Thursday, April 30, 2009

Four Fantasies of George W. Bush

From the PtB* archives: Four Fantasies of George W. Bush, a homage to National Lampoon. WARNING!!! Not for the faint of heart.The Big Game

I'm up in heaven at the big game, sitting in the box seats my daddy owns. It's the bottom of the ninth. Game's tied at one. Two outs. Bob Gibson is pitching for the minority team. He's given up only one hit, a long double by Babe Ruth that drove in Mike Schimdt back in the third inning . Lou Gehrig is at the plate rubbing some dirt onto his hands when the stadium P.A. fires up. It's God and he needs Lou immediately for some important heaven business.

Casey Stengel, the skipper of the white team, looks down his bench for a suitable pinch hitter. Someone who can not only hit but who can also play a respectable firstbase. Hank Greenberg comes to mind but he's a Jew and isn't allowed into heaven. Jimmie Foxx was a drinker and is burning in hell. Casey mutters something about Steve Garvey and the whore that he married, wipes his furrowed brow and a smile slowly forms. He climbs out of the dugout and looks into the crowd. He finds me and calls me out onto the field.

I quickly loosen my tie and reach for a bat. Ted Williams, unable to play because his asshole son cut off his head, hands me one of his gamers. I step into the box, careful not to dig in too much. Gibson has been known to throw at a guy who looked too comfortable. The first pitch flashes by like a blur and pops into the catcher's mitt. Judge Landis rightfully calls it a strike and I chuckle and tell him that its been a few years since a black man put one past me. Even Campanella has to laugh at my wit and composure.
The second pitch misses my chin by a hair. I figure that Gibson's next one is going to be something to hit because he doesn't want to fall behind. It's a hard slider down near my knees. I swing and am rewarded with the sweet crack of wood meeting horsehide. The ball flys out into right center. Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente race out to the fence but can only watch the ball disappear into the clouds.

As I circle the bases the crowd errupts. Even in the din I can hear my daddy saying with pride, "That's my boy. That's my Junior."

Defending her Honor
I'm at a Rebublican fundraiser in Orange County. I'm sitting on the dais next to Chuck Heston with my lovely wife. Chuck, Laura and I are sipping some cold Dr. Peppers and enjoying an amusing anecdote from the speaker, my old friend Cap Weinberger. Sitting next to Laura is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's not drinking soda pop. He's drinking scotch whiskey. Since that Kennedy bitch closed the compound gate, scotch is all he drinks.

Schwarzenegger is not paying any attention to Cap's oratory. He is staring at the long and silky legs of my wife. He bends in close and mumbles something into her ear in his pidgeon english. My wife, unaccustomed to such rude behavior, smiles politely and looks to me for help. I nod discretely, letting her know that everything is under control.

Taking my wife's smile as permission to further his advances, Swartznegger places his large hand on her thigh. A flush of embarassment burns my wife's face as his hand moves up her leg and begins caressing her.

I wipe my mouth with a napkin, get out of my chair slowly and wave appologetically to a confused Cap Weinberger. I motion to Schwarzenegger to follow me out of the room into the hallway. As I leave the room with my Secret Service escorts, Laura gives me a loving look of thanks.

Out in the hallway I tell the Secret Service agents to get lost. They protest strongly but I assure them that this was between me and Arnold. Alone, I clench my fists and confront the massive, Teutonic halfwit. No one, not even a wealthy Hollywood contributor, may behave in public with such a lack of decorum.

A few hours later, in the privacy of my hotel suite, I sit in a large and comfortable chair, check in hand, watching the proceedings. On the bed, my lovely wife Laura is getting the pounding of her life from the extremely well-endowed Mr. Schwarzenegger. Sitting in the chair next to me, stroking his Dr. Pepper, my daddy says with pride, "That's my boy. That's my Junior."


An Audience with my President

She lets me in. I'm alone. My staff and security know to wait in the cars. This is something I have to do by myself.

Nancy looks good. Her eyes are rimmed with red probably from crying, but she looks good. She always does.

"How is he doing Mrs. Reagan?"

A small smile appears and vanishes as she replies "Oh George, please. Call me Nancy. He's doing well. He has his moments of lucidity... I think, overall, he's happy."

"How are the children?"

"Good, George. Everyone is fine." Her hand reaches out for mine and gives it a squeeze.
I look in her eyes and I see something. A loneliness. A longing. I feel the need to give her a hug and I do it. Not a passionate one. A hug of two people sharing. Nancy hugs back. She really hugs back.

"How are you doing Nancy?" I ask as I take a step back.

She responds quickly, "Fine, George. I'm doing fine. It's hard sometimes but it's okay... Let's go see him now before he falls asleep."

She still has my hand as she guides me to his room. He's in bed his nurse sitting by his side.

"Ron, the president is here to see you." Her voice is loud and slow and startles me.

One of the truely great Americans turns and looks at me. His eyes take some time to focus. His lips tremble and churn to form words.

He whispers hoarsely, "George, my old friend George. It's great to see you."

"Mr. President, it's Junior. George's boy. You look great Mr. President."

Nancy excuses herself and I am alone with the great Ronald Reagan and his nurse.

"The country can really use your counsel, Mr. President. We all miss your wise words and steady strength."

He smiles. A sweet, earthy smell fills the room.

"Mommy! Mommy! I did a dirty!" he exclaims.

The nurse bolts upright and says, "Excuse me sir. The President has soiled himself. I'll have him cleaned up in a minute."

I look at the young man and ask a question that suprises him. "Would you allow me the honor, son?"

The nurse looks confused but is not going to confront his Commander-in-Chief.

"Please leave me alone. I'll call you when I'm finished."

The strapping young man strides sharply out of the room and closes the door. I pull down the old man's covers and unbutton his warm, damp pajama bottoms. His penis lies flaccidly, covered in a glistening dew. Can it get better? I look at the old man. He is happy. I know he's happy. I'm shaking with excitement. I mean I'm really shaking. There is only one thing that I know that can make this better and I have a baggie of it in my coat pocket. I spread the line right on the old man's belly like we used to do to the whores down in Austin. It looks okay. A little chunky but this is no time to be cutting. I'm shaking so much that its difficult to get the whole line. It takes three tries.

All is calm. The only noise is the deep wet sound of the old man's breathing. Everthing is sharper. My shaking has stopped. I reach for a baby wipe from the plastic dispenser on his nightstand. Gently I wipe away the moisture. To do a thorough job, I grab hold of his penis and lift it slightly in order to clean off his ball sack.

The member in my hand responds to my touch and the old man starts talking to himself, "Oh Raisa, you commie whore, make Daddy happy." A smile forms on the old man's face. My hand involuntarily begins a slow and deliberate stroking.

"Raisa, here comes Daddy!"

My hand speeds up and the old man comes on himself. I scoop up a dollop and carefully put it in the empty baggie. Never know when this particular DNA might be useful. I lick the residual off my fingers, finish cleaning up the old man, kiss him gently on the lips and walk out of the room.



G.I. George
The two General Electric turboshaft engines are melting the wax in my ears as the bird flys low and fast over the most desolate terrain I've seen since east Texas. We're so close to the ground that it seems I could reach out and grab a hand full of towel. I look around the cabin of the Apache Longbow at the faces of the team I have assembled to dig the rat out of his nest. Junior is not about to send a bunch of boys to do his dirty work.

Directly across from me is Colin Powell. Big, smart, wise beyond his years with a house nigger's blind loyalty. Outside of Jesus Christ Himself, there is no one else that I would want watching my back. To his left, Condolezza Rice, she's typing notes into her laptop. No press, Daddy said "no." Tom Ridge is down on the end, next to the Chief Warrant Officer. Cried like a baby in the oval office when he was told he had to stay behind. I thought he was going to pull down his pants and offer me his ass when I gave in and said he could go. First thing I'm going to do when I hit the ground is trip the useless fucker and put a bullet in the back of his head with the Russian Makarova 9 mm I keep in my ankle holster. Dear Mrs. Useless Fucker, you're husband died a hero...

Ridge is being carried back onto the bird as the rest of the team makes the treeline and the protection of the woods. We meet up with the scouts a few minutes later and get the low down on the cave and the troglodytes that call it home. Twenty minutes later we're below ground, infra-red goggles in place, pressed so hard against the stone walls of the cave that its geological history can be read off the indentations in my love handles. The air is thick with the acrid smell of the stun grenades that just echoed through the mountain. I can see him huddled in the corner surrounded by his guard. He looks worn and tired and my deeply felt Christian ethic should force me to feel sympathy and forgiveness. There is none. This man is evil. My team is picking off his pack of satanic prairie dogs one by one, careful to leave the alpha male for me. I unsheath the nine inch buck knife that I used to garrot my first deer when I was twelve.

A loud, piercing alarm goes off - screaming in my previously abused ears. What the fuck! Is it a poison gas indicator? Blackness, then blinding light.

"Honey, wake up! You better get a move on cowboy! It's almost 10 o'clock. You'll be late for work again." Laura smiles down at me, dressed in a silk teddy with my Daddy's arm wrapped snug about her waist. "That's my boy. That's my Junior."

*It seems like I wrote this bit yesterday but Reagan is dead, Arnold is happily married again and a goveror, and Ted Williams' head is no longer in the news. Oh yeah, Bush is no longer president. Sadly. Osama is still out there lurking in a cave.

If you're going to quibble that Ted Williams shouldn't be on the white team because everyone knows that he was half a mexican, don't bother.

If you're gonna tell me that Arnold can't possibly be well endowed because of his years of steroid abuse, don't bother. What man in his right mind fantasizes about his wife being penetrated by a Slim Jim and two raisins? It's a FANTASY, ferchissakes!


Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Gary Sheffield Report - 4/29/09 Wherein I explain the Sheff to Omar Minaya using simple words and pictures

I have decided that Omar Minaya is intellectually challenged. For the intellectually challenged out there, that means that Omar Minaya is dumb. I am going to explain with small words and pictures and a simple analogy why Gary Sheffield should not be batting clean-up. Forget the word "analogy," Omar. It's not important.

Back when Gary Sheffield was a young buck, there was a beautiful actress named Sharon Stone. She was pretty and sexy. If you wanted a beautiful and sexy actress to star in your movie back then, she would have been a wise choice.

Today Sharon Stone is old and unappealing. If you were casting a movie today and wanted an actress to star as a beautiful and sexy woman you would not hire Sharon Stone. You would hire Charlize Theron or Beyonce. This is not a knock on Sharon Stone. She had her day and now she is 50 and doing dinner theater in San Bernadino. Are you with me so far, Omar? Just look at the photos up there.

Here are two photos of Gary Sheffield. Omar, stop playing with your Black berry and listen!

He looks pretty much the same. He even waggles his bat the same way in the batter's box. But... Omar pay attention this is important, he doesn't hit the same. Yes, he looks and acts the same but he can't hit. Comprende? Good. Now go cut him and build a rotunda in honor of his 500th homerun.

For those of you that are not intellectually challenged, I'm going to use numbers now. I'm sorry Tony Bernazard, you can't stay. Go ahead, run off to the clubhouse and cause trouble.
Gary Sheffield is batting .169. In 30 at bats, he has struck out eight times and grounded into two double plays.

There have been 27 runners on base (ROB) when he has stepped to the plate and he has driven in three. That's 11% (OBI%). That's worse than any starter except D-Rod. Murphy and Church should be getting the at bats.



Monday, April 27, 2009

Gary "Hot Rod Lincoln" Cohen

Why you should want to be out drinking with N.Y. Met announcer Gary Cohen. Described by Ken Levine, MASH, Cheers and Simpsons writer and former voice of the Orioles and Mariners. (Yeah, Ken levine is living my dream life. Thanks for pointing that out.)

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Sheffield Report - 4/24/09

There will be no lol-ing during the reading of this post. Stats, straight up, no ice, no soda, no frickin' olive.

There have been 17 runners on base when the Sheff has stepped into the batter's box and he has driven in none. Gary Sheffield equals:


For the sake of fairness and for you D-Rod haters, here's the rest of the Mets:

ROB = runners on base
OBI = runners on base that you drive home
OBI% - percentage of the runners on base that you drive home.


So, David Wright has gotten up with 54 runners on base. He has driven 5 of them home. That's 9.3%

Carlos Delgado has driven home 20% of the runners on base when he steps to the plate.

Ryan Church and Sheffield have actually been less clutch than D-Rod.


All data from baseballprospectus.com

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Where Have You Gone, Jason Giambi? A Nation Turns its Lonely Eyes to You

From the PtB archives:
Giambi Wins A.L. Comeback Player Award

Robert Melonosky, Associated Press









Before meeting Jose Canseco, Giambi didn't know that constantly masturbating was causing him to be skinny and feeble-minded.

NEW YORK - Jason Giambi arrived at spring training unsure whether he could return to the ranks of baseball's top power hitters without his beloved steroids. After the first three months of the season, he was batting .195 with only five homeruns. New York Yankee manager Joe Torre asked Giambi to go down to the minors for the good of the team. "I told him no way," said Giambi, "and I went back on the juice and the human growth hormones."

Giambi was rewarded for lying and cheating Thursday when fans voted him the AL Comeback Player of the Year. Suffering from girlie ankles, a "stomach virus," an atrophed penis, a "respiratory infection," an intestinal parasite from the planet Mars and a benign pituitary tumor, all directly related to his abuse of steroids, Giambi hit .208 with 12 homers and 40 RBIs in 2004. He was so weak at the end of the season that when he went into a steroid-induced rage, he was beaten up by Mariano Rivera.

"I am truly humbled by this award," Giambi lied, sweating profusely as his greasy hair fell in front of his glazed eyes, "I would especially like to thank Arnold, our clubhouse boy, for tirelessly peeing into my sample jar and for popping the zits on my back and rock hard ass."

"I wanted nothing more than to prove to you and the people of New York that I could face adversity and comeback to be the player I once was," Giambi said. Maybe now Babe Ruth will stop spinning in his grave everytime Yankee announcer John Sterling calls Giambi, "The Giambini."













Three weeks later, through a lot of not-so-bad workouts and many painful injections, Giambi became a real man. He remained feeble-minded.


The New York media has made this Oakland A's series into the Second Coming of Jesus Giambi. I didn't listen to the radio broadcast but I'm sure that during Giambi's first at bat Suzyn Waldman cried a river of tears then visited all the Stations of the Cross. I have come to the conclusion that cellphones have damaged an entire generation's collective memory. Jason Giambi was a bum. The Yankees never won the World Series with Giambi. He was a poor post-season performer. He was a terrible fielder. He admitted to injecting himself with steroids and human growth hormone. One positive note, he did walk a lot.

Here's a reminder Yankee fans. The front cover of your favorite NY daily back in December 2004:

It's the Empty Seats, Stupid!


Brian Cashman can't explain it. "The original wind study performed by our engineers resulted in 106 wins, huge profits and a normal amount of home runs," the Yankees GM told reporters.

It's the empty seats, stupid! As any school boy knows, wind is caused by the unequal heating of the earth's surface. The surface in question, all those expensive seats in Yankee Stadium where the fake corporate fans are not sitting, is the problem. All the air and wind modeling the Yankees engineer performed assumed that those seats would be filled with expensive suits. Expensive suits filled with rich, pseudo-fans with large wallets and massive egos.

Remember this simple formula from Middle School math? It was called The Randy Levine Bald Faced Lie Theorem.

Wind to Right Field (mph) = Number of Corporate Accounts x Piles of Cash (tons) x NYY

where NYY = drag coefficient of $1,000 wool suits

When you replace expensive suits with cheap, blue plastic? Duh, wind! Additionally, all that hot air produced by the Bernie Madoffs of the world while they talk on their cellphones instead of watching the actual game? Empty seats can't talk endlessly about screwing the little guys! No hot air in the field boxes means convection currents and that results in big wind. This is simple stuff people.

Quick semi-serious notes: Forget the number of home runs. Did you see Grady Sizemore's grand slam? He hit it with one hand. And Posada hit a HR to deep right-center off the end of his bat.

Insightful comments and good photos taken by a real Yankee fan at PaulKatcher.com.

More photos of empty seats and real Yankee fans at RiverAveBlues.com.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Another Revolting Development

Last night's game was hard to watch. Bad pitching (Maine pulled an Ollie), bad hitting (Wright left four runners on base), bad umpiring (homeplate umpire Gary Darling must have had dinner reservations, he punched out Delgado to end the game on a pitch that was so outside it hit a 7 train) and bad audience participation (lots of empty seats and a douche bag that was sitting in the front row).

I'm going to focus on this douche bag. The guy that interfered with Daniel Murphy's double down the line in the fourth inning, costing the Mets a run and perhaps more, because Reyes had to stay at third instead of scoring. Remember him? He looked like an unholy amalgamation of Jorge Posada and the star of Slumdog Millionaire.

He's supposed to be a Mets fan. He was wearing a Mets hat his dad bought him at a new Citi Field kiosk for $35.99. When the ball is in play and the Mets are about to score, DON'T TOUCH it, you big-nosed, mouth-breathing, brace-faced, four-eyed, rich-ass DORK!!!

Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling gave him a pass and so did most of the "fans" in the high rent section he was sitting in. Those are $105 seats. Unless I win the lottery, I will never be sitting in those seats. The dick didn't even understand he did something wrong until someone explained the basic fundamentals of the game he was supposed to be enjoying. At Shea, he would have been doused in beer by real fans. He deserved to be doused in gasoline.

The sheepish, shit-eating grin he was sporting made me want to crush his $900 eyewear into a tangle of wire and broken glass and grind the remains permanently into the braces keeping his mule teeth from protruding past his Posada-esque proboscis.

Yeah, it was one game. But last year in September, it would have been real nice to have another win in April. Fans are supposed to support the home team not skull fuck it to death. It's not just the one game, its the idea that only filthy rich people can afford to go to baseball games and filthy rich people are not necessarily good fans.

When that loathsome, foul-smelling, tallow-skinned, excuse for a Mets fan got home last night, after he picked the foul-smelling smegma from his orthodontics and lured the cheese-like secretions from the endless whiteheads on his pasty face, after he put his new souvenir baseball next to the 10 RBI ball stamped with a facsimile of Alex Rodriguez's autograph, after he put his brand new, official 2009 alternative inaugural Citi Field Mets cap next to his worn only once, official 2008 last year of Yankee Stadium Yankees cap, the sonofabitch probably slept like a baby.



Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Rising to the Occasion - The First Game at Citi Field

When we were kids, me and my brother made up a song, it went something like this:

Beat the Mets! Beat the Mets!
Step right up and beat the Mets!
Beat their kiddies, beat their wives
Guaranteed to have the time of your life
Because the Mets are always dropping the ball
Giving up home runs over the wall...

You thought you and your brother came up with that clever ditty? Wrong. We did it first.

Well, what else is new, the Mets dropped the ball last night, literally (Mr. Church) and figuratively.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Why Pound the Budweiser?

Why pound the Budweiser, you might ask. Why not, I would reply. Where do the question marks go in these frickin' sentences, I ask. How the hell should I know, you reply.

When I was about 12 I read a book. It was a book about baseball. My favorite book up til that time was the immortal Catcher with a Glass Arm. The catcher of the title did not have a prosthetic arm made of glass; he had a weak throwing arm. The mean kids back in the day teased him by yelling insults like this at him.

"You have a glass arm!"

Kids can be cruel. Let's hope that today they can be a whole lot crueler. Life is tough. You can get busy dying or you can busy learning how to trash talk. Now go get busy!

The book I read when I was about 12 was called Ball Four and was written by an old Yankee named Jim Bouton while he was playing for the Seattle Pilots. It was good. Real good. It was about baseball but it was also about what ball players do when they're not playing with a ball. What I still remember and what impressed me the most back then are the following:
  1. Manager Joe Schultz had two favorite words that he used interchangeably, fuckshit and shitfuck. Schultzy also encouraged his players to "pound the Budweiser." I wanted a manager like that. My coach encouraged me to "keep my eye on the ball."

  2. When they weren't playing baseball, ballplayers spent a lot time beaver shooting, even the legendary Micky Mantle. This was my first exposure to a beaver that didn't have buck teeth and a tail. A few years later I was reaquainted with "wide open beavers," in another favorite book, Breakfast of Champions. Thinking back on it, couldn't Mickey Mantle have pounded his Budweiser into just about any beaver he met? He was Mickey Mantle and it was the 60's with those stewardesses in their hot, little costumes. Why was the Mick wasting his time shooting beavers?
  3. When baseball players were at a bar enjoying a cocktail and they saw an especially ugly woman, they used to say, "she looks like Joe Torre with tits." The vision of a naked Joe Torre with breasts haunted me for years. Now hopefully, you will be haunted too.

Ridiculously Big Pants Revisited

I apologize for not knowing that Prince Fielder's pants are almost as big as C.C. Sabathia's pants. Imagine my shame when I turned on the Milwaukee Brewer's game and got to see Mr. Fielder holding a runner on. Pants so loose that they literally hang from his ass cheeks showing no knees, calves or cankles. Clearly, I am old, out of touch and yearning for my old polyester skintights.

It has been brought to my attention by a close friend too cowardly to leave an actual blog comment that I am spending entirely too much time on man butt and not enough on woman butt. I pointed out to him that woman butt on baseball telecasts has always been in short supply. We get the occasional pretty face in a pink Yankee cap and we do get the "accidental" boobs bursting out of various "Official Outerwear of MLB," but butts are never seen. I kindly directed him to woman's tennis.

Now, while I am secure enough in my manliness to photoshop a man's butt, I have decided that this will be my last post about C.C.'s big pants until they become newsworthy. I envision a line drive hit back through the box where the ball gets lost in one of the bottomless folds of the "never to be mentioned again" pants. But before we go...
I have done a little experiment for the marketing guys in the Yankee front office.
I have to admit that its harder to see than I thought it would be. It's a large canvas but maybe it's the wrong logo. For you old timers, it reminded me some of Andy Messersmith of the Atlanta Braves.



Monday Morning N.Y. Mets Week in Review




The guy on the wall caught the ball. The guy in front of it didn't.



If I told you that Johan Santana gave up 1 earned run in 12 2/3 innings, struckout 20 and ended up 1-1 for the week, you'd say welcome to the 2008 N.Y. Mets. I'd say welcome back to the future.

Week Number 1 is done and the Mets are 3-3. Facing the Reds and Marlins, and with Santana getting two starts, I was hoping for 4-2. But they were on the road, so let's call it a wash.

How about these gaudy batting averages?

.478 Church
.398 Delagado
.375 Castillo
.360 Beltran
.304 Wright

Can you spell LOB? Hmm, maybe, the Mets left 53 on base over the week but their oponents left 46. Not much difference there.

The Mets choked! They didn't hit with men on base, what are they, September swooning in April now? The Mets did go an anemic (13-59, .220); their opponents went (14-54, .259). The league was, I don't know, but i'm guessing about the same.

It was the bully factor (in the Bronx, its sometimes called the A-Rod factor), winning big and losing close. The Mets wins:
2-1
9-7
8-4

The Mets weren't bullying anybody.

Sometimes the stats aren't worth crunching. This is one of those times. Just sit back and enjoy. Baseball is back!

Highlights of the week for me, watching Sean Green's sidearm delivery make Dan Uggla look like me. Wave, buckle and bucket, all in the same at bat. Ugh! It was beautiful.

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Sheffield Report - 4/10/09

Hey Omar the Magnificent, let's just say that the "experiment" is over, my hypothesis has been proven to be true -- and release the cancer before it metastasizes.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

C.C. Sabathia's Pants are So Big... How Big are They? C.C. Sabathia's Pants are so Big that They...

I apologize for forgetting to mention C.C. Sabathia's pants on opening day.

Now, C.C. is a big man, 6 foot 7, listed at 250 lbs. but probably closer to 350. But it wasn't his girth that was so freakish, although here's a heads up to the guys in the front office, slap a Dunkin' Donuts ad on that ass for the centerfield camera. There's no way the costly ads behind home plate will ever be seen on TV while Sabathia is pitching.

So, you're a major league pitcher with the ass of the late, great Bob Murphy. It's unfortunate. But wearing pants so big that they look like a pair of Rush Limbaugh's pajamas? That's just asking for abuse. Abuse like, "If you put a pole in those pants, you could cover the infield during rain delays."

Apparently C.C. likes his clothes like A-Rod likes his women, loose. The photo I found really doesn't do the pants justice.

Speaking of the late great Bob Murphy's ass, the average seat at Citi Field is 2" wider than Shea. The upper deck seats are the same, 19 inches. The widest seats are now 24 inches. The guy in the cubicle next to me (Steve) measured my ass, 15 inches. I definitely have an Upper Deck ass but a TV watcher's bank account. Bob Murphy's ass? Steve didn't know. Do you?

The Sheffield Report - 4/9/09

Gary Sheffield was "hitting ready" last night.

I had to participate in a family gathering involving Hebrew and bitter herbs. By the time I finished washing the dishes, it was the ninth inning. The only Sheff sighting was a dugout shot that followed yet another 2-0 curveball from Frankie the Rod. Bitter Gary, looking slightly disgruntled, had his head pointed in the general direction of the playing field.

Will Gary Sheffield ever be "fielding ready?" We've all read countless accounts (How's that for an alliteration? I'm talking to you Mrs. Ehrlich.) of the vastness of the Citi Field outfield. Opening night, I half expect to see a solitary polar bear hunting -- out in the endless tundra of right center. How the hell is Gary Sheffield going to play rightfield? Here's a diagram I prepared showing the range of the Met corner outfielders based on data from the good folks at the Elias Sports Bureau:


Carlos Beltran is going to have to cover all that green. That's 37 hectacres. I know, I know, Gary Sheffield's range is not to scale. I had to expand it slightly or the sterroid induced gigantism of his skull would have hidden all the blue.

Frankie, Bill Welke and the Mick

The 9th inning of the Met game was not comfortable. Frankie "Don't call me K-Rod" Rodriguez came this close . (that's a pixel) to blowing his first save. Bottom line, the Mets won. But...

Frankie Rodriguez went 2-0 on five batters. He threw so many curveballs I was waiting on one. So what's the deal, is it a hiccup on his way to 73 no pressure saves or is it the curse of Tug McGraw?

Painful memories of Doug Sisk, Armando Benitez, and every reliever that waddled out of the bullpen last year flashed through my sleepy brain until Frankie got the last out on a soaring drive to right-center that died on the warning track.

The game clocked in at 3 hours 54 minutes. You would have thought it was an old Yankee game when we got the priviledge of watching Bernie Williams adjust his wristbands for 40 minutes a game.

Umpires. Last night in the 9th, Bill Welke blew a call. It ended up being meaningless but he blew it. He called a guy safe because he thought Carlos Delgado took his foot of the bag. He was wrong. Keith Hernandez, color guy for SNY who tends toward homer-ism but who takes firstbase play VERY seriously, thought Welke blew the call.

Here's the deal. Every year MLB comes out with a report that lists every blown call for the season. And every year the data are ridiculous, like 80 blown calls. That's 80 blown calls in 2,430 regular season games (I think, someone help me with the math).

With Passover and day games, I've seen a total of about 12 innings, parts of both Met and Yankees games, the Red Sox game last night and I got to see Aaron Heilman pitch effectively for his new team, and I've already seen a blown call. I'm gonna keep track.

Quick Inappropriate Comment: How'd you like to have that photo of you floating about the internet. I hope an Amber Alert goes off if Bill Welke ever moves to my neighborhood.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Joba the Nut


Yo, Joba! Seth Rogen called, he wants his glasses back!

Why is this night...

I know, this blog was supposed to be only about beisbol but then I saw this:



Those wacky, ultra-orthodox newspaper editors in Israeli used Photoshop to replace two female members of the Israeli cabinet with men in the official published photo. Apparently, when the bible is correctly interpreted, photos of women are a no-no. The editors did not want to offend God and their devoted readership. We can't have Schlomo whacking off to the Minister of Transportation when he's supposed to be studying.

The obvious questions are, who are these guys and how can I get a piece of the action? I look Jewish and I own a suit. It seems like the equivalent of those people that sit in the seats at the Oscars while the real stars are in the bathroom touching up their Botox.

Think of the prime kosher meat I could score with this photo in my wallet. "Hey baby, there's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and there's me. How about we go up to my place for some labna and radishes?"

Other obvious questions are, what the eff is wrong with the religious nutjobs on this planet and what on God's green earth can be done about it?

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The Sheffield Report - 4/7/09


Sheff never got off the bench. To be honest, I'm not sure if he was even on the bench because I was "watching" the game on MLB Gameday.

Same Old D-Rod but the Mets Win!

The Mets win, the Yanks lose and all is right with the world - for one day.

Here's a scintillating replay of D-Rod's at bat courtesy of MLB's Gameday (powered by Adobe Flash). I was at work but I still got to "see" David Wright strikeout with a runner on third and less than two outs.