It's A Very SJ.com Christmas IV: Starring......21!!!

That's right. You weren't waiting for it, but here it is anyway...an SportsJournalists.com tradition unlike any other!!! The annual take on "It's a Wonderful Life" in which one disillusioned SportsJournalists.commer learns what life woudl have been like if he/she had never become a sportswriter.

"It's the Silent Night, Deadly Night of SportsJournalists.com!"--Ryan Sonner, ispin.com columnist

This year, my very favorite person on the board, 21, overcomes my inherent sexism and becomes the first woman to star in "A Very SportsJournalists.com Christmas," following in the footsteps of hockeybeat, dooley_womack1 and spnited!

It was impossible to fit in all the wonderful characters here, so my humble apologies if you are not mentioned here. It's probably nothing personal, unless you're Hondo.

So without further ado...A Very SportsJournalists.com Christmas IV!!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! ;D


It was a dark and stormy night when Mickey Mantle entered Marilyn Monroe for the first time. No, that’s shit.

It was a dark and stormy night and the trees swayed like Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe on the dance floor. He’s such a hard hitter, she thought to himself. I can’t wait until he swings the wood inside me. Good God, I suck.

It was a dark and stormy night and the rain pelted from the sky, making the ground as drenched as Marilyn Monroe’s panties. Fuck!

It was a dark and stormy night yet the trees remained hard and erect, like Mickey Mantle’s penis as he prepared to Boots Marilyn Monroe.

With that, 21 slammed her laptop shut. The inspiration, fleeting as it is, just wasn’t there as she attempted to write Mickey Mantle’s inventive memoir. Maybe a phone call to Boom would cheer her up.

“Helo youv’e reached Boom_70 I can not come to the fone rite now please leve a massage.”

She sighed. Probably off making another few million.

Perhaps a trip to her second home, sportsjournalists.com, would inspire her. No such luck. Buncha stupid posts by a buncha stupid kids about fantasy leagues that weren’t as cool as the No Idiots Allowed league and weddings and engagements and people seeking advice on which soda to buy for a holiday gathering, name brand or generic. It felt a lot like the end scene in St. Elmo’s Fire, where the gang stands outside the bar and sees a bunch of undergrads sitting at what used to be their favorite table.

21 rolled her eyes. Maybe a trip to the Hilton bar would cure whatever ailed her.

A Grey Goose in hand and her nerves already settling, 21 opened up the Mantle file. But instead of seeing the words on screen, she heard a sizzling sound…then nothing. Fuck! The hard drive was fried. Twenty thousand mediocre words, up in smoke.

Oh, this was it. It was two days before Christmas, her mother was coming in for a visit tomorrow and a book that she hated from the start was now toast. 21 picked up the laptop and threw it across the room. “I hate this business!” she yelled. “I wish I’d never become a writer!”

With that, she swallowed the contents of her Grey Goose. She raised her hand to get the bartender’s attention. As she stewed, bouncing the five-inch heels that dangled off the stool, she noticed the man at the end of the bar staring at her. Oh goodness, she thought. Another leering perv.

“Can I help you?” she said as the bartender filled her drink.

“I think I can,” the man said.

“Let me guess,” 21 said as she raised the glass. “You’re going to tell me you’ve learned my dad is a thief because he stole the stars and put them in my eyes? Save it. I’ve heard them all before.”

“Not at all,” the man said. “But I heard you bemoaning your craft, and I think it would be a shame to give up something you’re so obviously talented at.”

“Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.”

“See what I mean?”

“Big deal,” 21 said as she sipped from the glass. “So I can spot a poorly constructed sentence. Doesn’t mean I haven’t wasted my life.”

“But you haven’t. Why, no one ever brought the Arena Football League to life quite like you did.”

21 almost dropped her glass. Terry Haute…she hadn’t thought of him in weeks. “What…what…how would you know that? Who are you?”

“I’m the ghost of message boards past, and I’m here to show you what the world would be like if you’d never become a writer.”

 

(continued)

With that, 21 and the ghost found themselves in another bar—an establishment as seedy and sticky as the Hilton was elegant. Alone in a corner sat a man, alone with a glum look on his face and a drink in his hand.

“Boom!” 21 said. “My darling. How is he?”

“Not well,” the ghost said. “He spends all his time here at Stan’s, bemoaning not only his lack of a soul mate but also the difficulty he has spelling.”

“His spelling issues? Big deal. He’s brilliant. He’s so brilliant his mind can’t catch up with his fingers.”

“Yes, well, you know that, and you were the one to remind him of that. But you never became a writer, so you were never in the Bronx that October day in 2002. So you never met Boom. And now, instead of confidently brushing off the criticism he got at sportsjournalists.com, he spends his days nursing the wounds he receives from users at his favorite message board.”

“What’s that?”

“canadiansoccer.ca.”

“Oh my. That’s awful.”

“Yeah, you ain’t seen the worst of it. Check this out.”

With that, 21 and the ghost were in a high-rise building in the middle of Manhattan. “My goodness, I’ve never seen a man with so much work done to his face,” 21 said as she stared at the man pointing frantically at the other people in the office and yelling into a hands-free headset. “What’s his deal?”

“That’s your SportsJournalists.com foe Spnited,” the ghost said.

“What happened to HIM?” she said. “He was the oldest man at SportsJournalists.com by decades.”

“He still would be,” the ghost said. “But he never went into sportswriting. Instead, he became the top exec at MTV, where his motto is “Kill anyone over 25.” Once his kids turned 25, he disowned them. He has injections every week and a facelift every month in order to look as young as possible.”

“OK so Spnited is a fraud. Big deal.”

“Oh you better be careful how you use that word. You might get sued. Hey look over there, it’s your friend BYH.”

21 saw an impeccably dressed man dictating a statement to a secretary in a large yet sparsely decorated office. “That can’t be BYH,” she said. “All he does is post on SportsJournalists.com as he eats Oreos that he spills all over his John Stockton shorts.”

“Yes, but without you to lead him to SportsJournalists.com, he did something meaningful with his life—he became a lawyer. Instead of calling people frauds on SportsJournalists.com, he represents people who have been called frauds on message boards. He’s the busiest libel lawyer in America.”

21 shook her head. “That’s impossible. He’d never do that. BYH thinks everyone’s a fraud. Almost_Famous, Herm Edwards, the Mets…”

“Yup. Those are his top three clients.”

“So BYH became a libel lawyer. Good for him. He’s making real money as opposed to doing this shit. You haven’t convinced me I made a terrible decision.”

“Perhaps this will help.”

With that, 21 and the ghost were back in Chicago, this time in a conference room at the Tribune Company. They stood in the back and watched a speaker drone on as he ran a Power Point presentation on the importance of design in newspapers.

“That’s DyePack,” the ghost said.

21 had to steady herself on a desk. “That cannot be,” she said. “He HATES design.”

“Yes, he did. But without a message board to vent on, he sold out to the man. Now he’s the Chief Executive Officer In Charge Of Implementing New Design Practices for the Tribune Company. Mistakes in the paper are at an all-time high, but no one knows or cares because there’s no DyePack to point them out.”

“That’s awful,” 21 said as she wiped her eyes.

“It gets worse. You’re also staring at the next general manager of the Cubs. Speaking of which…”

21 and the ghost were now standing on a nicely manicured lawn in an obviously exclusive cul-de-sac. It was the only house in sight, and indeed, there was not a sound to be heard…until a small truck motored up the hill. It was a US Postal Service truck. Out of it stepped a man who could be heard muttering to himself about Neifi Perez, guns and the ultimate revenge.

“Say hello to your fellow Cub fan Armchair_QB,” the ghost said.

“My goodness, he’s a mailman?”

“Not just any mailman. Dusty Baker’s mailman. He’s two months away from re-defining the term ‘going postal.’”

“Poor A_QB,” 21 said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I was speaking out of turn. Can’t I just go back and return to my writing?”

“Not yet. Not before you see the most horrifying thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”

 

(Continued)

With that, 21 and the ghost were standing outside a basement window. They peered inside and saw an obese naked man holding a Boy’s Life in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. On the screen were the words “A Large Regular.”

“That’s your friend Chris_L,” the ghost said.

“He’s naked, ‘reading’ Boy’s Life and posting on a blog,” 21 said. “So tell me what’s changed, exactly.”

“Plenty,” the ghost said. “Look at that man behind him.”

The sounds of Barry White filled the air. A man in a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey came up to Chris_L. The two shared a passionate kiss.

“That’s Chris’ one-time arch-nemesis, JR,” the ghost said.

21’s stomach churned. “Oh God no!”

“As you know, the two of them sparred, with increasing viciousness, for years at SportsJournalists.com,” the ghost said. “But without a message board to divide them, they actually realized they were both log cabin Republicans. And they came together. In more ways than one.”

21 put her hand to her mouth. “I can’t take anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said I wanted to quit writing. I can’t take this anymore…I can’t take it…”

“But you haven’t even seen Buck and his ‘dorsal fin’ join JR and Ace.”

There was more for 21 to see…such as BigRagu moderating a David Hasselhoff message board under the name Prego…Sportschick, who turned into an arch-conservative stay-at-home mom of 12 who was not only married to a yeehaw golf writer in Florida but also spent her spare hours burning all books containing the word “dammit”…Hockeybeat, selling lemonade to tourists in New York City during the Christmas season…Moderator1, enjoying his box seats at Baltimore Orioles games…Dooley_Womack1, making billions after inventing a tracking device that allows employers to know how much employees are posting on message boards…Oz, serving as the athletic director at Missouri…Mizzougrad96, serving as the athletic director at Kansas…Simon, an unpaid intern working for Mizzougrad…Jones, waiting by his phone for a call back from John McCain’s spokesman…Poindexter, working the phones as the circulation manager of the Los Angeles Times…Starman, serving as O.J. Simpson’s spokesperson…Columbo, a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium…Imjustagirl, stalking a former member of the Cleveland Indians named……………Ken Schrom…Bubbler, living in an Amish village with no electricity and no contact with the world of popular culture…Cadet, a wrestling coach who is leading a nationwide moment to wipe Title IX off the books…Boots, a conservative lobbyist who is leading a nationwide movement to turn sodomy into a crime punishable by death…Fenian_Bastard, a right-wing radio host who rails against black quarterbacks in between scarfing down copious amounts of prescription painkillers…Cosmo, yelling racial slurs at the audience during comedy shows in Los Angeles…Acepublishing the Plain-Dealer…Freelance_Hack, coaching the Boston University football team even though the team folded nearly a decade ago…Junkie, leading the pep band at Ohio State…Dog428, posting on message boards as “Bobblehead” and “Yawn” and having gay affairs with day workers he picks up every, uhh, day…Idaho, who stalks Uma Thurman…Shotglass, still throwing cats at passerby…Huggy trying to capitalize on Rod Stewart’s renaissance by putting out covers of Stewart’s late ‘70s schlock…Flying Headbutt singing in a Cheap Trick cover band...and, of course, Slappy4428, mimicking his idol Mitch Albom by penning dimestore pap such as “Wednesdays With Waldo,” “Fridays With Felice” and “Eight People You Meet In Purgatory.”

“So you see, 21,” the ghost said as they sat back down at the Hilton bar, “the sportswriting world would have been irreparably harmed had you not gotten into it. There’d be no SportsJournalists.com. And all your friends would be worse off. Well, except BYH.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll get right back on that Mantle novel,” 21 said as she picked up her wounded laptop. “Why, that Chris_L/JR scene gave me an idea. What if Mickey and Joe DiMaggio were actually not warring over Marilyn Monroe but were in love with each other? Hmmm. I bet I could write a really hot love scene with the Mick and Joe D. in the bathroom of an Amtrak train…”

“Who the fuck cares about that? Finish the fucking Terry Haute book.”

-30-

 

Thanks Headbutt. Wish I'd written this earlier, but I've been busy posting at SportsJournalists.com doing work.

 

Hey, I'd have taken the billions. Damn 21 becoming a sportswriter. :-\

But enough about my troubles. Great job as usual.

 

BYH - you've outdone yourself this year. The SportsJournalists.com Christmas novel has become one of my favorite holiday traditions.

 

It's a Christmas miracle!

 

Wait a second, 21 has ghosts trying to convert her to Christianity?

 

Luckily, I send the maid out to score for me.

 

Brilliant! Can't wait to read HC's reaction to that torrid twosome of JR and Chris_L.

I'd write more but I'm busy finishing up my cover of "Passion".