Sox, Cicada Killers, Celtics & Sandwiches

(Despite the title, this is definitely saner than yesterday's posting. No further explanation will be forthcoming concerning yesterday. Either you got it [unlikely] or you didn't, in which case congratulations on your mental health.)

(And, by the way, any ONE of the following four sections could have been expanded to fill the entire space here. Instead, I've given you all four in one day. That ought to be worth something.)

(I mean, besides a kick in the ass.)


Now, a little quiz. Which of the following best expresses your feelings concerning the local baseball team:

A) The Red Sox are in first place! Hurray!

B) The Red Sox are in first place, by only four games, whereas they were in first place by fourteen-and-a-half games earlier this year! Man the lifeboats! Women and children first! Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!

C) Baseball is sooooooooo boring! When does the NFL season start?

If you answered:

A) You have a wonderfully positive outlook on life and you are no doubt enjoying this baseball season to the utmost extent.

B) You have completely forgotten a year of your life. Go read your diary for 2004 and then answer the question again.

C) Die, pagan scum!

Here's the deal, kids. If someone had told you before the season that the Sox would lose Curt Schilling for the better part of two months, that neither Manny nor Big Papi would have hit 20 home runs, that Julio Lugo would bat below .200 for most of the first half of the season, and that J. D. Drew and Coco Crisp combined would be batting about .270 (and sitting out in favor of Wily Mo Pena and his sterling .227 average quite often), but that the team would still be in first place by four games come August 14th, you would have jumped all over it and said, "No, you don't need to wrap that; I'll eat it here, thanks."

Take a chill pill, Red Sox Nation. These are the good times.



The cicada killers are pretty much gone. They've all dug their nests, laid eggs, caught a cicada or two, and died. I haven't seen one flying around for a few days now. The sand mounds are rather conspicuous, but no wasps are to be seen.

My only unanswered question regarding these critters is this: Where do they go to die? The ground isn't littered with cicada killer corpses. Do they crawl into the sand mounds and die alongside the poor paralyzed cicadas? Do they look at the cicadas mournfully, as if to say, "Hey, I know I paralyzed you and you're awaiting a gruesome death come springtime, but I'm checking out now, so... no hard feelings?"

(If I'm the cicada, I say the insect equivalent of "Go to hell!")



You knew that sooner or later I'd have to weigh in with my opinion concerning the Celtics' recent trades. So, here's my opinion of the Celtics' recent trades:

They stink.

Kevin Garnett is a great ballplayer. Ray Allen is a fine one, too. The Celtics will make the playoffs - barring injuries, of course - and will probably win a first-round series. After that, I don't see much good happening. They get eliminated in the second round or maybe get lucky and go to the conference finals before being eliminated.

Meanwhile, they've given up their future - Big Al Jefferson.

This is not to belittle the absence of Gerald Green or Delonte West or anyone else involved in the trades, nor to minimize the loss of the draft choices. However, there's one huge reason why these trades suck, and that's the loss of Jefferson.

Jefferson is going to be a franchise player for the next 12 or 15 years. He was the Celtic's future. Now he is Minnesota's future. I can't believe that Ainge traded this guy. I don't believe there's a player in the league with a bigger upside to him, and I'm including Oden and Durant.

Look at it this way: Jefferson is just now at the age when he would have been graduating college. Instead, he has years of NBA experience in his pocket and he's already proven, during the second half of last season, that he can consistently be a 20-15 guy and a decent defensive presence. If Jefferson came out in the same class as Oden and Durant, he would have been the consensus #1.

However, instead of keeping this gem and assuring themselves of some future, the C's decided to go for the gold ring right now. In so doing, they allowed themselves to be robbed blind by Kevin McHale and the Timberwolves. Jefferson and a draft choice for Garnett? OK. I still don't like it, but we can discuss it reasonably. Throw in Green? Extremely iffy. Jefferson, plus Green, plus three more guys and two choices and maybe Danny's first-born grandchild? The Celtics got raped.

After three years - four at the most - of middling playoff success, the Celtics are going to be right back at the bottom of the pile and it might be another 20 years before they get a shot at a player equal to Jefferson.

(Maybe I'm being too pessimistic. Maybe the new "Big Three" - and what a sacrilege it is to Bird, McHale and Parrish to name this aggregation that - will find something great to back them up. Maybe Rajon Rondo fully blossoms into a tremendous point guard. Maybe Big Baby Davis becomes a force in the paint. Maybe Kendrick Perkins shows that he can be more than just a decent 2nd-string center. Maybe Leon Powe... Maybe Tony Allen... Maybe... Maybe hundred-dollar bills are going to come flying out of my butt the next time I fart and I'll be rich.)

Despite the opinion of the no-patience majority, this is one of the worst trades in basketball history. Talk to me in two or three years and see if I wasn't right.

(Meanwhile, I am now dreading the delivery of the Celtics vanity license plate which I so happily signed up for last year. It still benefits Childrens Hospital, so I won't renege on the deal, but if this trade works out the way I think it will, I'll have to check into the legalities of re-painting Lucky The Leprechaun to show him ripping out his own heart.)



Finally, this lovely turn of events.

The other night, I got up at around 3 AM to take a pee. After doing so, I decided that I'd like a little snack, so I went out to the kitchen and made a cheese sandwich.

(The point here isn't my piss-poor dietary habits, so no "A cheese sandwich at 3am? Good God, Jim!" comments, please. Thank you.)

Anyway, I put a couple of slices of cheese between two slices of pumpernickel, poured a glass of milk, and took these things back to the bedroom. While listening to some dopey sports reporter on the radio bemoaning the fact that the Red Sox were now only five games ahead of the Yankees (see first section above) I took a bite of the sandwich. Then I winced in pain.

Somehow, I had managed to loosen one of my front bottom teeth by biting into a damn cheese sandwich.

I can now wiggle this tooth back and forth - not that I want to - and since then I've had to be very careful when biting into anything else because I might just lose it completely and I really don't want (and can't afford) major dental work right at the moment.

Never, in my wildest imaginings, would I have foreseen myself suffering an injury at the hands of a cheese sandwich. I am now officially decrepit. If I see some big guy dressed all in black, carrying a sickle, and he's pointing his skeleton-like finger at me, I'm going to run as fast as I can. However, considering the state of my knees, he'll probably catch me rather easily.

If I can avoid some other catastophe - for instance, breaking my jaw on a pudding - maybe I'll see you tomorrow with more better stuff.