Something for Met Fans to Cheer About!

A Mets player has finally executed a successful Hit-and-Run!!

Congrats to Ambiorix Burgos on this landmark accomplishment. And we hope to see him when he gets out of the clink in 20 or 30 years with good behavior.

And I thought Brian Bannister had a down year.

Curt Schilling: American Badass!!!

Everybody's taking a swing at this post on Curt Schilling's 38pitches blog. I guess that means it's up to me to knock this motherfucker out of the park (kind of like the fat fastballs Schilling's been throwing for the last 3 years.) He covered a bunch of different topics and I find more than just the Kobe stuff offensive, so here goes.

Manny hits 500, wow. 500 of anything means you’re good.

500 GIDP means you're a fucking rock star dude.

Be it walks, hits, runs, anything, but 500 home runs, while it can be argued is not the milestone it once was, is still an incredible feat.

If you're so pumped about Manny reaching 500, why are you taking away from it by pointing out that it's "not the milestone it once was"? Do you always shit on your teammates achievements?

I’ve said before, when you do something in a game that is more than a century old, for the first time, or only time, you’ve truly done something.

I appreciate Manny as much as anybody, but what has he done that's never been done before? Aside from high-fiving a guy in the bleachers after a catch? Most post season home runs? Could that have something to do with him playing in 95 post-season games? (30 more than Mickey Mantle, for example)

Who isn’t blown away at the Jon Lester story?

I'm not blown away. He threw a no-hitter. You're blown away because you still look at him and see CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCER CANCER TUMOR CANCER DEATH written on his forehead. To me, he's really just another pitcher now. I look at him the way I look at everybody else.

I’d like to think I’ve helped him a bit.

Of course you have. I'm sure he looks at you the way Andy Pettitte looks at Roger Clemens.

I couldn’t play in the NBA because about 43 times last night I heard things being said that would have made me swing at someone.

Curt Schilling: Bad Mother Fucker. But seriously, remember this quote.

Paul Pierce is friggin good. What a game. Who on the Lakers can defend him?

Kobe defended him pretty well in Game 3, when he didn't have to fight the refs the whole way.

I wondered aloud, a few times, how in the hell calls weren’t being made against the Celts on a ton of plays in the paint where there was some serious pugilism being committed.

Glad that Curt Schilling backed me up on this. Yeah Curt, I wonder why there weren't more calls against the Celtics in Boston...

From the first tip until about 4 minutes left in the game I saw and heard this guy (Kobe Bryant) bitch at his teammates.

They were playing like shit Curt, this is what some call leadership. Had they won the game, you'd be raving about how he "took charge out there and willed his team to win."

No dialog about “hey let’s go, let’s get after it” or whatever.
So you mean there was no disingenuous rah-rah bullshit? Just a fierce competitor wanting his teammates to cut down their mistakes, so they could try to win a game in the NBA Finals?

He spent the better part of 3.5 quarters pissed off and ranting at the non-execution or lack of, of his team.

So he has a temper? Well at least he didn't take a swing at a guy 43 different times for trash talking... like you would. Remember saying that Curt? That you'd take a swing at somebody? 43 times a game? Yes, I'm taking you literally. Kobe didn't bitchsmack Luke Walton for missing a rebound. So what's the problem. Again, if they had won the game you'd be gushing about his leadership. They lost, so he's an asshole.

So who do we think would win in a fight between DJ Mbenga and Curt Schilling? I've got $20 on Mbenga.

P.S. - Hey DJ, this is the second time I've mentioned you in my blog. And this time I didn't even imply that Kobe Bryant touched your no-no spot! You should thank me. You should autograph something and mail it to me. Better yet, get Kobe to autograph something for me... you know, after he sticks his fingers up your bum in the shower.

Thanks to Jane Silva for the tip on this article.

Happy Trails, Cedric Benson!

As you all probably know by now, Cedric Benson picked up his second DUI in a month this week. And as you probably could have figured out, the Bears just cut him.

So much for the 36-day holdout and the 5 year, $35 million dollar contract, and dealing Thomas Jones to make this guy the feature back.

However!!! This brings us to a spiffy new place!!! We're taking bets on where Cedric Benson lands!!

There are 31 NFL franchises not named Da Bears... and chances are, that somebody's going to grab up Benson.

The obvious favorites are, of course, the Bengals and the Cowboys... but send in your guess. The first person to guess correctly will win a prize of my choosing!

It could be something cool, or something completely fucking worthless, but it'll be yours. You can post your guesses in the comments of this post... or e-mail them to me.

Also, this made me laugh, Cedric Benson telling ESPN: The Magazine that he's "not Ricky." Yeah.. Ricky fails drug tests. Not sobriety tests.

The Biggest Gimme In Sports History!!

A guy named Jeff Gordon (no, not that one) wrote an article chronicling the 10 biggest human train wrecks in sports history. What I don't understand is... why he bothered. Here's who's on the list and why...

Mike Tyson - Raping people, cannibalism, wanting to fight Kimbo.
Dennis Rodman - Cross-dressing, starring in Double Team, touching Karl Malone's no-no place.
Jose Canseco - Gee, I dunno... Jose's such an upstanding guy.
OJ Simpson - his portrayal of Detective Nordberg in the Naked Gun series.
John Daly - Trying to eat his ex-wife. Literally.
Tonya Harding - Ruining Paula Jones' plastic surgery.
Pete Rose - People seem to think that he bet on baseball.
Diego Maradona - Who?
Denny McLain - Gambling, secret desire to be The Biggest Dope Man.
Tommy Morrison - Taking cheap shots at Rocky.

So here's what I don't get. Tyson's in the spotlight for wanting to fight Kimbo. Canseco put out a new book. OJ got arrested for tryin' to get some paper... but none of these people are NEW to the list in any way? They've all been crazy for at least 10 years.

I could understand writing this list if you were going to add someone to the list or if you were building a case for someone's removal from it, but to just write a list like this, where 95% of the references are extremely dated, and have been covered and covered again, doesn't make sense to me.

So here are some people that belong on a list of sports greatest train wrecks:

Terrell Owens - Suicide attempts, guest appearances in Bang-Bros porn, staring lustily at the ass of a stripper.
Coco Crisp - Grabbing at the junk of a small Japanese man.


Chris Henry - Gun charges, sex crimes, gun charges, DUI, gun charges, providing alcohol to minors, playing for the Bengals, gun charges, drug use, gun charges, assaulting a valet, drug use, gun charges.

Jason Giambi - Porn 'stache, sharing gold-lamé tiger-striped thong with teammates.

Apparently Idiocy Can Breed...

Do you look at the world around you and realize that the average person seems to get dumber every year? Yeah, me too. So where is all this raw stupidity coming from? There's only one solution. Jeff Passan's columns on Yahoo Sports are to brain cells, what kryptonite is to Superman. You don't even have to read them. You just have to be near them and your IQ errodes. Case in point...

The way Curtis Granderson figures, leadoff hitters actually lead off only once a game, so all of the attention they garner – it’s them and cleanup hitters with the recognizable nicknames, after all – isn’t necessarily warranted.

Yeah, and the studies have sorta shown that batting order really doesn't impact the output of the offense. That's where you're going with this, right?

Perhaps it was the romantic notion of the leadoff hitter: the scrapper who fouls off pitches and gets on base and dashes from first to third and manufactures runs, intangibles idealized.

And of course, the key component here is "gets on base" because your leadoff man gets the most at bats on the team, and thereby has the opportunity to make the most outs... so you should strive to use someone who makes less outs than the average player?

Oddly, Rickey Henderson was the best at this. I don't know how scrappy he was. And nobody ever talks about his "intangibles."

That player, of course, is a relic in the steroid and sabermetric eras, generally inefficient, and the prototype has evolved into Leadoff 2.0, the type of player Granderson and others across the game embody.

You're right. Rickey Henderson is a relic, but that's only because he's like 900 years old and nobody as good as him has come around again. Sabermetrics has most certainly never even IMPLIED that a guy who "fouls off pitches and gets on base and goes from first to third and manufactures runs" is inefficient. Sabermetrics has shown us that getting on base is incredibly valuable. It's also showed us how overrated stolen bases were.

And steroids? If anything, guys were taking steroids to try to do these things better. Getting on base more? Hello!!!! The poster child for steroids had an On-Base Percentage of like 2.842 or better for the last 10 years. No typo. Barry Bonds got on base 2.8 times per at bat. He was that fucking retarded.

They can run, yes, but they also hit for serious power, enough that they’d fit just fine in the No. 3 hole, the lineup’s true glamour spot.

We're talking about Curtis Granderson here? He of the .342 career OBP? Okay, that's not shitty, but it's also not what I want in the leadoff spot. And looking at last year, wouldn't the Tigers have been better off batting Granderson down in the lineup a little, where his 38 doubles, 23 triples and 23 homers could have produced more than 74 RBIs? And batting Placido Polanco (and his .388 OBP) first? Nah, you're right... it probably wouldn't make much of a difference anyway.

“You could have your old-school taking pitches so you get the pitch count up and let the hitters behind you see everything the pitcher has."

Yeah Curtis, working counts sounds like a good idea. Sure, this is an old school approach, but effective. Plus the more pitches you see, the more likely you are to draw a hit or walk, and thus, get on base.

"But if you’re a guy who can drive the baseball, you’re going to be aggressive and set the tone by either getting on base, getting an extra-base hit or, possibly, starting the game off 1-0.”

This season, Curtis is driving the ball to the tune of a .242 average and a .320 OBP, and he's on pace for 140+ strikeouts again. That's just what you want from the guy who hits before your run-producers. Keep trying to be Alfonso Soriano, Curtis. It's helping you.

His divisional and positional peer, Cleveland’s Grady Sizemore, socked 92 extra-base hits the year before.

Except that Sizemore got on base at a .390 clip last year, which is the kind of number you should want from the guy who sees the most at bats on the team.

And we can’t forget the leadoff hitter who best epitomizes the power surge – and the most misplaced – Alfonso Soriano, who must be telekinetic with his ability to convince manager after manager that keeping him hitting first is a stroke of brilliance.

Telekinetic? That's moving shit with your mind. MIND POWER!!! And suddenly I got an image of Alfonso Soriano giving Lou Pinella a telekinetic hand-job. The visual in my brain is like bad Star Wars porn right now.

The important thing here, is that Passan is writing an article praising Curtis Granderson and the "new breed" of power-hitting leadoff guys... and he ADMITS that Soriano is "misplaced" in the Cubs lineup, thus contradicting his entire fucking premise. This is why these posts are so long.

It [foot-speed] is managers’ last gasp at the classic leadoff hitter instead of one who resembles Rickey Henderson, baseball’s greatest power-and-speed combination at the top of the lineup since Ty Cobb.

Then here's the real question. What was more vital to Rickey Henderson's success? His "power-and-speed"? Or his ability to work counts, draw walks, and get on base?

Case in point... Henderson hit 297 career home runs. And stole 1406 bases at a success rate of just under 81%. For his career, he averaged a home run every 45 plate appearances. And as we know, stealing bases at an 81% rate really doesn't help an offense very much (because people have researched these facts extensively, and we trust facts.)

Power-and-speed: 1 homer every 45 times at the plate, minimal benefit from stolen bases.

Rickey on-based .401 for his career, with peaks of .420, .419, .423, .439, .432 and another .423 at 40 years old. In 25 seasons, Henderson made more than 400 outs 6 times. Alfonso Soriano, in comparison, has made 400+ outs in every full season he's ever played and has broken 500 twice. Juan Pierre has made 500+ outs in 5 straight years.

Walking/Getting On Base: Once every 4 games, Rickey Henderson is on base when Curtis Granderson is sitting on the bench after having made an out.

“I had Bonds hit a lot of leadoff home runs,” Leyland said.

Jim Leyland, speaking proudly about batting Barry Bonds in the lead-off spot... but at least Bonds was getting on base at an above-average rate. Still fucking stupid.

No one said being Leadoff 2.0 is easy. Which is just how Granderson likes it.

Umm... what? No one said it's easy? Which is just how he likes it? What are you saying here Jeff Passan? Are you saying that he likes it easy? So then Curtis Granderson hates being "Leadoff 2.0" because it's not easy, and he likes it easy?

Wit only looks witty if it makes sense dude.

Happy Trails, Tim!!!

This is probably the first and last time I'm ever going to cover Olympic sports (unless that double amputee runner wins a Medal) but here goes nothing.

Check this shit out...

Tim Montgomery's going to the clink for depositing $1.7 Million Dollars in bad checks. That's supposedly going to net him 46 months in the pokey. I know this is a hacky joke, but I just can't resist. There's no running away from this one Tim!

Say hi to Nate Newton and Troy Hambrick while you're in there. And don't get eaten by bears.

Crack Attack?!

Anybody remember Troy Hambrick? He was a running back for the Cardinals/Cowboys for a few years...

If I remember correctly, he didn't suck too bad in the video game (which is, of course, the best way to judge the prowess of a professional athlete.)

Guess what Troy did...

He dramatically improved the image of one Adam "Pacman" Jones. Pacman's gonna celebrate by 'making it rain' again tonight.

Seriously though... Hambrick made millions playing football in a pretty short time... and he's going to the pokey for a Fin... for selling crack?! This is the dumbest thing a Cowboy's done since Nate Newton couldn't see himself not being the Biggest Dope Man.

And the most embarrassing thing to happen to Cowboys of any kind since...



Yup... Brokeback Fiction.

I Don't Just Hate on Stupid Journalists.

I spew my umbrage at stupid players too. Which brings me to this guy.

That's John Bale. He pitches for the Kansas City Royals.

And as you can see here, he's also probably in line to win himself a Trojan Enz Boner of the Week Award.

John Bale spent a couple of years pitching in Japan, because he's not very good. The Royals are paying $2.2 million for a pitcher who's still not very good. He was already on the DL with shoulder tightness. And he breaks his hand punching a hotel door.

I could understand punching a hotel heiress. Actually that picture makes me not want to punch her.... maybe a video will make me want to punch her again.



Nope. Didn't work. Why don't people like her again? And for the record, the guy in this scene isn't very masculine. Whatever.

I guess we should look at the bright side though.

1) John Bale didn't get eaten by the Tarp Machine.

2) John Bale didn't get eaten by bears.

3) Thanks to John Bale, I've had my first excuse to link pics of hot chicks here!