Not-so-Free Willy

Typically when someone goes off on their “corporations are evil” speeches I just stay silent until they zip up their Northface coat, grab their Starbuck latte, start up their Toyota Prius and head off to Target to pick up a copy of Toy Story for their kid’s sleepover party. But this is one case in which the hippies might be right.

 

In case you don’t want to read the long version in the link above, here’s a quick summary.

1. Poorly socialized child is groomed into running the family business and builds an empire in the party-favor industry (and yes, in this case empire is not being thrown around loosely).
2. Businessman looses $127 million gambling at Harrah’s… in 2007 alone… accounting for over 5% of Harrah’s total revenue from Las Vegas area gambling that year.
3. Harrah’s sues businessman for $14 million after he fails to repay a gambling line of credit they extended him.

Now this is an Epic Fail on multiple fronts (where is this guy’s accountant), but when you claim that “promotion of responsible gaming is part of your heritage and culture” you’re held to a higher standard. If I wanted to go on an anti-corporate conspiracy argument I could dust off a Michael Moore book and say the whole campaign is a way to lure compulsive gamblers into gambling at Harrah’s since the casino will cut them off if they get in over their head. But there’s plenty more to talk about.

 

That “culture of responsible gaming” doesn’t appear to be relative to at least one competitor. The gambler in question was a frequent patron of Wynn’s prior to moving to Harrah’s in 2007. But “his heavy betting attracted the attention of Wynn’s CEO,” who met with the gambler, determined he had a problem and barred him from his casinos. That act speaks more to a culture of responsible gaming than a web page, series of television commercials and a mission statement.

But Harrah’s manages to rocket past bullshit customer friendly façade and take this to a level that can best be described by a Dennis Leary song. Apparently, taking over $100 million off of him in a year isn’t quite enough. Harrah’s has the guy facing criminal charges for failing to repay a $14 million marker the casino issued him, which in Nevada means that he’s facing down 28 year prison sentence. By my math this guy is getting one third of what Bernie Madoff got… and while it took Madoff 20 years to ruin the lives of thousands of people, it took the casino only a year to ruin this guy’s life. Yeah, that seems fair.

 

You’ll forgive me if I have trouble emphasizing with Harrah’s, because on top of the moral problems on display I am only slightly less disgusted with their lack of intelligence. Running a casino is a highly competitive, complex business built on long-term statistical odds that play to the house’s favor. And for all this “talent” running the company, you’d think that someone might have raised a red flag before extending a $14 million marker to a guy that’s $100 million in the hole for the year. I’m not sure I need a Harvard MBA to see that this might not be a great investment.

 

All in all not a very good showing for Harrah’s. Take a man’s personal fortune in a single year, check. Push to throw a man in prison for 28 years because of behavior you enabled, encouraged and profited handsomely from, check. Destroy corporate reputation, check.

The Psychology of Irrational Exuberance

Irrational exuberance isn’t just for financial bubbles anymore; it can be translated to any situation in which you ignore mounting evidence that a good thing is about to go bad.


Got a new girlfriend that’s way out of your league? Wondering why she wouldn’t let you borrow her chap stick, always has loads of small bills that smell like aloe and has a wide assortment of body lotions that all contain glitter? To the impartial observer that’s a clear case of a stripper with raging herpes. But to the guy who’s about to get that first “random” cold sore, he looks past all of the clear evidence for the typo riddled text message from Porsche at 4am asking what he’s up to.

And when we look back with the benefit of hindsight we ask ourselves how we could have been so stupid to ignore such obvious signs. It’s quite simple. We see what we want to see until reality wakes us up with a shift kick to the jimmy.

This Saturday, irrational exuberance reared its ugly head Kinnick Stadium. For 9 weeks Iowa has been winning game after game that it had no business winning. Normally a glass half empty guy, I went on the record as giving Iowa a 20% shot to get smoked in the National Title game, treating the Big Ten title like it was Kirk Ferentz’s birthright.

We ignored the warning signs; an inability to consistently move the ball… injuries piling up on a team that no one is mistaking for having USC-like depth… a penchant for turnovers… the lack of a gamebreaker at the skill positions. (And for all of those fans who want to drop Marvin McNutt’s name here let’s put it this way. Sure he’s a great college player who may even be able to bulk up a bit and develop into an Ernest Wilford type player in the NFL. But if your argument is based on Marvin McNutt’s ability to out run Indiana’s entire secondary for 90 yards, you need to find a new measuring stick. Indiana is a Division I football program in name only.)

The chickens came home to roost in the form of a moderately talented Northwestern team that may or may not be able to win the Motor City Bowl. And this is key because if this happened versus OSU the bubble would not have burst. Then it would have been a simple case of an “elite” team losing to another “elite” team on their home field. There’s no shame in getting knocked out by George Foreman (the angry 1970s version… not the benevolent 1990s version), but when Gerry Cooney puts you on the canvas you start to reconsider your life view.

So now the flaws are apparent to even the most myopic fans. If we wondered why Ferentz was sticking with Stanzi despite his penchant for throwing picks, our questions were answered on Saturday. We told ourselves that Ken O’Keefe was playing possum with the play calling and saving a little something up his sleeve for OSU. But then we watched him call a naked bootleg in his own end zone and then air it out 27 times in just over two quarters with an unheralded redshirt freshman with 3 previous pass attempts and remembered that his play selection is more limited than the orignal TECMO Bowl.

This bubble did hurt. This team was our everyman. No one stood out; they just went about their business every Saturday, gave us a heart attack and won. But eventually, the next man in philosophy will fail. But in terms of the typical case of irrational exuberance this one is fairly mild. Fortunately for us, this bout of irrational exuberance didn’t cost us any money… unless you already put down a non-refundable deposit on airfare and hotel to Pasadena. And unlike most other forms of irrational exuberance, this one is a rare case in which the rollercoaster ride to the top was worth the inevitable crash. Coming into this year, Iowa had the catch. Now, we get to ask which one.

So the Hawks journey on to OSU and the land of jean shorts with an uneven redshirt freshman under center. Vegas will likely post Iowa to be 20 point dogs now that Terrell Pryor seems to have entered into the “game manager” category of quarterback evaluation and Iowa’s QB will still be in the “who is this guy’s backup” category. Maybe Iowa has one more miracle up their sleeves, but the realistic goal from here on out has to be to make it interesting in Columbus, hoist the pig in two weeks and head into a January 1 bowl game with a chance to make a statement for 2010.

Random Thoughts from the Road

It's not a good thing when you come back to a hotel after six months away and the valet still remembers your name. But you learn some interesting things on the road. Some are even useful. I thought I'd share a few.

aLoft
My loyalty to the Starwood chain is rivaled only by Terry Francona's loyalty to Jason Varitek. Starwood's new mini-W is not a bad place to stay, but the lobby plays non-stop techno like it's a Martini Lounge in downtown Denver with a $2 martini happy hour. And it smells like your dorm room that was hastily cleaned before your parents arrived for a weekend visit. In other words, you strolled in 20 minutes before their arrival and tried to cover up the smell of weed by dumping imitation Pine Sol all over the floor and burning 15 sticks of incense.

The Other Benefit of Being Well-Read 
When jumping on a plane, always take a hardcover or large paperback book. Not necissarily to read, but the next time you find yourself next to someone weighing 3 bills and they "spill" over the armrest you'll need that book to wedge inbetween you and your arm rest. And if you're thinking that this doesn't solve the upper body spillover, I've yet to encounter someone who didn't lean the other way after feeling that book push them back across the Mason-Dixon line.

Ever Wonder What Dubya's Been up to?
If you ever find yourself in Dallas tune into the local AM sports talk radio station. In the post-work drive time slot they have a host that sounds exactly like George W. Bush. At first I was jarred when hearing a dead-ringer of our best 21st century two-term President offer half baked thoughts on the Cowboys... but it feels like a natural fit after about 5 minutes. Jimmy Carter builds houses, Bill Clinton gives speeches, George W Bush talks football. Yup, everything is right in the world.

The Legend of Frank Dux
If you have a 3+ night stay in a hotel I guarantee you'll catch Bloodsport on Versus at least once if you turn on your TV after 10:00 pm. And in 15 years someone will be writing the same thing about The Transporter.

The "Entertainment" of In-Flight Entertainment is Used Loosely
The best movies I've seen on a flight: Transformers, In Burges, Bottle Shock and Ratatouille. I consider two of those movies watchable. But the selection of movies does move you to ponder the larger philosophical question of how Ryan Reynolds continues to find work. Personally I thought he would have peaked with Blade III.
And remember that Valentine's Day episode of The Office? And the Phyllis/Bob Vance of Vance Refridgeration restaraunt scene? Well, on the plane they felt this scene pushed the envelope a bit too far and it's cut out completely because it's OK to let robots blow up downtown LA but subtly indicating that a married couple decides to take a quick break during their lunch break is strictly off limits. In short, make sure you load up the podcasts before you depart.


And You Would Be?
Apparently this guy is a big deal. And apparently I'm getting old... because I talked with this guy for an hour before I had to ask him who he was after the third person asked me to take their picture with him. Conversely, when a handful of the 2008 Boston Red Sox bellied up to the bar at the Pasadena Westin before an exhibition series with the Dodgers it took me about 5 seconds to figure out who they were. Douchey.

Quick Hits
International red carpet lounges = free drinks. Domestic red carpet lounges = pay for drinks. Important distinction.

When they ask you to turn off all electonic devices shut it down. If you're so friggin' important why in the hell are you flying coach?

St. Ives is very different from St. Ides. Not really a travel learning but the St. Ives commercial just aired and my mouth started to water because I didn't make the distinction at first. On a related note (this commerical is also airing), I give the George Lopez show an over/under of 4 weeks. In other words, the promotion of the show during the playoffs will last longer than the show itself. See Frank TV for historical precedence.

Drinking out of those airline bottels is always a treat because it reminds me of the best dive bar on the East Coast. But it's even a bigger treat when you see someone in a suit double up on the Monday 6:00 am flight out and chase it with an Egg McMuffin.

You Don't See This in The Economist Everyday

As a subscriber of The Economist I'm looking for two things. One, a point of view other than the "Obama should be deified" and "Obama is the anti-Christ" lenses that the U.S. media offers. Two, reading The Economist on the train makes me look smarter than I actually am. And unlike Penthouse Forum, it doesn't get me any dirty looks.


So I was flipping through the October 10th issue and was getting to the end. This is the point in which I usually just look at the job ads to see if the International Monetary Fund is in the market for a monolingual chap with less financial acumen than Lenny Dykstra. And there's always an obit. Usually it's for a very distinguished economist, politician or scholar, but this one caught my attention.

The Economist does a much better job eulogizing this man but let me offer my thoughts. At the age of 14 he is orphaned, but instead of disappearing into obscurity he goes to school and becomes fluent in 3 languages. That story upon itself is After School Special worthy, but we're not even halfway home. You see, Mr. Edelman was Polish. And Jewish. And it's 1939 in Warsaw.

Unless you're Mel Gibson Sr you don't need a history lesson on how being Jewish in Warsaw in 1939 is probably the worst set of circumstances one could find yourself in... Stalin to your East, Hitler to your West. @$*&, that's not good. Even Dana Barrett had someone to turn to when she was turned into a dog by an obscure 19th century religious cult.

And Mr. Edelman had some notice. He was a messenger and regularly journeyed out of the ghetto, so he got an early wind of what the Nazi's were up to. He didn't run. He didn't hide. He did what even the bravest could talk of doing in a hypothetical sense, he took up arms and organized an armed resistance against the Nazis in the ghetto. And when the ghetto burned to the ground he continued to resist the Nazis, ultimately participating in the Warsaw uprising of 1944. That moves us from After School Special territory to a direct-to-video movie starring Michael Ironside. But it doesn't stop there.

After Poland is "liberated" he doesn't leave Poland, getting a medical degree, becoming a noted cardiologist and staying in Poland until the day of his death. And all during this time he was active politically in a number of organizations that weren't exactly in good status with the communist powers in Poland, at one point getting interned. But once again Mr. Edelman outlasted his opponent; he lived to eventually serve in the post-communist Polish Parliament. Now we're officially in Oscar winning Spielberg flick starring Russell Crowe and Daniel Craig.

But just to add a little more intrigue, Mr. Edelman smoked two packs of heaters a day... and lived to 90. So, to sum it up, he faces down being orphaned at 14; Hitler, the Nazis and Stalin at 20; and communist rule and heart disease for his last 60 years. This guy is making every character John Wayne ever played look like Stuart French.

So my words can't do this man justice. Nor can Adam Sandler's. So let me leave you with the opening paragraph to Mr. Edelman's obit in The Economist.

"HE WAS sure that once he started fighting, he was going to die. No point in being scared about it. Death was death; there was nothing more, nothing bigger, that could happen to him. At least in this way, taking up arms, he could die on his own terms rather than theirs. His time, his place. Suicide would have been another way to do it, but he never considered that. Going to the gas chamber or the mass grave with quiet, considered dignity, like many of the residents of the Warsaw ghetto, was another way: far more admirable and more difficult, he thought, than running through random bullets as he did. But it was not for him. Only by dying as publicly as possible, loudly and with his gun blazing, could he let the world know what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Poland."

Getting a Little Ahead of Myself

The Hawkeyes are 6-0 for the first time since 1985 and the hopes are escalating enough that a 33 year-old man has broken out the "If You Ain't a Hawkeye, You Ain't Shit" shirt for the first time since the pressurized beer bong incident of 2005... which wasn't really an incident until it devolved into a pressurized wine cooler bong when the beer ran out. And last week I even talked myself into buying a box of mementos from the Penn State game for taunting purposes despite the fact I only know one Penn State grad.

So here we are in week 7 coming off more close wins that I care to relive. And I've now talked myself into the Hawks having an 8% chance to play for the national title, where they would get mollywomped by Alabama, USC, Texas or Florida baring some sort of bus accident involving those team's first string offense, defense and a handful of redshirts. But I have to remind myself that these things usually don't end well.

1997. The Hawks storm to a 4-0 record after a tough opening slate featuring Northern Iowa, Tulsa, Iowa State and Illinois. Fortunately, as a Hawks fan with 3 years experience I had long since given up any illusions that the Hawks were going to be a contender under Hayden "Have Nick Bell Run the Draw on 3rd and 8" Fry. And despite the fact that Gameday was on campus, I had no intention of setting foot into a stadium that would ultimately be remembered for Plez Atkins cementing Orlando Pace's draft status. I spend the tailgate hitting range balls in the Slater parking lot and trying to hitch a ride to the bars with an uncooked Brat wedged in my zipper. The Hawks lose. I lose $20 in a longest drive contest. And another $20 in a putting contest.

1995. The Hawks storm to a 5-0 record beating the likes of Northern Iowa, Iowa State, New Mexico State, Michigan State and Indiana. Do you notice the pattern that Fry didn't exactly like to schedule the NFC East towards the end of his tenure? Yet, the campus was a buzz as the team traveled east to play the rebuilding Penn State Nittnay Lions, fresh off a shared national title in 1995 and losing 3 top 10 picks to the NFL. As SOP dictates, I went out the night before, probably to the Sports Column with a 1:00 am run to The Union... probably wearing my Absolute Irish t-shirt. (To those who knew me back then, a sarcastic thanks for the wardrobe advice.) The game started at 11:00. I wake up at 11:20. The score was 21-0. I went back to bed. The Hawks went back to the Sun Bowl. And we spent the winter watching the legend of Chris Kingsbury take shape and listening to the more myopic of Hawks fans talk about how Iowa outscored Penn State 10-7 in the second half.

1985. I wasn't around for this season. At this point in my life Iowa wasn't even the school that turned in Illinois for the Deon Thomas situation. But this is a season that ended in such infamy that I grew more obsessed with finding a Hawkeye fan that didn't think Ronnie Harmon threw the Rose Bowl than Dr. Richard Kimball trying to prove his innocence. (BTW, can you recognize the one politician staring at the camera at the 1:00 mark?) But to this day it remains the only time Iowa was involved in a #1 v. #2 game, and probably the only time in my lifetime.

So what am I getting at? The journey has, and hopefully will continue to be, fun with a few more trips to Shadows and maybe even a road trip to Columbus. But it will most likely end in 2009. And by most likely I mean 92% most likely... but there's always that 8% chance.

My Nixon List: Buck Fuffet Edition

Bucket Lists are all the rage nowadays. I guess that's what happens when you make the definitive movie of the decade. But we're forgetting a much more important list that each of us should live our lives with. An enemies list. Famously, Richard Nixon kept an enemies list during his days as this nation's President. If it's good enough for one of our three best presidents of the 1970s then it's good enough for me. Here' s the first in a series of what hopefully won't be a long list. 

Eric Cartman and I agree on two things, hippies and Jimmy Buffet. The only difference is that my hatred of Buffet runs much deeper.

My hatred started way back in 1990 when I was a wide eyed freshman with a killer mullet hitching a ride to school every day with junior that lived down the street. And being a younger member of my class I wasn't going to be getting my driver's license until my junior year. So for the next two years I caught a 20 minute ride to school with this guy every day. And this guy had one cassette tape, you guessed it, Jimmy Buffet's Greatest Hits... a term that has not been applied that loosely this side of Color Me Bad.

For 5 days a week, for 20 minutes to start my day, I was "treated" to Jimmy Buffet on a continuous loop. Even Donald Rumsfeld would consider that torture. By the end of my sophomore year my ear for music was so utterly destroyed that this and this made their way into my CD collection. And if that's not enough, U2 released Achtung Baby in November 1991. Now, you might think this is a good thing. Not so much.

For weeks I looked forward to its release, knowing that this cassette would get purchased on the same day it was released. I was like Charlie Sheen in Platoon counting down the days to the end of his tour, but then Oliver Stone decided to make a sequel. On the way home that day we stopped at Best Buy to pick it up. For the next week we made our way through the tape... Mysterious Ways... One... Even Better than the Real Thing... Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses. My sanity returned long enough for me to scrap my plans to base my wardrobe on my New Edition album covers.

Then, after two rotations through U2. My driver said "I guess U2 had to lose it at some point... we'll stick to the classics." My parole denied. Damn you Buffet. Damn you to hell.

Luckily I was largely able to avoid Mr. Buffet after my sophomore year. He always played Alpine Valley every summer but isolating myself from the 40 year old soccer moms who duct taped a shark fin to their mini-van and drove up for the show was easy enough. All was right with the world again. He had his world, I had mine.

But recently Buffet the corporate entity has started to encroach on my space. First, he launched a series of restaurants. Fine, I can still avoid that. He opened a series of casinos and partnered with Harrah's to drop the restaurant in a lot of their locations. Getting more problematic but casinos are big places. Then he bought into the Dolphins and wrote a horrible song (is there any other kind of Buffett song) that makes this horrible song about the Dolphins almost listenable. Fine, I lost interest in the Dolphins when Dan Marino and Ace Ventura moved on.

Then he started a line of tailgating accessories that are heavily advertised during college football games. Dear god man. Is there no shelter from the never ending string of shit you'll slap your name on? You're making Krusty the Clown look like JD Salinger.

And for invading my college football Saturdays I put you squarely on my Nixon list. As Cocunut Pete said, "son of a son of a son of a bitch." Buck you Fuffet. Buck you.

The Soundtracks of our Lives

Music is one of the constants of our species. It was here long before we were and it will be here long after Keith Richards dies in 2056. The ironic thing its longevity is due to the fact that music constantly evolves at a breakneck speed to stay relevant. For something that’s been around for millions of years it’s quite amazing that in the last 30 years we’ve seen the advent of punk, hip hop and ska among others genres of music.

Sometimes this is for the good. The Paladia channel is one of the greatest ideas in the history of cable TV and music. With the possible exception of Remote Control, MTV aint’ got nothing on Paladia. Paladia’s decision to devote an entire channel to airing high definition recordings of classic concert footage ranks it right up there in the pantheon of great cable TV decisions along with ESPN, NFL Sunday Ticket’s Red Zone channel and Cinemax’s decision to corner the 13-17 year old male market with its late night programming.

But then again even the best of ideas can go horribly, horribly wrong. BTW, if you're Train's manager and you don't stop this you're not doing your job. And if you're a program at Paladia and this makes it on to the air, you're not doing your job either. And sometimes a musical idea can even go from so right - the Sugar Hill Gang leads to Biggie - to so wrong - Biggie leads to the P Diddy upper body dance... which we can all agree is utterly horrible.

But amongst all this chaos there are constants. I’m no sociologist, but I’m guessing music originated when some caveman figured that starting a band was a better way to get laid than the whole club and hair pulling thing.

Another constant is the near-universal opinion that one’s generation produced the best music and that all subsequent generations are tone-deaf. My great-grandfather probably told grandpa that Glenn Miller couldn’t hold Frederic Chopin’s baton. And my grandfather probably told my father that Elton John wasn’t man enough play piano in Glenn Miller’s band (don’t underestimate the power of the greatest generation’s gay-dar). And I do remember my father shaking his head at the “wailing” that was Eddie Vedder and asking if I ever listened to Rocket Man. And I know that someday I’ll tell my kid to turn that shit down so I can watch my Seinfeld reruns.

Don’t believe me? Then take a quick inventory of your iPod. While a great deal of your inventory may have come from “before your time” (but you still heard these for the first time at an early age) I’m guessing that about 90% of the songs were released prior to your 30th birthday. Why is this?

It’s the memory of youth. For us it’s not necessarily the music itself, but the memories triggered by the song itself. The band Orgy released a remake* of the New Order song Blue Monday. Both the song and the bad are lacking most, if not all, redeeming musical qualities. Yet I have fond memories of the song specifically because of the memories I associate with it.

* Side Note: Is there anything more predictable than a mediocre band having a moderate hit from a remake from a specific genre, failing to generate a follow-up with their own music and then resorting to covering another song from that same genre? FYI Orgy's song was You Spin Me.

Billy Corgan might think he’s the second coming of Ludwig van Beethoven, but in reality he’s just a self-indulgent apathetic whiner that rode a generations’ angst* and a couple of clever videos to stardom. Yet a smile still comes to my face when Disarm hits my ear and I remember my first real concert at Redbird Arena. Or try to watch this… or this… or this. Can you tell me that those songs didn’t bring you a smile and a memory? That’s the power of music.

* Side Note II: Is there a generation with a flimsier excuse to be angst ridden then Generation X? Economic prosperity, check. No threat of being drafted into a war, check. A vast assortment of entertainment options, check. Free porn on the Internet, check. The fall of the Soviet Union, check. What were we so pissed about? This might be a future blog subject… or just a link to 427 shitty sociology theses.

The beats, the lyrics, they resonate because music is the most effective memory trigger mechanism for the human memory. We essentially create a soundtrack of our lives. And don’t think you’re the only one that thinks their existence would be enhanced with theme music. I have mine, you have yours… and nothing is better than our own nostalgia set to our music.

Iowa v. Iowa State Thoughts

A few quick thoughts on the morning after... the Cyclones may have walked home at about 4:00 in the afternoon, but I believe that performance allows us to add a second definition to the term walk of shame here.

What the *#$& is the ISU Mascot

Called the cyclones, but there seems to be some kind of bird roaming the sidelines. And that bird looks a lot like a certain University of Iowa mascot.

Let's see... walking bird, check. "I" on the chest, check. Bared teeth, check. Angry look, check. No pants, check.

I'm not a patent attorney, but maybe the folks up in Ames should change their name to the Iowa State Copyright Infringers. Here's a tip folks, if your buddy has a black Ford Taurus and you buy a red Ford Taurus, you still have a Ford Taurus. So while you may hang your high school graduation tassel from the rear view mirror, add a spoiler and throw a racing strip down the side it's still the same car. The only difference is that your neighbor's car is capable of driving 10 yards without breaking down.

And to add insult to injury, check out this shirt from the ISU athletic department. "It's not a Hawkeye... it's RED!" Congrats ISU, I feel sorry for you for the first time.

Setting the Bar... Low
If your team treats a non-conference game played in the second week of the season like a bowl that's a sign your team is going nowhere. If your opponent in that game is the University of Iowa, it's a sign that you have the worst inferiority complex since Jan Brady. Well that and if you try to steal their mascot then denying doing so.

How much has ISU overstated the importance of this game, well the dedicated a whole week to game prep and built a web site specifically for this game. Does Michigan have a Beat OSU site? How about Texas and OU? ISU has essentially gone beyond treating this game like a Bowl Game and moved straight to treating it like the Super Bowl.

And way to show up for your Super Bowl fellas. Did you consult Marv Levy for methods to prepare?

The Cy-Hawk Trophy

I realize that the well meaning folks of Iowa State want to play for something, because they ceased playing for pride sometime around 1:00 CST, but this has to be the ugliest, least interesting trophy out there. Iowa needs to put it's foot down. If it ain't a pig, we're not playing for it.

Can we just give this to Iowa State every year as an perfect attendance award? Great work showing up on time fellas, here's your trophy. Of course you'll have to repeat the 7th grade again because of you have trouble grasping the basics but your perseverance is an inspiration to morons everywhere.

The Science of Rivalries

There are certain things that can’t be considered from a rationale perspective. Relationships. Political debates after the 4th drink of the evening. Religion. Art. Sarah Palin. Rivalries.

That last one is new to me as I’ve always thought that rivalries should rationale. The traditional thought is that a rivalry needs three basic elements; geographic proximity, regular match-ups and an evenly matched opposition. If you got doses of those three, you probably have a rivalry. But I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Let me illustrate using my alma mater the Harvard of the Midwest*, aka The University of Iowa.

* This is a joke people… I realize that Iowa is at best the Harvard of Iowa. Years ago on a recruiting visit to Miami (OH) the tour guide actually referred to the school as the Harvard of the Midwest without a trace of sarcasm. This one sentence ended my desire to attend Miami (OH). That and the fact it was located in Ohio.

Geographic proximity used to be a must-have – after all, familiarity breeds contempt. But the explosion of ESPN and the rise of the Internet and social media, you no longer have to share a fence with someone to develop a deep-seeded dislike of someone. Twenty years ago I could have cared less about the relative merits of the various conferences… it has no discernable impact on the performance of my team. But this debate on the SEC as the nation’s premier college football conference has subjected me to an endless string of articles, comment posts, radio shows, etc that spend hours upon hours exploring the “SEC rules, the Big Ten sucks” story line.

At first I took the “who gives a shit” defense. But after three years they’ve successfully annoyed me to the point where I have an irrational hatred of the SEC in general and point out that Iowa has beaten LSU and Florida in their own backyard in the past five years. That and no SEC team has played a regular season game outside of the confederacy since the Wing-T offense fell out of favor. And given the admission standards of some of those schools I’m guessing that the next time an SEC player has to play in the snow he would attempt to bottle up some snow to take it back to campus… and then be given an A+ in advanced chemistry for proving that it can’t snow in 75 degree weather.

Regular encounters used to be a must, and it still is. But because college teams compete for the same recruits and pro teams go after the same free agents that competition now comes in the form of the offseason team building. Back in the day you had no idea what type of recruits you were getting, the only way I judged a recruit was by the schools Iowa beat out. And let’s just say you could see the end of the Hayden Fry era ending poorly when we’d routinely get recruits to choose Iowa over Kent State, Western Michigan and the rest of the sisters of the MAC.

Nowadays the Internet scrutinizes these kids closer than the IRS reviewing Willie Nelson’s tax returns. Everyone gets attached to these kids as the next savior of the program. Call it the backup quarterback syndrome, because these kids have never cost their team a game and some recruiting “expert” compares them to Eddie George complete strangers now take an 18 year-old’s decision way-to-personally. And when some random school beats your team for the services of some kid, you decry his decision like he’s making the worst mistake of his life and resent the kid, and his school, for no reason.

The most seemingly rationale element is the last, evenly matched opposition. What do Yankees v. Red Sox, Michigan v. Ohio State, and Packers v. Bears have in common? They’re all relatively even teams that have routinely met in high stakes games over a long period of time. But how do you explain the Cubs and the Cardinals? They have played about 12 times per year for the last 75 years but when have those games meant something in the standings? The few times that the Cubs have been in the pennant race over the past several decades have coincided with down years for the Cards.

From a rationale perspective, the Cubs should not be considered anyone’s rival. It’s simply impossible to hate a team that routinely lets you take the season series. But Brewers and Cards fans hate the Cubs. Is there a rationale reason for that? Wouldn’t they be angry if you dropped the Cubs off their schedules and brought in the Yankees? But this might be an exception, I think the hatred has more to do with the fact that those fans reside in Milwaukee and St. Louis. If I lived there I’d be bitter too.

So I come to the Iowa v. Iowa State rivalry. I should have no reason to hate Iowa State, the Pittsburgh Pirates of the Big 12. This is a team that might struggle to win the Illinois High School 4A title… they’ve essentially been taking Iowa’s recruiting leftovers for years… their idea of a meaningful bowl game takes place during the second Saturday in September… Ames is just a bit more enticing that downtown Gary… the campus is a living embodiment of the term “sausagefest.” And yet, I still can’t stand the sight of those red and yellow uniforms slowly chasing the opposition down the field and throwing their hands in the air as the opposition crosses the goal line again… and again… and again, in the first quarter.

It just goes to show that there are some things you can’t rationalize. I hate Iowa State.

When the Stats Don't Add Up

.278/.372/.452. Being a believer in the "Moneyball" approach to baseball those numbers tell me I should be happy to have this guy penciled in my starting lineup on a regular basis. Assuming this guy isn't a statue in the field, a lineup full of guys like this would make the 1927 Yankees look like 2003 Detroit Tigers.


But as much as this guy is a statistical stud, his greatest contribution is that he makes you realize that as much as you want to boil down baseball to statistical measures, the joy of the game doesn't come from the box score. The joy of the game is about the story behind that box score. Griffey Jr.'s follow through. Ichiro throwing a 375 foot strike. Lou Piniella throwing a base 17 feet. Beltran going from first to third. McGwire negotiating a 15% discount off the price of his monthly pharmaceutical supply. That's where the love of the game comes from.


An astute observer would already surmise that I am talking about Milton Bradley. And yes, this is probably the 5,297th blog written about the man since he put on the Cub uniform. Everything that I know about baseball says that at the end of the year I should be happy that my starting right fielder is putting up offensive numbers that are on par to those of the Cub's 1987 N.L. MVP. But watching him play and looking back at his cumulative stats in October are two different things.


I started this article with the intention that I would write about the fact that the strongest muscle in his body seems to be the one attached to his pointer finger. Look back to his time in Cleveland, LA, Oakland. Blowing out his ACL arguing with an umpire... blaming the umpires for his early struggles with the Cubs... about blaming others for his short stints with other teams. It's never Bradley's fault. But then you took a closer look and see something else.

It's not that the man is lazy. This Friday I watched him hit a somewhat routine fly to right in the middle of a game destined to get lost amongst the other 161 games of the Cubs' forgettable 2009 season. Bradley then proceeded to run out a ball at full speed that will be caught 999 out of 1,000 times... and this guy's hamstring is about as reliable as your old college roommate that still tours with Widespread Panic at the age of 34.

And it's not that he's a player that takes talent for granted. Anyone who rehabs a torn ACL in one offseason isn't sitting around watching Deadliest Catch re-runs all day. The man may be injury prone but it's not like he's showing up to Spring Training with a severe case of Dunlap disease.


It's because Bradley does not play the game because he loves it, he plays the game because he's exceptional at it. And he knows it. "I don't get happy for myself. I might do something, but you don't ever see me smile about it. But when other guys do something, I get happy."

How many people do you know that drag themselves to work every Monday despite dreading the week ahead? Are those the people you like to have lunch with? And do they sound like Milton? They are not happy people.

But let's not kid ourselves, very few of us look forward to Mondays with an earnest eagerness and expectations to change the world with every key stroke. We may do fulfilling work, but the moments in which we derive pure joy from the job certainly don't occur every day. And that's why we can't root for Milton despite the fact he's more than a productive major leaguer. While most of us would kill to turn on a fastball just once, you get the feeling that Bradley wakes up every day and wishes for the anonymity of a desk job. It's hard to root for a guy like that.

And if he had a desk job with your company, you'd probably eat lunch with someone else .

The Cubs (un)Officially Concede the 2009 Season

As of Sunday morning Baseball Prospectus still listed the Cubs as having a 6% chance of making the playoffs but we can officially lick the stamp on the 2009 season for the Cubs. And if I know the Ricketts family, and I don't, I'm guessing they are experiencing the largest case of buyer's remorse since L. Paul Bremmer left Iraq.


So what's in store for 2010? More disappointment? Yes. Enough disappointment for my season ticket waiting list number to come through? Doubtful

The Cubs' only free agent of note is Rich Harden and I'm guess he'll depart for cooler temperatures. This guy's day/night splits scream for Rich to land with a northern team that plays mostly at night. That leaves the Cubs with a rotation of Big Z, Lilly, Dempster, Randy Wells and to-be-determined Jim Hendry panic signing #1 of the offseason. He let Jason Marquis go after signing for three years and $16 million, can he get Jason back for four years and $40 million? And by the way, I use "let" and "paid the Rockies to take him" interchangeably.


The rest of the roster looks to be locked in place unless a massive payroll increase/buy-out is on the horizon. Soriano, Fukudome, Bradley and Dempster's contracts are all varying degrees of untradable. That's right Cubs fans, we have another two seasons of that starting outfield taking the field at Clark and Waveland. And you wonder why the beer flows so fast and plentifully in the Bleachers.


Theriot, Soto and Marmol will be in line for arbitration increases in the coming years and the only salaries coming off the books next year are Lee and Lilly... two players you'd think they'd want to resign for reasonable amount. So the Cubs could add another player only if they had some more money to throw around. But if you're a Cubs fan do you really trust Jim Hendry to make another major free agent signing? Only if you're a big David Eckstein fan... or a fan of overpaying for "scrappiness" in general.


So a trade might be in order. And two players that may have some trade value, Aramis and Big Z, have full no trade clauses. So unless you want to trade one of your few 20-something players nothing is going to be coming along in a trade. And frankly, do you want Jim Hendry making a blockbuster trade on the Cubs behalf?

Maybe the minors will deliver an impact player. But while the minor league system has done a good job of providing some organizational depth to cover some injuries, Sam Fuld, Jake Fox and Randy Wells aren't going to lead you to the promised land. The only impact prospect of note seems to be this Josh Vitters kid. But he's only 19 and struggling in his short stint in A ball. And like most Cubs prospects, he looks to be allergic to taking a walk. So do you really want Hendry in charge of trading your only high profile prospect and/or rushing him through the minors before he develops any pitch recognition (insert hyped center field prospect of your choosing here).

In short, it looks like a lot of the same cast will be brought back in 2010 and long will be the winter of Cubs fans' discontent.

What We Learned from the Cubs this Week

Some quick thoughts on the state of the Cubs... who appear to be unraveling faster than Glenn Beck at an advance screening of a Michael Moore documentary.

What We Learned from the Phillies Series

• The Pedro Martinez of 1999 could have beaten the Cubs left handed.
• It is impossible to underestimate the lack of intelligence of someone with a chin-strap beard. Especially when they’re from the suburbs.
• Yes, the Phillies are good. Yes, they will make the playoffs. But calm down Phillies fan… the Cubs aren't exactly the best measuring stick for teams with World Series aspirations. You don’t see Yankee fans staging an impromptu parade trough the Bronx when they sweep the Orioles.
• There are a lot of Phillies fans that wear their hats backwards despite being born in the 70s.
• The Phillies can mash. But someone is going to do this to Brad Lidge in the playoffs if he keeps pitching like this.
• There will be no complaining about the virtual waiting room from Cubs fans when it comes times for buying playoff tickets.

What We Can Look Forward with the Pirates’ Series

• A 90 loss team the Cubs can beat (not to be confused with the 85 loss teams the Cubs can split with).
• The return of Aramis Ramirez… for a futile stretch run that leads to some debilitating injury in a meaningless game versus the Astros in September.
• Aaron Miles won’t be the worst player in uniform… arguably.
• But he won’t be the most overpriced… inarguably.
• “Cheap” walk up tickets from scalpers.
• The Pirates have essentially re-created the Indians team from Major League. Just try to look at their roster without saying “who in the #$*& are these guys” or “most of these guys never had a prime.”
• The Pirates slogan for 2009 is “Pride. Passion. The Pittsburgh Pirates.” I think someone in the Pirates marketing department mixed up their slogan ideas with their kid’s “which one doesn't belong” workbook.

Football Season is Upon Us

It may be 90+ degrees here in Chicago but pay no mind to the temperature, the NFL's annual Hall of Fame game officially kicked off the 2009 football season last night. With that in mind, here's a quick list of what's on my mind as we get ready for some football.


The Fantasy Football Sleeper
If you have a conversation with any guy about fantasy football this exchanges probably happened around the five minute mark.


Guy A: I can't wait for the draft.
Me: Yeah, it should a good time.
Guy: I'm going to kill the draft. I have a couple of sleepers that are going to win me some serious money this year. I'd tell you who they are but since we're in the same league you're going to have to wait until draft night.
(Wait 30 seconds)
Guy: So my sleepers are...


In other words, the idea of having "discovered" a great sleeper is more highly regarded than the value the sleeper brings to your team. Everyone just wants the rest of the league to know how smart they are and why they should be running the Bears and not Jerry Angelo. Bad example with Angelo, but you get my point. This is why Lendale White will be drafted in the third round of your draft.

No Brett Favre
In my mind, Favre hung up his cleats as soon as he turned into a Popsicle during the 2008 NFC championship game. But I've got to admit, I've really grown fond of sending my Packer friends Photoshopped images of Favre in Vikings uniforms... even if most Packer fans haven't figured out how to get their computer out of the box.

The lingering question is how is the NFL Network and ESPN are going to fill the 4 hours a day they devoted to Favre coverage? I just pray (no pun intended) that this void is not filled with Chris Connley pieces on what a great guy Kurt Warner is set to soft piano music. Is it too much to ask for a piece on Kurt Warner forcing a tourist to smuggle a kilo of Bolivian snow through customs? Everything I've heard to this point leads me to believe that the guy is the second coming of Mother Theresa. At the very least we need to cast him as the villain in the next Die Hard. I just can't see how this guy can run a huddle... we need some of this... or at least something like this.


Saturdays at the Shadows
Hands down the best Iowa football bar in Chicago. And every year it gives you a Goodwill Hunting moment. Sure, it's good to have a waitress and/or bartender that knows your name and beverage of choice... but it's also nice to walk in there, ask where so-and-so is and have the new guy tell you that they don't work there anymore and landed a job they can make a career out of.


Hank Williams Jr.
Lastly, we need to thank the man who gave us the Monday Night Football theme. And one of the best pieces of unintentional comedy from the 2008 Presidential campaign. What else can you say about Hank? Personally, I wake up every day hoping that he hooks up with Glenn Beck for a duet.



The Impossible Dream
Every year I enter in a Survivor pool with 5,000 other saps in an attempt to prove my football prognostication skills. And every year I last just long enough to get my hopes up before being bested by someone's girlfriend who is only in the league to prove how stupid these things are. Girlfriend win. That's the type of thing that will be held over your head for a lifetime.


The Impossible Dream II
Every year you probably look at your team's schedule and convince yourself there is a scenario in which your team can win the national title. Even if you root for Rutgers. For me it looks something like this.

If Iowa can get through the pre-Big 10 schedule undefeated (somewhat likely)...
And if Iowa can avoid any let downs against teams they should beat (feasible)...
And if Ferentz can out coach JoePa by 3 touchdowns at Happy Valley (1 in a 100)...
And if they play Ohio State in a monsoon (not going to happen)...
And if Terrelle Prior doesn't show up for the monsoon game (when does Mo' Clarrett get out of jail?)...
Iowa could get to the BCS championship game.


Then we'd need to go to another series of ifs that involve multiple team buses from Texas or Florida getting lost on the way to the stadium. Yes, I have convinced myself this could happen.


Bloody Marys
A great drink to start off your day. Unfortunately, society frowns upon day drinking unless you're this guy or tailgating. And while Bloody's can't be an everyday drink, nothing is better to kickoff a Saturday tailgate. Anyone that tells you differently doesn't know any better or needs to have that Mimosa slapped out of their hands (don't worry about them hitting you back... they're drinking a friggin' Mimosa). And please hold the celery, pickle spears are the chosen accompaniment of the professional.

The Best, or Worst, Theme Park Ever... I Can't Decide

Like about just about every other guy with a blog, my first instinct was to take some time to write about one of the coolest things I even heard about... Lendale White losing 30 pounds in the offseason simply by cutting the Tequila out of routine. And while this story will be the basis for the sequel to my soon-to-be bestseller diet book, "Hold the Bacon Tubby" it simply wasn't the coolest thing I heard or saw this week.

That would be this. That's right, there is theme park dedicated to the age-old question of what would have happened if dinosaurs had fought in the civil war - aside from the implications to Ken Burns' career and the need for an alternate ending to "Glory." Another way to describe this is Carl Everett's worst nightmare.

But I can't weigh in on this without getting knee deep in some of the details. For example, I'm willing to overlook how dinosaurs can go undiscovered in Virginia for 200 years and even that a cold-blooded lizard could survive a Virginia Winter but I do have my limits.

According to the theme park, the dinosaurs were discovered when "Virginia paleontologists accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs." I'm not a miner, or a paleontologist, but I'm still wondering how you dig a mine shaft into a valley. And the term "accidentally" caught my attention. You accidentally drop a glass... you accidentally hit "reply to all"... you don't accidentally dig a mine shaft. And I'm still trying to figure out what a Virginia paleontologist is doing working for the Union. And why said paleontologist stays in Virginia when the rest of the state brands the guy as a traitor. But let's move on to more pressing aneurysm inducing issues to ponder.

The above is my favorite pic... although I can spend days looking at some of these photos.

Here the union soldier, who may or may not be a paleontologist, dangling between the two trees. Notice that he and the 19th Century Megan Fox, who even Michael Bay would not cast as a paleontologist, did not chose to scale up either tree to avoid the dinosaur. He chose to demonstrate a skill set that would likely have won the Olympic Gold in the rings. As a matter of fact I believe it's the best practical application of men's gymnastics this side of Gymkata. Not only is the man showing off his rings skills, he's doing so with Miss Fox dangling from his legs. Well played sir.

My last point is the strategy of employing dinosaurs in battle. Hannibal had his elephants and that's about the closest thing I can think of in terms of employing large animals in battle so this isn't a completely original thought amongst 19th century West Point graduates. Now I know General George Meade isn't exactly regarding as the second coming of the Duke of Wellington among military historians but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have encountered a series of incredibly large man-eating lizards and attempted to pack them up to take to Gettysburg.


General Meade: "What the &^% are those. They're eating all of our horses"
Paleontologist: "They're called dinosaurs. Haven't you seen Jurassic Park?"
General Meade: "I've got a great idea, let's throw them in the back of a bunch of covered wagons and release them against the South at Spotslvania."
Paleontologist: "We're already in the South. We could just leave a trail of meat crumbs straight into Richmond."
General Meade: "But then some guy in the South won't be able to build a theme park about this someday. And how will Michael Bay make the prequel to Jurassic Park?"
Paleontologist: "Good point... I'll get the rope."


C'mon. These things are in Virginia. Even a mediocre Union general isn't going to pack up a valley full of giant man eating lizards that he just found and pack them up for Pennsylvania.

So add this to your list of places to go before you die, because you never know when a valley of dinosaurs will be unearthed in some valley out by Aurora.

Nitpicking with Buehrle

Last week Mark Buehrle caught us all by surprise by throwing the 18th perfect game in major league baseball's history. And while it's probably the most memorable (given that only 9 of these have occurred in my lifetime and this one happened about 3 miles from my house), I started to think about how it's probably one of the least dominant perfect games in the history of baseball.


Now that might be the equivalent of wondering where Mona Lisa's eyebrows are but the MAN only generated 6 swing and misses. So the question is, is the more impressive perfect game the one that comes from a pitcher like Buehrle, would would be pumping gas if he took the mound with a Farnsworthian approach to pitching, or one that comes from sheer dominance like Sandy Kolfax?


When nitpicking a perfect game you have to look at the competition. Was the opposing lineup the 1962 Mets or the 1927 Yankees? For example, David Wells' perfect game came against a lineup that featured a 42-year old Paul Molitor and nothing else. Unless you significantly overvalue the skills of former Cubs Matt Lawton or Ron Coomer, and even Jim Hendry released those two guys. Buehrle's no hitter came against a pretty stacked lineup... BJ Upton, Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria will probably be permanent fixtures at the All Star Game for years to come. And folks like Carlos Pena, Jason Bartlett and Central Illinois' own Ben Zobrist are professionals at the plate to say the least. But the top of the list probably is Sandy Koulfax's no hitter against a Cub lineup that featured Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks in their prime. Or Charlie Robertson's no hitter against a Tigers team featuring Hall of Famers Ty "I Make Pete Rose Look Like a Good Citizen" Cobb and Harry Heillman.


You also have to consider the situation. Nothing compares to Don Larson's World Series perfecto (against a stacked Dodgers lineup nonetheless). Buehrle's game came in a game that can best be described as one that would have been forgotten if he had "merely" pitched a complete game shutout unless the performance sparked a run to the title. And anyone who watched the Tigers series this past weekend (with Hawk Harrelson being the exception) knows that the 2009 version of the White Sox will be booking flights back home on October 1.


So let's consider the dominance of the pitcher. Buehrle struck out three while throwing 116 pitches. Which is the third highest pitch count of anyone throwing a perfect game. Addie Joss only threw 74 pitches while striking out three but that occurred during the Teddy Roosevelt administration so we'll discount that. On the other hand Kolfax three 113 pitches while striking out 15 Cubs and David Cone struck out 10 on only 88 pitches.


So while Buerhle's performance might not be the Mona Lisa of perfect games, you can can't find much fault with Starry Night.

Free Advice, When Antoine Already Paid

It's easy to judge in hindsight. Was it a good idea to give Soriano an 8-year, $140 million contract... should I really let Billie Joel drive my family home tonight... I think that last week's Chinese takeout is still edible. Well, Antoine Walker made one of these such mistakes this week when he was arrested on an outstanding warrant for bouncing checks at a casino. But it's not the crime or total lack of financial acumen that really bothers me here, it's the fact that he was arrested in another casino.


Now Antoine is not in a good position lay low in the first place. He's 6'6" and "weighed" (a better term might be "he was listed at") 250 pounds in his playing days, and knowing Antoine's love for Harold's Chicken Shack I'm guessing that 250 might be more than a little light. On top of that, I doubt he can get within fifty feet of a basketball hoop without hoisting up an off-balance three and shimming down the street... even if he's surrounded by 35 autograph seekers and Paul Pierce is wide open cutting through the lane.


Now I'm not a criminal mastermind but my first instinct is that if you're wanted for cutting bad checks to a casino, it's probably best to stay out of the casinos for a while. Or, if that's too much to ask, just stay out of casinos in the state that has issued the warrant. Or, if that also is too much, stay out of casinos in that state that are owned by the same company you bounced three quarters of a million dollars in checks to.


Think about this. You probably have no idea if that guy walking down the street has a warrant for cutting bad checks to cover gambling losses. And you probably don't care. He's no risk to you and his mugshot probably won't be on your wall at the post office. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure a casino employee is going to recognize a three-time NBA All-Star wanted for cutting $750,000 in bad checks to the company that signs his paychecks. While hard work and solid problem solving skills are sure ways to rise through the ranks, it can't hurt to turn in someone that owes your company a nice chunk of change.


Sorry I couldn't pass this along sooner Antoine, but I guess this goes to show you that sometimes bad shot selection carries over to off-the-court activities.

Smarter GPS!

For those of us who have to find our way around unfamiliar cities or trek across rural route after rural route to reach our destination the GPS Navigation device is quite simply the greatest thing since the free weekends of Skin-e-max when you were 13. And now comes word that the GPS is going to get smarter. Great news, but just like Magellan rounding Cape Horn, we've still got aways to go.

I'm the first to admit that my navigation device saved me while driving across the city of Los Angeles. I spent 18 months out there and I still couldn't tell you where Pasadena is in relation to Malibu. But like the article says "“The navigation systems are not intelligent enough today to make this information contextual. Ultimately navigation must become much more ‘situational aware.’ Today it is only ‘locational aware." For example, it will keep you off dirt roads (unless you're in certain parts of the South... then you're stuck back there with the Duke boys.

In the article this refers to the current GPS devices inability to take into account things like road closings and traffic and how the next generation of devices will consider "historical and current traffic conditions." Amen, but we have much work to do.

I'll give you a personal example. On the way back to LAX I'd often have to stop and fill the rental car up before dropping it off. No problem, the GPS lists gas stations within a certain distance of the exits you're passing. What it doesn't tell you is that it might not be the best idea to get gas on Compton Avenue at 10:30 at night. And for those of you who told your kids that listening to rap music would never pay off, you are now proven wrong.

Wouldn't it be great if the GPS could also provide some data on crime rates for specific neighborhoods? It could be like the Doppler radar map for precipitation... green for areas that are a bit seedy but OK for urban pioneering (for all you unfamiliar with the term think Bucktown circa 1995) and red for anything outside of the three block area around Commercia Park and Ford Field in Detroit.

But it's not just crime. Wouldn't it be great to know if that Jack 'n the Box had any health code violations before you throw down that Horse, err Ham, burger? Or that a store/restaurant's Yelp rating before you virtually commit yourself with the request to see the menu? Heck, everyone with an iPhone is doing that already... now we can just get them looking at the road instead of their awesome new toy.

The Non-Mitchell Report List

With Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez being named as two of the 104 players who tested positive when the league did its "confidential" testing of major league players in 2003 there's a lot of folks out there speculating who else is on that list. But there aren't too many folks speculating who's not on the list, except for this guy. But let's face it the other Donald has a bit of a vested interest here.



So let's do a favor for all of those poor, beleaguered major leaguers and come up with a few of the folks who are definitely not on the list.



The 160 pound studs: I'm looking at you Pedro and Greg. We all know that pitchers benefit from steroids with a quicker recovery time but they also tend to leave one with the ability to bench press something north of 125 pounds. And while they may have spent some time in the weight room working on their hitting stroke, I'm pretty sure these guys weren't walking up to Sosa and McGwire and asking them if they were going to the gun show. And while Pedro had a bit of a mean streak it was more of a calculated rage, juicers like Clemens had were prone to fly off the handle for no good reason. If Pedro was on the juice Don Zimmer would have never made it back to the dugout.



The fat kids: Think CC Sabathia and Lance Berkman. If these guys used steroids it was strictly for the purposes of frying bacon. Yes, steroids make you bigger. Yes, steroids can make you grow man boobs. Yes, steroids make bacon taste even better (I imagine). But no, steroids don't lead to a 52 inch waist and the inability to stand on your feet for 10 minutes without breaking into an uncontrollable sweat. Until Ben & Jerry add a Steroid Chocolate Dream flavor to their shelves these guys are safe.



Paul Bako: If you're on the juice and still can't hit .200, you'll probably retire. It's just not worth the side effects. Five years later Paul is still making the argument that the double play ball is not a pitcher's best friend... it's Paul Bako at the plate.



Frank Thomas: I'm pretty sure that if Frank Thomas ever took a performance enhancing drug he'd end up fighting Godzilla and destroying a good portion of Tokyo. The dude was, is and always will be large... and probably the last guy you'd ever consider throwing at as a pitcher. In over 10,000 plate appearances a 6'5", 260 pound man was hit by a pitch exactly 18 times. And if Nolan Ryan beaned him instead of Robin Ventura, the Ryan Express would have given his Hall of Fame induction speech from a wheelchair. (As a bonus you get a nice reminder of Keith O with a mustache with that last link).

Suffice to say that if you had to hit a batter in retaliation you not only waited until Frank was back in the dugout but you waited until he went back to the clubhouse. And for additional evidence the guy played SEC football at 250 pounds. In 2005 his weight was listed as 270. 15 years, 20 pounds equals no juice. 15 months, 20 pounds equals juice.



Ken Griffey Jr.: Steroids mean quicker recovery time from injury. Griffey never met a hamstring injury that couldn't sideline him for 18 months. Think about that. With modern medicine you can shred your ACL and every ligament in your knee and get back on the football field in under a year. Yet Griffey's annual spring training hammy strain would have him cashing checks from his yacht for 18 months.

Capital Idea Phil!

I used to think all that it took to make a horrible trade proposal was a phone and an open line on your local sports talk station. "Yeah, this is Ed from Calumet. I used to play a little in high school and probably would have gone pro if that JV coach wasn't so blind to my potential so I know what I'm talking about. What do you think about trading Milton Bradley and Mike Fontenot to the Marlins for Hanley Ramirez? I'll hang up and listen to your response." But apparently it helps if you also have a national baseball column for a major newspaper.

Now Phil Rogers is one of my favorites, right below Buster Olney, Tom Verducci and Keith Law. As a matter of fact, now that Sam Smith is no longer with the Trib he's one of the only reasons I still subscribe to the Sunday Trib. But his idea to unload Carlos Zambrano is about as smart as a morally corrupt man running for office on a platform of family values.

First off, the title of the article "Perfect Time for the Cubs to Waive bye-bye to Carlos Zambrano" goes against everything they teach you in business school. Or in elementary school for that matter. I don't think the apex of Carlos' value is on the heals of two of his more epic meltdowns. If you are going to unload him it might make sense to wait until things quite down and Z is sitting on a 14-6 record with a 3.50 ERA.

Second, the wheels of the Cubs' bus are hanging on by the same thread that's keeping Lou sane. These guys are getting old. Not old in the sense that you and I know, but old in the sense of dressing up in a uniform and playing in the dirt 162 times a year. Bill James knows more about math and stats in general than the combined readers of this blog (I'm using the plural pretty loosely). And when it comes to baseball he's discarded more than most of us will ever know. He's a big believer, and has proven, that most positional players start to drop off at about the age of 33.

Well, here's list of the Cubs starters under the age of 31. Theriot, Fontenot and Soto. Not exactly an Upton, Longoria and Barlett core. So when the wheels start to fall off you'll have to rely on your farm system, free agents or trades to replace that production. Let's summarize those options for the Cubs.

Farm System: The Cubs system consists of Josh Vitters and 125 guys not named Josh Vitters. Plus the Cubs will probably trade him for Bobby Howry this month.

Free Agents: All signs indicate the Cubs are topped off salary wise. And even if they weren't, would you trust Jim Hendry with the remainder of your spending money?

Trades: That leaves one last option and it's not much of an option. The Cubs already have untradable anchors, errr contracts, in Fukudome, Bradley and Soriano. Lee, Lilly and Dempster all probably have limited value with their respective ages and/or contracts and Harden is limited due to the fact he's a free agent and about as brittle as Glass Joe from Punch Out! That leaves Ramirez, Zambrano and probably Soto and Theriot as the only players with meaningful value (don't bring up Fox until he gets to 100 MLB at-bats).

So knowing that, does it make sense to trade Z for the first offer "from a bag of balls to a 32-year-old minor-leaguer?" The Cubs are going to need him when the open up the next era of their 100 year rebuilding process.

Sweet Lou and Sweet Lucy

Normally, when someone int he public eye admits to smoking some marijuana in their youth it makes the obligatory appearance on the CNN news crawl, causing us to collectively shrug our shoulders and go back to wondering why DanRather is camped out on Jon & Kate's front lawn. But in the case of a sports figure, that formula varies slightly. Typically it surfaces on segment 2 of Around the Horn so Woody Paige can recycle a joke he had an intern find on Google and Jay Mariotti can offer an opinion based entirely upon his ability to assign a nickname to the subject. But when Lou Piniella talks about lighting up, you have to take notice.



For me, Lou ranks slightly below Dwight Eisenhower and Kelly Kapowski on the least likely to be a friend of the leaf scale. The man is rumored to have tried to flush a bat down the toilet in anger during a slump during his playing days in Kansas City, is a world class base tosser and does not hesitate to throw down with Rob Dibble. Not exactly the side effects Nancy Reagan and Reefer Madness warned us about.


The good news from this is that the leaf didn't take with Lou, "it didn't do a damn thing for me." Who knows where Lou would be right now if he gave it another try. Would he mellow out a bit and become more a Phil Jackson-style zen philosopher/coach? Or would he have never pursued the managerial track and ended up in the annual Sports Illustrated Where Are they Now issue as the owner of a San Diego surf shop?

I guess we'll never know, but it would have been interesting to see Piniella storm out of the dugout only to lose his thought before he could get to home plate.

Soto and Sweet Lucy

Well, I guess all those stories about the "calming influence" Soto had over the pitching staff make a lot more sense with the news that Geo tested positive for marijuana during the WBC. This also explains his penchant for showing up to spring training on the hefty side - I'm not a social scientist but I'm guessing there's a low correlation between marijuana usage and spending a lot of time in the gym.

Going forward, I think this has two major implications. The hecklers will be coming fast, furious and forever. Remember how that guy sitting next to you at the Reds game in 2002 had that really great "Griffey is injury prone" put down? And remember how that guy sitting next to you in 2008 had that really old "Griffey is injury prone" put down? Well, in 2016 I'm guessing you'll still be hearing Soto marijuana taunts from the stands. But on the plus side I'm hoping that Cubs organist Gary Pressy is hard at work learning to play some Cypress Hill or Sublime tunes to accompany future Soto trips to the plate.

Secondly, I'm hoping "calming clubhouse influence" might enter the baseball lexicon as code for a player that likes to smoke the occasional joint. This could go right up there with:

• "Hardest worker on the team... lives in the weight room" - Which of course is code for being a living example of the benefits of modern pharmacology. Aside from the numerous baseball players this has applied to, I think the textbook case is probably my favorite player from the 1993 ECU Timberwolves.


• "Flu-like symptoms" - They might as well call this Mantle-itis... only the Mick was supposedly legendary for playing in less than ideal condition, lets go with calling this a case of the Strawberries. Or if you're in the NBA, trying to hang with Ricky Davis.


• "Tremendous competitor" - Tremendous asshole. There's a reason these guys end up playing on 5 teams in 10 years.


• "Fundamentally sound" - No talent... when is the last time you heard about a fundamentally sound player sending a ball 450 feet into the stands? OK, now when's the last time you heard of a fundamentally sound player grounding a single between the second and first basemen?

• "Scrappy" - See fundamentally sound. Could also be used to describe any undersized white guy, especially if he plays for Duke and slaps the floor every time down the floor and flops like a European center trying to guard Shaq in his prime.

So light one up for Geo ladies and gentlemen. After all, now we know why Piniella hasn't been kicked out of too many games as the Cubs skipper.