Sunday 3/30/25
What's the worst start a player has ever had to a season in MLB? I don't know the answer, but I do know that Rafael Devers is 0 for 12 with 10 strikeouts through three games. He has a walk and an RBI, so someone's probably done worse, but there's only so much worse you can do. Has anyone ever been 0 for 12 with 12 strikeouts and no walks and no RBI through to start a season? Possible, but also possibly not. I don't know...maybe you should've tried to actually get ready in spring training rather than being off wherever? Seems like that could have been better.
Sox are 1-2, Walker Buehler was lit up on the mound. Casas 1 for 5, Story 0 for 4. Bregman did have two hits and a walk. But remember: I'm the only person who thinks this isn't going to be a good team, so it'll probably be fine. Meanwhile, the Yankees hit 9 home runs and scored 20 runs. They hit homers on the first three pitches of the game that they saw from former Yankee Nestor Cortes. That tells me that they knew something about him--that he tips his pitches or something.
Shohei Ohtani has become such a dominant offensive player that I wonder if he should pitch again. Would he be this good of a hitter if he'd pitched last year? He could have been. He could be when he starts pitching this year. But he seems to unlocked something he hadn't back when he was pitching.
And look at those Dodgers. Seems like fun, doesn't it? Two homers for Mookie Betts yesterday, including a walk-off. Stars. Stars make your franchise go round. Not this Filene's Basement bullshit with goops of analytics that the Red Sox do courtesy of people who have no clue how the game is played and either weren't aware of Alex Bregman's plummeting walk rate or don't understand what it means.
You watch these NCAA basketball games and you see all of these players on their third, fourth school. Everything in life gets worse as we go along now. Can no one care about where they're at? Their school? Their friends? Their community? An experience at a given place? No?
There's more movement in college basketball and football now than there is in pro basketball and football. That's not a good thing. Everything feels so fucking soulless. I'm watching this one woman yesterday and they're like, "This is the third team she's been to the Elite Eight with." What is that? What are you loyal to? What's a part of you? What are you truly a part of?
These games meant more in the past because they were more about teams than they were about individuals and their brands, as such. It was someone's fourth year at that school and that place meant something to them and so did their teammates, a bunch of whom they'd been close with for four years, through ups and downs. Now that player is on a different team every year?
Everything gets worse. Music, writing, film, relationships, communication, cities, neighborhoods, sports. I was watching some of the BU-Cornell hockey game yesterday, and they're stopping the play every ten minutes for a video review. Can we not be human? Can we not be humans who get things right and who get things wrong? You need to review whether that was an elbow or not? We're humans. Make the call and let's be human and play the game.
There is no flow to any of these games now. A game has a rhythm. Fucking Candyland has a rhythm, and so does a hockey game or a basketball and a baseball game.
We have essentially gotten rid of individuality in favor of homogeneity, with people now being too scared and too weak to be themselves. The longer that goes on--with the given person and the overall group--the less likely anyone is even capable, if they wanted to, of being themselves, because all of their angles, their distinct parts, the special pockets and hollows inside of them, have been rubbed away. Drones in a box of drones with their smooth shells.
I've said it before, but when you walk around Boston, you see that it's all homogenized. The North End is somewhat different, but there aren't quirky spots. It's all self-same.
Why don't we just replace the players with machines and apps? A player is supposed to perform thusly, according to a printout, so have the printouts battle each other. That's where it's headed. We are being replaced. Humanness is being replaced. You see it even in sports, where you'd think it couldn't happen. Things give us less and less reason to care about them. When we care less, we are less. Then we just stare at screens, post the same shit in the same idiotic language that everyone else posts, follow the shit, consume the shit, and we're too stupid to understand what we've become and why, which means we can't do jack shit about it. And we don't have the tools to do anything about it anyway even if we did know.
I have a hard time watching these games at all. More than a few minutes' worth, with it on in the background. I'd rather be invested in something better, truer, more substantive.
You see less of this in college hockey. A player will be at their school. When they leave--in men's hockey--it's because they're going to the NHL. The NCAA hockey tournaments are better than the basketball tournaments because they feature teams of people who've been together and are in something together and didn't just come together as part of a near-accidental result of looking after their own interests.
BU advanced, UMass was eliminated. BU makes a lot of Frozen Fours. They could win this, and that would both be a surprise and not a surprise, I guess. It's kind of weird. BC and Denver play tonight. Sunday night feels like an odd time to me for a game like this.
The Celtics have been playing some nice ball and taking care of business. That's how you want to see them ramp up for the playoffs. Cleveland has been struggling and you have to like where the Celtics seem to be at. They didn't peak too early, and they've been methodically good, which is a very good kind of good, if you follow me.
Bruins lost yet again. I don't know why I'm noting that, to be honest. Get used to it, Bruins fans, is what I'd advise. I see some long years ahead of this team. No clue who is going to coach them next year. Jim Montgomery, meanwhile, has the Blues in a playoff position as of today. They're six points up on Vancouver for that final Wild Card spot, albeit with two games in hand. They have a +17 goal differential. The Bruins stand at -51.
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