Straw Meets Camel's Back

Shit gets you down. A lot of shit gets you way down. And sometimes sports doesn't give you a break from shit, it only piles it higher and deeper.

Granted my shit baseline is pretty deep these days. I've been unemployed for ten months and, if employers are to be believed, I'm simply unemployable unless 'you'd like fries with that' becomes my career path. So, you can imagine how "helpful" it is to me to sit down and watch Adam Wainwright blow out his Achilles tendon, or to hear the news last autumn about Oscar Taveras.

And then we get to the St. Louis Blues. There is no way I can do a post-mortem because I simply cannot stand it or them anymore. They have mattered so much to me since I was a 10 year old kid that they have used me up. It turns out 36 years of futility is my limit. It is impossible for me to believe someone could be a fan, and I mean a real fan, and last longer than I did. Every year they trot out some Cubs "fan" who claims 70 years plus, but that has to be bullshit. There is no way someone who really cared could last that long. I've known mothers that have disowned their own children, human beings they loved with all of their heart and soul, for less than what the Cubs have done to their fan base routinely. The only way you could last that long is if deep down you really don't care. And, don't get me wrong, that's cool for the people who are just enjoying following sports as a bit of play acting. It can be loads of fun to pretend you care about something. Why else would people adopt Cinderellas so readily. You don't actually care that that 14 seed you'd never heard of before they won a couple games in the NCAA gets knocked out in the Elite Eight. It's just fun to act like you do. When the ride ends, it ends.

In many ways I've always thought the film Fever Pitch, and here I'm talking about the real English soccer version and not the Americanized abomination, got a lot right about being a real fan. When the girlfriend of the main character chirps in the helpful "It's only a game!" the response is dead on. "Don't say that. That is the stupidest thing anyone could ever say. It quite obviously is not only a game. If it was do you honestly think I'd care this much?!"

What it misses out on is the hopelessness it can engender. The character Paul in Fever Pitch, and the author Nick Hornby on which the character is based, only had to endure a drought of eighteen years between Arsenal championships, and even then they won an FA Cup in the longish interval. The angst there is having been good and failing for awhile to reach those same heights. The Blues, on the other hand, have never been that good. Ever. Even when they reached the Stanley Cup finals, before I was born and when I was less than a year old, it was a fluke born to dodgy business decisions. They truly didn't belong there. The real championship was the semifinals played in the other conference. Everyone knows it even if they are too polite to talk about it that way. That is what the Blues were and what they have always been.

Seemingly it is what they always will be too, and that is what I cannot stomach. It's taking too much out of me and not putting anything back in. There is no joy to be had there any longer so I'm putting the Blues away. I'm not watching them, or the NHL in general, any longer. I've already boxed up everything I own with the Blues logo and tucked it away deep in a closet possibly never to be open again in my lifetime. But, at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing it won't be the Blues or the NHL sending me to an early grave.

That is something I suppose.

Let's Go Cardinals

It's now or never time.

An Unmitigated Disaster

I know it's early, but its not too early to decide that NBC's takeover of EPL coverage in the United States is nothing but a disaster for actual FANS of the game.

I was open to the switch until today when I realized NBC Sports had zero intention of covering the deadline as news.

My disgust knows no bounds. Being a fan sucks because you perpetually get screwed over with impunity.  What am I, or any other real fan of the English game, gonna do? Stop watching the games?

Ryan Braun, Cheater, Scumbag

The details:

Former National League MVP Ryan Braun was suspended without pay for the rest of the season and the postseason Monday, the first penalty from baseball's investigation of players reportedly tied to a Florida clinic accused of distributing performance-enhancing drugs.

The Milwaukee Brewers star accepted the 65-game penalty, 15 games more than the one he avoided last year when an arbitrator overturned his positive test for elevated testosterone because the urine sample had been improperly handled.

"I am not perfect. I realize now that I have made some mistakes. I am willing to accept the consequences of those actions," he said in a statement.

I must say I find this situation more exasperating than I would have originally thought. After all, I am a Cardinals fan and I lived through the Mark McGwire years. However, when that whole era was going down there already was the sense that something wasn't exactly right. When it exploded as a drug fueled myth no knowledgeable fan could be exactly surprised.

But that was all in the past, right?

When Ryan Braun signed his huge contract extension, choosing to stay with the small market club that established his name rather than chasing big money in a bigger market, I bought into the "feel good" storyline of it all. As a result I feel like nothing but a sucker today.

But really it is worse than that. Braun, in attempting to cover his ass nearly two years ago when he failed a drug test, absolutely trashed the reputation of the poor technician who handled that test. Basically Braun accused the tech of tampering with his urine sample. We now know Braun had a wider history of attempting to skirt baseball's drug policies. In the light of today's admission of guilt by Braun, the sumbag quality of that earlier denial has become unavoidable.

Braun should apologize to everyone whose integrity he so cynically attacked.

Wherein Joe Nocera Makes A Really Dumb Argument

See if you can follow this: Orwell and March Madness

If you’ve been watching the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball championship — a k a March Madness — you’ve undoubtedly seen the commercial. It’s an N.C.A.A. ad that shows college athletes pumping iron, running sprints and playing games. The voice-over, though, talks not about athletic achievement but academic accomplishment. “African-American males who are student-athletes are 10 percent more likely to graduate,” says the narrator. As the ad concludes, a female athlete looks into the camera and says, “Still think we’re just a bunch of dumb jocks?”...


Is it true that black male athletes have a higher graduation rate than other students? It is not.

Notice the pea getting moved? Nocera say the ad is making a claim the ad certainly does not make. The ad only claims that black male student athletes graduate more often than black make non-athletes, which is interesting to know. Nocera misrepresents the ad in order to say it is lying, but the only person lying here is Nocera.

In fact, Nocera goes off the deep end and claims:

The N.C.A.A. has created several other Orwellian concepts, such as an Academic Progress Rate, which allows it to use data to create the illusion that athletes are doing better academically than their peers.... ...In comparing college basketball players with their true peer group — full-time college students...

What? So comparing black males athlete with black male non-athletes is not a "true peer" group comparison? On what planet? Really, Joe says comparing black athletes with, for example, white suburban kids who graduated in the Top 15% of their high school class would be a "true peer" comparison, while comparing a black football player from Detroit with other non-athletes blacks would be "Orwellian." Uh, OK.... good luck with that. Look there is plenty to criticize the NCAA for, but you don't have to do it so ineptly, or so dishonestly.

Why Is Paterno Being Singled Out?

All I'm saying on this matter is this: Joe Paterno, by all published accounts, did not witness any wrongdoing by anyone. Merely being told of the allegation by the actual witness does not shift the burden away from the witness and onto Paterno.

That being the case I have to wonder if the outrage (if such it is) is being directed at Paterno at the behest of his enemies. And make no mistake, Paterno has enemies, alumni and boosters who have been campaigning behind the scenes for his dismissal for more than a decade.

Just saying.

UPDATE:

I see the lynch mob has been successful. Oh, happy day. After all everyone knows hounding an innocent 84 year old man out his job makes the pain of child rape go away.

Morons: English Football Division

It's a weird world:

Doncaster Rovers have sacked the woman who plays mascot Donny Dog after she posed in her underwear for a Sunday newspaper.

Tracy Chandler, who appeared in the photographs posing alongside Donny Dog's head, said she has been sent an email by the Championship side telling her she has "disgraced the club".

Ms Chandler, who has volunteered in the role for three years, admits she did not tell the club what she was doing but stressed it was "tastefully done". She also said the pictures had raised money for the NSPCC – the same charity for which Doncaster's players produced a naked calender last year.

That's right. This picture disgraces the club:



While this is fine and dandy:



I particularly like the tasteful bit of some of the lads with their hands down their pants. Classy!

Me thinks the Doncaster Football club has a bit of a problem with women.

Could there be any other explanation?

Talk About Unconvincing

Chutzpah award of the week: Justice to NCAA: Why no college football playoff

The Justice Department wants to know why the NCAA doesn't have a college football playoff system and says there are "serious questions" about whether the current format to determine a national champion complies with antitrust laws.

Critics who have urged the department to investigate the Bowl Championship Series contend it unfairly gives some schools preferential access to the title championship game and top-tier end-of-the-season bowl contents.

In a letter this week, the department's antitrust chief, Christine Varney, asked NCAA President Mark Emmert why a playoff system isn't used in football, unlike in other sports; what steps the NCAA has taken to create one; and whether Emmert thinks there are aspects of the BCS system that don't serve the interest of fans, schools and players....

Bill Hancock, the BCS executive director, was confident the current system complies with the law.

"Goodness gracious, with all that's going on in the world right now and with national and state budgets being what they are, it seems like a waste of taxpayers' money to have the government looking into how college football games are played," he said.

In other words: "The government was so busy we were confident we could get away with violating the law. Besides, why would the government care about our little football games, which only generate a few billion dollars of business every year."

Mr. Hancock you are a tone deaf idiot.

That is all.

U.S. v. Slovenia

Fixed I'd say.

The Bane Of My Existence: Golf People

First, I'm subjected (along with other exciting sports lovers) to their interminable tournaments monopolizing huge chunks of weekend television coverage. Now, I can't hear about the Winter Olympics, or the start of baseball Spring Training, or the tight conference races in college basketball, or anything else remotely interesting to those who like sports, because I'm supposed to care about where Tiger Woods sticks his John Thomas and the state of his marital vows.

Ugh.

Golf people...please go away (and don't ever come back.)

This Is Wrong On So Many Levels

Another for the "What the f**k are they thinking" file: Brewers to erect 7-foot high statue of Bud Selig outside Miller Park

The Brewers are erecting a statue of baseball commissioner Bud Selig outside Miller Park and will unveil it on Aug. 24.

Selig headed a group that bought the Seattle Pilots in bankruptcy court in 1970, moved the franchise to Milwaukee and renamed it the Brewers.

Oh, wow. Someone call a sculptor, stat!

Really, this is the sort of stupid idea that usually only results in the aftermath of a head of state departing to the hereafter. And, yes, I'm thinking here of the McKinley monument in the Antietam National Battlefield Park, dedicated to the memory of the day the future President served coffee to troops while under fire.

I'm not joking. That really is what it commemorates. Compared to what they are planning to do in Milwaukee the McKinley monument seems downright sane.

UPDATE:

A reader has chided me for minimizing the "accomplishment" of President McKinley upon that fateful September day when, as the monument makes clear:

Sergeant McKinley Co. E. 23rd Ohio Vol. Infantry, while in charge of the Commissary Department, on the afternoon of the day of the battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, personally and without orders served "hot coffee" and "warm food" to every man in the Regiment, on this spot and in doing so had to pass under fire.

I stand corrected. Sgt. McKinley was a damn fine waiter.

How Jonathan Bornstein Saved Honduras (The Country, Not The Soccer Team)

It may have pissed off various left-of-center scumbags, like under-talented Honduran player Amado Guevara, and so-called "policy experts" (as well as dictators in Venezuela and Cuba, and the friends of said dictators in Washington and San José, Costa Rica) when Jonathan Bornstein of the US Mens National Team scored late in injury time to knock Costa Rica out of the World Cup (yep, I'm predicting Uruguay wipes the field with them) AND propelled embattled Honduras into the World Cup finals...but I was exultant.

Here you have little Honduras, standing up to the heinously immoral hectoring and threats of the United States and the United Nations in defense of their Constitution and in defense of all small countries to remain independent of the behemoths who would crush them for whatever reason moves them, getting rewarded by the fates with an improbable sporting victory. It is the irony of ironies that it would be a team from the United States, whose government has seen fit to declare itself, not the Honduran Supreme Court, the supreme legal authority in Honduras, that would secure passage to South Africa for Los Catrachos, capping a come back from a two goal deficit to do so in the dying seconds of the game.

It is an irony, but a delicious one.

Here is Bornstein doing his job:



Here is the celebration in Honduras:



Good luck to Honduras in the World Cup, and good luck hanging onto the independence of your nation.

And, if you remember it, send Jonathan Bornstein a little something special.

Idiot Alert

Jeezus H. Christ. What exactly does it take to write for Slate? Charles Pierce (who is NOT, I repeat NOT to be confused with Charles Peirce) single handed proves it doesn't take a whole hell of a lot. The Cardinals' presence in the Super Bowl is fluky and disgraceful.

[W]e are going to be inundated with mendacious swill over the next two weeks on the subject of what a great story the Arizona Cardinals are....

We're going to hear about how they magically transformed themselves at the end of the season. We're going to hear about the remarkable comeback of Kurt Warner. We're going to hear about how marvelous it is for the National Football League that a Super Bowl championship is within the grasp of a team so thickly dripping with obvious mediocrity that it's a wonder Charlie Sheen isn't playing left guard. We are going to hear all of this because the NFL and its broadcast partners operate on the very simple premise that everybody who reports—or follows—their sport on television is a paste-eating moron.

This simple fact is that the very presence of the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl is at best a fluke and, at worst, a disgrace.

Tough words from a writer based in a city that produced, by far, the worst team to ever make a Super Bowl. The 1985 edition of the New England Patriots was a joke of a team that got utterly embarrassed in Super Bowl XX, which they lost 46-10. The Patriots managed a robust -19 yards of offense in the first half. Only the Bears showing some mercy when the game was out of hand in the second half allowed New England to finish with more than 100 yards of offense for the game. That vaunted New England rushing attack amassed 7 yards in 11 attempts for the entire game.

Granted, this was in the middle of an era of NFC dominance where the AFC lost 15 of 16 Super Bowls between 1981 and 1996. (Only the Raider's win in Super Bowl XVIII kept the AFC from complete futility.) But even in this age of relative AFC ineptitude the feebleness of the Patriots stands out. (Yes, the Broncos were creamed worse in Super Bowl XXIV, but Denver had the best record in the entire AFC that season, so just imagine how much worse the loss could have been had Cleveland or Buffalo made it that season.)

So could the Cards stink up the joint on Sunday? Sure they could, but they have high standards of sucking to meet before we starting making noises about "all-time worst" whatevers.

Hey, but maybe Pierce can back his contentions up with facts and stats. Let us read on:

They played in a landfill of a division. They won their two playoff games because Jake Delhomme of Carolina turned the ball over six times and because the Philadelphia Eagles all looked at the newspapers last Sunday and discovered they were in the NFC championship game again.

Actually, the Cards have won three playoff games this year, not two. But beyond that mistake lets check the logic here. "The Cards suck because the rest of the NFC West sucks." I guess the 2006 Colts, the 1999 Rams and the 1998 Broncos sucked as well since they also won divisions that featured no other plus .500 teams. Oh, wait a sec....all of those teams won the Super Bowl those years? Hmm...that must mean the quality of the division doesn't necessarily reflect on all the teams. Who knew?

Oh, and Carolina and Philadelphia, who collectively turned the ball over 9 times against the Cards, did so completely without defensive pressure from Arizona. Funny, I watched those games and I don't seem to remember it that way, but my eyes must be lying.

Cardinals are a glorified Arena Football League team with a soft defense and a running game unworthy of the name.

Yes, they don't have the high powered running offense of the Steelers, right? Well, let us see...the Cards racked up 3.5 yards a carry this season which ranked them 31st in the league. Pittsburgh is much better than that, right? Well, the Steelers averaged 3.7 yards a carry ranking them 29th in the league. Oh yeah, that's impressive. So according to Pierce averaging 3.5 yards a carry makes you a "glorified Arena Football League team" while 3.7 yards makes you an NFL juggernaut. Gee, thanks for the tip Chuck.

They are in the position that they're in because the NFL rigs its season worse than any carny rigs his wheel. For all the macho posturing of its principal propagandists, between the jiggering of the schedule and the conniving of the draft and the socialistic revenue schemes, and the desperate grab for any mechanism that will flatten out the differences between really good teams and really bad ones, the NFL is the league that comes closest to the biddy soccer league philosophy of making sure that everyone gets a trophy.

Yeah, I mean the Cards must have won only 2 or 3 games last year. The fact they went 9-7 this year must be some sort of conspiracy!! What is that? The Cards went 8-8 last year? Oh....never mind.

But wait...didn't the Cards face a much easier schedule when compared to the worthy Steelers? Well, let us compare Pittsburgh's non-division schedule to Arizona's. The Steelers non-divisional foes went a combined 95-64-1 this season with five of those teams making the playoffs. Take that you Arizona bastards!!

What is that? The Cards non-divisional opponents went 98-61-1 (three games better than the Steelers schedule can boast) AND five of those teams made the playoffs as well? But, that's not the same! Arizona only went 1-4 against those playoff bound teams! See they are undeserving!!!! What?? Pittsburgh also went 1-4 against their non-divisional playoff bound opponents? Well....crap!

The only proof anyone should need came in the 15th game of the season, when Arizona visited New England. It already was clear this year that the Cardinals were even money to finish in the middle of the pack of any league that played in the upper latitudes, with the possible exception of the Ivies. Send them north out of the pleasure dome that the Bidwills blackjacked out of the state of Arizona, and the team did things like give up 56 points to the New York Jets, playing such shoddy defense that Brett Favre threw for six touchdowns. This, of course, ignited another outbreak of hot and steamy Favre love from the easily smitten television press corps, so we have the Cardinals to blame even for that. In Foxborough, however, in December, they simply quit.

The Patriots scored on nine of their first 10 possessions. The score was 31-0 at halftime.

My God!! That is the sort of thing that only happens when one team has nothing to play for and the other is fighting for its playoff life. You know what I mean, when one side has already won their division and are no longer in the running for home field advantage...you know, like the situation Arizona was in this year. Oh wait a sec....

Maybe that isn't the point. Maybe the point is Pittsburgh didn't go on the road for the second to last game of the season and stink up the joint! What is that? They went on the road to Tennessee and lost 31-14? Well, that's is totally different because, um...well...because Arizona sucks!!!!

Bear in mind over the next week that this game will be cited as the "pivotal" moment in the Cardinals' miracle run to the Super Bowl. Ken Whisenhunt—who sat most of his offensive weapons in that game—and his staff will be the subject of gooey encomiums for cracking the whip after the loss to New England. There will be loose talk about professionalism, and about how pride was appealed to at a critical moment. And since snow is a long shot in Tampa, they might even win the game, and then there will be more of it. And it will all be nonsense.

Yeah, Whisenhunt rested his key players for a play-off run. See how that worked for him? They are only in the Super Bowl. What an idiot Whisenhunt is! Oh yeah, and even if this team wins the Super Bowl that only proves they are no good.

Who can argue with "logic" like that?

(Cross posted over at Blue Crab Boulevard)