As you may have noticed. There hasn’t been a post in a while. I’ve got two weeks off for Christmas (crazy, right? Surely, I’m going to be fired when I get back). Anyway, this is literally the first precious minute of Internet time I’ve had since arriving at my in-laws in middle of nowhere Texas. So…We’ll be pretty much dark until Jan. 5. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas that was Rick Reilly-free and happy.
For now, I’ll just link to a Tommy Craggs retrospective about this year in Reilly. Perhaps this will be the year he’s fired. Fingers crossed.
Til Next Week. Here’s the Deadspin piece.
Whoa boy, it’s really coming down out there. Here are some links for your (possibly) snowy weekend. I’m sure as hell not going anywhere today, so check back later on, too, as there’ll be another post in the afternoon. Anyway, here are you links. Enjoy:
- The Penguins-Flyers Game on Tuesday had not one, not two, but three fights…in the first 5 minutes of the game. Crazy. Luckily MondesisHouse has them all in one place.
- This is kind of like an anti-link. It’s Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell exchanging e-mails. While I’m normally a fan of Simmons, I am not a fan of Gladwell…he doesn’t really have anything to say ever, just nice turns of phrase. Anyway, I think he brings Simmons down a level, and while they readily admit that they’re doing this promote their new books…they neglect to tell us that they’re also doing this to successively and increasingly soothe their own self-aggrandizing egos. Annnnnnd, end rant.
- This song is awesome. It is, of course, an old Bob Dylan song, done by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of Once fame. That should get the bad thoughts of Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell kissing each other’s asses out of you mind.
- I admit, I’m the world’s biggest sucker for Friday Night Lights. And I would follow Coach Eric Taylor to the ends of the earth.
- I’m not sure what’s so fascinating about watching a fake QB go through about a quarter of his throwing motion over and over. But for some reason, I can’t stop watching this from Tirico Suave.
- From Ball Don’t Lie…I’ll be upfront with you, this is a little bit terrifying.
- Finally, it’s not all that funny, most of the time, but there are some gems, and amazingly, Danny DeVito somehow manages to make his tweets sound like the way he talks. Do your self a favor and follow him twitter. 9 out of 10 make zero sense, but that one in ten is worth it.
All right, enjoy your hot chocolate and college basketball. I’m gonna go shovel some snow. Be back later.
All right Dr. Emmett Brown, dust off your flux capacitor, it’s time for a trip in the way back machine. Actually only about four years, but whatever. As you probably know, Reilly has a pretty cush job. One where he only has to scribble out some nonsense once a week, and occasionally send everyone into a panic by appearing on Sportscenter. And it gets difficult sometimes combing through all the other terrible sports writing out there, so I’ll take a page from the Rick Reilly handbook on mailing it in, and take the easy way out: it’s vintage Rick time. This article is from August 2005.
Trade You Eight Reillys For A Vick
That headline seems a little silly now, doesn’t it? But I’d probably still make that trade.
Are you an avid collector of sports memorabilia? If so, what you’re going to hear next is going to make you take up a new hobby, perhaps sword swallowing. I now have my own football trading card.
I hate to break it to the guy, but even in 2005, I don’t think trading cards counted as sports memorabilia anymore. I used to collect cards like it was my job when I was little, and can remember when finding the hot rookie card meant something. You’d hang onto it, and if the guy ever made it to the Hall of Fame one day, it would be worth a fortune, just like your dad’s two dozen Mickey Mantle rooks that your grandmother threw away. Then they started “inserts” and packs started costing $6 a pop, and your regular, old rookie cards became worthless because they didn’t have pieces of the guy’s hair embedded into them. It was the beginning of the slow, death groan of baseball cards. Anyway, I digress. Reilly has a football card. Congratulations, you’ve secured your spot in irrelevancy on a piece of cardboard.
Sadly, this is true. Donruss has a series of cards called Fans of the Game, and this year they asked me if I’d like to be on one. They said my picture and my alltime favorite team (the extinct Los Angeles Rams) would be on it. This is a sickening trend in trading cards: putting nonathletes on them and causing 10-year-old boys everywhere to puke up their Skittles.
So then why’d you say yes if this is such an awful thing? Were you paid handsomely? I bet you were paid handsomely.
Last year, for instance, Topps put out a series of World Treasures that included Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela and Princess Diana. The only card signed by the Pope went for $10,400 on eBay last weekend.
In fairness, a signed picture of the Pope probably is worth a lot of money. I can’t remember the last time the Pope went around signing autographs.
I broke the news about my card to my 16-year-old daughter while trailing five feet behind her at the mall. “Rae, your dad is going to have his own football card!” I yelled up.
I love how Reilly is obviously excited about having a football card, but has to make it kind of seem like he hates the idea because deep down he knows it’s lame and is only going to make people hate him more. And maybe, just maybe, he has a nagging feeling that some smart ass is going to start a blog four years later and randomly decide to berate him for it.
And she whispered back to me, “Dad, you promised to keep a gap between us at the mall! In case my friends see me!”
His daughter, I must say, certainly has the right idea here. Rae, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be caught dead in a mall with your father either. Would you like to become an honorary board member of FireRickReilly?
“There is a gap between us!”
“No! A Gap store.”
Holy shit. What an awful joke.
O.K., the kids weren’t impressed. But when I was a boy, my collection of baseball and football cards were my life. I’d put them in three shoe boxes according to worth–KEEP, FLIP, and KNIFE.
Keeps were any Ram or totally cool player, like Joe Namath (who wound up being both). Flips were ammunition for lunchtime games of Match It, which you could play as long as the nuns didn’t catch you and match you with the school paddle. And the Knife cards were doomed to be thumbtacked to the door of the bedroom–laundry room my brother, John, and I shared. He could stand 10 feet away and flip his pocketknife so that it stuck in the door. I can remember his sticking the Baltimore Colts’ John Mackey in the right eye, a feat so amazing that Mackey remained pegged to the door for nearly a month, a hapless one-eyed Jack.
And then, 37 years later, my brother is waking me out of my daydream with a phone call.
“Guess what I just bought on eBay!” he says. “Your football card!”
Why would you ever buy their own brother’s card (or anything from their family for that matter) on eBay? Seems odd. Then again, this is the same guy who gives Rick a lot of column ideas (#13), so he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.
“Oh, crap,” I moan.
“Guess how much I paid?”
“Please don’t tell me.”
“One cent!”
“One cent? Who sells anything for one cent?”
Anybody selling anything that you’re associtated with, that’s who. I wonder if Rick’s been over to eBay lately, because it’s not much better now. There are some big bargains to be had on Rick Reilly books.
“Well, he got me for $3 shipping.”
So between my brother and my kids, a good bit of the glory was gone by the time a box of 750 cards came. Secretly, it was a minithrill, except there were no stats or cartoon on the back of my card. You know? Like, on the old cards, they’d have Jim Taylor’s yards per carry, plus a funny drawing of him getting pulled through the water by a fish with the caption, Jim once caught an 800-pound marlin!
Of course, what were they going to put on mine? My adjectives per paragraph? And maybe a drawing of me, sitting stubble-faced at a laptop, with a bottle of Dewar’s and a blank balloon over my head? Rick’s drinking tends to worsen with writer’s block!
Only two in this paragraph. You need to work on your stats, man.
I autographed 250 cards and sent them back, and Donruss sprinkled them among the other 1,000 they printed and put in packs of NFL cards. Can’t you see some kid paying $2.99, hoping for Michael Vick (worth as much as $1,600 signed) and getting me instead? No wonder there’s so much youth violence today.
You’re right. That would totally suck. It gets even more boring than usual the next few grafs, so I’ll skip ahead. Suffice it to say, his autographed card is worth more than some guy’s from CHiPs (not sure what that is, and I refuse to google it), about $200 less than Tony Danza, and the same as Ryan Moats (I bet that changed after Moats’ awesome fantasy day earlier this year.) So now he has a bunch of cards at his house. I think you’re caught up.
With 500 cards to get rid of, I went to Denver’s hot new watering hole, Elway’s, and started handing them out to perfect strangers. “Hang on to that,” I told them. “That could be worth seven or eight cents someday.”
Your false self-deprecation is unbecoming, my friend.
And every person looked at me and said the same thing: “Will John Elway be here tonight?”
These are some good people. These are some people I would like to meet.
So far, I’ve gotten one (1) card in the mail to sign. From Jeff Majeski of Fairmont, Minn. I called him up. He said he has some great signed cards, including a Joe Montana, which he keeps in a safe. Others he puts under the glass on top of his desk. “You’re in my bottom drawer,” he said, sheepishly.
Something awful should happen to Jeff Majeski. Yeah, yeah. I know he keeps it in the bottom drawer, whatever. Asking Reilly for an autograph only fans the flames though.
Hey, beats the Knife box.
I guess it does. But I have a solution to this. Here’s a picture of Reilly’s card. (Isn’t that an incredibly boring card? Plus it’s like a stock photo of him. I’ve seen that thing all over the place). Now, we can all print it out and tape to something sturdy that we don’t really care about and throw knives at it. How’s that sound? Great? Awesome!
I absolutely love it when Reilly comes right out and admits that he wrote what he wrote because it would be an easy column. It’s fantastic. You may remember his Cha Cha column from a while back. It wasn’t about sports at all, but it was easy. This column about Closed Caption text isn’t really about sports either…it just has the names of some athletes. And Reilly got to drink while doing it. Ugh, you suck, Reilly.
I like bars. I like sports. I like watching sports in bars. This is a topic my wife could discuss with you at length. But I couldn’t fully enjoy this hobby if it weren’t for an invention more miraculous than even boneless teriyaki chicken wings: closed captioning.
Everyone likes bars and sports, Rick. Nobody’s wife likes this fact. Boneless Teriyaki chicken wings? Really?
Closed captioning, or, as many closed captioners spell it, CLOTHES CAP SHUNNING, is what stenographers type onto the bottom of your screen, moving faster than a double-parked meth freak, when you press “CC” on your remote.
Hey, Rick, everyone in the world knows what closed captioning is. Honestly dude, stop insulting your readers. But yes, closed captioning typers have to go real fast, and they often mess up words or just spell everything they hear phonetically. You are certainly right about that.
These people are generally very good at their jobs, but sports announcers spew between 150 and 200 words per minute, and most stenographers were French majors at Swarthmore, so mistakes are made.
Random fact: Most sports announcers were Literature Majors from the University of Illinois!
I’ve seen HALL OF FAME LINEBACKER DICK BUTT KISS, and Atlanta Brave Chipper Jones come up to BAT RYE HANDED. (I wonder if Babe Ruth ever did that?) I’ve watched MIKE PIZZA and MIKE PIZZERIA. I’ve seen a thousand FIELD GOLDS and a few hundred torn INTERIOR CRUCIAL LIGAMENTS, some belonging to members of the Alabama RIMS AND TIDE.
Is this it? Is this what the article is going to be? C’mon, man. Everyone knows that closed captioning is not the most accurate thing in the whole entire universe. And now you’re just listing misspelled names, as if you’re the effing Ponce de Leon of watching effing TV. Also, Dick Butt Kiss is basically right. That guy just has a very unfortunate last name. Good thing he could kill just about anyone with his bare hands.
Good athletes compete for THE GOLD MEDDLE (as does Redskins owner Daniel Snyder), and bad athletes are JUST OUT OF SINK. Quick-release quarterbacks GET IT OFTENTIMES (and, here, I believe the subject is Tom Brady).
The point is I ghoulishly relish captioning mistakes. Also, my mouth relishes beer. No surprise then that a very, very easy column hit me like an angry wife’s 3-iron: What if I spent the entire weekend in bars seeing how many captioning goofs I could catch?
There it is: a very, very easy column. This is ridiculous. Eat shit and die, Reilly. You make $10 million dollars, and you’ve resorted to this bullshit. And then admit it. You could at least try. My twelve year old brother routinely does this stuff. You are supposed to be the preeminent sports journalist of our time, and you pull this crap. Good lord, I hate you.
God, I love this job.
FRIDAY
We must be vigilant in our quest, so we started early — 3 p.m. PST, just about when Michael Wilbon of PTI issued this statement about soccer, according to the captioner: I EXPECT TO WATCH THE WORLD COUPLE ALL MONTH. (Exactly which channel will that be on again?)
Stupid. stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid. Honestly man. This is almost like trying to get a grown man to write down PEN is 5 or I C U P, or telling someone to hold their tongue and say apple, waiting for them to do it, and then writing a freaking column about it. Everyone knows about poor/sometimes mildly comical closed captioning spelling. This isn’t funny or original.
Then there were these:
Jim Hill, Channel 2, LA: Tiger was found SHOELESS AND SNOWING. (Actually, the snowing came later, during the cover-up.)
Here’s the real kicker about these things. If Jim Hill had slipped up and actually said Shoeless and Snowing, would that be funny? No. No it would not, so why the hell would it be funny to see it typed out that way in a medium in which everything’s always misspelled. I don’t get it.
Lingerie football (hey, we said we’d be vigilant!), Channel 32, LA: HANDOFF TO THE LOVE SIDE. Also, a second and eight became THE SECOND THEY ATE.
On Channel 9, LA: David Beckham is from YOUR UP (but not from CROW ATE YA).
SATURDAY
The 8 a.m. SportsCenter captioner identified Cavs forward Jamario Moon as GENTLEMAN MARIO MOON. (Perhaps they’re in a book club together.) On ESPNU, Alabama receiver Julio Jones came out JEWEL I DON’T JONES. And on Channel 7 in LA, Clemson running back C.J. Spiller’s 4 TDs were sure to get him his IN-FLIGHT TO THE HEISMAN TROPHY DINNER. (Useful new word: Invite + free ticket = in-flight!)
I think there’s something wrong with your math there, Rick. This whole column is worthless. It’s not about sports, and is explicity an excuse for Reilly to sit at a bar and drink, thereby making the easiest job on the planet, even easier.
CC fun fact: The first closed-captioning message on TV, produced in the 1970s by Bill Kastner of Texas Instruments, was FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEE.
Interesting.
Okay, so Saturday was a slow day.
AND, he only managed to find three on Saturday.
SUNDAY
One of the delicious moments for those of us captivated by captions is the three seconds between an announcer’s saying something ear-twisting and the captioner’s typing it. On ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, host John Saunders said, “The best player I saw yesterday was [Nebraska's monster defensive tackle] Ndamukong Suh” [pronounced en-DOM-ah-ken SOO].
Whatever, I’d like to see you spell it Rickster. I’m gonna skip the next few. It’s not even worth it.
Mike Tomlin said his team would UNLEASH HOWL IN DECEMBER. (Poor dog gets off the leash only once a month?)
And that was about it. Remember, the point here was not to show all the mistakes the captioners make as they translate hundreds of thousands of live sports-TV words. The point was for me to drink many, many Coronas on an expense account.
Shameless. How on earth does he get away with this shit. Usually it’s just terrible, pointless rambling once a week. That I can handle. At least I know he just sucks at what he does. But these occasional columns where he goes: “I’m Rick Reilly, and I’ll do whatever I damn well please because I know ESPN won’t fire me and they’re paying me $10 million dollars and whatever this beer costs.” So he writes a column about absolutely nothing, and then tells us as much: the point was to get paid to drink beer. Which, whatever, that’s the dream, right? But if you’re supposed to be God’s gift to sports and writing, and get paid a crazy amount of money, don’t insult your readers by writing a column that no one on earth cares about and then telling us it’s because it was easy and you could drink beer.
Anyone complains, and I unleash Howl.
I’m waiting with bated breath.
All right…here are some links for the rest of the weekend. I was gonna put ‘em up earlier, but I had some Friday Night Lights to catch up on.
- As you all probably know by now, I’m a fan of Pittsburgh sports. Needless to say, what with the stellar performances of Pitt and the Steelers the past few weeks, it has not been pleasant being a fan of Pittsburgh football. Anyway…here’s a wonderful take on the Steelers (essentially season-ending) loss to the Browns, by Elvis has Left
- The Sports Pickle reports that Notre Dame has fired Brian Kelly already.
- Ken Tremendous (Michael Shur, Cousin Mose) had a pretty good week. See bottom of the page here. And Parks and Recreation, for which he writes, got some pretty high praise, too.
- Hey, look! The White House crashers are back in the news! I bet it’s for something very noble that will garner the admiration of many….or not.
- This video from the Onion is a bit old, I think, but worth it. That’s all we got. I hope your fantasy football dreams don’t die tomorrow.
A couple of Rick Reilly Updates:
- Just a quick word about the Tiger Woods saga. As you all probably know, yesterday Tiger announced that he would be taking an indefinite leave from golf. I can almost guarantee you that Rick will be crowing about this next week….that Tiger took his advice, that he saved Tiger’s career. Of course, don’t believe it. Reilly also called for Tiger to let a bunch of journalists into his home, you know so Reilly can come on over, and have a sleep over with Tiger, and maybe have a pillow fight, and if he’s real lucky, maybe even truth or dare. Further, Reilly wanted an apology, because he thinks that Tiger really hurt the poor little media. I have to stop. That makes me kind of sick. Shut up, Rick. You and the media have leached off the guy for years, he owes you (especially you, who yelled at him for getting persnickity on the course) absolutely nothing. You suck.
- So this past week, Rick Reilly apparantly hosted a Sportscenter. I didn’t see it at the time, but Deadspin did and decided to find out what Twitter thought about it. The Twitterati were none to happy. AND for some reason they’ve put him back on again. Confession: I don’t have cable, so I don’t know if he was on real Sportscenter or just the mini-internet Sportscenter (which you can see here or just watch below). If anyone knows for sure…let me know. I mean…on one hand you kind of can’t blame ESPN for trying to milk more work out of a guy who they pay $10 million. Bill Simmons has his podcasts and his mammoth (and awesome by the way) 30 for 30 project to go along with his writing. What does Reilly have? Well now he has a couple of Sportscenter videos where he sounds like he’s going to suffocate and die if he says more than six words without taking an awkward, breathy pause. It’s not the worst thing in the world, and from what I hear, certainly not as bad as the other performance earlier in the week. But still, the guys not good at it, and they have people whose profession it is to do what he’s butchering. So just bite the bullet, ESPN. Rick Reilly is not worth $10 mil., and no amount of hours he spends awkwardly yelling at us is going to change that. [Deadspin, ESPN, Twitter]
The video’s here. Like I said, it’s not awful, but the guy shouldn’y be on camera. Stay tuned for Weekend on the Links, coming up later.
I just want to point your attention to a couple new friends of FireRickReilly. Doin’ Work has something to say about everything from football to futbol, and everything in between. Go check ‘em out. Also, there’s Deuce of Davenport…they’ve got lots of flashy videos and some good articles to go along with them. As always, they’ll both be in the blogroll along with the rest of our friends, who all have one thing in common….a perhaps unealthy love of sports, and a healthy hatred for Rick Reilly.
We’ll have a Weekend on the Links tomorrow, and maybe another post or two.
For the first time in awhile, there’s zero football tomorrow. Maybe these will help you through it. See you soon.
Have you all had enough Tiger Woods, yet? Good. I’ll stop. At least until Reilly mails in another column about how Tiger will emerge from his trials as the second coming of Jesus Christ. Today, let’s talk about whiny Boston baseball writers! Hooray!
Meet Dan Shaughnessy. He looks like a saucy fellow, does he not?
If you don’t know, he writes for the Boston Globe, and is widely considered to be an ass. He is also very upset that the Red Sox aren’t signing Jason Bay, and Matt Holliday, and Roy Halliday, and kidnapping Adrian Gonzalez, and bringing in Willie Mays…or something like that. Let’s take a look, shall we? Yes, let’s shall.
Sox have a bridge to sell us
Fans shouldn’t buy this approach
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist | December 10, 2009
Storm the gates of Fenway Park. Cancel your NESN package. Stick your head out the window and say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’’
Good reference, sir! You and Rick Reilly should start a timely pop-culture reference club.
Do not buy the bill of goods the Red Sox are selling.
John Henry and Theo Epstein are preparing you for the Big Slide. While they continue to raise ticket prices and drain every dollar out of Fenway, they are telling you to put your expectations on the shelf. No more “championship-driven’’ campaign for your Red Sox. The Sox are building a “bridge’’ for the future. They are giving up on competing with those big, bad Yankees.
Bastards! I want them to drain their resources, NOW! Throw all their money into a mediocre free agent class and hope it sticks!
What a joke. First we had Sarah Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere. Then we had Bob Kraft donating thousands to Deval Patrick in an obvious (thus far, failed) effort to get the government to pay for a $9 million bridge to connect a couple of his parking lots. Now it’s Theo selling his bridge between championship seasons.
You do realize that Theo Epstein is not literally building a bridge, correct?
Please. Sounds to me like a bridge over troubled waters.
Art? Art Garfunkel? Is that you?
Uncanny…a little too uncanny.
In an e-mail to the Globe’s Amalie Benjamin last month Henry explained that the Sox might not be as good this year, writing, “Those reali ties are a function of available talent and age-related transitioning once again, as we did prior to 2007.’’
Tuesday at the winter meetings in Indianapolis, Epstein hammered at the same theme with “we’re kind of in a bridge period. We still think that if we push some of the right buttons, we can be competitive at the very highest levels for the next two years. But we don’t want to compromise too much of the future for that competitiveness during the bridge period.’’
OK. It happens. You sink money into a generation of players, and at some point, you’re going to have to replenish that, and it may not happen overnight. In fact, it usually doesn’t.
Translation: Don’t expect us to make any big deals. We don’t want to spend any more money on payroll. We’ve already blown enough on the likes of Matt Clement, Edgar Renteria, Julio Lugo, J.D. Drew, Daisuke Matsuzaka, John Smoltz, and Brad Penny. Let the Yankees spend the money. We’re not going to compete with them anymore.
Epstein did say that they were striving to be competitive at the highest levels for the next two years…just that they don’t want to sell off their future stars and prospects, for one or two more years of competing with the Yankees. Acutally, Epstein is saying they want to compete with the Yankees for always…now, and in the future.
So keep ponying up the dough for those Fenway tours and wait for our “kids.’’ You’re gonna love Jose Iglesias, Ryan Kalish, Ryan Westmoreland, Casey Kelly, and Lars Anderson, but they are a couple of years away.
And in the meantime you still have a pretty good team. Honestly, you can’t seriously want the Red Sox to break the bank and trade away their very good prospects for what really is a mediocre at best free agent class. Sure Matt Holliday will help, and it would be nice to keep Jason Bay, but realistically, these guy are old and on the low end of elite status (if that), but in a thin free agent class, you’re going to be paying them superstar money…and with Boston’s depth and young talent, it doesn’t make sense to splurge on these guys at the expense of their future. Not to mention the Sox are going to be competitive anyway. They have good pitching, and some decent bats, and they play good defense. Why screw that all up?
Just like Juan Bustabad was always a couple of years away.
I’m not buying. The Sox have the dough to sign Matt Holliday or Jason Bay. Just like they had the money to bag Mark Teixeira last winter. But they keep getting beaten by the Yankees and then they cry about it.
You’re crying about it. Not them.
Stop. It’s hideous of the Sox and their fans to complain about the Yankees buying championships. Sure, the Yanks can afford Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and A.J. Burnett, just like the Sox were able to afford Matsuzaka and Drew. The Sox got Curt Schilling and Victor Martinez the same way the Yankees got Curtis Granderson this week. The Sox are not the Pirates. They are not the Brewers or the A’s. The Sox are Haves, not Have-Nots. Like the Yankees, the Sox are happy to raid the rosters of teams that can’t afford high-priced talent.
And they HAVE. Shut up, man. By adding Victor Martinez at the end of last year, and Marco Scutaro already this offseason, to go along with Youkilis, Pedroia, that’s already a solid infield. They have potentially great pitching, and if they don’t bring back Bay or sign Holliday, their only perceived weakness is really left field. What more do you want you cranky bastard?
Oh, and last time I checked the Yankees developed Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, Phil Hughes, and Joba Chamberlain. They developed the players they traded in the deal that brought Granderson.
OK. Good for the Yankees. What’s your point? If there were a couple of all-world free agents or guys on the trading block this offseason, then I’d say the Sox would be remiss in not going after them…but bringing in players, and spending money, and trading away your farm system just to appease ass-hole Red Sox fans is moronic and you should be happy that the team’s management understands that.
–SNIP–
It’s nice that Theo has a passion for player development, but asking fans to take a year off is outrageous. Henry is a billionaire and the Sox are making bundles of money. If you don’t believe that, call their partners at Ace Ticket and try to score a few tickets.
Good lord, you are an idiot, aren’t you Shaughnessy? No one is taking a year off. The Red Sox will be good this year. Hell, they won 95 games last year. That’s also pretty damn good. Epstein never said he was taking a year off, all he said is he’s not going to sell off the future for a one-time shot at the title.
Red Sox fans love their team unconditionally. For eight seasons, Henry and Co. returned the love, rebuilding Fenway and overtaking/embarrassing the Yankees.
And now that Epstein said he won’t mortgage the future, you’re enraged? That doesn’t sound like unconditional love, my friend.
Now the Yankees are back on top and it feels like the Sox – happy with their trendy, ever-filled ballpark – are giving up. The ballpark is done (thanks for helping, Janet Marie Smith, now take a hike) and the championships have been won. Loyal fans can keep coming to Fenway and singing “Sweet Caroline’’. Just don’t expect the Sox to compete with the Yankees this winter or next season.
This is so dumb. Dan Shaughnessy, you are the most fickle man alive. The Yankees won the World Series, oh no! Now the Red Sox are shutting it down! Dude, they brought in Scutaro to replace their only really gaping hole, and you don’t need to buy along with Yankees to compete. Remember just a couple short years ago when NY brought in A-rod, and Giambi, and Damon, and still didn’y win the World Series those years? Who was winning? Oh, it was the Red Sox, I had forgotten already.
Sorry. Not OK.
Listen, man. Just calm down. The Red Sox are going to be fine. They will win a lot of games this year, and they don’t need to break the bank on a mediocre free agent class, or trade away their prospects for a year or two of Adrian Gonzalez. And no one is telling you to sit back and watch a losing season or two. They might even sign one of those free agents, just not at the expense of the future. Epstein is saying they’re going to keep competing…they’re just going to be smart about it. Something you obviously don’t understand.
Just posting a link here from Modesishouse.com as a little diversion from your Thursday drudgery.
Fair warning: if you’re a fan of Pittsburgh sports (as I am), this list will probably not make you feel all that great. If your a bandwagoner, it will be a nice little history lesson on Steelers losses (among others). They do that, you know, and not just against terrible AFC West teams.
If you’re not a Pittsburgh fan, well, you’ll probably call us a bunch of whiny babies. But we really do love our sports in Da Burgh. As a displaced Pittsburgher, I actually make an effort to watch Pirate games (I should probably go see someone about that). Anyway, we got a lot of passion, but I’ll be the first to tell you we’re just a touch delusional at times.
Anyway, without further ado, here are the top 50 most painful losses in Pittsburgh sports since 1990. (Yikes, since just 1990!)
I realize that the entire sports world has been taken over by the Tiger Woods saga, and that many writers are taking advantage of this, but Reilly is certainly doing a lot with one little stupid idea. Remember his thoughts from last week? He basically said that Tiger would come back stronger than ever because of his amazing humility and ability to kinda, sorta apologize. Well, the other day Reilly came on Sportscenter and said this about how Tiger needs to go on Oprah and skip a few tournaments, etc. in order to repair his image.
Now, he’s written a column saying the exact same thing. Which, whatever…fine. But really, the guy gets paid $10 million and all he can do is bash the same stupid idea over people’s heads for two weeks.
Here’s bits of today’s column:
Tiger Woods is the first person in history to run his car into a hydrant and set himself on fire.
His reputation is shredded. His once-perfect name has been dragged through more mud than a Nantucket clam digger’s boots. A once-spotless life is now an episode of “Cops.”
So what now?
First, Oprah Winfrey.
”It has to be Oprah,” says the king of Las Vegas publicity men, Dave Kirvin. “If you did a poll on who’s most disgusted by this whole mess, it would be women. To win over those women, you need to win over Oprah. You win over Oprah, you win over America.”
Once he’s on Oprah’s couch, he says this:
”To my wife, to my kids, to my family, to my friends, to my fans, I am so sorry. You believed in me. You looked up to me. You thought I was different, and I let you down. I’m ashamed of myself. My mom is ashamed of me. I’m sure my dad would be ashamed of me. I’m an idiot.” Then he has to go full Tebow: “From this day forward, you will never see somebody work harder, 24 hours a day, to win back your trust.”
It has to be next week and no later, because every day the British tabloids have him sleeping with everybody but the Page 3 girl. “The sooner he makes his public act of contrition, the sooner he takes the oxygen out of the story,” Kirvin says.
Second, he needs to shut down his public life.
He needs to skip San Diego, skip the Masters, maybe even skip the U.S. Open. When your house is rubble, you don’t go play the Buick Open. Tiger needs to prove to his wife, Elin, sponsors and fans that morality is more important than majors.
Third, he needs to clean house. If he wants to keep his wife, he has to get a new agent, a new caddie and some new friends. It’s hard to believe all this went on without their help or knowledge. How can she see them as anything but enablers?
Fourth, he needs to freeze his corporate sponsors before they freeze him. He needs to tell them, “I’m not doing any ads or taking any payment until I can again prove myself worthy of your products. I’m sorry I’ve let you down. It won’t happen again.”
Fifth, he needs to write his Tiger Woods Learning Center a check for $5 million with a note that says, “Keep studying hard. I’ll be back to help you fundraise in 2011.”
…
Let us into your life a little. Do the “A week on the road with Tiger” story. Give a home interview once in a while. Let people check in the closets and under the bed. Prove to the world you’ve changed. Because “no comment” and three security guards are only going to make people suspicious.
Sixth, a few manners wouldn’t kill him. No more terrible-twos temper. No more swearing. No more throwing clubs. And instead of pulling his signature blow-by move on the hundreds of autograph seekers waiting for him after every round, stop and sign for 15 minutes. Hasn’t hurt Phil Mickelson any.
…
Seventh, he has to return to the Tour and take the ridicule he has coming. He’ll feel as though he’s being paraded down Main Street, naked, in a glass box. Women will be wearing TIGER, YOU FORGOT ME T-shirts. Guys will be holding ELIN OVERCLUBBED signs. Babes will be hollering, “Hey, Tiger! I took my name off my voice mail like you said!”
…
He’ll come out of this as an even better player, if that’s possible. The golf course will be the one place where he can go to forget, and he will want to forget constantly. Where he once spent six hours on the range, he will spend eight. Where he once had the will of 10 men, he will have the will of 100. He will win again — win huge — and people will call it a comeback.
But it won’t be a comeback. He never lost his game. He lost only his mind.
Anyway, this all seems a bit simplistic. Sure, whatever, go on Oprah…but this idea that Oprah is the magic elixir that will cure all the ills of a bon-bon-eating female population is absurd.
And yeah, Reilly’s certainly right about Tiger needing to repair his public image by being a good guy, etc., but that’s pretty much just common sense, thanks for the expert opinion, Rick!
Now, this whole thing about Tiger needing to let the media into his home and go through his closets is indefensibly stupid. I understand that athletes and celebrities don’t really have privacy in this day and age, but to say that a guy must actively let the media into every aspect of his life in order to repair his image is asinine. This sounds a lot like Reilly’s trying to dig up the next segment of his “Homecoming” show. (Is that still on, by the way? Or did it fail so miserably that ESPN had to cancel it?) Through all of Reilly’s columns and video appearances about the Tiger drama, two things have been constant…the first: Tiger has hurt the media! He needs to make it up to the media! That’s just absolute horseshit, and sounds to me like someone (shh…it’s Reilly) got his world shattered by this.
Second: That Tiger will emerge from this bigger, better, and more awesomer than ever. I guess this is possible, but I think Rick is being kind of an ass-kisser here. And he’s trying to paint Tiger as some sort of other-wordly figure who will overcome and crush his problems like no one else can.
Anyway, the real point here is that Reilly keeps on dragging out his same, old, tired line about Tiger. It’s lazy. And it’s stupid.
