Ever Wonder?

July 29, 2008 at 6:03 pm · Filed under 1

Do you ever wonder if you could retire, change your mind, and then call your employer’s bluff by showing back up to work?  And do you think Brett Favre will ever realize that George Constanza actually triedl this first on an episode of Seinfeld?

Ever think back on your days in college and wish you could of cruised around campus in an SUV with tinted windows, an automatic weapon under the seat and some residue in the ash tray just so you could have been there when an employee of the university looked at the cameras and said, "I’m not giving up on this kid.  I looked him in the eye and saw something worth saving."

Think you might want to go into work tomorrow and announce to anyone who will listen, "I’m sick of this organization and they’re sick of me, so why don’t they do something about it?"  On your way out the door maybe you could knock down an elderly employee and curse at him because he couldn’t get you enough free tickets to the company picnic. 

Remember the day at work when somebody saw something to you, you said something to him, there was some pushing and shoving and next thing you knew you were hitting him over the head with a hockey stick?  So they gave you ten minutes in the break room and sent you home for the day. 

Try this on your wife some time.  Get implicated in using drugs banned by your employer, then tell everyone you know nothing about steroids, but a buddy of yours came over to the house and injected your wife because she wanted to look younger for some photos.

Some of you may have already tried this.  Once you hit your eighties ignore the hints you’re getting at work that you should retire.  Let everyone know you’ll make the decision year by year and you’ll let them know when it’s time.  But not now.

Ever consider what you’d do if a fight broke about between a large group of women at work?  OK, get your minds out of the gutter and think this through.  Would knocking a 36 year old mother flat to break up the fight be an option?

Have you ever thought about what you’d do if you owned the Coliseum in Rome?  Sure, it’s a part of the country’s heritage and all, but it’s a real dump and knocking it down to make way for a new one would be real money maker for you (provided the city paid for the infrastructure to support your new coliseum)?

Were you one of those guys who thought once China got the Olympic games they would let dissidents speak out, ease restrictions on the press, and become more open to democracy?  A related question?  How much stuff around your house was bought after 2 a.m. during an infomercial?

Are there any asterisks in your personnel file beside your annual ratings because some of your best work was done with the aid of drugs?

Finally, think there are any good driving jobs where they encourage you to break the speed limit and all you have to do is make continuous left turns for three hours once a week?

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The Oklahoma City Robber Barons

July 28, 2008 at 6:59 pm · Filed under 1

After an exhaustive search of available team names by the NBA’s marketing firm (Dull & Bland) six possible names for the Oklahoma City Sonics have been proposed.

Drum roll please.

Thunder. Bisons. Energy. Marshalls. Wind. Barons.

I have this theory a stoner came up with the names. Picture David Stern in his office as Jason, a 22 year old intern, comes in to pitch the choices.

"Dude, here’s what I got on the name thing. Oklahoma is like really flat and it blows. I mean the wind. And there’s thunder and stuff, too. It’s got a real energy, man. It’s like the marshal told me when he was shoving my head down so I wouldn’t hit it in the back of the cruiser. I think it was like, a LeBaron or Baron or something. I was freaking out because they had these really weird looking cows they called bison. I thought I was tripping so I just turned myself in and after they tazed me and stuff, I told them I worked for the NBA and they let me go. So, I think we should call the team the Tazers. Could you sign this so I get my credit for summer school?"

If I had to pick one of the names it would be the Barons. Considering how the team came to Oklahoma City I’d expand that to the Robber Barons. Or the Sterns. Maybe the Heist.

Energy, wind, and thunder sound too much like Earth, Wind, and Fire to me. Earth, Wind, and Fire is taken already but I’m fairly sure you could get Bootsy Collins to sign away the rights to Parliament or Funkadelic. In fact, I’m thinking the Oklahoma City Funkadelic would be a great name. You could even shorten it to The Funk.

That might be a bit much for Oklahoma City. Oklahoma means "red people", but unfortunately the white people ran the red people out of large parts of the plains states. The Oklahoma "Uninvited Guests" wouldn’t work on souvenir jerseys.

The whole baron thing sounds a little too elitist for my taste. But if you want a cattle theme, how about the Oklahoma City Moo. "Down 5 with 1:37 the Moo cross mid court and into the Celtics zone." Could work. And talk about disrupting the free throw shooter. You’re down one with time running out and have to sink two from the line with 18,000 people all yelling "Moo" at the top of their lungs.

Oklahoma has two major drainage basins, so the OKC Drainage could work. "OK, men, we got to get the ball back. Now go out there and stop the Drainage."

Animals are always a safe bet. Oklahoma is blessed with a diversity of wild life that ensures a variety of nick names. There’s the Prairie Chickens, River Otter, and Pheasant to name a few. The Armadillo is a personal favorite of mine, but for some reason nobody ever uses the name.

Oklahoma has nearly 200 lakes, so Lakers would be a natural choice, if it wasn’t already being used. Maybe Oklahoma could trade Kevin Durant to the Lakers for the rights to the name. It would be a better deal than Memphis got for Pau Gasol, and I suspect Commissioner Stern would have no problem approving it.

In the end, the best name for Oklahoma City’s NBA franchise is the Why? As in, why would anybody move a NBA team to Oklahoma? A few years down the road, once the novelty has worn off, it may be a question the NBA ends up asking itself.

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Do You Want Team USA To Win?

July 21, 2008 at 7:17 pm · Filed under 1

Serious question.

Do you want the current version of basketball’s Dream Team to win in Beijing?

Is it unpatriotic to hope they lose? 

Here’s why I ask.  My sneaking suspicion is maybe 25% of US sports fans wouldn’t mind seeing USA Basketball upset.   That would be 5% who will say that out loud and 20% who keep it to themselves.

Reasons?

Resentment of the NBA.  Past US Olympic teams didn’t adapt to international competition.  They simply took the NBA game with them and carried the pieces back home stuffed in their travel bags.

Admit it.  At some level didn’t that feel good?  Teams with better fundamentals schooling overpaid and under motivated NBA players.  Basketball being taken back from the hype machine. 

Americans love the underdog.  Pulling for Team USA in basketball is like cheering for Microsoft.  Actually, it’s like cheering for Nike.  You do remember Nike?  Nike is the voice down at the end of a long dark alley telling the people who run the sport, "You can have all the money in the world and it will only cost your soul.  You weren’t using that anyway, am I right?"

How do you pull for a Nike travelling squad?  Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the team is made up entirely of players who wear Nike or Nike affiliated brands (except for Dwight Howard).  A win for Team USA is money in the bank for the evil empire.

The Star Syndrome.  Nike looked at this year’s Olympics and saw the opportunity to promote……wait for it…..LJI Squared (LeBron James International Icon).  They rushed out an ad for the Chinese masses featuring James besting an elderly Kung Fu master, a couple of dragons, and two animated Chinese girls.  The Chinese authorities took offense, saying it insulted the motherland.

In truth, the ad was rejected because everyone knows James would have dunked repeatedly on the elderly master, dropped fifteen in the second quarter on the dragons, and then gone eight scoreless minutes in the third against the animated girls before coming back to almost, not quite, pull it out.

Americans don’t love Mike Krizyewski.  OK, exclude the few odd million who suddenly discovered they were Duke fans when Coach K came to Durham and started winning big time.  The rest of us aren’t so sure if he is the character guy who gives all those nice speeches or the whining, profane, borderline head case whose sideline demeanor stirs fond memories of Joesph Stalin.

Man bites dog.  You want to see the US lose because it isn’t supposed to happen.  And the things that aren’t supposed to happen are always more interesting than the things that are.  Like 30 point blow outs and a US gold medal in basketball.

What’s America got to do with it, anyway?  The Olympics are more and more like college sports.  The players are only vaguely connected to the institutions they represent.  These are professional athletes making a career choice to be involved with a marketing vehicle.  Some of them no doubt factor in pride in their country.  How many do you think?  50%, 30%, 10%?

In the end I’ll watch, and in the end I’ll kind of sort of pull for Team USA.  Why?  Same reason I support any team from Texas.  It’s where I was born, the home team.  But should Team USA lose I won’t feel all that bad.  And I’m betting neither will the players.

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Preserving the Morals of a House of Ill Repute

July 19, 2008 at 9:39 pm · Filed under Dudski

It is July and wind cries Barry.

I know, got to spend less time listening to Hendrix. My point is this. If the defenders of baseball’s collective morality have protected us from Barry Bonds by not letting him play, what has been preserved? And at what cost?

Are there any fewer players using performance enhancing drugs because Bonds hasn’t stepped onto the field? If Bonds is a threat to “team chemistry”, first define for me what that is? And whether, in the most individual of sports, it even matters? Have the “youth of America” stopped playing “Grand Theft Auto” long enough to be corrupted by Bonds?

Shakespeare said it well. “Use every man according to his desert, and who shall escape whipping?” If purity of mind, body, and spirit is the standard, who indeed?

What about Manny Ramirez? He pushed the RedSox travelling secretary down because the slugger didn’t get enough tickets to distribute to family and friends. At least he didn’t take the man’s AARP card. Then, according to a sportscaster close to the team, Side Show Manny intentionally struck out in a game against the Yankees after he was fined over the incident.

Maybe Alex Rodriquez? Admittedly, we’d have to do without a lot of players if the bar was set at cheating on your wife. But who is the bigger jerk? Bonds for trying to keep up with McGwire and Sosa in the steroids arms race or ARod? And give Barry a few points for not making a spectacle of himself with Madonna.

Then you’ve got Brett Myers of the Phillies. Management rallied around him like a fallen flag in battle after he knocked his wife around on the streets of Boston. Last I heard he was still pitching, and recently commented that he was getting his swagger back. Now there is a cheery prospect.

How about the General Managers who watched as not just Bonds, but a good chunk of baseball’s power hitters turned baseball into one big chemistry experiment? Come to think of it, did even one of them get named in the Mitchell Report? And what of Bud Selig who presided over it all? Think he should join the ranks of baseball’s unemployed?

The truth is, baseball made an example of Barry Bonds for three reasons. One they just don’t like Bonds, who has all the charm of an abandoned Russian chemical weapons lab. Two, he became the public face of a steroid scandal baseball’s executives were trying mightily to ignore. And three, at 44 he has more value utility value to baseball’s leaders as a bad example than as a hitter.

Bonds should have been in uniform from Day 1 this spring. Nobody can tell me he wouldn’t have added value to some American League team’s lineup. Or that, for reasons good and bad, he wouldn’t have put bodies in seats everywhere he played. And there is no doubt he could have been a difference maker to a contending team.

The same guys who told us baseball had no serious problem with steroids now tell us it is mere coincidence Bonds has not been signed. That the collective brain trust that is paying Eric Gagne, Andy Pettite, Jose Guillen, Tom Glavine, and Andruw Jones a total of $65,000,000 this season all spontaneously decided a player with 28 home runs, an OBP of .480, and slugging percentage of .564 was too risky a gamble to take.

Sure, Bonds had a good year they say, but Pedro Feliz was available at a mere $8,500,000 a year.

Baseball embraces its history like no other sports. On May 25, 1935 Babe Ruth hit his last home run. Three of them, in fact, with the last one leaving the park and traveling (based on accounts of where it landed) 600 feet.

The morally superior men who run the game of baseball are depriving fans of one of those moments in time. Nothing is going to be gained by preventing it, and nothing lost by letting Barry Bonds take the field one more time.

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I Don’t Know Why You Say Brett Favre, I Say Hello

July 14, 2008 at 4:36 pm · Filed under 1

Just when Paul McCartney thought the year couldn’t get any worse……

You say short route, I say no

You call an out and I say go, go, go

Over throw
You say retire and I say hello

I’m back you know
I don’t know why you thought I’d quit
I say hello
Hello, hello

I don’t know why you say twelve
Four’s good to go

My salary is high, you say go

You say why, and I say I don’t know

Oh, no

You say retire and I say hello

Hello, hello

I don’t know why you say backup
I’m good to go
Heck no, heck no

I don’t know why you won’t say goodbye

I’d say Tampa hello

Why, why, why, why, why, why

Do you say retire

Retire, bye, bye, bye, bye

Oh, no

You say goodbye and I say hello

I’ve missed the snow
I don’t know why you say goodbye

I say let’s go
I’m all aglow
I don’t know why you say goodbye

I say hello

You’ve seen me throw
I don’t know why you say retire I say hello

Hello

Hela, hey the deep ball

Hela, throw the deep ball

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Talkin Baseball

July 8, 2008 at 7:55 pm · Filed under 1

Sabathia to the Brewers. 

Good deal all around.  Most pitchers give a 50/50 chance of victory.  About a dozen shift the odds to 60-40.  With Ben Sheets and Sabathia the Brewers can win the division as long as the 3-5 starters give them anything.

The Indians get years of outfield prospect Matt LaPorta in exchange for three meaningless months of C. C. Sabathia.  In a perfect world the Indians could hold on to their best pitcher, but in this imperfect world the odds were against it.

And so the wheels turn and Rich Harden becomes a Cub.  The A’s get Matt Murton, who hasn’t been able to crack what often has been a mediocre outfield.  Throw in Sean Gallagher, who eventually will be 70% of the pitcher Harden already is, and Corey Patterson.  Patterson is alot like the guys who go to plumbing supply conventions.  A couple of trips a year to Chicago, alot of noise, nothing to show for it.  Oh, and a catcher who isn’t hitting in Peoria.

A real Dusty Springfield trade for the A’s.  As in, wishin’ and hopin’.  The worst part is they had Harden through 2009, during which time a better deal surely would have come along.  Might as well pop the champagne corks in Anaheim, because the second best team in the AL West just conceded.

Then you have the Mets, who are on a 3 game winning streak.  Woo hoo!  Don’t get too excited.  Baseball games are won by the team that gets the big defensive play late in the game, the clutch pitching performance to break a three game slide, the shut down relief appearances in the critical 6th and 7th innings, and the occasional three run home run.  The Mets might get the starting pitching part of that equation, but forget the other three parts.

I blame it on the hats.  Those awful black caps with a blue bill.  The Mets uniform IS the Mets, but A.O. (after Omar) they wear uniforms that look like something a metal band road crew would sleep in.

The Yankees compromised their heritage with the red, white, and blue NY the other day.  Sure, it’s to honor veterans, but raise the money another way.  The Yankees uniform along with that of the Montreal Canadiens should never be altered.  I guess if you’re taking a wrecking ball to the House That Ruth built it’s OK to patriotically pimp out the uniform.  Maybe we’ll see one of those snazzy red tops on Sundays next year.  Anything for a buck.

Speaking of compromised heritage, when do the Yankees send Alex Rodriquez packing.  Don’t get me wrong.  Ruth, Mantle, and Ford weren’t choir boys.  But they never were so willfully blind to the consequences of their actions and how it reflected on the team.  If Alex Rodriquez is a New York Yankee I’m an astronaut.

A word about pitching.  In 1968 the rules makers of baseball reduced the height of the pitcher’s mound from 15 inches to 9 to put more hitting into the game.  It worked.  At the same time arm injuries to pitchers have reached epidemic proportions.  Give the hurlers back three inches of leverage.  It won’t hurt the offense much and it will keep the game’s best pitchers off the DL. 

And finally, the Atlanta Braves.

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The Luckiest Man On The Face Of The Earth

July 4, 2008 at 4:38 pm · Filed under 1

"And when they light up our town I just think, what a waste of gunpowder and sky."
-Aimee Mann "4th of July"

It started slowly. A fastball that got by, he once would have turned on. Reporters he once would have eluded, catching him coming out of a strip club in Toronto with a woman not his wife. Reflexes which once would have turned from the camera, now caught like a deer in headlights. The numbness working it’s way up, until finally the ability to think and see straight was lost. A once great athlete, now a shell of himself pursuing a broom factory test pilot old enough to be his stepmother.

So it was 69 years to the day after Lou Gehrig made his famous speech that ARod, Alex Rodriquez, made his way to the microphones.

Fans, for the past week you have been reading about the bad break
I got. Who knew apartment house doormen were such gossips? Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this
earth. I have been in ballparks for fifteen years and have never
received anything but ever increasing paychecks and an ever decreasing sense of personal responsibility.

"So I close in saying that I may have had a tough
break, but I have a lot more to live for, assuming the checks keep rolling in."

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Take My Advice (Or Not)

July 2, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under 1

Mrs. Alex Rodriquez: Keep your weight evenly distributed during the swing and make sure the trademark faces up. And you might want to consider one of those maple bats.

Brett Favre: Two words for you. Arena football. When was the last time you saw an arena football quarterback get hit? You could be making comebacks into your mid-40’s.

Barry Bonds: There is a point in most episodes of Law & Order when the defense attorney leans over and, with a look of great seriousness, nods his head at the offer the DA just made. You can’t see me, but I’m giving you that look. The feds don’t care about Barry Bonds, they want to take down a network of steroid distributors. Give them what they want before you end up in some federal prison getting an asterisk carved into your back.

Ed Wade: Don’t bother people while they’re eating.

Manny Ramirez: Two words. Stub Hub.

Tiger Woods: You’ve got some free time. Shake up your image. I’m thinking some NBA style tattoos, body piercings, pimp up the old Buick. Get seen in public wearing that green jacket inside out with a sideways ball cap. Then go on the Golf Channel and tell them your one regret is that you’ll always wonder how good you could have been if you’d actually enjoyed the game. You might want to wait until next April 1, but feel free to do it earlier if you get bored.

O.J. Mayo: Decide early on who you are and what your game is going to be about. You can be who Stephon Marbury is, or who he could have been.

ESPN: Get over yourself. The ESPY awards? Nobody cares. You’re in danger of being what MTV is to music. A network about culture that forgot what its core business is.

LeBron James: Just go to New York already. The NBA will work something out. But if you do the dance of a thousand veils for the next two seasons you’ll turn off the fans in Cleveland and alot of other places. Stay. Go. Just make a decision now.

Tony Stewart: Hire a weather guy. No excuse for coming in at New Hampshire when everyone could see rain was going to hit the track. All that stood between you and your first victory was not having some kid with a laptop and the URL of NOAA looking at the nearest radar. For the want of a nail…

The City of Seattle: Take the NBA’s $75 million and let the Sonics go. Then look into creating an ABA for the new millennium. Eight team league to start, four overseas, salaries about half of what the NBA offers but a league bounty to go after a few big name stars. Emphasis on old school, fundamental basketball. The anti-NBA. Just crazy enough that it might work.

And finally…..To the New York Mets. Get rid of those awful black and blue caps. They symbolize everything wrong with the current direction of the team. The Mets are supposed to look like the likable alternative to the Yankees, not Brittany Spears roadies.

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