seth marks owns gay hats for both new york teams and other baseball things these days

i feel regret about tatis. there’s no telling why this is a stone i’ve decided to swallow and carry instead of some other, as there are many, except that that’s how time gets filled. one elects to be weighed down or lifted up by one thing or another and another and i’m a sucker but i find this PED stuff sad. a handsome kid. big and talented, bendy limbs. a wide-grinning darling, an arresting swing already, without more help. of course they wanted him to sell ice cream. perched so recently on the precipice of being alone at the top of the mountain as baseball’s brightest star, and it’s ruined. he’ll be back, i mean. and i am moved, even, by the stated desire, somehow prescient and babyish at once, to be so penitent, so very good, as to win back lost love, like love is something you can scoop up in a beach pail and swallow, save, but there’s no repairing magic. it is or isn’t or in this case was and was not. he had it right there. it’s gauche, disappointing. a balloon bursting before it even got to bob in the breeze at full height. i feel sorry for him, because of how he’s spoiled what was easy, what was good luck, and, cheerful in my stupidity, i feel inclined like a lovesick teenager suckling on fingers for spun sugar fibs, or a wife pretending lies are true, sedate, or some other quietly misogynist piece of imagery, i guess, to accept that he really did just get ringworm and chose carelessly the pill with which to treat it. somebody’s beautiful son. irascible, long-boned. overindulged. could be. they do have horses.

that said, i found san diego distressingly vacant, and petco park akin to a mall, albeit a mall where at any moment an ex marine in cargo shorts and a too tight v neck tshirt might punch you for not singing along to god bless america. on a smoggy sunday this month the city offered little to be excited about. even dear juan soto wore camouflage. during a lazy day game, which the padres did pull out, i drank two beers with my left ear plugged shut by a looming sinus infection (not COVID) and thought uncharitable things about the family in our row who inexplicably refused to stand to let us enter. if you’ve never seen a paunchy father clutching a ketchupy hot dog defy the most basic social standards and shake his red face sleepily to say, no, find your own way past, as if that’s normal, as if that’s how the world works….i envy you that surety. the peace that comes from believing certain facts of human interaction are ineffable. we easily climbed over from the row ahead. that’s not the point. in my seat, then, i dreamed of the forbidden fernando bobbleheads all piled up somewhere, befouled before ever getting unboxed. those people did not deserve them.

i can report that the vibes at oracle park in san francisco are significantly more pleasant than those of that other cousin to the south, and we had a lovely time watching the giants get swept over the fourth of july, though the air was cold and wet every moment all weekend, so much so that I had to purchase a hooded sweatshirt at H&M to get by, and it is my scientific conclusion after a summer of rather phlegmy california travel that the sun shines only in los angeles, bothers in rising at all just to warm los angeles.

in boston, too, we took in a game, and there it was glued thigh hot. megan’s first trip to fenway was as i’d hoped—beers in a basement before, kissing in the bleachers during, a few nascent “yankees suck” cheers mingling with an awful off-key reprise of “sweet caroline” from the masses on the sidewalk after—at least once we figured out how to get cash to board the train from my sister’s. i puckered and slurped through a del’s frozen lemonade. the sox won. we didn’t get sunburns. we had come east for a friend’s wedding and the fenway trip set the weekend off on a foot almost too charmed and happy, and things proceeded that way for days. i catch myself becoming embarrassed trying to explain what a powerfully beautiful time it was in the woods all screaming like maniacs to carly rae jepsen deep cuts in celebration of love and of being hot, gay, together and of seeing the stars in an improbably inky black sky. these were storybook summer days and even wincing i feel dutybound to name them that way. now it’s nearly september and i need a haircut but this wasn’t always true, and the long days were generous.

in that basement where i took my lovely girlfriend to sit in the middle of a sunny day, coors light flowing, the little league world series was on television, and a local, at that exact moment, massachusetts kid struck out eleven batters and hit a game winning homerun, a classic example of how this annual event broadcast on national television is really just about the two to three actually physically gifted kids on each team. everyone else is there to play video games and eat soft serve. the little league world series makes me sentimental; i love to be told some funny looking child’s favorite actor is dwayne johnson and then to see him hit a dribbler up the third base side and reach on a throwing error. i like when there are tight games, being often too sensitive to sit through the blowouts, though even in the close ones there is a risk of crying. we missed the championship game on sunday while out to a fancy french lunch, but that was all right. the kids from hawaii were too good anyway. in no phase of this tournament did any other team come close even to being able to compete with hawaii, let alone to beat them, and while i’m happy for the team, and hope those children are incredibly pleased with themselves, it’s the shock and awe on the faces of lesser preteen athletes when they make a catch they didn’t think they could or manage a walk by being too anxious to swing that really gets me. i am after the tenderness. here’s this year’s obligatory almost too saccharine moment if you missed it. it works on me. i don’t mind saying.

but gentle grace & warming gusts are not all that filled the air this summer, i’m afraid.

in june, i observed a one seth marks—ohio-loving man of dubious employ, husband and very occasional roommate of real housewife of salt lake city’s own lawyer turned jeweleress by way of garbage whore, meredith—out and about in a pride colorway yankees hat. this seemed reasonable enough. why wouldn’t a vacuous reality tv sycophant (please understand: i am deeply sexually attracted to this man) own a yankees hat? and the markses do famously love homos and all their accoutrement.

but then!

picture this. i lie in bed sweaty and quite pleased with myself on the lord’s day. though it’s night. just two days past. becoming drunk on the thoughtless burr of instagram stories, and sprawled in a charmed daze with the fan working overhead, i said, Oh look, seth’s in his gay yankees hat again! ha! i laughed. the automated flipbook of posts churned on and i with it until.. a tug at my center. a twinge of pain behind my eye as though hit by a lightning bolt, one not of heat and energy, but of thrill and disgust and thrill and..and.. That’s a gay METS hat.

ignore that these people over fifty with adult children look like sims styled by the horniest girl in the sixth grade. that’s a crime for another day. seth marks has a gay hat for both of the MLB teams based in new york, the city his wife allegedly fucked “half of”. does he even know these are two different logos for two different teams? does he claim to be a fan of both the yankees and mets? does he know that the mlb product is actually sadly not gay at all? does he, perhaps, own gay hats for each of the other 28 franchises but simply has not yet debuted those online? does he like baseball????? if anyone reading this knows seth marks please ask him to contact me and explain his actions. do not tell him i would [redacted] his [redacted] i will relay that myself. go gays!