Life is Hard

From Albert to Zito

For the second year in a row, I was granted first draft pick in one of my Fantasy Baseball leagues. This time, I didn't spend it on possible sports brother Grady Sizemore. Instead, I did something rational and chose Albert Pujols.

He's like the Derek Jeter of the Midwest, except better at baseball and younger and taller and heavier and exponentially more powerful. I guess what I'm trying to say is that he has a winning spirit and a good heart. If you disbelieve me, you can read this Sports Illustrated article. Don't do it at work, though, because you'll probably start crying when it gets to the part where he's 18 years old and working in a pizzeria to support his 21-year-old girlfriend and her baby daughter who has Down's syndrome and then they get married and go on their honeymoon to Peoria, IL.

Anyway, a Mariner's fan took Ken Griffey Jr. in the middle of the draft, so I had to scramble for an adequately symbolic last pick. I would have taken the now-retired Normal Garciaparra-Kolenik, but HE GOT DRAFTED, TOO. I guess I'm happy enough with my selection:


BARRY ZITO IS SO FAUX GROOVY. Remember when he had Twitter? Hahahahaha. In the bottom photo, what song is he thinking about playing and, in the top photo, is he on LSD?

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?

Sports Feelings

I'm working with a credible source/my friend Sam (not Weber) on a multifaceted exploration of why baseball players and fans have such obnoxious taste in music. Until then, please suspend your critical faculties for 4 minutes and 47 seconds while you enjoy this beautiful Ken Griffey Jr. highlight reel. SPORTS FEELINGS.

I Saw the Sign

I absentmindedly paused Game 6 of the 2009 World Series to make dinner and when I came back to my computer, this is what was on the screen:

If you haven't watched the World Series multiple times, you might not know that this is an image of crazy Joba Chamberlain striking out Phillies outfielder Ben Francisco so hard that stars appeared. Never mind that Fox Trax says it's a ball. Do you think that this means that Joba will finally have his BREAKOUT year as the Yankees' fifth starting pitcher?

Personally, I prefer the equally unpredictable Phil Hughes because I think he looks like a movie star:

Also, he's able to breathe with his mouth closed while he pitches. That's class.

Then and Now

As Jennie astutely noticed last week, TBB favorite Casey Blake has gone beardless.

My first instinct is a combination of disappointment and horror. But on a practical level: how is this going to affect his performance?

Last year pitchers had a stare down a fierce, hard-hitting third baseman. Now? An ogre-ish man that may have crossed eyes? Could I strike him out? Of course not - he's a major league baseball player and he may just be squinting in the picture above. But can Tim Lincecum? Probably, in fact he did it 4 times in 7 AB last year. And that was with the beard!

Here's a side-by-side comparison for reference.

I suppose it's possible that he wants to save the beard for later in the season. And this smile certainly bodes well for future facial hair growth. But for now, I'm afraid Casey Blake can no longer be:

Cleveland, Honestly...

It's a long-haired magenta carpet monster with yellow splotches standing next to a lady hot dog in a ruffled tube top and an apron. Nevermind your questionably offensive team logo, WTF are your mascots? Cleveland...Grady....Cleveland...anyone?

Ladies Love Us v. 2.0: The Outfield

Yesterday, I began to address the question of whether or not my Fantasy team has gotten less lovable by evaluating my infielders. Now, let's examine the outfield:

OF: 2009 - GRADY SIZEMORE (CLE); 2010 - ANDRE ETHIER (LAD)

In addition to being a cosmic waste of fantasy energy in 2009, Grady Sizemore was also the source of 90.5% of all managerial conflict for the Ladies. I love him. Paul hates him. In fact, Paul threatened to quit the team if I redrafted Grady this year. We took Andre Ethier, instead. Sometimes, I think he's really cute and sometimes I think he looks like a small talking mouse. Even though he'd be an upgrade over almost any other outfielder, here Ethier is LOVE DOWNGRADE.

Last year, Kei made this collage of Marauders of Time managers with their #1 draft picks. Doesn't it look like Grady and I went to prom together? My high school G.P.A. was higher than his, but maybe they didn't have weighted AP classes at Cascade High School in Everett, WA.

Grady, I still think we have a future...I'll call you when I move to Cleveland.

OF: 2009 - NICK SWISHER (NYY); 2010 - JASON KUBEL (MIN)

Remember when I met Nick Swisher last year? Jason Kubel looks like a ghoul and he plays for the Twins. SERIOUS LOVE DOWNGRADE.

OF: 2010 - NYJER MORGAN (WAS); 2009 - ADAM DUNN (WAS)

I made these photos backwards. Nyjer Morgan has a nice smile and steals a ton of bases. Adam Dunn looks like a donkey and steals NO bases. This is a LOVE UPGRADE.

UTILITY: 2009 - MANANANANNY RAMIREZ (LAD???); 2010 - JUAN PIERRE (CWS)

Hey Manny! I think you may be a bad person, but I still like you tons! Do something funny this year! Please make the Dodgers not suck! Are you and Casey Blake friends? I can't imagine that this could be possible! Juan Pierre looks like a teenager, but he's older than I am! We got him to compliment Nyjer Morgan! I wonder how that will work out...LOVE DOWNGRADE!

Next, our pitching staff, where a lot of good things happened yesterday....

My favorite Matsui photo

"TEMPE, AZ - MARCH 12: Hideki Matsui #55 of the Los Angeles Anaheim reacts as the fence holding back fans breaks before the MLB spring training game against the Chicago White Sox at Tempe Diablo Stadium on March 12, 2010 in Tempe, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)"

HE LOOKS SO CONCERNED!

Ladies Love Us v. 2.0: The Infield

Last year was my first season as a Fantasy Baseball manager and during our league's draft, my only objective was to construct the most beautiful, heart-pleasing team possible. Once the season started however, the skill shortage of my aesthetically elite dream squad put me at a serious disadvantage to more logically composed teams, which in turn caused my "spoiled only child sore loser" neurons to fire with such a frequency that all non-fantasy baseball thoughts were almost completely silenced. It was an intense and oftentimes unpleasant experience. This year, I attempted to make more practical decisions during our Fantasy Baseball draft. Numbers-wise, this new group of Ladies is an obvious and undeniable upgrade. Has the team become correspondingly unlovable? Well, starting with our infielders, let's take a look:

CATCHER: 2009 - PABLO SANDOVAL (SF); 2010 - MIKE NAPOLI (LAA)

Mike Napoli, while somehow not as ugly as I remember him being, is no Kung Fu Panda. I don't care if he hates Jorge Posada as much as I do, this is a LOVE DOWNGRADE.

FIRST BASE: 2009 - RUSSELL BRANYAN (SEA); 2010 - MARK REYNOLDS (ARI)

These are both Paul picks, and both are pretty good. Branyan is nondescriptly handsome and hits home runs and Reynolds is nondescriptly not unhandsome and hits home runs. Reynolds also broke his own record for Most Strikeouts in a Single Season, which is a truly remarkable accomplishment. I can't evaluate how I feel about this change at first base because Russell Branyan is on the team again this year as a bench warmer, so let's call this a LOVE DRAW.

SECOND BASE: 2009 - ROBINSON CANO (NYY); 2010 - ROBINSON CANO (NYY)

BEST SMILE IN BASEBALL!!!!! MOST HANDSOME MAN IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES. I was pretty stoked to get Robbie in the 4th round, because he's a quality producer at a relatively shallow position. LOVE DRAW.

SHORT STOP: 2009 - DEREK JETER (NYY); 2010 - DEREK JETER (NYY)

Is he going to have a good year? I don't know. It doesn't, couldn't, won't ever matter. LOVE DRAW.

THIRD BASE: 2009 - CASEY BLAKE (LAD); 2010 - EVAN LONGORIA (TB)

As far as the infield goes, third base saw the most blatant sacrifice in love for talent. While Swebs has been hot for Longorium since day one, I've never really been a fan. His charmingly gappy teeth and goofy ears just don't make up for the fact that he plays for my least favorite team in all of baseball. I HATE THE RAYS. I HATE BJ UPTON. I HATE MATT GARZA. I HATE MATT GARZA I HATE MATT GARZA I HATE THE RAYS I CANNOT STAND MATT GARZA. I wanted to draft Casey Blake as a sentimental bench companion, but someone else took him first! Can you believe it? He was actually not ranked that badly. Beardless Casey is kind of a goon, but he still holds a special place in my heart. LOVE DOWNGRADE. Casey Blake owner, who are you? Let's have a talk. You can't have Evan Longoria, but maybe we can work something out.

Coming next, the outfield and my thoughts on losing Grady Sizemore....

Fantasy Baseball Days are Here Again

Kei and I blog our fantasy baseball league here.
Sports feelings! GET READY!!!!!!

First Look

Spring training has begun! Let's look at some aesthetically unsettling formal portraits of my favorite players:

The two sides of Ichiro are equally frightening.

Grady's in baseball jail on the moon. REDEEM YOURSELF, SIZEMORE.

Derek Jeter is so good. His head is exploding with goodness.

My first thought upon seeing this picture of Robbie Cano was,
"God, I bet he smokes a lot of pot." Do you think it's true?

For some reason, Mark Teixeira's portraits were published sideways. He doesn't need help looking strange, so I'm not posting them, here. I will, however, share this photo of Teix jogging in sports flip flops. Gah. I can't look at him without grimacing in a baffled and horrified, yet somehow loving way. He's not normal. He's not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not at all normal.

And finally, no one cares about taking artful photographs of Casey Blake. Aw. What happened to your beard, Casey? Do you want to play on my fantasy team again?

Sam, what happened to his beard?!

I Don't Like Anybody but I Love You, Peter Pascarelli

For the last year or so, one of my favorite sounds has been the six-note chime that introduces ESPN's "Baseball Today" podcast. Do you think it sounds like the "Light World" theme in Zelda? That's a good song, too.

(via)

Similarly, I've spent many nights falling asleep or running laps to the sound of Eric Karabell and Peter Pascarelli fighting about baseball. Sadly, after making some typically disparaging remarks about MLB commissioner Bud Selig, Peter was removed from the podcast some time last week. His replacement sounds like a sports robot. ESPN, you suck. Peter was the ultimate "hater with a golden heart" and the upcoming season will be less enjoyable without his endless, growling rants.

On the bright side, this could be Kei's and my chance to finally launch the "Asian Girls Wearing Sports Gear Sports Fan Podcast." We can put it on iTUNES.

Forever Jeter

In his press conference today, Derek Jeter announced that he would like to remain a Yankee next year after his current contract expires.

Although this is like me giving a press conference to say that I will still love Derek Jeter tomorrow after I wake up in the morning, I'm still happy that he said it. You can watch the video, here.

Paul sent me a link to this video this afternoon, but I ignored it because 1) the subject of his email was "Jeter is going to end up on the PIRATES," and 2) I don't like to click on links. The result of this was that 1) I got angry at Paul and 2) I didn't know about Derek Jeter's press conference until ten minutes ago, when I saw it on the Yankees' Facebook page. The lesson of this paragraph is that internet links can sometimes lead to GOOD things. Who knew? If you send me a link this week, I will click on it.

(Unless you are Phil, in which case I promise to click on 50% of the links you send because you look at the internet too much.)

This is My Town

I've never been to Los Angeles, but thanks to their website, DODGERTOWN IS MY TOWN. Yeah! Matt Kemp's wearing a Casey Blake jersey with my name on it and high-fiving Andre Ethier. COOL!

The McCourts are getting divorced, Vincente Padilla got shot by his friend, and Manny Ramirez has just announced that 2010 will be his last year with the Dodgers, but I still feel optimistic about the team's chances. They're going to play the Yankees this year, which will be exciting. I'll bring my Dodgers hat so that I can wear it when Casey Blake bats. CASEY, IT'S YOUR YEAR!!! BREAK OUT!!!!! FANTASY ALL-STAR!!!!!!

Speaking of people who tanked my fantasy team last year, one or two weeks ago, Sam got drunk and warned me that he was going to address Grady Sizemore's nude photographs on our much neglected blog. "I'm going to make a post and it's going to be a post razzing [is this a word?] you for not being into those Grady Sizemore photos," is mostly what he said, "Come on, here's someone you spent a year toiling over and then this happens and you're not into it?!"

Listen Sam, when Grady Sizemore was just some handsome abstraction that I could daydream about meeting in the Continental Philosophy section of the Cleveland Barnes & Noble, life was great. Now that he's demonstrated himself to be a real person with an exhibitionist streak, a scary looking girlfriend and generally poor fashion sense (not to mention the fact that I've always known about his passion for The Doors), I can't help but feel slightly wounded. Unconditional love predicated on the knowledge of who a person is, as opposed to who I want them to be, is a feeling that I've reserved for only one professional athlete.

Now, here's some pictures I made that will make that last sentence seem completely disingenuous.

This blog just gets weirder and weirder.

Anyway, none of this means that I no longer like Grady Sizemore. I like him and I'll like him more once baseball starts again. I'll definitely go see the Indians when they're in New York. Maybe Sam can come with me. What do you say, Swebs?

New York, Ascendent

Per news reports, New York has taken a huge leap forward.

Detroit, however, has taken one huge step back. LINK

Sizemore (Uncovered)

With pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training this week, I thought it was worth rehashing a story that went curiously unnoted on TBB.

Back on November 29th of last year (ALMOST 3 MONTHS AGO!) deadspin broke the most TBB wheelhouse-y story imaginable: nearly nude pictures of Grady Sizemore surface on the internet!

Someone's got a big closet!

I've posted what I assume is SFW, but there are some others that are, maybe not quite...

Jenni, reached for comment last weekend, said, "gross". While I make no judgments about the pictures, I was pretty surprised considering Jenni's previous comments about Sizemore. See here, here, and here. And here for 3rd party confirmation. From Jenni's inaugural post:

I'm from the Midwest, so from the cradle I've been conditioned to like athletically built young men with honest faces. Grady Sizemore is the embodiment of my socially constructed desire.

Is it possible that these lewd photos have somehow shattered the illusion that any MLB player has an honest face? Or just Grady? I can't imagine they would have impacted the "athletically built" part...

But don't fear Jenni, Grady has finally broken his suspicious silence in an attempt to put this embarrassing (self-promotional?) episode behind him. As reported by Yahoo:

"This is a private matter," he said. "I never intended for any of this to get out. I hate to have to put everybody through this, but in the end it just wasn't meant to come out. It was meant for me and my girlfriend and it just happened to work out the way it did.

"You always have to be careful, but this was something that was stolen out of an e-mail account. It wasn't like we intended for these pictures to go anywhere. We weren't flying them anywhere. We weren't showing them to friends. This was stolen out of an e-mail account.

Come on, Grady! Embrace the limelight! Who knows, after baseball you may have a career as a Senator or something. Also, "flying them somewhere"? I'm starting to have some doubts that Grady is entirely up on how the interweb works. Baseball!

OMG

All You Need is Love!

(Not necessarily that kind of love....)

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

2010 Fantasy Baseball Preview

Remember last year when Sam and I evaluated every player in the Major Leagues and then ranked the teams by order of attractiveness? We couldn't have done it without MLB.com's Fantasy Baseball Preview. With the 2010 version now online, I'm ready to do it all again. Who will be this year's best looking team?

If you don't know that the answer is the New York Yankees, you KNOW NOTHING. Are we friends? Why are you reading my blog?! Scientifically sound Grady-metrics and other statistical evidence to follow.

I do want to say that seeing Ryan Braun as the league's #1 outfielder highly disgusts me. LOOK AT HIM:


BASEBALL PLAYERS, PLEASE STOP WEARING THOSE SHIRTS. I HATE IT. I HATE RYAN BRAUN. I LOVE BASEBALL! I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!