Rod, Curling and Victory

Last night, after posting a dismal 1-2 season record thus far, Rod took his balls back. Some say we have curling to thank for this. The Winter Olympics, loathed by many, slept through by more and watched by a few of us, featured the tremendous sport of curling (some would say "bocce on ice").

First off, those people are assholes. We don't sweep shit. Secondly, they make a fair point. It's "bocce on ice" if you remove the ice, the flat surfaces, the brooms, the target, the physcial activity and turn the stones into balls. And if you're clearly an idiot that has no concept of anything.

But nevertheless, Rod watched it and it made him think about angles, ball speed, competition and mostly got him hard for bocce again.

Proof is in the pudding, fools.

The Last Two Weeks in Rod News

1. Rod tore it up on Leno.
2. Team Rod beat Watch Your Balls in 2 games to run their season record to 4-0.

3. Team Rod discovered the best blog on the interweb.

4. Rod's new LP drops tomorrow.
5. Make sure to catch Rod on Kimmel later in the week.

It's a glorious time to be Team Rod right now.

A Doubleheader Disaster

Holy moly, we are terrible. Absolutely terrible. Truly truly terrible. I can't even figure out what to write here. I don't even remember the exact scores of this awful night.

Let me try.

Match 1 against Watch Your Balls was terrible. We lost both frames and we weren't even close.

Match 2 against Gowanus Iguanas was terrible. We won the first game after falling behind 4-0. Then we lost the second game 7-6. In game 3, it was short and not to sweet. But at least Sweet Touch made sure we went out in a stinking flame of glory. I wish that I had footage of it.

The situation was this:
We were down 3-0 already. They had one point. Erik decided to do something great or fail in spectacular fashion. Either outcome would be memorable. I think you know where this is going. He turned their one point into a four spot, game over. 7-0 Iguanas.

So we fell to an abysmal 2-6. We have one more shot to get to the vaunted three win level next Monday.

Our game is against the JTBP crew who as of this coming Monday were 0-7. This past week's results have still not been posted on the Floyd website so I'm not sure what their current record is. If they are 0-8, it would be wonderful to give them their only win. The only other time we played them last season, they beat us.

I hate bocce.

Just for kicks, I copied this post into a poem generator to see what I got since my words aren't enough to fully encapsulate the sorrow that it is to be Rod this week. I kind of like it.

FACELESS, DEAD FLOWERS LOUDLY PUSH A COLD, FAST WORKER.
DAMN, DEATH!
OH, FAITH!

Season Record: 2-6

Rod: Avenger of All Losses

After beating ODB last week for the first time, we faced off against another team that we were 0-2 against, Watch Your Balls.

In fact, not only were we 0-2 against them but we hadn't even won a game against them. But those two losses came at odd times in Rod's checkered past. One was immediately following the haze of a heartbreaking Sweet Meats defeat last spring as part of a doubleheader. And the other was last fall. That loss dropped us to 0-3 and much drama immediately followed.

But Rod is in a different place mentally these days and likens last fall to the dissolution of his marriage to Rachel Hunter. And now look how happy Rod is!

But when we went down by 4 after the first frame, things looked a bit dicey. But Rod ain't afraid of no balls. Mitch and I began the comeback by notching our first point. Dani and Beth added a point and then Mitch and I added two more. All of a sudden it was tied at 4.

Down 5-4, Mitch and I added two more. Dani put the hammer down in the next frame and we took a satisfying 7-5 victory.

Game 2
Mitch and SHR put up three quick points before Watch Your Balls answered with three of their own. Then Rod was down 4-3 before we even knew what hit us. No matter.

Jim and Erik tied it at 4. And then Mitch went to town. His first roll of the frame was so brilliant that it forced Watch Your Balls to expend all of their pent up energy into four missed opportunities. SHR and Mitch finished them off and that was all she wrote.

Game 1
Dani and Beth
Mitch and me
7-5 Rod

Game 2
Jim and Erik
Mitch and SHR
7-4 Rod

On the night, Mitch's side won by a score of 11-1. Nice! Yet somehow I scored the Hot Rod belt. I'll take the charity knowing that the real winner on this night was Rod.

Season Record: 2-0

The Movie

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

If You Want My Bocce squared off against Watch Your Balls this past Monday. I wish that we hadn't.

We fell to an ignoble 0-3 on the season. What the fuck? We are just terrible, terrible, terrible. All 6 of us were terrible on Monday night.

Five of the six members of the squad kept swinging for the fences all night to do something great. Instead, there were a lot of whiffs. Yes, there were a couple of nice doubles which were immediately followed by more strikeouts and more weak groundballs. Beth was the only member of the team to not hit the back wall at least once.

Watch Your Balls played well so no disrespect there at all. But we were abysmal. It was embarrassing how bad we were. We never forced them to make bad shots because we kept rolling hideous ones.

Game 1
Erik and Mitch
Beth and Dave
7-3 Watch Your Balls

2 of our points were scored because they gave them to us with an errant roll.

Game 2
Dani and Mitch
Dave and me
7-2 Watch Your Balls

At this point, we have to look deep within our hearts and see what we are truly made of. That is the beauty of sport.

"These are desperate times. We have to play like a desperate team. Maybe we can get lucky and get some help."

"This team has shown itself to be resilient. We needed wins the past two games and didn't get them. We need a win tomorrow."

The first quote is from Todd Helton. The second quote is from Clint Hurdle. Both were made after the Rockies lost their third in a row in mid September and were on the verge of having their season getting away from them. Since these quotes were uttered, the team has won 21 out of 22 and are headed to the World Series.

"We all feel terrible for ourselves as a team right now that we can't really close the deal. But we still have time. We're not giving in."

"It (the losses) will only make the champagne taste sweeter."

"We need to go out there and finish strong and dig down deep and really do some soul-searching because we're going to have to finish with a flurry."

The first two statements were uttered by Willie Randolph. The last one by David Wright. All there were made during the Mets disastrous last week of the season.

So what will it be? Will we be the Rockies or Mets? Can we right the ship? Or we will go down in an embarrassing blaze of defeats?

Statistically speaking, we are the worst team in the league right now. Our next match is against the best team in the league, our vaunted rivals, The Coffee Flats Terrors who will be out for my blood and the blood of the traitors in our midst.

But as Mitch pointed out, the Devil Rays seem to always beat the Yankees.

There is still plenty of season left to make Rod proud. Because right now, he's in hiding.

The Year of Rod Took a Slight Detour and Will Officially Commence in June

In the brief lull of another season ended too early, I present to you some scenes of what proved to be an insurmountable blow to our collective egos - the doubleheader defeat of Team Rod in our last regular season matches before the playoffs.

We may have lost but this scoreboard still makes me laugh.
Someone wants to get their twenty dollars worth. Either that or they were very angry.
Even though we ended up succumbing to the onslaught of Watch Your Balls in the second game of the sweep, I really like this exciting clip as they tried to put us away. They didn't on this shot but it only delayed the inevitable.

Summer season is right around the corner. Get in the mood with a singalong.

If You Want My Bocce Stalls in the Final 8 for the Second Straight Season

The day was bad. Real bad. We got spanked by the Po-Town Po-llinos. Nothing against them considering they were the number two seed but we really showed nothing. We beat them handily back in the glory days of our undefeated early part of the season.

After beating them, we ran our record to 3-0. After that, we lost 4 of our final 6 matches to finish with a mediocre 5-4 record, easily our worst mark since our first season of Spring '06.

In game 1, we got swamped 7-1. In Game 2, after falling behind 5-1, we came back to tie it at 5 before succumbing to an ignoble 7-5 defeat. I have nothing against our fine opponents but I definitely got the sense from some of them that they completely thought that we had no chance against them. Unfortunately, we didn't show them otherwise. So it goes ...

But at least a former Rodster showed up with his baby son Henry. In fact, it was a double Henry day as Dave also brought baby Rod veteran, Henry, who witnessed his fourth or so If You Want My Bocce match.
Ugly scoreboard to the right, cute baby to the left.

Mitch and I took off immediately after the ugliness to go see a movie. We came back in time to watch the number one seed and vaunted rivals Coffee Flats Terrors blow a 5-0 3rd game lead to Watch Your Balls. The Terrors might have been the last best chance to take out Boccelism.

The scene during the Watch Your Balls vs. Boccelism match. Unfortunately the "Stop Boccelism" shirts didn't do much. Thanks again to Cobra Kai for the shirt.

Boccelism destroyed Po-Town in the finals. Oh well, at least it wasn't Boccelism vs. ODB yet once again. Watch the movie of the last shot of the season - a movie that I like to call Fuck Boccelism.

Ezra Terror (not to be confused with Ezra Lism) excitedly points out that the Coffee Flats Terrors trophy is still bigger than any of the FOUR Boccelism trophies. Oh Ezra.
And what can only be described as the perfect description of the disorganized and half assed way that the whole league is run (is it too much to ask for the 20 bucks we were forced to spend to actually have chalk provided so we don't have to go out and buy some? Or how about new balls that aren't chipped?), Cobra Kai won the award for Best Blog of the Spring '07 season. Nevermind that their last post is from November 2006. Did Floyd even bother to check the blog? I suppose it makes perfect sense since Floyd doesn't exactly update its website all that much. I swear it will read "Coming Soon" in the photos section on their site forever. Kaci had the best heckle of the proceedings when she cried out, "Ross doesn't even remember the password to his blog!"

To be honest I think it is pretty funny that Cobra Kai won this award. It really cracks me up. Still, I wouldn't have minded having the award proudly displayed next to my Coffee Flats Terrors championship trophy. For the record, this blog has documented every SINGLE match we have played over the course of four seasons.

Ross shows off the goods.
Summer season is just around the corner. Stay tuned to this space over the next week, I have two more posts in me as I try to catch up on old business.

It Takes Two

Well Rodders, I'm glad I haven't had the chance to post write up for our regular season-ending doubleheader until now. Instead of a long-winded discourse of shoulda, coulda, wouldas, I'm saying, ON TO THE PLAYOFFS!

However, for those keeping score at home here's the ten second recap. We took game one against the Sweet Meats before they came back and tenderized us in games two and three as they did in last season's playoffs. In match two, we went down in two games to Watch Your Balls. In both matches, we put ourselves behind the pallino big time, falling behind 0-6 before mounting furious comebacks that just felt short.

Love,
YL the YT