AL Pitchers Aren't Men

Nope, AL pitchers are apparently not real men. And while I've always pretty much believed that, it's finally been confirmed by an AL owner. Hank's Rant. And since reading is for suckers, let me be a bit more specific. Hank's feelings on the NL not using the designated hitter (DH):

"I've got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. He's going to be out. I don't like that, and it's about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s."

5-year-olds playing t-ball can run the bases without getting hurt. Position players do it thousands of times a year without getting hurt. Do some suffer freak injuries doing it? Sure. But it's a very small percentage. Like 1 guy every couple years.
And to his "rule from the 1800s" jab, the vast majority of baseball's rules are from the 1800s. Let's see if we can examine a few from the original rules published in 1845:

1. The ball must be pitched, and not thrown, for the bat.
2. A ball knocked out of the field, or outside the range of first or third base, is foul.
3. Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught is a hand out; if not caught is considered fair, and a striker is bound to run.
4. A player running the base shall be out, if the ball is in the hands of an adversary on the base, or the runner is touched with it before he makes his base; it being understood, however, that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.
5. Players must take their strike in a regular turn.

Those are all rules that are from the 1800s and haven't changed a bit. Have you ever heard Hank complain about the "3 strikes, you're out" rules after someone Ks to lose a big game? Or if someone is out at first on a routine ground ball because of rule #4? So why target the lack of a DH in the National League when the DH is the latest rules change to baseball, and put in to address the "dead ball era" and generate more offense. That was addressed via a change to the height of the mound in 1969, and through modern advances in strength training and bat technology. Batters today work out year-round to work on their baseball skills, as opposed to having normal jobs in the off-season as in days of yore. Modern bats are lighter and stronger than ever before, meaning they can swing faster and the ball jumps off of the bat like never before.
I've never liked the DH rule. It just seems silly that 1 player on a team is allowed to become a 1-trick pony.
It's not football; you don't have a 2-platoon methodology. I recently heard it put even better: "No player should be allowed to show up to the ballpark and not even need a mitt." Yeah, these guys can hit. And yes, most pitchers can't. But some are actually pretty good hitters. And the majority of the rest enjoy going up there and doing what every other player on the team gets to do, even if they aren't so good.
It also adds a whole new level of managerial skills to the game. If it's a close game in the 7th and the pitcher's spot is coming up, do you pinch-hit for him and go to the bullpen? Or how about when you bring a reliever in mid-inning. If you know the 9-spot is coming up your next time at bat, you could insert the relief pitcher somewhere else, substitute for a position player in the 9th spot to replace whomever was in the spot the pitcher is now. For you AL guys, it's what's referred to as the double switch.
I understand Hank is frustrated at losing one of his best pitchers. But don't shit on what amounts to baseball ethics because your players are girl. Check that, even girls can run the bases without getting hurt. I guess he feels his pitchers all deserve to be in the Special Olympics. Those are really the only people I can see regularly hurting themselves jogging on flat, manicured ground. But hey, who am I to criticize someone who's put together far and away the highest payroll in baseball to build a 3rd place team.
Done and done.

Men are from Mars, Lesbians are from Lesbos.

Seriously. There is a Greek island, Lesbos.
I first heard about this via Opie & Anthony a few weeks ago when the citizens of said island were complaining about the direction their name has gone. How about you feel if your nationality shared a name with the potentially hot homosexual pairing?! But alas, my memory doesn't really work yet when I'm driving to work so I forgot all about it. Until today! I forget when and where it came up, maybe lunch, but it did.

Since I know most of you only read enough of the wiki page to figure out if I was full of shit or not, I'll fill you in with some details. To try and keep things clear, I will use the good English practice of capitalizing Lesbian when talking about the nationality and won't capitalize lesbian when talking about the sexual preference. Yes, this is just so I can make the easy jokes.

Now it's not a completely random association between the island and female homosexuality. Seems like quite a few of the poems penned by Sappho, who was a Lesbian, showed some strong sexual feelings towards other women. This Lesbian might have been a lesbian!! And so the link b/t Lesbos and woman-on-woman action was formed. Much to the demise of the Lesbos' current residents! Seems they're getting a little tired of it. The pilgrimages by lesbian couples, the laughs and taunts, the mocking from the other Aegean islands.
In fact, they're so sick of it, they've decided to sue lesbians to stop them from using their name! Lesbians vs. lesbians They claim that allowing gay women to use their nationality to reference themselves is insulting to their identity. Even worse, how do you explain that to a small child? I'm sure most children are going to get curious about why all those strange, non-Greek women are calling themselves Lesbians. Or is it lesbians? To quote one of the Lesbians involved in the trial:

"I have a hard time explaining to my daughter that we Lesbians are not homosexuals. My mother, my sister and my daughter are all Lesbians and it's incredible the amount of ridicule they suffer because of this,"

So true! So very true.
Lucky for everyone involved the court is committed to getting us a verdict within 2 months. Which then creates a pretty sizable problem of policing their decision, should it go against the lesbians. How do you stop the rest of the world from using it? I still say WWF when talking about the wrestling organization, and that's much less entertaining than thinking about young, sexy lesbians! Do you walk around handing out tickets to everyone that uses lesbians? Will people still click on spam emails advertising hot, soapy, Lesbians? I'm sure the island does have some lookers, but probably not what they need to have to support a porn business. Anna, you reading this? What is the legal precedent here?
And what's next? Is someone going to go after NAMBLA next? How would you even find members to sue? They aren't exactly an "out-there" group.
But don't fret people. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated on how it goes. Is anyone interesting in creating a Lesbian vs lebian betting pool?

Wrong on so Many Levels

I'm finally ready to share a disturbing event I was a part of last week. It was early in the day. I had just gotten to work and went to my yahoo home page. There was a headline of a story that implied there were pictures of the Pussycat Dolls dressed inappropriately. How could I resist?! So I go there to check it out and sure enough there was. But right next to them in the gallery was a picture of a...portly girl clearly taking her turn on the 'red carpet' at some event. She is apparently some big name in rock, yet I'd never seen her. Beth Ditto.
I proceed to do what any normal person would do and I see if wikipedia can help me out at all. Of course it does. Singer of a band Gossip. Lesbian and outspoken activist for gay rights. In a relationship with a "transman". At this point my brain realizes that we may be in trouble. Yet in my pre-coffee daze I stupidly keep reading. Mark isn't on GoogleTalk yet, so what else can I do?! Until I get to this mind-stopping quote:
"Ditto posed nude for On Our Backs, a women-run lesbian erotica magazine. "It was a big moment in my life," she told Curve magazine. "It was kind of a radical thing to do. I got my period just 10 minutes before we got there, and I was totally bleeding. I was doing it with my tranny boyfriend, who I’m in love with, and I was totally bleeding — how radical is that? — and I’m a fat person, and I’m a femme. It felt really good."
After recoiling in hour at what I had just read, Mark finally showed up and said 'hi' at the exact wrong moment. And after I share that lovely quote with him, he decided to fire back a shot of his own. This:


Touche. I proceeded to stare blankly at my screen for a good 30 seconds while my brain rebooted enough for me to get that awful image off my monitor.
Oh, did I mention that she also doesn't shave her pits or wear deodorant? Cause somehow not wearing deodorant is a feminist thing. Smelling like a bum in summer when you're out in public is her way of showing that she won't be oppressed by men.
And of course there's the issue of her weight. I'm thrilled she can be confident and happy even those she's at an unhealthy weight. That's just awesome. And she smokes. Even better! Why she needs to flaunt that, I really don't know. If I were to put on my psychology pants, I'd say she was over-compensating or she realizes that without doing that no one is going to give 2 shits about her, save for her friends and family. But certainly no media coverage for her activism. But maybe that's just the pants talking. They are known to do that. Why she can't maintain a healthy weight and still maintain her identity, I'll never care. But here we are. I'm no model, nor do I want to be. There's no way I can eat and drink the things I love and pull it off. Not until I can score a high-paying job that let's me work out and play sports all day. While those do exist, I'm horribly under-qualified for them. But what I can do is eat well and exercise and not keep myself at an unhealthy weight. But I think we've covered that ad nausem already.
So yeah, that was the opening to a morning last week. What morning I'm not sure. I've really tried to forget as much as I can. But alas, enough lingered that I had to find alternate outlets. I'm a wizard when it comes to ignoring and burying bad emotions. (does Jack ring a bell to anyone?) Why am I sharing this now? Cause I like to spread the pain around. You hurt me, I'll hurt a bunch of my friends.
ENJOY!!

Cubs-Dodgers Musings

So I made a few observations last night while watching the Cubs game (10:40p start) and having a few...adult beverages.
Juan Pierre, ex-Cubs CF, current Dodgers LF, is built like a human version of a Cheetah. Seriously. He's got a tiny head, long skinny body, and he's fast as all hell. All he really needs is to grow a tail and start chasing down and eating live gazelles. Wouldn't that be some funny shit to see on the field.
Bob Brenley, in all his wisdom, right after watching some defensive high-lights from the previous game: "Cubs are in the low middle in the league in fielding %, but they make lots of high-light reel plays. " That's typically the way it goes for both players and teams. Alot of the guys that win gold gloves and make SportsCenter all the time just tank some easy plays. Their raw numbers are usually not that great. But everyone lets them off the hook because 'they try to make plays on balls that the average fielder can't even get to." Same things with teams in general. The ones you see making tons of amazing plays are never the ones leading the league in percentages. And they usually blow a bunch of games when they boot some easy plays or make an error trying to make some hero play.
Cubs pitcher Sean Gallagher's name is a palendrome with 'her' on the end. Just something I noticed.
Jeff Kent looks like he'd be a terrible hitter. Stands there pretty much straight up, standing virtually still. Just an old white guy with a mustache standing in the batter's box like he couldn't hit a little league fastball. And then next thing you know he cranks one over 400ft away. It's eerie. He's the opposite of Ken Griffey Jr.'s sweet graceful swing, and yet the results are pretty much the same.
Len, after a replay of the BoSox-Rays fight: "Looks like Crisp was getting pounded by more than just 1 Ray!" Same thing was probably true later that night. Just swap "Ray" for something more...masculine.
Later in the night when Jeff Kent came up, the stadium guys played Santana's "Oye Como Va". This for a guy has been accused quite a few times of being a racist. Bonds did it back in the day, other team-mates have made the same hints. Seems like an odd choice of music choice for him. I'm not saying he is or isn't, just that maybe they should have thought that out a little bit better. Maybe they could have gone with some Skynard, or maybe a little country-western piece. Just saying.
But alas, the Cubs ended up losing the game 3-0. Not a great showing, but the LA pitcher did seem to be really on his game. Made our guys look pretty bad. But hey, even the best team in baseball has to lose a game once in awhile. When you're riding a 9-1 streak, you're bound to drop to 8-2 at some point. But today is a new day and should be another win. We've got Zambrano going against Lowe today so I feel pretty good.
Done and done.

Rain, rain don't go away!

You know what's weird? Now that I'm trying to grow grass I find myself rooting for rain. If I had my way it'd rain pretty much every day during the week. Not the weekends, cause I've got baseball to play every Sunday! But I was sitting at work and looking out the window watching it rain and actually said to myself, "Huh, this should be real good for the grass. Nice long, slow rain." Hopefully it'll keep this up from time to time so I don't have to water so often to keep the new grass from getting burned up. Summer is going to be a real challenge.

In the words of Mark: "Never trust anyone driving a ZipCar." Why not? cause these are people that don't drive very often and are typically REALLY bad drivers. Bad even when compared to the rest of the drivers here in Boston! I bring this up after almost being hit by a damn moron in a ZipCar SUV on my way to Target today. They were in the left-turn only lane but apparently didn't really want to be there. Oh yeah, and they got really deep into the intersection, even on a red arrow, before deciding that they needed to be in a straight lane. So what do they do? They just decided to floor it and try to squeeze in b/t me and the UPS truck in front of me. And yes, there was a median on the other side they had to dodge. Putting themselves in a position to hit either me or the median doing about 30mph. If I hadn't swerved over towards the right lane a bit at the end, they would have clipped my left-rear quarter panel pretty solidly. And of course they act like I'm the jerk. They don't know how to drive and follow really simple traffic signals, and clearly can't just wait for 30 seconds when there's an opening to change lanes into and I'm the jerk. But that's just kinda how it goes out here. People are just entitled and self-absorbed and just can't be expected to show any respect or consideration for their fellow man. But what can you do.

What I'm going to do is drink a few (dozen) beers and watch game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals! Featuring a fellow Bison , Bret Lebda. Well, 1/2 Bison since he only was there for 2 years before moving to Ann Arbor. The NW suburbs of Chicago isn't exactly a hot-bed of hockey, so that was a good move. Former NHL-er Bubba Berenzweig made a similar choice our sophomore year and moved to CT to attend a hockey-based prep school. Paid off well after he was later a captain at UMich, won the Ken McKenzie trophy in 2000 as the best American-born player in the IHL, and played a few years in the NHL. So now I've got 2 reasons to root for Detroit to win. Lebda and ex-Blackhawk Chris Chelios. 3 reasons if you include what the Penguins did to the Hawks in 1992, which I do.

Ken McKenzie Trophy

Okay, just something short and quick cause this article kinda pissed me off:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24920462/

And people wonder why it's so easy to fool the average American consumer. I'm not saying people have unlimited amounts of money to pay for gas. But anything you put in 1 week and don't use will be just sitting there in the tank for you next week. It doesn't magically expire Sunday night and go back to empty. So come on, take the extra $4 hit and buy an extra gallon. If you don't use, you can just buy 1 less gallon next week and save $4 then. The article mentions the potential damage to your fuel system if you're running dry. What they don't mention is the fees that AAA charges to come out with a tank of gas. Not only do you have to pay a premium for the gas they're putting in (probably $5-$6/gal), but you also have to pay their service fee for driving out there. So while you may think you're saving money, you're just royally screwing yourself by taking the risk. And a seemingly silly risk for the reason above regarding roll-over gas (for all you people that only understand cell phone-speak).
{Jarod decides to skip roughly 18 comments that all center around properly budgeting your money. But since they're all things that have been said already in previous posts, he just walks away to start working on dinner.}