Tonight the Angels lost their seventh game in a row, their longest slide of the season. Oh wait, what's that? You remember that fleeting victory on Thursday? So even though the Angels have lost six of their last seven, the streak is technically only at two?
You are correct. That is the truth. But I read the news. Truth is boring. I see what's happening on the Internet. We are suspended in a universal solipsism, the infinite superposition of me, me, me. My posts, my photos, my tweets, my blog and vlogs and photos and vines and tinders and ubers and lyfts and I'm going to intentionally mispyll some vowel now so you can google this and see me looking back at you forever and ever. And I, me, myself, ego, the atman, dasein—I am the longest losing streak of the season!
I try. This has got to be proof that I try. Look at that pun on the Smiths in the headline! Because Joe Smith coughed up a grand slam after Garrett Richards did his best to bail out the offense for seven innings. Joe Smith, the Smiths, get it?
Ugh. The Angels have now lost the last seven times when I've written up the postgame. Out of eleven chances this season, I've drawn only two wins. I feel like I am the perpetual cloud of doom. All I do is whine and complain and talk about how lousy this team is. The negativity is tedious for me too. But what can I do? When I write the postgame, this team just never fucking wins.
So, to satisfy the formalities, allow me to narrate this latest tragedy of tragedies. One so like before, and yet, so different. Pretend I sound like the most baddest-assed audiobook endition of H.P. Lovecraft or something, because I am the perpetual cloud of doom.
The rains threatened as the sun died, as suns always die, when darkness banishes their futile light from this black realm of animal mortality. At first, a pitch, a ball hit over the wall—a hope, a glimmer of tantalizing hope, but only to tease, for to be human is not only to suffer, but to be taunted, tortured, tormented by the inherent fleetingness of hope.
The rains came. The light died. For 38 minutes all signs of life vanished from the sodden field. And then, as if by some miracle, life reemerged as if from nothing, and did fearless but ultimately hopeless battle with the blackness of the void. The tumult raged as if the two forces had been matched evenly, both clutching, and clawing, and clambering for some advantage, which seemed never to appear.
And then, a bolt like lightning. But lightning it was not. It was the opposite of lightning. It was dark-ning, such a thing as no mortal had ever seen, because it cannot be seen—it is vacant space, a void, a vacuum that consumes the feeble embers of our sorry fortunes in only an instant. This is madness, an emptiness that cannot be looked upon. Those few who have know only their own foolishness: all else is horror and absurdity.
Hope is the cruelest of cruelties in this world of cruel world of infinite cruelty. It builds slowly, and disintegrates instantly. Even our memories it devours, turning our former desires into our present regrets, and our antique expectations into frustration with our own stupidity.
It is the Angels bullpen, and to look upon it is to suffer as the seething lamb!
* * *
Fortunately, no one reads these things on weekends, or I'd probably get some phone calls regarding my sobriety. The bullpen isn't that bad, these guys just can't hit.
Unfortunately, I'm writing up the game tomorrow too. So, with the team now falling to just one game above .500, I guess .500 it is. See you tomorrow fellow sports fans!