So I’ve ben getting a lot of junk mail…

… I mean seriously, a LOT. One place has sent me at least 3 things a week wanting to sell me mortgage death insurance or something. I’m really not exaggerating that – it been about 3 a week since I moved in. So, I decided to make some use of the postage-paid envelope they send.

This is the first one. I didn’t send the quarter, that’s just for reference. And bag of unraosted coffee from Sweet Maria’s is just a shamless plug for them. This one contained 15 pages of coupons from one of those local ‘magazines’ you get every other day. It also had instructions for a slip ‘n slide (sorry Val! I think you’ve got the hang of setting it up now though) as well as a dozen coffee beans.

Here’s the second one so far. Another dozen pages of coupons, a few that Krogers sent me (expired), the cardboard backing for a sprinkler nozzle I just bought, and everything to setup a Netgear wireless router – including CD, registration card, instructions, and the plastic it came in. You can see the CD is bent in half in the middle picture. I decided for giggles to write “DO NOT BEND” on the envelope too. The last picture is a top-down view of said contents.

Half the fun is deciding what all to stuff into the envelope. I mostly try to put other junk mail in it. Maybe I should write a note? I almost put a bug I just killed in there, but thought maybe that was too much. I might put an unopened condom in the next one… or maybe just an empty wrapper. I’ve heard one guy taped it to a brick and mailed that – that’s good thinking there. Or maybe a book of matches – hopefully the person that opens it will be tempted to burn the place to the ground.

I’m done with baseball

Man I used to love baseball. I remember watching the Cubs play almost everyday on WGN during the late 80’s – Andre Dawson, Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg… Rafael Palmeiro was drafted by the Cubs in the first round of ’85. I’ll even put Harry Caray in as part of the team. I remember watching the games with my friend Brian. He’d keep track of the stats himself for some reason, I’d sing along with Harey. After the game we’d go outside and play with a tennis ball — the street was a home run, hitting any of the apartment buildings was an out. We even collected baseball cards. We didn’t try to find the ones that were “worth more” we collected our favorite players. I still have boxes of the things… I might just put them all on eBay.

In 1990 I was living closer to Cinci and we had a tv – I watched the Red dominate and sweep the World Series. I was even one of those goofy people jumping up and down on the front porch with a Reds banner and a broom. (Today it’d probably be a picture of Bud Selig and a shotgun.)
Chris Sabo, Barry Larkin, Eric Davis (I think that was before he was all cracked-out) and of course “You can’t run on…” Joe Oliver.
Joe and Marty and their annoying Kroger commercials.
Every once in awhile my dad would get us tickets to the Reds’ games and I’d sit there with my glove on, hoping to catch a foul ball. I played little league and even a little into high school. During the winter I’d play video games about baseball.
I’m probably starting to make it sound like baseball was more a part of my life than it really was. I guess I was probably about average as young American boys goes.

Then the 94-95 strike happened.

I never fully recovered from that and I know I’m not the only one that feels that way. I still enjoyed the game – an occasional softball game/league here and there, creating my own franchise on the Playstation… I just never really watched it anymore.

Recently that started to change. I still haven’t intentionally watched a game in 10 years, but if I was someplace where a game was on I’d end up paying at least a little attention to it. I think it’s finally crashed for good.

I didn’t really care about Sosa or Mcguire – it was fun to watch ‘the race’. I know there was the whole creatine thing… but they both put up good numbers well before all that too. Then there was Bonds… I never really liked him anyway. And come on, who did you think you were fooling Barry?! You double your HRs in a season over the course of two years?? Yeah, 15 years into your professional career you finally learn how to smash the hell out of the ball. You’re a dumbass. I don’t care if your roid-rage causes you to kill me – you’re a dumbass.
I never liked Canseco either… but for other reasons I won’t get into right now.
But Raffy… why? I’m just at a loss for words. You’ve had a pretty good 20 year run, why mess with this stuff? Why sit there in front of congress and say you’ve never done it. It was easy to believe Canseco was full of it – he’s a media-whore schmuck trying to sell a book. But you… you were one of the guys that started my love for the game 20 years ago! You seemed to play with heart and class… now you’re just lumped in with the rest of the over-paid junkies.

And 10 games? Another problem with baseball. You fail that kind of test in other sports, you get banned for life. I guess I’ll just stick with Nascar – the worst that happens there is your favorite driver gets killed.

Raffy’s fall extremely bitter for fans