No pizzaz and Yaz...

All right, a thousand kudos to those of you who have labored in corporate America for long than ten minutes! I just did it for a week and feel like I have mono, a hangover, dengue fever and double vision! I am out of gas. In an effort to keep up with my other temporary data stewards I just kept working, almost all day long. On the computer at nine, with a dazzling slowness in operating it, and off at five feeling like I just played defensive tackle for a 0-10 college football team. I did have a few cups of tea and an apple or two. I went home at night and tried to eat 4,00 calories of anything to recover. Let's see if I make it through next week. Once again, for all you people with real jobs (something I'm really not familiar with after fifty some years of working, hats off! But get this, I can now use a mouse with my index and middle finger! There's something to tell the grand kid about!



While writing that piece on Keith Richards I thought of some of the worst people I had to deal with in the somewhat non-corporate world I've inhabited. Working in a medium-fine dining clam shack on the coast of Maine I came across one of my worst for a multitude of reasons. It wasn't that he was more than a considerable pain-in-the-ass, I couldn't stand the people he was involved with...the Boston Red Sox. Yet, being in Maine he was revered like royalty because he was, bow down now, Yaz. Carl Yastrzemski, who was then the recently retired left fielder of the Beantown ball club. The odd thing was that he wasn't as recognizable as he thought he should be. Being the manger at the time he gave me a small list of requests; he wanted to be seated immediately (there was an hour wait), in a Sopranos like corner table, no one was to come up to his table and, get this, he would give me one autograph. Like I wanted one! (I satisfied that offer by getting him to sign something for one of my son's friends, who turned it into a shrine of some sort in really rural Maine). So Yaz ensconces himself at his table with his wife or girlfriend and starts filling up the ashtray. The man could smoke like Gary, Indiana. The poor waitress spent most of her time dumping his butts. He grumbled and growled his orders,"See an empty glass, bring another drink," I paraphrase. I kept an eye on the table, making sure he wasn't rushed like Elvis at a concert, like I think he was hoping. The food was of a secondary nature...smoking and drinking was his dining experience. When he left, leaving a shitty tip I might add, you could tell he wasn't comfortable with his lack of recognition. I made a salutary comment about his meal, and wasn't even given the courtesy of a reply. I know Carl didn't come from the greatest of backgrounds, he grew up on a potato farm on the eastern end of Long Island before it became McMansion Central for the rich and famous summer people and his Dad drove him pretty hard...but you'd think he'd have compassion for the little people. My thought was that he might be just having a bad day, but his countenance was confirmed by other restaurateurs I came across later in life.

You know the Red Sox have had a great line of left fielders; Williams, Yaz, Jim Rice and Manny. Jason Bay isn't ready for election into that pantheon. I've met them all but Manny. The pariah of the bunch, in Boston, is Jim Rice. I spent a day with him during Spring Training, and guess what, he was one of the most cordial celebrities I've ever met...and all he wanted to do was talk baseball. I could write all day on why he should be in the Hall of Fame.

Maybe next time I'll tell you about another job in Maine...like the time I fell into the North Atlantic loading lobsters into a truck, in January. I took the week off in the prognostication department after last week's four winners and one cover...but I probably would've suggested Alabama this week, but that's called betting the "red board".

Later, biff