Hell Yeah Bitch! .com

I’m not sure how much of our readership enjoys watching ESPN, or for that matter EPSN. I watch ESPN a lot, and thought I’m not convinced its exactly a TV channel squeezed from the birth canal of Satan, there are some things that I absolutely HATE about EPSN. I won’t bother to list all of my personal complaints, but 99% of them start with “I hate it when Chris Berman does…” Berman sucks. I’m not sure why he keeps getting treated like a god on that channel, but it needs to stop. I can feel the rage build up inside me when Berman decides to make his “Whoop!” noise over and over again in the highlights. Most of the time Berman makes the noise from hell when the guy isn’t even making a cool move, he just running! And don’t get me started on his ruining of a baseball game with his retarded “Back back back” thing he does when someone hits a homerun!

Ok calming tones. Deep breath. I’m cool now. The reason for the enraged tirade was a great list of 52 Reasons ESPN Sucks by the guys at the College Football site Everday Should Be Saturday. Thought I’m not as upset with everything as they are, they do seem to share in my extreme hatred of Chris Berman and that makes me smile.

14. Chris Berman’s “WHOOP!” noise. Berman will make several appearances here, since he’s one of the worst things about the network, so we’ll just list the offense and the death strike we think is appropriate. In this case, we think the two hand spiral neck snap, an old Seagal move, would be perfect.

Read the 51 other reasons why ESPN sucks, nod your head in agreement, then come back here and leave a comment on whether or not any of you care about stuff like this.

Rafael Palmeiro did not take steroids! …earlier today…we think. Every other time during his career however, most are pretty sure he did. Why? Well it was released earlier today that the man that just broke 3,000 hits and last year topped 500 home runs was suspended for failing Major League Baseball’s drug test. I guess he forgot about the time he was in front of congress in March and said that he had not taken steroids ever. “…except for this one time, but it was my birthday, and I was hurting so I just thought it would be cool.”

Of course now he says, pretty much the same thing:

“Why would I do this in a year when I went in front of Congress and I testified and I told the truth?” he said. “Why would I do this during a season where I was going to get to 3,000 hits? It just makes no sense. I would not put my career on the line. I would not put my reputation on the line, everything that I’ve accomplished throughout my career. I would not do that. I’m not a crazy person.”

Ok then, tell us what you did take that set off the test then? If you didn’t take steroids, then just tell us what it was and we can evaluate further…oh and don’t tell us “You don’t know” because you are a pro athlete, and a good one at that. You know everything that goes into your body. So what did you take Rafael?!

Well, I don’t think he’ll tell us what drugs he took, but I we all saw him ingest a serious about of crow today.

……

I’ve been asked this question a lot today:
“Does this hurt his chances of going to the Hall of Fame?”
Of course.
“Will he still get in?”
Probably.

More on this story:
Buster Olney’s Take

I don’t know if any of the people that read this site are also readers of ESPN.com, but I certainly am. In fact I read ESPN.com, in particular the baseball section, religiously…or at least I did up until about a week ago.

ESPN.com wants to make some money. < sarcasm >You can’t blame them, you just don’t see enough of ESPN. I mean they only have six channels, they need every penny they can get.< / sarcasm > To make money on their site, they have special articles and extended rumor report (mainly about trades and today’s MLB trading deadline) that are only viewable by EPSN Insiders. They have had this program for a long time now, and I had little to no problem with it. There were times that I thought of buying it, but since I only really cared about baseball, why would I want to pay the full price for all of the other sports that I felt I had enough coverage from by watching “Sportcenter”, and “NHL / NFL Tonight”? Turns out, more people thought the same way I did than either I nor ESPN thought. So, slowly at first, and now at a breakneck pace, more and more articles are being converted to “ESPN Insider” only. These are articles that have been free for years! First all of the Jayson Stark articles where turned to Insiders Only, then more and more until they finally got to the point where the really pissed me off: Peter Gammons.

Peter Gammons, who incidentally is being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today, is one of my favorite national sports writers. He has the connections to get stories, has a nice style to his writing, and even at the age of 60, he is still telling people at the end of his columns about new and great bands. His only flaw being that he is a Boston fan…not a problem in that of itself, every writer is a fan of someone, but he tends to let it slip in too much…not a lot, but too much all the same.

Ok, ending tangent….now. The point is now that even Gammons articles are off limits for non-paying fans, all ESPN.com has become is a stale site for news that I heard reported before and a scoreboard. These are things I can get anywhere. ESPN.com used to be the place to go, and now its just a place.

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I’m sick of it. Every damn day we have to hear about the how great the Red Sox season was and how they finally broke “the curse”. I know, its a great story. I really feel for the poor $12x Million payroll team that just tried so hard and it beat all the other teams that have payrolls a fraction of their size and then they came back on the one team that has a bigger payroll.

…and since when is everyone a damn Red Sox fan?

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I’m not a basketball fan by any stretch but when I was checking out the highlights of Illinos’ win over Louisville I saw something that is very rare in the sports world. I saw a someone look at the camera and say “The other team was just better.”

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The Fleet Center, for those that don’t know, is a sports arena in the middle of Boston. Its the home of the Celtics and the currently resting, Bruins. The Fleet Center is looking for a name change and they posted the rights up on E-Bay.

The winning bid? $2,300 (Which doesn’t seem near enough to me, but thats what ESPN is reporting) Heres the real twist though: The winning bid was placed by New York lawyer Kerry Konrad, and he wants to change the name of the Fleet Center, which is in the heart of Boston remember, to the “Derek Jeter Center”. Derek Jeter being the face of the New York Yankees and one of the most hated men in Boston! Balls…huge balls.

Of course the Fleet Center most likely won’t go along with this and has already told Konrad that they will have to “think about it”. Somehow I think they’ll end up saying No…just a hunch I have.

However I am now a huge fan of one Kerry Konrad! This guy is hilarious! The best part is that he didn’t even try to hide his name in any way…he just came out there and tried to change a name of a freakin’ arena in Boston to the name of one of the most famous Yankees ever. That is an act I would do in a second if I had some extra scratch laying around.

Kerry Konrad: You are awesome.

The Reebok iPump

According to a commercial I just witnessed, pump-shoes are back, and they’ve been renamed in a fashion that all “new” and cool things are named these days. No, not Extreme pump shoes…but good guess. They are called iPumps. Wow I’m impressed, aren’t you?

F*ck! Congrats to the Red Sox. I wish you could have played the Cardinals when they still remembered how to pitch, how to bat, and how to manage (I would have started Haren).

Thats all I can really say about it now. Its going to take a while for me to even address this loss. But really, you can’t get too mad about the season that the Cardinals had this year, however I can be angry about how that same team played in the World Series.

Great season Cards! And congrats on being picked for 3rd place and winning the National League! Its been a great year.

(Now that I think about it. There shouldn’t be a lot of complaining about this year. I mean I could be worse…I could be a Cubs fan!)

Here we sit, on the brink of a World Series Sweep by the Boston Red Sox over my beloved Cardinals. The Cardinals have played fantastic baseball in every game they have played this year, execpt for the World Series. And judging by the constant promos, montages, and comments, if Fox has their way, the Cardinals will continue their crappy play tonight. Intresting that after following this team from top to bottom (How many of you Cardinals fans could string off a list of people playing in their minor league teams?), I’m not even pissed off at the Cardinals, I’m just depressed. However, the sudden “Cubs-Complex” that the Cardinals are afflicited with is not what I plan to discuss tonight.

The way I see it, truly interesting story comming out of this series is now: Everyone in Boston is so focused on making sure their Boston Red Sox don’t blow it, I don’t think anyone has thought about what will happen if they actually win! Think about it. The Boston sports fan has always had this “feel sorry for me” attitude, its been their identity for year upon years. Now what if the Red Sox win tonight? All of a sudden, their baseball team will be the best in the nation, and, I don’t know if you heard, but their football team, the Patriots, are doing everything they can to be named the “Greatest Football Team Ever” with their 20 game winning streak. Poof! Goodbye! Noone feels sorry for you now.

I can hear the Boston fans now: “We don’t want people to feel sorry for us! We want to win!” Well there are two things wrong with that. 1. You have been winning. Although the Red Sox haven’t won a World Series Ring in 86 years, but its not like that have be horrible that long. They have been pretty good in fact. So, I could really do with a bit less whinny all the time…(I’m looking at you Dennis Leary.) Are the Red Sox really underdogs? Fox wants us to believe that they are, becuase it makes much better TV for the causal fan. This “underdog” went 7 games in the ALCS last year. This “underdog” also sports a payroll of $125 Million dollars! This is not a rag-tag bunch of guys that teamed up and became magic…this is a group of very good players that have been paid very well to do just this: Win.

The second point? I think after the initial euphoria, these fans are going to find that they miss saying how much it sucks that their team never wins. They like that security blanket of no matter how bad, or good, they are, they can always say: “Damn that curse!” when they don’t win the series. Its not that their pitcher served up a meatball to Arron Boone, or that Buckner is a dumbass…its the “curse”. And what about the supposed “Red Sox Nation” all across the US and the world that is always the Red Sox buddies, even though many have never even been to Boston? Well don’t you think that maybe the reason people love the Red Sox for no reason (like Tom Hanks, that bastard) is becuase they have this “underdog attitude”. You think they will still have this underdog support with a ring? I would hope not.

Think of it this way: Wouldn’t it suck if you thought you had cancer? For years your doctor is saying you suffer from a horrible malady that can never be fixed. All your friends helped you out all the time and even your enemies really, deep down felt sorry for you. Now imagine that you switch doctors and he says: “You don’t have cancer. You never did. You are going to be just fine.” After that initial jumping for joy session, you find your friends don’t help you as much and your enemies have gone right back to kicking you when you are down. Sucks huh? That could be your life Boston. …and with that swing and home run from Damon, it could be sooner than you think.

When the League Championship Series began, both in the National Leauge and the American League, both had the potential to be great, nail-biting series. However, only the Amerian Leauge series featuring the rematch of the Red Sox and the underdog Yankees (It looks weird for me to say, “Underdog Yankees”, but its true.) seemed to take center stage…or at least it did with the execs at FOX, which is why I will begin there.

Remember that tremendous game 6 of the ALCS that forced a game 7 when the Red Sox started off the series down 3 games to none? Well try to remember it for ever, though some of us won’t have to try too hard, becuase that has never happened before, and it might not happen again in a long time. Look at what those Red Sox had to do just to force a game 7. Curt Schilling pitched 7 innings, leaving with only one run given up by him on the board and a saoked through, bloody sock on his surgically repaired foot. Then came the hits by David Ortiz, clutch homerun after clutch hits. Folks that was just to get to a game 7. The Red Sox still had more record breaking magic left in them, or at least in Derek Lowe and Johnny “The Caveman” Daman, to create the single greatest comeback in sports history. Two record breaking games back to back sending the Yankees into the record books as well as the Single Greatest Choke of all time.

Then there is the National League Championship Series. The series that everyone forgot about, yet had enough drama to match every second of that record breaking series going on at Boston and New York. This was a battle that will be talked about for a long time to come. Young star vs. Young star (Pujols vs. Beltran), great offense vs great offense, “the hottest team in baseball” vs. “the best team in baseball”. This was an epic battle simply becuase they were so well matched. When the first pitch of game 7 hit Matheny’s mitt, both teams has equal Batting Averages, ERAs, Runs Scored and both had won all its games at home. But this contest was not just simple two matched teams beating each other at home…if you want drama, this series had some to spare: 2 walk-off home runs, a game 7 pitched by a 328 game winner, 2 amazing catches by center fielders and enough home runs to set records all over the place. This was ANOTHER series to tell the grand-kids about. If you saw it, try to remember this one too.

In the end, both teams that were the favorites won, but they sure didn’t make it look easy.