The Bataan Death March that is our 2008 preview rolls on. Here, we give some heartbeat props to scribe Cormac McCarthy, whose profile has surged of late thanks to a close personal friendship with Oprah and some serious love from a couple of fellers from Minnesota. He previews his beloved Texas Rangers through the eyes of its new president.
The ranger walked himself into the clubhouse. He was tall and of severe aspect and his eyes were vulture eyes in the fluorescent gloamingness.
Shouts keened out and the ranger sliced a pair of glances to the right and left but no one had cognized him. Just japes and jests amongst theyselves, some kinda Spanish music on a playing box. He might as well have been a tree or a ghostly unvisible shambling thing for all the attention he got. What the hell is goin on in here he wanted to know. Who are these mere boys, slateblank and sideburnt, playin grabass with nary a care in the wild world. What has happent to this place and the game I once knew and America.
He trod with the force of five men towards the boxy office. Memories flooded him like fruitflies on a joba but the ranger tried his damnedest to slurn them off. Didnt matter, a man like him cant forget the things a man like him had done. Seven no hitters. Five thousand seven hunnert fourteen strikeouts. Two thousand seven hunnert ninety five bases on balls. One heart attack. Six noogies torrented onto the head of Ventura. Numbers, too many numbers. A man can get caught up in love with numbers and forget to breathe. The ranger trod on, alone.
Once beboxed, the ranger sighed out a heavy sigh that lay in the room like a goat fart or a sick shirtless uncle. I am in sore straits, thought he. Look at this damnable mess in which I find myself. President of what. Are you kiddin me. Sipped his coffee like it meant the end of the world. Tasted like it too.
There was a chart on the wall so the ranger turned to it. Slowly he turned. He tried to sop up its many meanings like a tortilla with some squirrel gravy but the names swabbled before his eyes and he felt bevomitous. Shook that off too. Gulped down a mountain of advil with a mighty flood of bad coffee. A man’s breakfast.
Okay let us take up this burthen once more. Start with pitching, always. Millwood up on top, a good one, a hardworking dirteating son of a bitch who would sooner bite off his granny’s titty than give up a run. Good thing that is just a metaphor, the ranger thought, otherwise Granny Millwood would be in a hurtin place. Second up is Padilla, a glum Nicaraguan with some filth to him. After that it is a graveyard indeed, men he didnt know fightin each other for the right to serve up gophers to tourists. What in the sam hell is a kason gabbard, sounds like something you would need to hook up or else the oxen will run away during the planting time. And the bullpen is no better, Wilson gibbering all over the place and Francisco the wildman who hit a woman with a chair and the heathen japanee named Fukumori. Good bleeding jesus. Not enough advil in the world.
The hitters no better. Worse maybe ifn thats possible in any way. All these cleancut dumbshitters just waiting their turn to nonrake, Young and Cruz and Frenchy Boussard. How are we starting someone name of Ian, that aint even a name is it. Now Hank Blalock on third sack, now thats a name for this line a work. Milton Bradley has a jib that is cut just fine for Texas, a wild jib, a jib like the jawbone of an ass to smite our enemies. And young Hamilton out in the pasture, he has got more grit than that magazine that kids use to sell to try to make money back in the golden floaty days.
But other than that we got nothing. Just a whole lot of people comin to the game for a nice fambly treat, catch a foul ball and slap some sugary treats into little Dakota and Trey. Maybe een take a picture with nice ol Ron the manager, no unnerstantin of the game but looks the part at least. This team uset to be somethin special, back in the halcyon, back when Dubya ran the place. There was a hell of a man who knew what he was talkin about. He could charm the cobra right outa the mongoose like my pappy said back when we lived in Refugio.
Now look around, see ifn you see anythin at resembles a base-ball club. Ha he spat a bitter spit. Might as well hit myself in the head with a bolt stunner now afore the fans and the media do it for me. Might as well just vanish, like the prairie, like the Californy Angels and the Warshinton Senators, like everything that uset to be great. Like America its damn self.
Sudden, a thought slapped the ranger in his mindbox. His feet turned him towards another chart swinging on the wall like a lynched man. There he glimmered a vision that grew and grew like topsy until it filled his whole goggling brainstem.
This is what was on the chart: Seattle Los Angeles Oakland.
That is all we got to contend with? Just these three things. Not even things, more like cobbled-together malformations, human slumgullion, posthuman mutants like after if there was some kind of nucular apocalypse. Look at em like the three blind mice: no batting no pitching no fielding. Hell we got those problems too, at least we could look like a real team ifn we keep ourselves fieldfiesty. Orphaneager. Gamescrappy.
An thats my job, enthoughtened the ranger to hisself. My job to instill gumption into these greenly sapsuckers. Teach them the ways of the high lonesome. Hell I larnt that stuff myself dint I, and I aint no intellect. Suddenly he was bestride this narrow earth like a colossus. No country for ol men Ill show em Ill show em all.
The ranger stepped quickedly back down the hallway. His heart did a gavotte inside his massive pumpedup chestal regions. He knew what had to happen. Noogies for everyone. Start with Gerald Laird and work through the list. Old school.