It's A Very SJ.com Christmas V: Starring......Boom_70!!!!

That's right folks. You may have been waiting for it. Chances are you weren't. But it's here anyway...my annual SportsJournalists.com-ian take on "It's A Wonderful Life." This year's star is none other than BOOM_70! He follows in the footsteps of hockeybeat, dooley_womack1, spnited and 21. That'd be quite a poker game.

I tried to fit as many personalities in here as I could. If you're not in here, my humble apologies. It's almost certainly not personal. Anyway, it's late and it's technically Christmas Eve so no further ado. Merry Christmas everyone!!!

A Very SportsJournalists.com Christmas V

It’d been a busy morning for the multi-millionaire businessman: He’d bought the eastern seaboard, sold it for twice as much as he’d paid for it and then bought it back for 10 cents on the dollar when the futures market fell apart.

But it left Boom Seven Tee feeling vaguely empty. Buy, sell, buy. Sure, he made enough money to afford whatever price increase the Yankees foisted upon him for his prime seats. He had enough money to buy his enemies 10 times over. He could fly around the world with the love of his live, 21, at a moment’s notice. Without his financial support, the Swift Vets never told their story in 2004 and that namby pamby John Kerry would be president.

But years of frantic buying and selling and the inherent pressures of business at the highest levels had sucked all the joy out of it for Boom. So much accountability, no room for error. One screw-up could cost him millions.

And the drudgery of it all: Buy, sell, buy. Buy, sell, grease the palms of business-friendly lobbyists on Congress, buy. Buy, sell, crank call Roger Clemens, buy. Buy, sell, masturbate, buy. All the same, everyday.

Even going to sportsjournalists.com and getting a rise out of his favorite foils didn’t provide the same rush it once did. There were only so many times you could misspell a poster’s name, or post the pictures Moddy told him not to post, or intentionally misspell words to antagonize the board’s best spellers, or start threads that would drive the liberals crazy, before it began to lose all meaning.

Boom sighed, got up from his desk and walked across the room to his bookcase, which smelled of rich mahogany. Maybe a few minutes with a great sports book would inspire him. He scanned the shelves and selected “Summer of ’98” by Mike Lupica. He began to read the poetic prose about a magical season:

You would watch his Cardinals across this summer because of McGwire, who was supposed to break the home-run record. He had hit 58 the year before; no right-handed hitter in baseball history had ever hit more. Now he was supposed to get Maris, even though McGwire was thirty-four at the start of the season, and only Willie Mays and Johnny Mize, the Big Cat who had played for the Cardinals and Giants and Yankees, had ever hit more than 50 home runs in a season at such an advanced baseball age.

Boom slammed the book shut in disgust. All Lupica could do now was rail against the steroid era. But he didn’t mind milking it for all it was worth in 1998. No accountability. A fraud.

Maybe another book would soothe Boom’s fire. He selected “Inside Baseball: The Best of Tom Verducci” and opened it.

Between outings Clemens religiously adheres to McNamee's tightly choreographed program of distance running, agility drills, weight training, 600 daily abdominal crunches and assorted other tortures. "One time he wanted me to ride a stationary bike, and I told him I never thought it gave you much of a workout," Clemens says. "He told me, 'Give me 17 minutes.' After 17 minutes I thought my legs would explode."

Clemens takes great pride in having stopped his baseball biological clock. He will tell you that he still runs three miles in 19 to 20 1/2 minutes, that he still weighs 232 pounds, that he still wears slacks with a 36-inch waist (though they must be tailored to allow for his massive thighs) and that he can still reach for a mid-90s fastball at will -- the same specs he had at least 10 years ago. "He's a freak of nature, the kind of pitcher who comes along once in a generation, maybe every 25 to 30 years," says Devil Rays pitching coach Bill Fischer…

Boom’s stomach churned. This lack of accountability made him sick. Didn’t Verducci write Sports Illustrated’s first steroid expose in 2002? He flipped to the table of contents.

Totally Juiced;
With the use of steroids and other performance enhancers rampant, according to a former MVP and other sources, baseball players and their reliance on drugs have grown to alarming proportions

By Tom Verducci
June 3, 2002

Tears of anger welled in Boom’s eyes. He turned and fired the book across the room. These fucking writers—concerned only with ingratiating themselves with their subjects and giving a surface-deep study of the important issues and contradicting themselves at every turn. These sonsofbitches have no idea what it’s like to work in an industry where one mistake could cost you everything.

I’m so sick of this shit, Boom thought. I can’t take it anymore.

“I wish I’d become a sportswriter!” he yelled.

-MORE-

 

Suddenly, the wind howled outside and his window flew open. His paperwork flew around the room.

That’s odd, Boom thought. I didn’t have a window before.

Boom bent down to pick up the paperwork. He stood up and was shocked to see an elderly man standing at his desk.

“Hello Boom,” the man said.

“Spitted?” Boom said.

“No.”

“Who the hell are you? How the hell did you get in here? This place is accessible only by handprint.”

“I don’t need a handprint. I’m a ghost.”

“A ghost? Do you want me to cue up The Righteous Brothers?”

“No Boom. Not that type of ghost. I am the ghost of message boards past. And I am here to show you what your life would be like if you’d become a sportswriter.”

(Yeah there wasn’t as much banter between the ghost and the subject as usual. The intro ran far longer than usual. Deal.)

With that, Boom found himself standing in a dirty old newsroom. A police scanner bleated weakly in the corner. Fuzzy images flickered on a rabbit-eared television. The combination of old newspapers and moldy Chinese food gave the room a noxious smell.

“Where the hell am I?” Boom said.

“You’re at your job at a small JRC-owned daily. Look, there you are: The one-man staff.”

The ghost pointed to a harried-looking young man working on a Commodore computer. He was typing furiously on a keyboard missing several keys. He occasionally looked up at a monitor that oozed nuclear waste and had Hilary ’08 stickers surrounding it.

“Goodness,” Boom said.

“That’s not the worst of it,” the ghost said. “You’re making $4.25 an hour and living at a hostel.”

“So what?” Boom said. “At least I’m not a fraud.”

“No, but you get called one all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

With that the two found themselves in an apartment where a man sat in a recliner, watching VH-1 Classic and alternately pounding at a keyboard and yelling. “Fuck you Butts_51! You fucking fraud! Yeah! I showed you! Number one again motherfucker!”

“Who the hell is that loser?” Boom asked.

“That’s your former friend, BYH.”

“Why are we fighting?”

“Because he thinks you’re a fraud for taking Greg Buttle’s name and uniform number as a screen name. He’s very protective of Butts.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, that and the two of you are neck-and-neck for most posts at sportsjounalists.com and being no. 1 there is all he’s got.”

“What a loser.”

“Well, it’s understandable. He doesn’t have a very good home life.”

With that, a woman’s voice yelled out at BYH. “Did you sell a book yet, BYH?”

“No MOM!!!” BYH said.

“Have you been working on it?”

“Mom, I’m BUSY!!”

“I know you are honey, I know you’re covering VH-1 Classic and Beverly Hills 90210 for your little message board,” his mom said as she walked into the room, a giant cross dangling from her neck. “I know it’s tough to find the time with so much to do. Not everyone can be a writer, or move out of the house before he turns 35.”

“Mom, it’s hard to find a place to live on a writer’s salary!”

“No I’m sure you try hard to find a full-time job. Maybe you can do it before I die of heartache. I will pray for you. I’ll pray to the patron saint of message boards.”

“MOM!!!”

“I know honey. It’s just tough if all you can provide someone is effort and not productivity or talent. Oh well honey. Don’t worry: I wasn’t crying because of you today. Not completely, at least. Maybe a little bit. Do you want Spaghetti-O’s for dinner or are you going to be busy not writing your great little book?”

BYH slammed his computer down and ran into his room. “Man that is lame,” Boom said. “What a beast he’s got for a mother.”

“You should be nicer to your beloved 21.”

Boom gasped. “21? But she’s Jewish! And a great writer! And she never ever wanted kids! What’s she doing giving birth to no-talent hacks?”

“Without you in her life, 21 converted to Catholicism and gave up her dreams of writing the great American novel. Now she’s just another passive-aggressive Catholic mom, working out her aggression through a son who will never meet her standards. And she’s in a loveless marriage, but she makes decent money.”

“What’s she do?”

“Produces bras for Jewish women with lopsided breasts.”

“Geez, that’s terrible,” Boom said. “My darling 21, how I’ve let you down so…”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.”

-MORE-

 

With that, the ghost and Boom found themselves on a street corner in a bustling city. Everyone was dressed well and hurrying to and fro except a naked man who reeked of booze, cigarettes and failure as he kept showing a tattered piece of paper to passersby.

“LOOK AT MY POLL!” he yelled. “LOOK AT IT!!!”

“Who the hell is that?” Boom asked.

“That’s Slappy4428. He used to organize a poll at an anti-BCS message board. But before the last week of the season, he was busy and pre-wrote his lede about Missouri and West Virginia meeting in the national championship game. But both teams lost and he was blackballed off the board and shamed into homelessness. Now all he does is compile his own poll and yell about it on street corners.”

“That poor crazy bastard,” Boom said. “Is that ironic?”

“I’m not sure,” the ghost said. “Is this?”

The two appeared in a basement. A few feet in front of them sat a 20-something guy in sweat pants and a wife-beater. Posters of Kim Kardashian and the girls from “The O.C.” covered every inch of the wall.

“Who’s that?” Boom asked.

“That’s Double Down.”

“Double Down? But he was such a respected guy at SJ and such a great writer. He looks like a blogger here.”

“That’s exactly what he is. He runs a blog called ‘The Big Bleed.’ All he does is post potentially libelous rumors as fact, then backtrack and shrug it off as no big deal. Check this out.”

Double Down pecked at the keyboard. “A source tells us Tom Brady is gay and is having Matt Leinart’s baby.” He hit post. Then he scratched his belly button, sniffed his finger and licked it before hitting modify. “This just in: The source might be wrong. Tom might not be gay and he might not be having Leinart’s baby. Supposedly men can’t have babies. Whatever. I don’t know. Sometimes we get these things wrong. Big deal. Kim Kardashian has huge tits and I want to fuck her.”

Boom shook his head. “this is making my stomach hurt,” he said.

“Too bad because we’re just getting started. Why, Double Down isn’t the only SJer blogging now that you’re in the field.”

Boom and the ghost found themselves watching a man laying on a couch with one hand in a bag of chips and the other on a computer. The E! network blared in the background.

“Who’s that?” Boom asked.

“That’s Fenian_Bastard,” the ghost said.

“That’s impossible! Fenian was the most politically active member of SJ! Now all he does is eat potato chips and watch trashy TV?”

“Well, without you to spar with he decided he just didn’t give a fuck anymore. So he started a blog. He calls it whogivesafuck.org. He’s trying to inspire people to not care.”

Tears again appeared in Boom’s eyes. “This is terrible,” Boom said. “I’ve been so selfish. I don’t want to be a sportswriter anymore. I can’t take it.”

“Shut up and deal,” the ghost said. “It could be worse: You could be imjustagirl.”

The two found themselves in a house adorned with posters of Brad Daugherty. “What’s wrong with this?” Boom asked.

“Instead of becoming a Duke fan who stalked Brook Jacoby, IJAG became a North Carolina fan who stalks ex-Cavs star Brad Daugherty,” the ghost said. “But she’s vaguely unhappy with this, which means life is hell for the poor guy who calls her every night at dinner.”

The phone rang. “Hello?” IJAG said.

“Hello, would you like to take a poll?” the voice on the other end said.

“FUCK YOU NO!!!” IJAG yelled.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m about to eat dinner and you fail at life!”

“What are you eating for dinner? Please choose one of the following options: Meat loaf, chili, hamburgers, hot dogs, spaghetti, chicken, turkey, roast beef, sushi, kung pow chicken, ham, pot pie, waffles, toast, green eggs and ham…”

“I FUCKING HATE YOU AND I’ll FUCKING KILL YOU IF YOU EVER FUCKING CALL HERE AGAIN!!!” IJAG slammed the phone down.

“Who was that poor bastard?” Boom asked.

“Your decision to become a sportswriter turned PhilaYank36 into a cold call salesman for Gallup. Had you just stuck with what made you a fortune, his damage would have been limited to the message board.”

There was much more horror to be seen: Buckweaver running SABR4Kidz—Society for American Basketball Research—and posting as Chuck_Nevitt and defending Reggie Bush on message boards…The Good Doctor, typing on several laptops with different IP addresses and bragging about how he has a Hall of Fame vote in every sport and how his next door neighbor likes it when he fucks her in the ass…Zeke12, living alone in a basement—unwashed and naked except for a tattered “Building The Perfect Beast: Tour ‘85” T-shirt—as he runs “The Boys Of Summer” webring, which tries to chronicle every single time Don Henley’s classic has been played on American radio…Hockeybeat, living life under a 3,500-mile restraining order from Sarah Chalke...Oz, a Yankees and Mets fan who also roots for the Browns and was kicked out of the Dawg Pound because he was too rude and too fat…Sam Mills 51, posting as Kevin Greene 91 and belligerently attacking people on message boards…Shotglass, running and serving as the only poster at an anti-design message board called helmetssuckalway.com…Spnited, the oldest Bon Jovi fan in the nation…Shockey, posting on message boards as Mitchell…Casty33, divorced from the woman who plays Lauren Fenmore on “The Young And The Restless”…JR, a militant Republican trying to turn Canada into a United States territory…HC, the lead singer of a death metal band…Mike311gd, trying to land financing for the porno movie he wrote that ends with his money shot on a face—Tobanga…Cadet, running Joe Morgan’s official website: Abettersecondbasemanthanrynesandberg.com…Sportschick, a shock therapist specializing in weaning people off message board addiction…old_tony, boxing in 50 states in 50 days with the words “Vote Hilary ‘08” temporarily tattooed on his chest and back…Flying Headbutt, authoring a book on the 1985 World Series…The Big Ragu, a meat-eating chemist who ran MALCO—Manhattan Area Laboratory Co-Operative—and starfucks steroid users while posting as meatora on SportsJournalists.com…Hoops McCann, a Rush fan imprisoned for trying to blow up the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…Rosie, an Arizona Cardinals fan…Webby, the author of “Duckpin Bowling: Why It Will Kill Ten-Pin By 2010”…Moderator1, who gets banned from numerous sites for posting pics of Tim Tebow’s girlfriend…Mizzougrad96, living the high life as Jerry Crasnick’s literary agent…BigDog, a professional hockey player who has won the Lady Byng Award…Tom Petty, posting jibberish under the screen name Bob Dylan…Simon_Cowbell, a noted economist who has published several academic papers on why baseball does not need a salary cap…Starman, the ghostwriter of Larry Brown’s autobiography: “Playing The Game The Right Way”…Armchair_QB, standing outside Busch Stadium with a sign reading “GET A BRAIN MORANS”…Ace, delivering the Plain-Dealer…Bubbler, living in a fallout shelter and convinced the Russians are going to attack any day now…Jones, writing magazine stories that tout Hilary Clinton as the comeback candidate for president…jgmacg, an overweight sportswriter outing people on message boards…dooley_womack1, admiring his shrine to Don Denkinger…Idaho, the only Mormon living in New York City…Hank_Scorpio, posting as Hello_Newman…Junkie, serving as the real singer for Lou Gramm on his solo tour and winning an award at SportsJournalists.com for most consecutive posts without self-nuking…and of course Huggy, starring in a one-man off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off-off Broadway in Willimantic, CT called “Love Touch And Beyond.”

“So you see,” the ghost said, “how life for everyone else—including yourself—would have taken a turn for the worse had you become a sportswriter instead of simply posting on a message board for sportswriters.”

“I get it now,” Boom said. “Thanks for this reminder. I feel invigorated for my job—and my duties on the message board.”

“There will always be people who are unaccountable for their words and their actions,” the ghost said. “And there will always be errors in the paper that drive you nuts. Why, did you realize the Daily News has a piece today calling Dan Naulty a member of the 1998 world champion Yankees without noting he wasn’t on any of the postseason rosters?”

“Motherfucker. I am all over that.”

-30-

 

You know I love you, man, but when the banks reopen after the holidays, you need to empty your accounts and proceed to buy yourself a life.

 

Duh!

 

Once again, we bow to greatness.

 

An early gift! Thanks

 

So are you saying I have a message board addiction?

 

Well done, my man! I'll be playing the big rooms one day!

Oh yeah, and I have one of those Building the Perfect Beast tour shirts.

 

Stuff like this makes all my "Hey asshole, get your poll ballot" emails to you worth while...

 

BYH darling....if you were thirty years younger...I'd be proud to be your mother.

The only thing missing is his cigar...otherwise, another masterpiece by the greatest Christmas dramatist of our times.

Brilliant, as always.

This thread will probably be locked before noon.

 

Mmmm.....chips!