Now all that has turned to fucking shit. David Wright is back to being totally fucking cold. Jason Bay is getting WORSE. Carlos Beltran is clearly not 100%, yet he’s put in CF even while he’s wearing a goddamn knee brace. There’s a guy named Angel Pagan who played CF the entire first half and was one of the best fucking CF in the National League, but because Beltran has a massive ego and expects to play CF, he can’t be moved to RF to accommodate the player who’s NOT WEARING A FUCKING KNEE BRACE. Angel Pagan has EASILY been the second-best player on the team, and probably the most consistent. At least Jeff Francoeur isn’t playing.

But maybe that’s why Jason Bay feels the need to stand in for him? To generate the lost suckage? Holy fucking shit. 0-6 with 4 Ks. Remember last year when we all wondered where David Wright’s power went? His SLG at the end of the season was .447. Jason Bay’s is currently .403. Brett Gardner’s SLG is .399. BRETT GARDNER. This is NOT a guy renowned for his power stroke. This Bay contract is turning out to be a bigger disaster than I expected. Sure, he can bounce back in the next two months, but he’s not going to get any better over the length of the contract. This is BAD.

Oh, and I got to watch Oliver Perez pitch tonight out the bullpen. I want him to pull a Carlos Zambrano and just get himself kicked off the team. Somehow he didn’t blow the game, but he came pretty close, with only the D-Backs total ineptitude saving his worthless ass. Less than worthless. Please Ollie, be gangsta and stab someone else shitty on the team, preferably Alex Cora. You’ll be suspended indefinitely, and hopefully Cora will never play baseball again.

Can I even manage to spew any bile Jerry Manuel’s way? He did double-switch Ike Davis out of the game so he could move Alex Cora to 1B and Luis Castillo to 2B. That was totally awesome. And he keeps starting Barajas, who has a OBP of .265. Sure, he hit a home run. WHOOP-DE-FREAKING-DO. Maybe if he didn’t, I would have been able to go to sleep two pointless hours ago instead of watching 14 pathetic innings of baseball.

I hate this team.

I don’t even know who to credit for the above pic. I saw it on GAF, but I’m 99.9% sure it didn’t originate there. And if you want the explanation: a “psychic” octopus predicted that Spain would win (among 7 other correct predictions).

So yeah, there was a lot of sex in Spain last night — especially in the soccer players’ hotel rooms and houses. Some of it even spilled out on camera. It must be nice to be the king of the sport the entire world plays, admittedly.

That final pretty much sucked, though. I guess I was rooting for Spain, but it’s not like I felt anything when they finally scored in extra time. The Dutch were playing ugly, rough football and the Spaniards were flopping all over the place. Who was I supposed to root for? Wait, did I say football? That probably happened because I’m regurgitating things I’ve read elsewhere. I was just glad it didn’t come to penalty kicks.

But I’m happy it’s done so we can get to the baseball equivalent of penalties: the Home Run Derby. Not like there’s anything else on.

Of course, as with any earth-shattering event, the rumors have been swirling and changing every 12 hours or so. It always seemed like LeBron was leaning towards staying in Cleveland, but then that disappointing exit in the playoffs changed everyone’s perception, apparently. Chicago became a real possibility. New York was always talked about — and living in New York has magnified it 100x for me. Miami was thrown out there. Even New Jersey and Los Angeles (Clippers) were mentioned.

I spent most of the day today with a chubby because the rumors were pointing toward New York. I tried my best to remain pessimistic, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. LEBRON JAMES A KNICK. I would have to get my Knicks crap back out of the closet. Cleveland would go back to being the most depressing city this side of Detroit. Chicago would have to settle for rewatching games from the Jordan Era.

But now the internet is exploding over reports saying LeBron is joining Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in Miami. He already was inspiring this type of vitriol just by making such a big deal out of his decision:

It doesn’t matter where he opts to go. If he goes to Chicago, he’s a cocksucker. If he goes to Miami, he’s a goddamn cocksucker. Even if he goes back to Cleveland, he’s a goddamn cocksucker. He’s a self-aggrandizing sack of shit, and ESPN is a bunch of pussy-whipped enablers for giving him a free hour of airtime tomorrow night and inevitably using 55 minutes of it to let Stu Scott give him a rimjob.

So imagine how much people will hate him if he goes to Miami and forms an unbeatable Big Three? Here’s a taste:

Now, the Association looks like a joke, a place where three individuals have held seemingly everyone hostage. New York’s rebuilding is a sideshow. Prokhorov’s participation in Russia’s insidious spying mission in America is something to track tepidly. Who even cares what the Clippers do now? The whole league has been submarined by LeBron, whose hubris these last few weeks has been ugly and costly. Outside of Miami, who will be left rooting for LeBron, especially after his made-for-TV drama? An NBA diehard, I am so disillusioned. This doesn’t feel right or fun. This feels terrible.

I really recommend reading that entire rant, as it’s absolutely spot-on and demolishes LeBron much more effectively than calling him a cocksucker a half-dozen times.

As an objective observer, I really believe LeBron should stay in Cleveland and build his legacy there — but I’m not objective. I want him to come to the Knicks, even if he is a cocksucker.

Flip Flop Fly Ball, of course, made an awesome chart that graphically displays what I’m trying to say in words. I fucking love his site so much. I wish I could be so awesome.

(Click to embiggen)

Naturally, such a chart applies to any team, and would extend another month for a fan of a team which happens to make the World Series. And this chart doesn’t even count most of the things I mention in the first paragraph of this post. The fantasy team managing would overlap with work. Sleep would be hurt by West Coast trips. Other stuff would be “reading about baseball.” It’s really insane. And then when you count all the hours I put in practicing and playing baseball for most of my life, I’ve spent more time with baseball than married people have spent with their significant others.

Power of the cocksword.

I just saw Lesnar take a beating that would have killed most normal people, and put most MMA fighters into a coma. Yet he came back the next round and choked out his opponent, Shane Carwin.

Remember when I said the best heavyweight in the world wasn’t in the UFC?

Lesnar is without a doubt the scariest motherfucker alive. I mean, he already kinda was, but there was still Fedor, who — even though he was a bit of a chubster — was an “undefeated” crazy Russian dude. But now he has lost, and Brock just beat a guy who had never let an opponent past the first round. Carwin tired himself out, shocked that Lesnar was still breathing after taking one million punches to the head.

It was a heavyweight main event that lived up to the hype. And it was a fantastic job by the ref not to stop the fight while Carwin was pounding on Lesnar while sitting on top of him, making him bleed all over the mat. Lesnar was defending and attempting to fight back the entire time — just not very well.

I still think the fight before (Akiyama – Leben) was more entertaining, but everyone knows going in that a heavyweight fight isn’t going to go more than a few rounds, nevermind all five of a title fight. For Lesnar to come back from the fucking precipice of death to winning the fight is just godly. I’ve never been a Lesnar fan, outside of marveling at what an absolute beast he is, but fuck, he’s won me over completely. I’d even root for him in a Fedor matchup, because U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

As I’m sure all of you know, the U.S. lost today to Ghana in the knockout round of 16 in the World Cup. It was disappointing, but it’s not like the U.S. deserved to win, considering they still hadn’t learned that play starts with the first whistle. For the second time in four games, they allowed a goal in the first five minutes.

I’m going to try to be as serious as possible in this post. On Twitter today, I posted a bunch of joking, but derogatory things about soccer; I don’t feel they were unfounded, though. I think flopping (@QVT replied to me that it’s not called flopping — I would like him to comment on here and tell me what it’s called) is a major issue that causes many Americans to dismiss the sport. You’d need a 2160p television set to see some of the “contact” on which fouls are inevitably called due to a guy jumping through the air and holding his leg. And some Americans were all too content to join in, as pointed out in this blog post.

And the Ghanaians display at the end of the match today was arguably the worst thing that could have happened, American-interest-wise. After all the goodwill and excitement conjured up by Donovan’s goal, Africa had to ruin things once again. First the vuvuzelas, then stalling the game by lying on the fucking ground after absolutely nothing happened to you. I’m trying to think of a comparable tactic in another sport. I guess a pitching coach or catcher coming out to the mound to give a pitcher more time to warm up in the bullpen? But that doesn’t necessitate deceit. And maybe this is what @QVT was referring to when he meant it wasn’t flopping — it’s stalling. But it’s stalling by faking an injury (actually, it didn’t even look like the guy was trying to fake it — he was literally just LYING THERE). Whatever it is, it’s bullshit.

I also saw some people complaining about the offside rule on Twitter, but I have to imagine they’re mostly casual — if not totally bandwagon — fans (like myself).  I really would like a true soccer fan’s opinion on this. Yeah, I played soccer up until junior varsity in high school, but by that point I had already lost a step or three due to not playing in 9th grade and I barely remember it anyway. Either way, I can’t say I ever held a strong opinion the offside rule. I know it would create more scoring, right? I can’t see how that’s a bad thing. People who rip on baseball seem to think it would improve with more scoring. But similar to why I don’t like aluminum bats (other than the sound), maybe hardcore soccer fans like their goals scarce. But I’m not quite sure why I even bring up the offside rule, because like I said, I don’t have any strong feelings about it — the only time I did was when the U.S. lost a goal to it when they weren’t actually offside.

But I’m not getting at the heart of why many Americans find soccer boring to watch. And I guess I’m going to project my own feelings onto the American public, but it’s because for much of the game there is absolutely NO chance of someone scoring in the immediate future, or at least that’s how it seems to the untrained eye. There is mostly passing in the middle and positioning, which doesn’t create much tension. In football, there could be a massive touchdown pass at any time. In baseball, every pitch can turn into a home run. In hockey — well, hockey is just a shrunken-down, sped-up version of soccer on ice, isn’t it? Only instead of flopping, there’s fighting. Basketball almost has the opposite problem of soccer in my mind, in the sense that there’s just so much scoring back and forth that it becomes mundane. Don’t ask me to explain NASCAR’s popularity.

But I have to admit Landon Donovan’s goal was fucking amazing. Even I was caught up in the sport at that moment. Perhaps that’s what watching soccer is all about? It’s waiting for that orgasmic moment that comes along once or twice a game if you’re lucky. It’s forgetting all the awful officiating and flopping to savor the ball getting buried in the back of the net. Sure, there are swathes of yawn-inducing play, but do those all-too-rare fantastic goals make up for that fact? I don’t know, but I’m still leaning towards no.

My question to myself right now is how I can continue watching this World Cup. I know England-Germany is a massive match, but who am I supposed to root for? It’s hard enough for me to keep my attention focused on the television during a U.S. match I have a rooting interest in, so how can I expect that match to grab me? Am I just supposed to pretend it’s 70 years ago and root against the Nazis?

And I need to go to sleep now. I doubt I’ll even wake up for the match now, anyhow.

Edit: How the fuck did I not comment on the awful officiating and how FIFA is totally averse to the use of any technology? I guess I mentioned how the U.S. got fucked out of a goal — well Mexico just got fucked. England got fucked earlier. There have been a dozen other awful calls too. Yet there is no goal line sensor or replay. Fucking joke.

Stolen from Bloody Elbow’s comments section:

To steal from Bloody Elbow once again, that very post sums up the fallout perfectly:

1. Fedor Emelianenko – The big one. As Luke Skywalker told the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, it was Fedor’s overconfidence that proved to be his weakness. The Russian paid no caution to Werdum’s guard and paid the biggest price possible. When Fedor begrudgingly tapped, he lost the aura that made him so appealing to the MMA fan base. He’s no longer FEDOR, but simply Fedor.

It’s a rule in MMA that EVERYONE loses, even the very best of fighters. The sport is too unpredictable and one mistake can end a fight. Yet Fedor always seemed to find a way to win. And accomplishing this as a heavyweight made his legend as immensely epic as possible. He wasn’t just the best “pound for pound” fighter in the world, he was the best fighter, period, full stop. There could be no talk of him moving up a weight class. He fought someone who was 7 feet tall!

So is my post from a year ago still true? I know the YouTube video is still badass, but Fedor just lost to Fabricio Werdum, who was the 9th ranked MMA heavyweight, and also a fighter who was released from UFC. Dana White is eating it up, as evidenced by this post on twitter.

I don’t know how to feel, because I didn’t even get to watch the fight as it happened. I found out Fedor lost by a “Holy. Shit.” on Twitter and someone on MSN telling me that Fedor had lost. I didn’t quite believe it, until Twitter updated again and I saw a string of about 10 people saying “Oh my fucking God” in different ways. The feed I was watching cut out right as the fight started, and since it ended only a minute later, I wasn’t able to find another working streaming in time. Fuck my cheap ass.

But I’ll say I’m pretty disappointed that we’ll never see an undefeated Fedor fight an undefeated Brock Lesnar, which was what every MMA fan — casual or hardcore — was pining for before Fedor joined Strikeforce instead of UFC. Since then, I feel like most people have split into two camps, one of which is extremely happy tonight, the other crying themselves to sleep. The former group consists of people pissed at Fedor seemingly ducking the best competition available, while an example of the latter would be whoever made that YouTube video.

At least Stephen Strasburg is still a God, right? Oh wait, he’s on the Nationals. Shit.

Two perfect games have been thrown since I last wrote — one official, one unofficial. Even though Roy Halladay is on the Phillies, I was rooting for him to get that perfect game. I wanted people to realize how fucking awesome he is, and I think that’s finally happened. I think it’s happened with Chase Utley, too. Maybe It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia was the tipping point. Or maybe it was the 5 HR in the World Series. Who could possibly guess?

But a player that people don’t yet appreciate AT ALL is Ryan Zimmerman. I thought maybe his fantastic year last season — combined with David Wright’s down year — would bring him into the discussion as the best 3B in the NL. Sure, it has done that among internet denizens, but it seems the general public still doesn’t even know he exists. Hitting .295 with 13 HR while being lauded for top-notch defense apparently isn’t enough to be in the Top 5 in All-Star Game voting. It’s almost infuriating to hear people talk about Stephen Strasburg and say how it’s great that the Nationals “finally have a star.” I’d say that maybe 3B just isn’t that sexy or something, but both Evan Longoria and the aforementioned Wright have had their knobs lathered with sportswriter adulation for a couple of years now. Zimmerman deserves to be given EXACTLY the same amount of attention and praise. I should have left some of this for its own post.

The World Cup, on the other hand, I can cover more than well enough within this post — mostly because I don’t know shit and can think of multiple friends who could write up more interesting thoughts on it. I know America got fucked over, I know England has been hilariously awful, and I know there have been a number of mind-blowing upsets. That’s about as much as I can be bothered to type about soccer.

Two other sports I barely care about finished up in the past month. It’s kinda sad, because I do find hockey pretty damn exciting when I care (like USA-Canada in the Olympics), but I just couldn’t bring myself to watch more than a period of two a game intently. And that wasn’t until the Finals. The NBA just sucks. I hate it. I hate the Lakers. I hate the Celtics. I hate how games turn into foul-shooting contests. I hate how much refs can control games. I hate Phil Jackson’s face.

(I will overcome these feelings if LeBron comes to the Knicks.)

Keeping up with other things that suck, The Sporting News published their “25 Under 25″ list. This would be their rankings of the best young athletes in only the popular North American sports. There is no Michael Phelps. No Lionel Messi (someone alerted me to his greatness). No Rafael Nadal. These are three generational talents, but they don’t play baseball, basketball, (American) football, hockey…or drive a fucking stock car. To be fair, it doesn’t seem like they cover the sports in which those athletes excel, but it’s pathetic anyway. Even Sportscentury, if I remember correctly, made a point to say “North America” whenever referring to its list of greatest athletes of the 20th century.

If you didn’t figure it out, this was a way for me to mention Rafael Nadal taking back his rightful place as the King of Clay at Roland Garros. He now has five French Open titles to go along with his one Wimblebon and one Australian Open. He’s still not even halfway to Roger Federer’s total of 16 Grand Slam title, but he could make it there in the coming weeks at Wimbledon. I think every tennis fan is praying for another Federer-Nadal Grand Slam final. There hasn’t been one since the 2009 Australian Open. None of the finals since then have quite lived up to that one, although the Federer-Roddick 2009 Wimbledon war of attrition came close. I know some people found that serve-dominated match to be boring, but I found Roddick’s determination absolutely enthralling. That’s about as embarrassingly gushy as I’ve ever gotten on this blog, but fuck if I didn’t feel for Roddick after that match. HE JUST CAN’T BEAT FEDERER.

But yeah, a Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final is solely needed; I won’t accept anything less. I said going into 2008 Wimbledon that if Nadal beat Federer, it would signal the beginning of the end. I was wrong then, but I’m going back to that well. Federer is now 29. He didn’t reach the semifinals at the French, ending a streak of 23 consecutive Grand Slam semifinals. Nadal is not yet 25 — even if his knees might be older than Federer’s. I’ll leave it at that.

Anyhow, hit the jump for baseball number goodness.

5/16

Oliver Perez: 27 K, 28 BB, $12 million. Carl Pavano: 34 K, 7 BB, $7 million.

I ripped Pavano as much as anyone for the shit he pulled with the Yankees, but he has been legitimately good this year (outside of his last start after this post, naturally). Perez’s contract was, is, and will forever be terrible.

5/18 (belated 5/17)

Brett Gardner: 17 SB, 1 CS. Baltimore Orioles: 9 SB, 10 CS.

This is me just making sure everyone knows how awesome of a base stealer Gardner is. He’s really, really awesome. At this point, he has taken away the title of “New York’s Most Exciting Player” away from Reyes. Shit, Angel Pagan is his closest competition at the moment, not Reyes.

5/18

Pedro, 1997-2003: 1408 IP, .940 WHIP, 213 ERA+. Koufax, 1962-66: 1377 IP, .926 WHIP, 167 ERA+.

I’m going to whip out FIP here. Pedro over his years: 2.39, 3.40, 1.39 (!), 2.17, 1.61, 2.24, 2.21. Koufax over his years: 2.54, 1.88, 1.74, 2.04, 1.73. Basically, other than the 3.40 in 1998, Pedro was as amazing a pitcher as Koufax was. Only Pedro pitched in one of the highest-scoring eras in baseball history. In Fenway Park. In the AL East. Koufax pitched in the greatest pitching era since the dead-ball era in Dodger Stadium. This is what accounts for the MASSIVE discrepancy in ERA+. In case you don’t know, that 213 ERA+ means Pedro was 113% better than the average pitcher (67% for Koufax).

I just want to get across that Pedro Martinez was better than Sandy Koufax. But the old people that still think otherwise don’t read this blog, unfortunately.

5/19

No-hitters by people with one hand: 1. No-hitters by New York Mets: 0.

Jim Abbott > Tom Seaver.

5/21

Ubaldo Jimenez: 8-1, 0.99 ERA, 58 K. Zack Greinke, 2009, thru 9 starts: 7-1, 0.82 ERA, 73 K.

I remember many people saying Greinke had already locked up the AL Cy Young at this point last year, but considering the way Roy Halladay is pitching (and his team), Jimenez has some work left ahead of him.

5/21

Pedro Martinez, 2000: 1.74 ERA. Roger Clemens, 2000, 2nd in AL: 3.70 ERA.

Almost a full 2-run difference. That season Pedro’s ERA+ was 291. In closing, Pedro Martinez in his prime was the greatest pitcher baseball has ever seen.