Friday, September 24, 2010

Stream Of Consciousness I

I could not decide whether I wanted to write an article about George Steinbrenner’s immense memorial in Monument Park, or something about the pennant race in baseball. I also had a bunch of other things I wanted to talk about, but they seemed too random to fit into a column about baseball. That's why I am just going to rattle off whatever comes into my brain today. Before you say, "hey, he's taking the easy way out! He just doesn't have a good enough idea for a full-on topic!" Well, you're probably right.


I've determined that the George Steinbrenner memorial in Yankee Stadium is the equivalent of 6 normal monuments…That means that Steinbrenner is as good as Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Lou Gehrig and Reggie Jackson combined…That is, in the eyes of the Steinbrenner family at least, and who could blame them!…Do you think Curtis Granderson gets creeped out knowing that, even though Steinbrenner is dead, he is still watching him and judging him from the centerfield monument…Who would blame him if sometime next season, he turns around and whips a ball at it…Imagine if Steinbrenner was alive today to see this…He would say it's too small, and demand that Monument Park be renamed the George M. Steinbrenner Memorial Park…I was watching the Steinbrenner 30 for 30 documentary, and I noticed something really weird about the Steinbrenner family…This may sound clichĂ©d, but they have an uncanny resemblance to the Corleone Crime Family…Vito is obviously George…Michael is Hal (the young up-and-comer who no one expects to take on the responsibilties of the Family business)…Sonny is Hal (the hothead who has vanished off the face of the Earth)…and Jessica Steinbrenner would be Fredo (a gladhander who doesn't get involved in the dirty work; don't betray the Family, Jessica.)…I am not really sure where Jennifer Steinbrenner-Swindal falls into all this…I guess she is Connie…And Steve Swindal (her ex-husband) is Carlo…Allegedly they got divorced over Steve AKA Carlo’s extra-marital affairs…I’m confused…How did this get past Howie Spira?…I wonder if Steinbrenner had this monument made while he was alive…Would you really be all that surprised if that happened?…


The pennant race in baseball is in full swing…Get it? Full swing?…Good, I am glad you got that joke….I was just thinking about this the other day…Is Jose Bautista the first person to ever hit 50 home runs, and not be mentioned once in any kind of MVP race whatsoever?…To me, Bautista’s fifty is more surprising than Brady Anderson or Luis Gonzalez hitting fifty…Why?…Because this is supposed to be the era where random players do not hit an absurd number of ball out of the park…How can 2010 even be mentioned in the “Best Pitching Season of All-Time” category, if a guy who has not hit a ball to right field in 3 months, has 50 home runs?…I just do not get it…I am sorry, I am still a little rattled after a Madden loss…I take them very, very hard…It is nice that the players no longer run like crippled penguins, but was it necessary to add the impossibility of scoring a touchdown off of a kickoff?…I rarely get to the 15 yard line before my blockers decide “Hey, I’ve done my work for the day!” and allow the entire opposing team and section 7G of the stadium to ambush my returner as if he ran onto the field as a streaker…My guess is that they added this because in Madden 2010, players would regularly average 50.5 yards per return…I cannot decide which was worse…


Where have the Minnesota Twins come from?….I honestly thought they were in last place up until September 1st…They have Justin Morneau out for a majority of the season, and Joe Mauer is about as likely to hit a home run as (Insert Awful Baseball Movie Performance Here)…That team is really all Minnesota has going for it now…The Vikings are in shambles, utter shambles…I was watching Sportscenter today, and they said that Greg Camarillo, a white guy, is Minnesota’s most viable wide receiver option…Now, I am not discriminating against white receivers, but unless your name is Wes Welker or Fred Biletnikoff, then the list of viable white wide receivers is extremely slim…It is kind of like the scene in Airplane! where an elderly woman asks for some “light reading material”…and the stewardess hands her a 4 by 5 inch leaflet entitled “Greatest Jewish Baseball Players”…Back to Minnesota…The T’Wolves are just not very good, and their oldest player is (by my estimation) 21…Apparently they also have a NHL team called the “Wild”…Were they running out of team names when they came up with this?…That is probably the second worst NHL nickname in history, next to only the brief decade where there was a professional sports franchise called “The Mighty Ducks”…How is it that only Kenan Thompson and the main character from Fringe were the only actors to make it “big” (If you call Fat Albert and a low-rated show on network TV “big”)…I could have sworn Goldberg the Goalie would be the biggest star out of that epic franchise…


Should I see The Social Network?…I mean, so far it has had overwhelmingly positive reviews, but I already spend way too much time on Facebook as it is…I do like the idea of putting Justin Timberlake in a role in a movie for once…It only took 100 genius performances on Saturday Night Live for some Hollywood schmos to realize that he might translate to the movies…Why did Shia LaBeouf get to mail in performances and ruin childhood memories (Transformers, Indiana Jones), while JT sat at home plotting SNL Digital Short ideas with (ugh) Andy Samberg…That was some delicious pie I just had…Mmmm….I have spent the whole day thinking about this next idea, but I am not sure if I should reveal it to the public…It involves politics, which I am sure everyone who tunes into a sports column will be juiced up to see…But this is my conscious, and I (for now) can think whatever I want…America’s biggest complain about the government is that the government does not really know what the people want right?…If that was not true, then why does the power in Congress switch over as often as it does?…Anyway, I have an idea that should solve this problem for the time being…Why don’t we have America vote on certain issues in America, American Idol style?…Stop laughing…Stop!…I do not mean have them vote on topics that will A) Affect America’s economy/world standing or B) Have anything to do with national security…Why not have people vote on hot-button issues like stem cell research and the like?…This way, you get to see America’s morality represented as a whole, and not just represented by Bill Right-wing and Mark Left-wing…Doesn’t this seem like a half-way decent idea?…This way, people feel more involved, and I do not have to hear uninformed people talk about why they hate the government… “Well, uh, I do not like it because, uh, they are raising our taxes way too high!”… I heard this from a 16-year-old the other day…


This Weeks NFL Picks…Winners are in Caps…TEN v Nyg…CIN v Car…PIT v. Tb…Buf v NE…Cle v. BAL…Sf v KC…Dal v HOU…DET v Min…ATL v No…WAS v Stl…PHI v Jac…IND v Den…OAK v Ari…SD v Sea…Nyj v MIA…GB v Chi…Season Record: 17-15…Go to Pigskin Pick Em to see my picks against the spread…I am 19-13 there…Follow me on Twitter!…www.twitter.com/theatticfan

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