When you miss a day of baseball, suddenly the entire games, which so many other people surely suffered through, become decided by a coin flip. You know the results have been dedcided over three or so hours, but you get them instantly. Unless, that is, you squeeze out the info, like my dad used to do with the horse racing results in the newspaper.

I got home from my night here:



...and, knowing nothing of the Sox or Yanks results, switched the internet dial over to the redsox.com channel. I put my hand over the screen as to only reveal to myself the picture on the top left. Each team's site usually pictures its own, even after a loss. So I had to figure out if the pic was a "we won" pic or a "consolation" pic. It was Beckett. A good sign, I thought. I checked below, hoping to see, "Josh Beckett totally pitched a perfect game tonight." Instead, it was, "Josh Beckett totally stunk, and we almost had a comeback, but didn't. You, Jere, weren't there for them when they needed you most. Terrible job."

Like a stake through the heart. Or at least through the heart of my until-then nice night. Then I opted to find out the Yanks result by checking the standings: 2.0 games back. Another stake.

Enough about that. Tonight I took the hour-ish long subway ride to Coney Island to see the Brooklyn Cyclones play the Coxsackie Muckrakers. Or something like that. The word "Muck" was in the team name.

Oh, wait. I guess I should wait to tell the story until I post the rest of the pics. Watch for that and those soon.

Caption for above pic: A lonely umpire waits for the inning to start as the Coney Island rides peak over the outfield fence or whatever. And it's summer and America and people are taken back to their youth and expensive stuff used to cost a nickel and blah blah blah.