Me and Pedro Down By the Ballpark

Pats/Colts more important than ever

2008-10-31T07:36:00.001-07:00

There has been a surfeit of stories this week about how Sunday’s Pats/Colts game has lost its luster. Maybe it has, but that only means this week’s game is more important than it has been in years. In the past, both teams could afford to lose to one another, knowing that they’d likely face each other again in the playoffs. This year, the teams are scrapping just to get to the playoffs, and have lost more games than they did last year, including postseason games. This game will be less shiny, but more important.

Look, each game in the NFL is a snapshot in time. Just because a team beats another in the regular season doesn’t mean they’ll beat them in the playoffs. Ask the 2002 Rams, or last year’s Patriots, how that turned out. The Pats/Colts epic games were fun, but they were just a prelude to a possible playoff game. That’s great and all, but when the teams are struggling to survive, there’s more on the line, and when there’s more on the line, it makes for more compelling football. Last year’s game was big because the Colts represented the biggest potential obstacle to the Pats’ undefeated season… but that was a vanity thing. If they had lost that game and only that game (and it looked like they were going to lose that game), they still would have had the number one overall seed in the playoffs.

This year, the Pats are tied for first in the AFC East. For someone who grew up in the Bill Parcells and Pete Carroll eras, this is a familiar spot. Every play is important. Every play represents the difference between having a chance to win it all and staying home in January. So let the national media complain that they’re subjected to a lackluster game. This is football at its best.

The Fightin' Phils

2008-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

In mid-September, I attended a wedding in Philadelphia. I was the best man, and the wedding party was a hodgepodge of East Coast and Chicago baseball allegiances. There was a White Sox fan, a Yankees fan, a Cubs fan, a Red Sox fan (myself) and the groom himself, who is a Phillies fan. The minister was also from Chicago. He was a Cubs fan. In God We Trust, I guess.

Mike got married, and it was the best day of his life. Hands down. Hands down. I had a pretty good time as well. The wedding was at an arboretum on a picture-perfect late fall day, and afterward we retired to some Philly bars still dressed in our wedding threads. We had some beers, watched some football, caught up, talked to single people. And the next day, we spread back out across the country, eager to root against each other for the next six weeks.

Well, Mike won. In a stupefying but welcome recent first, the Yankees were the only team among the bunch that didn’t make the playoffs – Hallelujah! Going into the first round, the White Sox looked like the most vulnerable, playing against the upstart Rays, while the Phillies were right back where they were last year — at home, in the first round, favored. Last year, it didn’t go so well, as they lost to the Rockies in three games largely spurred by Colorado’s second baseman, Kaz Matsui, a punchline in Mets territory who sat out a good percentage of this season with an anal fissure. Go ahead and read that previous sentence again. Soak it in. It is fantastic.

This year, the Phillies were the bullies, beating the Milwaukee Brewers in three games. They won their first two games at home en route to sweeping every home game they played this postseason; if you want to win a World Series, kids, this is a good way to do it. The White Sox would win a home game as well, but it was merely one to stave off elimination against the Rays, who would finish them off the following day. The Red Sox started out west, beating the Angels twice in Anaheim and nabbing game four at Fenway to move on. The only team NOT to win at home was the Cubs.

Offfff course.

The Cubs have really turned into the Red Sox; a team that’s an occasionally ferocious competitor that finds a way to lose in the most heartbreaking way possible. You got the sense this year that if the Cubs had actually won a postseason game, they might have found their stride and romped to an overexposed championship. It didn’t happen. They got pummeled at home and quieted by the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles, led by Manny Ramirez, whose quest to get back to the World Series fell just short. When his former team followed suit, it set the stage for one of the more bizarre World Series in recent memory: the young, eager team from city trying to round out its professional championship trifecta, against a team that had been around forever, won it all only once, and played in a city with four professional teams, none of whom had won a title since 1983 (Each of the others had failed once in the meantime).

During this time, I didn’t really hear from Mike. I don’t actually hear from Mike that often; he’s a pretty quiet guy. He’s the flip side to the stereotypical Philadelphian, who he’s fairly familiar with in the person of his father. Passionate about everything, ready to get mad at a moment’s notice, but fundamentally just upset about it all — that’s him. Mike just gets exasperated, and to tell you the truth, I would too. If Boston fans always thought they were superior, and the results didn’t show up on the field, Philly fans thought they weren’t superior, and the results did show up on the field. It wasn’t accurate, but Boston fans were wrong too (We weren’t superior). So when the Phillies won the title last night, and the only thing I heard from Mike was OH MY GOD, I knew something had snapped into place, the “It’s just sports, but it feels damn good to win” logic jump that usually comes far after a title win. Philly fans have known it’s just sports for years, which is why it killed them when they couldn’t win. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sports. Win the game. It never happened. Now the Phillies are champions, Philly stands intact and life can go on. Whereas Boston fans changed for the worse after the titles, I expect Philly fans to change for the better. I expect less relief than a profound sense of pride, but a dignified pride. I also expect the Eagles to win the Super Bowl, so we’ll see if it gets tested in early February.

But let’s let them have their moment.

One last thing about the wedding: the morning of, we went to eat breakfast in Philly’s Center City Market. There’s a Pennsylvania Dutch Country restaurant/counter where, basically, the Amish cooked us food. It was great, but others went off in search of cheesesteaks. It was 9:30 in the morning, but they wouldn’t be deterred. They came back sans cheesesteak, but they had made a discovery. “Mitch Williams is over there,” they said.

Mitch Williams threw the last pitch of the 1993 World Series. Joe Carter hit it for a championship-winning home run. Since then, the heat-throwing, hard-living lefty had actually made a pretty good life and name for himself in Philadelphia, becoming a talk-show host and hawking a line of Mitch Williams Wild Thing salsa. We went over and met him, told him Mike was getting married, got pictures with him and everything. He even signed a jar of salsa. Little did we know then, or did we know, that his days as a top Philly sports celebrity were drawing to a close. Everyone loves a character, but what everyone really loves is a winner. In 10 years, you won’t be able to walk a block in that town without hearing about Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Brad Lidge, and Williams will be an increasingly small footnote — that’s how these things work. Ask Drew Bledsoe. Everyone loves a winner. The Phillies are just that.

Controlled Substances, Wes Welker and Eggs

2008-10-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

(Now that we're in straight-up football season, some football talk. Story time!)

I went to last year’s Patriots Week 17 game against the, ugh, Giants, and rather than wait in a 90-minute line to catch the bus back to the Port Authority, I hung out with a group of people I kind of knew and waited for the line to subside (It never did; we would take a ride back to their hotel and take a cab from there). This was unpleasant because there was a man there, who I had met earlier that evening, who was from Rhode Island and had bet a substantial amount of money on the Giants beating the point spread, which did not happen. He was wearing a blood-red Patriots sweatshirt, and was the object of many “congratulations”-spewing Pats fans on the way back to their cars. One would think this was all fine and dandy, because the Patriots had just completed the first 16-0 regular season in league history. Only dude was under the influence of, let’s just say, a controlled substance that can make you hyper and angry, and since he was hyper and angry fellow to begin with, he was extremely upset about having lost the I believe TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS he had bet on the game’s outcome. If you didn’t think the bus line was really all that bad, the fact that I was hanging out with this guy should convince you otherwise.

So basically here’s what happened.

Guy passing by: “Yeah man! Patriots!”
Crazy guy: “I’ll f*cking kill you. Keep walking.”
Guy passing by: Really, really confused, does as he’s told.
(Repeat at least four times)

This was right after the game, and I had briefly lost contact with the person I actually knew among this group, who was my sole link to crazy guy, and it was just the two of us. I was scared to be around the guy because I was wearing a Patriots jersey, but I was acting appropriately somber given that there was a [redacted]-up dude in my vicinity who had lost $2,000. I know when to tread lightly. We made small talk. Like, really small. Then I had to pee. So I got, I believe the technical term is, the f*ck out of there.

About 200 feet away from the car was the road that creates the periphery of the parking lot; just beyond that were hella bushes that serve as a big pre- and post-game potty. This would serve me just fine. I was on my way back to the car when I someone yelled in my direction, “Hey Welkuh (the local pronunciation of the name on the back of my shirt), do you like eggs” and whizzzz…

… an egg went flying about 10 feet past my head.

This is probably the time I should have kept walking, but I was on the phone at the time and decided to describe the scene to my bemused friend. And talk a little trash. Given what I was returning to, I believe there is an expression to describe my circumstances involving a hard place and a rock, so I decided to stay where I was. I said to my would-be assailants, grouped about 30 feet away, “If you keep throwing them like Eli, sure, you won’t hit me.”

Did I mention I’m not smart?

Emboldened by my comment, one of them, who had to be at least 45 years old, walked straight up to me, stopping five feet away. He raised his arm and catapulted it forward, and while I attempted to dodge the chicken embryo, its casing broke against my shirt and its yellow goo caked all over my gloves and clothes. He said to me, shrugging, “I had to,” as if I was supposed to feel bad for him, even as someone closer to my age (I AM THIRTY), came over and said to me, “I’m sorry about him, man.” Which I felt good about until one of them threw a full, open beer can at me as I finally walked away. It hit a school bus full of children.

When I got back to the car, my friend was there, but I was careful to hide any evidence of the attack, because, and I mean this quite literally, red sweatshirt guy would have murdered someone if he found out. He wanted to murder someone anyway, and this would have been a good excuse. Thankfully it was pretty dark and didn’t come up until we were on our way out of the stadium, and, being in the car, we were able to convince him that we really preferred getting out of there to vehicular manslaughter.

I think I need to get new friends.

The Mighty Rays

2008-10-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Depending on who you ask, it is either completely surprising or completely unsurprising that the Tampa Bay Rays stand on the brink of a World Series victory, having (finally!) dispatched the defending champion Boston Red Sox. Mystique and Aura have left Fenway for the dome-enclosed charm of The Trop — quite possibly the worst venue in American professional sports today. Let that not, if we can help it, detract from the greatness and beauty of this year’s Rays club. Having never really been a factor in any previous Major League season, the team was on the verge of becoming the biggest headache for statheads in the history of the game before this season: a team chock-full of young stars that somehow couldn’t win. It was like adding 10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10 and getting 65 over and over. You knew it had to change eventually, but I would guess even the most stubborn number crunchers took one look at the Tampa Twentysomethings and still said, when the compass pointed north of 90 wins, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The Rays hadn’t just suffered through 12 consecutive losing seasons since entering the league in 1998, they had suffered through 12 horrible losing seasons. They finished out of last place exactly once, in the Red Sox’ miracle season of 2004. The then-“Devil Rays” won 70 games, and finished fourth. The Blue Jays looked up from below.

Now the Might Rays storm into the World Series, completing an odd, almost tragic superfecta: each of the four most recently-instituted expansion teams in Major League Baseball have reached the Fall Classic. The Florida Marlins won the whole shebang twice; the Diamondbacks claimed victory in 2001. The Colorado Rockies won 23 out of their final 24 games before being swept out of the title hunt by Boston. Cubs fans, Brewers fans and Pirates fans aren’t likely to see the joy in this little coincidence. It’s been 63 years since they played a World Series game at Wrigley. For that you can thank James Loney and Manny Ramirez.

It was Loney’s Game 1 grand slam that, for all intents and purposes, put the Cubs/Dodgers series out of reach: with their superior starting pitching and the superlative Manny Ramirez leading the way, the Dodgers sucked all the momentum from the North Siders and cruised into the National League Championship Series against the Phillies. Ramirez was the headline attraction of these playoffs. After he was traded by the Red Sox in late July due to a long-simmering feud with the team over a 2009 player option, Ramirez channeled his inner Barry Bonds, hitting an astonishing .396 for the remainder in the regular season (and over .500 in the playoffs), and inducing more than a few eye-rolls in the Fens. His replacement in Boston, Jason Bay, adequately filled Ramirez’s spot in the Sox’ lineup — not a Hurcelean task, but maybe a Mannychean one. Bay is not the hitter that Ramirez is, but Bay’s tall stroke has old-school power when he squares the ball up. The baseball world was ready for Red Sox/Dodgers the way it was for Red Sox/Cubs in 2003 or the NFL was for Patriots/Packers last year; instead, the two best teams in the game are those that play in a stadium unfit for anything but college kids and one whose fanbase is best known for throwing snowballs at Santa Claus during a football game.

•

The Rays didn’t pound their way into the Series, even if they spent the better part of games two through five sending forget-me-nots over the outfield walls in St. Petersburg and Boston. The Rays’ 15 homers in the frame set the record for a League Championship series, but it was a slicing, defensive line-drive by Evan Longoria that tied game seven at one apiece after Dustin Pedroia’s first-run homer for Boston. Longoria, a rookie who stands six-foot-three and a terrifying presence in the batter’s box, was already one of the great stories of the postseason for his tape-measure home runs, but this time he used his massive frame to deflect a ball just down the first-base line with a runner on second base. He was hopelessly late on the ball, but, like the best hitters, if you’re not hitting the ball out of the yard it doesn’t matter much where you hit it, and the important thing is to get the bat on the ball. He sliced one to right, and the game was tied. The Rays’ starter, the brilliant but mercurial Matt Garza, was able to relax a bit, and continued to dominate the Red Sox hitters. When the Rays took the lead on a single by Rocco Baldelli it was bedlam inside the dome, and curtains for the Red Sox. Willie Aybar would add a seventh-inning homer, and the Red Sox would load the bases in the eighth inning, but once Tampa regained the lead they looked like a team poised to make it to baseball’s ultimate stage. The canards about postseason experience die hard, but last night, in Tampa, the Rays did their best to kill off any old storylines. The Red Sox had come back from 3 games down to the Yankees and two games down to the Indians in their previous playoff runs; this year, the clock struck midnight on them, but Tampa’s Cinderella story continues.

•

The Rays will meet the Philadelphia Phillies, who breezed through the National League playoffs after winning the NL East’s war of attrition in familiar, ugly style. For the second straight season, the New York Mets blew a substantial division lead only to find themselves even with Philadelphia on the season’s final Friday; trailing by one game on Saturday; and even again on Sunday thanks to a brilliant pitching performance. Last year it was John Maine; this year it was the Minnesota and Venezuela important Johan Santana, who scrawled on the Mets’ lineup card “Let’s play like men today” and promptly threw a complete game, 11-strikeout shutout. Unfortunately, he was merely a spectator on the season’s final day, when the Mets were eliminated from playoff competition and the Brewers snuck past them to earn a wild card berth. As Queens sank into its annual winter depression, the Phillies were determined not to be swept out of the playoffs in the minimum number of games possible, as they were by last year’s supernova Rockies, but they were playing a Brewers club that had waited 26 years between playoff appearances and had the best pitcher on the planet scheduled to start game two in CC Sabathia. Sabathia, acquired from Cleveland earlier in the season and almost certain to land in the Bronx in 2009, spent his three months on Milwaukee racking up an 11-2 record with a 1.65 ERA and almost single-handedly restored dignity to the Milwaukee baseball franchise.

Sabathia couldn’t start in game one, though, and that job for Philadelphia fell to 24-year-old Cole Hamels, like Sabathia a tall, left-handed pitcher with occasionally dominating tendencies. Where Sabathia is hefty and unkempt in his two-sizes-too-big uniform, Hamels looks like the cardboard cutout of a pitcher. His cap is pulled tight over his had, brim unbent in the slightest, and when he delivers the ball it’s almost as if he’s reaching over to place it in Carlos Ruiz’s glove. Sabathia, on the other hand, rocks and fires, putting his obvious body mass to work and finishing each pitch with a theatrical flourish of his left arm above is head. Hamels’ delivery is all business: smoother, more consistent, ending downward in a fielding position. It was also more effective in this series. He pitched a masterpiece in game one and watched as Sabathia gave up a second-inning grand slam to the Hawaiian Shane Victorino in game two. This is the second straight year Sabathia has been roughed up in the playoffs after a brilliant regular season, possibly the result of the large number of innings he threw just getting there (His NLDS start was his fourth consecutive appearance on three days’ rest). Note to Hank: caveat emptor.

Against the Dodgers, the Phillies were faced with roughly the same quandary the Anaheim Angels were faced with in the 2002 World Series: How do you stop, with apologies to Albert Pujols (then and now), the game’s reigning best hitter at the peak of his abilities? The answer is to stop everybody else. Manny, long accused of making a mockery of the game, continued to do so with his bat, going an incomprehensible 8 for 15 with two home runs and seven walks over the course of the series, only to see his team fall, four games to one. His 28 postseason home runs are most all time, and his 74 postseason RBI are second to Bernie Williams, but it is those records — and the thought of his next $100 million contract — that will have to carry Ramirez through the long winter. Like his old friends in Boston, he couldn’t make it to the very end. In fact, it was Derek Lowe, Boston’s winning pitcher in each of 2004’s series-clinching victories, that took losses in games one and four for L.A., a team with a distinctly East Coast feel featuring Joe Torre behind the bench and Nomar Garciaparra sitting atop it. Even the Dodgers’ owner hails from Boston, but there will be no clam chowder nor wheatgrass in this year’s World Series. This one’s for all the cheesesteaks.

•

If there is one postseason story that should not be buried by Longoria’s superlative skills or BJ Upton’s mammoth playoff home run outburst (seven at latest count, one off the playoff record), it is that of Baldelli. Baldelli joined Tampa Bay in 2003 and put up good numbers through several losing seasons before struggling through something bigger: he was losing energy. After several trips to the disabled list and consultations with doctors, it was discovered that he has a severe metabolic condition that restricts his ability to engage in athletic activities for long periods of time. He’s still a good player, but a part-time one. For someone who grew up in Rhode Island (as a Red Sox fan) and was compared to Joe DiMaggio in his early days for his all-around abilities, it looked as if Baldelli’s career would be spent, for its valor, in the service of avoiding futility. Baldelli started only two games of the series, including the last one, but his go-ahead single in the sixth inning was the game’s decisive blow. At merely 27 years old, he is the heart of this both improbably and all-too-predictably good Rays team. Philadelphia’s center is probably their incredibly 26-year-old second baseman, Chase Utley, but their most recognizable player is their slugging first baseman Ryan Howard. Howard led the league in home runs for two out of the last three years, but his efficiency in producing them has dropped dramatically in that time. He strikes out in the most prodigious numbers in major league history, leading many observers to curse his approach, but there’s something magnetic about the man that is old-school baseball at its finest and delightfully simple to understand — he hits the ball a long way. Homerless through the NLCS, it would be vintage Howard to turn on the faucet when it’s needed the most (He won the 2006 NL MVP on the basis of a sizzling September, and may repeat the feat this year). The question is whether any of it will be enough to cool off the Rays. There may not be enough juice in Howard’s bat and Hamels’ arm to extinguish the thrilling young team by the bay.

They have to win

2008-10-19T15:55:00.001-07:00

They have to win

El caballito

2008-10-03T09:17:00.001-07:00

The Slanch Report (via Deadspin) has a post this morning about Dustin Pedroia, whom TBS announced Chip Carey calls "el caballito" as if that was his Widely Accepted Nickname. Which it isn't. It was the first time Slanch had heard this particular name, but I heard it once before, back in May, also during a TBS game, and I remembered it because it's, I don't know, ridiculous and awesome? But I didn't hear it again until last night, when Carey apparently said, "How many times have we heard about 'el caballito' this summer?" which led Slanch to guess that David Ortiz might be just messing with Chip for everyone's benefit, a lá Darryl on The Office. I love the idea of this, and Chip would be the perfect target, so let's hope Big Papi is onto something here. But we're onto something here, too, off the baseball topic, on The Office...

Sabbatical

2008-09-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

I (Bryan) have temporarily moved blog operations over here, but if this was the end, this blog was fun for the good times.

UPDATE: On second thought, about 5 minutes later, I might keep this as my sports outlet, keep the new one as a literary jackoff blog, and run them all through my eponymous site. I like it. Once everything was out my system, it felt better.

Reprinted for your enjoyment

2008-09-17T06:43:00.001-07:00

2006's Lebowski Tennis:

BAG: nor did I say Webber was in the top 60. I just wanted to discuss him. Ply likes to argue, this much is clear.

Ply: Louis, you can read this if you won't respond: Miller averaged 18.2 ppg for 18 seasons; for the same reason I'm not ready to punch C-Webb's ticket after 11 with 23 and 10, I am ready to punch Miller's ticket now... Ben, Ply loves to argue. It all derives from a simple equation: Bryan + coffee = Ply.

BAG: I understood what Louis meant.

Ply: This aggression will not stand, Ben.

BAG: The bums will always lose, Ply.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

128 comments:

Ben said...: At least I'm housebroken.; 4:09 PM
Bryan said...: Why is everything such a travesty with you?; 4:25 PM
Ben said...: You're not wrong Ply. You're just an asshole.; 4:31 PM
Bryan said...: I don't like your jerk-off name, I don't like your jerk-off face, I don't like your jerk-off behavior and I don't like you, jerk-off.; 4:40 PM
Ben said...: Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling.; 5:33 PM
Bryan said...: I don't roll on Shabbos.; 11:02 AM
Ben said...: Fucking fascist!; 1:48 PM
Bryan said...: Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism. At least it's an ethos.; 1:50 PM
Ben said...: What's this day of rest shit? What's this bullshit? I don't fuckin' care! It don't matter to Jesus.; 2:01 PM
Bryan said...: Look man... new shit has come to light... and you're not privy to all the new shit, man. Has it ever occurred to you that there are larger forces at work here, man?; 2:10 PM
Ben said...: Shut the fuck up, Donny.; 2:30 PM
Bryan said...: How about I take the money you have on you, and we call it even?; 2:33 PM
Ben said...: Did you ever hear of "The Seattle Seven"?; 2:45 PM
Bryan said...: Do you speak English sir? Parle usted Ingles?; 4:23 PM
Ben said...: Obviously you're not a golfer.; 4:45 PM
Bryan said...: That must be exhausting.; 4:54 PM
Ben said...: You mean coitus?; 4:56 PM
Bryan said...: I dig your style, Dude. But do you have to use so many curse words?; 5:04 PM
Ben said...: I fuck you in the ass, I fuck you in the ass, I fuck you, I fuck you, I fuck you...; 5:18 PM
Bryan said...: People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.; 5:44 PM
Ben said...: Well, I still jerk off manually.; 5:47 PM
Bryan said...: Get out of my fucking cab.; 6:22 PM
Ben said...: Brandt can't watch, though, or he has to pay a hundred.; 7:12 PM
Bryan said...: With one hundred thousand dollars you could buy any number of rugs that don't have sentimental value to me.; 8:48 PM
Ben said...: I'm just gonna find a cash machine.; 8:51 PM
Bryan said...: I was wondering if you could pay me in cash. My only concern - and I have to check with my accountant - is that this might bump me into a higher tax bracket.; 10:11 PM
Bryan said...: If you already have the check made out, that's cool.; 10:14 PM
Ben said...: It's down there somewhere, let me have another look.; 10:48 PM
Bryan said...: Do you, like, have any promising leads?; 11:01 PM
Ben said...: This is a complicated case, Maude. A lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of strands to keep in my head, man.; 11:10 PM
Bryan said...: For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.; 11:11 PM
Ben said...: That had not occurred to us, Dude.; 11:17 PM
Bryan said...: We're not the only morons here.; 10:30 AM
Ben said...: Were you listening to The Dude's story, Donny?; 11:52 AM
Bryan said...: Yeah, but I wasn't over. Mark it 8, dude.; 12:00 PM
Ben said...: Could you please keep your voices down--this is a family restaurant.; 12:08 PM
Bryan said...: Vagina.; 12:33 PM
Ben said...: OVER THE LINE!; 12:46 PM
Bryan said...: What did you think this was about, sex?; 1:12 PM
Ben said...: You ready to be fucked, man? I see you rolled your way into the semis. Dios mio, man. Liam and me, we're gonna fuck you up.; 1:48 PM
Bryan said...: Who's the nihilist now?; 2:40 PM
Ben said...: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.; 2:49 PM
Bryan said...: What are you, a fucking park ranger?; 4:23 PM
Ben said...: Does the Pope shit in the woods?; 4:26 PM
Bryan said...: I am the walrus?; 4:35 PM
Ben said...: No, he's a sex offender. With a record. He served 6 months in Chino for exposing himself to an eight year old.; 4:37 PM
Bryan said...: My "wife" is not the issue here.; 4:41 PM
Ben said...: So what are you saying? When you get divorced you turn in your library card? You get a new license? You stop being Jewish?; 4:44 PM
Bryan said...: It's like Lenin said.; 4:48 PM
Ben said...: Racially he's pretty cool?; 4:48 PM
Bryan said...: Oh no, he has health problems.; 5:00 PM
Ben said...: You mean... beyond pacifism?; 5:30 PM
Bryan said...: He treats objects like women.; 6:08 PM
Ben said...: When he moved to Hollywood he had to go door to door to tell everyone he was a pederast.; 6:17 PM
Bryan said...: Some burgers, some beers, a few laughs...; 6:18 PM
Ben said...: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here.; 6:40 PM
Bryan said...: (ahem) You didn't go to college.; 6:44 PM
Ben said...: What in God's holy name are you blathering about?; 7:00 PM
Bryan said...: V.I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov!; 7:23 PM
Ben said...: I don't see any connection to Vietnam, Walter.; 7:29 PM
Bryan said...: Wu peed on my rug.; 7:56 PM
Ben said...: Ah hahahahaha! Wonderful woman. We're all very fond of her. Very free-spirited.; 8:10 PM
Bryan said...: Stay the fuck away from my fucking lady friend, man!; 8:12 PM
Ben said...: She's got to feed the monkey, I mean uh... hasn't that ever occurred to you? Sir?; 8:23 PM
Bryan said...: My thinking on this matter was so uptight!; 12:33 AM
Ben said...: Dude, are you fucking this up?; 12:59 AM
sojo said...: I'll suck you cock for $1000; 7:26 AM
Bryan said...: Far out, man.; 10:33 AM
Ben said...: Where's the fucking money, shithead?; 2:24 PM
Bryan said...: From the looks of it, he already spent it.; 2:30 PM
Ben said...: What's in the fuckin' carrier?; 2:35 PM
Bryan said...: Knox Harrington, the video artist.; 2:44 PM
Ben said...: No, Donny, these men are nihilists.; 2:53 PM
Bryan said...: You don't know shit, Lebowski.; 3:10 PM
Ben said...: Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.; 3:21 PM
Bryan said...: Dude, today's already the 10th.; 3:29 PM
Ben said...: I'm sorry your stepmother is a nympho.; 3:39 PM
Bryan said...: She just came over to use the shower.; 3:44 PM
Ben said...: Mmm, sure. That and a pair of testicles.; 4:04 PM
Bryan said...: I got a rash, man.; 4:11 PM
Ben said...: Oh, Jesus, what's that smell, man?; 4:30 PM
Bryan said...: My "rod," or... "Johnson."; 4:32 PM
Ben said...: Walter, they're calling the cops, put the piece away.; 4:42 PM
Bryan said...: You didn't think I was rolling out of here naked, did you?; 4:46 PM
Ben said...: What... like an Irish monk?; 4:56 PM
Bryan said...: I'm a brother shamus, like you!; 6:13 PM
Ben said...: Okay sir, you're a Lebowski, I'm a Lebowski, that's terrific, I'm very busy so what can I do for you?; 6:44 PM
Bryan said...: I finally got my venue for my performance, I was wondering if you would come by.; 7:31 PM
Ben said...: The Beaver Picture?; 8:42 PM
Bryan said...: "The Port Huron Statement." I was the author of the original, not the compromised second draft.; 9:59 PM
Ben said...: Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost.; 10:24 PM
Bryan said...: I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee.; 11:34 PM
Ben said...: Jesus, you mix a hell of a Caucasian, Jackie.; 11:52 PM
Bryan said...: You got any of that good sasparilla?; 11:29 AM
Ben said...: Hey, nice marmot!; 1:43 PM
Bryan said...: It has fucking papers. You can't board it on an airplane, it sheds.; 1:47 PM
Ben said...: The chinaman is not the issue here, dude.; 3:55 PM
Ben said...: Well. I guess we can close the books on that one.; 4:38 AM
Bryan said...: To tell you the truth, Brandt, I don't remember most of it.; 12:15 PM
Ben said...: Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax...; 1:51 PM
Bryan said...: Shit yea, the achievers.; 2:07 PM
Ben said...: Jeez, Walter, I'm not talking about the guys who built the fucking railroad here.; 2:23 PM
Bryan said...: They released one album, in the mid-80s.; 3:41 PM
Ben said...: Come on, man. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!; 4:46 PM
Bryan said...: Well, I can see somebody doesn't want to be cheered up. Donny, let's get a lane.; 5:02 PM
Ben said...: Strong men also cry... Strong men also cry.; 5:10 PM
Bryan said...: Who's in charge of scheduling?; 1:21 PM
Ben said...: The man in the black pajamas, Dude. Worthy fuckin' adversary.; 1:53 PM
Bryan said...: I'm the guy who's going to kick your phony goldbricking ass.; 3:00 PM
Ben said...: Will you come off it, Walter? You're not even fucking Jewish, man.; 3:09 PM
Bryan said...: This is about drawing a line in the sand, saying that beyond this point YOU DO NOT... and Dude, that's not the accepted nomenclature, Asian-American, plase.; 4:20 PM
Ben said...: What is that, yoga?; 4:51 PM
Bryan said...: You're killing your father, Larry.; 12:01 PM
Ben said...: Isn't that what makes a man?; 1:50 PM
Bryan said...: I'll stick that piece right up your ass and pull the trigger until it goes click.; 3:19 PM
Ben said...: Are these the Nazis, Walter?; 4:09 PM
Bryan said...: The carpet-pissers did this?; 11:06 AM
Ben said...: That was me... and six other guys.; 2:12 PM
Bryan said...: Come alone. No funny stuff.; 2:54 PM
Ben said...: I told that Kraut a fuckin' thousand times, I don't roll on shabbos!; 3:13 PM
Bryan said...: No, like I said, Wu peed on my rug.; 3:59 PM
Ben said...: The rug was in the car?; 6:59 PM
Bryan said...: It is our most modestly priced receptacle.; 10:16 PM
Ben said...: Probably a vagrant slept in the car. Or maybe just used it as a toilet and moved on.; 11:16 PM
Bryan said...: Fuck it. Life goes on, man.; 12:06 PM
Ben said...: That's right, Dude. 100% certain.; 2:14 PM
Bryan said...: Well, the Dude abides.; 2:51 PM
The Stanger said...: The Dude abides. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there, the Dude, takin' her easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes The finals. Welp, that about does her, wraps her all up. Things seem to've worked out pretty good for the Dude'n Walter, and it was a purt good story, dontcha think? Made me laugh to beat the band. Parts, anyway. Course--I didn't like seein' Donny go. But then, happen to know that there's a little Lebowski on the way. I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' it-self, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time until-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again. Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed yourselves.; 3:42 PM

Tonight We Drink Presidente

2008-07-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tonight we drink Presidente. Tonight we open the beers, one by one, and roll them into our mouths, letting the heat try to pry them back out. Tonight we don’t talk about the man we are drinking, but we are thinking about him the whole time. We drink the beer of the Dominican Republic; we don’t have to say his name.

Somewhere Manny is on a plane.

Somewhere Manny is on a plane.

He is on his way to Los Angeles, to play for Joe Torre and to play with Nomar, to fire balls around Dodgers Stadium’s spacious outfield, to lose the ball in the sun and lope out grounders, to a place where he is singular and epic and beloved all at once.

We have let Manny go because there was no keeping him, now. It was, we were told, the last straw. We had given up guessing how many straws there were, but we figured there was at least one more. There he was, asking to be traded for Brett Favre and smiling and acting like the guy who his teammates liked at times and hated at others but never stopped loving. And then Theo Epstein did something strange: he actually traded him. He actually traded him.

Manny is gone, and he’s not coming back. Not ever. To paraphrase Rick Pitino, Manny Ramirez is not walking through that door. And we can’t even exhale, because if we exhaled we wouldn’t acknowledge that our team got painfully, painfully worse today. There’s no more Manny-n-Papi connection. Nothing lasts forever, but this lasted five years — an eternity in modern baseball.
Tomorrow, Manny will play left field, or maybe right field, where he is better suited, and he will bat fourth and probably get a base hit or two.

The Yankees will cheer. The Yankees will exult. The Yankees will do what they do, when they do it, because they are free of Manny’s curse. Manny made Yankee Stadium his own personal ballyard, mere miles from a house in which he grew up and which he most assuredly could not find.

We are left… here. We are left in a new place. Manny is gone, and David Ortiz will seem so alone now. Now we are a team of laser artists, seeing-eye dogs with high on base percentages and all the fundamentals. Eight years ago, we signed a punk, spacey guy from Cleveland for 8 years and $160 million, and for the first time people finally wanted to come to Boston again. That was Manny. Somwhere Manny is on a plane.

Tonight we drink Presidente.

•••

A beer eight years in the making tastes great. It tastes just like you imagined it would taste: sweet, refreshing, relaxing. It does the job. I remember where I was the Red Sox signed Manny: I was in my apartment in Chicago, and when my college roommate came home with the news, I turned on the local radio station and listened to the news update every 10 minutes just to make it feel real.

Nobody ever came to Boston. Nobody. It was shitty place to play with a shitty stadium with shitty locker rooms and shitty fans who would call you a piece of shit the first moment it looked like something was going to go wrong. They blamed you for everything, and would later treat Manny like it was their birthright to tell him how to do his job. Manny was Manny, is Manny, so he didn’t care. He cared in fits. But eight years ago, he felt about Cleveland the way he feels about Boston, and floated his way here after a winter’s worth of negotiations. Eight years, $160 million, with options to push it up to $200. The numbers were so blinding that they were an achievement in themselves. We had someone who made money and deserved it. We could get players.

Manny was the first to come to Boston voluntarily, though Pedro agreed to stay here. I don’t want to think about what happened to him, and the similarities. Look: it’s like a marriage, only the problems only arise once the deal moves past six years. Then people start to get upset. They want freedom. The front office has taken them for granted. They talk. It happens. It happens with almost every long-term free agent. It’s not their fault. We should let it be.
Manny had to go at some point, and it wasn’t going to be later than after this year. But you still felt like they weren’t going to trade him. Everyone in that dugout knows how good he is. David Ortiz knows how good he is. So does Derek Jeter. So don’t everyone. Tim Lincecum’s job just got a lot harder.

Here’s how we should honor Manny: by rooting for him. It costs us nothing. To root against him would cost us everything.

•••

My First Time

2008-07-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve been to about 20 baseball stadiums, but the last time I went to a “new” one (for me) was two years ago, when I went a Dodgers game in the immediate jetlagged haze of a return flight to the States from New Zealand.

I just read a Baseball Prospectus writer’s column where he waxes poetic about his first time in Yankee Stadium, so here’s my first impressions of the stadiums I visited as a kid:

1. Fenway Park
During the 1986 season, we were taking a vacation in Boston during the summer when I asked my dad if we could go to a Red Sox game. We lived outside Washington, DC, but I was born in Boston, so I had declared my 8-year-old self a Red Sox fan. We saw that there was a game coming up on a Saturday, and my dad my a couple calls, and we were set (how quaint). At first, I thought Clemens was pitching, but it was Schraldi. It was an afternoon game, and all I remember is being really close to the field and that it was gray and misty — cinematically so. I remember the seminal experience of coming out of the tunnel and seeing the field, and the burly players, for the first time, and walking along the innermost walkway on Fenway’s periphery to find our seats. I also remember that the Red Sox won. Or maybe they lost. I’m not sure. I don’t even care.

2. Yankee Stadium
A couple years later — important years — my father picked us up from his home in Connecticut to take us up to New York, and I suggested we see a Yankees game. It was the middle of the summer, and I remember taking the train up to the Stadium, where my youngest brother was yelled at on the train by someone asking if he had seen a black person before. We got off the train and made what seemed to be an eternal walk to a monstrous, colossal stadium, past the city parks where people were playing their own baseball. Our tickets cost $6 each and we sat waaaaaaaaaay up in the upper deck, along the third base line, and watched the Twins beat the Yankees in 10. The Yankee Stadium of then and now, to me, seem so different it’s ridiculous, but they’re both going bye-bye next year. I miss the one from my youth.

3. Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium
The first time I went to Memorial Stadium was in 1989, to see the first game of a doubleheader against the Red Sox. This one has two standout moments — one was on the bus on the way there (it was a camp field trip) that, sadly, I can’t share — the other was that just when we walked in, Nick Esasky’s 21st home run was going over the fence. I would choose not to add that Roger Clemens pitched for the Sox, which I only know because I just found the game on retrosheet.org (it’s easy to find doubleheaders, and Esasky was only on the team for one season), but there you go.

4. Exhibition Stadium, Toronto
Finally, one with mom! We were in Toronto for a vacation with our uncle and his family when I convinced her to take us to a Blue Jays game — again, I think against the Red Sox. (Many Red Sox-related coincidences like this one — them playing the Blue Jays when we were on vacation — seemed positively karmic to me as a youngster; actually, they still do). We sat in deep centerfield of the stadium, and I remember the people around us being really nice to us, which makes sense, because they were Canadian and my mom was a single woman with three brats. We actually still have pictures from this game, and I think at least one of us has a Blue Jays hat on. The unquestionable highlight of this trip, though, was being in the elevator with Jim Henson in our hotel, the four of us and him. My mom immediately knew who it was, and he knew that she knew, and she kind of looked at us with a ‘Pay attention to this man!’ look while trying to stifle a smile, unsuccessfully. So when he said, “Four, please” to us, who by this time were staring up at him, he said it in Kermit’s voice. I can still hear it.

5. New Comiskey
On a trip to Chicago, the White Sox were playing someone who was NOT the Red Sox in the first year at the new Comiskey Park. Even as a 13- or 14-year-old, I was unimpressed with the stadium, though I was damn proud of myself for having visited the stadium, being from Massachusetts and all, and I bragged to all my friends at home about it. Or at least I assume I did. I went with my Uncle Mike, which was the most fun part about it.

D'evils!

2008-07-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

A strange thing happened on my television last night. The Sox were swept by the Rays, who scored six runs in the seventh inning off a combination of an ineffective Manny Delcarmen, Craig Hansen, David Aardsma and Javier Lopez.

The strange thing was how shook the pitchers looked in the seventh for a team coming off a World Series title. Craig Hansen looked like a deer in the headlights, if the deer was bout 6’5”, weighed 250 lbs. and couldn’t find the strike zone with a map of home plate.

The Sox wasted a cycle-plus effort from The Little Pony, who finished with two doubles, a triple and a homer. During the game ESPN showed that there have, surprisingly, been a similar number of cycles and no-hitters in the history of baseball. If it seems counterintuitive, that’s because it is: if you took the number of games like Dusty’s, which is to say, those who hit for at least a single, double, triple and homer in a game, the numbers wouldn’t be close.

As I was discussing this with my roommate over some beef with string beans — which is to say, a large carton of string beans with whatever “beef” Dragon Gate was using last evening — the Red Sox started to come back off Tampa Bay closer-replacement-extraordinaire, Dan Wheeler. Soon enough it was 7-6 and Jason Varitek was up with Mike Lowell on first with one out

For those of you in “the know” — LIKE ME (and everyone else watching ESPN) — Jason Varitek is in a terrible, terrible slump. He has problems hitting the baseball, which is a problem for someone in his profession. Anyhow, despite this, Terry Francona put on the hit and run with Varitek at the plate, and JayVay responded by actually lining a shot down the right field line, just foul. On the next pitch, the hit and run was back on, and this time, Varitek responded the way everyone thought he would — he whiffed on the pitch completely, and Lowell was thrown out by about ten kajillion steps. That was strike two, and it was summarily followed by strike three.

I actually like the hit and run call in that situation, or at least I’m able to defend it on these grounds: if Varitek is having trouble hitting the ball, Francona’s trying to force him to by putting on the hit and run. Trick the guy into simply making contact and maybe you’ll trick him into a hitting streak. Okay, maybe it’s not that easy to defend. But I gave it the old college try.

Tonight, Me and Pedro will be at Yankee Stadium. A PayPal account will be set up for you to contribute to my hot dog/beer fund. Euros preferred.

Here come the Rays. Hope you were paying attention

2008-07-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

If you’ve watched ESPN over the last month, you can’t probably help but notice that the TAMPA BAY RAYS ARE PLAYING WELL. In case you didn’t get that the first time, THE TAMPA BAY RAYS ARE BASEBALL’S SURPRISE TEAM.

Is it surprising that Tampa Bay is in first place? Absolutely. But it’s not surprising that they are good because, as ESPN will tell you, THEY HAVE LOTS OF GREAT YOUNG PLAYERS.

So how far can BASEBALL’S SURPRISE TEAM go? Can they win the WORLD SERIES? Let’s talk about it.

You would think that after the Cardinals won the World Series with an 83-78 regular season record, and after last year’s Rockies surprise, that ESPN would shy away from predicting the unpredictable. CAN THE RAYS WIN THE WORLD SERIES? Of course they can, fucknuts! Can we just wait and see what happens?

In the meantime, instead of trying to project the future, how about some interesting Rays stories? Like, how the team was slowly and methodically assembled with great draft picks (and two big trades)? Sure, it’s been long chronicled here and here and plenty of other places, but I’ll admit not everyone saw the Rays era coming.

Or how about how, during their decade of futility, they had the best media relations department in the business, just one way to stave off the boredom of working for MLB’s worst franchise?

Sorry to give you story ideas, ESPN — it just seems that you don’t have any except trying to tell the future. FACT OR FICTION: TAMPA BAY WILL WIN IT ALL!

It’s a sad day when the average informed fan can be more informed than pretty much the entire staff of Baseball Tonight. It’s a sad day called “every day in the last five years.”

To the guy who sold us counterfeit tickets to the Yankees game

2008-06-27T18:18:00.001-07:00

"Hi Bryan, this is Mik. Listen, if you get this message, don't get on the train, don't check your bag, don't get in line. The tickets are counterfeit. Bogus. We're going home."

Hey dude — thanks for the tickets.

No seriously — thanks. I didn't want to see Carlos Delgado's 9 RBI game, or go to the last Mets/Yankees game in the Stadium. Why would I? I could always just walk around before the game, alone, with nowhere to go, right?

Go to the bars in front of the Stadium? The ones that have charged me up to $2 more per beer for sporting Red Sox gear? Nah, I don't think so.

Take a trip around the Stadium? Sounds great! Oh wait, there are crowds everywhere. Can't get through 'em. Do I need a ticket? Sure do? How much? $100? What a coincidence! That's what I paid!

Just go home? Love to! Except the swarms of people leaving the train are boxing me onto River Avenue. Behind me, a Yankees fan yells to anyone in orange and blue: "You got the wrong hat! This is the Stadium. You're in the wrong borough. This isn't Queens!"

And you know what, he's right, this isn't Queens. You could find Queens on a map of New York City, right? Yeah, it's right at the tip of my middle finger, there. I'm going there now and watch the Yankees lose by 10. That's a football score.

Which leaves me one question:

Want Giants tickets, asshole?

Been a bit loony since I found the site that makes these

2008-06-20T09:39:00.001-07:00

The best

2008-06-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

You might have heard this before but... now it all makes sense.

Now I get the Celtics' history, the devotion from the old-time fans, the love from the new ones, and, most importantly, I understand why the Celtics are the best team for Boston.

When you win the NBA title, you really win it. Rarely do you win it like the Celtics won last night, but there's never a doubt about who the champs are. It's not football, with its one game for all the marbles, or baseball, with its "Get a good team and cross your fingers" kismet.

It's not even hockey, where a goalie can stand on his head for two months and flip back over with the Stanley Cup.

It's basketball, where if you fill up the basket more than the other team, you win. When things are going good, you can exult on every play. And let's just say things were going amazingly, unbelievably, historically good last night.

The fans exploded. Then they exploded some more. And some more. That's when I realized why the Celtics are the best team for Boston — they validate this city in a way the other teams don't. The Celtics allow you know, in a self-satisfying way, that they're the best team in the world, to the point where you don't even need to celebrate it in front of foreigners — i.e., non New Englanders — because it's just so damned obvious. It's a phenomenon unique to NBA basketball, and it's why the Celtics have a fan base that stretches from the Back Bay to just shy of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Don't get me wrong, we love the Red Sox and Patriots (and Bruins) too. But you can forget about a Red Sox title on the following Opening Day, when a .212 hitter takes your number one starter deep. And our need to be validated has taken its toll with the Patriots. We have, as fans, acted like assholes to the point where being a Pats fan in mixed company is like wearing the Scarlet Letter; that the team followed suit really doesn't help. I hate to say it, but the Super Bowl loss keeps us honest.

The fact is, I'm happier with the Celtics title than I would have been with a Pats win, and I think that's a common feeling. It's not just that the other team finally won one in the midst of all this prosperity, it's that the right team won one. Often this season, I tempered my expectations, just because I had been out of following basketball for so long that I wanted to remain grounded. As the season went on, I started to believe more and more, but it wasn't until the Celtics made the Finals that I bought into the entire program. The Gatorade commercials, ESPN spots, the hype — none of it mattered any more. It was time to play REAL basketball, the type of basketball that not even a March sweep of the Texas trio can mimic.

And just like that, Paul Pierce went down in game one. He was carried off the court and into a wheelchair. Nothing — nothing — prepared me for that blow. Two minutes later, he was back on the court. His two three pointers probably ended the Lakers' season right there. The rest was just details. Those details: biggest comeback in Finals history, biggest clinching win in Finals history. Best team in the last five years. Best excuse to skip a day, walk down the Common, and enjoy life.

Now it all makes sense.

He's Certified — "Anything is Possible," the extremely rough transcript of Kevin Garnett's amazing victory speech

2008-06-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

Michelle Tafoya: League MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, now it’s time to add to your resume. NBA Champion, how does that sound?

KG: (silence, plays with hat)

Man I’m so… I’m so hype right now… Anything is possible… ANYTHING IS POSSIBLLLLLLLLLLLE!

(near tears) Oh my momma [unintelligible]

(Falls over, mobbed by random dudes)

MT: Kevin… such emotion…

KG (interrupting): I’m sorry Michelle.

MT: It’s alright! Don’t apologize.

KG (interrupting again): I just wanna… this is for everybody in 'Sota, this is for everybody in Chicago… VV!... It’s for EVERBODYYYY! South Cack! Mashwood (?)! My momma! Peanut! See everybody who I love! My momma! I made it ma! TOP OF THE WORLD! TOP OF THE WORLD!

MT: Kevin…

KG (to someone else): You have no idea…

MT: What does top of the world feel like, Kevin?

KG: (after a pause) Man I’m so… so happy right now… I’m not finna sleep for a week. Ray Allen had a great game, Paul Pierce, everybody. I can’t even take all this man, but I’m certified. I’m certified. Michelle, you look good tonight, girl.

MT (smiling): One more, Kevin. To do this… you talked about Minnesota, you talked about that, but to do this in Boston, with a franchise this storied, against a franchise like the Lakers, what does that mean to you? You’re a student of the game.

KG: You have to understand when you come here, it’s a lot of responsibility that comes with putting this great jersey on. I’m just happy that we carried out tradition. What you gonna say now? What can you say now? I MADE IT MA!

/ascends to heaven through Garden roof

Leon Powe FILLS UP THE BASKET

2008-06-09T07:13:00.001-07:00

Leon Powe was our favorite Celtics bench player all year long. Why? Because the man fills up the basket. This is hard to do in the NBA. Not for him. Last night, he filled it up. Twenty-one points in 15 minutes is some Kobe sh*t, but this isn't the MVP, this is the man from Cal. Give him the ball, and he's going to the hoop, and the ball is going through it. Simple as that.

Lakers upset about the fouls? Here's a suggestion: how about driving the freaking ball? The reffing was certainly not completely even last night, but as Phil Jackson alluded to, the discrepancy was a result of the Lakers standing around and having the ball stripped from them, whereas the Celtics, led by Leon, were getting to the rim. This is why Powe not playing in the early rounds was maddening — with the exception of Pierce, Powe and sometimes Allen, the C's are a jump-shooting team. Relying on Perkins to hit the bunnies is not a long-term strategy, but it's Powe's bread and butter. THROW IT DOWN, BIG MAN!

Now, staked to a 2-0 lead by the P&PP crew, the C's head to L.A. I've been warned, McCain-style, against going negative, so I can't write how I would be astonished if some combination of Kobe and the refs didn't push this series to 2-1 in convincing fashion, but that's why they play the games. On the plus side, Sam Cassell is "hurt" again, so we probably won't see him any more in this series. That means more Eddie Heezie. Sun Devils Stand Up.

Now with video!:

On The Sprain and ESPN's Inability To Cover Sports Like Adults

2008-06-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

I used to love SportsCenter, because it was so clever: it seemed to me like the anchors spent hours dreaming up weird and funny stuff to say on television. It was a product of the talent that they had at the time: Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Charley Steiner, Craig Kilborn, Rich Eisen, Kenny Mayne, etc. These guys were funny, so the show was funny. Even straight-arrows like Jack Edwards did the show professionally.

But once these guys left, the wit they brought to the set became institutionalized. Now the jokes make themselves, the moments of pathos seem hackneyed, and the show has become devoted to the lowest common denominator in sports coverage. In this case, it's Paul Pierce's knee.

In Friday night's SportsCenter, they led off by taking five minutes to talk about whether Paul Pierce really hurt his knee or not, emphasizing his quick return to the court. They played some skeptical comments from Phil Jackson and relayed the to the Celtics, and voila!, they had a story. A friend from Boston asked me what I thought, when I had hardly thought about it at all. The reason? The Celtics had already divulged what the injury was and all of Pierce's symptoms fit with it perfectly.

Have you ever sprained something? Has anyone at ESPN? Maybe John Anderson running into a copier, or Neil Everett rupturing a vocal chord while screaming? Well, here's what happens: you hear a pop, sh*t hurts like hell, and then you figure out the extent of the injury. If it's a minor sprain, the pain will stay somewhat constant. If it's a major sprain, it'll get worse. Pierce had a minor sprain, but it was a minor one, so he was able to come back. He'll be in serious pain during game two.

Is it too much to ask for ESPN to do this simple, obvious analysis?

At this point, I'm afraid it is. People want to talk about the aesthetics of the Celtics victory rather than how they did it — shut down those little pieces of crap that are the Lakers second-tier players, play great D on Kobe, hold up a mirror to Gasol's face. They gave about three minutes to this, after the knee talk. Maybe after game two they can get renowned sprain expert Lisa Turtle to weigh in on whether Pierce is still faking it. I hear she's available.

On: Rocking the Shit

2008-06-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Paul Pierce rocked the shit last night. But I want to talk about this series' stoner HD potential which is, to give credit where credit is due, a Bill Simmons joint. (Get it? Joint?) Quite simply, game one was mind-blowing, and not just Pierce's performance. From the exterior shots of the Garden to the game to the freaking commercials, this was probably Bob Dope's favorite game of all time.

Let's start with the exterior shots? Have I ever wanted to be anywhere as badly as I wanted to be in Boston last night? Let's put it the BDD way: fuck and no. The Celtics are the only Boston team the city knows how to root for when it's got some prosperity going. The exact same people who were dyed-in-the-wool Celtics fans last night act like deranged Sox fans or asshole Pats fans, but we know how to root for the C's. It's just been awhile since it mattered.

The game itself was as vivid as it gets in purple hazed HD and, but for a brief 8-point Lakers lead, was comfortable throughout. Big props to the dude who talked Paul Pierce through his exercise bike routine. Pierce loved the guy; let's set him up with some speaking engagements at local schools. You can be a winner too, kids.

Finally, those commercials. That McDonald's commercial with all the fruits and such is absolutely amazing in Cheechvision, even if the food remains completely unappetizing (That's how you know it's really bad.) I hate to say it, but the commercial where the dude picks up the nudists in his SUV was pretty dope too, and that holy-shit-this-commercial-is-obnoxious-but-Christ-"California Soul"-is-a-dope-song Dockers commercial is sneaky. We'll be catching Sunday's game after a matinée of Zohan. Expect Bob to be in attendance.

Wheee! What a predicament!

2008-06-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

The NBA Finals start tomorrow night and, despite some tough talk a few days ago, I'm starting to get excited about Lakers/Celtics. I'm still not totally sold on the "Celtics mystique" after two decades of futility, but the clash of the uniform colors, and Bill Simmons' comment that, "For stoners, watching a Celts-Lakers game in HD is like staring at a 50-foot fish tank," well, the man has a point.

I'm not allowed to make a prediction, either, because loyal reader B. Gray told me, "enough of your Celtics negativity, first it was pick Detroit, they've got Stuckey, now you want to piss on this series... a little homerism, please." On top of that, Frownies linked over to my Pistons pick, and another reader viciously and repeatedly accused me of giving the Celtics the dreaded "double-reverse schmoo." Looking back on my words, it would be hard to argue the point, but I swear it wasn't intentional.

At least in this series I can claim I haven't seen the Lakers that much, but I know they're good. Good enough to beat the Celtics, but the Celtics are good enough to beat them, too. I'm not sold on the Lakers' second-tier players — Farmar, Vujacic, Radmanovic, Walton — and even Fisher and Odom are overrated, but I'm realizing more and more that it's all Kobe, and he's just that good. I'm not ready to say he's better than Jordan quite yet — let's let the man win one "on his own" first. This would be the time, and it's possible he could do it in as few as five games, but I'm not ready to say that: I've underrated the Celtics all year, and I'm not going to do it now. If Perk can stay out of foul trouble and Pierce can light it up, the Celtics can win. I'm not as sold on the idea of Ray Allen being the X-Factor, as in, "if Ray Allen scores 25 the Celtics will win," which seems to be a common idea; his defense is lazy enough that he has to score just to balance out the points he costs on the defensive end. I think Pierce is the X-factor. It doesn't get any more big-time than this for the Captain. If he wants to be next to Larry Bird in stature and not just in number, this is his time. It's almost inconceivable he's in this position, but he is. Now let's do it.

Astonishing, Bananas, Cockapoopoo

2008-06-03T08:33:00.001-07:00

I know you probably didn't watch Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals last night, but it was freaking incredible in every way. This was a game, and we can skip through the "Hockey's Still Around?" jokes, where the underdog Penguins took and early lead, blew it, and scored against a DOMINANT Red Wings team with 35.4 seconds left, then withstood a Mike Tyson's Punch-Out like flurry of Wings scoring chances in the first overtime, got scoring chances of their own in OT two, only to score the eventual winning goal halfway through the third overtime by a guy who had freaking called his shot.

Don't believe me? Well, part of the new hockey coverage includes a dude who's stationed in a small gap right between the two benches, so he can hear what the coaches and players are saying to each other. Late in the second overtime, the Pens' Petr Sykora tapped on the glass and told NBC dude, whose name I can't find, that he was going to score the game-winner. In the third OT, the Pens went on a four-minute power play after the Wings slashed some dude in the face, Pittsburgh brought back Sergei Gonchar — who had been hurt, seemingly for the game, in the second period, and as if that weren't enough, he was on the ice for less than one shift before Evgeni Malkin, the superstar who has been a straight goat in this series, fed Sykora for a slapshot that won the game. By this time it was like 1 in the morning, but I jumped in the air. This shit was too much.

As the OTs went on, Sidney Crosby did less and less, as the Red Wings' D got more and more physical and everyone got tired. There was a lot of talk by Eddie Olczyk about players eating pizza during the breaks to get energy, which was great. So to recap: one the best games you'll ever see in any sport, in the finals, a called shot, pizza talk. That's freaking awesome.

Note: The fact I didn't mention Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in this article by name upon first publishing is probably a criminal act. Don't take it from me, take it from Don Cherry, who said his performance was the greatest goaltending he's ever seen in the playoffs.

Yes: Don Cherry said that.

How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl?

2008-06-02T19:55:00.001-07:00

How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl?

I'm not sold

2008-05-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not sold on this whole Lakers/Celtics thing. Sure, I'm happy the Celtics are in the Finals, but I don't see what this Lakers/Celtics series has to do with those from two decades ago.

These teams play each other twice a year. How can that sustain a rivalry? It can't. The uniforms are the same as the Bird/Magic era, but that's all. There's no narrative here whatsoever, whereas Bird and Magic played each other for the NCAA title; came into the league at the same time; were, obviously, of different races and played in cities with different demographics; and jousted for the league title for a decade. The best you could say about Kobe and KG is they represent the new NBA. They're two of the best players to come straight out of high school and both were talked about in trade rumors in the offseason. KG actually got traded, and the New Celtics were born the second he stepped into town. That's great and all, but why pretend like the Celtics have been building toward this, when it's a product of the NBA free agency system?

Some great basketball is about to be played, and until it is, everyone is going to talk about ghosts. The ghosts of Kareem, Magic, Worthy, Bird, McHale, Parish and the rest, and how these teams are playing for the legacies of the old teams. They're not. When John Havlicek presented the Celtics with the Eastern Conference Finals trophy and told them how proud they should be to be wearing Celtics green, it was hogwash. He was ignoring the two decades worth of embarrassing teams Celtics management has put on the floor, expecting this Finals appearance to wipe the slate clean. It doesn't, but it represents a chance for everyone to turn the page on the last 20 years in Boston country. While we've been twiddling our thumbs and missing jump shots, the Lakers have won four titles and appeared in the Finals seven times. They're two titles away from the Celtics. Havlicek should have said: you're playing against those guys, and here's your chance to push them back a bit. He made it sound like we were the favorites just because of the jerseys we wear. We're not. Bill Russell may still be alive, but his Celtics teams are distant memories. The Lakers are the NBA's top franchise now, and have been for quite some time.

That's why, also, the Pau Gasol and KG trades are not quite identical. KG was traded to the Celtics because of Danny Ainge's and Kevin McHale's relationship; the Lakers flexed their muscle to get Gasol. The Celtics got lucky, whereas the Lakers put themselves in a position to succeed. Instead of seeing ourselves as the antithesis of the Lakers, we should be trying to emulate them to make our success a long-term one, instead of KG-dependent. Winning a title would go a long way toward restoring that, but competent management and coaching would go much farther. Enjoy Lakers/Celtics — we will — but reviving the rivalry is going to take more than one best-of-seven series.

Go With The 'Ston(e)s

2008-05-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

Back in 2004, our good friend Cleveland Frowns was at a bar in O'Hare Airport during the Conference Finals. The Lakers/Timberwolves game was on TV, and Frowns sidled up to the bar next to exactly the type of sloppy drunk man great stories are made of. After a bit of small talk, Frowns asked who he liked in the series.

The man, ignoring the question, snarled, "Go with the 'Ston(e)s!"

From that moment on, Frowns rode the Pistons — ahem, the Stones —
straight through the Eastern Conference and NBA Finals, advising all his associate Savvy Sirs to do the same. He was rewarded, handsomely. Something about the guy not even answering his question, and pushing him toward Detroit, was too much for Frowns to take. Forget the talking heads — Frowns reads the tea leaves of everyday life to inform his picks. Everything is connected, and if everything is connected, how could he pass on the Stones after that? (Note: we don't just like this approach, we love it and condone it in all forms, for everything.)

So here is our advice: Go with the Stones.

After watching that fourth quarter in Boston, is there anyone who thinks the Pistons will lose tonight? The Pistons work like clockwork, and the Celtics, for all their talent, play a sloppy, disjointed brand of basketball. In the war of attrition, who's going to win: the self-confident, precise team or the team that can't figure out how to score in big spots? Take the Pistons in game 6 and the Pistons in game 7, and get ready for another Detroit/L.A. final.

This is an obvious departure from my pick of last week of Celtics in five, which I stuck to after Game 2 because the Pistons had to make literally every shot to beat the C's, and, sure enough, the C's whupped them in Game 3. But Game 4 was a complete embarrassment for the Celtics, as was the end of Game 5, and you're supposed to play like this less and less as the series goes on. The Pistons are the stronger team in every subsequent game for one reason: the maturation of Rodney Stuckey.

If my refrain at the beginning of the series was, "Who's going to get to the basket for the Pistons?" the answer is Stuckey. The guy gets to the hoop better than anyone on both teams. He also hits his shots, the only miscue being a missed foul shot late in Game 5. But seriously: if that game went on one more minute, the Celtics were toast. These knock-down, drag out games come down to who can get the foul calls and get to the hoop when it's close. Billups is good at that, but Stuckey can be the difference between a good Pistons team and a great one. He also could be the reason the Celtics are going home early.

But he's no Rip Hamilton.

Quite simply, the fourth quarter of Game 5 was a masterpiece for Hamilton. He hit everything, from anywhere. He shot with confidence, a confidence that the Celtics sorely lack. Health permitting, he'll do it again tonight, and he'll lead the charge to the Game 7 win either way. It seems inevitable. By the end of Game 5 no one on the Celtics could, or even seemed to be inclined to keep up with him. It's only going to get worse for them. So, for a final time: Go with the Stones.

Paul Purse

2008-05-22T08:29:00.001-07:00

I feel the same way about Paul Pierce that Juno's father/stepfather/whatever felt about her baby daddy: "Paulie Bleeker? I didn't think the kid had it in him."

I'm not the biggest Paul Pierce fan. I like watching him score and have some level of admiration for, as I believe it was Eric Neel said, "his funky, earthbound way to the basket." I have no real idea how he succeeds in the NBA without any sort of dominant skill.

But he does. However, for years he's done it and pouted at the same time. Now, it's hard to blame him entirely, as he was given jack sh*t to work with until Kevin McHale popped in an old Celtics tape, drank half a bottle of Southern Comfort and dialed the first person in his phone (Ainge, Danny). You ready to vent? LET'S VENT!

Even by his own admission, Pierce sort of mentally checked out last year. This year has obviously been different, but there have still been times when he'll force his shot, do that crazy thing where he drives and throws his arms up and then looks like he's going to cry when he doesn't get the foul call.

(Speaking of fouls, what on earth is his foul-line foot arrangement? That's straight out of the Nick Van Exel school of weird stances. He's got one foot way in front of the other and is half crouched over. It's odd, especially for someone who lives at the line.)

In the playoffs, though, he's starting to live up to his role as "Captain." Now, I have argued in non-Internet circles that it's absurd that Pierce is the captain when Garnett is clearly the team leader. But, as has been discussed ad nauseum on the various tubes, Garnett isn't a cutthroat playoff baller. Neither is Pierce, really, but he'll have to do, and he's comfortable trying. He's been succeeding so far, but we'll see what happens when he throws up a stinker. He's not Kobe for a reason, and the reason is consistency. If Garnett or Rondo (or that other guy) can pick up the team once or twice, as they have done so far, the C's can win it all. It's truly a team effort.

All that said, I think the Celtics are going to have a surprisingly easy time with the Pistons. The problem against the Hawks and the Cavs was that both teams had one scorer who could destroy the Celtics' superlatively-good defense. The Pistons have many very good players, but they don't have a superstar scorer. The Celtics should be able to shut them down, as a unit. And despite what sounds like a column full of dogging Paul Pierce, he should really shine in this series (It's the next one that I'm potentially worried about, vs. Bowen or Kobe, when rough play and ego battles will get ratcheted up to crazy level). So I'm going to say something ridiculous like Celtics in five, having been spotted game one, leading to an ESPN about-face on tired the "can they win a road game" storyline so fast that you'll feel all whiplashed like Mike Mussina spinning to watch balls fly into the bleachers.

(That is a pretty ridiculous photo btw)