Congrats, Curt
You’re a
blowhard, and a know-it-all, and sort
of a geek.
But you
were our geeky blowhard know-it-all. And
when you rolled into town not long after that awful Bronx
night, a good-guy gunslinger pledging, at long last, to make us whole,
promising to “make 55,000 people from New York shut up,” few could have
predicted, despite the fact that you'd done it before, how emphatically you’d make good on your word — never mind the incredible
circumstances under which you’d labor to do so. More than four years later,
I still can’t quite believe it all happened like that.
So, yeah,
you liked to hear yourself talk. But at least you also made for great copy,
and, more often then not, you backed up your words.
You made a better
starter than a closer. You never should’ve
shaken
off Tek that day in Oakland.
And I’m still miffed at you for talking
politics the morning after the ’04 World Series.
But, hey, you
won us that World Series. And then a
few years later you helped
win us another one.
And, for
that, one can be nothing but eternally grateful.
So
congrats on your well-deserved and hopefully happy retirement.
Now please
don’t be like Clemens and Favre.
Sincerely,
Someone who
was there in the stands, screaming himself hoarse, when you won
# 200.
PS: And
please don’t run for Senate.
But I look forward to an encore performance, perhaps, on Celebrity
Jeopardy.