for three runs, coming by way of a Spoon walk, a Chris "topher" Adams double, a single by your reliable wordsmith Sam Bull (for that self-description, Crizzle just artfully implied that i have a vagina), and then a fucking RBI TRIPLE by Jesse, which made me tired. Jesse dispatched the Cleaners in the second with another effortless inning, and then S.K. was replaced by Hank Seaman, a man whose name pretty much does my job of making fun of him. Jimmy led off with a single, John walked, Rob Spector flied out to center as he's been stubbornly doing since the dawn of time, Abe walked, Moss singled, and then Spoon, Mickey and I walked with the bases loaded for a total of four runs. Hank was yanked for Cleaners manager Shawn "Boof" Wyman, who struck out Jesse in a creepy portent of things to come.

A WORD ON THIS FUCKING GUY

There's been a lot of noise about jocks and ringers and PEDs since this league started, but this asshole somehow transformed himself from an unremarkable pitcher with poor control into Steve Carlton, and I feel justified in calling him out. Piss in the cup, Boof.

u still can't hit tho

After going up 7-0, we became relaxed and magnanimous, swinging at bad pitches so as to speed up the Cleaners' inevitable defeat and get them home in time for the tail end of the Warriors game. What can I say: we're not very bright. Seven runs turned out to be the limit for us, as Boof was lights out for the next six innings. The Cleaners scored four runs in the fifth thanks mostly to some heartbreaking defensive near-successes, then another three in the seventh to tie it up. I rarely delve into the details of the opposing teams' offensive success, because it always looks cheap and lucky to me, so all I'll say is this: I really hate that little scrunchy Rickey Henderson guy on the Cleaners who crowds the plate in the hope that he'll be hit by a baseball.

In the bottom of the eighth, Crizzle led off and quickly went down 0-2 with his patented "'Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman" technique of swinging really hard with his eyes closed, but then Boof plunked him. I came up and duplicated Crizzle's at-bat, wildly swinging and missing twice and then taking a breaking ball to the knee which I'll admit I did not try very hard to avoid. Jesse was next, and he roped a solid single to the right-center gap, only it was different than most singles in that the center fielder caught it on the fly and doubled Crizzle off second. (No finger-pointing here, I was also a mile off first base and could conceivably have been "tripled" off.)

In the top of the 9th, the Cleaners, well, they scored twice, in excruciating fashion, aided by some defensive confusion involving potential double plays that weren't and some sketchy calls. I really hate talking about this stuff. I still felt hopeful about a comeback until I realized the Cleaners have fucking Danny as their closer, a guy who actually wears the "washed-out MLB prospect" jacket WITHOUT hyperbole. We are, let's face it, on an insufficient plane of time and space and perception to hit a guy like Danny, even though John managed to get on base by catching a pitch with his leg. We lost. 

Way to clean up yer crap, "Cleaners" where are

the Chinese when you need em

The Cleaners brought this in case anyone needed

to terminate a pregnancy mid-game

(joke credit: H. Lando)

JESUS H. CHRIST PLAY OF THE CENTURY: Abraham "El Patriarca" Nunez. Based loaded, one out, one-run game, fly ball smashed to the right-center gap. He's not gonna get there. No fucking way he gets there. The ball is about to drop and he's still five miles away. Then he dives into the air, fully extended-like Superman, or my dick right now-and somehow bends the fabric of space, Warp Drive-style, and catches the ball. Best Dealer play I've ever seen. I wish somebody could have captured it for the ages. Oh wait, I totally fucking did.

Honorable mentions: Mickey's demented backhanded absorption of a screaming shorthopper hit deep in the hole at short, and Eric Rosen somehow spearing that line drive from Danny that was hit so hard I didn't even see it. 

HARLEY-DAVIDSON DRIVE OF THE GAME: jesse's triple it was good his hair is nice i'm over him tbh

PURPLE HEART OF THE GAME: This suppurating infected wound on my thigh, the result of a play at the plate and inadvertent spiking from some dirty Cleaner. If this thing gets amputated Louie Rappoport is really gonna have the last laugh

CRIZZLE PUFF RAGE OF THE GAME: When we picked off a Cleaner at second via the classic "center fielder creeps up quietly" move (we had this in Little League-it was code-named "Mizuno"-it never worked) but the guy was called safe. Crizzle has more passion than the rest of the team combined. Sometimes I fall asleep listening to a looped mp3 I made of Crizzle screaming

PLAYER OF THE GAME: I haven't been doing this because you're all such amazing snowflakes that it hurts me to rank you in any way. 

MARK MOSS OF THE GAME: Mark Moss

STATS

(please lmk if I fucked these up, I trust y'all)



MISSION STREET DEALERS: PROVIDING CUTE, INSPIRATIONAL WALKOFF WINS FOR OTHER TEAMS SINCE 2011. DCB 11, MSD 10 (10)

It's been a while since I blogged at ya'll, my productivity predictably diminished by depression, alcoholism and sexual dysfunction. I'm basically late-stage Eugene O'Neill if he didn't get haircuts and had a Nintendo Gamecube. So consider yourselves lucky that Saturday's game provided us with so much florid suffering that I couldn't NOT write about it. I didn't even write about the 29er game, and that one involved an actual, literal ambulance. 


After losing our first two games to various skateboarders and nerds, we went to Crocker Amazon (Crocker? Really? I heard the Brians tried  to get Rolph but decided it was "too classy") looking for our first  victory since the invention of fire. Our opponents were the Daly 
City Brians, a team whose most marked improvement since last year was in the field of "dressing less horribly." I got to the field shortly before the scheduled first pitch and was the only Dealer there, in contrast to the roughly 300 Brians playing catch and doing jumping jacks and piercing each others' ears. Eric, Mickey and Abraham trickled in, and the four of us decided we could take 'em. Abe would pitch, I would catch, Mickey would be a rover, and Eric would handle our money. 

The main reason that anti-Semitic joke was terrible is that

none of us have money, least of all Eric.

Eventually enough guys showed up that the prospect of playing baseball evolved from "farce" to "black comedy," and the game was on. Abraham, a vicious woodland creature named for the biblical figure who invented the sneer, took the bump and pitched damn well for a guy who was also named after our gayest president.

Abraham, shown here trying to sell a diseased

sex donkey to a pretty youth.

We got out to an early 2-1 lead, which is rare for us. Our vibe is usually more "failed comeback" than "scoring in the first inning." The Brians managed to score some runs, which I won't get into in detail because when I talk about the Brians I get so bored I have to slam my balls in a drawer just to feel something. Abraham and Jimmy pitched really well. The runs they gave up felt like bullshit. We started scoring for real around the fourth inning, erasing a five or six-run deficit with quality at-bats from the likes of Abraham, Mickey, Jesse, Spoon, me, a couple of elderly Chinese can collectors, pretty much everyone. Team effort. We traded blows evenly into the bottom of the ninth inning, when some guy presumably named Brian made it to third base with one out. Jimmy saved the game by masterfully inducing a pair of popouts, and we headed into extra innings, brimming with confidence from our history of losing every extra-inning game we've ever played.

Mark Moss led off the top of the tenth with a screamer down the third base line, scampering into second like a hungover bunny. (Do bunnies get fucked up? Fermented carrots?) Spoon advanced him to third with a perfectly placed grounder to the right side (I was the only one screaming praise at him for this, because I like the little things and am a thoroughly awkward person) and then Mickey smoked a clean base hit to center, which he didn't have to do (a fly ball or slow grounder would have worked) but was nice of him. We went into the bottom of the tenth looking to slam the door on those bluish-gray bags of carbon for our first win of the season, and after their first batter flied out to the sexy hairdo playing center field, things were looking good. But then some bad things happened. The Brians loaded the bases in their typical raggedy horseshit style, and the next batter hit a deep fly to center that got over Jesse's head. The winning run was scored by Elias Perez, a man whose speed is measured in geologic eras.

Please don't kick my ass if you're reading this EJ, despite

my size I am incredibly weak and a noted coward

Jesse ran off the field, jumped on his Harley and drove it straight off the Golden Gate Bridge, landing safely in a newly-installed suicide-prevention net because of course he'd fuck that up too.

Pete Kozma Play of the Game: I'm going to give this space to Mark Moss because he's always great and I don't want to acknowledge that the defensive play of the game was Kyle Smeallie's game-saving (for the Brians) catch of Eric Rosen's super-clutch shoulda-been base hit in the later innings. Kyle looks like Wolverine. I'd post a pic of Hugh Jackman but that just looks like a compliment

Drazen Petrovic Drive of the Game: Eric Rosen's super-clutch shoulda-been base hit in the seventh that got caught by fucking Wolverine

Honorable Mention: Spoon's mammoth blast over the right-fielders head in the I think seventh? Dude was on ABSINTHE at the time. He's like Pete Rose mixed with Arthur Rimbaud and left out in the Nevada desert for a few years. Also, of course, Moss and Mickey's hits in the tenth inning etc.

Roscoe Arbuckle Sad Fatty Moment of the Game: Me failing to take second base on an overthrow because i was too tired and distracted from having to run ninety feet. With Jesse's base hit coming afterwards, it could have won the game for us. Which brings us to the 

River Phoenix Sad Prettyboy Moment of the Game: Jesse getting picked off. 

Raoul Wallenberg Self-Endangering Act of Bravery of the Game: The great hobbled bear, Andrew Gomez, drawing a walk and playing an inning at first base against the advice of every medical professional in his employ (the quacks AND the real ones)  

Mark Moss of the Game: Mark Moss

Rob Spector Sighting: confirmed

Was This All Crizzle's Fault? yes, probably would have won if he was there

STATS COMING TOMORROW

SOMEBODY CHECK ON JESSE

I'M WORRIED