This is Not Working

(photo from Boston.com)

Look, baseball is hard. I understand this. It's difficult to always throw the ball, catch the ball and hit the ball at all the right times. I get it. Sometimes they make you play games in stadiums with Hefty bags in the outfield and meany pants fans who boo you and say mean things and dare cheer for the other team. I know, I know, there, there. It's okay.

But here's the thing: YOU ARE PROFESSIONAL GODDAMN BASEBALL PLAYERS AND YOU GET PAID UNCONSCIONABLE AMOUNTS OF MONEY TO THROW, CATCH AND HIT BASEBALLS AND SOMETIMES, YOU DON'T GET TO PLAY AT YOUR HOME PARK AND SOMETIMES, OTHER FANS ARE GOING TO BE MEAN TO YOU SO SACK THE HELL UP AND PLAY LIKE MOTHERLOVIN' MAJOR LEAGUERS!

Let's just put it this way, if your team's sole offensive output comes from Coco Crisp (who is, at the moment, the only one of you jokers not currently ON THE LIST), you have problems.

Full naming Matthew Paul Clement seemed to work for one game since his last outing was acceptable. Reader Peggy in Florida shot me an email after that start saying that as a teacher, she frequently has to speak to her misbehaving students in the same way I address baseball players. One would assume with less profanity. I am also assuming that the students listen better, Matthew Clement.

Because I am not as patient as a teacher. And I am nowhere near as comforting as Mike Lowell up there in that picture. Unless his left hand Vulcan nerve pinched Clement into a quivering pile of goo (I don't know, I had already flipped to The Sopranos), then he is a more understanding person than I. But these are professional ballplayers. Play some freakin' ball.

I'm just...frustrated with them right now. I'm especially frustrated with Clement because it's not like he's a 22-year-old upstart who's waiting to realize his full potential. He's not even a late-blooming 28-year-old prospect with promise. At this point, he's an almost 32-year-old man who just Can't. Get. It. Done. Remember last year's Game 1 of the ALDS against the White Sox? Or, as they call it in Chicago, "Merry Go-Round Day." This is what I'm saying.

Maybe what Clement needs is for someone to whip out one of those Men In Black memory eraser thingies after each of his starts and eradicate his memories of the game. Maybe he'll pitch better if he thinks every game is his first. If he's got no record to go on.

I am now advocating make-believe science fiction technology from a Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones movie with a talking pug to help Matt Clement pitch better. DO YOU SEE WHAT THEY'VE DONE TO ME?

I do not wish to speak of this anymore. I no longer wish to discuss What's Wrong with Matt Clement. I prefer to imagine scenarios in which Mike Timlin, fresh from his DL stint, sauntered into the Red Sox bullpen, stared down Keith Foukle, spit at his feet and said, in his best Clint Eastwood, "This bullpen's not big enough for the both of us" prompting Keith Foulke to scram to the DL his own self.
That might have happened.

Wakefield tonight to try to salvage the final game of the series. You bozos best score some runs for him, Douglas, lest I get really mean. Trust me, you don't want to see it. Pretty sure Patriots training camp is just starting up and if you didn't like it when I switched the channel for twenty minutes to watch Idol, just wait'll you see what happens when I pop in a Patriots DVD. Don't test me, boys.