Matt Lawton, This Year's Goat

You read it here first. Matt Lawton of the New York Yankees will be this year's Bill Buckner, this year's Steve Bartman, this year's goat. When he is, and the Red Sox sail into their second consecutive World Series, y'all will have to come back here and thank me for my efforts.

Regular readers of this space may recall that way back in July, one of my fabulous relatives was kind enough to take me to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox. Well, I've just promoted that same dude to the prestigious title of The Idiot's Favorite Relative, because last weekend he took me again. (Yes in fact, I am that easy).

This was the third to last game of the season, against the Yankees, and his seats are right behind the Yankee dugout. (Family members still vying for the 2005 favorite relative award take note).

Since I still have nightmares thinking about that prison yard stare that Gary Sheffield gave me in July, I did no heckling, except to tell Yankee pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre that he needed a bigger wang. (Uh, the Yankees started 6'3" pitcher Chien Ming Wang, who lost). The Sox won, of course, and won again on Sunday, and as a result are one of the eight teams for whom the season didn't end. I behaved myself and we all returned home without incident and without having any run-ins with the 867 riot police that Boston brought out for the games. (Actually, the Yankee fan in our midst DID step in a big pile of horse shit as we were leaving the game, left by one of Boston's mounted police, so that's kind of a run-in, but more correctly it's just plain old poetic justice).

Now, on to Matt Lawton.
As I said, these seats are RIGHT BEHIND THE DUGOUT. When we buy beer, which I feel is a good thing to do at ball games, we need a place to put them, and the roof of the dugout, which is right in front of us, seems like a great place. Sadly, Fenway is trying to be "family friendly" and has hired a little googly-eyed man to come over every once in a while to tell us to keep our beers off the dugout. Matt Lawton, Yankee benchwarmer, (who's hitting a robust .128 since joining them), thought he would be helpful and called little guy over a few times when he noticed that our beers had made it back onto the roof. I'm not kidding. This guy is a major leaguer, playing in one of the most exciting season ending series in the history of baseball and he's not paying any attention to the game at all- he's looking over the roof every couple of outs to see what we're doing. His interest in the beer free roof was, interestingly, non-partisan, as the guy next to me was all decked out in Yankee apparel, so it was clear that Lawton is a hater of all beers, not just Red Sox brews.

Since haters never prosper, and since Lawton is a hater, and a beer hater at that, I'm certain that he's due for some horrendous karmic event. See, my small part of bringing glory to the Sox.

Now, 162 games later, the season really begins.