But not me. I like baseball. A lot. I love the Orioles, and have a lot of Baltimore/Maryland pride, and while I don’t hang on the O’s to provide me with justifiation or validation for being alive, I do consider myself a part of BIRDLAND. And when I talk about Birdland, I will always use “we.”

My sense of it is that for him the team is simply a toy which he bought, played with for a while and broke. So what? He may even think to himself “Hey, I tried to fix it— but those jerks [players, coaches, tethered FO] just screwed up all my good ideas.” A broken toy will not humiliate him, any more than fans staying home in droves…except those from other cities, of course.

The most characteristic Petey line remains “I’ve never enjoyed this,” by which he meant once the inherited good team/farm system/fan base ceased to function effectively on automatic pilot, meaning that actual work and knowledgeable investment would be required to succeed further, he realized that owning a toy-team didn’t simply mean basking in adulation. And this made him very upset, since basking in adulation was exactly what the toy-team was s’posed to let him do— and here are all these stupid people not letting him do it! So we’ve had alternating g-r-r-r / sulk / g-r-r-r / sulk ever since.

Sorry, this is all so hashed-over I shouldn’t even trot it out. But I still feel marginally better for doing so. And I didn’t mention Ferd Manfroo even once. Anyway, not to put too fine a point on it: F*ck you, Petey. And Grow up.

p.s. I also didn’t mention Pretend Commissioner Bud. But John Sterling did. Anybody else happen to hear this last night?

I don’t mind Sterling (I have audio problems with Suzyn’s voice), even the dim and ceaseless “Thu-h-h-h-h Yerkees win!” thing doesn’t bother me that much. But last night Sterling went into a 5-minute spiel on, get this, “Thanks to PC Bud, we’re in the Golden Age of baseball.” I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. You could almost hear people throughout the region— basically everyone but the out-patients and the severely retarded – laughing hysterically or throwing up.

 Did he mean the Golden Age of Drug-Enchanced Records, the Golden Age of Exciting Interleague Play, in which one league cannot help but slaughter the other with numbing regularity, the Golden Age of All Star Games That, Y’know, Really Count (stop, you’re killing me), the Golden Age of Stupid Assh*le Owners (line up behind Hank and Petey, people- and stop shoving), the Golden Age of Two Leagues With Different Rules (which could be fixed with the stroke of a pen, but won’t be) the Golden Age of No Commissioner (when team owners get together and appoint a team owner, what else do you call it?), the Golden Age of…oh, forget it.

All right, I’ll go quietly now, officer.

p.p.s. Congrats to Memlo and Huff ‘n’ Stuff. Them are some numbers!!

 p.p.p.s. Z: The Skins were pretty underwhelming— only the score makes it sound like a game. Buckle up, bumpy road ahead.