We Are The Champions

Before the playoffs started, I had watched maybe three entire games during the baseball season. You can call it bandwagon-jumping, I call it escape from boredom. Baseball is a tough sport to watch, especially when cool new inventions like TiVo and instant messaging have cut my attention span to about one second. I watched every one of the White Sox playoff games, although I didn't see every minute of the opening round since I was on a cruise and there were many other events to take my attention.

I found the playoffs to be very exciting. In 11 wins the Sox only 'blew out' their opponent twice. In the World Series they failed to have a lead of more than two runs at any time. Every game versus the Astros was constantly tense. It was also, from a national perspective, constantly boring.

I wonder why that is. Both teams had incredible pitching, although they failed to show it until the final game of the season. The only 'name' player was Roger Clemens and he pitched two lousy innings. For some reason the White Sox's "We threw the World Series" curse wasn't as sexy as the Red Sox's "Our cheap owner sold the best player in baseball history" one. The Astros' franchise was in their first World Series. The NFL equivalent of this would the Kansas City Chiefs (no Super Bowl since 1970) versus the Arizona Cardinals (last NFL championship before television). It would be huge because the Super Bowl transcends matchup. It's a cultural event. The World Series isn't quite there because there are multiple games and only insomniacs can watch every minute of every game. I TiVo'd the end of Game 3, thinking I'd watch it in the morning. What I recorded ended in the bottom of the ninth inning. I had to go online to see how the game turned out.

I've been a fan of the team since 1983, so it's not like I've suffered for my entire life. I took it for granted that the White Sox would always underachieve and some other lucky sucker would watch his team run through the playoffs. That's all over now. I don't care what the haters said, my team won the World Series, and not only that, they did it with the best record (11-1) of the wild-card era. It doesn't matter how they won or if the team compares with champions of the past. The White Sox now have a trophy to display that isn't really dusty. Actually their 1906 and 1917 World Series champions probably didn't get a trophy.

I have one more thing to say. I ordered the 'locker room' t-shirt and hat two days after the final game of the series. It's going to take four to six weeks for the hat to arrive. Tell me that happened when the Red Sox won last year. Go ahead.

Vacation

I didn't want to be one of those people who started a blog only to eventually abandon it for no good reason. I got sidetracked by a few personal events. First I took a vaction. The wife and I went on a long-awaited cruise. I spent a couple of days on Miami Beach before we took off. Let me say, what passes for casual in Miami is different from Atlanta. A thong and a pair of sandals is OK. And that was just the hairy 50-year-old men.

Your body goes through changes while on a cruise. After the first day hunger ceases to be an issue. Meals are always available, including 24/7 room service that we never tried. My favorite was the pizza bar. They had exotic flavors like rusticana and marghareta, which actually were just pepperoni and cheese. There were dueling ice cream machines. One was yogurt and one 'real' ice cream. I heard that the yogurt was good.

You act differently on a cruise. We had the late 'seating' for our evening meal. I don't really like the formal setting for dinner for a couple of reasons. You have to dress up. Every night. Actually you can get by with khaki pants, a short-sleeve shirt and sandals but it still doesn't feel like a vacation. There's one formal night. Yes, I got to dust off the suit. If you're just in a couple the ship puts you at a table with other couples. We were nervous about this. On the first night none of the other couples showed up. Eventually we did and made friends, at least for the duration of the trip. The guy sitting next to me happened to be a Titans fan, so conversation went well after that discovery.

The ports of call are the highlight of any cruise. We stopped at Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios, Jamaica. When going to these ports, it's best to have a plan. At Grand Cayman we set up an excursion through the Internet. This is the way to go. The boat offers excursions but they're expensive and crowded. We went to swim with the stingrays. While it took a while to get used to wearing a mask and breathing through my mouth, the reef we visited was beautiful. I can't wait to see the results of our underwater pics. Our second stop was Stingray City. Dozens of boats gather in the clear teal water. The water itself was about chest high. The boat operator took a small white pail, anchored it down and left it floating. Inside were small pieces of squid that we were to feed to the stingrays. These cats of the ocean were pretty much domesticated. They'd swim right up to us. I grabbed a piece of squid and moved it to where I thought the mouth opening was. The guy just sucked it up. It was a fun experience.

Our second stop was in Jamaica, and no, I didn't have anyone offer to sell me any illegal substances. We took a bus trip to Dunns River Falls. You walk down to the bottom on a path and hire a guide to bring you back up the falls. The waterfalls looked insanely steep but we made it up without any major accidents. Our tour guide was smart in taking us there first because the place got crowded as we walked up the waterfall. We also tubed down a river, which was all right. There was a group of Norwegian tourists and we had fun trying to figure out what language they spoke. In short Jamaica is another poor country that depends on tourism. Contrary to my understanding marijuana is illegal there, but I think it's illegal like taping movies on your VCR is illegal here.

One downside to a week-long cruise is the lack of connection to the real world. There was shipboard Internet service but it was expensive ($24 per hour) and moved at dial-up speed. I lost one of my fantasy matchups because I didn't find out that Joe Horn was injured until after the fact. I felt like I missed more than one week when I returned.

At least there were some sports on TV. I kept running back from dinner to a TV to check on the Sox in game three of the division series. I didn't see the finish of the game but I saw the celebration.

On our travel day we woke up around 6 a.m. to get off the boat first. Instead of leaving our bags out we took them ourselves and got out with the first group. We made the airport early but Delta cancelled an earlier flight so we had to wait. I went back to work on Friday and had a nice restful weekend after that.