9/12/08 Dear Lou's Resulting Comic Wedgie

Oh ya’ll, I’m about to share a very important lesson with you. Don’t be all cute and try to tell Lou Piniella how to do his job. Otherwise the Fates will raise their eyebrows and say things like “So you think you can do better, do you?” And then they’ll smack you upside the head and your softball game will go Down. The. Toilet.

Like when you told Lou that he just needed to get his players to just hit the ball and stop stranding runners on base, and then you went to bat in your little game and proceeded strike out TWICE, both times being the third out and stranding your fellow teammates on second and third base.

That’s what they call irony, my friends.

Or how about when you told him that his stinky team needed to play some better defense and stop letting the other team score so much. Then, with two minutes left in the game, being up by one, you let a line drive to right field (where absolutely no one has hit the ball all night) come flying over, take a weird bounce 4 feet in front of you, go careening off to the side, and roll all the way to the fence, thus allowing the two runners on the opposing team to make it easily to home and beating you 7 to 6.

Not so many smug comments to the Cubs now, you’ll notice. (Although the missed line drive did bring up some other rather interesting comments, mostly involving not-nice-words that I yelled as I chased the ball back to the fence).

Anyway, the point is that the universe tends to recognize flippant smuggery (yes, I just made that up) and it corrects it by arranging to have you “brought back down a notch”, usually during bouts of physical activity, as they have the best embarrassment potential (although high school reunions and meetings with upper management are also up there).

So with the universe giving me the whole “Take that Mrs. Smarty Pants!” while bestowing a cosmic wedgie, I sent my most sincere telepathic apology to Mr Lou Piniella, sir, for telling him how to run his team. They are doing the best they can. And Lou, ever graceful when accepting an apology, decided to actually win a game.

Did I mention the irony?