Fine, No Sports This Time (Much...)

Since I've gotten yelled at by no fewer than three people (comprising a significant portion of my reader base) for writing about sports too much, I've decided to stop posting altogether; I mean I've decided to wait until I had something meaningful to write, which was non-sports related.

Anyway, on Sunday I went to the Verizon Wireless store to cancel my mom's service and to exchange my new phone for another one. I originally got a white Moto KRZR, but I decided I didn't want to get stuck with it for two years; that's a long commitment! Az I traded it in for an LG VX8700, the prom queen of cell phones. Seriously, in the catalog they had at the store, they ascribed each phone to a different type of person. The RAZR MAXX is for the straight-A student, and that fancy LG TV phone is for the athlete / jock. My phone is for the prom queen. It's okay, I'm secure with my masculinity. It's hard to be insecure when you're carrying around 215 pounds of man.

Az there I am, at the counter in the Verizon store, giving the service rep an extremely hard time with my carefully worded, cleverly delivered questions about cancelling Mom's service and exchanging my phone. Meanwhile, things were made slightly more difficult by the fact that we purchased our plans and phones via the internet, and therefore, my options for handling things in the store were limited. I won't bore you with more details, but let's just say that while I was pestering the service folks, I was behaving in my usual friendly, engaging, joking manner. This made all the difference to the reps. I could tell because they were being receptive to my bottomless supply of cheer, so much so that the woman even waived the surcharge for transferring my 250+ phone numbers from my KRZR to the LG. The moral of the story is that one smile can be a catalyst for changing someone's outlook on their day/life. I'm not saying that just flashing my (mother of) pearly whites is enough to effect a grand change (I'm not that cocky goddamn it. See Hedberg, Mitch in "Mitch All Together."), but it certainly couldn't hurt.

And that's as long as I could last without writing about sports, just two measly paragraphs. It's okay, I'm not gonna write a lengthy discourse on the pros and cons of swinging on 3-0; I'm just gonna show a brilliant trade I made a few weeks ago in one of my fantasy leagues. On June 20th I traded Andy Pettitte straight up for Carlos Pena. Since the players were officially added to our respective rosters, these are the stats both players have posted:
Pettitte: 12.1 IP, 18 ER, 10 Ks, 2 BBs, 13.14 ERA
Pena: 38 AB, 11 Runs, 2 2B, 4 HR, 12 RBI, 10 BB, 9 Ks, .368 BA, .500 OBP, .760 SLG, 1.260 OPS.
I think I'm a genius. That is all.