I’ve been enraptured by the young baseball season. Drawn in, scooped up. I can’t stop watching. Last year was a nadir for me. I had grown frustrated, unable to focus. I was nauseated by the thought of long innings; runners left in scoring position; poor two-out hitting; bats and balls and new helmets and ESPN and delayed gratification and BART rides to Oakland. I had become an approximation of my own hypothetical nightmare girlfriend.
I wasn’t appreciating the game anymore. Where was my love for the suspense, the strategy, the bigger picture? I felt like a basketball fan. I wanted it all happening, all at once. Always moving. Back and forth, tidally. Non-stop force-feeding. I wanted to scarf it all down and shit it all out and then for more to spring forth from my shit for me to eat again. I wanted to shotgun sports down my throat. Baseball is a 200-minute IPA, sipped and swilled and considered and remembered. Who has patience for that?
But this season, resurrection. I’ve remembered that it isn’t a binary situation. Baseball can be guzzled, swallowed whole. You can have your cake and eat it quickly, too.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I’m talking about tailgating, about getting so drunk that you displace the needle from the record of time, sending yourself skipping through the fourth dimension like a modern-day Quantum Leaper.
Or like Desmond in Lost?
Fuck yeah. Like Desmond in Lost. The outcome of at-bats and innings will present themselves to you before they have taken place, and you’ll share them with your friends who will be dazzled with your skills of prediction. The endless spinning, shifting cogs of the game will be revealed. There are no long innings in drunken baseball watching. Only the somber, desperate eighth and ninth when they’ve stopped serving alcohol at the stadium. But by then, the game itself has become a briny, sweet, bracing liquor surrounding you, coddling you, the plump drunken oyster.(1)
And what do you eat?
Tortas, brother. Tortas. Procured from La Torta Loca in nearby Fruitvale on your way to the game.
Are you drunk now?
Hold on I’m beaming you a photo of the place now.
What the fuck?
Are those weapons in the background?
Order the pambaso. It’s chorizo, potatoes, and crema, nestled on a gigantic soft roll, and seemingly pressed and fried in chorizo fat. AV will clear it up for us in the comments section. Play ball!
Fuck you.
(1) NB: Oyster juice is known as the liquor! Fucking brilliant, brother.
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4 responses so far ↓
sheeho // April 16, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Wait, are those weapons?
alvaro // April 16, 2009 at 4:48 pm
forgive me brother for i have sinned. my first game of the season yesterday and i didn’t eat a torta nor pambaso! it has been nearly 6 months since my last confection.
and if missing a pambaso’s not bad enough, how about insulting the purveyor? when i parked on fruitvale yesterday (wearing my customary, totally unmissable and wholly embarrassing outfit of green pants, yellow polyesther shirt, and, new this season, green/yellow children’s plastic batting helmet), the only spot was right in front of torta loca. the pambaso man saw me and stepped from the back of the shop, around the weaponry (tazer, machete, coupla aluminum bats, wooden bat with metal studs on it, if you can’t see that in the photo) and WAITED for me. i had to pretend i didn’t see him and went to taqueria san jose for a burrito because for some reason, that’s what i was craving. i felt like a player who’s been traded in the offseason and is facing his own team knowing he doesn’t have the skills to whomp a homerun to shut up the fans. sure, my burrito was excellent (super carnitas, xtra sour cream, sub whole avo for guac) but the food-baseball gods punished me otherwise. with a horrible loss which nearly took my appetite away.
here is my report to fellow athleticians, hope it links directly: http://www.athleticsnation.com/2009/4/15/839238/andersons-gem-wasted-by-almost#14230150
ps. you missed an ingredient on the pambaso. it’s smothered in red sauce before it’s fried/flattened.
rimpletide // April 22, 2009 at 1:50 pm
ima go there before my next a’s game
Juicebox Millionaire // June 10, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I effen love Desmond from LOST [cue hollow metallic taiko drum hit]. That guy is the guy I dream of when I almost wake-up and realize I’m dreaming, then go back to sleep to dream about whatever I want to.