This is Not Good

This is the kind of picture that populates the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery these days:

Disorienting cropping, static straight-ahead camera angles, noticeable lack of Derek Jeter.  Who is this person?  Evan Longoria.  What does his hair look like? Indiscernible.  After all, what else could anyone possibly want to know about Evan Longoria? Nothing!

My quality of life directly correlates to the quality of the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery. I may never know what anyone looks like again.  What will I put on this blog? Acrostic poems about my favorite athletes, I guess.  Here's my first two:

1.
Day after day,
Even when I am
Reasonably happy, I spend at least one minute thinking about how in-
Evitably, Derek Jeter is getting older.  It
Keeps happening.  There's no reason to take it personally. It's

Just something that is happening.
Every day,
The past gets larger and larger, like a floating yak that can't stop
Eating.  Someday this insatiable ghost yak, or whatever it is, will consume you.
Realistically, thankfully, I doubt that Derek Jeter has considered his spirit animal of death.

2.
Please be good at football this year.
Eli has already won two Superbowls.
You deserve another one,
Two, three, four
Or five...just kidding. You're probably too old for four.
Not that I know anything about the lifespans of professional athletes.

M
A
N
N
I also don't know why you're in that boring car commercial.
N
G

Someone please fix the Yahoo! Sports MLB Photo Gallery. Writing poetry is stupid and hard.

The First of my Thoughts About Peyton Manning and the Broncos, with Some Quotes from the Colorado Rockies

What's Peyton Manning going to do in Denver in his spare time? Pitch for the Rockies, I guess.


From the Yahoo! Sports article:

The news spread fast during batting practice at Salt River Fields before the Rockies’ game against the Los Angeles Angels, and just in case anybody didn’t hear, one player pregame yelled: “No more Tebow!”

Sorry, Tim Tebow, but the Rockies are on Team Peyton.

“Tebow is a great player,” outfielder Carlos Gonzalez said, “but I’m from Venezuela and not even a football fan and I know they got one of the best quarterbacks in history.”

“I have nothing against Tebow,” outfielder Dexter Fowler concurred, “but I’m definitely a Peyton Manning guy.”

For one, Manning spent more time around the Rockies than Tebow. Because of his friendship with Helton, he has shown up unannounced in recent years before Rockies games. Last July, Gonzalez walked into the dugout, saw Manning and said to himself: “I think I know this guy.”

A month later, when the Rockies were in St. Louis, Fowler glanced at Helton’s locker only to see someone with three extra inches and one fewer goatee.“He’s sitting in Todd’s chair,” Fowler said, “and you’re like, ‘What? Oh, yeah, that’s Peyton Manning.’ ”

Obviously, my fantasy was for Peyton to move to New York, replace Mark Sanchez, do media appearances with Eli and local television commercials with Derek Jeter, and go to the Met with me on Sunday afternoons. We'd have such a nice time eating hot dogs on the front steps and then walking through Central Park. I mean, nothing (much) against Denver, but you can't do any of those things there.

Go Ahead, Take One More Year in Philadelphia, Cole.

I was proud and not at all surprised to learn today that "Cole Hamels" was my #3 most Googled phrase of 2011. I was confused and very surprised to see that "Doug Fister" was the only other professional athlete to crack the top ten. After all of my seeking, the only thing I know about him is that he's not bad looking.

Eh. Then again, what else is there to know about a person, really?

Anyway, there is actual Cole Hamels news on the internet. Something about how he's getting $15 million dollars to stay in Philadelphia next year. I don't know. I'm mostly only paying attention to stories about Cole Hamels becoming a Yankee is 2013. Just like I'm mostly only paying attention to stories about Peyton Manning becoming a Jet is 2012. Now wouldn't that be a holy square of sports superstars?

Derek Jeter. Cole Hamels. Eli Manning. Peyton Manning. I'd wear nothing but sports jerseys for the rest of my life!

Time Keeps Happening

"Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers."

We're all getting old. Come back soon, Peyton.

Happy Father's Day

To sports dads and all dads.

Refractors

It's Sunday, so I spent the morning half-listening to The BS Report and looking at baseball cards on the internet. I don't know anything about the baseball card market-- I just appreciate that they're uniformly rectangular objects with images on them. Some cards look SO good. I love nostalgia cards and cards that resemble paintings, like this Chase Utley National Chicle card I got out of a pack I bought while in Door County, Wisconsin with my parents this summer (note: this is not an image of my card). Someday, I'm going to curate a show of my favorite baseball cards and write a really pretentious press release and have an opening with lukewarm white wine in clear plastic Solo cups. Maybe Kei and Mordecai will consider hosting a similar exhibition in their beautiful new house.

Anyway, I looked at a lot of refractor cards today:





Cool, right?

Brothers in Sport and Song

The thing I like most about football is star quarterback Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts, and one of the things I like most about Peyton Manning is that he has a younger brother who is also a star* quarterback on a team that wears most of the same colors as the Indianapolis Colts.
(*By "star" I mean "appeared in a series of Toyota commercials that may or may not have aired outside of the Tri-state area.")

While I like all configurations of sports families (Griffey and Griffey Jr. and Griffey, C., for example), I REALLY LIKE sports brothers. In fact, the ONLY thing I like about B.J. Upton is his brother Justin. So, when baseball commentators began talking about Detroit Tigers prospect Scott Sizemore this spring, I automatically wanted to believe that he was the younger brother of Cleveland outfielder Grady Sizemore.

Shared trait: Crooked grins

Although I can't find any proof on the internet that Sizemore and Sizemore are brothers, I also can't find any websites that specifically say that they aren't.

Shared Trait: Bad running faces

If Scott Sizemore were exceptionally ugly, it would be easier for me to accept that the two Sizemores aren't genetically linked. Does it follow, then, that Scott Sizemore's serviceably standard looks can be used as further evidence that he and Grady are related?

God, obviously not. Didn't you take logic in high school?