Thursday, June 03, 2010

Reading this and watching the Mariners are great time sucks

Ahhhh, back from from an amazing week in Vermont and the Adirondacks, great motorcycling and enough golf to keep the “lies” coming for weeks. And what do I find back in RaCha… the baseball scene as boring as when I left.

Teixeira can’t read a calendar. Hey Mark, its June, not April. Girardi still has him in the three hole offering no protection for the Roid. I heard Joe comment that in spite of an anemic .215 BA (oops… just checked today’s box and he’s up to .217) and a lower than team average OPB, he likes that the visually challenged one has over 30 RBIs. Big deal. Picasner could do that given as many opportunities as Texiera has had. More telling is the number of runners he’s failed to drive in and the rallies that he’s killed. But not to worry, May is just around the corner… the 11 month corner.

Speaking of the much and deservedly maligned P… I sent a copy of his post on umpire Jim Joyce’s latest visual hallucination to Tiger’s manager Jim Leyland. I know he’ll fell much better knowing that “It was a mistake” and simply “…part of baseball”. BP has used the “Picasner Imperative” to explain turning the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic waste dump. It was a mistake and simply part of drilling for oil in 5,000 ft of water. I know I feel better already.

The only real “talk” about MLB reversing the decision has been from the P. While that’s an easy straw man to knock down, get ready for a serious analysis of expansion of umpire reviewed video replays. Before our favorite has a seizure, just remember that “the good old days” never really were.

I guess I we already know that MLB umpires are still visually impaired, narcissistic, wide-bodied fog horns – and currently the buzz of talking heads everywhere. Who says Bud Selig doesn’t recognize a marketing opportunity when it bashes him in his shrunken head. Marketing through Incompetence! That’s the man we love.

The NL remains only slightly more satisfying than watching paint dry (fewer fumes) and much less than watching the grass grow (costs less, smells better). The Ubaldo Factor is fun and so is the Much Ballyhooed Arrival of Strasberg. Still, both will be pitching in a minor league.

The good news is that there is at least two more Stanley Cup games to watch and a renewal of the Celtics – Laker rivalry on tap. Watching a few NBA games called by their bozo refs is the best prep for a long summer of Joe West, Jim Joyce, Angel Hernandez, ad nauseum.

Kudos to the P for calling out Paul O’Neil’s and Mikey’s performance in the booth. Those two need to get a grip on something other than their own egos. I’m so pleased to learn that the self admitted Big Headed One doesn’t yet wear a size 8 hat and that O’Neil’s wife doesn’t allow him to carry actual cash and that he eats like a pig, but as P pointed out, there is occasionally a game in progress. Sadly, the radio broadcast offers little more since Susan is limited to stroking the source of “he’s Swish-a-licious”. Help us.

Finally, with 1/3 of the season over, the standings offer little to be surprised about. The Rays are playing as well as most knowledgeable baseball people expected and the Yankees and Red Sox continue to make the AL East the most if not the only interesting division in MLB. The Central and the West have only 2 teams between them more than 2 games over .500 and the NL is just not ready for prime time – so what could possible be surprising, other than Ubaldo?

I’ll leave it to the P for now to recycle the same stuff until the Yankees do something worth reporting and umpires regain some competency and dignity. In the meantime, I’ll watch Kevin Garnett, the dirtiest player in basketball, and Kobe Bryant, the Tiger Woods of the NBA, do some amazing things on the basketball court while trying to overlook that they are people you warn your kids about.

Peace

Vod

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