10.

My team sucks and I no longer care.

9.

Ted used all the words.

8.

Football has started and that’s my favorite sport anyway.

7.

Johnny said he wrote enough Bullpen for both of us and I’m taking him up on it.

6.

I’ll never be as funny as Bob, or have less skin cover.

5.

Soccer, soccer practice, more soccer, traveling to soccer practice, traveling to soccer games.  Soccer, soccer, soccer.  I hate soccer.

4.

I’m out of toilet paper, as I have had a lot of issues lately (not as many as I had at Scott’s cabin).

3.

Chuck has the religious angle, so I don’t have that going for me.

2.

I can’t afford to pay someone to write for me, like Scott can.  Not even a B-list actor like Screech.

And the No. 1 reason for a short Bullpen:

1.

No one will ever ask Tolstoy to write War and Peace II.

Ø

Thanks to SloPay for his usual thought-provoking comments in this issue of The Irate Pirate, which reads like a Tolstoy novel in comparison to last issue’s abbreviated version.  It’s nice to know he still cares!

Ø

And why so glum on the fortunes of the Pirates?  Their current 7th place standing is a banner year in comparison to most Bucko seasons.

Ø

If you link over to the Photo Gallery, you will see photos from this year’s Trip to Cincinnati and Louisville.  Screech served as our official photographer for this year’s junket.  It’s a handsome, fun-loving group, to be sure, but my, how some of you are aging.  Hard to believe you old codgers are capable of such madcap antics.

Ø

I could spend some time here dwelling on the woes of the Senators and their current and ongoing collapse, but it’s too painful to recount.  The Reds are clearly going to run away with the 2003 title, and the Senatros will be lucky to hold off the surging Skipjacks. 

Ø

On our Trip, we relived several of our past trips, and bandied about some of the details of the many games that we have attended.  When I got back, my curiosity was piqued about our ’92 trip to Toronto and the Skydome, and so I pulled up the box score for that game from www.retrosheet.org, a website that each of you absolutely must put on your Favorites list of websites.  Anyhow, by going back to the box score from that day, June 11, 1992, I confirmed my memory that the pitching matchup that we saw that beautiful June night was Roger Clemens for the visiting Red Sox against Jack Morris of the Bluejays.  I vividly remember watching these two mound warriors pitch against each other from seats just behind home plate, a titch toward third base, about 20 rows from the field. 

How many of you remember that Jack Morris twirled a shutout against the Red Sox in Toronto that night, with the Jays beating the Sox by a score of 4-0?  Or that home runs were hit by the Jays’ trio of Joe Carter, Pat Borders and Dave Winfield (416th of his career, 10th that season), all off of Roger Clemens, who dropped to 9 and 4 with that loss.  Do any of you remember that we saw Ellis Burks play in that game, or Kelly Gruber (3rd base for the Jays), or Candy Maldonado (left field)?  Does anybody remember who played 2nd base for the Jays that night?  It was then-rookie Jeff Kent, just beginning his ML career, now a superstar for the Astros.  Although Joe Carter and Jeff Kent are probably long shots for the Hall of Fame, with Clemens, Boggs and Winfield on the field, we saw at least three current or future Hall-of-Famers, and maybe as many as six (Jack Morris probably has a shot through the Veterans Committee, and Carter and Kent are both possibilities). 

Ø

I don’t know why I like living in the past so much, and maybe I just do have way too much time on my hands, but I am going to try to include in future issues of our league organ a recap of one of the terrific games that we have seen on our many Trip journeys.  As a teaser, can anyone give me any detail about the first-ever game attended by HSL members on our first trip to Kansas City in 1985?  (Hint:  The Royals played Possum’s beloved Red Sox.)

     That’s it.

                                  Skipper