Put The Devil Back In It

I want to wallow in pity.

I want to embrace despair.  

Dark clouds have formed over St. Petersburg and Rays manager Joe Maddon has bolted for sunnier skies--wherever they may be--but it's not in Tampa.

Joe's gone, kids, and with his departure comes the arrival of days that old school Rays fans like me are still all too familiar with even despite the team's recent successes.  Those of you outside of my little bubble might find it a little difficult to understand why a manager leaving a team would be so devastating and heartbreaking to the fans when just a few months ago the same franchise lost their ace and didn't react as bad.

David was a gut-punch.  It knocked us to our knees, doubled us over in pain, but gradually it subsided and a lot of it had to do with the blind trust we had in our genius leaders.  They know what they're doing.  They'll get us through this.  It was that mantra that helped me keep my lunch down every time I saw David in a Tiger's uniform.

Then we lost Andrew Friedman to the Los Angeles Dodgers.  To the Dodgers!  They literally have enough money to buy and sell the Tampa Bay Rays about a dozen times over and still have enough left over to do it another dozen times or so and they poached the head of our baseball operations.  I get it, trust me I really do.  Big Money talks and everybody else shuts the hell up.  Friedman is the next big thing and he deserves to get whatever they are willing to throw at him.  I'm not mad at anybody directly I'm just pissed off at the whole goddamn situation.  I'm not even sure at this point at whether or not it's irony or coincidence that one of the poorest people in Oliver Twist is named Dodger.  I'll just take solace in knowing that he was of the Dickensian era and he probably died of typhoid.  

Friedman leaving sucked but we still have his protege, Matt Silverman, and he's been with us for a decade so that cushioned the blow just a little bit.  Instead of getting into a car accident where you fly through the windshield and then your own car rolls over you we just got into a car accident where we flew through the windshield and landed harshly on cement.  Still alive!

Then today happened.  David was a gut-punch.  I can live with Friedman leaving.  Maddon going is the death knell.  We've just reached the end of the Mortal Kombat fight and those red, bloodied letters just appeared on screen, "FINISH HIM!"  There's a very iconic part in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy where Sam asks Frodo if he remembers certain parts about their home during that particular time of year.  Because of all their trials and tribulations, going through Hell and back, Frodo tells Sam that he can't even remember the taste of strawberries.  Strawberries!  The very name elicits a cognitive motor response where you can't even define the taste of what a strawberry is other than saying it tastes like a damn strawberry!  But I get it.  Right now I can't remember what a strawberry tastes like either.

Why so glum?  It's hard to imagine that success is on the horizon, say, without the only man we've ever had success with.  Before we even delve into the four playoff appearances, the World Series appearance, and the multiple 90 win seasons, when I talk about success with the Tampa Bay Rays I am referring to simply winning and they couldn't do it before Joe Maddon.  We didn't win.  Ever.  And sure, we've had some great seasons and some really memorable experiences but what's going to happen next?  The future of the Tampa Bay Rays is like an alternative ending to Pretty Woman.  Julia Roberts lives a life of poverty and prostitution, spends a glamorous pampered week with Richard Gere, and then goes back to poverty and prostitution.  Roll credits.

Whoever said, "It's better to have loved and lost than to ever have loved at all" sounds like a pretentious dick that's dating the hottest chick in school.  It's probably why I hate vacations.  I don't want to spend three days at a Sandals resort and then go back to this hellish facade writing about why I care a 60 year-old man is making a career change.  Damn this Twilight Zone, damn it all!

Whew.

Okay.  I'm cool.  I just had to get that out.  

It's just so disheartening to constantly have expectations of what you presume to be the "right way" and only have it dashed to pieces.  It's like if at the end of A New Hope Obi-Wan turns to Luke and says, "You know, I reeeeeaaally have this thing I gotta do so I'm going to peace out.  Good luck with Darth Vader!"

I need a tub of chocolate ice cream, a Blu-Ray copy of The Notebook, and a solid forty minute cry session and after that I'll either be fine or ruined completely.

Don't float on, graceful swans, all is lost.

Something Rotten This Way Comes

It's kinda nice being the owner of the Studly Pastures because that generally means that I don't have to ever touch unicorn shit and can just make my employees pick it up.  But even from my pedestal I know that shit is shit--even if it's rainbow colored--and if you have to pick it up for too long you tend to get a little jaded about your job.  I've had plenty of good-natured ranch hands file their papers over the years because these little horned devils just won't stop fertilizing the yard.

Something stinks.  Literally.

If I was Joe Philbin, the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and I wanted to keep my job I would have utilized my knowledge of the years I spent training Aaron Rodgers and used that to my advantage to defeat him last Sunday.  However, if I was the exact same guy and I wanted to get fired, I would have done exactly what he did last Sunday.

I've seen enough people try to get fired that I recognize it now almost instantly.

The man's had enough, and while I don't blame him, he's simultaneously tanking the one thing in the sports world that brings even the slightest of glimmers to my eye and it's driving me mad.

Why don't I blame Joe Philbin for trying to get fired from his job as head coach as the Miami Dolphins?  Because Joe Philbin is a nice guy, with a great football mindset, aaaaannnndddd he makes a great offensive coordinator because he can stand behind the scenes and call the shots and not have to be the face or voice of a franchise.  He's not a head coach and he got hired as a head coach and I blame him as much as I blame myself for not being a ladies' shoe salesman and I got hired once as a ladies' shoe salesman.  Live and learn.

Plus, I don't blame him because Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, is an idiot and wouldn't know couth if it was his own mother telling him how much he sucked as a person.  See what I did there?  I was very uncouth on purpose because I have couth, dammit!  I'm couthful.  Stephen Ross is uncouthful.  He tried to hire a coach while he still had one on payroll and after that failed he settled for his silver medal, Joe Philbin, and now that that's not panning out he's trying to poach the same guy...AGAIN!

I'm being pretty discreet and I'm not sure why...it's not like I'm the goddamned Associated Press (cough, cough).  I'm talking about Jim Harbaugh and how Stephen Ross has had a hard-on for his khaki-loving ass for a few years now.  This is, apparently, one of those 'first love' kinda loves and it just sort of lingers on even after several girlfriends...I mean head coaches.

If I was Joe Philbin and I wanted to keep my job and every time I suffered a loss and had to give a press conference I would be succinct, bold, and very adamant about what went wrong, how it happened, and how I planned to prepare to make sure that it never happened again.  However, if I was the exact same guy and I wanted to get fired, I would treat EVERY press conference as the same and always say the same thing: "I have to do a better job."

"I have to do a better job."  That's not exactly the life mantra of a leader.  "I have to do a better job" leads me down two paths: One is that he's said it enough times now and it means that he simply cannot do a better job and it's time to go OR he really knows that he has to do a better job and chooses not to...SO HE CAN BE FIRED.  How much patience would you have that if somebody kept screwing up and his only explanation each and every time was "I have to do a better job"?  

At the end of the day it boils down to people with millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal and have absolutely no idea what to do with it.  Is there a book that exists titled How To Be Successful And Then To Stop Being Successful?  Joe Philbin should be hosting a fishing show on public access, Stephen Ross should be blasted into space, and the Miami Dolphins should have pulled a George Costanza and gone out on a high note back in 1974.  One undefeated season and back to back Super Bowl titles?  Yeah, take a bow, you're done.

The problem with not having anybody to pick up the shit is that it just keeps piling up higher and higher, eventually to the point where it suffocates you but you don't get the privilege of either Heaven or Hell, no you get purgatory.  The only problem with purgatory is that the whole goddamn thing recycles itself every three to four years and if you're skeptical you can go back to the beginning of this blog because I've been here longer than four years.

It's the Twilight Zone and the only thing worse than living in the Twilight Zone is knowing that you live in the Twilight Zone.