Hooray for Sonics!

God bless you, Mr. Drobnjak.

Introducing the Zito Calculator

This is so good.

The Barry Zito salary comparison/garlic fries calculator.

h/t.

Side note - the year I spent in Berkeley (2001-2002), Zito was the shit.

Just take a look at his line from 2002:

23-5 (who the FUCK wins 23 games anymore?)

229 IP

182 hits

182Ks/78BBs

2.75 ERA.

That's not just good, friends, that's great. He won the Cy Young that year.

I loved his quirky southpaw attitude, his laid back style, his space cadet brain. He seemed to make baseballs transparent. He was better than good, he was a fucking liability (to the other team). Of course, throughout his career he's had his detractors, who've pointed to peripheral data as well as scout reports that said nothing he was doing was remotely sustainable. Still, I wanted to believe. So I'm sad that he's completely fucking useless now. Them's the breaks, Barry. Enjoy your 2,000,000 orders of garlic fries.

Well, Back To Talking About How Versus Sucks

I'm in Boston. NESN is televising the Bruins/Canadiens game, so I get to hear the dulcet tones of Andy Brickley. (For the last time this season, from the look of it.)

Versus is also televising the Bruins/Canadiens game. But they are also also televising the fantastic Capitals/Flyers game, currently tied at 2-2 after two periods.

Naturally, since Bruins/Canadiens is on locally, and is therefore blacked out as a national broadcast due to NESN's territorial rights, Versus is sending us the Caps/Flyers game. After all, the people who run Versus and the NHL are logical and rational, and realize that blacking out hockey entirely due to local restrictions is antiquated, short-sighted, and stupid.

Oh. My mistake. It's a bunch of cowboy dickbuckets trying to stay on top of an abused cow.

Fuck you, Gary Bettman. Fuck you in the face.

It's Like A Koala Bear Crapped A Rainbow In My Brain

I used to think a medium rare NY strip with shallots, garlic mashed potatoes and haricots verts was delicious.

Then I read this story [h/t], and deliciousness was forever altered in my mind.

If I were Pitchfork, and that piece of news were an album, I'd give it a 10.0.  Even on a day that features the Sox at 11 AM, a friend running in the Marathon, and a potentially historic Game 7 tonight, this is the runaway leader for Best News Of The Day.

I was getting worried for a while.  I thought he was gonna actually let Brian Cashman do his job!  Silly me.

Time To Break Radio Silence

I have been protesting the Bruins, in my own inimitable and irrational way, all season long by posting barely a word on them. This despite having watched almost each and every one of their aesthetically displeasing attempts to set the NHL record for overtime losses (the OT loss being the NHL's embarrassing version of an A for effort). I've also resisted, time and again, the frequent, burning urge to defecate dedicate myself towards the noble goal of filling the internet's Bruins-blogging vacuum. I'm moved to celebrate this team, and I stifle every such movement as soon as I can.

Why is that? I'm a hockey puck. I love the Bruins. LOVE them. I should be clogging your bandwidth with unreadably brilliant hockey posts. Nothing would give me greater joy than to see the Bruins win the Stanley Cup. I'd trade all three Patriots Super Bowls for a Cup. I'd see the Celtics embarrassed in a four-game sweep by Atlanta next week, wearing the disaster like a cape, if it meant the Bruins could win it all. I mean that.

In a perfect world, I would have been at tonight's instant-classic Game 6 in person. I would have paid any price. I would have snatched the ticket out of a Habs fan's grubby Canadian fingers (in a peaceful and sterile fashion, of course) to be there. And it would have rocked my balls off, because I love hockey like nothing else.

But it's not a perfect world.

Much as I love the Bruins, I also hate them passionately. Because with every ounce of success the Bruins achieve, and every iota of joy I derive from that success, I'm forced to remember that Jeremy Jacobs is out there, somewhere, benefiting from that success. And that makes me want to puke.

Cackling, arrogant, ragingly Dickensian piece of shit Jacobs, together with his worthless, Rosemary's Baby-type demon spawn of a child, Charlie Jacobs, combine to form a Voltronian of pure evil that goes unchallenged as the very worst ownership group in professional sports. Nobody comes close.

There are many owners, like James Dolan, who beget losing out of their own ignorance and arrogance. There are many others, like Donald Sterling, who maintain a manageable and profitable level of non-talent and sub-mediocrity that persists to the point where the team's fans KNOW that success will not come. Still others, like the vile Jeffrey Loria, dismantle potential juggernauts in order to maintain an even his bottom line.

Jacobs, however, enjoys dismantling 100-point teams in order to go from Filthy Rich to Filthy Stinking Rich. His destruction is never a matter of the bottom line... always the TOP line possible. I cannot think of a single owner in sports who has cried poor, in the face of top-5-leaguewide profits, to the same self-immolating extent that Jacobs has. And no owner I know of, apart from the gutless, cowardly pukes who threaten relocation, has purposely and needlessly destroyed his own fan base more effectively than Jacobs... and then had the gall to wonder, in the media, why he gets no fan support. (Read the Charlie link above. Really.)

Jeremy Jacobs is a man who allowed ALL of his unrestricted free agents to leave town for nothing prior to the 2004 lockout. He did so in order to make sure he wouldn't be on the hook for anyone's paychecks upon re-entry. Of course, the league negotiated a 25% pay cut across the board for all talent under contract, so Jacobs tore the team apart for absolutely no reason. The team still hasn't recovered from this landmark act of fiscal lunacy.

This is a man who allowed perennial Selke contender Dave Poulin, the biggest penalty-kill scoring threat in hockey at the time, to skip town and sign a multi-year deal with Washington... because they offered another $100K or so extra over the course of the deal. He took the offer back to Boston (ahem, ONE OF THE MOST PROFITABLE TEAMS IN HOCKEY) who refused to pay it. This is how the Bruins have conducted business since Buffalo native Jacobs bought the team.

This is a man who took Ray Bourque to arbitration. RAYMOND FUCKING BOURQUE!!! Jacobs instructed the vile, subhuman Harry Sinden to enumerate the ways in which the Bruins' best player, the #2 defenseman in NHL history, and the classiest human being to don the spoked B in my lifetime, was in fact lousy and overpaid. This despite running, again, ONE OF THE MOST PROFITABLE OPERATIONS IN THE NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE. Couldn't spare a couple bucks for the best defenseman who ever lived not named Bobby Orr. Un. Fucking. Real.

Jacobs has loosened his notoriously-tight purse-strings (and believe me, that's a man with a fucking purse) in recent years, now that a salary cap is in place. He now spends up to the limit. He apparently thinks that's enough to make up for everything. In reality, his is a life sentence without parole. I'll never, ever forgive him for hanging all those Bourque/Neely/Oates juggernauts out to dry, denying them the kind of talent boost that a Cup contender requires. He may have wanted a Cup, but only if he could get it on the cheap.

In my unbiased (ha!) opinion, he is the worst thing about the National Hockey League. Worse than Versus. Worse than the Flyers. Worse than Sean Avery. Worse than points for overtime losses. Jacobs' magnificently thorough cock-suckery has turned the 500-mile radius surrounding Delaware North's corporate headquarters into a vacuum worthy of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The guy just sucks.

And because Boston fans all grew up with built-in bullshit detectors (say what you I will, but we Massholes know when someone's shitting us), most of us know the score with Jacobs, and have scurried into hiding. See how the Garden is half full of Habs fans in the playoffs? It hasn't got a goddamn thing to do with fan apathy, or the success of the Sox and Pats and Celts. Nothing. Ticket demand being what it is around here, there's more than enough room in this town for four contenders. This city cares. We care so much, in fact, that we refuse to support the team until Jeremy Jacobs sells it.

Our absence, at great personal agony, is the only action remaining for those of us who give a damn about winning a Cup. We simply will not support the Jacobs family during its reign of terror. And rightly not.

That's why I refuse to so much as set foot in the Garden as long as Jeremy Jacobs and the Jacobs family own the Boston Bruins. Swear to God, I wouldn't accept a free ticket. And I sure as shit wouldn't blog about them for free and give them the publicity their players and front office deserve. I'd sooner eat my own penis than give a single, solitary cent to the Boston Bruins.

So... why am I talking about the Bruins?

Because tonight's Game 6 was the best, biggest, and most entertaining hockey game this city has seen since Raymond Bourque sported the spokes. And the fact that it has moved me to break my silence, in spite of all the negatives I've just discussed, should be evidence enough of what a fantastic game it was.

The third period began 2-1 Canadiens, and within 17 minutes it was 5-4 Bruins. Playoff hockey just does not come in that variety (though my buddy Ovie may beg to differ). And as a result, for the first time in the 84-year history of the Bruins and the Canadiens, the B's have stormed back from a 3-1 series deficit to force a Game 7. And for the first time in 2007-08, a season in which they'd lost all eight regular season games to Montreal, the Bruins look like the better team. That alone is worth celebrating.

Now, I'm not sold. This is a bad, bad team. They have no reliable scorers, and their goalie is a 21st-century version of Arturs Irbe. Their brand of hockey is so boring that a Boston victory, a 1-8 upset, is actually a bad thing for the NHL playoffs. And most importantly, every playoff game they host just means more money for the Jacobs family. An upset of this proportion will not undo the past 30 years of active destruction.

But it'd be pretty sweet. And if there's one thing I learned from refusing to watch games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS, it's that I shouldn't let the threat of pain deprive me of the good stuff. This right here, a Game 7 against your mortal enemy, is the good stuff.

Canadiens fold under the pressure. Bruins in 7.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Hey Isiah, step into my office....

Ding dong, the cocksucking motherfucking fuckass piece of rat shit is dead.

Lolcasey

oh hai



i iz saf, kthx

Illinnoyances on Parade: Horry Kow Edition

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRACIST!

Horry Kow?!? Really? What is this, 1956? As with the LaTroy Hawkins saga, it's a higher priority to honor some old/dead white dude than pay a lick of basic human respect to a present-day minority. I award them no points, and may God have mercy diarrhea on their souls.

Though I guess you have to wonder if it's any worse to make t-shirts that are unapologetically racist as opposed to unapologetically homophobic.

(In fact, the Bukkake Matsui t-shirt is a little racist too. Perpetuating that famous stereotype of Japanese men engaging in circle jerks. And you'll have to rip my Bukkake Matsui t-shirt from my cold, dead man-breasts!)

Note to self:

watch more hockey.

I'm currently watching Flyers/Caps, in intermission preparing for the 2nd OT, and good lord. Somehow in the last 5 years of paying approximately 0 attention to hockey, I had forgotten that there really is NOTHING in sports more awesome than playoff overtime. It's like crack for the sports fan. I've been sitting here the past 20 minutes or so, sporting the Aardsma face, unable to speak. Just giddy.

And with the Rangers playing well, what the hell have I been missing?

Total side note, unrelated to everything - I shelled out for the 17 game pack season tix for the Phillies this year, and after 2 visits to the stadium, I have 2 walkoff wins under my belt, one in the 9th, one in the 10th. Gonna be a long, awesome season.

UFIAardsma

It's high time I reminded everyone of Red Sox setup man David Aardsma's claim to fame:



OMG UFIA

Time For A Post About Something Besides Massholes

FJM's ongoing series on senile moron Lowell Cohn has been off-the-charts fabulous.

After Dusty Baker left, Sabean hired Felipe Alou, who was too old, a guy the players couldn't stand. And now he has Bruce Bochy, who's shown no aptitude to rebuild a team that desperately needs rebuilding.

Strike strike strike strike strike strike strike. We're playing the "Strikes Against Brian Sabean in an Article Supporting Brian Sabean" Drinking Game, and everyone here has died of alcohol poisoning, had their ghosts rise from the dead and resume playing the game, and then had their ghosts die of alcohol poisoning.

So, what's the West Coast equivalent of a Masshole? Westtard? Pacifuck?

Massholes on Parade: Not a monopoly

Yankee fans can be every bit as racist and myopic as our neighbors to the north!

Look, I love Paul O'Neill. He embodies much of my image of the late 90's team that forever will be the best sports experience of my life. It was when I recaptured my love of sports, forged my identity as an adult, and first got some. It was also when I rediscovered my connection with New York, a town I had left in 1992 as a sullen youth of 14, and was deeply conflicted by, but ultimately grew to love. During that time, Paul O'Neill was hailed as a classic "grinder", and definitely wouldn't be as famous had he played anywhere else, but still, he was a hell of a player. Not HOF worthy, but really good. And yes, I fully understand why fans of other teams hated his guts, but as a Yankee fan, his antics and fury were goddamn entertaining.

All of that said, the fans yelling racist shit at LaTroy Hawkins for having the gall to wear #21 in homage to Roberto Clemente can die in a fucking fire. And Paul ain't exactly helping: “What can I say? The fans have always been unbelievable to me there. I don’t really know how to explain it. It makes you feel good that the fans still think of you as wearing that number.” O'Neill regularly appears as a booth guy on YES broadcasts of games. I really, really hope he takes a moment to tell his fans to STFU, even if it's too late.

Massholes On Parade: Bruins Edition

This is fast becoming the lone reason for the blog's existence...



Anyway, on the heels of Alex's reporting coup comes this:

Witnesses say that both suspects punched and kicked the victim. In short time, officers located the suspect wearing the #41 Jason Allison Bruins' jersey and the suspect wearing the blue running jacket.

Who knew? There actually ARE some Bruins fans left besides me. Not that you could tell by the Garden attendance the last couple games.

Of course, the real problem isn't the beatdown. The crime against humanity here is that these two twatwaffles gave money to Jeremy Jacobs. How are we going to get that vicious, villainous, irredeemably inhuman son of a cunt to sell our hockey team if we keep him in business? Shame on them for not knowing better. Next time, if you're gonna bother with jail, do us all a favor and beat up a Jacobs.

Bustin Loose Baby Do Your Thang

Boston has its greatest hero since Paul Revere.

DAILY INCIDENTS FOR MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2008

“Black and Gold” Covered in Yellow

Last night, Sunday, April 13, 2008, around 9:06pm, Boston Police officers performing a detail at the TD Banknorth Garden arrested suspect, Walter Cutler, 40, of Scituate and charged him with Open and Gross Lewdness and Disorderly Conduct.

During the Bruins game, officers’ attentions were drawn by numerous event goers as well as event staff to the upper seat section. Officers responded there and were directed to an individual in the stands. Officers were informed that the noted individual had been observed reaching into his pants with his hands and manipulating his hands inside his pants. According to event staff and event guests, the suspect then exposed himself and started urinating on event guests causing then to become hysterical and attempt to escape from the confined area.

Link is here (sorry, Blogger's being a little whiny bitch): http://www.bpdnews.com/2008/04/daily_incidents_for_monday_apr.html

Massholes On Parade: Construction Worker Edition

Jesus Christ, please just make it stop.

First of all, why did this Mass-tard think IMMEDIATELY was the best time to announce his sad attempt at a curse? If he'd just kept his mouth shut for a few months, it'd be too late anyone to dig it up. Presumably this is why he's working construction and not pulling jewel heists or working on his Ph.D. in nuclear physics.

Second, why would any Red Sox fan in his right mind want to SPREAD the notion of a curse? We just spent twenty fucking years trying to get everyone to shut up about it, and now this clown is resurrecting it. Was that not the whole point of winning??? It's such a childish, unnecessary idea, entirely opposite to the notion of what the rivalry should be: two phenomenal organizations duking it out on an effectively even playing field.

Third, this level of obsession is no longer cute. It's just stupid. It's precisely the sort of idiotic homer crap that does more to embarrass than to celebrate. We longed, collectively, for 86 years to be just another group of fans. A perfectly rational and noble goal. Now we're trying to be known as More Obsessed Than You. It's as if we all watched Jimmy Fallon's stink-eye performance in Fever Pitch and collectively thought, "yeah, I want to be just like that guy!" NO!!! FAIL!!!!!

It's one thing to exchange a few playful jabs with a Yankee fan; it's a whole other ball of potatoes to go and sabotage their stadium. It's within our power to take the high road. Not the smug, self-absorbed, holier-than-thou high road, which we've apparently chosen, but the magnanimous high road. We can relieve ourselves of the petty instincts we grew up adhering to. We can be free of this nonsense and just watch some great baseball.

Or we can try to bury Manny's jockstraps in the new Monument Park and look like even bigger douches than we do already. Either/or.

David Cone /lathers taint

The funny part is at the beginning.

Massholes On Parade: Retroactive Edition

It's Opening Day at Fenway, the last of like eight opening days over the past week. What better occasion for the second installment of my periodical series on self-hatred:



And it's not just any opening day. Today, the Sox have given us the opportunity to celebrate one of the biggest Massholery victims of all-time: Bill Buckner.

Buckner had not been back to Fenway since his brief return to the team in 1990. On that day, he received a thunderous ovation on Opening Day that year, and was released a couple months later. He's been living in Idaho ever since, in relative anonymity.

Today, however, Buckner traveled east to be the centerpiece of the Sox' opening day ceremonies (as opposed to the ring ceremonies that preceded them), receiving a loud and raucous standing ovation as he threw out the first pitch. There was nary a dry eye at Postgame Spread headquarters as he walked out from the Green Monster. Looked pretty dusty around Buckner, too.

So, where's the Massholery, you ask?

For starters, Bill Buckner is not owed our forgiveness, nor has he ever been. WE should be begging HIS forgiveness. Our media (for whom we must take responsibility) chewed him up and spat him out for us, and we've been gnawing at him ever since. Nobody who's made such an honest mistake deserves to be put through everything he's endured, especially not someone as decorated, as accomplished, and by all accounts as classy as Buckner. It's a testament to him as a person that he leads a happy life in spite of public perception, because it could have been a lot worse. The author of the Globe article above, Stan Grossfeld, asked Buckner if he sought forgiveness from Boston. That question needed to be reversed.

Second, regardless of the polarity of today's ceremonial apology, it was too little, too late. A wonderful gesture, of course, but it's all too easy to extend an umbrella now that the sun's out. Bill Buckner Day should have taken place DECADES ago. A World Series victory should not have been required to make this day as forgiving as it felt; we should have had the integrity, as a fan base, to visibly and sincerely beg his forgiveness in the immediate aftermath. The 1990 ovation (which I remember) was the truly beautiful gesture. I'm proud that we, in our darkest period, had enough class to do that.

I wonder whether it would play out the same way ever again. Today was nice, but let's not shit ourselves. For all that today was a great thing, the crowd also made time to boo Edgar Renteria, loudly, in his return to Fenway. What was the point of that? On a day of celebration and happiness, we saw fit to boo someone who was clearly miserable here? Gee, I wonder why. Boston has not booed its last goat out of town. Shame on us.

Eh, enough Masshole hate for today. From here on out, I will gladly accentuate the positive on what I saw today. It was genuinely moving, especially to someone who has a lot of trouble dropping his grudges. I'm grateful that Buckner agreed to receive the ovation he so sorely deserves, but equally grateful to have the moments of self-reflection his return inspired.

I Feel Like Bustin' Loose

The Washington Nationals' new home run theme song is absolutely perfect.

Instead of the standard Fatboy Slim/Blur pump-up stuff, Nats fans voted to use local go-go legend Chuck Brown's "Bustin' Loose."



What an inspired choice. This is a great moment in the history of baseball theatrics, rivaling the Yankees' "YMCA" tradition and the first use of "Sweet Caroline" at Fenway.

How proud my old home base has made me, if for no other reason than the individuality. Anyone could have picked an overdigested techno beat out of the hat (because they can can can!) but nobody else would have picked a go-go song... never mind such a totally dope go-go song. GIMMETHEBRIDGE Y'ALL, GIMMETHEBRIDGE Y'ALL! I defy you to get the horn riff out of your head.

If only they could stop the game for 7 1/2 minutes and let the whole thing play to completion. On every home run.

Anyway, bravo, DC. That $611 million is well-spent so far! (Well, except for the whole pathetic-hospitals-and-schools thing.)

Jeff Brantley is not a clutch announcer

This is so goddamned good, they might as well just retire Fire Joe Morgan.

omigodomigodomigodomigodomigod

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!



AAAAAAAA!



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!