Food Metaphors Remain

A slow day at work and I'm reading about some baseball goofiness--an article by ESPN.com's Sam Miller about position players pitching to pitchers hitting (bizarro world, eh?).  It's an amusing article. But the reason I am coming out of blogtirement is because of this paragraph:

If real baseball is like a really good salad, then does Hitter Pitching To Pitcher Hitting just resemble a sloppier, lower-quality salad? Or is it a total inversion, a bowl of globby ranch dressing sprinkled with lettuce shreds? Can you eat it?

Has anyone ever compared baseball to salad?  Is the world so health-conscious now that we choose salads for our metaphors? Can't we just choose baseball-related food metaphors--like WHAT IF YOU PUT THE HOT DOG ON THE KETCHUP WOULDNT THAT BE WEIRD.

It might be that baseball writers are getting better about obsessing over wins and batting average as the measures of pitchers and hitters, but boy let me tell you this is a food metaphor for the ages.

Shameless Homerism

The yearly posts about 'Is ____ a Hall of Famer?' are out. The results will be in January 6th. We've covered a bunch of these in the past, and they're usually good for a debate. But the purpose of this brief post is to link to an article supporting the candidacy of the second-most-famous baseball player named Barry in the 1990s.

Ladies and gentlemen, wearing #11 and captain of your Cincinnati Reds, Barry Larkin.



Given that, over the last few years, the Reds have been a much poorer baseball team than the favorite teams of the other writers on this blog (White Sox, Rockies, Cardinals, etc)... this is about all I can get excited about lately.

Just Bad Old Writing

Figurative language is a dangerous thing when employed by a man named Mark Sheldon. I know the Reds have been pretty bad since the ASG, but I wouldn't wish this sort of writing on any team except maybe the Cubs.

CINCINNATI -- With a day-night doubleheader looming for the Reds on Monday, manager Dusty Baker wanted to protect his bullpen like a lioness and her cubs or a college freshman and the last slice of pizza.

What?

I mean, I guess I understand the similes, but... what?

Unfortunately for Reds starter Bronson Arroyo, quality starts and victories are mixing like oil and water lately.

What?

Oh, I get it.

Horses Aren't People

Siblings carry Barbaro's legacy, capture imagination of fans

WILMINGTON, Del. — As the runaway leader galloped down the stretch at Delaware Park, the Barbaro nation roared again.

I didn't even know Barbaro nation existed. I hate teams/horses/countries that have followings called "nations".

This time, the cheers were for Nicanor. He is the oldest of three full brothers of Barbaro, the Thoroughbred star who grabbed the attention of horse racing fans and the sports world with his 2006 try for the Triple Crown, then touched hearts beyond the track with his fight for life following a leg fracture in the Preakness.

Touched hearts beyond the track? I'm pretty sure that nobody who wasn't already a horse racing fan had their heart touched.

After dominating the Kentucky Derby, Barbaro was 6-0 and favored in the Preakness. Before the first turn, he sustained a hind leg fracture. He was euthanized in January 2007 due to a foot condition called laminitis.

More like lame-initis.

Now fans who prayed for him and mourned his death are watching his siblings grow up via the Internet and the interstates — and looking for signs that there might be another great one.

It's like Barbaro was the messiah or something. These poor fans are such devoted fans, awaiting the consolation of the Triple Crown.

One fan drove from Bristol, Conn., on Wednesday to see Nicanor win by a mile (actually 15¼ lengths) at the same track where Barbaro won his first race.

The ghost of Barbaro lives on at the track, spurring his brother on to honor his memory.

"A 10-hour round trip to see a two-minute race. It was worth it 100%," said Gregory Jones, 42, noting he shares a March 15 birthday with Nicanor.

That's... awesome. Not only did he drive ten hours to watch a low-grade horse race, he proudly notes that he shares a birthday with... a horse.

Karen Line, 43, here from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., follows "every possible detail" about the brothers on Internet blogs.

dan-bob, 25, here from internet blogosphere, follows "every possible detail" about the Barbaro saga on internet sports news sites.

"We are hoping one of them will take the Triple Crown," she says.

"I am hoping that news stories about Barbaro keep coming out so I can spur Larry B's rage to new heights," he says.

Bloodlines are studied at the betting windows and valued on the breeding farms. Dynaformer, the stallion whose matings to La Ville Rouge produced Barbaro and his brothers, has a stud fee of $150,000 per live foal.

I'm glad all these fans are in it for the sentimental value of these inspiring horses, who fight against all odds to make their owners enough money to buy a yacht for their new yacht.

But Saturday's Preakness in Baltimore, the second leg of the Triple Crown, will be won at the finish line.

As opposed to all those races that were won at the starting gate.

The long road to get there is fraught with uncertainty, and family ties provide no guarantees. Like Barbaro, the brothers are colored bay with white markings on their foreheads. But how much they resemble Barbaro on the track remains to be seen.

These horses will have to overcome incredible odds, fighting for a chance at glory, much like human sports players have to. This is such an inspirational story!

Nicanor, a 3-year-old, hadn't won in three starts in his year of eligibility for the Triple Crown. Instead of getting ready for the Preakness, he was entered here in a maiden race for horses who had never won.

So all these blogo-fans of Barbaro should have known that Nicanor sucks at winning races... but, being true die-hard fans, they still root for him.

Roy and Gretchen Jackson, the couple who owned Barbaro and now own the siblings, say they won't saddle them with high expectations. Patience is the trademark of their trainer, Michael Matz, who also trained Barbaro.

Roy and Gretchen Jackson spend millions of dollars on horses. They're probably richer than Jesus. How nice of them not to "saddle" them with high expectations.

Says Roy: "It would be a miracle if we ever had another one like Barbaro."

What was so great about Barbaro anyways? Six horses in the last eleven years have won the first two legs of the the Triple Crown. When you compare Barbaro to them, considering that he only won the first race, Barbaro doesn't have a leg to stand on!

Well, he didn't have four legs to stand on after the Preakness.

Barbaro finished with $2.3 million in earnings at the track. Had he gone on to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, he might have earned millions more as a breeding stallion.

And Gretchen and Roy Jackson could have bought a new horse and put him on their yacht so they can watch horses race on their yacht.

For his win at Delaware Park, Nicanor earned a modest $39,750.

Damn, that's modest.

...

Brown says "Fans of Barbaro" now is an Internet community of 2,000-4,000. It is a platform for horse welfare causes, Barbaro's legacy and brothers.

I sure hope these million dollar horses can get someone to advocate for their welfare. I hope the media picks up on this and the whole public can really get behind the horse welfare movement so these million dollar horses can get their story told.

...

Jockey Rosie Napravnik after riding Nicanor: "He was just out there having fun. He looked like he was really the best horse in the race on paper. Once the gate opened, he outran everybody."

Rosie, the horse was just out there having fun? Hey - why didn't anybody ask Nicanor if he was having fun? Oh, right, he's a fucking horse and can't talk.

Jackson says it's "completely" up to Matz whether to enter Nicanor in the third leg of the Triple, Crown, the Belmont Stakes on June 6. So might Matz look to the Belmont?

Too bad it's not up to Nicanor. He's just having fun.

"I would say 99.9 (%) that he's not going to run in the Belmont," he says.

Makes sense, 'cause he sucks at winning races.

His fans will be there if he runs. On Wednesday, Ann Pournaras, 55, came here from Fleming, N.J., to see one of the brothers she follows on the blogs.

On Saturday, dan-bob, 25, didn't have anything better to do than make fun of middle-aged horse racing fans on his blog.

"I hope one is great," she said, while holding a winning $50 ticket on Nicanor.

"I hope my parents don't kick me out of the basement," he said, while holding a bag of Cheetos.

Matz will be looking for signs of whether Lentenor is ready for the "stresses and the pressures and the distractions" of the track.

Horse racing: 90% mental. The other half is horse steroids.

"You wouldn't send a Little League baseball player to play in the majors until he's seasoned enough," Matz says.

"I wouldn't make serious comparisons between animals and people," dan-bob says.

The numbers are in the Jacksons' favor. In 2007, The Blood-Horse magazine analyzed the 11 Triple Crown winners and their 39 full siblings. Of the 39, seven (18%) won stakes races, the premium events. That's five times greater than the general rate.

Don't expect stats like this every horse racing post. Most of these posts only exist to make fun of horse racing.

"The full siblings of Barbaro have a better chance of being superior racehorses than the general population because Barbaro was a great horse," says Ernest Bailey, a geneticist at the University of Kentucky's Gluck Equine Research Center.

That seems like fallacious reasoning: the reason Barbaro's siblings are likely to be good horses isn't at all because Barbaro was a good horse, its because Barbaro's parents were good horses.

The Jacksons were in Louisville the weekend before the Derby for the unveiling of a Barbaro statue outside Gate 1 at Churchill Downs. Fans were there in force, wearing his blue and lime green colors. They cheered when the covering was removed from the bronze statue of Barbaro in full gallop. The day after Mine That Bird won the Derby, his team placed his mantle of roses on the railing around the statue. Roses later were given to fans.

Aww.

During Barbaro's battle for survival at the New Bolton Center in Pennsylvania, fans sent flowers and gifts and flooded the Jacksons with letters and poems wishing him well. That continues.

Poems?

"There's never a week goes by that we don't receive at least one or two communications from fans. Somebody just sent me a gold cross that they wanted to be buried with him," Gretchen says.

Awesome. Horse racing fans are so fucking legit, they mail gold crosses to absurdly rich owners hoping to get the cross interred with a horse that was cremated two years ago.

"That isn't possible (Barbaro's ashes are interred at the base of the statue) … but it's still so ongoing, the dedication of so many to him."

The Jacksons probably pawned the cross to buy more horses.

Says Roy, "For some reason, he just captured the interest of the public."

I wish my million-dollar investments captured the sentimental interest of the public.

Kathleen Anderson was veterinarian to Barbaro and now is in the same role with Nicanor and Lentenor at Fair Hill.

"I think everybody wants to see a fairytale ending," she says. " … And I think the hope is that Nicanor, Lentenor, one of the lineage will come up to his (Barbaro's) standard.

I think Larry B wants to see an ending involving a lot of dead horses.

And we never know until the story is over."

I think I know before the story is over, thanks to the foreshadowing of this article: Barbaro's brothers will lose a lot of races, horse racing fans will continue to do idiotic things, and Larry B will punch a lot of inanimate objects.

You Can Be an ESPN Personality While Stealing the Jokes of 20-Year Old Undergraduates

A recent Rick Reilly Blog post, which proves that you CAN just reprint stuff from a bunch of undergrads and put your name on it and make money from ESPN!

A few team names NOT featured in Reilly's post:

This Is Our Drinking Game
Four Cowboys and an Indian
Banana Munchers
Off Tha Heezy
Ryan Grant and A Bunch of Other Football Players
Don't Think About AJ Hawk
Kevin and the Timepieces
Club Sped
Rigor Is Gay
Timmy, Tommy, Tammy? Who's Wasted?
Harold Swanagan's Booty

No Frills--This is Simply a Poorly Written Article

Jeffri Chadiha tackles 5 running backs for whom 2008 will be a year of some note


Here goes:

1.Reggie Bush, New Orleans Saints: The hype machine for this guy has lost quite a bit of steam over the past year. What we learned about Bush in 2007 is that he's always going to be a talented open-field runner who will need a creative offensive mind to maximize his skills in the NFL. In other words, he'll never be an every-down back in this league. He proved that much when Deuce McAllister sustained another season-ending knee injury last season and Bush became an unreliable answer to that loss.

As a beleaguered Notre Dame fan, I have absolutely no problem with writers piling on Bush. As a matter of fact this isn't a particularly poor piece of analysis--especially when compared with what comes later--but this begins a spell of absolutisms that plague this article.

So 2007 taught us that Bush will NEVER BE AN EVERY-DOWN BACK in this league? Seriously? Not in a different offense? Not if he puts on weight? Not if he changes his running style?

I'm not high on Bush, and I think he's probably going to be a huge bust before all's said and done, but to say he'll never be an every-down back because of a poor sophomore year is silly. He doesn't lack speed, agility or toughness (remember when he came back to play after THIS:

)

Let's soften our absolutes, duder. Oh and one more thing:

Prediction: A scout once declared Bush a Marshall Faulk clone. He's starting to look more like the second coming of Eric Metcalf.

This is not a prediction.

This is one that gets my goat a little....perhaps because of homerism, but I like to think because of blatant absolutism:

2. Cedric Benson, Chicago Bears: Can he do anything more to taint his brief career with the Bears? It was bad enough that he'd been a fragile, inconsistent runner with a knack for vanishing in the biggest of moments over the past three seasons. But when you add his recent off-the-field trouble to the equation -- he's currently fighting misdemeanor charges of drunken boating and resisting arrest in Texas on May 3 -- it's apparent that this fellow doesn't have a clue.

Ok. Benson HAS been a huge problem for the Bears, and despite being a Bears fan, I don't particularly like him as a player, but because of an incident wherein most eyewitnesses say a sober Benson did nothing but cooperate with police only to have them manhandle and pepper spray him, he "doesn't have a clue"? I'm not saying Chadiha should assume Benson is innocent, but in a case where he's more likely to be innocent than guilty, perhaps we should lay off the "clueless" labels.

And here's his analysis of the situation:

The good news is he's dropped about eight to 10 pounds in a year that is critical to any future he might have with the Bears. The bad news is the weight loss really won't make a difference. The Bears already spent a second-round pick in this year's draft on another running back (Matt Forte) and that's ample evidence of the doubts they now have in a man who was supposed to be their workhorse.

Wow. Thorough.

"The good news: although your wife has been complaining that you spend too much time at your job, you've been making an effort to get home by five thirty every evening.

The bad news: Your effort to change doesn't matter. In four months she's going to fuck your adopted brother Charlie."

At least his prediction that "The Matt Forte era begins this fall" is actually a prediction.

Here's a good one:

3. Larry Johnson, Kansas City Chiefs: There are no questions about Johnson's ability; he's made the Pro Bowl in two of his three seasons as a full-time starter. However, there are plenty of reasons to wonder about the supporting cast that will surround him as he returns from a season-ending foot injury sustained midway through the 2007 campaign.

Brodie Croyle remains an unproven quarterback. There are currently no reliable receivers outside of wideout Dwayne Bowe and Pro Bowl tight end Tony Gonzalez.

Ok. I question how successful Johnson will be this year...but the last sentence of this excerpt is pretty silly. All he's got is Bowe and Gonzalez? You mean a perennial Pro-Bowl TE and a first round draft pick who had an awesome 2007? A TE and WR most teams would love to have? That's it?

4. Rudi Johnson, Cincinnati Bengals: He tried shedding weight last season. He tried changing his running style to become more elusive. He also discovered he'd made the dumbest decision in a career that had been pretty impressive until Johnson started eating like he was a contestant on "The Biggest Loser."

No problems here per se. He's right--Johnson should have stayed big. But this is a lame attempt to inject pop culture into an article. What's wrong with just giving in-depth analysis? Oh that's right--this article contains almost no analysis

Blah blah blah Thomas Jones will rush for the exact same amount of yards as last year but it "won't be as ugly", blah blah blah. Ugh. That's enough for now.....Like I said--not the world's most obnoxious article, but plenty blah. And this is the front page feature on espn's NFL page? Wonderful

Some Casual Announcements

As the title states, I'd like to announce a few news items that some of you may find interesting. No big deal. Ho hum. If you are shocked or amazed by any of these, please leave a comment expressing your feelings. None of them have links to the stories that would prove they are true because... um... well, don't worry about it. Just take my word for it- all of these are real! Promise. (I can't wait. This is going to be so funny.)

-Apparently the Mets have signed a new pitcher named Sidd Finch, who can throw a fastball at 168 mph. Good for them. If he stays healthy, I'd have to say this puts them a step above the Braves and Phillies in the NL East.

-Doctors in Toronto say that when they conducted their routine physical on David Eckstein after the Blue Jays signed him last offseason, it was discovered that he literally has the largest heart out of anyone on Earth. It's about four times larger than yours or mine. One of the side effects of this condition is having no skin pigment.

-I won't be picking on Bill Simmons anymore. I just realized how funny he is. And, it's like, he's so right about everything! It feels like he's my old buddy, you know, and he just happened to get a job as a sportswriter. Hooray for more articles about Boston teams. I have to admit, they're just more compelling than everyone else.

-It turns out, "Jemele Hill" is just a pseudonym. She's actually a racist white guy from Alabama, spewing his hateful ideas all over the internet under the guise of being an African-American woman.

-Jay Mariotti has been fired by the Chicago Sun-Times and ESPN.

-PNoles will be taking his place in both capacities. Congratulations PNoles.

Again, if you think any of these stories are unbelievable or amazing, be sure to leave a comment saying so. I think it's really important that you share your feelings about this. (Oh come on, just one person... please... please... I did a good enough job being subtle and believable, I'm pretty sure.)