For the Birthers (Not to be Confused with Friday Musical Interlude)

I don’t think we have to say much on this one…

Around the League with Richard Kincaide

by Richard Kincaide

Cash For Clunkers…

I will try really, really hard not to laugh out loud as we type this, but I can’t guarantee anything. 

According to ESPN.com, the highest-paid pitchers on the current Detroit Tigers roster are:

• Jeremy Bonderman, $12,500,000
• Dontrelle Willis, $10,000,000
• Nate Robertson, $7,000,000

If you don’t like math no worries, I’ve done it all for you.  The cost of these 3 golden arms comes in at a not-so-grand total of $29,500,000.  Not 29.5 million dollars spread out over x-number of years.  No.  That would be 29.5 million for the current 2009 season only.  Here, then, is what 29.5 million dollars will buy you these days in the good old baseball game which is the best game you can play, incidentally:

• Bonderman (0-1) 13.50 ERA
• Willis (1-4) 7.49 ERA
• Robertson (1-0) 7.71 ERA

Let’s see.  I’ll do a little figuring here and, oh yes, 29.5 million dollars divided by two wins computes to $14,750,000 per. 

Now, toss in the $18,971,596 Detroit is paying Magglio Ordonez for his 7 homers and 37 RBI and the $14,000,000 the Tigers are paying Barry Bonds’s workout partner Gary Sheffield to hit 10 homers and drive in 43 runs for the Mets this year and you’ve just rung up a little under 63 million dollars for five players who have given your club 2 pitching wins and 37 RBI which I think is why any baseball man worth his salt will tell you—as he prays, hard, that if the “you” he’s talking to is his boss that you will believe him—that putting together a Big League roster is more art than it is science.  At least that’s what I’d be saying.  Just sayin’…

I HATE Pennant Races… 

Wednesday provides an excellent example as to why this is so.

On paper, on Wednesday, the Tigers should have won at home against Seattle in a night game and Chicago should have lost at home against Kansas City in a day game. And when it comes to “The Race for the Flag,” I don’t have to tell that what the other team does is exactly as important as what your team does.  Chicago has been chasing, but never quite catching, the first-place Tigers for over three months now. (Yes, I know the Tigs and White Sox were “tied” for first on July 23, I’m not an idiot, but Detroit was still first with a winning percentage of .527 to Chicago’s .526, so there.)

Back to Wednesday where In Chicago the White Sox were up against Zach Greinke while the Sox countered with Jose Contreras who, when last seen last Friday night had been staked to a 6-0 lead at the Oakland-Alameda County Fair Stadium but who had proceeded to cough up 7 runs in four-and-two-thirds and had to be yanked before getting in the 5 innings of pitching required of a starter to get a win. That same night, last Friday, Greinke was here in Detroit, blanking the Tigers on 3 hits through 7 innings before Brandon Inge homered in the 9th off somebody else for the games only run.  Greinke—until the All Star break the Best Pitcher in the History of the American League, ever—pitched 101 innings and faced 398 batters before he allowed his 3rd home run of the season.  On Wednesday in Chicago, he pitched 7 innings and faced 28 batters before he allowed his 3rd home run of the day.  Contreras, meanwhile, tossed 7 innings of 3-hit ball and the White Sox won 4-2.

Wednesday night, the Tigers had their bargain-basement ace Justin Verlander going—he’s only making $3,675,000 this season but when you lose 17 like he did last year what do you expect?  That they’re going to triple your salary?  Well, it turns out that’s exactly what the Tigers did since he made 1.1 million last year but I digress.  The point is that he’s won 13 this year and was coming in off that heroic shutout at Fenway last Thursday in which the Tigers really, really needed a win or else they were going to be swept four straight in Boston and that would have been quite upsetting to everyone, indeed.

So it’s Verlander against some hamburger for Seattle who comes in, from Australia, no less!, with an ERA of, wait for it, 8.77.  That’s almost 9 for those of you scoring at home and I hope you are.  And not to jinx anybody or anything but in the always spot-on “scouting report” they show on the TV while the pitcher is warming up, Rod Allen (he of the .091 Batting Average in his 7-game major league career) says the pitcher, (0-1) Ian Snell, has “command issues.”  Why don’t you just finish the job and say he sucks, Rod? 

I don’t have to tell you how this ends, do I?  Snell shuts the Tigers down and Verlander pitches well but on a night when the three he gives up are too many against a pitcher who came in with no wins, an ERA of 9 and “command issues”.

Instead of picking up a game on Chicago Wednesday, the Tigers lose a game to Chicago Wednesday in the Division Standings. 

Good of the boys to come back from that 6-2 deficit Thursday to beat Seattle 7-6 and go back up to a 2.5 game lead over idle Chicago. 

There will be more days like Wednesday the rest of the way.  And more days like Sunday when the Tigers blew a game by going 0/16 with RISP, only to have the White Sox keep pace with a heat-breaking 10-inning loss in Oakland.  It’s going to be exciting.  Nerve-wracking.  And no fun at all!

Friday Musical Interlude

It’s not even Friday anymore (well, perhaps it still is in Los Angeles and I’ve got people there so I’m going to count it) and I haven’t even posted the FMI.  A harsh note from von Ebers about all of this is not far off, I fear. 

This, as usual, is just another song I like.  Maybe, just maybe, a little more meaning attached than usual, however. 

I didn’t exactly rule the world, but I did rule whatever microphone I was speaking into no matter what frequency I was using to use the ether which (“using the ether”) is a broadcast term. 

“…sweep the streets I used to own,” says this song.  Sometimes I feel that way but I know somewhere—and not far away, either—lives the man I once was.  And will be again.  I just know it…

It’s less important that you understand what I am saying than it is that I do.

Like I said though, I like this song.  Perfect as Buehrle I think.

 

I don’t know who talkshowdude2 is, but please feel free to do as he suggests.

Friday Musical Interlude

I know, I know.  I’ve been lax in the extreme about writing—odd, too because I actually have so much to say.  I’ll try and get something going on that front forthwith.  For now, time for the FMI which I notice I haven’t even done that for a couple of weeks and really, how hard is it to post a song you found on YouTube?  Not very, I know.  Anyway, in keeping with our theme of posting tunes I like as opposed to tunes with some meaning be it social or personal, here’s one off my MP3 player.  I’m not a big fan of the big band sound.  I had a girlfriend once whose dad—who I was a big fan of—listened to nothing else.  But it never caught on with me.  Except this one which I heard in some Woody Allen movie and which became an all-time fave.  I don’t put songs on my little MP3 player unless I like them, you know?  The horns at 2:25 are the best part, so don’t bail too soon, k?  Hoping this finds all of you well, etc., here we go…

 

“We Choose To Go To The Moon”

It will be forty years Thursday morning that Apollo 11 launched.  Now, we are going back: 

http://wechoosethemoon.org/

42 hours to liftoff and the countdown is proceeding toward launch at 9:32:00 am EDT July 16.  Enjoy the ride!

What Teabagging Is

 

 

After I made reference to it in my last post, a friend asked me what “teabagging” is.  Teabagging was the name originally given a series of anti-government stimulus package protests set for Tax Day, April 15th.  The protests were said to be grass roots in nature but it turned out big right wing money was at work behind the scenes and the Faux News Channel—a latter day propaganda machine of which Joseph Goebbels himself would be proud—played it up big time.  But, to the chagrin of the right, the term “teabagging” had a different (read: sexual) meaning which rendered the title (see picture above) nothing more than a joke, and a dirty one at that.  It took the right a few days to catch on but once they did, the Teabagging protests were renamed “Tea Parties.” 

Those of us on the left thought the original was much more in line with how the right actually thinks—or actually, fails to think—and was, besides, way, way funnier.  So the name has, for us, stuck.

Here’s some material I found it at Teablogging.net which I originally stole, I mean posted, back in April either on the day of the teabaggings or on the day after…

 
Teablogging.net includes a helpful FAQ section which we reprint for you here without permission but with a strong recommendation that you take a moment a drop by...

What is Teabagging?

We’re not sure exactly. Well, there’s that definition. But in the context of the Tax Day Tea Parties, Teabagging seems to allude to an amorphous set of conservative, libertarian, rationalist and vaguely anarchist sentiments held by Fox News et al. If you have a more concrete definition of Teabagging, please, let us know.

Why “Teablogging”?

Because you have to teabag the conservatives before they teabag you.

How’d this all get started?

See, back in February, after American Capitalism had been utterly destroyed by four whole weeks of the Soviet Obama Administration, some guy named Rick who nobody had ever heard of went on scion of business journalism CNBC and sort of lost his shit. Somewhere in the midst of the sweating, frothing, and arm-waving, Rick mentioned the Boston Tea Party, and a movement was born.

Really?!

Yes, really.

So should we go to these Tea Parties, or what?

You can. Huffington Post is looking for Tea Party Reporters. Or, if you’re one of the handful of Productive American Capitalists who’s fortunate enough to be still be employed, you could go to your job that day. If not, just get drunk at home, alone, as usual.

Now, the teabagging, ur, Tea Party movement scheduled Independence Day, July 4, for another series of nationwide protests.  That’s why I asked in my last post if anyone had “gone teabagging.”  Not many did, apparently.  I heard a news report that about two dozen had shown up in Washington, D.C.  (300,000 can show up to protest an illegal war and it doesn’t get a peep from the ha, ha, “ left wing media”, but 20 people show up for reasons which remain altogether unclear to the rational among us and that’s good for some airtime but I digress.)  Here’s a picture from the D.C. “protest”:

 

So, there you have it.  A quick look at what teabagging was and is.  I hope you found it useful. 

Best Wishes,

Richard

Hitler Finds Out About Sarah Palin

I'm no good at the You Tube stuff, but thank God others are...




What I love about Babble Spice's resignation Friday (today on her Facebook or Twitter she called it her announcement that she "won't be seeking re-election in 2010," WTF?) is that the media immediately seized upon it as evidence that she will seek the 2012 Rethuglican nomination for president. The fact that she tried to bury her announcement by making it on the Friday of a holiday weekend, that Todd the first dude had to be summoned to return home in emergency fashion from a fishing trip to be at the "press conference" (no questions, please), that her spokesidiot Meg Stapelton was in New York at the time and that the media was given two hours advance notice of the announcement which was being staged 50 miles from Anchorage all tell me that something's up here that has nothing to do with her insane lofty aspirations for higher office. Do you mean to tell me that making herself the no-term governor of Alaska enhances her already dubious credentials? I don't think so...but the right wing is amazingly pretty breathtakingly stupid so perhaps in their eyes it does.

Hope you had a great 4th. Did anybody go teabagging?