Brooklyn Citizens (7-3, .700) @ Los Angeles Kings (6-4, .600)
I often spend the twenty minutes it takes me to walk from my condo to the ballpark reflecting, visualizing future success, and listening to something with some pep. I did none of those things on my way to the park today – I was a blank slate, focused only on putting one foot in front of the other and not getting hit by a wayward driver crossing one of the many intersections I have to navigate on the way. Maybe it was nerves, maybe I’m just mentally spent after being put through the ringer this season – Otto showed up to camp nearly 30lbs underweight and under the spell of a charlatan posing as a guru, Foggy got lost in a globe-trotting investigation into the origins of Otto’s hypnosis, and I, somehow, got myself connected to a Tupperware-based money laundering scheme that threatened to destroy everything I’d built over 3+ season in Tinseltown. This has been something of a non-linear jaunt along the edge and has, with us only 1 game away from elimination, brought me right up to it. In order to succeed you have to jump, that much is true, but, and I think this is important, in all of the hullabaloo of our 2078 campaign I haven’t had time to double-check my parachute…
In other news… I have it on good authority that, after her name change from Foggy Finkelstein to Loretta Synn was processed, our resident rabble-rousing PI of ill repute has installed herself as the Co-Captain of LA’s premier Roller Derby outfit, the Rocket Queens. I think that I’m happy for her – on the surface this all seems to be on the up & up… but knowing Foggy… err, Loretta… I’m not convinced that she’s not up to something here. She has the gift – sees all the angles, plays the ones worth playing, and, somehow, despite her habit of acting out emotionally (RE: the Phoenix debacle), she always comes out smelling like roses.
Game 6: Cam Murphy (0-1, 4.15) @ Jonny Garcia (1-0, 1.88)
Loss, 3-2. All that glitters isn't gold, all we are is dust in the wind, we're all just bricks in the wall, manic depression's a frustrating mess, you can't always get what you want, a hard rain's gonna fall, and, until 2079, the thrill of living is gone… We got handled by Brooklyn in this series, and while we did mount a mini-comeback in the bottom of the 9th it wouldn’t be enough, the destiny of the 2078 Los Angeles Kings was sealed when Phil Murray thought it would be a good idea to rebrand our club the Kings… the Kings of what? Second place? East-LA? Who knows what that guy was thinking… here we got a masterful Cam Murphy who kept us scoreless through 7 innings, a lockdown effort from the opposing bullpen who kept it that way, and a 2-run ding dong from 3B Jarel White that would be all she wrote. Lloyd and OH HONG both struck out 3 times, Dom hit into a soul-crushing, rally-killing double play that squashed our comeback effort in the bottom of the 9th, and we left 8 runners stranded without enough pocket money to get a bite to eat while they wait for the bus to come through. We came into this season on a high note, the best team in the game, and, eventually, watched our destiny slip through our fingers as injuries took their toll. That’s my story anyway – it was the injuries, without them we’d have swept our way through the playoffs to claim our 3rd straight World Series rings, right? Yeah, not so fast… this is baseball, and it has no love for a sure thing. Don’t believe me? Go ask the guys from Golden State or any of the players who were on Philly’s Tricentennial squad… We have some big decisions to make in the off-season, I have some big decisions to make – my contract is up, Phil is notoriously miserly, and, let’s be honest, a change of scenery might be nice.
Elsewhere: The Brooklyn Citizens defeated the Toronto Reds BC in 6 games to win their 5th World Series title and first in 47 years. But nobody cares about that. Unless you live in Brooklyn, I guess. But no one else, for sure.