BUDDY CAN YOU SPARE A BEER?

What a weekend! And the Phillies swept, too!

First, the Phils. The Dodger series ended with the Phils losing the second 1-0 game in Citizen's Bank Park history. Odalis Perez and three relievers combined on a four hitter, and Jimmy Rollins was apparently too concerned with thinking of something on which to spend his $40 million to be bothered to hit a groundball with a runner on third and one out. He saved the grounder for later when there were runners on first and second and one out for an inning ending DP.

The free-falling Padres came to town on Friday, and fortunately, the Phillies did nothing to impede their downward progress. In what looks to have been a terrific game, Chase Utley ended it in the 11th with a two-out, two-run homer for the 8-6 final. Saturday's game saw Robinson Tejeda turn in another sparkling outing as the Phils won 2-0. Utley struck again with a solo homer off Padres starter Pedro Astacio and scored the other run on a Ryan Howard sac fly. On Sunday, Brett Myers worked six strong innings and Howard hit a pair of doubles to lead the Phils to an easy 5-1 victory. The Nats continued their much anticipated collapse and the Braves split four games since last Thursday, which puts the Phillies three games back of both teams for the division lead and wild card. The bad news is, the Road Trip From Hell starts tonight in Houston against Andy Pettitte and the suddenly unhittable Astros, followed by the bullpen horror show that is Coors Field.

(The rest of this post is being written as a record of the Buddy 20-year reunion. If you have no interest in our stupidity, and why would you, please move along.)

The Buddy Reunion was a smashing success, aside from the four to six Buddies who failed to show up or decided to spend more time on such empty pursuits as oh, coaching their kid's Little League team or visiting their parents. I arrived at Buddy Joe's home on Friday as two of the Buddies, Dave and Steve, were hooking up one of two kegs of Guinness products. Dave works for Guinness and supplied all of the alcohol gratis. I'm assuming he is writing off the trip as a business expense (don't tell the IRS). Aside from the two kegs, there were multiple cases of Smirnoff Ice, Red Stripe, Guinness Draught, Smithwick, and numerous other Guinness brands I can't recall. Suffice it to say, no liver was left unscathed.

The Buddy Meet and Greet was followed by Buddy Jeopardy. Dave pulled out two poster boards covered with Post-It notes which contained the answers. The categories included: Herkimer Retards, Herkimer Landmarks, Buddy Nicknames, Herkimer Legends, More Herkimer Retards, and Buddy Crushes. The Final Jeopardy question was "The total number of times the people in this room have been arrested and charged with at least a misdemeanor offense." The correct question, after much obfuscation, denial, and outright lying, was, "What is nine?" Steve, also known as "Satan", led the way with four. Frightening. We all stayed up until 4 AM after about five hours of Buddy reverie so vulgar and disgusting that Comcast would surely shutter this web site if it were fully explicated, at which point our host Joe announced he was going to bed, prompting loud shouts of "Faggot!".

After a few hours of sleep, we all reconvened at 9 AM for the Buddy nine-hole golf outing. I shot a respectable 44, but Dave, who plays regularly with his distributor customers, took the day with a 42. Steve, meanwhile, arrived late on the second hole, driving a cart that some misguided person in the clubhouse had rented him. His approach to scoring, and to playing the game in general, was novel to say the least. At one point, Steve hit a low slice into a tree and was taunted by a pudgy 7 or 8 year old playing behind us, causing him to remark loudly "Hey, I was just made fun of by a fat kid!"

After golf, it was time for the epic Driveway Whiffle Ball doubleheader. The games were played "marks" style. A grounder that could not be fielded before crossing the road was a single; a liner that cleared the driveway and hit the road in the air was a double; any ball that hit a parked car across the street in the air was a triple; and any ball that cleared the road in the air and landed in the grass on the other side was a homer. Buddy Chris, Buddy Bob, and I took on Buddy Dave, the other Buddy Dave, and Buddy Steve. Dave pulled out a mini-breathalyzer that Guinness had given him, providing us with the only significant stats that were recorded in the games. Steve, to no one's surprise, once again led the way in that department, topping out with a BAC of 0.26. He also led all players in exposing himself to us, the neighbors and passing cars, three times to none. Buddy Rob, who arrived after the first game and played in the second game on my team, broke all rules of protocol and brought his wife. By the end of the second game, he had a BAC of 0.19 and she was a 0.14. The two teams eventually split. I was the nominal MVP of game one, but during the between games pool break I went back to my hotel to get my swim trunks and changed from my sneakers into my man sandals. Big mistake. I was about 2-for-20 in the second game and made the last out in extra innings.

We played another half-hearted game of only six innings as it was getting dark, but since no one could really see the whiffle ball, or were seeing multiple whiffle balls, we decided to just sit in the garage and drink. The topic of the conversation turned to a discussion that Chris and his family were having a few weeks ago about me and my academic record. Chris recounted that his mother, our third grade teacher in Catholic school and the sweetest woman who has ever lived, called me "exceptional". At this point, Chris (BAC 0.21) called his mother on his cell phone. She picked up the phone, and Chris hollered, "Hey, Footsie!". Yes, he calls his sweet old mother "Footsie". This is a reference to a C-grade exploitation/horror/porn movie called "Blood Sucking Freaks" that Chris and Dave used to watch repeatedly while in college together. One of the characters in the film, named Ralphus, liked to use women as footstools. Since Chris' father was named Ralph, naturally his mother is now referred to as "Footsie". After several minutes of protestation that he wasn't drunk, Chris harangued his mother to repeat what she had said about me on the speakerphone so that I could hear it. Later he called her again to ask her who was smarter, me or Maureen "McBrain". Maureen had enrolled in our Catholic school during the second half of 8th grade and completely blew my relatively feeble academic achievements out of the water. She's now a Harvard fellow and writes occasional book reviews for the New York Times. Chris' mother refused to answer, having never taught her, but you only had to notice which one of the two was not sitting in a garage in Herkimer at that moment to know the correct response.

After that, we went in and ordered pizza and wings and put on the late Yankee game in Anaheim. Steve and Dave passed out and the floor, and Chris dumped half a glass of Guinness on the carpet right after Vladimir Guerrero blasted a three-run dinger off Kevin Brown. I went back to my hotel at midnight, and four of us met on Sunday morning for breakfast at Chet's Lunch, legendary home of "Two On A Roll", whatever that is. We said our goodbyes and headed our respective ways. I hope it isn't 20 years before we meet again, and I think we all really hope that Dave keeps his job.