TUFFY, SOCRATES & THE SUPERKING

Happy October everybody! Check out the October issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands…

…for my “Four Corners” column (page 185, or here), my review of the yummy Tunisian restaurant Habbouz (page 184, or here) and this year’s Best of the Valley section, to which I contributed (again, no prizes for guessing which entries are mine).

If even that’s not a hearty enough portion of Your Humble Narrator, check out New Times blogs for my account of auditioning (unsuccessfully) for Jeopardy! back in the early ‘90s...

I hadn’t made it to a single Diamondbacks game during this highly disappointing season, but The Kid, for making the honor roll at her summer school, had obtained a coupon for a free ticket which, having little interest in baseball—where have I gone wrong?—she gave to me, and as yesterday afternoon was the last regular season game, I took myself down to Chase Field to watch the Diamondbacks take on the more-or-less equally lame San Diego Padres. Probably because it was happening opposite the Cardinals game across town, it was a very sparsely-attended affair, which gave it a relaxing and fun atmosphere.

This was a true nosebleed seat, overlooking the third-base line, but I liked the vantage; these cell-phone images, though photographically abject, give some idea of the God’s-eye view…

As for the game itself, it remained stubbornly unexciting until the last two innings, when the Diamondbacks tied the score at 2-2. In the ninth, catcher “Tuffy” Gosewisch doubled, then was replaced at second by pinch-runner Socrates Brito, marking a collaboration by the Diamondbacks with the two coolest names. Pinch-hitter Phil Gosselin then singled Brito home, the Diamondbacks won, and in so doing managed, by one game, not to finish last in the NL West. For a few seconds, it felt not unlike they had won the World Series.

Feeble though this triumph may have been, it should be noted that the D-bax faithful had a more pleasant afternoon then the Cardinals faithful; the birds lost to the Rams 17-13.

Wandering around Chase Field during the duller stretches, I also met some lovely dogs on the “PetSmart Patio,” and ran across this puzzling guy…

Superman from the neck down, Elvis from the neck up?