The Late Show: Not Worth Staying Up For

I’ve always loved west coast road trips and those late-night games that give a guy the chance to get home from work, maybe go to the gym for a couple hours, grab a bite to eat, and then sit down in front of the television to watch baseball as the clock drifts toward midnight.

They fit my life and my schedule perfectly. Hell, I’d be happy as a clam if the Twins could find a way to play part of their schedule someplace that would allow me to watch the games in the middle of the night. I once saw a game between two Swedish teams –or maybe it was the Swedish National team against the Norwegians– that took place above the Arctic Circle at midnight, played entirely without the aid of artificial light. Afterwards I went out and ate pizza with a bunch of Swedish baseball players. Early that morning, as I staggered back to the apartment where I was staying, I thought, ‘This is the life.’

It really was the life, now that I think about it. Midnight baseball on a soccer field carved out of the tundra. A game in which every player who came to the plate batted left.

That doesn’t, of course, have a damn thing to do with the nonsense I witnessed tonight, or over the last five days. I’m not so sure, though, that I like those late west coast games anymore.

And I don’t much like the Twins at the moment, either. I might well like them again tomorrow, or sometime next week, but right now they’re on my shit list.

Sorry, boys, but nine runs in five games ain’t gonna cut it. Playing from behind night after night and day after day ain’t gonna cut it either. Streaky, inconsistent, bullshit baseball just ain’t gonna cut it with me right now. I’ve got too many books I want to read and too many records I could be listening to while I shimmy around my apartment. And there’s that miniature log cabin I’m trying to build out of Slim Jims that has been sitting half finished on my dining room table for almost six weeks now.

What I’m saying, I guess, is this: I can’t deny that I have a lot of time on my hands and a non-existent social life, but, dammit, I can find other ways to waste that time. Plenty of other ways. I’m not a fair-weather fan, and I’ve too often proved that I’m capable of following a truly shitty team from wire-to-wire. This hot-and-cold stuff, though, this game of tease and torture, this I will not abide.

I’m just telling you, you bastards.

Consider yourself warned.

Brad Zellar is getting very weary.

Very, very weary.