remindmeofthe | (no subject)

And speaking of ridiculous, one of those papers I'm finally getting in gear on is about the baseball teams I followed in 2005. (It's gonna be thirty pages by the time I'm done, and we're workshopping these. Everyone is going to hate me so hard. But whatever, that's what happens when my instructor basically tells me to write a shitty first draft and put down everything that my brain vomits up.) And you know, I tend to refer to the 2005 Tigers as a giant soap opera, but, unless I take a few minutes to really dredge it up, I forget how fucking insane that team really was.

Highlights include!

* Signing Magglio Ordoñez, putting language in his contract to protect the team from his bad knees, and losing him for half the season to a HERNIA about five seconds after the press conference.

* Signing Troy Percival, losing him immediately to injury, using Ugueth Urbina to close games, getting Percival back, trading Urbina two days later after he caused trouble on the team plane, Percival getting himself re-injured and never playing as a Tiger again, using Kyle Farnsworth to close, and then trading Farnsworth and having NO ONE to close. It doesn't QUITE rival the 2007 A's Ongoing Catching Saga for sheer psychosis, but only because nobody was actually told to avoid preparing for a role that they were subsequently asked to fill.

* Ugueth Urbina later being charged with attempted murder in his home country of Venezuela, where he is currently serving a fourteen year sentence. No, I'm not making that up. Go ahead and read it again. I'll wait.

* And let's not forget Roman Colón, one of the players we got for Farnsworth, going berserk last year and breaking the Mud Hens catcher's face. Neither of these things technically occurred in 2005, but they really augment the overall madness quite nicely.

* The brawl with the Royals. This remains one of my top five moments in baseball. "Kyle Farnsworth with a big-time takedown!"

* The entire team pretty much packing it in a month early, leading me to wish that the season would freaking end already so that the torment would stop.

* Jeremy Bonderman being shut down for the season for elbow problems with about a month to go. He would later admit that the elbow had been bothering him SINCE SPRING TRAINING.

* Pudge Rodriguez laying the blame for the team's sucky play as his teammates' feet.

I still feel as though I'm forgetting things. And let's not forget that I was ALSO following two other teams at the time, both of which made it to the postseason and one of which made it all the way to the World Series. How did I not just have a complete fucking nervous breakdown during the season? It's little wonder that I gave up on devoting equal attention to three teams after that. I burned out.

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* Signing Magglio Ordoñez, putting language in his contract to protect the team from his bad knees, and losing him for half the season to a HERNIA about five seconds after the press conference.

That was pretty awesome.

* Ugueth Urbina later being charged with attempted murder in his home country of Venezuela, where he is currently serving a fourteen year sentence. No, I'm not making that up. Go ahead and read it again. I'll wait.

No, that was pretty awesome. But not as awesome as this picture (http://pics.livejournal.com/offspeed/pic/008dewp0).

* Jeremy Bonderman being shut down for the season for elbow problems with about a month to go. He would later admit that the elbow had been bothering him SINCE SPRING TRAINING.

And didn't he do that in 2007 too, pretty much? LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES, BONDO.

* Pudge Rodriguez laying the blame for the team's sucky play as his teammates' feet.

And don't forget Tram! And dude don't forget Pudge's jaunting off to Columbia! For -- we still don't know what! Oh, I heard it was related to his divorce, but I kind of like the idea that he's secretly a Miami drug lord.

I want to see this paper once it's done. :P

Dude, I had to give up and leave shit out. Ten pages before I finally got to the next team. Colombia and Tram and Dmitri's convenient injury after his five hundredth AB would take another ten pages to hash out. I also had to leave out stuff with more long-term effects like Verlander's debut (and Vance's meltdown, hahaha, god I miss him). I'm leaning heavily toward just making this paper about the Tigers. 2005 was FUCKED UP for all my teams to varying degrees, but I should probably narrow my focus just a tad. Even though I really want to get into Farnsworth's unexpected reappearance in my baseball life. Hell, I could do an entire paper just on HIS 2005 season.

Yeah, Bondo fails at learning from his mistakes. "THIS time, it will be okay! :D" I worry.

I also had to leave out stuff with more long-term effects like Verlander's debut (and Vance's meltdown, hahaha, god I miss him).

Me too. ;_; He's starting the season on the DL -- AGAIN.

I'm leaning heavily toward just making this paper about the Tigers.

HA, you could probably get twenty pages out of just that particular Tigers team. They were so amazingly neurotic and crazy. Are you going to cover the plane fight?!

Yeah, Bondo fails at learning from his mistakes. "THIS time, it will be okay! :D" I worry.

Me too. Hopefully they've hammered it home that if you have an injury, you freaking tell somebody, rather than try to "tough" it out and hurt the team even worse.

I don't even know the DETAILS of the plane fight. Does anyone? Like, is there an actual citable source? I mean, it's not really an academic paper, but I don't want to fall back on gossip and hearsay. Right now I'm going with, "He started a fight on the plane and then got traded and now he's in jail for attempted murder!"

Becky and I both read, like, MONTHS later in one of the local papers that Jamie Walker and Urbina were the main combatants. I'm sure it's floating around online somewhere. I just remember LOLing at the fact it was Walker taking on a drunken Urbina and not, like, Farnsworth.

God, that trade! Even if all we'd gotten was a used hackysack, it still would have been a good trade. Throw in Placido and it's the best trade the Tigers ever made.

Ha, that one and the Guillen trade. And they still got Santiago back.

No, dude. You're not following my logic here. We successfully rid ourselves of a homicidal psychopath in exchange for the next year's ALCS MVP. BEST TRADE IN THE HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION.

Ah, yes. Now that you put it like that. hahaha.

My thoughts on the Farnsworth trade:

kyle farnsworth our closer is but free agent trade what.

Ha.

Edited 2008-03-18 22:25 (UTC)

A rough summary on my initial thoughts on the Farnsworth trade:

"FUCK."

My current thoughts on the Farnsworth trade:

"Thank Christ. Also, wtf Roman Ramón? Why do we keep ending up with violent players?"

I meant to say this in my original comment, but the icon for your original post fits in a ridiculous, but entirely appropriate way.

Pretty much sums up the season, doesn't it?

...I had no idea, since I didn't get into the Tigers until I, y'know, moved to Michigan, and that was the /next/ year.

Their infield this year makes me salivate. I mean, I'm not sure I will ever love another infield as much as I loved the 2006 Red Sox infield, but the Tigers infield this year kind of fills me with baseball lust. I've had a special place in my heart for Miguel Cabrera ever since I saw him win a game by swinging at an intent ball, I really want to see Renteria actually be good, and if Placido Polanco and Carlos Guillen actually cared about which one of them was 'my Tiger', they would have to fight for it, because they are both so awesome. (I am not sure who would win. Polly's just a little bit more awesome, but Guillen was a 2001 Mariner -- he's the guy they asked to fill A-Rod's shoes -- and they were my very first baseball love.)

Edited 2008-03-18 22:09 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, the 2005 Tigers were a fucking mess. I was sneaking in some work in the paper during Spanish lab, and after a while I just started laughing over all the shit I was remembering. It was so bad that this girl turned around and asked what I was laughing at. XD

FUCK I forgot we had Rentería. Speaking of crap from 2005 . . .

Ah ha hahah the drama llama team! See, I can laugh about the Farnsworth trade now (oh, how I laugh). I've got perspective and shit.

I dissolved into giggles reading my reaction posts. We have both achieved perspective.

I am, however, still pissed off that it was THE ONE DAY I chose to have a life and not be around for RP. I had a fuck of time trying to figure out why !Bondo didn't say goodbye.

I always feel this strange sense of Venezuelan pride when it comes to Ugueth Urbina though. Attempted murderer or not. I think it might come from the fact that while there are many Venezuelan baseball players, there aren't that many famous ones (Luis Sojo, Ozzie, The Big Cat, Magglio, Cabrera, Alfonzo, and Johan Santana aside). Plus, the guerrellas stole his mom for how long (like a year? half a year?) I'd go after random farm-hands with a machete too, I'm not going to lie.

What year was that? I know it wasn't during the 2005 season, because the mom thing was before the "I TRY TO KILL YOU" thing that got him kicked out of the MLB.