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| I once thought that this website would make me the millions of dollars I need to conquer the world, but I now have a more realistic idea of where my riches will come from. I am going to start betting on sporting events based on the bodily functions of my dog. The seeds of this brilliant plan were planted last Wednesday night. I was watching the World Series and furiously rooting against the Yankees like I do during every fall classic. (It boggles my imagination that baseball hasn’t considered a contraction plan involving the entire dismantling of the American League with the exception of the Yankees and Red Sox. It’s a classic rivalry with some accepted limitations – the Yankees always win and the Red Sox always lose. Since the Yankees are always going to get to the World Series anyway, why don’t we just cut right through the treacle, give people the match-up they want to see, and get right to the October classic. No sense in having thirteen disappointed teams every year when we only need one, and they disappoint every year already.) The Diamondbacks, who were winning the series two games to one, were up 3-1 with two out in the bottom on the ninth. The Yankees had a man on. If this were any other team in the universe, including any fictional “feel good” team like the Bad News Bears, there’s a routine grounder and the game is over. No team ever ties it up on the final out. I was ready to celebrate. Then a sequence of events took place that would prove to be more than mere coincidence. First, my dog threw up what appeared to be used motor oil. Seconds later, Derek Jeter, who up until that point had a series batting average so low a calculator would have to round it up to .00000001 just to fit on the display, tagged a pitch that just barely got over the right field fence. This isn’t difficult, since the right field fence in Yankee Stadium is only 60 feet from home plate. A paper airplane thrown from the batter’s box would land in the upper deck. Bottom line, the Yankees celebrated another dumb luck victory while I cleaned up my dog’s mess with the $60 wetvac we bought for such occasions. (It actually didn’t work, but a simple wet paper towel did.) Fast-forward to Thursday night. Diamondbacks up 2-0. Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenley, after three hits of heroin and a shot of jagermeister, decides he’s going to put in the same pitcher who gave up two home runs to lose the game the night before. Big shock, the pitcher gives up a two-run home run, and the Yankees eventually win the game, but not before my dog threw up what appeared to be roofing tar mixed with spackle. I’m sure at one point it had been actual food, but a dog’s digestive system does some pretty funky things. I was starting to get concerned, because usually when my dog is sick he lets me know by just peeing on me. I didn’t make the connection to the previous evening, because at that point, knowing the Yankees were one win away from another title, I felt like vomiting myself. Saturday night proved to be the clincher. The Diamondbacks had an insurmountable 15-2 lead. No one, not even the Yankees, can come back from that. But my beloved Capitals were playing the St. Louis Blues. The game was tied 1-1. I thought the Caps had a chance. Then I noticed my dog was going into convulsions. He didn't appear to be in any pain, but he was shaking, drooling, and couldn’t seem to stand up or walk straight. He looked very much like me when I'm shooting Nyquil with a Jack Daniels chaser. Fortunately we’re not so far from a 24-hour animal hospital, so off we went. SIDE NOTE TO TELL THE STORY OF THE COUPLE THAT HAD APPARENTLY NEVER BEEN TO A VET BEFORE: A young couple in front of us had brought in a cat. The vet came out, told them the problems with the cat, and what needed to be done to fix the cat. The couple said fine, do whatever you need to do. They went to the receptionist for an estimate. “Do whatever you need to do” rapidly turned into “there’s no friggin’ way I’m paying $1,300 for whatever you need to do. Do you know how many new cats I can buy for $1,300? I don’t spend that much on repairs for my car. I didn’t spend that much on my own mother’s funeral.” The sad thing is there probably are people who pay $1,300 for surgery on their cat, rather than throwing it out the window and getting a new one like a normal person. My mom, on the other hand, has the uncanny ability to get cats that run away at age eight or so, just when they’re getting boring. She gets a new cat, eight years go by, cat runs away. Works out for everyone. BACK TO OUR STORY: By the time we got to the vet, Grendel appeared to be 100% again. They did some tests, and told us everything looked good, but that he was probably epileptic. As if there wasn’t enough wrong with my one-eyed, bruised hip, badly-set-broken-legged, poor hearing dog, he apparently has epilepsy. The vet said any number of things could have set off an attack, flashing lights (though there aren’t too many of those when the Caps play), bad smells (plenty of those, though), or loud noises (I’d been drinking Guinness – you don’t have to read the tea leaves to see that connection; this would also account for the smell factor). The vet told us we should rest him for a few days, which is like telling us to rest a starving hummingbird. Grendel doesn’t do rest. He has three speeds: coma-like sleep, get the hell out of my way, and hold on I need to pee. But we promised to do what we could. We paid our $250 bill (anything less than $1,300 was just fine by us) and headed home. When I got back, I saw that the Caps had lost 4-1. It suddenly became clear to me. My dog knew that the teams I was rooting for were going to lose. He certainly could have picked a better way to show me – biting my wife, for example – but he knew. That’s how I knew the Diamondbacks were going to win the series, despite being down a run going into the bottom of the ninth. If they were going to lose, my dog would have exploded like a suitcase bomb. I’m still trying to figure out how to use Seizure the Psychic Wonder Dog to my financial advantage. I’m practicing placing bets while cleaning up dog vomit. With the Caps playing the way they are, I’m going to need a lot of paper towels. |
| GRENDEL THE GREEK |
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