If there's one thing I hate more than advertising, it's doing it in a sneaky way. (Especially when they try to get it for free, and they're a giant company that needs no help anyway.) Look at this "comment" I got yesterday. See if you're *savvy* enough to spot the intricately weaved in ad!

....This is simply because IF the Angels have to go to the bottom of the 9th tied or trailing, they'd get to face Rivera, who sweet mercy I CANNOT WAIT til he retires, does not give up anything even IF he gets in a jam...see Game 3.

I think it's an interesting point to talk about. I've also got some great [stuff to sell] from [business], a client of mine.

But back to business, let's not leave out Girardi either. He PINCH RAN for A-Rod. That was ridiculous. He makes Scoscia look like Joe Torre. I'll hold off from commenting on Tim McCarver since it would only upset me.


So disgusting. (Note: This was a rare time when it wasn't about ticket agencies--it was another baseball-related racket.) "Back to business"? That's your big segue? Did an "ad man" with a big cigar come up with that one? They really thought we'd all think that this "real sports fan" commenter just happened to think of this business in mid-comment, decided to tell us about it, and then go right back to what he was talking about?

Look, if you wanna advertise on someone's site, at least offer to give them something in return. At this site, you'll be told "no" anyway, but at least there's some honesty involved that way. (But also stupidity, since when you tell me you think my site would be a "great fit" for your company's ad, it clearly means you didn't even look at it, what with its big "ad free site" banner and repeated anti-advertising rants.)

So--to "Tom," who posted that comment. I know you're probably long gone, like some sort of "Johnny Ad-pleseed," but you are always welcome to come back and talk about whatever without trying to make money off of me. (Then again, I doubt you really are a Red Sox fan--you must have to "relate" to the content of each blog you visit with your fake comments. But if you do happen to be a fan, feel free to read this blog and post not-for-profit comments.)

Thank you.

Angel Nation (Heaven?), wake up! You have another must-win tonight! We're all on your side. (Except for talk show hosts who start fake arguments strictly so they'll have something to "debate" by saying "I want the Yankees to win because it's a 'better story.'" I've heard this phenomenon on two DIFFERENT Boston sports stations in the last few days. This really relates to the above--it's all about doing something totally fake, just to make money. Remember kids, money is the most important thing! But if they really are rooting for the "better story" (my god, isn't having those fuckers LOSE a better story anyway??), it just shows the disconnect between media and fans, which is why if you're a fan, you should make your own site--the media's becoming less and less relevant, but we need to drive the final stake into them! Become the media! (But once you have, don't just turn into exactly what they were. Like Dirtdogs.)

It's a good thing for you the Angels won. Had they not, my rage may have broken your computer.

My lawd, Scioscia, what the capital F? Seriously, dude. I know Darren Oliver was a Yankee killer in, like, '02, but you're going with him (and therefore his bullpen buds) when Peter Brady's pitching a shutout? Even McCarver said beforehand that Lackey should be in until (meaning if) the Yanks tie it. When Tim McCarver is outwitting you, it's time to retire.

And then at the end, Daisy actually gets two outs, but they walk A-Rod to put the tying run on base, forcing the pitcher's attention to now be split, and he alllmost blows the whole damn thing! Thank god for Swisher. And The Huggies Philler.

But nothing made me madder during that game than the patented Fox Jeter three-play. Some other guy gets a key hit. We see Jeter clapping in slow motion from after the play. But what led to that? We need to know. So we get the slo-mo Jeter from during the play. Then as they go to break, another replay of the first clapping shot. Three shots of a completely irrelevant player within about 20 seconds. I really want someone to explain this to me. My throat is still sore from yelling at those assholes for showing that. (You'd think I'd act like I'd "been there before," eh?)

Of course, they didn't show him after he RANGED (ha!) to his left and couldn't get to that ball up the middle. Or talk about it. And they didn't show his losing face at the end of the game, which also could have been fun.

So, overall, nice job, (select) Angels. Weaver, you're in that bunch. You spun the wheel of fish to perfection and I would have just stuck with you for the ninth....

We go "back to New York." (Think of that line in that cartoon caveman's voice. It's funnier.) Stay alive, Angels! I'm behind your often dumb asses!!!! Do it!!!!!!!

Pedro and the Phils are champs of that other, weirder league. In our contest, longtime reader SoSock was the first to guess, and picked 49 total runs for the series. Turns out, he'd be the closest to the actual total of 51. Nice job, SoSock--e-mail me and tell me which two players you want on your baseball card magnet.

Other stuff: Lisa of that Mets/Yanks blog Subway Squawkers interviewed me and others for this article in The Faster Times.

These TV networks just don't get it. The Phils win the pennant, and their first shot is a wide shot from the blimp of fireworks above the stadium. And they hold it there for a second round of 'works before finally cutting to the celebra--nope, a shot of the three Phillies who are kind of standing off to the side high-fiving--before finally cutting to the pile. They think too hard, these people. Or not at all....

My friend Bruce sent me this classic video of the '69 Mets a-singin' on Ed Sullivan.

And I've noticed a pattern. People who are all worried about getting Media Flu and who get the shot are feeling all these mystery pains and think they must have something. Whereas I'm not worried and I don't get the shot (never got a flu shot, never got the flu), and I'm feeling fine....

But I have to say, I'm rooting for Swine Flu. These people who text and talk on the phone without paying attention while driving--they need to be stopped before they kill again. And supposedly this flu hits younger people. Perfect. Thin out the ranks of the selfish--actually, if you're not even aware that anyone exists but you, can you technically be selfish? Please, Swine Flu, my middle finger and horn hand are getting carpal tunnel. (Don't you hate it when you're alongside them giving them the finger after they cut you off, but they don't even notice because they're STILL not aware that you're even there?)

If the Dodgers win tonight, our contest moves on.

If the Phillies win, the series will end--if that's the case, here's the total number of runs each contestant needs in Game 5 to win:

El Cerdo: 1-3 runs or Dodger forfeit in which no runs are credited to either club
Neil Hay: 4-9 runs
bwsmith: 10
Jay & Ryan: 11
SoSock: 12-14
AJM & Bosox Fan Wichita: 15-23
pweezil: 24 or more

I'd say Neil Hay looks like the favorite right now.

Meh.

Their hired, obese gun did a great job tonight. Note: It wasn't a blowout, they just tacked on a bunch when the game was over.

After the first call where the ump looked right at an out but said safe, I was pretty pissed. But after the second one, where the guy looked right at the funniest double play of all time but for some reason only called one of the two clearly tagged runners out, I was sure the fans wouldn't let the game continue. That's where you start throwing stuff on the field. But I guess in California you just go with the flow or whatever. And Freeways. And god, and the bible.

Good night, and here's hoping Yankee players get extremely painful mysterious injuries while sleeping tonight. Especially Matsui. You know what I'm talkin' about.

Oh, and I recommend reading David Cross's new book during the game. You can mute the parts when the Angels turn to jelly and get a few laughs in.

Unrelated: I was about to end this post, but I just saw the end of this piece on Nightline about people who select their babies by what they're gonna look like. So, of course, nobody chooses Abe Vigoda, but instead it's these superficial self-important women selecting little Joey Lawrences and Oscar De La Hoyas because who's gonna love a baby who doesn't look perfect? (The people who want to trade Papelbon, I suppose.) Anyway, my first thought was, Wouldn't it be funny if those babies turned out to be horrible freaks? Then I thought, No, because it's not their fault. What would be really great is if the baby does turn out just as Johnny Deppish as promised, but the parents both go blind.

No, it's not a law firm (hahahahahahahahaha, aren't people witty? Any three names? Sounds like a law firm!), it's the three Yankee starters with lifetime averages over .185 against Kazmir.

Show up, Angels!

While I appreciate all your comments and e-mails telling me not to watch the ALCS for health reasons, I'm glad I got to see this one today.

The Angels finally busted through with an all-out assault, taking the power back in the series!

Just kidding. They DID win, but my lord did they ever try to lose it oh so many times. If you missed it, here's the quick recap.

Yanks get solo dongs early, but Weaver gets out of a few jellies, so it's "only" 3-0.

Angels get on the board with a Solo Cup of their own, and then, with two outs in the 6th, Vlad is up with a man on against the mysteriously quickly recovering Pettitte. Girardi comes out to mound for a chat. Pettitte serves it up. Dong, and we're tied.

7th: Joba, the man who hasn't done much of anything in his career yet still has T-shirts and wind-up toys made out of his likeness and always enters games with some kind of "danger! awesomeness ahead!" warning, enters to preserve the 3-3 tie, and gives up a triple on his first pitch. A sac fly, and the 'gels have the lead, which they'd never relinquish. Again, JUST KIDDING.

8th: After the Angels pitch out and nail the tying run at second with no outs, Posada hits a dong anyway, and we're tied. (Camera only cuts to Jeter in dugout ONCE before Posada finishes rounding bases. Victory!)

bottom 8th: Abreu with a leadoff bomb into the gap--he's going for 3! Yet he stops for some reason. Halfway to third, the fucker stops, as the ball is reaching the cutoff man, who throws to second, EASILY getting Bobby as he scampers back toward the bag. McCarver then teaches a seminar (oh don't think I didn't expect it--if Jeter's in the same town as any defensive play, he was integral) on how Jeter was the key to that play and every other play in the history of baseball/rounders. A "nose for the ball," Tim says. Forget the fact that it was all Abreu's fault. Or that Jeter simply caught a ball thrown to him and then threw it to where the dumbass runner was going, right in front of him. Or that Teixeira was the one who came all the way from first to cover the base! Nope, it was all Jeter.

But wait! As we come back from break, McCarver has come up with yet another reason why Jeter's play was so impressive. Tim claims that "no one told him where to throw the ball"! Can you believe that shit? Because of course, as a legally blind citizen, Jeter would never be able to see a baserunner stuck between two bases RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS FACE. Basically the replay we saw as Tim blathered proved the theory wrong as he was saying it. Go back and watch that one for a good laugh. And if Teixeira WASN'T yelling to throw him the ball (again, he wouldn't have needed to, Jeter caught the ball and turned with plenty of time to see where to throw), I'll give you 100 Jeter bucks, good for 50 Tim McCarver used Kleenexes.

In the 10th, the Angels start with a double. Game over, right? Not yet. Yanks go to Mo one batter too late, and the Angels bunt, and Mo goes to third with it! He's got the man! But he throws it away!! Game OVER, right?? No. Yanks back up the play. But it's first and third, no outs, tied. GAME OVER, right? No. Next guy grounds to first, Teix makes diving stop. Runner at third doesn't go, Teix touches base. Second and third, one out. Still just need a sac fly. Abreu looking to atone--but they walk him on purpose to load 'em for Hunter. Of course, our friend Torii grounds to the drawn-in infield, and they get the force at home. Vlad up, and he hits the third grounder to first for an easy out. Angels pull off a miracle, not scoring in that situation.

11th: First two Angels make outs vs. Robertson. Girardi thinks too hard and pulls the guy. Blown-ceves comes in and gives up a solid single to center. Winning run at first. Mathis hits deep fly ball to left--Hairston had gone to left for defensice purposes in the last inning since Damon has no arm (which also effectively took Mo out of the game since he was forced into the lineup and his spot came up in the top of the inning), and he goes back to the wall, doesn't catch the ball, but instead of trying to play the carom, which would have been the only chance they had at throwing the winning run out at home, he goes crashing into the fence, falling down like Shemp. Melky gets ball, but they've got no chance. Angels finally win. Yankees finally lose a postseason game. I bet every Yankee fan said something about "destiny" after they got out of that 10th. But they lost. Angels have to keep it going tomorrow to make it 2-2. CC on three days rest tomorrow!

Where should I start? My problems with Fox's coverage, the Angels, the Yankees, the fans, McCarver.... I'll just throw stuff out there in whatever order:

When a Yankee pitcher has two strikes, instead of Fox showing close-ups of Yankee fans clapping, they should just cut every time to the gigantic scoreboard saying "2 Strikes" and showing two big cartoon hands clapping together. (Look closely--sometimes you can see it on wide shots.) Mike Lupica says they're the greatest fans in the world--more like an audience reacting to an applause sign. I am completely serious, though--why wouldn't Fox want to let the home viewers know that in Yankee Stadium, you're not seeing a natural reaction, but a scoreboard telling people what to do? Whereas in Fenway, every single time the fans cheer during the game in any way, it's completely natural and was done without a cue. If you're from Seattle and have never been to the east coast and you think I'm making this up, please come visit both venues.

And by the way, is Lupica serious with that article? I thought I knew him better than that. I finished it and I said, Ha, good one, Mike! Either that or someone got on to his computer while he was at lunch and whipped up a completely thoughtless article with a premise based on nothing and with no literary value and signed his name to it.

Another guy who couldn't have been serious: that second base umpire. I've never seen a guy make a safe call on an out because he felt like it. What the screw? Ask yourself this. If he makes the out call, do the Yankees even argue? Does any person in the stadium, watching at home, rooting for either team or neither team, think it was anything other than a standard double play? The answer to those questions is No. Unless you're that umpire, in which case you live in opposite-land, where shit falls UP to the toilet and Ronan Tynan liberates the Jews from Auschwitz while singing very short, un-annoying songs.

Another entity that couldn't have been serious: the baseball gods on the Vlad strikeout, where he swung at a pitch ten feet outside, but the ball got away. But, as it's heading away from the catcher, it hits Vlad and goes back toward Molina. And Vlad somehow remembers how to run fast, and he still appears to be safe, but is called out! After all these times when Teixeira is off the bag, I thought maybe they'd give us a break, but no. It seems like Teixeira has a magic, invisible tether--he streeetches, and his foot leaves the bag, but clearly the special foot extension stays on the base! Out, every time! Only the umpire can see this foot-long invisi-toe of his. After that play I wondered if the series was some kind of practical joke.

ANd is it me, or was Torrii Hunter swinging for the fences every time? So many times he'd be up with a key runner on second, usually the go-ahead run. Just get a base hit, man! And his double play was very key, killing the rally when the Angels went up one in extras. I needed more runs there, but Torii was yet again not thinking about getting the man in from second and keeping the lineup moving. (He also should have caught a ball in center that he misplayed. Oh, and speaking of that, on a bloop to right-center late in the game, the second fucking baseman went so far out for it, he appeared to actually PASS where the ball landed before it hit the ground! He let Abreu take it, but he was nowhere near! Stick your glove up, guy! And we never got a replay because Fox had to throw it to the pre-planned Ken Rosenthal PIE REPORT. Man, this game just killed me. And Abreu--can you start walking all the time like you've done in every other game of your career up until two days ago??)

I actually almost went to bed after the mystery double play safe call. And I should have. Oh and didn't you love it when Buck said that all of us baseball fans appreciate how the shitty call didn't affect the game?? Anything like that affects the game. The pitcher has to throw more pitches, the lineup is one man farther along, etc. Instead, maybe when A-Rod hit his wall-scraping home run, he could have said how all of us baseball fans are ashamed that the guy with the key homer took steroids, along with the next game's starting pitcher! (Great job by Aybar for saying "that's fucking unbelievable" and having it picked up by Fox's microphones, though. I'm glad the nation got to hear that.)

Angels--capitalize! Come on! I had told Kim earlier that what I wanted to see was Cano's proud nonchalance cost the Yanks a game. He makes an error, they don't score. He makes ANOTHER error, again they don't score! And Jeter botches a double play ball, and they don't score. And even though Buck calls it a DP ball while it's happening, McCarver tries to come up with some crazy reason why it might not have been one. (This after he told us about a bunch of articles (blog posts? Tweets?) about how Jeter's done, and how those people are now "hiding under a rock in a cave somewhere.")

McCarver also looked at a kid in a Viking hat (not the football team, a fur hat with Viking horns) and said, Oh, Oklahoma just played Texas today. He thought it was a Texas Longhorns hat.

There was one time when Fox was doing one of their replay-a-thons, and at the last second they cut back to live, and we saw the end of a low pitch. After the next pitch, their count only showed one pitch having happened. After each pitch, I thought they'd correct it, putting the extra ball into the count, but no. Then it got to 2-2, which I was pretty sure was actually 3-2, and their count still showed 2-2. We then saw a closeup of the catcher, with the ump's hands behind him. I saw three fingers on one hand AND actually heard a voice say "3-2." Cabrera (I think it was him) struck out on the next pitch. Had it been a ball, he would have walked on what Fox's screen and announcers had told us was a 2-2 pitch. They never clarified it. I think it was the 7th-ish.

And when Mo faced Hunter, the screen went black. Such a key pitch, and I'm sitting there watching blackness, and then I hear the pitch hit the catcher's mitt and a cheer. A full pitch missed in the late-innings of an LCS. Terrible. Can anybody back me up on either of these two things? I could be wrong about that first thing.

Finally, I think I saw a picture of some Yankee with pie--winning a game on an error and getting pied--that's like playing your victory song after a loss! Oh wait....


Update: I was right about the 3-2 thing. Buck even says it's 2-2 when it's actually 3-2. Here's a screen shot of the ump showing 3-2, right behind Fox's 2-2. Last out of bottom of seventh. Terrible job:

Hate crime! Hate crime! Look at what a Yankee fan just commented on my last post (I'll excerpt it, leaving out his incorrect statements about the Red Sox):

"Listen you fucken piece of shit jew mother fucker...

...john henry is a jew fuck..."

He also throws in some vintage Bleacher Cretin homophobia as a bonus!

(It's also really funny to me that some people are so incredibly stupid that they think the abbreviated, g-dropped form of "fucking" (fuckin') is actually its own separate word called "fucken." Like it's "begotten" or something.)

So fitting that after their attempts at paying off the umpires fails, they win on an error. Always the way they do it.

Good thing the scoreboard told the empty chairs when to cheer all game.

The shitlickers are beatable. Will the Obtuse Angles remember how to play baseball? There's still time.