How I got hooked on “MLB: The Show” by flushing the toilet

The newest version of the baseball video game “MLB: The Show” is coming out soon.

For the past few years, when “The Show” comes out, I’ve written a post here about how much I enjoy it. Partly as a baseball fan, but also as an adult, approaching and now 50 years old, who plays with children’s toys. Toys that cost $60 a year. One tends to think about such things, and wonder if it is a stupid purchase.

(They’ll have a Negro Leagues feature this year, with a short documentary about the different players, followed by in-game scenes where you can connect buttons that correspond to important games in those players’ lives. This is pretty cool, and makes me think $60 is almost worth disappearing that $60 for, say, food.)

It’s interesting to me that, for several years now, I’ve given free advertising to a video game company that has never given me anything. So this year, I’m asking for a completely free copy. Or I will not praise “The Show” again. I mean it! Heed my words, San Diego Studios, and give up!

Here we go, my total sales for “The Show”! It’s a story. Fighting, children, is a story.

So one time my studio apartment bathroom ceiling started leaking.

In 2010, the future Mrs. James was staying, and we heard “drip … drip … drip” as we went to bed.

I checked the pipes. Kitchen, away, bathroom, away. It must be one of the strange noises of the apartment wall pipes (the building is over 100 years old, and was the first hotel in St. Paul with electricity). Go back to bed.

Dripdripdrip was going fast.

Well, it’s coming from the bathroom ceiling above my bathtub. Definitely some kind of plumbing issue. I will call about it in the morning.

Then, enough rain.

At this point, the paint above my bathtub has caved in like the inverted roof of the Metrodome, and there is water slowly pouring out of it.

There is no live manager on site, so I call the property owner. One Jeff DeLisle.

“How did you get my number! Not listed!”

“I have a network, you can find anyone. This leak is a real problem.”

“Well, go there and knock on the door to the upper room!”

All right.

I go upstairs, and knock on the door. There is nothing. I can hear “Madden 2010” playing, loudly, so I knock on the door more forcefully.

This guy answers. Some guy in his early 20’s who looks like an athlete in a white funk band. He is tired of his bad mind. Fry completely. I explain the situation. From time to time. It takes him a while to find out. He shows me his bathroom. It’s completely soaked, as is the carpet outside her bathroom door.

Apparently, he had problem #2, and it required a lot of flushing, and this clogged the toilet. So he just kept pushing and cleaning. If you keep cleaning, eventually it will all go down the drain, was his logic. The toilet flushed. As they will.

I call the landlord again. I’m told, “Well, go flush his toilet!”

“And what? I don’t have a pipe.”

“The convenience store downstairs is open until midnight. Go buy a pipe!”

Surprisingly, the convenience store has a toilet (the immigrant cashier is happy with the story), and I flush this guy’s toilet, and call the owner. Because this poopy water is still pouring into my bathtub through the repainted Dome roof.

“Tell him to dry off. He can use a towel. Or a hair dryer.”

(Totally baked guy running a high voltage air conditioner on standing water. Good idea.)

So I tell the top man. He says “Okay.” Back to Madden. I find the pictures look great on his widescreen TV. I remember this mentally.

I went back to bed with Mrs. James and we fell asleep with the ceiling back on the drip. It has decreased.

Until, CRASH

THE ENTIRE BATHROOM ROOF IS PLATED IN

There is rotting wood and dry wall and brown water everywhere. The bathroom looks like someone put a grenade in the ceiling.

“Oh, I’m going home,” Mrs. James says. “But call me and let me know how it works.”

The DeLisle Company still owns the building. (Jeff DeLisle retired. His son, Jeff Jr., is worse off. I don’t live there anymore.) The hardware store is still there, though it’s not open until midnight now.

That completely baked Madden flusher? Maybe he was fired, I don’t know. Maybe he’s running a hedge fund, now. I have to say I was bummed he didn’t give me any of his stash – I flushed his toilet. Proper ganja etiquette says to at least make an offer. I would have said “no thanks,” I’m more of a beer guy than a weed guy, but it would have been polite. I’m dropping poop on you guys, and I’m with a girlfriend down there.

(Who, thankfully, has never minded how ostentatious my life has been… that’s something only some of my in-laws, on both sides, have been doing very badly.)

As it is, all I got was a nice widescreen TV with Madden 2010 on it.

I’ve always wanted to buy a widescreen TV, and see how good my DVD collection or baseball video game looks.

So I bought one. And buy “The Show.” The DVDs looked great. Still do. “The Show” looked good. It still does.

Now, “The Show” people, can I get a copy of the cover? Free ads! Post this link on your website! SEND ME A GAME!

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