Poor Clay Hensley. He’ll be answering questions about this for years to come. I thought Greg Maddux was supposed to pitch tonight. If Bonds had hit his homer of Maddux, Maddux could have shaken it off and entered Cooperstown without feeling too badly. I mean, sure, giving up 755 would suck, but being the greatest control pitcher of the last 20 years would probably take some of the sting away.

I guess the guy who gives up 756 will have it worse, won’t he?

It must be horrible to live in someone’s shadow. I would imagine that Robert Olen Butler is feeling sort of the same way about Ted Turner right now. This kind of shit is enough to make you not want to live a literary life. Thank heavens no one cares about poets. It’s safe to be one.

I was at a baseball game with friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. He brought a date, a delightful girl he was excited about seeing. When I told her I was working on an MFA in poetry, she said, “I love poetry!”

“Who do you like to read?” I asked.

“Oh, Billy Collins is my favorite,” she said.

“He’s quite good,” I said.

She kind of furrowed her brow for a moment. There was a long pause. “I made out with him once,” she said.

“Smashing,” I said.

I really didn’t know how to follow up on that. I write poetry, too, but I wasn’t really planning to make out with this young woman to get her to read my stuff. I kind of wished she’d said she reads a lot of Mary Oliver.

Ladybug and I have watched movies in the evenings after I finish working on my essay, a first draft of which should be somewhat complete tomorrow. Good heavens. Tonight, we watched Hot Fuzz, which was pretty terrible. The preview looked good. The preview showed all the best parts.

But last night, we watched Venus, which was one of the best movies we’ve seen in a long time. I was so struck by it that I was ready to put it in my top 5– it was hilarious, pathetic, and touching all at the same time. I had read in this blog and that blog how Peter O’Toole was getting some Oscar buzz. Sure, people are thinking that he’ll win on the “body of work” principle… but why is no one talking about him winning solely on the strength of his performance in this terrific film? Peter O’Toole deserves two Oscars for this movie… one for himself, and one for all the ass he kicked.

Last night: Durham Bulls. Lots of heckling. The Ottawa Lynx probably do not like us very much. Always good to spend time with old friends, and perhaps a new friend or two. One of the girls we were with found out that I’m working on an MFA and was excited. “Are you a poetry fan?” I asked. “I love Billy Collins,” she said. “He’s quite good,” I said. “I made out with him once,” she said. “Is that what sparked your interest in poetry, or was that the end of it?” I asked. “The end,” she said.

Still reading the economics book, but I have also started Making It Happen: A Non-Technical Guide to Project Management. This is for the work “book club.” Within three pages, I wished I could retreat into some Elizabeth Bishop or something. I can just see how it’s trying so hard to be pleasure reading… and how it just fails.

If my job switches from Movable Type to WordPress, I’m going to switch as well, in all likelihood.

So, I have now set up my blog for NaPoWriMo. After thinking about it a great deal, I decided that I’d do it at another site, and I’m probably not going to share that site with people. Is there any need for you to see me in my underwear? No! And seeing the poems that I’ll write over the next month would probably be quite similar.

You can, however, see me at a wrestling match. Several, actually. Blink, and you’ll miss it… though you can see Bill Ferris, Travis Smith, Philip McFee, and Ben Moser at various moments, and you can hear Moser hollerin’ at the rasslers quite a bit. Long live the smart marks.

A book arrived in the mail today from Big Game Books, and it’s awesome. Peruse the list of titles, and let me know if you see one that would automatically appeal to me. Yep, that’s the one I bought. Yep, it’s great. I’ll be placing another order with Big Game pretty soon.

I don’t know whether to root for the Bears or the Colts. It pretty much comes down to Manning vs. Urlacher + Hester for me. Urlacher and Hester is two. Manning is one. Perhaps I know who I am rooting for.

We had trained to be astronauts. But we ended up here. This place: desert, it seems to mock us with its expanse. As though it too could go on forever, and if we could traverse its distance we might unlock some piece of ourselves. In flight school, we welcomed the challenges of nothing, of nothingness. Here, we are reminded daily of our insignificance. We might burn a drum of oil one night, in hopes that someone might swoop down from the heavens, having noticed us, and carry us to a precipice. We might, some other night, build the most magnificent of sand castles, and live in them until the next stiff winds. Or perhaps we will grow larger, we ourselves, and walk in one footstep from one edge of the desert to another– if the desert has edge or end at all. We’ll all need bigger uniforms.

Wrestling is hilarious.

We saw GOUGE at Kings last night.

We loved the wrestling.

The wrestlers loved us.

It’s that time of year– today is Opening Day in the major leagues, so you need to know who I think is going to be awesome and who I think is going to suck. You also need to know how I did last year, when I did a surprisingly good job of picking it.

My pick appears in blue if I got it right and red if I got it wrong. The number that follows is where my pick actually placed in the race.

AL East: Red Sox tied with Yankees
AL Central: White Sox, Twins (3)
AL West: Angels, A’s (2)
AL Wild Card: Yankees tied with Red Sox

NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Padres
NL Wild Card: Astros

World Series: White Sox over Astros, Cardinals over Yankees.

AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez
NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Cy Young: Bartolo Colon, Johan Santana (3)
NL Cy Young: Chris Carpenter, Roger Clemens (3)

AL HR champ: Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz (2)
NL HR champ: Andruw Jones, Albert Pujols (3)

AL batting champ: Michael Young Alex Rodriguez (2)
NL batting champ: Derrick Lee, Todd Helton (4)

AL Rookie: Huston Street, Scott Kazmir
NL Rookie: Ryan Howard

So, in 2006, it’s gonna look like this:

AL East: Yankees
AL Central: Indians
AL West: A’s
AL Wild Card: White Sox

NL East: Braves
NL Central: Cardinals
NL West: Dodgers
NL Wild Card: Mets

World Series: A’s over Cardinals

AL MVP: David Ortiz
NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Cy Young: Joe Blanton
NL Cy Young: Jake Peavy

AL HR champ: Manny Ramirez
NL HR champ: Albert Pujols

AL batting champ: David Ortiz
NL batting champ: Albert Pujols

AL Rookie: Ian Kinsler
NL Rookie: Ryan Zimmerman

Today is draft day for Matt Pack’s Fantasy Baseball League! I’ve agreed this year to become a whipping boy for this league, since I am now armed with widgets like the Major League Baseball standings widget and the Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball widget. I expect that I can finish no higher than 11th of 12, but I plan to be the league badass by polishing up some of my old CSBL skills and sending crazy-ass press releases about my team. Sadly, I cannot find any remnants of those old press releases, though I believe them to exist in some electronic format, somewhere. I do remember some of my favorites, such as:

• Vladimir Guerrero Makes Tasty Pie
• Manny Ramirez Concerned With Creation of Comfortable Workspaces
• Bruce Chen: “I Swear, I Am Not Asian”

I have thoughts on all kinds of subjects! Really! Here are some of my thoughts from the world of SPORTS!

Man, am I glad to see that Dook is out of the NCAAs. I hate Dook, I really do, but this year’s crop of Dookies has a special place in my black, black heart. JJ Redick annoys me some, but that has more to do with the flood of “JJ is Gay” “No, JJ dated MEEEE” posts in my blog. Shelden Williams also annoys me, but that’s because I hate seeing his “pumped up” face on TV– it’s hideous. But the part that stings me the most is that this is the first Duke team, mostly because of the aforemetioned players, that I had to have some respect for. Before, abject hatred was enough. This crew… well, they earned some respect, because Redick and Williams are damn good basketball players who seem to play the game the right way.

The Carolina Panthers have apparently tossed out the concept of team chemistry and signed Keyshawn Johnson. The man is a cancer. I guess since T.O. got all the ink this winter, they figured Keyshawn couldn’t be that bad. But he is. He’s that bad. (He’s also in decline.)

Alfonso Soriano is an idiot. He won’t go to left field because he thinks his value is higher as a second baseman. The Nationals threaten to disqualify him. He goes to left field. He has a horrible second day. Everyone makes a big deal about it.

How would it have gone down if he’d just quietly gone to left field? He has a horrible second day, no one cares.

Christ almighty, if you paid me what he’s making, I’d play both positions simultaneously.

This giant photo of Adam Morrison crying is really, really unsettling. I almost feel bad for the guy that it was published on a major website like ESPN. I don’t feel bad at all that a rinky-dink-ass website like mine is pointing people to it.

Roy Williams is awesome. This should be a bigger story than it is, and since it’s not, I am assuming that is because everyone knows Roy Williams is awesome.

Seriously, do you care that much if JJ is gay?

Yeah, I love me some Jesse Boulerice, but if it’s true that Doug Weight is coming to Carolina for Jesse and some picks, why then, goodbye Jesse! A guy like Weight coming to Carolina… I mean, it’s just unreal what kinds of things you can do when you’re winning.

I am guilty… so guilty… but since my recent spate of professionalism, they’ve hung unused in the closet. And that’s sad.

Wait. Ben Moser, you and I have countered this with jersey theory, which should one day be defined in one of our blogs.

As many of you know, I was for many years a season ticket holder for the Carolina Hurricanes. This year, with grad school and the DSI Comedy Theater open, it didn’t make so much sense to renew my season tickets.

We went to the disappointingly toothless Avalanche/Canucks game when Todd Bertuzzi first set foot on the ice in Colorado after the Steve Moore incident. The Denver fans managed to boo every time that Bertuzzi set skate on the ice or touched the puck, and there were weak one- and two-person chants of “coward” in the upper bowl. But otherwise, completely lame. Scott Stevens received much harsher treatment for far less each time he came to Carolina. (Proof that crowds are thinner, but the fans are superb in Carolina.)

Still, this experience has prompted me to pursue a career as a hockey player. So, to that end, I have enrolled myself at hockey academy. Can anyone ship me a guitar to Denver?

Am I the only person in America who has given the MLB steroids issue, and has come to the conclusion that he just doesn’t care? Because I don’t. I did– I wrote in March that I didn’t believe that steroid users should be eligible for the Hall of Fame. But now, I don’t care. Yes, it’s cheating, but so is using a corked bat or scuffing the ball. And if you get caught, you suffer the penalties. That should be it.

Just because cheating doesn’t keep you out of the Hall automatically, doesn’t mean that you have to get voted in. If, five years after your retirement, the baseball world hasn’t figured out that you are an undeserving wretch, you probably were good enough to go in. McGwire will be voted in. Hell, McGwire should not have even had to testify before Congress, because he wasn’t even active when the Congressional hearings took place.

My faith in the game isn’t diminished because a couple of guys hit a lot of home runs while injecting steroids any more than it would be if I found out that Greg Maddux was scuffing his baseballs. Taking steroids alone won’t make you a great hitter, or everyone in the sport would have taken them. (This guy took them… see where it got him?) So, sports writers, quit the bluster. This isn’t as big an issue as you want it to be. It’s horrible that those guys, who a lot of us view as heroes, have cheated. It’s terrible that role models engage in dangerous behavior with a nation watching. But in the end, there are still a lot of guys who play the game the right way. And maybe we’re lucky that the whole steroids thing happened, because if it weren’t for 1998, a lot of fans still might not be seeing them.

Ryan sent me a link to an eBay auction for the chance to play in a minor league baseball game. And seriously, if I were a rich man, I would pay well more than the $7,100 that the auction is currently fetching to suit up and play pro baseball for a day.

Though, once this one is successful, more teams will do it, and it won’t mean as much. And seriously, I would have to tell the manager that I didn’t really need the one at-bat. Start me in right field for a home game, let me play for one out, and then sit me down. Just an appearance. Let the team have a chance to win the ballgame. Heh.

Pretty sad that my fantasy day on a minor-league baseball team includes being benched for a real baseball player almost immediately. But would you really want to be the chump who paid to be on the team and hamstrung the manager for a full at-bat? Well, maybe if you were a little person.

Seriously, doesn’t Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons look like a video game character?

(AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Badass.

I was in there.

This link won’t be so cool in a couple of days, but check it now: http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?ei=ISO-8859-1&c=news_photos&p=chapel+hill

Ladybug and TFP celebratin’ with a "WHOOO!"

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosswhite/

Well, North Carolina is the national champion that I thought they would be from the get-go (never mind what I said after the Santa Clara game). Roy Williams got a well-earned championship, and thank heavens, he will never have to hear all that crap about “most wins without blah blah blah.”

We watched the game at Chez McFee, completing a wonderful run of games that began with the first Friday of the ACC tournament and was interrupted only by the weekend in Boone. Usual suspects were in attendance tonight– Michael, Belinda, Mary and her husband Joe, Tara, and the Whites. Joined by Mary and Joe’s son William, who just last week was causing Mary sleeplessness by being sick in Ireland.

Tara, Ladybug and I ventured to Franklin St. for a while, where we were party to fireworks, bonfires, lots of shirtless guys, tons of cell phones and digital cameras, and bodies so thick in places you could hardly move.

I was 18 the last time the Heels won it all, in the spring of ‘93 (I started at UNC that fall), and Jon Ingram and I, who had watched the game in his basement, came very close to heading out to Franklin back then. We were convinced they’d win it again while we were at Carolina.

And I stayed convinced during those years, picking UNC in Dan’s basketball pool every year. Carolina basketball, in the years that I was actually enrolled, came to mean so much more than the outcomes of the games. I truly looked forward to the weekend games when Ant, Mike and I (or Ant, Fuzz, and I) would have Lisa, Dan, Alia, Claire, and– despite the fact that he would sometimes root against UNC– Leo over to sit on the crappy couches at Carolina Apts. We had all kinds of people wander in for games: Ken, Charlie, Marshall, Kara, Sharon, Zach, Corey, the GFt, Caroline, even whassername who broke Mike’s heart. We had the wonderful traditions, like Lisa having to take a poop at halftime. (Lisa Bowers, we do still blame you for Carolina’s loss in the Final Four when you went up to Indianapolis to see the game. We did use the cut-out photo of your head, put it on your chair during the game and even took it into the bathroom at halftime. But there is no substituting for having your friends with you at the big game.)

We saw amazing wins, a bunch of them against Duke. They can show the Jeff Capel shot all they want but what not many people remember is that UNC won that game. We saw some heartbreaking losses, a bunch of them against Duke, and one against Harold Arcineaux and Alcorn St.

Watching Carolina win a national championship again tonight, and heading to Franklin St. with Ladybug and Tara tonight, I was thrilled to be out celebrating, but old enough to think that my best years of celebrating were spent on those couches at the old apartment. I was ecstatic about Sean May and Raymond Felton and Marvin Williams and Rashad McCants and Jawad Williams and Melvin Scott and David Noel, and yes, even you, Jackie Manuel. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish that you, Anthony King and Dan Kois and Alia Smith and Mike Garrigan and Fuzz Al-Shibli and Lisa Bowers, and yes, even you, Leo DiNapoli, were there on Franklin St. celebrating with me.

I will admit to being dead wrong in just about every prediction I made last night. I was pacing by the end of the game, afriad the Heels would make me a REAL internet embarassment by dropping the game to villanova after Raymond Felton fouled out.

So, NC State, I am sorry my prognosticating was so horribly, horribly wrong, and you’re headed home.

But at least Duke let it slip to Michigan State, and the quote of the day resulted:

Whew, kinda hung over today, after a hella good night of karaoke. We’re about to go to Chez McFee to watch both the State and Carolina games, and we’ll be cheering loudly for North Carolina basketball this evening.

My prediction: NC State squeaks by on an absolutely amazing game from Julius Hodge. Carolina thoroughly trounces Villanova after a tight first half. Marvin Williams grows wings and flies back to the heavens, as he is truly an angel.