Well, the fun just never stops, does it? Yesterday, the Sun Times opened a response thread under Jay’s column*. And all of Jay’s fans .... well, there weren’t any. So, instead, the thread got filled with vitriol, abuse and so on. Much to no one’s surprise, the thread got ripped off line, but not before Mark K. from Arizona won a free Jay The Joke T-shirt. So, congratulations to him and I am sure that he will be sporting this prize on every occasion. As long as you keep it clean, it is acceptable to wear it at a bar mitzvah, all weddings and any reunions, including ones for schools you did not attend. But, check with family members before wearing it at funerals.
Yesterday Jay ripped on Cubs’ fans for being delusional morons. That won him friends all over the web. The Ted Lilly fan club immediately named him an enemy of their site. I am not sure if that accolade comes with a goody bag, but it’s nice to see they were paying attention.
Today, Jay rips on MLB for inconveniencing him and forcing Boston fans to watch a game without beer. He also claims that Europeans view baseball as a bastardized version of Cricket. Not true. Members of the British Commonwealth view baseball as a bastardized version of Rounders. The rest of Europe is essentially clueless as to what baseball is at any level.
Even so, baseball is making inroads there. I am the proud owner of a Dublin Black Sox jersey and my wife has their hat. There are also baseball teams in Israel. Quick memo to Jerry Reinsdorf, I see two really good promotional tie-ins for you here, and they would be insanely cheap to jump on.
Anyway, back on track, Jay spends the rest of his article bitching and moaning about how Opening Day has been ruined by the one game in Japan and goes on to point out that he is not a xenophobe. We are all thrilled that he got an intern to help him find that big word.
But, since Jay is Jay and if the story isn’t about Jay, it isn’t about anything, we get this bizarre closing couple of paragraphs.
I was on the Tokyo trip in 2000 when the Cubs opened against the Mets. I remember an exhibition in the suburbs ending in a rainstorm during evening rush hour, forcing Joe Girardi to organize a train ride into the city to avoid a four-hour bus ride. I remember Sammy Sosa taking a limo on his own, natch. I remember Mark Grace’s blond hair being fawned over by Japanese women. I remember a Cubs coach passing gas on the train. And I remember a Tribune beat writer, Teddy Greenstein, pleading with us to stay quiet about a snafu. Seems he was conferring with a Japanese writer on a daily basis, and after a lineup-card controversy involving opposing managers Don Baylor and Bobby Valentine, Greenstein told the writer that “Baylor had a heart attack.”
He didn’t mean it literally, of course, but the Japanese writer interpreted it that way. Next thing you knew, the writer was reporting that Baylor, indeed, had suffered a heart attack, with an accompanying headline to that effect in his local newspaper. The story had to be corrected, and my only thought on that March evening was:
What are we doing here?
Well, after reading that Teddy Greenstein got demoted to “beat writer” (sorry to hear about that, Teddy), that Jay was fixated on the functions of other men’s anuses even back then and that he somehow took two paragraphs to say absolutely nothing, I can only conclude with “What are you STILL doing here?”
Our favorite narcoleptic, TomD, has already started a thread so CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE FUN!