As I write this, I am sitting in the house that slack built in St. Petersburg, Florida, home of friends Peek and Dan (former home of Brain and Aaron). If you’re a fan of tight writing, smooth transitions and beautiful wordplay, then you will be disappointed. I’m scatterbrained from two straight days of moving all my stuff, I’m hungover and this house offers about as much piece and quiet as a demilitarized zone.
I have written before that true friends will always bail you out of jail and help you move. Peek now qualifies as a true friend. Loudog, in the past, has served in that capacity. But he helped me move six months ago and he helped me move a year before that and he and Cheri have bailed me out of jail and she didn’t even get really mad when I broke into her house, set off the alarm and attracted the attention of the Hillsborough County Police Department. If Loudog were a classless bastard, he would remind me how much I owe him. But he’s not. And since I am aware how much I owe him, I didn’t ask him to fight the Florida summer and lug all my belongings. So Peek helped.
Anyway, today’s a great day because the St. Louis Cardinals are in town and I am going back to Tropicana field (the worst stadium in baseball) for the first time since March of ’98 when the Cardinals and Devil Rays played the first game ever there (it was spring training). I attended that game with my buddy, Ian, who is a diehard Cardinal fan. I have also mentioned before that there is no rhyme or reason to a lot of the fandom decisions down here. Ian has been as big a Cards fan as I’ve been because his Dad, Red, who grew up in Tallahassee, was told by his older brother to pick a team to root for when he was a little kid. Red picked the St. Louis Cardinals because he thought it was cool how the city’s name was abbreviated (the kid was six at the time). Ian was actually raised as a Cardinal fan based on this. I know, it’s strange. What can you do? My friend Brian is a Cubs fan based on the fact that, because they had no lights, the games were always on when he got home from school. And Brian’s as diehard as my acquaintance Chicago Tom, who grew up in north side Chicago. Welcome to the weirdness, sports fans.
At any rate, we get to see the Cardinals play three games in a row (tickets are still available—I know, it’s shocking).
And the winner for worst blog entry thus for goes to…. Whatever the hell I title this one.