Because you care.

There may be a misconception out there that I'm a Lions fan. Never been one — and this year even though they played better their demeanor on the field has been very difficult to embrace. Or maybe zero people are mistaken in this. Who knows.

But now that there are four teams left, this is about the time in the NFL playoffs that I need to nut up and pick a team. (Probably should've done that to start the playoffs ... or, y'know, beginning of the season.)

New England Patriots — Difficult to root for, based on their past decade of success and trying to turn any personality whatsoever into a fine granular substance. Belichick makes it so. We also know that offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien will stay with the team until they're done playing. So the more the Patriots win, the more Penn State is without a head coach. If they make the Super Bowl they are coachless through National Signing Day. And then they can lose!

New York Giants — Well ... it's New York. They have enough fans. If Eli Manning wins another Super Bowl he'll have more than his big brother. That'll rankle a bunch of NFL fans, I'd reckon. And while I enjoy how Tom Coughlin's face changes to all sorts of red ... they're going to play in San Francisco and then maybe a dome. That's no fun. However it seems that the last-team in typically wins the Super Bowl, doesn't it? So they're possibly the actual favorites. I don't like favorites.

Baltimore Ravens — Really? Root for a team whose owner ripped them from Cleveland? You don't have to be an Ohio sympathizer to know how much that bites. There's a Harbaugh coaching them, Ray Lewis at linebacker, but a quarterback with outstanding eyebrows. Sorry, don't think there's enough evidence here to hope they beat the Patriots.

San Francissco 49ers — Another Harbaugh. They're everywhere. There's one in my crawl space. And even though they were great in the 80s, they're the team that's gone the longest without a championship. So by virtue of that they may be sentimental favorites to win the NFC.

BUT THEN VERNON DAVIS TAKES ALL OF THAT AND DOUBLES DOWN.

Yeah, sorry. Be the honorary captain for an Olympic curling team and you trump everything. Tom Brady had his chance to turn in Michigan and now in Boston. And nothing.

49ers over Patriots.

I had an odd dream last night. It was one of this film-style dreams, where you're not in the dream but a ton of strangers are. The Pittsburgh Pirates won their division, but nobody could figure out why, because they were supposed to be bad. Stranger still, there was no known GM for the team, yet somebody kept making roster moves and it was unknown to humanity who this was. Except this unnamed female protagonist was able to figure out that the general manager behind every move was none other than President Barack Obama.

There was a pivotal scene near the end of the film/dream where Obama is walking through a parade of fans and supporters, but he's not taking any questions (in this dream sequence he never takes questions when he's en route somewhere) and the protagonist tries to "trap" him into admitting he's the GM of the surprise Pittsburgh Pirates.

PROTAGONIST: "Mr. President, do you like baseball?"
OBAMA: "I cannot answer any questions ... but I can ask you a question: do you like baseball?"
PROTAGONIST: "Why ... yes I do."
OBAMA: [big smile, walks away]

Then I woke up.

If anyone has a clue as to what this means, lend me your theories. My best plausible theory: is that in reality, Barack Obama is the secret GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The esteemed Hon. Andrew Bucholtz pointed out this article by famous television sports person Woody Paige on the Broncos game today. It's good — hey, it's in a newspaper — but could use some sprucing up. So I'm going to try and improve this little epistle.

I ran it through Google Translate, converted it to Korean, and then back to English. The Paige parts are in boldface, and the English->Korean->English parts follow each paragraph:

There is no life on mars or at the stadium today.

Life on Mars or on the field today do not have any.

There was no celebration on the field at game's end. The Broncos still didn't know if they'd be in the playoffs.

There was a festival at the end of the game field. If the Broncos in the playoffs, they'd still did not know.

Read the rest of this post »

Garfield, that lunkhead, had it all wrong. Mondays? Those are ridiculously simple to survive. It's the first day after a relaxing weekend, meaning you received sufficient rest and may have gone a full 48 hours without wearing uncomfortable trousers.

Wednesdays? Those are the worst. It's colloquially "hump day," but it hardly feels like the middle of the week when you wake up Wednesday morning. No, you are already battered after two days, and have THREE MORE TO GO. It's fool's gold.

The illusion of being halfway home in the workweek doesn't occur until lunchtime —  but by then you're no longer trying to parse the week into segments. That only happens during the groggy wee hours of the morning when you contemplate exactly how many more minutes you can sleep until getting up. Generally they have the fewest number of football games on TV, and it's probably the day least taken off for work. You're also most likely to kill yourself on a Wednesday.

Mondays are cake. Mondays also generally provide cake. They generally have very few deadlines. And they have a myriad of bank holidays: Labor Day, MLK Day, President's Day, Memorial Day and the little-celebrated Bagel Sandwich Day (Observed).

Saddam Hussein was born on a Wednesday. So was Scott Stapp.

Matt Sussman

(You can vote more than once.)

If you're reading this, then you — like me — are pretty bad at sports. So you're going to empathize with me on so many fronts. This is comforting.

SOCCER, FIRST GRADE: Home videos dictate that I was pretty good at keeping up with the pile of kids who were trying to kick the ball one way or the other. I would always know where the ball was, and I would always stay away at least 10 feet away from it. Once I kicked the ball and almost scored, but it hit the post. I think I once played goalie too.

BASEBALL, SECOND-FOURTH GRADE: Couldn't catch, really, anything. I vividly remember trying to field a ground ball and it went through my legs. The coach told me to kneel all the way down so that didn't happen. On the next ground ball I did that ... and the ball skipped over my shoulder. I think I batted about .250, mostly by virtue of other kids not being good at fielding either. Also once when I was "pitcher" (the fielder next to the pitching machine) I made a throw to third base to try to get the baserunner out. There was no fielder there — but fortunately the baserunner's face prevented the ball from leaving the infield.

TENNIS: I don't recall much about this one, but ... geez, how am I supposed to serve it into that portion of the court? Can't you let me hit it anywhere? 

BASKETBALL, FIFTH-SIXTH GRADE: I was really looking forward to this one a lot. I was taller than most of the students, so I was pretty good at rebounding. But I never wanted to foul anybody. I once drew a foul and felt terrible about it. I was in many ways the anthesis of Charles Oakley. I thought it was pretty cool that one time when I made the first basket of the game. Right from the corner of the paint.

GOLF, FOURTH GRADE-PRESENT: Putt-putt was fun because if you got a hole in one, you got to use an orange ball for the rest of the course. Real golf, turns out, wasn't like that. But I wanted to keep trying new sports so there was this week-long class during the summer that my parents let me do. There were a total of ... four kids. I was the youngest. I shot a 99 on our final day. On 10 holes. Plus ... good lord, I missed all the time, I had trouble finding the ball after hitting it. So naturally I still play with friends when they need a fourth to make them feel better.

FOOTBALL: The first time I ever played football was a pickup game in high school. Didn't like the sport until then. I remember once returning a kickoff and actually dropping the ball without getting touched. A couple of intramural teams later, I was basically done. Key advice: never try to start playing football after age 14.

BOWLING, THIRD GRADE-FIFTH GRADE, HIGH SCHOOL: Now here's a sport for me. Copious amounts of sitting down and drinking pop and conversing. One year I think I had the highest average of my grade. 104! Then of course high school came around and everyone knew how to curve the ball. Any time I tried to apply spin, the damn thing spun ... but went perfectly straight. I'm still kind of neato at this (one 200 game in my entire life) but there were many drawbacks.

I didn't see a whole lot of strategy in the game. You try to aim for the pocket on your first throw, then if you failed ... try to hit the rest of them. Then repeat 9, maybe 10 times. Meanwhile, all your friends are watching, and you're there all alone on the floor with your smelly shoes and greasy orb. Kind of a drag at times.

Here's what I found out when I tried curling in college:

1. Holy crap I'm not falling down as much as I am in other sports and I AM STANDING ON ICE.
2. I'm kind of good at this.
3. Look, a social aspect to the game!
4. And there's so much strategy. Every game is different.
5. I'm also kind of bad at this.

But most importantly, it's a sport that I'm actually halfway skilled at. When you go your entire adolescent life in an environment where "people good at sports are better people" is a true thing, then even if people don't respect the sport or think it belongs in the Olympics, it gives yourself a neat feeling.

Curling season at our club begins Sunday. It will conveniently begin no less than 48 hours after the conclusion of the baseball season. This couldn't have been planned better. It'll also have been almost exactly 10 years since I ditched econ class to go to open curling for my first time. Best decision of college. I don't give out many life lessons, but there's one: never go to econ class, and try curling at least once. It might be that one sport that you were never good at.

I don't know what any of this will mean, but here's how every playoff team did against everyone else this season:

TIGERS
Yankees: 4-3
Rangers: 6-3
Rays: 6-1
Diamondbacks: 2-1
Total: 18-8

YANKEES
Tigers: 3-4
Rangers: 7-2
Rays: 9-9
Brewers: 3-0
Total: 22-15

RANGERS
Tigers: 3-6
Yankees: 2-7
Phillies: 1-2
Rays: 5-4
Total: 11-19 

RAYS
Tigers: 1-6
Brewers: 2-1
Yankees: 9-9
Cardinals: 2-1
Rangers: 4-5
Total: 18-22

PHILLIES
Diamondbacks: 3-3
Brewers: 4-3
Cardinals: 3-6
Rangers: 2-1
Total: 12-13 

DIAMONDBACKS
Tigers: 1-2
Brewers: 4-3
Cardinals: 3-4
Phillies: 3-3
Total: 11-12

BREWERS
Diamondbacks: 3-4
Yankees: 0-3
Phillies: 3-4
Cardinals: 9-9
Rays: 1-2
Total: 16-21

CARDINALS
Diamondbacks: 4-3
Brewers: 9-9
Phillies: 6-3
Rays: 1-2
Total: 20-17

Lesson: you don't want to face a playoff team in the playoffs.

Yes.

Yes.

Not really.

1. Form a conference called the Naughty 10. Include the 10 schools most recently caught with major football violations. At some point this will include Auburn, Ohio State, Oregon, Miami, North Carolina, USC, etc...

2. Anybody in this conference will be ineligible for any postseason game, bowl berth, etc.

3. When a new school comes in, the eldest member will return to their original conference, if it exists. This will happen every three months or so.

4. None of their games will be televised — unless they have their own HD network — except the championship game, which will air on PBS.

5. The team that wins the Naughty 10 Championship gets to pay each player $20,000.

6. Every other team's players get the harsh penalty of having to do all their coursework by themselves.

Don't.

Gonna make my point in 300 words or less. Not including this paragraph. SHORT READS 4 LIFE.

One of my followers sent me the ESPN ombudsman take on the Bruce Feldman/Mike Leach book flap, and honestly most of the information didn't seem that different from what Richard Sandomir filed in last week's NYT story.

When it came to ESPN handling the Leach story two years ago, they screwed the poodle sideways. They know it. Be it defamation or sloppy journalism, it's now their job to fight the lawsuit.

We knew that Feldman received permission from his superiors to co-author a book with Leach. But what I had never heard during the chants of hypocrisy was that this permission was given BEFORE Leach was even accused of anything. This doesn't justify meeting with Feldman, but it does help explain them. Moreover, it exacerbates their initial fuckup with the Leach/James story. How they handled Feldman and the book excerpts, honestly, seems like a pretty good job given the shitty hand they dealt themselves.

Several people — including highly-respected journalists — on Twitter overreacted on this story and did the exact same thing we initially did to Leach: heard one side of a story and placed judgment. Maybe it's because they were ESPN's competition. Maybe it's because they carry the torch for the bastion of journalism. Maybe they were Feldman's friends. But it didn't make the accusations right.

People were so swept up in trying to catch ESPN in a lie (that Feldman wasn't suspended when he actually was) that it quite detracted from the whole reason they got into this mess; that ESPN may have helped facilitate the unjust firing of Mike Leach at Texas Tech.

Today I think less of ESPN, as well as many other journalists and bloggers who didn't fact-check the suspension.

(Okay, oops. Not FOURTH PLACE teams, but ... I suppose this is the teams in each division with the fourth-best chance.)

Source: Baseball Prospectus

AL Central — Twins: 7.4%
NL Central — Pirates: 2.6%
NL East — Marlins: 0.9%
NL West — Dodgers: 0.9%
AL West — Mariners: 0.4%
AL East — Blue Jays: 0.0%

My girlfriend snapped this picture at a red-light. I then watched this video. And waited until the 2:20 mark:

Imagine how debilitating someone would be in a baseball lineup if they were able to just foul off pitch after pitch. Never put it in play, just make sure that the baseball was struck and went foul. And you could go 30, 40, 50 pitches into an at-bat, just wearing out a starting pitcher by making foul contact. Wouldn't that person be the highest paid player in baseball?

Kids, if you can't swing for the fences, swing for the fences that are closer to you. You may just make millions.

"I bet that extra stick makes the chocolate taste terrible." — Charlie Bucket, CEO, Wonka Ltd.

And this sadly isn't my idea. You can credit the Nestlé Corporation decided to field test a dual-stick ice cream bar without my knowledge.

10. Collmenter
9. Kimbrel
8. Broxton
7. Nolasco
6. Troncoso
5. Melancon
4. Repko
3. Molina (unethical cloning practices)
2. Konerko
1. Varitek