From T.J. Simers in Wednesday’s LA Times.
I was excited. I couldn’t wait to get here and show Jeff Kent my new perspective necklace; you know, the one like Phil Weirdo wears, in the hopes that maybe Kent and I might finally find ourselves on the same wavelength.
I was clutching my beads and telling him all about the Chinese coin and Phil Weirdo when he interrupted and asked whether I had resorted to childish name-calling in the newspaper.”That’s what a friend told me,” Kent said.
Now I would’ve never guessed that Kent (above) has a friend, but I have a new perspective on life, so instead of asking him to prove it, I explained that I began calling him “Mr. Chuckles” weeks ago.
Funny, but Mr. Chuckles didn’t even crack a smile.
“I have a very serious job playing baseball and trying to win,” he said seriously, and I chuckled.
“You play baseball for a living,” I said. “Tell me you’re a brain surgeon and ¦ ”
“It’s serious work playing baseball, the dedication, the sacrifice and suffering,” he said. “It’s serious business making a lot of money, playing hurt and doing your best for the family of four that comes to the ballpark and spends $150 expecting you to play well. That’s supposed to be fun?”
No ” we’d probably all agree it’s no fun spending $150 to go to a ballpark.
I waved my necklace at him and thought about chanting.
“I don’t want any of your sensitivity,” Kent said. “Your sensitivity is not worth the socks I am wearing.”
I would imagine the Boston Parking Lot Attendant, money-minded as he is, asks the guys to wear the socks over and over, so I could see where Kent might’ve had a point.
“I laugh at your patheticness,” Kent continued, while wondering out loud whether that is a word. “A better way to say it would be, I laugh at the world you live in.”
A better way for Kent to say it, of course, would’ve been: I chuckle at the world you live in.