Armchair Beer Vendor

I was happy with my lawn. It had always served my kids, my dog and my jarts with aplomb.

As far as I was concerned, one couldn’t ask for a better patch of sun-drenched greenery of which to be vaguely aware while watching TV inside. But as they’ve done for so many baseball fans over the years, the New York Yankees have come along to ruin my summer.



On Thursday morning, in a desperate attempt to avoid being productive and to justify my presence on the couch, I fired up the ol’ satellite dish in search of some sports viewing. I landed on the YES Network, whose pinstriped heros were in Minnesota to take on the Twins. It was a dream matchup for those who dream about Yankees/Twins games. I was hooked.

But no sooner had I remained seated than a commercial came on for Stadium Associates Authentic New York Yankees Grass Seed. You read me right, folks. You can now seed your lawn with the Kentucky bluegrass mixture they use in the House That Albaladejo Built.



I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. I’d read that a Yankees fan had planted some Bombers’ seed in Fenway Park. It happened back in May at a Phish concert. Grass gets smuggled in to such events all the time, but it’s not usually the legal kind. Anyway, this Johnny Big Appleseed had the idea that such an act would help tilt the race in the A.L. East back in the Yankees’ direction. I’d ask what the guy was smoking, but again, it was a Phish concert.



I’m not sure how I’d imagined that this guy had scored a bag of such exclusive grass kernel. It had never occurred to me, though, that Yankee turf could be mine as well. And yours, my friend. And yours.

Now, be forewarned. They don’t just give away bags of this special seed. Whereas a three-pound sack of ordinary Kentucky bluegrass seed can be had for a price of roughly $10, this authentic Yankee stuff’ll run you a bit more than that. The going rate for a three-ounce bag seems to be around $15. So if my math is correct -- never a given, mind you -- three pounds of the stuff would come to over $250.



But tough economic times such as these practically demand overpriced, novelty lawn-care products. So, dig into those savings. College fund, shmollege fund. 401K, shmour01K. Gold bricks in the safe behind that bookshelf in your home library, shmold bricks in the safe behind that book ... well, okay, you get the idea. So get going. Yank up your yard.

That’s what I’m going to do. No, I won’t have an expert grounds crew attending to my lawn’s every need. And there will be no state-of-the-art, perfectly calibrated irrigation and sprinkler system to nurture that plot of earth into an MLB-caliber field. But I’ll be sure to clean up after my dog a few times a week. I’ll gladly stencil “No Pepper” on the side of my house. And I’ll make sure my kids never step on that sod again, swing set be damned.

My backyard doesn’t have the dimensions of a reasonable baseball stadium. But neither does Fenway, and people seem to like that place. And, despite the absence of an infield, a pitcher’s mound and a Monument Park, my space back there will have much in common with Yankee Stadium. There will be beer. There will be swearing. There will be no clutch hitting by A-Rod.

But for such pleasure, there must first be pain. Don’t let the appearance of the Twins’ Metrodome fool you -- a baseball venue doesn’t get snapped together overnight.



Cultivating a little piece of Yankee Stadium in my backyard will pretty much take over my life for the foreseeable future. So my next few months will be bereft of the typical summertime backyard fun. No swimming pool. No Slip ‘n’ Slide. No chimp in a funny hat and sunglasses drinking through a straw.





Yes, there will be sacrifices. And where three ounces of grass seed are concerned, $15 dollars ain’t chump change. But that's how it should be. I mean, what kind of chump would actually spend his change on authentic Yankee grass?

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ITEM: This isn't sports news in the traditional sense, but it must be chronicled. About an hour ago, my 8-year old son managed to get a Lego stuck up his nose. The foreign body was eventually expelled by forceful exhalation, and I'm happy to report that both boy and brick are recovering nicely.

It was a simpler time. A time when George W. Bush was President, American Idol ruled the airwaves, and if you had said that a half-eaten plate of spaghetti would one day pilot the first trans-Atlantic flight from Tulsa to Pittsburgh, people would have called you a lunatic.

So it was that environment in which the 2004 American League Championship Series took place. After falling behind three games to none to the hated New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox made history by taking the next four games and winning the series. They’d go on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals and take home their first world championship in many a moon. But for me, the moment that would change my life as a sports fan came on the night of Game 2. It was the way Yankee fans serenaded Pedro Martinez with “who’s your daddy?” taunts, and also the way he responded to them.



Until then, it hadn’t even occurred to me how hurtful reminders of your Daddy’s identity could be. That’s the kind of thing the books won’t tell you, but I’m happy to say that, thanks to baseball, my kids only know me as “That guy who seems to live here.” No child should have to grow up knowing who his father is.

But back to that fateful night. The Yankees won, 3-1, and Martinez took the loss. After the game, he spoke with reporters. He was, of course, asked how the fans' heckling had affected him. I’d like to tell you exactly what he said in response, but not as much as I’d like to blow off the research and just paraphrase his answer. So that’s what I’ll do.

The constant taunts, he said, made him feel good. Reporters chuckled, certain of his sarcasm. But, in fact, he was being sincere. He explained that the verbal beating he’d taken from a packed Yankee Stadium reminded him of just how far he’d come. Once a penniless kid sitting under a mango tree in the Dominican Republic, he was now important enough to stand on the mound in The House That Ruth Built and provoke hatred in tens of thousands of people he’d never even met.

I think we’ve all seen enough cliché-filled responses to obligatory post-game queries to know this was a far more revealing and poignant answer than anyone had the right to expect. And I think precious few of the New Yorkers who only hours earlier knew Pedro Martinez to be evil incarnate would have anticipated such an eloquent summation of the sense of wonder and appreciation that the perennial All-Star had for the position in which he now found himself. Many of those fans, upon hearing Pedro’s heartfelt reflections, began to regret ever razzing him at all.

Because they didn’t want him to feel good.

They hated the guy, remember? The name-calling, the obscene gestures, the accusations of a pinstriped daddy? They were supposed to upset the guy. But if getting on Pedro like that only made him feel good, what were they supposed to do? Cheer him on? Give him a key to the city? Make him play for the Mets? Common sense and history tell us that none of those things would break the man.

With that one statement, Pedro Martinez revealed the truth behind sports and hate. Yes, Pedro wore a Red Sox uniform in Yankee Stadium. But a whole team of players had done that very thing on the same night. And somehow, the likes of Alan Embree, Mark Bellhorn and Brian Daubach made it in and out of the stadium without attracting the invective that so readily came Pedro’s, Manny’s and Big Papi’s way.

Look, there are some really good reasons to hate a guy, like if he’s a genocidal dictator, a violent sociopath, or a delusional clown who favors what you know to be an inferior personal computer platform. Sorry excuses for human beings, all of them. But in The Big Apple, such bad apples would be welcomed more hospitably than Jonathan Papelbon and Dustin Pedroia. Because the tyrant, the criminal, and the nerd have never come between the Yanks and yet another world championship. Pedro got it right. If throwing a ball can make you Public Enemy #1, you must be able to do it pretty well.

Now, don’t go slapping me on the back, Red Sox fans. While you were spending the better part of a century hating the Yankees, a whole lot of Yankee fans found your boys too pathetic to feel much of anything about them. Sure, loudmouths from New England and loudmouths from Gotham have never mixed well, but the fisticuffs in the bleachers were less motivated by the guys who took the field than by the guys who sold the booze.

The Red Sox have recently won two World Series during a stretch in which the Yankees have won zero. But while Boston fans boast (and boast and boast) about their town’s sports superiority, their actions are continuous reminders that the Red Sox have also recently won two World Series during a stretch in which the Yankees have won 26.

You may want to rethink those Yankee Hater hats, guys. And hey, next time you gather in public to celebrate a Patriots championship? Leave the “Yankees Suck!” chants at home. You want to know why Yankee fans, nine years removed from their team’s last championship, are still so smug? Your hatred keeps every one of those 26 championships alive. As Pedro suggested, nothing can warm the heart of an athlete and his fans like unconditional hate.

Now, the fact that you’re reading this blog says two things about you:

1) You’re bitterly disappointed with the way you’ve spent the last couple of minutes.

2) You have a SportsFanLive account.

Thanks to the latter, you are now on record as hating at least one team. You’ve probably put down some players you can’t stand, too. Here’s what I suggest. Change your profile. Your animosity only fuels the flames, my friend. As Pedro said, these jocks thrive on your animosity. Thus, Kobe thanks you for your bile. Sean Avery is tickled pink that you’re thinking of him. T.O. wants you to hate you some him. Take ‘em all off your list. What they don’t know won’t help them.

Now, I hear what you’re saying. And while I do wish you’d stop calling me “jackass,” you’ve got a good point. You can’t just stop hating strangers. That’s not healthy, and I wouldn’t ask you to do that. In fact, I insist you fill out your card with all the hate your heart has to offer. But why give the gift of your loathing to an athlete worthy of it when there are so many who’ve never known the thrill of being despised?

That’s why I decided to hate the UMKC (Missouri-Kansas City, if my guess is right) Kangaroos. Can’t frickin’ stand ‘em. And I’m gonna pass this animosity on down to my kids, and grandkids, etc. A few generations and UMKC will have a proud tradition of being thought of as a bunch of a-holes. And who could possibly get behind a team of lowlifes like the women hoopsters at Quinnipiac? Go to hell, Bobcats, and while you’re there, say hello to the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Stony Brook Seawolves. And really, no need to thank me.

I do wish I could see the look of glee on the face of North Texas Lady Eagles’ basketball player Amanda Quattrochi when I say she’s a horrible human being, or the tears of joy Fairleigh Dickinson’s Michael Blackgrove might shed upon learning that I dream of the day he gets hit by a bus. And I hope Alcorn State football player Sedetric Chambliss realizes he owes me nothing for pronouncing him the worst thing in the history of things. It’s my pleasure, Sedetric. Just pay it forward.

No, I don’t know any of these people. I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of any of them before awarding each a spot on my 'Hated' list (at first I thought I’d recognized Chambliss’s name, but I was actually thinking of this kid with whom I went to grade school, Sedetric Rubenstein). But the skill and dedication required of these student athletes deserves -- nay, demands -- my intense dislike.

It would be easy to conclude that, with the redistribution of your animus, your good work is done. But slow down, Robin Hood. There’s the not-so-small matter of your ‘My Players’ list. At first glance, it would seem that the boost you provide your favorite athletes with your show of affection can’t possibly come back to bite you in the sit-upon.

But think about it. If you love, say, the Michigan Wolverines, your gripe with the teams of The Ohio State University is implicit. So, every “Go Blue” you shout injects an inadvertent shot in the arm of the Buckeyes. The more vociferous the Lakers fan, the bigger the fire lit under the Celtics. Any fan wearing a Sidney Crosby jersey might as well set Alex Ovechkin up on a breakaway. With the opposing goalie pulled.

That’s why I’ve turned a cold shoulder to the players and teams I’ve loved for years and found myself some new heroes. I’m now the Lipscomb Lady Bisons’ biggest fan. I can’t get enough of the New Mexico State Aggies. And I bleed whatever colors are worn by the South Dakota State Jackrabbits.

I could go on to sing the praises of my favorite players, like Francesca Henderson, Will Allday and Derrick “Number 33” Bails, but I don’t want their heads to swell. Nobody likes an arrogant jock, and should the egos of these ones become insufferably large, they would soon be placed on many ‘Hated’ lists. Which -- as we now know -- would only make them stronger.

As you may have guessed by now, I’m not a sportswriter. But I do love sports, so when the good folks at SportsFanLive suggested I write a blog here, it sounded like the perfect opportunity to try something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the guts.

And so I jumped at the chance to claim my DirecTV sports packages as a tax write-off.

This may be the first sportswriting I’ve ever done, but I’ve read plenty. I’ve seen how the opinions of a scribe can boil the blood of the sports fan who doesn’t share his views. I know that some of you hate me already.

I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel.