This asshole is clapping hard right about now. His name is apparently Eric Adelson, and the thing he wants most in the world is a really sloppy blowjob from Derek Jeter. As an attempt to break the Captain’s ice, he’s offering up a written blowjob of his own, in this awful article about how the Ambassador’s Captain-y-ness is way more important than dorky shit like how good he is at baseball. It starts, promisingly enough, like this:
So the SABR rattlers have pronounced Derek Jeter old and creaky.
"SABR rattlers" is a really old, really awful joke. And you left out the part about how we all live in our mothers’ basements and drink a lot of Mountain Dew.
The captain’s average is average and his OBP is WTF.
I hope the law that requires macho he-men to do the acronym joke in every article complaining about those nerdy goddamn nerds and their fake-o stats never gets repealed. Though this is probably the nadir of the art form. Here’s a better one for next time, Irving: "maybe you nerds should see an OBP/GYN, because you’re giant pussies!"
The New York Yankees hit king was once the belle of the ball, but now he’s dragging along like a tin can behind a "Just Married" car.
See, this is exactly what I mean. When they’re not making the acronym joke, they’re actually finding ways to be even more retarded. Also: fantasy of Derek Jeter as beautiful woman + marriage-related Derek Jeter fantasy in the same sentence. Damn, dude.
The $50 million over three years he’s sure to get from the Yankees this winter is more like a Wall Street golden parachute than a worth-every-penny contract, at least if you listen to the stat wonks.
Hey, actually, the nerds hashed this out a while ago, as you’d know if you hadn’t dropped out of the University of Being Any Good At Your Job. You know what the consensus of the nerds was? 3/$45M.
And now you want a "golden parachute" from Jeter? This is getting out of hand.
They do have a point.
And they’re missing the point.
Jeter is not above the laws of age or numbers. His age will go up, his numbers will go down. Those are facts.
Wordplay: 1/10
Now you’re talking about "going down?" This article delivers! And if you’re already being porn-y, why couldn’t you at least use the phrase "hard-core facts?"
But just for a moment, let’s move past that. Let’s move past the huge contract he’ll sign and not statistically earn.
This year’s a wash, sure, but Fangraphs has Jeter being worth $64M over the last three years. You sure he won’t be worth $50M over the next three? Damn, I thought you had a giant hankerin’ for the Baseball Pope’s sceptre of office. Why are you hating on him all of a sudden?
Abandon All Stats Ye Who Enter Here. Because in one important way, Jeter is worth as much as ever.
Cock size?
Shut your eyes and think of a Jeter moment.
!
Maybe it’s the behind-the-back toss against Oakland. Maybe it’s him falling into the stands. Maybe it’s a home run against the Mets at Shea. But most likely it’s not a statistical moment.
Yeah, most likely it isn’t a statistical moment, because that is not a thing. And I think we all know what moment you’re thinking about.
It’s a moment when he did something that altered the arc and the feel of a postseason game.
I dunno, Isabel. The "arc" of a game? That sounds like the sort of shit you could affect with goddamn statistics — you know, like home runs and baserunner kills and shit like that. Better leave that part out and focus on how Jeter totally alters the feel of postseason games. Because if anything screams "pay me fifty million dollars," it’s a supernatural ability to alter game-feel!
Curtis Granderson’s shut-your-eyes moment came in 2006, when he lined up in centerfield as a Tiger in the ALDS. He looked in at Jeter and damned if it felt like Jeter was staring right back at him.
Which he may have been, since it kind of matters to him — the batter — where the fielders are positioned.
Oh, also, the Tigers won the 2006 ALDS. So maybe not the best possible example.
"It felt like he was thinking, ‘I’m going away from you,’ " Granderson said.
No! Don’t go away! I need you!
"I thought I was positioned right but at least two of his hits were just out of my reach."
There you have it. Derek Jeter’s super power: at least two of his hits don’t go straight to CF.
"And I thought, ‘That’s why they call him what they call him.’–"
The quotation in the article cuts off right there, with that trailing dash. Any guesses what Granderson said?
Yes, that was four years ago. Yes, Jeter’s hitting and fielding have eroded since.
"Eroded" don’t describe it. Jeter was a legitimate MVP candidate as recently as last year, when he hit .334 / .406 / .465 / .871 while being worth an astonishing 6.4 UZR. It was arguably the best year of his career. So, no, not "eroded." Maybe more "fell off a cliff," since this year he’s hitting .262 / .329 / .369 / .698 and defending for -6.8 UZR. Not really a trend so much as an abrupt drop, which is a thing you would know about if you didn’t have an irrational fear of knowledge.
But his postseasons haven’t yet.
Have there been postseasons yet this year? Because, if there have, I missed them entirely. So, while you are 100% totally correct, your sample size of zero fails to inspire confidence.
Jeter had 11 hits in the World Series last year – more than in any playoff series in his career. (Sorry – that was a stat.)
That’s okay; I forgive you. A few other things to consider:
• Derek Jeter bats first these days (he used to bat in the meat of the order), which gives him more PA, on average (though that particular World Series was only the third-most PA he’s ever had in a postseason series).
• Eight of Derek Jeter’s eleven hits in that series were singles. None were triples. None were home runs. He walked once.
• Derek Jeter finished third in MVP voting in 2009, because he was ridiculously good at baseball all year long.
So it’s okay that you used a stat — it was awful. Nobody’s understanding of baseball was improved.
Of course playoffs are a tiny sample size, but when you add up 28 postseason series – and all those moments – you get a bigger sample size. And that sample size speaks loudly to players even if the regular-season numbers are starting to rasp.
I agree. And you know what that sample size speaks — loudly! — to me? It speaketh this:
.313 / .383 / .479 / .863
Those are Jeter’s cumulative postseason stats. They’re not too bad, huh? Gee, I wonder what his regular-season stats look like.
.314 / .384 / .453 / .837
Oh, come the fuck on. That is exactly the same. His BA and OBP are seriously within one point of each other. Sometimes, you really look like an ass when you just assert things and don’t do any research, huh. But I wonder what Rays outfielder Carl Crawford thinks!
"You can’t put a price tag on him, man," Rays outfielder Carl Crawford said. "He’s Derek Jeter. It’s just one year! I had a bad year in ’08."
There’s a lot of fluff surrounding the kernel of value in there, which would be the sentence "it’s just one year!" However, there is something to note, here. When Crawford had a bad year, he was 26. Jeter is ten full years older than that. While we know bad luck has played a role in his shitty performance, there is legitimate question as to how much — his BABIP is sixty points off of his career average, which is a lot, but how much of that is just dumb idiot luck, and how much is what happens to hitters with severe groundball tendencies as their power and speed decay? This is an interesting question to think about. Or, in your case, to paper over with platitudes about CLURTCH and AURA and MANMEAT.
Crawford continued: "I remember one year he was struggling. I was thinking, ‘This is the year he’s not going to hit .300.’ I had my own doubts about him."
Crawford then took out his iPad and logged on to Baseball-Reference.com, which he has bookmarked. And lo and behold, in 2004, Jeter hit .379 in September and October to ramp his overall average up to .294.
And therefore… Crawford was right all along: Jeter did not hit .300 that year. So, uh, nice anecdote. You should probably get like an editor or something, though, because the exact web site you mention gives Jeter’s 2004 BA as .292, not .294. Also, it wasn’t the first year he didn’t hit .300. So, really, what the fuck was the point? To illustrate that Carl Crawford has an iPad?
OK, OK: The iPad thing didn’t happen.
In that case: what the fuck was the point?
The point is: "You keep playing to the end," Crawford said. "I remembered that year and I learned from it."
Oh. Nothing. Nothing was the point. You just interviewed Carl Crawford and wanted a chance to use all the words you wrote down.
If Crawford learned from it, imagine what the Yankees learned from it. And that brings us to Jeter’s consistency.
You mean like how he consistently hits better than .300 except for that year that he didn’t, and also the other years that he didn’t? Or maybe you mean his consistent fielding, which ranges from 6.4 to -17.9 UZR? Or his consistent refusal to move to third because, hey, holy shit is A-Rod a better defensive SS?
Not the consistency of his stats, but the consistency of his ways.
What? Derek Jeter is utterly notorious for changing his batting stance like every single week. His ways are famously inconsistent. At least you consistently don’t know what you’re talking about.
"He’s my all-time favorite player," Yankees outfielder Marcus Thames said.
Who gives a fuck? My wife’s all-time favourite player is David Segui. That doesn’t mean he’s good.
"So his numbers are not up. You wouldn’t know it. He seems fine to me."
Of course he seems fine to you — he’s your all-time favourite player. You are not what we would consider a disinterested party. Also, yeah, I would know it — the fact that he’s not getting on base any more (which is not a magical fairy concept Bill James invented in a lab, but, like, an observable fact about the game of baseball, which you may have heard of) and that his power is completely fucking gone kind of makes it noticeable. Especially if he’s going to be batting first.
"He’s a helluva leader. I check him out to see how he handles things. Every single night, he wants to win."
"Unlike some dumb orange fucker who shall remain nameless, who only wants to win on select nights."
Jeter says he’s never changed a thing about his game.
I’m assuming he means "except for his batting stance," because, seriously, he changes that all the damn time.
Never unwound his swing, never altered his preparation. Never tinkered at all. Cal Ripken, Jr., the model of consistency in the modern era, repeatedly changed his batting stance. But not Jeter. Not even during this rough patch.
What?
I’m not even kidding. In all of baseball history, the player most famous for repeatedly changing his batting stance is none other than Derek Sanderson Jeter. Do you know anything at all about the game of baseball?
"Baseball is baseball," Jeter said Tuesday on the night of his 2,279th regular season game. "The game doesn’t change. If you try to change things, you’re in trouble."
Sounds like Jeter’s going to be an excellent bitter old commentator when his playing days end!
It’s easy to be steady when you bat .300 every year.
Unlike Derek Jeter, who does not.
Hell, even a superstitious worrywart can do that.
Which is good, since that’s all baseball players ever. Except for J.D. Drew, who has no fire and no balls and certainly no balls of fire and probably not even a single Delayed Blast Fireball.
But the fact that Jeter hasn’t changed this season is a new kind of leadership – one that reaches even further.
Yeah: the kind of leadership that focuses on ignoring your problems until they go away. Or until it’s September, and, holy shit, you’re only batting .262 / .329 / .369 and now I guess it’s too late to do anything about it, huh.
There’s nothing to empirically prove consistency of method is a good thing, but it certainly must settle nerves when Jeter acts the exact same way in November as he does in March.
A-Rod, meanwhile, spends the summer as a centaur, but then becomes a yeti for the colder autumn months. And in the winter? He turns into a xorn and burrows into Bob Costas’ hairpiece to hibernate.
If the Yankees are down 0-2 in a series, or if a teammate gets caught up in a scandal,
— cough, A-Rod, cough —
or if the team gives up a six-run lead to the first-place Rays (as the Yankees did Tuesday night) after losing four straight games, Jeter is going to be Jeter. How many other players are like that?
How many other players are Jeter when that happens? I dunno. Maybe Michael Young?
How many other players have the exact same unafraid look in their eyes every single at-bat?
J.D. Drew sure does. And everybody hates him for it.
So next year, maybe Jeter will bat lower in the lineup, or hit .250, or play the outfield.
Jeter’s not far off from .250 this year. And the outfield? Holy shit no. Dude wouldn’t move to third; what makes you think he’ll move to the outfield?
But when October comes, every teammate will know Jeter has seen it all before.
Well, yeah. He’ll be 37. Every Padre knows that David Eckstein has seen it all before, but that doesn’t make him — oh, wait, you probably think he is awesome, huh. Fuck you.
And October seems to always come for the Yankees, even with Jeter in a slump.
Except when it doesn’t. Like in 2008.
The Yankees can afford pay younger players for the regular season. They will pay Jeter for October. They will pay him for the moment, and for the moments.
What? I don’t even understand what that means. I mean, no, they won’t just… pay Jeter for October. They’ll pay him for the whole year. The union will cause them some trouble otherwise, yeah?
The stats have changed. They may never change back. But Jeter himself hasn’t changed. Maybe that isn’t worth a boatload on the open market.
But it’s worth a fortune to the Yankees.
On the open market, Jeter would be likely to get about 3/$45M. Which is exactly what he’s expected to get from the Yankees. Didn’t we say that two thousand words ago?
You’re bad at your job.
September 15th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
Apparently the UK press considers its readership to be so stupid that they need to be informed explicitly that they can’t trust robots. Did all these people miss every story, novel, movie, TV show, and especially video game about robots?
I especially like how they talk about how awesome it would be to have deceptive robots that could be used for military applications, as long as nobody makes anything dangerous, like robots that hunt and gamble. Because I guess being murdered by military robots is less dangeriffic than losing to a civilian robot at poker.
September 14th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
So over at Fangraphs is some dude called Maury Brown who has written a very odd post about the things he would do if he were the "God of Baseball." We should all be happy that Maury isn’t the Greek god of anything, because his ideas are about as terrible as ideas come. Let’s make fun of them!
I don’t want to be "Commissioner for a day." What’s the fun in that? I mean, after all, if I’m Commissioner then I have to deal with Michael Weiner and the MLBPA. No, I want to do whatever I please without anything getting in the way.
I’d just like to note that when he says "anything," he is including in the set things like logic and reason and empirical evidence. As we shall soon discover!
Abolishing the DH
Let’s get the easy one out of the way: I’m killing the DH. It’s time for the NL and AL to play by the same rules. Yeah, you’re going to get more bunts than before and guys like Thome and Manny have shorter careers, but it’s time to put a fork in it if for no other reason than to keep AL pitchers from looking like fools in the postseason when they come to the plate.
Now, I’m no fan of the DH, but I do think you need some other reason there, Edna. I’d like to get rid of the DH mainly because it represents a step in a direction I don’t want baseball to take, which is toward a football-like specialisation where offense and defense are entirely separate teams. Also, I sort of like watching people look like fools.
Also note that your argument fails to consider that enforcing the DH on both leagues would accomplish your solitary stated goal also, as well as making Hank happy because those fucking cavemen in the NL won’t be endangering his fragile little fairy pitchers.
Expanded Instant Replay
If there are boundary calls for homeruns, let’s go one step more and say that instant replay should be used for foul balls. It’s not going to go as far as some would like, but at the very least the gaffe that Phil Cuzzi made in Game 2 of last year’s ALDS doesn’t happen anymore. When you look at how bad that call was, it’s an easy decision to make. I’m sure Joe Mauer agrees with me.
It’s barely going to go anywhere at all. What’s with the balls-less replay approach? You’re the God of Baseball, jackass. I don’t think you’re allowed to be the Greek God of anything if you’re such a gigantic pussy. Here’s an idea: let’s expand replay to include whatever the fuck gets called wrong, but limit the number of challenges coaches get to make per game. Maybe assign them a penalty if they challenge and fail, to keep people from challenging frivolously. But you’re right — way too radical. Joe Mauer might not like it!
The Luxury Tax in Reverse
I can’t take credit for this one, but in a lengthy discussion with ESPN’s Jayson Stark, I came to really respect his idea of using a scaled tax at the bottom of the revenue scale, much like the Competitive Balance Tax at the top. In this instance, there’s a minimum payroll threshold to which clubs must adhere. You can opt to go below it, but if so, you get taxed for every dollar below. The change would keep clubs such as the Marlins from pulling in such high levels of revenue sharing, while fielding low player payroll year after year. You could do – just as is the case with the Luxury Tax – increased tax rates for those that go below the threshold in consecutive years.
Haven’t I warned you about this? Oh, hey, I sure fucking have. This is the stupidest idea anybody’s ever had in the whole history of people having stupid ideas — which includes, for reference: Parkour, letting the Ramones anywhere near recording equipment, and at least 65% of the things Bill Simmons thinks. Seriously, don’t listen to Jayson Stark. He’s completely off his fucking nut. The best way to keep the Marlins from pulling in a ton of revenue sharing dollars is by eliminating fucking revenue sharing and forcing them to produce a product that people wish to pay to see.
Not that the Marlins are a great example, of course, since they actually do pretty damn well on their tiny budget. Maybe you should have said Pirates?
Teeth in the Luxury Tax
While we’re at it, I’m tired of the Yankees thumbing their nose at the Luxury Tax and busting through the thresholds each and every year. It’s time to make it so painful that they throttle back. If I have my way, the tax rate starts at 50%, escalates to 70% for breaking the threshold a second consecutive time, and 90% for each consecutive time thereafter. I think I just heard Hank Steinbrenner faint… either that or punch a wall.
No, what you heard was the collective sighing of six billion people who are seriously sick to death of you salary cap fucktards and your senseless argument.
Loria, the Nuttings, David Glass, and Frank McCourt
Gentlemen, thanks for playing… you’re all fired. Time to get some owners in position that either want to be competitive instead of getting fat on Luxury Tax dollars, or (as is the case with McCourt) realize that coming into ownership leveraged deep and then going up to your gills in debt isn’t good for the best interests of baseball. Go ask Tom Hicks what I think of him.
But not owners who want to be too competitive, mind, since then they’d run the risk of spending too much on player payroll. Which is a bad thing that we need to discourage.
Also: the Dodgers did just fine under McCourt’s tenure. So it’s great that you think he’s a shitshack, but did he really work against the "best interests of baseball," whatever that means?
Also also: good work leaving Peter Angelos off your list. If you’d put him on there he’d probably vaporise you with his giant space laser.
Giving Mark Cuban a Chance
I’ve written repeatedly that Mark Cuban will never be allowed to be part of the ownership brethren during the Selig tenure and likely with his successor. Since Bud and the owners don’t have any say in this fantasy, I’m letting Cuban buy the Pirates after the Nuttings are removed. I have a stipulation, however… Cuban has to wear a shock collar, and if he gets any closer to the field than lower bowl concourse during a game, he gets hit with high voltage. I figure this will put an end to any notion that Cuban goes all "NBA on the umpires" like he’s done with the refs at Mavericks games. Come to think of it, this in-game entertainment might be more fun than the Sausage Races. I imagine that given time, Cuban couldn’t help himself and would take the volts rather than bite his tongue.
If your joke sucks, rewrite it. Don’t just put irony quotes around it and expect we won’t notice.
And fuck you for ragging on the Sausage Race.
Putting a Limit on Mound Trips
Watching the postseason last year, I think Jorge Posada spent nearly as much time on the pitching mound as some of the relievers. I’m putting a cap on the number of trips a catcher can make to the mound at 4 during a game. The number likely gets you two trips for the starter, and two for the relief staff. That should be plenty.
What? The way Girardi uses his bullpen, I think I spent as much time on the mound as some of them did. The reason we don’t need a new rule for this situation is because it’s already covered by an existing rule — same problem these oafhats had when they tried to solve all of baseball through the magic of armchair social engineering. Neither pitcher nor catcher can call time — only the home plate umpire can. So instead of enacting more pointless rules and arbitrary limits, how about we just tell the umpires not to grant time so often?
Balancing the Divisions
As baseball god, I’m giving this one to the people. But no matter how you realign the league, the AL West has to go from 4 to 5 and the NL Central from 6 to 5. Make the league 6 Divisions of 5. I’m sure you’re creative. Let’s hear your comments.
As the people, I’m giving it right back to you. Why do those things "have" to happen? Because the aesthetics of the current arrangement displease you? Truly, you are a wrathful and completely queer god. Also, perhaps this failed to penetrate the layers of armoured plates encasing your walnut-sized brain, but fifteen teams per league would mean we have interleague play all year long. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a pretty major change in the way the game is played, and one you seem too dense to have spotted.
Postseason Games On Sat. and Sun. Have Daytime Starts
FOX will pitch a fit, but I don’t care. This is about growing the game for the next generation. I’m will to compromise and give you weekdays for prime time, but on the weekends, 3pm ET starts allows the youngest of baseball fans to catch 9 innings, and maybe a couple more if extra frames are needed before hitting the rack. You’ll thank me when kids that have become more in-tune with other sports start getting hooked on MLB again.
Yeah, the youngest of baseball fans… on the east coast. Doesn’t do a lot for the ones on the west coast, Captain Plan. Also kind of fucks over the non-youngest baseball fans who have shit to do during the day, such as the non-trivial quantity of us who work. But there I go again, ignoring the "greater good" — which is to say, what you want. Nice "won’t somebody think of the children" though, asshole.
Using a Clock for Exhibition Games
The game needs to pick up the pace, but I’m not ready for a "pitch clock" for games that count, and that includes Spring Training. But, the SEC added not one, but two play clocks in tournament play this year, and I want to see how big league players would react. It’s a good thing Nomar’s retired.
Spring training games don’t count. They’re exhibition games. That said, I don’t give a flying fuck what happens in exhibition games. Dress A-Rod up as a centaur for all I care. But is it supposed to be impressive that they used two play clocks instead of just a pedestrian one play clock? Is it just the quantity of clocks that matters, like you have some weird clock fetish?
No More Home Field Advantage with the All-Star Game
If the league wants to allow fans to vote up to 25 times for All-Star selections, then I want no more of the winner of the Mid-Summer Classic having home field advantage in the World Series. Pure and simple, the team with the best regular season record gets it. Figure out another way to incentivize the players.
I… agree. Dammit, start being an idiot again. This is no fun.
Here’s something novel… The winning team gets a hefty bonus. Make the "purse" a selling point. Start with $1 million and escalate the amount each year to the winners. That should redefine, "This time it counts."
Ah, that’s more like it. Let’s make a list of reasons why this is stupid!
1) Money comes from where?
2) Assuming the purse is split among just the players, and the coaches and shit don’t get a dime, that works out to $40k each. Not clear to me that $40k is supposed to motivate people who get paid many millions of money dollars every year — and players on the All-Star Team generally are near the top of the salary curve, yes?
3) Why does the All-Star Game need to "count" at all? Can’t it just be a silly exhibition game where players goof off a bit and do wacky things? Like, for example, obliterating Ray Fosse?
4) Paying the winning team a cash bonus counts as a "novel" idea these days?
Adding 2 More Teams Into the Postseason
MLB has the fewest percentage of their clubs advancing to the postseason of any of the other Big-4 sports. I say, add in two more Wild Card teams. To keep owners that have teams missing the playoffs from pitching a fit about lost games, the regular season will be compressed on the calendar by adding a novel suggestion: Bring back more day-night double-headers.
I say: learn to use colons properly. Should be easy for you, since I’m getting the impression you have a lot of experience with colons. Here are some other things I say:
1) Who cares if baseball advances a smaller percentage of teams than any other sport? Does that matter? Do you win a prize for advancing a huge percentage of teams? If so, give the fucking NBA the lifetime achievement award, since the NBA playoff structure has like all but two teams advancing, and then the playoffs themselves run for about four years. I think baseball’s just fine not moving in that direction.
2) Your first sentence is a mess.
3) The reason day-night doubleheaders fell out of favour is because they’re really rough on the players, who work a lot harder than, like, professional bloggers. I know what you’re thinking: man, if I really had to, I could write two stupid articles in one day, no problem! Hell, I personally have written two stupid articles on the same day several times. Baseball’s not like that.
4) Single-elimination tournaments work really really well with five participants. So well, in fact, that somebody would get a bye all the way to the LCS! That’s what I call competitive balance. So we’ll be restructuring the entire postseason to accommodate this purely aesthetic change, yes? Excelsior.
Death to Blackouts
There’s certainly more that could be monkeyed with here. I’m sure I’ve missed something (I never addressed Tim McCarver or Joe Morgan). But of all the things I’d change, I end with the most important of the lot: I’m killing off MLB’s television blackout policy with the exception of the postseason. There are so many regular season games played in MLB that the idea that blackouts will drive fans to the ballpark is bordering on lunacy at this stage. When you throw in the arcane and often times expansive broadcast territories, there’s nothing beneficial for the fans with the blackout policy. And if the league would catch a clue, you grow your product by making it readily available to the masses, not by restricting consumers, which should made dissolving the blackout policy a win for the owners, as well. Oh, and FOX and ESPN… Sorry, your days of national exclusivity deals are history. To baseball fans, I am releasing you from bondage.
Yeah, fuck you, FOX and ESPN. You have no say. I speak for all the fans and all the baseballings and also the fucking trees and don’t you forget it. You get no more exclusivity deals. What’s that? You won’t carry our games, then? And then nobody will be able to watch them? Well, that’s good for the fans, too. Because… ah… I have freed them, you know, from the bondage. You can’t exploit them any longer by allowing them to watch programming they want to watch!
Finally… What would you change?
First of all, I’d fire you from writing. Then I’d change all of your changes, because they’re terrible. Except for the All-Star Game home field advantage one, and the Morgan/MacArver getting hanged by the neck until they are dead one.
After that… probably I’d make a rule that the Fatinals have to play all their home games inside an active volcano, and all their road games at the bottom of the ocean, and that other teams can not show up and still win. I’d make a rule that says the Cubs are no longer allowed to give out any contracts longer than three years, because they fucking suck at it. And then I’d make a rule that the Mets all have to wear those tricorn jester hats with the little bells on, because the Mets are here for my amusement and they better not forget it. Then I’d see all that I had made, and it would be very good.
In other news, K-Rod is in trouble for sending his girlfriend — you know, whose father he punched? — 56 voice mails when he’s not supposed to be communicating with her at all. I’d be on his side if it were like one "I’m sorry" message or whatever, but fifty-six?
The Mets are funny.
September 14th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
What hilarious misadventures do you suppose everybody’s favourite comedy baseball troupe has gotten up to this week?
I see o’er this way that the Mets are singlehandedly responsible for crippling MLB’s 2010 attendance figures. That’s even funnier when you consider that, hey, didn’t they just open a new ballpark? Wow. Guess the honeymoon is really over down there.
September 9th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
So I see on ye olde Wikipediae that one of the reasons the Patterson-Gimlin Film absolutely positively shows a real live Bigfoot and don’t you forget it is because of the ratio between the breadth of the creature’s shoulders and its height. Somehow — and I’m sure I’ve missed a step in here — they’ve been able to determine that Sasquatch’s shoulders are 28.2″ across after adjusting for his hair, and that he’s 78″ tall. Yeah, they’re claiming that level of precision in their analysis of this footage, which reminds me: I’ve uncovered incontrovertible proof that Rick Moranis and a dog are ridiculously fucking huge, since I guess this passes for science these days.
Anyhow, the point is that Bigfoot’s shoulder breadth is 35.1% of his full standing height, which it is utterly impossible to believe any human could attain. Okay, then. That’s proof of Bigfoot, I guess.
Here’s a fun fact: my shoulders are 24″ across (I checked). I am 65″ tall. That gives me a shoulder-to-height ratio of 36.9%. Ergo, here’s an important update to your Bigfoot theory, kids: not only is Bigfoot real and proven, I personally happen to be Bigfoot. Apparently. Actually, I think this means I’m 1.8% more Bigfoot-y than your average Bigfoot, so really I’m like some type of Bigfoot superhero, like an indestructible flaming Bigfoot with chains.
September 8th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit |
no comments
So Lair of the Shadow Broker’s out. You played that? I haven’t.
I mean, I bought it and installed it, but I’m refusing to play it tonight, because I need to get to bed early, and if I start in on that I’ll never stop. So I’m waiting until tomorrow to help my crazy blue lady smack her bitch up.
But you know what else was a fun game? Trying to buy Lair of the Shadow Broker. Obscure and untrustworthy gaming news site masseffect.com has a big splash up that says "Lair of the Shadow Broker Now Available," which, if you were not on your guard, could fool you into believing that Lair of the Shadow Broker is now available. Trusting soul that I am, I clicked on the "purchase now" link and got taken to the Mass Effect 2 DLC list, which contained seven things that were not Lair of the Shadow Broker and zero things that were.
(update: the top entry now says "IGN gived Lair of the Shadowbroker 9.5/10," thereby continuing the run of high-quality correctness)
Come to find out — after like fifteen minutes of trying different things — Bioware did launch Lair of the Shadow Broker, but then pulled it back for the non-trivial fault of it didn’t work. So, great, I’m glad they have their crack team of engineers trying to figure out why they posted an installer that was apparently all zeroes instead of one that contained data, but wouldn’t it be nice if they spared one crack engineer or two and they maybe updated the front page to say so? Or took down the big "CLICK HEAR FOR GAEM" link? Yes it would.
I guess they fixed that eventually, since I bought the thing, though my adventure was far from over! See, in the real world — which is where Derek Jeter parks his car when he’s shtupping Minka Kelly — we can buy downloadables by going to the publisher’s website and, like, buying them. Well, no, actually, in the modern real world, we can just press the "buy DLC" button on the game’s goddamn Steam listing, but I guess Bioware didn’t want to sully the gritty realism of its ridiculous space opera with that sort of futuristic bullshit, so you have to go to the web site. But did you think it would be as simple as pressing the "buy DLC" button on the web site?
See, you can’t buy shit from Bioware using your pedestrian "money." "Money" is not a form of currency accepted here, plebeian. You must purchase the DLC for 800 "Bioware points," which, in turn, you purchase using your filthy stolen money on another page entirely. And did you then make the similar amateur mistake of assuming that 800 Bioware points would cost $8.00 money dollars? Because it does not. It costs $10.00 money dollars, for some reason stuck halfway between "bullshit" and "satanic ritual." Oh, pardon me — $10 plus state sales tax, because apparently a "Bioware point" is an actual good or service. Also, I guess Canadian game developer Bioware has some type of office in the state of Massachusetts that I’m not aware of which causes its tangible good or service that is a "Bioware point" to be subject to state sales taxes. So the total cost of 800 Bioware points is $10.63. And I would like to note that I paid more in taxes on those 800 Bioware points than I did for Mass Effect 2 itself, which was retailed by the non-morons at Valve who didn’t try to charge me for state sales tax I’m not obligated to pay.
Here’s another fun fact: the reason I never played the Overlord DLC was because I saw the 560 Bioware points price tag and said "oh, it’s only five bucks? I’ll get that," and then found out that it was actually like seven and a half bucks. Now, I know, that’s pretty minor; what actually pissed me off about it is that — for some fucking reason, and I swear to God I am not making this up — you have to purchase Bioware points in multiples of 800, which would leave me with Overlord DLC and 240 useless spare points.
Whenever I’m confronted with something that doesn’t seem to make sense, I turn to the only two sources of information I trust — Oprah Winfrey and Wolfram Alpha. You can see for yourself what Stephen Wolfram’s amazing computational knowledge engine had to say for itself, but, as for Oprah, I’ll have to give you a screenshot of her reply.
So I’d like to thank Bioware for the value-added exciting pregame. It’s sort of like the Portal 2 ARG, but nobody made a wiki for it, and I had to solve the whole thing by myself. Tune in tomorrow for some senseless bitching about the actual game! For tonight, well, VVVVVV just launched on Steam also, finally, so maybe I’ll play that.
September 8th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
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Looks like I was right all along; it just took a little bit longer than I expected for the mean to regress those dudes right upside the head. So long, Padres! Don’t let how awesome I am hit you in the ass on your way out.
Also, nice picture of guess the fuck who in that article, Dave. Though it would have been nice if you’d left out the part where you breathlessly invoke the pathos of a ten-game losing streak and how that’s so much worse than an eight-game losing streak. Nobody’s ever had a ten-game losing streak and made the playoffs!!! Except twice!!! I don’t know how to use statistics and now my head hurts!!!
September 6th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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I, along with everybody else, will believe it when I see it.
Apparently Gearbox is going to finish the goddamn thing? It’s hard to know for sure, since the Wall Street Journal seems to think Duke Nukem was a "space marine." If they’re wrong about that, maybe they’re wrong about the entire article.
September 3rd, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Games |
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Nyjer Morgan — whose name I’m really trying not to make fun of, for the sake of the more touchy-feely members of my vast audience — got hit by a pitch yesterday. Then, next time he came up to the plate, the Marlins promptly threw behind him. He decided he’d had enough of that bullshit, and decked the pitcher, which turned into a benches-clearing brawl. You can see it here, complete with the most insane possible bullshit pouring out of the announcers’ mouths. My favourite line:
The Marlins hit Morgan in a professional manner — they didn’t throw at his head — and then what did he do? He stole second and he stole third an a [sic] eleven-run game, which, generally, you wouldn’t see done.
That’s the craziest moon-logic I’ve ever heard in my life. I refer you to the official rules of baseball, section 8.02, subsection d: "The pitcher shall not Intentionally Pitch at the Batter." The weird capitalisation is in the original.
The official rules of baseball, I am saddened to report, do not contain any such prohibition against stealing bases if you’re down by eleven runs. And you know what else? The unwritten rules don’t contain that either, since that’s complete bullshit. Perhaps you’re thinking of the unwritten rule against stealing bases when you’re up by eleven runs? It doesn’t work the other way around, jackasses. If you’re down by eleven, you need to work like hell to get back in the game, and that means increasing your run expectancy any way you can. Now, Morgan sucks at stealing bases, so from that perspective he shouldn’t be doing it. But it’s not like against any unwritten rules, dumbshoes. And, unlike throwing at the batter — which your guys did twice! — it’s not against any written rules, either.
So in conclusion, you’re stupid. Get out of the baseballs.
UPDATE: Yeah, what he said.
September 2nd, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
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In re: this post. I’m sorry, did I say the Angels would win the AL West? Apparently I meant the Oakland Athletics, since I failed to realise quite how terrible the Angels really are. Tee hee.
September 1st, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball, Meta-meta |
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