R U Ready for Some BASEBALL??

Why, yes.  Yes, I am.  I had to send democommie™©® a note yesterday with a link to a story replete with pictures and a video, mind you, of something they call "Truck Day" in Boston--so named because it is the day that the Red Sox (who as you all know suck and always have and always will and there's nothing more to say about that) load up their gaudy, painted-in-Fenway Park-Green 18-wheeler with all their ugly uniforms and all of the rest of the equipment they need to play a game of catch and/or pepper--and send it off to where ever in the hell it is that they spring train.

We mention this because, Huzzah!, it is just about time for the pitchers and catchers to report and to that I say, "Oh, Hell yes!"  It snowed again here today and we've arrived at the time of year where I'm tired of being cold and tired of shoveling snow and am ready for a little hardball.  So, bring it on...

As I am too cheap to actually subscribe to "Baseball Prospectus" I cannot confirm that the following information was generated by Nate Silver of  fivethirtyeight.com fame (he's the most savvy of all the political pollsters as you know) but word is that it was.  It's something called the "Pecota Rankings" named after former KC Royals utility infielder Bill Pecota due to the fact that the acronym by which it is known (PECOTA) matches his name: Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm.  The algorithm--which involves math, apparently--takes into account things like who's out of rehab and who's still on the juice and the like and attempts to project future player performance based on what they've done in the past, etc.

We'll print the prognostications for you today and then we'll check back and check how things turned out in October or thereabouts:

        AL East
Boston         94-68
New York    92-70
T.B. Rays    91-71
Balt.            79-83
Toronto       71-91

       AL Central
DETROIT    80-82
White Sox   80-82
Minnesota   80-82
Cleveland    77-85
K.C.           74-88

      AL West
Texas        87-75
Seattle       83-79
Oakland    82-80
L.A.          76-86

    NL East
Phillies       89-73
Atlanta       86-76
Florida       82-80
NY Mets    77-85
Wash.         75-87

   NL Central
St. Louis     88-74
Cubs          79-83
Milwaukee 78-84
Cincy         77-85
Houston     77-85
Pittsburgh   72-90

   NL West
Colorado  88-74
Arizona     84-78
Dodgers    81-81
Giants       81-81
San Diego 72-90
----------------
That which jumps out at me is the predicted 3-way tie for first in the AL Central.  I guarantee one thing: if it happens it will be because Detroit dropped their last 8 games of the season or some such thing to make it happen.  I guess I can spend the summer trying to find out how a three-way tie would be resolved.  Right now I can't think of a way to do it without a double-elimination tournament of some sort.  I know this much, it's never happened before and is about as likely to happen as a coin landing on "heads" 50 times in a row, but hey, it could happen, I suppose.
 

The Winter Olympics, Explained

A commnetator at "Wonkette", one Escape Goat Nation, has helpfully explained the folly of the Games of the Winter Olmpiad:

Q.
Dear Mr. Sports Know It All,
When did Snowboarding become an Olympic Sport?
Jimmy age 10.
————————————————
A.
Dear Jimmy,
Nice try, but you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool ol’ Mr. Sports Know It All.
The answer is:
Snowboarding isn’t a sport.
Snowboarding is actually a HOBBY whose enthusiasts are Silver Spooned Slackers who view themselves as some kind of disaffected counter-culture heroes that are too lazy, self-important, immature, undisciplined and disinterested to dedicate all of their time and energy to learn a real sport that is respected and that adults participate in.
Hope this helps Jimmy.
Signed
Mr. Sports Know It All.
————————————————————————–
Thank you Mr. Sports Know It All.
However, I do have one more question:
If Snowboarding isn’t a real sport, how come you can do it in the Olympics and win a bunch of Medals?
Jimmy age 10.
—————————————————————————————————-
Hi Jimmy. Welcome back.
Well Jimmy, you see the Winter Olympics have never been really kind to the U.S.
Even though the U.S. has plenty of good mountains, snow and ice, they continually got their asses kicked by countries with populations 1/10th it’s size…with 1/1,000th of it’s funding.
You see Jimmy, Americans are big fucking babies and poor sports. So what happened was that American corporate interests bullied and pressured the IOC to include Snow Boarding and the Free Style Skiing bullshit to be Olympic Sports so Americans could win some medals.
Let me give you an example. Let’s take the results of the last Winter Olympics held in Turin, Italy in 2006.
The U.S. finished with a respectable 25 medals. Second only to Germany. U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! WHOO HOO! IN YER FACE WORLD!
Ok Jimmy, here comes the Science!
If we subtract the Medals won by the U.S. in the BULLSHIT Snowboarding category, “Sport” (Hobbies for wealthy slacker kids) which was 7 total medals, The U.S. finishes 6th place in total medal count…below Canada.
See how it works Jimmy.
And now you know…the rest of the story.
Signed,
Mr. Sports Know It All.

Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/413699/nobel-peace-prize-hopefuls-include-bill-clinton-avatar#comment-512684#ixzz0d8vE7rLd

Safe At Home

Just got back home.  Everything went really, really well.  Thanks for your prayers and good wishes.  They meant so much to me.  I have to take a little nap now.

A Brief Programming Note

Well, the day has finally arrived: I’ll be in the hospital later today for the long-awaited procedure which is designed to restore my heartbeat to its normal rhythm.  I’ll be undergoing this procedure at 11am today (Monday) at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor which, believe me, sucks more than I—as a proud Michigan State University Spartan—can hardly express.

I know I haven’t been a very good blogger these past few months.  It is my hope and belief that once I put this little heartbeat irritation behind me I’ll be right back to my old sarcastic and altogether unpleasant self.  I look forward to it.

I appreciate all of your good thoughts.  I am sorry to Nomi that your e-mails have gone unanswered. Your concern has meant a great deal to me. 

The procedure is supposed to take four hours.  I’ll try to get a Tweet off after it’s over, but I may be out of it. (Diladud, ask for it my name!) 

My wife, daughter and Mom are all worried as you might imagine, but my Dr. told me he’s never heard of anyone dying during or subsequent to this procedure and I’d listen to him because, after all, he was pre-med once.  Although it may have been pre-law, I can’t be sure.  The literature I read indicated a 1/3000 chance of experiencing a fatal event.  I’ve decided to withhold this nugget from my family. Besides, I read it to mean that they could perform this operation on me 2,999 times before they managed to kill me.  So, I’ve got that going for me. 

I’ll talk to you on the other side.  I love you all…

Richard

Limbaugh Jumps The Shark

Major bleepstorm alert:



This is gonna be...outta here! This is gonna be a bigger deal that whatever racist crap this pig had to say about a black QB. Way so much more. This boy has just, today, talked himself right out of existence. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that he'd do this someday but it didn't, but now he has. See 'ya 'round, bleepwad!

For MLK Day We Will Not Be Silenced

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How Not to Play Out of a Bad Lie