Names of the Year

In honor of the Name of the Year Tournament, which is one of my favorite websites of all time, I have decided to come up with some names I think would be tournament worthy. Those in bold are real names.

Herschel Controversial
Schlomo Himmler
Monetary Christmas
Rich Poormansblood
Shaky Parkinson
Peter Rigglesdick
Valentino "Scooch" Pascucci (Why was/is Marlon Anderson a met when Scooch had to settle for Zephyrhood?)
Johan S. Burg
Pretoria A. Part-Hyde
Wenceslas Malady
Horatio Hammerfinger
Booker Woodfox (Creighton hoops)
Mervin McMervin
Remember Patience Whipple (I actually don't know if this is a real name or a fictional character, but I remember my sister having a book about a girl who comes over on the Mayflower with this name)
Francine Frogswallow
Percy Merciful
Dick Octagon
Santos de los Santos (NY-Penn Leauge player from a few years back)
Glasford Barnaby (Played baseball with him when I was 13 or 14)
Alabaster Black
Drake Rakish
Martin Luther ibn Faheed
Jatavius Hotnickels
Randall Cummings-Onurback
Oregon Riverford
Dingo Destitute
Foopa Cooper
Long Dong Gonzalez


You get the idea. I could really just think of names all day, but my ideas are running pretty thin.

David Wright, National Hero

That is all.

Well, actually no it isn't. Watching the US beat Puerto Rico got me thinking just how stupid this World Baseball Classic is. I was excited at the prospect of it a few weeks ago, but now that's it under way I am fully convinced that this whole thing is pointless. Mercy Rules and pitch counts = my 10 year-old Babe Ruth little league series. Also, isn't the US playing Puerto Rico kind of like the US playing Florida. Puerto Rico is not actually a country. I understand that they are an island and speak a different predominant language, but if the Netherlands can field a team the majority of which is from Curacao and Aruba, then why aren't there Puerto Ricans on the US team?

Anyway, I thought I'd put together a roster of some states that might be able to rival Puerto Rico.

Florida
C-Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Mike Napoli
1B-Casey Kotchman
2B-Rickie Weeks
3B-Chipper Jones
SS-Jeff Keppinger (bit of a stretch...SS is pretty thin)
CF-Rick Ankiel
RF-Ryan Ludwick
LF-Elijah Dukes
DH-Gary Sheffield
Bench: Outfield-Luke Scott, Denard Spann (or Lastings or Matt Joyce or Marlon Byrd); Infield-Howie Kendrick; Utility guy-Ryan Freel
Starting Rotation: Zack Greinke, Jesse Litsch, Brett Myers, Bronson Arroyo, Tim Wakefield
Bullpen: Scot Shields, Chris Ray, Scott Proctor, Chris Perez, Bobby Seay, Boof Bonser (as the swingman), Andrew Miller (I think he could be a good releiver on this team.

Anyway, there may be some guys I missed, but that seems like a pretty competitive team. (Conspicuously absent: David Eckstein, Brian Schneider)

California
C-Gerald Laird, Jason Kendall
1B-Adrian Gonzalez
2B-Chase Utley
3B-Evan Longoria
SS-Jimmy Rollins
CF-Jim Edmonds (for defensive purposes I guess)
LF-Ryan Braun
RF-Carlos Quentin
DH-Milton Bradley (or Jason Giambi)
Bench: Derrek Lee, Dustin Pedroia, Jermaine Dye, Troy Tulowtizki (over Michael Young), Randy Winn (or Xavier Nady)
Starting Rotation: C.C. Sabathia, Danny Haren, Ted Lilly, Aaron Harang, Kyle Lohse (or Randy Wolf)
Bullpen: Heath Bell, Brian Fuentes, Bobby Jenks, Troy Percival, Chad Qualls

That's a damn good team, even taking out some big names that couldn't make it. (Conspicuously absent: Darryl Kile, Cory Lidle, Joe Kennedy, Eric Byrnes)

I was gonna do Texas and maybe another state, but I'm bored of this now.

The worst year in sports ends...

...with a trip to the NIT.



Of course, by worst year in sports I mean worst year for dtro's teams in recent memory. And I'm also including the 08-09 Georgetown Hoyas among 2008 teams, because that's when their season started. However, if you want to count last year's Hoyas then a disappointing second round loss to a naked mole rat also fits in with the general pattern.

Let's review here: My favorite 4 sports in order are MLB baseball, NFL football, NCAA football, NCAA basketball. All other sports and leagues are pretty much pointless in my opinion.

1) The New York Mets of 2008 were not really collapsers, but a disappointing team nonetheless. And coming off 2007 and the 06 NLCS, it's not easy to be an optimistic Mets fan. Luckily, all Mets fans are sour-minded misanthropes, so the team fits our general outlook nicely.

2) The J-E-T-S were flying high for a minute before the reality that Brett Favre is old and sucks began to mainfest itself on the field. They were a true collapse and thoroughly infuriating.

3) Michigan Football suffered its worst season since the Rutherford Hayes administration or something. New coach Rich Rodriguez proved that recruiting and not necessarily coaching itself is his strong suit. The combined play of Nick Sheridan and Steven Threet was reminiscent of a back-alley abortion, and a loss to Toledo was probably very confusing and embarassing for LCT.

4) And here we are with the Georgetown Hoyas. The team started strong with a win over Memphis and only a loss to Tennessee prior to conference play. After they won at UConn to start the Big East schedule we were looking at a ranked team that was surprising people with how quickly they had recovered from the loss of Roy Hibbert and Jonathan Wallace. And then they started to suck. They remained fringe contenders for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament based on the fact that the Big East has been anointed the greatest college basketball conference in the history of forever and that their strength of schedule is #1 in all the land, but the bubble picture has finally been clarified by their embarassing overtime loss to St. John's last night.

Let's delve a little further into the Hoyas' season.



THE HIGHLIGHTS:

-Greg Monroe. An outstanding freshman center with decent post moves and good passing ability. He's already the best player on the team, but he's not good enough to be a freshman phenom and bolt for the NBA, meaning he should only get better next year. He should probably work on getting rebounds.

-Youth. The Hoyas only had one senior on the team, so at least they can blame part of their failure on being young. Dajuan Summers is a junior and has a claim against Monroe as the best player on the team (except that he disappears for no apparent reason during large stretches of games)so he'll be back next year as the senior leader guy or whatever. Chris Wright and Austin Freeman are sophomores and showed flashes of goodness. Henry Sims and Julian Vaughn are young guys and tall, which is nice I guess. I truly believe Georgetown has enough good players with a couple of decent recruits to be a Big East contender next year.

-Nikita Mescheriakov. A white guy in the rotation? Hell yes! The Bulgarian Bomber, as I have dubbed him, was pretty awkward looking at times but he could hit a few 3s and looked like he was trying hard. Also of note, he is from Belarus, but Bulgarian works better in my nickname for him.

THE LOWLIGHTS:

-Jesse Sapp. The Hoyas only senior was expected to provide leadership and hit some big shots, or at least hit a few shots. Unfortunately he completely forgot how to shoot and forced JT3 to use...

-...Jason Clark. He's a freshman, he's athletic, he plays hard and he's a fucking HUMAN TURNOVER MACHINE. He can't dribble, he can't pass and it looks like he just went through a growth spurt and hasn't yet adjusted to the size of his feet.

-Rebounding. Nobody, and I mean nobody, on this team can rebound. The Hoyas have been outrebounded by an average of 47-11 per game over the course of the season (note: figures are approximate/made up). You can play all the defense you want, but if everyone gets 2 or 3 shots per possession you are fucked. JT3 talked at the beginning of the year about running more, because the team was more athletic than it has been in years past, except he forgot to tell the players that in order to run you have to GET SOME MOTHERFUCKIN REBOUNDS.

-Bad losses. Getting blown out by Louisville and losing a thriller to Syracuse are acceptable. Getting swept by Cincinnati, losing to Seton Hall, and blowing a 16 point lead against a St. John's team led by a guy named Rob Thomas are not.

-Losing to Duke. I think we can all agree that it's tough to see the "Leader of Men" and Duke win any games. Fuck I hate that team.

-Luke Harangody. His torching of the Hoyas for 31 pts. and 11 boards was fucking miserable. Luke Harangody is exactly like Tyler Hansbrough...if Hansbrough were fatter, uglier, less athletic, had a retarded haircut, and bitched at the refs nonstop for 40 minutes.

I guess Georgetown technically has a chance if they win 5 games in 5 days to take the Big East Tournament crown. But that's not happening.

Look out Davidson, we're gonna get our revenge!

In the NIT!

EDIT: At least I don't root for this team.

Snow Day

Ok, so I'm the idiot who actually came in to work today not remembering that our nation's capital shuts the hell down when there's a few inches of snow. Naturally, no one else from my office is here, but my boss's boss just came by and thanked me for coming in and offered to help throughout the day (translation---I can't leave at 9:30 like I was planning to if no one else showed up). DC shutting down when there's a bit of snow is one thing that bothers me. Here are some other things that have been bothering me lately:

-Metro escalators: you stand on the right side, you walk on the left side. It's really very easy, but people not knowing where to stand is just a minor quibble of mine, because they might be tourists and not know any better. If you are going to walk down the escalator, though, then FUCKING WALK WITH SOME PURPOSE. I don't have time to be caught in the left lane behind your moseying ass. Just walk fast or stand to the side you jerk.

-Save the Children: thank God it's snowing today, because it actually spared me from having to make pretend phone calls or quickly walk away and avert my eyes to avoid the Save the Children people who usually hang around outside my office building. Listen I hate poverty and want to help orphans as much as the next guy, but with, you know, moral support---like remote pity and such. I'm at work here and I've got rent to pay, and you've seen me enough by now to know that I'm not signing up for some monthly payment plan.

-Dubious charitable donations: There's the thing, Save the Children and Greenpeace (who are occasiaonally lurking in front of the Chipotle down the block from my apartment) don't want you to know. I know what you're up to. I know you don't just get people to donate money, but make them sign up for some sort of ongoing payment thing. Don't try to guilt me into something when you're pulling the same tricks magazines do when they have "free" subscriptions around Christmas. The jig is up you charitable bastards.

-People bumming cigarettes and then needing a light too: do you smoke or don't you? I only gave you that cigarette under the assumption that you were an unfortunate smoker caught without any more smokes.

-People asking me for directions: what is it? Do I just always look like a local or like I know where I'm going? I think I must be the most approachable looking guy in New York or Washington, DC, because wherever I am I get stopped on the steet and asked for directions once a week. And I really don't know where I'm going in DC so I just make stuff up half the time.

-No sports. G'Town basketball is rather disappointing this year as they fight for an undeserved at-large bid on the strength of the Big East's ability to claim that it is the greatest sports conference of all-time. The NBA and NHL are a joke. Why can't Spring Training last for only a week.

-People looking at me funny just cause I'm reading a book called Cannabis: A History on the train. I'm not a pothead and fuck all you old ladies for even thinking that.