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.