And next, on the Deuce ...

You know, we relocated two months ago and drunkenly forgot to mention it here, BUT: we're over at What Would Tyler Hansbrough Do?, making fun of TJ Yates, live-blogging the ACC basketball season, and drinking a lot of Jack Daniels. Change your bookmarks and add us to your RSS reader, yo.

"Guess who's pitching tonight?"

Here in the NC -- aside from FOX's weekly national games -- we get baseball on three channels: ESPN, WGN, and TBS.

This means we watch a lot of Braves games and we hate on them (but it's baseball) and we watch a lot of Cubs games and I have rage blackouts at the Big Z on a regular basis (but it's baseball). But more than that, mostly we just watch a lot of Cubs games in general: they're on, Len & Bob are frequently drunk, and it's baseball when there's otherwise no baseball on the TV.

And more than even that, it means that Ted Lilly is stalking us. I've probably watched three or four dozen Cubs games this year, and at least half of those I've watched with shep., and at least half of those -- so we're talking a dozen games at least, here -- Ted Lilly has been pitching.

We've seen Jason Marquis throw a few times. We've mocked Sean Marshall's oddly squashed face a few times. We've seen the Big Z melt down more than I care to think about. And we've seen damn close to half of Ted Lilly's starts this season, and we can't figure out why.

Does WGN love Ted Lilly particularly? Is this a fluke of the broadcast schedule, a whim of WGN's carrying of Cubs games that we've just been subjected to?

No, it's clearly this: Ted Lilly wants shep. and me to love him. I mean, come on, people: he's on ESPN tonight, begging for our love. Ted Lilly wants us to stalk him, so he's stalking us instead.

Ted, I'm sorry. We're very busy with Matt Wieters and Andrew Carignan at the moment, and I know it's hard, but we don't love you the way you love us. If you don't get off our TV, we're going to get a restraining order.

Seriously, Ted. You're starting to creep us out.

"You know, that guy's still there."

You would never know it, if we were to talk about National League baseball today, but I had aspirations to be a Houston Astros fan once. True story: it was 2003 and one of my dearest friends was blogging about them from Houston and, you know, I thought they were sort of endearing? What did I know, I'd never followed a National League team before.

In retrospect, I blame it all on Roy Oswalt.

Most people don't know this, because they're less crazy than I am, but Roy Oswalt has one of the lowest active ERAs in baseball, second only to Pedro Martinez. Roy Oswalt has had multiple 20-win seasons. Roy Oswalt cannot swing a bat at a baseball to save his life but he'll hit you in the head with it, motherfucker, because Roy Oswalt takes shit from no man. Roy Oswalt is now, and always has been, six feet of smoking southern bad ass technology, even while recovering from re-occurring groin injuries that laid him out for over a season.

Roy Oswalt is sort of amazing, although I might be biased; he non-ironically drives a tractor, he throws like a machine, and he looks a lot like my brother. In my head, Roy Oswalt is like the Chuck Norris of baseball.

Roy Oswalt's ferocity and drive and 90 mile-per-hour fastball made me love him, absolutely and completely. They made me care about his team, made me want the tshirt and the cap and the kool-aid and the whole goddamn Minute Maid Park experience, until his team turned around and signed my favorite pitcher out from under me. The Astros and I, we've never really been able to move past that because I wasn't a National League fan -- I'm an American League fan. I am a Yankees fan, born and raised in the Empire State, and while Don Mattingly is the first athlete I remember, Andy Pettitte was the first Yankee I ever loved.

Fast forward four years.

These days, everybody knows Andy Pettitte is back in New York, sans a new championship ring, because Houston wouldn't give him the contract or the money he wanted, and New York was just desperate enough to offer him both. Roger Clemens rode Pettitte's coattails back to avoid separation anxiety, or something? The television wants me to believe it's because he doesn't have a Cingular phone? Obviously he just needed 27 million dollars to buy one!

Roy Oswalt, through all their shenanigans, has stayed in Houston. He's a rock like that. The immovable object in the face of the irresistible force that was the Clemens/Pettitte hypothetical baseball homosexual circus in the middle of Texas, and now it's blown over and his team has fallen apart and he kept on keeping on, trying to hold the pieces together.

I watched the Astros/Dodgers game tonight; it was hard for me. But I was drinking and Roy was pitching, an experimental method to achieving awesome good times, and it worked: he threw 109 pitches and held the Dodgers to one run for eight innings and the bullpen didn't blow it in the ninth, he earned his 13th win for the season. He was pretty awesome. It was all pretty awesome.

During the fifth inning (although I can't be entirely certain, I did not TiVo), the cameras did the long pan down the visitor's dugout while the ESPN announcers discussed the futility of Houston attempting another playoff run. At the far end of the dugout, at least six feet from any other member of his team, sat Roy Oswalt. He was slumped forward with his elbows on his knees, watching the Houston at-bats, and after every portent of doom proclaimed from the booth -- the injuries, the anemic bats, the exodus of starting pitchers, Brad Lidge: great headcase or greatest headcase -- the camera would re-focus on Roy's face and one of the guys would say, "that guy's still here. He's going out every fifth day, and he's doing all he can. They don't even deserve it, but he's giving them everything."

That guy's still there. Fuck, I love him. Maybe I should try to learn something from this! Stand by your boys, even after they kick you in the fruit stand! But seriously, not if they're the Houston Astros. Those dudes will screw you over every which way they can, from stealing your players to sending them back again, without signing any draft picks in between. You know, I thought the Yankees signing Andrew Brackman was bad. Roger Clemens and Andrew Brackman. Sheesh.

"I missed the proliferation of Glavines."

shep.: I hope Lou gets in a fight with someone.
dex.: *hopeful* Tom Glavine?

I really, really hate Tom Glavine. Like. A lot. I hate Tom Glavine more than I hate Rick Pitino, and I hope the Cubs stick it right up his ass tonight. YOU DO NOT DESERVE NICE THINGS OR 300TH VICTORIES, MR. 1994 STRIKE NL PLAYER'S REPRESENTATIVE.

His hair notwithstanding, he was a good dude.

shep. and I spent a lot of time making fun of Skip Prosser's hair, but the fact of the matter was, he was a class act, a great coach, and a genuinely good guy. When I was in middle school -- many, many years ago -- I spent a season paying five bucks a game to watch a very young Skip Prosser coach Loyola (MD), and he was a joy to watch then, too. Someone who genuinely cared about his players, the fans, and the game.

It causes me great sadness to report that Prosser died this afternoon after suffering a heart attack while jogging. shep. and I want to extend our condolences to Prosser's family, the members of the basketball program and athletic department of Wake Forest University, and the Wake faithful; college basketball lost one of the good ones today. RIP, Skip.

It is designed to break your heart.

I think I'm having a baseball renaissance.

Not that it ever really went away -- I loved baseball before I even loved Carolina basketball, and even with the basketball, there are days when the game is simply a vehicle for everything else I love, the living breathing weeping cheering Carolina nation, you know? But baseball, man, baseball I love for the game. The sound of the bat, the 6-4-3 double play, watching a really good pitcher break a curve a full foot and a half for a called third strike.

I'd kind of forgotten that. shep. suckered me back into it last summer with her fantasy league, and after 10 years -- from when they broke my heart with Davey Johnson, through the photos of Moose holding up the Yankees jersey that tapdanced on my soul, to Bedard and Guthrie and Loewen and Cabrera this year, smart good young pitchers who love the game -- I almost sort of got back together with the Orioles last year. We're having a trial reconciliation. If they don't trade Brian Roberts or Nick Markakis or Adam Loewen or Eric Bedard away, we might get back together for good.

The thing is, see, I feel like baseball's the only game where college and the pros are the same. It's the same game, 90 feet between bases and watch the hitters who pull to the left, and the NBA bears no resemblance to college basketball for me and I couldn't give less of a crap about football, so. Baseball it is.

I forgot about how much I loved baseball, though; I became a Cubs fan in Chicago because Wrigley was right there and my friends had become Cubs fans. Gone from Chicago, I am less and less invested as the team I loved four, five years ago is traded away, injured for good, just gone for whatever reason. The Cubs were like that guy you sleep with while you're taking a break from the love of your life -- it's pretty hot sex and it satisfies a craving, but it's not a forever thing. (Except with the Big Z. The Big Z and me, we're forever, even if I did dump him off my fantasy roster. He deserved it. He was sucking. I HAVE NO REGRETS, JOHN MAINE IS AWESOME.) Being a Cubs fan for me was never quite about being a baseball fan.

And in some ways, rooting for the Heels this year was not quite about being a baseball fan, not at the beginning -- and then, suddenly, under the lights in the Bosh and the sunlight in Omaha, it was. Wishing for Dustin Ackley to find his slumpbuster. Picking apart Robert Woodard's herky-jerky motion on the mound, skeptical no matter how good he is or how many times they say someone taught him that way on purpose. Trying to find the exact hole in FedEx's swing. Watching the outfield shift, watching Seth Williams go ass over teakettle and come up with the ball, spitting grass and hat six feet from where he landed.

Plus I currently own both the AL leaders in wins, two of the top three in AL strikeouts, the second leading AL era, the AL stolen bases leader, and the NL leader in batting average on my fantasy team, which helps. (The fact that I willing gave Jake Peavy to shep. burns me daily. DAILY, I TELL YOU. But I love her, and she loves Jake, and so. I think I was still drunk at 10 a.m. on a Saturday when I agreed to that. I remember saying, "But only if I can find someone awesome to replace him." CC Sabathia is awesome, but he is not nearly as hot as Peavy. And also he got shelled this afternoon and he's on notice.) Fantasy baseball might be sort of dumb, you can keep your opinions on that to yourself, but it makes me pay attention to the game in way that nothing else ever has; not my Orioles, not just the Cubs, the game.

And I walked over to the Bosh on Monday, linked my fingers in the gates that won't be there this time next year because they're tearing it down and building a park like this program deserves and just looked at the field all empty. And tonight, shep. and I, a little tipsy on beer and Jack Daniels and definitely flush with the cool, clear evening, walked out there again, hooked our fingers in the chain link fences, peered into the batting cages, tried to figure out if we climbed into the stadium, just to sit in the dugout and stand on the mound, could we climb out again. (The answer was no, we could not, and also we didn't want to be banned for life when campus security caught us.) For long moments in the Sunday night game during the regional at the beginning of June, nobody I cared about on the field and it wasn't about Carolina at all, it was just about wet grass and the halos on the lights and shep. counting balls and strikes on the backs of the rosters crammed in my scorebook while I stood in line for more bottled water.

I love Carolina basketball, but I just love baseball.

I can't stop thinking about baseball, like I go to sleep thinking of pickoff moves and doubles to right center and wake up thinking about how Woodard's hitch will play in a rotation with Jake Peavy and in between I think about Josh Horton's hands and Andrew Carignan's 94-mile-an-hour fastball and Eric Bedard's run support. I'm in the middle of a stretch where I feel like I'm not just having a bad week, I'm having a bad life, but then I think about the hit-and-run and somehow it's better. Baseball, man. It's designed to break your heart -- but sometimes it's the thing that saves you.

An Open Letter To The University of North Carolina Baseball Team

Dear Coaches Fox, Forbes, Holbrook and Howell; dear Cardiac Heels:

Thank you for giving us a team like you gave us, a team we could love completely and obsessively and probably a little unhealthily. Thank you for making us love college baseball so much that the only place we'll be in June next year is Omaha. Thank you for getting thrown out of games on the force of your convictions; thank you for trusting your players enough to leave them in the lineup.

Thank you for being bad ass new gods and studs who hit bombs. Thank you for the black uniforms. Thank you for ERAs under 2.00 and double plays and catches made against the wall, for sacrifice bunts and doubles off the warning track and home runs when we need them. Thank you for the at-bat music that made us laugh, thank you for nicknames both of your making and our own.

Thank you, Joshie, for putting yourself on notice, for loving the the game more than anyone else in the world, for always smiling. Thank you, D.Ack, for being the best freshman in the country, for breaking aluminum bats on grand slams. (shep. would also like to thank you for being hot like burning.) Thank you, FedEx, for being the heart of the team, the one we always believed in no matter what. Thank you for proposing at the CWS, Benji, even if dex. did want to marry you herself. Wooten, thank you for wanting to always be on the field, and for the sacrifice of the tooth -- you're the one we want watching our backs in a fight. Thank you, R.Wood, for coming back for your senior year, for career victories, for the face you make when Coach Fox takes you out of the game. Thank you, little Timmy and Kyle, for being part of a freshman class that scares other teams. Thank you, Reid Fronk, for being the kind of lead off hitter we needed, thank you, Chad Flack, for swinging the big bat at the most crucial moments. Thank you, Mike Cavasinni, for coming back, for continuing to play, and for making a backup catcher at Georgia Tech think that shep. loves him.

And thank you, Andrew, for being the kind of player -- committed to his teammates above anything else -- that we're proud to have playing for our university. Thank you for being the bad ass new god; thank you for coming back with your head high and your fastball in the 90s.

Thank you for proving, over and over again, that the game is never done until the 27th out in the ninth inning is recorded. Thank you for being a team we could love like we do love you.

Regardless of what happens tonight -- thanks for being awesome.

dex.

I can say: REIDFRONK is totally on notice.

I would live-blog tonight's UNC/Miss State College World Series game from my pineapple couch here in the CH, just to stick it up the NCAA's ass, except that a live-blog involving me and shep. would mostly involve a lot of commentary on who wears the high socks for Carolina, who should wear the high socks for Carolina, who shouldn't wear the high socks for Carolina, and also a lot of discussion of catchers', uh, assets.

So you're spared. Count your blessings. Go Heels.

Now I have to go make another drink. A strong one. A really strong one.

ETA: Carolina has now scored 26 runs in the 6th inning or later over their last four games; they're 3-1 in that time. I'm okay with this, because they keep winning, but come on, guys, can't you score some earlier just so my heart catches a break?