Now my seminal column with Sports Central entitled "A Jaded Look at the NBA Playoffs" was such a compelling piece of print that six people amongst you just had to write me and confirm my profound and inimitable intellect.
You can only imagine how distraught I was to visit Sports Central recently and find that nobody — not even my good friend, Southie — responded to my May 24 "Take Me Out to the Brawl Game" column.
Keep in mind, reader, just because everything I say transcends the corporeal world in which we live, I do still enjoy hearing from you from time to time. Take, for example, the dialogue I had recently with a loyal reader of mine who calls him/her/itself Southie:
On May 25, the ever-endearing Southie wrote, "Kevin, you punk! Your governor is a steroid abusing weightlifter – have you been too busy trying to be cool to notice that?...If you could write an entire sentence without a juuvenile misspelling you'd have more cache..."
This comment struck me as a bit odd because Southie misspelled both juvenile and cachet, but, forgiving guy that I am, I didn't have the heart to mention it; instead, I responded to this faithful reader of mine with my accustomed pleasantries: "Southie ... All this hostility about steroid use and you sound like you are in the throes of 'roid rage ... As far as cachet, you know you're on top when people take time out of their precious days to write you hate mail ... Thanks for that ... Kevin Connelly (the 'punk')."
I understand that this discourse might, to the untrained eye at least, appear to portray Southie in a rather ignorant light. In all honesty, though, this couldn't be further from the truth:
You see, Southie, I was fortunate enough to grow up in an environment where people, for the most part, actually knew what they were talking about. This, at one time, rendered me as cavil and insensitive when I encountered those [mostly from, but not limited to, Connecticut] who rivaled Mike Tyson on the ol' coherency scale. But, like most people do Southie, I ultimately matured with age and even grew to respect what people like you had to say regardless of how ineffectively you said it.
Just because you are inherently incorrect, Southie, and just because everything I say seems to manifest itself into cognitive bliss, this does not mean you don't have my utmost respect. Believe it or not, Southie, I consider you a dear friend of mine — just make sure you don't let anybody else know about this, though, as there is a certain sense of credibility I must uphold as a practicing journalist.
Since I'm now on the subject of the inarticulate, I feel obliged to mention that after much pleading and prodding last Saturday, I condescended to the level of three of my old high school friends and watched the Dodgers game with them over poker. Like you, Southie, these friends of mine were the type of people who never did so well as far as that whole life thing was concerned so I went out of my way to befriend them in high school.
As I'm sure you know, Southie, high school can be a rough time for dateless wonders like these guys, so I taught them a social grace or two before it became too late. One of these friends, Mr. Ryan Badger, my most promising subject back then, has even gone on to shack up with a rather attractive woman and have a couple children with her — I have yet to receive his thanks.
So I showed up to daddy's house at around 8 PM just in time to see J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent of the Dodgers hit back-to-back home runs in the fourth inning off of Brewers pitcher Victor Santos to take a 2-1 lead — a lead they would not surrender. His youngest son of sixteen months was the only one who seemed focused on the television at the time so I asked him if he thought Jason Phillips was the answer for the Dodgers this year at catcher. Not seeming to understand the importance of the question, he responded with a peculiar stare and a rather infantile groan and proceeded to stumble across the room to his mother — I realized then that this kid was going to be a bigger project than his dad.
It took me a while to get over the audacity the little mute had in ignoring me, but I did. At this point, I ventured over to the kitchen table to see my three friends setting up for a game of poker. Before I could ask the compulsive gamblers how they have been, one of them, Mr. CJ Miyake, managed to eruct some nonsense I figured out later was intended for me.
"Grab a turtle from the fridge," he snorted. "You have to read the legend first, though."
Feeling thirsty, I went to the fridge to grab a drink before I sat down to play poker. All I could find was some cheap-looking beer I had never seen before called Caguama so I cracked it open, took a swig, and was not impressed.
"Read the legend first!" he was heard snorting, it was reported later, from a block away. He then walked over to my side of the table, picked up the can, and read some pithy tale about how a mysterious turtle inspired the cheap, foul-tasting beer. I thought back to all of the hard work and time I had put into turning this guy's life around and was instantly saddened.
I took another swig and feigned approval just to appease the beer-lover and wondered how many more I would have to drink before the outlook of the Dodgers' 27-27 season started to look any better. I looked up at the TV, saw rookie DJ Houlton making his first start as a Dodger, and went to the pantry to look for the hard stuff.
None being found, I grabbed another foul-tasting beer and sat down to ask the beer-lover about life. He told me he was moving to Japan in about a month, so — after rejoicing to myself in glee, of course — I asked him whether or not he would watch any baseball there, knowing professional baseball is taken very seriously in Japan. Not knowing much more about life than poker and beer, the beer-lover mumbled something about a Japanese magazine offering Ichiro Suzuki millions of dollars to pose nude and I left it at that, neglecting to mention how Ichiro was washed and would never hit .300 again in the MLB.
I was surprised to realize at this point that the third stooge of the bunch, one Jeff Illions, was being inordinately quiet. I pondered this behavior over another swig of foul-tasting beer and I came to the conclusion that, being a Red Sox fan, he was still speechless because his team actually won a meaningful game for the first time since his grandpa was making my grandpa clam chowder in New England. I was thinking about asking the beer-lover to say something stupid again to get clam chowder's attention, but he suddenly came to faster than Johnny Damon at the sound of hair clippers and a shower.
Clam chowder just finished his first year of law school at Pepperdine University, so I asked him if law school was as hard as everyone makes it out to be. Still living in the past like the rest of the Red Sox nation, he described law school with a baseball metaphor:
"It's about as hard as hitting a backdoor slider from Pedro Martinez," clam chowder said with pride. I mentioned to him that Pedro was now pitching for the Mets and slugger Manny Ramirez had less hits this year than a botany website, and, in disdain, he told me to "write a story about it."
So here's that story you asked for, clam chowder. I hope you enjoyed it.
The final word comes from one of my many devoted readers, Mr. Jeff Hirth: "I don't think I have ever seen a column as intelligently written and thought through as yours, Kevin. My hat goes off to you..."
Jeff, you forgot to mention how good-looking I am.
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