It's Here! B-List 2007: The Book

You do for CLE baseball what Bukowski did for the post office – Chris Gemerchak

The triumphant second year of The B-List on TheClevelandFan.com featured more of what readers have come to expect from the daily column chronicling the adventures (and misadventures) of the Cleveland Indians’ run to the ALCS. In this book, you’ll find more of the fluid wit, unorthodox statistics, and language butchery that made The B-List one of the favorite must-read columns of Steve Buffum’s relatives everywhere.

Within these pages, you’ll discover such things as:

• The ballad of Oldberto Hernandez
• A proposal to change all Cleveland relievers’ names to “Raffy”
• The claim that Ryan Garko’s triple was the result of a meteorite strike and a polar bear attack
• Over 50 outrageous lies about Mark Shapiro
• A player who is, inconceivably, worse than Ramon Vazquez
• Fausto!™
• C.C. Sabathia and the Inning of Crap™

On TBS’ coverage of the ALDS: New York's uniforms were much whiter than Cleveland's, which were a dingy grey, just like the city of Cleveland itself. We do not want to broadcast from Cleveland. Cleveland is nowhere, like Des Moines or Kansas City or New South Wales. We hate our jobs. We hate our fans. We can't believe we spent money to do this. Sob!

On defense in general: Borowski induced a routine ground ball to first baseman Ryan Garko, who slapped it with his frying pan before kicking it with his hockey skates. (In his defense, he was wearing oven mitts at the time.)

The B-List: 2007 recaptures the magic of a playoff season while still reminding us that while players like Garko and Tom Mastny can go from super to fungal and back to super, the options on someone like Mike Rouse remain more … er … limited.

Email steve.buffum@gmail.com to order a copy of The B-List: 2007 for $15.95 plus postage and handling.