bill simmons (shockingly!) is in the middle of a writing a pretty decent column- how will he screw it up?

we'll do this like a quiz. first go here and read all the way up until the part very close to the bottom that says "Rosie on FNL". go ahead, i give everything in the article up to that point my non-sarcastic seal of mild approval. it's a pretty good (if hyperbolic, but come on, this is simmons we're talking about here) article. but once you get there, stop! no peeking. there are 2 paragraphs left. how will simmons snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and turn this column into the kind of crap we're used to seeing from him?

a) by telling a story about j-bug, hench, the sports gal, and his daughter
b) by needlessly referencing the celtics
c) by needlessly referencing the patriots
d) by talking about "the karate kid" for some reason
e) by talking about the red sox/yankees, which would be acceptable since this is a "summer" article and all, but by doing so in such a douche-y and snively way as to ruin the point


think about it....



ok, did you guess? let's take a look-






Will things turn around? All I know is this: Back in '81 and '94, video games helped save me. Now Madden 2008 is saving me. After wrangling an advance PS3 copy last weekend, for the first time ever I didn't have to make shady trades to improve the Patriots offense; their roster was so loaded I just cued up Franchise mode, skipped through exhibition season and started things off with the Jets in Week 1.

For the first play, I had Brady wing a play-action bomb to Randy Moss, who hauled it in 50 yards downfield and zoomed down the sideline for six. Watching fake Moss celebrate with his fake Pats teammates, I found myself hoping the same play would work during the season. And when you think about it, that's what the summer should be about: hope.

what a giant turd of a conclusion. we get it, bill. you like the patriots. smooth segue there from talking about how great they're allegedly going to be (at this point, a completely cliched topic; has been since early june) to giving a pathetically generic overarching point that's supposed to somehow wrap up the article. so the answer was c. although, give me some credit, weren't all 5 of the options i gave you totally plausible? i bet hench is pissed he didn't make it into this article.

Quiz Time!

On my long way back from chris w's place to ol' Cincinnati today, I was listening to 700 WLW Reds radio's daily sports trivia game, and there was a great question posed by a listener about the 500-out club: seasons in which a player managed to get themselves out 500 times.

It's an interesting concept, I think - trying to find a player who made a ton of outs (bad) and yet managed to do it five times.

I was most amused because sports radio is usually a sea of garbage: jackasses ranting with uninformed opinions, and useless interviews with players and managers that are probably taped before the beginning of the year. Yet, in true blogosphere fashion, this interesting baseball tidbit gets on the air not because of good research and thought by a radio journalist, but rather because of the good research and thought by an anonymous baseball fan.

As for the question: write your guess in the comments section of this post, and the first to answer it correctly gets a buck from me, via PayPal. Also: no googling, and you only get one guess. Good luck, and here goes

Which player leads all major leaguers in seasons in which they made 500 outs with five?

a quick quiz: can you identify bad sportswriting?

im not even going to do any commentary on this article. im just going to link it. you read it, then check back here to take a very important test. i know this seems weird. just go along with it, because it will help you determine whether or not checking this blog more in the future is worth your time. here's the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/sports/baseball/27cheer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

ok, youre done reading? good. now answer these 2 questions. (no peeking at the answers printed below!)

1. on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest and meaning "totally awesome", how good is this article?
2. what was your first reaction to the article once you were done reading it?
a. that is absolutely terrible, why would an editor approve that?
b. are you sure this isnt from "the onion" or "sports pickle" or something?
c. this writer should be fired, and possibly legally restrained from being within 1000 feet of a media outlet's offices lest she somehow get another writing job and repeat this performance
d. i dont know, it wasnt that horrible... i mean, it didnt completely offend my intelligence



answers (i wish i knew how to make this appear upside down, that would be fun):

1: if you are not a yankee fan, the only acceptable answer is 1. if you are a yankee fan, ill let you get away with answering 2 because its been a frustrating season and you can relate to the author's sentiment. but no higher.
2: a, b, or c, preferably c.

if you did not answer both questions correctly, please close the browser window and never come back to this site. im not calling you dumb or anything, but clearly our perceptions of "good" and "bad" sportswriting are so diametrically opposed that theres no point in you reading what we write here.