My new drug of choice? It’s Pokey. I’m buying an HDTV monitor just to watch him tear it up even clearer than I do right now. I want a NESN talk show dedicated to what the guy’s doing when he’s off the field — shopping for toothpaste, waxing the car, enjoying a sandwich. I want all Pokey, all the time, because watching him devour anything that comes within centimeters of his far-reaching personal space gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling akin to watching vintage Pedro mow ’em down, Manny drive a towering shot, and Denise Austin doing lunges.
Last night, Pokey snared a line drive that Francona himself said the guy “had no business catching.” He defies gravity and sensibility every evening, turning Fenway into the Big Apple Circus and making us wonder just how in the fark we were willing to settle for the likes of Jeff Frye, Rey Sanchez and Craig Grebeck shuffling about the infield.
Plus: My man hits! He’s no longer that automatic out that you simply conceded while you ambled to the fridge. Last night he jacked a wall-ball double that he clearly thought was gone — hell, we all thought it was gone — but still drove in a couple runs. We chant his name and don our Pokey shirts and we keep our eyes on Pokey, not the pitcher, because we don’t want to miss a friggin’ thing he does.
And to think, we HAD this guy a coupla years back and traded him to Pittsburgh before the start of the 2002 season.
But now is not the time to look back. It is time to focus on the future. It’s the year of the Pokester.
For more info on last night’s 4-1 defeat of L.A., see what a better writer had to say. Me, I just wanna talk Pokey.
Oh, and yesterday, the Yankees flipped the switch and turned a certain defeat — they were down by two runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth — into a victory over the Padres in extra innings.
But, y’know what? Screw New York. They got no Pokey.
