Affirmative Action For Girls?

So I spent this afternoon hanging out with a female friend of mine. We've watched some games together -- basketball, mostly, because that's what I mostly watch.

We talk a lot of trash; I don't think it's unfair to say I put more effort into basketball watching than she does -- she probably knows more about baseball than I do.

So we're at a bar in the evening. It's L.A.; only baseball on tv because tonight Barry Bonds takes on the Dodgers. Also because it's the summer and no other sport is happening (although KG is throwing out the pitch for the Red Sox and I look around for weapons of mass destruction).



Before that kicks in, though, we watch some Mets/Brewers action. I don't know anything about baseball. Nothing that Ron Luciano couldn't teach me at age nine anyhow.

She claims to be a Mets fan. I'm giving her grief about that; uncalled for grief given that I know nothing about baseball. I ask her for the name of the pitcher. They're showing a number and a last name and a wind up. She doesn't know. I wouldn't know either; I don't know. I'm just pissed because once upon a time she made an unfortunate cry of glee when AI made an unfortunate shot and the Lakers lost their only game of that playoffs.

None of that has anything to do with anything.

Barry Bonds is up at bat again. Nothing happens in that at bat, but we're volleying back and forth. Neither of us super-serious -- we know nothing about anything. We had that conversation during the Mets/Brewers game -- I gave her grief, and was forced to confess that I know less than her. So. Barry Bonds.

I have a dream that Barry Bonds is completely innocent and that there is fail-safe evidence of that and that he is a conflicted jerk of a man who doesn't want to pander to the crowd. If true, the best sports movie ever. I wish it were true, almost as much as I want Britney Spears to turn it all around.

We joke about it.

Somewhere in there, the waiter comes in. The couple next to us wants to buy us shots for talking baseball. We don't need the shots; we weren't really talking baseball. We don't know anything about baseball.

But what are we supposed to do? Anyway, it's not like I haven't had guys, talking basketball, which I care about, turn to me and say "You must be really bored right now."