The Inner Circle of Baseball Hell

That is where Mets fans are currently residing, myself among them. Clearly God hates the Mets and their fans and has shown this to them by injuring everybody on their roster, presenting them with a succession of Steve Phillips, Jim Duquette, and Omar Minaya, by giving us a Braves-Yankees WS in 1999, and lastly by allowing the abortion that is this year's World Series. This isn't a "Oh, woe is us!" bullshit-Red Sox thing: that happened because of their city's and organization's racism. The Mets are cursed for no good goddamn reason and it has all led to us having to make a choice about rooting for the Yankees or Phillies in the classic matchup of mystique vs. grit.



Now there are those who say we should root for the Yankees. After all, we all know Yankees fans and many of us have friends who root for the Yankees. However, I must explain to you that any Yankee fan friends that you know are decent people are the exception to the rule. Yankees fans are obnoxious loudmouths with a ridiculous sense of entitlement and such a dearth of knowledge about baseball that they immortalize people like Scott Brosius while vilifying Alex Rodriguez. We Mets fans, despite the best attempts of the Wilpons to eradicate it, must not forget our heritage. And that heritage means hating and rooting against the Yankees with every fiber of our being. Paul O'Neill, Chuck Knoblauch, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, A-Rod etc.--don't you just fucking hate these guys. I know I do and deep down you do too. We must not root for the Yankees. The Yankees are not our crosstown brethren, they are our crosstown fucking rivals, and if I didn't root for the Yankees after 9/11 when New York "needed " and "deserved" a World Series, then I'm sure as shit not rooting for them now. The Yankees deserve nothing.



"Well, then dtro," you might say, "I guess that means we have to root for the Phillies." To which I say FUCK NO! While it is important not to lose sight of our hate past in the presence of the nouveau-douchiness of the Phillies, let's not pretend that this team and fanbase are not ridiculously detestable. Phillies fans are drunken mongoloids with no loyalty to anyone but the Eagles. They are violent and despicable people who seek out confrontation with other fanbases and others within their own fanbase, because frankly there's nothing better to do in a shithole like Philadelphia but get drunk and fight and then go complain about the best QB in your franchise's history. Philadelphians harbor a pitiful yet grating inferiority complex regarding the city of New York (and well they should) and lack the class, sense of history, integrity, or creativity to come up with their own rallying cries. The Phillies themselves have a roster of fuckfaced fucks. Jimmy Rollins is a douche, who likes to make big claims and shush Mets fans in the CitiField crowd while putting up a .296 OBP. He is probably the second most overrated player in the NL, trailing only Ryan Howard. Cole Hamels likes to call our boys choke artists? Choke on my dick. Chase Utley looks like he should start up a barbershop quartet with Wes Welker where they can sing about their hair parted perfectly down the middle (not to mention he leans into about 15 pitches a year). And Shane Victorino is a special kind of douche, my hatred of whom cannot be expressed in words. We may be in the inner circle of baseball hell right now, but rest assured there is a special place reserved in baseball hell for Shane Dicktorino after his fatal stabbing a couple of months from now. Just kidding...but I seriously wouldn't mind if he got stabbed and slowly bled to death.

That's right Mets fans, our best bet is to ignore this whole fucking thing. This is an opportunity to spend time with family and friends and not think about baseball until we're welcoming Matt Holliday with open arms and preparing for a 2010 Mets team that will exorcise all of our demons. And if you still feel bad about baseball right now, there's always this to cheer you up:

The New Manifesto*

*By which I won't swear at all.

Based on some texts exchanged with Boyce on this fine drunken friday night, yours truly will try to post some more shit on this blog. Shit about how Steve Phillips' banging a busted-ass psychopath showed poorer judgment about fat people than the Mo Vaughn signing.

Shit about how Mother Teresa was a dirty fucking sham artist, who was more interested in death bed conversions than actually helping the poor, sick and needy (this according to G Wilko--although I tend to believe him,cynical as I am).

Boyce says hes in it for the lulz, but not me. I'm in it for the loot. Every time you log in to this page I make the potential for future income in the tens of dollars a year based on google ad revenue. I mean if a woman walks up to you who might be homeless, but a high-class respectable homeless, and offers to buy a cigarette off you for some nickels and pennies proffered in her outstretched AIDS-poisoned (assumption on my part) hand explaining that you "might could buy a soda" with it--and you seriously consider her offer: well then for fucking fuck's sake you need some loot.

And so I beg of all of you who read this: do not judge me (us) harshly for my (our) absence. Consider instead giving me some money so that I can get drunk and write some similar shit again. Clearly, the next time it might be about the clear lack of judgment on the part of a family that entrusts the majority of its money to Bernie Madoff and Omar Minaya, but I digress.

A man once said to me, "There are lots of people moving everywhere in this hustle and bustle we call life. But you," (and by this he meant ME), " you can see everything clearly, because you take the time to stop and look and consider everyone. You look at everything all around you, and for that you are blessed. Can I get a couple bucks for the train so I can get to..." blah, blah, blah: the fucking homeless bum. Dude smelled of piss-soaked potatoes and guilt-forced me into a MetroCard swipe at High St. (because when your in the Heights you feel like you can afford an extra fare or two, what with the deliciously wealthy smell of wood-burning fireplaces).

Fuck it I'm DAAAAAAARUNK!

Why the Mets Failed pt. 339

Testing out this graph for Amazin Avenue FanShot:

Milledge and Manny for All-Star

Because Major League Baseball and the All-Star game in particular under the leadership of Bud Selig has been retarded. Because noone can really pretend to be that mad at Manny for doing steroids or whatever, because everyone freaking did it for the last 15 years or so. Because Lastings Milledge is one of this blog's favorite players, and we know he is going to turn around his career in Washington and even if he doesn't he was still worth more than a 29-year old platoon outfielder and a douchebag fucking plumber masquerading as a major league catcher. Because the Nationals suck and having a AAA player represent them in the all-star game is a hilarious concept. Because Manny is still entertaining and funny to me. Because fuck the all-star game; it's pointlessly long and stupid and ended in a tie a few years ago and someone from every team has to make it and the managers try to get everyone in the game and the pitchers can't go for more than a couple innings and for some reason Bud Selig thought it would be a good idea to give world series home-field adavantage to the winning league even though the game is often decided by token all-stars from inferior teams that have no shot at the playoffs. Because MLB puts together their all-star ballots before the season and never changes them to accomodate changes in clubs' rosters. Because of all this I encourage everyone to vote for Manny Ramirez and Lastings Milledge to start as outfielders for the National League.

And also vote for Beltran as the 3rd guy, because he is awesome.

The bored at work, haven't posted for a while Mets suck post

Some thoughts on a shitty Monday morning:

-Have you ever heard that old line about "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain"? You know, having two really good pitchers and hoping to muddle through the rest. I guess you could do one easily for the Mets, like: "Johan and Maine and pray for rain," except that I'm pretty sure John Maine sucks. It should have been "Santana and Lowe and pray for snow," except that Omar Minaya misjudged the market for Derek Lowe and then pretended he wanted Oliver Perez all along, saving a couple mil a year to have a ridiculously inferior pitcher kill our bullpen every fifth day (And now he may kill our bullpen from the inside, all part of Oliver Perez' latest plan: Operation Destroy the 2009 Mets). So now it's just "Santana and pray he goes 9 innings or pray that JJ Putz will revert to 2006-7 form after a year in which he was injured and that none of the other relievers blow this one and that Daniel Murphy catches flyballs hit at him and that the Mets not strand 15 runners and actually give Johan some run support and that it then rains for four consecutive days." And that's just not very catchy. It doesn't even rhyme.

-And speaking of rainouts, how have there not been more rainouts when I can only remember like 4 days out of the last 40 where it didn't rain in this godforsaken shithole of a city where the Metro closes at midnight on weekdays making it pointless for me to even think about going out on a Thursday night since I'm gonna waste an extra ten bucks taking a cab home?

-Sign the petition to paint CitiField's walls blue. Let's see, you cut down the seating from 55,000 to 42,000 to help create a false demand for tickets, allowed a corporate sponsor to name your stadium with money from the American taxpayers, completely ignored 47 years of Mets history and devoted all stylistic elements and historical flourishes of the new stadium to Jackie Robinson, a stadium that is now two huge apartment buildings and a team that left Brooklyn so long ago that all of their local fans are in Greenwood or those huge cemeteries out in Queens, painted the seats green and the walls black, and sold my dad a 15-game pack in a spot where he can't see a large portion of left field (which might be a good thing considering Sheffield's/Murphy's defensive play). You must be the Wilpons and you must truly have your finger on the pulse of the average Mets fan! At the very least paint the damn walls blue and give the place an identity that is somewhat Mets, rather than its current identity of "a place with very good food for a ballpark."

-Hey St. Francis Prep, I hope you all get swine flu. That's what you get for naming your sports teams the Terriers. Pussies!

-Mark Sanchez is gonna be fucking awesome! Except he's probably going to suck, because the Jets and Mets will continue to be disappointing for the next 50 years!

Tweet Tweet

Inspired by this, I encourage you all to check out this.

Ah, the smell of the fresh cut crack of the bat

Well, baseball is back just in time. My bracket sucked,and the seven months of NBA/NHL playoffs are about to start dominating sportscenter, so thank God baseball is here. Forget for a minute that ESPN realized that the Sunday Night Baseball* team was horrible and then thought to themselves "Hmmm, how can we make this more horrible?...I know, Steve Phillips!" Let's just focus on the good things, like Johan Santana at one o'clock today and Ricky Nolasco hopefully coming through for 3 different fantasy teams of mine.

*I think maybe I'll use a Pozterisk** here to mention that I no longer believe a word Joe Morgan says. He can be talking about anything and I just think "No, he totally made that up. He pulled that out of his ass. This guy's an idiot." Like he said that Chase Utley had trouble on breaking balls last year due to his nagging hip injury, and I thought "No. He made that up. Even if that's true, there's no way in hell Joe Morgan knows that." And Jon Miller's lengthy explanations of OPS in the first inning were just downright insulting. Thankyou so much, Jon, for explaining that, but there's really no need as I have been sentient for the last 10 years.

**Read some of this guy's posts to understand.

Anyway, let's get some predictions going for the baseball season. I was pretty terrible at this last year, but I've got a good feeling this time around:



AL
EAST: Red Sox. Fuck this team and their racist mongoloid fans.
CENTRAL: Indians. The Twins were a fluke, the White Sox are old, the Tigers have meh pitching, the Royals suck. Therefore, the mediocre Indians win a mediocre division.
WEST: A's. Fuck it why not. The Angels let Teixeira walk and thus have a shitty offense. Lackey, E. Santana, and Escobar are hurt at the moment. I'm going out on a limb and saying that the A's young pitching comes through and the Holliday-Giambi-Cust combo is enough.
WILD CARD: Rays. I will never pcik the Yankees, and though their rotation is awesome, I don't think their lineup is amazing, especially with Anabolex out. I think the Rays are all-around solid and that Matt Joyce will have a huge breakout year (just fucking with you LCT).

MVP: Grady Sizemore. Division winner, good player, Jeter black.
CY YOUNG: Jon Lester. If he's really good, the cancer* thing will push him over the top.
ROY: Matt Wieters seems to be some sort of combo of Johnny Bench and Jesus, so we'll go with him.

*Ok, so AIDS was the disease of the 90s and cancer has been the disease of the 2000s. What will be the disease of the next ten years? The leading contenders would probably be heavyweights like alzheimers and autism, but I can't help but root for an underdog like harlequin ichthyosis.



NL
EAST: The Mets of New York town. 4 awesome players + better bullpen - Willie Randolph + Daniel Murphy's unbridled intensity + Gary fucking Sheffield - Aaron Heilman - Scot Schoeneweis = who fucking knows, but I'm not picking the Philthies.
CENTRAL: Cubs. This is definitely the most obvious choice. Why do they even have this division any more?
WEST: Dodgers. Solid lineup, ok pitching. The D'Backs aren't bad and neither are the Giants somehow, but the Dodgers lineup is deep and Chad Billingsley will be awesome (I hope, for fantasy purposes).
WILD CARD: Phillies. Ugh. Braves have a good rotation, but the goddamn Phillies just will not go away.

MVP: Raul Ibanez. If it's not Pujols, it generally goes to the 4th or 5th best Phillie hitter.
CY YOUNG: Johan. The man, the legend.
ROY: Tommy Hanson. I think that's the Braves pitcher who will probably come up at some point. I don't really know. Who cares really? Ben Grieve once won one of these.

Ok, that is all.

My Top Ten All-Time Favorite People

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.