Fire Everybody in the Whole World!

My Own Farewell

2008-10-28T21:42:00.007-04:00

Since Passive Voice and Archie did their own farewell posts, I figured I better do one as well. I'm surprised the good folks at Fire Jay Mariotti haven't jumped all over this because they HATES TMQ, but as a long-suffering Dolphins fan this jumped out at me.

Easterbrook is making the point that Mike Singletary might be a bad choice for the Niners because he's never been a head coach before. As an example, he cited Cam Cameron:

Never-before Cam Cameron's year running Miami? Let's not go there.

No, Gregg, let's please, because I like making you look like a fucking tool. But first let's make like a Secret Service driver in Daley Plaza and back up, because I like to blog like Tarantino. Gregg ALSO said:

Three others had some head coaching experience: Tony Sparano was a small-college head coach at Division II New Haven...

Now let's look at the facts. Tony Sparano was, in fact, the head coach of New Haven from 1994 to 1998. (By the way I fucking love Tony Sparano. He is like the Bizarro Wannstache.) It was a Division II school, but the fact is that he was pretty good there, posting a record of 41-14-1. Not bad at all. But guess what? If you guessed Cam Cameron was a head coach in college, you are smarter than Gregg Easterbrook. Or else you know how to use Wikipedia.

Cameron coached at his own alma mater, Indiana University, from 1997 to 2001. Unlike Bizarro Wannstache, he sucked, winning about a third of his games. Also unlike Bizarro Wannstache, he was actually coaching Division I players, including Antwaan Randle-El, and playing quality Big Ten teams (bear in mind that Michigan was actually pretty good back then) so there's something to be said for that. The two men did go on to be successful coaches in the NFL working for head coaches who knew their shit and are generally very well respected. Coincidentally, they both ended up coaching the Dolphins in consecutive years. Bizarro Wannstache seems to be doing a good job where Cameron won only one more game than I have in my own NFL Head Coaching Career.

What's the point you ask? The point, my friends, is that CAM CAMERON WAS A FUCKING HEAD COACH BEFORE HE TOOK THE DOLPHINS GIG. Easterbrook points this out as if it is the strongest support of his thesis (teams should not give men with no head coaching experience a head coaching job in the NFL) and it is blatantly false. Gregg, you were once a pretty good and interesting writer. Do your fucking homework.

And with that, I bid you readers adieu. Good night, and good luck.

One Last Go 'Round

2008-09-25T03:36:00.006-04:00

For nostalgia's sake and all. Take it away, Hank Steinbrenner:

"The biggest problem is the divisional setup in major league baseball. I didn't like it in the 1970s, and I hate it now," Steinbrenner wrote. "Baseball went to a multidivision setup to create more races, rivalries and excitement. But it isn't fair. You see it this season, with plenty of people in the media pointing out that Joe Torre and the Dodgers are going to the playoffs while we're not. " [sic on this quotation mark, I think] This is by no means a knock on Torre - let me make that clear-but look at the division they're in. If L.A. were in the AL East, it wouldn't be in the playoff discussion. The AL East is never weak."

Sigh. Combined record of Toronto, Boston, Baltimore and Tampa against non-AL East opponents: 164-186, including Boston's strange 16-2 record against the NL. It's been 24 months, man. Come on.

Okay, so long.

Ladies and gentleman, the clown show blogger has been put on hiatus for retooling...

2008-09-15T17:27:00.004-04:00

Hey, so you know what I forgot to do last night? 52 52 52, finally ending my admittedly somewhat dubious streak at 29. Not bad, I guess. To be honest, I think I've blogged myself out, at least for a little while. It's been going that way for some time, but now I can say with certainty that I'm ready to take a break. I'm not speaking for Djmmm or Passive here, but I'm definitely on vacation. If and when I come back, I'll restart 52 52 52.

For what it's worth, I do have a bit of a secret project with a relatively major blog in the works, which I feel I can safely reveal because nobody reads this thing. But until then? Take it easy, compadres.

Hey, Passive Voice here, rudely intruding on Archie's post. I am skipping country (continent, actually) for awhile, and am betting I won't be thinking too much about bad sports writing. I am pleased to report that this last little update was written from a computer in the extra-deep basement of my parents' house. Farewell.

52 52 52 Week #29: Illinois

2008-09-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I can't help but find this whole 52 52 52 endeavor remarkably similar to the video below...

Although, to be fair, I grunt way more than that. I'm talking female tennis player levels of gruntitude. What can I say? I'm a loud worker.

I'm also from Illinois (and, by that, I mean I lived there for the first eight years of my life I actually remember), which makes today's entry rather near and dear to my heart. So let's do our best and give a shout out to everybody's favorite 1325-foot highpoint, Charles Mound:

1. It's described as a "gentle" slope. Why are all our nation's highpoints so damn uninspiring?

2. It's "within the Driftless Area, a region of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, centering on Dubuque, Iowa, that was not covered or ground down by the last continental glaciers." I don't know how interesting that is, but "the Driftless Area" sounds rather badass. Kinda mystical or something. Not really sure. I probably am reading too much Lord of the Rings. By which I of course mean any amount of Lord of the Rings.

3. A couple called the Wuebbels own the land, and they only let people on it four times a year due to theft concerns. That might sound reasonable, but I feel likely this is just part of a larger anti-whippersnapper agenda. Possibly also an expansion of the "get off my lawn" mantra. I'm not sure. Incidentally, I have no reason to assume the Wuebbels are old. I am, in fact, an asshole.

Now, since we're talking Illinois, I really feel I've got to go straight to the source of Illinois's greatest journalistic talent, one Mr. William "F. Buckley" Leitch. That's right people, we're off to Mattoon! Woot! Let's see the sort of sterling journalism that inspired the world's greatest emeritus sports blogger. Journal Gazette scribe Brian Nielsen, the floor is yours. Hit me with your best shot!

Some good signs are there for EIU's offense

Knowing Leitch, I bet this is going to involve breasts. Or some form of pep talk from Ron Zook. I also can't rule out the Arizona Cardinals being involved in some capacity. Maybe the spirit of Barbaro and/or Isaiah Thomas's career? Let's find out together!

Passing the 1,000-yard rushing mark in his career, Travorus Bess might just be showing Eastern Illinois fans he can be the feature running back.

Oh, a running back. How blase. How bland. How old media. How...actual. Frankly, I would have expected something far less relevant.

“I don’t think that was ever a question,” Bess said after running for 183 yards in Eastern’s 47-21 loss at Illinois Saturday. “For some reason, I’ve just seem to always be injured.”

If I may take a moment from pretending to be amazed the Journal Gazette of Mattoon doesn't precisely mimic Will Leitch's writing style, I really need to parse that quote. To whit...

1. If Mr. Bess is, as he puts it, always injured, isn't that precisely why there's a question whether he can be a featured back?

2. Get out your [sic]'s, people, because that second sentence is on the syntactical warpath. Even if I look past the split infinitive, which is something I choose to gladly do (META ALERT!!!), there's still the whole "I've just seem" bit, which can be simplified to "I have seem." Ooh boy. That tense construction ain't right.

3. I guess that's it really. I just really don't like bad grammar.

Just think when the Panthers have Florida transfer Chevon Walker to go with him in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, just think! Tell me more, Brian Nielsen!

Still, Eastern shows reasons for concerns.

And...that's the article. That was it. All four or five (depending on how you chop up the quote) sentences of it.

Yes...I think I can see why Leitch might have left. Although I do feel pretty proud of myself for getting through an entire column like that. I'm a regular reading rainbow, I am. Hmm...

See Brian Nielsen’s column in Monday’s JG/T-C.

Sir, you just gained yourself a reader!

52 52 52 Week #28: Indiana

2008-08-31T23:45:00.004-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Great. Just great. I finally get home after weeks and weeks of writing this post on the road, and I'm stuck with a cold or something. So here comes another quickie post. Sorry about that.

Continuing Iowa's Hawkeye Point's theme of unbelievably obviously named highpoints, Indiana is proud to present 1257-foot Hoosier Hill. Here are three things I can't imagine it would hurt for you to know:

1. It's on private property, but the owner put a trail

2. Geologically, it's in part of Indiana that's already unusually high, so it's only about thirty or so feet higher than the surrounding countryside.

3. There's concern that a nearby landfill might end up being taller than Hoosier Hill, making a garbage mound the highest point in Indiana. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Indiana, I don't know what will.

Look, I'm sick and I'm tired - not sick and tired, mind you, but still - and so I'm going to have to make this fast. And what better way to do it than to turn to Steve T. Gorches of The Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana for some hot local bowling commentary?

If you're a sanctioned league bowler, then the season-opening league meeting brings up so many quips and quandaries.

That is so like my life that I don't live. Aw shit, I'm slipping into pseudo-profound bullshit. I'm fading fast here, peeps.

My league's meeting was last week and I learned one thing in particular: expect the unexpected.

That's true for many aspects of life in general, but in bowling it's especially true in league meetings when debate is healthy and reasoning is skewed.

I just love that he says that's true of "many aspects of life in general," just that the truthiness of that statement goes quadruple for bowling league meetings. It's like our entire lives are just some pale reflection of the glory that is a bowling league meeting. Also, I bet the beer tastes better there.

Oh yes, reasoning can be quite skewed, and this deduction doesn't come just from one recent meeting.

Phew. For a moment there I thought he might be working with a non-robust sample size.

Last week's encounter just enhanced my opinion built from years and years of shaking my head in preseason meetings.

Let's talk handicap.

Wait, he realizes him writing his column isn't him addressing a league meeting, right? Right!?

With averages rising over the last 15 years, it's understandable that the old standard of 80 percent of 200 has gone by the wayside. But that doesn't mean we have to keep raising it through the roof at the same rate of averages.

Oh goodness, that's only the first paragraph. Of four. ABOUT FUCKING HANDICAPS. And believe me, this is some scholarly, borderline impenetrable shit.

Then he's got even more to say about how many games before averages kick in, which I didn't even realize was a concept, let alone an issue. Seriously, is this how he communicates with his league? Does his league require all proposed rule changes be first aired in a column in The Post-Tribune? Because I'm having trouble understanding this any other way.

Eh, what the hell. I'm tired. I'm sick. Let's just enjoy some vintage thoughts on bloggers.

52 52 52 Week #27: Iowa

2008-08-24T23:57:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Hey, gang! I'm super-excited to do this week's post, if only because I've rarely come across anything as inspiring as Iowa's 1670-foot Hawkeye Point...

1. It's north of Siblet, Iowa and really near the Minnesota border! Isn't that incredible?

2. It's near a silo! Like with grain or stuff, I guess! Assuming the silo is still in use!

3. According to Wikipedia, the best way to get there is, "Hike(?)"! That question mark spells mystery, gang! Come on, to the Mystery Machine!!!

OK, OK, Hawkeye Point is no great shakes. But The Iowa City Press-Citizen is happy to provide a compendium of awesomely meaningless quotes regarding everybody's favorite thing: University of Iowa field hockey. Your humble compiler is Ryan Suchomel. Let's do it, folks!

When thinking about national title contenders and the University of Iowa, most people think about singlets first, not skirts.

I had to look up what "singlet" meant. Turns out it's that skintight wrestling leotard thing. I count it as a rare point in favor of my masculinity that I had no idea what that was.

But the Iowa field hockey team has all but one starter back from last season when they went 17-4 and finished ranked fifth in the nation.

"We have a lot of dreams," senior Lauren Pfeiffer said.

Like, this one time, Melissa Helsel totally dreamed she forgot to study for an exam, and another time Caitlin McCurdy had that one dream where she was falling, and another time Amy Baxter dreamed Christian Bale had finally come to take her away, but first he had to fight a dragon with Jude Law's head for some reason. Needless to say, dragon with the head of Jude Law breathed smug Britishness. Fiery, fiery smug Britishness. Basically, this team is a Jungian wet dream, which in turn was a dream...eh, never mind.

"I do think we can be there at the end of the season," Iowa coach Tracey Griesbaum said. "They felt they made a mark last year, but they want to make it in permanent ink marker and not pencil."

What about one of those washable markers? I mean, as long as you don't, you know, wash it, you should be fine. Also, ballpoint? Would that work? Because I've got a shitload of spare Bics lying around somewhere.

In addition, senior Caroline Blaum was an all-Big Ten pick.

"I am really, really excited. Period. Flat out," Blaum said.

I always appreciated when people punctuate their sentences for you! Oh, um...EXCLAMATION POINT! It removes so much ambiguity, doesn't it? Rhetorical question mark?

"I think we have a great team. On paper, it doesn't take a field hockey professional to realize what we have."

Well, I'm not a field hockey professional, but I'd definitely say you have a field hockey team. Yeah, definitely.

And what do I have? Another completed blog post. Oh, OK, fine, have a YouTube clip on the house. Hell, I'll even make up for last week's Reagan-baiting. Or, at least, that's what I'll claim to Djmmm. Don't tell him of my subtle subterfuge!

Move over, Muppets and Michael Caine, you guys are about to get your Dickensian shit owned. Speaking of which, is there anything better than interviews with Muppets?

No, there isn't.

AMERICA: FUCK YEAH!

2008-08-24T21:18:00.004-04:00

So the between Michael Phelps pwning the world, the US finishing first in the overall medal count (never mind the gold tally; the ChiComms are cheating bastards and the IOC is in the tank for them), and, of course, the Redeem Team taking the gold, I'm feeling rather patriotic. How patriotic, you say?

THIS fuckin' patriotic:

Kobe Bryant told Chris Collinsworth in some interview "Our country is the best." I nodded with self-satisfaction when I heard this.

Hooray for America! Where else but here can a limey, a beaner, and a moose-fucking canuck come together to blog about shitty sports writers? Only in America, my friends. Only in America.

Jaw-Dropping

2008-08-19T00:55:00.005-04:00

Peter King and his editors show a shocking (even for them) lack of discretion:

So I see Gary Myers of the New York Daily News in the press box at the Meadowlands on Saturday night. He tells me the doctor about to give him a colonoscopy last year says to him, "Do you know Peter King?'' Myers says yes, and the doc proceeds to tell him what a kook I am for beginning the prep work for my bowel cleanout just before a two-hour-and-40-minute plane trip. You think that's the first time I've heard that one, doc?

You know what I think, Peter? I think fuck you.

******

Edit/Postscript: Peter's referencing this, an even bigger crime against his readership.

52 52 52 Week #26: Missouri

2008-08-17T23:45:00.003-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

So this is, I think, the fifth straight week I'm writing this damn post away from home. Sure, I'm no longer in Central America, and I've got my own computer back at last, but hey...there's a reason why I'm not posting all that much lately. I'm just sort of a globetrotter. And, by that, I mean I'm in Florida right now. It's almost the same thing. Well, it's not completely an utterly different thing. Let's move on.

Because I made an executive decision that I'm not nerdy enough, I just finished rereading The Hobbit and am about to embark on The Lord of the Rings books. If nothing else, it'll give me so much more subtext as I get lost in Viggo Mortensen's eyes. It also has made me find Missouri's highpoint, the 1772-foot Taum Sauk Mountain, rather appropriately named. Sure, it's not the Misty or Lonely Mountain(s), but Taum Sauk Mountain just screams Tolkien. Maybe. Look, I've spent the last two days in a car. Work with me here as I give you the Taum Sauk report...

1. Its topography "is that of a somewhat flat ridge rather than a peak." You know, sometimes I just know I'm working with an interesting one. And sometimes the first fact is about how its topography isn't really mountainous. But hold on...

2. "While not as impressive at 1,772 feet (540 m) as other peaks, Taum Sauk and the St. Francois range are true mountains, being the result of a volcanic orogeny." Volcanic orogeny? If that doesn't sound deliciously dirty, you've probably got moral fiber or something. Whatever you've got, I'm missing it.

3. Some of you (read: none of you) may have heard of the Taum Sauk Pumped Storage Plant, which failed in 2005 and caused a flash flood. Well, don't blame Taum Sauk Mountain, as the plant "is not actually on Taum Sauk Mountain. It is on Proffit Mountain, about five miles (8 km) southwest." I feel like there's a deliciously anti-corporate pun I can make out of "Proffit Mountain", but I can't quite get there.

I'm trying really hard to not try very hard tonight. I think my plan is working. To the article!

Our newspaper today is The Joplin Globe, which has to be a solid contender for worst Wikipedia page in existence. I was going to do a, well, better newspaper this week, but the awesome shittiness of the Wikipedia page won me over. And then when I thought even so I should probably find a proper sports section, this headline showed me I had been right all along...

If I had caught any fish this past week ...

There's an art to the building of suspense, to quote Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, and that headline just motherfucking built it. Larry Dabelmont, the floor is unimpeachably yours...

I don’t want to make anyone real awful mad here

You couldn't if you wanted to, old friend. You don't think he minds if I call him old friend, right? He just seems so lovably folksy and homespun!

but I can’t tell you the name of one politician running for anything that I would want to go fishing with.

I'm pretty sure that, if you diagram that sentence out, he's saying he wouldn't want to go fishing with, say, the office of the attorney general or somesuch. But hey, what's a little linguistic anarchy among such good, down-home-on-the-ol-fishin-hole friends? The missing "d" and "g" mean it's extra country-like!

The whole bunch of them seems a sorry lot to me.

Do you mean politically, or fishing-wise? Because I'm definitely on board with the latter, and quite possibly the former.

The ones who have won and the ones who didn’t win, I put them all in the same sack.

I'm pretty sure fish win by not getting put in your sack. Oh, wait, you're talking about politicians! What's that about them and your sack? I'm not sure I approve of such talk from a country gentleman...

But then, what do I know about politics? If I had caught any fish this past week I’d be writing about that.

Oh, so that was the resolution to the cliffhanger of what "if I had caught any fish this past week" would entail. That was...um...worth the wait. Yeah...totally. Oh, and while we're here, go see Tropic Thunder, please. It apparently needs all the help it can get, which is sort of a shame, because it's, you know, awesome. OK, OK, back to Larry.

I once shook Harry Truman’s hand, and I have to admit that I was impressed with him, even though I was only about six at the time.

Truman lived from 1884 to 1972 (I almost didn't have to look that up, though I was out by a decade on his year of birth), so that means Mr. Dabelmont could be anywhere from 42 to 130. Who wants to bet his age is closer to the latter than the former? (I'm suggesting he's OLD!!! Isn't that, like, hilarious? Come on, don't make me start randomly swearing in the name of fucking comedy.)

I also liked Ronald Reagan a lot. I can’t remember much about his presidency,

OK, what I'd like to make here is a joke mocking Ronald Reagan on the grounds that he was incompetent and openly slept through a shitload of his two terms. The joke I'd like to make is "That's OK. Neither did Reagan." Unfortunately for both him and the purposes of my joke, the illness that affected Mr. Reagan later in his life renders that joke a bit tasteless. Dammit reality, always cramping my comedy buzz.

Also, I'm fairly sure any Reagan-bashing might result in Djmmm hunting me down and killing me Ollie North style. Best just to move on.

But I really liked Ronald Reagan in those Western movies he made after he got out of politics.

That...that was awesome. That's the kind of so obviously dumb he's a genius - albeit a batshit crazy genius - sort of shit that just makes me fall in love with sports journalism all over again. I'm primed, Dabelmont, hit me again!

I have read some things about Teddy Roosevelt that makes me think he was a lot like me, since he liked to hunt and fish so much and float rivers, and did some outdoor writing. He and I looked very much alike too.

OK, that was more "3rd grader writing about his incarcerated father" than satirically folksy sports journalist, but I'm willing to try it again.

But of course my favorite president will always be Abe Lincoln, who had two things no president or even presidential candidate will ever have again. He was poor, and he was honest.

Andrew Johnson was actually poorer than Lincoln - I believe Johnson is the only president most historians consider to be "born poor" - and even Richard Nixon came from a relatively poor background. Admittedly, that last one doesn't really help on the honesty front. Um, how is this about sports again?

Earlier in my life I too was poor and honest, and as a matter of fact I am still relatively poor, and I am being honest about that.

You're starting to lose me, Dabelmont. Also, I'm having a real hard time keeping the consonants in your last name in the correct order. Any chance you could do something about that?

My favorite politician was Davy Crockett. He and I were so much alike that it is just amazing, except for the fact that he did get into politics, becoming a Tennessee congressman. My cousins and I watched him on Walt Disney when we were kids

OK, time for a vote. Who here is honestly uncertain Larry understands the Disney show he watched wasn't a documentary about Davy Crockett, but instead a highly fictionalized adventure show? Yeah, me neither.

Crockett was loved by his constituents, just as I am loved by my readers, except for a few ladies who got mad about that recent article concerning female bass.

You know what? There's no way I'm topping that. You win, Dabelmont. Be sure to savor your victory, which I can only assume involves doing unspeakable things to female bass.

Do not understand.

2008-08-11T16:28:00.003-04:00

Adam Dunn just got traded for a 23-year old pitcher with 28 K in 50 innings of A ball, and 2 PsTBNL. You may otherwise know Adam Dunn as the current bleeping league leader in HR. Dude has a 131 OPS+. Not only that, he's a free agent after this year, so if/when he takes his ball-crushing (in a good way?) bat elsewhere, Arizona will get draft picks. And apparently the Reds have agreed to help pay the remaining $4m he's owed this year.

W. T. F.

It's my understanding that the LA Dodgers could have made a claim and blocked him from getting to AZ (LA's lower in the standings). I suppose the worst that would have happened is that LA would have been stuck paying $4m for yet another outfielder. Admittedly, that seems sort of silly until you realize it's Adam damn Dunn, whose bat would go well in any line-up, and it would have stopped him from getting to the team they're chasing and THEY WOULD GET DRAFT PICKS OUTTA THE WHOLE DEAL at the end of the season.

Am I missing something?

52 52 52 Week #25: Michigan

2008-08-09T19:38:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Wow. Somehow, some way, I am halfway through this little experiment. No, I'm not sure either, particularly since the last few posts have been written using a combinationof Macs and Spanish-language keyboards, which are just different enough to slow me down something fierce (and why some of my previous posts have diacritics where apostrophes should be). But hey, I'm here, and I might as well keep it going a little longer. Especially when we've got Michigan on tap. 1979-foot Mount Arvon, what have you got tosay for yourself?

1. It only recently became the highpoint of Michigan. For the longest time, people thought nearby Mount Curwood was the tallest. But no, a resurvey in the early eighties discovered Mount Arvon was an entire foot taller. That may have been the most exciting thing that happened to that survey team. I'm not even kidding.

2. It's named after slate. Well, specifically the slate found in Carnarvon, Wales. Aren't you glad you now know that?

3. The land is owned by a paper company. Isn't that just hilariously mundane?

Good stuff. I don't know how many of my readers have tried to guess the sorts of ultra-sophisticated metrics I employ to determine which newspaper I'm going with, but I'll give you one huge hint: if your newspaper is the newspaper of record for the town of Bad Axe, Michigan, you're probably getting chosen. Seriously, Bad Axe? I just hope I live long enough to find a reason to move to a town with a name that awesome. Holy shit, man, just...holy shit. If only the newspaper was called The Bad Axe Blade, I'm pretty sure I could just go ahead and die a happy man. Oh well. The town's name is still plenty more than enough.

So yeah, The Huron Daily Tribune is your newspaper, Paul P. Adams is your writer, and EVERYTHING EVER IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER is your topic. Enjoy!

These are just a few of my thoughts on what has transpired at the state and national levels in sports during the past week.

Oh yeah. Let's do this shit.

...Michigan football officially hit the field with new coach Rich Rodriguez and all the baggage he brought with him from West Virginia.

Baggage aside, Rodriguez is a proven winner who has turned around every program he’s been at.

Care to give some context, some analysis of his previous work? If my Internet were any faster (seriously, it's balls molasses slow right now), I'd look it up myself, but I bet there are some interesting comparisons and contrasts one could come up with if you actually talked about his previous work. Nah, not going to do that? Well, OK...

The Wolverines aren’t in need of a complete overhaul, but they could use some tweaking — and that starts with the offense.

With Rodriguez calling the plays, Michigan fans will see something they’ve never seen before — a wide-open spread offense.

Couldn't I get this from, I don't know, a U of M media guide? Is there content here that I'm just missing? Has Central America driven me stir crazy? Sorry...I mean stir loco.

The transition may take a year or two as Rodriguez recruits the right players for his system.

That transition could lead to a less than stellar year for the Wolverines, who open the season ranked No. 24. They probably won’t contend for the Big Ten title, but should make a bowl game.

So almost exactly like last year, just with more realistic expectations going in? Seriously, preseason No. 5 my ass.

Also working against the team and Rodriguez is inexperience as only two starters return on offense and four on defense.

It’s going to take time, but when things begin to click, Michigan fans will be thankful for the hiring of Rich Rodriguez.

I feel like somebody held in total isolation in a cave somewhere could generate this level of bland platitude. That's right, people - this is Joe Morgan territory. Admittedly, Paul P. Adams isn't a national anything, so I should probably be less pissed. But then this happens...

He will return the program to national prominence, it just won’t happen this year.

That's bad grammar, people! That's like a run-on or some shit! And you know how I feel about people who use bad grammar? Well, I hired a surrogate to emote for me...

New topic!

...Mark it down, the Tigers are officially done!

Since trading Ivan Rodriguez for Kyle Farnsworth and his gas can, Detroit is just 1-6 and now sits 8 1/2 games in back of the White Sox in the division.

Man, I bet Kyle Farnsworth is totally to blame!

That’s not to say Farnsworth is totally to blame, but he hasn’t helped.

Yeah, but how much can he help, really? Dude's a relief pitcher. Those guys rank barely above the equipment manager in terms of impact. Well, mostly.

He debuted on Saturday and worked a scoreless inning, but on Sunday, in a pressure situation, he melted down, giving up three runs in a game the Tigers should have won.

So he pitched really well once and really poorly another time? Why, he sounds like...an average relief pitcher. He's not swinging anybody's playoff hopes. Neither was an over-the-hill catcher like Pudge, of course.

A colleague of mine told me on Friday the Tigers were going to get swept by the Rays in a weekend series.

Come Monday, he was right, and with it all hope of making the playoffs might have vanished.

Your colleague accurately predicted one of the three best teams in baseball would beat a below-average team three times in a row? Is your colleague *HUSHED TONES* Nostradamus?

The team answered back by blowing a big lead in the opening game of a critical contest with the White Sox on Tuesday.

Jim Leyland has been threatening to shake things up, but it’s too little, too late.

The Tigers will make a mini-run here and there, but they’re just not good enough to track down the Twins or White Sox.

Yes. That is in all probability accurate.

The rest is more on Brett Favre, which I'll spare you out of kindness, an obit for Skip Caray that I'll leave alone, and a bit on the Panthers suspending Steve Smith that features this as a complete fucking paragraph:

Smith actually busting Lucas’ nose.

That...I just don't have any words for that.

This is always fun.

2008-08-06T16:30:00.003-04:00

I'm somewhat wary of doing this because there's a decent chance I'm totally wrong, but I don't think Stewart Mandel (or, presumably, his editor at SI.com) knows what "nevertheless" means.
Exhibit A:

That's a whole lot of coaching changes for one offseason, nevertheless ones that
dramatically changed the fortunes of so many programs for the better.

Exhibit B:

Prior to your e-mail, I was not aware of any ill will I felt toward the Badgers
(or badgers, for that matter), nevertheless a hatred that apparently shows up
"year after year."

I think he meant "let alone" in the first one, and "never mind" in the second one. Isn't blogging fun? I am at work.

All Favre, All the Time

2008-08-06T11:05:00.002-04:00

I know I'm kind of infringing on Passive Voice's beat here, but I read something in Peter King's little column about Favre that kind of made me wonder...

At one point, I text-messaged Favre, telling him what I thought -- the team would rather pay him his 2008 salary and not have him play rather than cut him loose.

This text message came back from Favre's phone: "tell ted to release me."

This kind of begs the question, what kind of relationship does Favre really have with PK that the former feels comfortable basically using the latter as a kind of intermediary between himself and his own boss? Is it just me or is this kind of inappropriate?

Oh and please feel free to insert your own Peter King-Brett Favre homo-joke in the comments.

Eh.

2008-08-04T23:01:00.005-04:00

Peter King at Packers' camp:

The Packers jog out to practice. They stretch. They belch and guffaw and prepare. They do drills. They throw and catch and run. And never is heard a discouraging word.

Is that...? Really? Home on the Range? Okay.

I start to think three things:
1. How well-behaved and wonderfully Green-Bayish they are.

2. What sheep they are.

Pretty much the same thing, no?

3. How they wish they could just get on with their football lives and forget the nightmare of the Favre thing and just get on, distraction-free, with the most important thing in their lives -- a new Packer season.

You're allowed to edit your thoughts and stuff, you know.

Even though many of these fans do not like GM Ted Thompson, this is not Philly or Foxboro, where the fans would hang Thompson in effigy. Or worse.

I'm a "fan" of the Patriots, I guess. (I lost interest in them last year, though. I dunno. I think I was mad that they let David Harris get to the Jets or something, and that was that.) Most of my Boston relatives are too. Anyway, the point is this: are Pats fans particularly intense? My impression was that, in all matters non-Red-Sox, New England fans are kinda blah. I know my relatives could name Brady, Welker, Belichick and maybe one or two of the black players. If the Patriots started sucking again, they'd probably just lose interest and go back to whatever they did before 2001.

Conversely, I thought Pack fans were the most intense, fanatical maniacs west of Pittsburgh. I don't get it. Also, it's just a suspicion, but I'm not 100% convinced Peter knows what "in effigy" means. It's not wrong here, it's just...well, suspicious.

Lastly, this week's travel note was about some Hertz workers not knowing Baltimore was in Maryland. Peter?

I weep for our geographical future.

Peter King adds fuel to the flamers. Flames. Fuel to the fire. Peter King is gay.

2008-08-04T15:43:00.003-04:00

If there's anything else worth pointing out in today's MMQB, I'll get to it later. For now, it's a holiday here (Happy BC Day!) and I'm going to go pretend I know how to golf. But first, Peter King finishes an interview with Tony Romo with:

Time for the nightly quarterback meeting. He left me a good deal to chew on.

I spent all morning reading Arrested Development quotes, so maybe this seems funnier to me than to anyone else. But still. "...there's so many poorly chosen words in that sentence."

52 52 52 Week #24: Wisconsin

2008-08-03T19:44:00.004-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

I find myself in a Central American internet cafe, using a weird computer with half the keys in the wrong position. Yeah...this post is going to be fun.

This week we’ve got Wisconsin and its 1951-foot tall highpoint, Timms Hill. You know, I’ve gone skiing in Wisconsin. It’s fucking depressing that I didn’t even go as high as Timms fucking Hill. Oh well, know these three things and be merry...

1. It’s got a lookout tower.

2. It’s less than a mile from Highway 86. No, seriously, that’s how fine I’ve got to cut these facts up to get to three. Timms Hill is not interesting. At all.

3. Wait, here’s something interesting: "Originally, Rib Mountain was thought to be the highest point in Wisconsin. However, this was later proved to be incorrect." But however did they manage that? The suspense (or possibly the boredom) is killing me! "While Timms Hill has the highest elevation in the state, Rib Mountain has the largest height differential from the surrounding landscape." Nope, sorry, the fork’s already in my eye.

I thought I might try something a little different by, for the first time in 52 52 52’s surprisingly long-ish history, revisiting an old friend. That’s right, it’s Jeff Sherman from On Milwaukee, who we met way back in this post. So all his diehard fans who keep emailing me for his return can finally shut up. I never thought it’d happen. Anyway, Jeff, your topic is something or other. Take it away.

The latest in Milwaukee's ever-changing restaurant news is that Yanni's Steaks, Chops and Seafood, 540 E. Mason St., has closed, though this rumor has been floated constantly since I wrote about it last September.

Huh...that’s an...odd...thing for a sportswriter to discuss. Although good job on the background research. I like it.

The rumor appears true this time, as numerous calls have not been returned and today the voicemail at the Downtown dining destination is full.

But how can you know for sure? Shouldn’t somebody go there and, like, peek in the windows or something?

Peeks into the windows of the once highly rated restaurant both last night and this morning make it, indeed, appear closed.

Jeff Sherman is officially owning my ass. I am surprisingly OK with this. Still, where’s the sports?

Several area workers and business owners also have said it's closed. The Web design company that Yanni's used couldn't confirm the closing, but Yannismilwaukee.com remains live although its opentable link is down.

I think we all remember that nugget of restauranteur wisdom: "As goes your opentable link, so goes your restaurant." And, with it, the nation. Or so I’ve heard.

That's not official word, but don't bank on Yanni's for lunch or dinner since the doors are locked and voice mail is unattended.

You know, I’ve never even heard of this place until right this second, but I’m still weeping a little bit. Or maybe that’s because it’s been three fucking weeks and I still haven’t seen The Dark Knight. Oh, the pain!

Just this week, most locations of the national restaurant chains of Bennigan's and Steak & Ale abruptly closed and filed for bankruptcy. It's rumored (again, there are always rumors) that a few other Milwaukee area restaurants plan to close their doors in the coming weeks.

I never thought I’d ever say this, but...Wisconsinites need to start eating more. How else will we preserve all those good Bennigan’s franchises?

Got news or buzz about the Milwaukee area dining scene? Use the OnMilwaukee.com Talkbacks.

You know, I get the sense that maybe this dude doesn’t write about sports. Maybe, and this is just a theory, his primary focus is the Milwaukee dining scene and he, you know, just happened to one time write about something sports-related.

Still, aren’t you just glad I managed an entire Wisconsin-sports-related post and didn’t once mention Brett fucking Favre? You’re welcome.

I guess that's one way to put it

2008-07-31T20:06:00.005-04:00

Terry Ryan's talking 'bout being a GM at the trade deadline. Terry Ryan gets to talking about different management styles. Terry Ryan mentions Steve Phillips. Someone call an ambulance for Terry Ryan, because I think he just had a stroke:

Steve was one guy who was always very aggressive. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he was willing to give up -- he was very good.

Fuckin' ESPN...

2008-07-30T20:42:00.004-04:00

In the midst of dealing with a hard-on the size of a house at the possibility of Manny Ramirez coming to Miami to play for the Marlins, I noticed something fishy about The World Wide Leader's reporting on the story. Early in the afternoon, the only place this rumor/story(?) was being reported was at Baseball Prospectus and, later, Sports Illustrated. Now I know we're generally pretty hard on SI in general and Jon Heyman in particular, (and by "we" I basically mean Passive Voice) but to their credit SI/Heyman had the professionalism and decency to mention BP's breaking of the story.

Jon Heyman, you are frequently a dumbass and/or unfunny, but today you're a righteous dude.

You do see where this is going, don't you?

ESPN reported the story on their website (or at least "updated" it, whatever that means) at 8:47 PM. They cited "sources" that told "Buster Olney." No mention of SI. No mention of BP. Nothing.

On behalf of BP, and I think, most of the blogosphere-- Fuck you, ESPN, you unprofessional bunch of cunts.

The fuck, Deadspin?

2008-07-28T20:17:00.005-04:00

Journalism commentary, non-SI.com Dpt:

This was originally going to be about JP Ricciardi and his weird anti-Adam-Dunn, keep-AJ-Burnett-despite-being-all-but-done-playoff-wise rhetoric, but then I realized I didn't know what else I was going to say. I just thought he should have blown that whole team up before this season. Whatever.

Anyway, the topic I settled on for this post is: What the hell happened to the Deadspin commentariat? Take this quote from commenter mfdoom on the dick-to-the-face-nike-ads post:

they get like 5 comments in before the fags bring the heat. shit, they just need to go back to their gaybies and quit taking themselves so seriously.

I know this is pot-kettle-black territory, coming from a guy who spends an inordinate amount of time drearily parsing Peter King's manchildish ramblings, but where's the funny? And it's not so much that it turned out unfunny as that it had absolutely no chance of ever being the tiniest bit funny at all. It's just an guy saying a thing. Which (ahem, again with the kitchenware) I realize is part of the democratic, or whatever, appeal of the blogosphere. It's just that the space below Deadspin posts, not long ago, was a place where merit prevailed. Now...the comments really aren't worth reading. I can (and do) get all the stupid I want at SI.com or any other MSM site. At least I'm on the lookout for it there.

52 52 52 Week #23: Ohio

2008-07-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Well, I'm still in Central America, my computer died (I mean completely and utterly) earlier this week, and we didn't have running water for most of this week. On the plus side, I got to wield an honest-to-goodness machete. That more than makes up for it.

So, with my computer dead and gone, comes the first ever 52 52 52 written on a Mac. I have no idea whether or not it'll be the last, but if you detect slightly more self-loathing in this post than usual (hard to notice, I admit), that'd be why.

But first, something awesome...

Ah, holy shit. Do I really have to do the rest of the post? I mean, it's only Ohio, right? And unless Matt Sussman still reads (and I think it's pretty clear that he does by all the comments he doesn't leave), I'm somehow doubting anyone will care. Seriously, what's Ohio got? A couple halls of fame and a kickass amusement park? Actually, that reminds me...

Oh yeah, I've ridden that bad boy. I've also wielded a machete. All from the safety and security of my mother's basement, of course.

In any event, Ohio makes the list this week thanks to its 1550-feet high Campbell Hill. Three things potentially worth knowing...

1. It was "the former home of the Bellefontaine Air Force Station, where the 664th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron maintained a Cold War early warning radar." Hey, as long as it helped beat the commies, I'm on board with whatever.

2. Apparently the hard rock of Campbell Hill helped it resist the glaciers during the ice age. Must have been commie glaciers.

3. The land used to be owned by the brewer of Augustiner and Gambrinus beers. I don't have much to add here, but those are some fucking awesome brand names.

Speaking of fucking awesome (this post is just full of the stuff, even if I'm just compiling it for you nice people), this week's newspaper is The Toledo Blade. You might remember I tried to do an article from The Washington Blade, but sadly the gay newspaper of record for our nation's capital had no sports section. The Toledo Blade, however, is not only awesomely named after the swordsmithing industry of Toledo, Spain, but it also has a sports section. And that's more than enough for me to do a quickie article and throw in some clips from the Blade movies. You're welcome.

Today's article has the headline, "Bucks expect expectations." A headline that asinine just has to be worth making fun of. Matt Markey?

The specter is everywhere.

And thus a pulpy fifties detective novel began.

You are reminded of it by the girl from Circleville who sits behind you in sociology class, then by the guy in the produce aisle at Krogers, and again at the family reunion, and when you meet with a couple former players who stopped by campus to visit.

Booooring. Time for a Blade clip.

I'd like to see the girl from Circleville remind you of that.

And even here, surrounded by the swirl of humanity in the heart of downtown in the Windy City, just beyond the shadow of the Sears Tower and a short walk from Navy Pier or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, you can't elude the aura of Ohio State football.

And to think I used to like Chicago...

Sorry! U of M fandom rearing its head here a bit. I'll try harder.

"It is all around you, and it is everywhere," Buckeyes linebacker James Laurinaitis said yesterday morning as the Big Ten wrapped up its two days of preseason meetings that signal the informal start of the 2008 college football season.

"It is all around you, and it is everywhere"? That may be the most profound-sounding-and-yet-utterly-not-profound thing I've ever heard. And I've heard Martin Heidegger.

Philosophy BURN!!!

"Ohio State football has such a position of prominence in the minds of so many people. But with all of that history and tradition come the constant expectations, and you quickly learn to accept it and really embrace it. You gotta love a place where every year, you are expected to be great."

Its position of prominence? Woefully underrated team that gets blown out when it actually counts. (Admittedly, Michigan loses when it doesn't count, so I maybe shouldn't talk).

Let's cleanse the palate with some more Blade...

That scene (and any other Blade scene with Donal Logue) is so much more funnier if you've seen (or just barely remember) early 00's Fox sitcom Grounded for Life. That might actually be the only contribution Grounded for Life made to the world of humor. Not an utterly terrible show, actually, as far as sitcoms go, but still...

Boeckman, a fifth-year senior who played behind Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith for two seasons before assuming the starting role for 2007, was first-team All-Big Ten last year, when he threw for 2,379 yards and 35 touchdowns. Boeckman said he won't ignore the Buckeyes being ranked in the top five nationally in all the preseason magazines, and Ohio State being the overwhelming choice of the media to win the Big Ten.

I guess it's sort of refreshing that a player admits he is actually aware of his team's gaudy rankings. I'm not sure; I'm kind of blinded by rage here. That and all the blood from that last clip. Damn messy vampires!

"When things get hyped up, you can't let yourself get distracted by that kind of thing, but you also can't deny it exists," he said. "I think the best approach is for us to just make sure we are ready to face what comes with all of those expectations. At Ohio State, we feel like we always get everyone's best game, and that should definitely be the case again this season."

Yes...the best games of soft, outmatched teams that are scheduled merely to rack up rings. I mean, I'm no "SEC is the best and should always be champs" guy, but seriously. Northern Indiana's best game is still a pretty shitty game.

Jenkins has twice been named first-team All-Big Ten, and was a second team All-American last year when he helped Ohio State lead the nation in pass defense. He said the Buckeyes, who have played in the last two national championship games, have the depth and talent to challenge for another conference crown and make a case for returning to a third title game. Jenkins said the expectations of the fans and the media won't be higher than those the team will set for itself.

I'm pretty sure OSU fans expect the team to fix the economy, cure most known diseases, and land a man on the Sun by 2025. I dunno...they're expectations still might be a little bigger.

"We do have a lot of guys back - a lot of very good players - and on paper this could be a championship team," he said. "We have that potential, but until you turn potential into product, it doesn't mean anything."

I'm guessing the words "potential" and "product" were the two words he took away from the one econ class he went to last year before he was told a special assistant would take care of it. Man, I'm an ass. Feels good though.

You know what even OSU and U of M fans (not to mention all you nice normal people out there) can agree on? Blade. Just...Blade.

Tressel, who starts an eighth season as coach at Ohio State, said he was comfortable that the leadership on his team would handle any issues with keeping the hype and expectations in perspective.

"The Buckeye Nation is out there and we see it everywhere we go. Our fans are very loyal and very passionate, and they don't make it a secret that they want us to succeed," Tressel said. "Our players know that and they understand that. It goes with the territory, and I'm comfortable they won't let it affect their preparation or performance."

You know, OSU fans and players are so unique and interesting. Oregon fans only secretly want their team to win, and Boston College routinely shits itself because they're terrified of upsetting the fans (OK...that might be kinda true).

Laurinaitis, who was chosen as the Big Ten's preseason defensive player of the year for the second straight year, said the sense of obligation to honor the winning heritage at Ohio State is likely on his mind more than any stress over living up to what appears in polls or what fans expect of the team.

"There's a saying we have at Ohio State that says 'with tradition comes responsibility,' and we've got great tradition at Ohio State, so we've got a responsibility to keep it up," Laurinaitis said. "That's something I think about every day."

"With tradition comes responsibility"? That's what happens when you take a cliched Spider-Man quote and up the suck. It sucks, that's what.

Eh, let's just watch Blade fight Dracula.

Man, I wish I could fight Dracula. I'd even bring my machete! Speaking of which...

You're all fucking welcome. Make checks in appreciation payable to the Archie Micklewhite Foundation. It's money...for me.

52 52 52 Week #22: New Jersey

2008-07-20T23:42:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

You know what's delicious? Irony, that's what. As I may or may not have let slip over the course of my writings here, I happen to hail from the ~~great~~ state of New Jersey. This week's post should have been my magnum opus, a self-indulgent celebration of myself and the state I happen to reside in. It would have been grand. It would have been opulent. It would have been unreadable. I mean like James Joyce unreadable. Late period Joyce.

But, as it happens, I'm in central America, I'm actually doing shit during the day (there aren't even basements here, my mother's or otherwise), and the internet is spotty. Hence this post will be an utter cop-out. I mean utter. Oh, and I'm also probably suspending the other two weekly features until I get back. I don't have the material for Comics & Sports, and I don't really have time to develop ideas well enough for the Column Thingy. Hopefully Passive and Djmmm will be able to step up.

So yeah, let's get this shit-show on the road. New Jersey's highpoint is, well, High Point, a 1,803 foot highpoint that's, you know, high and shit. Here are your requisite three facts:

1. It's the highest peak in the Kittatinny mountains. I live in the fucking state and I've never heard of this particular range. It clearly needs a better publicist.

2. It's a state park with a 200-foot monument at the summit that memorializes those killed in war. Which is very, very laudable. Of course, since this is Jersey...

3. ...the governor wants to shut the park down. Always knew that guy was a commie.

Our article this week comes from The Star Ledger. It's a fun little paper, I guess, and I've proudly never read it. Since this is New Jersey, there's only one thing it could be about - the Yankees, and the fucking awesomeness thereof. Or, in this case, Kyle Farnsworth. Dan Graziano has the floor.

NEW YORK -- They didn't boo Kyle Farnsworth at Joyce Kilmer Elementary School. Second-graders generally aren't the booing kind, and anyway Farnsworth wasn't there to pitch.

Not there to pitch? Ba-ZING!

This was back on May 21, when Farnsworth couldn't so much as warm up in the Yankee Stadium bullpen without getting booed. So the trip out to Mahwah to talk to the kids about a couple of his favorite topics was a pleasant respite.

May 21st? Even I wouldn't touch something that old. Well, other than that one time I did. But that was to do with Michael Tunison! Sweet, beautiful, resplendent Michael Tunison.

"Kids that age are little sponges," Farnsworth said. "They take in everything they can."

Other ways in which kids are like sponges...

1. They're both eukaryotes.
2. You can use both to clean yourself. Although only one doesn't usually involve a visit by the authorities.
3. They're also called "poriferans."

Farnsworth wasn't there to talk about the Yankees, or about life as a big-league relief pitcher. Sure, some of that came up, but his real purpose for being there was to educate the youngsters on fitness and nutrition.

I'd like to think the questions the second graders did ask about the Yankees were of the following variety...

"Hey, Farnsworth? Fuck you!"

OK...that's only kinda a question. But hey, it's Jersey.

"This is something I care about," Farnsworth said. "So I can tell them a little bit of what I know. Fitness, working out, but also nutrition. That's the most important thing. You can work out all you want, but if you eat bad food, it's not going to do you any good."

Oh...so that's what I've been doing wrong. Also, I don't work out.

Who'd have thought it? Kyle Farnsworth -- man with a message. And a worthy one at that. It may not be enough to make the guy a fan favorite, but it's at least something to think about the next time you boo him.

Kyle Farnsworth thinks fitness is good. This alone should earn him your veneration. After all, A-Rod spends weekends force-feeding chocolate sundaes to already full children.

In three years as a Yankee, Farnsworth has built a poor reputation with the fans. He's seen as a weak link -- a blower of late-inning leads, an unreliable performer whose balky back occasionally renders him useless when they need him most.

But...because he was once a Cub plus some other random reason, my brother fucking loves Kyle Farnsworth. Like he's probably reading this post right now without pants on.

But slowly, as this year has progressed, Farnsworth has begun to rehabilitate himself. He has taken over the eighth-inning setup role, flourishing as the man in front of Mariano Rivera since Joba Chamberlain moved to the starting rotation. He received a huge vote of confidence from his new manager, who also happens to be one of his former catchers, and he has so far justified it.

Let's assume I just made a really juvenile gay joke. You know, because the word "catcher" was used. Goodness, I'm mailing this shit in big time.

Farnsworth acknowledges having had a tough time his first couple of years in New York, but he says the fans' booing isn't anything that's bothered him.

"Nothing I can do about it," he said. "The important thing is that I never lost confidence in myself and what I can do."

That may be the most cliched thing I've ever heard. I'm just saying is all.

Farnsworth is as fit as any player in the major leagues. He works out five days a week in the offseason, a little less during the season. His typical lunch is grilled chicken and rice. His typical breakfast is eggs and/or oatmeal. He'll mix in a steak here and there for dinner, or a baked sweet potato. He'll even have a cheeseburger every now and then. He has no sweet tooth, so he's able to lay off the desserts -- you're far more likely to find him sipping on a protein shake than dipping into the clubhouse's ice cream freezer -- but most of his nutrition program is sensible.

So, he talks to second graders, and "most of his nutrition program is sensible"? Wow, this was really worth writing a column about, wasn't it?

I feel pretty much the same way about this post. Let me make it up to you with a YouTube clip that is guaranteed to cause infinite happiness...

Come on...wasn't that awesome?

Rick Reilly sucks balls at Sportswriting AND Poetry

2008-07-20T09:05:00.005-04:00

True Story: A number of years ago, while at WPCR (Pretentious College Radio) at Ivy League U, I interviewed a member of the 1972 Miami Dolphins (not Mercury Morris). We talked a bit about that season, and at one point the player mentioned that every year they celebrate their accomplishment when the last undefeated team loses. This was long before the Patriots made their run, but every year, some sportswriter someplace would write a column about how the '72 Dolphins are grumpy old men who need to shut the fuck up and go away. Rick Reilly had relatively recently written one such column.

"Well," I asked, "what do you say to someone like Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated who writes that the '72 Dolphins are basically grumpy old men reveling in the short coming of current players?"

"Rick Reilly is a horse's ass."

Truer words were never spoken.

This is all a lead-in to this poem that Reilly "wrote"(?) for ESPN. Seriously, don't click that link. I'm about to break it down for you, and the poem is awful enough without seeing Reilly's douchey face with his douchey voice reading it to you. Here it is, shitty couplet after shitty couplet:

I love the Open from its A's to its Z's
But Most of all, I love it for thee

Seriously? Rhyming "A's to it's Z's" with "thee"? This is sign number one that this will be bad. Also "zed" and "thee" don't even remotely rhyme...

Bangers, Pasties and good stout beer

Roughs so high you can lose Mike Weir

Mike Weir is the ranked 35th in the world. He has not won a major since 2003 and he hasn't won anything at all since October 2007. I tell you this because I asked myself, since when is Mike Weir at all relevant. Then I realized his name happens to rhyme with beer. Silly me.

Wee winding burns and half grown flag sticks

Teeing off and it's only half past six!

I have no idea what the first half of this couplet means. Archie, you Limey bastard you, does this make ANY sense? And yay, they tee off... early... in the morning? Yay?

Funny lies and your still on the tee

Oceans you smell but never see

... I'm seriously starting to lose my motivation guys.

Holes that seem like they're more than a mile

Fairways so narrow you walk single file

Worth noting that that second line was accompanied by a golfer and his caddy walking shoulder to shoulder down a fairway.

Fish and chips and biscuits and tea

Heather and gorse and greens like high seas,

What does that bit about the greens even mean? The greens are wet? The Kraaken lives in the 17th hole at the Royal Birkdale Golf Club? Tiger Woods is Davy Jones? Is this all a lead in to a Monkees embed? Yep!

Okay that's enough fake Beatles for today...

Blokes and chaps and "good shot laddy!"

Drives hit lower than a '56 Caddy

Okay, this is just starting to not make sense at all. Was the '56 Cadillac particularly low? Did Rick mean a "5'6" caddy?" I guess that'd be a pretty low drive but don't we usually describe such people as "short" rather than "low"? And if the reference is to the car, then fuck you, Rick Reilly, for making such an indecipherable reference to a car manufactured 52 years ago.

Rain and cold and gusts that stagger

And Bunkers with lips as big as Mick Jagger's

...

Fuck this, man. I'm going with the Stones embed here.

Holy shit, I didn't even recognize Keith Richards.

Huge chilly crowds with red rosy mugs

Millionaires lusting for one little jug,

I'm out of energy, man...

And the only way to make them all skittish

Is simply to call their Open the British.

Oh ho ho! I see what you did their Rick Reilly! Everyone else refers to it as the British and they just call it the Open! Ha! No not really all that funny. In fact, it's not funny at all. If there's one thing this world needs less of it's bad poetry. Well, I suppose we could do with less religious intolerance and violence, war, disease, famine, shitty themed restaurants, and child-molesting clergy, but bad poetry ain't too far behind.

ESPN, THIS is what you're paying $2 million a year for? Jesus Christ, this is worse than that time you gave Stephen A. Smith his own show... oh man... ANOTHER embed to close? YAY!

Comics & Sports #4: A 52ian Interlude

2008-07-17T00:23:00.001-04:00

As all geeks (looking at you, anyone who realizes the phrase "Neon Genesis Evangelion" isn't just a random assortment of nonsense words) know, every Wednesday (or, in this case, Thursday because I'm still in Central America and my computer actually died on me for like six hours before staging a comeback worthy of Lazarus himself) is that most hallowed of days, new comic book day. In the spirit of that most beautiful of days, I present a feature spotlighting the potentially awesome confluence of sports and comics.

For a whole bunch of reasons (at least two of which were mentioned in the standard intro), this week's post will be a bit abbreviated. To be honest, I'm not sure whether I can guarantee three weekly posts in my present state, but I'll do my very best. Whatever happens, I'll keep you posted.

We're going to take a break from the psychotic fun that is Centaur Comics (we've got at least one absolute doozy in reserve, so it'll definitely be worth the wait) and instead take a look at one of the most obscure corners of the DC universe. And when I say "obscure", I am not even remotely kidding.

A couple years back, DC had a weekly series called 52. It was a series featuring on lesser-known characters told in a real-time during a year without, for various reasons, most of the big guns of the DC universe. It was, all things considered, fucking awesome (although the less said about its technical follow-up Countdown, the better), and it also later served as the namesake for my other weekly feature, which most scholars agree is still its most lasting contribution.

As part of the construction of this larger universe, DC created a tie-in website that was supposedly the online Daily Planet (Clark and Lois's newspaper, for the uninitiated), complete with articles that, to varying degrees, directly described events that could be found in the comics themselves. I say "to varying degrees" because among the vast majority of articles that clearly describe events in the 52 comic there were, for some unfathomable reason, a couple of utterly horrendous fake sports articles. This is one of them.

Bring on The Thunder!

by Ajax McGilicutty, Daily Planet Contributing Sports Reporter

Before we begin, I'd just like to acknowledge that some might consider this week's entry something of a cop-out, an unacceptable deviation from the established format. Well, at the risk of being overly defensive, I would like to defend myself. The most obvious way to do that is to point out someone was, in all probability, paid to write a fake sports article to tie in with a weekly comic book series that had absolutely nothing to do with sports, especially not the story in question. And, as the ultimate "fuck you" to struggling bloggers everywhere, this probably-monetarily-compensated fellow named his fictional sportswriter "Ajax McGilicutty." The inanity of that is almost beyond comprehension. Needless to say, I fucking love it, but I feel my point has been made. I did originally intend to make a point, right?

Fawcett City, May 3 — As a former semi-pro ball player and full-time sports commentator for both the Daily Planet and WHIZ Syndicated Sports Radio I think it's safe to say that I know good basketball when I see it.

Might as well prove my geek stripes and walk you through the comic references as we see them...

1. Fawcett City is the hometown of Captain Marvel; you know, the one who's really a 10-year-old (or thereabouts) boy who turns into Captain Marvel by shouting "Shazam!" It's worth pointing out that "Shazam!" is perhaps the single most hilarious thing somebody could yell during a moment of *AHEM* ultimate passion (although certain Klingon proverbs run a close second). Of course, anybody amused by that is unlikely to find themselves engaged in coitus anytime soon.

2. The Daily Planet is, as previously mentioned, the employer of Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White. I'm fairly sure it's currently owned by Bruce Wayne, although this doesn't come up particularly often. I think it's more of an all-purpose excuse trotted out to explain why Lex Luthor (or, much worse, Rupert Murdoch) never bought the damn thing. Incidentally, while we're on the subject of the Planet, it might be worth wondering why the article's "author" isn't just its resident sportswriter in the comics, seventies meathead Steve Lombard, which would make a hell of a lot more sense that the unbelievably silly moniker that is "Ajax McGilicutty." Maybe they didn't have the rights to use Steve Lombard? Of course, if a random, little-read part of DC's website couldn't use one of its own company's ultra-obscure, little-used bit characters for something as passing as a damn byline...well, I might just weep a little. Also, this article references the Grizzlies later on, which would put them just below Steve fucking Lombard in terms of ease of legal use. Actually, that might make sense.

3. WHIZ Radio is the employer of Billy Batson in a number of incarnations of the character, going right back to his 1940's appearances in Fawcett Comics. Speaking of which, I probably should have mentioned Fawcett City takes its names from the original publisher of Captain Marvel, before the forerunner of DC drove them out of business on the (somewhat dubious) grounds Captain Marvel was a ripoff of Superman.

Anyway, back to sports. What incredibly point does Ajax McGilicutty have to make about basketball?

It's with those qualifiers, not that I'm a long time Fawcett City native, that I say that the Fawcett City Thunder are bringing the noise and look tough to beat in this year's basketball finals.

Holy shit. This is perhaps the most perfect distillation of bad sportswriting I've ever seen. Everything is in place...

1. The utterly spurious, unsubstantiated support ("I know good basketball when I see it")
2. The unbelievably blatant homerism ("not that I'm a long time Fawcett City native...")
3. The lame slang that may - may - have been vaguely cool in the early nineties ("bringing the noise")
4. The vague, Joe-Morgan-esque description of their qualities ("look tough to beat")

The best part is I can't even be sure what this article wants to be. Is it knowing parody written by some bored FJM fan? Is it a sincere imitation written by some bored intern who desperately wants to pitch his Vigilante revival to Geoff Johns but hasn't yet worked out how to approach Johns during lunch in a way that shows him he's cool? I have no idea, and that's what makes this so precious. It's like finding an original copy of the Declaration of Independence at a garage sale, but then discovering a DVD of National Treasure is taped to the back, complete with possibly stoned Nicolas Cage commentary.

With that all said, let's press on.

Solomon Williams' seemingly unstoppable defense has been solid all season and looks to be just as impenetrable in the post-season, with a whopping ten steals in last week's game alone.

Is defense really "unstoppable"? Sure, it's definitely impenetrable, no doubt about that, but unstoppable? I mean, if we're talking immovable object and irresistible force here, defense is obviously the immovable object. C'mon, Ajax McGilicutty, get your head in the game!

Oh, and ten steals would tie this Solomon Williams with eleven other people for second-most all-time, behind only Kendall Gill's eleven back in 1999. So "whopping" might almost be underplaying it.

Coupled with the aptly named Johnny Hooper's offensive leadership and the Thunder look flawless.

Not a sentence. That was so self-referential my mind now actually hurts a little bit. Oh, and who wants to bet the article's ghostwriter decided he had "nailed it" when he called the team's best scorer "Johnny Hooper"? That thought is simultaneously hilarious and strangely moving, like an Onion article that makes you slowly realize most people's lives really are that tragically mundane.

It's no surprise that they've already clinched their position in the next round with a 4-0 sweep over the Memphis Grizzlies.

It's nice to know that, even in the fictional DC Universe where they're the only real NBA team name-checked, the Grizzlies are still a perfectly acceptable punching bag. Some things really should be constant in all universes.

Sure you could argue that it's early in the post and you can't rule out the traditional powerhouses like the Gotham Guardsmen, or the rising newcomers like the Opal City Gems, but if you ask this reporter's opinion, something magical is happening in Fawcett City this year. Go Thunder!

And that's the end of the fake article. Weird use of "post" instead of "postseason", a couple vague allusions to two other teams that makes a mockery of the very definition of "analysis", and then a moment of total cheerleading in an article that claimed the author's opinions were based on rational analysis. Like I said, this is the perfect imitation of bad sportswriting I've ever seen.

And I still like it better than a Plaschke article. But then, you knew that joke was coming.

Hot steaming feature.

2008-07-16T21:27:00.004-04:00

This week in SI.com Truth and Rumors message board commentary: Brett Favre.

"He's had a great career but it's all about Brent. He just doesn't know when to let go."
"Hear we go again, week 2, same ish!"
"i used to like and respect favre. he just needs a little bit of STFU and sit down now."
"Since Bret "will always be a Packer", he should accept the "different role" of player-coach..."
"Maybe he should go back to ATL finish where he really started or not."

And my favourite (of the first 80 or so comments. There are 650.):

"Where are some of your heads? You call yourself Fans! This is the Packers head brass fault! Yeah, Brett retired regretting it! But, that doesn't mean he can't come back! And for the Packers Brass out there this is a simple problem for ya. You either want him to play for ya or you don't. The most evident issues of all this coming out. Is the Brass knows Brett can play better then Aaron any day of the week. As far as legacy goes Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy's are going down real fast. They will be a blip on the history of the Packers. No matter what happens here. Brett will have his legacy intact. Sometimes a team not Brett need to know when to let go. Unless you come to terms that you want the most arguably best QB ever to play the game. Who can that be? Oh, Brett Favre. Well, look at this way the Vikings will take hiim any day. Come on over Brett we have a opening waiting for ya. I know this won't happen but you Cheese Heads that don't won't Brett Favre back need to get your heads out of the clouds! We are talking about a person who already is a Legend!"

Bread and Butter

2008-07-16T02:19:00.005-04:00

I'd estimate 90% of my posts are about things seen on SI.com, and there're two guys in particular. One showed his butterball face yesterday, and the other had some thoughts today. It's Jon Heyman, and I actually only have two quibbles today. One was:

A Barry bad way to go out

Not acceptable. The other was:

Josh Hamilton ... wow. That's all I'll say about that. OK, maybe one more thing: How does Justin Morneau go home with the Home Run Derby trophy if everyone knows that Hamilton outdid him by about a mile (in home-run distances)?

Even though Justin Morneau is from New Westminster and wears Canucks shirts at batting practice...yeah, it's silly. But, uh, shit gets silly when slates get wiped clean and "champions" are decided based on a tiny sample size. Where was your outrage then, Heyman? Let me have my small, British Columbian fun.

Out of the wilderness.

2008-07-14T20:42:00.002-04:00

Not literally. I'm still, physically, in the wilderness of northern Canada, where the Home Run Derby is strangely delayed for two hours so that we can watch Don Taylor and Dave Pratt talk about which is the best summer song. Yay, televised sports radio!

No, I'm talking about my month of gloom and darkness, brought on by the inconsiderate, vacation-taking Peter King. But he's back, and he's got Favre on his mind and vacation stories to tell. A warning: this is rough. Pete isn't funny and neither am I. This is a slough. The Favre stuff is eh whatever, except for two little things. First, a controversial thesis statement:

Here's the question in the Brett Favre saga as we wade through his request to be released and the Packers' denial and the firestorm it's created in Wisconsin: How will the endgame play out?

Uh...yeah. You're gonna get hit hard for insinuating that where Favre ends up is what's of interest (as opposed to what?), but stick to your guns, man. There was this too:

[Pack GM Ted Thompson] said Favre's return to the Green Bay locker room "theoretically could be awkward. But football players usually figure out a way to make things work.''
Maybe. I don't know how you possibly could make this work -- one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, coming off one of his three or four best seasons ever, returning to the team to back up a guy who's never started an NFL game. It's absolutely absurd.

Not, uh, not that absurd if the OOTGQbOAT guy is pretty old and said he was leaving for good, allowing the team to give the former back-up an offseason of support and first-team reps and stuff, only to have the OOTGQbOAT guy show up a few weeks before training camp saying "I want back in." I dunno. I don't like going up against PK on actual football stuff, because the gap between his fuhbawwwww knowledge and mine is similar to that between mine and my dog's...but I think he's seeing through Favrejuice-tinted glasses a bit here.

Anyway, Peter was back in the non-football swing of things pretty quickly, with a travel note about a bicyclist attacking a motorist in Oregon. He finished with this hard-hitting commentary:

Not sure what the moral of the story is, but it's not good.

Whatevs, PK. Let's get on with the summer vacation:

June 14, Athens, Ohio: I do not fret for our future. After 28 hours on campus for graduation, I drove away thinking how serious and dedicated so many of these kids are, more than I remembered my class being. Not just brown-nosing nerdy serious. The summer editor of the student paper I used to work for, The Post, is going to law school in the fall. When I met with a bunch of the Posties, there was no talk of drunken nights waking up in some strange dorm. Internships, ethics, cultivating sources. That was the talk. I was also surprised there wasn't a lot of job fear. These kids think they'll find their way, maybe not in traditional media but in some form of info-gathering.

I love that PK's worries about the future are completely placated by the fact that a couple college kids didn't tell him about drinking. King follows it up with a story about his softball team raising money for people in Iowa, and finishes it with:

Goosebumpy stuff.

Peter King's a horrible writer.

June 25, Clifton, N.J.: My wife had been on me for weeks -- months, really -- to get the burgeoning freckle/mole on my right forearm taken off, and so I saw a dermatologist who agreed it must go. I never would have gone on my own. Too busy. But I went. Mole removed. Size of an Atomic Fireball. Routine. Six stitches. Doc, Jonathan Gold, said I'm fine. Gave me 55 and 70 SPF sunscreen and told me to wear it. Life goes on.

That's, um, gross, Pete. Really. There are people out there like me who read your softball stories because we have no social life and have nothing better to do and are petty. There are people out there who probably skip the softball stories. There are (theoretically) people who read your softball stories because they enjoy them. You know what all these people have in common? None of them care about your disgusting skin.

And "Life goes on."? Peter King's writing just makes my skin crawl. It screams "I am an incredibly boring man!". He's still the champ of short sentences, though. 36 words. 9 sentences. Ama. zing.

[There's a softball player I coach] who's not as fast but just as gritty and competes like Dustin Pedroia.

Is Pedroia really that gritty and compete-y, even? By the way, if this is somehow an allusion to Eckstein, I...I hate you, Peter.

July 1, Clifton, N.J.: "I need you to come in today or tomorrow,'' Dr. Gold said on the phone. Oh? What for?'' "Your mole came back with a melanoma.'' Cancer. I think he said after that he thought it was contained within the original mole and tissue he cut out, but all I could think of is, What is this guy talking about? Isn't melanoma something for old people in the sun too long?
I go in the next day. The protocol for such things, I see on WebMD.com, is to cut out an area three-quarters of an inch in all directions to make sure the melanoma has not spread into the lymph nodes or bloodstream. The procedure was longer, and the smell of burning skin more intense as he burned and cut the innocent tissue away. "You'll always have a little dent in your forearm now,'' he said as he sewed up the gulf with 25 stitches, then looked down at his handiwork. "Looks like the laces on a football."

Fire Peter King's editor.

Anyway, King's dog didn't handle fireworks very well, Mary Beth bailed for the west coast (Peter, you must be a millionaire. How could any millionaire's month off be this damn boring), and:

I stopped for the afternoon in Chicago, lathered on the 55 SPF sunscreen, and sat in the seventh row of the left-field bleachers at Wrigley Field for Cubs 3, Giants 1. The guy a few seats away asked me, "What's your favorite ballpark?'' And I told him the story of taking my late mother to Wrigley for the first time, maybe eight or 10 years ago, and how she'd been used to Fenway Park and didn't think any place could every be better, and in the seventh-inning stretch, she leaned over to me and said, "Peter, I think this is better than Fenway.''

I'm willing to lay decent money that Peter King answers every simple question with an elaborate story about his family. So, that was Peter's vacation. Again, and to nobody's surprise, fucking boring.

In the mortal words of Mike Greenberg, "We're back and better than ever.''

Google hits for "in the mortal words of": 289 (That's 17^2!). Google hits for "in the immortal words of": 345,000. Typo? Joke I don't get? Joke that's just unimaginably unfunny? Or just crushing stupidity from everyone involved?

If there's something more stupid in sports than allowing fans to vote thousands of times for the baseball all-star game, I don't know what it is. It became a matter of civic pride to get Evan Longoria (who deserved it, I might add) into the summer classic, and so the good people of Tampa Bay were asked to vote over and over for Longoria online so he could be the final member of the AL team. In the National League, one guy estimated he voted 70,000 times for Pat Burrell. Fix the sham-mockery, Bud.

I'll see that and raise you, I dunno, half of all Olympic sports. Or every program on the WWL. Or, closer to the topic, everything about baseball year-end award and HOF voting. Or, closer still, players voting for all-star team members. What exactly is the problem with letting fans see who they want?

I ask all of you out there who have whatever agendas you have to please allow the presidential race to be decided on the issues, not on the myriad other phony things (like the silly Obama's-a-Muslim stuff) starting to crop up.

I am so fucking inspired.

Anyway, there you have it. PK's back, and the time off really seems to have helped him, as he was pretty aggravating this week.

52 52 52 Week #21: Canada

2008-07-13T13:14:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a ~~state~~country-by-~~state~~country basis, progressing through the ~~states~~ countries in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

I know I've been a bit tardy on deadlines this week, but you can bet I'm being extra-punctual with this week's 52 52 52. Since I'm spending all of Sunday traveling to an undisclosed location in Central America (I shit you not), I'm going to have to make this entry a bit brief. So sorry to our neighbor to the North, which makes the cut as the 52nd state right ahead of Puerto Rico. After all, they had the Expos way longer. If that doesn't make them deserving of this bizarre weekly series of mine, I can't imagine what would.

Canada boasts the second tallest peak in North America, with its 19,551-foot Mount Logan beating everyone except Alaska's Mount McKinley. So fuck yeah for America and its 1860s territorial purchases from the Russians! It's a catchy refrain, you've got to admit.

And now for some fast facts regarding everybody's favorite highpoint in the Yukon Territory that may or may not be named after Wolverine...

1. OK, OK, it was really named after Sir William Edmond Logan, who didn't even have the decency to have an adamantium skeleton. Nah, he was just a geologist. And not even a geologist with retractable claws.

2. It's pretty fucking cold up at the summit. On May 26, 1991, it got as low as -108 degrees (and of course I mean Fahren-fucking-heit) up there, which is the coldest natural temperature ever recorded outside Antarctica. So, um, pack a jacket.

3. Apparently former Prime Minister Jean Chretien once wanted to rename it after the even more former Prime Minister Pierre Troudeau, who is most famous for this one time his wife ran off to have sex with the Rolling Stones for two weeks (not that there's anything wrong with that). However, the name change failed due to opposition from, and I'm quoting here, "Yukoners, mountaineers, geologists, Trudeau's political critics, and many other Canadians." I really think they could have just said "everybody in Canada except for maybe a couple of Quebecois jerkoffs", but what do I know? I'm not Wikipedia...not yet, anyway.

Speaking of Quebecois jerkoffs - and I should stress I have nothing personal against Quebec, except that as a proud France-hating Brit I really do have to hate France's bastard offspring on principle - this week's article comes from the Montreal Gazette. Sure, I maybe should have gone with a newspaper from the Yukon Territory, but the only articles I could find were all about me striking it rich in the Gold Rush of 1898. Man, I miss The Yukon Trail, another exciting game from MECC! Not that I'm advertising, you understand.

Anyway, Pat Hickey has the floor on something or other NHL-related. No, please, stick with me. This might just be worth reading anyway.

You would think that a couple of U.S. lawyers would have a firm understanding of freedom of speech, but National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman and his right-hand man, Bill Daly, trampled all over the First Amendment to the United States Constitution this week.

Conversely, you'd think that a random Canadian sports columnist would have a piss-poor grip on the Constitution. *SPOILER ALERT* This article is going to prove just that.

The folks in the NHL front office brought an end to the most entertaining hockey story of the offseason when they ordered Anaheim general manager Brian Burke and his Edmonton counterpart, Kevin Lowe, to stop sniping at each other.

The who and the what now?

In case you came in late, Burke accused Lowe of driving up the price of business in the NHL by giving offer sheets last year to restricted free agents Thomas Vanek and Dustin Penner.

Huh...that sounds...potentially...maybe...ever so slightly...no, sorry, I can't really go ahead and call that "interesting." I tried though.

Lowe countered by calling Burke a "moron" and suggested that Burke had little to do with Anaheim's Stanley Cup victory in 2007.

OK...now we might be getting somewhere. I must admit I like that Lowe merely said Burke had "little" to do with it instead of nothing. As far as insults are concerned, you've always got to concede a little if you want to gain a lot. That's just basic insult theory.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

And who would want to?

(Admittedly, if Arli$$ was still on and I was about 20% more hackneyed than I actually am, I might just have made an "other than the writers of Arli$$?" joke there. But thank goodness we don't live in this hellish alternate existence.)

Daly said the feud was bad for business, but he missed the essential point - people were talking about the NHL and the buzz around the water cooler was more interesting than waiting for Mats Sundin to make a decision on his future.

Who was talking about this? I mean, I don't want to underestimate the importance of hockey in Canada, but this made absolutely zero impact in the United States. Now, I'm not trying to be an American supremacist here, I'm just pointing out that this supposed business-boosting brouhaha (how you like my alliteration now?) made nary a dent in the country where a good 75% of NHL franchises are located.

Also, wasn't this supposed to be about free speech in some way? Eh, I'll just point out that private organizations such as the NHL have the right to moderate the speech of its employees within certain limits. If our resident law student wants to expand, he's more than welcome, but at its most basic - this is in no sense a free speech issue. Which, judging by the fact that Pat Hickey completely forgot about it after the first sentence, might be something he realized as well.

Wrigley on ice: The NHL seems determined to make an outdoor game as much a part of the annual landscape as season-opening games in Europe.

And why not? It's easily the best idea they've had in years. Well except for that awesome gap year the NHL took a few years back. Really made fans appreciate what they had for so long taken for granted.

It shouldn't come as a surprise because NBC, the U.S. television rightsholder that doesn't pay for the rights, wants an encore for the successful game this year in Buffalo.

The fact that NBC wants anything to do with regular season hockey is an immensely good sign, and yet somehow I get the sense Pat Hickey is not pleased.

The next edition of the game will be played at Wrigley Field and will feature the Chicago Blackhawks against the Detroit Red Wings. There's no word yet on how the NHL will deal with those fans who watch games from the roofs of neighbouring buildings.

Wait...is that his objection?

Tale of two countries: You might recall that Oren Koules and Len Barrie, the new owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning, had trouble finding someone to finance their purchase of the team. They came up with one-quarter of the $200-million purchase price and former owner Bill Davidson was so anxious to cash out that he's holding an IOU for the balance.

An IOU? It's really true - in every single way, billionaires are like seven-year-olds. Or characters if fifties sitcoms. Kind of a mix really.

The situation is quite different here in Canada, where Darryl Katz was able to secure a $100-million loan to complete his purchase of the Edmonton Oilers. The 6.37-per-cent interest rate is considered high for this type of purchase, but it's hardly usurious.

Ooh, somebody's got a vocabulary. What an insufferably portentous auctorial fellow! I say, wot?

Huh...I broke into a British accent for a second there. Weird.

Katz was able to find money because the strong loonie - it's actually a weak U.S. dollar - has made Canadian NHL teams more viable and the resource-based economy in Edmonton is booming.

I'm sorry, but when your country's favorable economy can really be described in terms of "the strong loonie", how the fuck do you expect anybody to take you seriously? I mean, sure, your economy might not collapse in the next ten years, but at least nobody laughs when they hear the word "dollar." Well, at least not in terms of how it sounds.

Salary cap update: It's a tossup which team is in the worst position vis-a-vis the salary cap in the NHL, the Los Angeles Kings or the Anaheim Ducks.

For fuck's sake - is Los Angeles just incapable of supporting a sports team? I mean, we all know the Lakers are going to fold within six months of Jack Nicholson kicking the bucket.

The Kings are $12 million below the $40-million floor and they have been non-players in the free-agent market. They do have some restricted free agents like Jarret Stoll and Patrick

O'Sullivan to sign, but they might be forced to overpay just to meet the minimum.

Nice formatting. And shouldn't there be more than two sentences of vague "analysis"?

The Ducks are one of four teams that are currently above the $56.3-million cap. They have overspent by $2.4 million and it can't all be Kevin Lowe's fault.

Oh, I'm sure this Burke guy would beg to differ. I cannot wait to talk about this at those Central American water coolers!

There's another sentence, but it's boring. Fine, you asked for it...

Other teams over the cap are the Philadelphia Flyers, Chicago Blackhawks and the Calgary Flames.

See?

I think this article needed more discussion of dating Madonna. I mean in a theoretical sense. Do you think it would help or hurt to like her music? Wait, what am I thinking? Got to save shit this profound for the next column...

The Column Thingy #3: Dr. (rooting for the) Story-love OR How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bandwagon

2008-07-12T14:04:00.000-04:00

I realized I wasn't a true fan on September 1, 2007. For those who don't immediately recognize the significance of that date - and hell, I had to look it up to know the precise day, so no worries if you don't - we might as well run through my team allegiances, which might make things a bit clearer...

MLB: Cubs
NBA: Bulls
NFL: Bears
College football, not-my-own-college division*: Michigan

*That division is otherwise known as Division I-A. And no, I didn't forget about the name change. I just don't care.

Now, as much as the Cubs' 4-3 victory over the Astros on September 1 was traumatic in its own way (it was a Jason Marquis start, after all), that isn't what I'm talking about. I am of course referring to Appalachian State's 34-32 upset of Michigan, which, if I was any sort of real sports fan, should have been the most embarrassing moment in my real sports fan life. But really, my only reaction (beyond a distinct lack of surprise) was, "Wow...that's pretty cool." I was actually happy - or, if you prefer antiquated nineties slang, stoked - that some I-AA upstart had beaten my supposed favorite college team. Sure, I wished it had happened to some other team, but I was just glad it had happened at all.

I think the seeds of this had been sown in October 2004, back when I was a regular Simmons reader and a true believer in the gospel of grit and intangibles. (It's a dark part of my past, but I won't run from it - Djmmm can vouch for the fact that our first ever meeting in fall 2006 was me arguing A-Rod was crap because he wasn't clutch and the Cubs were somehow jinxed because of bad fielding in one inning in 2003. Now that, my friends, is full motherfucking disclosure.) It's hard to remember now, but back in 2004 Boston was a city of underdogs that the whole nation could root for. I know, hard to believe, but still. And really, by any standard, the 2004 ALCS was just about the most insane thing that ever happened. I can't remember if I was rooting for the Sox because I considered myself a Yankees anti-fan, because I saw the Sox as a decent substitute for my even more woebegone Cubs, or just because I was a gorram adolescent frontrunner. Maybe the last one. I'm trying to be hard on myself, after all.

Anyway, without laboring the point, as much as the 2004 ALCS was arguably the apex of my sports viewership at the time, reading the Simmons columns and watching the SportsCenter highlights made me realize something that really should have been obvious: the Red Sox players and the Red Sox fans were two different groups. As much as Simmons used "we" to discuss the team's accomplishments, that just wasn't the case. I think the crystallizing moment was when I saw the clip of the Sox players celebrating at home plate after Game 4 or 5, with the fans at Fenway in the darkness far behind them. These players had actually done something, whereas those behind had just watched something. And it was then that the slow process that was my ruination as a sports fan truly began. Shit, that last sentence was tortured. Ah well.

In any event, it was then that I realized the Cubs might someday win a World Series, but I never would. The best I could ever hope for was a vicarious thrill, a championship by association. Anyone able to realize this current band of Cubbies has absolutely nothing to do with all the past losing incarnations really should be able to make the next logical steps: the fans don't even have anything to do with the current team, let alone the 1908 crew. So what, exactly, was the point of my blind devotion? What did I really want out of sports? The answer is relatively obvious - I wanted entertainment, pure and simple. Hell, it's the standard line of bloggers everywhere, and with good reason. But I don't think that's what I always wanted.

My teams have reached their respective finals four times in my memory - the Bulls from 1996 to 1998 and the Bears in 2007. I can't imagine more different fan experiences. As an 8-to-10-year-old rooting for those Bulls teams, it really did seem like this was a matter of life and death; I remember Game 6 of 1997 was basically three hours of adrenaline overdose. But the Bears? Well, I guess I was rooting for them...I guess. It was just my luck - and again, Djmmm can confirm this - that I arrived at the (very lame*) Super Bowl party I had chosen to attend about ten seconds after the game started. Which means, as anyone who actually remembers the Super Bowl can attest, I missed the only ten seconds that went well for the Bears, what with Devin Hester scoring a touchdown and all.

*Although really, is there any other kind of Super Bowl party? Frankly, based on prior experience, I'm dubious.

On some level, I was glad the Bears hadn't won. If nothing else, Peyton Manning could never again be considered a choker (or at least that's what I thought), and that had to count for something. It moved the NFL's ongoing story along in a way the Bears winning wouldn't have. I'm not sure, to be honest; maybe it was just that I had already conceded the game midway through the third quarter and spent the rest of the time crafting the perfect Barbaro-related Deadspin comment. Needless to say, I failed. (This was back before I scammed Harper Collins as part of my Machiavellian scheme to get a commenting account, of course.)

But maybe it was just because I didn't feel anything towards this Bears team. Their inconsistency was vaguely cute back when it produced epic comebacks against the juggernaut that is the Arizona Cardinals and resultant Dennis Green rants. As much as I was over the concept of "destiny", I was rather amused by the notion that the Bears might luck their way into a Super Bowl in the most ass-backwards way possible, sort of like the end of Slapshot or "Homer at the Bat" or something like that. I don't want to go too far with such revisionism - I certainly wasn't consciously transforming the 2006 Bears from epic drama to slobs vs. snobs comedy, but by Week 8 I didn't seem to have many other options. By the Super Bowl, it was clear that to root for the Bears was to root for the worst Super Bowl champion in history, sparkly 13-3 record be damned. And as a lover of the great story, I was against that.

And that's really the point. Since I'm now unable to figure out why I should irrationally root for the Bears, Bulls, Cubs, and Wolverines, I've just started rooting for the best story. After all, if sports is about entertainment, shouldn't I root for the most entertaining thing to happen? Boise State, Hawaii, George Mason, the Golden State Warriors, the Atlanta Hawks, and, yes, Appalachian State. These are the teams I've rooted for, if only temporarily. Some actually came through (Boise State, George Mason, the Warriors, Appalachian State), some didn't quite make it (Hawaii), and some probably did us all a favor by merely teasing us (much as a Hawks upset would have been awesome, I dread to think how boring the East might have gotten without the Celtics involved). All of that is easy enough to understand - I love me some underdogs, just like pretty much everybody else, with the possible exception of everyone involved in ESPN. Of course, when you're the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader, I guess it makes sense to root against the little guy. But I digress.

There are three teams I've recently rooted for that I should probably discuss: the Patriots, the Giants, and the Lakers. Obviously, the Patriots and the Giants are intertwined. During the season, I was more interested in seeing the unprecedented (14 wins is less than 16, Djmmm, and that's all that I mean by that) happen, despite the fact that rooting for that Patriots team seemed even worse than rooting for those early millennium Yankee teams that I so righteously despised. I wasn't really rooting for the Patriots; I was rooting to be an observer of history. But by the time they had reached the Super Bowl, I felt as though the point had already been made. I'll never quite understand why people took the Patriots' loss as evidence that it was somehow impossible to go completely undefeated. All the loss proved was what we already knew to be the case - it is really, really hard to go 19-0 (and don't get me started on 20-0). But the Patriots getting it that far put it squarely in the realm of possibility, however remote. In all probability, by 2040, another team will have made a very serious run at a perfect season. Sure, that's a hell of a long time to wait, but it's awesome to know that it really can happen. Hell, maybe even my Bears will be the team to do it. Well, OK, not really "my" Bears. Da Bears. Yeah, that's what they all say. They all say "Da. "

But what of the Lakers? What of those soft, disappointing, oh-so-European scamps? Entering this year's playoffs, I had no obvious rooting interest, so I just went ahead and hoped for Lakers-Celtics. You know, for history's sake, both of the historic and instant variety. (Yes, I know I just referred to "historic history." I humbly request that you motherfucking deal with it. Oh, and I also rooted for the Hornets.) Even so, for the first three rounds of the playoffs, I wasn't all that bothered by who won as long as the Spurs and Pistons ultimately went down. And then, as the Finals started, for whatever reason, my rooting interest snapped into place - for whatever reason, I wanted the Lakers to win.

I honestly have no idea why. Certainly, I don't consider myself a bandwagon fan. I had no intention of rubbing a Lakers victory in anybody's face (of course, you'll just have to take my word on that), and under no circumstances did I intend to claim anything more than a passing fling with the team. (And, if worst came to worst, I'd just do what Shaq does and pay ~~his women~~ the team off.) As a Bulls fan, I still feel very favorably towards Phil Jackson, but that wasn't enough to make me root for him when I almost gave a shit back in 2004. I dunno.

I guess my point, if I have a point, is that there are thirty or so teams in each of the three (OK, Passive, four) leagues. Only about half of those teams even make the playoffs in a given year (even less in baseball, of course), and of those half are, by definition, gone by the end of the first round. At least 75% of the teams in a given league end their seasons in unequivocal disappointment, and that figure is probably up to 95% these days, seeing how even making the Conference Finals isn't always enough to guarantee continued employment. Unless you're rooting for the handful of teams that have been good for decades, more often than not the season is going to end on a sour note. And for a country that so seems to love happy endings (Casablanca notwithstanding), that seems like an odd arrangement for something that's supposed to be entertainment. That seems all too depressingly realistic to me.

And so that's why I just root for the best and most entertaining story, and why I've made peace with the fact that that puts me on the bandwagon more often than not. I've always got someone to root for come championship time, and with so little emotional investment it's fairly easy to quietly spin a loss and move on. (I belive the words "Well, at least KG finally has a ring" were uttered as I switched over to The Daily Show midway through Game 6.) But there's an obvious downside. The Cubs look to have as good a chance as any to win the World Series this year, and since I no long believe in stupid fucking bullshit like jinxes I've got no problem openly saying they've got a great shot. But, as much as they were obviously not nearly as good a team in 2003 as they are in 2008, I sorta wish the Dusty Baker/Sammy Sosa/Mark Prior brigade had come through (or, if I'm really pushing my luck, that 1998 Wild Card crew). I suspect, as much as the Cubs winning the World Series will entertain me, it won't affect me nearly as much as it could once have. At least back in 1998 and 2003 I was stupid enough to think sports actually meant something.

And I'm still not sure whether losing that feeling is a bad thing or not. Eh, at least I've got Deadspin...

This may end poorly.

2008-07-11T01:55:00.005-04:00

I'm going to try to dabble in basketball, which, based on demographics, seems like a horrible idea. But I think this might have enough general silliness for me to stagger through. It's a Steve Aschburner article about how the Eastern Conference of the NBA is maybe starting to catch up to the West. Keep in mind that like 3 months ago a regular season ended that saw, as Mr. Aschburner himself notes, the ninth-place Western team finish with a better record than the fourth-place Eastern team. East teams won a stellar 42.7% of the interconference games, and that's including Boston's 25-5 record. (By my count, the Knickerbockers went 3-27 against the West. How the fuck is that even possible?) So, it'll be hard for the East to get worse, but....well, let's just get started:

For years now, the NBA's balance of power -- East to West and vice versa -- has drawn all sorts of inexplicable and undue attention. As if it's wrong for things to tilt one way or the other in sports as opposed to, y'know, our daily lives and relationships....[clever examples of one-sided relationships in life, like "pizza-dieter"]...Yet with the NBA, we pull out micrometers and slide rules every year to gauge the gap at any given moment between the [two conferences]. It offends, I dunno, our sense of fair play if too many good teams seem to be stacked up on one side of the league compared to the other.

Actually, it's probably a legitimate piss-off to Golden State fans when their 48-34 (20-10 against the East) team has to sit out from May until the following February (Playoffs-are-long joke! So fresh!) while the Atlanta Hawks (37-45, 13-17 against the West) get to take part. (***See below!***)

Let's sift through the evidence:
• Exhibit A: Elton Brand agrees to a five-year, $80 million contract with the 76ers. [He gives a long explanation.]

Okay.

Exhibit B: Jermaine O'Neal goes to Toronto, while T.J. Ford gets swapped to Indiana. On paper, this seems like a wash for the East. Not if both teams end up stronger than they were...

Less of a sure thing than Brand, but okay.

Exhibit C: Washington re-signs Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison.

Nope. Those players are staying on the same team, and have been there for multiple seasons. Does not count. He also weirdly includes this in the explanation:

If losing three consecutive first-round series to Cleveland doesn't qualify under the NBA tradition of knocking at the door of contender status, nothing does. Except maybe for the fact that the Cavaliers keep getting through that door first.

Whatever, dude.

Exhibit D: Cleveland general manager Danny Ferry is pursuing his master's degree in capology...[Cavs need to win now and build for future to entice The Bron to stay]...So it is no accident that the Cavs' roster has more than $27 million in expiring contracts for the coming season and only James' $15.8 million player option for 2009-10 on the books beyond that. One way or the other -- around James or without James -- Ferry will be building a new team. Urgency suggests it will add to the East's collective strength.

Does urgency suggest that? Why? This may be where my utter lack of understanding re: NBA crops up, but who's to say that Mr. Ferry will restock the team well just because it's urgent? Also, aren't expiring contracts usually sort-of-shitty players?

Exhibits E and F: Chicago nabs the No. 1 player in the draft, Miami takes No. 2.

Makes sense, but here's the first part of the explanation:

The murmur that went through the NBA in June 2007 -- when Greg Oden and Kevin Durant went 1-2 to Portland and Seattle, respectively, leaving everyone else with, well, everyone else -- didn't quite play out, with Oden hurt all season and Durant shooting and scoring for a lousy team in its lame-duck year.

So, the East looks to be adding two big-impact rookies. But...the West is adding last year's big-impact draftee, plus should see improvement from a no-longer-lame-duck Formerly-the-Sonics team. Is it a wash? Last year also showed that sure-thing rookies aren't necessarily sure things. I'm, um, not convinced of anything right now.

Exhibits G and H: Shaquille O'Neal and Jason Kidd still are (yawn) in the West.

Yeah, they're still in the West. That hasn't changed the balance any from last year. Not hugely convincing.

Exhibits I and J: Orlando and Atlanta are about ready for their close-ups.

Sure, whatever. I guess you could counter that Portland and OKC both look like they're going to be pretty good, pretty soon. But sure.

Exhibit K and L: Larry Brown and Donnie Walsh have rolled up their sleeves again.

Sure, but we all know Brown'll bail in like six months. Whatever. Anyway, he gives himself credit for 12 bits of evidence. I'll give him six, and a C- overall. Which is roughly how well I think I handled this article. Passing grades all around!

***The CFL has a crossover rule, you know. And there's "free" health care here too!. Blah blah blah I'm going to masturbate with maple syrup.

Comics & Sports #3: Mighty Man and the College Football Squad of Doom

2008-07-10T23:45:00.002-04:00

As all geeks (looking at you, Futurama writing staff) know, every Wednesday (or, in this case, Thursday because of July 4th and my own damn laziness) is that most hallowed of days, new comic book day. In the spirit of that most beautiful of days, I present a feature spotlighting the potentially awesome confluence of sports and comics.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty much completely and utterly the Dash Dartwell show. Which is all well and good, but the creative minds at Centaur Comics had more than just Dash Dartwell up their sleeve. For today we will prove once again they knew far more about satirizing future sports issues than giving 1940s comics readers what they want; after all, if they'd understood the latter, Robert Downey Jr. would be gearing up for Dash Dartwell 2: Dash Boogaloo as we speak. But ah well. A few fuzzy black & white comic panels are way more fun than some Robert Downey Jr. improv any day of the week. I'll just keep telling myself that, shall I?

Today's featured hero is Mighty Man, and once again the comics themselves will do a way more coherent job explaining the character than I could...

The Mighty Man is a twelve foot super-giant who was found in a hidden valley in California. He leaves the valley to wage a war on criminals. To date very few people have heard of the Mighty Man - for reasons of his own he needs to be kept in the background.

Good to know he's not just a giant - it's really super-giants that get the job done, crimefighting-wise. So he's our hero. But behind every superhero is a creator, a writer of unmatched genius with the verve and the wit necessary to make such outrageous characters truly come to life. Or, in this particular case, a journeyman halfback/quarterback named Frank Filchock who was notable for roughly five things:

1. He was Sammy Baugh's partner in a thunder and lightning package with the early forties Redskins; seriously, he was the Flingin' Frank to Baugh's Slingin' Sammy. He even managed to beat out Baugh for most touchdown passes once. So no offensive slouch was old Filchock.

2. He was the first person to throw a 99-yard touchdown pass, which means everyone else is living in his Filchockian shadow when it comes to long passes. Well, until the Germans offhandedly mention they'd really like to see a soccer-size field and Goddell expands the field to 130 yards.

3. He was embroiled in a massive gambling scandal that got him banned from the NFL for four years and ultimately exiled him to Canada. Wikipedia has the scoop, but basically someone tried to offer him a bribe to fix a game, the NFL got wind of it before the game was played, he denied he'd ever been offered one, played his absolute hardest in the game, got acquitted of any wrongdoing, and then got banned. He may have been a victim of circumstance or he may just have realized the best way to look innocent after getting caught redhanded was to play lights out. Hard to say really. Probably would make a good movie though. And yes, Hollywood executives, I'm very much available to write and direct.

4. He was the proud owner of a deeply silly name. Seriously, Frank Filchock. I still can't spell his name correctly without looking it up first. I just so desperately want his name to be all the way dirty instead of maddeningly close. Honestly, drop that "h" and we're on a one-way train trip to hilarity junction. I'm just saying.

5. Finally, and most importantly for our purposes, he had a brother by the name of Martin Filchock. Martin was a comic book artist with Centaur Comics, and, while I know nothing of the circumstances of the following story's creation, almost certainly asked his famous football playing brother whether he could think of a superhero story that involved playing football. At the very least, Martin illustrated his brother's idea, and in the absence of a credited writer, probably wrote most of it.

But still, let us never forget - the following comic was the brainchild of a real NFL player. For the Redskins, no less, proving Washington really has always had the most interesting athletes. I'm sure 40s-era D.C. blogger Silas Mottram would readily agree.

And now, to the comic itself...

Sports media has really come a long way in sixty years, hasn't it? Seriously, that looks like nothing more than the information necessary to understand what is going on. Where's the snarky rejoinder, the contrarian undercutting, the random if totally justified Hitler reference? Truly, it was a living hell of nothing more than bare bones information.

Interesting that Filchock's villains would be a bunch of men too evil to need substitutes. Sounds like somebody's advocating one-way players. Pfft. Wuss.

Look, a twelve foot giant - sorry, super-giant - is one thing, but now I know this is utter fantasy. The blue-chip recruit of the century (I can only imagine what ESPN analysts would make of his wingspan) and they're worried about him passing tests and enrolling? Not in my universe, pal.

Who does Mighty Man think he is, leading one team on by playing its fears of a rival snatching him up while all the while plotting his betrayal...Terrelle Pryor?

Sorry, sorry, the homerism alarm has just gone off. Won't happen again. Wasn't even a fair comparison anyway. Well, mostly.

Anyway, Mighty Man presents himself to the coach of the Western College team and the team's Doctor, a man with the unbelievably appropriate name of Doc Bigger. His tryout goes rather well, all things considered...

What I really love about these panels is the Coach's exclamation, "What an end he'll make!" As though that's specifically the position where a super-strong twelve foot man would be effective. I mean, I know the trend these days is towards specialization, but seriously...

Again, this isn't like any kinda college football I've ever heard of. For all the fact that these two are obviously supervillains - I mean, they're in a comic book, and one of them has got a monocle - they seem to have better recruiting scruples than any school in the SEC. Or the Pac-10. Or the Big 10. Or...well, you get the idea.

As the final part of the tryout, for some reason the coach makes the rest of the team try to tackle Mighty Man. Afterwards, our hero has some questions...

Hey, Mighty Man, maybe the quarterback was confused because you tackled him during practice. Forties or not, I'm sure that's a no-no. Of course, it could be because he's a zombie controlled by the team's doctor. On second thought, that's probably it.

Oh, forties sensibilities, you so crazy!!! I'd say more, but I just sorta start to weep inside.

Anyway, a steel vault and some knockout gas later, Doc Bigger and the coach have captured Mighty Man, which of course means it's time for the good doctor to prattle on about his evil scheme...

He certainly is mad, Mighty Man. Anyone who thinks a tall dude like Erick Dampier is naturally more valuable than some little'un like Steve Nash is out of their mind. Or possibly Mark Cuban. That last part may have been redundant.

Sorry to go all circa-2004 on you nice people, but that seemed like the best joke available. Also, it gave me an excuse to unleash the phrase "go all circa-2004 on you nice people", which I predict will be the catchphrase of happening hipsters come 2009.

Anyway, because he's a superhero in a forties comic, Mighty Man easily breaks free and then kills Doc Bigger in the most darkly appropriate manner imaginable...

If Tom Brady ever rebels againt Bill Belicheck, I pray that this is how he does it.

Seriously, Mighty Man? "Some football coaches don't care how they get a winning team"? I dare any of you to name one coach who wouldn't do this. Seriously, give it your best shot.

That's what I thought.

Join us next Wednesday (no, seriously, I'll have it done by Wednesday) for our next Comics & Sports extravaganza!

Comics & Sports tomorrow...

2008-07-09T21:08:00.004-04:00

Since new comic book day has been delayed by a day (thanks American independence, you big jerk - and to think I thought you were a good thing), I too will postpone Comics & Sports until tomorrow. Well, that and I'm feeling lazy. Not to mention tired as all get out. I must be getting old. Or something.

To make up for it, I give you what I know you all really want - random acts of violence and a seedy pitchman...

Anyone else feel like there's nothing happening in sports at the moment? Well, apart from those trades, but as a fan of one of the teams I'm recusing myself from such discussion.

Go on. Live a little.

2008-07-09T01:52:00.002-04:00

I know the (original, but not at all original) purpose of this website was to try to dump on professional sports journalism, but...I love the comments on the "Truth and Rumors" part of SI.com. I'm addicted. They are almost flawless. And today came a gift from whichever God watches over my sports-related entertainment: an article about Dan Rooney. Cue 600 "The Rooney's are pure class. Their the best thing that ever hapened to the Steelers." comments, right? But this one has so much more. Go on. Try it.

52 52 52 Week #20: Vermont

2008-07-06T23:59:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

If there was ever a week when 52 52 52 wasn't going to happen, it was probably this one. (Well, other than the four weeks I'm about to spend out of the country, but let's burn that bridge when we get to it.) After all, it's still Independence Weekend (and if that isn't the term, it should be), and I still am under no obligation to do anything other than affirm my love of all things America in the most jingoistic way possible. Which, as far as I'm concerned, involves blowing up Spanish battleships in the name of payback, "Remember the Maine" style. Because that's how I roll.

For after all, as the state motto of Vermont says, "Live free or die!" And if you think of blogging as synonymous with living free and not blogging as much like death, well then...

Ah, I see. I'm being told that "Live free or die" is actually New Hampshire's motto. Honest mistake, that. What's Vermont's? "Freedom and Unity", eh? Well then, if freedom is blogging, and unity is not taking July 4th weekend off, I think you can see how...ah, fuck it.

Point is, we're on Vermont this week, and its stylish Mount Mansfield, clocking in at 4,393 feet. I'd like to think Mount Mansfield was the source of a bunch of really immature jokes by Vermont schoolboys in the 1950s, thanks to the popularity of the truly spectacularly-chested Jayne Mansfield. You know, a lot of stuff about wanting to "mount Mansfield" and other similarly hilarious repartee passed around during hiking excursions. A man can dream. And, because this is still America dammit, a man can supplement the following three facts with pictures of Jayne Mansfield. Because I am, like my last post said, a motherfucking hero.

1. From Wikipedia: "Mount Mansfield is one of the two spots in Vermont where true alpine tundra survives from the ice ages." At the risk of a very, very hackneyed joke that is sure to piss off Djmmm, I think there's a definite chance I may have to revise that joke by 2018. You know, because of global warming. Melting ice, people. Fuck, I probably should have spent more time phrasing that joke and less time apologizing for it. Ah well, no need to apologize for this...

King of the segue, yes sir.

2. Mount Mansfield is the home of the Stowe skiing resort. I'm sure it's a very nice place, but I'm guessing it was at a slightly warmer clime that this photo was snapped...

Not that I'd complain with more ski-appropriate attire. Those fifties gals sure knew how to stretch a sweater. And, by that, I mean they had almost cartoonish busts. Eh, no "almost" about it.

3. Also from Wikipedia: "The mountain has the appearance of a (quite elongated) human face when viewed from the east or west with distinct forehead, nose, lips, chin (the highest point) and an Adam's apple."

I imagine much of that might also be true about Jayne Mansfield, but I haven't quite bothered to check yet. Well, apart from the Adam's apple. Hopefully. Eh, with breasts (or, as us classy folks call them, "gazongas") like that, I won't quibble.

Now that I'm good and horny (which is my preferred writing style, not unlike Oscar Wilde, and we all know how he turned out...wait, he turned out how?), let's talk some Vermont sports journalism. Kenneth Wells of the Newport Daily Express steps up with a piece on a Canadian NASCAR driver. I had vowed to never discuss Canada and NASCAR, but such is the world in which we find ourselves. Also, when the grammar and mechanics are this atrocious, I just can't resist. It's the pedantic dick in me. Mr. Wells?

He’s young, good looking and has that quality personality that fans and friends alike can root for.

"Quality personality"? Not to sound like a stereotypical horny dude in a shitty comedy (too late, I know), but when has that ever not been used as a euphemism? What does this dude have? Genital warts? I'm going to go with genital warts.

For Joliette, Qué. native Patrick Carpentier a big step towards respectability in his chosen profession was taken.

Oh, he's from Quebec. Close enough. To genital warts, I mean.

Man, this is one hell of a dirty post. I guess this is what I get for talking about Canada so soon after the 4th of July. John Adams must be spinning in his XXL grave.

He emerged as the NASCAR Pole sitter in the Lennox Industrial Equipment 301 race this past weekend.

Just to finish off the utterly juvenile trifecta: heh, heh...pole.

The 37 year old turned the mile oval in 29.349 seconds and called it his,"biggest" accomplishment in a career dating back more than a decade. Carpentier said, "Its amazing." There is going to be busloads of people down here, and that’s what the objective is, to grow the fan base of NASCAR here and bring more people in. A lot of people in Canada are starting to be fans.”

Here's a fun game - let's play "Count the grammatical, mechanical, and formatting errors!" in that last mess of text. The game's so fun, it's totally sick! Well, sic, at the very least. This man isn't just the editor of the sports section like last week's Sara Mettlen; he's the fucking publisher of the entire newspaper. For goodness sake, I think I could dig up articles I wrote for my middle school newspaper that are better written than that. And hell, I'm always looking for a new gimmick...

Patrick is smiling, and genuinely appreciative of his feat which could make him the perfect Canadian ambassador for the sport. He continued," I am really happy, and hopefully this will help me stick around for a few years.”

Him winning the pole in a minor NASCAR race makes him the perfect Canadian ambassador for the sport? The sad thing is, I totally buy that.

Patrick Carpentier, who makes his home in Las Vegas now is a likable person and his story is somewhat a Cinderella version.

Seriously...was this originally written in English? I'm perfectly willing to redact this post if this was actually a French language article badly translated but, but...I doubt it, somehow.

Honestly, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. If there was one fish that completely filled the barrel. And the water was frozen. And the gun was glued to the fish. And the gun was set to auto-fire. And even if you missed, it still counted as a successful shooting of fish in a barrel. That's how easy mocking this article is. It's almost beneath me. Thank goodness I'm unbelievably petty.

He is easy to pull, for less than two years ago he came to Loudon during the Sylvania 300 weekend to basically introduce himself to potential sponsors.

He's easy to pull? What, one can, as Wiktionary so eloquently puts it, "persuade [him] to have sex with one"? He really is Quebecois...

It's obvious that Kenneth Wells is forcing his children to write articles for him. Here's the real question though: was it his twelve-year-old or five-year-old? Keep in mind, his twelve-year-old is going through a bit of a geek phase, so you'd think there'd be some random Gundam Wing reference crowbarred in there somewhere. You know, much like I did there. Overall, I'm going with five-year-old on the day he learned to use spell check. Because, atrocious as the usage might be, at least some of the words are spelled correctly.

Carpentier has never finished higher than 23rd, but, if he can ever hang close enough and long enough to capture the checkers, there may well be a new national holiday up north.

If he wins one obscure NASCAR race, Canada will designate a national holiday? Look, I know the Stephen Harper premiership has gotten people down, but let's not take things to completely radical extremes.

See! I even know the name of Canada's prime minister. Admittedly, I thought it was James Harper until I looked it up, but isn't it the effort that counts? So, um...yay America!

Help me out here.

2008-07-06T18:26:00.003-04:00

Jon Heyman is doing a funny, I think. Regarding the A-Rod+Madonna thing (which is evidently consuming my life), he has this to say:

Dominating the pages of the New York tabloids is the reputed hookup of the Material Girl (Madonna) and baseball's Material Man (Alex Rodriguez). However, the latest distraction doesn't seem the be affecting the Material Man's on-field performance so far. It should be interesting to see if the MG has All-Star tickets.

No, it shouldn't be interesting. But more importantly, I'm curious about "Material Man". Heyman's evidently proud of it, because he used it twice. Is that a reference to A-Rod's big salary? Is there any other (funnier) explanation that I'm missing? I'm going to guess that there isn't, because that would be just the kind of thing I could see Heyman chuckling to himself about for many minutes after thinking of. Horrible sentence, sorry.

The Column Thingy #2: Independence Day means another week until I really start

2008-07-04T18:16:00.002-04:00

That's right, I'm calling this "The Column Thingy." Originality was never my strong suit.

If you're reading this, it's because I am currently in a campground without internet access. And no, unlike pretty much everyone in my last post, I haven't been kidnapped, I'm just on vacation. Because, as I'm sure you all know, today is July 4, famous throughout these United States as the birthday of Hiram Walker, the grocer and distiller. And Independence Day. But really, mostly Hiram Walker.

Of course, thanks to Blogger Scheduler, I'm really writing this two days beforehand, on July 2. Which, weirdly enough, is entirely appropriate, because independence was really declared on July 2, and it's only the relatively less important adoption of the Declaration of Independence that happened on July 4. John Adams even wrote to his wife that July 2 would be known forever as the most important date in American history. Collectors, ever the scrupulous bunch, simply changed the date to July 4. So yeah, a free history lesson.

Anyway, since I just (from my perspective) wrote that whole Dash Dartwell post, I'm going to keep this one short. I'm really sorry I keep teasing a column and then rather spectacularly failing to deliver, but circumstance is a bitch. I believe it was Rousseau who said that.

Anyway, in lieu of a proper column, I present to you the most American YouTube video I could find. And believe me, I looked. Shockingly, there's a truly worrisome lack of Batman kicking ass for America on the series of tubes. For a while, I was going to embed this video, because I happen to love The Great Dictator and the utterly shameless earnestness of the greatest shattering of the fourth wall in cinematic history, but I thought a long speech by a British expat dressed like Hitler was a bit too much of a mixed message, no matter the context. Still, the link is there, and I certainly don't discourage you checking it out.

So, instead, I present this. Since the original poster had disabled embedding, I had to upload the damn thing myself. You know, because I'm a hero.

Be safe, have a great Independence Day, and I'll see you Sunday.

Interlopin' Djmmm: Wait a minute, I'm the only real American on this here blog? You know what that means....

Somewhere across the Atlantic, an obscenely wealthy man steps out of the batter's box and sniffs the night air.

2008-07-03T20:30:00.008-04:00

The Vegas odds of America seeing Serena Rodriguez jumped from 1300:1 to an impressive 17:2 after SI.com made this picture the front page.

Comics & Sports #2: Dash Dartwell Redux

2008-07-02T01:45:00.008-04:00

As all geeks (looking at you, Chuck from the NBC series, which is also called Chuck) know, every Wednesday (and Thursdays when Monday was a holiday or something) is that most hallowed of days, new comic book day. In the spirit of that most beautiful of days, I present a feature spotlighting the potentially awesome confluence of sports and comics.

Last week, I promised the following...

Join us next Wednesday for another Comics & Sports entry where our friend Dash will use his tablets to hit more home runs. No, seriously. I swear that's actually going to happen.

Now, I might as well make a confession: I hadn't exactly read that particular comic yet. I was pretty sure that would happen, but I wasn't sure. What if he only threw a no-hitter and didn't hit any home runs? That wouldn't nearly be unbelievably ironic enough. But don't touch that blog dial, comics and/or sports fans, because I should have known Dash Dartwell always delivers. And how!

But first, let's remember just who young Dashford is. From today's comic:

Dash Dartwell is now the miracle man of the athletic world because of his new and astonishing records set with the help of Professor Moss’s metabo-accelerator pills, which speed up all the life processes and give their user unbelievable speed. Dash can dodge bullets and outdistance speeding cars – until the pill’s effect is over.

So yeah, he's everybody's favorite juicer. Last week he used his abilities to rewrite track and field records. And now...baseball. It's the big game between Dash's Dravrah College and its archrival Elay (if you're confused, read those names backwards), and just like with the track meet, a bunch of mobsters have nothing better to do than fix the game in the least subtle way imaginable...

Seriously, "brainy" is the best adjective to describe a guy who guarantees a loss by kidnapping the best five guys on the team? This makes Mr. Burns's team of ringers look downright inconspicuous. Except for Mattingly's sideburns, of course. Those things are fucking visible from space.

Sorry about the quality on some of these; this is what seven decades of obscurity will do to you (just ask the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which at one point was actually a tariff instead of the reference for things that are boring). In case you can't read that, the coach asks, "What do we do?"

In this situation, and I must admit I'm not a trained kidnapping expert, I would probably, you know, call the police. I mean, it's not like the note makes any demands or anything. All it says is that they've been kidnapped so they can't play. You'd sort of think, under the circumstances, that might be grounds to postpone the game. Of course, the availability of the world's fastest man might well skew the standard operating procedure when it comes to kidnapping. I mean, it could.

"Do whatever you do to build up this speed of yours." I believe you can find that on Tony LaRussa's family crest. It's like this comic was written before they invented the concept of accountability. So, what, before 2005? Yeah, I'm going to go with 2005.

Just in case you thought there was the slightest chance Dash didn't know exactly what he's doing. Again, this was apparently in no way considered cheating in the 1940's. I dunno, maybe the war had something to do with it. And you know what? If one last invasion of France will stop all the anti-steroid sanctimony, I think I'm OK with that. More than OK, actually.

Anyway, proving once again that there's no problem you can't solve with kidnapping, the gangsters try to capture Dash as well. But they somehow didn't count on the world's fastest man running away...

Wow, Dash easily outran a car driving at 115 miles per hour? Let me do a little math here (and by "let me", I of course mean Google will do it all for me)...

Call Dash's speed 130 miles per hour. That's the equivalent of 58.1152 meters per second. That means he could complete a 100-meter dash in 1.72 seconds. Makes his last recorded speed of 3.5 seconds look positively slow. Of course, he might be getting a little wind assistance. Maybe. Or would running at that sort of speed pretty much by definition create a tailwind? You'd really think two years of high school physics would have taught me more than this. Oh well, that's the failure of the American public school system for you. Nobody's worked out how to outsource sports blogging yet, right?

In any event, Dash finally gets to the game...

Again, how the hell is this not bad sportsmanship? Or are you allowed to have one juicer if your three best sluggers and two best pitchers get kidnapped? Is that the ethical equation here? I just hope somebody was thinking about the children. Never mind the obvious homosexuality of Batman and Robin corrupting the nation's youth, this comic is clearly responsible for warping the judgment of a bunch of kids who were born about twenty years after this was published. Prove me wrong, people!

Incidentally, why do you need to kidnap two pitchers for one game? I mean, even if they're both aces, the guys in the first panel acted as though both of them would be huge factors in the upcoming game. And considering we're still a decade away from Hoyt Wilhelm, I'm not sure it makes sense for one of them to be a reliever. You know, I'm pretty much completely certain the fondest wish of this comic's writer was to have some asshole nitpick the story's internal logic sixty-seven years after it was written. I know that's what I'm hoping for. Get to it, sentient death blogs of 2075!

Wait, did I just come up with the title and premise of Japan's next big anime? I'm going to say...yes. Yes I did.

And so, with the pills working again, Dash turns into what Jose Canseco so desperately wanted to be: an all-pitching, all-slugging drugged-up super-athlete. To think he didn't even need to blow out his elbow to do it! Truly, he is science's greatest miracle. Or he's just a slimmer version of early career Babe Ruth. Whichever you prefer.

But let's not forget those wacky gangsters! With Dash coming up to bat, even these guys have to admit kidnapping isn't really an option. So they go for the only option more blatantly illegal: shooting Dash in a crowded stadium. With a machine gun.

Shouldn't somebody...anybody...be reacting to one of the baseball players throwing a bat at a guy in the stands who was just brandishing a machine gun? Is Dravrah winning really so incredibly exciting that it makes everyone forget that just happened? Or does that sort of thing just not faze any of them?

I'm starting to see what Tom Brokaw was talking about. Maybe these forties fuckers really were the greatest generation.

Oh that Rojas...truly the weasely Brian McNamee to the gangster's assholish Roger Clemens. I guess that makes Dash the George Mitchell in this analogy. And why not?

With the baseball game out the way, it's time for a little skull-busting. Predictably, Dash works fast.

Damn right! Forget ending human misery when there are so many more sports of which Dash hasn't yet made a complete mockery! How about 2,000 yards...in a game? Or 100 points...in a quarter? Or the hockey equivalent of those things!?

And, lest we forget, Dash hasn't even begun to explore the perverted applications of super-speed. Sure, it's no invisibility, but where there's a perverted will, there is always a way.

And let that be today's lesson.

That's all for now with our pal Dash, but join us next Wednesday when we look at another superhero in a story actually devised by a member of the Washington Redskins. And no, to our eternal regret, not Chris Cooley.

It seems I'm late to this party.

2008-07-01T22:04:00.003-04:00

Apparently the whole A-Rod + Madonna thing has been around Deadspin for at least a day now. But I feel obligated to weigh in with this old but too-perfect post from insane celebrity gossip blog What Would Tyler Durden Do. Does A-Rod do things just to get publicly humiliated? Just for the record, Jeter has banged Jessica Alba, Adriana Lima, Scarlett Johansson, a Miss Universe, Mariah Carey, Jessica Biel and 3734 others, and A-Rod counters with.....??

HAPPY CANADA DAY EVERYBODY.

52 52 52 Week #19: Kansas

2008-06-29T22:56:00.005-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

This week's highpoint and article really need no introduction. Wait, does that count as an introduction? Aw, I hate epistemological conundrums...

Kansas's highpoint is, essentially, the Kansas-Colorado border. Technically speaking, it's called Mount Sunflower, it stands at 4,039 feet, and here's three things vaguely worth knowing about it:

1. It's completely indistinguishable from the surrounding land. Also, it's really close to Colorado's lowest point. So yeah, hell of a summit.

2. If you'll remember Nebraska's entry in week six, you might recall a humorous account of climbing its distinctly non-mountainous highpoint. Well, that was only a sequel, a pale Bad Boys II to the original Bad Boys that is this harrowing tale of climbing Mount Sunflower.

3. The summit is on private property belonging to Mike and Rae Marie Jones, who apparently have a good sense of humor. According to Wikipedia, the summit is adorned by such items as "a picnic table, a sunflower sculpture made from railroad spikes, and a plaque that states 'nothing happened here in 1897.'" I'm sorry, but that last part is hilarious.

Today's article comes from The Leavenworth Times, which I pretty much checked out on the off-chance there would be a random allusion to local inmate Michael Vick. For once, I was not disappointed. Thanks middle America! Or, to be more precise, thanks Leavenworth Times sports editor Sara Mettlen!

You know, when you do a Google image search for "Sara Mettlen", this is the first result, for some awesome reason:

I don't know why, and, frankly, I don't want to know. Sadly, Ms. Mettlen's prose is much like what I imagine the Amazing Amazon's would be: pretty damn preachy. Let's just do this.

Today is Michael Vick’s birthday.

Happy birthday Michael! Oh, wait, this was written on June 27. Ah well. Better late than never, right? Well, except when it comes to being caught torturing dogs. Am I right, people? Man, I kill myself. So, um, Michael, no need to do that when you get out, right?

Just thought that was worth knowing since he’s practically a neighbor. Don’t worry, I’m also going to make it work into a point I hope to make later, so it’s not totally random knowledge.

Well, thank goodness. For a second there I thought you were just wishing happy birthday to a convicted felon. And if that were the case, as Bill Plaschke would say, "Shame on you!" (Seriously, if there's one thing I learned from Around the Horn - and I'm absolutely certain I didn't learn anything else - it's that that is America's next great catchphrase.)

For some unknown reason, the article divides itself into a "BETTER" section, a "WORSE" section, and an "ABOUT THE SAME" section. Man, I hate lame gimmickry. And be sure to check out next week's "Comics & Sports", not to mention the next installment of "52 52 52"! And whatever will I name my column next week?

Huh...don't know why all of that just occurred to me. Oh well.

Fresno State won the College World Series on Wednesday with a 6-1 win over Georgia. If you are a first time reader you’ve missed me writing about how much I love the CWS for a couple weeks now,

I'll try to survive. I'm not sure how I'll live without having read that stuff, but I'll try.

but if Fresno winning — the equivalent of a 13-16 seed winning the NCAA basketball tournament — didn’t make you smile for a least a little while, either you’re a Georgia fan or something is wrong with you.

Or maybe college baseball doesn't do that much for you? I mean, congratulations to Fresno State and all, but I just can't quite buy into the collegiate version of a sport with such a huge minor league system. Hell, I'm not even downplaying the enormity of their achievement. It's just that college baseball seems so irrelevant that I couldn't even be bothered to learn the context.

Now obviously, feel free to disagree. I have to admit, I'm just generally a pro sports kind of guy, and I've got tons of bizarre quirks and abnormalities when it comes to my sports fandom. Hell, this is probably one of them. But I know I'm not a Georgia fan, and I'd like to think nothing's wrong with me...eh, who am I kidding? There's definitely something wrong with me.

You see, Fresno’s win makes a statement, much like the one KU’s two first-round losses during March Madness did but with less emotional distress for me. The Bulldogs’ win shows that regardless of the how high or low a team is ranked or seeded you have to show up to play on game day. There’s a lot of athletic talent in this world and thinking you can get by just because some system gives you a better seed than your opponent is probably a sign you’ll lose.

Is it just me, or should there have been more than two commas in that whole mess of text? I admit I probably overuse the damn things, but that whole block felt like one long detour into run-on country.

Oh, I'm sorry, you want my thoughts on the content, not the grammar? Well, hey, I'm as big a fan of the underdog as anyone else, but I'm not the biggest fan of couching that sentiment in "you have to show up to play on game day." That seems a little gritty to me. I dunno, I think it's more down to random chance and a little luck than people overlooking their opponents. To be honest, that whole angle is probably a little overplayed.

In a nut shell: Respect your opponent.

I fully expect this to be the slogan for next year's NBA playoffs.

WORSE

My dislike of Shaquille O’Neil aside (if you get paid that much money to play basketball you should be able to make a free throw)

Or, alternately, you can make up for your admittedly lousy free throw shooting by dominating pretty much every other aspect of the game for a decade. Also, it's O'Neal. Who the hell is editing this sports section? Hey, wait a moment...

Or, to be more precise, thanks Leavenworth Times sports editor Sara Mettlen!

Looks like somebody doesn't know how to self-edit. Of course, me make mistake? That's unpossible. Just so we're clear.

the video of him rapping about Kobe Bryant is a whole new low.

If by "low" you mean "proof of Shaq's comedic genius", then I'm totally on board. Of course, if you're using pretty much any of the "correct" definitions of the word "low", then I really will have to disagree.

So Kobe didn’t want to be on your team, feel free to not like the man, heck even hate him, but don’t publicly do something that mostly just makes you look like a moron to put him down.

I think it's a little more than "didn't want to be on your team." I believe it's "caused a massive rift and then pretty much forced Laker management to rebuild the team in his image, starting with trading Shaq." Look, I'm about as big a Kobe supporter as you're likely to find, but let's be honest. Shaq has legitimate beef here. Kobe beef, even.

(I swear that pun was not initially intended. But hey, when the opportunity arose, I fucking took it. That's why I'm a champion blogger.)

I think first of all someone should tell Shaq he really isn’t all too great of a rapper and secondly maybe throw out a reminder that not only do his own children look up to him but so do a lot of other children around the world.

This is just a crazy guess, but I doubt Sara Mettlen is the world's biggest hip-hop fan. Of course, Shaq is a terrible rapper, but only when you judge him against professionals. As a free-styling amateur? He's pretty decent, I'd say. And speaking of overplayed angles...

Look, the last thing anyone wants to hear from me is moral outrage in response to moral outrage, so I'll spare you that. Let's just be realistic. It's the 21st century. Not only do kids regularly hear worse than anything in Shaq's song, there's the simple fact that to ask athletes to constantly be on guard against letting children down is to basically ask them not to have a private life. Ten years ago, that rap would have been at best a rumor, a story repeated in select circles and then later related by somebody like the Sports Guy. Hell, that would probably have been true even three or four years ago. So let's be realistic here. Role model or no, Shaq has the right to act like an adult every once in awhile. Which, ironically, usually entails behaving unbelievably childishly, but whatever.

Here comes the tie back to Vick, professional athletes seem to be steadily making poorer and poorer decisions, which is particularly alarming consider nearly all professional sports are enjoying some of the best ratings they’ve had in years.

Wait...Shaq asking Kobe how his ass tastes in a freestyle rap is somehow even remotely comparable to what Michael Vick did? Come on, let's at least try to be sensible here. Oh, and this barely makes any sense. I mean, like, at all. Leaving aside the run-on vibe and the mechanical errors (that should be "considering" up there, and that's without even really looking at it), none of the points in that sentence even begin to logically connect. Michael Vick...poor decisions...still great ratings? What...the...fuck?

So for the rest of the population making a living off of their sport, please find a way to act with more decorum than Shaq. That shouldn’t be too hard.

Or, alternately, for those of us following sports, we could admit these are all real people with real lives, and decide either to enjoy this sort of off-screen stuff or ignore it. Seems only fair.

ABOUT THE SAME

Although Michael Beasley was, in my opinion at least, the best player in the NBA draft, he didn’t go first. Brandon Rush went higher than expected, Darrell Arthur went lower and somehow Mario Chalmers slipped out of the first round. I’m sorry to break it to anyone who spent hours of their night watching the draft, but it doesn’t really matter.

Well...it might matter if your team made a terrible selection. Or, if you prefer me to feign optimism, an awesome pick. It certainly matters to me who Chicago chose (although obviously it mattered even more than usual this year). Judging by all the Kansas-related players, I'm guessing Sara Mettlen is approaching this from a collegiate perspective, from which, yeah, it doesn't really matter who goes where as long as they get drafted. But from a professional perspective? It matters a huge fucking deal who goes where.

Until all the trades are finalized you don’t even really know where a guy is going to be playing next year.

Yeah...that's true, but it certainly narrows it down a little, right? I mean, I didn't really bother watching the draft because it's, you know, boring, but I certainly followed it.

A caveat to the it doesn’t matter remark, it does matter in monetary terms for the players themselves, but to fans not so much.

Again...I'd guess a good 85-90% of draftees end up playing (if they ever play at all) for the team that picked them. So yeah, it does matter to fans. Fans of the teams that picked them.

Trades aside, where a player goes in the draft doesn’t necessarily match up with how well he does once he’s in the league. After all, Michael Jordan went No. 3 and the current league MVP Kobe Bryant went No. 13.

Is it just me, or is she arguing two different things here? First that it doesn't matter where a player gets taken, and then also it doesn't matter who selects them. Because maybe I'll grant the first point, but the second one seems, well, kinda dumb.

Ah well, I guess it's all good. And once again, happy belated birthday Michael!

Congratulations to Spain...

2008-06-29T16:55:00.003-04:00

...on winning the finals of Eurocup 2008.

I assume they now go on to the Ultra-Finals to play England, yes? I'm just going to assume that's how things work.

Stay tuned for 52 52 52.

Is this a post? A comment? Truly, only God can know for sure.

2008-06-27T21:54:00.004-04:00

While I was furiously masturbating with cat faeces to pictures of your dead grand-aunt (am I right, guys? Hey? Hey?) this little establishment here became, like, a blog. Djmmm and Archie have done all sorts of new spicy things far from the realm of "Look! Jon Heyman thinks Schmo Bimbley and his .237 Eqa are valuable! Chortle." I'm not totally ready to make that full-blown leap, so consider this some sort of transition.

Catching up on Leitch's last day at Deadspin, I just read the back-and-forth with Bissinger. I thought the game of '"[Leitch] Don't you feel FOOLISH for how you acted?! Aren't you MORTIFIED?" "[Buzz] Well actually countless smart people agree with me so I'll be okay."' was kind of lame on both sides. I will narrowly avoid Archie's wrath by stating that, of course, Leitch came out ahead. One thing in particular bothered me from Bissinger's last reply:

We just disagree on a lot of fundamental things. Obviously, the biggest is that
sports should not be treated with seriousness. I think Friday Night Lights
proves the point of just how serious sports is in our culture.

You sure, Buzz? Are you sure it wasn't the overwhelming feeling of "Holy crap, look at how seriously those hicks take football!" that made the story compelling? If every reader of the book lived only to watch his favourite team, to the extent that people in west Texas did, the book wouldn't have mattered. It was interesting because high school football was all those people had, and that sort of rabid fanaticism isn't frequently seen. People don't take sports very seriously because, as Leitch said, it's just entertainment, really. What's more, that season was 20 years ago. As the epilogue to the version I read mentioned, people are a little less nuts about football now; Permian has a girls' soccer team and stuff. Even the craziest of the crazy have maybe come around a bit. So, no, Buzz, I don't think FNL showed how fucked up we all are over sports. Really, it emphasized how unimportant that stuff ultimately is to the large majority of people.

Anyway, I'm going to go brush my teeth with smegma and watch animal porn. Tits.

The New Original Column #1: How's about an introduction?

2008-06-27T15:16:00.001-04:00

Finally making good on my promise of gimmicks as far as the eye can see, I am pleased to unveil that most original of premises, a column. It's just like what the MSM (not to mention Big Daddy Balls) do, but written by me. And since a random Spinal Tap reference was the best I could come up with for a title, you can rest assured that I'll be trying again next week. I just felt "It's a column, stupid!" was a little much.

Because the world in sports is so busy today, what with the blogosphere still reeling at ~~the news of Mayo-for-Love~~ Will Leitch's departure, I'll keep this pretty short. Hell, I'm not sure how much longer this will be than the italicized intro thingy up top, but what the hey?

Basically, I generally try my best to avoid discussing actual sports on this blog. This is because, if I can get my Socrates on for a second here, the only thing I know about sports is that I know nothing. I refuse to claim there are very many absolute truths in a sports world where...

1. In the last decade, an 83-win team won the World Series while a 116-win team couldn't even push the ALCS to game six.

2. The Boston Celtics had more of a challenge finishing off the Atlanta Hawks than the Los Angeles Lakers.

3. Eli Manning went from confused semi-bust to Super Bowl hero in less than a month.

4. Something weird about hockey, if only for symmetry's sake.

Now, obviously, the proper response here isn't to turn around and say "Sports is inexplicable, so let's start bullshitting!" That's the Way of the Plaschke, and I won't stand for it. There are no end of valid, interesting ways to interact with sports, and I probably don't need to bore you with a list delineating all of them. (And since I'm trying to actually follow my new "no navel-gazing" rule, I don't really want to get into what would essentially be plugs for a bunch of great sites that don't really need the Micklewhite Boost*.)

*The Micklewhite Boost is a proud rip-off of the Colbert Bump.

There's plenty of stuff to talk about in the world of sports and, frankly, I've got more than enough time on my hands to do it. I'll start in earnest next week, but right now I think I'm just going to make the most of Mr. Leitch's last day in the blogosphere. Well, until he comes back, anyway. Departures are never quite as final as they used to be, you know.

Credit where it's due...

2008-06-27T01:41:00.001-04:00

And my increasingly semi-sycophantic (how's that for tortured verbiage?) Simmons watch continues. Obviously, his absolutely fantastic, complete-with-profanity Will Leitch roast today was nothing short of spectacular, and bodes well for the very possibly fast-approaching day when he cuts ties with ESPN. So that's cool.

But until that potentially glorious day, I'm going to give some props to Bill Simmons and Chad Ford for their mock draft. I know some people haven't much cared for Bill's analysis, but I think it's worth pointing out that the draft is such a crap-shoot anyway that aimless bluster and swagger aren't all that far from attempting real analysis. Actually, the bluster and swagger are firmly aimed at fellating Kevin Durant, but you get my point.

Besides, with Chad Ford around as the rational straight man, Bill's silliness is far more palatable. All in all, a rather entertaining piece. Honestly, if the two of them ran away together to start a basketball blog, I'd read it. Especially if there was cussing.

But really, the main reason I bothered with this post was this last rejoinder from Bill. Chad Ford went to some lengths to explain how cognitive dissonance was skewing Bill's perceptions of the draft, which Bill mostly shrugged off as intellectual hooey. Still, with an ending like this...

Yours in cognitive dissonance,

Simmons

...I think I'm OK with that.

Man, it's a fun time to be a sports fan. More on this coming up soon in my first true column thingy.

Re-ranking the 2003 draft class the only way I know how...

2008-06-26T09:15:00.001-04:00

The NBA draft is tonight, which hopefully can only mean one thing: the Stephen A. Smith Heckling Society of Gentlemen will be on the prowl. Oh, and both Djmmm and your humble author's basketball teams of choice will make potentially franchise-altering picks. So there's that. But let's focus on the bigger picture here. And that bigger picture is, of course, the tiny, tiny screen of YouTube. But more on that in a second. Let's go back to the draft...way back.

After all, hypothetically redoing the NBA draft has been column fodder since time immemorial. And those links just cover the 2003 draft, which admittedly has the advantage of probably being the most important draft of this decade, perhaps even until 2015 (especially if Jermaine O'Neal can step things up big time in Toronto and make Chris Bosh a legit contender).

So how's about we also redo the 2003 draft based on that most all-important of factors - acting ability. After all, what's the true measure of Michael Jordan's greatness: the six rings or his fearlessly homoerotic chemistry with Kevin Bacon in those Hanes commercials?

(Hint...it's not the rings.)

For simplicity's sake (and also because no one has yet seen fit to have Chris Kaman shill for their used car dealership, which is really humanity's loss), we'll just stick with the top five of the 2003 draft. Oh, and because I willfully break my own rules whenever I feel like it, I think I'll go from 5 to 1. And why not?

#5 Carmelo Anthony

Carmelo takes a risk from the start by rejecting W.C. Fields's legendary advice: "Never drink water - fish fuck in it!" No, sorry, I mean, "Never work with children or animals." (And that one kid's buck tooth has to count as it own organism, so those are your animals.) Unfortunately, the definitive riff on little children picking professional athletes happened way back in The Simpsons classic "Homer at the Bat", anchored by the comedic genius of Wade Boggs.

I think I'm getting off-point. What my point is, I believe, is that Carmelo is merely adequate here, brings very little emotionality, and appears somewhat torn between playing it like an overgrown man-child or a "stop snitchin'!" hardass. Which is weird, because I believe he already is a combination of those two things in real life. So yeah, fifth it is.

#4 Dwyane Wade

Nothing wrong with the line reads here, but come on...this clip is pretty much all Sir Charles. All that Dwyane does is react and let the comedy happen around him, adding very little humor of his own. Which might admittedly make him suitable for the lead on Scrubs - hell, he'd almost certainly be a huge upgrade over the comedy black hole that is Zach Braff - but it can't really earn him higher than fourth in this insanely pointless (not to mention pointlessly insane) redraft I'm doing. Come on, let's see some passion!

#3 Darko Milicic

Ah, much better. Sure, some of you might cry foul here, claiming since that was, you know, real, that shouldn't count as proof of his acting prowess. Well, allow me to retort...

I am gonna come back and fuck your mothers to all of them. That is my massage to you. Pussies!

Seriously folks, the dude's a natural. (Even if he did, in the heat of the moment, somehow mix up "poruka", the Serbian word for "message", with "masaza", or "massage." Weird you'd mix up such different words, but I'm sure that can be coached so that, in time, it isn't a gigantic liability. Much like all other aspects of his game.)

Look, even if you won't grant me the obvious fact that he's the long-awaited heir to Al Pacino, you've got to admit his improv would put even mid-period Will Ferrell to shame...

I am gonna fuck their mother in her mouth!

[Swigs what I can only hope is Gatorade.]

I’m gonna fuck them all & if he has a daughter I’m gonna fuck her too!

That's just brilliant. I especially liked the part where he switched from singular to plural. That sort of thing just never occurs to me. Probably why I'm still toiling in the blog trenches.

#2 LeBron James

Sure, I could have gone with the timeless elegance of The LeBrons, but you know what? I just can't get over how legitimately good his acting is here. Not sure how huge his range is (although The LeBrons clearly showed him capable of such diverse emotions as "old" and "asshole"), but if nothing else, LeBron has got the part of "slick lawyer" down motherfucking pat. Can we get him a guest spot on Boston Legal? The thought of him arguing a case against a gleefully insane William Shatner and/or idealistically sleazy James Spader might just make for the most unbelievable television in recorded history.

#1 Chris Bosh

Hey, you guys remember Dr. Strangelove, where Peter Sellers played three different roles? Yeah...fuck that shit, because Chris Bosh just blew that dead British prick (at least if certain Geoffrey Rush TV movies are to be believed) out of the water.

Let me ask you this - did Peter Sellers ever put a basketball underneath his shirt to make himself look fat? No? I rest my case.

Comics & Sports #1: Dash Dartwell

2008-06-25T17:35:00.005-04:00

As all geeks (looking at you, Djmmm) know, every Wednesday (and Thursdays when Monday was a holiday or something) is that most hallowed of days, new comic book day. In the spirit of that most beautiful of days, I present a new feature spotlighting the potentially awesome confluence of sports and comics.

I recently spent two weeks in scenic (no, really, it sort of is) East Lansing, Michigan, having somehow scammed my college of choice into funding my research into a little something called Centaur Comics. Ultra-quickly, they were a fifth-rate (much like this blog) comic book publisher back in the late thirties and early forties, during the so-called Golden Age of comics. They trotted out a variety of oddball heroes, including an honest-to-goodness centaur, a ventriloquist-turned-detective, and a giant flying eyeball that may or may not be God. So yeah, no lack of creativity over at Centaur. Sanity is a whole 'nother issue.

They also did a bunch of stories that mixed elements of the emerging superhero genre with the world of sports, producing predictably bizarre results. Today we spotlight a steroid parable written six decades before anyone even realized that was an issue. Of course, the whole thing is about the virtues of performance-enhancing substances and how people who use them are heroes. Start taking notes right now, disgraced major leaguers. The key to your redemption may well lie within these pages.

First of all, the set-up. From the comic:

Dashford (Dash) Dartwell is a student at Dravrah University and a member of the "scrub" track team. However, his interest in track is secondary to his new interest in the research of Dr. Drew Moss, Professor of Bio-Chemistry at Dravrah. An added attraction is Bettie Moss, Dr. Moss's lovely daughter.

Three things...

1. Dashford? I think I know what I'm calling my children. Yes, all of them.
2. Dravrah? I would make a crappy joke here about how I bet its rival is "Elay", but, um...that's actually the name of its rival. Oh, that crazy forties-style wordplay!
3. Bettie Moss? If I didn't know better, I'd call that a cheap knock-off of Hulk love interest Betty Ross. Just because it was made twenty years earlier doesn't prove anything!

OK, with that out of the way, let's take a look at the story itself. Professor Moss has just created "metabo-tablets", and he's the first to admit he doesn't have the faintest idea what they'll do...

Leaving the really questionable medical ethics aside for a moment (I mean, shouldn't he first force-feed a bunch of rats ten times the recommended dosage before he even thinks about human tests?), I'm pretty sure the "But I'm not even going to play anyway, so it's OK!" line later became the core of Alex Sanchez's defense.

Meanwhile, a bunch of mobsters with apparently nothing better to do than fix an Ivy League (sorry...Yvi Eugael) track meet kidnap all the top runners, forcing the coach to use the now-medicated Dash...

Frankly, I don't know what Dash was ever doing on the second team in the first place. I mean, his name is Dash Dartwell. For crying out loud, hasn't the coach ever heard of nominative determinism? Anyway, now that the performance-enhancers have kicked in, Dash does the only reasonable thing - demand to be in every single race. Of course, I'm sure he'll take things easy, using his amazing new powers to only just win. Right? Right!?

Because I've very legitimately got nothing better to do, here's a comparison of the modern records in those various events with Dash's marks...

100 Yard Dash: 9.72 seconds vs. 3.5 seconds (Dash)
High Jump: 8 feet vs. 19 feet
Broad Jump: 29.4 feet vs. 70+ feet

And that's without sixty years worth of improved conditioning. So, um, yeah, holy shit. Way to be inconspicuous, Dash. The best part, of course, is where there are no repercussions whatsoever. Hell, no one even vaguely questions whether these completely impossible results are on the level. His coach only gets concerned when the tablets start to wear off and he almost loses. OK, that last part is pretty believable, but still.

Well, OK, there is one repercussion. Those violent mobsters are going to try to kill him. But in terms of oversight from the governing athletic body? None. None whatsoever. And what's the press's reaction?

That's right, they're total suckers for the great story. Huh. Maybe this isn't that ridiculous after all.

Also, Dr. Moss? You're giving the credit for three world records to "you, with the help of my metabo-tablets"? With the help? Yes, in much the same way the Apollo astronauts reached escape velocity with the help of the Saturn V. Or, if you'd prefer sports-related, in much the same way Jud Buechler won three NBA championships with the help of Michael Jordan.

Well, anyway, Dash fights the angry mobsters and defeats them because he's, well, really fast. He also wears a suit the whole time while fighting crime, which is strangely badass. All of which leads to...

And so, because he uses his incredible drug-fueled powers to not only rewrite the record books but also to beat the crap out of some local gangsters, Dash Dartwell is a superhero. All I know is, if Barry Bonds starts busting skulls in the Bay Area, I think we'll know which comic book he started reading. Well, assuming those skulls belong to criminals. I could also see him as a super-villain. Either way, it really seems like his only logical career move. Other than Taiwan of course. You can't be extradited if the US doesn't recognize the country!

In any event, remember the timeless lesson of Dash Dartwell - drugs makes sports better! Yay for performance-enhancing substances!

Join us next Wednesday for another Comics & Sports entry where our friend Dash will use his tablets to hit more home runs. No, seriously. I swear that's actually going to happen.

RIP George Carlin 1937-2008

2008-06-23T17:00:00.003-04:00

*AHEM*

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

You know, if Brian Williams reduced tonight's obituary to those seven* words, I'd probably forgive the mainstream media right then and there. Oh well.

*OK, technically eight, but let's not split hairs here, yes?

Leave it to the real world to just legitimately bum me out. Not much to say that hasn't already been said, but I thought I might pay tribute to an aspect of George Carlin's legacy that is being sadly pushed aside in favor of his admittedly iconic and absolutely essential work in the field of comedy. Still, to people of a certain age (this guy very much included), George Carlin will always first and foremost be the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine and friends, which pretty much has to remain the all-time unlikeliest casting decision ever. I even found a sports-related video to embed. (Cricket counts as a sport, right?)

In the words of Walter Sobchak (and maybe someone else before him), "Good night, sweet prince."

No more navel-gazing! (Well, just this one last time)...

2008-06-23T16:30:00.003-04:00

Will Leitch has written a truly excellent (and uncharacteristically ornery) post over at Deadspin about an LA Times article that basically claimed, thanks to some choice quotes from The Big Lead's Jason MacIntyre, Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, and Deadspin's own A.J. Daulerio, that the wild days in the sports blogosphere are giving way to some newfound respectability. Leitch, in so many words, called this a pile of horseshit. He even used the word "fuck" and everything, which for him is relatively remarkable. And you know what?

Leitch's right. Psychotic...but absolutely right. We got to take these bastards. We could fight them with conventional weapons. That could take years, cost millions of lives. In this case, I think we have to go all out. I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

(Thanks Animal House!)

Unfortunately, since I can't come up with an appropriately futile and stupid gesture (fire-bombing is still technically illegal, right?), I'll just do this - from now on, fuck the whole MSM/blogosphere thing. It's done, it's played out, it always was played out, and I'm not touching it anymore. I believe Matt Ufford said it best in his usual elegant, non-inflammatory prose:

You people are fucking gay.

I believe that's actually a quote from Henry VI, but whatever. Point is, this self-indulgent self-dissection shit has to stop. And I'm just the sort of worthless peon to do it.

But just before I do that, I have to point out one thing from the article that amused me no end:

"It's almost like the difference between Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby," Florio said. "Can you still be funny without cursing?"

I won't belabor the point too much, but if Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby are Florio's barometer of "edgy" vs. "safe" comedy, what year must he be living in? 1986? Because if Eddie Murphy has proven one thing, it's that he can't be funny without cursing. Not at fucking all. Although that movie about the tranny was pretty funny.

Wait, what?

52 52 52 Week #18: Georgia

2008-06-22T15:35:00.000-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Not the best of weeks here at Fire Everybody! A fun NBA finals has given way to the inevitable doldrums of mid-summer sports, and my recent self-indulgence has probably reflected the fact that, well, there isn't all that much to say. So, I'm tinkering with the notion of going to the following format for the foreseeable future (hey - alliteration!)...

Sunday: 52 52 52
Wednesday: A staggeringly brilliant new feature combining two of my greatest loves...more info to follow
Friday: A rambling piece on some general point of interest to me in the world of sports

We'll see whether this works, and if there's anything of interest that pops up otherwise, I'll certainly post, and of course Passive and Djmmm can do what they like. But still, if you're trying to figure out when to check the site, do know that new content should be appearing on those days.

OK, with that out of the way, let's talk about everybody's favorite 4,784 foot highpoint, Georgia's awesomely named Brasstown Bald. This may be the first highpoint that sounds like the name of a '30s pulp hero, which is something I'm definitely in favor of. Some other, more factual facts coming up...

1. The mountain is apparently most made up of soapstone and dunite. Don't know what dunite is? Well, it "is an igneous, plutonic rock, of ultramafic composition, with coarse-grained or phaneritic texture." Huh. That cleared that up. Let's just all agree soapstone is a stone made out of soap, yes?

2. Although this may not be terribly surprising, there isn't actually any brass in Brasstown Bald. Instead, it gets its name "was derived by a simple Cherokee translation error by white settlers. Sounding very similar, settlers confused the word "Itse'yĭ" (New Green Place or Place of Fresh Green) with "Ûňtsaiyĭ" (Brass). Itse'yĭ, New Green Place, was used to describe the top of the mountain, as it was grassy and devoid of trees." Doesn't Wikipedia just know everything?

3. Wikipedia tells us, "The U.S. Forest Service has webcams atop the Observation tower." Of course, gold members of the U.S. Forest Service can watch live shows with Brasstown Bald, and platinum members can even chat with it and make requests. Want to see some soil erosion? You bet your perverted ass you do. But you best pay up. All major credit cards accepted.

After the disaster that was last week's entry, I'm playing things safe and going with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Admittedly, this stretches the definition of "local" journalism to almost ridiculous proportions, as I'm pretty sure I'd have to consider the South "local" for this to count, but whatever. Terence Moore is your writer, and the Atlanta Braves are your topic. Well, that and the phantom panic. Why do I say phantom? All will be explained. All I say!

(Was that melodramatic enough? I'm going for huge here, you know.)

Young Braves must not panic

I have to admit, this is a premise that I pretty much immediately dislike. "Panic" is one of those things, like "team chemistry" or "grittiness" that gets invented to explain a team's failure or success, when really it's probably at most like .5% of the reason. But hell, I'm here now, so I might as well follow through.

Even though the baseball season will reach its midway point by the end of the week, the struggling and aching Braves aren’t panicking, and they shouldn’t.

I think this sentence might hold the whole key to the Atlanta Braves. After all, they might be struggling because they're aching, and any notion of panicking is just faulty causation. Maybe. But again, I'm jumping the gun here; I should at least wait for some evidence.

It’s still early. Not only that, the National League East isn’t a scary place. The division-leading Philadelphia Phillies and the surprising Florida Marlins are a collapse waiting to happen. You also have the New York Mets, the NL’s most dysfunctional team, and the Washington Nationals, as ghastly as advertised.

I dunno, PECOTA seems to agree with you on the Marlins, seeing as how they're currently pegged for an 81-81 final record (sorry Djmmm), but the Phillies? PECOTA has them at 89-73, and that's taking into consideration all the problems they've already had. At this point, the Phillies really figure to either stay about the same or get better, and either will likely be good enough to win the division. Of course, PECOTA is imperfect (and, by that, I really should say a Monte Carlo simulation run a million times every day is imperfect), but I can't get on board with the Phillies being "a collapse waiting to happen." The Braves are going to need to go on a bit of a tear at some point relatively soon to give themselves a good chance. You can't really count on the biggest collapse in baseball history happening yearly in the same division.

Oh, and "The...Phillies and the...Marlins are a collapse waiting to happen"? Tsk tsk on the number agreement there, Mr. Moore.

Plus, despite the Braves’ woes, which were interrupted Saturday night at Turner Field with a 5-4 thriller over the Seattle Mariners after scoring twice in the bottom of the ninth, they have as much talent as anybody. That’s why they’ve stayed among the league’s top two in hitting and pitching for weeks. They’ve also yet to hit their stride. Even so, they began Saturday night just six games out of first, and they have the pleasure of knowing that one or more of their wounded will return at various points to help them spurt.

That sounds like reasonable stuff. I'll readily admit I haven't been closely following the Braves (I'm saving most of my baseball energy for a certain team in the NL Central that PECOTA thinks is bound for a 99-63 record), but I can't really object too much. Indeed, it seems like a perfectly serviceable column could be built around the fact that, for a bunch of reasons, the Braves are due to bounce back (perhaps also acknowledging the same is true of the Mets, as evidenced by their near-identical PECOTA records). Unfortunately, the title really seems to promise some tripe on "panicking." Still, titles usually aren't made up by the writer, so maybe it's just an honest mistake and this article really is that perfectly serviceable (if mediocre) column I was envisioning. Could it be that, for once, I was wrong?

No, the Braves aren’t panicking, but will they, especially if that spurt doesn’t happen sooner rather than later?

Nope. Why must I be so cursed with always being right!?

Oh well. Let's consider the evidence.

“It’s hard not to expect them to [panic], because they’re young and they haven’t had the experience of winning as much as we have and did,” said Tom Glavine, the Braves’ future Hall of Fame pitcher, in his 21st season in the majors.

Exhibit A: A future Hall of Fame pitcher finds it hard not to expect [panic].

“You’re young, and you’re looking around at a team that doesn’t resemble the one that we thought we’d have coming out of spring training. You have all the injuries, especially to the pitching staff. It would be really easy to look at it and feel sorry for yourselves and say, ‘Well, geez. Look at all the stuff we have to deal with and how we’re going to win?’ But you can’t think that way.”

Exhibit B: Said future Hall of Fame pitcher notes injuries and changed expectations, expects fifties-style swearing (i.e. "geez") to break out any minute.

The Braves aren’t thinking that way.

Exhibit C: They're not panicking.

Then again, they are getting close.

Exhibit D: But they could!

After they dropped the opener of this series to a Mariners bunch so wretched that it fired its general manager and manager during the past few days, the Braves had lost 18 of the previous 28 games. They’ve had trouble winning on the road and grabbing one-run games. They’ve also had too many innings that resembled the first inning Saturday night that had the Mariners scoring thrice courtesy of two booted balls at shortstop and a wild pitch.

Exhibit E: They have, of late, been struggling.

(And if you read the word "struggling" like Tony Reali does on Around the Horn, well...want to join my support group? We meet regularly, and there are cookies!)

Come to think of it, maybe the Braves are panicking — you know, a little.

Exhibit F: Struggling leads to panicking. Or maybe panicking leads to struggling. Either way, Q motherfucking E motherfucking D.

“There are guys like Glav [Tom Glavine], and [John] Smoltz and Chipper [Jones] who have that not-panic attitude,” said Braves right fielder Jeff Francoeur of the trio that survived the peaks and valleys associated with most or all of the Braves’ record trip to 14 consecutive division titles through 2005.

Exhibit G: At least 12% of the 25-man roster has that not-panic attitude, conferring on them immunity to panic. If I can turn around a trusty old scientific aphorism, evidence of absence is evidence of panic. So there! Panic it is!

It’s just that the rest of the 25-man roster is a novice at such things.

Exhibit H: The rest of them, having not won most or all of 14 consecutive division titles, are still susceptible to panic. This is why part of astronaut training is to sign a ten-day contract with the 1997 Braves. You know, just to soak up that division-winning goodness and ward off panic attacks.

What? How else do you explain Greg Myers and Tim Spehr?

Which is why Francoeur said, “You have guys like myself, where, it’s not so much panic, but we want to get it done now and get back in it. So, we don’t want to say, ‘Hey, if we keep playing our butts off now, come August, we’ll be back in it.’ I don’t like to say that, because I like to say we need to win now.”

Exhibit I: Francoeur and the rest of the young Braves aren't really panicking, but they want to win. If that isn't conclusive evidence of panic, I don't know what is.

(I don't know what is.)

The Braves aren’t winning now, at least not consistently. “Still, even with our injuries, we’ve had guys come in here to show that they can carry the load, and that’s what your mind-set has to be,” said Glavine, who won’t pitch for a month or so after damaging his 42-year-old left elbow. In addition, Smoltz is out for the season after shoulder surgery. Then there is Jones, who reinjured a quadriceps that will keep him out of the Braves’ starting lineup for the next few days and that manager Bobby Cox said may never improve.

Exhibit J: They have injuries, but "guys [have] come in here to show that they can carry the load." Oh yeah, that'd be panic right there.

I'm sure, based on all that evidence, you can only agree with one inescapable conclusion:

That leaves those Braves not named Glavine, Smoltz or Jones to play and not panic through this mess. That’s the problem, and that’s a big one.

I can find no fault with that. Logic at its finest, yes sir!

Bill Simmons: Non-It-Getter

2008-06-19T00:22:00.005-04:00

Look, whatever problems I may have with the guy, one of his teams just won the championship, so I can't really argue he's not justified in another Celtics column. But this?

Note No. 1: "6/17"
If you're a numerology buff, then you'll enjoy this one: Game 6 was played on June 17 -- in other words, "6" (the number for June, as well as the number of games in the Finals) and "17" (the number of Boston championships if you include one for 2008). Two of the four greatest Celtics of all-time -- Bill Russell and John Havlicek -- wore "6" and "17," respectively. And if you add 6+1+7, you'd get "14," the number worn by Bob Cousy, another one of the four greatest Celtics ever. (If you want to really stretch it, 3 + 3 = 6, and "33" was worn by Larry Bird, the fourth in the "greatest Celtics ever" group.) If that's not enough, the area code for Boston is "617." And on a somber note, the 1986 draft happened June 17 -- really, the last day the Celtics felt like they were invincible.

Look, that's some pretty dumb stuff right there. It speaks to the complete and utter inanity of the exercise when Bill himself admits the Bird thing is a stretch, but still...whatever, no biggie. As long as nobody attaches any actual weight to it, it's just a somewhat silly parlor game. But then to end with this...

I don't know what all of this means, but it means something, right?

That...that's just painful to read. I mean, honestly...I'm not going to pile on too much here, but it's just disappointing to see someone trot out all this pointless, vaguely interesting crap and then somehow end up thinking there's something to it. I guess I could make a somewhat assholish point about the nature of faith here, but I'll hold back. Just...dammit, man, I thought Simmons was finally headed in the right direction.

Seriously, where the hell is skepticism when we need it most? Huh...turns out - and I had no idea this was the case before I looked it up - it returns this very day.

You know what? Have a taste. Be my guest.

Bring on "The War on Porn"! And no, I won't be writing an awkward sketch teaming up Penn & Teller with Willie Randolph or something like that. Although...

Jeff Van Gundy: It-Getter

2008-06-17T21:54:00.006-04:00

Mike Breen lays down some 17-themed numerology, to which Mark Jackson quickly declares, "It means...NOTHING." Breen, clearly just going for some local color, tries to get Jackson and Van Gundy to admit they had some superstitions as player and coach, to which Jeff Van Gundy explains:

Good players and great players...that’s my superstition!

Dubious grammar aside, that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. Jeff Van Gundy is truly the anti-Joe-Morgan, swapping inane blandness for insane hilarity and replacing bizarre gut feelings with pragmatic rationality. And no, I don't think I'm overstating things. Not one bit.

I love this man. I'd say in a non-gay way, but, well...I'm not so sure anymore.

I'M HANK STEINBRENNER

2008-06-17T20:46:00.004-04:00

I JUST CAUGHT MY DICK IN MY ZIPPER! OW! I'M GOING TO SUE THE CREATOR OF ZIPPERS AND DEMAND THAT ALL PANTS BE EQUIPPED WITH BUTTONS! YES, I SUPPOSE I COULD HAVE JUST WORN SWEATPANTS, OR I SUPPOSE I COULD HAVE JUST DONE MY ZIPPER UP MORE CAREFULLY BUT FUCK YOU, YOU CANNOT FATHOM THE PAIN AND EMBARRASSMENT OF BEING 4 GAMES OVER .500 DESPITE MISSING THE BEST HITTER IN THE GAME FOR A MONTH!

Marvin Finds A Solution

2008-06-17T20:06:00.001-04:00

Though it's not our bread and butter, it's hard to deny the skit is one of the sports blogosphere's most versatile forms of comedy, and I'd be remiss if I didn't make as much of an ass out of myself trying to do that genre as I have with FJM-style deconstructions and Deadspin-esque "news" items.

Today's entry is fresh off the news that the Marvin Harrison case isn't quite going away just yet. Oh, and in case you have no idea what I'm referencing, look here for the short version. Anyway, enjoy.

[A bar in Philly. The bathroom door opens in a distinctly non-flying manner.]

Dennis: Dude, seriously...

Mac: What?

Dennis: You said you'd clean the toilet! It stinks like yesterday's urine in there.

Mac: Well, that's probably because it is...

Dennis: You know what I mean.

Mac: I do, I just think if you put more work into your quips we'd get more done around here.

Dennis: How does that even make sense?

Mac: Whatever dude, it does.

[Sips beer.]

Mac: Anyway, that's Marvin work.

Dennis: You know Marvin's not around anymore.

Mac: Goddamn cops. Used to be America around here. You can't bust up one little brawl anymore without Johnny and Jenny Law swooping in.

Dennis: And you know who suffers? Our toilet, that's who. I'm pissed.

[Sips beer.]

Dennis: You want to shoot the gun?

Mac: Yes, yes I do.

[Looks for the gun.]

Mac: Dude, it's not there...

Dennis: That's not possible, that's...

Together: Marvin!

[Marvin's apartment. The phone rings.]

Marvin: Yello?

Mac: Where the hell is the gun?

Marvin: The what now?

Mac: The gun, dude!

Marvin: Oh...that.

Mac: Where is it?

Marvin: It's...safe.

Mac: What the hell does that mean?

Marvin: It's...with me.

Mac: Dude, we want the gun. We need to blow off some steam.

Marvin: That's...valid.

Mac: Why do you even have the gun anyway? You know the cops are still on your ass.

Marvin: I know. I just...I needed it.

Mac: Marvin, listen to me - have you still got the gun fever?

Marvin: No...of course...

[Cocks gun. Sips beer. Uncocks gun.]

Marvin: ...not.

Mac: Look, we'll be right over.

Marvin: O...K.

[Hangs up. Someone knocks on the door.]

Marvin: That was fast.

[From outside.]

Voice: Dammit Harrison, open this door right now! We need to discuss certain matters.

Marvin: Be right there!

[Puts gun in pants.]

[Opens door.]

Roger: Thanks for agreeing to meet with me, Marvin.

Marvin: Of course. Anything I can do to help.

Roger: You know this whole ongoing investigation thing...it's reflecting poorly on the league, Marvin.

Marvin: I'm sorry to hear that.

Roger: Believe me, so am I. Look, if this isn't resolved soon, I'm going to have to suspend...

[Marvin stretches, revealing his midriff and the gun contained therein.]

Roger: What the hell is that?

Marvin: Hmm?

Roger: That!

Marvin: Oh...THAT! Right, well, look, Mr. Commish, let me break this down for you. I haven't straightened things out yet, OK? Could happen to anyone, you know? But I will, I will make this thing go away. Because I've got ways, Rog, I've got ways. Do, do you follow me?

[Mumbles.]

Marvin: Roger, what is this, your silence impression? Come on, nice and loud with a big boy voice. Do...you...follow me?

[Nods.]

Marvin: Good enough. I'll see you for the Hall of Fame game, yes?

[Nods.]

Marvin: Good. Now get going.

[Closes door. Exhales, clutching the beautiful, beautiful gun. Whispering.]

Marvin: Thank you thank you thank you...

[Later.]

Dennis: So everything's sorted out?

Marvin: Looks that way.

Dennis: Great.

Marvin: Pretty much.

[Sips beer.]

Dennis: So, can I have the gun?

Marvin: Oh...right. Yeah, let me get it for you.

Marvin: Wait, which one did you want?

Dennis: Huh.

Since when did I go on Simmons watch?

2008-06-16T22:40:00.006-04:00

It might be because, after years (at least three) of not reading him at all, I've had time to forgive him some of his worst excesses and actually appreciate what quality there is in his writing. Or it could just be because I'm lazy and this is an easy way to churn out a quick nugget of content when I've got nothing else to say. Who knows? (Or dares to dream...)

Anyway, his latest column for ESPN The Magazine features only the most passing of references to Boston and none at all to random pop culture (read: The Karate motherfucking Kid, which I suspect he actually quietly retired a couple years ago), which is good, has an interesting topic, which is great, and is pretty much spot-on in its analysis, which is surprising.

The topic is why Roger Federer has not done for tennis what Tiger Woods has done for golf. The basic premise is...well, I'll just go ahead and quote him:

Unlike golf, another time-sucking sport that appeals to a specific audience, tennis lacks a Tiger to keep it relevant. When tennis develops its own version of Tiger—first Pete Sampras, then Roger Federer—the guys do almost more damage than good. We see the best tennis stars as the Ping-Pong player at a family gathering who destroys all the uncles and cousins, and eventually kills everyone's interest in playing Ping-Pong for the day. Golf is a sport that hinges on luck and timing, streaks and slumps, and the quirks of different courses. So it's almost inconceivable for a golfer to dominate as Tiger has. But for Federer to dominate, it's completely conceivable. And boring.

Yep, pretty much. There is a slight problem with this theory, in that for Federer to truly be like Tiger, he would have won every Major. Bill completely omits the whole Nadal-on-clay/Federer-on-grass thing, which is another reason tennis is having trouble. I mean, I would have called it a "rivalry", but that suggests the two are actually competitive against each other. Instead, one just kicks the other's ass on one surface, and vice versa on the other surface.

That might suggest tennis could return to greater relevance with the emergence on someone who was dominant on every surface - someone legitimately chasing the Grand Slam into the US Open would be huge in much the same way horses like Big Brown get people to momentarily care about horse-racing, but it's pretty much impossible with the whole Nadal/Federer thing still in effect - but even if that happened, I have my doubts. The other possibility I'd like to entertain is a Brit winning Wimbledon, as that would almost have to be by definition a massive underdog story due to Britain's crap training regimens, but I may just be indulging my redcoat fancy a little too much there by thinking Americans would care about that. Still, you look at soccer's ratings these days, and you never know.

I've got to think golf, niche sport though it is, derives some of its appeal from the fact that lots of people actually play golf, and the presence of a lot of random apparently out-of-shape dudes (Phil Mickelson and Rocco Mediate spring to mind) reinforces the delusional notion that literally anyone could have the round of their life and win a Major. Less so with tennis. And by "less so", I of course mean "not at fucking all." Anyway, that's my tuppence. Um, I mean "two cents." Yes, yes, that'll do. American!

All this talk of tennis and British currency is making me feel rather unpatriotic. Time to refuel with a little help from my new favorite show...

If that's not a mantra, I don't know what is. Somebody's congressman is about to get a letter requesting that be made our new national anthem. (Hint...it's mine!)

Anyway, there were only a couple of random parts of the column that didn't work for me. Since I don't want to be accused of going easy on Simmons (or too hard on him, for that matter), I'll deal with them quickly.

You can't have four "majors" when absolutely nobody cares about one of them. (I believe not even The Schwab could name the last 10 Australian Open winners.)

Maybe one of our readers (of which we have a few more than usual lately, thanks to some random links) can help me out here, as I must admit I'm not an expert, but can't pretty much the same argument be made for the PGA Championship? Isn't that sort of also a black sheep major? I dunno, it seems like golf does just fine with only three truly relevant majors, so he might be barking up the wrong tree there.

This final one is the title of the column, so it probably wasn't even written by Bill, but it's so damn weird I can't even work out what the hell it's supposed to mean.

Wimbledon? I wouldn't miss it. And I don't mean that in a good way.

Huh? Just...huh? If someone can explain what that means in the comments, you might well end up preventing me having a fatal aneurysm. Because I just know I'm going to blow a gasket working out the logic of that one.

I have never been so completely and absolutely nailed...(no, not like that)...

2008-06-15T22:41:00.001-04:00

Another amazingly random Jeff Van Gundy rant to start off the second half:

That’s the problem with our country...too much TV-watching, too much time in front of the computer; it leads to childhood obesity, I just read about this...

I heard this as I sat on a couch playing FreeCell on my laptop while watching Game 5 (well, obviously) with a just finished large 10-piece McNugget meal from McDonald's by my side.

I, um, may be part of the problem he's talking about.

52 52 52 Week #17: Kentucky

2008-06-15T17:23:00.001-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

Urgh. Slim pickings this week on the local journalism front. Kentucky, sad to say, doesn't have terribly much to offer. So, because Kentucky has failed me and, by extension, all of you, I will offer a little gift by way of compensation. Since I just wrote "slim pickings", enjoy this moment of iconic cinema from legendary thespian Slim Pickens:

Oh that's classic. Slightly less classic is Black Mountain, which stands at 4,145 feet. Not really a ton to work with here, but I'll try my best...

1. It's near an FAA radar dome. So, um, there's that.

2. A coal company owns the summit, and anyone want to climb to the top has to sign a waiver.

3. Wait, I'm getting something vaguely interesting coming in: "Coal companies have also alleged that mined coal veins converge underneath the summit of Black Mountain and that the summit itself is prone to collapse." I smell a disaster movie! Or at least a reordering of my highpoint list if the thing does collapse.

Yeah, I'm yawning too. Let's just push on.

I'm going to go real local today, because all of the bigger papers were either uninteresting or about racing (both of the horse and car variety), which also falls under the header of "uninteresting" as far as I'm concerned. During my desperate search through pretty much every newspaper in Kentucky, I couldn't help but be mildly amused by the inanity of the first sentence of an article in The Commonwealth Journal about high school softball. Since mild amusement at inanity is pretty much the best I'm going to do this week, I'm rolling with an article about high school softball. If nothing else, the author, one Steve Cornelius, has a pretty awesome name.

Hey, what's that I'm clutching at? Is it straws? Why yes, yes it is! Moving on...

Somerset — When people talk about Pulaski County High School softball, the names of K.K. Holman and Jessica Randolph inevitably come up.

Hey, don't just go assuming stuff like that, Stevie Corn (that's a nickname, you see). I was having a chinwag with a local shop owner just the other day about Andria Hill's key offensive production in the team's success this year, not to mention Samantha Solomon's excellent work at the top of the batting order. Didn't even mention those two so-called inevitable pieces of the Pulaski puzzle. So there!!!

Look, there really isn't anything to work with this week - I had to google random other players on that team for the purposes of that joke up there, which didn't serve to do much beyond make me feel a bit creepy - but I'll be a dick and press on.

“To have two players from the same team be selected as all-staters speaks volumes about their talent on the softball field,” Pulaski coach Scott Taylor said.

What's this "from the same team" business all about? Unless there's some weird Ozzie Guillen 2006 All-Star Game thing going on here, the team they play for should be irrelevant. Man, this is such a stretch.

Randolph holds almost every single-season and career hitting mark for the Lady Maroon program. This year alone, Randolph hit 10 homers, drove in 59 runs, batted an amazing .500 and had an on-base percentage of .583.

Wait, she batted .500 but only on-based .583? Look, high school softball player Jessica Randolph, it's called walking, and even Juan Pierre does it these days. Let's see some plate discipline!!!

This is why I will never coach a high school softball team. Well, that and certain laws.

“K.K. had an amazing offensive year considering she is only a sophomore from an offensive standpoint,” Taylor reasoned. “Basketball has always been K.K.’s first love and it probably always will, but the gap is closing between the two as far as her competitive level in each sport.”

I won't make a big deal out of this, but is "K.K." really that wise a nickname? I dunno, it just seems like that name has way too big a chance for excruciatingly awkward, Curb Your Enthusiasm style misunderstandings. She doesn't even pitch, for goodness sake, which seems like the preferred place for a softball player with the name "K.K."

When another spring rolls around a new group of young girls will take to the Pulaski County High School softball field, and inevitably the number 4 (Holman’s #) and 32 (Randolph’s #) will be donned by two other softball players wanting to emulate the two all-state softball players before them, who set the high standard of excellence for future generations of Lady Maroons to come.

Those numbers probably could have been set up earlier in the article. You know, so that paragraph was pithy instead of forced. Whatever.

Look, I'm going to quit while I'm far, far behind and call it a post. Here are my conclusions:

1. Kentucky sucks.
2. I suck.
3. Pulaski County High School softball rules!!!

Ah well, at least the streak lives. Hopefully next week will have a better crop to choose from (I honestly do not see how it couldn't). Here's to an enjoyable Game 5. Sussman will be live-blogging it over at Deadspin, so I recommend checking that out. I'll be back next week with better stuff.

Turns out you can take it with you...

2008-06-13T19:30:00.003-04:00

...assuming "it" is a crappy writing style, and the place you're taking it to is ESPN. Hell, judging by the current state of the DotCom branch of the World Wide Leader, that appears to be pretty much required. Rick Reilly?

Rooting for Tiger Woods is like rooting for Justin Timberlake to get lucky, Exxon to hit a gusher, Bill Gates to find a twenty on the sidewalk. It takes no imagination.

It takes a certain amount of imagination to come up with rooting for Bill Gates to find a twenty. That's a pretty out-there example.

It takes no courage. What's the point? It's 1-to-5 he's going to win anyway, whether you cheer or not. Makes no difference to him. It's like rooting for erosion.

Little-known fact - erosion actually has terrible self-esteem and would probably do a lot better if we cheered him on every once in awhile (my first family vacation was a trip to yell encouragement at Lake Michigan). I mean, erosion has been working for, what, billions of years? And the Earth is still 1,083,207,300,000 cubic kilometers in volume. All the oxbow lakes in the world aren't going to make up for that sort of failure.

Huh. Oxbow lake reference. Looks like someone just justified their eighth grade science class.

Rooting for Phil Mickelson, on the other hand, is like rooting for the salmon to eat the bear.

Nah, rooting for Phil Mickelson is like rooting for a smaller bear to beat another bear. Admittedly, this bear is also fatter and pretty out-of-shape, but it's still very much in the family Ursidae. Point is, as freakishly brilliant and in his own class as Tiger may well be (he is), his closest competitor (which is Phil) is still a bear. Maybe a bear with a limp and a touch of hernia or something, but still a bear.

You'd have to root for somebody like, I don't know, Zach Johnson, if you really wanted to root for the salmon. I mean, the dude was only ranked 56th when he won the Masters in 2007. 56th is pretty salmon-esque. Admittedly, we're talking about a very Christian salmon here, which pretty much completely evens out the playing field against a bear, which as we all know is a godless killing machine.

It takes faith. It takes forgiveness. It takes Tums. Mickelson is a roller coaster in an earthquake. One shot will be so inspired you'll cover your mouth in astonishment. The next will be so Spam-brained you'll slap your forehead in disbelief. It's like watching a blind guy jaywalk across Hollywood and Vine. Your fist is in your mouth the whole way.

A blind guy...jaywalking...across Hollywood and Vine? That's so bizarre on so many levels I'm not even going to bother breaking it down.

Also, Reilly's fist is in his mouth the whole way? Did this dude have a career before sportswriting that he's kept under wraps? And by "career", I do of course mean gay porn.

(I know, I know...I assume everyone does gay porn. Well, prove me wrong folks. Prove me wrong. As a great sage once said, you can't send me photos of something you don't do.)

I bring all this up because Woods and Mickelson will play side-by-side Thursday and Friday at the U.S. Open. You must choose. You cannot root for both. It's un-American.

Can we root for neither? Is that an option?

Also, rooting for both may be un-American, but it's very Moroccan. I say that because Morocco was for some reason the country that came up when I googled "most bisexual country", and I wanted to make an immature and somewhat offensive joke. I think I succeeded.

Here's how to tell them apart: Woods has the Joe Weider body, the Iron Byron swing, the Green Beret mind. Mickelson's body leans toward Sara Lee. He's carried two drivers—one for hooks and one for slices—but none for straights. He can get it up and down out of an ice cream cart, which is a good thing, because he's there a lot. He might be the only athlete whose catch phrase is, "I'm such an idiot!"

Who exactly needs a field guide to tell the difference between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson? Well, other than that blind jaywalker, but I'm pretty sure he's still in intensive care.

I mean, those dudes wouldn't look anything alike even if their skin pigmentation happened to be the same (OK, that's not true - both Tiger and black Phil would be dead ringers for Martin Lawrence, as any Deadspin commenter would be glad to point out). Hell, one's a righty and the other's a lefty, which I deduced from Phil's nickname being "Lefty" and Tiger's nickname being "Tiger." Tiger means "Righty" in some language, right? I'm guessing Swedish, what with the whole Elin Nordegren thing.

By the way, as much as Djmmm has promised me he won't edit my posts anymore (my posts are like my deformed children, and I won't have him coming in here and plastic surgeoning them into something presentable), I'm pretty sure he'd just delete the entire post and replace it with three dozen Elin Nordegren photos if I didn't make with the sexy snaps.

It's the law of the sports blogs - you mention a sexy woman, you provide pictorial evidence. Sim-fucking-ple. This is why With Leather is pretty much the best blog around. Well, that and Matt Ufford's sexy, sexy rage.

I believe I've gotten slightly off point. Still good though.

For Woods, there's almost nothing at stake this week. It will be just another hunt for just another major, his third U.S. Open and his 14th major overall. It's Year 13 of his Scorched Earth Tour, which we all know will end up with The Coolest Guy in the World owning every golf record known to man, to say nothing of every T-bill. He'll finish with 25 majors, making Jack Nicklaus look like a guy with a rental set.

Yeah, probably, but you're telling me him getting dangerously close to Jack's total isn't interesting? Sure, the 18th and 19th Majors are going to be the really exciting chases, but it's not like he can skip right to those. I mean, there's nothing interesting about Hank Aaron's 715th home run if he doesn't hit the 714 before that necessary to get there. (I would've have gone with Bonds there, but he carries too much baggage at the moment for even an innocuous analogy). So yeah, in a long-term sense, there's definitely something at stake.

At stake for Mickelson? Just about everything. This is arguably the most important major of his life, the one in his hometown, on his home course of Torrey Pines, in front of all his family and friends, against the man who has caused him more heartburn than any other.

Come on, give a little credit to the guy who invented "lobster ravioli with tarragon cream sauce and garlic bread." That shit's got way too much stuff in it not to need an Alka-Seltzer afterward.

He's got hopes of finally winning his first U.S. Open after four catastrophic chokes, near misses, and should-have-been second-place finishes in this baby. I ask you, couldn't you switch to Phil just this once?

Wait, so you can't root for both, but you can randomly switch your allegiances from one very popular golfer to another very popular golfer? This is a little like, "I know you've been on the Lakers bandwagon since the threepeat, but don't you think, just this once, you can root for KG and his upstart 66-win team?" Well, not quite, because Phil probably won't win the US Open, but still.

Also, I don't know if there are really much by way of popularity rankings in golf, but I always thought Phil was the popular fan favorite, and most people more respected Tiger than actually liked him. Or have I underestimated the American penchant for front-running?

Besides, rooting for Phil is so much more interesting. Tiger's in the fairway. Phil's in a lady's Prada!

A joke as lame as that requires a comeback equal as lame. *AHEM*

LAME...

Tiger's on the green. Phil is banking it off a pine, a boulder and a San-o-let! Tiger makes a 2-footer for a what-else-is-new 4. Phil makes a seagoing 30-footer for a did-you-see-that 4! It's the difference between watching Dow Jones and Indiana Jones.

That doesn't even begin to make sense. I mean, I'd try to parse it, but I wouldn't even know where to start. Fine, I'll give it a go...

1. Who actually watches the Dow Jones? You can monitor it, sure, and people work in its vicinity, and I'm sure some of the business channels sort of cover it, but it's a stock market index. That's basically an abstract concept.

2. Even if you grant that first thing, how the hell is Tiger like a leading stock market index? Especially when you consider our current economic situation, which makes Reilly's use of it in the simile as something steady and successful even more puzzling. Hmm. You know, between that and the random reference to Hollywood and Vine, I think Rick might be a little out-of-touch. Privileged even.

3. Phil Mickelson has, to the best of my knowledge, never made par by hiding in a fridge during a nuclear explosion.

And that's just off the top of my head. Equally off the top of my head (as is, well, everything else I write on this blog), here are some comparisons that would have made more sense. I'll even keep up the weird Jones-and-Jones scheme!

It's the difference between watching James Earl Jones and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

It's the difference between watching Chipper Jones and Andruw Jones.

It's the difference between watching Welsh crooner Tom Jones and crazy preacher Bob Jones.

It's the difference between watching Terry Jones the Monty Python member and Terry Jones the Christian rocker.

It's the difference between watching John Paul Jones the admiral and John Paul Jones the Zeppelin drummer.

It's the difference between listening to Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones" and "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows.

It's the difference between watching British computer scientist Clifford "Cliff" Jones and Adam "Pac-Man" Jones.

Oh, and in terms of what I prefer, it's all the first stuff. I guess that makes me a Tiger fan, or maybe I just thought it made more sense to list that stuff first for joke purposes. Anyway, I'll take the former in all those examples. Except for Catherine Zeta-Jones and the other John Paul Jones; they too can live. Oh, and Pac-Man as well, but that's only because I believe it's impossible to kill him with conventional weaponry. If only my werewolf boomerang would hurry up and get here!

Look, Tiger needs this major like Yao needs stilts. There'll be a dozen more after this. He doesn't need to prove he's better than Phil. We know. Not counting Stableford or match-play tournaments, these two have entered 157 pro tournaments together. Tiger is 104-50-3 against him. That's not a rivalry. That's avalanche versus twig. That's more one-sided than a Venezuelan election.

Someone get Ed McMahon over here, because that zinger demanded a hearty "Hey-OH!!!"

You know, I know, Phil knows that Tiger is a god and Phil is but a serf. There's no argument. Yes, Mickelson is No. 2, but it's about as far as a 2 can get from a 1. Put it this way: Let's say Tiger's knee really bothers him this week—say it bothers him for the rest of the year—and he doesn't play the next three majors. And let's say Mickelson wins all three of these majors. That would still only get Mickelson even with Woods in the world golf ranking.

Man, that's insane. I now sort of get what Phil's up against.

Do you sort of get what Mickelson's up against?

Dude, I just said I did. We're never going to get anywhere if you don't learn to listen. Also learn to love, but there's time enough for that. That's what our trip to the lake house is for!

So you could do worse than rooting for him. After all, he has a few qualities Tiger doesn't have. He signs more autographs, smiles more, tips way better. He skis better. Flies a plane better. Bets better, despite all those Vegas rumors that never were true.

Yes, but does he bang Swedish supermodels better? Oh, he doesn't? Going with Tiger.

I have nothing against Tiger, of course. He's the most accomplished athlete I've ever covered.

Reilly's willing to reassess that if Sammy Sosa ever accomplishes the simple task of peeing in a cup. He's a reasonable man.

He's taken us to places in golf we never dreamed. When he said the Grand Slam this year was "easily within reason," we all agreed, because it was. But it's like watching a thresher go through wheat. All that blinding brilliance, all that chewing up and spitting out, can make you a little numb.

Lot of wheat threshers on Hollywood & Vine, I guess. C'mon, Reilly, don't try to pander to middle America. They're smarter than that!

(Well, I hope they're smarter than that. But not smart enough that they can challenge my northeastern elitism.)

So, while everybody feeds the big dog, couldn't you throw the little dog this one bone?

You know, I always remembered Rick Reilly as saccharine, emotionally manipulative, and boring, but I think I forgot his true defining characteristic: the weirdest motherfucking metaphors I've ever come across. This whole ESPN thing should be fun.

The greatest announcing team of all-time...

2008-06-12T22:00:00.000-04:00

If you will forgive me a little Van Gundy hyperbole, I have never enjoyed an announcing team more than this Finals crew. After a fun (if irritatingly synergistic) Michele Tafoya interview with Will Smith, we're treated to this amazing example of awesomeness in broadcasting. The subject? Kevin James and the film Hitch...

Jeff Van Gundy: If there’s anyone funnier than Kevin James, I want names.

Mike Breen: [Vaguely exasperated, but clearly in a good way] These superlatives you put on mediocre movies.

Mark Jackson: [Surprisingly adamant] No, Hitch was an outstanding movie.

Also, I just saw a close-up of Kobe and a ref on the court. Larry David was in the background with a bizarre expression on his face. It almost looked like the Larry David equivalent of a grin, in that he still looked horrifically constipated, but the corners of his mouth were pointing upward. Huh. You don't really get that sort of thing at a Bobcats game. Of course, considering Michael Jordan's position as executive whatever, there's always the possibility of a massive last stand shootout between Charles Oakley and a horde of federal marshals. So they've got that going for them.

I'll be back tomorrow with a post with more, you know, content. For now, I think I'm just going to enjoy Game 4.

Burn the flip-flopper! Burn him I say!

2008-06-11T10:30:00.000-04:00

At the risk of getting all political and shit, it looks like this election might not be quite so historic after all. From CNN...

Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama back-tracked on one campaign trail prediction Tuesday, switching his pick in this year’s NBA Finals.

And here I thought Barack Obama was somehow different from John Kerry. I'm so ashamed to be loosely allied with the Democratic Party (I'm the Bassas da India to their France, or something like that...*). Just get it over with and tase me now. No, seriously bro, fucking tase me. Only way to wipe away the pain. You know, by adding more pain. Of the tased variety.

“I tell you what, I thought the Lakers were the better team,” he told NPR’s All Things Considered, according to a transcript of an interview scheduled to air Tuesday night. “But the Celtics have been tough. I might have to revise my prediction here. I assumed Lakers in six. I don’t think that’s realistic now at this point…It does not look like it. It may be Celtics in six.”

It may be Celtics in six, Mr. Obama? (Sorry to get all formal, but when I pretend to directly address presidential candidates I bust out the New York Times style guide.) Where's the insane certainty? This is why that rock solid opinion machine Skip Bayless is going to stomp your ass come November.

(Wait...Skip Bayless isn't the Republican nominee? Huh, my mistake; I guess all white people just look the same to me. Or perhaps I just really like the thought of Skip Bayless spending five years being tortured by the Viet Cong.)

The Illinois senator said that even though he had lived in Boston for several years as a student at Harvard Law School, “the truth is that I’ve got no dog in this hunt.”

“I’m a Bulls fan. We’ve gone through a drought for quite some time now. But we got the number-one draft pick, so our games may get a little bit better.”

Huh...Illinois connection, Boston residence, no rooting interest, Bulls fan, excitement about the top pick...that's eerily similar to my situation. What if...what if I'm really Barack Obama? Nah, that's ridiculous. I imagine for a fact that Obama hates Michael Caine and Cary Grant, so why would be create his deviously clever pseudonym from their real names? He wouldn't, that's why. Oh, and the whole all sports bloggers are white things. I just thought I'd spare you that hoary old cliche being the primary joke. Not that my replacement was much better; we all know it's pretty much impossible to hate Michael Caine, and I apologize for suggesting otherwise.

Finally, take a look at the picture and caption that accompanied the article. I've heard of bizarre juxtapositions, but this takes the cake:

Obama rooting for the Celtics.

Obama...rooting...for the Celtics? From that picture? In context with this article? Where he actually said "I've got no dog in this race"? Wow, it's like the caption guy over at CNN doesn't even care. You know CNN, I'd be happy to do it. CNN, how do you feel about random Highlander references captioning any photo of a Scotsman and/or person over ninety? Because for a mere eight-figure income, that could be yours.

*Did that simile work? You can be honest. Well, don't be too honest. OK, just tell me it worked.

Hey Peter

2008-06-11T00:13:00.004-04:00

Could you please make a 34-year-old reference and have it come off as implying that some NFL QB is a white supremacist?

K-K-K-KELLEN AND THE JETS.

Great, thanks.

Boston-LA Game 3 Live Blog...and away we go...

2008-06-10T20:30:00.099-04:00

8:30 - OK, so it looks like I'm still alive and, much more importantly, have internet access. Because I'm perfectly happy blogging as a zombie. Judging by the wild success of zombie-themed comics (which currently make up about 2,000% of the comics industry, assuming the stat I just made up is accurate), it might actually improve my standing.

Be honest: did you see that reference coming? Because I sure as hell didn't.

8:31 - Stu Scott is setting the scene with his usual shoutastic braggadocio. Could someone a little older than me help me out...was there ever a time when he was cool and/or funny? Or was he always a hack?

Random notes...I'm sort of regretting using the hyphen after the time-stamps. It means I have to use a colon or ellipsis whenever I want to randomly interrupt myself and start a new thought, which is pretty much every other sentence: see what I mean? OK, that was more of a semi-colon situation. Oh, and I'm shocked I spelled braggadocio correctly. This may be the first live-blog dominated by grammar and spelling commentary. You're welcome.

8:33 - Jerry West just said something about the front office being very happy the match-up is what it is. If Bill Simmons is watching the telecast (he's probably in the building), I guarantee some "You rigged the Pau thing from beyond!" thought is passing through his head. Just want to get that out there.

8:36 - Man, that was a snitty last comment. Why the hell did I make it? Oh, right...so I can pat myself on the back if I happen to get it right. And by "pat myself on the back", I do of course mean "justify an unnecessary post."

8:39 - Mark Jackson is not up with Mike Breen quoting Walt Frazier. It was a little weird, I have to admit, but who would Jackson have preferred Breen quote? How about Walt Whitman?

That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well — it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.

Sure, he was technically talking about baseball, but that's just because basketball hadn't been invented yet. Can't really hold that against him. And don't tell me that quote isn't apropos - Kobe most definitely needs to get his "go fling" on if the Lakers are taking Game 3.

Yeah, I'm using dashes. A man can only fake it with colons and ellipses for so long. You need the real thing after awhile, you know?

8:42 - Wait, should I be doing these with the latest at the top? Crap, I better reorganize things. There we go.

8:44 - My love of Pixar just battled it out with my hatred of ESPN synergy. Synergy won out, unfortunately. Damn it Stu Scott, don't turn me off of Wall-E! He's just so damn cute in a cool eighties sort of way.

8:46 - In the Wipeout promo, a sultry voice just asked, "Does size matter?" You know ABC, asinine double entrendre or not, I really don't need you guys sowing seeds of doubt with regards to my sexual (in)adequacy. I've got my self-doubt to take care of that. Ah well, watching a bunch of basketball players for three hours should take care of any lingering confidence issues I might have.

This is probably inane of me to even say, but isn't Wall-E just the robot from that Disney ride? You know, Star Tours?

Ah crap, now I'm being synergistic.

8:50 - Wilbon said the Lakers weren't going to suddenly become "the '85 Chicago Bears" in terms of their defensive play. Even as a pseudo-Chicagoan, I found that a little unnecessarily homerish.

8:51 - This is from awhile ago, but Stu Scott said Ray Allen is a Hollywood guy because he was in He Got Game. He does realize that movie was shot nowhere near Hollywood, right? And that Spike Lee is pretty much the filmmaker most associated with New York, now that Woody Allen has decamped to Europe to shoot softcore lesbian celebrity porn. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. Hell, there's pretty much everything right about that.

8:53 - Those were some funky weird organ cues on the Celtic/Laker introductions. I'm pretty sure Clue had more dramatic scoring. I mean the movie, not the board game. Although now that I mention it...

8:54 - Pretty throaty national anthem from David Cook. I would have said "the American Idol dude", but the PA announcer said his name again. Ah well. You guys still know I'm hard and badass, right?

8:56 - Were they supposed to throw a spotlight on Doc Rivers? Dude seemed a little bemused at standing glumly in the darkness. Wait...can you stand "glumly"? I have no idea.

8:58 - I don't want to agree with Simmons on anything - thank goodness he doesn't appear to care for The Simpsons that much - but the boos and cheers seem a little half-hearted.

8:59 - Phil Jackson looked a little...grim. I'm going to go with grim. I was thinking maybe I could argue he seemed a little elsewhere, setting up a tremendous Jon Stewart/Half Baked reference. Eh, fuck it, I'm going to go there anywhere. *AHEM*...

"You ever coach an NBA Finals...ON WEED!?"

9:00 - Finals montage had that always nice Rudy Tomjonavich "Don't ever underestimate the heart of a champion" quote. Hey, you remember when Rudy coached the Lakers? Me neither.

9:02 - Jeff Van Gundy argued Game 3 is critical for the Celtics if they want to win this series. Well, in the sense that going up 3-0 would, historically speaking, clinch the series, then yeah, I guess. But honestly, isn't Game 3 when you're up 2-0 about as non-critical as a finals game can possibly be? Other than any games after you're up 3-0, of course.

9:05 - So we've gone from game shows to reality shows to Japanese game shows? That sounds about right, although nobody's surviving anything for reals until someone stares down a Komodo dragon. Those things are lethal, right?

9:06 - And the game is underway. Since LA won the tipoff, I assume they will cruise to a 200-0 victory. Instant history motherfucker!

9:08 - Huh...so now I have to blog about the game. I didn't quite realize I'd have to do that. Give me a second.

9:09 - Wow...this is a sloppy game thus far. I'm hoping we get one of those "one dude tries to tip in his own shot repeatedly but to no avail" situations before too long. That was always my primary move when playing my younger brother in one-on-one.

9:11 - Paul Pierce crashes into the stands; Mike Breen says that's familiar territory. Because there are two parts of California: the Lakers court...and the rest. And all non-court parts of the Staple Center count as "the rest."

9:12 - This is the most dominating 6-2 lead I've ever seen. I can see why I don't usually do this.

9:16 - Fisher to Byrant? What is this, 2002? Nah, that's impossible. There hadn't even been one Hulk movie in 2002. Speaking of which, I should probably go ahead and say SPOILER ALERT!!! right now:

You know, I think I'm at the point where I'd pay to see any movie if it featured a brief cameo by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. And yes, that might even include Sex & the City 2. I mean, wouldn't that be sort of awesome? Sort of!?

9:20 - Jeff Van Gundy didn't like that Mark Jackson "left him hanging" by not audibly agreeing with his point. To be fair, it is a little difficult to say anything when you're busy fellating Jeff Van Gundy. But only a little. He's not ~~Ron Jeremy~~ Stan Van Gundy, after all.

This better be the dirtiest entry in this live-blog.

9:23 - Kendrick Perkins almost did that thing I mentioned earlier. Sure it was only one tip-in and it was Paul Pierce who first shot it, but it was sloppy and pretty much depended on pure height, because there was zero talent on display there.

9:27 - Missed dunk, desperate out-of-bounds recovery, failed desperate out-of-bounds recovery. Oh for goodness sake.

9:29 - The new Hancock trailer used "Sabotage" as the music. What's that, "Sabotage" music video? You want me to embed you? But I'm in the middle of a live-blog...

Quoting The Simpsons and ripping off Kissing Suzy Kolber is never a bad way to go. Wait...that may have been redundant.

9:35 - I think Sam Cassell might like to shoot a little more often than he should. Just a theory. But then again, what the hell are they going to do? Cut his ass? Like that's not going to happen anyway. I'm pretty sure Sam Cassell has nothing left to play for except Sam Cassell. Whatever the hell that is.

9:37 - You know what I said about Sam Cassell? I mean, like, literally two minutes ago? Yeah, same goes for Sasha Vujacic. If he's got the ball when the whistle blows, he's shooting that shit. Not that that's anything surprising.

9:41 - "Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce have yet to score. How can they be more productive?" By scoring, Michele. By scoring. And I don't mean Wilt-style.

9:43 - I feel like a Simmons-esque asshole for even asking this, but is Luke Walton more a Bill Walton or a Ben Affleck? Or maybe some form of unholy cross?

9:44 - Either they're really fouling Kobe, or else dude's getting his Manu Ginobili on. Which I am not OK with, considering I made it quite clear he needed to get his fling on. C'mon, Kobe - what Walt Whitman said makes sense! Stick with it!

9:46 - Mike Breen just impersonated Bill Walton so he could mockingly chastise Luke Walton. It's amazing how unprofessional this crew is willing to be. I mean, Jeff Van Gundy just declared something, "The best pass in Laker history!" to continue the Walton-age, and then Mark Jackson begged off his own attempt. Frankly, I'm a fan of such high-spirited inanity. I'd rather have that than Joe Buck asshattery.

Blogger doesn't think "asshattery" is a word. Blogger is an asshattery. You read that right.

9:50 - I can't believe ABC's new hospital reality series Hopkins (at least the film stock made me assume it's a reality show - damned if I'm looking it up) felt the need to actually write "passionate hospital drama" and "dramatically real" as the announcer said them. I honestly thought it was going to be some tastefully questionable parody, the captions were that inane.

9:54 - Garnett is 0-for-7. Pierce is on the bench. Kobe has 17 in the first half. Shouldn't the Lakers be up more than six? Maybe just a little?

9:56 - Again Sasha Vujacic shoots after the whistle, and then we cut straight to Phil Jackson with some choice words for everybody's favorite Slovenian. (Sasha is from Slovenia, people. It's in Europe. Borders Italy, matter of fact.) Coincidence? Oh I think not.

9:58 - Crazy thought...is Larry Bird's right side the side they should have gone with? His left side profile just seems a little off. Or is he one of those dudes who you have to see both sides in order to recognize them properly? Just another reason why that commercial is a whole 'nother category of creepy.

10:00 - Jeff Van Gundy shills for Wall-E with an insane exuberance that Stu Scott cannot even dream of matching. You sort of suspect he might start babbling about some other multinational media corporation's summer tentpole releases at any moment. I look forward to some bizarre Kung Fu Panda analogies in the near future.

10:02 - Sasha Vujacic has ten points in nine minutes. Hackneyed as the joke may be, I should point out he's actually scored about thirty points during that time. Yeah...not worth it.

10:06 - While we're talking Vujacic, Mark Jackson claims Vujacic said, "Got you!" after catching a defender out. Maybe Mark, but I believe he actually would have said, "Zaslužiti vi!" By the way, to our legion of Slovenian readers, I'll admit that wasn't even close to an accurate translation. Sorry 'bout that.

10:10 - Mark Jackson "questions the taste" of a boy with a life-threatening illness who, with complete access to both Finals teams and a slew of NBA legends, wanted nothing more than to meet Jon Barry. Jeff Van Gundy gives a not-at-all insanely exuberant, "Amen!" to this, adding only that, "I coached Barry!" I can see why people don't like Van Gundy's schtick. I get it...but thankfully, I don't agree with it. Dude's hysterical.

10:13 - Wow...what is up with the free throw woes? And yes, that's pretty much the extent of my basketball analysis.

10:16 - Kobe has shot more free throws by himself in the first half than the Lakers did in all of Game 2. Someone's getting his Leon Powe on.

10:18 - Wow...Kobe can be an awkward interview. Well, the Lakers are up, it's the half, and I'm taking a break to get some caffeine. See you at the start of the second half. Or whenever the hell I feel like resuming. Whichever is earlier. So keep furiously refreshing, hoping for more beautiful live-blog! Eh, who am I kidding? Nobody's reading. Still fun though.

10:29 - I may be gay (or, at the very least, Paul Rudd), because this Coldplay iTunes single is exciting the hell out of me. Or maybe it's just because I know behind that pretty voice and banging of Gwyneth Paltrow the dude is just like me - a soulless bastard...

10:32 - Stu Scott is breaking down the Tim Donaghy situation like he's a journalist or something. It's really bizarre that Jeff Van Gundy is involved in this situation while also being a commentator. Huh...they're just about getting away with a relatively massive conflict of interest.

10:38 - Hey...I've been misspelling Mark Jackson's name this whole time. I feel like such an ass. Ah well, time to get my 1984 on and correct that little mistake out of existence.

10:41 - The Happening looks like the dumbest fucking thing ever. Although the presence of Marky Mark is always appreciated. I just can't get over the trailers actually featuring the lines, "There seems to be an event happening!" and "How can this be happening?!"

10:43 - Four of the six top players in this series have utterly failed to show up. Whenever Garnett, Pierce, Odom, and Gasol want to start participating, that'd be great. I'm just saying is all.

10:44 - That was a bitchy thing to say. Sorry about that. I'm an ass and whatnot.

10:44 - Djmmm chiming in here. Dude, I was just gonna say that I thought The Happening looked like it'll be REALLY fucking creepy. In any event, can we agree that if the Celtics pull this series out, that will pretty much put the whole "COACHING IS REALLY IMPORTANT!!!" argument to bed?

10:48 - These Michael Jordan Hanes commercials seem to be lacking in clear motivation. I mean, I got the point of the old series - Hanes is so comfortable that it causes homoerotic interplay between Michael and Kevin Bacon. But Cuba Gooding Jr. wearing His Airness's underwear? How...odd.

10:52 - And yes, Djmmm, you shameless interloper you, I imagine a Doc Rivers defeats Phil Jackson scenario would certainly help make the case coaching is inconsequential. Although I think it still might be an argument that if the teams are evenly matched, coaching is a tie-breaker. Maybe. I dunno, one series doesn't really prove much of anything, does it?

10:56 - Not to hate on The Happening unnecessarily, I'd like to do some absolutely necessary hating on The Happening. Far be it for me to stop people enjoying what they want to enjoy, but this was pretty much game over for me. Well, that and the fact the only M. Night movie I even vaguely liked was Unbreakable.

11:01 - OK, back to the game. Hmm...Celtics are now leading. Crap. I should really watch this game. Eh, maybe not.

11:04 - Jeff Van Gundy is insane. His favorite celebrity here is Alyssa Milano, and "If I was Nick...Latch-EE, is it?...I wouldn't let her out of my sight. There are a lot of vultures in LA!" The man may well be clinically insane. I'm completely OK with that.

11:07 - More shameless interloping. I love how Spielberg just sort of smiled and shrugged sort of embarrassed at the camera. It was as if he was saying, "Djmmm, I'm really sorry about that whole Indiana Jones debacle. In fact, I don't doubt it had at least something to do with your failure to get to first base with that girl that night. It was terrible, and I'm sorry. But please, feel free to blame George. This was 90 percent his fault, man." Fuckin' Crystal Skull, man.

11:08 - Someone who has been actually paying attention might like to tally up just how many missed layups and dunks there have been. I'm guessing there have been...a lot. Yeah, I'm going to go with "a lot."

11:13 - Is Sasha Vujacic the Slovenian Marmalard? I may have to email Christmas Ape for a ruling. Eh...maybe not.

11:15 - Aren't the Lakers supposed to have more than 63 points with 10:37 left in the game? I mean...aren't they?
And Djmmm - your interloping almost deleted two of my entries! Two of them I say!

11:17 - Tough offensive foul on Lamar Odom. I refuse to say Bill Simmons told me so, however, in re the whole "Lamar will come up small" thing

11:19 - Kobe missed the free throw, then kinda kicked it back to the ref. Jeff Van Gundy just suggested a "Hack-a-Bryant" strategy. If the Lakers lose by less than Kobe's missed free throws, horrible things may happen in LA tonight. I mean more horrible than usual.

11:21 - I'm sure this point has been made elsewhere, but can Will Ferrell live out the rest of his career in two-minute increments? Because that might work.

11:22 - The shamelessness of this Honda Pilot commercial really spoke to me. It was sort of the "me emailing Will Leitch begging him to link me" of car commercials. Needless to say, I approve.

11:25 - Jeff Van Gundy apparently does not understand the cultural importance of the barbershop. He then makes a brilliant point that I'm sure Djmmm will heartily endorse: "Here's who I check in any coaching match-up...whoever has the best players!"

11:27 - Van Gundy doesn't like that he has to pay the same rate as a guy with a full head of hair at the boutique. He believes "this is wrong on so many levels" and claims "this has hurt his whole family." Keep in mind that it's the fourth quarter of Game 3 of the NBA Finals. If I was blind and thus could not actually seem the game action if I so chose, I could imagine myself getting really pissed off at Jeff Van Gundy.

11:30 - The crowd is chanting "M-V-P" to pump up Kobe. Why do I suspect something more along the lines of "Kill, Mamba...KILL!!!" would be more effective? Still, it worked.

11:33 - I hate to bust out a cliche, but Lamar Odom is doing pretty much everything other that scoring to help his team. Of course, scoring would be nice. Wait, was that too inane to be even a cliche? That may just have been a description of facts.

11:37 - As Djmmm very politely points out in the comments, I pretty much elided right over the whole Celtics leaving Kobe completely alone thing. As was pointed out, that's pretty much the most open Kobe Bryant has been in, well, forever really. I dunno, I can't really chalk it up to much beyond an odd defensive breakdown. Of course, judging by his free throws tonight, leaving Kobe open may actually be a valid defensive strategy. I immediately regret writing that.

11:39 - If I can just be a pure basketball fan for a second, I have to point out that I fucking love watching the Lakers pass. Just brilliant stuff. Of course, it can seem a little all for naught if they don't score, but it's still awful perdy. "Perdy" is rustic for "pretty", by the way. And of course "rustic" is euphemism for "redneck."

11:41 - Van Gundy: "It isn't illegal if they don't call it!" Good to hear Jeff and Homer Simpson agree on basic points of jurisprudence.

11:45 - Holy shit is this shit dramatic. It'd be even more dramatic if Kobe Bryant had touched the ball.

11:46 - Vujacic is clearly a massive douche. But since I'm vaguely rooting for the Lakers, that means he's vaguely my massive douche. So, um...go Sasha go!!!

11:48 - Off the top of my head, Bryant and Vujacic have been responsible for about 2/3 of the Lakers' scoring tonight. That's probably significant. Damned if I know why though.

11:50 - Jeff Van Gundy does not care for people pounding their hearts and apparently will "lose it" if it happens again. He also "can read lips" and claims the words between Bryant and Pierce "isn't as friendly as it appears." I should probably add jokes here, but I kinda just want to give Van Gundy room for his genius.

11:51 - Dueling threes? Wide open dunks? We may reach a 100 yet! No, no we won't, but still.

11:52 - Mark Jackson said "Ray Allen shutting down Kobe Bryant isn't happening in our lifetime." Lifetime you say? What about when Allen was 6 and Kobe was 3? Maybe? Wow...I'm still dubious that Ray could pull it off. Nothing against him either.

11:53 - Offensive foul against Garnett with 21.1 seconds left and a six-point lead. Never say never, but...

11:54 - Well, Doc Rivers agrees with me, apparently. No fouls (other than Lamar Odom's not-at-all inevitable offensive foul with six left) and the Lakers win. Paul Pierce finishes with 6 points. I'm guessing he may improve on that one in Game 4. Just a guess. Thank goodness this is actually going to be a series.

Hope you've enjoyed the live-blog. Now to shuffle everything again so that you can read it back in chronological order. Because we're all about the posterity around these parts.

Live-blog tonight...fingers crossed...

2008-06-10T17:31:00.002-04:00

Game 3 is tonight. It starts at 8:30. I will attempt to live-blog it. I imagine that means there is now a lightning bolt with my name on it, if past experience is anything to go by. Still, assuming I survive the next two hours and fifty-three minutes, the live-blog will happen.

That is all.

Well, um, that didn't work...

2008-06-08T23:28:00.005-04:00

The label I went with was "experiments doomed to failure." Well call me Ti-motherfucking-resias, because that was about as prophetic as it gets. I won't bore you with what is a, well, rather boring story, but here's the equation:

Train delay of over an hour + power outage at my Residence Inn = No live-blog

Ah well, doesn't seem like I missed that much of a game. Well, you know, other than an attempt at the greatest comeback in NBA history. Oh well. I'll try again with Game 3. I imagine some form of winged rhinoceros will be dispatched to foil me. Actually, that might just be so cool that I'd be OK with that.

Chad Johnson sees T.O.'s porn cameo and raises him, well, you should probably just see it...

2008-06-08T13:20:00.001-04:00

Considering it's the Sabbath and all - wait, isn't the Sabbath a Jewish thing? Don't make me bust out my copy of Chariots of Fire to work this one out. Hold on, my research assistant, the lovely Cary Caine, is telling me something. OK, apparently it's Christian as well. Anyway, how better to celebrate the Lord than an update in our somehow continuing series Great Moments in Wide Receiver Pornography!

(The exclamation point means that excites me. And by "excites me", I do of course mean it sexually arouses me.)

As I previously noted in my trademark rambling, tangential way, Chad Johnson is guesting as editor-in-chief for ESPN The Magazine, a publication famous for its motto, "ESPN The Magazine...where colons can go fuck themselves!"

Anyway, as was very much previously noted, the cover of Ocho Cinco's issue is this:

When my family's issue arrived today, I was finally able to get in close enough to read the textbox resting precariously on Chad Johnson's elbow (that thing could hit his funny bone at LITERALLY ANY MINUTE!!!). It says:

Check out the cover that I almost went with, on page 40.

First of all, even if I have a grammar boner (gramner?) for the Oxford comma, the comma after 'with' up there is totally unnecessary and actually just wrong. I know Chad's guest editor, but which jock did they get to handle copy editing? Marques Slocum?

Anyway, my curiosity suitably piqued, I thumbed to page 40, desperately dodging the sharp corners of ESPN's pages made of recycled tissue paper (all of it official imitation Cleanex brand) and the ticket to papercut country they represented. Arriving on the fortieth page with nary a band-aid on my fingers (well, maybe one or two...those pages are so damn sharp and crafty!), I was greeted with quite possibly the most tastefully erotic image ever captured:

Somewhere, Robert Mapplethorpe is smiling. I imagine that somewhere is Gay Heaven, and I'm not talking about the nightclub. Well, maybe a little, but only if we're talking circa 1983.

And on that appropriately homoerotic note...stay tuned for the live-blog! I might be a little delayed getting started - I'm on a train until 8:21 or so, and then I have to dash to a hotel (that's right - Archie's on the move!) and get set up. But hopefully I'll be up by ~~the end of the first~~ ~~the middle of the second quarter~~ ~~sometime during the second half~~ the second overtime. So root for gridlock! Sweet, beautiful gridlock...

If you're reading this...

2008-06-08T07:48:00.000-04:00

...then I'm still in transit somewhere between the Micklewhite Homestead and my Undisclosed Temporary Location. I've been spending pretty much all of today on various planes and trains in what is a real testament to the fact that many of the places in this country are fucking hard to get to.

Honestly? As long as this doesn't befall me...

...I think I'll be OK. Funny thing though - that wasn't the biggest train wreck in that movie. This was:

Oh, Silver Streak, you truly were the best of the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor team-ups. It also had Patrick McGoohan in it!

Wow, it's like I'm live-blogging my own life. Game 2 should be a piece of cake.

Random Celebrity Sighting!

2008-06-07T22:21:00.004-04:00

This isn't funny so much as it just sort of was VERY abrupt and unexpected. I was in the Bank of America building yesterday in downtown Miami. You've probably seen it in any number of wide shots of nationally televised games involving the Marlins, Canes, Dolphins, or Heat. Here it is:

As you can see the building's got multiple tiers, so you have to take an elevator up to the "sky lobby" and then there's three banks of elevators that go to different sets of floors. So I was meeting with an attorney yesterday and we were coming down in the elevator and as the elevator doors open I almost literally bumped right into this man.

That's right. Dwyane. Fucking. Wade.

Big Brown (Turd)

2008-06-07T18:39:00.003-04:00

Well, I haven't been that disappointed since I lost my virginity.

I love that everyone on ABC was talking about how cool and collected and intellectual the horse is. (Ralph: IT WAS A FUCKIN' HORSE, TONY! Tony: She was a beautiful, innocent creature!)

And then the horse laid a Big Brown turd. Fuck Horse Racing.

52 52 52 Week #16: Oklahoma

2008-06-07T17:00:00.005-04:00

In which I examine crappy local sports journalism on a state-by-state basis, progressing through the states in terms of an alphabetical ordering of the heights of their tallest points. Because I can.

After a lot of (possibly unfair) hating on West Virginia, I'm feeling pretty well-disposed towards our next state, the wondrous state of Oklahoma. If nothing else, Oklahoma played the all-important role of "overdog" (not a word, I know) to Boise State back in the 2006 Fiesta Bowl, which is still pretty much my favorite football game ever. So let's get right down to business with Oklahoma's highpoint, the Black Mesa. Here are three quick facts...

1. It partially extends into New Mexico, where it reaches 5,239 feet.

2. There's also a little bit of it in Colorado, where its elevation is over 5,700 feet.

3. The part in Oklahoma is 4,973 feet. So if you're keeping score, the highest point in Oklahoma is smaller than other parts of that same rock formation that can be found in two other states. And people call Oklahoma flat for some reason.

As a special treat for this week's post, we'll be going with a video from NewsOK.com, the online wing of The Oklahoman. The Oklahoman, which Wikipedia claims is "the only daily newspaper that covers the Oklahoma City area." I think they left out "the only daily newspaper with the courage to cover the Oklahoma City area." Let's put it like this - Bobby Petrino isn't working the OKC beat anytime soon.

Also from Wikipedia:

Charles George Werner, a rookie political cartoonist at the newspaper, won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for editorial art. The winning cartoon, Nomination for 1938, depicted the Nobel Peace Prize resting on a grave marked Grave of Czecho-Slovakia, 1919-1938. Published on Oct. 6, 1938, the cartoon bit at the recently concluded Munich Agreement, which transferred the Sudetenland (a strategically important part of Czechoslovakia) to Nazi Germany.

That's...that's pretty badass, in the way that only opposing the Nazis can be badass. Finally, the paper is owned by the Gaylord family, which is a surname that I will never, ever get tired of. Their current CEO is Christy Gaylord Everest, which might just be the most awesome name trifecta ever. So yeah, I'm a fan of The Oklahoman, even if this video is about to undo some of the good will.

I have to say, there's nothing quite as brilliantly inane as a non-telegenic writer reading his column off a teleprompter. I mean...what the hell is the point? Well, other than to amuse me, but I'm not quite self-absorbed enough to think that's the main reason. Well, not the main main reason.

In the name of helpfulness, I'll provide a transcript, just in case any of my readers in the year 2653 (hello far future overlords!) are getting to this post after the video has become unavailable.

I’m Berry Tramel with The Oklahoman.

Kind of a neat trick, talking in italics like that. Also, Berry Tramel? BERRY!? Add "casually insane names" to my list of reasons why I love the Midwest. I think that brings me up to two whole reasons (the other is Will Leitch).

Sorry if I don’t join the euphoria over a Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals. Nothing against the Lakers, nothing against the Celtics.

Based on this premise, doesn't the rest of his video-column (volumn?) have to develop which teams he would have liked to have seen in the Finals? I mean, if there's seriously nothing against either of them, then it really should just be a matter of a preferable match-up. Frankly, I'm not sure what that would have been (although, if I can be really revisionist and alternate-universey, I could see a Hornets-Magic series kicking all manner of ass).

But do we have to have them both? I mean, I wouldn’t be thrilled by Yankees-Dodgers in the World Series, why should I get excited about a Lakers-Celtics?

One reason why you might not be thrilled by Yankees-Dodgers this year is that neither team is especially good, what with being a combined 58-61 and all. Of course, if both teams were the best teams in their respective leagues, would it maybe be a little more exciting? It's not like the Lakers and Celtics were a couple of four-seeds that barely scraped their way into the Finals. Well, the Celtics were a one-seed that barely scraped their way into the Finals, but still. These were the two best teams this year, crammed with great players and fascinating storylines; the history aspect is really just the icing on the cake.

Also, even if Yankees-Dodgers is the most common World Series match-up, I'm not sure I buy it as a fair comparison to Lakers-Celtics. When all is said and done, those two teams will own half of all NBA titles. That is, in a word, fucking ridiculous (OK...two words). 32 combined World Series championships is nothing to sneeze at, but when you consider Major League Baseball is twice as old as the NBA? There really isn't a comparison.

So anyway, there are two obvious reasons to be excited by Lakers-Celtics. One is that this is legitimately the best and most exciting match-up for this year, even if these particular rosters happened to play for, say, the Grizzlies and Bobcats. The other is that there really isn't a rivalry in American sports quite like Lakers-Celtics. Maybe the latter does nothing for you, but the former really still should be good enough.

The Lakers are always good and, if they’re not, someone in the league makes sure the Lakers get good.

That someone would probably be Mitch Kupchak. You know, their GM. Seems like that'd be his job.

The Lakers got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a trade from Milwaukee, Kobe Bryant in a trade with the Hornets, and Pau Gasol in a trade with the Grizzlies.

One of those is not like the others. Actually, none of those are like any of the others. Going one at a time...

It seems weird including the Kareem trade with those far more contemporary deals - what, no room to include plucking George Mikan from the dispersal of the Chicago American Gears? - but whatever, I'll roll with it. For what it's worth, a 3.5-second search of Wikipedia turned up this info:

Although Abdul-Jabbar always spoke well of Milwaukee and its fans, he said that being in the Midwest did not fit his cultural needs and requested a trade to either New York or Los Angeles in October, 1974.

As much as the unnecessary comma at the end there rips into my soul (in fact, I've already taken the liberty of editing it out), that pretty much explains how the Lakers magically lucked into the third- or fourth-best center of all-time. As always, it's comes down to location, location, location. Unless anyone would like to suggest David Stern used a time machine to invent Islam so that ultimately Lew Alcindor would broaden his horizons to the point that he didn't want to play in a relatively small town like Milwaukee, allowing Stern to enjoy awesome ratings when he took over the NBA in 1984. Anyone? Seriously, don't make me embed the Nazi Gold clip again to prove Kareem's awesomeness. You all know I will if I have to.

Oh, and as far as Kobe is concerned, he made it clear he would play for no one other than the Lakers, so the Hornets were just making a savvy business move in drafting him in the first place. (Although they also could have gone with Steve Nash or Jermaine O'Neal, both of which are rather interesting what-ifs. Oh, or Tony Delk. Could have gone with him.)

The Pau Gasol trade was unusual, I admit, but that was ultimately a salary dump. To think it was anything more sinister than that is to engage in Nixon-level paranoia. OK, that might be hyperbole, but that's only because Nixon probably thought his dog was out to get him. I mean, have you seen Checkers?

Those eyes are pure evil! The dog's, I mean.

The Celtics, who haven’t been good since the eighties,

Can we please not completely write off the Antoine Walker/Paul Pierce era? They made a conference finals and everything! Admittedly, they did it in a horrendously weak 2001-02 East and lost to the New Jersey fucking Nets, but c'mon! That at least counts as good, right?

finally wised up to the Lakers’ way and traded for Minnesota’s Kevin Garnett and Seattle’s Ray Allen. This notion of trading superstars is all very strange.

Ray Allen isn't really a superstar anymore, but either way, I don't really get his confusion. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to trade a superstar, including:

1. Massive chemistry issues: Shaq to the Heat is a perfect example.

2. A need to clear house and rebuild: KG and Ray Allen to the Celtics, AI to the Nuggets, and Shaq to the Suns, if only so I can reference Shaq multiple times (if only he'd been traded from the Magic to the Lakers). The corollary to this is the notion of "rewarding" a player who has given his all for years and should have an opportunity to compete elsewhere, which was very much the situation with Garnett and Iverson.

3. Change in team philosophy: Jason Kidd to the Mavericks is sort of an example of this, considering the Nets wanted to go younger, although this was also a pretty big heaping of massive chemistry issues as well. Actually, it was mostly chemistry issues, but I was straining for an example. Maybe AI to some degree? The 76ers were sort of competitive after the trade.

4. Superstar demanding to be traded: Vince Carter to the Nets goes a little beyond "demanding" a trade, but you get the point.

5. Money considerations: I'm blanking on a good example, but I guess the hypothetical would be if the Cavs traded Lebron to get back some value on him, assuming he's going to bolt for New York at the end of his contract.

Anyway, that's at least five legitimate reasons to trade a superstar. Sure, you generally want to hang onto them, but sometimes circumstance forces your hand.

Isn’t acquiring players like Jabbar and Garnett the whole notion behind having a basketball team?

Dude, his name is Abdul-Jabbar. I'm sure he'd take the time to learn your name (I mean, who wouldn't take the opportunity to call someone "Berry"?), so please return the hypothetical favor.

Why discover oil, then sign away the mineral rights?

Thank you, Berry Tramel, thank you so fucking much, because you have just given me an almost legitimate excuse to throw in a There Will Be Blood clip into this post. (I assume this is what Djmmm was hoping for/half-expecting to have to edit into the post the second he read the above line.) Since I already embedded the milkshake scene in a previous post, I'll go with another scene. It's sort of The Revenge of the Sith to the milkshake scene's Star Wars, if you think about it, in the sense that it totally sets up the milkshake scene and is almost as badass in its own way. You know what? Maybe you shouldn't think about it.

Can we require that all columns we deal with have to include a bizarre oil metaphor? It's six months later and I'm still obsessed with There Will Be Blood.

Oh well – Laker gold versus Celtic green will make David Stern happy because the TV folks will be happy with such a ratings bonanza.

And thank you again, Berry my boy, for an excuse to follow the There Will Be Blood clip with its only equal in hardcore depictions of the American west. I speak of course of...Bonanza!

I'm not really convinced this country has had any true heroes after Lorne Greene died. Where's the Bonanza reimagining, Ronald D. Moore!?

The whole country will watch, including the good fans in Memphis and Minneapolis and Charlotte, knowing they were in a small way part of these title teams.

Technically, I'm pretty sure Charlotte has washed their hands of the Hornets. So maybe New Orleans (or even Oklahoma City...hey, wait a minute...) should feel bad about Kobe? Eh, whatever, it's not like Charlotte got screwed out of Kobe or anything. They just figured they could use him as a trade chip, which is why the Hornets got to enjoy the Vlade Divac era, which is really the best kind of era.

Honestly, people, I think we're past the expiration date on mindless Boston hatred. You know, I may need to start writing a column (well, another column, assuming you count this weekly post thing-a-ma-jig as one as well) to discuss random points of sports philosophy like that. Consider yourselves teased. My track record suggests that post will now never happen, but hey...always a first time.