Saturday, August 3, 2019

A Guest Post from City Hall 'Stro

Got this submission in the ol' inbox and it was too good not to post. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you City Hall 'Stro.
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By quick way of introduction, I work in local government, big ‘stros fan. 28 game season ticket holder, once met Yordan Alvarez at the Midtown Chipotle, have one of the Apollo 11 hats. My cousin is married to a Red Sox bullpen pitcher. So yeah, I’m a fan of the Houston baseball team and suffered during the playoffs last year.
Like any good American, I hate the Yankees. The Evil Empire was dominant during my youth, and it seemed they were able to just buy their way to championships. So that’s my perspective coming into this piece.
That being said, I really love @jomboy_ on twitter and his “breakdowns.” Despite being a Yankees fan, dude has some of the best content on baseball, especially in narrating over ejections with some quality lip reading. I highly suggest you follow him and whenever he tweets out a video, do check it out. It is why we all love baseball and grown men getting angry and yelling about a game.
Along with the masses, I was following the trade deadline countdown and frankly a little worried. After not understanding the Stroman trade (are the Mets going all in this year while selling Lugo?), I was worried about the ‘stros being able to pick up a starting pitcher. While I like Urquidy and Sneed has been impressive, I didn’t want to have the Oakland A’s breathing down our neck with pitchers not named Verlander/Cole/Miley pitching 40% of the games. I’ve got enough anxiety for an election year and the Trump Administration.
So I see the trade with Toronto with Game 5 scoring hero Derek Fisher for Aaron Sanchez and start looking him up. The 6+ ERA was not exactly what I would call the Luhnow standard of deadline deal excellence (shows what I know), so was getting pretty bummed.
I’m streaming Jomboy’s live Trade Deadline forum to see his take. Reflecting my own beef with the Mets, he’s going on a quality rant about how the best starting pitching went to *checks notes* Mets and Reds, two teams that look to be allergic to making the playoffs in 2019. Then it happens.
The best 2 minutes of content I’ve ever seen.
In Jomboy’s honor, I would like to present to you, Jomboy livestreams the Greinke trade, a breakdown:
Alright, starts out with the above mentioned take on the trade deadline being both boring and not good for the playoffs. I both agree with these and totally like his take.
Jomboy tosses it to it back to Jake. Jake is no Jomboy. He starts to try and make a point about the second wild card when you see Jomboy’s eyes dart down. You can see him read the tweet. He brings his hand to his mouth, he’s likely looking for the official blue checkmark that verifies a twitter truth from fiction. He sees it, reflexively reads it. “Astros got Greinke?”

And then, he leans forward and speaking for 28 other MLB teams says, “What the fuck!” The reaction is pure Wayne’s World disbelief. He can’t process this. Greinke? To the ‘stros? No, no, let me check. This news to a Yankee’s fan would be cataclysmic. You can literally see the lightning news hit him, completely changing his posture.
Within the space of 4 seconds, Jomboy looks to have transformed from laid back dude halfway griping into someone seeing the End of Days. Jake, on the other hand, reacts by not moving at all and simply says, “oh boy.” This is about wraps up the positive contributions of Jake to these two minutes. Jake now serves as background noise to Jomboy. “Oh boy.” Thanks Jake, good game.
Jomboy stares intently at his screen and types trying verify. Greinke? He says “Yo, did they. . .” and trails off. It hits him full square. The Astros have just landed an ace . . . and the Yankees didn’t.
It’s now verified, it is reality, it has happened. He literally recoils with the news. “Hoooly, shit, that’s so fucking bad.” Yup. Hands over the eyes. It isn’t to look away, it is literally to start rubbing his head which has now exploded knowing the Yankees will have to win 4 games against a legendary staff. It doesn’t take a baseball man like Jomboy long to calculate those odds. “Hooooly shit” is right.
“That’s a fucking nuke.” Yup. The full realization of what his beloved Yanks will be facing is now a real thing. 3 of the best 5 pitchers in baseball now start for Houston. And their 4th, Wade Miley, would unquestionably be the best pitcher on the Yankees staff this season.
And then my favorite thing happens. He pulls his “El Gary” hat so low on his head, he’s hiding from this news any way he can. It is amazing. Arrested Development has this ongoing gag where when someone gets bad news, they bow their head down and walk slowly to Charlie Brown music. Jomboy is now a Bluth.
He then throws his hands up, briefly looking at the greater good of something exciting happening on this MLB trade deadline, but even he can’t get out more than a sentence before the gravity of this trade smacks him in the face. The Astros got Greinke. What the fuck.
“Are you kidding me?”
This is the last thing Jomboy says for a minute. A full minute. This entire video is only 2 minutes long.
Jake goes about being Jake and basically making background noise. I have no idea what he is actually saying because I’m looking at Jomboy while the “Sounds of Silence” plays in my head.
Hello darkness, my old friend. The biggest rival to his team just secured the bag while the evil empire folded. At this point, Jomboy is like an Empire General who just lost the Millinium Falcon on radar and knows he is about to get force choked by Vadar and doesn’t even fight it.
Take me Luhnow, I have not fight left.
The fact that Luhnow uses the Death Star firing on twitter makes this work even better. We are destroying your planet. All of it. Say hello to Alderaan.
As he listens to Jake (or more likely uses a thousand-yard stare into a computer screen 2 feet away), while just suffering. He’s thinking about it, he’s processing it, he’s accepted it.
The Astros traded for Zack Greinke.
How does he sum it up? What are his innermost thoughts? How does he express this pain? Jomboy comes to the podium to deliver a concession speech. He goes all in on one word:
“Fuck.”
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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