The title of this posting is usually reserved for what we tell ourselves while mustering-up the guts to ask out a girl who needs to carry a fake ID, but tonight it goes out to Jamie Moyer, and our favorite baseball player of all-time, Greg Maddux.
It was the summer of 1987--Magic Johnson had just completed his finest season and lead the Lakers over the Celtics (more on this later this week), Fraggle Rock was the shit, Oliver North didn't remember a thing, and our family had just moved onto a street full of old ladies and no other kids. But there was no need to feel sorry for us because we had two friends who spent almost every afternoon with us that summer. Their names were Steve Stone and Harry Carey.
This was back-in-the-day when WGN carried each Chicago Cubs game and since it was two seasons before the lights were installed, each of their home games was broadcast to the nation while the sun was still shining bright. We're pretty sure we are the only six-year-old kids, not named Raymond Babbitt, to have ever watched all nine innings of at least 81 baseball games (plus the Unocal 76 pre and post game shows) in the history of this fair nation. We'd wake up and watch the Iran Contra hearings with our mom, then hit rocks over the alley behind our house with our baseball bat until game time, then watch the Cubbies, then throw the baseball up against our front steps until our dad got home from grad school...repeat.
From memory (no help from the series of tubes) here is our attempt at the 87 Cubbies lineup:
1: CF Dave Martinez
2: 2B Ryne Sandberg-HOF and hell of a public speaker
3: 1B Leon Durham-looked like BA Barakas, gold chains and all
4: RF Andre Dawson-hit 49 hr's that season and won MVP, we had a poster
5: 3B Keith Moreland-calls games on the radio now for UT basball
6: LF No Clue
7: C Jodie Davis/Joe Girardi (platoon)
8: SS Shawon Dunston
9: RHP Greg Maddux, LHP Jamie Moyer, Closer Lee Smith
We were six! we hadn't started 1st grade yet! it was 1987! and Greg Maddux and Jamie Moyer are still in The Bigs!!! And not just pitching, there pitching well. Moyer is 6 and 3 and Mad Dog has an ERA under 4!!! After the unforgivable firing of Steve Stone from the Cubs TV booth, the steroids crap, and the horrendous way ESPN handled everything Bonds, we are through with baseball. What was once our favorite professional spectator sport is now dead to us. Dead to us, unless Moyer or Maddux is taking the hill. We make time to stop and watch these two masters of their craft while we still can. We truly, and honestly love these two guys, they are our personal fountain of youth, and it will be two very sad days when each decides to hang-em up for the final time.
1 comment:
You could give college baseball a try. Nothing as satisfying as watching Rice send UT home crying in the regionals.
Then again, those wood bats really suck.
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