Godspeed, David Price!

I am in a state of remiss and for that I must apologize.

The Tampa Bay Rays decided to trade David Price in the Zero Hour of the Major League Baseball trade deadline and I sat there for a second, soaked it all in, and then promptly went to get drunk.

The conundrum that faced the Rays and the solution that they inevitably came to was not exactly how I would have dealt with the problem.  The Rays would, in due time, owe David Price a lot of money because he's a left-handed ace entering the prime of his career.  Due to the dichotomy of the MLB the Rays do not have a lot of money they can spend on one player thus the conundrum: trade him and get value now or keep him and compete this year.

A month ago I would have helped him pack.  The Rays sucked, you read it, right?  But then my resilient little team of never-say-die came back and they are right back in the thick of things.  The thick of things in this scenario is most likely a wild-card spot and that might even mean the second wild-card spot which would entail a must-win game for the right to travel to maybe Anaheim or Oakland or some really tough spot to win like that.  The point is that wouldn't do enough for a fan base like the fan base that the Tampa Bay Rays have.  Simply put just making it to an early round playoff exit wouldn't increase the fortitude, the payroll, or the fan-ship of a team like the Rays.  In essence, nobody cares.

And this breaks my heart.

In the days boiling down to the trade deadline I was very staunch in the idea that the Rays would keep David Price.  I understood that his value would never be as high as it would be right before.  I also understood that if the Rays kept him through the year he would garner no trade value.  But I also understood that our best chances for post-season success was with our best pitcher and the Rays should just go for broke.  Put it all on the line THIS year.  As a lifelong Rays fan I can honestly tell you that I would be okay if the organization decided to keep him this year in an effort to win the World Series.  Forget the speculated prospects, the money we will save, and all the other fiscally sound moves.  I want a banner...and not one of those stupid 'Participant' ones.  If Price left and we didn't win or get anything for him at least I would know we tried to actually win, dammit!

Sabermetrics isn't good enough for me.  Being just good enough to be competitive isn't cutting it anymore.  Johnnie Cochran once said, "If you ain't got the dough, you will never go!"  I'm just kidding, he never said that, but if he had he'd be exactly right.

Before the trade there was renewed energy in the team...I could feel it and I live two hours away!  Price was a Cy Young winner, a leader on the team, and a leader in the clubhouse.  He took his usual starting role the day before the trade deadline which is usually a sign that a player is staying put but he got roughed up by the Brewers.  I casually mentioned how much that would suck if that was his last start in a Rays jersey because I fully expected to see him in five days.

I was wrong.  David Price got traded to the Detroit Tigers in an almost 'Cold War worst nightmare' type of deal.  Hands wavered over the trigger button only to drop in the last second.  I'm not even going to go into length on the players that the Rays got in exchange for Price because, no, it's not enough.  They got David Price and we got Not David Price.  That equation is pretty simple.

Price will make his debut for the Tigers on Tuesday against the New York Yankees.

And this makes me sick to my stomach.

That's our boy and now we get to sit here and watch him play for a team in Michigan that doesn't truly appreciate him.  Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that they're fully aware of who David Price is.  They know about his dominant year a few years ago when he was a 20 game winner.  They probably even knew he was leading the league in strike outs this year.  They know he went to Vanderbilt, school for nerds, and he's damn proud of it.

But they'll never look at him like we look at him.  We look at him and we just beam.  That's our boy.

The fact that the powers that be made it so that David Price couldn't be a Ray for life is something I'll have to deal with for a long, long time.  And I think eventually I'll get past it but today is a dark day and it's going to be dark for a little while.  I wish him nothing but the best and I miss him terribly.

I don't know if I'll watch his start on Tuesday.  It still feels a little personal to me.

It's completely against journalistic strategy to bring up an entirely new point at the very end of a piece you wrote but I like breaking the rules so I'm going to end on this:

Small teams end up being bad teams that end up celebrating by drafting good players that turn into great players just in time to hand them over to the big teams and the system feeds itself by chumps like me throwing peanuts at the television and consequently hating myself at the same time.

The good news is, kids, you don't have to pick your hero right away because the way the market shifts he might end up being your enemy.  You get to give it about six or seven years before you realize you're part of the problem and just go with it or you're like me and just not know what to do other than air your grievances on a blog that gets more international fame than ice cubes.  Seriously, they don't use them over there.

  

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.

Five

July is always special to the Studly Pastures and this July we start our fifth year!

Five!  Booyah!  Take that, Google Ads!  You could have had some of this sweet five-year matured nectar but you ditched us for the classier stallion and you still probably made the right choice, you business savvy bastards!

Look, I never needed an Internet Trends Adviser to let me in on the biggest little secret on why the ol' SP isn't exactly the cream of the world wide crop.  I curse, I'm small-minded, I make broad accusations on wild theories that don't even make sense, I almost always reference pop culture in a sarcastic tone, I never really pay attention to true grammatical standards despite my natural journalistic background, and I write so sporadically that if you do read this blog you are probably just as surprised as my blog that a new posting is available.

What can I say?  It's been a hell of a ride.

I curse in my writing because I curse in my talking and I write like I talk.  Duh.  And I've never been too keen on there being words that one shouldn't say.  This is one I'll kick the soap box over for though.  I don't walk up to strangers in my everyday life and say, "What the fuck do you want?"  I would love to but it's uncouth.  I understand that there's a certain threshold of words that are widely accepted in social interactions.  With that said, now you're in my house, and the unicorns seem to respond to offensive language...bitches.

Besides, I don't know if I could come up with a curse word that would accurately describe the feelings of the fans of the Brazilian national team and it's mostly because I don't speak Portuguese.  I've had a favorite team be on the 'please sir, no more' side of a beating and I think I yelled some gibberish in utter frustration at one point but that's nothing like this.

This was on the world stage, on your home turf, in the semi finals, and in a sport where you've won the most world wide titles...and you got completely embarrassed.  Brazil was dissected, analyzed, and pinpointed for every weakness in the span of less than the time you could have switched over from some crap American day-time television.  Not even Judge Judy could have yelled fast enough.

Germany was textbook Germany.  They came out and methodically passed the ball and waited for mistakes and then took advantage of them.  What they didn't expect was a Brazil team that would show up already defeated.  There was talk before the match that the Brazilian nationals would have an excuse to lose without best player Neymar and team captain Thiago Silva playing in the match.  I guess the Brazilian nationals took that as an excuse to not even attempt to play the Germans.


And I guess I appear small minded because if you write about sports long enough you'll catch yourself writing about the same damn thing over and over and over...

When we started in Year One the biggest story of the summer was The Decision and where Lebron James would take his talents.  I painstakingly took the time to bunk or debunk every team and finally whittle it down to two choices: Miami Heat or Cleveland Cavaliers.  I inevitably picked the Cavaliers and was proven wrong a few days later.

Now we stand, four years later, on the bright and beautiful cusp of a new year...and yet again I'm forced to choose between whether Lebron James will play for the Miami Heat or the Cleveland Cavaliers.  Listen, if there's anything I've learned in the last four years and would like myself to know four years from now when we recycle this bullshit...it's simply this:

This kid is not Jordan.  He's not even goddamn Pippen.  He's Lebron James, he's selfish, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep that spotlight right on his receding hairline.  I hate attacking a man for his premature balding but he's forcing my hand!

James doesn't care about winning titles, or establishing legacy, or even being the best player of his generation.  He only cares about tv time.  How long did they talk about me on Sportscenter today?  The worst part is that ESPN is more than happy to oblige.  The greatest player to bridge the gap since Jordan is Kobe and the next to carry the torch is Kevin Durant.  Lebron is just going to wind up with a lot of people confused about how he carried himself.


Now!  About this broad accusations on wild theories, I have to say, I don't even know where that one stemmed from.

Bill Belichick and the rest of the higher ups on the New England Patriots knew that Aaron Hernandez committed a double murder and still gave him a pay raise.  They say that blood is thicker than water but that saying doesn't make sense in this day and age because money is thicker than blood.  In fact, you can soak up a lot of blood with cold hard cash and there's nothing that brings in more money by the truck loads than winning a Super Bowl.

Hell, even going to a Super Bowl these days will at least pave the streets with some sort of platinum knock-off.  I mean, what's your soul worth?  Are you even using it?

Is it so far off the oblivious path to suggest that a team that had already been found guilty of spying on other team practices in order to gain an advantage on the field that they wouldn't engage in other unsavory activities?

By the time the Patriots drafted Aaron Hernandez he was already a bargain basement deal...why not, right?  Why should it be on them that a double murderer would commit, wouldn't you know it,  a third murder.  What a dick.  He ruined everything.


Five years in and nothing has changed.  I'm the same, you're the same, and sports hasn't changed a lick.  I could have sold out two years ago and I stuck around for this shit...

Float on, you graceful whatevers.

Right In The Sugar Cubes

Kids, even though I command a stud farm for unicorns I have to admit that I do not know much about horse racing.

I do appreciate it though for being one of the few things other than a play place at McDonalds that I am just too big for.  Apparently I'm the Andre the Giant of jockeys and that helps me sleep at night.

I also know what the triple crown is and in case you don't it's winning a succession of horse races in a small amount of time which is particularly hard for the horses, not so much the jockeys.  It's so difficult to achieve that it has not been done since Affirmed managed to finish off the triple crown in 1978.  By the way, Affirmed spent one more year racing after winning the triple crown and spent the better part of the next twenty by making sweet love for profit.  Our human equivalent is Wilt Chamberlain.  Affirmed was mercifully euthanized after falling ill in 2001.  A lot of you are probably asking yourselves if Affirmed, a horse, lived a better life than you and you might even fall back on your children as reasoning enough.  No, stop right there, Affirmed sired champion racers as well.  This horse was really pretty something.

Affirmed was also granted one of the greatest honors of a race horse and that was being buried whole which only adds to my suspicion that dead horses actually do get turned into glue or low-grade dog food.

Damn you, Orwell.

Anyhoo, I bring up all that triple crown stuff because just like I alluded to in my last piece (and if you didn't read it don't even pretend to know what I'm talking about now) we just recently had another horse going for the glory.  California Chrome was the latest horse to challenge the triple crown and I really wanted him to do if only for the reasoning that everybody would shut the hell up about it.

Alas, Chrome came in a distant fourth in the final leg of the triple crown and while the rest of the world went back to reading their newspapers one man could not get over it.  I'm talking about Chrome co-owner Steve Coburn.

Coburn looks like Wilfred Brimley in a cowboy hat and since I always picture Wilfred Brimley in a cowboy hat he just looks like Wilfred Brimley to me.  After the race in which Chrome was denied the triple crown the media descended upon Mr. Coburn and he just went absolute nuts.

You see, kids, the triple crown is obviously three races.  In order to win the triple crown a horse must win all three races in the same year but in order to compete in a triple crown race a horse doesn't need to race in any of the other two.  In other words, if your horse isn't an immediate threat to the triple crown you can pick and choose which of the three races you want to race in.

Now before I can continue further, I must admit something more about myself.  I like a sore loser.  I like the guy who is beaten in something and is angry about it.  I'll be gracious in defeat tomorrow but right now I'm pissed off and it's going to show whether I like it or not!  See?  That makes sense.  That's the natural human psyche.

So when the media went to Steve Coburn and asked him about the race IMMEDIATELY after Chrome had came in fourth and was out of the triple crown it's only natural you are going to get the rantings and ravings of a pissed off dude.

I get it.  He called the other horses cheaters because they didn't race in the other races.  He cursed a lot.  He demanded that the rules be changed.  All natural responses from someone on the verge of history that just had the table cloth pulled out from under him.  You get a reprieve from that, Coburn, it's completely understandable.

But then he got to sleep on it.

And then he still came out and acted a fool.

Coburn, Wilfred Brimley's body double,  has the nerve to compare what happened in the race to himself, a six-foot-two man, playing basketball against a kid in a wheelchair.

WHAT THE HELL, MAN?  You slept on it!

Now before I have written this, Coburn has come onto national television (of course) and apparently apologized for his 'kid in a wheelchair' comments.  But I didn't listen to it because that was going to be the most in-genuine thing he's said all week so why even bother.  He doesn't mean it anyways.

What's his entire basis of his tirade?  He didn't like the fact that fresh horses were running in the Belmont Stakes, the final leg of the triple crown?  How convenient that you didn't make this a known thing before you were on the verge of history and were denied!

Listen, douchebag, you're not entitled to anything.  I know you probably envisioned yourself being played by Harrison Ford in five years in a heart-wrenching Disney movie about the 'horse that bucked the trend' but say goodbye to that sweet Mickey cash and get over yourself.  Champions are champions because they tested and beat EVERYBODY.  Muhammad Ali didn't fight the same guy over and over (although he could have) and he went after stronger and bigger opponents.  Why?  Because he wanted to make sure he was the champion.  And he was.

California Chrome is a fine horse and it's going to spend a fine life making lots of other fine horses but you're not the champion, Coburn.  The champion welcomes opponents, regardless of rest, and regardless of past accomplishments.

As far as your 'kid in the wheelchair' quote for that I can only hope he realized the err in his ways for liking his situation to that as a child confined to a wheelchair playing a game of basketball.  But he won't, and he doesn't deserve it because we're doing just fine without him anyways.

There are a lot of therapeutic treatments for children with cerebral palsy and other muscular and cognitive disabilities and guess what...a lot of them are from horse-back riding.  Turns out that riding on the back of a horse kinda trains the human body to react in ways that were shut down by certain cognitive diseases.  That's amazing and beautiful and outweighs anything a blowhard like Coburn has to say.  It's only fitting that the horses know it too.

You're always welcome to Studly Pastures, Chrome.

The Wa-Wa Cool-Cool

2007 was a weird time for me.  The Studly Pastures were just a twinkle in my eye, I was a junior in college, and the Miami Dolphins were mere months away from unveiling the 'wildcat' offense.  I sure hope that NFL Films locked away that footage.  It'd be a shame if those tapes were lost to the ages.

2007 is also the year that I adopted subtle sarcasm in my writing.

It was also the year that I started stretching the use of the word 'subtle'.

2007 was also the last year that the Tampa Bay Rays were a bad team.  I've been around since the start and they used to stink, like bad.  We threw a party when we came in fourth place for the first time in our history and that's not even supposed to be a joke but it sounds pathetic when I actually write the words.  2008 saw our first postseason berth and the dream lasted all the way to the promised lands--the world series.  2008 just so happened to be the same year that Cole Hamels traded his soul and forsake everything holy for a World Series title.  I hate Cole Hamels but that's not the point of this post.

Just a mere seven short years later, it appears our time in the sun is over, and the Tampa Bay Rays are once again bad.  Cue Rob Schneider, "Oh no, we suck again!"

The Rays manager, Joe Maddon, is probably a crazy person who just so happens to coach baseball but he's my kind of crazy so I dig what he's throwing out there.  He's been setting up a table full of different kinds of cologne lately because we've been 'stinking' so bad.

I'm not kidding.  Sex Panther made an appearance too.

For the last seven years, the Tampa Bay Rays have been my "I don't have a problem" excuse.  Everything else that I follow has been a colossal failure and a huge blemish on my otherwise pristine social standing but they've always been able to say, "Yeah, but he's a Rays fan."  Boom.  Forgiven.

And now the underdog has finally gone under and it's a sad, sad time to know me because I will not stop bitching about it.  All kidding aside, will my heart strings retain their elasticity after all this wear and tear?


But you don't have to be a Rays fan, or a baseball fan, this time of year.  You can like horse racing and be one of those gullible jerks that fall for the triple crown threat every year.

Look people, there hasn't been a triple crown winner since 1978.  1978!  That's the year that Kobe Bryant was born and he was born in late August so he's never seen a triple crown winner either so make sure you point that out to him when you see him.  2007 is also the last year that Kobe Bryant was the NBA scoring champion.

California Chrome is the 13th horse since Affirmed to win the first two legs of the triple crown...and I'm picking him to finish it.  The thirteenth horse?  Come on, this streak needs a little reverse luck, doesn't it?  June 7th, look out, California Chrome will complete the triple crown and simultaneously be delicious.  (And that's a Great Depression joke.)  Horse meat is a bit tough though and you might need something like Sprite (Kobe) to wash it down with.

And the PETA calls started...now...


Last night I stubbed my left pinkie toe on the side of my bed and I'm not ashamed today to admit that it hurts terribly.  My dog, sensing that I'm injured, came over to lick the wound and the contact hurt even more.  Either it's broken or I'm a huge baby.  Huge baby status aside, I'm still willing to walk without the aid of a cane or a hover-round.  Which, by the way, who are they kidding with those advertisements?  The first place I'm going if I'm suddenly mobile is not the Grand Canyon.  I'm getting more pudding.

The point of the toe story is do you sacrifice something for the greater good?  If you're injured, and severing something will relieve that, at what point do you make that decision?  In other words, kids, how long will David Price be a Ray and how long will I keep my left pinkie toe.  These are great questions that need further pondering.  I'll be in my pondering machine.

Float on, graceful swans.

King Crowns and Crab Legs

For the first time in a long time, kids, I don't even know where to start.

I guess for the sake of all media we're bound to start with Donald Sterling and how he used to own the Los Angeles Clippers.

If there's one thing that I have no tolerance for, and saying 'I', I also hope to include the genuine American public as well because that's where I make my home and that's where I have no tolerance for bigotry or racism or supremacy or whatever the Hell they call it these days.

No tolerance.  In fact if we've gotten to the point where we communicate on a regular basis, exchange a few anecdotes every now and then, maybe even talk about our personal lives a little bit and you go and say something racist in jest...well...I've just shut down.  My immediate reaction is strictly brainwaves.  My brain goes into immediate 'How do I phase this person out of my life' protocol.  The physical response is a deep sigh and my head kinda tilts down like I've just been deactivated.  You know what I mean.

I've read the transcripts of the Sterling tapes.  I've heard the Sterling tapes.  I've seen the punishment wrought by the NBA and new commissioner Silver.  The immediate response is to stand up and applaud Silver...but that damn brain of mine just won't stop there.

For those of you that don't follow the NBA this is Silver's first year as commissioner following the Evil Sith Lord, David Stern.  So already off the bat we have a first-year commissioner that's following one of the most controversial commissioners in the history of the NBA and he's faced with an owner that's being accused of racism.

I hate to get all Star Trek V: The Final Frontier on you, but Kirk asks, "What does God need with a spaceship?"  And I'm just sitting here wondering what a white racist wants with an NBA team.

Here's the biggest thing that I had a problem with Mr. Sterling and his elocution to his girlfriend over the phone is that I felt, over many things, is that he made himself a Pharaoh.  I feed them, I clothe them, and they only have what they have because of me.  That's the gist of his speech.

In case you aren't getting the gist of my speech, in essence, Sterling saw human beings as commodities that he had bought and used to try to win in a sports game.  At that point and juncture we wave bye-bye to you because you represent all that is wrong with the world and I mean that wholly.  As far as being human, you failed miserably, and I can't wait until you're banned from the Earth and not just the NBA.

And that's all good and makes sense in mankind logic.  But did Silver do that to make himself popular in the eye of the public?  Ehhhh...probably.  And are the owners going to follow suit and oust Sterling as owner of the Clippers?  Yep.  Why?  Because that makes us all happy.  It's not enough that this guy has been a poison for years but he always had money.  NOW all of a sudden when the media eye is on us we focus on morals.

How ironic.



Now we turn our heads, ever so slightly, to Jameis Winston.  If you're not familiar with Jameis he's the latest recipient of the Heisman Trophy and the quarterback of the National Champion Florida State Seminoles...and he can't stay out of the news.

You all heard last year when he was involved in a sexual assault case that was eventually dropped because there wasn't enough evidence to go to trial and it also helped that the guy in question was uber-popular.  Look, I wrote an article last year about Johnny Manziel acting a fool all over the place because he had already adopted the playboy lifestyle before he got paid and it looked bad for him.

Listen to me, this is something COMPLETELY different.  Jameis Winston is officially on "Eh, we're kinda afraid of him" after he's been on the "Definitely going number one" list for a year.

Mr. Winston was recently cited, in Tallahassee, at a grocery store, for not paying for thirty-two dollars worth of crab legs.

WHAT?! 

You have no sense in your head to not get yourself in trouble over stealing some crab legs when in about a year and a month you can literally bathe in crab legs and dry yourself off in crab legs?!  By the way, when you get out of the tub you can step on crab legs too.

$32.  That's pathetic.

What we have to understand is that even though he's a Heisman winner and also quarterbacked the National Champion team is that he's not rich yet.  He won't be rich for another year.  I understand some NCAA players get hungrier than their stipends or scholarships allow.  That's why they don't eat crab legs.  They eat what they can afford and look forward to the day when they can buy crab legs and not bat an eye.  Jameis Winston apparently takes what he wants whenever.

That's a huge red flag, not only as an NFL prospect, but as a person.  If I could talk to him I would just look him in the eyes and say, "Come on, dude!"

Siiiiiggggghhhh...see you kids after the draft next week.

Who's The Other Guy?

Is it something I said?  I mean you could tell me and I wouldn't get upset.

I was just going over notes left for me by the Studly Pastures research team (cough) and it turns out that readership is down--like way down.  Let's say it's so down that if we were a company that was built on turning a profit that I would have resorted to insider trading a few months ago.  Our stock is bleeding faster than a stuck pig and I've never understood that reference other than I guess you have to bleed the pig before you cook it otherwise you get really bloody bites of pork.

They've even gone as far to say that Latvia hasn't been around in months and I'm especially hurt about that.  We had a great thing going, Latvia, and you're just going to toss me aside like some cheap blog floozy.  It makes me wonder two things: where the Hell are Latvians going to get their American sports banter if not from me and why did they ever stumble upon me in the first place?

Who knows how this wacky internet thingy works.  I type words that only I can see and press a button and suddenly every entity in the universe can see them too.  That's either incredible technology or the Devil's work and I haven't decided which one it is yet or if it's both.

After I crunched the numbers left for me by the research team (cough) I started trying to find some sort of correlation between the lack of readership and the content of the post.  That search proved to be moot because all I concluded was that I was consistent across the board with genius observations and hilarious banter on American sports.  That much was clear.

However a senior ranking adviser from the creative department (cough) discovered an abnormality in what kind of music I listen to when writing a post.  For most of the last year I've been listening to classical music because I love classical music and it makes me relaxed and put at ease.  Well that's exactly the opposite of what the Studly Pastures is about.  We're loud, we're abrasive, and we don't do serene.  No more classical.  It's time for some other classical.  I'm writing tonight to the sweet sounds of the Electric Light Orchestra station on Pandora and it's time for some real thoughts.

First off, if a closer comes into a ninth inning with a two-run lead and loses the game he should be demoted or at the very least docked in pay.  Your job is to close the game, the very nature of it is in your job title for crying out loud!  If I'm the cab driver and you hop in the backseat and tell me where you are going and I say okay and immediately gun the gas pedal and drive into the first light-post I see there's going to be consequences and repercussions!  I understand that the job is a high-stress atmosphere.  There's never thousands of people watching a cab driver's every move on television but I guess my beef is truly with the lack of ownership.  If you give up a walk-off grand slam to lose the game for your team when everything that went wrong was truly your fault the very next thing you should do is answer for it.  I want to hear you come out and say, "Well I sucked complete balls tonight and I'm really sorry that I didn't do my job and even beyond that I found some twisted way to make doing my job seem more heroic than it really is.  I guess I shouldn't have walked out to the mound and immediately crapped my pants and then proceed to chuck that crap into the stands.  I am really sorry about this and can only hope you show mercy."

If that happened I might be a little more forgiving.

Second of all, the NFL Draft is barreling towards us which is always a very exciting time for me here down at the Studly Pastures.  I get really worked up about it and always refer to it as NFL Holy Day and everybody wants to know who is going to go number one overall.  Well last year an offensive tackle went number one overall and that's always boring but before him the last four number ones were all quarterbacks, which is considered the most important position on the team.  In fact you'd you have to go back all the way to 2006 to find when the last defensive end was taken number one overall and that was when the Houston Texans took Mario Williams over Reggie Bush.

I don't know if Johnny Manziel, or Blake Bortles, or Teddy Bridgewater is going to be great in the NFL and maybe they all will be.  But I do know this about the NFL and the Houston Texans: getting pressure on the quarterback is very vital and they already have a specialist in J.J. Watt.  Get another one!  Use the number one draft pick on Jadeveon Clowney.  The history of the Houston Texans number one draft picks is David Carr and Mario Williams.  David Carr is probably in some sort of veterans hospital and Mario Williams is still playing in the league in Buffalo.  Granted, those both sound like Hell on Earth, but at least Williams is still getting a fat paycheck.  Take the freak defensive end, create awesome pass-rushing defense, get anybody later in the draft who can throw the ball to your own team more than the other one.  There's the formula, don't disappoint me Houston.

Thirdly, and I'm so surprised that's a word, is that we've been together a long time, you and I, faceless entities and I worry that we're just not ourselves anymore.  Let's promise each other something right here and now.  I'll try harder and so will you.  It's not that tough.  You could always use a little information and a good laugh and I could always feed my narcissism.  It's win-win for the both of us.  Let me know what you think, my office is always open.

By the way, if you see Latvia, tell her that you saw me talking to Estonia.  That ought a do it.

Float on, graceful swans.