Aaaaaaaaand...We're Back!

 Kids!  Faceless entities!  And, also enemies!

We're back!

As much fun as I was having enjoying retirement there was just this constant nagging to return to shoveling pound after pound of unicorn shit.  They were right, work is never work if you love what you do.

I'm just kidding.  The powers that be called up and said I had to come back.  They said something along the lines of, "If they brought back MacGyver, Full House, 90210, Heroes, Dynasty, Hawaii Five-O, Roseanne, Magnum P.I., Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Supermarket Sweep, and now Dexter...then we're gonna roll the dice on you too."

And I really get it, because, coming up with an original thought these days is super hard.  We're better off taking someone else's idea and running with that because it is waaaaay, way easier.  But we can't just say we took that person's thing and are now making it our thing, that will never float with the general public.  They're still pretty staunch on their stance on stealing, even after all these years. (Alliteration bonus points?)  But if we give it a fancy title...hmmm...now we might be onto something.  I've got it!  We'll call it a reboot!  We can do it to movies too!  It'll be great, we'll make the same thing twice at two different intervals in time, and these idiots will eat it up because it's nostalgic and new at the same time!  Even though they can just go back and watch the thing they fell in love with in the first place, they won't!  This is new!  This has Will Smith in it!

Well.  Sorry to disappoint.  This is not a reboot.

It's the same.  It's always the same.  If someone else came up with a sports blog centered around a unicorn stud farm then that is just a really gigantic coincidence.

And I know what you're thinking.  "Wait a minute, he's been gone for longer amounts of time BEFORE he actually announced a retirement than he has AFTER he announced a retirement.  What a jerk."

What can I say?  I'm precocious?  

Ah, to Hell with it.  I don't know where the train is headed either, just sit back and enjoy the ride.  Come on, join the joyride.  Be a joyrider.

So let's begin our grand return with the grand return of something I love very deeply that hasn't happened since 2008.  Kids, the Tampa Bay Rays are back, where they belong, in the World Series.

Shall we?

Back in 2008, I was simply blindsided.  You see, and I've mentioned several times in the ten damn years we've been doing this shit, that before 2008 the Rays were absolute dog shit.  Then Maddon came, and Longoria, and Price, and then we crawled out of the darkness and got ourselves a nice tan on our pasty whites.  But we crawled too far and found ourselves out on the big stage against the Phucking Phillies.  We were young, naive, and dare I say...precocious?  We didn't realize at the time that some scum bag that probably hates Betty White, a one Cole Hamels, sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for a title.

By the way, kids, before I continue, quick update on Cole.  He's doing great, actually.  He's really coming into his own as one of those human advertisements on the side of the road.  His sign flipping is something to see!  Supercuts has never been busier, so congrats, Cole.  You've made it.

Bitch.

Anyhoo, since 2008, all three of my aforementioned favorite Rays have since dearly departed.  Don't misunderstand me, they're still alive, they're just dead to me.  Yet somehow, the Rays have dabbled, dipped their toes in, and sampled...success.  They've been in the conversation for the majority of the last twelve years buuuuuut we have yet to close the deal even though we've been really charming and doing everything right and not rushing right to the bedroom.  It's really quite a shame.

Then 2020 came around and literally everything became a waking nightmare.  I wasn't even sure we would have baseball in the first place.  But then we did...and we ended up in first place.

Then we beat the Canadians.  Then we beat the Yankees.  Then we beat the Asstros.  Still not a typo.

Now, here come the artful Dodgers, and everything is going according to plan.  You see, I wanted all of these teams.  All of them.  I mean, Canada just kinda tagged along, but I wanted New York, I wanted Houston, and I want Los Angeles.

Why?  Trust me, I didn't develop a death complex in the last three months, I just knew we could beat them.  And we did.  This is it.  This is what I prophesized when we were having that whole discussion about splitting custody between St. Pete and Montreal.  I said go for broke, win the whole damn thing, give them all the finger, and then blow it all up.

Do you know who the Rays are right now?  They're playing with house money.  We're not the same virgin nerds from 2008 that you remember.  We're now chain-smoking, leather jacket wearing badasses, that come with complete reckless abandon!  Sure, we're still virgins, but we've seen some tits and even felt a few, goddammit!  Still counts!

I can't imagine how much pressure the Dodgers are feeling today.  If Kershaw stays true to form and comes out and absolutely shits the postseason bed, then holy shit, things are gonna get weird.

I'm not going to give a prediction on who I think will win.  I will simply hope for the best.

But I will say, I feel a lot different today, than I did in 2008.

Get back to floating, graceful swans, and let's go Rays!

Let's Put A Pretty Bow On It

Graceful Swans,

First off, I want to say I love you, and I hope you're still floating.

It's now July, this very month, ten years ago, I decided to start chronicling life on a unicorn stud farm while also giving my opinion on sports and pop culture.  And, for whatever reason, it worked.

Trust me, I have always thought what kind of looks I would have gotten if I pitched this idea in a boardroom all those years ago.  "Hear me out, it's me, but not really me and I own and operate, apparently by myself, a unicorn stud farm.  I know, I know, unicorns don't exist but that's not the focal point at all.  It's sports.  More importantly things in sports that matter mostly to me but I expect other people to read it because I'll pepper in some juvenile jokes here and there.  Oh, the unicorns?  Nah, I'll mostly reference them as footnotes or in the lead.  Yeah.  Yeah.  No.  I promise I've never done LSD and I wouldn't even be able to pick it out of a lineup.  Yeah.  No.  What?  I'm sorry I just missed that last part you said.  Seriously?  I was thinking 'Unicorn Sports Fuck Fest'.  Yeah, I wasn't married to it either.  Yeah.  'Studly Pastures?' I personally don't think that's edgy enough but whatever..."

And just like that we were up and running.

Going back and looking at that first year...I kind of cringe.  It just seems so gimmicky and hokey and clearly I thought this would make me some money.  Like all true writers, as soon as I realized I wasn't going mainstream, I said "Fuck it, I'll just write what I want to and everybody else be damned."  And so I did and man, were we really popular in some obscure European countries for whatever reason.  One love, Latvia!  I can only assume they actually thought I was breeding unicorns.

Oh, by the way, STILL to this day, after all those poignant posts that have real meaning to them and came straight from my heart and make me actually proud...they still don't hold a candle to some bullshit Charlie Sheen post I made in Year One.  The viewership on that one post alone...I...I just really hate humanity.  It's like if you opened the New York times one morning to the best sellers list to see 'Old Man and the Sea' at number two and then 'Today's Garfield cartoon' at number one.  I'm not trying to take a shit on Garfield but come on...in ten years the best thing I did was the blog post equivalent of a fart joke?!

That's depressing.

I have some true favorites that I'm especially proud of but I'm really proud of all of them, truth be told.  I painstakingly agonized over each and every one of them because if I wasn't satisfied, then I didn't expect you to be.

You're probably wondering why I've been pandering on like this for this long and well...the truth is that this is the last post for the Studly Pastures that I will make.  It's been a decade, that's a helluva run, and I would rather slowly limp off into the sunset than wait for the computers to take over and use my own blog against me.  I'm not sure if that's a thing but I'm smart enough to know not to wait and see.

Why now?  Well, we're a sports blog.  I've been watching cornhole tournaments and Korean baseball.  I figured I would spare you and I would fall on the sword myself.  I know I once said that I would keep writing this blog until the Miami Dolphins won the Super Bowl or that I died.  Let's face it, neither of those things are happening for a long, long time.

Ten years is a long time.  This blog is essentially a time capsule.  None of it will be deleted, unless that thing I said about the computers taking over happens.



Kids, this has been an absolute blast.  And I know I've said it before, but if any of these have made you laugh, think, or just simply be intrigued for a split second about a man running a unicorn stud farm that has a particular proclivity for sports...well then...mission accomplished.

Float on forever, graceful swans.

The Longest April

This has been the longest month of my life, and considering that when I hit round abouts age 28 that everything sped up like I was headed on the space shuttle of death, that has to count for something.

I mean, for Christ sakes, every day I wake up it's April!  It's been April every goddamn day and...aaaaaannnndddddd...there's still days left!  I swear to whoever the fuck is controlling this goddamn thing that it's been April 26th for like three days now.

I apologize for all the cursing, Mom and Nana, but the month of April has felt like that scene in Payback when Mel Gibson gets tortured by having his feet bludgeoned with a hammer.  Here's another movie reference for all the people that missed Payback, but I also feel like how Rocky looked at the end of literally all of his fights because while he's a champion and stuff...he also gets the shit kicked out of him every time.  It took like seven Rocky movies for them to actually come out and say what the message of the story they were trying to 'subtly show' was because too many people took it as just a movie about some intermediate intelligent Italian mug from Philadelphia that liked to beat the shit out of people.  They actually have him come out and say it's not about how hard you can hit, but how many times you can get hit, and that's what living is.

I'm so thankful that the Rocky franchise finally cleaned that up because I just wasn't getting it, you know?  The message was so subtle and I'm just no good at subtlety so I just want to really, sincerely thank them, for finally letting us know the great mystery behind all of the Rocky movies.  I usually enroll in a different school.  I want to put YOU on YOUR ass, not just see how hard of a beating I can take.  That's just ridiculous.

Maybe I'm warping the message, I tend to do this, it wouldn't be the first time.  But this month has felt like a bludgeoning of hammers and I don't feel victorious for sustaining the blows.  I feel like I just got fucked up by a bunch of hammers.



Anyhoo, a team that's used to taking as many hits as they can and not reaping any of the benefits that Rocky seems to think come with them, the Miami Dolphins went ahead and did what I hoped they would do and that's draft Tua.

Here's the thing: I don't give a goddamn about what the so called 'experts' have to say about Tua.  I don't give a damn that some say he's injury prone or that some say he's the best talent in the draft.  They all contradict one another and just throw noodles at the wall until one of them sticks.  Sounds like a pretty sweet gig to me, where do I sign up?  I might forsake my former dream of being a meteorologist for this piece of pie.

What scares me, and this is true, is that I endorse the pick, in fact, I love it.  Why would that be scary?  Because I'm the kiss of death of any success that the Miami Dolphins should enjoy.  For ten years now, I've been writing about how terrible the Miami Dolphins are.  Through countless players, coaches, assistant coaches, general managers, hell, probably equipment guys, I've been the one constant.  I've been the ONE thing that hasn't changed and that probably marks me for their harbinger of doom.

All these years and it turns out it wasn't Chad Henne, Tyler Thigpen, Chad Pennington, Matt Moore, Ryan Tannehill, Jay Cutler, Brock Osweiler, Ryan Fitzpatrick, or Josh Rosen's fault.  It was mine.  And you can't blame those guys, they're just the ones that have started at quarterback for the Miami Dolphins since a unicorn stud farm started blogging about sports.

So it's gotta be me, right?

Look Tua might be constructed of balsa wood and one day he might get his wish of being a real boy, but what do the Dolphins have to lose in this scenario?  Another name that gets pushed into cheaper jersey sales?  I'm sure the company that makes those are like, "Come on!  Another one?  Let's transfer to Green Bay...or New England."

Too soon?

Nah, it's never too soon to talk about how Aaron Rodgers is getting Aaron Rodgered and that Tom Brady is now a pirate.  It's funny to me, the disparity between sports.  In baseball and basketball, if you're one of the greats and you announce you are retiring at the end of the current year, you get some sort of like farewell tour.  Other teams give you presents, you get endless tributes, and ESPN talks about you constantly.

In football?  You're leaving?!  Fuck you.  Green Bay is that scum bag in high school that says, "Hey, when her and I break up, I'm gonna date you next" right in front of the one they're currently seeing.  Yeah.  Motivation levels should be high after that.

And Brady leaving New England is like those celebrities that escape Scientology.  They can breathe that fresh air finally, they don't have to log how many bathroom trips they take daily, and they can finally have sugar.  And just like Scientology, what does Belichick and New England do?  It's fine.  He was never one of us anyway.  We have 'insert name here' and we're gonna be just fine.  Despite the fact that there's people on the family tree of Jarrett Stidham, who is now their quarterback, that have never heard of him.  "Jarrett?  We thought his name was Jared for years, we put it on every Christmas card!"

Brady with the Buccaneers is going to be like your dad after the divorce.  He might score a couple times but it's going to be depressing and kind of gross.  Especially because he's bringing his best friend, the one that never grew up, along for the ride.



So what does it all mean?  It means I take Tua at face value and if he turns out to be a total bust then Miami has just another box checked.  That's all.  How could you not take someone that could potentially turn your franchise around?  They said that about Tua, not Tannehill, and that's more telling of Tennessee.  Alliteration much?  Much too much.

Float on, graceful swans.

Okay, Maybe We're Done!

Hello friends, and I guess also enemies, I'm back and I wanted to address a few things.  The last post I made was meant as a distraction from all the crap happening in the world right now.  It's not my job, it's just something I like to do.  I like throwing peanuts in people's faces.  It's fun.

However, it's dawned on me over this past week that I can no longer distract you, but rather break down to shit what some of these 'higher institutions' are considering in the light of the Coronavirus pandemic.  I'm not sure if pandemic should also be capitalized, I haven't been through one before.

Essentially, it's become perfectly clear that nobody knows what to do and they are basically playing Madlibs at this point.

Let's start with you, MLB, because you are clearly drinking too much grain alcohol in this quarantine.  The proposition sounds like something a very desperate person would do at the end of their rope and let's keep in mind, their season is just postponed!  It wasn't canceled like the NBA or NHL.  

So here it is, the grand drunken plan, first off, we're all playing in Arizona...in a bubble.  Yep, a bubble.  There won't be any fans and all the players will have to stay away from their families the whole time.  A regular baseball season is 162 games.  I can't imagine they will try to squeeze all those in but still, that's a lot of time away from your family.  Regular baseball life is tough on the family, this is just ridiculous.  Moving on, there won't be any fans in the stadium...but there will be players!  That's right kids, the players will move from the dugout to sit in the stands, six feet away from each other.  We're also eliminating mound visits from the catcher and manager and I can't believe you've let me get this far and I'm still not done yet!  We're also talking about realignment.  We're going to keep how Spring training does it.  In case you are unfamiliar, we have the Cactus and the Grapefruit leagues.  Why?  Because cactus grows in the desert and that's where everybody west of the Mississippi plays and old people love grapefruit so come on down to Florida for the rest!

So how does the playoff dynamic work at that point?  There are fifteen teams in each league.  We're just going to round robin the entire season?  So, when someone wins, do we really care?  Isn't it best to not do this whacky shit and just sit down for a year?!  Hell, if goddamn Pizza Hut can make it through this, I think the MLB will be just fine for a little while.  It's just too gimmicky for me.  I miss baseball, but not this much.  This is too much.

Sigh.

Okay, let's get to you, my most infamous enemy, the NCAA.

Look, it's been no surprise over the years that I have not been a fan of the NCAA.  In fact, I've been on record as calling them the National Collection of Assholes Anonymous.  I'm good at acronyms, what can I say?  But the idea of some conferences operating, because they have the funds, and leaving the rest out, is simply demonic.  Now they haven't come out and said that they're doing this buuuuuuuut let's be rational here, unlike the NCAA.  Some conferences operating is a lot more money than no conferences operating, right?  And what, say it with me, sways the opinion of the NCAA?  Dolla, dolla bills, y'all.  

I'm also going to go out on a limb here, and don't worry, it's a very sturdy ass limb, that these conferences are primarily concerned about college football.  I say that, because, I didn't hear shit when they canceled the goddamn basketball tournament.  And I can't imagine that they're that concerned about the swimmers and soccer players.

All of this is a contingency plan.  It's April.  Who knows where we are come late August?

However, it's April, and I've already heard this shit.  

If there wasn't a time to give money to student-athletes...I'm talking about the ones that have now been banned from their housing units because of the lockdown, and a lot of them, if not most, travel far to go to their school and couldn't just go back to mom and dad's house and are YOUNG and simply...lost.  None of this is right.  It's madness.  I don't want to hear about conferences talking about how some of them can start up and others can't, I want to hear about what they are doing to help, goddammit.  And if they aren't doing that on a conference level, then the NCAA needs to get their heads out of their collective asses and make them do it.  These are kids, that believed in bettering themselves and went to do it, that got screwed because of something that most of us only read in history books.

I'm referring to the plague, which is colloquially referred to as the Black Death, which took place in the 1300's.

The 1300's!!!

Those people thought it was okay to walk amongst rats and just dump your shit bucket out the window onto the street below.

Welp.  No consistencies here.  

We're Not Done Yet!

I last posted in October, it's now March, and the only things I've missed is the collective end of all sports and the entire world descending into all holy hell.  Bad time to take five months off?  I took the liberty upon myself to make sure the unicorn farm was far away from the rest of the population because these moody motherfuckers like to start trouble and my insurance is a bitch as it is so when you mix horses with horns in their foreheads with their innate proclivity for causing mischief and adding THAT to large populations, yeah no thanks, we're heading out to the sticks.

And who would've thought.  High insurance premiums saved us from the apocalypse.

But seriously, you all ok out there?  I've heard terrible, terrible things.  Apparently toilet paper has become the reason to declare war on each other?  Thankfully the unicorns don't need to wipe.  I have no idea why, they just don't.  I mean if I was a mystical creature, I'd probably nix wiping in my top five powers right off the bat, I just don't know if it's a choice or act of God.  Alas, I still need to wipe, but being the only human male on the premises I can probably last another couple of years.  Eh, let's face it, I can get gross with it.  Toilet paper is a luxury item.

But wow.  Weird times for sure.  I mean the things I wanted to talk about seem so trivial now...

...

...Okay fine, I'll talk about them anyways!


You and I need to come to some sort of agreement that the next time I start talking about the Dolphins, just slap me across the face, and tell me that I need to stop because the Dolphins were no longer a thing since the late 90's and if I keep talking about them like they are a thing then I'm going to get committed.  But also, at the same time, a lobotomy seems liberating at this point.

I'm going to shit on a bunch of things right now, and given the lack of toilet paper in the world it seems dangerous, but bare with me.  Let me ask a question.  Can the Miami Dolphins stop playing their seasons like the movie Rudy?

In the movie Rudy, Samwise Gamgee plays this real life tiny guy that wanted to play for Notre Dame football but they wouldn't let him because he wasn't Catholic enough.  Anyways, he spends his entire college career on the practice squad and then, finally, with the threat of all the best players quitting, he's permitted to come to his last eligible game.  He sits there on the sidelines the whole game and it gets to the point that it's obvious that Notre Dame is going to win the game.  Now is the time those same best players start chanting and basically forcing the coach to put poor Rudy in the game in a meaningless situation.  He relents, Rudy goes in, and makes a play when it doesn't matter.  And that, my friends, is what it's like to watch a Miami Dolphins season.

Some people watch Rudy and think "Wow, how inspirational! He never gave up!"  Uh, yeah he did.  He had to have a janitor talk him out of it.  The same janitor that quit from the same team.

This isn't a message of inspiration.  This is a message of "hey, if you don't quite cut it, we've cut some participation ribbons for ya!"


Okay, I'm gonna stop that thought right there.  We don't need that right now.  I apologize.  But I'm right, right?



I'm done with football.  I was very much excited for baseball because my scrappy team of never say die are looking verrrry verrrrrrry promising this year.  Plus, not to mention we got robbed by those cheating Houston Asstros last year.  That's not a typo.  That's who they are now.

In this day and age, if you're going to cheat, Jesus, can't you be smarter about it?  Or maybe smarter isn't the right word.  I think shrewder is.  So the idea is that we have this high tech camera in the outfield wall that's going to determine what pitch is coming in so our batters have the advantage.  Okay, how do we relay what the camera shows?  Uhhhhh, bang on a trash can?  Excuse me?  Bang on a trash can?  What the Hell?  Did we blow our whole cheating budget on the camera?!  Are we going to at least have the same guy do it every time so we can at least say that's just his thing?  He likes banging on trash cans?  No?  Fuck.

What about if we put some more money into the cheating budget?  I could probably make these little devices that you can attach to your uniform and it will buzz in what the camera sees.  For that amount?  I could probably make one small one.

End scene.

You're gonna tell me that those conversations didn't take place?  They definitely did.  Listen, whenever you have some sort of scandal like this come out, there's never any quality intelligence involved.  It's always stupid and it's always caught, isn't it Belichick?




Hey guys, real quick I just wanted to say:
This is a sports blog that's run by a unicorn stud farm, I get it, I really do.  We're all hurting.  I've been away for a while but if it helps people smile, I'll do my best to post some more since I know some of you lucky bastards have been ordered to stay at home.  Some of you hate me for saying that but you have no idea what it's like out here so screw you too!  Anyways, I'll be around more often...for you, for me, for the unicorns...for all of us.  Thanks.