the red sox post

I was going to write this in May. Then I was going to write it at the end of July. Something got started about a month ago, but I never finished it. In fact, I don't think I got through two whole paragraphs. The words didn't come. I did post a little missive on tumblr, but it was a small piece, and focused only on two players.

The last time I wrote a season-ending missive was after the 2003 ALCS. I wrote it as a letter to the Boston Globe but never sent it. It was an angry and defensive rant about the team, raging against the naysayers and curse-mongerers. I bet I wasn't the only fan who penned such a letter. I'm glad I saved it, as the catharsis of 2004 felt all the sweeter for that saved file lurking date-stamped but never printed in my Documents folder. The tone was belligerent and assured, that the Red Sox would one day win the World Series and that anyone who doubted that could go fuck themselves. I emailed it to my folks and my mom suggested that it could use some editing. My dad loved it.

So sitting at the end of the 2010 regular season and pondering what has just passed is quite meditative in comparison. I'm not crying into a beer and swearing at Dan Shaughnessy (well, possibly the latter). Instead I'm shaking my head, sipping a beer and remembering some of my season highlights. Watching Tim Wakefield out-pitch Roy Halladay in Philadelphia certainly stands out, though it's gutting Wake didn't have the form he did last year. I have a witness who can confirm that I called Daniel Nava's first-swing grand slam (as did, apparently, Victor Martinez). Darnell McDonald's first appearance as a Red Sox resonates, beating the Rangers almost single-handedly and giving the first glimpse of a team turning the corner from a dreadful start to the season. I was at Opening Day when Dustin Pedroia led the comeback against CC and the Yankees with a dinger over the monster. The Dodgers game where he smacked a 100mph fastball into right for the walk-off winner played live through my flatmate's laptop onto the TV in the living room. We all knew he could do it. I was also at AT&T Park and saw Pedey foul off his foot, take the walk, hobble to first base and then back to the dugout, without any idea of the significance of it all. There was the series against the Tigers in May, where David Ortiz homered twice in one game against pitches that didn't seem hittable by anybody (I'm sure he drove one of them with his knuckles, it was that far inside). That was a late night. I remember my jaw hitting the floor the first time I witnessed a Beltre one-knee homer and the feverish excitement when we swept the Rays at Tropicana, a feat formerly commonplace and now so rare.

There was a lot to love. I liked watching Mike Cameron in the dugout, even though he was hurt, because he seemed like a cool guy to be on the team. Lester and Buchholz were a blast to watch, as were at least three of Dice-K's starts. Maybe four. The first three innings against the Yankees in May, where Beckett looked staggering just before he went crazy, crossed up 'Tek and then proceeded to hit the entire Yankees lineup with errant pitches. Victor Martinez's growth as a catcher and determined comeback from the DL (no rehab games) showed just how admirable a player he is. And Dustin Pedroia was the funniest second baseman on crutches I've ever seen.

That said, it wasn't all fun n' games. Watching most games on my laptop, enduring the five hour time difference, it could be incredibly frustrating. I stayed up until 3 in the morning watching Lester give up 9 runs and the Blue Jays trample us while the Jimmy Fund Telethon rolled on in the background. Day games were little consolation as the Sox seemed incapable of winning them. As for night games, to struggle through watching all the way to the bitter end only to watch the fragile bullpen blow a win was no fun. Sometimes I didn't stay up, but woke up early to check the scores and read about it all. Pete Abraham and Chad Finn provided some cracking reporting and commentary along the way. Sleep deprivation has become an accepted side-effect of the summer. If you catch me somewhere in Scotland on a June morning, I'll probably be yawning uncontrollably. But that's what being an ex-pat fan is all about. I probably caught more games this season than any since I left Boston, 21 years ago.

I don't regret it. As I mentioned above, there were some brilliant baseball moments, as fun and exciting as any full-on championship run. It was a fun team, and they played hard. All that lacks is the catharsis that comes from making the postseason. Rabid, longtime Red Sox fans have had a serious change to deal with of late: we've gone from perennial disappointment to the perennial expectation of success, even if it is the unromantic 95-wins-will-get-us-there philosophy. Gone is my outrage from 2003, and I'm pretty sure that in 2006 I was still so buzzed from 2004 that it didn't make a dent (I also didn't have MLB.tv). The rash of injuries, the under-performing bullpen (plus Lackey & Beckett) and all the impending free-agencies don't leave a bad taste in my mouth, they just leave me tired and a little curious. It was a long season for the devoted fan, and without the rush of the playoffs there's little point in spitting nails and grumbling.  And any season that starts and finishes with beating the Yankees can't be all bad, can it?

We'll see what happens. A new bullpen and staying healthy would help.

When does Spring Training start?

Update: 132 days until Pitchers and Catchers report.

sunday thoughts, musings and banter

Every time it looks to be properly Autumn the sun pops out, the wind dies down, the temperature climbs and the flies come back. So we're going to take a frisbee, a rugby ball and perhaps a cricket kit down to the beach and throw stuff at one another, hoping to catch it. In the brief time before this, my now caffeinated mind has been mulling upon some of the following:

• This blog is in catch-up mode. I had an amazing, fun-filled summer and there will be a lot of posts looking back on it. California, Islay and France all feature heavily. So there will be a stretch where this seems more like a travel retrospective than anything else.
• My cat is huge. And still sounds far too much like a seagull.
• My car is dead at the moment and may need quite a lot of work to resurrect it. I've been avoiding it up until now, but am beginning to feel claustrophobic without it. Considering how long I waited to get my license, that strikes me as funny.
• The more I realise I need a new job, the more clueless I become about what I'd like that job to be.
• St Andrews still lacks a wide enough range of lunch options. Those who follow me on Twitter know this to be an enormous bone of contention.
• I still can't bring myself to give up on the Red Sox this season. There is so little chance it's laughable, but whatever. Lost causes are no stranger to this team.
• Good Morning, Nantwich, Phill Jupitus's Radio 6 memoir, is a fun read.

Right. Off to the beach. 

misplaced monsoons, jet-lag and apple blossoms

The following are some snippets I wrote in early June 2010

The cat is launching himself throughout the flat, bouncing and arching his back, leaping up on the window sills and ambushing me from behind ill-concealing corners. From the edge of the curtain I see two striped paws stretched, claws extended, resting on my desk next to a stack of blank cds and a memory card reader. And then they're gone again, a stampede and a meow and the cat is elsewhere.

Spring turned into summer and I didn't realise. I turned 34 and didn't tell anyone. I flew to Boston again and saw my sister for her 40th. We had a blast and so did the rest. We walked through Harvard and beyond in the summer sun, we ate pizza and watched the Celtics/Lakers, we got along. One afternoon I insist on running. It's muggy, it's cloudy and by the end I'm dancing through a monsoon. Only in India have I seen rain like this. There are tornado warnings and the streets run like rivers. It's only a weekend and then it's gone.

Before I know it, I'm back in Scotland. Events tumble in some manner of domino order. For a brief moment, on a sunny day, I wander into the back garden. In the back garden lives the hammock, strung between two knobbly, knuckled apple trees. They stand in full blossom, their petals pink with hints of green and already they fall, three or four at a time, spinning on warm cushions of lazy air. I stretch out on the hammock, slowly, and deliberately rest one leg over the other. I tip my Sox hat over my eyes and fold my hands over my chest and in little time I snooze, letting the jet-lag take me.

When I wake up, I'm covered in blossoms and the sun is still shining.

old running shoes

I bought them towards the beginning of 2008. I was living in a flat on South Street in St Andrews and I'd not yet been to India. The Red Sox had just won the World Series and I was happily in my early thirties, rather than aimlessly in my mid-thirties. Their predecessors had served me well but were wearing out at every seam. I replaced the garish orange trim with a slightly more subdued blue trim. I bought another pair of Asics as I liked the last pair and they've always struck me as a 'serious' runner's shoe.

Not that I'm really that serious a runner. 

How many miles have they run? I don't know. For a while I considered calculating; working out my injuries and lazy periods, the recovery from my eye operation and hiding from bad weather and, of course, the cataclysmic hangovers. I couldn't be bothered. Why put a number on it when the answer's the same: they've seen a fair few. It's probably more than a thousand miles. They've run in Scotland, in England and in Ireland. They've run on both coasts of the United States: in California and Massachusetts. Sunrises, sunsets, and the glorious midday sun; howling gales, morning frosts and the odd hailstorm, their treads wasted smooth in all weather, at all times of day. 

The heels wore out first and I repaired them with packing tape. The jury-rigging lasted me about a year. 

I'd run the beaches and leave them on the landing outside the flat, coated in sand and/or mud. Some mornings they felt heavier than others. 

In the time I owned them I changed jobs twice, ran four half marathons, gained more weight than I lost and didn't write anywhere near enough. I've been on three different continents and helped make three vintages of wine. The Red Sox have not won a World Series since, and the Celtics won one World Championship, their 17th. I attended several weddings but not my own. Many friends had kids, some more than one. 

Can the lifespan of a pair of running shoes be a specific measurement of time? It's no more arbitrary than the calendar year, I suppose. A considerable chunk of life happened while these were my running shoes, and the breathless therapeutic rhythm of those daily exertions helped deal with the peaks and troughs of that life-chunk. 

I've not thrown them away. They're in my closet, unworn since I retired them. Outside the front door of my flat sits a shiny new pair of Asics. I've run in them three times and they've given me some brutal blisters. My feet have healed now though, and I'm ready to give them another shot. 

I don't know how long they'll last.

still here

In so many ways the title suits. I am still here. I have several blog drafts to finish and post. It's been far too long. I even reached a point where I thought of just wrapping up my blogs. In the end, I decided against it. Writing is proving difficult because I'm out of practice. My prose feels stilted; forced. This blog was meant to keep my writing limber, like stretching before a run. Its neglect has led to stiff prose and it may take awhile to sort out. In any case, if you're reading this, then thanks for sticking around. There's a lot more to come.

rainy sunday

The clouds didn't retreat this time and there's a steady rain falling without thunder. My legs are stiff and head a bit fuzzy from the ridiculous selection of beers last night and a probably-unneccesary nightcap of Balvenie Doublewood. There was Port too, as there usually is if I'm with my sister. The Sox won though, and the bar cheered when Youk hit a dinger. There was a loud, bellowing Jersey girl and two hipsters in bad hats slouching by the bar, trying to look badass. There was a faux hippy with dreads and a beard who still managed to look too concerned about his appearance. It was an amusing supporting cast. As we left the bar there were four or five yardies hanging out in the square laughing in the warm summer night.

The lazy ass side of my brain is using the rain and the stiffness as an excuse to avoid running. The arguments for and against batter about like a tennis rally, or battle-to-the-death on a squash court. It's Tom Hanks vs. John Candy in Splash type-stuff. I sip my coffee and ponder. The small blue ball bounces above the red line and back, smacking John Candy right between the eyes.

The coffee went down quick and now there's mutterings of breakfast. All this leads me further away from my run. My sis wants potato cakes with leftover veg. I'm still full from last night's burger. She's checking the movie listings and I still haven't decided whether or not to go for a run. The rain's falling hard now though, and my coffee cup seems to have refilled itself.

storms threatening

I'd forgotten the heat of a summer's day in Boston. The sun's strong and the air's thick. A little soupy, if you will. I'm not really built for humidity, to be honest. I'm not built for speed or distance for that matter, yet I still insist on running half-marathons. So there you go. Anyway, it's a hot, humid June day in Boston. Every hour or so the clouds build up; dark, full, towering clouds that block the sun but not the heat. They threaten and if it's quiet I can feel a growl of thunder that may only be in my head. Everything seems to go quieter, muffled. Shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops seem like overdressing and not for the first time I ponder wandering down to the Charles and just jumping in. I hear it's a lot cleaner than back in the day (apologies to The Standells). The beer tastes amazing and I've probably eaten more than I need to. Another look out the window and the clouds have released the sun again, retreating to the distance and looking for all the world like mountains.

I'm here for my sister's birthday. The party was last night and the beer flowed, the paper plates buckled under pulled pork, chicken and the trimmings and I bumped into folks I'd not seen in a quarter century. My three siblings and I were under the same roof for the first time in 5 years and it was good. I hold my breath at these things, conditioned to expect disaster, the one-too-many rant, the fractious calamity of exposition and tears. I guess I'm a touch of a pessimist. Disaster never came. There were hugs and laughs and dire attempts at compressing five years of life into the confines of a party conversation. The general idea is passed along but it's vague; abstract. If you're lucky, it gets close to impressionism. The room filled with happy party noises and an all-70's soundtrack. Jetlag combined with age (I'm a year older too, as of a week or so ago) led to good behaviour on my part. That said, it was still a slow start this morning.

Boston is a cocktail of eating, walking, drinking and remembering. I munch lobster rolls and oysters, slurping clam chowder, Harpoon IPA and Sam Adams. I trip along the uneven sidewalks in a daze, the oft-beaten streets of my younger days showing the passage of time or obscuring it, convincing me that nothing's changed. I sometimes wander past one of my old playgrounds, feeling that stabbing pang of lost youth. I breathe deep and cherish it.

silver mornings

The sunlight isn't golden in the mornings, it's silver. And so it coats the world beneath it: the sea, the clouds, all and sundry sparkling in the morning light. The water becomes quicksilver and the landscape slips behind a polarised filter.

It doesn't last long, or it hasn't of late at least. The wind picks up. I watch the waves ripple on their swells and see the walkers pull their collars up against the surprising chill. The cloud rolls in and the silver turns quietly to grey.

Summer's almost a month away and it still isn't warm enough for Spring, though people seem to be ploughing on regardless. Pimms is swilled and I see shorts and flip-flops with alarming regularity. Sunglasses are fused to every face and there are fewer pairs of tights beneath the skirts that walk by. The tables outside the pubs are full of smokers and drinkers laughing and shivering. There's often the whiff of BBQs or bonfires or both travelling along with the breeze.

I'm ready. I've got a closet full of shorts, two pairs of flip-flops. There's a nice selection of whites on the wine rack at home and some cider in the fridge. But most of my drinking of late has been in the warmth of the pub. I bumped into a chef I used to work with and an impromptu 'quick pint' turned into several. The banter flowed as did the beer and we lost track of whose round it was. We finished off the proceedings with a couple of quick shots and stumbled our separate ways. I heard later he got into trouble with his girlfriend for showing up late and tipsy. As an act of solidarity I gave myself a stern telling off for my behaviour. It was worth it. As I get older catching up reminds me more of where I am, rather than where I've been.

cat at the bottom of the bed

The cat's grooming himself at the bottom of the bed. He's fairly meticulous, from what I can tell. I guess most cats are. One of my Red Sox hats lays on the duvet next to him. I think I threw it off in the wee hours, upset while watching the Yankees knock us around. The room's quiet otherwise, but for the sound of the cat's tongue on his fur. There's the sea in the background, of course, but sometimes I forget that's there. The curtains are drawn, but they're not dark, and the cloudy light from outside gives the room a soft, pastel glow. The sun pops out occasionally and its beams pierce the gaps in the curtains, drawing blades along the corners of the desk, the floor and the bed. Through the gap in the curtain I can see whitecaps on the waves and I guess the wind is still up. Now the sea is louder than the cat. He's moved from his rump to his forepaws and looks scheming, licking his claws in contemplation.

I didn't sleep much last night. Around 10 to 5 I felt myself slipping and then my brain noticed and was so excited by the possibility of unconsciousness that I woke up again. I guess I got maybe 3 1/2 hours in the end. I woke up several times after sun up and then gave up. I read the end of my book, which left me somewhat deflated (White Tiger by Aravind Adiga) - superb writing but it tried too hard in the end. Or maybe not enough. The result is often the same. In any case, I really loved the book up until the last 50 or so pages. After that, I just liked it. I read over what I wrote in those wee hours and found it to be the predictable gibberish I spout at that time of night. I was half tempted to delete the post but decided that while it was predictable gibberish, it was my predictable gibberish. And so now I sit, propped up in a bed seemingly incapable of providing sleep, still in my pyjamas, typing more predictable gibberish and wondering how to avoid the day.

The cat's finished his grooming. It's nap time. He's sleeping on the part of the bed that, should the sun come out again, will bathe him in warm light. His face looks scrunched when he sleeps and his ear twitches every once in awhile. There's no snoring, but sometimes the occasional groan. I try to match the sound of the waves crashing to the rise and fall of his striped breaths but there's no correlation. Each to their own rhythm.

insomniac musings

There's no reason for me to be awake right now. The Sox game is over and we lost. I didn't sleep in today. Work was long and in its way exhausting. I had a big dinner: a curry. My last cup of coffee was lunchtime - well over twelve hours ago. I'm in the middle of a book, and it's good, but not the sort of page-turner that keeps me up. So I don't really understand it. My head keeps fumbling with mental knots as soon as I shut my eyes. Then my bed feels too warm but it's chilly lying on top of the duvet. And so I sit here and am not surprised that the cat isn't lying at the bottom of my bed anymore. Restless bedfellows are no fun and he knows it. He must be tired because usually when I wake up at this hour he's here in a flash for a quick cuddle and probably the chance of a snack (he never gets the snack, not at this hour).

To be fair, it's not the latest I've been up of late. There's been the odd 4am and 6am finish, mostly seen along the way with copious quantities of Madeira, beer, whisky and whatever. Tequila too, though that was an early night. The bonfires have raged into the wee hours of the morning and I've still got the odd sand-coated, smoke-reeking article of clothing needing seen to. I've flown to Boston and back and Dublin and back since my last post, which was far too long ago. I've seen the odd sunrise and missed the odd sunset. I've not written any words of consequence, but I've thought of quite a few.

The cat's still hiding. Once I find my peace he'll pop in and pad my nose and purr and try to get comfortable. Until then I'm left with just my ponderings.

Sometimes there's clarity at this time of the night. Sometimes there's blurriness and confusion.

And sometimes there's just enough of both to keep you awake too long.