Poor sonsofbitches

The young Hispanic clerk behind the counter at the Speedee-Mart on Hualapia Way knows from my daily visits to the store that the postseason pennant chase has been a nail-biter for me. It’s 4:30, a half-hour from game time in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Tampa Bay Rays and the Boston Sox have tied it up. Whoever wins tonight advances to the series, and let me just say that I am very unhappy that the Phillies are representing the NLC this year. So many great teams in the western division, both NL and AL: the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Padres, Rockies, Giants, Angels, Oakland A’s. But the west got shut out.

“What time is the game tonight? Are you ready?” the clerk asks as I slide my 12-pack of Busch across the counter. “Who do you think will win?”

“Let me put it to you this way,”I say. “I don’t want to see Tampa Bay in the series.”

“Why do you say that?” a voice laced with accusation says behind me. He is a tall guy, easily six-five, lanky and tanned, dressed in a baseball cap, blue T-shirt, and sweat pants. He looks like he just stepped off a softball diamond, clutching a bottle of Gatorade in one hand and a power bar in the other.

I mull over my answer while paying for my beer. “Because I’m a traditionalist. The Boston Red Sox … they’ve been playing at Fenway Park since 1912. The Rays? What the fuck’s with that? They’ve been around since ‘98, they play ball on artifical turf in an indoor stadium. That’s not baseball.”

I don’t await a response from Mr. Softball. I don’t care. I’m already horribly disappointed in the postseason and I don’t want to rumble in the parking lot of Speedee-Mart to defend my bitterness.

I walk home with my beer, answer a few e-mails, do a little more work on my next Pop Matters Column, and then pop over to Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg’s LA Times book blog, where I leave a snarky comment about her piss poor verbiage in her review — well, what seems to be oddly passing as a review — of the new Bukowski collection from City Lights (I am reviewing the same book for PM).

And then the horror commenced on TBS. Matt Garza outdueled John Lester in nine innings and it’s all over now. I can only hope that the Phillies — it sends shudders up my spine to think that I will be rooting for them — will roundly rub the Rays’ collective faces in the Astroturf.

I’m grabbing another beer and getting back to work. Fuck this shit.