Additions to the Baseball Lexicon

Boston's victory in last Night's ALCS Game 2 exceeded the limits of English's descriptive capacities. Detroit's late-inning defensive implosion following Nate Scherzer's strong start requires the following words be added to the English lexicon:

Anaptonym - (n.) A name which seems horribly unfit to its owner. Antonym to "aptonym."
      example: Prince Fielder's name is an anaptonym; he's neither a prince nor a fielder.

Scherzerfreude - (n.) the sense of happiness engendered by the misfortune (see: "schadenfreude") of Detroit piddling away one of Nate Scherzer's starts with a late-inning collapse.

      example: When David Ortiz hit his grand slam in the 8th inning of ALCS Game 2, a euphoric wave of warmth beshook me, wracking me with a Scherzerfruede which nearly caused me to wet my pants in delight.

To read more about Anaptonyms and Scherzerfreude, surf on over to:

http://www.bugsandcranks.com/keithgood/baseball/neither-prince-nor-fielder-be/

Boston Hipster Reclaims Ironic Sox Gear

This man shrugged with Glee

Boston MA
14 October 2011

Arnold MacMurray, 29, has been living in a personal hell for seven long years. In 2004, with the Boston Red Sox down 3-1 in the American Leauge Championship Series, Arnie bought a Bill Buckner jersey to wear ironically whilst out and about his native Boston.

"I figured it was a safe bet," MacMurray mumbles between drags on his corncob pipe, "That Buckner Jersey was my way of saying, like,  how sports are such a bankrupt enterprise, man."

Arnie's act of fashion disobedience became instantly null when the perpetual also-ran Red Sox won not only the AL, but the World Series.

"People on the street started high-fiving me," Arnie shudders. "High fives, man! It was awful."

And so it went. Each baseball season seemed to bring more wins, more playoffs, more World Series. Arnie relegated the ironic jersey to the back of his free-standing clothes rack and faced the harsh reality that he may never again be able to mock Boston sports-lovers with his attire.

"It was a dark time for me," Arnie says.

This September, though, a wonderful thing happened: the Red Sox started sucking again. The black magic which peppered their 86 fruitless years returned with a vengance: the pitching fell apart, the offense made anemics look like gluttons and the Sox squandered a 9-game lead. Tied on the last day of the season for the final playoff spot, Arnie went to his free-standing clothes rack for the appropriate gear.

Putting on his ironic Buckner jersey was, quote, "like Eskimo kissing your roller derby sweetheart."

The Red Sox were eliminated from the playoffs in the early hours of September 28th. Arnie wasted no time in gallivanting through Black Bay and Fenway with his Buckner-clad chest puffed.

"Now people look at my shirt and shake their heads in woe," Arnie says, twirling his moustaches. "It's everything I could ever hope for."