Royals Manager Makes Outrageous Claim

I’m still really peeved at that Royals manager Ned Yost for what he said about the Red Sox the other day. After Boston WON the game, he was talking about his pitcher and said “every pitch he got hurt on was actually a good pitch. We competed very, very well!” Oh really, Mr. Yost? What an outlandish claim! Obviously he was saying the Red Sox just got lucky. Wow, I’m shocked! Have you even seen your team’s record compared to Boston’s record, My. Yost? Lucky indeed!

My grandma says sometimes when someone envies you or thinks you are lucky to have something, it can put a sort of a curse on you. It reminds me of the time, a couple of years ago when I was still in high school, my dad brought home a big 50-inch high definition Panasonic TV to replace the old Magnavox that we had in the living room from before I was born. Mom said it was too expensive and too big, but pretty soon she was watching movies on it every night, eating a bag of microwave popcorn and wrapped in her camouflage pattern snuggie that I gave her for Christmas, which she had never even taken out of the box until we got the new TV. The new TV was also terrific for watching sports. I told my friends at school how it was like being right there at the baseball stadium. Most of the guys weren’t too impressed because they already had high definition TV’s, but Timmy Melvin was really interested. Timmy’s mom and dad were divorced, or his father had ran away or something. He lived with his mom and they were kind of poor. Their grass was always too high and I don’t think their car ever worked. “You’re lucky.” Timmy said. I remember his exact words because two days after he said that, my dad got laid off from his job.

Of course, we Red Sox fans are no strangers to curses. As we all know, the Sox haven’t won a world series since 2007, a dry spell going on 4 years. But in case you didn’t know, in the old days, from the times of Babe Ruth, they had a much longer curse. They didn’t win the world series all the way from 1918 to 2004! Dad says the curse was because the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. In my opinion the Red Sox management definitely made a very poor decision in trading Babe Ruth, who was a very popular player. But I’m still not sure how the curse worked, especially in the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s, when Babe Ruth and everyone involved in the trade was deceased. I asked my dad, and he just said that’s the thing about curses, you never know how long they are going to last. “One minute you’re selling babe Ruth to the Yankees and the next minute a knuckleball doesn’t knuckle and Aaron Boone is hitting a moonshot into the upper deck.”

Oh and I remembered an even better example of why you shouldn’t tell people they are lucky. One day back when I was in little league, this kid named Carmelo was in the middle of pitching a perfect game against my team. Carmelo was on the Yankees, the best team in the league. My team was called Chicago, which was a pretty dumb name — they told our coach Mr. Sullivan he could have any team name he wanted, so instead of picking “Cubs” or “White Sox” he picked “Chicago”. Anyway, Carmelo was a big kid, not very smart but he was starting to get a mustache and he could throw really fast. That day he was striking out all our players. Coach Sullivan sent me in as a pinch hitter in the 5th inning. I was a little nervous, but coach said “just wait for your pitch, Thirsty!” That’s what he called me. I went to the plate and the catcher for the Yankees yelled “here comes another strikeout!” Then, to me, he said “He has 10 strikeouts already.” I said “just lucky I guess.” I was trying to be funny, but really I was fairly nervous. The catcher yelled “Hey Carmelo, pudgy here says you’re just lucky!” Suddenly Carmelo, who didn’t seem very happy to start with, seemed to get really mad. On the first pitch he hit me right in the back. I got to go to first base, except, I could barely move. The umpire asked if I was alright. Coach Sullivan came over and looked at me and said “aw you’ll be OK Thirsty — walk it off!” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I slowly walked it to first base. My back sure hurt a lot and I was leaning to one side.

Then I saw that Carmelo looked even madder. His face was red and he was pounding the ball into his glove. Then he turned really fast and threw really hard to first base, actually straight at my head. He really had terrific aim. I was able to duck out of the way, and the ball went all the way to the fence. “Run! Run!” my teammates were yelling, except I could barely even stand up. I sort of slowly limped toward second base, but the first baseman ran and got the ball and threw to the second baseman and they tagged me out. When I was walking back to the dugout Carmelo called me a bad name and said I ruined his perfect game, and he was going to beat me up after the game. Luckily my mom got there just before the game ended and I didn’t have to get beat up.

Well I sure learned my lesson that day. You shouldn’t belittle someone’s accomplishments, even as a joke, by saying they are lucky. I hope someday Mr. Ned Yost of the Kansas City Royals learns the same valuable lesson!


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