The Assman Grieveth, Part II of III: Sports Make Me Angry

And now I get to bitch about my sports teams. Such is the magic of Festivus.

Let me start by saying I hate sports. Well.... I love them and I hate them. Sports are like a wife to me. Sure, I love them and need them in my life and they help me raise my kids and that sort of thing, but every 5 days or so, I'll see sports standing in the kitchen cutting up potatoes, think about the retarded bullshit it had just pulled the night before and I'll want to shake it for a few minutes until it cries. "Cut your bitching, sports! Cut your bitching now!"

I won't, of course, since the divorce laws are written to protect sports, and I don't want to be sending Roger Goodell a third of my income in alimony, but still... I think about it. Let me explain.

I'm a Raider fan, which means two things:

a.) it was a fucking fumble. It just was, and, no, I'm not going to stop talking about it until we get back to the SuperBowl, win it and spike the game ball into a copy of the NFL rule book. The only Tuck Rule I respect is the one that allows Bill Belichick to dance naked in front of a mirror and sing to himself while avoiding an NC-17 rating. Sorry, and,

b.) it's a good thing that we publicly made an agreement with the NFL to sit this season out and not play any games until the franchise got itself back in order. I mean, if we had agreed to play this season, we might have done something silly like sign Daunte Culpepper and the 300 extra pounds he got surgically grafted to his torso to a contract and start him under center for a few games. We might have traded for Josh McCown and allowed him to do all of the things Aaron Brooks did to get forcibly retired from football and, instead, get a job playing point guard for the Houston Rockets. (If you see a 3rd string shooting guard playing for Memphis next season with McCown on his jersey, don't be surprised...) We might have made an NFL head coach out of the offensive coordinator from USC who made the boneheaded decision to not run a play involving the best player in college football against Texas in a bowl game. We might have even passed up Calvin Johnson and drafted a guy who looks like Daunte Culpepper, but didn't need no stinkin' surgery to have a 300 pound torso in training camp.

Thank God none of that happened. I mean, one more season of LaMont Jordan being surrounded by more garbage than LaMont from Sanford and Son would have been too much to bear. One more season of Robert Gallery being shifted around into more positions than a 20-year-old actress making her screen debut in the back of a van with the Bang Bros. would have broken me. One more season of trying to forget that Ron Curry stiffed UVa (after making a verbal commitment to them, in order to go to Carolina) while watching him drop passes that Aaron Brooks (who could have used him at UVa) conveniently aimed at the back of his head with the lightning speed of a .223 shell would have been nauseating. I'm really glad that, Al Davis, in his pre-death retirement speech, formally requested that the Raiders be left off the NFL schedule this year. As a fan, I needed the break.

Which doesn't mean the season was devoid of it's customary nightmarish pain. After the hated Patriots (it was a fucking fumble!) sweet-talked us out of the most talented player on our roster in exchange for a 4th round pick and some stolen videotape of the Houston Texans' audible signals, I had to spend the year watching Mr. Randy Moss undress the NFL like it got too drunk on prom night and he had the keys to his dad's sweet lake house.

Which isn't a completely terrible thing. I mean, sure, Randy has been so audaciously good that he's basically driven a knife into the hearts of every Raider fan on the planet and, sure, he's so remarkably unstoppable and jaw-dropping that I could come home and find him in bed with my wife and not even be surprised. (She'd say, "He came over and asked to sleep with me. I said no, then sent two cornerbacks and a free safety to keep him out of the house. Next thing I knew, Tom Brady is launching the ball in the air, and before I even saw what happened, Randy's pounding me between the sheets. All three defenders were wondering who missed the assignment and I'm shaking my head in disbelief while watching Randy take off my bra on the Jumbotron. We tried.")

But there's also a measure of pride involved. It's like being the guy that dated Hillary Swank in high school. Sure, she was awkward looking and all of your friends joked about how much she looked like a horse. Sure, she was a little weird and made you feel like a dickbag every time you tossed a can of soda in the trash instead of recycling it. Sure, you were happy to break up with her at the time because being with her made you feel like a little piece of you died every day. But once you saw her on stage accepting that Oscar for playing a horse-faced boxer with Clint Eastwood, you'd well up a little and brag to the guy next to you, "She was all mine for 3 years, buddy. Shitty years, no doubt, but she was all mine." An odd feeling that I can only explain via ham-handed metaphor that makes it sound like I don't think Hillary Swank is attractive despite the fact that, yes, I do. I keep a handful of sugarcubes in my pocket just in case I ever run into her on the street.

I'm also a Yankee fan, which also means two things:

a.) it was a fucking fumble. (Sorry, my inner Raider fan just won't let it go...) And,

b.) nobody in charge of making Yankee decisions ever pays attention to what's going on, and it pisses me off.

Baseball is stupid. Not the sport itself, but whoever is the gatekeeper of the unwritten rules and superstitions. The Red Sox didn't win a World Series for decades and blamed a curse. The Cubs haven't won for decades and blame a goat. Meanwhile, all anyone has to do is watch a few games without a handful of retarded historical yarns in their head to see that teams that win do so because they have good pitching. In fact, if I ever wrote a book about baseball, it'd have exactly two sentences:

1.) "Just get good pitching and the rest kinda handles itself."
2.) "Managers don't need to wear tights."

(Scratch that. I might have a few more sentences in there about the dangers of treating your rules and record books like a holy doctrine handed down by Allah himself. At this rate, baseball is about 20 years away from the first intra-sport jihad between different sects of purists. Shea Stadium will be laced with landmines. Peter Gammons is going to grow a giant beard and send in Youtube videos from his cave about the perils of revenue sharing. Four guys from Cleveland are going to film themselves beheading Dante Bichette in their basement. And, of course, George Bush is going to lead a misguided invasion of Wrigley Stadium claiming their hot dog vendors are attempting to develop Snacks of Massive Destruction. Everyone involved here needs to drink a cool glass of water and learn to relax a bit before the suicide bombers start heading for Barry Bonds' house.)

Which makes me wonder... why do the Yankees, after having won approximately 237 World Series with good pitching, go out and spend long cash on pitchers that exactly nobody thinks are going to be good enough to win 20 games in a season? Then, because we don't have good pitchers, I've got to read headline after headline about how Alex Rodriguex's .310 batting average, attitude and latent homosexuality are the problem.

Sometimes I daydream about being able to go back in time and help my favorite teams out in the draft process or in their free agent signings. Of all the ways I could go back in time and make a legal buck outside of gambling, I think I'd get the most pleasure out of that. Being hired as a team consultant from the future, who gets to say things like "Todd Van Poppel? Not so fast." The Yankees, however, seem to have done the opposite. It seems like they've hired a time traveler from the past who says things like, "Mike Mussina? That guy is automatic," or "Kevin Brown? Get that guy a few hundred million. Sweeet." And we don't win anymore, despite the loaded roster. Blame the coach? Blame the gay third baseman? Or blame the free agency consultant who keeps an almanac from 1996 in his back pocket like Biff Tannen? I'm going with the latter.

And if we are going to have old bums pitching, would it kill them to get on a good steroid regimen? I'm not willing to pretend that steroids make me angry. Pitchers that walk off the mound with the same limp that my dad had after chasing me and my brother around on a playground for 3 hours need a little help. They're all 57 years old, for crying out loud. When Mookie Wilson hit the World Series winning single back in '86, I'm pretty sure Andy Pettitte was warming up in the bullpen. These guys are old. Inject them in the butt with something. Steroids, Ben Gay, pomade, snake oil.... just something. Does basebalI test for super soldier serum, Gummi Beary juice or the ooze that made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The next time I see Robinson Cano, I want him to be hiding a green shell under his jersey. Cowabunga. Do drugs, guys. I don't care. I just don't care. Shoot it up like Blue Magic. We need some help.

Sadly, I'm also a Pacer fan, and my charges against the team are legion! However, my one beef with this season's squad trumps them all.

Ron Artest, blah, Peja Stojakovic, blah blah, Steven Jackson, yak yak yak, trade demands, blah, Larry Bird's a cunt, blah blah, who the fuck is Shawne Williams and why did we draft him, blah, Jamaal Tinsley thinks he's Don Magic Juan... blah blah. Whatever. All nightmares and all irrelevant to the true matter at hand.

Why did we trade for Mike Dunleavy? Of all the sick sad contracts in the NBA, why did we have to trade for his?

Think of every failed NBA prospect in history. They all fail for the same set of reasons. Maybe they're an odd size for their position (Shawn Respert). Maybe they're a little slow and somewhat short of athletic competence compared to the alpha male Replicants they square off against every night (Bryant Reeves). Maybe they're a bit of a douchebag and that fact is obvious to everyone that sees them for 2 minutes (Isaiah Rider). Maybe they have a soft, weenie face that says, "I'm somewhat afraid of you, large black man. Feel free to dunk on me repeatedly. I'll do nothing to impede your progress" (Shawn Bradley). Maybe their name is Nikoloz Tzkitizsvilli (Nikoloz Tzkitizsvilli). And occasionally, you'll come across a guy that somehow combines the worst qualities of every failed NBA player in history (outside of Nikoloz) along with an undeserved long-term guaranteed contract and a weenie dad coach that refuses to trade for him.

Why did we have to get that guy? Any time you have a basketball player that would be best played by Ben Affleck in the movie version of his life, you're not looking at a championship ring in the near future. Any time you have a player from Duke that my Duke fan brother somehow remembers as having gone to UNC instead, don't expect much athletic heroism. Any time you trade away Steven Jackson and people actually have to question why, you're not sitting on an upgrade. You're just not. Any time I'm looking at the salary cap and sorting out whether or not we can trade a guy straight up for Brian Cardinal, I'm not a happy fan.

And, what the hell, since it's National Bitch Day, I may as well bitch about the sports fans here in Arizona.

I mean, I live here, so I should be afraid to say something, but there are only about 9 of them and they're about as passionate as androids having sex with dead nuns. When the Diamondbacks got eliminated from the playoffs this year, there was less uproar than when the Gin Blossoms broke up. That's not normal, nor is it acceptable. I know its weird because, seemingly, 85% of the people here are actually from somewhere else and wouldn't give a fuck about the Cardinals at all if they didn't have Anquan Boldin on their fantasy teams, but, coming from another city where there were zero professional sports, is it so odd to expect people blessed with all of them to somewhat appreciate it!? And I reiterate... I hate sports.

Even fantasy sports. In case you're wondering, hi, I'm the guy that drafted Rudi Johnson and Gilbert Arenas. And it's getting hard to talk now.

Okay, I'm going to take a few minutes to run outside and randomly start choking people till I cum. Be back with Part III shortly...

Comments

[SL22]

Charles Johnson was projected as a 7th rounder, I think. DE out of Louisiana-Monroe, right?

[Schmoopie]

Sugar cubes? Sweet.

[Assman]

Charles Johnson was projected as a 7th rounder, I think. DE out of Louisiana-Monroe, right?

I'm entitled to typos.

[Flash]

We might have traded for Josh McCown and allowed him to do all of the things Aaron Brooks did to get forcibly retired from football and, instead, get a job playing point guard for the Houston Rockets. (If you see a 3rd string shooting guard playing for Memphis next season with McCown on his jersey, don't be surprised...)

Get out of here with this. I very distinctly remember all of your Josh McCown fellatio in the off-season. "Stop being negative," you tell me. "Like Jake Plummer without the INTs," you said. "This is a great signing. You'll see."

All I see is Stay-Puft Russell, Ivan Drago and your bullshit.

[April]

1. I completely agree with you 100% it was in fact a fumble. I fucking hate that pussy, Tom Brady and his butt-chin. IT.WAS.A.FUCKING.FUMBLE!

2. You and I should be wearing black stripes during football games.

3. Alex Rodriguez is gay? He's still hot.

4. Tony Romo is NOT and will NOT ever be a Brett Favre. Mother fuckers need to stop comparing. Period.

5. GO PACKERS!!

[Assman]

I very distinctly remember all of your Josh McCown fellatio in the off-season.

Because he was solid in AZ! Solid! In Det, they must have taught him the Way of Rodney Peete.

4. Tony Romo is NOT and will NOT ever be a Brett Favre. Mother fuckers need to stop comparing. Period.

Well... no. Favre is a legend.