Sometimes rhetoric is just lying

In case you didn't know, Derek Jeter is eligible for free agency. He has played for the Yankees his entire sixteen-season career and has been generally overpaid for his level of statistical production. No doubt the Yankees are happy to pay for his intangible benefits to the team.

But things are getting tough for Jeet: he's thirty-six years old and he just posted his lowest ever BA, OBP and OPS numbers. But he's almost at 3,000 hits!

His agent, Casey Close, had this to say:

"Derek's impact on the sport's most valuable franchise cannot be overstated."

Let's give this a try:
1. Derek Jeter has had a more significant career impact on his franchise than Babe Ruth.
2. Derek Jeter had a more significant impact in 2009 on his franchise than Robinson Cano.

Looks like Derek's impact on the sport's most valuable franchise can indeed, in fact, be overstated.

An afterthought: isn't it surprising that the biggest clutch player of our times had the worst season of his career... in the walk year of his ten-year deal? Not very clutch for his bottom line!

We Have a New Entrant in the Ongoing Contest for Worst Article Ever Written

Full disclosure: I found this on KSK, and they did a full breakdown of it (which I don't have time to do). But seriously... just read it. It's an insult to the English language. Hell, it's an insult to each of the individual letters in the English alphabet. Reading it left me wondering whether or not there is a God. My eyes now hurt. My brain hurts. My whole body aches from being exposed to the pile of dumbfuckery that is this article. Is that enough hyperbole for you? No? Just go read the article. It's like drinking gasoline while sticking a fork in an electric socket.

In sum: the link above goes to a bad piece of sports journalism.

Hyperbole: Alive and Kicking

So today, after my World of Warcraft guild successfully completed an epic quest, but before I settled into watching Lost DVDs, I decided to check out ESPN.com's Page 2. The front story --Greatest of Them All? David Fleming Wonders If The Steelers Are The Greatest Sports Franchise Ever. Hmm, interesting concept. My immediate thoughts go to teams like the Yankees, Canadiens, and Celtics, teams that have racked up dozens of championships over the years. Still though, I'm intrigued. One could make a case that the Steelers are one of the greatest franchises in NFL history, with 5 Super Bowls and 7 AFC Championships. Maybe David was going to say something about how, with only 43 Super Bowls, having a team win such a disproportionate number of titles makes them the best ever. Let's see what he's got for us:

Are the Steelers the best sports franchise ever?

EVER? You tell me.

But since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 (something Art Sr. helped orchestrate), no one's been better. No one.

Really? No one? Nobody even close? Oh... I forgot about these guys.

And now, after seven Super Bowls,

Those guys have been to 8.

30 postseason wins, seven championship games in the past 14 years,

This 14 years part will be relevant soon.

19 Hall of Famers and the dynasty of the 1970s that includes probably the greatest, baddest football team ever assembled

Nevermind that mini dynasty of the early 90s. That doesn't mean shit.

… if you factor in the popularity of the NFL and the quaint but sturdy Midwestern soul of this franchise, it's hard to argue against what the Steelers have built.

Oh, that's a great point -- Pittsburgh has a real quaint and sturdy Midwestern soul. Sidepoint: If you're East of say... Indiana, you're not in the midwest. I don't care if they have farms in Western Pennsylvania, it's not the Midwest. Hey, New Mexico has farms, let's call that the Midwest too). Either way, having a sturdy soul doesn't have anything to do with a team being the greatest EVER.

Ok, so Mr. Fleming has given us some reasons that he thinks the Steelers are a good franchise, so let's hear why they're better than some other historically great teams.

Yes, of course, I know the Montreal Canadiens have won 24 Stanley Cups. But if we're talking about the best-run, most successful franchise in our lifetime,

Well, because the point you're trying to make is about the best team EVER, we're definitely not talking about the most successful franchise of our lifetime. Unless you're talking with Jesus, who lives forever.

the Habs are disqualified for winning only two Cups in the past 30 years.

Wait, they're disqualified from being the best team EVER because of what they've done in the past 30 years? That doesn't seem right.

There are the defending NBA champs in Boston, of course, who have collected 17 titles, but they too were largely a non-factor for the past two decades.

Again, what? The last 20 years? And didn't they just win a title last year?

The Cowboys? America's Team? Please. They haven't won a playoff game in a dozen years.

What the fuck? You're trying to prove a team is the best of ALL TIME!!!!!!!! If you wanted to prove that they're the best team in the last 30 years, maybe you'd be on to something, but right now you're just being a fucking idiot. I'm pretty sure this article started out just like that, and then some editor said, "You know what would make this jump off the page? Calling them the Greatest EVER!!!"

This is really a huge problem with sports media. It's not enough for the Steelers to be a "Great Franchise", they're have to be the "Greatest EVER". USC's Defense? Greatest EVER. Patriots last year? Greatest EVER. Ray's turnaround? Greatest EVER. Tiger's US Open? Greatest EVER. Last summer's Wimbledon Final? Greatest EVER. Michael Phelps? Greatest EVER. NCAA Bball Final last year? Greatest EVER.

At a certain point, we just get desensitized to the hype. It's a shame really. We're so overwhelmed with Greatest EVER, that when something truly great happens, sometimes it can get lost in the mix.

Let's Meet Filip.

This is Filip. Filip Bondy. (..what?) Filip has some beliefs about the New York Yankees. Sometimes, Filip thinks things that aren't true! I have been told that my job description entails shouting needlessly at screw-ups like Filip until I'm blue in the face (what's the deal with that figure of speech anyway?). So let's get started.

Betting on young arms cost Yankees the season
Starting pitchers’ injuries leave Bombers scrambling for makeshift rotations

Well this seems pretty reasonable. This is kind of what screwed up the Yankees this season. Point: Filip. Score: pnoles: 0, Filip: 1

By Filip Bondy

Oh boy. That's your actual name isn't it. That doesn't really help your cause. Score: pnoles: 1, Filip: 1

The Yankees are dead. Long live the Mets.

To which I thrust the following label into your face. "More hyperbole than you can shake a stick at." All hail the 77-61 Mets. Can you imagine how the Mets' royal subjects would address them? "Would you like a glass of wine today, Your Above-Averageness?"

By the way: The difference between the "dead" Yankees and the "long-living" Mets is 3 wins. I'm taking 2 points for this one, because those were two equally stupid sentences. Score: pnoles: 3, Filip: 1

In New York, nobody has much patience for non-playoff baseball teams — even those with 26 world championships, a 13-year postseason streak and a new, grandiose stadium on the horizon.

All of this is pretty fair and valid. Score: pnoles: 3, Filip: 2

The Yankees are mired hopelessly in third place right now in the AL East, and all that’s left is a postmortem analysis and a jolting prescription for the future, which is actually quite simple. The Yanks must remember again that they are the Yanks, and not the Oakland A’s.

The Yankees spent $209,081,579 this year. I'm pretty sure they're aware of the whole Yanks/A's inequality. Although this sounds a little ridiculous, I haven't given you a chance to dig your way out of this one, so no points are awarded here.

It is no great mystery where things went wrong this season. General manager Brian Cashman decided he wanted to be Billy Beane.

Again, this sounds insane. Brian Cashman spent $209,081,579. It is nearly impossible for him to identify with Billy Beane. But fine, you still haven't made your point yet, so no score for this. I'm getting very impatient though! What are you going to (finally) tell me?

And while it’s a nice, feel-good notion to develop your own homegrown stars through the minor-league system, the Steinbrenner Yankees never did that before when it came to starting pitchers.

I'm sorry....have you....paid attention to anything that's happened in New York in the past few years? The Yankees have finished 8th, 7th, 9th, and 6th in the AL in ERA over the past 4 seasons. Their offense has been fucking carrying them into the postseason each year. Can you really blame Cashman for taking a different angle here, especially given that he had a glut of young, seemingly MLB-ready starters? No, no you cannot. Score: pnoles: 4, Filip: 2

From Catfish Hunter to David Cone to Roger Clemens, the club’s aces were traditionally mercenaries, imported to get the job done for two or three years before retiring or moving elsewhere.

And baseball is a business that never evolves or changes. The Yankees were in a situation that is prospect-wise exactly the same as all those years in the past, competing in a market that is exactly as intelligent as the ones from decades past. Never change or adjust to the way business is currently being carried out. I, personally, invested in Krispy Kreme back in 2000, when everyone said it was going to do well long-term. And since nobody got smarter and figured out that you can basically make Krispy Kreme doughnuts in your basement, and that the company isn't anything special, the stock is still probably doing really well (I haven't checked it in the past 4 years to make sure).

What the hell was I talking about? Oh well, I deserve a point for working Krispy Kreme into the equation. He said something pretty irrelevant anyway. Score: pnoles: 5, Filip: 2.

You're falling behind, Filip! Be careful!

Cashman, however, decided to change all that because he and the Tampa cabal experienced a troubled history recently while chasing outside talent pools. In direct competition with Theo Epstein of the Red Sox, Cashman signed the wrong former Marlin (Carl Pavano vs. Josh Beckett), the wrong former Japanese star (Kei Igawa vs. Daisuke Matsuzaka) and the wrong former Arizona Diamondback (Randy Johnson vs. Curt Schilling).

This is actually fairly interesting to see side by side. Score: pnoles: 5, Filip: 3

Having been burned so many times before, Cashman went the youth route. He turned his back on Johan Santana, refusing in a proposed deal to give up the quintessential mediocre prospect, outfielder Melky Cabrera.

What are you talking about? He was offering Phil Hughes and Cabrera in a package together! And we're talking about Phil Hughes the phenom, not whatever you want to call him today. There is absolutely no way that you can claim that he simply turned his back on Johan Santana. Score: pnoles: 6, Filip: 3

Instead he dived headlong into the 2008 season with a projected starting rotation that included young arms Chien-Ming Wang, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and swingman Joba Chamberlain.

All four of those pitchers projected to pitch very, very well. But you're right, the Yankees should have totally signed like, Carlos Silva or something this offseason.

What followed was an unmitigated disaster, and one that should not have been wholly unexpected. You place your chips on immature arms, no matter how promising, and a raft of injuries and setbacks are bound to follow.

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Filip! My goodness! That is simply not a good thing to say! It's wrong! Very very wrong! Thing B does not directly follow from Thing A! That is not a theory! That is just a non-truth!

Who's leading the AL East? Who pitches for that team? Were Matt Garza and James Shields considered "mature arms"? John Danks and Gavin Floyd...are they having decent-ish seasons? How about Nick Blackburn and Glen Perkins? Is Tim Lincecum experiencing "a raft of injuries and setbacks?" "A raft of injuries?" Raft? WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THESE UNITS OF MEASUREMENT????

Score: pnoles: 7, Filip: 3 (I resisted the urge to give myself a billion points)

In New York, fans witnessed this sort of meltdown a dozen years ago with the Mets, when that organization figured Bill Pulsipher, Paul Wilson and Jason Isringhausen were the starting rotation of the future.

Stephen Drew is a baseball player.
Stephen Drew is a shortstop.
Therefore, all baseball players are shortstops.

I like using your logic, Filip. It makes proving things way easier!

Score: pnoles: 8, Filip: 3

One by one, these young Yankee arms and tendons met similar fates. Each one went down for at least a large chunk of the season. And while Wang and Chamberlain retain substantial promise, nobody even knows whether Hughes (9.00 ERA in six starts) or Kennedy (8.17 in 10 appearances) owns enough talent to succeed at the major-league level.

OK, sure. You aren't acknowledging how devastatingly unlucky any of this was, but Hughes and Kennedy are definitely, at the very least, question marks right now. Score: pnoles: 8, Filip: 4

This has left the Yankees in the uncomfortable position of slapping together makeshift rotations throughout the season. Even the unexpected resurrection of Mike Mussina wasn’t sufficient to offset the disastrous starting situation. As of this writing, the Yankees owned a 4.33 ERA, 16th in the majors, despite mostly solid efforts out of the bullpen.

But...but that ERA and MLB ranking is totally not out of line with anything the Yankees have been doing hiring mercenaries in the past few years! You really aren't convincing me of much here.

You can talk about the offense underachieving, and you’d be right there too.

Oh okay. I was reallly worried that you wouldn't even acknowledge this.

The Bronx Bombers were batting .273, sixth best in the majors, but their run production was ranked 13th. Alex Rodriguez had regressed into familiar non-clutch performances. Injuries to Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui didn’t help, and this was a team with too many DHs, too few Golden Gloves.

Alex Rodriguez has been one of the best 5 hitters in the American League this year. But he's just such a fun punching bag!

Too many DHs, too few Golden Gloves......alright so if a team's defense is bad, don't you think that adversely affects how many runs the pitching staff allows? This is just taking too much away from your argument that betting on young arms was stupid. Even if you didn't say anything blatantly wrong in this paragraph, the way you worded and analyzed that entire thing has me 100% convinced that you know zero things about baseball. Score: pnoles: 9, Filip: 4

Yet those were not the reasons the Yankees have dropped so far, so fast.

WHAT??!?!??!?! You're making me fairly angry right now Filip! Here are things you have said. The offense has been mediocre, 13th in MLB. The pitching has been mediocre, 16th in MLB. Now you're telling me that only the pitching is the reason that the team has been mediocre this season? Your brain is a disaster zone. Score: pnoles: 10, Filip: 4. This is quickly turning into a blowout.

They were goners because the starters collapsed and because the Tampa Bay Rays emerged from nowhere.

By counting on young pitching, the Tampa Bay Rays emerged from nowhere to surpass the New York Yankees, who were completely and totally stupid for banking on young pitching. Score: pnoles: 11, Filip: 4

They failed because Cashman threw money at position players, but not at starters.

Because the market for purchasing starting pitching in this offseason were terrible. You could either 1) Trade for one year of Johan Santana, or 2) Sign Carlos Silva. That's. About. It. Score: pnoles: 12, Filip: 4

From here, then, there needs to be a radical change of philosophy and course. Hank Steinbrenner needs to sit down with Cashman and tell him, flat out: We are not the A’s. If you want to be general manager of a small market team, that can easily be arranged.

Wooo hoo! You tell 'em Hank! Give him hell! That's the last time you'll put any faith in some of the best pitching prospects in the game on my watch!

It’s time to chase some free-agent pitchers again, to start making deals, to fill a rotation with 30 year-olds instead of 22 year-olds. The Yankees have a new, expensive stadium to fill, demanding outrageous ticket prices. They can no longer be outbid for the Santanas and CC Sabathias of the world.

Oh yeah, because 30 year-olds are automatically better than 22 year-olds.

The Yankees’ dynasty of the late ‘90s was built around a largely homegrown cast of position players, and with talented temps on the mound. Somewhere along the way, things got reversed in the Bronx. The Yankees chased expensive sluggers, and fell in love with their starters in the farm system.

BECAUSE THE COMPOSITION OF THE FARM SYSTEM CHANGED! HOW IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD TO UNDERSTAND??

Score: pnoles: 13, Filip: 4

That romance has failed. The sooner the Yankees remember their bullying, big-market roots, the faster their recovery.

Now that ever blood vessel in my head has popped, you're finally done speaking. Wow. In re: big-market roots, I guess leading MLB in payroll wasn't enough. Just fuck off, Filip. By the way, you owe me $61,343.87 for surgeries to repair all the damage you just did to my brain.

I win. 13-4.

The Suns And Mavericks Are Going To Have A Hard Time Golfing Comfortably With Such Huge Balls

I'm working on a Gregg Easterbrook "WMTMQR" column, but I got sidetracked by the topic you're seconds away from reading about, so the Easterbrook thing will have to become a "TMTMQR." Look for that, of course, on TM. Having just watched the final seconds of the Spurs closing out the Suns, I decided it would be fitting to talk about this guy named Bill Simmons who writes for ESPN.com. He's actually one of their most popular columnists. Who knew? Yeah, that's what I'm saying, too- whatever happened to Hunter S. Thompson?

Anyways, one of Simmons' more well-known columns from the past couple years is this, from February 2007, in which he lambasted nearly every team in the NBA for not making some kind of risky, roster-altering, hype-generating trade before that season's deadline. In his criticism, he very cleverly re-christened the league the "No Balls Association" in a brilliant turn of acronym. Oh, the audacity! His point was basically that although nearly every team in the league was flawed at the time in some obvious way, their GMs were too afraid to make a big deal lest they take the fall or get fired should the move either not produce good postseason results or further delay a rebuilding effort. It was an interesting concept for a column. Certainly gave a lot of fans something to discuss and complain about.

But I didn't at all agree with him at the time. (This blog didn't exist so I could voice that opinion, which is a convenient excuse for me to use revisionist history in my favor now.) Basically, the whole premise seemed less about teams trying to make the best possible decisions and more about teams doing things that Bill found exciting. New faces in new places! New matchups! New columns to write, about potential impacts and ramifications! What's not to like, if you're employed as Bill is? Unfortunately, nearly all of the trades he talked about didn't make sense for at least one of the teams involved. And some didn't make sense for either/any of said teams. Of course, as with anything Simmons writes, it was basically a chance for him to pop off at the mouth and act like his opinion is unadulterated fact. (Yes, you asshole anonymous Simmons-defending commenters, every columnist does this to some extent. But Simmons does it constantly, and with a nearly unparalleled level of abrasiveness.) And just because he gets on his high horse, and cracks wise while acting like he's smarter than at least 20-25 of the 30 GMs in the league, doesn't mean he's right.

So fast forward to February 2008. It's the "No Balls Association" no more. The Mavericks work overtime and jump through several hoops in order to land Jason Kidd, and the Suns surprise a lot of people by rolling the dice on Shaq. Hooray, says Bill. Finally- a group of executives not afraid to go boom or bust! Well, fittingly, tonight both of those moves more or less busted. Neither team even came close to sniffing the second round. Although it's arguable that their results would have been no different had they not made their trades, my point is that big deadline deals rarely happen for a lot of very real (and non-"ball lacking") reasons. For the teams scuttling their season and acting as sellers- unless the star they're probably giving away is in the final year of a deal, there's an incentive to wait until the summer to field offers because that gives them more time to maneuver and often allows them to drum up interest from more potential trade partners. For the teams acting as buyers- there's no other way to put this; the enormous risk such deals usually carry is just flat out debilitating. Laugh all you want, question whether or not people have nuts in their sacks; but the risks often outweigh the rewards. And what happened to the Suns and Mavs speaks to that. Neither team got noticeably better after acquiring their star. (Dallas probably got a little worse, and almost missed the playoffs.) Both, especially the Suns, are financially worse off than they were before the deals.

Now, let me put all the caveats out there to make sure I don't sound like an idiot. Yes, I know the Lakers also traded for Pau Gasol in a "big deal" and that that move is working out swimmingly. Good for LA. But that was an extremely rare case of a team looking to deal a superstar actually not asking nearly what their guy was worth. Opportunities like that don't come along often. The Lakers basically paid the Grizzlies peanuts, so they don't get credit for showing balls. Yes, I know Simmons actually stated that he thought Kidd was a bad fit for the Mavs. But in the column in which he voiced that opinion, he still said he approved of the trade. Why? Among other things, the Mavs "needed a transfusion" and this trade made them "more interesting." He also gushed all over the Shaq trade. Oops. And finally, yes, I know that Simmons has never said that making risky deals guarantees teams success. But he still violently advocates doing so anyways, and that's reason enough for me to make fun of him.

In conclusion- (I love using that, because my high school English teachers always discouraged it, and now they're not around to stop me from having my fun and writing poorly) I'm not writing this from the stance of "Haha! Dallas and Phoenix didn't both win four NBA titles each this summer after making big deadline moves, so everything Bill Simmons has ever written is wrong and he should be fired!" Well, he should be fired. But not for this. I'm writing it to point out something a little subtler. Taking an ultra-abrasive stance as a writer, the way Bill did in his original "No Balls" column, can blow up in your face. Even if you feel really passionately about something, you're probably better off writing about it without resorting to too much hyperbole and histrionics. Is that a rule the writers of this site, myself included, ever follow? Absolutely not. Go fuck yourself. It's still a good rule. I know, it's really tempting to act like every GM in every league is a dummy. After all, only a handful of them win championships every year, and only about half of them field teams with winning records. But the vast majority of them are smart enough to run a team. Their moves/non-moves are made for perfectly legitimate reasons. Grading the performance of a group of them at a particular time, and giving three quarters of them Fs, F-minuses, F-minus-minuses, Z-minues, etc., is over the top and stupid. Stop it. You're somehow making yourself look worse. Just go back to writing your dumb mailbag and flaunting the fact that you know a lot about Vegas. Vegas? Really? Wow, cool. Where else could I possibly find information about that place? Do you think they have a tourism board or anything? You know, I'm too lazy to do any actual research about one of the country's top 5 vacation destinations. I guess I'll just take what this prick says as gospel.

Speaking of that mailbag, I checked it out. Not a ton of material I felt like covering. Basically he's become a Boston blogger who has his work published on ESPN. The kind of analysis he gives about the Celtics/Patriots/Red Sox is more or less similar to the type of stuff I read about my favorite teams on their respective SBNation blogs. You want to ask him about anyone else? If it's one of a handful of NBA teams (Suns, Pistons, Lakers, Cavaliers), he might be able to offer something coherent. If it's any other NBA team, he's clueless. If it's an NFL team, he doesn't know it, but he's clueless. If it's the Yankees, he'll just talk more about the Red Sox or make a joke about how A-Rod is actually Choke-Rod. If it's another AL team, he'll mention a player from that team on his fantasy team. If it's an NL team, he'll act like the fact he doesn't follow the NL makes him cool or something. In essence, he's running CeltsCornerSawksTawkPatsPrattle.blogspot.com off of the world's most popular sports site. Sure, I'm bothered by it, but at the same time, it's like... it's so boring that I can't really get that worked up. Oh my God- does this mean I'm losing my edge? Hopefully not. This basement is still as comfy as ever.

Been Quiet Recently, Eh?

But Scott Merkin is still a dumbass. He's the mlb.com mailbag dude for the White Sox.

Where is Scotty Pods going to end up?
-- Bob, Homewood, Ill.

There are two correct answers to this question.

1) The minor leagues.
2) Out of work, but lucky Scotty, he's still married to a Playboy playmate!

I was talking about this exact topic with a few higher-ups in the White Sox organization recently, and there really doesn't seem to be any current buzz surrounding Podsednik. It could come down to a Minor League deal for Podsednik, although for those of you who asked, it won't be with the White Sox. When healthy, Podsednik still is one of the few elite leadoff hitters in the game.

I'm trying to think of contexts in which "Podsednik" and "elite" should be used in the same sentence. Sadly my puny brain can't bend itself to find something. Let's rank these "leadoff hitters" or something.

1-16, whatever order: DeJesus, Granderson, Sizemore, Pedroia, Roberts, Ichiro, Willits, Lofton, Soriano (if he even counts), Weeks, Rollins, H. Ramirez, K. Johnson, Reyes, B. Giles, Furcal (and plenty of other guys like Kaz Matsui, Scott Hatteberg, and Alex Rios who lead off sometimes for brief stints)

17: Healthy Scott Podsednik

18 - crap: People similar to Juan Pierre (like Podsednik).

Merkin, the guy was damn good in 2003 (thanks to him having SOME power and probably a sick BABIP or something), and hasn't shown a sign of being even above-average since. Can we please stop deceiving Bob from Homewood, IL? I'm sure he doesn't appreciate it. As soon as he goes to Podsednik's stat page, followed by that of an actual elite leadoff hitter, he's going to figure out that you're a lying sack of shit.

I'm Sorry Everyone, but Jay Wants Attention Again

I know, it's stupid. But like the 2-year old who doesn't get to play on the big boy slide, he won't stop crying for attention until someone gives it to him.

I guess we might as well do the honors for him. Jay?

The End: Bears better off losing

You are a Chicago-based columnist saying that your sports teams are better off losing. This is not the first instance of something like this happening. No team in contention for anything is ever better off losing, Jay. Ever.

A victory over the Vikings would have brought some false hope. At least now it’s clear that the once-proud Bears are in dismal shape

I wonder what Mariotti would be like as a Denver columnist.

Sept. 25, 2007: "Rockies tease city by arousing playoff hopes with another meaningless win."

Oct 4, 2007: "Rockies off to good start in playoffs, but better they lose now than later before they realize they aren't more than just an NLDS team."

Oct 11, 2007: "Webb an embarrassment as Colorado sneaks away with a win. World Series remains a pipe dream, however."

Oct 23, 2007: "Wake up and smell the reality. These Rockies are no match for the Boston juggernauts."

Oct 28, 2007: "Told ya."

MINNEAPOLIS -- Now America understands why the Bears are the NFL's newest crash dummies -- or, I should say, the segments of America that wasted their lives watching Monday night.

Note: Watching a football game that comes down to the final 2-minute drill is a waste of life. These games are totally uninteresting. Also, sports suck.

After the latest collapse, three men gathered on the ESPN set. One was Emmitt Smith. Another was Adrian Peterson, who might break Smith's all-time rushing record, smiling as he was serenaded by lingering fans with the obvious, "Yo, Adrian!"

But I was more interested in the guy sitting with them. Hey, Steve Young, can we talk you into quarterbacking the Bears? Yes, at your age?

Oh yeah, that's totally a professional joke. Every fucking idiot Chicago fan has been saying this type of thing for 2 years now. "Hey, my son should be the new Bears QB, am I right guys?" Haw. Haw. Haw. How do you have a job?

False security doesn't stop the bleeding. It only creates a pseudo comfort zone that shouldn't exist at Halas Hall, where the Bears officially are stuck in the NFL past tense and need a significant offseason overhaul. Much as a victory might have warmed the civic bones on a cold December night, really now, what would it have accomplished?

Excitement. Satisfaction for every guy on the team. Derailing a division rival. Keeping the playoffs as an outside possibility. Achieving the goal of winning, the only reason that the team went onto the field instead of just forfeiting beforehand. Gee, I don't know, Jay? Why do sports teams try to win?

What did loss No. 9 teach us?

That Kyle Orton is not a legitimate starting quarterback and has a bigger neckbeard than a future, which I already knew before he made a horrendous throw to downtown Duluth on 4th-and-1 to end a late threat.

Jay, you're brilliant! What foresight! You knew that a guy who has a career 59.5 passer rating that plays as a THIRD STRINGER for a team stereotyped by not having a good quarterback is not, let me emphasize this ladies and gentlemen, not, a legitamate starting quarterback!

That the defense played well against the explosive Peterson but is finished as a dominant force, which I already knew before Brian Urlacher stopped writing his blog and woke up for the ESPN cameras he so adores.

And....get this guys. Jay knew that the football team that has let up the fourth most yards per game in the NFL is not a dominant defensive force! Maybe he isn't so stupid after all! Let's get rid of this blog, or at least retitle it.

That Devin Hester is the most exciting athlete in sports but also the most perilous to his team when he grips the football like a lunchbox, which I already knew.

A kick returner that has trouble catching/hanging onto the ball puts his team in a perilous situation? ESPN should really consider getting you onto that "Around the Horn" show.....

That this team makes stupid mistakes, which I already knew before Peanut Tillman's unforgivably unnecessary roughness penalty (which led to a Minnesota field goal), Fred Miller's roundhouse swing at Jayme Mitchell (which killed a drive) and a Garrett Wolfe holding penalty (which shortened a good return in the final minutes).

Pompous, insightful Mariotti continues to hammer home that he KNOWS the things that casual fans observe every fucking game. This better not keep going on much longer....my sarcasm is waning.

Oh, I can hear the giddy amnesiacs now. The Bears made the Vikings sweat, which can serve as a confidence builder for 2008.

What giddy amnesiacs think the team will say to itself next year, "Hey guys, we can do it! Remmeber last year when we were 5-8 and almost beat the 7-6 Vikings? If we can do that, we can do anything!"

Apparently Jay thinks that there are dumbass blowhards out there stupider than he is.

Bad news about that, Jay.....

So It was for the best that they lost, if only to subdue the would-be nonsense that their future isn't so shaky after all.

Again...if the Bears win, they become 6-8. The difference between 6-8 and 5-9 is not enough to change anyone's opinion about how "shaky" the Bears future will be.

The Bears, of course, need a quarterback, as they have for most of their existence, with the Donovan McNabb dream still flickering for serious fans after Orton stumbled in his first start in two years. The Bears also need a running back, a revamped offensive line and probably a receiver assuming Bernard Berrian signs elsewhere, which makes sense with his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, prowling in the hallway near midnight. The Bears will need to address the likely departure of Lance Briggs (another Rosenhaus client), problems in the secondary and whether Urlacher -- who was great -- still can be a consistent, healthy season-long monster.

All of which, you understand, is pretty easy, given Jay's excellent advice in "Offseason Sports Team Management For Dummies". Here are the main principles.

1) Sign every free agent. It don't matter what he costs, kids.
2) Trade for everybody good. You don't need to consider contracts or what you're giving up. Just beat the other teams to your guy!
3) In baseball, you have to make "bigger" moves than the team on the other side of town to be considered a success, NOT (and this is a common misconception) the moves that maximize the use of your resources.

When Peterson slipped past a blocked Briggs and scored to give Minnesota a seven-point lead with 10:50 left, tell me: Did anyone think Orton could win the game? He had a couple of impressive moments in the first half, but he was seen flipping his helmet on the sideline when the offense turned sickly in the second half.

Yes. I thought Orton could win the game. It was a possibility. There was a chance that he would repeat the impressive first half moments. And let's not forget that the ball was being moved pretty well before that fatal interception on Kyle's final 40-something yard bomb.

How many times do I have to say it?

1273. I don't even care what you're about to say. I bet you'll repeat it 1273 times.

Rex Grossman can't play. Brian Griese can't play. Kyle Orton can't play.

You were singing a different tune about Griese earlier this season, but more to the point....

What is your goal in saying this? What should the Bears be doing? Do you think there's some other quarterback they could be playing right now? What kind of insight can you offer that the loud, fat 45-year-old at the game sitting behind behind me can't? This isn't a sports column. This is just a bitchfest.

I'll end with a legitimately funny quote that Jay the Entertainer put in this column about Lance Briggs.

Briggs is accused by the mother of his 3-month-old baby of not paying sufficient child support and getting at least two other women pregnant.

"I have had an open-door policy toward parenting," Brittini Tribbett, 21, told the Sun-Times. "Lance has apparently had an open-pants policy toward paternity."

Nevermind. I'm not ending with that. I just read the last line of the column.

This season was dead before it started.

Shut the fuck up. Seriously. Shut the fuck up. This is a team that went to the Super Bowl last year and only had one major loss in the offsesason, middle-of-the-road running back Thomas Jones (who, by the way, has been worth a whopping 7.5 more yards per game and an astronomical 0.2 more yards per carry this year than perpetual scapegoat Cedric Benson was before his injury). How can you POSSIBLY, in a million bajillion years, say that this was a season that was dead before it started??? Are you fucking claiming that before Sunday, September 9, 2007, that this Bears team had ZERO chance of going anywhere???

It's a fucking disgrace that words you type hit the presses in any newspaper, let alone the second biggest newspaper in one of the biggest cities in the United States of America.

Can YOU handle more Mariotti?

Sorry folks, I see that phrase every day when I check the Sun-Times for more Jayberrish from that guy. (You guys like what I did there? I pretended like I was Jay writing about Lou Piniella, and displaced Mariotti's first name into a place where it doesn't normally belong, but where it creates a nonsense word that is phoenetically similar to the original word I was spoofing! Isn't that clever? I deserve a raise...)

Anyway, just prior to a shameless plug in which Jay bragged about how good Around the Horn is (despite Mariotti and especially Paige's continued stupidity, it actually is pretty entertaining), he wrote this nonsense.

I don't know how to break this to Bears fans who make road trips, but you know what? You're not playing on the team, fellas.

That's kinda harsh. You could have let them down a little easier there.

It's nice that you spend your money, wear your replica jerseys and travel in support of a losing football team, but let's keep this in perspective.

You're fans, ticket-holders, spectators.

Yeah, everyone needs to relax a little. Maybe be a little bit more passionless and robotic about your football team. They're losing. You should act accordingly by supporting them less. That's what good fans do, right?

``We are going 12-4, Jay!'' a guy in orange and blue told me on the flight.

We? And isn't 12-4 now mathematically impossible?

Give me a break. Is this really the first time you've ever heard someone use the word "we" to reference a sports team and its collective community of fans? "We're gonna be good this year" and the like?

Once in Philly, things only got goofier. Outside a Center City hotel, some Bears fans throwing around a football saw a few Eagles fans. Next thing you know, they were challenging the homeboys to a tackle football game -- IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET.

ZOMG! Stop the presses! These fans are ridiculous! Why is this being printed in the online column and not the real thing!

6 months later....

"The traveling Chicago Cubs fans decided to play an intense game of catch outside Miller Park -- IN THE MIDDLE OF A CONGESTED PARKING LOT! Do they have no decency for people's cars or the security officers directing traffic????"

The Eagles' fans passed, showing a little more wisdom even in a town where Vince Papale soared from the South Philly streets to the Eagles and became a Disney movie.

Guy living in a city who rises from the streets and joins a pro football team and inspires the movie Invincible = something that indicates a lack of wisdom in that city.

``Why do you dog us all the time?'' a middle-aged fan in a Butkus jersey asked me. ``We're trying our best.''

No, you're drinking beer

Dumbasses!

tailgating

Insane morons!

and returning to reality Sunday night

Yeah, eat it, you fantasy-dwelling douchebags.

I should mention, of course, that most fans I know keep sports in its right place. I also should mention this identity-tranformation phenomenon isn't endemic only to Chicago. In Cleveland during the baseball playoffs, I was walking through Jacobs Field when an Indians fan stopped me and said, ``We're gonna win tonight. Wait, you hate us.''

This problem is becoming an epidemic! Everyone thinks they play for their favorite sports team!

No, I don't hate you. Nor do I hate the Indians. I picked them, wrongly, to win the American League championship series.

Sportswriters aren't the enemy, folks. We're just sportswriters.

We mean no harm, and we come to spread peace and tranquility.

The column is about how ridiculous and crazy Bears fans are. Here at the end of it, Jay has lapsed into self-defense mode. You can tell he's done his job.

Slate finds new ways to suck ass.

Slate is a piece of shit e-mag. Everybody knows it. I don't care that it has a large "liberal" slant; I just care that most of the staff are wannabe hipsters writing sensational crap in order to elicit strong responses. You may be asking why I bring Slate up, since this blog focuses on sports writing and not politics. Well, they have a story linked from their home page titled:

Win One for the Cheater
Why the enraged Patriots will go undefeated.
By Charles P. Pierce

Oh great, here we go. I thought that Slate always tried their hardest to go against the grain, but here we have it: an ESPN segment written in pretencious prose.

Before I even started reading what promises to be a vomit inducing, X-rated, deep-throating of Brady's/Belichick's/Kraft's collective cock, I had to read more about this Charles P. Pierce fellow. From his website:

Charles P. Pierce was born December 28, 1953 in Worcester, MA.

"Aha!" Exclaims our noble blogger eriz. "This is certain to be unbiased"

*throws up all over the floor*

Let's begin, shall we?

Perhaps the oddest thing about a very odd week in the history of the New England Patriots, a franchise that has known its share of very odd weeks, was the identity of the commissioner who finally brought the hammer down on the lawless regime of Bill Belichick (last seen stalking the sidelines dressed like he'd just knocked over a 7-Eleven while his enraged team performed public ritual murder on the San Diego Chargers). Way back in 1970, Sen. Charles Goodell, R-N.Y., lost his political career at least in part because he took legislative action to curb the unilateralist excesses of Richard Nixon. (Sen. Goodell lost to William F. Buckley's less-easily parodied brother James.) So, here's his kid, Roger, conducting himself in such a way that he probably should be standing on a balcony somewhere, his medals gleaming in the tropical sun. No wonder Nixon lusted after the job of the commissioner of the National Football League. Everything about the position would appeal to him.

I guess no Slate sports article would be complete without long winded correlations to American Politics.

Anyway, seeing a Goodell acting as the New Sheriff in Town—to use the John Ford-ism that's become trendy among America's sporty press—has brought out the latent authoritarian in everyone, it seems. He'd already knuckled Pacman Jones for gunplay, Michael Vick for aggravated Rovercide, and Dallas quarterback coach Wade Wilson for practicing pharmacy without either a license or a decent lie. Goodell couldn't very well have taken a pass on laying the wood to Belichick, who went out of his way to steal defensive signals on a sideline only 20 miles or so from Goodell's desk. In truth, he should have suspended Coach Beyond-The-Law for a couple of games, too, but a half-million bucks is a considerable fine, and the loss of a draft pick makes any football executive cry. People who have been waiting six years to see the Patriots get their comeuppance seemed generally quite happy with Goodell. And then the game started.

Quite simply, no NFL team in recent memory has played a game as well from start to finish as New England did Sunday night.

Oh really? You may have your opinion on this matter, but let's be honest here: You're wrong. What about the Tampa Bay's super bowl beatdown of Oakland? What about the Broncos' win over Atlanta in Super Bowl 32, where John Elway repeatedly picked on Eugene Robinson like (insert joke about cocaine and a prostitute here) ? What about JUST LAST YEAR'S Super Bowl when the Colts dominated the Bears in almost every way possible? I named three Super Bowls for a reason. First of all, the consequences of these games are exponentially more important than a week 2 matchup. Secondly, they are examples of two of the very best teams in the NFL (proven over the course of 16 regular season and 2-3 playoff games), where one team beats the crap out of the other team. Sure, we know San Diego is loaded with talent. But they struggled against the Bears a week before and they have an entirely different coaching staff from last year's 14-2 squad.

So before you start with the hyperbole (whoops, too late!) let's put things in perspective.

The 38-14 final is not even remotely a measure of it. Neither is the 407-201 margin in total offense, or the 35:46 to 24:14 gap in the time of possession. This was one football operation beating the other one into the ground.

Which never happens. Ever. Every single game played in the NFL is really even, except one team has to win in the end.

The Patriots built this lead in the offseason. San Diego canned head coach Marty Schottenheimer because he lost a playoff game to the Patriots, replacing him with Norv Turner, who has now coached 325 NFL teams in his life.

Actually, it's like 5 or something; good joke though. The firing of Schottenheimer was a monumentally stupid move, but I'm not sure how this makes the Pats better. Whatever.

For their part, the Patriots picked up receivers Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth, and, most notably, Randy Moss to give Tom Brady some actual weapons to use. They also signed Adalius Thomas, a frighteningly athletic linebacker from the Baltimore Ravens. It was Thomas who broke the game open, stepping in front of a terrible Philip Rivers pass and outracing all of the Chargers more than 65 yards for a touchdown. By the time Thomas made his play, Brady already had used two of the other newcomers, Welker and Moss, to carve up the Charger secondary, the latter on a 23-yard post route that bisected two San Diego defenders and was as perfectly an executed football play as ever has been. Brady looked off the defenders and came back to Moss, who found the ball on his fingertips as he crossed the goal line at full speed.

Oh I didn't know that New England acquired all these players this offseason. Goddamn Sports Illustrated and ESPN, I wish they had filled us in on all of the Patriots' off season moves!

And everybody knows that the Chargers' biggest weak spot is the secondary. Joey Harrington and Rache Cauldwell could rack up yards against them.

On the other side of the ball, Thomas has given Belichick so many options on defense that the coach's creativity is at floodtide, and the team doesn't even feel the absence of all-pro defensive lineman Richard Seymour and explosive safety Rodney Harrison, the latter of whom Goodell earlier busted on a banned-substances rap. The beating was so obvious and thorough that the postgame commentary from the Patriots had more to do with the vicissitudes of the previous five days than it did with the problems inherent in beating a team that went 14-2 last season. There was all manner of chortling and gloating about how the team had managed to overcome the stigma of the media's pointing out that its head coach had gotten caught behaving like an arrogant jackass. A team this good, this dominant, got to cast itself in its own mind as outraged innocents battling to stick it to The Man.

I just wanted to put this paragraph in so I could point out that our dear writer used the word "vicissitudes."

It was like watching conservatives talk about how Michael Moore was picking on them while they were running the entire government.

I don't get it.

So at this halfway point of the article, Pierce has told us about how Goodell is actually his own father, Belichick is Richard Nixon (who wanted to be Goodell all along), the Chargers did some stupid shit in the offseason, the Patriots signed a bunch of good players, and the Patriots beat the Chargers by a lot of touchdowns.

I thought he was gonna tell us why the Patriots are going undefeated.

It's why, absent catastrophic injury, New England can win every football game it plays this season.

Ohhhhhhhh. What was the title of this column again? Let's scroll up... Ah here we go.

Win One for the Cheater
Why the enraged Patriots will go undefeated.

So which is it? They will go undefeated? Or they can? There are lots of teams in the past twenty years you could have said the latter about during the first few weeks. The 2004 Colts. The 1998 Broncos. One of the 49er teams of the 90s. These teams all had the ability to run the table. But there are a bunch of reasons why it hasn't happened, and likely won't, for a long time. The NFL is a super competitive league. The talent separation between the top team and the bottom team is arguably the slimmest of any professional American sport.

The Patriots are quite possibly the best team in the NFL right now. But they will lose at least one game this season. I'd bet my firstborn child on it.

For years, the rest of the NFL has chafed at the ability of the Patriots to play Poor Widdle Us while pushing the envelope of league regulations on everything from the injury list, to media obligations, to what you can and can't do on the sidelines. If, ironically, Goodell is Nixon as "the president," then Belichick is the Nixon who hired the "plumbers," right down to the ludicrous written statement that remains his only public comment on the affair and which lacks only a reference to his mother, the saint, to match old Tricky's farewell speech for unmitigated smarm. When Belichick finally got caught this week, you may have noticed that the rest of the league wasn't exactly rallying to his side. Jerome Bettis grabbed onto a retroactive alibi for having been whipped by New England over the past decade, and Tony Dungy offered a plaintive "what-about-the-children" rumination that was just inches from actual sincerity. This was not an accident. In many ways, everybody in the NFL is against the Patriots, and a lot of them have damned good reason for being so.

I'm glad Pierce hasn't pulled out the old "the patriots are a classy organization" zinger yet. He admits that they are kind of scummy and everybody hates them. But, once again, what does what he has written have anything to do with the Patriots going undefeated?

However, the only thing that New England didn't pick up in the offseason was a cause, and now it has one, especially if the investigation is as thorough and ongoing as Goodell seems to be saying it will be. It is possible that we will have a revelation a week in which, as New England linebacker Tedy Bruschi put it after Sunday night's game, New England's "integrity" comes into question. More ill-feeling. More bad blood. More grist for Belichick's endlessly grinding motivation mill. Moreover, the players seemed all week to resent most that their work in winning three Super Bowls suddenly had been devalued by their coach's misbehavior. That's the obverse of a general feeling that has arisen among Patriots in recent years—that their own talents have been made subordinate to their coach's alleged genius.

So apparently the desire to win championships by itself isn't enough for the Patriots? They needed a cause, i guess. sort of like when Tom Brady pulled out the old "we don't get any respect" card two seasons ago before their divisional playoff game against Denver. I guess Brady's motivational tool didn't work too well for him when he threw a terrible goal line pick to Champ Bailey that was returned 98 yards. On a side note: I was at that game, and man was it fucking awesome.

One of these is inspiration enough. Both of them together is a volatile mix. If more sordid details come out, and Goodell feels obligated to suspend Belichick for a week, the New England players themselves might beat some team 100-0.

No they won't. It's not possible. I can guarantee that they will lose at least one game. I also assure you that they will not win in a shutout all season. Their defense gave up a ton of yards and touchdowns last season. They added Thomas at linebacker, but it's not like a good NBA team signing Michael Jordan at his prime. They have a mediocre linebacking corps after Thomas and an atrocious secondary save for Asante Samuel.

The whole mishegas puts the 1972 Miami Dolphins' distinction as the only team to play an entire NFL season undefeated in serious jeopardy. Roger Goodell did the right thing last week, but he also created a situation in which, come February, when the Patriots win the Super Bowl, and he has to hand the trophy to Bill Belichick, it's perfectly plausible to wonder if it shouldn't be the other way around.

*eriz bazooka barfs all over his keyboard*

Guy Gets 10 RBI, Saves Team, Personifies Team, Rescues City From Hurricane, Doesn't Suck at Baseball Anymore

Michael Ventre has a few thoughts on Garret Anderson's 10 RBI evening last night. Since he's such a good writer and never shows up on blogs like this one, I'm sure we can expect things that are well-thought out with no wild claims and exaggerations, right?

Yeah....this is gonna be a disaster. I really hope I beat Fire Joe Morgan to this one.

Garret's eruption puts Angels back on radar
10 RBI night by Anderson reminds us all how good this team really is

Yes, Garret Anderson totally restored my belief that the Angels are a very good team. The fact that they have a very good starting rotation and bullpen, coupled with the fact that they have one of the best hitters in the game in Vlad didn't quite do it for me. I needed a 10 RBI night in an 18-9 blowout by a poor corner outfielder to REMIND me that this team is any good.

Garret Anderson probably will never have a model of shoe named after him. He’ll never spill his guts on “Oprah,” or be photographed coming out of a club with Paris Hilton, or do a talk-show tour demanding a trade.

I get it, he's not one of the most famous players in the world, but this is dumb. I'm guessing the point of this paragraph is to say that Anderson isn't very well-known, but here's the thing, lots of people know about Garret Anderson. They remember him for the 2002 World Series, as well as for being the 2003 Home Run Derby Champ / All-Star game MVP. There was a time that he was a good baseball player, and was relatively famous.

In fact, the only time the Angels’ outfielder is ever featured on “SportsCenter” is if he does something extraordinary.

In fact, this is true for pretty much all players who aren't any good!

There is no doubt today that the acutely low-key Anderson is a “Who’s Now” candidate after belting out 10 RBI Tuesday night.

I acknowledge that "Who's Now" was a very dumb ESPN publicity stunt, but seriously.....

WTF?? Tiger Woods (arguably the best golfer ever), LaDanian Tomlinson (sets NFL record for TD's in a season), Ronaldinho (best soccer player in the world), Garret Anderson (drove in 10 runs in that one regular-season blowout against the Yankees).

"There is no doubt today" that Garret Anderson belongs in the same breath as those people.

It is appropriate that Anderson seized the spotlight in an 18-9 Angels’ decision over the Yanks. It is almost as if the other Angels drew straws to determine which of them would remind the baseball world that they still exist and they’re still viable as championship timber.

So, when deciding who should "remind the baseball world" that the FIRST PLACE ANAHEIM ANGELS WHO ARE IN FIRST PLACE IN A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL DIVISION FOR BEING ONE OF THE BEST BASEBALL TEAMS IN THE ENTIRE BASEBALL LEAGUE exist, the Angels "drew straws" (a supposedly random method) and Anderson won "appropriately". I don't follow.

This is a Yankees-Red Sox world, after all. Oh, occasionally Cleveland and Detroit will cause a dust-up in their lust for the AL Central crown, or Johan Santana will hurl a gem and in the process underline the Twins’ inadequacies, or the Mariners will scream for attention.

This is only a "Yankees-Red Sox world" for idiots who choose to immerse themselves in those two teams so far that they are oblivious to whatever else is going on in baseball.

Yet the Angels have often seemed so far under the radar that they can’t even be detected with sonar. They just happen to be 6-2 against the diva Yanks so far this season, and are 11-4 in their last 15 against them in Anaheim, including the 2005 playoffs.

ESPN must have been using some sort of ULTRA-sonar to constantly talk about the Angels at the trade deadline about adding another slugger to their lineup or about where A-Rod is going next year.

On Tuesday night, Anderson took a curtain call as a crowd of 45,257 lavished their appreciation. When asked if he expected more such reactions, Anderson said, “It took me 13 years to get that one. I don’t see myself playing for 26 years.”

If he did, he probably wouldn’t be any more of a household name –even in Orange County households – than he is today. And the Angels will likely still be the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, pining for bragging rights over the Dodgers in Southern California, a modest franchise with big dreams.

Please, STOP acting like no one knows who Garret Anderson is! 2002 World Series. 2003 Home Run Derby Champ, 2003 All-Star Game MVP. Granted, he's not one of the most famous baseball players, but he isn't fucking Yuniesky Betancourt either! Ventre, you suck.

This isn’t anything new. Movie cowboy Gene Autry, who owned the team over four decades, shelled out lots of dough to buy guys like Reggie Jackson, Fred Lynn and others in the early 1980s. That team generated a lot of attention, but it didn’t bring Autry a World Series championship.

What does this have to do with anything?

That achievement occurred in 2002, an unlikely crusade that culminated in a series victory over Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants. Back then, they were still known as the Anaheim Angels. The following year, they were sold to a Latino businessman named Arte Moreno, who made his millions in billboards.

But no matter how much advertising they have done, the Angels can’t seem to bust out of that small-market pigeonhole, even after replacing “Anaheim” with “Los Angeles” and putting together perhaps the best starting rotation in the majors.

First off, after reading this, I seriously don't think that Ventre knows that the full name of the team is the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim".

Second, the Angels are 11th in team ERA, and they have a non-awful bullpen, so I'm going to go ahead and say they don't have the best starting rotation in the majors (if anyone can find a site where starting pitching is ranked, I'd actually really like to know, because I can't find one. Leave a comment). The Angels starters, except for that #5 Santana/Colon slot have been very good, however.

Third, and probably most absurdly of all, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN "small-market pigeonhole"!?!?!??!?! Los Angeles is one of the biggest cities in the United States. The Angels have the 4th highest payroll in Major League Baseball. There is absolutely nothing small-market about the Angels. You, Ventre, are the definition of ignorant.

Garret Anderson is the personification of the Angels, at least for today.

The FUCK does that even mean? The "personification" of the Angels? He's a corner outfielder with a .242 EqA. The Angels have kept him around despite consistently low walk totals and shrinking power numbers. He has a .298 OBP. Garret Anderson is the personification of everything the Angels have done wrong in recent history. His 4-year $48M contract is the definition of "mistake". And you're saying that a bad player who had one hot game "personifies" a very good team? You clearly are one of those people who has his head stuck so far up the metaphorical ass of the Yankees and Red Sox to even GLANCE at what other teams are doing. I bet you wouldn't have even written this article if the 10 RBI didn't come against the Yankees.

That only occurred because he happened to become one of only 12 players in major league history to post double-digit RBI in a single game. Ordinarily, he can’t even hope to compete in the “player with the most talent who is most often overlooked” category with Vladimir Guerrero, the Angels’ lone superstar, currently batting .322 with 19 homers and 100 RBI.

Because he doesn't have very much talent. He's bad. He has a .298 OBP.

Anderson, Guerrero, Mike Scioscia, the team’s gently intense manager, and the rest are all a reflection of the stone man named Bill Stoneman.

And the award for greatest play on words in history goes to......

He’s the team’s general manager who is probably more notable for doing nothing at trade deadlines than any of his peers. In fact, his ability to do nothing has to be ranked up there with the greats.

Yet he must be doing something, because the Angels have held on to the AL West lead now deep into August, albeit by a shrinking margin. Stoneman and Moreno have embarked on a Gandhi-like path of passive resistance. They’ll compete, they just won’t go out and spend money on free agents to do so. That’s partly why some idle chatter about A-Rod eventually landing in Anaheim is the funniest stuff to come out of the region since Bob Hope was in his heyday as a standup.

WHLEF;asdf'asdfl;asdkflkals'dfasdklf'ja;sdfkj'asdflsda. The Angels pay their players a lot of money. All the talk about A-Rod going there, whether or not it will happen, is to be taken very seriously. Contrary to what you just said, the Angels splurge big on free agents quite a bit(e.g. Vlad Guerrero, Gary Matthews Jr.), it's just that they just are quiet at the trade deadline usually. Honestly, how can you be this stupid and uninformed and still publish your trash at a place like msnbc.com (then again, it IS msnbc.com, and they hired HatGuy).

Yet the larger implications have to do with another push toward another World Series title. Before Tuesday, the Angels had been the small independent film that everybody respected that would surely be forgotten when Oscar voters cast their ballots. Now they’re more like a studio picture with a little more national backing.

They don’t have what they want yet, but they’re getting there.

The Angels have been transformed...nay....TRANSCENDED by the performance of Garret Anderson into a team that must be considered by all as "legitimate" (they were not at all legitimate before last night). Thanks to him, they won a game by 9 runs when he drove in 10, and if you plug someone else in his place in the batting order, there's no way that they Angels would have won this game. They're nothing to be fucked with, because they have a bad player who got hot for a game. Be warned AL contenders, you may one day meet the wrath of Garret Anderson's powerful bat, as it put the Angels on the map. Thanks to him, they now mean BUSINESS.

If You Thought the Lunchpail Alert Was High Before....

....it's bright freakin' red now, thanks to Jerry Crasnick

I've established my stance on Jerry Crasnick insisting on doing a "Starting 9" every week. This is one of his worst.

No pain, no game for these hard-nosed players

Gritty McGrittersons. Guys that sprint for every ball. Guys that just NEED to beat out that grounder to the third baseman, so they run their absolute hardest to first (read: almost everyone). Guys that dive and get themselves dirty. Guys that look an outfield wall square in the eye and say, "I'm not afraid of you, biznitch." What a great topic.

Baseball players aren't typically regarded as tough in the manner of NFL wide receivers going over the middle or NHL wingers digging into the corner for loose pucks. But the season is so long, so physically and mentally draining, that few regulars report for work each day feeling spry or healthy in the conventional sense. They're all soldiers in a war of attrition.

Baseball is easily my favorite sport, Jerry, but there is absolutely no way you can compare the "toughness" of MLB players to that of NFL or NHL players. It's insane to do that. Baseball players don't get checked into the boards repeatedly, or have to catch a ball while preparing to get leveled by a quick, 270-pound linebacker. Most of the in-game time in an MLB season is spent sitting on a bench or standing around at your position (taking into account that pitchers aren't everyday players).

Toughness is in the eye of the beholder. But we're pretty sure it's embodied by Minnesota backup catcher Mike Redmond. During a game in July, Chicago's Jim Thome took a long follow-through and caught Redmond in the head with the barrel of his bat.

After several moments on the ground, Redmond staggered to his feet, blood pouring from his head, and apologized to teammate Joe Mauer on his way back to the dugout. It was the second game of a doubleheader, and Redmond felt bad about taxing Mauer's workload.

"It wasn't like I was hurt that bad," Redmond told Jim Souhan of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Just bleeding a lot."

What a TOUGH player. "It wasn't like I was hurt that bad" he says, referencing the time he was leaving the game due to an injury. This is like saying "That guy stopped playing the basketball game because he sprained his ankle. What a hard-nosed player!"

Remember "The Breakfast Club"? We'll call this week's installment of Starting 9 the Eat-Nails-for-Breakfast Club.

Nails for breakfast, cold stomach gruel for lunch (served in a pail, of course), and raw, freshly-killed deer meat for dinner. A truely grit-tastic 3-meal day for the champion looking to harden his nose.

Oh, and mentioning "The Breakfast Club" fits in just perfectly here, I might add.

Russell Martin, Dodgers catcher

He blocks balls, shakes off foul tips

Like John Buck and Brian McCann do.

breaks up double plays with abandon

With "abandon", he slides hard into second base and drives fear into Khalil Greene coming across the bag to turn the deuce in such a way that Johnny Estrada never could.

and doesn't know the meaning of the words, "I can't go, Skip."

Because he's young and hasn't been seriously injured yet.

Todd Helton, Rockies first baseman

Helton has endured back pain and calf problems, and missed two weeks last season with acute ileitis, a painful inflammation of the small intestine. Despite losing 10 pounds, Helton came off the disabled list as scheduled and started 64 straight games before Colorado manager Clint Hurdle was able to chain him to the bench.

"chain him to the bench". Simply priceless. Like the huge, overly-aggressive dog from the next yard over. I'm getting images in my head of Todd Helton needing to wear a shock collar that jerks him back into the dugout whenever he tries to leave.

It's the same brand of fortitude Helton displayed as a University of Tennessee quarterback while facing the onslaught of SEC linebackers. If he's ambulatory, he's out there.

Ah, no wonder. A football player. If we keep going, and Darin Erstad is left off of this list, I'm going to give you a Joe Morganesque lecture on how you're not being very consistent.

It's a certainty Biggio will be wearing an Astros cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. The portrayal would be even more genuine if it showed him beneath a gunk-encrusted helmet with sweat and eye black all over his face.

I say "gunky" becomes the new synonym for gritty. Eye black is a new one actually. Eye black! It makes you tough! That's how Scott Podsednik does it, duuude! And he's a guy that everyone considers hard-nosed.....a pretty-boy married to Playmate Lisa Dergan. (I can think of few baseball players who do not sweat)

Miguel Tejada, Orioles shortstop

No.

No. Fucking. Way.

This is one of the most subjective topics in the world. And you actually got it wrong.

Everyone in the sports media world knows that for shortstop, there is one, and only one accurate answer to this question.

Standing in at 4'2" and weighing about 81 pounds, a boy playing a man's game with hard-nosed grit, hearty soul, and the energy of the fires of the sun, the answer has to be David Eckstein.

One
Two
Three
Four
Five -- Actually Jerry, that one's yours!
Six

With all due respect to Miguel Tejada and his consecutive games played streak, he doesn't stand a chance against Eckstein in the scrappy, hard-nosish department (read: Tejada is too good at baseball to win those honors).

Ty Wigginton, Astros third baseman
If Eric Byrnes is known as the Crash Test Dummy, then Wigginton should forever be regarded as the Human Four-Car Pileup.

Wow.....just....wow.

Just ask catcher Koyie Hill, who suffered a broken ankle while being steamrolled by Wigginton, or Yadier Molina, whose cage was similarly rattled. Wigginton isn't the most skilled or graceful athlete. But he's a grunting, snorting, collision-inducing machine.

So he's basically Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor from "Home Improvement" in baseball player form. Great. The fact that Wigginton crashed into 2 catchers and is being honored in an article for it does wonders to show how useful the article is.

Aaron Rowand, Phillies center fielder

Not Darin Erstad!?!?!!? I mean, good choice and all, but come on! Erstad was a football player too, ya know. As promised, here's your Morganesque lecture.

I'm not sure how I feel about Jerry Crasnick as a sportswriter, because I don't see him write everyday. He isn't very consistent in his views, and I think he would become a good writer if he learned to be more consistent. He's just looking for another good idea coupled with a good analogy. If he gets those, then maybe he'll be a contender. But it's too early to tell.

Chicago general manager Kenny Williams, a former major league outfielder, describes Rowand as tough in every conceivable way. "And I don't toss out that compliment lightly," said Williams

Rowand would prefer the fences were made of barbed wire. He brushes his teeth with a cactus, he bites the heads off of rattlesnakes, he's Chuck Norris with a glove!

One more Erstad-related blip from this column. The winner for pitcher was a tie between Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz.

Glavine, a former high school hockey star in Massachusetts, has thrown 4,300 innings without a disabled list appearance.

Who would have thought that there would be an article about hard-nosed baseball players, a college football player, and a high school hockey star without mention of Erstad's name.

San Diego reliever Doug Brocail, who came back to pitch in 2006 after two angioplasties in four months, also received several mentions.

"Brocail is the guy I'm avoiding if a brawl breaks out, because of his mental stability combined with his toughness," said Padres infielder Geoff Blum. "Oh yeah -- he's had two stents put in his heart."

He's basically the image of tough in a nutshell. Ray Lewis, Hulk Hogan, Russell Crowe, the Crocodile Hunter, Brocail.

Next week on Crasnick's starting 9: The 9 most dependable guys to sacrifice bunt a guy from 2nd to 3rd, coupled with a ton of bullshit reasons, backed by quotes from whoever Crasnick has talked to recently and weighted by whatever Crasnick has seen recently.

hands down, best article ever

it's not even close. it's like comparing "dirty work" to other comedies from the late 90s. it's like comparing charlie weis to other girthy college football coaches. it's like comparing something that's really awesome to some other stuff that sucks in comparison. you'll see what i mean by all this hype, as soon as you read resident espn outdoorsman jeff mckinnis's article about quite possibly the most dominant athlete in any sport, ever. i'm honestly embarrassed that i'm taking the time to make fun of this article... i just can't help myself.

Raise an eyebrow toward KVD
Is the Sooner Run champion possibly the best ever — in any sport?

never heard of KVD? he's kevin vandam, and he's a professional... bass fisherman. that's right. i don't want to waste my time, or anyone else's, by getting into a lengthy discussion about what is or is not a sport. nascar? bowling? poker? all receive major airtime on "sports" tv networks. all are debatably un-sporty, at least when compared to baseball or hockey or boxing. but fishing? really? what percentage of one's ability to fish well is function of athleticism, and what percentage is a function is fine tuned skill? if it's not a 0/100 split, it's damn close. and there are literally thousands of competitive activities out there that share that same 0/100 split. many of them are not sports. that's all i'm saying.

If this article gets no further than the core fishing fans, then I'm only preaching to the choir.

While I hope the choir enjoys it, I'm really hoping that someone else out there stumbles across it, and it raises at least one eyebrow. With that said, let me assure you that I'm not a writer, I'm just a guy with some thoughts about professional bass fishing that I just have to spout off about.

both my eyebrows are completely unraised as of right now. but i suppose that could change. spout away, jeff.

I am an absolute sports nut. I drive to work every morning with "Mike & Mike" on the radio, and ESPNews is on my TV all day, with its lower right-hand corner giving me "breaking news" as it happens in the sports world. Yes, I know I need to get a life.

I'm pretty smart about my sports, and I know that the reality is bass fishing will never be a major sport, but it absolutely can become super strong in the "niche" category if for no other reason than for the amount of people across the nation who play the game.

i'm going to go waaaaaaaaay out on a limb and say kevin tragically overestimates the number of americans who "play" bass fishing. do you think more people fish than bowl? than play poker? than play pool? i'm not a fisherman myself, nor did i have any as friends growing up, but if you put a gun to my head and made me guess fishing's place in that hierarchy (with pool, bowling, poker, and other "fringe sports" that get tv time) among the american public, i'd have to put it dead last. furthermore, in terms of enjoyability, fishing seems to be a highly personal kind of thing. i think you can get a certain level of enjoyment from watching an amazing bowler finish off a 285 game, or watching that crazy looking asian lady sink a ridiculous 4 ball combo (everyone knows who i'm talking about, right? that lady is ALWAYS playing whenever womens pool is on). but watching someone fish... i mean, how do you enjoy that? the weigh-ins might be somewhat interesting, but as for the competition as a whole, i'm postulating that fishing is crappy television. even if you yourself love to fish, i can't see how you'd get any enjoyment out of watching it.

ok enough stupid analysis of fishing. let's just allow mckinnis to go ahead and say a lot of hilariously outrageous stuff about fishing. that was, after all, why i made this post in the first place and hyped it up so much in my intro.

One more thing before I get to the point. If the sports world knew how hard it is to excel as a professional bass fisherman, these writings would be more impressive. If you had any idea how hard these guys practice in all weather conditions, how hard they compete in all weather conditions, you would be amazed.

if i knew how to insert an mp3 of a sitcom laugh track that played immediately after you read that, i would do so. seriously- these guys MAKE THEIR LIVING CATCHING FISH. you have no idea how hard that is.

If you just had a clue of the hand-eye coordination, the decision making, the stamina and the vision and instincts these bass pros are blessed with, you would stop thinking about Jason Giambi and his steroid issues at least for a few minutes.

the laugh track i was talking about would continue for a while here, as well.

as a side note, i have this friend that's effing ridiculous at guitar hero II on playstation. should he get some recognition for that? you have no idea how amazing his hand-eye coordination, decision making, stamina, vision, and instincts are.

Very few people sense those things, so outside of the "choir," I'll be viewed as just another bass nutt. Here it goes anyway.

Bass fishing is not the next NASCAR because we don't get 100,000 people to our weigh-ins.

bass fishing is not the next nascar because people would rather watch cars drive 180 mph and crash into each other than watch some dude sit in a boat and fish.

Kevin VanDam is not exactly the Tiger Woods of the sport. No disrespect to Tiger, but KVD dominates more, in a more demanding sport.

i cannot put into words how funny that sounds. i'm not saying that i know, 100% objectively, that pro golf is more demanding than pro fishing. what i am saying is- that last sentence is hilarious.

Wow! Here we go. Kevin VanDam is the point of this outburst.

Why isn't KVD ever in that "breaking news" box on ESPNNews?

i'm having a hard time coming up for an answer to this question; every time i try to ponder it, "turkey in the straw" and "dueling banjos" just keep playing on repeat in my brain.

Actually, I know. It's because it's just not on anyone's radar.

But why isn't it?

I know that answer as well. Most people just don't understand what KVD is accomplishing. In the world of professional bass fishing, most competitors strive for good finishes and maybe one win every 5 years. I'm betting that professional golf is about the same.

rafael nadal recently set an all-time record by winning like 80 straight tennis matches and 12 straight tournaments on clay, and most people didn't hear about that. why? because people weren't aware of it? the executives at the major sports news outlets had no idea that it had happened? false. because no one really gives a shit about tennis, thus it's not worth those networks' airtime and print space to talk about it. now, take this concept that the sports media doesn't really cover much tennis, and extend it to fishing...

Well, KVD has won two out of the last three Bassmaster Elite Series events, and please be aware that the field he competes against is hands down the strongest there has ever been. It's the big leagues of bass fishing.

"the big leagues of bass fishing" sounds like "the big leagues of pogo stick jumping" or "the big leagues of juggling".

Then there's winning a Bassmaster major, which for an angler's career can compare to a golfer winning one of its majors.

Two years ago, KVD won three out of the four major tournaments. When I think about that, I realize it's unfathomable. Can't be done. Where in the world is a Sports Illustrated writer? How do all the bass feats things go unnoticed?

how indeed! i'm dying here. is this guy serious? the further i go into this article, the more i keep checking my calendar to make sure it's not april 1st. also, tiger woods won 4 majors in a row in 2000-2001.

When an NFL team wins a Super Bowl one time, it's in the mind of a sports fan, forever. Mr. VanDam has won the bass fishing Super Bowl (Bassmaster Classic) twice in recent years. So you'd think someone from Fox's Best Damn Sports Show Period would be all over that.

seriously, mckinnis, i'm at work here. you're going to get me in trouble. people are giving me looks. of course, the irony here is that BDSSP (as those of us in the know refer to it) is so dumb, i wouldn't put it past them to report on fishing.

Take KVD out of the mix and I could make the statement that bass fishing, unlike other sports, can't be dominated because no other sport deals with a live, unpredictable creature — the bass. Kevin is dominating it, though. He is doing the unthinkable. He's defeating Mother Nature.

just like that british guy with the show on discovery channel about surviving ridiculous situations in the wild does. the difference- the british guy is entertaining to watch.

Now, you might be wondering, what difference does all this make to me? Well I guess my motives are selfish because I'm obsessed with elevating the sport of bass fishing. The quicker everyone sees that we have, dare I say it, a freak of nature on our hands, the sooner and stronger the spotlight will hit this very unique and special sport.

jai alai is a very unique and special sport. i don't think they're going to be attracting any spotlight anytime soon, and they're definitely in line in front of fishing in my book.

KVD has held up the winner's trophy 13 times in his young career and is by far the leading money winner in Bassmaster history with $2.5 million, and I could continue listing his accomplishments, but I won't. I'm stopping right here.

i'm sure kevin appreciates that. actually, i just thought about him sitting at a computer reading this article and just being really embarrassed by the hyperbole. that would be great. if he has a website, i'd love for him to release a statement on it along the lines of:

"sorry some of you read that outrageous piece on espn.com about me. i promise you, i don't take myself that seriously. i'm great at fishing and i enjoy my life, but i try to keep it all in perspective. also, i have never given nor will ever give an interview to jeff mckinnis because he's insane."

I could also tell you why I think he's reaching these heights, but I'm going to leave that to someone else. I will say, don't believe the "cape and phone booth story," though.

thank you jeff. i will be sure not to confuse kevin vandam, real life pro fisher, with superman, fictional character, no matter how many people insist they acquire their prowess the same way.

No, the why and how is not important to me. That he's doing it right before everyone's eyes is important to me.

Kevin VanDam is a young, clean cut gentleman, who is loved and respected by all his competitors. He's extremely smart about life and sees the big picture when it comes to his sport of bass fishing.

the big picture hopefully being- "man, i can't believe i make my living catching fish while wearing a jacket with 350 different corporate logos on it. this is awesome."

To top it all off, he's blessed with a wonderful family. Kevin and his wife Sherry have twin sons, and like most bass pros, struggle with being away most of the time.

they also deal with the potential danger of kevin one day being tricked into going on an ill-fated fishing trip with roy scheider, richard dreyfus, and robert shaw in pursuit of a gigantic shark.

Say this is starting to sound like I'm after the job of being KVD's agent, doesn't it? No way! I just want to see the Bassmaster Elite Series advance one more step, which can happen if the sports world gets a feel for the path this talented angler is traveling right now.

So, hey USAToday! Come on Greeney and Golic (Mike & Mike in the Morning). What do you say People Magazine? This is possibly the most dominating competitor that any sport has ever seen.

i'm speechless.

Someone please show and tell us what KVD is all about. Raise at least one eyebrow.

the answer, from everyone except people who already know about and love fishing: no.