The Wolf

I’ve found that when I see someone a lot, they start looking like an animal. Sometimes it can be a certain physical feature that bares resemblance, other times it's just something they do that sets off a trigger. Eventually I spend so much time focusing on it that it engulfs the image I have of them; like Kevin Garnett for instance.

The other night, while watching him follow up a sweet baby hook over Josh Smith with his usual F-Bomb trot, I realized he reminded me of a wolf. The most obvious association would be his career in Minnesota, and the endless highlights we’ve seen of him screaming with that teal and black Timberwolf on his chest. But the analogy works on more than one level.

Physically, he’s got the look. He has a long, ripped, scraggly dark body, a goatee that looks like it’s made of steel wool, and piercing eyes that could turn anyone’s Fruit-of-the Looms into a fudge factory with a passing glance. I actually saw one game where he prowled down the court on defense, crawling backwards with his hands on the floor just staring and growling at the point guard (Needless to say this image was only bad ass and horrifying because it was KG. Substitute Scal in the same instance and I’m still on the ground laughing a year later). My buddy Kev and I just looked at each other with our jaws dropped, wondering how this guy could get any more intense. He looked like a wolf backing into the woods after an attack, emaciated yet strong, hungry, not blinking his yellow eyes and waiting for you to follow him so he can tear your skin off and take you back to his den (I just got a chill down my spine).

He’s always howling up at the rafters like a wolf might do to the moon, and I love how for some reason, the networks haven't caught on that every other phrase out of his mouth starts with F and rhymes with duck, so every time they show his face after a big play he’s always prefacing these F-ducks with the words “mother” and/or ending them with another obscenity.

What’s even better is that half the time he’s screaming it into one of his teammate’s ears and pushing them around like a wolf plays with his baby pups. Can you imagine the shock of everyone on the team during their first practice, when rather than getting a hard slap on the ass after throwing it down they got an earful of love with words they still can’t say in front of their mother? That must have taken some getting used to.

His looks and demeanor aren’t even the only resemblance. You can’t find a better analogy than comparing his role to Harvey Keitel’s in Pulp Fiction. Can’t you just hear him introducing himself to Danny Ainge before being signed: “I’m Winston Wolf. I solve problems.” And what about these other instances:

Garnett walks into Ainge’s office and sees him standing there with Doc Rivers, both of them covered with the brains and blood of their dying franchise:

KG: “You must be Jules, which would make you Vincent. Let's get down to brass tacks, gentlemen. If I was informed correctly, the clock is ticking, is that right?”
Danny and Doc: “Uh…one hundred percent”
KG: “Now, you've got a corpse in a car, minus a head, in a garage. Take me to it.”

Or what about when he comes over to the sideline and barges his way into the huddle:

KG: “Boys, get to work.”
Big Baby: “A please would be nice.”
KG: “Come again?”
Big Baby: “I said a please would be nice.”
KG: “Get it straight buster - I'm not here to say please, I'm here to tell you what to do and if self-preservation is an instinct you possess you'd better f***ing do it and do it quick.”

Big Baby then runs away crying, after which Garnett addresses the rest of the team:

KG: “If I'm curt with you it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this. So, pretty please... with sugar on top. Clean the f***ing car.”

I can see it - and if it went anything like that I can understand why Big Baby went back to his seat like he was a 3-year-old and KG had just pissed on his Lego's.

In my lifetime I’ve never seen someone play with such animalistic intensity, (I might have made that word up) which is weird because if you just saw his press conferences and never saw him on the court you’d assume he was a shy, antisocial guy who doesn’t like to talk. It’s almost like he gets in this zone on the court and just blacks out of reality, but every time he gets back in the locker room he snaps back into it and realizes how crazy he just acted – almost like waking up the morning after having one more beer than you should have. Then when he gets up to the interview table he wraps his neck with a towel, puts his head down, rubs the top of his head and talks quietly, as if trying to get over the emotional ecstacy he just put himself through for a few hours.

KG leaves his heart on the hard wood by the end of every game, and that passion has no doubt resonated not only within the team, but among all Celtics fans. You’d be hard pressed not to smile and get electrified watching the pregame videos and light shows where he screams at you from a thirty foot screen. Every time I see it I want to get up and do push-ups until it hurts.


Calling him a dog or a beast wouldn’t give him enough credit. The guy’s a wolf. He’s intense, bloodthirsty, and solves problems.

Example A: Banner 17.

Dusty Old Cardoard Memories

When I was growing up, my parents never had cable. We had a ton of movies, but no worth-watching television channels (which is why I can still recite lines from Honey I Shrunk the Kids and couldn’t stage the argument for how much MTV has changed since the early 90’s. Hasn’t it always been a provocative, script-based, sexual reality television network? Damned if I know.) Most of my friends had cable, so I knew what was out there; although that almost made it worse. Just getting that little taste every now and again of things like Nickelodeon and the Disney channel was like one of your friends giving you a taste-tester spoon full of his Ben and Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie ice cream…then just walking back home with the rest of the pint and leaving you with a steaming pile of broccoli.


There’s no doubt it sucked, and at the time I would have given my left thumb for cable and maybe a pair of Nikes (that’s another story for another day). For me, missing the kids shows like Catdog and Rugrats were one thing, but the Sox games were another.


Believe it or not, those massive retractable rabbit-ears didn’t pick up NESN or ESPN. I could have wrapped the antennas in 15 roles of tin foil and shoved them up the damn chimney, and I still wouldn’t have seen a lick of good sports. Therefore, every morning while my friends were munching down on a bowl of Count Chocula and listening to Craig Kilborn on Sportscenter, I was sitting on a chair in my basement choking down Chex and getting the Boston sports skivvy from my mom, who would regurgitate what she understood from the bumbling Bob Lobel Sox coverage she saw on WBZ news. Besides that, I was on my own. I would catch a game or two at friends and family’s houses, but the only time I saw the Red Sox play on my own couch was during the playoffs…when they got there.


My best friend Nate was in the same boat as me, only you could argue his situation was worse. I’m not sure if he got morning mom updates, and I’m positive he didn’t have the privilege of wearing Nikes or even eating Chex (Rice Krispies and skim milk…it made breakfast the worst part of sleepovers). I don’t even think they had a good movie selection, which is why I can remember watching movies like Andre.


What’s funny though, is that when it came to sports, we were never really too phased by our isolation. Sure, we would have loved the chance to watch every game, but because our only regular season home baseball watching was limited to the occasional fuzzy Fox game at his house, it made other things a lot more fun and forced us into filling our baseball fix using other outlets.


I understand that collecting baseball cards isn’t a novel hobby. Nate and I were avid collectors, but we knew we weren’t the only ones. In fact, we took it upon ourselves to seek out other card connoisseurs so that we could rip them off and take their good ones. I wish I was kidding, but it got so bad that one of our younger friend’s dad got him a Grand Slam pack for his birthday (the granddaddy of all baseball card packages) and specifically told us at the party that we weren’t allowed to trade with him. We spent the rest of the ride home from Chuck E Cheese sulking in disappointment while Birthday Boy Kyle sifted through his glossy Ken Griffey Jr. cards that we had been banking on being ours. I can’t speak for Nate, but I still hold a deep internal grudge towards Kyle’s dad to this day, even though he’s probably one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet.


The point is we loved baseball cards. And not just for the trading and value, although that was a big part of it. I can remember buying every new Beckett issue to find out what my Gold Crown Juan Gonzalez card was worth. It was close to $35 bucks back then…right now I might be better off sticking it in my bike spokes. We’d have stacks of cards we deemed nearly worthless, stacks of all Red Sox cards, stacks of cards in thick plastic covers, then some in the thin plastic card condoms. We knew which ones the other wouldn’t dare trade, which ones we wish they would trade, and which ones the other wanted so bad, but you’d never trade. I wanted Nate’s Roger Clemens and Frank Viola card almost as bad as he wanted my Nomar Garciaparra top prospects card (when he played for the Trenton Thunder minor league team).


I still have Nomar. He still has Roger and Frank.


Two more for the spokes? Never.


Baseball cards are such a rich, dusty old pastime that should be past down from generation to generation. They meant so much more to Nate and I because we didn’t have ESPN or the Internet, so they were the way we put faces to the names of our heroes. They gave us stats and quick bios, great photos, and a hands-on way of following our favorite players.


Just recently I came home to get ready for a job interview, and while rummaging through my closet to find dress socks, I found two old shoe boxes filled with my baseball cards. Once I took the cover off and began fanning through some of the old worn out pieces of cardboard, the memories began flooding back. I laughed to myself when I saw all the Tim Nearing cards I had in plastic cases, and I kicked myself for all the Alex Rodriguez cards I let float around and get nicked. I couldn’t help but crack up seeing a cut out MVP candidate card of Cecil Fielder, and a Jack Clark card I remember intentionally bending in half. They’re definitely more than just pictures and value to me. They represent my childhood baseball knowledge, and no ESPN.com video or NESN Red Sox recap could have held a candle to the fun and excitement I had collecting these cardboard memories.

Time to Make a Purchase

A couple guys I work with are big sports fans who are always making things up and telling each other lies to make the other laugh. Things like, “No Garnett tonight…missed his flight back home yesterday” or, “Hear about Manny? Says he wants to come back to the Sox” and of course, “Tito called…said he wants you to start tonight over Wakefield” (As a side note, I can’t imagine Garnett ever missing the team flight, but can’t you just see Scalabrine standing alone in the airport, holding his luggage and looking around with the same dumbfound look he has on the floor? I can).

It took me a good month before these comments finally stopped giving me brief heart attacks, and I stopped saying, “WHAT?! NO WAY!!” every freakin’ time. Eventually it became funny, and it wasn’t long before I started cracking them off on my own. My personal favorite: On a Red Sox off day, while their in the middle of a losing skid, “Well, they can’t lose tonight!”

So yesterday when I passed one of these guys at the vending machine, and he told me the Sox had just signed Pedroia to a six year deal, I laughed in his face. I didn’t believe him. It didn’t seem like something the Sox would do right now and was completely out of the blue, just like it didn’t seem accurate that Francona would want one of my middle-aged co-office-workers to take the mound over Wake (although on some nights it doesn’t seem THAT crazy). It took me until I looked it up for myself to believe him, and once I did: “WHAT?! NO WAY!!”

I’m not quite sure why I got so excited. I guess it was sort of inevitable in retrospect. The guy did just win an MVP, and for $800,000 over the last two years he did give the team over 300 hits, around a .310 batting average, and the best glove up the center the Sox have had since...well, I have no idea – a hell-of-a long time that’s for sure. All I know is (as my buddy Bear would say), “the guy’s a stud”. He’s one of those raw dogs you can imagine eating a bowl of nails every morning after taking a shower in cold water – deliberately – then running 35 miles to the ballpark in a loin clothe and no shoes. Yeah - the guy’s definitely a stud.

I guess it’s almost like a security blanket now – knowing he’ll be around. Watching all these young guys grow up as ballplayers right before your eyes, and leaving their heart on the field while their doing is just so fun to watch, but all along I just keep dreading the day they’ll have to go. Between Youk, Pap, Lester, Ellsbury and Masterson, a few of them will inevitably be leaving soon. And that’s tough, especially when you're waiting to see which jersey to buy.

See, I refuse to spend money on a player’s jersey if they’re this young, no matter how nasty they play and no matter how tempting it can be. Not because I don’t love them, 'cause I do. And not because they’re not good enough, 'cause they are. It’s just that having their jersey makes you bias when it comes to trades. Like last year, if I had bought an Ellsbury jersey after his ridiculous World Series, I wouldn’t have been able to think as hard this year about possibly dangling him out for trade bait, (not that I am…although it’s not out of the question) because of my investment in the jersey. It just makes it more difficult to part with him.

I’m not exactly loaded (and by that, I mean I'm broke), so just going out and buying a new jersey isn’t really an option. Thought needs to be put into that purchase. Will they be remembered wearing a Sox jersey? Were they/are they one of your favorite players (regardless of stats)? Will it be one of those uniforms you wear and get, “Pedroia! Niice!” comments all the time? These all need to be accounted for, and jumping the gun on a rookie could turn into a detrimental mistake.

So maybe that’s what got me so excited about Pedey’s signing. Now I can go out and grab his jersey, knowing he’ll be here for a while and that (as of right now) he fits into all of those categories. I can wear it around the house, get Fenway ketchup and $8 dollar beer stains all over it, and absorb a bunch of great Red Sox memories.

He’s already got a ring here, an MVP, his Rookie of the Year and that throw away Gold Glove award - and who knows what the next six years will bring. What I do know is this guy is for real, and no matter what happens over the course of his contract, you know he’ll be out there earning every cent of it, making all of us out there wearing his #15 proud.