"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.

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.

San Diego: the MLB team I always forget exists.

In an effort not to make a flailing all-caps post about the Tar Heels' excellent College World Series advancing victory over South Carolina tonight, I share with you my favorite story about a major league ballpark, which was triggered in my mind by seeing a reference to Petco Park elsewhere on the internets:

Seattle relievers were dismayed to find out when they got here that the beautiful, still-new Petco Park does not have a bathroom in the visitors' bullpen, which is down the right-field line, on the opposite side of the field from the visitors' bench.

No one was more dismayed than lefty Matt Thornton, who had go to the bathroom during the game Friday night. To do so, he had to climb over a fence to reach a public restroom, where he had to stand in line.

"I met a guy named Stan, who invented a baseball cap with a handle so you can take it off fast to catch foul balls," Thornton said. "He said he tested it at a batting cage on pitches at 75 mph and caught five before the seams started to give out."

Closer Eddie Guardado said that the visitors' bullpen in San Francisco doesn't have a bathroom, either.

"It's not that bad there; the dugout is closer and you can run back," Guardado said. "Maybe it's just they didn't think of it, or maybe they're trying to be cute. It could be tough to pitch well if you gotta go, you know?"

From The Seattle Times. Stan! I'm sorry, two years later, that story still cracks me up. He had to wait in line! In full uniform and spikes! Ahahahahahaha.

In conclusion, I leave you with the text message I received from shep. upon her viewing of the Tar Heels' celebration: THAT IS A BIG PILE OF DUDES I LOVE

And it was, dear readers, it really was. It was a very large pile of dudes that we here at Coming Up Carolina love, and I can only hope that no one bit Andrew Carignan while he was on the bottom of the pile. He's got to go to Oakland in a couple of weeks and learn how to be a hippie from Danny Haren, after all.

And the Heels have to go to Omaha and give shep. a College World Series title for her birthday, so I feel teeth should best be left out of it. The victories can continue.

(ETA: I just watched the large pile of dudes again -- thank God for TiVo -- and, hilariously, Tar Heels outfielder Kyle Shelton, who usually spends games sitting in the bullpen by himself to shag foul balls, completely overshot the large pile of dudes and went flying over the far side of the pile. Kyle Shelton, I love you, and I feel sad for you when you have to sit by yourself in the bullpen. In case you ever Google yourself to know if people love you.)

And, oh yeah, the Heels are ACC Champions, bitches.

I woke up this morning in my childhood bedroom with an inexplicable hangover and the feeling that shep. and I had done something truly ridiculous yesterday, which was odd, since the sum-total of my drinking on Sunday amounted to a single beer at the O's/A's game and I always adhere to the Rule For Drinking Beer During Hot Weather At Baseball Games (half a bottle of water for every beer, which is only problematic when you miss ninth inning rallies because you're in line for the women's bathroom), and also since, honestly, when do shep. and I ever do ridiculous things, especially when we aren't even in the same state? NEVER. Well, hardly ever.

Once I downed two cups of coffee and shoved the cat in his carrier to start the six hour trip home to the NC from the parentals' place in Baltimore, I remembered: oh, yeah, yesterday shep. bought us All-Session passes to the NCAA Chapel Hill Regional.

So that's what we're doing for at least a good chunk of this coming weekend: watching Carolina play WCU, ECU and Jacksonville for the right to go to the Super Regional. If you're going to be at the Bosh for any of the games, we'll be the people sitting down by the opposing team's dugout hassling on-deck batters and assessing catchers' ... talents. shep. has big sunglasses. I will be wearing a spectacular hat, and will have a digital camera in one hand and a scorebook in the other. We promise to make lots of off-color jokes about the fact that WCU's mascot is the Catamount, and possibly embarrass ourselves horrifically, like always.

In other news, if Daniel Cabrera promises not to suck like a Hoover anymore (like he didn't yesterday), I shall make myself present at all of his starts. Luckily, I think that the likelihood of Cabrera not sucking is low, so I can save on game tickets.

somehow, this is all Tyler Hansbrough's fault.

There was a longer post here about my life karma, currently in the green (good weather, full set of teeth, favourite Tar Heels returning), and how it's feeling perhaps affronted by the recent burst of serenity in my life. Being my life karma, it's decided to take reckless matters into its own hands and find new and improved ways to fuck me over this spring.


That post is gone now because it was stupid.


All I can say is, of course the Yankees' baby-faced Phil Hughes, twenty-year old pitching prospect extraordinaire, went down last night with a hamstring injury during his second major league start. Of course he did. After all, he's only pitched three AAA games. Such things are destined to happen! Oh, and he might miss a month! Well now! Shock of America!


During the NCAA playoffs dex. and I spent an unreasonable amount of time making deals between ourselves and fate, all in the name of basketball. We would cheer for teams we hated, or compliment coaches and players we'd rather see lying dead in the street, in an attempt to garner better karma for the Tar Heels. Ultimately, losing to Georgetown could not have been our fault; in March, I said more nice things about Billy Donavan than the total amount of time I talked to my family, and words cannot describe how difficult that was for me.


Would I trade one of the returning Tar Heels for a healthy starting rotation, or a bullpen that won't burn itself out over the next month? No, I wouldn't, and not just because dex. would kick my ass from here to Asheville. But if Bobby Frasor could throw ninety miles an hour and had a reasonable sense of control, I would strongly consider chloroforming his ass and driving him to New York myself, just to see how he could do. Seriously. I have a really spacious trunk.