NBA Overreactions Day 1

There are things bigger than sports that happen all across the world every day, and one event in particular hit a little closer to home than most. Let us take a moment to wish everyone suffering lost power, flooded homes, or property taken away by Hurricane Sandy the best of luck in coping with these losses. My fellow students at Pace and I have been extremely fortunate in terms of the damage the storm has caused, but there are plenty of those who were ravaged by the storm. You can help these people out by visiting www.redcross.org, call 800-Red-Cross or text the word “Redcross” to 90999 to make a $10 donation. 

Now on to the less depressing stuff. As many of you know, the NBA season began last night. The stars were out and the bad blood was plentiful. And of course, the sports pundits were out making their bold predictions determined to shape the outcome of the season. Now that the first round of games are done, it is time to look at the most overblown story lines for the season to date. 

Overblown story line number 1: Rajon Rondo’s Flagrant Foul on Dwyane Wade.

It was garbage time in a rivalry game and the Heat had the game well in hand at that point. So with 18 seconds left, Rondo decides to stop the Heat’s leading scorer from breaking 30 by wrapping his arm around Wade’s neck in a game that was over.

Of course the post game comments did little to stop the fire. Wade called Rondo’s foul a “punk play” Rondo didn’t say anything, LeBron said Wade was pissed, and OMG Sally said that she saw Marry kissing Jimmy behind the lockers during third period!

Give me a break. The game was well over and nobody was hurt, so the rest of this was bravado. This is the exact kind of stuff that doesn’t matter in sports, yet it seems sexy to pundits to cover, so viewers have it shoved down their throats.

This foul is far more sore loser-ish than dirty. Rondo was upset that his team lost by 13 to the team that everyone in Boston wants to beat, so he took it out on Wade. Neither of these two men are saints, and there are plenty of examples on Youtube of both players committing dirty fouls over their careers. Plus it distracts from the actual story lines of the game, which are the following

-Whether or not LeBron can guard power forwards for the whole year after reportedly leaving the game with cramps (spoiler alert: yes he can).

-The Celtics biggest acquisition in the off season may be Leandro Barbosa and not Jason Terry.

-The Celtics and Heat still don’t like each other and that’s great for basketball.

-Rajon Rondo still can’t shoot free throws or hit an open 15 foot jumper. So while he apathetically puts up near triple doubles every night, he will not be regarded as the best point guard in the NBA for these two reasons.

-The impact of the “Hybrid Lineup” the Heat will play against the rest of the NBA.

Alas, our basketball minds are muddied by the he-said, he-fouled, oh-no-he-didn’t, take-your-hands-off-my-man! moments the NBA has to offer. 

So while we get our minds out of high school for a second and look at a slightly more serious overblown story line Skip Bayless is falling in love with on First Take. 

Overblown Story line 2: The Lakers lost to the Dallas Mavericks without Dirk Nowitzki. LA is overrated! Dwight Howard is a bum! They should have kept Bynum!

The Dallas Mavericks bested the “new look Lakers” by  a final of 99-91. On a team with Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, and Dwight Howard the best player on the Lakers last night was Pau Gasol (23 points 13 boards and 6 assists, which is a fantastic line). Dwight Howard clanked 11 of his 14 free throw attempts and is being blamed with the loss and shrinking on the big stage of LA. Questions surrounding the increasingly inevitable destruction of Kobe Bryant’s body loom large. And coach Mike Brown is already on the hot seat a day into the year.

Fortunately for LA fans, I have ritalin in word form for you all: Everything is going to be fine.

The following statistics got lost in the missed free throw shots. Dwight Howard still had 19 points and ten rebounds in his first NBA game after having back surgery. Kobe had 22 points on only 14 shots. The Lakers shot 50 percent for the game.  There are still 81 games left in the season.

Unlike Bill Simmons I was not ready to hand the Lakers the Western Conference just because the Lakers got Howard for nothing. I still believe that the West still runs through Oklahoma City, even post-Harden trade. Yet there is a big concern the Lakers are facing, and will continue to face if this is not solved now.

Scrap the Princeton offense. It’s killing Steve Nash.

For those who don’t know, the Princeton offense is basically four players outside the 3 point line and one guy at the top of the key. The four guys at the top of the key make backdoor cuts to try and get themselves open while the guy at the top of the key either shoots the ball or passes.

The guy in the key with the ball last night for LA was Pau Gasol. While Gasol is a good passing big man, Nash has far superior court vision and has won two MVPs with his passing.

Nash had a resounding seven points and four assists last night on three of nine shooting with no free throw attempts. Yet everyone is too worried about Howard missing free throws to notice. Nash told ESPN’s J.A. Adande that he was caught trying to move the ball in the Princeton offense instead of using his vision and passing skills that got him two MVP awards.

You don’t put great NBA players in a box and limit them based on what you want them to do. The same way you don’t tell Miguel Cabrera, triple crown winner, to hit the ball to just one side of the field. The same way you don’t tell Aaron Rodgers to not audible if he sees something in the defense. The longer the Lakers have this power struggle between Nash and the Princeton offense, the longer they will look like they have struggles on offense.

So bravado and overrating players are the kings on opening night rather than a good game between two heated rivals and the struggle between Nash and the Princeton offense. 

Welcome to the NBA.

I Was Wrong About...

           With every right there is a wrong, and many of these wrongs come from pundits across all four major sports. I am about to do something exceedingly rare in the internet age, I am going to write about the instances in which I was wrong.

Why am I taking time out of my day to admit to the things I got wrong you ask? Well it is because nobody is perfect and there are plenty of instances that I just missed completely. Also I am underneath the weight of a Kaaba (that giant cube in the heart of Mecca, Saudi Arabia for those of you who don’t know) sized writers block and this is a stopgap until I think of something better. There have been plenty of things for sure, yet I am going to make sure that everyone knows that it is quite possible to be a journalist, and still be wrong about your particular opinions.

I am lacking an award show theme idea for this one, so I’ll just say it on a scale of one to ten; one being I got an outcome of a game wrong and ten being Paul Ryan and Joe Biden incorrect when it comes to major political facts.

            This first one comes from a while ago. Remember when everybody wrote off Dwyane Wade after he tanked and pouted against the Indiana Pacers? Well, unfortunately I was part of the Wade-is-washed-up-bandwagon.

“The spark that drives Wade’s game appears to have burned out. The quickness that was synonymous with Wade’s cuts to the basket has slowed to the pace of a slug shooting jumpers. Wade has gone from a fiery competitor to a sour shooter looking for a foul call after every shot he takes..”

            Well, that bandwagon immediately steered into a puddle of kerosene and was lit on fire by the fan base of South Beach. Wade and the Heatles rolled on to the NBA Finals and right through the Oklahoma City Thunder. Wade’s final stat line from the Finals read a little something like this: 22.6 points per game, six rebounds per game, and five assists per game.

           

            Fortunately LeBron James dominance throughout the playoffs prevented this from being a seven or higher on the wrong scale. Few had a more dominant postseason than LeBron’s 2012 run, and it was because of his dominance that served as a moderate ointment for the burn Wade gave me.

            Still Wade and the Heat singed me pretty badly. Thanks to LeBron’s incredible postseason I don’t have to go to the burn ward, but it is still bad.

            I give my wrongness regarding Wade’s effectiveness a….

            6 out of 10: Getting a giant sunburn on the back of your neck because you saw the sun behind one cloud and thought ‘oh, it’s not going to be that bright out today, so I don’t need sunscreen.’

            Next up we have The Trade Deadline/Archer Award Show. This was easily one of my worst columns of the year for two reasons.

1: The fact that I pre-determined the fate of one team in the most unpredictable sport in the history of human kind. Seriously, this is the last time I write a ‘winners and losers after the MLB trade deadline’ piece. The rest of the regular season is too long for me, or anyone else, to be right about everything over a long period of time.

2: I couldn’t use any of the best quotes from Archer for obvious reasons to anyone who has ever watched the show. Unfortunately I had to settle for the Donnie Wahlberg level quotes from Archer because all of the Marky-Mark quality quotes are too offensive. Naturally Archer is my favorite animated show for these very reasons but I digress.

            Anyway here is the biggest thing I got wrong.

                                                                                               

            “By landing (Ryan) Dempster, the Rangers reminded the American League that teams still have to go through Texas to get to the World Series.”

            If I could get my hands on the delorean that only lets me go back and alter sports related predictions go back and change three events in the past I would..

• Kill Hitler because that is always the first rule of any form of time travel.
• Make sure my much younger self stayed up all night on October 27, 2004.
• And tell myself in July that the Texas Rangers were going to loose the AL West on the last day of the season, and then get bounced in the inaugural American League one game playoff; so for the love of all that is holy don’t write a column about it.

    Sadly the Delorean is in the shop so I have to live with being wrong about the Texas Rangers. Seriously, I did not think that the team with the second best batting average in the AL, a pretty good rotation, and that much postseason experience could lose to an Oakland A’s team made up mostly of unwanted Boston Red Sox who banded together for a great season.

    Also, I didn’t know that Skoal had the ability to create a Dallas sized riff, but again I digress.

    Still, I am going to give myself a bit of a break on this one. The Rangers went to the past two World Series, it was only a matter of time before someone else came and took their AL title away from them. I just did not expect it to happen in the way that it did. Oh and Dempster being a bust in the deal didn’t exactly help me.

     I give my wrongness on this one…..

     5 out of 10: Waking up early only slightly hung over from an above average night of drinking the previous evening. You know that you shouldn’t have had that much to drink, but you stopped before getting morning sickness. I could have said that the L.A. Dodgers got the better of the Beckett-Crawford-Gonzalez deal.

    I can actually make a solid segue here. The Rangers lost to the Baltimore Orioles in the wild card game (sadly which is another point I have to get to), and I effectively ended theAL manager of the year race in September.

   “The AL manager of the year race is over. Buck Showalter has guided his Orioles to meaningful September baseball for the first time in 15 years….”

    Pretty much the only portion of that statement that you need to read is the first eight words. This was when the Orioles were tailgating the Yankees division lead for the entire month. Unfortunately I made an enormous gaffe that would make Rombama  look good.

    In that column, I didn’t even mention the job done by Bob Melvin of the California Fighting Adjectives…err…I mean the Oakland Athletics.

    Seriously, I Bill Bucknered that one. Not only did the A’s win a division, but they even had a more improbable run than the fighting Showalters. The A’s had a season team batting average of .238 compared to Baltimore’s .247. The A’s were sixth in the AL in home runs when Baltimore was second, and they had a better team ERA than Baltimoredid.

   Now both teams are still in the playoffs for the time being and the harshness on this one comes from calling the manager of the year race over in September with an entire pennant race still to play. It is not that Showalter is undeserving, but I didn’t even mention Melvin once in the column, so I should take a well deserved beating on that one.

    I give my wrongness for calling the AL manager of the year race over in September….

    9 out of 10: You forget to study for a major exam and you try to cheat off of the person sitting next to you; even though you know they aren’t as smart as you. However, not only are all of their answers wrong on the exam, but you get caught cheating. You fail the class and you are put on quadruple secret probation. And you try to lessen the already bad situation by making a light hearted joke at the expense of the Dean’s maternal figure during the meeting that decides your fate.

Sidebar: This will go down to an 7 out of 10 if the O’s advance to the next round andOakland doesn’t.

    Let us turn our attention back to the O’s beating Texas in the first wild card game of the postseason. The one game playoff was supposed to make the baseball playoffs more drama packed and they succeeded like the Real Housewives of wherever succeed in fabricating drama.

    If you want to know more about why this great idea was ruined. Read this.

   The system was fine, it just became indefensible after one horrid call. I give my wrongness about the One-game-playoff….

   3 out of 10: You are walking around a big city late at night and your friend is going to make out with some dude selling Marijuana Lollipops; leaving you to wonder how you got yourself in this situation in the first place. This situation is very bad, but it was not your fault. Still, you should have accounted for something like Marijuana Lollipop man happening.

   Speaking of officials, I did not write a column about this because of time constraints. Although this one is going to be particularly hard to admit.

    I thought….I thought that the Replacement Refs weren’t going to be that bad.

    I knew that the NFL was being arrogant and stupid by not paying the real officials, yet I felt that the “experience” of the replacements were solid enough to tie us over. I also expected the NFL to hold out on paying the real refs for as long as possible because people were still going to watch the games regardless.

    Then the regular season started. Games became un-watch able and both players and coaches were blatantly ignoring the refs. Then of course the “interdown” happened on Monday Night Football.

    It was the second biggest swelling of sports related hatred from fans that has happened in recent memory; trailing only Jerry Sandusky for the top spot. 70,000 phone calls were made to Roger Goodell’s office by everyone. A senator from Wisconsin put Goodell’s number on the internet. The refs became an internet meme. And most surprisingly, a casino in Vegas gave everyone who bet on the Packers their money back after that game.

    I give my wrongness on the replacement refs…

    15 out of 10: Sounding like Skip Bayless animatedly defending one of the following organizations: The KKK, people who believe the Holocaust never happened, any Neo-Nazi organization, and anybody who defends what Jerry Sandusky did.

    There it is, my politician like gaffes in writing. I may not always get it right, but hopefully I will get it wrong a lot less in the future. 

Kill the Umpire

           The introduction of the one game playoff to Major League Baseball was supposed to infuse drama into a bland playoff structure. This change had the potential to add another angle to the umpteenth number of dimensions that exist in baseball to date. The one game playoff was supposed to enhance the integrity of competition.

            Instead, the illustrious career of Chipper Jones ended in an explosion of profanities and hurricane of empty aluminum cans. Replacement official….correction left field umpire Sam Holbrook single-handedly killed the Braves season with one of the worst calls in recent memory.

            In the eighth inning, a popup by Andrelton Simmons listed lazily to left field and dropped between two Cardinals. Yet Holbrook ruled that the play was a product of the infield fly rule and Simmons was out.

            Again, an umpire whose job it is to patrol the outfield called the infield fly rule when the ball was at least 50 feet from the dirt.

            Thanks to Holbrook, defending this one-game-winner-goes-to-play-Washington scenario is virtually indefensible. The one game playoff now looks like a moronic idea right up there with calling the 2002 All-Star Game a tie and canceling the 1994 World Series. There was a fair amount of criticism of the one game playoff entering the day, yet this horrid call ending a team’s season will ignite the fiery anger of social media users.

            Holbrook will now go down in umpire infamy reserved for Jim Joyce, Tim McClelland, and Don Denkinger. Although Holbrook did not take away a perfect game, forget the rules of safe and out in the middle of a game, or rob a team of a World Series title, he ended a team’s pursuit of the Commissioner’s Trophy. Holbrook can’t show his face in Georgia after this game, and it was his own doing.

            Nobody should be more upset about this call than Chipper Jones. There could not have been a worse ending for one of the classiest Atlanta Braves in recent memory. This may have been Jones’ last postseason regardless of the outcome, yet the Hall Of Fame career of Larry should not have ended as a result of a politician-like gaffe from Holbrook.

Sure Jones got an infield hit in his final at-bat as a Brave, yet that was rendered useless thanks to a ground out by Dan Uggla to cement the tragedy.

Normally the prevailing argument can be made that the Braves had other chances to win the game. Yes the call incorrectly produced a second out in the eighth inning, yet the Braves could have gotten three runs in four outs. After all, it is baseball, crazier things have happened in the postseason.

Not this time. Atlanta got shafted by whatever unpleasantly large object you choose to picture. Baseball is a game where momentum overrides stardom in the postseason, and Holbrook gutted the Braves run like a baby pig before a roast.

Jones did not deserve to have his career end this way. The Braves fans did not deserve to have their season end this way. And the team certainly did not deserve to lose this way.

But this is baseball, and anything can happen. Including NFL replacement refs wearing MLB umpire clothes and ruining what could have been a fantastic idea for everyone. 

Here is How We Fix the NFL....

            Turn off your television sets. 

            Look away from the shamefulness of this damaged game. If you need sporting entertainment, there is quite an exciting pennant race going on in baseball.  It may seem impossible to do, yet it is the only way to get the real referees back.

Last night the integrity of football dissolved right before our eyes. The replacements made a call that cost somebody a game. Although the normal refs would have also faced a great deal of scrutiny for this call, they would have at least discussed the play first. Yet as much as you will yell, curse, and tweet, there is one harsh reality that for some reason many do not understand.

The NFL doesn’t give a crap about its fans. As long as you are still eating up whatever they serve, the league will continue to serve you the same previously digested pig meat.

Think about it. If you go to a restaurant and get poorly prepared food there are two courses of action. You could pitch a fit, throw your food at the waiter, demand a refund, and demand the restaurant makes certain staff changes. However, you will then be seen as a jerk and if you go back to that same restaurant, they will still serve you food that tastes like wet dog.

The other course of action is to not go. If enough people stop going to a restaurant, they have no choice but to make changes because they are bleeding revenue. The NFL has the exact same mindset.

It is tragically funny to see and hear talking heads act so shocked that multi-billion dollar cooperation doesn’t give a flying fudge about the fans they are supposed to be catering to. Steve Young of ESPN was the only one who seemed to get this very critical point. Everyone is yelling about the same thing, yet their cries of anguish will be ignored while the NFL bathes in its billions.

It is a basic fighting principal that hard must be met with soft to do more damage, and this is now a fight to get the real refs back. Everybody screaming at the league about the broken integrity of the game will be lost in the vacuum of NFL space. Instead, what must be done is the soft approach: turn off your television set.

That means that you the fans have to sacrifice in order to make the NFL listen.

This means no fantasy updates. No Tebow coverage. No are the Saints on the verge of implosion debates. Not even any complaining about how bad the replacement refs are. If you want your game to be fixed, you actually have to give something up in order to make that happen.

I know sacrificing something for the greater good sounds weird, but it must be done. Otherwise the NFL will continue to feed you the same crap for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Do not fear. In this instance not watching your team will not make you any less of a fan. If you want the NFL to be fixed, you have to refuse to accept the product the league has sent out.

Otherwise you look stupid for giving that same terrible restaurant more of your money. 

A Buried Lead

Devon Walker will never play a down on Sundays. He will never win the Jim Thorpe Award for best defensive back in the country. Walker’s team, the Green Wave of Tulane University, will likely never host College Gameday on ESPN.

These are just some factors as to why the kid who broke his neck in a game has become a one day story.

On the final play of the first half, Walker went in for a tackle and his helmet met the plastic headgear of a teammate. The resulting collision fractured Walker’s spine, collapsed his lung, and broke his neck.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal and ESPN.com both reported that Walker was in stable condition after being rushed to a Tulsa hospital. Both of these sites also reported that Walker’s mother watched her son break his neck on TV.

The big media outlets filed the Devon Walker story and ceased their coverage. It was time to ignore Walker’s condition and focus on whether to start Adrian Peterson or Maurice Jones-Drew for your fantasy team.

Expanding on Walker’s injury and questioning the safety of football would have put a damper on the NFL’s opening day. A multi-billion dollar industry would have had to share the media cycle with the demons of their game; but that didn’t happen.

The season debuts of the pro teams were too important to the big time networks. Peyton Manning playing on a new team, the expectations for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and of course everyone’s fantasy team was more important than the life threatening injury to Devon Walker.

A college senior fracturing his spine during a game did little to continue the national debate about the safety of football. The death of Junior Seau had a media cycle that lasted for days, and prompted several well reported stories relating to concussions in the NFL. Walker’s story had the impact of throwing a pebble into the ocean. When in reality, the horrid image of a player dying on a football field looks clearer than ever.

There is a good chance Walker will never walk for the rest of his life. Yet he isn’t a deceased hall of famer, a player on a noteworthy football school, or a kid on Mel Kiper’s draft board, so he clearly doesn’t’ matter.

Not all media outlets were guilty of dropping the story like Terrell Owens. Yahoo!Sports, USA Today, and SportingNews.com did their jobs by following up on Walker’s condition. Whether or not Walker would ever walk, let alone play football again, was not even on the home page of ESPN.com on Sunday morning.

Even still a young man almost died on a football field, and his story gets buried in less than a day. Meanwhile Tim Tebow, a quarterback who couldn’t hit water if he fell out of a boat, gets an entire summer’s worth of media coverage for taking his shirt off in the rain.

Somebody’s priorities are really messed up.

A family almost lost a son to a game where bone shattering collisions are encouraged. Instead of questioning the culture of America’s favorite collision sports, or filing stories about the devastating impacts of helmet to helmet hits, the media turned our attention to bigger behemoths hitting each other at faster speeds instead. Yet for the most part, the audience turned away from the ugliness of the game to see something else.

What nobody will be watching is if Devon Walker will ever walk again. And the decision to ignore the dangers of football, could lead to the death of somebody else’s son. Chances are, unless Tom Brady dies in a head to head collision next week, it will be downplayed as somebody else’s tragedy.

Sadly, we are all someone else to someone else. 

Enough of the Racket

           Andy Roddick’s racket bears the weight of a five ton sledgehammer. Not because he has not won a major in nine years, but because he held the title of America’s best in tennis.

            Now, it appears that the weight of expectations has finally proved to be too much for Roddick. The former U.S. Open winner will retire at the end of this major; the one that made him famous.

            When Roddick hoisted the U.S. Open Trophy in 2003, he also held the future ofU.S. tennis in his grasp. Roddick was supposed to carry the torch of American tennis  Andre Agassi and John McEnroe once held. He certainly was talented enough.

In his prime Roddick was quite good. His serve went from zero to 155 miles per hour at the bat of an eyelash. His slices cut through the hard surfaces of the RCA Championship, the Canadian Masters, and the other 30 tournaments he won.

Yet in an era of legends, quite good was never good enough. Roger Federer won more majors than any other tennis player in history. When Federer didn’t win, his rival Rafael Nadal did. When Nadal didn’t win, Novak Djokovic did. Despite Roddick’s talent, one man’s good is not enough to best another man’s great.

There were not enough major titles for Roddick once Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic started reeling them in. Sure Roddick is 5-4 career against Djokovic, yet the Serbian has five major titles at age 25 compared to Roddick’s 1 at age 30.

            As for Nadal, Roddick is 3-7 all time against the Spaniard. Nadal also has ten more majors than Roddick; and they have both been playing for 13 years.

The closest Roddick ever came to besting one of the three giants of the game was in the titanic Wimbledon Final against Roger Federer in 2009. In that four hour slugfest, Roddick’s serve was broken only once; for the championship point that gave Federer more majors than anyone else.

Roddick was never able to reach the plateau of greatness that the three kings occupy today. Yet that is not his fault. There are other good athletes that are overshadowed by great ones.

Golf’s sentimental favorite is the perfect example. Phil Mickelson is a very good golfer with four major titles. However, for the better part of the new millennium, he has had to carry Tiger Wood’s jock strap; just like the rest of the field. It’s nobody’s fault, it was just Tiger was so great for so long.

Roddick suffers the same fate as lefty. His really good play was overshadowed by the greatness of others. Both Mickelson and Roddick both have emptier trophy cases because of greater players. Neither of them is at fault for winning more because really good does not beat great in the world of sports.

This summer will end with Roddick hanging up his racket. Even though Roddick will always be remembered for how he lost, A-Rod will never forget that glorious day in 2003 when greatness was his. 

The Cherington-Colletti Conversation

            (Phone rings)

Ned Colletti, General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers: Hello?

Ben Cherington, General Manager of the Boston Red Sox: Ned! Hey it’s great to hear your voice. How is business?

Colletti: Oh it’s pretty good. We are one and a half games out of the Wild Card race. We have the second lowest Earned Run Average in the National League and have given up the second fewest hits in the NL. The offense isn’t looking too good though…

Cherington: What about your deals for Shane Victorino and Hanley Ramirez at the trade deadline?

Colletti: Well Hanley has been good for us, but we are still hitting .251 as a team. Victorino has been awful for us. He has one homer and seven runs batted in as a Dodger. And we are paying him nine million bucks. I can’t wait until he leaves town.

Cherington: Sounds like you need a bat.

Colletti: What did you have in mind?

Cherington: Well as you know, we put Adrian Gonzalez on waivers recently…

Colletti: We’ll take him!

Cherington: Glad to see you are interested. Now let’s make a deal shall we?

Colletti: Okay Howie. What do you want?

Cherington: So you know that De La Rosa kid? How about him and two other prospects for Gonzalez?

Colletti: Three prospects for Gonzalez? Come on Ben you can do better than that. Gonzalez is hitting .212 at Dodger Stadium for his career. You can give me a little more than that.

Cherington: Okay. Then how about we take James Loney off your hands?

Colletti: Go on…

Cherington: Great it’s settled! We give you Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto for Loney and three prospects.

Colletti: Sounds go…WHAT?!?!?! How did Crawford and Beckett get in there? I’m okay with you trying to sneak Punto by me. Punto is about as exciting as vanilla ice cream, but he is harmless as a player. Did you fall out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down?

Cherington: Hey, you need offense. I’m offering you offense.

Colletti: Carl Crawford’s three homers and 19 runs batted in is not offense. Not to mention that he needs Tommy John surgery; like the rest of your team. What do you guys get a discount for every player on your team who needs Tommy John surgery?

As for Beckett, you have got to be off your rocker! He is 5-11 with a 5.39 ERA. Chris Capuano has a lower ERA and more wins. Not to mention Beckett makes Simon Cowell look like Mr. Rogers.

I have seen some stupid offers in my day, but this is the king of them all. You are offering us two guys who each make over 100 million bucks; meanwhile only one of them has been remotely productive. And your starter would make our rotation worse just by showing up.

Now if you wanted to eat a lot of the money for this…

Cherington: Actually that is the other thing. It would be so great if you guys ate most of the money…

Colletti: YOU’VE GOT TO BE SH*@!*&^ ME!! So let me get this straight. You want us to eat 249 million dollars and give you one of our best prospects?! Stick your offer where the sun don’t shine! This is not a video game Ben. This is baseball!

Did  your sports talk radio listeners call and tell you to make me this offer? Well I’ve got news for you. Ned Colletti is no fool. Good day to you sir!

Cherington: Ned wait…

Colletti: I SAID GOOD DAY SIR!!

(click)

(20 minutes later)

Colletti: Ben your guys are willing to waive their no trade clauses right…

Cherington: Of course!!!(*coughs) I mean, of course. What made you change your mind?

Colletti: Ownership thinks that we need big named, low production players in order to bring back the L.A. Dodgers brand.

They said that the fans will be so blinded by the number of big names coming in that they will overlook the awful seasons and contracts.

Cherington: Sounds great. I will get the paper work started right away.

(click)

Colletti: Get me a glass of bourbon and keep them coming. I’m going to need a lot of them to make me forget I made this deal. 

Best Worst Movie: "Nazis at the Center of the Earth" (2012)

2012.

The year that brought us current greats like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and Prometheus.


It also brought us Nazis at the Center of the Earth; a dung the size of Jupiter set ablaze with the fire of a thousand suns.

If you are anything like me, and genuinely enjoy watching horrible movies for an easy laugh; this is the movie for you.

Nazis at the Center of the Earth features a multitude of exceptional topics that combine to form comedy gold: Nazis, horrible CGI, brutal acting, terrible writing, God-awful subtitles, a resurrected Robot-Hitler and so much more.

So what's the plot?

If you didn't watch the trailer above (by clicking the movie title), you can assume that there are Nazis.......under the surface of the Earth.  Without the trailer the title is somewhat misleading however; I thought I'd be witnessing a mixture of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (the classic original one of course) with a silly Nazi twist.

The title should instead read Nazis Under Antarctica, which certainly doesn't sound as cool, but conveys the plot a lot better.

Basically...there's a group of researchers in Antarctica that, while drilling for some science-y type shenanigans in the ice, come across the remnants of a Nazi plane, the same plane that was shown in the beginning of the movie as flying off with some important technology at the end of WWII.

First of all....the snow here is hilarious. Its practically cotton balls, while the background is a blank white screen.  No skyline...no snow falling..just a white backdrop.

Not to mention excellent cold-weather gear. (Source)

The heavy-duty ice drill in question? It supposedly goes down quite an amount of feet  in the ice until it hits the plane, prompting the two researchers operating it to stop it immediately.  But the scientists need only to wipe away one inch of  snow until they come across the swastika-covered tail of the plane!  Wouldn't that be something you would have noticed immediately when trying to dig an initial groove for the drill to slip into?

Anyway I digress. After finding the plane the two scientists get captured by Nazis wearing old gas-masks, and dragged into a cavern.  The same cavern, in turn, is easily found by the other team of scientists through the footprints and drag marks the Nazis left behind.

Because the words "subtle" and "Nazi" are never placed in the same sentence. (Source)

Long story short, underneath the ice is a terra-formed tropical paradise that holds an Army of Nazis lead by none other than Dr. Mengele, or the Auschwitz "Angel of Death" who should have died in the 1970s.

Taking Europe while fighting a double front would've been easier than achieving this. (Source) 

Needless to say the Nazis have been replacing their dying bodies with the body parts of captured scientists over the years, and they need the group they just captured to help finalize their plans for the revival of Robot-Hitler and the beginning of a new era for the Third Reich.

Some Notable Characters:

Dr. Adrian Reistad (Jake Busey)

(Source)

Ever since Starship Troopers, I've been physically incapable of hating Jake Busey.  Busey is, strangely enough, one of the only main actors in this movie that can be considered an actor in the first place.  The name and the blond hair are dead give-aways, Reistad is a Nazi-sympathizer that has been volunteering his comrades skin and organs to the Nazi's regeneration program for years.

Which, for some reason, must be done while they are still alive. (Source)

Best Line: "You were never squeamish before!"

This is, of course, in reference to his fuck-buddy scientist throwing up after seeing her best friend's brain/spinal cord pulled out of the top of her head.

aka this.

That pales in comparison to her priceless reaction however:

"I'm pregnant.."

(Said baby is subsequently butchered and its stem cells used to  resurrect Robot-Hitler....nobody wins in this movie).

Especially not the CGI department. (Source)

Indian Guy with a Perm (Abderrahim Halaimia)

No, that's not actually his character name.  But this character is hilarious, practically mute, and pretty much just as useless as "Fabio" from Robot Holocaust.

Angela Magliarossa (Maria Pallas)

Basically the only attractive member of the science-team, Angela meets an untimely demise via dispatch-way-of-zombie-rape.

But not before giving the viewers a little "Hey Now!"

Best Part of the Movie: The subtitles.

Why?

Because two semesters of German in college taught me that "Was ist Das?" means "What is that?" and would suggest as such during the scene in question.

The subtitle committee instead, elected for "What's happening?"---marking for a moment of hilarity as it made "Nazi-versus-the-scientist-with-something-intriguing-in-her-hand-trying-to-get-away" seem more like a casual party scene of "Nazi-asks-cute-girl-'What's up? How's everything going? Like the party I'm hosting?'"

Best Line of the Movie: "SHIT A BRICK!!!"

This priceless line comes from an esteemed member of our armed forces when radar picks up the giant-technologically superior-Nazi-flying-saucer bearing down on the rest of the world.

Because Nazi flying saucers truly is a "Shit a brick" moment. (Source)

So how bad is bad?

Craptasticly-Awesome Bad.

See the movie....then thank me later.

On the Ballot, Out of the Hall?

           The illustrious gates of baseball’s sacred shrine are about to be stormed by the game’s demons.

            Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens headline next year’s potential Hall of Fame inductees. These men also have been the big names of the steroid era in baseball and its blackened legacy.

            The question of what to do with the poster children of cheating has to be answered by 25 to 40 baseball writers. They can no longer bury the steroid issue, for it has now resurfaced in front of the game’s holy shrine.

            Whether baseball’s electoral college likes it or not, the Hall of Fame class of 2013 will set a precedent for what to do with players from the steroid era.  

There are realistically three roads that the Baseball Writers Association of America can take. Yet none of these options will satisfy everybody.

            The first road would be to bar everyone from the hall who is guilty in the court of public opinion. This way, Bonds, Sosa, and Clemens all get turned away and the cheaters stay out.

            However, denying everyone who is suspicious is the most dangerous precedent to set. If the BWAA can deny suspected steroid users, this could lead to the indirect punishment of clean athletes. For example, Jim Thome and his 611 home runs could be left out of Cooperstown because some writers could think ‘there is no way he hit 600 homers without the juice.’ Even though Thome was not listed in the Mitchell Report, Jose Canseco's book, or the 2003 leaked list. 

            The second option would be to let everyone in and count potentially tainted numbers in the record books. This way, Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Garry Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez and others all go toCooperstown based on their career numbers. Yet, the asterisk will forever be linked to the substances these players abused to achieve statistical immortality.

            Still, letting everyone in does not solve the problem either. Writers like Bill Plaschke, and Woody Paige have denounced steroid users and the idea of letting them set foot within 16 blocks of Cooperstown. Besides, the concept of rewarding cheaters in baseball is enough to send the already rabid internet culture into frenzy.  

The consequences of the third road are the least fruitful, yet the fairest. Baseball’s journalists could let people in based on the burden of proof. However, if that is their determining method, Andy Pettitte gets punished for being honest. Meanwhile, Sosa gets enshrined for forgetting how to speak English in front of Congress.

            No matter what the BWAA elects to do their yay or nay vote will be scrutinized. However, they have to vote and determine the precedent for when the rest of the steroid era.

One thing is for sure, the job of Hall of Fame voter will be one of the least desirable positions this time next year.