I never thought my life would take this particular path. I never thought that I would be such a stereotypical suburban dad. I suspect no one ever thinks that way about themselves and as a much more cynical college student and post-graduate, I was CERTAIN that I would never be that guy.
Instead, there I was at the wheel of a black Saturn Vue toting my three-year old son to the local Barnes & Noble as we listened to Daft Punk’s “One More Time.” The idea was his, because he really likes to play with the elaborate Thomas the Tank Engine set that winds its way through an alcove in the expansive children’s section. My plan was to pick through one of Chuck Klosterman’s books on the advice of a friend who told me I’d really like his work[1]. My other goal was to keep my oldest son from smacking the hell out of anyone who tried to snatch away one of the trains he wasn’t playing with. Three-year old boys, as it is, have a very difficult time sharing anything even when they don’t need it, don’t want it, or don’t like it. In that sense they are a lot like just about everyone else.
Perhaps the most alarming part of this scene was the fact that Daft Punk was playing from an iPod attached to the Vue’s stereo system. The truth is I don’t know a damn thing about Daft Punk and I like to stay up to date on those types of things. Actually, I assumed that with the name Daft Punk, the group was likely a west-coast based alt-rock-skate-techno group that was developed through market research of the X-Games/PSP demographic.
Well, that’s almost correct, though I suppose I hastily judged the book by its title.
Instead, Daft Punk could be classified as an “electronic” band, or “techno” as it was (is?) called a decade or so ago when such bands (groups?) were associated with raves, club drugs and incessant strobe lights by the popular media. To me, it all sounds like the music designed for the ride through Spaceship Earth at Disney’s EPCOT about what the “future” is supposed to sound like. First the narrator explains how science WILL change how we live and think about damn near everything in that pitch-perfect voice as we roll past products that we will all purchase in the future not only because we love them and want them, but because it will be a necessity to drink Diet Coke with ginseng.
“In the future, man will keep domesticated animals in his home…” the voice says as we ride into the belly of Spaceship Earth, which, incidentally, isn’t a spaceship at all. It’s just a big silver sphere with dimples like some space age golf ball. Perhaps in the future spaceships will come in basic shapes?
Anyway, after the voice explains what the future will be like, the Daft Punk song comes blasting over the loudspeaker. People then dance in their seats because techno/electronic music is specifically made to make three-year olds and disaffected club kids to respond in the exact same manner. In that sense, the boy and I were having a blast as we drove to the Barnes & Noble. He especially took delight in naming the instruments as they were introduced into the mix.
“That’s the drums!” he yelled as he pretended to play.
“That’s a cymbal!” he said as he continued to drum.
Then a vocalist using a voice box-type thingy came in.
“Huh?”
Yeah, exactly.
I don’t know what the point of that was, and I still don’t know much about Daft Punk, either. I do know that Ted Leo has been known to cover “One More Time” from time to time in his wildly entertaining rock shows and since I follow Leo as closely as a lot of people follow the Phillies, I figured I owed it to someone (myself?) to learn more about Daft Punk. Either way, an actual point is that I felt like a quintessential suburban dad. Actually, I don’t think it could get much more suburban-er. A quasi SUV littered with kids’ toys and books and blasting Daft Punk while motoring to the Barnes & Noble in the mega box-store strip mall that also includes a Home Depot, an Old Country Buffet, a Blockbuster, a Circuit City, Sports Authority and Office Max, so the kid can play with the Thomas the Tank Engine and dad could dig through Klosterman books…
Where’s Norman freaking Rockwell?[2]
But aside from the expedition to a popular pop culture palladium where the task will be to look like being an attentive parent even though I'm reading about the cultural significance of Motley Crue and whose kid appears to be well-adjusted with Jimmy Carter’s altruistic sense of community – at least when it comes to letting other kids play with metal toy trains in a book store – the task was to get back home without violence or a classic tantrum that makes strangers think that I’m the masculine version of Joan Crawford. Hey, the Phillies were scheduled to play a day game in Atlanta and I felt compelled to watch.
Needless to say, this was a losing proposition at best. Fighting for what to watch on TV against a three-year old is a lose-lose proposition. If you “lose” and he gets to watch Little Einsteins or whatever, you lose. But if you take control and put on a baseball game, the chances are that you made the kid cry. Even though you won you still lost. In fact, I hear this is specifically the reason why the TV networks make sure that all of the World Series games start past bedtime on the east. There are a handful of dads like me who still watch baseball somewhat regularly and don’t want to have to battle against the programming wizards at Nick Jr. in order to do so. At my house a 7 p.m. start means I only miss the first inning or two, a 8 p.m. start means I can pretty much watch the entire game (until I fall asleep during the middle innings).
But a day game or 9 p.m. start means I’m screwed. Nine o’clock is just way too late to keep a guy with kids up at night, and a day game ensures that no one will watch.
Who sits inside and watches TV during the day anyway?
But with the Phillies still in the thick of things in the NL East and the National League’s wild-card chase, plus with me slated to return to work on Friday for the homestand opener against the Florida Marlins, I figured it would be fun to watch the game from Atlanta. Why not? During the previous two weeks of my paternity leave that has been labeled a “vacation”[3]by a handful of idiots, certain duties kept me from watching the Phillies. But that’s OK, too. After all, I always looked at sports viewership as my job more than anything and likened it to the time that I worked in one of my grandfather’s restaurants for two weeks one summer when I was 15. After getting a look “behind the curtain” I never wanted to eat there again because I knew what went on in the kitchen. Hell, some of it was even my fault.
Be that as it is, I made do with a few visits to some in-progress box scores on the web as well as a few in-game blogging by a few of the scribes covering the club. Truth be told, I’ve pretty much given up on traditional sportswriting in newspapers unless I’m directed there by a blog authored by a newspaper writer.
Is that the definition of a paradox or is that more like an abstract painting in which the artist uses white paint on a white canvas?
So when I saw that the Phillies were safely up by six runs as the game entered the seventh-inning stretch, I figured that all I missed was another offensive assault by the hometown team. According to the box score, the starting eight position players each had at least one hit by the fifth inning. This one, as they say, was oh-vah!
Man did “they” ever get this one wrong.
Instead the Phillies became the first team in 2007 to take a six-run lead into the eighth inning and lose. It’s interesting to note that there were 517 times that a team led by six runs heading into the eighth inning and every single time the team with the big lead won.
Perhaps the 518th time is the charm?
But simply blowing a six-run lead isn’t the really bad part. Oh sure, considering the playoff implications and the Phillies’ standing in the NL East, the loss was a solid jab to the solar plexus. Certainly every game should be viewed as a so-called “must win” at this point of the season, especially when the team is leading by six runs with just six more outs to go to close it out. Losing a game in such a situation is just really bad. Not just really bad, but really, really bleeping bad.
“I still can't believe what happened,” manager Charlie Manuel told the writers after the game in which several of them specifically pointed out that the skipper’s skin color had noticeably changed its hue. “Totally amazing.”
The most amazing part is that the Phillies blew the lead when the team’s two best relief pitchers were on the mound. To start the eighth inning Manuel turned to 19-year veteran Tom Gordon, who was an All-Star closer last season and had pitched in the team’s previous two games against the Braves.
After Gordon recorded just one out (and allowed four runs), Manuel brought in Brett Myers to get the final five outs, which is a task the novice closer has never been asked to perform. Forget that Myers was the Opening Day starter or that testosterone-charged closers of the past like Goose Gossage and Bruce Sutter used to get as many as nine outs to finish up a game from time to time a generation ago, five outs in such a situation is a tall order. It’s a monumental task even though Myers paints himself with such false machismo from his off-the-field demeanor, complete with his penchant for faux-tough music and coterie that makes him look like a star in the WWE instead of an athlete that just signed a three-year, $25.75 million deal last winter.
Apropos, Myers is an interesting character because he is completely uninteresting and without depth, which is something we will examine in fuller detail later.
The important part is that the anchors of the Phillies’ Posh Spice-thin bullpen couldn’t nail down a six-run lead with six outs to go in the final month of the season. Moreover, the reason why they couldn’t do so isn’t really deep, either. Actually, even though Myers was tabbed with the loss and Gordon’s ERA ballooned to 6.49, those two are hardly in the bull’s eye of whom to blame. After all, the Braves did collect four broken-bat hits in the seven-run assault, which is kind of like being beaten to death by pillows. No, in this instance we will place the blame for the loss squarely on one man’s shoulders.
Hello, Chris Roberson.
The game ended when Matt Diaz hit a bases-loaded double to right field. More accurately, the game ended when Roberson failed to catch the fly ball that Diaz hit to right field. Myers’ post-game quote really says it all:
“When [Diaz] hit it, I thought, ‘Game over,’” Myers said. “I started walking off the field. I guess it just got away from him, spinning away. It was a good tennis shot, I guess.”
Yeah, but in tennis most balls at least touch another racket no matter how crafty the shot. Diaz’s game-winner was more serve-and-volley than a blistering, line-hugging ace from Roger Federer. This ball actually hit Roberson’s glove, and not the tip of it where he would have had to make a snow-cone catch either. Replays showed that hit the thin part of leather where if overlaps the thumb. Had Roberson been a centimeter deeper than he was the ball would have landed flat in the pocket, the game would have ended with the Phillies as the victor in a meaningful game, and everyone would have smiled in disbelief reserved for instances when the brakes on the car finally lock to avoid rear-ending the person in front of you who is stopped at a red light.
“Did that almost happen?” you say with mock exasperation. “Did I almost cause an accident?”
In this case, Chris Roberson rear-ended the guy in front of him at the light.
“It was real tough to read the ball,” Roberson said in his defense. “I saw [an earlier hit ball] go up and it was real tough to see if it was coming out at me or staying in the infield.”
He said this after noting that he “just rushed out” onto to the field to start the eighth inning without his sunglasses. This tells me that Roberson doesn’t pay attention to details and wasn’t prepared to play. This point was proven when two seemingly routine flies blooped in at Roberson’s feet to further exasperate the team’s death by pillows. It also tells me that Roberson should probably never play in another game as a defensive replacement – which is what his role was in this instance – ever again.
Never, ever, ever again.
Here’s what I know about Chris Roberson:
- His dad, Will Roberson, played in the NBA for the Detroit Pistons, though I can’t find any record of this.
- He is from Oakland, Calif., which is where shortstop Jimmy Rollins was born and raised.
- Manager Charlie Manuel is not a big fan.
That last one is purely speculation, though it isn’t too far off.
[1] This is nice. I like when people suggest to me what books, movies and music to check out. Actually, let me rephrase that. I like it when smart people tell me what I should check out. Dumb people tell me what I should read or see all the time and it’s always a letdown. Often some of the stuff they suggest has to do with Jesus. Certainly I have nothing against Jesus, but when it comes to pop culture, His body of work is often trite and made with the intent to make me feel bad about myself and others.
[2] I’m not sure where I read it or saw it, but there was a funny spoof of Rockwell paintings in which one was entitled, “Turn Your Head and Cough.” I think it was from Letterman, but I’m not 100 percent certain.
[3] There is no such thing as a vacation with two kids. I don’t want to be one of those whiny you-don’t-know-what-it’s-like guys, but really, people with one kid or no kids have no idea what it’s like. It’s fun and rewarding and all of that other happy horsebleep, but it’s also really, really hard and time consuming. It’s much more difficult than learning algebra when you can barely divide. You also get kicked in the nuts a lot, which isn’t meant to be metaphorical. The truth is you literally get kicked in the nuts. A lot.