I Understand There Was a Baseball Game on Last Night

Let me tell you, the office watercooler is a-buzz about the Boston Red Sox' holiday-making victory last night. I've got two stories to share for the occasion.

One is this actual guy at my office. He's this tough sounding New Yorker who looks like his face was carved out of asphalt. Normally we talk about funny stuff from The Daily Show or maybe the occasional "This Land" video clip that people in offices pass around instead of working. (Most office relationships don't go even that far, since most office conversations recognize the two-pronged embargo on dinner table conversation instituted by Emily Post: politics and religion are not discussed in polite company.) But the wider culture has granted office-going people everywhere another subject to discuss with the strangers with whom they spend all their time: a sports event. A momentous sports event! So this office guy, this poor schmuck, he gets a little too enthusiastic about the opportunity and reveals to me and a small band of office guys that he had to google the Curse of the Bambino. He didn't know what it was.

What? That's not sports trivia. That's like a gaping whole in your brain. That's like, I don't know, not knowing what a plum is—sure, you don't eat plums, you don't think about plums every day, you don't know if they're vegetable or fruit, but you're not going to get away with asking, "What's plums?" The pack of office guys acted immediately, of course, and not only is this poor fool eating lunch in the back kitchen, he's totally off the Anti-Bushie listserve.

My other Boston-related story comes courtesy of my friend Delbow. Delbow, a horrible GOP-shill who recently appeared in this site's comments posing as a Kerry-slammin' Nader supporter—you could call it Nader-baiting—loves hisself some New York Yankees. He lurves 'em. He even went so far as to say in comments on October 20, 2004, at 12:57 PM, that the New York Yankees got "A-Robbed" on that first-base-swipe reversal in Game 6, thus taking another principled stance against the reality-based community in all its manifest forms. So I was eager to see what he thought of last night's comeback, the biggest in sports history—and it turns out that Delbow had a victory pegged for Boston the whole time! He says that there wasn't anything that stunning about pulling that kind of comeback, and I must agree, so long as you're some office jerk sitting alone in the back kitchen with no funny jokes in your inbox who never turned the channel to ESPN once over the last 86 years and wouldn't know a plum from the head he's shoved up his ass.

Shills like my friend Delbow can't stand being wrong, so I make this prediction now: Watch for him to 1) admit to always being the world's greatest fan of the National League 'cause who needs these damned designated hitters anyway go Cards or alternatively 'Stros!, and 2) cut and paste from his I-was-right boilerplate this exact post on November 3 with "Kerry" replacing the BoSox and "Bush" standing in for the NYY 'cause Bush's star burned too brightly and Kerry pulled out the dirty tricks and men of history know when to hand over the reigns and go Jeb/McCain '08!

I think this picture 'bout sums it up: