i had given up on this a long time ago.

but it feels good, finally. really good.

i just watched the white sox win their first pennant in my lifetime. had just missed the last one: came in 59, two years before my birth.

i used to listen to the games every night in in the bottom bunk with my tiny transistor radio. with the volume turned all the way down to the edge of the off click, with it laid right up against my ear on the pillow, so i could just make out Harry Carrey calling the balls and strikes, but my mom, when she stepped right into our bedroom doorway--which she did every night to see if we were asleep--could not hear a sound from five feet away. and i would close my eyes and feign sleep, praying for a lull in the action till she passed.

(i have never been able to fake anything. took every ounce of concentration i had to paste on that blank sleep expression and try to control my breathing. a long fly ball to left and i would have been so busted.)

nearly every night, nearly 162 games, for years and years. partly cause my older brother was a cubs fan and he beat me up every afternoon--and that's easy to say now, but "joke" about it, but it was fists slamming into my skull and belly over and over and over again every single day of my life, so i knew i had to come home to get abused every day as soon as school was over, like it wasn't horrible enough there already, it was at least a predictable bruising when i came home; it was brutal and i hated him, god how i hated him, that cruel bastard--so i not only hoped and prayed for every hit, every run every win for the sox, i hoped and prayed for the cubs to lose so that my team would beat his team, it was the one hope i had of beating that horrible evil guy who was beating the crap out of me every day to make it to the playoffs before his team and show him that we and they were better than him.

(the last paragraph i wrote while drunk in an email to my little sister a few weeks ago--cleaned it up a little tonight. i'm not angry now, but clearly it simmers just below. i didn't realize i was still angry for years and years until it suddenly came to a head in a bitter encounter this summer as i realized that the pattern had lived on through adulthood. and he didn't really get it when i told him, so it didn't go away. )

bucky dent before he went to the yankees was my favorite. partly cause he was really hot, too, and i couldn't quite grasp that, but i told myself it was cause he was a shortstop really good in the field and a good hitter who always seemed to have more potential than he realized, and jorge orta and a brief ron santo, and of course harry carrey before he turned traitor and went to the cubs, god, i never forgave him for that.

but they let me down just too many times, and i was losing interest in pro sports anyway, especially once i realized i didn't have to pretend to follow it to be a real man, so i finally let it go. but i will never forget the feeling.

and i was so happy for them tonight. and in a weird little way, even though i had nothing to do with it, for me.

and i emailed my brother the second it was over to demand my money.

hahaha. i have no idea what we bet--a dollar? seemed like a lot at the time. i think that's when we got five cents a week allowance, so that was nearly half a year's income.

whoever's team won the pennant first won.

who would have expected it to go on this long? they had the longest and second-longest streaks without one in baseball.

but not tonight.

and it feels good.

and i'm going to get to work on figuring out how to forgive my brother.

If you've been watching Survivor this season, particularly this past Thursday, you probably came to the conclusion that Blake Towsley is kind of a dick. If you missed him on The Early Show the next morning, you have no idea.

On Thursday, you had the footage of him babbling incessantly about his infinite superiority--about his high school state sports championship, about his girlfriend's size double-D breasts, about his wild drunken debauchery--and you had the outcome of the episode: his three original tribemates, who had everything to gain by sticking together, may well have written themselves out of contention just to get a human being so vile out of their vicinity.

That was nothing.

Friday morning, after months away from the game to get over his astonishment and anger over being disliked, and mere seconds after thumping his chest for having played the game so honorably, he chose the most spineless method possible to slander his former adversary Brian with what he surely regards as the ultimate insult.

Brian badmouthed him in Guatemala, and apparently engineered his ouster. Blake got his revenge Friday by "accusing" Brian of being gay--by pretending to "defend" him.

Judge for yourself. I transcribed his full screed, no edits or omissions of any kind (though I didn't bother with a few quick echoes of his comments from Harry Smith, spoken at the same time as Blake, in the midst of it):

"The thing that I wanted to come away with more than a million dollars was my honor and my integrity, and I did that. The one thing that was kind of--everybody in the, everybody on the cast and everybody thought that that Brian was gay. And made it a big issue, and a big hot topic and I was, you know, he was adamant about defending himself on that and never once did I speak a bad word about Brian. They had me in interviews and they're like, He's not gay, but everybody thought he was. Brian and myself were the only two the exceptions to the rule. So I'd tried be a good guy for everybody. I think I got out right before it got ugly."

Yeah. Until now.

It's bad enough to out someone on national television. To "accuse" someone who claims not to be on--especially by pretending to defend him--yow. How low can you get?

It's no insult to me, but I'm quite sure it is in Blake's world. Still the most damaging epithet you can slap a guy with in many circles. It's disgusting to do that to Brian, and more disgusting to gay people to use the "charge" as an insult.

Blake mentioned watching the show every Thursday night, and knew damn well the producers had chosen not to air any of those "allegations." So he knew it had probably never crossed the minds of most straight people in the country, and how easy to point it out for them. And if they did already suspect, he was all to eager to provide the compelling evidence that everyone there--other than Mr. Integrity, of course--thought it was true.

Playing the gay card. I keep forgetting we're not past that.

And Harry Smith, of course, said nothing about the slimy slam.