In Need of Slump-Buster

Nobody's going to care about this, but I need to vent, and it's 2:30 in the morning, so this seems like as good as space as any. But I'm warning you now, you might as well click away from this page, because these are precious moments of your life that you won't get back...

I bought MVP 06 NCAA Baseball for the XBox the other day because it was getting good reviews and I couldn't resist the temptation to play as the Long Beach State Dirtbags. In this game, EA Sports has utilized the right analog stick for the batting mechanism. You pull back on the stick to shift your weight to your back foot and then push forward to swing. You also use the left analog stick to control swinging inside or outside and the shoulder buttons to control a powered versus a controlled swing. A bit complicated, but once you get the rhythm down, it shouldn't be too difficult, right? Well, it turns out I absolutely suck at the game. I mean really, really suck. The first game I played, I went the entire game without hitting the ball out of the infield. To top it off, the right stick is used in throwing the ball as well, which leads to plenty of errors on defense. After three innings, I was trailing 28-0 and had 10 errors. As Mike Patrick says during the game, "Ho-lee Cow!"

With practice, I've improved my defense, but I still can't hit for shit. It's so depressing. I've never sucked at a sports video game before- especially not when just playing against the freaking computer! Is this the death knell to what remains of my youth? Should I just take up bridge and lawn bowling now?

And I think this is beginning to have a domino effect on other areas of my life as well. For example, Pimlico is currently shut down because there is an outbreak of horse herpes, and I don't have a joke for it. Horse herpes! I suppose it's apropos that I'm tossed a softball of a story and am forced to meekly tap it back to the mound...