I promise that I want to get something up on the site today that isn’t a weekend recap or a picture of Osama Bin Laden with OBAMA’D in big white letters at the bottom, but today is officially Did You Hear About Osama Day in America. Maybe if I was blogging from Kenya I could report futbol news and a funny video of a busty lady tripping and falling down while crossing the veldt, but no, baseball happened and then we killed a guy.
This week’s Baseball is Boring takes a xenophobic approach to the national pastime, wherein I resort to a combination of CTRL+X and CTRL+V for my USA chants and question the authenticity of Jose Bautista’s birth certificate. I’m sorry, his steroids certificate.
It’s Always Patriotic in Phialdelphia
The big baseball news of the day is the outpouring of patriotism during the Phillies/Mets game on Sunday night, when the crowd (who I guess had been looking at their phones a lot) found out about Bin Laden’s capture-sassination and started chanting U-S-A. You could feel the electricity spreading in the stadium, and a guy in a USA jersey has become an image of American pride, the kind of pride that needs to have its head covered but thinks he looks cooler with the sun in his eyes. Note: if you are old enough to have facial hair, you are old enough to properly wear your hat.
For one sweet evening, the battery-chucking, child-vomiting, dog-murderer-idolizing, violently-tazed drunken assholes of Philadelphia came together to celebrate a guy being bombed in the face and became America’s sweethearts. It was the closest I came to feeling kinship with a bunch of jerks since Yankees fans sang “New York, New York” when they didn’t have to. Baseball is America, for better or worse, and I love it so.
The Indians are Killing Folks Every Day
A walk-off grand slam from smooth rocker Carlos Santana and a 13th-inning go-ahead single from Michael Brantley helped the 2011 World Series Champion Cleveland Indians sweep the Detroit Tigers over the weekend, pushing the Tribe to 13 straight home victories and a 4 1/2 game lead in the AL Central. Sports sites are starting to pick up on the reality of a Cleveland contender, doing the whole “uh, so should we start taking them seriously” article with titles like “plucky Indians win again, somehow.”
Cleveland’s inevitable plunge into a Fausto Carmona-led June Madness will ultimately prove me wrong, but just in case this is Cleveland’s inspirational year to save its city in the wake of LeBron James and win the World Series, I will be proud to be on the ground floor. I picked the Tribe to win it all before the season started, and how smart do I look now? Please ignore that I picked them to win it all last year, too, and the year before that.
Wait, Uh oh, Hold On, What
I’m sorry, did I say the Indians would plunge into madness in June? They’re really living a Major League scenario, where the owner will do anything to keep them failing. Because, I mean, seriously:
“Omar [Minaya] is one of my best friends in baseball,” said [Mark] Shapiro. “He’s also friends with Chris [Antonetti] and Manny [Acta]. I asked him to visit before the start of the season and this is the first time he could make it.”
That’s just one of about 14 terrifying quotes from the Plain Dealer regarding former Mets and Expos cretin Omar Minaya visiting Indians front office personnel. Sure, Cleveland likes him because of the terrible trades he made that benefited the Tribe, but come on Cleveland, the LAST thing you need right now is for somebody ELSE to show up and start trading people away.
Dear lord, this is never going to end well for me in my entire life, is it
Don’t Worry, it Won’t End Well for Carl Pavano, Either
Carl Pavano strikes me as a well-adjusted guy who does not go off in the style of Patrick Bateman when he has a bad game. I couldn’t imagine him repeatedly striking something with a baseball bat because he caused some runs to be scored in a Spring AL Central game between two middle-of-the-pack teams. I mean, who would do that?
The only thing that could made this clip better (besides it being properly recorded, and not filmed with somebody’s Olympus from 1998) would be Jim Thome on the other side, dressed as Paul Bunyan, fervently hacking away at whatever Pavano’s hitting with his axe.
Screwball Roger McDowell Suspended for Homophobic Hot-foot
That crazy Roger McDowell! Heh, will he ever learn? The Atlanta Braves pitching coach was suspended for two weeks without pay Sunday by Major League Baseball for an incident in San Francisco where a fan was trying to give an interview, but McDowell filled a pie pan with shaving cream, snuck up behind him and pushed it into his face. The fan was a good sport, laughing as he wiped cream from his eyes, but then the whole thing went downhill when McDowell started screaming “QUEER! QUEER!” at him.
[Justin] Quinn said he was in the stands with his wife and 9-year-old twin daughters before the April 23 game at San Francisco when he noticed McDowell ask three men “Are you guys a homo couple or a threesome?”
Quinn said McDowell made crude sexual gestures with his hips and a bat. Quinn said he shouted, “Hey there are kids out here.”
According to Quinn, McDowell said kids don’t belong at a baseball park, picked up a bat, walked up to Quinn and asked him, “How much are your teeth worth?”
He then found a bald man, rubbed the man’s head, and tried to see himself in the reflection.
Pro Wrestling NOAH star KENTA injures Carlos Lee
In another clip straight out of a blooper VHS, Houston Astro Carlos Lee was badly injured when shortstop Angel Sanchez tried to catch a pop fly and ended up sliding knee-first into Lee’s chest. Lee then flopped around on the ground like a baby (I’m not calling him a wimp, I’m saying he looked like an actual infant child) until he could be helped off the field. A preliminary chest X-ray at the hospital showed no fractures, but a CT scan confirmed a left rib contusion, and the Lee is day to day.
The loss of Lee means there are now only two people on the Houston Astros roster I have heard of, instead of three.
Phil Hughes is Just Really Bored
Or maybe he has mono, I don’t know. Whatever’s happening, Yankees pitcher Phil Hughes keeps losing velocity, and since nobody knows what the hell is wrong with him we can go ahead and attribute it to everything from “needing a nap” to Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Hughes went 0-1 with a 13.94 ERA in three starts in 2011 while dealing with dead arm, the same condition other pitchers like Kenny Rogers have battled in their careers. Hopefully Hughes won’t come out of this with the other personal and mental problems Kenny Rogers developed, although it would be pretty funny to see whitebread Phil Hughes wandering around Yankee Stadium, shoving journalists on their asses.
Phil’s temp replacements are the Grumpiest Old Men duo of Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon, who will do fine in the rotation until their equivalent of Ann-Margaret shows up. Maybe the Red Sox are Ann-Margaret? It’s close.
Ethier Approaching Zack Wheat Levels of Greatness
We’re headlong into May now, and Andre Ethier won’t stop hitting baseballs. Maybe he figured out that if he hits baseballs a lot, his team has a better chance of winning? Too bad Juan Pierre didn’t stick around to hear about that.
Ethier’s 7th inning lead-off single on Sunday extended his hitting streak to a second all-time Dodgers best of 27 games, bringing him within four games of Willie Davis’ 31 consecutive in 1969. 27-straight is the longest hitting streak in the majors since Ichiro hit 27 in a row in 2009. And, of course, he’s only 29 away from tying Joe DiMaggio’s all-time record, which would be funny considering all the BASEBALL’S ONLY UNBREAKABLE RECORD talk lately. Guys, I’ve seen Sammy Sosa hit more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth, anything can happen.
Roy Oswalt to Return, Sometime
Roy Oswalt left the Phillies earlier this week to deal with the tragic natural disaster damage that ravaged his Mississippi home, but now he’s been standing outside of his house for like three days and no tornadoes have hit, so he thinks it’s okay, and he can comfortably return to work without wondering if the weather that passed will return to kill his family. The Phillies expect him back for his next start. This is Oswalt’s second annual tornado vacation, and he’s considering moving his childhood home to rural Kansas in the hopes of getting whisked away to the merry old land of Oz and/or getting a couple of weeks off in April.
In all seriousness, tornadoes are the Devil’s Bugles and I’ve spent the last week desperately hoping they don’t kill my parents and my friends, who have all been in harm’s way. So say a prayer for those affected by the events, and include a line in there about how they should also have as much money and as little to do as Roy f**king Oswalt.
