14 posts tagged “baseball”

1a) Roger Clemens has always been a douchebag, but now he's a cheating douchebag. F.P. Santangelo's candid comments about his own usage really put that whole bat-throwing incident with Mike Piazza back in 2000 in perspective, too: "[HGH] changes who you are. If you're a jerk, you become a bigger jerk. If you're impatient, you become more impatient. It accentuates whatever personality you have to the utmost. It gives you this false confidence."

1b) Haven't really dug into it yet but this site -- http://www.baseballssteroidera.com/ -- looks like it will make for interesting reading over the holidays.

2a) "Moral victories" are bullshit rationalizations to make losers feel better about being losers. The Jets D played pretty well on Sunday but the offense was terrible again and it's clearly not just Chad Pennington.  I have a feeling he's going to end up having another career year next season playing for someone else -- Miami? Baltimore? Kansas City? -- while Kellen Clemens, Leon Washington and Thomas Jones (if they don't trade him) continue to struggle until the offensive line gets a complete overhaul. Not paying Pete Kendall the extra $1m was a bonehead decision.

2b) Tony Romo picked the wrong Sunday to lay an egg, as his minus-17 point performance almost surely killed my playoff run in the poetsleauge fantasy football semi-finals, unless the Minnesota D can turn Kyle Orton in Rex Grossman tonight and return a few INTs for TDs. The worst part is that my team scored 201 points last week while we enjoyed a bye.  Ugh!

3) Realized Friday night that we don't have the current title for the old car and need to get a replacement one issued before we can sell it.  Ugh!  Took it out to Long Island so we won't have to move it around every other day for alternate side of the street parking rules, probably the main reason we're not keeping it.

4) Spent most of the day Saturday Xmas shopping and ended up buying more stuff for the kids and ourselves than the people we were supposed to be shopping for.  Went out on Sunday morning to get a few last minute things from Target and got a little carried away.  If they'd have had a Wii in stock, I'd have probably picked one of those up, too!

5) I could never remember which Christmas movie Heat Miser was from but Kevin's handy list of Christmas movies reminded me that it was The Year Without a Santa Claus. Coincidentally, while I was at Target yesterday, they had a Deluxe Edition DVD that I snatched up and we (Salomé and I, not Kevin and I) watched it with the kids before bed last night. It's pretty dated and doesn't hold up as well as Charlie Brown's classic tale, but the Snow Miser and Heat Miser intro songs still work for me and seemed to catch the kids' attention, too. (Salomé fell asleep halfway through!)  Makes me wonder if Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is as good as I recall, or if the Island of Misfit Toys is better off left as an untainted memory.

 

Not just no, but "HELL, NO!"

"As I've said before, he's one of the free agents in the market, and we're looking at all free agents," Minaya said about A-Rod, whose private plane flew from Miami to the Bahamas on Sunday...

Minaya continues to reaffirm his pleasure with David Wright and Jose Reyes, but won't offer any guarantees that a position switch to accommodate A-Rod is not viable.

"We don't need to fill third base," Minaya said yesterday. "I'm telling you, today we're very happy with David Wright at third base."

I understand the need to do due diligence and investigate every free agent on the market, but if the Mets sign A-Rod, I'm done.

D.O.N.E.

While his offensive prowess is without equal -- in the regular season at least -- he's the kind of over-priced, "Me, first" player that doomed the Mets in the Nineties and would be a cancer on a team that needs to head-check after last season's collapse.

I don't care if we could trade Reyes for Johan Santana and A-Rod moved back to shortstop. I don't care if he's willing to play second base. I don't care if he took a paycut; I don't want him in Queens and if they do sign him, it's the end of my 25-year run as a Mets fan and I'm going back to the Yankees.

Over on Facebook last week, I posed a question -- "If you could make me write a poem, what would it be about?" -- and got some interesting responses that I've been letting marinate in the hopes that one of them would break through my current case of writer's block. Yesterday, determined to read something new at 13, I went with Cory's prompt -- "A gentrification poem in the voice of a subway car. Locale and line your choice." -- and ended up with one of the oddest poems I've ever written, in terms of how it evolved from the first line to the complete first draft.

"Untitled" for now, it's really two different poems: the one I started to write, about the difference between my 4th grade commute and my current one, both on the D train, and how the faces have changed over the years; and the one it decided it wanted to be, reminiscing about being a Yankee fan back in 1978 and how different they are today. It's about as unpolished a first draft as I've ever read on stage, but there was something startling to me about the passion for the Yankees that bubbled up, and I thought it was pretty funny that I was wearing my Edgardo Alfonzo Mets jersey last night.

A-Rod is officially the new Michael Jordan, the reigning "all about me" superstar, only without the championships or mega-endorsements. Farewell, loser!

Interestingly, with Joe Girardi taking over as manager from the Zombie King, Pay-Rod packing his bags, and the exciting kids who came up this year and saved the season, I'm starting to feel like I could become a Yankee fan again!  While I'm sure they're going to spend as much money as they always have, it almost feels like the tide is turning here in NYC and the Mets have become the fat, lazy underachievers while the Yankees are resembling the scrappy underdog you can't help but cheer for.  If Graig Nettles finds his way onto Girardi's staff, I may have to officially convert!

Weird.

We trekked up to Lawrence Farms Orchards again on Saturday to have an apple-picking/pumpkin-picking/picnic party for India's 5th birthday and the unseasonably warm October weather was absolutely perfect for it! (More pictures @ Flickr.) India, who doesn't like birthday parties at all, handled things pretty well, though she had no interest in her cake and didn't warm up to the idea of opening her presents until we peeked behind the wrapping paper of one of them and she realized a Care Bear was inside! Prior to that, she had dissed a gift bag full of clothes as "boring" and was insisting that I give her the Pliplup (Pokemon) figure she knew was in another bag because she'd spied it at home a few days earlier.

The rest of the day, she carried around the smaller of the two Care Bears she received (Grumpy Bear, ironically) and the talking Chimchar (Pokemon) I wanted to claim as my own! It's kind of funny that years after Pokemon has pretty much faded into the pop culture background, my old cards buried in the back of the closet, both Isaac and India have discovered them in various forms, from the toys to the cards to the video game itself.

And no, that's not my direct influence at all, though I fully encourage it now that the interest is there! :-)

My new favorite toy, the Creative Zen 4GB, arrived last week and I've been having fun playing around with it, loading it up with 3.25GB of the most random selection of music from the 60s to today, and finally dabbling with some podcasts via Zencast. So far, the CNN Complete Update, MLB.com's Gameday Audio Rewind, and NPR's Latino USA have been keepers, but I'm still looking for the "killer app" that really sells me on the concept as a viable standalone feature. As much as I loved Pump up the Volume, most podcasts seem to be the digital equivalent of bad pirate radio, so any recommendations of particularly compelling content would be welcomed!

 

Skipped 13 last night and finally caught an episode of K-Ville and it was pretty good.  Not great, mind you -- the plotting is very by-the-numbers and the writing isn't quite as crisp as I'd like it to be -- but as I expected, Anthony Anderson and Cole Hauser work well together, and one of the sub-plots, the petition for reinstatement by cops who went AWOL during and after Katrina, is a pretty compelling one. I won't necessarily skip 13 too often to catch it but I'll finally hook up the DVR box to make sure I don't miss any future episodes. Now I just need to get on track with Private Practice and work Grey's Anatomy back into my schedule and all will be right on the TV front.

 

And so the baseball season ends in NYC, not with a bang, but with a gag.  In stereo, at that!  First the Mets pull an historic choke over the final two weeks of the season, losing a playoff berth that was all but guaranteed at the beginning of the season; then, the Yankees test the "better to have loved and lost" theory by storming into the playoffs only to pull an embarassing no-show for three out of four games, getting eliminated in the first round for the third year in a row. Not even the Teflon Don himself, Derek Jeter, was immune to the Choke, hitting a paltry 3-for-17 (.126) and a single RBI.

And what of Joe Torre, the beleaguered manager who, depending on the time of year and who you ask, gets too much or not enough credit for the Yankees' successful run during his 12-year tenure? He's been a great manager for them, this season more than ever, but he's simply not the right guy anymore because Steinbrenner demands better than Bobby Cox. If Torre had the slightest shred of the dignity he's so often credited with, he'd resign today before Steinbrenner can lower the axe. And please, no one suggest the Mets hire him as a bench coach for Willie Randolph.  That would be an insult to both of them.

 

I have another Spindle update going up later this week, featuring a varied batch of contributors dominated by people I don't know personally who found the site via marketing efforts on Facebook, Duotrope, NewPages and the flyers I printed up and gave out at 13 over the past few weeks. In putting it together, I had to deal with my first outright rejections, which was painful but necessary.

I tried to find the right tone for the rejection note, seeking a balance between expressing sincere appreciation for the submissions and being clear that the material wasn't up to par, without going into any detailed critique which I simply don't have the time for.  I showed it to Salomé after I'd sent it to a couple of people and she was appalled!  We went back and forth over it and I finally saw her point, realizing that maybe I shouldn't have developed it in the context of answering one specific submitter who had clearly not read the guidlelines at all.

On the bright side, I've lined up two poetry editors and am talking to someone this week about writing a regular column; plus, I'm working on the first interview of interesting NYers that I hope to be a regular feature. and I have our first solid fiction submission, though it's a bit long and may have to be serialized.  Good stuff!

1:09pm Guy is holding his breath, crossing his fingers, and dressed in full Mets gear. His kids, too.

--I even got Salomé to put on something: my long-sleeve Mr. Mets shirt!  We are ready to rock, though separately as I'm the only one actually watching the game.

1:31pm Guy is thinking Tom Glavine is welcome to return to Atlanta next season.
--Things started to fall apart almost immediately as Glavine made some good pitches but the Marlins were hitting them anyway. Never a good sign. I never really warmed up to Glavine being a Met as it was clear his heart remained in Atlanta, but I respected his veteran presence on the team. More than any of the myriad injuries this season that illustrated how old the Mets were, no bit of evidence stands out more than Glavine's ineffectiveness over his last three starts.

1:41pm Guy is believing 9 innings is a lot of time to pull off a miracle comeback.
--Seven runs is a huge deficit, but with the way the Mets offense has been hitting lately and the lousy season Dontrelle Willis has been having, the game is still far from over.

2:09pm Guy is second-guessing Willie for pinch-hitting for Sosa who just struck out the side. Let him sacrifice Milledge and pitch one more inning.
--Sosa is your long reliever, comes in and does a pretty good job in a very tough spot, and you pinch hit him after 1+ inning...with Sandy Alomar, Jr.!?!? Plus, the bottom of the Marlins order is coming up next inning. Total panic move, Willie.

2:23pm Guy is stressed, eating leftover coconut shrimp, drinking PBR and glancing at the Jets score.
--No score in the Jets game through the first half, so it's only a mostly depressing sports day for me so far. The shrimp, from Stew Leonard's, tastes a lot better the next day, and PBR is a perfect complement for the misery that is looming on the horizon.

2:31pm Guy is thinking, despite this season, that the Mets should go after Dontrelle Willis in the off-season.
--I think Rick Petersen can fix his mechanics and mental state, a la Oliver Perez, and he'd definitely step up to the challenge of pitching for a contender. PS: Billy Wagner is an idiot, misquoted or not, and I'll take Petersen over him any day. Trade him.

2:36pm Guy is giving props to Manny Acta and Freddi Gonzalez for not letting their teams lay down. Unlike, say, Art Howe...
--Or, apprarently, Willie Randolph. There's rumors that Acta was the de facto manager under Randolph in his first two seasons here in NY and watching the Nationals play out the string like they were in the thick of the playoff race makes me wonder. Howe, BTW, is now the bench coach for the Texas Rangers, who finished in last place in the AL Central this season. What are the odds that he, multiple low-energy failure, gets another managing job before Randolph does?

2:54pm Guy is not going to be satisfied with a one-game playoff @ Philly because they both lost today. Win or go home TODAY!
--After the inexplicable, inexcusable collapse of the past three weeks, the Mets simply don't deserve to make the playoffs if they don't win today. They barely deserve this last shot, really.

3:03pm Guy is starting to feel the hope slip away.
--The look on Randolph's face the past couple of innings suggests he's already let it slip away. At least Zombie Joe Torre is generally inscrutable and you can't tell when he's thrown in the towel.

3:20pm Guy is reluctant to admit, no matter what happens today, that Willie Randolph is the appropriate scapegoat. Reluctant, but willing.
--Same as I was calling for Torre's head at the beginning of the summer, I have to hold Randolph similarly accountable. Omar Minaya takes a hit for some bad personnel moves this season, but Paul LoDuca and David Wright stood out as the emotional leaders of the team throughout the season while Randolph kept playing his poor man's Torre role to no effect. If he'd have benched Reyes and Milledge today after their lackadaiscal play in yesterday's game, THAT would have showed some balls and sent a message to his team, the Marlins and the rest of the league. His bosses, too. If he doesn't believe his job is on the line with today's game, he's clueless.

3:30pm Guy is second-guessing another Randolph bullpen move. Fuck, man! Maybe Acta really was the manager the last two years?
--The bullpen only gave up one run after the first inning meltdown but I've never been happy with Randolph's micro-managing of the bullpen, too often playing the odds over the moment itself. Makes you think there was something to Minaya's trading youngsters Heath Bell and Royce Ring and taking his chances with veterans like Schoenweiss and Mota.

3:50pm Guy is just about to give up on the Mets game when he realizes the Jets game ended with them losing to Buffalo. Time for another PBR?
--Well, fuck. It's going to be a long sports winter, isn't it?

4:03pm Guy is rooting for the Colorado Rockies to pull off the upset and force a playoff with San Diego.
--I've always been a fan of the underdog, and that's what the Mets were back in 1981-1982 when I switched my allegiances from the Yankees after most of my favorite players had departed. I was 12 years old and the Yankees were the team I was given, not the team I chose. The Marlins, ironically, have been my second-favorite team for years -- I chose them this spring for my son's tee ball team when the Mets were already taken by a returning coach -- so it's particularly galling that today is playing out the way it is. The Rockies are the most underdog you can get for this season's playoffs and I'd love to see them snatch the Wild Card and then rampage through the playoffs, making the World Series against the Yankees. At that point, with all of promising kids who have come up and saved the Yankees' season, it's going to be hard to root against them this year.

4:26pm Guy is fascinated by how much passion the Mets' TV crew shows, not just for the team, but for the game itself. They deserve an Emmy nod.
--Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are the best sports broadcast trio I've ever heard. They make the game fun, offering insightful commentary and analysis peppered with occasional non-sensical tangents, and can make even a blowout like today bearable to keep watching.

4:32pm Guy is contemplating "the greatest September collapse in the history of Major League Baseball." It's not a good feeling.
--This unquestionably ranks as the most disappointing sports season I've ever experienced as a fan. The Mets coasted most of the season thanks to a strong start, weathering a slew of injuries and an inconsistent bullpen, but in the home stretch, with the likes of Martinez, Alou, Chavez and Castro all returning to the team and the additions of Castillo, Anderson and Conine, there's absolutely no excuse for the wheels coming off so dramatically. I'm withholding final judgement until I see his press conference after the game, but barring some ballsy comments that demonstrate his taking full responsibility for the collapse -- because that's what good coaches do -- right this second, I think it's Willie Randolph's head on the chopping block and deservedly so. And that's a depressing feeling on a number of levels that go beyond sports.

1) Spindle: It's where the majority of my free (and not-so-free) time has gone the past week as I've been tweaking things in the background since the site "soft launched" last Wednesday. I pulled some different featured content to the front for those not inclined to wandering the City aimlessly -- something I plan to do on a weekly basis -- and am pulling together new content for an October 1 update.  Response so far has been terrific, both to the site design and the content, and I'm putting out the first official mass Call for Submissions tonight, distributing flyers at louderARTS and placing a sponsored listing on NewPages.com that will hopefully go live sometime this week.

2) Kids: Isaac had a rough weekend as he picked the wrong time to pull a spoiled brat move at Barnes & Noble on Friday night and is now on "punishment" until his birthday next month. His "punishment" is that he won't be getting anything other than the basic necessities until then; no toys, no ice cream, no videogame time, etc. Of course, as that lame "punishment" probably makes obvious, it's totally our fault that he's a bit spoiled, but it's not too late to fix it. We made him write an essay on Sunday about what he'd done, why it was bad and what the consequences were, and I think it finally sunk in for him why we were so disappointed with him. He's such a sensitive kid, quick to tears when he's embarassed or frustrated, and generally speaking he's a saint, but he's got a bad sense of entitlement that we need to nip in the bud. India had a similar moment Saturday night in Target, refusing to try on a pair of shoes and throwing a fit which got even worse when we "punished" her by putting her Lightning McQueen Halloween bucket back on the shelf. Yikes!  She can go from 0-60 in about 3 seconds, arms and legs flailing in high-volume anger, and then almost as quickly become a sobbing mess, clearly overwhelmed by the moment as she tries to calm herself and communicate. I calmed her down for a bit and she eventually agreed to try on the shoes and got her bucket back in the process, making the connection we spent the whole weekend trying to get Isaac to understand.  Looking at the two of them, myself, and people's behavior in general, plus having finished reading The Speed of Dark (review coming soon), I can't decide whether "autism" is too narrowly or too broadly defined.

3) Work: Took a quick trip out to Cincinnati last Thursday for a strategy meeting and to meet my new Advertising Director. Things are looking good for 2008, but I've got a lot of legwork to do over the next few weeks before the Jan/Feb issue closes to make sure of it.  The Nov/Dec issue blindsided me as I missed my overly optimistic reforecast, but I'm making it up online and am comfortably ahead for the year overall. I finished the media kit, too -- an almost total revamp from last year -- and if we can launch some of the new online opportunities I put in there before the end of the year, I should be sitting pretty when the smoke clears and the final numbers come in.

4) Fantasy Sports: My baseball team revived itself for one last hurrah after my pitching staff tanked last week, and I claimed 5th place this season. Sucky ending to what was shaping up to be a great season until these last three weeks. In football, my money league team is clinging to its first victory and I'll be forced to root for the Eagles tonight over the Redskins, or at least for Jason Avant to outscore Santana Moss, in order to preserve the "W". Matt Schaub has outscored Philip Rivers two weeks in a row now, sitting on my bench.  In my Yahoo! Poets League, I'm spanking fools with a 2-0 record and the highest-scoring team (though I might be surpassed by the end of tonight's game.)

5) NY Sports: The Mets are giving me heartburn with their horrible bullpen situation. I mean, the Phillies aren't that good, but we're making them look like the Braves used to as they've now swept twice in a row and closed the division gap to 3.5 games. No way they catch up (fingers crossed), but it doesn't bode well for the playoffs, especially if they manage to snag the wild card. With the Yankees keeping things interesting in the AL, I'm only partially rooting for a Subway Series rematch. Whether Eric Mangini wants to acknowledge it or not, the Jets officially have a quarterback controversy after Kellen Clemens stood up to the Baltimore Ravens' over-powering D and never backed down, almost pulling off the dramatic comeback. If not for Justin McCareins dropping TWO TD passes -- please, Mangini, make a statement and cut him this week, no matter the salary cap implications -- they could have stolen that game. I'm a big Pennington fan but he's had his chances and always comes up a little short in the end. Still, I'd take him over Eli Manning any day.  That kid's a dorky goofball who will always be in his big brother's shadow and will never succeed in NY.

** It's becoming clear to me that no matter how much I enjoy going to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets, I am apparently bad luck for them as they've lost the majority of times I've been in the stands. Sunday's Subway Series finale was particularly painful to watch, not just for the loss, but because I was literally surrounded by Yankees fans. Most of them weren't terribly obnoxious -- if anything, Mets fans were worse, especially with the unnecessarily crude "Yankees suck!" chant. It's long past time to get over the inferiority complex and act like we believe we belong on the same field, you know? -- but I now understand what the handful of loyal Marlins fans must feel like whenever the Mets go down to Miami and are greeted with healthy cheers of "Let's Go Mets!"

** Speaking of the Marlins, the Pee Wee version had their first mid-week practice yesterday, and more than half of the team showed up, which was nice to see. The 20-30 minutes of hurried practice we manage to squeeze in before the game every Saturday isn't nearly enough for the individual attention many of them need at this point to progress to the next level. I gave them all progress report cards at last week's game, rating them in the fundamentals along with some specific feedback on areas they need to focus on, and we worked with those who showed up at practice on some of those things. A few of the kids have awkward swings that needed tweaking, and it was great to have 5 minutes to work with each of them individually. Isaac has a weird hitch that comes from his skinny little arms, but we adjusted his stance, pulling his back foot further away from the plate, and it made a big difference. The most confounding was one of the two girls who has trouble putting all of the little steps involved in taking a clean swing together seamlessly, causing her to appear like she's swinging in stop-motion animation, and she has a similar problem with throwing. It's going to take a lot more practice to get her straightened out, but she's a great fielder and has a great attitude about the game so I'm sure she'll be ready for the next level with enough practice.

There's no game this weekend, so we'll have one more practice session next Wednesday, and then our final two games of the season over the next two Saturdays and we'll be done.  I had no idea that I'd enjoy coaching them as much as I have, nor so willingly throw myself into the extras like the newsletter and report cards, or the baseball cards after every game, but I've been feeding off of their enthusiasm and the positive feedback I've heard from the parents and it's been a blast.  I wish the season were longer so we could keep playing through the summer. :-(

** In about 15 minutes, at 10:30am, India will be visited by someone from the ASD Nest program for observation in consideration of her being admitted for the fall. She cleared the first step, a review of her CSE records, which was probably the trickiest step since they removed the Autism classification, but the evaluations make it clear that she needs a more structured setting than General Ed or even the standard CTT setting can offer. I'm cautiously optimistic about the whole thing because she seems to perfectly fit the profile they're looking for, plus she's a girl, which is a relative rarity for ASD and I got the impression that that could work to her advantage.  Cross your fingers!

** The Walk NOW for Autism is next Sunday, and I'm at 91% of my upwards-adjusted fundraising goal of $1300. Another $120 and I'm all set.  If you haven't yet, and you're able, help me out.  If you have, thank you again!

** Did I nail American Idol or what? Jordin might end up surpassing Kelly as my favorite winner, and Blake just might end up being the most popular runnner-up yet. That duet with Doug E. Fresh was bananas!

Tonight, tonight, tonight!  You have to figure, even if John Maine unexpectedly flames out and the Yankees light him up, the Mets should be able to do twice as much damage to Tyler Clippard and their beleagured bullpen.

Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!

Paging Joe Girardi...

The Subway Series kicks off tonight and I'll be there in person for Sunday night's game, where John Maine will hopefully be nailing down the victory that completes the Mets' sweep of the Yankees.

If that does happen, what are the chances Joe Torre gets fired Monday morning, to be replaced by Joe Girardi just in time for the three-game set vs. Boston that starts that night? Or, does Torre get the Boston series as his last stand?

Who says baseball lacks in-season drama?

The combination of the Mets looking like they have a legitimate shot at winning the World Series this year and Isaac playing (and me coaching) tee ball, has me into baseball like I haven't been since I was a kid. The only difference is the amount of money I've spent on baseball-related stuff this year, including: a 5-ticket nosebleed seat plan for Mets games, plus the Autism Awareness Day Game; new Mets jerseys for Isaac and I, as well as t-shirts for Salomé and India; a new Mets bookbag for Isaac; baseball cards for the tee ball kids, plus all of Isaac's and my accessories...

Yeah, I broke down and bought a Marlins jersey on Ebay -- Delgado, in black -- to go with my Coach's cap on Tee Ball Saturdays! Shut up!

And now, earlier today, I got an email from the Mets that I'd been selected for their Subway Series 2nd Chance Ticket Purchase Opportunity, offering a chance to get up to six tickets to next weekend's dustup with the Yankees! Outside of season ticket holders and certain ticket packages that were too expensive for me, getting Subway Series tickets is difficult, so I clicked through the Friday and Sunday games and found two great Upper Deck Box seats and called Dan to see if he could make the game, which of course he could, because any real Met or Yankee fan is required by law to drop everything when a chance to go to one of these games pops up! You get your fan card pulled otherwise.

Throw my fantasy baseball team into the mix and it's going to be an exciting spring and summer of baseball, hopefully capped off by the Mets nailing down October with a six-game World Series victory over...whomever!  I'm not predicting a sweep simply because I want the Championship celebrated on our home turf.

In tee ball tomorrow, we take on the Pee Wee Yankees for the first time -- the Mets were last weekend, and, coincidentally, were probably the best overall team we've faced so far -- and we bought a digital video camera last week so we can tape it for posterity.  The kids are starting to separate a little bit, with the clearly talented ones standing out more and more each week, so the next few games should be a lot of fun. I'm hoping to be able to edit together footage from the next three games to give them each a copy as a gift at the last game, when they'll also receive their trophies.  They've loved the baseball cards I've given them the past few weeks, and I've got a bunch of comics Midtown donated that I'll give out this weekend, but the DVD should be something both they and their parents will really appreciate.

I know I wish I had mementos like that from my childhood, so I definitely want to have them for Isaac and India as they get older. That commercial with the parents bathing the teenager in the kitchen sink is hilarious and on-point...though maybe not terribly effective since I can't remember what it was promoting!