August 31, 2008 - Gasworks Park
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( 3 / 6 )What. The. Fuck.
Regardless of her politics, the choice of Sarah Palin to be McCain’s VP is, in my view, a way for McCain to reach out an olive branch to women voters. Obama has proven that not only does he not care about women’s issues, he fundamentally doesn’t understand them at all. Even worse he has such utter disdain for women that he refused to pick the one person who would have ensured him victory in November. McCain on the other hand has just told the biggest voting block in the nation that while they may have disagreements on issues, even issues that are extremely important to a lot of women, he acknowledges their importance to the governance of this nation, and lets everyone know that he believes a woman is capable of governing the most powerful nation on Earth. And in my opinion that’s a big deal. Why? Because for all of their boasting about being progressive on women’s issues, the Democratic Party has shown through their actions that they don’t buy what they themselves are selling.
Obama and his supporters will try to tell us that we are hypocrites if we vote for McCain/Palin because we are ignoring the issues, and voting for her just because she is a woman. This is because they don’t understand us at all. Hell they think we are sino-peruvian lesbian Republicans. And they will have their henchmen like that deranged anti-semitic, porn peddler Christina Cedeno barking about how we’re through, that we lost, that we’re pathetic, right on up until election day. Then when McCain/Palin is done handing Obama/Biden their collective ass, we will remain as a formidable pollitical force to be reckoned with, and she will scurry back to whatever bridge she crawled out from under. Hey, we just played a part in having a woman put on the presidential ticket. But I digress. The reason that some of us will support Palin, even though we may not agree with all of her political positions, is that she is not an illegitimate candidate. She did not steal votes from her opponent. She did not smear us with charges of racism. She actually has a lot in common with some of us (mother, businesswoman, athlete, etct). And the man that will be her boss showed us that he is at least listening and aware of our presence. He didn’t flick us off his shoulder and tell us we weren’t needed. He didn’t play the abusive boyfriend and say “where else are you gonna go babe?”.
But not only did Obama, and in turn the Democratic party, tell women to either STFU or get lost, they played on the darkest fears of, and used, yet another large, important, Democratic voting block; African Americans. Obama is going to lose, and the REAL losers because of it are the African American community. They got hoodwinked yet again by a leader who was more interested in his own glorification than helping out a community that supported him almost to a man. If they had realized what an imposter he was and Hillary had been elected, not only would we have had the first woman president, I am positive that she would have put many African Americans (men and women) into powerful positions that could have served as springboards to higher office. Obama has not only damaged race relations for a generation, he has damaged the prospects of African American politicians as well. And he may have very well destroyed the Democratic Party.
PUMAs, we have a lot of work to do.
Some people need to get a fucking grip. Like...literally. Grab a table or a chair for support. Breathe deep. Now sit down slowly...let's think about this for a second and be rational.
The comments that follow are killing me. Mom, I better not see your name down there anytime soon.
On the bright side, the always reliable MSM gets to act as sexist as ever.
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( 3 / 10 )As usual, some guy with a website can say it much better than I can.
I like Joe Biden as a person. I really do. He's entertaining and he's smart, and on the latter I cannot get into how refreshing it is that he's not afraid to acknowledge that. The most painful part of the 2000 race was watching Al Gore, a man smarter than probably 99% of the entire country, going out of his way to pretend he was an idiot because the actual idiot was the one "you wanted to have a beer with."
There's an even better way to frame Biden's personality, and despite what people are worried about, I think it's his greatest asset: In simplest terms, Joe Biden is an enormous asshole. And frankly, I love him for it. He's the type of asshole who's an asshole because he knows, right out of the gate, that he's smarter than you, that he knows more about a subject, and that he actually has the right idea about something. And damn it people, it's time to finally try having someone who's not ashamed of that instead of pretending to be an idiot just to pander.
...
Biden is the one person who might actually be able to deflect criticism appropriately- he's the only one who, when faced with attacks like "in 2005 you said you'd be thrilled to run with John McCain", he might actually respond with the equivalent of "well, yeah, that was before I found out John McCain was a fucktard." Hell, he might even say exactly that. And he'd be right.
McCain has two major weaknesses- he's incredibly short-tempered, and he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Biden is going to attack both, and he's going to do it in a way the media will love. He's everything necessary to be the ying to Obama's yang. Biden is perceived as flawed while Obama needs to shrug the mocked stigma of being a flawless messiah. Obama is the insightful, visionary newcomer. Biden is the established attack dog. Obama has compassion; Biden has rabies.
I admit I breathed a sigh of relief when CBS interrupted Total Recall with the breaking news that Biden was selected. A stronger sigh than I would have guessed would come.
As Al Bundy would say, "Let's rock."
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( 3.1 / 16 )In the fall of 2000 I was a dumbass 20 year old going to Chico State University, taking a class called "Magazine Writing" or something to that effect. Elective, nothing to do with my major, I thought it'd be fun since while writing academic papers and the like made my head hurt and happiness bleed, part of me enjoyed aspects of writing and thought "hey, maybe I'd enjoy writing some of that magazine-type fluff!" For each piece we'd let the professor know where we'd intend to send the article for possible publication (haha), so he could see if we were picking appropriate topics and had a read for what our audience should be.
My first few pieces weren't received by my professor with much enthusiasm. I was probably getting C's and B's on them; technically they were OK, but they were also likely a meandering mess of ideas that contained little/nothing of interest to a casual reader. Late in the term though I decided to write something kind of about Canadian triathlete Simon Whitfield. It was actually more of a piece on living vicariously through those more successful than you (y'know...like Little League dads who want their kid to play college/pro ball like they never could...or Nastia Liukin's dad) and that for one day Simon Whitfield was my vicarious athlete.
A few months earlier, he had won gold in Sydney and I was lucky enough to have seen a lot of the race...at least as much as NBC would let me see. Before seeing this I had never heard of the guy or anyone else in the field. I watched anyway. It wasn't just that Simon won a grueling event, it was the way in which he accomplished it: he was involved in a bike pileup and then simply demolished the field in the 10k running portion, clawing his way back to the leader and dropping him with a magnificent final sprint. He ran the 10k in an absurd 30:54. I recall sitting there watching it all thinking, "holy cow this guy has balls of steel." I couldn't really get much out of the swimming and cycling portions, since I sucked at both of those, but I could appreciate what this guy was doing with the running shoes.
So I wrote something about how sports allowed me to be a loser wannabe athlete who, for a few minutes a day, could pretend to have balls of steel like Simon Whitfield as I shuffled along the trails of Bidwell Park trying to shed that spare tire I grew while working at the Donut Nook. I threw some psychology elements in there and chose an intended publication. Some running/training/fitness/triathlete magazine, I don't recall which one specifically.
It was the only A I got in the class. Aside from a couple minor edits, the only note on the paper was "This could get published." Words can't express how proud I was. You couldn't say shit to me that day as I internally thanked Whitfield for doing what he did that one August day on the other side of the planet. I no longer possess that paper...(not that I'd post it if I did).
Today I learned that while Simon did not win gold in the 2008 triathlon, he might have inspired another chunky 20 year old to get out on that trail and pretend he was a world class badass with balls of steel...if only for a few moments.
Beijing -- This is a story of possibility. It is a story of what can happen, and what we can do.
Simon Whitfield was getting dropped like a hot potato, baked in the Beijing heat. After running with the leaders on the last lap of the triathlon, Whitfield was 40 feet back, and falling. His Olympic gold medal was eight long years ago. Of the three men in front of him, two were the top guys in the world. The little man from Victoria, B.C. had fought the good fight, but only four men in the 56-man field were older, and Whitfield looked cooked. Fourth place, old man, his rivals seemed to say.
But in his mind, Whitfield kept repeating one thing: Sing like Kreek.
Few athletes endure what triathletes suffer -- more than anything, triathlon is about eating barrelfuls of pain. And Whitfield began to close. Whitfield ate the pain, and spat it out. And in his mind, he kept repeating, sing like Kreek.
"I didn't think he was coming back," said his coach, Joel Filliol. "Normally that doesn't happen -- when you get dropped, that's it."
Except that in the final 200 metres, in the shadow of the magnificent Mings Tomb Reservoir northwest of Beijing, Whitfield kicked as he had on that magic-filled day in Sydney, and took the lead. Thanks to a supreme act of will, everything was in front of him. It was all possible. And he kept saying it: Sing like Kreek. Sing like Kreek. In the stands, triathlon officials and his coach were screaming those words, too. Sing like Kreek! Sing like Kreek!
...
"Do you want to know what I honestly thought?" Whitfield said, grinning. "I rolled up behind them, and I said, ‘You just made the biggest mistake you ever made.' I can't say it here, but I thought to myself, ‘F--- it. Here we go.' That's what I thought. If you're going to beat me, you're going to hurt so much doing it.
"I always believe you go earlier -- you just go so early that it takes pure willpower to go with you," said Whitfield. "I wanted them to have to really believe that they could go. I wrote on my handlebars today, ‘Sing like Adam Kreek,' our men's eights rower who bellowed out the national anthem during the gold-medal ceremony.
"And I ran on the back, and it flashed in my head, ‘Sing like Kreek, buddy." And I thought, ‘Let's take off, let's go.' And I tried. I tried hard. It was so close. And for a moment there I actually thought I kind of had it."
Full story
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( 2.9 / 16 )Now that we've made it through that slog of a fake wiffleball season done with two 10-sided and one 20-sided die, let's dedicate a post to the whole reason I went through this whole thing: the stats!
First off, here's an Excel document you can download to view the entire thing, including a handful of sabermetric stats that probably don't really work. This doc includes the stats for each gameday as well as the full batting/pitching stats for the regular season, the All-Star Game, the Playoffs, and (of course) the full standings.
Some of my favorite numbers:
1) Clint Wattenberg's all-around batting stats. First off, he was the only guy in the league to hit a triple. Secondly, he also managed to post double digit 2B and HR marks in a league where it's not unheard of for a guy to have 30 HRs and only 1 2B. Only six players picked up 10 or more doubles, and only five of those six had more than 10 HRs.
AB R H RBI 2B 3B HR SO BB PA/K OBP SLG BA OPS 182 44 56 36 10 1 15 65 24 3.17 .388 .621 .308 1.009
2) While it would be kinda lame if all this game did was more or less replicate the exact stats guys posted in real life, it is kind of cool when it does indeed happen. Pat Plummer is one case. In his one real life season (2003), Pat hit:
AB R H RBI 2B HR SO BB PA/K OBP SLG BA OPS 100 16 17 14 4 4 50 22 2.44 .320 .330 .170 .650
He struggled to get hits (esp extra base hits), but he had a good eye and racked up more than his share of walks. In the dice game, Pat posted a line of (with the numbers reverted to a 100 AB season below in italics for comparison to his 2003 real life season above:
AB R H RBI 2B HR SO BB PA/K OBP SLG BA OPS 153 23 27 19 8 5 68 34 2.75 .326 .327 .176 .653 100 15 18 12 5 3 44 22 2.75 .326 .327 .176 .653
3) The hope was the final stats would look a lot like the final stats of a real life season. Not in that every number was the same, but the quantity of the counting stats would be about the same. I didn't want Carmichael to bash 75 HRs when in real life he only topped 50 once (56), and I didn't want John Robins to have 125 whiffs as a batter when the record for a season is only 84. Luckily, this seemed to work out for the most part. Some final leaders who either ALMOST broke records or barely did, with the real life record in parenthesis:
Doubles
Luke Carriere - 13 (16)
Strikeouts
John Deatrick - 90 (84)
Base on Balls
Pat Plummer - 34 (32)
Batting Average
Joey Creighton - .449 (.465)
Innings Pitched
Scott Carmichael - 60.0 (61.0)
Pit Base on Balls
Clint Wattenberg - 39 (49...43 if you don't count Aaron Kemper or Jeff Register)
Pit Strikeouts
Scott Carmichael - 119 (117)
Wins
Scott Carmichael - 10 (11)
Batters Faced
Mark Montgomery - 259 (275)
4) Aaron Kemper, the bane of the Living Legends, posted an OPS+ of 2. Two. That's...really bad. For reference, 100 is average, 200 is MVP-like, and 50 is god-awful. Aaron posted a 2. Yet his final numbers were actually quite improved over his real-life 2001 season.
Season AB R H RBI 2B HR SO BB PA/K OBP SLG BA OPS 2001 129 8 15 2 2 2 66 13 2.15 .197 .178 .116 .375 2008 125 11 18 10 3 5 72 9 1.86 .201 .288 .144 .489
OPS+ if he posted a repeat of that 2001 season? -17!
Aaron also posted th exact same amount of innings as he did in 2001, but the Legends suffered much less than the Road Warriors did in 2001.
Season IP H R BB K HR BF BB/4 K/4 HR/4 Oavg ERA W L 2001 27.1 56 58 47 22 21 182 6.88 3.22 3.07 .381 8.50 0 5 2008 27.1 49 37 36 21 12 166 5.27 3.07 1.76 .377 5.41 2 3
Looks pretty obvious what happened there! Despite this, Terry Creighton is more than interested in fielding trade offers for Kemper this off-season.
5) In the final gameday, Pat Plummer walked 2 batters in 4 IP, bumping his BB/4IP ratio to an even 1.00 and becoming the ONLY Road Warrior to not fall below that threshold by season's end. All told, there were only 6 guys in the entire league with BB/4IP ratios lower than 1.00, and two of those only barely (James Vassar and Mark Montgomery, both at 0.98). Scott Carmichael had a 0.87 mark...and then the top three were all Road Warriors (Dave Cain: 0.86, Curtis Henning: 0.52, Darnell Uhland: 0.51). All four Road Warriors combined to walk only 28 batters all season, a total less than five players accumulated all by themselves. The Living Legends featured two of those five players and as a team walked 110 batters. Again, Terry Creighton's open to trade offers for Aaron Kemper.
6) Real life Mark Montgomery's only request before the season: For his dice self to lead the league in ABs. Thanks to oftentimes having to lead his team off since he was the best pitcher, and his distaste for walks, dice game Mark Montgomery finished with 218 ABs, tops in the league and one of only two to top the hallowed 200-AB barrier. You're welcome Mark, and you owe me a Pepsi.
For more stupid pointless crap, download the excel file for yourself and see how everyone did...especially if you were one of the 32 guys I included in the season!
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( 2.8 / 17 )For the 2nd time in...well, 6 years, the Road Warriors finished atop the wiffleball(2k) world with a 5-game victory over the Holy Whites in the 2008 Series at the Sac.
The series nearly replicated the 2003 (real-life) finale that saw the Road Warriors defeat the Holy Whites in another full five game series. This one also went a full 5 games, with the Whites taking 2 of the first 3 but dropping the final 2 by scores of 1-0 and 5-2. The game 5 finale was a classic, featuring all 8 players and going 7 full innings. Curtis Henning's 3-run homerun off Mike Walsh put the Warriors up for good in the top of the inning. Darnell Uhland then came in to pitching the bottom of the 7th and only allowed a single to Tavis Beynon.
Voting for the Series at the Sac MVP was tight, but Henning won out thanks to the GW homerun in the clinching game, a 1.66 playoff ERA, and a .355/.535/.613 line at the plate. He broke a league record with an amazing 12 free passes in only 43 plate appearances.
In the semi finals, the Holy Whites dispatched Wiffolution in fairly easy, straight set fashion (7-3, 8-6) while the Road Warriors had a tougher time with the over-achieving Living Legends. They game 1 7-1 in an impressive one-hit performance, but got one-hit themselves in game 2 in a 1-0 loss. Then, despite Aaron Kemper missing the game, the Warriors won the deciding game 3 by a score of 7-2, though the game was much closer than the score indicates. In the bottom of the fourth, the home team Legends saw themselves down 2-0 and facing elimination with fireballer Curtis Henning on the mound. Clint led off the inning with a walk however, and Nate Stuempfig immediately tied the game up at 2 with a shot to left.
The Legends' excitement was short lived however, as the Warriors answered in the top of the 5th with 5 runs off Stuempfig, who walked in the first run and then gave up a grandslam to Pat Plummer of all people. Dave Cain then tossed a scoreless inning to secure the win and send the Warriors to the finals, where they eventually defeated the favored Holy Whites.
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( 2.9 / 16 )Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world, not Jeremy Wariner. I was wrong, I admit. I watched the 2nd prelim last night...in the first one, Tyson Gay looked like he went all out for his 10.09 while a couple races later, Bolt seemed to shut it down at the 50m mark and still hit 9.92.
Then in the finals he shut it down at the 80m mark and still set a world record. Unbelievable. But it begs the question...why shut it down and pose during the final 20m? Why not run a 9.61 or something...and THEN preen for the crowd? Sometimes I don't get sprinters...
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( 2.9 / 17 )
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