Since It Didn't Suck Enough Live, Let's Review Some Choking with a Bill Simmons Running Diary

So we all understand the baseball games Wednesday night were awesome and shitty at the same time. There was one guarantee coming out of this though. Win or lose, Bill Simmons would do a running diary or a column about, not the baseball games that night, but the Red Sox game that night. That's really the only way the "Sports Guy" will actually talk about baseball. The "Boston Sports Guy" will talk sports in the realm of how it affects the Red Sox. There is no pennant race if the Red Sox aren't in it. Think I'm full of shit? Last year was a great example. There was no pennant race column because the Red Sox weren't in a race for a playoff spot. It's Bill's column so he can do whatever he wants, but baseball is slowly becoming like hockey for Bill. It's only talked about in the context of his favorite team and if his team isn't in the playoffs, he ignores the sport completely. So that leaves us with a running diary of Wednesday night, which will probably be the last mention of baseball from Bill Simmons this year.

Before we get to Bill...how great was this? Dan Shaughnessy, you have failed. Look for him to write a book about this and then put some more rouge on those rosy cheeks of his for television interviews about the new fake curse he created.

One other thing, one part of this post on the Big Lead sort of irritated me.

The Phillies eventually took care of business in the 13th inning. The bright side? Does this unfortunate turn of events really bother anyone in Atlanta? The answer is most likely no, which is exactly why you aren’t cackling at them nearly as much.

Simply because Braves fans aren't yelling annoyingly loud, have widely known sportswriters putting it in everyone's heads how above everyone else our fan base is, and aren't located in Northeast doesn't mean Braves fans don't care. We do, even if the shitty fans actually living in Atlanta can't seem to show up for games. So yes, the unfortunate turn of events really does bother people in Atlanta. Maybe one day Braves fans will get their very own loudmouth sportswriters to get in the public eye and skew the public's opinion of the team to obnoxiously reinforce the idea we care, but I hope that day never comes.

I was paying for groceries in Los Angeles while wearing my trusty Tim Wakefield no. 49 T-shirt jersey. From behind me, I heard a raspy, older, female voice ask me, "You guys gonna win today?"

I turned around. The voice belonged to Amy Madigan, the actress who played Kevin Costner's wife in Field of Dreams.

First off, this is yet again another story Bill tells us to convey the idea he lives in Hollywood and rubs shoulders with celebrities all the time. If this hasn't been made clear enough at this point then you haven't read any other column/mailbag Bill has written where he name-drops celebrities or "insider" celebrity stories as much as possible.

Second, I am not sure I believe this story. It just seems too perfect for him to run into the lead actress from "Field of Dreams."

"Who's pitching?" she asked.

"Lester today. Tomorrow, I don't know. Might be Kevin Costner."

She thought this was funny.

Well of course she thought this was funny! Bill is a really funny guy and he has celebrities who laugh at him as proof of this. Bill HAS to add that she thought this was funny, because he always wants his readers to know he is the funniest, most clever guy in the room at all times. Bill's ego will have it no other way. So despite the fact whether she thought of this comment is funny or not is relevant to the story (which it isn't and he made a similar joke on Twitter that same day), he has to add this in to the story so people who read his column know that a celebrity thinks Bill Simmons is funny. It basically just reinforces how funny Bill already knows he is.

That's what you do when your baseball season is falling apart: you search for signs … any signs, anything that means anything.

No, this is what you do when you don't have a real job and have time to think of this shit. Everyone else goes home, eats with their family and then watches baseball games hoping their team wins quickly enough so they can get some sleep and won't wake up tired.

The Red Sox hit that point about two weeks ago, midway through their improbable swoon, as they kept trotting out the Lackeys, Wakefields and Weilands with everyone thinking, "Wait, we don't have ANY other options?"

Do you know what other teams were thinking this? Every other team in Major League Baseball, except the options these teams didn't like were mostly retreads or rookies and not high-priced free agent acquisitions and 200 game winners. I do understand Wakefield and Lackey pitched poorly, but let's get some perspective.

As a fan of the Braves, a team that had a rotation comprised of three rookie pitchers during the month of September it is hard to feel sorry for Bill that Lackey and Wakefield were in the rotation. The Braves had their own John Lackey and his name was Derek Lowe and he was the #2 starter. It's just one of those things some teams have to deal with, having crappy guys in the rotation. Bill needs to drop the pity-party about the starting rotation. I understand the Red Sox had injuries, but nearly every MLB team (outside of the Phillies) doesn't completely love their rotation during the month of September.

It's been a surreal month for Red Sox fans: Our pre-2004 DNA told us to react the way we always did (total panic, woe-is-us complex, the whole thing); our post-2007 DNA told us, "You won twice, keep it in perspective, this isn't life or death, other teams have it worse";

Guess which DNA won for Bill? That would be 2004-DNA.

our sports-fan DNA told us, "You just spent the past six months watching a team that's probably going to kick you in the teeth … hard. It's coming."

Yeah but every single MLB team kicks their fan base in the teeth at some point during the season, except for the eventual World Series champion. I think it is safe to assume the fans of the World Series champion don't feel like they have been kicked in the teeth at the end of the season.

When Bill wrote this column it sure didn't feel like he was prepared to be kicked in teeth. This was a pretty tough collapse to handle, I will give him that, but if Bill paid attention to the rest of the playoffs this year he would see seven other fan bases about to be kicked in the teeth as well.

I ended up at my friend Daniel's house to watch Sox-Orioles and Rays-Yankees. And yes, I kept a running diary. Here's what transpired.

Madness is what transpired! Pure madness!

4:02 — A month ago, Ryan Lavarnway was in Triple-A. As recently as 48 hours ago, he wasn't playing. Today, in Game 162, with a playoff spot on the line? He's catching and batting fifth. Somehow, I'm fine with this. I can't think of anyone else I'd bat fifth. Welcome to the 2011 Red Sox season.

Lavarnway wasn't good at all, but the Red Sox still had two MVP candidates in the lineup. Let's keep this in mind.

4:07 — As the camera pans the Red Sox players standing for the national anthem, we see one blond-haired guy, and Daniel says, "Who's that?" Neither of us have any idea. Again, welcome to the 2011 Red Sox season.

Bill’s ignorance of who this blond-haired guy may be is not an indication that he doesn’t follow the Red Sox closely enough, but is a sign this player is irrelevant and probably not good at baseball. Once again, if Bill Simmons doesn’t know of you, then that makes you irrelevant to the world as a whole. Bill’s ignorance of a topic speaks to the irrelevance of that topic and is never a reflection on Bill’s own ignorance nor a reflection on how this ignorance on Bill's part is his own fault.

By the way, if you had explained to me as recently as 10 years ago that I'd be living in California and rooting for the Yankees on an iPad, I would have assumed that I was on the lam for a crime and doing whatever it took to survive.

Then Bill would say, “So I am living in California? Does this mean I know celebrities on a first name basis? If so, who are they?”

4:22 — Red Sox killer Robert Andino leads off for the Orioles as Daniel hisses, "That's just an eff you move by Showalter." Lester strikes him out. I've had Andino on my AL Keeper Team all season — he's a homeless man's Ben Zobrist. There's no better candidate to ruin the 2011 Red Sox season and join the Bucky Dent/Enos Slaughter/Aaron Boone group. He's the odds-on favorite.

There is no way, okay maybe there is a 10% chance, that Bill really wrote Robert Andino was the odds-on favorite to ruin the 2011 Red Sox season. He most likely wrote this in after the running diary was finished in order to make himself look smart. I see this simply because Bill probably only knows Andino from his AL Keeper Team and probably hasn’t paid very much attention to him this year. Just like I believe Bill writes some of the mailbag questions himself, I also believe he will go back and edit his running diaries to take out predictions or comments that make him sound stupid and replaces them with comments that make him look smarter.

That’s really one of the big drawbacks of a running diary. You have to trust your author not to edit too much of what he says in order to get some authenticity out of it. Otherwise, the author can make himself sound really smart if he wants to.

4:25 — J.J. Hardy's surprisingly good season (30 homers) inadvertently inspires Daniel and me to discuss whether we'd take HGH if we were baseball players. I decide that I wouldn't take it until I started slipping in my mid-30s, and then I'd start popping them like Pez.

This is awkward then. Bill, you are past your mid-30s and you have been slipping for a few years now. Better start retroactively popping them like Pez.

4:41 — Lester gets a long fly ball out from Baltimore's Secretly Scary Guy (Matt Wieters),

It’s not really a secret that Wieters is a scary guy. He’s a 25 year old catcher who hit .262/.328/.450 with 22 home runs and 68 RBI’s and it feels like he struggled to get those numbers. Basically, his ability is a lot higher than his numbers currently reflect.

then gives up an infield single to Baltimore's Openly Scary Guy (Adam Jones)

You mean the guy who hit .280/.319/.466 with 25 home runs and 83 RBI’s this year? It sure seems like the openly scary guy and the secretly scary guy have similar numbers. I wonder why one is secretly scary while the other is openly scary? I’m guessing it is because Bill just chooses to label them this way based on the three Orioles games he watched this year.

I feel as bad for Crawford as you can feel for someone who's worth nine figures…I still feel like Crawford could redeem himself someday — maybe even during these next five weeks. I'm rooting for him.

(Please, Lord, don't let that paragraph be thrown back in my face.)

And what do you know? This paragraph got thrown back in Bill’s face when Crawford couldn’t catch a fly ball at the end of the game. It’s almost like Bill wrote that last sentence in parenthesis AFTER the game was over. He’d never do that though, would he?

4:49 — Back-to-back singles by Ellsbury and Pedroia. 1-0, Red Sox, nobody out, David Ortiz up. Semirelated: I wish Ortiz named his different beards with monikers like "Insignia" and "Macarena." For tonight he shaved his mustache, shaved the left and right sides over his chin, but kept every other part of the beard and connected the soul patch to it. It would have been so much easier if I could have just told you, "Tonight Ortiz is wearing Insignia," right?

I try to be fair. I think this is a pretty good idea.

God forbid Lester or Beckett have one "Come on, fellas, everyone get on my back!" start these last three weeks.

These two guys did look pretty terrible over the last three weeks. Perhaps, and I am just eyeballing this, the reason the Red Sox struggled down the stretch isn’t because of Terry Francona (the horror he may not be at fault) and could be because few of the Red Sox pitchers pitched well during that time?

I know! It’s crazy to think about, but what if the players got most of the blame instead of Theo Epstein or Terry Francona?

5:22 — If you're looking for a guy to end innings by getting thrown out by three steps on bizarrely timed steals of second base, look no further than Mike Aviles. The good news: It's still 5-0 in Tampa.

The Red Sox got a .317/.340/.436 line out of Aviles (he hit .222/.261/.395 in Kansas City) and Bill isn’t happy because Aviles got caught stealing twice in six attempts. This further proves that Bill has no shame and will complain about any player on the Red Sox team even based on one play.

And is anyone more unstoppable than Mark Teixeira in Game 162, when the Yanks clinched the division a week ago?

I laughed at this. Bill has a point, even if he doesn’t know it. I got to watch Tex for a full year in Atlanta and he seemed like he was great at hitting the home run that put his team up 4-1 when it was already a 3-1 game (Of course, I would have loved for a Braves player to put the Braves up 4-1 Wednesday night, but that would ruin my point that Tex isn’t clutch so please don’t point this out). Tex is the best second-best player on a team in the majors. He’ll never be “the guy” on a great team, but he will always be the best second-best player on a great team.

Does it seem like a cheap shot to mention Tex's career line in the playoffs is .214/.320/.330 with 26 strikeouts in 122 plate appearances? I know this is a small sample size, but I feel like he gets off easy sometimes when discussing players who need to step up in the playoffs.

6:05 — I always love hearing the kicking Boston accents during the local NESN commercials (like the creepy Jordan's Furniture guy just now). It's too bad you can't pick the accents for commercials the same way you can manipulate the SAP button. I'd go with "Rhode Island" and maybe even blend "Chicago" in there every few weeks to mix it up.

Again, not a terrible joke. Bill's sort of on a roll. I’m a tough critic, but I would love this SAP-type button on my remote.

6:15 — Either Lester (87 pitches) just pitched around Wieters, or he can't find the plate anymore. Third and first, two outs, Adam Jones up. This goes beyond tense. Lester is laboring. Everyone on the Red Sox looks like a college kid whose girlfriend just told him, "We have to talk, I did something dumb last night."

And we’re back to typical Bill Simmons throwing out analogies that “speak to the average sports fan,” but are also vaguely sexist. Assuming "the average sports fan" dated a woman who cheated on him during college because she’s like most women and just a super huge whore.

7:18 — Bases loaded, no outs, Yankees winning by six, bottom of the eighth, Michael Kay saying, "The Yankees have used nine pitchers tonight, there's really nobody else available other than Scott Proctor,"

Having gone through the Scott Proctor Experience this year to the tune of a 6.44 ERA and 1.71 WHIP with the Braves, I have sympathy. He gave the Yankees a 9.00 ERA and 2.82 WHIP, which brings me to the question of "Why the hell Scott Proctor still has a job in the majors?"

At this point in the game, it would have been better to skip Proctor entirely and then throw in a utility guy or Jorge Posada (what the hell else does he have to do? Can he go from DH to pitcher? I should check the rulebook on that) to pitch for the Yankees. He could not be any worse than Scott Proctor has been since 2008. Proctor's arm injuries were a sign that he refused to heed. The sign was telling him he needs to take all the money he made in baseball and go find another career. He didn't listen and the Red Sox suffered.

By the way, Scott Proctor has pissed off three franchises this season. Atlanta, New York and Boston. What else can be expected of him? That's what he does. The best part is the playoffs aren't over. Somehow, I bet he manages to piss off a fourth team.

I apologize for the rant, I’m still scarred by the Scott Proctor Experience.

7:39 — Somebody named Greg Golson flies out to end the top of the ninth — he looks like one of the fake Yankees who played against Billy Chapel's team in For Love of the Game. He might be an actor. I'm not even kidding.

Of course, please remember the fact Bill can’t recognize this player shouldn’t be a big deal since he couldn’t recognize one of the Red Sox players earlier in this running diary.

Let's add this to the "What the hell was Terry Francona doing this month?????" files no matter how this turns out.

I still don’t get the Francona/Red Sox separation. The whole “team chemistry” issue is bullshit because winning creates good chemistry. A manager is a player’s manager until the team starts losing in which case he runs too loose of a ship. A manager is a detail-oriented manager until the team starts losing in which case he is too overbearing and criticizes players for small mistakes. Maybe Francona didn’t do the best job in the clubhouse this year, but if the Red Sox pitchers didn’t pitch well in September and there weren’t injuries to the team then he would still be the manager. Maybe I don’t have my hand on the pulse of the issue but it seems to me like this a bit of an overreaction on both Francona and the Red Sox part.

8:02 — Here's all you need to know about tonight, this month and this season: I'm PETRIFIED of Robert Andino right now.

The odds are 95% now that Bill wrote this part of the running diary after the game was over in order to make himself sound smarter.

Although I'd still vote for Justin Verlander. It's hard to think of anyone being an MVP on a .500 team (Toronto) or a team that choked so memorably in September (Boston).

It’s not hard to think of someone as the MVP when on a .500 team or a team that choked in September. In fact, in the guidelines on how to vote for MVP it specifically states to ignore where that player’s team finished the season. It is fun to think otherwise though.

If there was an MVP to be given out this year, it was the NBA Finals MVP — you know, for that September streak when the Red Sox won six of 24 games.

I get it! Because Kobe Bryant went 6-for-24 in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals against the Celtics!

The first 50 times Bill told this joke it wasn’t funny. Now it is just getting annoying. You lost, Bill. The MVP was also decided on the other six games in that series as well. But Bill’s non-funny joke based on a small sample size of one game just keeps getting less funny.

8:42 — The Braves are done. Lost in the 13th. I was afraid to mention them — they're like our co-Kings of Kollapse.

Bill also forgot to mention the Braves because he really hasn’t watched a single National League game this year and all. Since that’s the inferior league in MLB. I wish Bill could be completely honest. He watches MLB when the Red Sox are good and he only watches Red Sox games. He couldn’t tell you the best pitcher on the Arizona Diamondbacks’ pitching staff. Hey, and this is fine. He just shouldn’t call himself “the Sports Guy,” and go back to the moniker “the Boston Sports Guy.”

"Daddy needs another drink," Daniel says. That's going to be the title of my 2011 Red Sox book.

8:53 — Chris Davis keeps Baltimore alive with a double down the line, then Golson gets tagged out for the Yanks on a grounder to third (second and first, one out). And just like that, everything flipped. I can't wait to write about this in more detail this winter when I'm writing Daddy Needs Another Drink.

And Bill Simmons has co-opted his friend’s idea. Now, if Daniel was just a normal reader who wrote into Bill’s mailbag, then Bill would point out there is already a book called “Daddy Needs a Drink” and then try to improve on the reader’s idea so Bill could be the most creative guy in the room. Since Daniel is Bill’s friend, then Bill is fine with him having a creative idea, but Bill will have to steal it.

9:02 — Andino rips a single to left, Crawford dives for it, should catch it, seems like he's going to catch it … can't catch it.

Andino is the same guy Bill was worried about hurting the Red Sox earlier in this very mailbag!

They disintegrated over an entire month, day after day after day. You can't even explain how brutal they were unless you followed the free fall firsthand.

THIS COLLAPSE CAUSES THE WORST FEELING ANY TEAM HAS EVER FELT IN ANY SPORT EVER! MY SADNESS IS MORE SAD THAN YOUR SADNESS BECAUSE I CARE MORE!

I think I can imagine the feeling of losing a 9 game lead in early September.

If the 2004 Red Sox distinguished themselves by everyone chipping in, the 2011 Red Sox distinguished themselves by chipping out.

There we go. I knew we would get a 2004 Red Sox comparison at some point.

They choked away Game 162 by getting three guys thrown out on the basepaths, by blowing a 3-2 lead in the ninth, by botching a season-deciding fly ball, by letting Chris Davis, Nolan Reimold and Robert Andino

But Andino is like a poor man’s Ben Zobrist. Again, notice Bill’s use of italics for emphasis. I just noticed how he uses these italics and I have to say I love it.

This was a mercy killing. At least that's what I will keep telling myself. The 2011 Red Sox needed to go away.

I guess you could say the Red Sox didn't even deserve to make the playoffs even if they had made the playoffs?