Big Hypocrite

Who here likes old school baseball?

Because I sure do.  Hell, if I'm a pitcher (and a damn good one too) and you're a hitter and you tag me for a couple of home runs in the playoffs you can rest assured you are going to get plunked the next time I see you.

It would be disrespectful for me not to hit you.  There have been too many great players in this great game that have understood how it goes and carried on anyways.  Nobody is bigger than the game and the great ones truly understand that.  Derek Jeter still goes to bed every night thanking his lucky stars that he gets to play short-stop for the New York Yankees, as his job, and then he proceeds to ravage whatever super model he wrangled that night.  Good for him and we all tip our caps to him.

It's an honor and a privilege to play the game of baseball and it's also a weird fraternity that has weird rules that date back before the invention of refrigerators.  Unless you are Shane Victorino who stands exactly on top of the plate while batting you have a few reasons why you were just hit by a ball thrown by the pitcher:

1. He's throwing erratically and it was bound to happen anyways.
2. You are Alex Rodriguez.
3. It's baseball, you should have seen it coming and that's why we make pads now, jackass.

There it is.  It's really quite simple.

Then you have players like David Ortiz who just really doesn't understand why he's the biggest hypocrite in baseball and if it weren't for Donald Sterling it would be all of sports.

The Tampa Bay Rays have an ace pitcher, his name is David Price, and he owns a Cy Young award.  They only give those out to the best pitcher of each league each year.  The Rays played the Boston Red Sox last year in the playoffs and David Ortiz hit two home runs off of David Price.  By the way, the Rays did not win that series.

The first time David Price saw David Ortiz this year he plunked him with a pitch to pretty much his ass region.  Clearly this was not trying to invoke injury as Ortiz has quite the padded posterior since he spends most of his time on the bench.  As a designated hitter he is only required to hit and not do half the stuff that everybody else on his team is doing.  This wasn't malicious of Price.  This was baseball.  This was 'you beat me pretty good last year now take your lumps and let's move on'.

Only Ortiz didn't see it that way.  He took exception to the beaning and when you are the King of Beans your voice gets heard by ESPN.  Ortiz said he no longer had any respect for David Price and that this game that children play on the regular in suburban parks with Popsicle breaks had now become 'war'.  War?  Really?  Have you seen war?  Because I feel like you haven't.  You wouldn't use that word for a baseball game if you knew what it meant.  A guy throws a baseball at your ass and it's a declaration of war?  No congress would ever substantiate that decree.

David Ortiz put on his tiara and little pink Tutu and yelled, "Mommy, that guy hit me!"

David Price came back and said, quite simply, that David Ortiz thinks he's bigger than the game--which is strange because you never really find a lot of pretentious behavior coming out of Boston...(cough cough)

Let's now flash forward to tonight's game between the Rays and Red Sox in which Ortiz was facing three-year man Chris Archer.  Archer started the third inning with a walk and a base hit to let two men on for Ortiz in a scoreless game.  Archer struck out Ortiz in the first inning with a change-up and I was fearful he would try it again in the third.  Alas, my fears came true when Archer threw the change-up and Ortiz sent it over the wall for a three-run home run.

Here's where I take issue:  Ortiz hits the home run, flips his bat, stands there and stares at the dugout, turns, and then leisurely trots around the bases as if he just hit the home run that cured cancer.  It's as if he almost forgot that he was in Tampa, in the third inning of a game that goes at least nine, and that his team was in last place and putting up their starting pitchers on the trading block as the hours ticked by.

Look, there's a lot of rules in baseball that are hard to follow and get misinterpreted as the years go by but I think it's pretty rudimentary that if you hit a home run and stand there and taunt the team that gave it up that you better be prepared for some sort of retaliation.

David Ortiz is ridiculous.  He expects the baseball world to bow to him while he pisses all over their backs.  It's ridiculous how brainwashed he has people too.  Even the great Carl Yastrzemski thinks that Ortiz is a better hitter than him and is only second to Ted Williams.  I just puked.

Yaz is obviously slipping in his older age and it makes me sad.  Yaz won the triple crown, he has 3,419 hits, 452 home runs, and oh by the way has seven golden gloves which they only give to people THAT PLAY IN THE FIELD!  David Ortiz shouldn't even be allowed to say Edgar Martinez' name without feeling ashamed of himself, let alone Carl Yastrzemski giving credit to someone who won't even appreciate it.

The rest of the game goes by without incident for some reason.  I didn't get it at the time but afterwards I can only imagine it's because we're going to let David Price do the dirty work when the Rays welcome the Red Sox back to the Trop in late August.  When interviewed after the game Archer just pointed to Price and said that he was right when he recognized that Ortiz thinks he's bigger than the game.  Ortiz simply just made fun of how little time Archer has spent in the major leagues...just like the classy guy he is.

For someone who boldly took the face of a city in the midst of a tragedy just a year ago to act the way he has this year is absolutely appalling.  I don't know about the rest of you but I like my heroes to not be cry babies.

David Ortiz is apparently okay with rules as long as they don't apply to him.  I'm okay with never letting David Ortiz see another pitch from any Rays pitcher again...so long as it hits him square in the back.  We'll have the pity party meeting him at first base.

Float on, graceful swans.

N Is For Nutrition

You know who has a really cushy job?  Sandra Lee.

Never heard of her?  That's because you probably don't watch the Food Network as religiously as I do.  Or you might be one of those normal people that requires them to work on a Thursday afternoon.  Either way, I'll explain why she's got it made:

She hosts a show (obviously on the Food Network) called Semi-Homemade Cooking where she cooks in front of a camera a bunch of pre-packaged crap that the rest of us buy every night for dinner only she's getting paid to teach our stupid degenerate asses how to work a blender.  As if it wasn't bad enough she ends every show by making a cocktail that she then proceeds to chug down and laugh her drunken self all the way to the bank.  I'm pretty sure the show is meant to be catered to housewives but it ends up just being an open mockery of American life and I find it to be pretty hilarious, so I tune in every Thursday.

Needless to say, it's questionable at best, like a lot of what the Food Network has been doing lately.  Paula Deen for years has been advocating eating full sticks of butter in a nation with a youth obesity problem but we let that slide.  But an older southern woman admits to using the N-word in her past and we yank her off the air and shun her like she's picking up where Hitler left off?  I don't get it, James Woods.

Why the big crack down all of a sudden?  Why all of a sudden is the Food Network pretending to care about social issues like racism?  I can picture the big Food Network executives sitting in some high-rise office building with big ol' smug grins on their faces just saying, "You're welcome, black people!"

Look, I'm not defending Paula Deen, in fact I'm kinda glad she's off the air because like I said, she was trying to kill our children.  I'm just a little suspicious about what's really going on around here.  I understand the history behind words, trust me, I do.  But are we really living in a world where we care what Paula Deen subscribes to?  Are we really going to Paula Deen for more information than how to deep fry bacon in fat back?  As far as ambassadors for goodwill go, Paula Deen isn't and has never been on my list, why is she on yours?  I don't get it, James Woods!

Enough about that crap though.  Let's talk about some other crap.  How about some baseball crap?

ESPN brought to my attention last night something that at first hand seemed like a record but upon closer inspection is really no big freakin' deal at all.  Apparently David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox has now achieved the most career hits by a designated hitter.

Well, wa-freakin'-hoo for you, Ortiz!  You've done exactly what we've DESIGNATED you to do and that's hit the damn ball.  First of all, he plays a position that the American League just went and made up in the '70s because, well, probably just to see if they could!  Second of all, all he does is bat!  Do you  know how many DH's have been league MVPs or Hall of Famers?  I'll give you a hint...zero!  Nobody likes a guy who plays half of the game.  Get yourself a glove and get your ass out there!

What's the deal?  Are you too out of shape to go shank ground balls?  Bullshit, Prince Fielder drags his rotund ass out to first base for every Tiger's game because his momma raised him on the Paula Deen diet and now he's a superstar so don't tell me you can't do it!

If a person is given one specific task for the entirety of their job description and they can't do it then they are a FAILURE.  But when they do achieve that one specific task there is no cause for celebration because all they have done is their job, which is something millions of Americans do every day!  David Ortiz might be a feared hitter but he won't buck the trend of DH's not making the Hall of Fame.

There's just something about him that's so...shifty.  He sucked for Minnesota, went to Boston in a bargain deal, and then all of a sudden became lights out.  Then people started dropping like flies in the steroids scandal and he sucked again.  And now a resurgence?  I just don't get it, James Woods.

Well, kids, I've referenced Paula Deen, David Ortiz, and somehow James Woods.  I need to go lie down.