Ozzie Smith....... He's kind of a dickhead.

I was a pretty typical nine year old. I had imaginary friends, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, played baseball, and watched Animaniacs religiously. Then early one summer morning, it happened. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the middle of trying to make the difficult decision, of whether I wanted
Cocoa Puffs or Cinnamon toast crunch for breakfast. I decided I would go with the CTC's, but  I grabbed both boxes. The Cocoa Puffs box always had better activities on the back of it, and I was looking forward to helping lead Sonny the cuckoo bird through the maze to his birdcage.

Then my stomach started itching real bad. I lifted up my shirt and started freaking out at what I saw. I had grown like 6 nipples on my stomach overnight. I frantically ran into my mom's room to show her. " Mom, help I have Nippleitis," I told her. Nippleitis is a condition which causes you to grow nipples all over your body. It's extremely rare, and also it's not a real thing. "You have chicken pox," my mom said. For some reason that sounded worse to me. Why couldn't I have nippleitis instead. " Don't scratch them or you'll get scars," she told me. Seriously, Don't scratch them. How am I going to do that? They itch like crazy. This sucks. I wanted to yell, "Shit." Instead I yelled, "Shoot." I would've gotten into trouble for yelling "Shit." On top of the fact, my sister had already filled out the maze and the word search on the Cocoa Puffs box. What the fuck is that shit???

The next 48 hours were brutal. Chicken pox had spread everywhere. They were on my face....MY FACE.  It took every ounce of will power I had not to claw my face off. I wanted to take care of the itch, but I didn't want to wind up looking like Ray Liotta

My face has the texture of a decorative autumn squash

The only solace I found was knowing that the Cardinals were playing and were going to be on TV that night. This was before everyone had cable and when there were only like 12 games televised a year. So.....Yeah it was kind of a big deal. Then right before the game was to start, Jack Buck made an announcement. Ozzie Smith will not play tonight. He is out with the chicken pox. Whaaaaaaaatttt? That's like fate or something, Right?  Let's review

• Ozzie plays baseball
• I play baseball
• Ozzie is a shortstop
• I am a shortstop
• Ozzie currently has chicken pox
• I currently have chicken pox

I decided to write him a letter. It was like 20 years ago, but I remember it went something like this...

Dear Ozzie

Hi, My name is Ryan. I'm your biggest fan. I play baseball too. I play shortstop just like you. I heard you have the chickenpox. I also have the chickenpox. Would you like to be friends? Please write back.

Sincerely
Ryan

I am still awaiting a response from him. How could he not write back? The nerve on this guy. Does he think he's better than me?

I do backflips.... I'm hot shit...

I expect an apology letter at this point. An apology for breaking my heart. That probably won't happen though, because he's too busy with his Fancy restaurant. What does he do at that place anyway? Does he cook? Does he wait tables? Does he have anything to do with managing that place whatsoever? I'm thinking....probably not. It seems like every athlete has a restaurant these days. I guess when you're that big of a star, your name alone makes you money. For crying out loud, Micheal Jordan has his own cologne. Micheal Jordan didn't create that cologne. People who create cologne created that cologne. Then they approached Mike and asked him, " Hey Mike do you think this smells good." Mike was probably like, " Yeah, no doubt." Then they were like, " Great, well how about we slap a jumpman on the bottle and make you even richer than you already are.You'll be stupid rich. We're talking like own your own basketball franchise, and run it into the ground kind of rich." Can you blame them though? Why wouldn't you want to smell like Micheal Jordan? He's cool, and people want to be cool too. That fragrance wouldn't have the same ring to it if it were called The mailman Ralph cologne, because the mailman Ralph isn't cool. In fact he is kind of a dumbass. He's stupid looking and half the time he puts your neighbor's mail in your mailbox. Then you have to go to your neighbor's house to give them your mail, and they give you your mail. Then they look at you weird because they found out about your Teen Vogue subscription. This never would've happened if Ralph wasn't such a dipshit, and put the mail in the right....wait a minute, maybe that's what happened with my letter to Ozzie..... fucking mailmen...