If you watch football you know that former gap-toothed NFL sack-specialist Michael Strahan is now a Dr. Pepper enthusiast, filming a ridiculous commercial on the subject of his favorite drink. This commercial makes no sense for several reasons. First, why does he care about caterpillars now? Is this some sort of play on words, like "the big bad NFL guy loves something soft and innocent?" If so, then why would he destroy Donovan McNabb's entry-way table? Furthermore, why is he waiting outside of McNabb's house on the off chance he has a pizza delivered, just to sack him? Do these two have a history that I'm unaware of? Also, why is an NFL player ordering a pizza when he should be eating better? Also, what the hell happened to that ice cream truck?
I demand answers! It's like Dr. Pepper hired bizzaro Don Draper to put this together.
Life, and Sports
Monday, December 13, 2010
A metaphor for the Washington Redskins season?
I live in a Redskins-heavy area, and this video seems to be an appropriate metaphor..
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Drum roll please..
Ladies and Gentlemen, your 6-7 division leading Seattle Seahawks!!
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| Pictured: Matt Hasselbeck not completing some kind of falling-down wizard pass |
Friday, December 10, 2010
There Is A Special Place In Hell Reserved For Adrian Beltre
Jack Zduriencik had reason for optimism heading into the 2009-2010 Major League Baseball season. His team had come off an impressive 85-win campaign the previous season, and after having traded for Cliff Lee (in this humble blogger's opinion a top-5 pitcher) and signing Chone Figgins away from a division rival, why not be optimistic?
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| Yeahhh.... About that.... |
In life, not everything works out the way you want it to. Sometimes you go into a store only hoping to spend 10 dollars, but you end up spending 20. With the 2009-2010 Mariners, they went in only wanting to spend 10 dollars, but ended up going into such deep debt with a loan shark that they ended up floating at the bottom of the Puget Sound with two broken legs encased in concrete.
Allow me to set the mood here.
In the 2009-2010 Season, the Mariners were totally, consistently, inarguably, unabashedly (and historically!) terrible at offense. Allow me to do my best stutter impression. They placed last (30/30) in Batting Average, .236, last (30/30) in Slugging Percentage, .339, last in On Base Percentage, .298, had the fewest runs, 513, fewest hits, 1274, fewest doubles, 227, fewest triples, 16, fewest Home Runs, 101, and, surprise!, had the fewest RBI's, 485. In total, they were so bad, I couldn't even count the number of games where Felix Hernandez would come out during the 7th nursing a 1-0 lead, drape a towel over his head, and contract his entire body in anticipation of the sound of the other teams bat hitting ball.
CRACK. *Felix Hernandez rips towel off his head, jumps up, leans over rails, and affirms that other team just scored two runs off [hapless reliever X]* .... *Felix thinks about how C.C. Sabathia is getting over 7 runs worth of run-support per game in New York*......*Felix re-drapes towel and cries*
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| Getting lonely, King? |
And that's what makes this year, and this Cy Young award winners season, particularly frustrating.
In other areas of the game, the M's showed life.
They had a top-ten team ERA of 3.93, a 21st ranked defense by Fielding Percentage (.982) but 10th ranked by UZR (15..8).Heck, they had 2 gold glove winning outfielders (ichiro and guti) to boot.
If they could have gotten some hitting from the get-go (only Ichiro produced this season, per usual) and justified holding onto Cliff (perhaps for a dream contract re-extension run this summer!?!?), they could have made a run at the division. Instead, we crapped the bed, and ended up trading Cliff within the division (practically gift wrapping the world series berth for the Rangers).
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| Wipe that smirk off your face, you never even averaged .280 for us |
Which brings us to Adrian Fucking Beltre. I really hate that guy. For years he was our ace defensive third baseman, AKA the "hot corner". Before he came to us, he was also (at least for a short while) a monster offensive player. He wasn't that for us. In 5 years, his batting averages were .255, .268, .276, .266 and .265 with pedestrian slugging percentages and a passable home run rate. We let him go before the 09-10 season because we signed Chone Figgins (only moderately productive, clearly on the downside of his career) away from the Angels. Then, we found out Chone couldn't play third base so we moved him to second and slotted Jose FATpez (er, Lopez) into third base.
Boy that turned out well.
And after quietly signing with the Bahhhhstan Red Sox, check out the numbers Adrian Fucking Beltre (AFB for short) put up:
Beltre
Avg .321
Slg .553
Ops .919
102 RBI
28 HR
189 H
84 R
40 BB
Adrian Fucking Beltre. Why couldn't you have put up those offensive numbers for the half-decade you played for us?
There is a special place in hell reserved just for you.
You crushed my dreams of years of King Felix/Cliff Lee, anchored by great defense and the hitting prowesses of Dustin Ackley, a 369 (or whatever) year old Ichiro, and Franklin "Death to Flying Things" Gutierrez.
You crushed them, you bastard.
...
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| Thissss fuckin' guyyyy |
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Saturday, December 4, 2010
Where's the leak?
Portland dropped its 6th straight game tonight to the lowly Wizards, putting the Blazers at 8-11 for the year. It's also worth mentioning that Dallas, Denver, San Antonio and Utah have all been on winning streaks while the Blazers have been in their current tail spin. I was serious when I tweeted that Portland would win 60 games this year; now it looks like I was 15-20 wins off. Add the current losing streak to division losses to...well, everyone they've played (including two losses to OKC), and it looks like the Blazers might miss the playoffs and move back down to the basketball purgatory of a late lottery pick in the NBA draft. So what's the problem, exactly? There are several popular options:
1) Injuries have left the team devastated. The traditional logic says that without Oden or Pendergraph, the team has been out-rebounded in pretty much every game this year and relying on Sean Marks to an alarming degree, and Roy has been hobbling around a lot, but I don't think that's the real issue. Roy's been back for a few games and has managed to get his points--he had 18 tonight--and the team managed to use (La)Marcus inside to get to 50 wins last year.
2) Fire Nate! Some people think that the coach has mixed around lineups so much that people, like Nic Batum, are uncomfortable in their roles on the team and their minutes on the court, and his slow-down style is crushing the young and athletic team that always seems to play better when they run. I don't buy this excuse, either. There's a reason why the defensive-minded Nate is on everyone's short list to replace coach Spo in Miami next year--he's good! All the Nate haters need to look around the league and see how few coaches are better than him. This is the guy who took an injury-ravaged team to the playoffs last year.
3) No leadership. Many fans think that teams that lose in the 4th quarter over and over again--which has been Portland's specialty this year--lack a veteran who simply won't let those collapses happen. Nope. Not buying that, either. Roy has hit lots of buzzer-beaters in the past and Miller and Camby have been around forever. Plus, LaMarcus isn't exactly a kid anymore and Joel's been in the league for a while, too. The team has veterans and does not lack leaders.
Honestly, I think it's probably a little of all three. Although the team has all the components of a winning team, years of playing the high-energy, scrappy underdogs fighting through everything likely takes a toll on everyone. Still, losing game after game in the fourth quarter, even to terrible teams, is not an accident. Something's wrong in Portland--I just wish I knew what it was.
1) Injuries have left the team devastated. The traditional logic says that without Oden or Pendergraph, the team has been out-rebounded in pretty much every game this year and relying on Sean Marks to an alarming degree, and Roy has been hobbling around a lot, but I don't think that's the real issue. Roy's been back for a few games and has managed to get his points--he had 18 tonight--and the team managed to use (La)Marcus inside to get to 50 wins last year.
2) Fire Nate! Some people think that the coach has mixed around lineups so much that people, like Nic Batum, are uncomfortable in their roles on the team and their minutes on the court, and his slow-down style is crushing the young and athletic team that always seems to play better when they run. I don't buy this excuse, either. There's a reason why the defensive-minded Nate is on everyone's short list to replace coach Spo in Miami next year--he's good! All the Nate haters need to look around the league and see how few coaches are better than him. This is the guy who took an injury-ravaged team to the playoffs last year.
3) No leadership. Many fans think that teams that lose in the 4th quarter over and over again--which has been Portland's specialty this year--lack a veteran who simply won't let those collapses happen. Nope. Not buying that, either. Roy has hit lots of buzzer-beaters in the past and Miller and Camby have been around forever. Plus, LaMarcus isn't exactly a kid anymore and Joel's been in the league for a while, too. The team has veterans and does not lack leaders.
Honestly, I think it's probably a little of all three. Although the team has all the components of a winning team, years of playing the high-energy, scrappy underdogs fighting through everything likely takes a toll on everyone. Still, losing game after game in the fourth quarter, even to terrible teams, is not an accident. Something's wrong in Portland--I just wish I knew what it was.
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