Free-staining

I'm going into this one without a topic. That's all the warning you're going to get. I thought up one too many ideas to post about and OD'd on my own stain. I thought about dropping a fierce baseball metaphor about the Iraq deadline debate. Ran through it in my head during my walk to work. Then I started collecting imaginary emails for the second edition of the Stain Club imaginary mailbag (this is coming next week unless I stain everyone out and forget about it because baseball will be here). I feel pretty strong about both of those topics and maybe I'll write them up. But, it's almost March 28th, which means its almost April 2nd, which means it's almost BASEBALL SEASON. All I can think about is the underdog Reds surprising people in the NL Central and my inevitable fantasy dominance over some of my fellow Stain Clubbers.

Trash-talk and general baseball enthusiasm aside, the most significant effect so far has been my recent penchant for describing everyday events in terms of a pitching stat line. Weird right? Think about it before you start judging me. What if you're walking down the street one day and you run into a friend. You stop and say "How's it goin?" Normally he'd reply "it's good" or some variant of that. But, what if, instead, he says, "ehh 5 1/3 innings pitched 5 earned runs 3 walks and 4 K's" You immediately know his day really hasn't gone that well. Alternately if your buddy drops "7 strong 2 earned runs 1 walk 6 K's and I got the W" you know he's had one hell of a day. Does it even matter how he had such a good day? I say no. I'm already excited that he racked up 6 K's and I don't know how he got them. Was he throwing inside heat? Did he get a promotion at work? Was he painting the outside corner (D. Page and I call this the Maddux Zone and we suggest you do too)? Did he meet a girl? Doesn't matter.

Some foolish critics might argue that this takes a lot longer to say. But if we standardize the system and just drop a series of numbers I think this will seriously cut down on time without any loss in meaning. This works on so many levels.

It's also amazingly versatile. If you're telling a story about a friend and you start off with "He was really on his game... Threw 8 strong innings and racked up a ton of K's" People know it's going to be a good story. This will also be hugely helpful in terms of statistically analyzing how successful your evening is. How many times have you been sitting around with friends drinkin some beers and trying to one-up each other with stories of stainyness and glory. If you're talkin baseball you can effectively challenge a story. Your friend says he totally had big life with a girl and you know that's not true... you can fire off "no way you had 7 K's she got with some other stainy dude in the 5th and you had to QFS for some middle relief." I refuse to believe I'm the only one who thinks that's a better way to describe life.

To finish on a strong note, I would say my day was 6 2/3 pitched, 7 hits, 4 ER, 2 BB, 5 K's. But I'm hoping this post and some solid relief will get me the W.