Why Do You Build Me Up Pudgey-cup?

Well, for those of us who thought that the Yanks had lost their will to fight, I guess that last night’s outing against the Angels proved us all wrong. It was the bottom of the sixth. Pudge and Torii Hunter did the bumpty bump during a play at the plate. And, while Hunter claimed it was an accident, Pudge believed it was intentional. So Pudge pushed Hunter. Hunter pushed Pudge. On thing led to another, and before you could say, “The only thing stupider than a mascot is a rally monkey,” the benches had cleared. The tension was incredible. Everyone was all fired up. Raring to go. And then, and then…

And then the Yanks continued to get pounded and ultimately lost the game in a 12-1 decision.

Girardi had this to say about the fight. “It's not something that you want to see happen, but it's emotion. Pudge was showing emotion, and I'm OK with that. Emotion is a good thing. It's baseball.”

Actually, it’s not.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, emotion is “a strong mental or instinctive feeling such as love or fear.” And, just to do a little refresher, baseball is the thing where you swing the bat at the ball and try to get the guys on your team around the bases. It is the thing, Girardi, that your team is currently not so good at. It does not technically ever involve shoving or punching or physical displays of “emotion.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I like a brawl as much as the next guy. Not so much in real life. In real life, I’m a pacifist. But in real life, I also don’t believe in telling people they suck. Sports is a little bit different from real life. However, just because I like a sports brawl, it doesn’t mean I think that they should be happening willy-nilly for no reason. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the entire point of beefing in sports to get everyone all pumped up to kick some tush? When the Yanks get into a benches-clearing fracas in the sixth and then go scoreless for the three remaining innings, I don’t call that a display of “emotion.” I call it a useless expenditure of energy.

Let me digress a moment, if I may.

I watched a movie the other night. An Irish film, entitled Once, which some of you may remember as this year’s Oscar winner for Best Original Song. (If you would prefer not to hear the details of the storyline, I advise you to skip this paragraph.) The movie tells the heartwarming tale of an Irish guy and Czech girl, both of whom are hung up on an ex who doesn’t value them. Throughout the course of the film, the boy and the girl discover a shared passion for music, they record a CD, they fall in love. And all’s well that ends well. Except. Except. They never tell each other. They never tell each other, and they get back together with the ex-husband and ex-girlfriend who didn’t appreciate them in the first place. For no good reason. If I had to guess, I would say because someone told John Carney, the filmmaker, that happy endings were not allowed in independent movies. The result of this narrative decision was that I was left with the feeling that the whole experience, the journey, the voyage of their love, had been a total waste of my time. Leaving me to wonder, “Why do you build me up, John Carney-cup, just to let me down?”

And that is much how I felt last night. If you’re going to go to the trouble of getting into a brawl, shouldn’t you just win? Shouldn’t you at least make a stab at a comeback? Score another run? Something?

Meanwhile, back on the Jersey Shore…For those of you haven’t already heard, let me fill you in about Ryan Ward, the pride of New Jersey, who has been using his likeness to Joba Chamberlain as a way to get women to sleep with him. The 29-year-old, who originally hails from Delaware, was recently arrested for the scam and released on $10,000 bail. Poor guy had obviously never heard of JDate, where it's just so darn easy to not get arrested for being a pervert.

Now, the best way to teach this moron a lesson—if indeed a lesson could ever even penetrate the sieve that must be his mind—would be to simply let it lie. And to teach this moron a lesson would probably be in the best interest of society at large—or the women of New Jersey, at the very least. The New York Post, of course, does not have the best interest of society at heart. As evidenced by their penchant for lipstick-wearing pit bulls. And basically every news article they have ever published. Eager as ever to jump on anything remotely tawdry, the Post has decided that, rather than let this story run its natural course, they would find a way to breathe new life into it. They have arranged a meeting between Ryan and Joba. The pitcher is apparently anxious to meet his impersonator, claiming he wants to “know what was going on in his head.”

May I make a suggestion to Joba Chamberlain? (Because the people at the Post could give a crapelbon.) A guy like Ryan Ward—a guy who pretends to be a professional baseball player so that he can laid? A guy who does this and then later jokes about it with the press? A guy who says he would only “probably” never do it again? A guy who now claims to want to parlay his likeness to Chamberlain into a living? (Because we all go to Vegas for the Joba impersonators.) This wouldn’t be a guy who loves attention by any chance, would it? A guy who would be really psyched to be getting as much media as possible out of this whole ridiculous farce? And we want to, what? Reward him by giving him even more press and a private audience with one of the most famous sports figures in New York? Right. That seems fair. Because I don’t get to meet Joba Chamberlain and I didn’t imitate anyone so that I could get laid.

Look, Joba, I’m no expert in male psychology, but if you really want a glimpse into the mind of Ryan Ward, I am going to go ahead and guess that it looks something like this: “I want sex. I want sex. I want sex. I look like a famous person. I want sex. I want sex.” Curiosity piqued?

Oh, right. But I forgot who I was dealing with. Because while Joba may not be a sexual deviant, he can relate to Ward on one level—homeboy loves to make love to the camera. He’d pass up the opportunity to participate in a ridiculous media circus like I’d pass up the opportunity to tell Torii Hunter that his name is misspelled.

Or the opportunity to say You Suck Coco Crisp.