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
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
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
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
- 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 the
“The AL
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 Baltimore did.
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.
