Cruzin' and Freesin'

The 2011 World Series starts tomorrow, the 19^th, and features the Rangers of Texas and the Cardinals of St. Louis.

Both teams closed out their championship series in convincing fashion pounding the baseball all around Arlington and Milwaukee in game 6 for each.

The Rangers Nelson Cruz set a single playoff series record with 6 homeruns and was named the MVP while the Cardinals David Freese earned the same honors for St. Louis in the NL.

The Cardinals have the better starting pitching in this series but simply because the Rangers might not have the horses to start games, they have a nice bullpen and have the power to overmatch the Cardinals.

The Rangers return for the second straight year to the World Series but the Cardinals are no strangers to it either. They won it in 2006 and have Albert Pujols. I know that every time I write about baseball that I mention his name. But he is the premier player in the league and, as such, deserves the mention. After all, look where his team is right now.

Ron Washington’s Rangers starters need to hold off the Cardinals for a good 6 innings in each game or they are doomed again. Five inning “quality” starts aren’t going to get the job done, I imagine, especially on this stage. But this is going to be a tricky thing for them.

But the Cardinals staff has its own worries. Michael Young, clean-up hitter and future hall-of-famer now, is now on fire getting locked in at just the right moment. That’s fuel on the fire that Cruz lit against the Tigers. The Cardinals can’t pitch around these guys either because there are 5 other guys in the lineup who hit at least 24 homeruns this season.
Normally the DH rule has an effect on the AL in the World Series, but not here. When the series is in St. Louis, Young, the regular DH, will play first. They don’t lose a thing there and I think it tightens up their lineup. The Cardinals will get to DH Lance Berkman in Texas which will help their defense in those games. But that won’t matter too much in that park, which is a launching pad anyway.

Will there be any new-found heroes this year? Will the stars we already know are stars, like Young, Pujols, Adrian Beltre, Chris Carpenter, Josh Hamilton, Berkman, Matt Holliday, or Cruz add to their stature? Will there be one of those “goat” moments or a black-cat kind of moment which will go down in baseball lore? 

Wednesday we will begin to find out.

I am a news junkie and particularly a political news junkie. But I am now currently interested in odd news stories from around the world. To be precise I am interested in finding headlines that stick out as odd to me. For example…

Scrabble player demands strip search of opponent after letter 'G' goes missing...

Teacher on trial for punching, choking first-graders...

Burglars steal 7-year-old's piggy bank...

The main reason is to discuss them on the Dungeon of Manlove show. They provide good fodder on which the cast can opine. These conversations get pretty interesting and often times funny as our diverse group of misfits provides a unique blend of commentary.

If you’d like to hear examples of that, you know what to do, but I really bring up this point to bring up a different point.

The Holidays will be upon us soon and as soon as Thanksgiving hits I stop reading the news. Even though we will be in an election year and there are extra things to think about and discuss, I try every year to keep as far away from the news as I can so that I can enjoy the season.
This will be particularly important this year as I have all the classic symptoms of depression once again. Whether this is a chemical issue or just the result of an awful year, there is little doubt about this.
I was in the gym a week or so ago and was watching a screen talk about depression and its symptoms. Now, I’m not a hypochondriac here; I’m pretty objective about myself when it comes to this stuff. I had everyone they listed. It was depressing to read that I was depressed!

But certainly not shocking. This means taking proactive measures wherever possible short of checking in with a doctor for medication. That is one place where I will not turn unless as an absolute last resort. As a recovering person diagnosed with depression a long time ago in a rehab clinic I was pretty pissed off when I was prescribed anti-depressants when I was trying to rehabilitate myself from self-medicating for far too long.

Staying away from the news is one of those ways. Now I did just start my political blog under my fake name so I might have started that too soon since I might have to take the holidays off from it. But since it’s my fake name, no one will care even if anyone finds it anyway.

Autumn does have a positive effect on me though. The summer really drains me and is a reason why I get down in the dumps. It’s totally opposite of most people, I know. I’ve been fortunate to have a few shows this month which have taken me to a couple of areas where I can enjoy watching the leaves change in the mountains. It has been sort of tempered by the fact that my dog is gone but it still helps. Driving, and driving to see as much territory as possible, is one of my favorite things to do.

Well, there are lots of things I need to do and not a lot of money to do them, so I guess that I’m off and I’m

Done.

Bribe the Audience

Two tough battles are raging the MLB Championship series.
The Tigers held off elimination last night with the aide of their third base last night. Not their third baseman, but their home field third base bag as a routine double play ball bounced off of the bag fair and into the leftfield corner to help save the game.
The bag itself was removed after the game and is now in the possession of Tiger manager Jim Leyland who said he would place the bag in his personal memorabilia collection. Should the Tigers win it will be worth a little more than if they lose the series, of course.

The Rangers Nelson Cruz has smacked five homeruns in this series already, which tied a record for one post-season series. He has hit 2 extra-inning homeruns which is a record and became the first player in post-season history to end a game with a grand-slam homerun.

I refuse to say “walk-off” homerun, because it’s a stupid saying and I am tired of hearing announcers shout out “WALK-OFF!” when their guy strokes a game-winning hit.

Some of these announcers are really bad but I won’t name names because I am feeling kind today…sort of. I hate the way they count pitches, call game-winning hits, and overly praise players with stupid adjectives like “gutsy” when they are playing a game that last 3 hours, for the most part.

The Cardinals and the Brewers are now tied at two games each. This should not come as a real surprise since they split the 18 regular-season games that they played. The perfect way for this to play out is for the series to go seven games.

I would imagine that MLB and the network that airs the World Series would like to see a Cardinals-Tigers WS matchup. They played against each other in 2006, which the Cardinals won, and famously in 1967. St. Louis is the best baseball town in America and Detroit is such a hell hole that the city could really use a boost of morale for its citizens.

But the Brewers Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder are prime-time players. Braun seems to thrive in the limelight and I am sure that he will pick up a lot of new fans and enemies in the Fall Classic, should they bounce past St. Louis.

The Rangers pound the ball though and in a season which didn’t showcase a great deal of power numbers, they have three guys who hit 30 homeruns each and two others with 24 and 29. Since they are the defending champions of the AL, they do have some players which casual baseball fans would know like Josh Hamilton, Michael Young and Adrian Beltre, for example. The return appearance would also solidify their standing as an AL powerhouse which bodes well for the AL since the Red Sox and Yankees could use some competition in that regard.

For whatever reason there are more people reading this blog than I actually imagined. It has left me with a bit of a dilemma. I teeter back and forth with what I want to do with this stupid thing here. In one respect it’s a journal for me but I do also have the desire to write about more intense things that are on my mind. These things include politics but they also include a venting process where I would like to speak more freely about things that aggravate me and I would like to swear a lot while doing so.

I am writing this around 5pm. I have been thinking about this since 8am. I think that what I am going to do is start another blog with a fake name and rant there rather than risk alienating people that I don’t wish to alienate.

So I will stick to basic cultural things here like baseball, TV shows, and anything that I might find interesting to pass along while on the road performing. I’ll toss in some personal things that, for some reason, generate more feedback than anything else (like when the girl friend left the house and when my dog passed 2 weeks ago) but leave the bitching about some otherwise polarizing subjects to my ghost name, which I naturally will not reveal here.

A show at West Chester University went rather well last night. It was my first time in there and there was a crowd of over 100. There is no telling how many people will ever show up at these things and it is sometimes a risky proposition taking a show like this without a decent estimate of crowd size. This is particularly risky doing a show for a place like for the first time. Let’s face it; I’m no household name so I don’t get any draw because of that. I have to hope that the hosts give out cookies and ice cream and make a free show out of it to get a room full of college kids on a Thursday night.

But more often than not my concerns are unwarranted. Ugh…I’m not even going to jinx myself by expanding on that any further. It went well and I’ll probably get asked to come back there again in the future; that is what is most important.

I am concerned about the future months coming though. Last year I had my December shows booked by August. It’s now October 14^th and I have one show booked for December. It’s getting hard to make ends meet and I just got some local real estate information that was disturbing for me also with the depreciation in home prices here. My house was my out in case of emergency. It still is, of course, but now it’s less of an out for me.

That is one thing makes me need to go write another blog…RIGHT NOW BEFORE I EXPLODE!

Done.

Curse of the Squirrel

Round one of the MLB playoffs is out of the way and so is a combined 370 million dollars in payroll between the Yankees and the Phillies, the teams with the top payrolls in both the AL and the NL.

I was on the road for a couple of the 5^th games of the divisional series and watched from a hotel room and heard on the car radio. All three of the final games were interesting and exciting for a baseball fan.

The Brewers and Diamondbacks game featured one of the best postseason catches in history in the 7^th inning by the D’Back’s Chris Young in centerfield, who coincidentally wears #24, the same as Willie Mays. Young made a run-saving, back-to-the-plate running, stretching catch that was simply better than the one Mays made in the 54 series against the Indians. At the time the game was 1-1 with a Brewer standing on second base.
Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks ace pitcher Ian Kennedy, he then paid Young back by hanging a fastball and a bloop single scored the run anyway.
But the Brewers closer, Jon Axford, who hadn’t blown a save since April then blew one in the 9^th to send the game to extra innings.
In the 10^th there was some déjà-vu. The Brewers Carlos Gomez stood at second base and scored the game winning run on a Nyjier Morgan single, scoring as he had for the Twins in a one-game playoff a few years ago that helped the Twins advance to the playoffs.

In Philadelphia good friends Roy Halladay and Chris Carpenter faced off in a great pitching duel won by Carpenter and the Cards on a 3-hit shutout. The Cards scored their run with their first two batters and Carpenter shut it down the entire way. Credit Cardinal manager Tony Larussa for not trying to fix what wasn’t broken and leaving Carpenter in to finish what he started.
This game featured a little déjà-vu also as the Phil’s Ryan Howard made the team’s season-ending out for the second year in a row. Howard added injury to insult this time as he ruptured his Achilles tendon trying to get out of the batter’s box and he’ll require surgery that will most likely keep him out of the Phil’s lineup for the first couple of months of the season. I have a feeling it will be longer than though. I had an Achilles issue in my 20’s and it was a couple of years before it felt right again.
The Phillies’ fans have a scapegoat, if they wish, and it’s not Ryan Howard…it’s squirrels. In the 4^th game in St. Louis, which they lost, a squirrel ran across home plate while the Phil’s Roy Oswalt was pitching. Prior to game five, in Philadelphia, groundskeepers had to chase down and remove yet another squirrel.
I believe that it was the exact same squirrel which was brought to Philadelphia by the Cardinals in order to get in to the heads of the Phillies. And it worked; the Phillies lost because of a squirrel!

 

The Yankees went down weakly in the Bronx with the heart of their batting order looking like minor leaguers in the bottom of the 9^th needing one run to tie the game and keep them from advancing to the championship series. But Tiger reliever Jose Valverde, who was perfect in save situations all year, stayed perfect in post-season play too closing out this game by striking out Alex Rodriguez.

So those three game five winners joined the Texas Rangers who dispatched the Tampa Bay Rays in four games. The Rangers capped off their final game win with help from Adrian Beltre’s three-home run game.

I think the Rangers are now the favorite to win the World Series. They beat the Tigers in game one and now the Tigers are down two starting outfielders, Delmon Young and Magglio Ordonez. Young tweaked an oblique muscle in the Yankees series in which he hit three homeruns and Ordonez broke the foot which kept him from playing in most of the 2010 season.
The Rangers have 5 guys who hit over 20 homeruns and three of them hit over 30 so they can bomb a team for sure. With CJ Wilson their number one starter they don’t match up as well on the mound but it might not matter.
The Brewers beat the Cardinals in game one as their marquee players (Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder) both went deep in a 9-6 come-from-behind victory. I can’t see the Cardinals beating them but they did split the 18 games they played against each other this year. But since my predicting skills have been less than skillful don’t place any money on anything I have to say.

There is a new Showtime series called Homeland that I think is a winner. It aired its second episode last night following Dexter, which is still fantastic. Homeland is about a US Marine who was help captive in Afghanistan for 8 years and was rescued and returned to the states. A female CIA agent believes that he was turned by his captors while there and the “rescue” was facilitated by the terrorists so that they could send him back as a sleeper agent. Her superiors don’t believe her but she attempts to watch his every move nonetheless.

I’m not going to write more about TV shows right now since it would make it sound like that is all that I do. But to recap, I am currently watching Dexter, Homeland, Hung, Survivor, Raising Hope, Jersey Shore, Two and a Half Men, Whitney, Terra Nova, Fringe, Stossel, Baseball, Football and anything that involves politics (I have to get my share of horror shows in there, after all.)

The last couple of weeks have been tough for me without my doggie. Today was probably the first day that I noticed that I wasn’t looking for him around every corner. That, however, made me sad anyway. But for the most part I have come to terms with it. Aside from the fact that he had been with me for 15 years I am also bothered by the fact that I simply can’t just go get another dog right now. With times tough for me and no one else around the house to help take care of one when I am on the road it’s just not fair to try bring one home to fill some emptiness within me. So until such time as our times improve or my living situation changes I will have pet and play with other people’s doggies for a while.
Ok, that just made me sad again, so I’m…

Done.

Back to Baseball

The 2011 MLB Playoffs start in just a couple of hours. I’ll keep an eye on them as a baseball fan but frankly they don’t interest me all that much with the teams that are involved.

What did interest me was the final day of the regular season which was one that will be remembered as one of legend years from now.

With two wild card playoff spots remaining the Braves and Cardinals in the NL league were tied in the NL and the Red Sox and the Rays were tied in the AL.

The Braves had the toughest assignment taking on the Phillies and one could perhaps make the same case for the Rays since they needed to beat the Yankees.

The Cardinals blew out the Houston Astros early and they were waiting for the finale of the Braves-Phillies game which the Braves were winning 3-2 going into the 9^th inning.
But the Braves rookie closer, and perhaps the NL Rookie of the Year, Craig Kimbrel, blew a save and allowed the Phillies to tie the game to send it into extra innings.
In the 12^th inning the Phils scored a run on what was basically an infield hit. In the bottom of the inning the Braves other ROY candidate Freddie Freeman grounded into a season-ending double play capping off an amazing season-ending choke to allow the Cardinals to earn the final playoff spot.
The Braves had an 8.5 game lead on the WC race at the beginning of September. This collapse became the second worst in NL history pushing my 2007 Mets from 2^nd to 3^rd and settling behind the 64 Phillies.

So over in the AL, the Red Sox were playing the Orioles and they too had a 9^th inning lead. They also had the comfort of knowing that Yankees were beating the snot of the Rays and were leading 7-0 going into the bottom of the 8^th inning.

But some funny things happened. The Rays scored 6 runs in the bottom of the 8^th inning capped off by an Evan Longoria 3-run homerun. The Rays still looked doomed and they were hurting by a real bad at-bat by one of their rookie hitters which, had it not happened, could have helped the Longoria homer tie the game. With Mariano Rivera, the Yankees closer, perhaps ready to come in to get a save in the 9^th, the Rays come-back attempt was valiant, but probably too little too late.
The Red Sox game became delayed by rain and so the attention was on the Rays game.
The Yanks didn’t score in the 9^th and in the bottom of the inning the Rays didn’t have to face Rivera. Red Sox fans were no doubt fearful that their enemies, the mighty Yankees, perhaps weren’t putting everything into this effort, but the Yankees decided to rest some key players.
It looked like it didn’t matter. The Rays made two quick outs and then manager Joe Madden sent in pinch hitter Dan Johnson who was hitting .108 with one homerun during the entire season.
Johnson and the Rays were down to their final strike of the season quickly. They could see that the Red Sox were winning their game. At that point they could only hope for an improbable Orioles comeback.

Johnson then hits a 2-out, 2-strike homerun to tie the game and ultimately send it into extra innings.
I’ve watched countless numbers of baseball games and baseball game highlights. I even had shivers watching that play. The Rays were back in the game.
Just to give this a little more perspective about how improbable this comeback to tie the game was; the Yankees had not blown a 7-run lead that late in a game since the 1950’s.
To make it more unreal was the fact that the guy who hit the homerun was not exactly some superstar player who came off the bench or up to bat and became the hero. No, Dan Johnson became Bucky Dent at that moment or Bobby Thomson, names of otherwise little known players who hit gargantuan homeruns for their teams at key moments in their team’s history.

But the Rays still hadn’t won. They played into the 13^th inning. Meanwhile the Red Sox and Orioles resumed play.
In the bottom of the 9^th in Baltimore, the Red Sox bring out their stud closer Jonathan Papelbon.
Papelbon blows the save in Baltimore. The Orioles tie the game. The Orioles then get a game-winning hit to drop the Red Sox.
I turn the TV almost immediately over to the Rays game after I watch the Red Sox sulking as the Orioles celebrate as if they had won the playoff spot. Up at bat is Evan Longoria. All of a sudden Longoria smokes a line drive down the Tropicana Field left field line which clears the fence for a game-winning homerun. The Rays win the game and clinch the final playoff spot in the AL.

The Red Sox end up beating every MLB team for the biggest September collapse in baseball history. They blew the 9-game lead they had over the Rays on 9-4. The Sox went 7-20 in September. If they had just gone an absolutely miserable 8-19 they would at least have clinched a tie for the WC spot. They started 1-10 and then became unbeatable only to become unable to win when they had to do so.

So the matchups are Phillies-Cardinals and Diamondbacks-Brewers in the NL and the Rays-Rangers and Yankees-Tigers in the AL.

The Yanks and Phillies are the favorites to meet in the World Series but both teams have the exact matchups that are the worst for them in the best-of-three Division Playoff Round.
The Phillies aren’t exactly hitting very well and the Cardinals are the best hitting team in the NL. That is offset by the Phillies pitching rotation of course and they are still favored to win, but no team wants to face an Albert Pujols lead team with momentum at it’s back going into a short series.
The Yankees have to face the best pitcher in MLB in Justin Verlander and they may very well have to face him twice. But they have another issue…some dude named Doug Fister who in his last 8 starts is 7-0 and has only given up 4 earned runs.

I like the Brewers over the Diamondbacks in the NL to set up a Phillies-Brewers championship. I’m on the fence with the Yankees and Tigers, to be honest. If the Tigers win game one in NY I think they’ll win the series though and then face the Rangers who I like over the Rays.

I just saw that the Red Sox are not going to exercise the option of manager Terry Francona for next year. That basically means he just got fired for this collapse. He can’t hit, throw or catch the baseball for the team but ultimately he is the fall guy. When the Mets choked in 2007 I wanted their manager fired too. The Mets didn’t fire him and they bit it again the next year also. So I guess that the Red Sox didn’t even want to fool around with him any more. He will leave with two World Series rings in his pocket though; no one can take those away from him.

Now I must get ready to kick back and watch the games. Nothing much else going on today to do so I’ll have that to keep my mind off of this past week.

Done

Goodbye Sweet Prince

My dog, Brother, is now frolicking around on Rainbow Bridge as I had to lay him down this past Saturday afternoon.

Brother was an abandoned dog who I rescued 15 years ago. At the time I had another beautiful little dog named Spooky and I called the stray dog Spooky’s Little Brother for a while and Brother just stuck.

The vet guessed at the time when I first brought him there that the youngest he could have been was a full year so his birth date was simply estimated. But if the youngest age he could have been was a year or so, he managed to make it 16 years in this world.

Because he was abandoned I tried my best to take extra good care of him. I wondered if he was abandoned because a family couldn’t take care of him and then wondered if some little kids were missing him and had no clue where he was. I know that had I ever lost a dog and someone else found him that I would have wanted him found by the best person possible (and not someone like the Eagles quarterback) and that he would lead a wonderful life if not with me.

I left home when I was 16 years old and only returned for about a year a couple of years later. Considering that we don’t have much memory of the first years of our lives I was with this dog longer than my own family. Since I never had children, he was not only my family but a surrogate child to me.

Brother was my fourth dog. There were a couple of more in my family when I was younger, but consider him MY fourth.

My first dog Sheba was a German Sheppard that I had to put down when she was about 12 and I was 17. When her time came I brought her to the vet and basically just passed her off to the staff. I was trying to recall if I had the option to stay or not but quickly regretted not being man enough to stay with the dog I grew up with from the time that I could remember.

The very next day I was given a cute little white dog which I named Napoleon. He lived to be 14 years old and while I had him I bought a little black puppy which I named Spooky.

Napoleon died in my house while I had been drinking myself into oblivion one final Saturday night. I came home wasted to find him lying on the floor dead while Spooky was trying to wake him up.

That, of all things, ended my drinking career at 31 years of age. I was an alcoholic, and already had come to that conclusion some years earlier, but the fact that I made the decision to drink like that (and it was every day) and wasn’t there for my dog was the ultimate reason that I checked into a rehabilitation clinic the next day.

The only thing that kept me from shooting myself in the head that morning was that I knew at least that Spooky was with him at the end if I wasn’t a good enough man to be there for him.

Spooky lived to be 12 years old. He had a brain condition the name of which I can’t recall. He had broken his house training and the vet diagnosed the reason and said he had a short time to live. He was still quite energetic and this was particularly shocking, of course, so I didn’t make that call right away.

Spooky pretty much told me himself one weekend when he did something uncharacteristic of him and I could tell he was in pain.

If you have never been with a dog when he/she is put to sleep I can tell you that it is a very peaceful and comfortable process. It is quick and there is no evidence at all that there is any pain involved. Thank God for the people who developed the method of doing this in a way that is humane and dignified. Back in the old days our pets would just get taken in the back yard and shot when it was their time.

I was initially shocked and therefore extra upset with how quickly it was all over but it was the right time and his pain was now gone so I was comforted knowing that reality and the fact that Brother was still with me and waiting for me at home.
I had one regret with Spooky afterwards, however, and it was that he was still a little agitated when the shot was administered. Had I known how fast it was going to be I would have spent a few extra minutes calming him down more.

At the time Spooky passed Brother was nine years old. He was already a senior dog at that point. So I basically spent the next 7 years of his life trying the best that I could to be an even better pet owner. I fed him better food, I changed the way I corrected to him to keep him less stressed, I played with him more, I sat with him more, I hugged him more, I savored every minute that I could. I loved his dog more than any other as a result of all of that.

Since I laid him down I’ve been upset wondering if I did enough for him and with him. I guess anyone might think that they didn’t once their pet is gone and I am no different, but I did try my best to make him as happy as possible. I take solace in the fact that since he lived to be 16 years old that I did something right.

About five years ago he came up lame because of a bulging disc in his back. Back then I thought it might be over for him too and to say I was upset (and anytime I say that) is just an understatement. But his vet prescribed him steroids to relieve inflammation and after just two doses it was like he was a little puppy again. This stuff is the fountain of youth, I’m going to tell you. Now, I knew this wasn’t a cure for his back but what it did for him was nothing short of a miracle, in my opinion.

This treatment allowed Brother to have a better quality of life and it also allowed me to have more quality time with him and to make sure that I could do my part to try to do even more still figuring that he didn’t have a great deal of time.

He had a couple more cycles of steroids during the next few years and each time with the same results. I even asked the vet at one point if we could just cycle him through a steroid round occasionally as a proactive and preventative measure. He was sort of reluctant because there can be liver complications so we never did that, but given that he was on them now and then anyway, I didn’t want to risk any side effects needlessly.

A body-builder that I know believes very strongly that men over 40 should cycle through a round of steroids now and then to improve their overall health. And I will say that watching what happened to Brother the five times he was on them made a believer out of me.

Back in early September, Brother came up lame again and it was a trip to the vet with a specific request for the steroids this time. Sure enough, two doses and he was running around the backyard like a puppy again. But it was a little different this time. He didn’t get the power in his legs back to jump up on the couch like he used to do.

Brother was a very charming little dog. He used to step in front of someone from whom he wanted attention and would sit up for you. It was completely irresistible and worked every time, even on me to whom he did that thousands of times.

But during the past nine months or so, he wasn’t able to do that any more and it was very noticeable to me that he was trying but just couldn’t.

When the round of steroids was done he came up lame again and it was worse than a month ago. I knew that if I pressed the vet for another round, he would give in to my request but I knew that I would probably have to sign a waiver.

But Brother had a few other issues also at this point. He had what was diagnosed as some sort of heart issue which made him dry hack to a point which I was feeling was too uncomfortable.

For about ten days I would help him get in and out of the house to pee. I hoped that maybe he just twisted something and he would get better, but it never happened. Then a front paw was hurting him so his whole left side was now not working right and he really couldn’t get up at all this past Saturday morning.

I knew that this was probably the time. I got upset thinking that this had to be too much for him and also knowing that I had to make a decision about the life that meant so much to me and had changed my own life as well. I am sure that it was not a pretty sight to see me right about then.

But then I had to go to work for a few hours; it was unavoidable. I contacted the vet along the way to see if I could get in there to see if there was anything that he could do. Maybe, I thought, I could leave him in their care for a couple of days and they could help him. Maybe even when I got home a couple of hours later he would be better.

I worked (videotaping a football game) and tried not to cry on top of the press box (and failed) knowing that I had left him alone while he was in pain.

I rushed back home praying he was ok.

But he was not better. While he did come down the four stairs necessary to reach outside to pee, he fell when he tried. During those 3 hours I was gone, he messed the kitchen where I had to keep him.

Again, I was just a mess. I thought I let him down. Dogs need dignity just as much as humans do. If I ever get to the point where someone has to lift me around so that I can pee I will beg someone to put me down. I thought that he deserved the same respect.

My poor little boy was as brave and strong as he could be and he didn’t know what was happening to him and why; he just pushed forward the best that he could, and it was so admirable.

But I knew what was happening and I also know that dogs have feelings as well and all of that was running through my mind as I lifted him into the car and rushed down to the vet.
That ride wasn’t pretty either as I was petting him the whole way there realizing that these strokes of his soft hair were probably going to be some of the last.

Usually when our car rides were done, he would easily get out of the car. But he didn’t move to even try to get down. He just couldn’t. Now, I’m slumped over at the waist in the middle of the parking lot doing whatever I could to try to compose myself. Finally I lifted him out carried him to the vet’s office. He was resigned to being carried and this was something that he didn’t really like before.

We were brought right back into a room and I was sitting on a bench with him in my lap. I was trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do but was waiting for the conversation with the vet. As Brother was sitting in my lap he was hacking again. Then the vet walked in and I really couldn’t keep calm.

The vets where I go are truly amazing. Although this wasn’t Brother’s regular vet this guy was truly, 100%, professional and compassionate. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to talk through this situation with the dog.

He did offer to go through another round of steroids and pain medication but it was going to mean doing some blood work and regular blood work after that as well. Then there were financial considerations. Here is where I lost it again. If you have read this blog you know that I have had financial issues this year. Now I was angry on top of everything else; I had just been turned down for a job this past week and I simply don’t have the savings or unlimited cash flow necessary for something like that. I would spend whatever I could have to help my dog but I simply didn’t have it. I have plenty of credit left but still have too much unpaid on there now.

Ultimately I knew that I had to resign myself to the fact that this was not about me at all; it was only about my little Prince. I didn’t want to risk finding him like I found Napoleon. And I had thought about this moment for years now. I knew how I was going to be able to control it so I wouldn’t have that small regret that I had with Spooky. He lived a great life, or at least as great as I could make it for him with my limited ability as a flawed human being.

I had to make sure that I was not trying to keep him alive as long as possible because I was being selfish. I needed to be as selfless as possible with this life that I cherished so much.

So I made the decision. I wondered what gave me any right but it was only really only mine to make.

I am not really a man of God. I am best described as agnostic but I have my moments when I can only think and believe that God exists. I do pray from time to time. How I know God is through what I hear, read, and sometimes even see and experience. One thing that I have read, and do believe more than anything when it comes to matters of God, is that our pets are placed with us by God to watch over until He wants them to come back home to Him. My main duty for the past 15 years of my life was to take care of Brother until this time came. I did pray and said to God that I hope I did a good enough job doing that for Him.

The vet techs took him to prepare him and carried him back in to the room wrapped in a blanket. I got down on floor with him and had a few minutes to say everything that I wanted to say. I know that sounds odd to some people but I really don’t care what those people think.

I told him that I loved him and how happy he made me. I told him that Michelle, his mommy, loved him. I petted him and hugged him and had him kiss me back, which he did.

The vet came in and, again, was just amazing during what must be a very challenging time for them. Brother was calm, in my arms, and looking at me as his eyes slowly began to close shut. I knew it was over right away having been through it before but the vet talked out loud about what was happening and how it was gradual and peaceful. I appreciated it and just took that time to say to my Prince that I loved him and petted him and hugged him more.

I was noticeably shaking when I knew I was now alone and my little boy was gone. I am right now as I write this. My heart is broken and empty. I am so destroyed right now even knowing that it was the right thing to do for him. I wonder if I have done something wrong to deserve this pain that I feel.

Since I am alone and I have to travel for work I cannot have another pet without imposing on other people to help take care of one. My little boy was my life. I didn’t even realize how my life was revolved around him. I haven’t been able to sleep right for the past couple of nights, although I got more rest last night than Saturday.
He used to make a certain sound to try to wake me up in the morning, or whenever he wanted me to awaken. I heard that noise the first night while trying to sleep. I can still see him in my mind around every corner and whenever I look out the window into the back yard. It’s not very surprising; I thought that something like this might happen.

I walked around the house most of the day yesterday not really knowing what to do now. I am sure that this is much like what happens to those who take care of elderly parents or other sick family members who stay as close as possible and do every thing to help that you can. I am also sure that what I am going through pales in comparison to those situations. But I will say that the bond and love that I had with, and for, this dog was as strong as any other that I had in my life.

I found a great poem that I had posted on his Facebook page but it seems to have disappeared. Here it is…

LAST NIGHT

I stood by your bed last night; I came to have a peep.
I could see that you were crying you found it hard to sleep.
I whined to you softly as you brushed away a tear,
"It's me, I haven't left you, I'm well, I'm fine, I'm here."
I was close to you at breakfast, I watched you pour the tea,
You were thinking of the many times, your hands reached down to me.
I was with you at the shops today; your arms were getting sore.
I longed to take your parcels; I wish I could do more.
I was with you at my grave today; you tend it with such care.
I want to re-assure you, that I'm not lying there.
I walked with you towards the house, as you fumbled for your key.
I gently put my paw on you; I smiled and said, "It’s me."
You looked so very tired, and sank into a chair.
I tried so hard to let you know, that I was standing there.
It's possible for me, to be so near you everyday.
To say to you with certainty, "I never went away."
You sat there very quietly, then smiled, I think you knew...
in the stillness of that evening, I was very close to you.
The day is over... I smile and watch you yawning
and say "good-night, God bless, I'll see you in the morning."
And when the time is right for you to cross the brief divide,
I'll rush across to greet you and we'll stand, side by side.
I have so many things to show you, there is so much for you to see.
Be patient, live your journey out...then come home to be with me.
- Author Unknown

Goodbye my sweet prince...

 

Back in the Groove

I’ve been a little busier recently so there hasn’t been a great deal of time to write.

I initially wrote a bunch of baseball stuff and then read my last post and a lot of it was the same so I have chopped it out.

Since revenue is still down for me it means that I have to stay around the house as much as possible and that means lots of TV when I need to rest or be entertained.

The new season has started and I’m now locked into watching Survivor on Wednesdays. It is still the best reality-type of game show out there and I’m just a huge fan of it and the production crew that puts it together.
I watched the new Two and a Half Men with the debut of Ashton Kutcher on it. I like Kutcher as an actor. When I first remember seeing him I wasn’t impressed but he grew on me and I think he is truly talented. Charlie Sheen, despite what his odd fans think, did not make that show good; the writing made it good and it’s still good. Kutcher will enhance the show and provide some new story lines. Some do say that this means that the show will “jump the shark,” but I think that unlikely.

I watched the new comedy “Whitney” with comedienne Whitney Cummings last night. She is a new face to me and I liked the trailers so I watched the pilot. The pilot show was decent so I’ll flip it on from time to time to see how that goes. She created and wrote this show.

If you aren’t watching Raising Hope on Fox you’re missing a real funny show. This has entered it’s third season and 84-year old Cloris Leachman has a fantastic role on the show.

Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. was the winner of America’s Got Talent and I thought that was a great pick by the voters. He did beat one particular group (I-luminate) which was probably the better overall routine, but Murphy’s literal rags-to-riches tale was just too good to vote against in this contest and now he moves from a job washing cars to the strip in Las Vegas. THAT makes that show great this year. We could do without Piers Morgan hitting that stupid buzzer in the middle of final round performances so I would hope they could find someone with some sort of talent to actually judge talent, but so be it.

I tried to watch X-Factor over the past couple of days but couldn’t really get through it. The auditions are taped in front of a live audience and they still feel the need to dub in extra crowd effects, much like The Voice did this year. It is way over-produced and even though Paula Abdul is still pretty hot she is even more annoying as a judge than she was on Idol.
As girl who was crying at the end of her audition because she wasn’t moving forward, Abdul climbed on stage to console her. It was so phony and so dumb.
Another act made her “sick” to her stomach and she had to leave the judge’s table. I mean, come on now; this show is not supposed to be about Paula Abdul. In fact, I don’t think any of these shows should be about the judges at all, yet somehow they get way more attention than they should.

Geez…people need to throw me some more work, don’t they?

Speaking of work…I have a public hypnosis show appearance coming up on October 1 at Widener University in Chester, PA. Showtime is 7 pm and tickets are $10 at the door. It’s family and friends night at Widener so stop on by if you can and say you are my friend. You still have to pay; students only are admitted for free.

Also, I am 99% sure that another public show is on the schedule for 10-27. This one is in Pt. Pleasant, NJ. I need a signature and venue details before I can make that call for sure. Well, the show is happening; I just need to find out where exactly it is taking place.

So that’s about all I wanted to say. I needed to get back in the groove here.

Done

A Bunch of Stuff

Yes, to the 8 people who read this blog, I am alive.
The worst part of the hurricane passed to the east of where I live. We got half the rain and half of the wind gusts that were forecasted for my neighborhood.
A tornado warning at about 9pm shook me up a little, though, but basically I’ve had regular thunderstorms that were much worse for me.
But I don’t want to downplay the severity of something that took lives and something from which people are still recovering in flooded-out areas.
Water always wins.

A 3-game sweep of the Brewers by the Cardinals left St. Louis 7.5 games back in the NL Central. But with just about 30 games to go it would take a giant collapse for that gap to shrink enough. Albert Pujols slugged 2 hr’s and went 4-4 with 5 rbi’s in the final game of the series. He is the NL leader in homeruns with 34 but only has 89 rbi’s himself.
The Brewers Ryan Braun is looking like the MVP in the NL right now hitting .331 with 25 hr’s 89 rbi’s and over 30 stolen bases.

I will say that baseball has been pretty boring this year. I was watching the Yankees and Red Sox off and on between other garbage and it didn’t have the excitement that it usually does. That’s probably because both teams are coasting into the playoffs at this point and whether one team is first or second in the AL East really only determines who they will play in the first round. Both teams should cruise through that round and just meet other again in the championships of the AL. I would think that then there the excitement level would increase.

The Tigers Justin Verlander became the Major’s first 20-game winner. A couple of others still have a shot to do so. Verlander is also second in the league in ERA and leads in strikeouts. He is only .10 of an earned run behind Jered Weaver in ERA. If he should happen to overtake Weaver in that category and maintain his lead in the other two major categories, he will win the pitching triple crown in the AL. That is about the most excitement from an individual player that this season is yielding right now. Statistically this is an awful year.

Bring back roids!

Summer TV shows are almost over now. America’s Got Talent is one that I enjoy. The finals are now all set. This week a couple of my favorites had a great moment on the results show.
Eleven-year old Anna Graceman sung a Motley Crew song, which she killed, and was brought out for results with Landau Eugene Murphy, the W. Virginian car washer who sings like Sinatra.
With just the two of them there, one finalist already revealed, and four left to name with nine remaining contestants, I was shocked to see both of them potentially ready to go home.
Graceman’s name was called as the finalist and Murphy was headed home. When he was called over by Nick Cannon, the host, he was then told that he made it through to the finals after all. It was cruel in a way but the result was great and the embrace of the short young little blond girl with the tall dark-skinned, dreadlocked man was touching. And they both deserved to be in there.

Murphy and Graceman Embrace

I also watch Big Brother. I started watching this show last year and got hooked in to it. I don’t know if they call this a reality show or not, but I guess it’s in that genre. It’s a game show where people get locked into a studio house for a couple of months, compete against each, vote each out and try to win a half a million dollars (if you didn’t already know that.)
I like strategy games and this is why I do like this show. It always helps to have hot girls in there, of course, and there are still three left of the five remaining, so my interest is still fresh. This year has been much more dramatic than last year so it means that the show has casted well and provided enough twists in the game to prime the strategy pump.

True Blood is another that I watch on HBO. There are just two shows left in that season and it’s frustrating that these cable series are so short. They differ from mainstream network shows in that there are half as many. There are half as many mainstream shows during a season as there used to be also. I would think that with the plethora of people who can write material out there that successful TV show franchises could produce more shows for their fans.

I also admit to watching Bachelor Pad on ABC. The producers throw some twisted twists in this strategy game which is essentially a relationship game. It seems as if any time there is a relationship brewing they will throw in some sort of twist that will cause all sorts of chaos between the couples who are pairing up with each other to try to create new pairings. The girls on this show are usually the worst as far as just being loose hussies.

Shows that I am waiting to see in the fall include Survivor, Two and Half Men (with Ashton Kutcher replacing Charlie Sheen) Dexter, X-Factor (with Simon Cowell) and hopefully that is all that will keep my attention. I shouldn’t watch anything at all and just turn off my cable completely to save the money, but I am undisciplined and need a beating.

For some reason I was thinking about how people seem to confess all of their sins on their death beds, try to apologize to everyone, say goodbye to everyone, and tell certain people not in their lives that they love them before drawing their last breaths.
It made me wonder and want to ask if you would write a “goodbye” letter like that knowing that, unless there is some sort of accident, you still have a lot of time left to live.
Do you have things that you absolutely need to tell people before you die? I’m pretty sure that everyone does.
How about making a public proclamation? See, those are the ones about which we might hear and the ones that are so profound and memorable; how someone on their death bed pens a letter of remorse or love and doesn’t care who reads it or hears it.
Would you make such a statement while totally healthy? Would you say the most important things within you that you absolutely have to get off your chest before you pass away?

I’m not sure why I was thinking about that. 

I’ve been here a little less because I’ve been working on finding a second job. There is no way around this situation I am in currently and unless show bookings increase two-fold, it’s the only way to survive right now.
I’m in a testing process for a sports writing position that would provide enough flexibility to deal with show schedules.
Other projects like the Dungeon show and Delaware Sports will continue.

Done.