Manfred, man

I’m a cold person, now. I didn’t used to be. Used to be I could make do with just a light jacket if the temperature was above freezing. I could drink iced coffee even in the winter. I had warm hands and a dozen well-worn t-shirts.

But not now. I’m cold as hell most of the time anymore. I regularly wear long sleeves in the house. I drink tea. I’ve been a coffee drinker for years, and my wife has always been a tea drinker, but I never made a habit of it. Now I’m having a cup of English Afternoon as the clock dictates and a cup of chamomile around bed time. Which is like fucking 8:30 nowadays.

I suppose it would be too obvious for me to go gray from chronic stress and fatigue. Contrarian DNA.

The last few years have changed me though, man. I was looking at myself in the mirror the other day and I was stricken by a strange sense of familiarity. I remember those tired eyes, that faint grimace, the gaunt jawline. Jesus, I look just like my mom. I don’t know why that surprises me so much. History doesn’t repeat: it rhymes like a motherfuckin’ juggalo.

So here I am drinking an afternoon cup of tea with an afghan on my lap (my mom always sat with an afghan in her lap) because I’m cold. And here is Rob Manfred grinning like a dipshit as he tells me baseball is cancelled because eh April games aren’t really all that profitable anyway, I guess. The collection of billionaire piggies who get to sit at the table and nurse the golden supple teats of our national pastime aren’t quite full enough yet. They demand more. The richest people in the world, each one of them as rich as Croesus and Ken Griffey Jr put together, think they aren’t getting enough. And so we won’t be seeing baseball for a good while now.

I wish I could tell you how I feel about that. It’s all a bit much to put into words. And I sure haven’t been in the practice of it recently. I just can’t quite get over the look on his face. I’m not a violent man, by nature, but I gotta take off this sweater right now because I’m fucking boiling.