Predictions Reviewed

Predictions for 2005

As I’ve done annually for all of one year I will sink so low as to examine my own omniscience and see how this crappiest of years actually shook out compared to my estimations.

January – Andy Reid inexplicably deactivates all his first string players for the NFC Championship game while mumbling something about T.O., spandex, injuries and trying to get to the Superbowl. The Eagles manage to eke out a win but lose the deactivated players during a freak Gatorade accident leading directly to a Steelers Superbowl win 107-2.

Not as wrong as I ought to have been. Substitute Patriots for Steelers and assume the score is allegory and I’m damned close.

February – Surely predicting one whopper of a snowstorm wouldn’t be amiss. Would it be too much to ask for another day off?

Did it snow? Christ, I can’t remember. I’m getting old. Someone help me out here. Right or wrong?

March – While celebrating the tenth anniversary of my being legally able to drink on St. Patrick’s Day in Boston . . . Well, to be honest, I get drunk. Maybe I’ll go bowling. Oddly hued domestic beer will not be involved.

I got drunk. Goddamn but you should see the lines in the downtown bars in an Irish town on St. Pat’s. I had to go all the way to the Cask and Flagon for some damned peace.

April – The Washington Nationals open their season to sell-out crowds which rapidly decline as the Nationals prove to be a worse local team than the Orioles. This leads to another round of caterwauling by the DC City Council over a new ballpark and Major League Baseball again suspends team operations. Strangely, the team and its three or four die-hard fans never notice and go on playing the sort of baseball that keeps DC teams migrating to the exciting locales of Minnesota and Texas.

How about 50% on this one. They turned out to be pretty good for the first half of the season as did, surprisingly, the Orioles. But there is caterwauling about a ballpark and ownership and God knows what else.

May – An early heat wave causing spontaneous Twinkie combustions leads to several cellophane shrapnel injuries. The Bush Administration is blamed for inciting the “Tastykake street.”

It’s a big country. Who knows?

June – The Phillies get the better of their annual series with the Red Sox in Philadelphia two games to one. Typically, the game I attend is the game they lose.

Wrong. Boston swept. I was to attend a losing Red Sox game in Boston later in the year.

July – Our nation turns 229. I snooze drunkenly through the fireworks.

Mostly true. That weekend was the worst of the year.

August – Hillary Clinton finally concedes that she’s a candidate for the office of President of the United States. Congressional Democrats immediately file suit to discard the Constitution in order to allow Presidential elections whenever a Democrat seems to have a chance to win and forbid competition in same elections. When this plan is opposed, the Bush Administration is blamed for inciting the “Federalist street.” The majority of the American people sweat apathetically while warily avoiding shelves stocked with Twinkies.

Time will vindicate me. There was a lot of sweating.

September – I go to Chicago during the one weekend all year when both the White Sox and Cubbies are in town in furtherance of my quest to see games at all MLB stadia. At least one game gets rained out.

After planning for over a year I never did make it to Chicago. Instead I pulled stakes and headed south to residence in Nashville, Tennessee.

October – The Red Sox and Phillies meet in the World Series. The Red Sox win again; thereby inaguarating “The Curse of the Wild Thing” that keeps the Phillies from ever winning a World Series because they once actually allowed a man with a mullet to represent them on the mound.

After many depressing nights of sitting in the local bar watching games I, sadly, got to sleep through the month of October.

November – Thanksgiving will be its typical festival of nigh-transcendant joy and this time I may actually go to the bar with the cousins.

Right! But nobody went to the bar.

December – Thirty-two. I’ll be thirty-goddamned-two. Leaving me one year to complete my work on Earth or prove myself unequal to the Son of God.

Right again! I’m a prodigy.

I’m giving myself seven out of twelve on account of it being a shitty year and my deserving at least a small portion of victory. Go ahead, argue with me.