Hard F

I've mentioned on several occasions that the unicorns are pretty strange when it comes to their everyday activities.  I still haven't figured out if it's because they are mythical creatures or if they're just fucking with me.  But anyways, come see the horned bastards.

One of the weird things that they like for some godforsaken reason is hard candy.  Not just any hard candy, like a brand or anything, but 'the one specifically your grandma likes', and I'm not really sure what to make of that.  See what I mean about them fucking with me?  Look, they could honestly just not know what they are called and that their only frame of reference is that older people tend to like the same type of candy.  They could also be playing a sick and twisted mind-game where they insinuate that they have been having sexual relations with your grandmother, I'm just not sure!

But one thing I am sure about is that the other day I was carrying a bucket of hard candies out to the unicorn stable and I misjudged the distance I had between the lock.  Here's a quick recap of what followed: the bucket dropped, the hard candies spilled everywhere, I grabbed my elbow, and yelled out, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

The unicorns' faces went pale, their eyes widened, and they immediately went into hysterics.  I'd like to believe that it was either because I was in such pain or shouted out such an obscene word, but it was probably because all of their precious grandma candies were now all over the ground.

You see, I've been cursing around the unicorns since they were born.  They need to know.  And I haven't been churching it up with 'fudge' and 'frickin' either.  They've been getting the hard F since they were unicolts because that's what's real.

I call it the hard F because if unicorns aren't exempt from it, why should you?

The Hall of Fame Game was the other day, and for those of you not in the know, it's the first preseason game of the NFL that they reserve for the two shittiest teams in the league.  It also corresponds to some of the inductees into the Hall that weekend, but you can't help but always think, "Football is back!...and I'm still going to watch baseball for a little bit."

This year's inductees include Roger Craig, Luke Keuchly, Adam Vinatieri, Larry Fitzgerald, and Drew Brees.  And most of those I gloss over and say congratulations to but also don't really care as much.

Except for you, Drew CHRISTOPHER Brees.  I said your name out loud like an old Jewish mother that just caught you stealing cookies and I hope you rot in...I don't know...some sort of beignet?  

I don't hate you Drew Brees.  I hate what happened.  I'm always going to be hung up on what could have been between us.  This Hall of Fame class gets a hard F because I'm always going to be chasing that dragon.  That Drewgon.  I'm chasing that Drewgon.

Don't tell your grandma, swans, but I'll be floating by for some candies later...

Silent P

 You know there's been a few things I've had to suspend about reality here on the unicorn stud farm.  I promise I did not write that last sentence for a bet I had on Kalshi, the PREDICTION market.  Look, I love a good loophole, in fact, it's my third favorite hole, but prediction market?  I prediction market you that they have to call themselves that to make certain illegal things legal.  And again, all good here.  I run a stud farm for unicorns while simultaneously writing a pop culture sports blog--you think all of my shit is legit?  You think I'm too legit?  Too legit to quit?!

I'm kidding.  I pay my taxes literally as soon as possible.

But one of the things that gets lost is a little thing I like to call mortality.  I like to call it that because so does everyone else.  I've talked about death on this blog quite a bit.  Someone's death, my death, the death of literally everything good...blah blah blah.  But nothing really shakes up your idea of mortality quite like the death of someone fairly young and in otherwise good health.  Kyle Busch, a NASCAR driver, died suddenly a few days ago from pneumonia and sepsis.  He was 41.

Look, I've had my fun at the expense of NASCAR and it's fans for quite some time and if they could read what I wrote they would probably be very upset.  But if you could read aloud the following for them I would be very grateful:

Nobody should die at 41.  My condolences to his family, his fans, and to anybody else that just lost a bunch of money on Kalshi, the prediction market, because he was supposed to race this past Sunday.

I make jokes because this is what I use in the face of mortality, this is nothing to mock the death of Kyle Busch.  His death is unfortunate and I'm sorry it happened.

Buuuuuuuut I can't shake it, this nagging goddamn feeling I have about pneumonia.  Anybody else have a feeling about pneumonia that they just can't shake?

First of all, that silent fucking P is ridiculous.  We all put up with it with pterodactyls because those are badass dinosaurs but why are we dealing with pneumonia?!  This is an infection of the lungs so why didn't we call it Lungitis?  I think that has a nice ring to it.  Pneumonia.  Was there an old monia?  Just in case, this one's new.

Second of all, pneumonia is very treatable.  Antibiotics, son, we've been developing them for ages.

So how does one, a professional athlete, die from a treatable infection like pneumonia?  Severe pneumonia lets you know you have it by coughing up sputum.  Sputum, kids, is mucus and if you're coughing it up, it's past time to consult your town doctor.  In Kyle Busch's case, it was blood.  He was coughing up blood.  I'm not a hypochondriac, but coughing up blood to me seems a little high on the panic meter.  

Look, death comes for us all, nothing matters and we're all hamsters blah blah blah, but we can prolong this shit.  It has nothing to do with toughing it out or being manly about it.  That nagging cough, that cold you can't shake, that feeling of malaise day in and out, please go get it checked out.  Pneumonia is treatable but you have to get someone to fucking treat it.  The chest X-ray on lungs that have pneumonia makes it look like a lava lamp. 

Get yourself checked out, kids.  Don't let this shit get you.  We're too epic for that, graceful swans. 

Apparently, You Can Leave

Well, that aged like friggin' milk, didn't it, kids?

I'm referring to my last post, approximately six months ago, when I asked the powers that be to not release Tua and Mike from the Twilight Zone because why should they have it so damn easy?  Is it too much to ask to have the direct protagonists of your suffering have to endure said suffering?  Just a little suffering?  A teensy, little, microscopic suffering perhaps?

Perhaps not.

They both got their walking papers and I'm still sitting here like I wasn't paying attention when they called my name and I'm too much of an introvert to get up and ask anybody and now I'm just going to sit here until my untimely death because that's less stressful to me somehow.

Now, there's some new guys.  We've got new guys now.  That's great.  I was just thinking that maybe the thing that could really jumpstart this whole thing and really give it a swift kick in the ass, is just some new guys.  Why didn't anybody just go out and get some new guys before all this shit happened?!

I don't even know their names or where they came from or whatever possible Hell they might've endured before this, but, heh, strap yourselves in fellas, shit gets weird around here.  It is now April of 2026.  The Miami Dolphins last won a playoff game on December 30th, in 2000.  That's 25 and a half years ago.  A quarter of a century of just nothing but bed-shitting and farting in the bathtub.  You know that goddamn game went into overtime?  CAN YOU EVEN FATHOM WHAT I'M TELLING YOU?!  The Dolphins needed extra time to sneak in a playoff victory in a world that DID NOT HAVE ANY SIGNIFICANT EVENT HAPPEN ON SEPTEMBER 11th YET.

But hey, we've got some new guys now.

Mike McDaniel went to the west coast to go and make an offensive juggernaut out of the San Diego...er...Los Angeles Chargers of Anaheim...er...whatever.  Because they have Justin Herbert, the guy that the Dolphins SHOULD have drafted instead of Tua, right?  Because that guy has just been wrecking it, right?  Or, he will, now that Mike McDaniel is there.  Isn't that exactly what's going to happen? It's so damn obvious from my seat in the penthouse of the Twilight Zone that if I were a betting man, I mean I'm obvioulsy not because HELLO, but if I were, I would put mucho dinero on the Chargers being the best offense in the NFL next year.

Tua goes to the Atlanta Falcons to be the backup quarterback in a situation where it almost seems like he can't lose no matter which way you spin it.  He's getting paid almost nothing from the team to be there because the Dolphins are paying the bill.  He's immediately entrenched as the backup to the current starter, Michael Penix (yes, that's actually his name), who is already on borrowed time because the Falcons drafted him WAY before he should have gone.  So, inevitably when Penix is benched, and Tua goes out there, he's going to be received very well by the fans because they don't even expect him to color within the lines very well at this point, so as long as he doesn't just completely barf all over himself, which he won't do because Tua has never done that, he's gonna be on easy fuckin' street there!

And I sit here, knowing full well they should have called my name by now but it's well past time for me to do anything about it and the end of the world can't come soon enough.

I often wonder how I felt on that day in December of 2000 because I honestly can't remember what it was like because it seems obvious now that was the last day I experienced a new emotion.  How ridiculous.  25 years?  That's what some people get sentenced to prison for killing someone for.  I could have killed someone, done hard time, and still not have missed a Dolphin's playoff victory.

There we go.  There's my Twilight Zone.

You Can't Leave

You know it's a wonderful thing when a baby unicorn is born into this world.  The weight of it all feels a little lighter, there's multiple rainbows in the sky, and Skittles are half off at every gas station.  We've had a number of newborns over the years down here at the farm and I've been proud to be present at each and every birth.

It's very important to me that as soon as the little unicolt witnesses the world for the first time in its existence that I'm there to grab it and hold it close and whisper ever so gently, "I'm so sorry, you're going to be a Miami Dolphins fan."  And then I give it a little kiss on the head, smack its ass, and off we go into this whole fantastic voyage. There's no sense in coddling in this day and age--it's going to hit you regardless.

The year is now 2025.  I've written about Andrew Luck being the potential savior of the Miami Dolphins but instead fate had him go to the Colts and he's now retired and in charge of Stanford making sure they keep winning math competitions and shit like that.  I've also written about Ryan Tannehill, my little Fuzzby, being the potential something of the Miami Dolphins but instead he went to the Titans and now he's retired and...welp...I don't honestly have a clue what he's doing now.  But now the Dolphins have Mike McDaniel and Tua Tagovailoa and things have been...the goddamn same.  IT'S THE SAAAAAAAAMMMMMEEEE!!!!

How? How is this possible?  

How can you be so ridiculously mediocre for two decades?  TWO!  DECADES!  Decades, kids, in this instance is the amount of time it takes to fill ten years and two, is well, TWO OF THOSE!  Could you imagine, just for the sake of humoring me, going twenty years and not being able to do something that is completely in your wheelhouse of doing?  Like, just for shits sake, let's say that I needed you to change someone's brake pads on their car and you don't know brake pads from the hole in your ass.  You don't think, in twenty years, you could not only change brake pads but also probably become goddamn Callahan Auto Parts from Sandusky, Ohio! Twenty years. I'm giving you twenty years to be Chris Farley in Tommy Boy and you can't fuuuuuuuuucking do it.

I say all of this because it's 2025 and the Dolphins are currently 1-5 and looking damn shitty doing it too!  The talking heads are calling for the heads of everyone from top to bottom and that sounds like a rational response to me for a team that somehow has little expectations and falls short of them anyway like the little rascals they are.

Rational.  Uh oh.

I used a 'no no' word.

You see, kids, we're stuck in the Twilight Zone and things like 'sense' and 'rationalization' have no meaning here.  In fact, they're flagged as 'no no' words.  Can't use 'em.  

So that leaves me with the alternative.  I propose something radical and hear me out--or don't--I don't care.  Don't fire them.  Make them stay.

MAKE THEM STAY.

If they stay, and after every loss, they have to face a battery of questions from the astounded media that have been hired and retired since you've been relevant, well then maybe we're getting close to where I feel.  A whole cycle of reporters asking why you're still shitty when everything else that has been shitty became unshitty? That sounds like purgatory and that's exactly where I've been for TWENTY YEARS.

And I want them here with me.  Mike, Tua, get yourselves comfortable because we should be joined at the goddamn hip.  You don't deserve the luxury of being fired.  You have to stay, right here, with me. So grab a shovel because this unicorn shit piles up like you wouldn't believe.

The Old Man And The See?

 What?

What's everybody looking at?

Sheesh.

So it's been...oh shit...years.  It's been years. I was in a coma.  Just bluntly like that.  Coma.  Tell me I wasn't?  Be that jerk.  You see the thing about a coma is that it's so convenient for just disappearing for huge amounts of time while simultaneously being immune to the world's struggles.  And also letting that body hair have a reason to grow like a jungle before...well...white men.

Is all this still kosher?  Was it ever?  I'm sorry, I just got defrosted.  Did I mention that?  I was in a coma, while frozen, because you can do both.  It wasn't anything planned, funny story, I fell into a vat.

But then I got out of it and was subsequently put into a coma and frozen.

I'm clearly talking out of my ass, but who isn't these days?

I mean, clearly you knew I was coming back for this, Nick?

We don't go gently into the night.

I'm referring to of course, Nick Satan...I'm sorry, still defrosting, Nick Saban.  He retired this year and I barely noticed except for the fact that sunshine happened again.  What an absolutely legend...ary ass-wipe.  He's the epitome of "smug asshole" face, and if you are unsure, it's not pronounced eppy tomb but more like ep pit of me.  It helps to break it down by the syllables, which is another word he can't say either because the Devil's tongue is forked and it sounds like szzzzzzzz.

I wasn't really in a coma, I just felt like we needed a break.  Didn't we need a break?  Don't we all need a break from some time to time?  I just happen to have no idea of the affects of time so I just went away for...well...this amount.

I've wanted to come back for so many other things but my publicist wouldn't let me.  I'm just kidding, my publicist was begging me to come back.  It was embarrassing for her because none of this is published and it's definitely not for the public and beyond that, the public doesn't want it, in fact, I asked them and they collectively said, "NO".

But Nick Saban retired!  I always come back for the death of a villain!

Now, as happy as I am, that a truly, horrible person, that definitely hates dogs, announces his "retirement", which I know just means "I'll be back in another form and you'll never truly defeat me, szzzzzzzz." He's still considered the greatest.

The greatest?!

I keep that in lower-case so you don't confuse that with the actual "Greatness", Muhammad Ali, and I will DIE before the two are considered one and the same.

But still, he says that he has a problem with college kids making money, while in college, which affectively ruined his advantage over the rest of his competition, so he effectively said, "Fuck it", and just retired.  And he mentioned a 'touching' story about his wife, how they would host breakfast and invite the new 'recruits' over and how that doesn't mean anything now.

Barf.

I have no high-horse, no box to stand on, it's literally me and the unicorns and now they're wondering why I don't pay them, Saban!  What the fuck!  Just retire and keep your big mouth shut!  

Kidding.

They don't even know what money is, they just go ape-shit for honey combs.

The big problem here, is that Santa, errrr...whatever his name is, retires when, finally, college players are getting paid.  He's afraid of the future when the rest of us were always afraid of the past.  If I break my neck on an oil rig as an intern, who cares?  Uh, probably my family, everyone that's watched me grow on oil rigs over the years, and, I don't know, the muuuueeellllliiiiiioooons watching at home on their goddam tv!  Maybe, just maybe, before I sacrifice literally everything I have there can be some compensation first?  You know, in case I break my neck?

The old man left because he was afraid that the future wouldn't be in his favor.

No shit.

The future isn't something to be afraid of, or run from, we embrace it.

Float on, graceful swans.

Los Delfines Son Malos

 To illicit fear in the heart of your enemies, one must choose a symbol of strength and ferocity.  A symbol so powerful that just upon the very sight of it would speak volumes and send you running with your tail betwixt your legs.  That word of the day is brought to you by Subway.  Eat fresh, douchebags.

My symbol is a dolphin.  An elegant, sophisticated, and incredibly intelligent marine mammal, fair enough, but not exactly the animal you want to strike fear into the hearts of your combatants.  Most people would probably associate the dolphin with balancing a beach ball on it's nose, or whatever the Hell you call a dolphin's nose.  Beak?  Weird protruding mouth with way too many teeth?  But also weird, gummy teeth?  Also, let's not forget the blowhole, my favorite feature of the dolphin.  So how does it breathe?  Oh, there's a hole in the top of it's head that it surfaces from the depths of the water and takes a deep breath from and goes back down into the abyss again.  You see, the dolphin is so smart, that it breathes from a hole in it's head.

Athletically?  Dolphins are incredible!  They swim through the water like a knife through cheese and also jump through hoops just to flaunt their own talent.  When it comes to physical contact though, dolphins are like the poet laureate of the seas.  They'd rather just sit back and talk about how intelligent they are.  Which is fine...for dolphins.  Now when it comes to human Dolphins, specifically from Miami, they're not very athletic at all.  In fact, they also have a blowhole, but it's not for breathing, it's just a giant gaping hole in their brains.  That's it.

Kids, I've been in the Twilight Zone for quite some time now, so I'm not so easily surprised these days.  It's no shock to me that the Miami Dolphins are terrible because that's all I have ever known.  Did you hear me?!  I've only known failure from them and I've been alive...well...a while.  It's coming to the point where I give up on me and just hope the best for the unicorns because those dum dums followed my footsteps and became fans of them too!  If not for me...for the unicorns?!

Miami is crap.  Tua is hurt, our starting quarterback is named 'Jacoby', and the offensive line is made up of whatever was left of the stockpile of Fatheads.  You guys remember Fatheads?  Good concept, but their clientele was very limited.  As a grown ass man, how do you explain to your wife why a life-size sticker of Ray Lewis on your wall is a good idea?  

What does the future hold for my dear Miami Dolphins?  Cheap ticket prices.  There's nothing else.  You know, they say that purgatory is worse than Hell, and I agree.  At least with Hell, you've made it to your destination.  

It's all blowholes, kids.  Take a deep breath.

Ahoy Matey!

 How's everybody doing out there?

Good?  Not so good?  Yeah...it's a struggle, I get it, but at least we don't have scurvy?  I apologize if you do have scurvy, but how hard is it to eat a goddam piece of citrus?  Eat some citrus, goddammit.  There's at least five I know of off the top of my head.  Oranges, limes,  lemons, tangerines, grapefruit, and...well...that's all I've got.  I told you I knew five.  Now personally, I feel like grapefruit was made from the Devil and if that was the only piece of citrus available, I would take my chances with scurvy.  Grapefruit tastes like everyone hates you and your parents still make you go to school.  I bet you Cole Hamels has a grapefruit every morning for "tribute".  We call it breakfast, but Cole calls it "tribute".  It really is a shame that he goes such ape-shit over the Devil's fruit because I would really like him to suffer from scurvy.  And really, it's because one of the symptoms is "change of hair" and I think he would really lose it over that and that would make me really happy.

Sorry, I'm rambling, I'm talking about scurvy for some reason and that's a disease you don't really have to worry about unless you're a pirate and at sea for months at a time.  August does this to me.  I have a real problem with the "herald of my fleeting mortality" that I tend to lash out in random directions.  I understand that time is a human construct and that birthdays don't really matter and all of it is just some sort of weird measuring tool anyways but my number is starting to get higher and I don't like it one bit.  "You're only as old as you feel!"  Yeah, sure, try putting that on your Tinder account.

I don't have a Tinder account so I'm not exactly sure how it works but I imagine it's mostly people with scurvy trying to convince you they don't have scurvy, then you meet up at a local eatery, and share stories over some grapefruit.

Wow.  I'm a mess.

But at least, at the very least, when I wake up in the morning and present myself to the world, I can proudly say that I'm not Alex Rodriguez.  The reasons are endless but the latest one added to the collection was that he recently said that the Los Angeles Dodgers are the New York Yankees of baseball.

That's a weird connection to make considering that the New York Yankees do, in fact, also play baseball and Alex Rodriguez was a member of their team.  They also play in the same league.

Now, before I continue, I would be a tremendous asshat if I didn't tell you a quick story.  We all know that I'm a huge North Carolina Tar Heels basketball fan.  Well, I was watching the game, one random day, with a girl that could care less about the actual gameplay or results.  She was on her phone the whole time and that was perfectly fine with me.  It just so happened that at halftime of that particular game, Michael Jordan came out and announced some charity or scholarship program he was funding.  Cool.  That's awesome.

He spoke for a little bit and told everyone what he was doing and it was going quite well.

Then he said it.  "The roof is the ceiling!"

I obviously heard it clear as a bell but I was praying to whoever would listen that she didn't hear it.  Then she puts down the phone and says, "Did he just say the roof is the ceiling?"

Dammit.

Now, you know, that I'm a lyrical wordsmith and I talk pretty, but, if you didn't think that I knew MJ said the wrong thing but I still defended him anyways then I don't know what we're really doing around here.  I lawyered the shit out of that and I'm damn proud of it.  I'm sure he meant to say something along the lines of "The sky's the limit" or maybe even "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!" but instead he had a little mix-up and just referenced a thesaurus.  We've all done it, just not as the greatest basketball player that ever lived, on national television, in front of his alma mater as he's announcing this great contribution to society.

So, I told you that story to get to my point.  There's a distinction.  Michael Jordan has no business even being mentioned alongside Alex Rodriguez.  The very obvious point I can make is that Jordan is not a broadcaster on basketball.  Alex Rodriguez is a baseball broadcaster, he gets paid for that, yet he said that the Dodgers are the Yankees of baseball.  I'm sure he meant maybe that the Dodgers are the Yankees of the National League, or that he meant the Dodgers are following the blueprint of the early 2000's Yankees, or maybe he's got the mush-brain ever since he lost J-Lo.  I definitely think I would have the mush-brain after losing J-Lo.

Or?  And hear me out, A-Rod has scurvy.  Can somebody get A-Rod a grapefruit?

Float on, graceful swans.  I don't know how much time I have left, but as long as I have time, I think I'll spend it right here with you.

To The Face!

It's the end of May and that means that the 'dog days' of Summer are upon us.

Very soon, basketball and hockey will get out of the way, and all we will be left with is baseball, the so called 'boys of summer', which is also a really good song...which I don't think has to do with baseball?

I'm not sure.  Don Henley was on a lot of drugs, pretty much all the time, so he could have been watching a Phillies game on acid when he wrote that song.  So it could mean that he was really into the lineup that featured Mike Schmidt, Von Hayes, and Steve Carlton.  Or, in the most likely scenario, he's never seen a Phillies game in his life and the "Boys of Summer" is based off of some sort of drug-induced nightmare, despite it's playful beat and hopeful optimistic lyrics.

I don't know and I don't really care, because I used all of that as a literary bridge.  You see, also on the 1984 Philadelphia Phillies was a pitcher named Jerry Koosman.  He spent 12 years with the Mets and won 140 games.  Jerry was no bum, but this story isn't about him.  It's about another Met.

Literary bridge crossed.

This is the story of Kevin Pillar, the Mets outfielder that was hit in the face with a 94 MPH fastball.

Picture this: You're in the great state of New York, more specifically in the city of Kingston.  You decide you want to get away for the weekend, maybe just get a breath of fresh air, but whatever you do...you're just getting away.  It's important.  It's healthy.  It's mental healthy.

You decide to go to the city of Massapequa.  Small, quiet hamlet, on Long Island.  It's the perfect getaway for the constant grind you face in Kingston.  Kingston is always go, go, go, and this is Massapequa...slow, slow, slow.  A guy can really get some thinking done around here.  There's a lot of history there, as well.  The Massapequa people spoke Algonquian, which is a real cool party trick these days.  Also, Jerry Seinfeld is from there!

Anyways, you are leaving from Kingston to spend your wellness time away in Massapequa, and you're in a hurry.  There's not a time limit on working on yourself but nevertheless, you've got to get there.  You'll get there as fast as you can...say...like within an hour.

Kingston is 90.4 miles away from Massapequa.  You could go 90 MPH in a Volvo to get from Kingston to Massapequa and still not be faster than the baseball that hit Kevin Pillar in the face a few days ago.

Kevin Pillar got hit, in the face, with a baseball, traveling faster than you could get from Kingston to Massapequa in an hour.  A baseball.  To the face.

A Major League baseball is comprised of cork, rubber, cotton, wool, and cowhide.  I don't know how many of you have been smacked in the face with cow-skin that has a cork and rubber core, but I can't imagine it feels good, let alone at a speed that's faster than you can drive from Peekskill to Baldwin and back again.

Well, Kevin Pillar took that super fast cow-skin to the face and was upset he had to leave the game!  What an absolute beast.  I've got to be honest here, maybe I'm soft, but a 94 MPH to the face sounds like a sweet retirement insurance plan.  I mean, 94 to the face?!  I thought I played baseball and wasn't an UFC fighter!  Diamond, right?  Not Octagon?

I'm better than that joke, but I'm letting it ride for the new readership.

Look, it's rare when you love your job so much that you're willing to take a 94 MPH fastball to the face.  I guess there's always the possibility that he didn't see it coming or also could react in a way to shield himself.  It would be weird if I got hit with a 94 MPH baseball.  That would be a story.  Guy walking across the street gets hit in face with fastball from Major League player.  That's enticing.  But only because I'm not a baseball player.

As a baseball player there's an inherent risk that you could get hit in the face with a ball made of cow, traveling faster than northern New Yorkers on vacation.  I'm pretty sure that's in the contract.

As for Kevin?  He went to the press conference after the game.

He. Went. To. The. Press. Conference.

I'm not saying that Kevin Pillar is impervious to fast cow because it definitely jacked up his face...a lot.  Like how you would expect...it was gross.

But he went and spoke to the media!  Looking like Quasimodo!

I talked about how it would be weird if I got hit in the face with a baseball going 94 MPH, because I'm just a civilian.  I've played co-ed softball and got plunked on the square of the back.  I only got hit because I saw it coming high and inside and I turned in time, you know, for the team.  It stung for a hot minute.  I also learned that getting hit by the softball doesn't grant you first base like it does in real sports and I felt really ashamed.  I was ashamed because what kind of screwball rules are we doing here?!  God forbid I took a softball to the face!

I didn't.  Even still, it would have been at a cool 35 MPH, which could maybe give a toddler a few stitches and also amnesia...for a little bit.

Kevin Pillar took an '84 Volvo to the face and then described it at the press conference following the game.  Kudos to you, sir!

Float on, graceful swans!

Bad Taste

 Sorry, I know I've been gone for a hot minute, I was busy making sure the damned unicorns didn't catch Covid.  I spent months showering them down with special shampoo, making them eat out of food bags instead of troughs which takes way more time to do, and also sanitizing their hooves every time they leave the barn.  

They let me do this for months until just the other day I caught them snickering and asked what was so funny and come to find out that unicorns are immune to all viruses and infectious diseases.  Good one, you horned bastards.  I revoked their internet time for a week, that will teach them.

What did I miss?

Oh.  I see Tom Brady won another Super Bowl.

I could easily take the approach of how much I hate Tom Brady and how most of his Super Bowl rings are centered around some sort of cheating but I would be wasting my time.  I told you all, long ago, that Bill Belichick was a Sith lord and he alone was responsible for the Patriots success...because he did it out of pure evil.  Tom Brady was Belichick's Darth Vader.  With him gone, there was no immediate apprentice, and the empire crumbles.  For the first year, in about twenty, I didn't have to assume the Patriots were going to win the division.  In fact, they only didn't finish last because the Jets shouldn't even play football.  They're more of a lacrosse team.  It's kind of like why all great classical music comes from Germans, you have to be evil to produce the absolute greatness.  If that starts World War III, I apologize.

To be honest, this is the first year that I didn't hate Tom Brady.  How could I hate him, you ask?  He has chiseled good looks, married to a model, and has had nothing but great success in the NFL and maybe has earned him self the title of the best to do it ever.

That last sentence was from his publicist.  I could never write that.  I would vomit, and then vomit again, upon seeing and smelling the vomit.  It's a terrible cycle.

I hated Tom Brady because in the first year he took over because Drew Bledsoe got hit so hard he had a ruptured spleen.  A ruptured spleen spawned the birth of Darth Vader of the New England area.  The Patriots lost that game by a huge margin and that only stirred the hate in Palpatine.  They made it all the way to the Super Bowl that year and, as underdogs, beat the Greatest Show On Turf, the at the time, St.Louis Rams.

It should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyways, that Dan Marino is the greatest quarterback of all time.  He never won a Super Bowl, in his last game he lost 63-7, to the fucking Jacksonville Jaguars, and still, I think he's the best.

And, in his first year, because of a ruptured spleen, Tom Brady has a ring.

What the fuck does the spleen even do?  Do we need it?  Why would that sideline a professional athlete?

A goddamn spleen.  That's how we got Tom Brady.

And I immediately hated him for a few reasons.  One, he's already accomplished the highest goal in football, which my idol never did, and he played for the Patriots.  Kids, keep in mind, this was 2001 when the Patriots won the Super Bowl for the first time.  Before that?  They were an absolute joke.  Again, think of the Jets of today and you get the Patriots before this.  It was a dumpster fire from bad grease removal, and they kept throwing water on it instead of flour because what the Hell do they know about grease fires? 

The Patriots were never supposed to happen.  They weren't supposed to have this much success.  I believe that Bill Belichick used his time as a horrible coach in Cleveland to figure out the secrets of how to win, unlawfully, in the NFL.  The guy came from Bill Parcells, come on!  If you are so star-spangled brilliant then why cheat your way to the top?

So Tom, Darth Vader, becomes the bane of my existence the next twenty years or so, and then jumps ship to Tampa Bay.

And I was immediately happier for two reasons: one, he left the evil empire, and two, I don't give a flying fuck about the Bucs.

Good for him, he's clearly retiring into the sun and great weather we have here and that's finally that.

Nope.

They surround him with great talent and he has that fuck you mentality against Palpatine that propels them enough to win the goddamn Super Bowl...and they do it in their own stadium.  First time that's ever happened.

So, I started about how this is the first year I didn't hate Tom Brady, despite all my rambling, I should probably address that point.

First of all, I liked that he didn't play for the Patriots anymore which was always a huge detriment to the Miami Dolphins, a team that I love, despite their continual misgivings.  Second of all, I took it as a huge slap in the disgruntled face of Belichick/Palpatine.  I would akin it to finding out an ex got engaged to someone else.  It's all terrible.

In essence, I've hated Tom Brady for twenty years.  Now that he's in Tampa, I don't give a shit.  But never forget, you got here because of a ruptured spleen, you smug asshole.

Float on, graceful swans.

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.

Damn It All, To Holy Hell!

I'm pissed.  24 hours ago I would have told you that there was just no way that the Tampa Bay Rays were going to lose that do or die Game 5 in the ALDS.  I felt an energy from the team that...well, shit, I haven't felt unless I built it up myself as their biggest cheerleader.

In case you can't tell from the title, they did in fact, lose.  And it sucks, and I hate that it's so quickly deflating after such a looooong, looooong season, but that's baseball, kids.

I can take solace in knowing that my ragtag team of misfits and throwaways, that collectively make less money than the top three earning Yankees, gave the best team in baseball absolutely all they could handle.  It took their freak of a pitcher, Gerrit Cole, who will win the Cy Young this year, to beat us twice in a best of five series.  Without him, we would have done it.  We beat Greinke, we beat Verlander when the iron was to our face, and dammit, if only it's not Cole's year!

Cole...Cole...

Weird.  That name resonates with me for some reason.

Anyways, I mentioned the energy from the team, but I also meant the energy from the Trop and the fans that actually came out to support the Rays.  That was incredible.  I honestly didn't think that would ever happen.

I wrote back in June, when the whole weird Montreal thing was happening, that the team should just kamikaze themselves into a championship, and yet somehow those two playoff games at the Trop make me...siggggggghhhhhhh...have hope.



Look, if this is your first trip down to the Studly Pastures and you've never seen a unicorn crap a cupcake before, let me give you some advice: hope, in all it's forms, is the worst feeling you can have when it comes to sports.  Also, never eat the cupcakes.  It is NOT my first trip to the stables, in fact, I've run this joint for longer than I care to remember, and I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I said that part about having hope.

Hope is for the dumb dumbs.  Hope is for the people that refuse to believe in facts.  Hope is for those people that know the inevitable outcome, yet despite that, believe it could work out in their favor.

It is a bad, bad thing.

Hope leads to heartbreak.


And yet, after all this time, and after all the Lucy's pulling the football from me right before I kicked it...I have hope.

I believe, whole-heartedly, that I will one day write a Studly talking about the Rays as champions.  I really do.  And I really hope it's next year because I'm getting tired of how much crap these unicorns produce.


Cole...dammit, I just can't shake it.

Wait a minute!  It's like the SAT's...Gerrit Cole is to Cole Hamels as to harbingers of the Rays doom and the newest member on my list to hopefully get penis rot and get shanked by three midgets in a trench coat.

Damn you, Twilight Zone.

Said The Dolphin To The Horse, Part II

Back in 2011, which might as well be a lifetime ago now, the Studly Pastures was just starting up.  At that point, we were around for just over a year and we were struggling to find our voice and our passion.  It was rough beginnings.  People don't seem to just jump at a sports blog/unicorn stud farm like I thought they would, but eh, let 'em squirm.

Then our passion became clear.  The Miami Dolphins were the worst team in the league and being the worst team in that particular year meant that you were going to be set for the next foreseeable future because the universe was going to bestow upon you, Andrew Austen Luck.  I forsake everything.  I wanted us to not only lose every game but get stomped, absolutely trounced, and leave no doubt!  That's how important it was to me.  Andrew Luck, as I was convinced, would be the savior and turn our franchise around in a way we haven't even sniffed since The Man retired.  I was convinced.

It was clear that we would do it, until a second contender came into the picture.  I have never liked the Indianapolis Colts and it really has nothing to do with them other than I consider Peyton Manning a horrible aberration.  He was the bane of the Dolphins for a long time and those things don't go gently into the night with me.  Never forgive, never forget!

The rest falls ever so perfectly for someone like me living in the Twilight Zone.  Peyton has to have his neck fused to his back so he can still be a person and he leaves Indy to join the Denver Broncos.  He ends up winning a Super Bowl with them so it's not all roses, but he retires shortly after.  However, without Peyton, the Colts, turns out what we thought forever, weren't very good at all.  In fact they won two games that year.  And my plucky band of idiots, that started 0-7, rallied to win six of their last nine.  Six wins?!  When you have Andrew Luck sitting in your stupid, stupid hands?!  What the Hell is the matter with you?  I really can't anymore.  I must have drank myself something stupid that year because not even I remembered that we won six goddamn games that year.  Jesus Christ...

Anyhoo, the Colts had Manning for decades, won a Super Bowl, lived in the sun the rest of the time, he basically dies, they have one shitty year, and then they get Andrew Luck, the next goddamn Manning.

I tried to talk them out of it.  I pleaded with them.  I even wrote them a letter called  Said The Horse To The Dolphin.  It didn't work.  They still took Luck.

And wouldn't fate have it, he was as good--if not better--as advertised.  The Colts were immediately back in the playoffs and contending for Super Bowls and living in the sun and the Dolphins kept their pasty asses in the dark and I wrote very hateful blog posts to the state of Indiana calling them "grain-eating flat-heads".  I apologize for nothing.

But then he started getting hurt, and not just bullshit hurt, but like actually life-altering hurt.  The kind of hurt where, say, and I'm just ballparking here, but maybe at age 43 you just wouldn't feel like a person anymore.  That's a heavy thought to bear and Luck was smarter than that.

See, let me put it this way, Manning and Luck are both smart but they're different kinds of smart.  Manning went to the University of Tennessee, where it's acceptable to do buffoonish stunts like dropping your nut sack on the face of a female trainer and just sit around and lick the icing off of Oreos all day.  That's all good and well.  He was a savvy quarterback though and could read defenses like they were broadcasting their coverage schemes off of his gigantic forehead.  Luck went to Stanford.  That's all I have to say about that.

And when it comes to injury?  They had to fuse Manning back together!  That's insane!  Give it up, man, you've done it, you're good!  Luck probably saw that, looked at his future, and said 'You know, I think one day I'd like to be able to hug my kids without blowing into a straw first!"  And good on him, because I'm sure that's tough as Hell to quit the only thing you've known your whole life but still know it's the best decision for you.

So he retires.  It's shocking but not when I break it down for you so eloquently, so get over it, Media Pundits.  It's not the same as Jordan going to play baseball--it's not---by a looooong shot.

I reached out to some Colts fans, told them I was sorry for them and then I went about my day.

But I just had this nagging, nagging, little thought in the back of my head that kept going back to 2011.  The Suck For Luck campaign did not go my way, obviously, but we have a new campaign this year and it's very much so Tank For Tua, the great quarterback out of Alabama.  Our two quarterbacks this year, that are still currently duking it out for the starting position about twelve days from the start of the season, are Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Rosen.  We're tanking, for sure, and we damn sure better not hit anywhere close to six wins!

And it dawned on me, that, without Andrew Luck, the Colts might not be very good this year.  I beg you, Indianapolis, win one more than we do this year.  Please!  Hold out for Trevor Lawrence next year, he's got that Anglo look that you guys seem to die for!

Please...not again...

A Tale Of Two Cities

You know they say that life often imitates art and that can be a wonderful thing.  In the case of it being a book about the French Revolution though, eh, not so much.  Ah Dickens, you crafty old codger!  I hope you're rolling in your grave right now!

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."

I didn't get much sleep last night so I sort of disregarded the notification on my phone but it said something about the Tampa Bay Rays and Montreal.  I've done some funny things on sleep deprivation so I chalked that up to that and grazed about my day.  Then I saw it on something else.  And again.  Then it had my attention.

Apparently the Rays have permission to explore some sort of deal where they would play the first half of their home games in St.Petersburg and the other half in Montreal.

Oh, because that's a thing?!

I just wrote that and I still don't even know what it means!  I'm literally at a loss.  I don't want to do it, you can't make me!


Sigh.


Fine.


Let's take a trek down the damn rabbit hole.

So here's the problem in a nutshell:

Despite the fact that a team with one of the lowest salaries in baseball constantly overachieves and shits on teams with three times their payroll, and is currently leading the AL wild card, they still can't seem to get people to come out and watch them.  They signed a 30 year lease at Tropicana Field, which back in 1998 when this whole thing began seemed like a 100 year lease, it's really only just eight years away now.  People blame the Trop as part of the reason why nobody goes to games and I'm one of them.  While it's nice to sit in air conditioning and watch a baseball game, well, I can do that at my house.  Because of the dome there's an intricate catwalk system that has a very confusing set of rules on what happens if a baseball were to hit this catwalk instead of this catwalk.  Added on top of that, it almost has a warehousey feel to it, especially since nobody goes there.  The Rays have tried multiple options on new stadiums, including modern waterfront ones in Ybor and actual Tampa, and have been shot down each and every time.

Then there's also the fact that St.Pete is nothing but geriatrics and transplanted northerners.  If you are a Rays fan and you go to a Yankee game, you're outnumbered, in your own damn house.  I mentioned the geriatrics because you have to get on I-275 to get to the stadium and the ol' blue hairs remember when they built the damn thing and they're not driving on it.

So, in recap, terrible stadium, terrible location, and terrible fan base.



And now the solution today is to split custody with Montreal.  Montreal?  Let me see, where have I heard that name before...

It's right on the tip of my tongue...oh yeah...the Montreal Expos, the MLB team that is now the Washington Nationals because, wait for it, NOBODY WENT TO THEIR GAMES EITHER!  They didn't split them in half and let them play the last part of their season in Boca Raton, no, they just straight up said, "You're done, pack your shit!"

That was at least fifteen years ago, so now you're telling me that Montrealians are now suddenly salivating over the possibility of getting a team for half the time they used to get and it's roughly the exact same team that they used to have and didn't bother to show up for in the first place?  Oh, and I should mention that part of the deal they're exploring is to have two new stadiums, one in each city.  Because what do you do when you keep losing at poker?  You fucking double down and really go out with a bang!

I'm not even going to bother with semantics on this one because it's just so ridiculous to me that I don't even want to ponder whether they'll wear different uniforms, play in different leagues, or who holds claim to the title if god forbid, they win something.  That's all stuff for other people to deal with.  I'd rather just kick this in the nuts.

The only positive I could see coming from this is that we could probably have a pretty sweet national rivalry with the Toronto Blue Jays and that's meant entirely as a joke and I would probably eat a bullet if I ever saw the Clash of the Canadians and one of them was my favorite baseball team.



What's the real solution here?


"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."


End it.  You have, hopefully, eight years left, go for goddamn broke and stop with the sustainability bullshit.  Win a title, drop the mic, and literally blow up the Trop.  I'll miss them terribly, I was there Day One back in '98 and they've pulled on my heart strings ever since.  But what a fantastic epic ending that would be if they went all in, took home the World Series, gave the middle finger to everyone that stopped us from being, and that was just it.

My solution is definitely not for the faint of heart but it's one I could at least live with.

To the bitter end, boys.

Red Herring, Sick Mammal

I have the privilege of being privy to several literary techniques, you know, because I've been classically trained by Plath, Vonnegut, Hemmingway, and Kerouac.

For example, I had to have a minor, and that sounds terrible but journalism school required that in order to be through the program you had to have a lesser degree in something else.  Dolla dolla bills, y'all.  So I picked English writing, which should have been a cake walk but it was way more technical that it sounded.  I actually had to learn the business side of it and that brings us here: teaching me the inside workings of the whole establishment was the worst thing you could have done.

I know too much now.

One of the classes I took to finish that English writing minor was a science fiction writing class that was held online.  The final grade was an original written short story based on the techniques that we have learned throughout the course.

The following is 100% true.  I tell no lies.

I wrote the entirety of that short story in a hotel room in Chicago across the street from Grant Park.  The room did not have any hot water but I got free porn on the television.  That seemed like a fair trade off at the time.  I was across the street from Grant Park because that's where Lollapalooza was being held and that's a three day music festival that I traveled to alone in a city that I had never been to before.  My cab driver told me a story about how he got so fed up stuck in traffic that he just up and left the cab with a guy in the back seat.  He told me this, while we're stuck in traffic, in a city I've never been before on the way to my hotel.  No hot water, free porn.

I was there to see the The Shins and some guy named Kanye West that just so happened to be from Chicago.  I also really enjoyed Gnarls Barkley.

It dawned on me when I finally got to the hotel that I had not even attempted the final grade for my science fiction writing class.  So I sat on the bed, whipped out my trusty MacBook, and wrote an odyssey.  Well, it wasn't The Odyssey, but all you could do is buckle up and ride along.  It was a parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and it was completely absurd but it was also a deus ex machina.

That's Latin, doll, but it's also a literary technique for basically having something save the day, when all hope was lost, and it was never mentioned before.  It's a cheat.  But I thought it was hilarious and it made perfect sense in my Frankenstein parody, which was titled The Aardvark's Bane.

NOW, when I tell you, that I use a deus ex machina, purposely, regardless of what kind of porn is going on in the background while I'm writing it, you should know that it's all meant as absurdity!  It's fucking called The Aardvark's Bane for Christ's sake!  I'm not mocking the class, the professor, or anybody else who took that class...I'm mocking myself?  Okay, I don't really know who I was offending there but the professor definitely took offense and that was the day that I almost lost a shot at a minor in Chicago at a music festival.  Again, the wording of all this sounds a bit awful.

And now I can't help but think of the Miami Dolphins, dear Lord, why do I think of the Miami Dolphins?!

The Dolphins have traded my favorite Fuzzby in the whole-game, Ryan Tannehill, to the Tennessee Titans.  We thought he'd be right at home in purgatory with the rest of the teams that don't ever seem to do anything ever.

With Tannehill gone, the only other quarterbacks on the Dolphins roster were two guys that just got done with their shift at Dairy Queen and said, "eh, whatever."  I'm not even sure if I'm shitting on Dairy Queen at this point or if it's the Miami Dolphins.  Lines are blurred, factions crossed, and I'm just rambling because what the Hell is the point of all of this?  There's just under a month before the draft and I can't see my team winning more than three games next year.

Fuck!  I even forgot to tell you that we just signed Ryan Fitzpatrick!  This guy might as well be me as an NFL quarterback in that I have no fucking business being an NFL quarterback.  Fitzpatrick is the guy that would work for different gas stations and if that doesn't tell you anything, 'cigarette bribes' will.  He's the guy you can get to do things for cigarettes. "Hey Ryan, I'll throw you two packs of Marlboro Reds if you help my Sister-in-law move her new couch in next Tuesday."

"Hell ya, brother!"


All of this makes me want to watch that Jay Cutler show that's on tv, and then I quickly remember I'd sooner chop off my left hand, and now we have Ryan Fitzpatrick.  And I referenced it as the "Jay Cutler" show but he's just really the supporting role because when can he actually take control of something for once in his life and I feel for you Kristen Cavallari because what the actual fuck..


The fact that we didn't send Tannehill off in a Viking funeral really makes me mad.  Fuzzby deserves better than the Titans.  I think everybody deserves better than being the back-up to Marcus Mariota.  What a weird web we weave.

Float on, graceful swans.  By the way, in case you didn't know, the entire first part was a Red Herring.  Love ya.

Miracle Boy

It's been 363 days since the last time I've posted from the Studly Pastures and all I have to say about that is that I'm only contractually obligated to post once a year.

I'm like the George Clooney of bloggers.  I did my thing, now I'm resting on my nest egg on the shores of an Italian lake and every now and again I'll surprise everyone by appearing in a commercial for an express coffee maker that as far as I can tell nobody actually owns.

Just kidding, I'm still over here shoveling pound after pound of unicorn shit and keeping a keen eye on the weird, wonderful world of sports.

Now that I'm significantly older than when this wild ride took off for the first time I'd like to think that my view has matured and I'm more open to discussion rather than my opinion operating like one of the Ten Commandments.  I'm not sure if you're supposed to capitalize the Ten Commandments but I'm going to anyways because I don't trust the odds of being struck by lightning.  Anyways, I've been really trying to see different view points and really become a structured individual when it comes to conversation but I seem to be running into this problem each and every time--they're always wrong!  It's the damndest thing but I can't seem to find anybody I actually agree with over myself.  Oh well, good thing this blog is like talking to myself in the mirror anyways.  Off we go!


This year brought back haunted memories for me as an old friend was reintroduced into something he has no business doing.  The Green Bay Packers decided it was best in the middle of a season to fire their head coach, Mike McCarthy, who led them to a Super Bowl victory, and told Joe Philbin to go get them tiger!  Now keep in mind, when the announcement came over the airwaves I felt like Darth Vader did when he sensed Obi-Wan on the Death Star.  I was just as surprised as anyone that Philbin was still in football, let alone a position that allowed him to be promoted via assassination.  What the Hell is it with this guy?  Does he knit Christmas sweaters for the commissioner every year and he gets these ridiculously underqualified jobs in return?  Like I said during the painful years that he coached the Miami Dolphins, Joe Philbin is better placed in some high school in Wisconsin trying to get kids accepted into trade schools.  I'm sure this past Sunday, when the Chicago Bears clinched the North and eliminated the Packers from the post season, Philbin let out his best "Well, shoot!" and then proceeded to gently blow on his hot cocoa.  I'm sorry for you Green Bay, if only more of you subscribed to the SP you would have known about Philbin.

Speaking of the Miami Dolphins, they've now resorted to Divine Intervention in order to achieve victory.  Last week's win over the Patriots was dubbed the "Miracle in Miami" and I immediately thought, "Great, a miracle, I'm sure we'll get some more of those!"  Don't get me wrong, watching Tom Brady wipe that smug shit-eating grin off his face while he's talking to some teammates about what type of Uggs he's wearing that night as Kenyon Drake goes racing past is one of those moments that I'll keep seared on the back of my cerebral cortex for the rest of my life.  But a miracle?  Hardly.  When it comes to the Miami Dolphins and miracles, I'll start believing when I don't spend the final two weeks wondering if we'll get the fourteenth or the fifteenth pick in the upcoming draft.  I'll consider it a miracle when Ryan "Fuzzby" Tannehill doesn't hold the ball for ten seconds and takes a game-altering sack on third down.  I'll start to believe that maybe a higher power has something to do with it when I can watch them play against a broken ass team like the Minnesota Vikings and have them not manhandle us like we owed them money.  An early December win against the Patriots is the same as getting a participation trophy, not a miracle.

So let's see, is there anything else in the last year I want to bring up other than the two things that happened in the last month...uhhh...LeBron joined the Lakers...nobody cares...Bryce Harper is going to get a contract that instead could be used to sustain the rainforests...nobody cares...oh, I got one!

The University of Central Florida Knights haven't lost a football game in two years and all they get to show for it is the chance to play LSU on New Year's Day in a bowl game that doesn't really mean jack shit.  A four-team playoff to decide the National Championship is nothing short of a joke and really makes me revisit that path I always take when I say I hate the NCAA.  I really fucking hate the NCAA.  What are we doing here?  Four teams out of 130 are the official odds, but they're really not because you let a 'committee' determine those four teams based off of their own biased opinions.  And, guess what, who would've thought that those opinions are leaned heavily on by money?  At the end of the season we end everything with a big Bullshit Parade and tell people that Alabama are the champions when really all they had to do was beat two teams picked by a committee of people that actually don't give a shit about football.  WOOOOOOO!  Congrats, dickheads.

Why not UCF?  They haven't lost in two years, nobody else can say that!  You want to argue strength of schedule and I don't really get that because we're just asking to play the big boys, not get handed anything.  What would be so really terrible for the NCAA if they let UCF play Alabama?

That they could beat them?  Then what would we do?  Change everything?

Now there's a theory...

The Revenge Of The Sith

I woke up this morning to the terrible news that I am no longer a baseball fan.

In a move that revered scientists couldn't even explain to me, the Tampa Bay Rays have traded Evan Longoria to the San Francisco Giants, effectively rendering anything they ever do again be pointless and terrible.  This is by far the stupidest move the Rays have ever done.

As a small market team, the biggest problem is trying to keep home grown talent and trying to not be a minor league team for a big market team.  Just ask the Miami Marlins how they feel about the New York Yankees right about now.  They just "traded" away their franchise player in Giancarlo Stanton to the Bronx for the equivalent of a ham sandwich, with now I whom sympathize with. (Marlins' fans, not the ham sandwich)

Does it really matter who you get in the trade?  The Marlins traded away their Barry Bonds.  The Rays traded away their Derek Jeter.  Could you imagine the New York Yankees trading away Derek Jeter?  No, you couldn't because you know it would never fucking happen!  Just as you knew that Jeter was the heart and soul of the Yankees, Longoria was the heart and soul of the Rays.  We just traded away the first thing that ever gave us any hope, that ever gave us any success, and that ever acted like the Rays could compete with the rest of the assholes.  Price was the shot to the gut, Maddon was the death sentence, and Longoria is the dirt on the casket.  It's over kids, we just traded our own son to somebody else.

You don't trade Longoria.  I can't believe that should have been a sign we had made up and put in the GM's office.  How do you not know that?  Why is there not somebody's job that all they do is stand around and as soon as someone says, "Well, why don't we trade Longoria?" and they quickly run over to that person and slap them as hard as they can directly in the face.  I would have paid that salary myself if I knew this day was coming.

I have no intentions of listening to any press conferences or statements from the team because it's all bullshit anyways.  You can not tell me that you were actively trying to make the team better by removing it's foundation.  You're trying to sell me a car without wheels and expecting me to jump in and take off.  It's not gonna work.  What the Hell is the point anymore?  If this wasn't the official stamp on the "We're Just A Breeding Ground For Four Other Cities" then I don't know what else to call it.  Hey kids, come play for the Rays and just maybe someday you'll actually be taken seriously and traded to San Fran, Boston, LA, or hell, maybe even New York!  I feel like I could angry vomit right now.

I just know that some San Franciscan is turning on ESPN right now and saying "Cool, that guy's a good pickup" and I'm over here updating my will but it's entirely accurate.  There's no angle to look at this and say it isn't devastating.  The people behind this deal are probably related to the architects of the Titanic and the Hindenburg.  I want to be able to say "Well, fuck you San Francisco" but it all reality it needs to be "Well, fuck you Tampa Bay!"  How could you not know?  How could you not know to not trade Longoria?

Oh dear God...they did know.  That means that they simply just didn't care.  They don't care what this means to me, and you, and everybody else like us.  Some men just like to watch the world burn.

Goodbye, Longo.  Goodbye, underdog.  Goodbye, baseball.