You're reading Books, Beer and BLOGshit. It's the only blog that wants to get to second base with Draven Star on the first date. I am your southpaw blogger, Mr. Frank.
It's been too long since we last gathered at the Blogshit. We've been doing a whole lot of talking books too with not a word on beer or bullshit. It's time to remedy that, at least on one front. This time out we are going to bullshit. Bullshit about Pete Rose.
Pete Rose? Yep. Pete Rose was in the headlines recently, weighing in on the current performance enhancing drug usage scandal plaguing baseball. Pete Rose, who was banned from baseball back in 1989 for gambling on the sport, made some very valid and colorful points comparing the grounds for his permanent ineligibility from the sport with the mild punishments players like Alex Rodriguez were handed for repeated violations of the steroid abuse policy. Rose said he would have been better off abusing drugs or beating his wife instead of gambling.
As you can imagine those types of comments drew some ire from women's groups and substance abuse counselors. Someone always has to bitch even if he has a very valid argument. The point is that Pete Rose is prone to say stupid things because he has a giant head. It has to be difficult if not downright impossible to reign in the amount of stupid shit floating around in the enormous cranium.
I have a love/hate relationship with Pete Rose's head. I've had this relationship with Pete Rose for many more years then I can count. It all started at a very early age when I had a dream. The moment I woke up from that dream, a dream I will remember for the rest of my life, Pete Rose and I were inextricably connected.
The dream was the usual collection of odd events, people and places that have no connection to one another. We've all had those dreams. This one picks up with me in a row boat motoring across a bay that is as flat as glass, towards an island something akin to Alcatraz Island. I have no idea how I know this, but I'm going to that island to free refugees. Refugees from what you ask? I haven't the slightest idea, there were just refugees and I had to go free them.
Anyway I get to the island and collect up some refugees from the prison and we head back to the rowboat to escape to freedom. That is when the fun begins. As I step into the boat I get shot in the neck and fall into the boat facing up to the sky, incapacitated. I can see the blue sky and clouds through blurred vision, I'm dying.
Then Pete Rose, in full uniform, hovers into view. He shot me in the neck. He never admits it and I never ask, I just know it was him. Despite attempting to kill me for freeing refugees he seems to feel horrible about it. He gets in to the boat and cradles me in his arms. He hands me a slice of pepperoni and compels me to eat it, assuring me it will undo all the damage like some magic potion. I eat the pepperoni and, what do you know, I'm good to go. I get the boat away from the waters edge and we zip back across the bay to freedom.
I'll never forget that dream, ever. Pete Rose shot me in the neck and gave me pepperoni to make it better. Couple that with a boyhood fascination with a larger then life icon of baseball. Pete Rose is one of those special kind of players that transcend your favorite team. If you were w Yankees fan or a Dodgers fan or a Rangers fan, you couldn't help but love and respect Pete Rose. We all feel for him. He deserved to be punished for gambling on the sport sure, but a lifetime ban of one of the greatest men to ever play the game? That just seems criminal.
Then I take a trip to Las Vegas in 2000. I'm walking around the indoor mall in Caesars Palace and walk by the Barnes and Noble where I see a mob of people in an already crowded mall. I peer into the mass to try to spy what is drawing everyone's attention to the front of the store. That's when I see it. It's impossible to miss once you see it and can never be unseen once you have.
Pete Rose's Giant Head.
I mean it's colossal. I would never have thought a head that large could ever be held up on a human neck. It's moving and disturbing at the same time. I was enchanted and repulsed by it all at once. I stood, dumbstruck, and then just looked at some random stranger standing next to me who was also trying to take in the calamity and I said to him, "Jesus, he has a big head." The guy nodded at me like he knew something was amiss but couldn't' place his finger on it until I pointed it out.
Pete Rose comes and goes from our collective consciousness. These days he's out of the spotlight most of the time and thus out of sight, out of mind. Still, as I've said before a head like that can't hold back, to do so would be to break the laws of physics, so Pete Rose will open his mouth and the world will marvel at his audacity. There will be headlines in the papers and hours spent discussing it on sports talk radio. In the media frenzy that surrounds it all you can be sure that I'm out there somewhere not caring at all about the repercussions of what he said but marveling once again at what a giant fucking head Pete Rose has.
It's been too long since we last gathered at the Blogshit. We've been doing a whole lot of talking books too with not a word on beer or bullshit. It's time to remedy that, at least on one front. This time out we are going to bullshit. Bullshit about Pete Rose.
Pete Rose? Yep. Pete Rose was in the headlines recently, weighing in on the current performance enhancing drug usage scandal plaguing baseball. Pete Rose, who was banned from baseball back in 1989 for gambling on the sport, made some very valid and colorful points comparing the grounds for his permanent ineligibility from the sport with the mild punishments players like Alex Rodriguez were handed for repeated violations of the steroid abuse policy. Rose said he would have been better off abusing drugs or beating his wife instead of gambling.
As you can imagine those types of comments drew some ire from women's groups and substance abuse counselors. Someone always has to bitch even if he has a very valid argument. The point is that Pete Rose is prone to say stupid things because he has a giant head. It has to be difficult if not downright impossible to reign in the amount of stupid shit floating around in the enormous cranium.
I have a love/hate relationship with Pete Rose's head. I've had this relationship with Pete Rose for many more years then I can count. It all started at a very early age when I had a dream. The moment I woke up from that dream, a dream I will remember for the rest of my life, Pete Rose and I were inextricably connected.
The dream was the usual collection of odd events, people and places that have no connection to one another. We've all had those dreams. This one picks up with me in a row boat motoring across a bay that is as flat as glass, towards an island something akin to Alcatraz Island. I have no idea how I know this, but I'm going to that island to free refugees. Refugees from what you ask? I haven't the slightest idea, there were just refugees and I had to go free them.
Anyway I get to the island and collect up some refugees from the prison and we head back to the rowboat to escape to freedom. That is when the fun begins. As I step into the boat I get shot in the neck and fall into the boat facing up to the sky, incapacitated. I can see the blue sky and clouds through blurred vision, I'm dying.
Then Pete Rose, in full uniform, hovers into view. He shot me in the neck. He never admits it and I never ask, I just know it was him. Despite attempting to kill me for freeing refugees he seems to feel horrible about it. He gets in to the boat and cradles me in his arms. He hands me a slice of pepperoni and compels me to eat it, assuring me it will undo all the damage like some magic potion. I eat the pepperoni and, what do you know, I'm good to go. I get the boat away from the waters edge and we zip back across the bay to freedom.
I'll never forget that dream, ever. Pete Rose shot me in the neck and gave me pepperoni to make it better. Couple that with a boyhood fascination with a larger then life icon of baseball. Pete Rose is one of those special kind of players that transcend your favorite team. If you were w Yankees fan or a Dodgers fan or a Rangers fan, you couldn't help but love and respect Pete Rose. We all feel for him. He deserved to be punished for gambling on the sport sure, but a lifetime ban of one of the greatest men to ever play the game? That just seems criminal.
Then I take a trip to Las Vegas in 2000. I'm walking around the indoor mall in Caesars Palace and walk by the Barnes and Noble where I see a mob of people in an already crowded mall. I peer into the mass to try to spy what is drawing everyone's attention to the front of the store. That's when I see it. It's impossible to miss once you see it and can never be unseen once you have.
Pete Rose's Giant Head.
I mean it's colossal. I would never have thought a head that large could ever be held up on a human neck. It's moving and disturbing at the same time. I was enchanted and repulsed by it all at once. I stood, dumbstruck, and then just looked at some random stranger standing next to me who was also trying to take in the calamity and I said to him, "Jesus, he has a big head." The guy nodded at me like he knew something was amiss but couldn't' place his finger on it until I pointed it out.
Pete Rose comes and goes from our collective consciousness. These days he's out of the spotlight most of the time and thus out of sight, out of mind. Still, as I've said before a head like that can't hold back, to do so would be to break the laws of physics, so Pete Rose will open his mouth and the world will marvel at his audacity. There will be headlines in the papers and hours spent discussing it on sports talk radio. In the media frenzy that surrounds it all you can be sure that I'm out there somewhere not caring at all about the repercussions of what he said but marveling once again at what a giant fucking head Pete Rose has.
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