I got hurt today. Not really badly hurt and not even my left leg. I just overdid it. It’s a particular problem. I’ll be okay. I’m not dead yet.

However I have been fucking off the last portion of my work day to sit here and watch the Yokohama Bay Stars in action at a very comfortable hour from Japan. At the moment I am writing, it is 0-0 in the top of the fifth and they are facing the Yomiuri Giants. I guess you could say I was at a Giants game.

I started following the Bay Stars because I have been following the story of Trevor Bauer. I am of the current belief that there is such a thing as justifiable misogyny. It also seems that quite a few of my heroes have several things in common. They are all outstanding technicians in their craft and are willing to do anything to achieve a sense of perfection. If you use this as a marker and ask if these people have problems in their relationships with modern women, we can see even a justifiable path. No one needs violence but sometimes it seems you live with someone who will just needle you to death and no language or normal understanding will stop them from what they are doing.

Whenever anyone from the West talks about bauer, no matter what his baseball is like, they never stopped mentioning that he is a bad person because he is a sexual abuser. I don’t really like listening to that shit and this will be the only time that I ever do it. But fair is fair, that’s how I got here.

I wouldn’t say I was obsessing but I was genuinely interested in how Bauer was getting along and all I had to go on were his videos which to be honest, leave something to be desired. His pitching lessons are God level. His life as a western blogger visiting Japan is a waste of time. What I was craving was at least some genuine stats or reports from the games because normal coverage from the West is of course that they ignore them. There is no difference in the industrial world anymore. Everyone is now completely ignoring everything. But you know, I left the industrial world and generally rejected it a long time ago so I usually go the extra mile and take the extra steps. You see the correlation here?

So I found a couple of sites that would provide decent stats and got to know the players a little and I found a couple of video sites that would give me daily recaps of the games. What I didn’t know because I really don’t speak Japanese and didn’t think to analyze every page in Japanese to English, which doesn’t really help anyway, one of them turned out to be live coverage. And here I am in the bleachers having the time of my life.

So one more layer of the onion. I would say that this all seems like a minor league. I’ve seen pictures of the big weekend games when everybody is free from work and I have seen 40,000 people screaming from first pitch to last. This is only a few thousand people and they are playing at a really small park with a pretty sparse crowd. But what’s going on is that I have the baseball coverage I have been asking for. There are maybe five or six angles going on but they are all very wide shots which means you get big pictures of the field instead of all of those intrusive close-ups. There have been no commercials and because I don’t speak Japanese, the announcers are hardly bothering me at all. I’m also getting delicious ambient baseball sounds and a very broad view of the action. From genuine distances, it absolutely seems like I’m in a ballpark watching a game.

Kai Yokigara is pitching for the Giants. He gives up a single through the six hole. Hayashi batting for the Bay Stars. Fastball, foul. By the way, just for baseball commentary, the answer to the question of why the Bay Stars are such a pitching Juggernaut is that this field has more foul territory than the Oakland Mausoleum. A pick-off move with a man on first. Another pic off. A blast off the right field wall, the throw goes into second and he’s safe and then to the plate and he’s safe too. The Bay Stars are up one nothing in the first. No, I can’t get even out of this paragraph. Kouki  Kajiwara just parked the ball with a beautiful Japanese left-handed swing and let’s make that three to nothing. Okay, that’s enough.

I’m just loving this. I love it when crazy things show up that are just exactly what I’ve been dying for for so long. I’m not making up this emotion. I’m not saying anything about making do or what’s appropriate or not. I’m not even fighting. I’m just saying that no one’s driving their cars or cutting their grass right now. My phone is not telling me a bunch of shit that I didn’t need to know. It’s one of these moments when life in the country is about fresh air. And yeah, I did all the watering and I did the cleaning too. Tomorrow, Shabbos or no Shabbos, it’s July and I might have to water. God can forgive me. My people have made things hard enough already.

Anyway, I’ve been having these really crazy thoughts lately. I have a habit of making a scenario out of everything because this is what I do. I do all kinds of scenarios and love figuring out how things turn out. Sometimes I just like to make myself laugh. Anyway, let’s just call this a snippet or a tick tock.

The motorcade remains blocking the main road and the forest is full of soldiers. At my request that for some reason was honored, they did not put helicopters in the air for this detail. I hear them crunching up the shitty road in their city shoes, a giant shiny suited mass of the bureaucracy of Belarus coming say hello to me.

Right at the head of the group is the rockstar, The president of the Republic of Belarus, mustache and everything. The actual theme was to make good on his word. They had declared me the last entrepreneur in Belarus and he was coming to shake my hand. No threats, no nonsense, just meet each other.

He says my name with Mr in front of my surname. I called him by his name and his ochistvo.

Can we come in?

If it’s all the same, you are in absolutely no danger here. Maybe you just yourself.

He agrees. I’ve already unlocked the gate so he lets himself in and then closes the gate behind him. He walks over to where I am sitting with one leg folded over the other on the bench I built earlier this year. I am dressed exactly as I am now in a pair of black swim trunks a bicycle hat and a smile.

I can see that his hand is a little nervous wondering what to do so I stick out my right fist for a bump and when he returns it, about a thousand photographs are taken. The sound of the cameras whirring from the press corps is electric and I just can’t stop laughing.

Don’t worry about it. Only green. It’s the only thing I’m ever going to feed him. I don’t give a damn how shitty the rest of his world is, when he talks to me, we talk green.

Shabbat shalom. Peace out. Be good people.

Small addon: Finished everything. and, I forgot to mention, Mr Saltbush, an entire budding plant, went into the hummus as well as a fresh from the bush chillie pepper. Also, all of the editing for this post was done with the twig. And finally, it was a problem with my right leg today which makes the real MVP lefty, who showed up when needed to pick up the slack. The lads and I went down together five times today. But we got back up five times as well and went on to finish the job that needed finishing. Well done, lads.