Does Anyone Else....

want to see a Brewers-Rays World Series?

The Yankees are out. Ha.

The Mets are going to choke it away, mark my words. Even if Santana has a killer outing tomorrow, they'll outchoke the Brewers. And given the abysmal September Milwaukee has had, that's saying something. [Side note, Stats Inc. reported that if games ended after the 8th inning, the Mets would have won the NL East by 8 games. lol failpen.]

Boston? Psh, I stopped cheering for them the moment they won their first title in 04. How they expect anyone to see them as an underdog still is beyond me. When you outspend everyone except the Yankees, you are not an underdog.

The Dodgers? Let's see them play someone other than the Padres and Rockies week in, week out. When you win your division as the only team with a winning record...no.

The Angels, sorta like the Dodgers. Better team, far worse division. I don't know if anyone appreciates just how wretched the rest of the AL West is. Honestly.

Cubs? Obama said it best. White Sox fans are the real heroes. The Cubs are the trendy underdogs. Except Bill Murray. He's always cool in my book.

Alright, I can't find any reason to hate the Phillies, so if they make it, that's cool. Whatev. Remember, though, it's for them, not their fans. DIFFERENCE

The realistic scenario I like best? Philadelphia and Anaheim Los Angeles...of Anaheim. Whatever.

But I'd love to see the two smallest markets, the two most ho-hum teams in the playoffs (assuming I'm right, and the Brewers make it. And I'm always right. You can't count Ohio State and the Browns against me). Seriously, can you imagine the good folks Joe Buck of Fox trying to give two shits about teams not in one of the big four cities?

"Here we are at historic Tropicana Field, here in St. Petersburg, Florida. If I said it was a perfect evening for baseball, I'd be lying. We're here under the sanitary glow of a Wal-Mart Warehouse, a building with the charm of a Bronx DMV office. There's a tepid air of semi-believable enthusiasm, and the stands are filled with fine folks who look like my father, who has been dead for a few years now."

As an imitation Reds fan, I would love to see either team, particularly the Rays, make a run of it. You know, for the little guy. And to give Rays fans a reason to show up, other than one dollar beers in the cheap seats. And, as always, for the lulz.

Seriously, though, this would be one for the purists. It's the true sign of this "New Era" stuff, you know, the end of the steroid era. Two teams who combined have one player anyone can name (and hell, you still wonder, "Sabathia's in Milwaukee?!"), micromanaging their way to glory. It's a baseball nerd's wet dream. The dinger is dead. Long live small ball.

And who doesn't like to see Joe Buck reduced to the smug bastard he really is?

USC Goes Down

Oregon State pulls off their second straight home upset of USC, and Mark Sanchez is uuuunhappy. Throwing shit around, pouting, pouting, pouting some more. Oregon State came out swinging and USC didn't think this game through.

Jaquizz Rogers got pounded (I'm literally blogging this as I watch SportsCenter) and still took the vaunted USC defense to town. 186 yards. So much for being unstoppable.

Another online dude:

best quote of the night..."I'm a small dude, they couldn't find me"...how bout them Beavers

USC didn't have their heads in a game Oregon State considered their Big Game for the year. Hrm, sounds familiar...argh.

Well, if we can't bring 'em down, at least someone did. Go OSU!

Holy shit. Oregon State is 5-2 against ranked teams in Corvallis. Shit, that would make it a pretty damned hard place to play, amirite?

And finally, to quote Ben Folds, and to promote his new CD and my other blog:

IF THERE IS A GOD, HE IS LAUGHING AT US, AND OUR FOOTBALL TEAM.

Edit: someone over at 4chan /sp/ just delivered this:


Win.

Hockey is back!

And so is Don Cherry.

Canada, this is your boyfriend. Sorry, this is one of your national heroes. Or villains. Depends who you talk to.

Hey, Remember Mo Clarett?

Copy-pasta from Tumblr



That man used to be a hero. Really.

Maurice Clarett was going to the next great college tailback. He was going to be the next great Buckeye. He would have been the next Archie. Then he fucked it all up. And harsh as it is, that’s the only word that can truly express how badly No. 13 messed it all up and slipped out of relevance.

I remember watching that first game. I was a 14 year old kid, a freshman, and major Ohio State fan - this is Columbus, y’know. Jim Tressel was still the new guy, and had something to prove. And so did this kid. He was a true freshman, out of Warren Harding. And all of a sudden, he was a starter. And what a game he had.

He pretty much plowed through the schedule, Big 10 and all. I still have many, many vivid memories of the whole season - especially listening to the very end of the Purdue game on the radio on the way home from Wittenberg. Krenzel threw the winning touchdown as we hit the driveway…anyway, that’s a story for another day.

Anyway, he had a killer freshman year. Naturally, he was set to be the latest hero in Ohio State lore. And yet, a random online article was the first time I’ve heard his name in god knows how long. It’s like a collective family secret, one no one mentions, and no one acknowledges. Hell, even ESPN, who was at one time totally out to get us, hasn’t done the inevitable catching-up piece. Or maybe they have. I’ve only recently caught up on my morning SportsCenter. But he’s gone for all we know, locked away in a prison up in Toledo. And it’s his own damn fault.

It started the summer after The Glory (as I still refer to the whole “ness” of the one actual championship season - again, another story) when Mo’s car got robbed. Suddenly, he helped himself to bunch of stuff that just wasn’t there - for those of you familiar with insurance terms, it’s called “fraud” and it’s sort of illegal. This played out as a “oh no” bit, while he was bitching about how Ohio State treated him like shit, he got suspended…and it just went to hell from there.

He never did play another game, not at Ohio State. Man, imagine if he’d had a young Justin Zwick or Troy Smith handing him the ball…damn. Anyway, we digress.

From here, Mo sits out a year. Doesn’t plan on coming back. Whines to ESPN some more. Then, he decided to challenge the NFL. If you’re not familiar with it, the NFL was the only league at the time that had college-experience age limits (the NBA has since passed a 20-year-old restriction for draftees). He decided he’d be the supposedly inevitable guy to bring the rule down. So he challenged it. And lost. In a word, “shit”.

So he waited. Not much was heard till the next draft came ‘round. He’d sat out two years, but since he was soooooooo good, that wasn’t gonna be a problem. Right?

His two 40-yard-dash times were around 4.7 and 4.8. That would equal most of the guys actually measuring the tests. Still, the Broncos took a flyer on him - in the third round, no less. He signed the first deal they shoved his way, much to the chagrin of his agents. Turns out, he was almost a million dollars in debt after his lawsuit against the NFL went almost the Supreme Court (who declined to hear it). Instead of taking more guaranteed money, he wanted a Ricky Williams-esque deal laden with incentives. He figured he’d be the same guy he’d been his freshman year. Hell, with Shanahan’s system, he had a shot. Except for the part where he showed up to training camp injured and 20 pounds overweight.

So that was kinda over before it started. He considered bouncing around a few local arena league teams. Then came New Year’s 2006. After a late night of partying, a couple of guys walked out of the old Opium lounge, when suddenly, they were accosted by a vaguely familiar looking man. Suddenly, they realized, “fuck, dude, you’re Maurice Clarett!” All he got out of them was a cell phone. He turned himself in the next night during the Fiesta Bowl against Notre Dame, and that was that. He got a court date, and all was calm. Then, the night before his trial began, he went batshit insane. Almost literally.

The C-Bus collectively woke up to remember Mo when he was splattered all over newspapers - even the Dispatch had gotten it just in time. He’d led police on a chase down I-70, ended with spike strips and Mo being “removed” from the vehicle. Police, er, calmed him with mace. They tried a taser, but he had on a bulletproof kevlar vest. He was ridin’ dirty with two handguns, a knockoff AK-47 and a used bottle of Grey Goose and - you can’t make this shit up - “a compact disc of children’s songs recorded by Ohio prison inmates that the state distributed…to prisoners and their families.” Yep.

He made his hearing after all, then, to no surprise, got sent to prison. He’s currently serving, due out in a year or so.

So there you have it. He might have been the best tailback Ohio State had seen since Archie, or at least Eddie. Instead…well, you see the picture above.

Good luck, Mo. Just…stay the fuck away from me, alright? Thanks.

The Secret Club

So here's the thing: I, er, gave up blogging for the rest of this year, Twenty Ought Eight. Just couldn't pull it off. However, seeing as how you've found this and it's less than a week after I made said declaration, I'm fudging. Officially, the lie will not be revealed until January, but again, we're here, and it's September. And that sentence should not have been that long.

Point is, I won't stop blogging, I'll just...refine? Sure. Call this a dry run, a secret show, like when the Stones show up at a 300 capacity bar to test their arena tour and end up bringing in 12,000. Except if my, er, "readership" doesn't know about this, then I play to the bartender and whichever chicks show up to, uh, "get their drink on." Sorry about that.

So what exactly is the Jeff Blake Fan Club? Funny you should ask. Jeff Blake was, let's be honest, a rather forgettable quarterback for the Bengals in the mid 1990s.
Hailing from ECU, he helmed the Bengals to the heights of mediocrity, including an 8-8 campaign in...1997, if memory serves me correctly.

So why is he immortalized as such in this little site? Well, simple: he was my quarterback. When I was still a Bengals fan (yeah, I kinda gave up on a professional sports team at the precocious age of 11), he was the man. The Man. I bought the posters, wore the jersey, wrote the fan letters. Hell, to this day I drag my toes when I throw a football, because that's how Jeff did it. And more than most things in life that don't relate to Sigmund Freud, your sports memories as a kid shape your views today. Unless you give up one of your childhood teams before you hit puberty.

So I'm a man of two teams: Ohio State football (Dad's a grad, best friend's a junior, and, well, this IS Columbus. And the Cleveland Browns. I have a fickle relationship, much like an abusive boyfriend. We're like Cubs fans, except that it's not hip to be long-suffering Browns fan (given that I'm not long-suffering, I refrain from using we often).

Trials and tribulations are our forte here in Ohio - home of the Chokin' Brownies and the Ohio State Buckeyes - this decade's Buffalo Bills.

So check back, secret blogging friend. I promise, much lies ahead. Farewell and goodnight.