A hazy shade of winter

A good way to be sure the curtain is closing: Your home run calls sound like, "Ken Griffey Jr.! Number 625!" It may be true that Griffey is, in fact, coasting along the final few miles, the odometer turning evermore slowly until the friction of the road brings him to a halt. But I make it a point not to eulogize the living, and I wish other people would do the same.

Ok, so that was a lot of lame aging metaphors, but seriously--let the man play, and don't genuflect every time he goes yard. If that's how you're gonna be, just come out and call him The Doughy Shell of Ken Griffey Jr., why doncha.

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This is absurd

A great clipping from today's New York Post:

Reader Gary Cicio, NYC podiatrist, did the research, and asks us to choose one of the two options to see a Mariners-Yankees game this season, and from the very best seats:

Option 1: Two tickets to Tuesday night, June 30, Mariners at Yanks, cost for just the tickets, $5,000.

Option 2: Two round-trip airline tickets to Seattle, Friday, Aug. 14, return Sunday the 16th, rental car for three days, two-night double occupancy stay in four-star hotel, two top tickets to both the Saturday and Sunday Yanks-Mariners games, two best-restaurant-in-town dinners for two. Total cost, $2,800. Plus-frequent flyer miles.

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Way to kill the suspense, Jayson

I've never really had any beefs with Jayson Stark--not to mention that he seems like he'd be a super, duper nice guy--and this post is sheer nitpicky crap. But I just found this column to be totally unhelpful.

Jayson is out to answer the question of who may be managing the Mariners and Mets next year. The answer?

Bobby Valentine, Jim Fregosi, Buck Showalter, Ken Macha, Bob Brenly, Jim Tracy, Joey Cora, Ryne Sandberg, Brad Mills, John Farrell, DeMarlo Hale, Ron Wotus, Ron Roenicke, Ted Simmons, Pete Mackanin, Joel Skinner, Terry Pendleton, Ken Oberkfell, Gary Varsho, Andy Fox, Eddie Perez, Tim Bogar, Jose Oquendo, Tom Foley, Scott Ulger, Jamie Quirk, Don Wakamatsu, Dave Jauss, John Mizerock, Pat Kelly, Lenn Sakata, Mike Quade, Ty Waller, Lorenzo Bundy, Torey Lovullo, Robby Thompson, Don Mattingly, [or] Whitey Herzog.

I don't really care much about the subject, nor am I at all bothered by this column. I just think it's funny that Stark listed enough candidates to not only fill those two vacancies but to re-fill them after the first two guys get fired while still having enough names left over to re-staff every other managerial position in the league and man a moderate-sized sea vessel.

I just can't believe Terry Bevington was left off the list.

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Random thoughts while eating my Garden of Life Super Seed Whole Food Energy Bar!!!

Since we've all been too busy/lazy/indifferent to post much lately (though I don't think anyone else has noticed anyway), I figured I'd refresh the page by ripping off Pat's signature recurring post by tossing out a bunch of lazy one-liners about recent happenings in sports. Here goes...

Word today is that the Mariners fired hitting coach Jeff Pentland, who will be temporarily replaced by former Cubs manager Lee Elia. Wow--between manager John McLaren and Elia, I expect more unnecessary profanity in the Mariners' clubhouse than in Dennis Leary's standup act.

If we don't see better starts out of Joba Chamberlain soon, we may see Brian Cashman lose his joba.

Federer lost to Nadal again in the French Open. That Nadal is one fine-looking tennis player. And I do mean fine-looking.

Think Rafael Nadal bears any relation to former Marlins catcher Bob Natal?

Now that Dominik Hasek is retiring, he should have a lot more time to spend with his beautiful family and also, this guy.

Did you see Big Brown fall apart at the Belmont? Man, I haven't seen a horse choke that bad since that episode of Mr. Ed where he bites off Wilbur's arm.

That was some NBA Finals game last night, with L.A. nearly erasing a 20-point fourth quarter deficit. Man, I haven't seen Celtics choke like that since the Roman army won the Battle of Mons Graupius in 84 A.D.

More overdramatic: Paul Pierce on Thursday night or Cher in Moonstruck? Discuss.


...And I'm out!

(P.S.: I'll be going out of town tomorrow, so don't expect any new posts out of me until at least next Monday. Which is to say, don't expect any new posts out of this site until at least next Monday.)

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Further building the case that managers are relatively unimportant

I apologize that this post is a day late, but I'm in the process of a move (from my mom's basement to someone else's mom's basement, where I'll write for this blog, play RPG games, and eat salty snacks all day), so I didn't have time to touch on it last night.

If you missed it, Seattle Mariners manager Mike Hargrove quit baseball, purportedly for good, because his "passion [had] begun to fade."

The Mariners--at the time of the announcement--had won seven in a row and nine of ten. They were 44-33 after starting 19-21 and were just four back of first in the division. So, as best interpretation of Hargrove's words would imply, the Mariners were playing progressively better as their manager was growing less and less capable to manage--something we must assume if we consider motivation a primary role of a manager.

By no means am I insinuting that the Mariners couldn't have played slightly better had Hargrove been at full capacity. But the coincidence of the two events does reinforce the idea that managers are nowhere near as important as mainstream media outlets and casual fans tend to believe. If they were, how could a manager who, by his own admission, was going through the motions lead a team to a .670ish mark over the course of six weeks?

Sure, Hargrove was but one small factor in the streak, and that's the whole point. I wouldn't even be jumping this soapbox again were it not for this line in this blog post on the Yankees:

It's time for a new Joe. Sorry Mr. Torre, all good things come to an end. This team's lackluster play unfortunately will be the end for Joe Torre. The Yankees better not be stupid and make Don Mattingly their next manager, everyone knows that the next star manager is Joe Girardi. Lock him up, let him do whatever he wants with the coaching staff, this guy can manage. (emphasis added)

Based on what??? I'm not picking on this one random blogger because he's only sharing an opinion that seemingly every baseball fan holds true--that Joe Girardi is a great manager because his only season as an MLB manager happened to be with a wildly talented team that outperformed popular expectations. That's ludicrous.

It's a tired argument, and I'm really sick of making it. I understand that natural impulse to assign results to a sole source--especially one dictated by rational human thought and not frightening out-of-our-control things like innate ability--but I expect better out of baseball fans.

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