Baseball dream of the week

At the Reds game with the family, a meaningless game at the end of another season out of contention. Still, the game is exciting. The stadium is neither Great American nor Riverfront but looks like a combination of both. In the ninth inning, the Reds are winning, but the other team gets a couple of runners on. The Reds are able to close it out, though, and I say, "there's nothing more satisfying than a Reds victory, even when it's meaningless." We get up to head to the car and I walk much faster than my family and we are separated. The ramps are the Riverfront ramps. I go back to try to find them and suddenly find the parking lot is inside the stadium (actually, in real life at the Reds first ballpark, horses and carriages were permitted to park in the outfield!) I assume they had just left me behind. I look from afar at two places my mother usually parked. The red Jeep Cherokee isn't there in the first spot but is located in the second - down the third baseline. So I have to try to find them.

As I walked around the stadium, I encountered a pro-Palestine rally. The rally is fuzzy - all I know was that it was a line of people with signs on a ballpark terrace overlooking the river. I continued on and hit some sort of market for foreign art that looked mostly like junk. Then I found a line at a movie theater for a movie I had never hear of. I talked to some of the people in line and they judged me for not hearing of it because "everybody has seen it."

I finally found my mother and two sisters in a bar drinking pints of Bud Light. I said something about being sorry and thought you'd left me, but they just ignored me.

Dreams and Shea and Stuff

I had a dream last night that I bought a new pack of Topps baseball cards. There were ten cards in the pack, but not a single one of them was a regular player card. There were MVP cards, cards with two players on them, and a card of Anthony Bourdain. The cards themselves were made of thick cardboard, thick like the cards in that game Memory, and the cards had very green borders the color of the We Play Green logo.

I was really disappointed with the pack but then a tornado came and I had to worry about taking cover and forgot about the cards. Fortunately for me, the tornado didn't hit our house, but then I thought about how it hit the neighbors house and felt guilty for hoping it would skip us and hit someone else.

Anyway, I read this article about the last piece of Shea being torn down, and it made me really sad. I remember watching the demolition of Riverfront with a tear in my eye. Even though Shea was a dump, it was home for so many New Yorkers. Mets fans, I feel your pain.

This quote is really sad:

“It’s one last chance to say goodbye and let my son witness history,” McDonnell said. “Maybe someday he’ll bring his son to watch Citi Field being torn down.”

Why? Why do we tear down our stadiums? A couple of seasons ago I took an Austrian friend of mine to a Nationals game at RFK. He couldn't believe it was going to sit empty (at that time, we thought United was going to build a new stadium) or that it might be torn down. You go to Europe, you see stuff that's been around for hundreds of years. In America, we rip it down.

These aren't just buildings. These are parts of us, parts of our history, our heritage, our society. And we just tear them apart.

Field of Nightmares

I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed that a gamma ray hit the earth and a reddish brown haze was taking over the atmosphere. This is a result of some show I saw on the History Channel yesterday about how science could fulfill biblical prophecies. Anyway, in the dream, I woke up and the gamma ray was only a dream, but it was 3pm when I woke and it was starting to get dark and I was mad at myself for sleeping so late. Then I played Legend of Zelda. Then I woke up in the dream again and it was only 11:30am, still late but not as bad as 3pm and I was relieved that it was earlier and that had only been a dream. Then I woke up for real.

Sometimes I think that when I do my daily check of Reds news that what I think is real about the Reds is only a dream, but it never is. Willy Taveras is still on the roster. There's still no leftfielder. There's still pop but no power. Jeff Brantley and George Grande are still broadcasters. Marty still thinks of Bill James as the enemy. Dusty Baker still chews toothpicks in the dugout. We still have an eight year (nine?) losing streak. But maybe I'm still in a dream and I'll wake up and Nick Swisher will be in leftfield (or Adam Dunn!) and Davey Johnson or Lou Pinella will be our real manager and Jarrod Saltalamacchia will be our catcher and we'll have a centerfielder who can hit it out of the infield. Or something like that.
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Baseball Dream

I was designing a room with Legos. All of the furniture was to be made of Legos. The couch was made with red ones, a chair was made with blue ones, and I was building bookshelves and tables and everything that goes in a living room, but since my sister stole all of my childhood Legos, I was angry. Some woman whom I have never seen in my life came to visit, but she was allergic to Legos so she had to go sit out on the back patio. She just sat there overlooking the yard and no one in the house went to talk to her. I looked at her through the back door and felt sorry for her, but then that I noticed you could see the Reds play from one of the windows. It was a strange view of the field, kind of overhead. I looked up just in time to see Dunn score.

Then they started playing like crap. It was like Little League, like the 2008 Reds. So I went down to talk to them and tell them to get it together, to get their heads into the game (somebody has to do it, right?) I noticed a man with long white hair and a long white beard (Father Time?) pushing a plastic garbage bin full of multi-colored pills, and I realized the Reds were all on drugs and that's why they were playing poorly.

Weird.

I had a dream

A baseball dream. I was at Spring Training, only it was now and the games actually counted. But the minor league teams all got to play before the Reds played at night. They wore Reds uniforms like they do in ST. We were watching the Dragons play a team called the Indians, though I don't think they were from Indianapolis. I went over to the players entrance because I wanted to wish Devin Mesoraco - the Reds 2007 first round draft catcher who was promoted yesterday to low A Dayton - good luck for his first professional game (I guess the GCL Reds of last year didn't count). Though he was the right height (the guy is on the short side in real life), he came in with large black sunglasses and curly black hair resembling an afro and didn't acknowledge my presence when I wished him luck. Why would he, as I was lying on the asphalt in the parking lot with a notebook open? Just another freak of a fan, I guess. This was right after there was something to do with aquarium fish, but I don't recall what that was about. And cats. And very tiny turtles in a sink. I remember trying to keep them from washing down the drain.

We sat on bleachers and before the game started, some guy in a full chieftan headdress came around and passed out little figures of their mascot giving the finger with cracked birds eggs running down it. Yeah, weird. I thought so in the dream, too, so I ignored the guy when he tried to hand me mine, but as soon as he passed, I wanted one and proceeded to go to the end of the bleachers to accept my strange gift. But he wouldn't give it to me, said I had my chance. Then I got the bright idea to go to the military recruits section. I put on BDUs so he wouldn't recognize me, but one of the recruits - they were on a special day away from basic training - got into trouble and so everyone in a military uniform had to do push ups. There were people from all four branches, but the Navy had to wear their dress whites while the rest of us wore BDUs. Then I heard the crowd scream so I got up and ran back to the game. I had missed Mesoraco's first home run, and he was the guy I had wanted to see play.

I woke up in a good mood, though, because I had just been at a baseball game, demented as it seemed.
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Nocturnal Disturbances

Wow, quitting a job that doesn't make you happy is more difficult than I thought. Lots of anxiety today, but now my boss knows. We haven't talked about it yet, as he has to interview someone for another open position, so I haven't been given the guilt trip, which is what I was dreading anyway.

I hope my next office job allows me to watch baseball games during the day. I have a greater hope that I won't have another office job, that I'll finally figure out a way to be self-employed, for it is the monotony of office life that is getting to me more than the job itself. It's nice to be able to watch the Reds game right now, especially with Harang on the mound and Votto kicking butt again. I'd like to see Phillips hit one out to join the 30/30 Club before this one's over.

My brain is in hyperdrive because of the trip, the change, the preparation, and the anxiety. It's affecting my dreams, too. I've written before about some of my dreams when they involve baseball, and well, I just remembered a disturbing one that I had last night. Josh Hamilton died in it. Now I am feeling quite disturbed, as I am a believer that dreams mean something. Not in the superstitious way, mind you, but I think what you dream is a reflection of your thoughts and your mental state. If I dream about someone chasing me in a mall, which is a recurrence in my dreams, it tells me I am thinking about how the pursuit material possessions is bad for your soul, an issue which I struggle against, especially now that I am going away for a few months and bringing very little with me. If I dream about airplanes crashing, which I frequently do, it does not mean I'm going to die in a plane crash, it just means I have a terrible fear of flying. (At least I hope so - my stomach is in knots just thinking about flying in a few weeks.)

But I can't figure out what Josh Hamilton dying means. Josh Hamilton symbolizes so much, a guy who overcame his demons and is living his Major League dream after some delay, so why in the heck would something so positive be destroyed by my own imagination?

Maybe I was just upset that he injured his leg again and is probably out for the rest of the season. I hope that's all it was, anyway.

Josh Hamilton is not a Good Samaritan?

It's weird how the mind works. I guess mine's a little weirder than most. Yesterday I got home and flipped on Seinfeld as I was changing out of stuffy office clothes. It was the series finale, when the four of them are on trial for violating the "Good Samaritan Law." (For those who don't know, they were heading to Paris when their plane had mechanical troubles and they had to land in a small town in Massachusetts. As they are walking down a sidewalk waiting for the plane to be repaired, a guy gets carjacked and they stand and watch. A cop arrests them for it.)

Anyway, for some reason - perhaps the cold medicine I took - that show got into my dreams. Congratulations to Josh Hamilton - you must be a Red because you appeared in my dream, too. See, everyone was worried that Hamilton was about to be arrested on drug charges because there was an issue of drugs around and people suspected it was him. I accused him of "it" (the exact it, I'm not sure of) to his face but it turned out that he was totally clean and I felt bad. Then, the cops came and arrested him anyway because the rumors he had caused violated the Good Samaritan Law, and he was put away for a year, which apparently ruined his baseball career forever.

Weird.

CaliRipken Dreaming

Worshipers of the Church know that I have strange dreams pretty often. Last night was no exception.

I can't remember exactly why I was standing in an apartment building looking out a window in the hallway - the hallway was lined with windows - but I think it had something to do with waiting to scream at someone who lived in the building, for I was very angry for some reason. It certainly was not because it was Cal Ripken Jr.'s building, even though I stood in front of his door. While I was standing there, Ripken came out talking on a cellphone. The very odd thing was that not only did he have hair, but he had long, gray hair. He wore a suit with no tie and looked like he had just come from Miami.

My mind raced through all of the Ripken things I own that I wished I had with me then - a 1983 Topps Rookie Card, a specially issued Rawlings Major League Baseball used in the game he broke the consecutive games record, and a beer stein in the German style commemorating The Streak (yeah, I really have all of those things). Then I thought of anything I had on me that he could sign. I had a baseball in my backpack (I have contemplated carrying a ball in my bag in case I ever run into a Nationals player somewhere in DC), but in the end I just decided to leave him alone. He got off the phone and I walked past him, saying something polite but pretending I didn't know who he was.

Update: I had forgotten until just now that when Ripken came out, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's song Yankee Go Home was coming from his apartment. What a perfect song for the Orioles (or Red Sox or any other team that plays the Evil Empire) to play.
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Chelipe

I had a dream last night that I've been trying to post all day. (Blogger!) Anyway, the dream is worth mentioning because it starred Felipe Lopez, a guy I never really was attached to but who decided to visit the realm of my subconscience.

I was at an old farm house with a friend hiding from some bad guys on a hot August day, the kind of day only flies and grasshoppers like. There was lots of corn, rows upon rows of it on all four sides of the house, which had a narrow driveway going through more corn. It was still too green for the time of year, though I knew it was August because I kept saying, "August is only a summer month because of the temperature." I think I was referring to the shortened length of the days which seems to affect me so.

I often hide from the bad guys in my dreams. Sometimes the bad guys are old friends or acquaintances with whom I am no longer in contact. Most of the time they're just random people, though. Like Felipe Lopez.

Felipe was dressed like Che, beret and all. I guess I was the leader of some resistance group, though I was not dressed like Che. We were monitoring the movements of Lopez's group, who were doing maneuvers in the corn. They had surrounded the farmhouse, so there was no way out, but they had yet to discover we were in the farmhouse. Some of my group grew frightened, however, and started to defect to Chelipe's side. Finally, I decided to go with them, too, more out of boredom than anything else.

It gets weirder. So I find Felipe, whom I apparently knew quite well from the past, and I march straight up to him. And you know what he says? He says, "Oh, Cath, I am so disappointed to see you here. You know I always admired you for your principles, but now you've violated them by coming here."

I immediately realized my error and replied, "No, I'm just here to get my jeep back," and nodded to what was apparently my jeep that had been stolen by Felipe's men. It was a red jeep. He apologized and tossed me the keys and let me leave, saying, "I look forward to more clashes with you." He smiled and said, "Later."

Weird.

(If I had Photoshop on this computer, I would make Chelipe.)

Update: Image of Chelipe courtesy of Devils Advocate. Thanks! (If only I could figure out how to make a copy of Photoshop from another computer. Anyone know? Ahh, the curse of copyrights...Stupid capitalists, says Chelipe.)

;)