Headline Potpourri

It's been a while since I have written here consistently and I make no promise that I will start to again now, but I do like spouting off about things and pretending that people are reading it and I am influencing the masses (even though I can look at the Google analytics and see that usually only 4 people read anything on here...which just tells me that my mom must log in from different computers).

So here's my scattershot look at the sports world these days.

Omar Minaya needs to be fired. I am pretty sure that his main qualification when he was hired was being a life-long Mets fan. Well, I want the job then. I can identify the highest profile star free agent and sign a huge check to bring him in. I can misidentify the abundant mid-level talent that actually wins ball games. I can sign over-the-hill stars in a transparent attempt to sell tickets. I can trade away young talent without having any real sense of if they'll be any good or not. I can sign and resign bad pitchers to hugely overvalued contracts, while passing on others that would have been cheaper and more effective.

According to a blog on the MLB.com network, Joel Pineiro was all set to sign with the Mets this offseason.  He is close friends with Alex Cora, who told him that Minaya had said they were gonna get it done.  Pieneiro was excited.  Then Minaya settled on the same crap that had lost nearly 100 games last year and Pineiro eventually signed with the Angels for just $1 million more than the Mets initial low-ball offer.  If you're wondering, last year Pineiro had his best year as a full-time starter with a 3.49 ERA and 15 wins.  His ERA is 2.77 this year, including dominating the Yankees in New York yesterday.  Good call Omar. 

Jerry Manuel also needs to be fired. He over-manages the bullpen to the point where most games are unwatchable because of the constant pitching changes. And this makes all of the pitchers tired because they all warm-up every day and most pitch every day, so mid-way through the season, all of them are fatigued. He over-manages the lineup to the point where no one knows exactly what his role is. If Jose Reyes is your 3-man, put him there and shut up about it. If not, don't...and shut up about it. If Angel Pagan is your centerfielder until Carlos Beltran comes back, then put him out there and let him settle in. If you are trying to find extra time for Gary Matthews, Jr. so you can trade him when Beltran returns, then do it and leave him in there so he can settle in. Set a lineup and stick with it. One bad offensive day doesn't mean you blow the whole thing up and start over. But two years of the same crap not working over and over, does mean to start over.

And Gary Matthews, Jr., you are 36 years old. Drop the "Jr."

Oliver Perez needs to be released. Damn the contract. There must be any number of pitchers available (Pedro Martinez, Jerrod Washburn, any minor leaguer) who can come in and throw a great 4 innings here and there, and then give up 5 runs and 6 walks in an inning here and there. Screw this guy. He stunk when we signed him. He stunk under the last pitching coach. He stinks under this pitching coach. Stop stroking his ego and trying to ease his psyche so he can find the freaking strike zone. Let him use the money you're paying to go to Fiji and hire a sports psychologist and figure it out on his own. There's no reason he needs to parade out there every five days like an albatross around the necks of your fans and the rest of the team just so we can figure out if he's still an overvalued lunatic. (Note: This program does not allow for photo captions, but the one above would have been, "Ctrl-Z".)

John Maine...you're next. Quit screwing around.

Sharks fans: your mascot has one syllable. Luckily the convention of sports fans has standard crowd-roaring cheers for just such a situation. And they have other cheers for two syllable mascots. Stop using the wrong one. "Let's go Sharks! - Let's go Sharks!" Memorize and repeat. You've watched too many Yankees and Red Sox games on ESPN (though that is all they show, so I can't blame you) and are trying to make "Sharks" a two-syllable word. Stop it. "Let's go Sha-arks." I can't believe I have to listen to that for at least 1 more home game, possibly as many as 15 more times this postseason.

Sharks players: What the hell? How many former Stanley Cup winners and Olympic Gold medal winners do you need to join you before you stop being choke artists?

Ben Roethlisberger is an idiot. Can we move on though? He didn't get drunk and crash his $200,000 car into a pedestrian. He didn't run a dog-fighting ring. He didn't shoot himself in the leg in a nightclub. He just keeps sleeping with the wrong women, once he crashed a motorcycle, and he has a really bad barber. If he's ever convicted of rape, then I will change my story here. But for now, he is a really rich, kinda fat, kinda ugly 28-year-old dude who likes going to bars and hooking up with women.

Elin Woods is allegedly pissed at Tiger for playing in the Masters just 5 months after their marriage blew up. Not that Tiger has to work, given his financial success, but golf is his job. I think 5 months off is a reasonable amount of time off from work before restarting some normalcy to life without being callous. In the real world, people go back to work the next day after catastrophe hits. That said, she should be pissed (and allegedly is) about the Nike commercial where they spliced together things his dad said into some kind of eerie, post-mortem, lecture to Tiger about being a scumbag. It is disgusting, shameful and sad. From Nike's point of view, what was the purpose of this: "We will get unrelated statement made by his dead father, who he was really close to, and chop it up so it sounds like he is scolding Tiger. And this will make people want to buy shoes." Are they really exploiting his infidelity as an avenue for sales? It's one thing to keep him as a spokesman since he is still a great athlete, even if he's a scummy person. But it is another to advertise his scumminess.  And he signed off on it.  Oh, and he had sex with all those skanks.  Screw the pre-nup saying you have to be married for a certain amount of time, show him that at least you can't be bought. 

Can we stop looking at Tiger's father as some kind of model for all parents? He raised a son who is arrogant, petulant, rude, condescending, and adulterous. During the US Open this year, which is always on Fathers' Day weekend, I hope I don't have to hear about what a wonderful man it was that raised and was so close to this huge asshole. He may have been a good guy, and maybe all these problems with Tiger are not his fault. But as a former teacher, I often saw that if a kid was a good kid, you saw why when you met his parents. And visa versa.

It took Milton Bradley 5 games to have a blow-up on his new team. And this is after being fired from his last team for having blow-ups all the time. Which is after a litany of blow-ups throughout his career despite his consistent insistence that it's never his fault. Newsflash Milton: opposing sports fan heckle. Especially those in cities where you formerly played. Especially when you had a huge contract and stunk and got run out of town because of behavior problems. So at this point, I am starting to think it isn't Bradley's fault. It's the teams that keep hiring him.

Phil Jackson just criticized NBA referees for the preferential treatment that Kevin Durant gets. I'm sure this blatantly transparent and pathetic whining has nothing to do with the fact that Jackson's Lakers are playing Durant's Supersonics in the playoffs this week. I am sure Jackson would have spoken out about this had the Lakers not been playing the Sonics. And I am sure that Jackson is aware of the fact that his 10 championships are partially a result of the fact that Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant have always gotten better preferential treatment from refs than Tiger Woods would get at the Bunny Ranch. NBA officiating is a joke, Phil. If you score 20+ points per game, or get 15+ rebounds, you get any call you want. It doesn't matter who you are, just that you're somebody.

I know they're not the Supersonics anymore, I just still can't believe it. And Jim Britt deserved better, so that's for him. (By the way Jim, sorry about Milton Bradley being insane. Who saw that coming?)

I went to the Giants-Pirates game yesterday and saw what I think was my first inside-the-park homerun. I have a vague sense that I saw someone hit one at a Padre game at the Murph when I was in college, but I can't quite place it. Eric Young?  I think it was a Rockie.  In any case, this one yesterday was awesome and Aubrey Huff probably hopes he never gets a funny bounce like that again. He looked like the only way he was gonna make it home was on a gurney.

In related news, I rode my bike to the game. This is significant for a number of reasons. One: it's awesome. Two: I was not worried about my bike being stolen or myself being stabbed at any point before during or after the game. Maybe moving away from LA wasn't so bad. I've been to two games at AT&T Park now this season. 0 waves. 0 beach balls. 0 fights. 0 drinks/food thrown at opposing fans. 1 Braves fan in a Chipper Jones jersey in the front row who spent most of the game facing the crowd with a smug look on his face and his arms out in a "That's right, we're winning, what are you gonna do about it?" posture who deserved drinks and food thrown at him, then a fight, but got none. 0 violent incidents outside the stadium.

I have eye glasses but I don't wear them very much, though I should. Last night I was sitting pretty far from the TV watching the Sharks-Avs game and had a hard time spotting the puck. There is obviously an easy way to remedy this situation for the Kings-Canucks game tonight. I need a bigger TV.

Fantasy baseball is frustrating for a lot of reasons but here are two examples from this past week: The Braves got shelled but I couldn't fully enjoy it because I had their pitcher, Jair Jurrjens, on my team. Then the next day, the Mets got shelled even worse by the Rockies. But at least I have one of the Rockies' big hitters on my team so I benefitted there, right? Nope. He had the night off.

Tracy McGrady made the announcement today that he intends to retire if he cannot regain his form. Thanks for the update, Tracy. I think I speak for most fans, and probably most GMs when I say, Tracy McGrady is still in the league?

So Many Stories, So Little Time To Write

A week's worth of headlines rolled into one brilliant compilation:

Alex Rodriguez Is A Liar, And Not A Very Creative One!
So pretty much everyone has said that the "I didn't know what I was taking" line is a load of crap despite that every athlete caught doping seems to use it. But not only that, apparently the drug that Aroid claims to have taken without his own knowledge would not have tested positive for the two drugs that he tested positive for. And it is also not for sale in the Dominican Republic - he claimed his cousin bought it for him there. But at least his Valentine's Day-week fall-guy was his cousin and not his wife like Roger Clemens. Next excuse?

Mets Dominate Fantasy Drafts
The Mets have two players (Jose Reyes and David Wright) ranked 4th and 5th in Yahoo!'s fantasy pre-rankings and another two (Johan Santana and Carlos Beltran) ranked 17th and 19th. So with four of the most productive or valuable players in the game, and Daniel Murphy being everyone's late-round sleeper (I hope no one in my league is reading this), how have they not won a playoff game in three years?

Dodgers Fans Actually Listen To Tommy Lasorda
Last week before heading to Spring Training in Arizona, thus officially and finally driving a stake into the hearts of old-time Dodger fans everywhere, Tommy Lasorda actually said that he is not worried about the team signing Manny Ramirez and that they'd be fine without him. Apparently he did not watch the first 100 games last season. Staggeringly, 15% of Dodger fans are exactly as dumb as Lasorda takes them for and apparently agree with the fat bastard, based on a poll I posted on CBS2.com and KCAL9.com last week.

Tour Of California Races Down The Coast
Americans are dominating the nations largest cycling race, with Levi Leipheimer, David Zabriskie, Lance Armstrong and Chris Horner in 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th respectively. Thus far most riders have been content to stay in the peloton (aka pack) and just wind up with the same time as the leader, but Friday is the individual time trial where each rider takes off on the 15 mile sprint course on his own and races only the clock. There could potentially be a massive change in the standings, which have been basically unchanged since the first day of the Tour last weekend. Thus far, Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton have been inconsequential in the overall standings, but neither has nearly the support that those other four Americans have, and Landis was a phenomenal time trialist before his fall from grace and hip replacement. The Tour comes to L.A. Saturday, and should pass my parents' house between 1-2 p.m. on its way to the Rose Bowl. How pissed are the French going to be if Americans get 2 or more podium places in the Tour de France?

David Beckham May Return To Save American Soccer After All
Beckham was going to make soccer relevant in American when he signed with the Galaxy two years ago. After one injury plagued season and one season with the worst record in the league, the sport had vaulted up into the top 10 sports in the U.S. trailing only football, baseball, basketball, car racing*, hockey, Guitar Hero, Mariokart, basket weaving* and soap carving*. Last week it looked like an Italian team and Beckham had arrogantly decided that his contract here was irrelevant and he should just leave. To their credit, the Galaxy told the Italian team to screw themselves and wouldn't let their star go. Supposedly the Italians are planning to sweeten the deal to get Beckham out, but for now he is still back to save soccer once more.

*-not a sport

The Clippers Are Bad, I Mean Really Bad
On paper, this is clearly a playoff team: Baron Davis, Zach Randolph, Eric Gordon, Al Thornton, Marcus Camby, Chris Kaman and Ricky Davis are a solid first seven and they have some decent backups well. Injuries and the fact that their jerseys say "Clippers" on them have cursed them however. How bad are they? Over their last 15 games, they have allowed 113 points per game. and only kept opponents under 100 seven times in the last two months. And Mike Dunleavy has two jobs and I don't.

Suns Didn't Trade Stoudamire But Lost Him Anyway
Amare Stoudamire, rumored to be traded to every team in the NBA, 11 NFL teams, 5 MLB teams, and bridge club, didn't get traded as the NBA trade deadline passed. In fact Rafer Alston was the biggest name to move. Now one day later, the Sun found out they have lost Stoudamire for 8 weeks due to a detached retina. As bad as I feel for the Suns and for Stoudamire himself of course, I cannot help but think about Kenny from Out of Sight and how he had to retire from boxing because he had his retina detached two times. Then I think of Kenny tussling with Toughy and Moselle telling Karen Cisco that if she sees Snoopy Miller to tell him that she needs grocery money and the dog got run over. I love that movie.

NFL Combine Starts
All of the NFL Mock-Drafts that have been published to this point are hereby rendered irrelevant, begging the question of why those writers ever put their names to those admittedly inaccurate rankings in the first place. So who will go #1? Not Andre Smith who decided not to come to the combine apparently because he has not been working out and didn't want to show off all of his new rolls (he's 330+ when in shape). He admitted that he hasn't worked out in three or four weeks and wants to get his "numbers down" before running his 6.8 40. Mark Sanchez improved his stock by signing up to do all the throwing drills, which most quarterbacks apparently don't do. Why do they have this combine if no one goes to it? Anyway, Sanchez's decision to go through all the drills shows he is willing to put out effort and be coached. The trouble is, the drills will likely show he is not a very good quarterback. Pick your poison - spoiled reputation but a top 10 pick, or nice guy reputation and a 2nd round pick.

NBA Dunk Contest Won On A Dunk You've Seen 100 Times
Nate Robinson won the NBA Dunk Contest by jumping over a guy and dunking. In other news, the set set in the west that evening. But I suppose it is better than Dwight Howard winning last year's dunk contest by successfully completing a layup, but not a dunk.

Aikman Award: Color Commentary Of The Week
"Every time UCLA gets up by 7, or 8, or 9, Washington makes a big basket to get it back to a one possession game."--UCLA Basketball announcer Don MacLean, who has to be checked every 3-4 minutes for a pulse. Apparently University of Washington players have figured out how to make a six-point basket, which could really catch on.

Rivalry Week Hasn't Exactly Been What You'd Call Riveting

When ESPN calls it “Rivalry Week” I definitely feel that that means there will be a few larger-than-normal matchups and that I will be spending a lot more time than normal watching sports. So what happened this week?

Sure Duke hosted North Carolina on ESPN and USA hosted Mexico in soccer Wednesday night (two of the Best Rivalries In Sports that I named last February on CBS2.com – I will update that list here soon). But other than that, what big rivalries are there?

Louisville vs. Notre Dame and UCLA vs. ASU are supposed to excite me? Besides being league opponents and being pretty good, are either of these games actual rivalries? Is this the best they could do? Michigan State vs. Michigan was a decent one on Tuesday, but did anyone outside of Michigan care?

And even UNC-Duke and USA-Mexico were both a little lackluster.

Watching basketball at Cameron Indoor is often worthwhile and watching UNC play there is nearly always worthwhile. But this one never really grabbed your attention and refused to let go. It was a game of spectacular streaks (UNC’s red-hot start and then Duke’s I-wonder-if-they’re-cheating-somehow answer from behind the arc). But in the end, Carolina just out-ran Duke and slowly wore them down. No big shot, no real drama down the stretch. Great basketball, but nothing for the history books.

USA vs. Mexico was similar. The U.S. team was just better. They controlled the time of possession and wore down the Mexicans methodically. Mexico had a few decent chances to get a dumb-luck goal and steal a tie (exactly why soccer blows), but ultimately there was very little drama. There wasn’t even any of the normal US-Mexico unbridled hatred. Sure, the Mexican captain made one half-assed dirty play to kick our goalie and got red carded, but that was it. It was very hard to hate Mexico and normally that is really easy. They didn’t go for cheap shots and they didn’t take dives on every other play. In fact an American (Dempsey) was the most obnoxious player on the field. There weren’t even any really good soccer hairdos. Boring.

Is the Daytona 500 supposed to fire me up for the rest of the week? It isn’t even a sport and the only story I have even heard coming out of this is that Jimmie Johnson is going to drive without a brace on his injured finger. Really? Unless you have a broken leg, a broken arm, or a bladder problem, there really is no physical problem that a racecar driver should complain about.

The rivalry between Elgin Baylor and reality is a decent one. Right now, the two are set very far apart from one another. Seriously Elgin, we all appreciate what you did as a player (on and off the court). We all think that your firing was a little unceremonious. But ageism? Racism? You were underpaid during your tenure? How many winning season did the Clippers have in your 22 years? How many sub 30-win seasons? They had more sub-20 win seasons play playoff appearances. You should have been fired years before you were and thus were overpaid in that you even had the job!

Brett Favre vs. Retirement has been quite a rivalry over the past four years. It appears that while Brett was 2-0-1 going into this year, but retirement finally got a win. Last year he retired and unretired, so that counted as the tie.

Manny Ramirez vs. the Dodgers is a good rivalry playing out this week (though that will likely not go final by week’s end). For a while now it had begun to look like Manny had waited himself into a shorter, smaller contract but after Bobby Abreu and Adam Dunn have now both signed elsewhere and the Dodgers are left with just one slugger on the market, it looks like Manny may get closer to what he wanted all along. Was this Scott “Satan” Boras’ plan all along?

Speaking of Manny, Tommy Lasorda said yesterday that the Dodgers will be fine with or without him. I would like to follow this up with a snappy, funny comment, but it is pretty funny in and of itself, so I will leave it alone.

The L.A. Galaxy vs. Some Team In Europe. I don't really know what team David Beckham wants to play for because it is soccer and I can't believe I am bringing up two soccer stories in one post. Anyway, apparently he can't handle playing in the U.S. and wants to go back to play in Europe. What will American sports do without him?

Adam Morrison vs. Vladimir Radmanovic. A showdown for the ages. I think you have to say that Morrison wins this matchup because he was traded from basketball purgatory to the best team in the league on the virtue of being a terrible defender and an average shooter.

Perhaps the rivalry coming this week that will affect the most people for the longest period of time is Fantasy Baseball vs. Free Time. With pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training, many fantasy sites have opened for business and I for one have already opened my league. I opened up the league within hours of Yahoo!’s page going active and my league is #46065. I don’t know if that started at #0 or not, but either way, this amount of man-hours spent researching can’t be good for the economy.

NBA First Round Preview

The NBA Playoff match ups are finally ready for consumption. If I, or anyone else, cared about the Eastern Conference until the Pistons-Celtics series, I would discuss those series as well. But I don't, and neither does anyone but the family members of the players. So here is my flawless prognostication of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs:

1 Lakers vs. 8 Nuggets: I mentioned yesterday that this is the only match up in the West that stinks. The Lakers won't roll over the Nuggets, but the Nuggets will just find ways to lose. Traveling to Denver is tough because of the altitude and that will give them an advantage at home, but considering that the only Los Angeles basketball team to win a playoff series since Shaq emigrated was the Clippers, Kobe Bryant will make sure the Lakers win this one. And Denver can't play defense, so they can't stop the one-man Bryant show. Lakers in 6 (and that is being charitable to the Nuggets).

2 Hornets vs. 7 Mavericks: This is a tricky series because the Hornets have been front-runners for a long time this year and deserve the easy first round series, but there is no easy first round series, and they have absolutely zero playoff experience anyway. On the other side, you have Jason Kidd who may or may not be really good and Dirk Nowitski who is the same, but being a European, he will fold under pressure (born too close to France). If the Mavs can get the ball out of Chris Paul's hands like they did Wednesday night, the Hornets are screwed. And that is all the series comes down to. Defend Paul, Mavs win. If not, Hornets win. No way they can keep him down for four straight. Hornets in 7. Wouldn't it be great if Byron Scott then went and reminded Jason Kidd that it was Kidd who got Scott fired from New Jersey?

3 Spurs vs. 6 Suns: Is this the best first round match up in history? No question this series goes 7 games. Shaq and the Suns have been playing better and better as their season progressed, and the Spurs have been slowed a bit in the last weeks with Manu Ginobili hurt. However, I think if you give Tim Duncan seven times to find a way to beat someone, he will do it at least four of those seven times, every time, every opponent. I do not understand why Tony Parker is not subject to the European=soft equation, but somehow he escaped. Maybe Eva's Latin fire rubbed off on him. Spurs in 7 in a spectacular series. How sad that Shaq won't go further than Kobe again.

4 Jazz vs. 5 Rockets: The Rockets avoid a nightmarish road series in Utah because of an unusual rule change from a few years ago. Despite the Jazz being the higher seed, Houston has a better record by 1 game, and thus is awarded home court for the series. Utah was 37-4 at home this year, one of the losses was to Houston (opening night - doesn't really count). However, the only reason the paper-thin Rockets are in this situation is a freakish 22-game win streak. Without the streak, they are barely over .500. Put plainly, they won't win a game on Utah, so the question is: Can the Rockets go 4-0 at home? The answer is no. Utah in 5.

For posterity's sake, I will call the Spurs over the Jazz in the West Finals and the Celts over the Spurs in the Finals.

Yesterday I experienced the worst fantasy baseball day of all time. I had five starting pitchers, but only four spots for them so I had to bench on of them or a closer (Wagner, Papelbon and Rivera). I figured the Mets would blow out the Nats, so I benched Wagner, thus assuring a save between the other two who played each other. My starters' lines: Chien-Ming Wang 4 IP-8 earned runs, Tim Hudson 3 IP-4 earned runs, C.C. Sabathia 4 IP-9 earned runs, James Shields 5 IP-6 earned runs, and John Maine 6.2 IP-2 earned runs and a win. My closers: 0 IP. And Wagner, who I benched, got a perfect inning save with 1 K. This is why I do not pay for these leagues.