Mookie Betts (left, on base against the Dbacks July 31) gives
Dodger fans hope for a World Series championship after
seven straight Western Division titles.
(Photos by Ed Piper from TV monitor)
Don't stand
Don't stand so close to me
The Police, "Don't Stand So Close to Me"
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Now touch me, babe
Can't you see that I am not afraid
The Doors
Songs for the COVID era
Two totally different approaches to circumstances in the lyrics cited above, and that encapsulates the upside-down world engendered by the coronavirus pandemic.
And my coping device: Scoring, scoring, scoring one Major League Baseball game after another since the season began a week ago Thursday (July 23), as I chronicled in my previous blog entry. (See previous.)
Plus the other thing almost compelling me to sit on our living room couch and watch Dodgers-Dbacks, Padres-Rockies (the last two mornings, Aug. 2-3, catching the early morning replay of the latter on Fox Sports San Diego), Yankees-Red Sox, you name it--is a quickly-healing open blister on my right big toe. I've stayed off my feet the past week, and viewing baseball gives me something concrete to occupy my time with.
Two things: One is this late start to the baseball season and my being home (sidelined by the COVID situation from substitute-teaching, being an aide in summer school in Poway, covering local high school sports, and sharing a message at our denomination's area churches, a true 0-for-3 as I count it, subbing and summer school as one item) likens to my annual Spring Training experience in the greater Phoenix area.
I was able to slip in and out of the Valley of the Sun during the last week of February/first week of March this year to watch 12 games in eight days, visiting all 10 stadiums (though the visit to the Brewers' park was only a driveby) and seeing, basically, all 15 teams.
Watching six games on my couch of the present MLB season, scoring five of them in my scorebook (which had last been used at Spring Training), is a similar hyper-adrenaline fueled experience. I played baseball as a kid and in high school and American Legion with my brother, so the sport has always been in my blood.
Second, having the open wound (now almost completely closed) takes me back to my final days teaching in the Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS) before I retired five years ago. There, I had to use up all my sick leave, three weeks, after walking barefoot on the hot concrete and street pavement at La Jolla Shores after taking a dip in the Pacific Ocean and burning my feet. I have neuropathy, so I don't have a lot of sensation in both feet. I got into my pickup, and looked down. There was blood pouring from my feet! I hadn't even felt a thing.
personal favorites who I've watched in Spring Training,
gets shelled in his first pitching appearance in two years.
The "Japanese Babe Ruth" failed to retire a batter
in the first inning.
I bandaged them, I poked them into my size-17 shoes, I drove all the way from Clairemont to Kaiser in Otay Mesa on a Saturday morning for the clinic there. There was a long line of people waiting. For some reason, being on my feet on two bad wheels, the nurses in charge bumped me up to third and I quickly got in to see a doctor.
The hilarious thing, having driven myself the 18 miles down to Kaiser Otay, was that the nurse taking care of me wrapped a pile--literal pile--of gauze and tape around my feet, so that there was no way I would be able to get into my stick-shift truck and drive home, using the pedals.
I kept my mouth shut, as the time in the cram-packed clinic was already extending, despite my being bumped up in the queue. I didn't tell the nurse, but I let her put all that stuff on. Then, having checked out of that area and dropping off a prescription to be filled in the adjacent pharmacy, I quickly walked outside on the patio and stripped all the mounds of tape and gauze off so I could put my shoe (I think my right one) back on to drive myself home.
Funny. Just a stack of padding I deposited into the trash can right there outside the pharmacy door, though not in direct view of the employees of the pharmacy (so that someone wouldn't ask why I was taking all my just-applied bandaging off).
Full circle, five years later, almost to the day and month, and I sitting at home staying off my (gauze-less) right foot.
I have really felt inside the game, watching so many and scoring three, four, even more innings a game of whoever is on: I flip through Ch. 29 (ESPN), Ch. 76 (MLB-TV), and less frequently, Ch. 5 (Fox), Ch. 30 (ESPN2), and Ch. 61, the Padres' station.
The NBA bubble has come up for viewing, too, interspersed with MLB. But I've found over the last couple of days that my attraction is to the Lakers, not so much other teams.
My mantra in the restart period: Let's get two titles, Lakers and Dodgers. (Forgive me, San Diego natives/Padres fans, I grew up in greater L.A.)
"qualifying round") hockey. The NY Islanders
faced off against the Florida Hurricanes Aug. 1.
Infielder Max Muncy (taking a lefthanded hack
at the plate against Arizona) brings a lot of punch
to the top of L.A.'s order. So far, Dodger manager
Dave Roberts has rotated Muncy and Betts in the
first two slots, depending on whether a lefty or righty
is facing L.A.
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