So I've been gone for a few months. As soon as the NFL season started, I went on hiatus to ramp up my studying for the LSAT, followed by a few months of worrying non-stop about whether to apply to law school with a sucky LSAT score.
Fall proceeded nonetheless. My Dodgers World Series dreams came and went, leaving me with a well-used rally towel by which to remember the Matt Holliday groin game and all of Vin Scully's subsequent groin-related euphemisms, not to mention a second towel from the Phillies series that I use to plug the gap in my window when I run through the car wash. My Cowboys Super Bowl dreams came and went, with my attempts to remain unhopeful dissolving into the by-now-trite (at least to me) roller coaster of emotions, but I'm happy Romo stopped playing Favre and that the team found a defensive identity to carry into next year. Speaking of Favre, I still can't believe he willingly deferred to Adrian Peterson for most of the season; yes, I was wrong about his stats, but he still single-handedly tanked the Vikings' season in the end, which I found very satisfying. Also satisfying was the seeming fruition of my hopes for the unequivocal end of the Patriots' decade of dominance. Overall, while the football season ended disappointingly, even in light of the fact that the BCS title game never happened, I feel much more comfortable with what I started to see take shape with the Cowboys than what the Dodgers left me with at the end of the baseball season.
Now that football's over, and we've come full circle to the cusp of spring training, I suppose it's time to start addressing that, but that's not what brought me out of hibernation today. Instead, I'll admit that I'm prematurely, irrationally giddy about the latest rumor of Eric Gagne's return to the Dodgers. Early yesterday, my colleague passed on the news that the Dodgers and Rockie were working him out; today,
Jon Heyman reported that the Dodgers are the leading candidate to sign him. No, it didn't end well the first time around: he injured his knee, pitched through the injury, injured himself further, was never the same, and still asked for a ton of money that the Dodgers weren't willing to give him. He went to Texas, and I started listening to the end of Rangers games hoping to catch some game-ending strikeouts. Then, the Rangers traded him to Boston, and I (and Red Sox fans) wanted to die, followed by Milwaukee and incrimination with buddy, former batterymate, and my former favorite Dodger Paul LoDuca in the whole steroids mess.
Throughout it all, I always hoped he'd come back to L.A. because, before it ended badly, Eric Gagne provided me with three-plus of the best years of my life as a sports fan, and I don't care that he likely fueled those years with steroids. You had to have been a Dodgers fan, and you had to have been there, but there's a reason why playing "Welcome to the Jungle" on Guitar Hero III, hearing "Welcome to the Jungle" on the radio, or even thinking about "Welcome to the Jungle" still makes me misty-eyed. Brazoban was a fat, one-dimensional fly ball machine. Saito was great, but he was old enough that we knew it wouldn't last long, and he always looked like he'd just walked into surprise lottery party every time he earned a save. Broxton throws as fast as Gagne threw in his prime, but he's inconsistent, relies too much on his heat, and let Matt Stairs, of all people, get inside his head. I have no illusions that re-tread Gagne would come anywhere close to matching his salad days, but I hold a deep-seated need to see him rumble out of the bullpen to "Welcome to the Jungle" one more time, even if he only ever strikes out one more batter in his life. It just ended too soon and too abruptly last time; as a woman, sometimes I guess I just need closure.
Eric Gagne signed a minor-league deal with an invitation to major-league spring training today. Again, I hope this works out, but I have absolutely no expectation that it will--after all, he pretty much got lit-up in the Canadian league last year.
