Flicks

We all have movies that we stop at least a part of anytime we come across them on TV, no matter how many times we've seen them. My list would include Goodfellas, Casino (the same movie, actually) anything by Monty Python, Apollo 13 (even though I know how it turns out), Field of Dreams, and, of course, Behind the Green Door.

I'd add to the list Glengarry Glen Ross which is useful today as I would like to comment on what the Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney said the day before yesterday about President Obama's handling of the wars which he himself created and it is this, from Glengarry Glen Ross, courtesy of Richard Roma:

"You stupid fucking cunt. Cheney! I'm talking to you shithead! You just cost me 6,000 lives. 6,000 lives, and one Cadillac. That's right. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it...asshole? You fucking shit! Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt?! You idiot! Whoever told you that you could work with men?! Oh, I'm gonna have your job, shithead. I'm going to Mitch and Murray! And I'm going to Lemkin! I don't care whose nephew you are...who you know...whose dick your sucking on, you're going out! I'll tell you something else, I hope it was you who ripped off the joint, maybe I can tell our friends something that will help them to catch you. Any man who works here lives by his wits. I'm going to be with you in a second. What you are hired to do, is to help us. Does that seem clear to you? To HELP us. Not to FUCK US UP! To help men who are going out there to earn a living, you fairy. You company man. You want to know the first rule you'd learn if you'd ever spent a day in your life? You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is. You fucking child."

Thank you.

Speechless

Seriously, the kid in this video is 9:



The best part of this?  Look at the reaction of the poor and hapless netminder.  It's the goalie version of WTF????

Who's Looking Out For The Big Guy?

If we can get this "embed video" thingy to work we can have a chuckle and make a point about health care...

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

I had to fire my chiropractor over the health care issue yesterday. He decided it was a good idea to put one of those obnoxious yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags--the one with the coiled snake on it--in his front office window. Well, don't tread on me, neither buddy. There are enough people in his field that I don't have to go to no teabagger to get my back worked on. My back is actually hurting today after having played hockey on it but I'll ice it down and grit my teeth until a find a new guy. When I told the receptionist yesterday I wouldn't be coming back and she asked me why, I pointed at the snake flag in the window and shrugged.  That said it all as far as I was concerned.  You shoulda seen the look on her face.  She asked, "Are you for real?" Now, I have to confess that I was a little taken aback at having had my very existence questioned but I recovered nicely. "Of course I am," I told her.


Jeannie and I were at a big health care town hall a couple of weeks ago and we got to see these moronic haters up close (in your face up-close when we got down to it, in fact) and a lot of them were waving that very flag with the snake on it. They were haters. I don't know what the whole "don't tread on me" thing is about. I know it has some historical significance but I'm too lazy to Google it. All I can say to this clown is, "If you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is buddy you have to wait..."

Anybody know a good chiropractor in the Farmington area?

Ernie Harwell

Ernie Harwell announced today that he has inoperable cancer.  Mr. Harwell was the play-by-play voice of the Detroit Tigers for over 40 years.  He is to Detroit what Vin Scully is to Los Angeles; what Harry Caray was to Chicago.  I've led a lucky life.  One of the reasons is that I got to know and I got to work with Ernie Harwell.  I wrote the following about him for the monthly column I write for my professional organization, the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association:

I hope that when I die, if I get to go to Heaven, that when I get there Ernie Harwell will still be my friend.


I just heard the news and it made me think of so many things.

The first was about Ernie’s courage. I heard him being interviewed this morning and he talked about how he’s ready for the next adventure God has in store for him. He sounded so totally at ease. I don’t know of too many people who could take in stride the news that they had inoperable cancer, but that’s just what Ernie is doing.

I thought about how I got to drive Ernie from his place in the suburbs to our Christmas party at Sinbad’s and back last December and how those couple of hours that I got to talk baseball with him made the day about the best day I’d had all year.

I thought about his asking during that drive what the DSBA was up to these days and I thought about the check he wrote right there in the car for our grant fund after I told him our primary function now is to raise money to support high school broadcasting programs and young broadcasting students and I thought about how he made me promise not to tell anyone about it and so I didn’t.

I thought about the story I told about Ernie at that same party. The same one I always tell about him. How, when I was just starting out, when I was just 22, when I was covering the second Tigers game of my career, Ernie came up to me while I was standing near the cage and stuck out his hand and introduced himself to me: “Hi, I’m Ernie Harwell,” and how I thought to myself, “Well, duh.” And then I thought, “Dude, you’re talking to Ernie Harwell. Ernie freaking Harwell! I was just a kid and he made me feel like a big shot. I’ll never forget that. That was the moment I stopped worrying about fitting in when it came to covering Big Leaguers. If my being there was good enough for Ernie Harwell…

I thought about how he announced one night during a Tigers broadcast that Jeannie and I had become parents that day. In so doing, he did the impossible. He made the best day of our lives, the day our Laura was born, even better.

A few months ago, Ernie called me at home to pass along a web address he thought might help me find that elusive next broadcasting job. I was out and Laura took the call. I took Laura to the ballgame the other day. When Detroit gave up six runs before recording an out I told her that based on my experience we could safely leave at that point but we wound up staying to the bitter end. On the way out we passed Ernie’s statue. I said, “Look, Laura. It’s Ernie Harwell.” Laura said, “He must be pretty important to have his own statue. Wow, he called our house.” So there’s Mr. Harwell, making another generation of Kincaides’ feel like big shots.

I love you, Ernie. Thanks for everything.

YouTube - Bob Seger - "Get Out Of Denver"

YouTube - Bob Seger - "Get Out Of Denver"

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!