Daily Log of a Fresh-faced Graduate
April 9, 2013

“She’s just a girl, man,” Dan-o said.  “I got a line on a guy who can get shrooms… can you imagine that?  I bet we can get into a little fun before we get outta Lexington.”

I thought about spending the night in a psilocybic rush, and all I could see was the pragmatic expression on Mezzy’s face as she climbed the stairway out of my life.  The thin line of her lips had been half smirk, half grin, as if the thought that we might get together was so strange it had never existed until that very moment.  The glance she had given Belinda said, “Can you imagine this guy?”

So Dan-o and I spent the night in a basement bar listening to some crappy country band and drinking crappy beer.

Until I turned to him and said, “We’re going back tomorrow,” and left him to sit in the bar alone.

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A wise man once said that the most beautiful thing is a ballpark filled with people, but entering Churchill 1 for the second time, I could not have cared less about the 34K-plus people who were soon going to fill it.  All I wanted to see was one specific girl.

Section 212, row 7, seat 102 was empty when we got there, but then, so was pretty much every other seat.  We sat down nearby and waited.

“We should probably go across the way,” Dan-o said.

“Why?”

“What if she comes and doesn’t want to talk?”

That hurt, but he was right.  If she wanted to avoid me, she would just not come to her seat.  “Okay,” I said, and we went down to the rail to watch BP.

Ten minutes before the game started, two old guys took Mezzy and Belinda’s seat.  Must be her father and a client.

Damn.

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Let me talk about London for a while.  If there were true justice in the world, the team would just be named Orlando Germán Eight Slabs of Beef.  Okay.  Crud.  That’s not really true.  I’m just pissed, and the game was a boring, rain-interrupted affair that ended in a 4-1 Kentucky win.

The Underground managed only four hits, scoring only on Rémi Young’s 4^th inning homer to right.  Young’s a player, and with Germán in center, the Underground are two-thirds of the way to a solid outfield.  That’s like saying you got The Three Stooges as long as you got Moe and Larry.  I mean, you just have to have Curly, too.  I don’t think Carter is the answer in left, though.  If 3B Kien-lung Hsiao can get his OBP back up to the .350 range where it was before last year, then maybe these guys will score some runs, but with a guy like 2B Dale Mitchell out with injury, manger Sergio Manetti is penciling guys like Juan Montoya and Ernesto Burgos into the lineup.  Montoya has the glove to play and his minor league stats are intriguing.  Burgos played today and he drew a couple walks.  Not terrible.  I guess Montoya had a race to run, or something.

I like what I saw of Jon Mitchell, though Jamie Boyd touched him up for his fourth homer of the year before the rain came.  Mitchell is 37, though, and certainly not the kind of guy the Brits expect to be around forever.  With his contract being up this year, it will be interesting to see what happens there.  I had really wanted to see Luis Mora pitch.  His fastball, cutter, curveball, change repertoire makes him hard to predict, but the Underground don’t seem to know what to do with him; he’s pitched in about every role possible.

So, I don’t know what to think of these guys.

London has won 71 games each of the past two seasons, and finished an average of 25½ games back.  The team is under new management, always a tenuous moment.  This off-season saw them sign catcher José Alsina to a three-year deal, then sit him on the bench, something that always makes you wonder.  I mean, crap, I ain’t got a job, so I would be willing to do that for half the price.  Pisses me off, really.  Alsina’s making 3-mill a year, and I’m getting voice mails from my Mom saying that Mr. Gram is asking about me and wondering if I want my old job back at the grocery story.  Like that’s ever going to happen.  God, I hope not.  Is it?

Dan-o, he don’t much care, though.  He sits there in his rain-soaked chair and takes in a baseball game as if it’s the only thing in existence.  I admire that in him – that ability to live in the Zen of the moment.

Except, of course, that this moment is one where Mezzy didn’t come to the game, so who the Hell wants to wallow in that, eh?

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I leave the park in a worse mood than ever.