Put The Devil Back In It

I want to wallow in pity.

I want to embrace despair.  

Dark clouds have formed over St. Petersburg and Rays manager Joe Maddon has bolted for sunnier skies--wherever they may be--but it's not in Tampa.

Joe's gone, kids, and with his departure comes the arrival of days that old school Rays fans like me are still all too familiar with even despite the team's recent successes.  Those of you outside of my little bubble might find it a little difficult to understand why a manager leaving a team would be so devastating and heartbreaking to the fans when just a few months ago the same franchise lost their ace and didn't react as bad.

David was a gut-punch.  It knocked us to our knees, doubled us over in pain, but gradually it subsided and a lot of it had to do with the blind trust we had in our genius leaders.  They know what they're doing.  They'll get us through this.  It was that mantra that helped me keep my lunch down every time I saw David in a Tiger's uniform.

Then we lost Andrew Friedman to the Los Angeles Dodgers.  To the Dodgers!  They literally have enough money to buy and sell the Tampa Bay Rays about a dozen times over and still have enough left over to do it another dozen times or so and they poached the head of our baseball operations.  I get it, trust me I really do.  Big Money talks and everybody else shuts the hell up.  Friedman is the next big thing and he deserves to get whatever they are willing to throw at him.  I'm not mad at anybody directly I'm just pissed off at the whole goddamn situation.  I'm not even sure at this point at whether or not it's irony or coincidence that one of the poorest people in Oliver Twist is named Dodger.  I'll just take solace in knowing that he was of the Dickensian era and he probably died of typhoid.  

Friedman leaving sucked but we still have his protege, Matt Silverman, and he's been with us for a decade so that cushioned the blow just a little bit.  Instead of getting into a car accident where you fly through the windshield and then your own car rolls over you we just got into a car accident where we flew through the windshield and landed harshly on cement.  Still alive!

Then today happened.  David was a gut-punch.  I can live with Friedman leaving.  Maddon going is the death knell.  We've just reached the end of the Mortal Kombat fight and those red, bloodied letters just appeared on screen, "FINISH HIM!"  There's a very iconic part in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy where Sam asks Frodo if he remembers certain parts about their home during that particular time of year.  Because of all their trials and tribulations, going through Hell and back, Frodo tells Sam that he can't even remember the taste of strawberries.  Strawberries!  The very name elicits a cognitive motor response where you can't even define the taste of what a strawberry is other than saying it tastes like a damn strawberry!  But I get it.  Right now I can't remember what a strawberry tastes like either.

Why so glum?  It's hard to imagine that success is on the horizon, say, without the only man we've ever had success with.  Before we even delve into the four playoff appearances, the World Series appearance, and the multiple 90 win seasons, when I talk about success with the Tampa Bay Rays I am referring to simply winning and they couldn't do it before Joe Maddon.  We didn't win.  Ever.  And sure, we've had some great seasons and some really memorable experiences but what's going to happen next?  The future of the Tampa Bay Rays is like an alternative ending to Pretty Woman.  Julia Roberts lives a life of poverty and prostitution, spends a glamorous pampered week with Richard Gere, and then goes back to poverty and prostitution.  Roll credits.

Whoever said, "It's better to have loved and lost than to ever have loved at all" sounds like a pretentious dick that's dating the hottest chick in school.  It's probably why I hate vacations.  I don't want to spend three days at a Sandals resort and then go back to this hellish facade writing about why I care a 60 year-old man is making a career change.  Damn this Twilight Zone, damn it all!

Whew.

Okay.  I'm cool.  I just had to get that out.  

It's just so disheartening to constantly have expectations of what you presume to be the "right way" and only have it dashed to pieces.  It's like if at the end of A New Hope Obi-Wan turns to Luke and says, "You know, I reeeeeaaally have this thing I gotta do so I'm going to peace out.  Good luck with Darth Vader!"

I need a tub of chocolate ice cream, a Blu-Ray copy of The Notebook, and a solid forty minute cry session and after that I'll either be fine or ruined completely.

Don't float on, graceful swans, all is lost.

Something Rotten This Way Comes

It's kinda nice being the owner of the Studly Pastures because that generally means that I don't have to ever touch unicorn shit and can just make my employees pick it up.  But even from my pedestal I know that shit is shit--even if it's rainbow colored--and if you have to pick it up for too long you tend to get a little jaded about your job.  I've had plenty of good-natured ranch hands file their papers over the years because these little horned devils just won't stop fertilizing the yard.

Something stinks.  Literally.

If I was Joe Philbin, the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, and I wanted to keep my job I would have utilized my knowledge of the years I spent training Aaron Rodgers and used that to my advantage to defeat him last Sunday.  However, if I was the exact same guy and I wanted to get fired, I would have done exactly what he did last Sunday.

I've seen enough people try to get fired that I recognize it now almost instantly.

The man's had enough, and while I don't blame him, he's simultaneously tanking the one thing in the sports world that brings even the slightest of glimmers to my eye and it's driving me mad.

Why don't I blame Joe Philbin for trying to get fired from his job as head coach as the Miami Dolphins?  Because Joe Philbin is a nice guy, with a great football mindset, aaaaannnndddd he makes a great offensive coordinator because he can stand behind the scenes and call the shots and not have to be the face or voice of a franchise.  He's not a head coach and he got hired as a head coach and I blame him as much as I blame myself for not being a ladies' shoe salesman and I got hired once as a ladies' shoe salesman.  Live and learn.

Plus, I don't blame him because Stephen Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, is an idiot and wouldn't know couth if it was his own mother telling him how much he sucked as a person.  See what I did there?  I was very uncouth on purpose because I have couth, dammit!  I'm couthful.  Stephen Ross is uncouthful.  He tried to hire a coach while he still had one on payroll and after that failed he settled for his silver medal, Joe Philbin, and now that that's not panning out he's trying to poach the same guy...AGAIN!

I'm being pretty discreet and I'm not sure why...it's not like I'm the goddamned Associated Press (cough, cough).  I'm talking about Jim Harbaugh and how Stephen Ross has had a hard-on for his khaki-loving ass for a few years now.  This is, apparently, one of those 'first love' kinda loves and it just sort of lingers on even after several girlfriends...I mean head coaches.

If I was Joe Philbin and I wanted to keep my job and every time I suffered a loss and had to give a press conference I would be succinct, bold, and very adamant about what went wrong, how it happened, and how I planned to prepare to make sure that it never happened again.  However, if I was the exact same guy and I wanted to get fired, I would treat EVERY press conference as the same and always say the same thing: "I have to do a better job."

"I have to do a better job."  That's not exactly the life mantra of a leader.  "I have to do a better job" leads me down two paths: One is that he's said it enough times now and it means that he simply cannot do a better job and it's time to go OR he really knows that he has to do a better job and chooses not to...SO HE CAN BE FIRED.  How much patience would you have that if somebody kept screwing up and his only explanation each and every time was "I have to do a better job"?  

At the end of the day it boils down to people with millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal and have absolutely no idea what to do with it.  Is there a book that exists titled How To Be Successful And Then To Stop Being Successful?  Joe Philbin should be hosting a fishing show on public access, Stephen Ross should be blasted into space, and the Miami Dolphins should have pulled a George Costanza and gone out on a high note back in 1974.  One undefeated season and back to back Super Bowl titles?  Yeah, take a bow, you're done.

The problem with not having anybody to pick up the shit is that it just keeps piling up higher and higher, eventually to the point where it suffocates you but you don't get the privilege of either Heaven or Hell, no you get purgatory.  The only problem with purgatory is that the whole goddamn thing recycles itself every three to four years and if you're skeptical you can go back to the beginning of this blog because I've been here longer than four years.

It's the Twilight Zone and the only thing worse than living in the Twilight Zone is knowing that you live in the Twilight Zone.

Solidarity

Anybody who keeps up with the Studly Pastures knows that I keep track of my readership statistics to get a better idea of who exactly is my target audience.

The tricky part is that there is no rhyme or reason to it.

This month, the country that's leading the way in most visits to the SP is...wait for it...France...of all places.  While I embrace the motherland and it brings a glimmer to my eye that they turn to the prodigal son for commentary on the decay of Western society I can't help but think that France is beating us.

Rodney Harrison was doing his best impression of somebody who has something to say last night during halftime of the Steelers and Panthers game and mentioned how he thought the Denver Broncos earned a "moral victory" for taking the Seattle Seahawks to overtime.  The only problem with that statement is that the Denver Broncos failed to get the actual victory.  Maybe I'm just an inconsolable loser when it comes to term but if anybody offered me a "moral victory" they would probably be punched directly in the face.

The most ironic thing, of course, is that the whole basis of a "moral victory" is that yeah, you lost, but you lost defending your principles.  Your principles!  The National Football League is a League of Shadows--they have no principles!  You cannot forsake everything good in the quest for the most dollar bills and still have "moral victories."

Roger Goodell is a puppet operated by 32 rich white men that have forsaken their principles.  If you see a video of a man striking a woman out of her shoes and your first thought is "Let's make this go away so it doesn't cost us too much money" then you are officially no longer on the same moral thread as the rest of humanity.  I lambasted Donald Sterling for holding people in the same regard as commodities and this is the same goddamn thing!  Goodell stood at a podium on Friday afternoon and not only tried to rationalize violence but also the process in which rich white men try to cover up violence so that it doesn't cost them money.  No accountability.  This is a common theme among kingdoms built upon pillars of bullshit.

Dollar, dollar bills, y'all.  The NFL is a rotten institution in the fact that 32 rich white men can pledge their full support to a shell of a man that TRIES TO COVER UP ABUSE!!!  It's so goddamn maddening that it's almost impossible to understand that this is actually happening in real life and not some shitty Lifetime movie.  My apologies to Lifetime but they really do exploit anything and everything that I'm sure they're just salivating over this whole facade.  By the way, Lifetime, Kevin Hart should play Ray Rice, Kerri Washington should play Janay Palmer, and Gary Busey should play Commissioner Goodell but don't tell him he's being Commissioner Goodell and have him just be Gary Busey.

I don't have any human children yet (my dogs could care less) but it has to be really, really hard to explain to them why the Ravens released Ray Rice--or why Adrian Peterson isn't playing anymore.  What do you tell the kids?  Hell, tell them the truth.  One day they will have to make a choice between being a good person or a bad person.  It's just so depressing that a lot of people, even people we try to like or admire, go with Option B.  Kids, stick to the comic book heroes.  They're the only ones that actually come through at the end of the day.

So kudos to you, France, for coming to your chosen one to receive your weekly report on why we suck so bad.  Hopefully this means that you'll open your doors to me once the NFL sends their goons after me.  The NFL shows no discretion.  The NFL will beat your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  The NFL is the honey badger.  The NFL doesn't give a fuck.

Peace out, France.  Float on, you graceful swans.

League of Contradiction

Hey guys, I'm back from my annual trip to Scotland for the Unicorn Stud Farm Convention.  Some of the workshops can be a little tedious and most of the other farmers just simply won't shut the hell up about their farms but what can I say, it goes with the life!

I didn't miss anything, did I?

Oh.

Boy this whole 'Ray Rice domestic abuse cover-up by the NFL' really blows the pants off the Dolphins' bullying scandal last year, doesn't it?  Sorry, I just had to quickly reiterate that there are far worse things in the world.

For those of you that need the bullet points here they are: Ray Rice and his then fiance, Janay Palmer, went to a casino and got drunk, they got into a verbal and spittle argument, and then Ray punched Janay in the face twice, knocking her out and sending her flying into a handrail inside one of the casino's elevators.  Then Ray kinda dragged her around outside the elevator, not really knowing where to put her, and looking really annoyed by it at the same time.  Ray got arrested, indicted, married Janay a day later, and received a two-game suspension from Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL.

The two-game ban sparked outrage from anybody who gives a damn about the repercussions of domestic abuse and, hey, who knew, it turned out to be a lot of people.  Goodell came out and said he got it wrong and promptly offered harsher penalties to future offenders (including six games for a first offender and a lifetime ban for a second offender).

Then everybody held hands and sang kumbaya and put flowers in guns and shit like that until a ruthless media outlet known mostly for obtaining photographs of people wearing sweatpants and picking their noses went ahead and released a video of what happened inside the elevator that fateful night.

Now everybody loses their minds.  While I agree it's different to say, "Oh that guy hit a woman" and then you show me a video of a guy throwing hay-makers on a woman half his size and knocks her flying across an elevator, clear out of her shoes, and into a handrail then that tends to bring a little more emotion into it.  It especially brings more emotion into it when Ray Rice said he "had no choice but to hit her" invoking ideas of if she carried a chainsaw in her purse or was in fact capable of turning into a werewolf.  Thankfully the elevator video cleared it up that she wasn't wielding any sort of maiming weapon or that she possessed any sort of lycanthropic powers.  But the first video, of outside the elevator, that existed from day one of this whole mess.  We saw him dragging her around like a sack of stuff that he really didn't give two shits about.

Wasn't that enough?

Wasn't it enough after he told you that he hit his fiancee inside that elevator?  He was honest about it, knew he shouldn't have done it and was remorseful, and then pledged himself to her to try to spend the rest of his life to make it up to her?

There was your moment, commissioner.  You should have punished him right then and there and made him the shining example of your stance against domestic violence.  Suspend him for a year, fine him an exorbitant amount of money, make him take special counseling and give him the warning that if his name even pops up in a police blotter about spousal abuse that he'll never see a down in the NFL again.  It was that simple.

Roger Goodell and Co. didn't do that, however, because Roger Goodell is all about 'protecting the shield of the NFL' and it's statements like that, they make me just kinda sit back and stare off into no particular distance and say, "Holy shit, they're all in on it."

They're all in on it.

Goodell saw both videos.  So did the rest of the NFL executives.  He passed down a judgment that he thought was fair and let it be so!  But he didn't bank on the casino going bankrupt and out of business.  Now those security tapes are up for the highest bidder and that was TMZ.  Let's pause for a minute so I can remind all of you that the NFL is worth about 100 times more than TMZ and didn't even bother to cover-up their own cover-up because what's the worse that could happen to the mighty NFL?!

Now's a good time as any to also remind you what I think is the best word that describes the NFL: archaic.

The massive cover-up was already underway.  Goodell said not he, nor any member of his staff saw the inside-the-elevator tape, then added the caveat "to his knowledge."  The Ravens released on Twitter a disgusting tweet about how Janay regretted the role she played in the incident that night.  I agree with that simply that if I play the role of face to someone else's fist I'm probably going to regret it in the morning too.

After the inside-the-elevator tape went public the cover-up indoctrine was pushed aside for the shortest witch-hunt in history.  Ray Rice was released by the Ravens and banned by Goodell and the NFL for an indefinite amount of time--all because of something we already knew he did!  We didn't learn anything new on Monday morning when that tape went public but because it went public and John Q. Public could see that video now, and the horrific nature of it, now we really have a problem.

People like to be told something but they don't like to see it.  That's all right.  It's human nature.  You would rather be told your dog died than be shown a video of your dog dying.  It makes sense because most humans are compassionate individuals.  Roger Goodell is compassionate towards a logo.  He has to protect the shield!

Sorry ladies, you're just the means to an end where men get to play football and make money for Goodell's league.  I saw a woman today being interviewed on the news for wearing a Ray Rice jersey to the Pittsburgh-Baltimore game taking place tonight and she said she was wearing the jersey because she was a supporter of Ray Rice.  Now she could have been totally off of what I'm about to say but I'd like to think that what she meant by that was that Ray Rice was the scapegoat of  a lot of archaic dinosaurs that still don't get it.

Do I think two games was enough?  Of course not, don't be ridiculous.  I already touched on that.  I think he should have gone to jail, I really do.  But he didn't and that didn't really shock me because I'm 29 years old and I'm not fucking naive.  Roger Goodell never intended for that second video to come out and when it did he knew he was screwed.  But you don't get to the top without a few sacrifices!  Ray Rice is 27 and a dumb ass.  What he did was heinous and absolutely atrocious but should that define his life?  Should it end it?  I don't think so.

I'm not defending Ray Rice, I'm just a guy who finds the whole institution is a lot more corrupt and evil that we were lead to believe.  My parting words are to the commissioner himself: Sometimes to protect the shield you have to fall on the sword, you son of a bitch.

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.