Random Thoughts On A Sunday Morning Updated To 11-24

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 9-14

...It didn't take long for someone to take the ice bucket challenge and use it to humiliate an unsuspecting person and naturally it had to be a bunch of kids that were behind it. A fifteen-year-old autistic boy was tricked into taking the challenge for the ALS charity and instead of being drenched with cold ice a group of boys dumped urine and spit on him and later it was posted on Instagram. There's been such an outcry about this that three celebrities have pledged $10,000 apiece for a reward fund to find the people that did this. They'll catch them, I'm sure. Kids like that can't keep quiet about doing things like that because they feel they have to brag about it. And when they get caught they'll apologize and say they never should have done it and look sad while they are telling the kid's parents this. They could face charges for this because the police are saying this is assault but the way I look at it they should get a taste -or rather a smell- of their own medicine. What's good for an autistic boy should be good enough for a bunch of "normal" boys, right?

...The start of last Sunday began with so much hope. Perfect day outside, Yankees on TV, Derek Jeter day and week one of the NFL season and because of DirectTV trying to reel in last-minute customers to their Sunday Ticket package I got to watch the Oakland Raiders. Reality quickly set in as I watched my two favorite teams experience virtually the same problem as the Raiders kept going three-and-out and the Yankees kept on getting out one-two-three. I don't know what was worse. A declining baseball team fading in the stretch run or the start of another long losing season for Oakland.

...The only guy that was impressed last week with the leaked video of Ray Rice knocking his wife out in the elevator was Miguel Cabrera.

...That being said there really isn't anything I can say about what Ray Rice did that has not already been said. I'm more interested in what his wife said because her brief statement that she wrote on her Instagram account says all that any of us -and by that I mean outsiders- need to know. No matter what we think about Rice's actions, his wife is the one that has to deal with it and she desperately wants all this media attention to go away because she wants to deal with this in her own way and in private. That even drew criticism from some people because they wanted to see an angry wife dragging her wife-beating husband to divorce court and taking him for all he has. And if that ends up happening that should be between those two people and it should be done privately and not be played out on the front of the tabloids.

...That story on Friday about the Palins getting into a fight when they went to a house party was hilarious. I can't wait to see what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert got to say about this because Sarah Palin has been providing them with funny material since 2008. From what witnesses report, Track Palin (Palin's son and who has never had a reality show) got into a fight with a man who dated his sister Willow (who was on a reality show and does not have an illegitimate kid yet.) The owner of the house tried to break up the fight to resume the party but Bristol Palin (who has an illegitimate kid and a failed reality show) stepped in and after the man asked her to leave she gave the guy six quick right hooks in the face before leaving. It's a good thing he didn't ask her for an autograph. Witnesses also say that Sarah was so angry at what was going on that she yelled out to everyone "you know who we are don't you?" Anchorage police arrived on the scene conveniently after the Palins left in their stretch limo. All I wish is that someone recorded this on their phone. If Sarah and company wanted to get back in the public eye they succeeded. Now I want to hear what the late-night hosts have to say about this.

...Starting next year residents from Berkeley, California who earn less than $32,000 per year and have a prescription for medical marijuana will be able to get it for free at any dispensaries operating within the city limits. This law was passed unanimously by the city council and it was quickly opposed by some religious groups because they complained that if they have to buy their weed so should the poor people.

...My wife bought me a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK last week and I'm still wondering to myself why she got it for me because my birthday was a month and a half ago and I have never expressed any interest in owning a tablet. But, there you go, never ask for something and sure enough you'll get it. With that in mind maybe I should have never hinted around for a PS4. I have learned a little bit about this while playing around with it this week but not that much. I know I can get on the internet, read books and watch movies. Other than that I'm lost.

...Part of the deal included $200 worth of free content and call me skeptical but when they give away that much for "free" there has to be a catch. There was. They gave me three TV shows for free but I couldn't choose what I wanted because they gave me what they wanted me to have and just to show me what a great opportunity this was I had the chance to purchase the entire first season of each show for a certain price. I passed on this. Then I was able to pick out four magazines that I would get for free for a trial run and whatever magazine I chose I could also have some back issues too. I was considering trying out Sports Illustrated on the NOOK but I immediately recalled the previous time I had subscribed to S.I. back in the late nineties. When I decided not to renew I must have received ten "absolutely final last chance" notices from them for me to re-up. Each time they made the offer better and better. Sign up for another twenty-six weeks and we will throw in a NFL T-shirt of your choice plus the Super Bowl DVD. It got better and better. They tried to sell me with free baseball stuff, free commemorative Yankee World Series mementos, you name it. They got so desperate I thought they were going to give me stock options next. So that's why I didn't take advantage of the free magazines. Barnes and Noble didn't lie. They did give you $200 worth of free stuff but they never said that it was going to be something you wanted.

...Last thing about the NOOK. I was given a five dollar voucher to purchase anything I wanted from the NOOK store and I only had forty-eight hours to use that big credit amount or I would forfeit it. I really didn't know what I wanted and then I remembered that Mariano Rivera had his baseball autobiography out and it looked sort of interesting from the excerpts that I read on the New York Daily News webpage. So, I bought it. What a mistake. It wasn't the worst baseball book that I ever read but it was close. Rivera's a very religious man and he doesn't let you forget it for a second because in the entire book he's quoting Scripture. Let me interject something here for second if I may. I'm not some kind of heathen that turns his back on the word of the Lord and I try to lead a decent, honest life at all times but when I want to read a baseball book I want to do just that. Well, that's Mariano and that's how he is and I have no problem with that. It's just that it didn't seem like a baseball biography.

...Rebuilding the Yankees Dept: This past week we had a nice topic going on in the shoutbox that began when I complained for the one hundredth time this month about how the Yankees were playing. (Don't worry, their season is almost done and when that happens so will the comments on how lousy they are.) My biggest complaint about being a Yankee fan is their love of signing free agents and not building a farm system. With all the financial clout that this team has you would think that this would not be the case. Jim825 pointed out that the Yanks built great teams in the past without spending a lot of money and then went on to say that maybe they forgot how to do this or that they may not want to go through some lean years. Looking at it from the outside this would appear to be true. How much money have they thrown away on players since the end of the 2001 season, a season that saw them lose a few starters to retirement? The free agents signed after that season were rarely worth it, very expensive, and discarded as quickly as the next one came in. Ten years ago on this very website we had a huge discussion back and forth about if the Yankees should trade for Randy Johnson who at the age of forty-one was beginning to break down. It didn't matter. They traded prospects for him and his two years in New York were riddled with back problems and inconsistent pitching. Besides signing older free agents that have physical problems this team even trades for veterans who spend most of their time in the trainer's room. Barring a major miracle where the Yankees can unload their laughable contracts that they gave to Alex Rodriguez, C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira, they are headed for some lean years because they have no choice but to keep them until it is time for them to cut ties for good. Years ago there used to be a series of advertisements for Prell shampoo and in these ads a woman would take off her pearl earring and drop it in the shampoo and it would slowly sink to the bottom. That is what it has been like watching the Yankees play this year. Each month they slowly slid out of contention and while they may not hit bottom this year they are close enough.

...And when these lean years come just watch how fast the Yankee band wagon fans jump off. I really hope it doesn't come but these guys are in such a bind there is no other way.

...Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter has been hitless in his last twenty at-bats and to make matters worse he also has just one extra-base hit since Aug. 27. If your name is Brendan Ryan you are out of the lineup. Starting today the Yankees only have fifteen games left when the season mercifully ends two weeks from today in Boston. With the way he's hitting (.251) they will never know he's gone. They got enough players on the team swinging the bat just as bad as he is and they aren't going anywhere.

...I am glad that Giancarlo Stanton is doing much better after being hit in the face last Thursday night in Milwaukee. It may have been a bad break for him (literally) but it could have been worse. He got hit with an 88 MPH pitch -fast enough to do the damage it did but as I said it could have been worse. Imagine if he was hit with one of Alrodis Chapman's 100 MPH fastballs. What would have happened then? I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Not even a steroid using hot dog overrated son of a *&$%@ who plays in Boston. Wait just a minute....no, no I wouldn't.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 9-21

...Kanye West put on a great show last week in Sydney, Australia and it had nothing to do with his off-key singing and complete lack of talent. For some reason West stopped his show and would not continue until he made everyone stand up so they could sing and dance to something called Yeezus worship. I have no idea what the hell that is but then why would I? I have common sense which is more than anyone who spends good money just to see this guy rant, sing, swear and then rant some more. Anyway he would not continue until all his followers stood up and did what he said. Just to show how brainwashed these people were one of the members of the audience that was still sitting took her prosthetic leg off and waved it in the air to get West's permission to continue sitting. Her wish was granted. He then continued singing until his eagle eyes spotted someone sitting down and he again stopped the show to send his body guard down to where the troublemaker was sitting but when he got there he discovered that the person was in a wheelchair and would not be standing up any time soon. Even after finding out why one person in the audience didn't get up when he said so West still did not apologize. It just shows how much class this guy has and I'll go as far to say that anyone who remained to see the rest of his "show" was just as bad as he was. How do people like this get famous?

...Levi's Stadium in San Francisco is the 49ers new home and the little that I have seen of it on TV and what I've read, the team went all out to make their fans comfortable. And to make sure that they don't miss any of the action on the field they have an app attached to every seat where you can order food and beverages. No more getting up to get your beer and pizza for the 49ers fans. You know what's going to happen now don't you? Someone's going to hack into the app and order food and drinks for 68,000 fans.

...Concerning that Jonathan Papelbon crotch-grabbing incident at Citizens Bank Park last week after the Phillies closer gave up four runs in the ninth inning to blow a save in a 5 - 4 loss to the Miami Marlins. I honestly believe Papelbon forgot where he was when he grabbed his you-know-what right in front of the crowd. I think for a brief moment there he thought he was coming off the mound in Fenway Park because when you do the exact same thing there no one will object and most will even give him a warm round of applause. I have it on good authority that it is the customary way to tell the other guy in good old Fenway that here I come and you better get out of my way. Maybe someone in the Phillie dugout was sitting in Papelbon's spot and that's all he was trying to do. So in the end it cost him a seven game suspension. The next time he better remember where he is.

...Joe Girardi blew his stack last Tuesday night in Tampa after Derek Jeter was hit by a pitch in the eighth inning with the Yankees losing by a 6 - 1 score. With the way that team has been hitting this year the score may have well been 20 - 1 because you knew there was no way they were going to make a game out of it. Girardi complained after the game that five Yankees were hit by Rays pitchers since the last time they played each other at Yankee Stadium and that he was tired of it. Maybe so but why talk about it to the press? His pitchers have the ball too and they can just return the favor at any time. And besides, why in the hell would the Rays hit Jeter with a five run lead that late in the game? The Yankee lineup is full of easy outs and there is no one easier to get out than Jeter. I don't blame Girardi at all for being upset but he should have handled it differently.

...For any of you in here who play a game called Minecraft you probably were not happy to find out that Microsoft bought the game for 2.5 billion dollars in an attempt to lure a new set of young gamers into their mobile world. For that amount of money the changes that they are going to make to that game is sure to upset just about everyone who owns it. They want people to play the game on their servers? That means you got to pay Microsoft's online subscription fees and there's no way around that. Without a doubt they are going to do other things to this game to make the fans give up and leave it. It seems that every time Microsoft buys a game or a game company they ruin it. I still haven't forgiven them for what they did to the Links golf series from Access Software. Since the release of a PC version in 2003 and an Xbox version in 2004 this series has been dormant and I can't figure out why because it was one of the best golf games I've ever played. I'm not saying this is what is in store for the fans of this game but still I'd be concerned.

...Hello, I must be going Dept: There is a funeral home in Saginaw, Michigan that has introduced a drive-thru window so people can pay their respects to the dearly departed without ever having to leave their car. The owner of the funeral home came up with the idea because he realized that there were some people who were very uncomfortable being in one and secondly for people who are in wheelchairs or can not walk around that good but would still like the opportunity to visit the loved one one last time. The people in the car can spend up to three minutes at the window. I don't know why it's only three minutes. Some of the wakes I've been to it takes some people three minutes to work up a good cry. And the window that you view the casket in is actually a sheet of bulletproof glass covered by curtains connected to a motion sensor. What for? It's not like anyone would want to jump in. What's next? Funeral homes opening an online forum so relatives can post their condolences from the comfort of their home or wherever they may be? Oh look, Jimmy says he's sorry to hear about Uncle Joe. He's in the Bahamas and wishes we were there.

...A man in Indiana broke up with his girlfriend last week and just to be sure she got the message he fatally stabbed her and then proceeded to eat her heart, parts of her lung and her brain. The liver was next but that's when the cops came to take him away. I'm not trying to make light of this subject and I will not try to slip in any "tastes like chicken" jokes here. I just can't believe something like this would happen in a civilized country as ours. I'd expect it to occur in the middle of Africa where there are no McDonalds' around and when they get hungry those people draw straws and the short one gets cooked. This guy made Ray Rice look like an altar boy.

...I could not believe that the Buffalo Bills were sold for over one billion dollars. Think about that for a minute. It's the Buffalo Bills. These guys play in Buffalo or if you really want to be accurate, Orchard Park, New York. There's only one good week of weather in Buffalo and that's around the Fourth of July. The rest of the time you got to wear a coat. The only time people go to Buffalo is on business or by mistake. This did not stop someone named Terry Pegula from purchasing the team after the death of Ralph Wilson earlier this year. This guy has owned the NHL Buffalo Sabres since 2011 so he should have had an idea what kind of a sports town Buffalo is but not even that stopped him from buying the Bills.

...After observing the recent firing of Houston's Bo Porter and the resignation of Texas' Ron Washington, Seattle manager Lloyd McClendon became suddenly concerned that Major League Baseball is not doing enough to reach African-American players and managers. He's uptight that there is a dwindling amount of black players in the game but that is certainly not by design. Even with the RBI program that baseball has been sponsoring in the inner cities over the past fifteen years, it still has not increased the number of black players on team rosters once these kids get of age. The issue here is when these kids decide to pursue a career in professional sports they either choose football or basketball and that is just how it is and no committee or program is going to change their mind. McClendon is trying to turn this into a racial issue when it really is just a matter of choice. What the hell does McClendon want, a quota system? Let's see now, each team should have a dozen white players, five black ones, five Latino ones and three Asian ones. That's twenty-five. Why does it always have to be some idiot associated with baseball that's got to stir this kind of stuff up? Have you ever heard a white NBA coach complain to the press that there should be more white guys in the league? Maybe McClendon should concern himself with getting the Mariners into the post season before he finds himself the third black manager this year who is unemployed.

...I wrote that McClendon piece earlier in the week and I figured because this story really had no basis for complaint that it would quickly die and go away. Little did I know that Bud Selig would jump on this and makes matters sound worse than they actually are. Selig said that he was 'concerned' about the dwindling number of minority managers. You must keep in mind that all this talk is the result of the firing of Bo Porter and the resignation of Ron Washington which took place only four day apart from each other. Now that there is only one black manager in the game Selig wanted to show everyone that he is well aware of this "injustice" and wants to do something about it. Managers should be hired on their qualifications only and not by anything else. Look how many times teams hired someone like Dusty Baker before they learned their lesson and stopped hiring him? Baker showed that he could be as lousy and incompetent as any white manager. The point is he got the chance not because of the color of his skin but because teams thought he was qualified to manage. That's how it should be and it shouldn't take a stuffed shirt bureaucrat to take a head count of all the minority managers and go into a panic when there's only one.

...Last Sunday the Supreme Court of North Korea convicted a twenty-four-year-old American man of entering the country illegally to commit espionage and sentenced him to six years of hard labor. You may remember this guy. He was the one who tore up his tourist visa when he visited the country in April and demanded asylum. The reason why he did this was because he wanted to experience prison life so he could secretly investigate North Korea's human rights situation. Well, after a quick ninety minute trial he got his wish. See you in 2020 you dumb son of *&#$@.

... In case you missed it Rusney Castillo went 1-for-4 in his major league debut last Wednesday night for the Red Sox. If he has one more game like that the Boston fans will insist that he be inducted into the Hall of Fame right away.

...And because the Red Sox signed this guy that means the Yankees are going to go all-out to sign Yasmani Tomas, who was the next Cuban player to escape Castro's island. He'll end up getting more because the Yankees are not going to let another Cuban guy get away especially since Boston gladly overpaid for the last one.

...This is just a guess on my part but I think that the reason why former Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington met with the press last week in Dallas and read from a prepared statement without answering any questions is that the woman he was seeing was possibly threatening him by exposing what he did. So instead of giving her the satisfaction he first resigned and then after meeting with some crisis management firms, they helped him prepare his prepared piece. From here on out the business of what happens here should be between Washington and his wife.

...Let's see. The NFL has wife beating down pat and now they are dabbling into child whooping. Makes me wonder what they have planned for us during the third week of the season.

...I can not close this week's edition of Random Thoughts without thanking Dennis James and Daflyboys for the wonderful >Mvp 2014 mod that was uploaded to the website last week. Great job and thank you for keeping this great game alive!

[GoRedSox34]

Robert Christgau is 72 years old. The Dean of American Rock Critics, he is recognized as the most important and knowledgeable music critic of all time. Let's take a look at what he has to say about Kanye's body of work: http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Kanye+West

All but 1 of Kanye's albums are rated as an "A". That's virtually impossible to accomplish with Christgau.

Christgau is on point: "Anyway, he's as good as he thinks he is--a backpacker at heart who, like many brilliant nerds before him, has accrued precious metal by following his dream. He wants everybody to buy this record. So do I."

It still baffles me how people who are completely ignorant as to Kanye's body of work are quick to call him "untalented" and "arrogant".

I don't know why I'm talking about this in here. I'm probably talking to myself. I'm just defending the hip hop genre on this homogeneous, close-minded forum as I am someone who grew up playing the saxophone and the piano and I have a passion for jazz and rock and r&b and all that fun stuff.

EDIT: I remembered why I posted this, it's because y4L (big surprise everybody) questioned his talent and his fanbase

[Yankee4Life]

I don't know why I'm talking about this in here. I'm probably talking to myself. I'm just defending the hip hop genre on this homogeneous, close-minded forum as I am someone who grew up playing the saxophone and the piano and I have a passion for jazz and rock and r&b and all that fun stuff.

And I don't know why you are saying this about this forum.

EDIT: I remembered why I posted this, it's because y4L (big surprise everybody) questioned his talent and his fanbase

Why should this be a "big surprise"? I write random things every single week in here that people sometimes agree or disagree with while at the same time trying to make them laugh about things.

So, about Kanye West. I have never bought any of his music or listened to his songs or watched any of his music videos. He's foul-mouthed, acts superior over everyone else, refers to himself as a God, etc. I don't like him because of his attitude and if he was an actor for example and he did the same things I would not bother to see his movies. And yeah, I don't understand how anyone can be a fan of that guy when he projects himself the way he does.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 9-28

...I got to give K-Mart credit for their new "this is not a Christmas commercial" they have been running.The tongue-in-cheek ad asks people to pretend that there's an event you have to plan for in late December - like your whole family having a birthday on the same day.So to plan for that non-Christmas celebration K-Mart suggests you come in and layaway some gifts so you can pick them up in December. All the while in the background the things you associate with Christmas are subtlety shown behind her while she is talking. A Christmas tree, some elves, a reindeer and Santa riding in the background in an electric scooter. For anyone who dreads the coming of the Christmas season and all that it includes this commercial really hit home.

...A man in Shanghai has offered to rent out his girlfriend in order to generate cash so he can purchase the iPhone6 when it comes to China. He'll have plenty of time for this because the latest edition of the iPhone is not supposed to arrive in China until next year.I hope that he has a back up plan to get money for his phone because he is stipulating that no "funny business" can go on when you are spending time with his better half. You can only eat and study with her and if you want, go on three-person dates with her.Where's the fun in that? If that's all you are allowed to do you may as well ask your cousin to do the same thing and save the money.

...If you've ever had a glazed donut from Krispy Kreme you know how good and addicting they are. I once ate a half dozen so fast that I had to pull over and put the rest in the back seat. Over in London, England Krispy Kreme made a giant box of 2,400 glazed donuts that they will be giving away to a business staging an event. That's 53 pounds of sugar if you are keeping score. All I can picture is right after that company that wins this deluge of donuts all the employees will be buying their clothes one size up for awhile.

...Somebody once said if you want to get nothing done you should form a committee because they are a substitute for action. .That right there is all you really need to know about Bud Selig's latest idea. This guy only has a few months left as the baseball commissioner but he is showing everyone he still knows how to waste everyone's time while at the same time making it look like he is actually doing something. That in itself is a talent that people in upper management seem to know how to do effortlessly. Selig has formed a committee to find ways to pick up the pace of games and he is trusting that roundtable of hand-picked minds to implement the new rules that they come up with in time for the 2015 season. They'll come up with something if not just to show they actually did something except order lunch every day. Whatever it is it will be enforced for the first few weeks of the season and then slowly set aside. Anyone recall a few years back how they were going to enforce pitchers to throw the ball within a certain amount of time? How often is that enforced? If they really wanted to they can lean on some of those pitchers every day. Some of them look like they are standing out there waiting for a bus. I am all for speeding up the game and if this committee is really serious about it then all they have to do is get a DVD of a Yankee - Red Sox game that lasts 4 1/2 hours and that will tell them all they need to know about picking up the pace of the game.

...This committee has as much a chance of making a permanant change in the game as Custer did in the Battle of Little Bighorn. Selig wants to speed the game up after introducing expanded replay this year.These people are going to try to tinker into everything except for the commercial breaks. They'll never touch those.Too important.

...Sorry Emma Watson but feminism is synonymous with man-hating. Stick to making movies.

...Proving that you can not teach common sense to some people, police in Vermont arrested a fifty-nine-year-old man for breaking into their police station after he used a traffic cone to break the glass. The man told the police that the reason why he did it was because he wanted a warm place to stay. It turned out to be his lucky night though. After the police caught him they charged him with unlawful mischief and then they escorted him to a nice, warm jail cell. It may not been exactly what he had in in mind but when you can't tell the difference between a school and a police precinct then you have no right to complain.

...There were videos last week that surfaced on the internet of some Philadelphia Eagles fans getting into fights with each other during their game against the Redskins last week. Maybe it was because the game was close (they won by three points) and that made them nervous. It couldn't have been that they decided to pound on an outnumbered Washington fan because there were none there. It was just ugly green jerseys beating up people in other ugly green jerseys. If there is nothing else you can say about a Philadelphia fan you must admit that they are resourceful. They can look around and even if there is no reason to start a fight they'll do it anyway.

...Honey Boo Boo's parents (even she has some) have decided to split up and take some time apart to figure out some things in their relationship. That's another way of saying you take the house and I'll take the kids. It's sad really when an illiterate redneck who chews tobacco constantly and a woman who looks like Miss Piggy come to life can't make it work. If they can't do it no one can.

...I don't know what the makers of Ragu and Prego think about this idea but there is a company named Podey Pizza that has begun to sell jars of pot-infused pizza sauce at marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, San Francisco and in the states of Washington and Colorado. A five-ounce jar of this potent pizza sauce sells for twenty dollars and contains 300mg of medical cannabis per jar. And if you live in the right neighborhood you can have this pizza delivered right to your door. That should make anyone forget the stuff crust pizza from Pizza Hut from now on. So far no one is complaining about the asking price of the five-ounce jar. This sauce packs such a punch that you can three slices and be fully medicated. And if you eat the entire pizza yourself you won't remember anything except that you want another pizza.

...Maybe you saw the video last week of the twenty-one-year-old woman who had a third breast implanted in the center of her chest. She said she spent $20,000 to have it done because wanted to be "unattractive" to men and land her own TV show. If she would have asked me I would have told her to save the twenty grand because the only time men would be knocking at her door is if she had a roommate.She went on to say that more than fifty plastic surgeons turned her down for this until she found one willing to take her money and now that she has it she is hoping MTV will take notice and reward her with her own show. For good measure she threw in the fact that her parents and sister stopped talking to her since the surgery.If all of a sudden you feel someone pulling at your pant leg it's this woman because she is pulling your leg just like she pulled mine. The only show this woman is going to be on is World's Greatest Liars. The woman has some obvious problems if she felt she had to do something like this for attention. Doesn't she know that all she has to do is make a sex tape and go all out in it and have it accidentally released and then pretend to be embarrassed about it? She'll get her show then. I always thought that people who were on television and had their own shows had some sort of talent. That's not the case anymore. It's crazy. Do you ever think you are the only sane person in a world gone mad?

...Bill Simmons was suspended by ESPN last Thursday for three weeks after he repeatedly called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a "liar" during a podcast last week. Simmons received this forced vacation from his job because ESPN felt that he did not "operate in their journalistic standards." That explanation raised a lot of eyebrows because even regular viewers of that network would admit that ESPN has no journalistic standards.It's an open secret that whatever the NFL wants done ESPN is going to do it for them. Some big shot -and it could have even been Goodell himself- must have picked up the phone and said that Simmons went too far and they wanted something done about it. That's why ESPN did not support one of their employees for stating his opinion and one that many people agreed with. Making the NFL happy is much more important.

...David Ortiz is sitting out the final three games of Boston's season because of a convenient wrist injury that suddenly popped up at the right time. There are so many words I can say about this. Gutless. Lazy. Self-serving. I could go on but why bother? You get the point.

...Because of the Yankees not making the playoffs this year, today's 1:35 pm game at Fenway Park will be Derek Jeter's final game of his career. At the start of this season I was hoping that this would not be the case but with the way they played this year this result certainly is not surprising. This entire season we have been on Jeter overkill and for those of you who do not live in an area where you do not get the YES Network at least you have been able to get away from what was almost a twenty-four hour countdown of his last season. By the time the end of June rolled around his last season coverage by YES made Yankee games almost unwatchable because no matter what was going on in the game and what the score was the announcers would always find a way to talk about his last year in pinstripes - like we were ever going to forget. I am not blaming Jeter for this because he wasn't part of this self-promotion but ever since the Yankees held Derek Jeter day three weeks ago you could not read about or watch baseball without having someone remind you that he was retiring. The Yankees and Steiner Sports all assumed we had short-term memories because time was running out for us to buy the best Jeter memorabilia around and bless their hearts they just wanted to be sure we had the chance. Since it is the last game of the season for both teams I don't imagine this Yankee - Red Sox game to be as long as their usual affairs so a little after 4:00 p.m. today the game is going to end and so will Jeter's impressive Yankee legacy. I am going to miss the ballplayer and what he did for the Yankees and I am going to miss how he conducted himself at all times. I'll be missing all the important things about Derek Jeter that the memorabilia market can not bottle up and try to sell to someone. Thank you Derek, enjoy your retirement.

[gotribematt]

Steven A Smith said women need to stop provoking their own beatings got 1 week

Simmions called someone a liar got 3

ESPN cares

[sabugo]

It was a former Portuguese dictator who came up with the phrase: 'If you don't want something to get done, name a committee."

Smart man...

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 10-5

...What a start for the 2014 MLB post season. And if the wild card games are any indication of what is ahead for us for the remainder of this month we are going to have a lot to talk about and discuss in the off season, which sadly is not that far away.

...The only thing that the Kansas City victory over Oakland did for me was turn me into an Angel fan, at least on a temporary basis. I didn't want the Royals to win. Hell, I didn't want them in the playoffs. Twenty-nine years without making it in there was fine for me and as soon as they are eliminated the better. I wonder what the Athletics really think about this loss. Seems to me they could have made it to the wild card without trading their best hitter for a pitcher who played his last game for the team last Tuesday night. No matter what, Oakland got there. That's more than the Yankees can say because the past two years they couldn't even get that far and by not doing that they spared the world witness to another pinstriped October collapse. Don't count on next year either for them but for Oakland I don't see why not.

...The San Francisco Giants must have watched the A.L. wildcard game and then had a team meeting where they agreed not to make the game as exciting as the one in K.C. and to make the Pirate fans run for the exits instead of dance in the aisles. Brandon Crawford made sure of that. And the Giants won this game with a dominant left hander that they did not have to go out and get and who will be there next year for them also. If there is one team in the National League that I would not mind winning the pennant it would be these guys because I can not determine if I dislike Washington, St. Louis or Los Angeles the most.

...Maybe Andrew McCutchen can look on the bright side. He has all this free time now to get a haircut.

...The baseball season like it always did went by too soon and when I think back this winter about how the season ended up my first thought won't be about the no-hitter by Washington's Jordan Zimmerman or the conclusion of the Derek Jeter season long goodbye tour. Not for me. I'll be thinking about the Seattle Mariners. For some reason that only these people could understand they found it necessary to go on the field and celebrate their third place finish in front of the Safeco Field crowd. There they were, jumping up and down, running around and waving at the crowd. One guy, Tom Wilhelmsen (I never heard of him either) got so into it that he broke into a dance. And all this because third place was theirs and no one could take it away. Somehow I don't think this would go over so well in a place like New York where you are actually expected to do something.

...Yankee owner Hal Steinbrenner apologized to Yankee fans everywhere for the poor showing by the team this season. I really hate it when owners do something like this because in my opinion it is completely unnecessary. How was it his fault that the Yankees were one of the worst hitting teams in baseball? Was it his fault that C.C. Sabathia missed most of the year and when he was playing he was useless? All he did was give Brian Cashman the resources to get what he needed and it didn't work out. That's what happens. Steinbrenner did say that the team planned to "learn from the mistakes" from this season and I hope he means it. He should have also focused on the smart things he did last off-season. No matter what Robinson Cano did this year he is not going to be worth that ten-year contract he got and I believe that he won't even have five good years with the Mariners. Steinbrenner should be congratulated for not caving into his demands. He let his GM do his job. It wasn't his fault that the players they have didn't give a *%& about anything.

...I thought that the timing of Derek Jeter's new website was terrible only because of the day he decided to let everyone know about it. It was the same day the baseball post season began in Kansas City with the American League wildcard game and I believe the last thing anyone needed to hear was one more thing about this guy because I think we all have had quite enough. Why couldn't he have announced this the day before when there was no baseball being played? There is no way that I will ever believe this was an oversight on his part. The New York press are turning on Jeter and I believe deservedly so because for his entire twenty-year career he has offered only "no comment" answers to tough questions and now he wants to open up and let loose on a website that -surprise to no one- he has control over the content. I got a few questions I'd love to ask this guy and I am very sure he won't answer a single one of them. Mine aren't filtered enough.

...This kind of brings me back to something Alex Rodriguez was a part of back in 2007. If you recall his agent at the time (Scott Boras) made an announcement during the World Series that year that A-Rod was going to use his option to play out of his contract with the Yankees. That gave Rodriguez a lot of bad press even though he wasn't the one who made the announcement or even wanted to. Boras was accused of trying to put Rodriguez' interests above the entire game. No matter how you looked at it A-Rod was the villain here. But if you think about it didn't Jeter do the same thing when he announced his website on the same day post season baseball began? Sure he didn't do it in the World Series and he didn't opt out of his contract but he did take attention away from the game and put it on himself. Let's give him another standing ovation for getting away with this one.

...What is it with sales calls that you get sometimes where even after you hang up on them they still remain on the line? There is this one particular one where some woman starts out her sales pitch with 'do you want to go on a cruise?' No I don't. And that's when I hang up. But when I go to use the phone after I am done with these people and I try to dial out I still can hear the sales pitch just as if I never did anything. Kind of makes me wonder if there is something wrong with my phone or is it just something they are doing on their end?

...I was very surprised I was able to write even this much last week because for most of the week my left arm was literally useless to me. I obviously did something to it and I wish I knew what it was because for a few days I couldn't do anything. You don't know how dependent you are with both of your hands and arms until you aren't able to use one of them. From the base of my thumb to past my elbow my arm was hurting so bad that it felt like I had broken it. I couldn't hold anything or hold the Advil bottle so I could take some pills. I had to do everything with my right hand and that was frustrating enough. Would you believe I couldn't get used to the angle of the spoon when I was eating cereal? And I don't even want to get into the trouble I had changing channels on the remote. Laugh all you want, it's true. If I can't have my left hand and arm the dominant one I am shot. Which explains why I forked over one hundred dollars on a keyboard not too long ago. I must have pinched a nerve somehow and if I never get close to that pain ever again I will consider myself lucky.

...I don't follow popular music as closely as some of you guys in here do and I don't apologize for that. I just know the basics and that's good enough for me. I know that Katy Perry and Christina Aguilera would have never got recording contracts if they didn't spread their legs and keep them that way. I know that Kanye West is a no talented criminal with such an over-inflated opinion of himself that there's even some days he even can not stand to be in the same room that he's in and I know that Lady Gaga is, well, I don't know what the hell she is. Last week I had to go to an anniversary party and I sat with all of my cousins. We're older now but we still sit at the same table. Eventually the subject turned to music and someone brought up the latest album they purchased from iTunes. By that time I was only half-listening. Then someone asked if anyone else listened to Iggy Azelea and that got my attention. I first heard this name about two weeks ago and I immediately asked my niece if she heard of her and she told me she did and she told me that Iggy Azelea was an Australian singer. That was good enough for me because the only Australian singer I knew about was Bon Scott and he really wasn't. He was Scottish. So when the question was asked if anyone there listened to Iggy Azelea I chimed in with "is he any good?" I don't want to tell you how much that made people laugh. Then again how was I supposed to know? I always thought Iggy was a guy's name. Blame it on Iggy Pop.

...Thank God last week is over. I spent the entire week going between two houses because my sister and her family went on vacation to someplace called the Outer Banks in North Carolina. They rented a house for the week and from what I heard from phone calls and e-mails, had a wonderful time. The house they stayed in had it all. Swimming pool, sauna, whirlpool, big screen TV, an elevator in the house, a Playstation 4 and most importantly, WiFi. With all that I don't know if I ever would have left the house. I had to stay at her home because I had to take care of their dog and during the day be at home to watch and care for my little barkers. I must have put on 100 miles in the car. I volunteered to do this way back in January and I thought they forgot all about my offer. The next time they plan a vacation I am going to quietly leave the room.

...The National Football League has not done a lot of things right this season and after Kansas City Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah dropped to his knees to say a Muslim prayer after celebrating a touchdown, he was flagged for an "unsportsmanlike conduct" penalty. The next day the NFL came out and apologized to Abdullah and said that he should not have been penalized. As far as I am concerned that's where they made their mistake. I could care less if some Muslim got his feelings hurt because he was praying. I'm glad there was a video of him praying just so people actually could see that Muslims do it at times. Mostly they are running around killing people, chopping off their heads and blowing things up to to actually pray. Who's got time for that when you have all this to do? All I know is there are innocent people getting killed over there. They seem to enjoy beheading people. I'm trying not to include the entire Muslim race for what ISIS is doing but pardon me if I don't get too worked up about the rights of some hot dog show off football player when he tried to pray. I don't care.

[GoRedSox34]

explain how Kanye is a criminal

[Yankee4Life]

explain how Kanye is a criminal

All I did was read about him. What are you, his public relations man?

[GoRedSox34]

you didn't answer the question.

When Kanye says "I Am A God" he is using a conceptual metaphor that is integral to the story of his latest album. It has nothing to do with him saying he is "better than" you.

But, of course, you wouldn't know this, so you hold on to what the news outlets have to say about him. And obviously the media is going to portray him as "arrogant" when Kanye repeatedly tries to dodge the paparazzi. He is an intensely private individual, and as such, is very sensitive to people following him around all day.

As a result, the gullible masses love to read about how "arrogant" and "self-centered" Kanye is so they can direct their anger towards a wealthy and successful person. The funniest part is how opposite the media's portrayal of Kanye really is. He's actually a total nerd, who has a lot of insecurities, this is widely known.

[Yankee4Life]

I only have a two-word answer to your 156 word response.: Who cares?

[DeadShot]

explain how Kanye is a criminal

In case you didn't know, this is an opinion thread from Yankee4Life and he has been doing it for almost a decade now. Therefore, he doesn't need to explain to you whatever things he says here because that is his opinion. You can disagree with it, but he doesn't need to explain to you why he says something.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 10-12

...While I did not have a vested interest in the Angels - Royals series that ended a week ago today I really enjoyed the close-up looks on Mike Scioscia's face when the Royals started pulling away in game three. The guy looks like a little kid right after someone took away his cookies.

...Josh Hamilton, the Angels' $125-million mistake, did not get one hit in the three game series. He did even worse than Alex Rodriguez because at least A-Rod can manage one hit before he strikes out for the rest of the series.

...The best part about seeing the Tigers, Angels, Dodgers and Nationals get eliminated was knowing that guys like Miguel Cabrera, Josh Hamilton, Yasiel Puig and Bryce Harper won't get to the World Series.

...Pulling for a Baltimore - San Francisco World Series.

...I was waiting for something like this to happen as soon as the Yankees were eliminated from post-season play last month for the second straight year. Someone who did not deserve it was going to get the ax because of how the team played this season and sure enough the Yankees fired hitting coach Kevin Long and first base coach Mick Kelleher because as everyone knows it was the combined efforts of those two coaches that the Yankees are not playing in the American League Championship Series as we speak. What did Long do that was so wrong? In their last championship season back in 2009 everyone praised the guy because that team actually hit and scored runs and that is exactly what they did not do this season or last. It was a different team five years ago compared to the old and overpaid roster that made up the Yankees this year. I don't see how it was Long's fault at all but again he was an easy target and that's the Yankee way. And while I am talking about easy targets I would love to know what Mick Kelleher did wrong. As first base coach he was lonely all year. He didn't have a chance to do anything wrong. What did he do, take someone else's seat on a plane one time? This is how the Yankees take care of problems, by getting rid of people that had nothing to do with why they didn't win. They are famous for this. The players that they sign is never a problem because there is always another over-the-hill veteran out there every year for them to scoop up to add to their injury list.

...Last Wednesday in New York the other thirty-one NFL owners unanimously approved the sale of the Buffalo Bills to Terry Pegula and his wife. I had no idea that there were so many rich guys mad at this guy. Wait until the excitement wears off and he realizes what he bought.

...About ten minutes after the Dodgers got eliminated by the Cardinals last week Josh Beckett told the press and anyone that cared that he was retiring from baseball. If you take away his no-hitter he had this year you will see he hasn't done anything in three years. Maybe after a few years he can return to Fenway Park where they can retire his number because it would be hard to find someone who wore a Red Sox uniform that was more of a whiny crybaby than this guy.

...It took the NFL less than a week to find the fan who shined a laser pointer at some Buffalo Bills players when they were in Detroit last Sunday during their game with the Lions and the reason why they caught him had nothing to do with the high-priced people that were hired to find the guy. The idiot that did this did all the work for them because he immediately ran to twitter to admit what he did and to brag about it. His bragging and his aim with the laser didn't do him any good since Buffalo came back to win the game 17 - 14 but he figured he'd try anyways. The Lions have banned this kid for life from "entering Ford Field again legally." That means they are not going to be able to stop this guy from getting in the stadium in the future if he blends in with the crowd and keeps his laser toys at home. He won't be able to purchase tickets online via credit card with his name but someone else can do it for him. So Ford Field hasn't seen the last of this guy.

...Seven hundred miles away in the offices of Fenway Park the Red Sox officials observed what went on last Sunday in Detroit and vowed that the same thing would never happen in there. What they plan on doing is to pass out laser pointers to everyone in the bleachers next year the first time the Yankees visit Fenway so if one of their fans runs to twitter to brag about it MLB won't know which fan to arrest.

...You can use a lot of adjectives to describe Sarah Silverman but saying that she is funny should not be one of them.

...Tomorrow is Columbus Day across the country except in the state of Washington where they still do not recognize it as a legal state holiday and after what happened last week it probably never will be. That's because the Seattle City Council voted to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day on the same day that the rest of the country. In case you are wondering what the hell that actually is it is a day set aside to honor the contributions and culture of Native Americans and the indigenous community in Seattle. Fair enough but why did they have to celebrate this on the same day that Columbus Day is recognized? Why not the week before or the week after? The president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians explained why to a crowd of supporters after the approval of the Seattle Council. "Nobody discovered Seattle, Washington," she said. And she's right. But she also quickly overlooked the fact that no one wanted to discover it either.

...A Delaware mother was released from jail after posting $6,000 bond and has been barred from coming into contact with her three children after her little four-year-old daughter unknowingly brought 250 packets of heroin to her daycare, and passed them out to classmates thinking they were candy. Police say she was fit to be tied after she was released and they didn't know if she mad because the four-year-old found her stuff or that she gave it away for free.

...I don't know who is in charge of the Walmart public relations section but they either have to learn to be quiet or get someone else to do their job. Back in June a Walmart truck driver hit Tracy Morgan and his friends because he fell asleep behind the wheel. Driving for thirteen hours straight without a break will do that to you. Someone at Walmart must not have thought that this fact was too immaterial to even worry about because they released a statement blaming the vehicle that Tracy Morgan was in for the accident. Morgan himself could not believe that Walmart even tried to place the blame on him but really he should have seen this coming. When big corporations screw up the first thing they never do is come out and admit that they messed up. They first have to blame the other party no matter how bad it makes them look. Let's say there are tours given out at a company's main distribution plant to show people how their product is made and during the show-and-tell someone gets seriously hurt. The first thing the company won't do is accept responsibility for what happened. They'll find a way to blame the person who got hurt and if they can get away with it they'll say the unlucky schmuck should have never been born in the first place. That's what Walmart's doing to Tracy Morgan now. The good thing is that only Walmart's buying it.

...Because more Wal-Mart employees signed up for health benefits this year than the company expected, Wal-Mart was forced to eliminate health benefits for 30,000 employees to control their rising health care costs. These people are something else. They give their workers the option to sign up for health coverage and when they do they took it away from them so fast that they couldn't even fill a prescription. You ever notice that the only press coverage that Wal-Mart gets is bad? There's a good reason for that. They're Wal-Mart.

...If there is one group of people that consistently contradict each other it would have to be nutritionists. How many times has it been drummed into you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that if you don't take the time to have something in the morning your energy level throughout the day will not be as high as it should be? I have heard this since I was a kid. But now some nutritionists are claiming that skipping that first meal may lead to some real benefits like losing a few pounds to increasing your level of anti-aging growth hormone. I don't know about the last part but I can kind of see what they are talking about when they said you would lose a few pounds. I think that would depend on what you have in the morning that you call a breakfast. If you are used to having a breakfast worthy of Jethro Bodine from The Beverly Hillbillies then I can see how holding back will help you. But if you are having an egg, a slice of toast and coffee I don't see how that will hurt you but that is exactly what these people are trying to sell now. One of these days one of these research nutritionists while under interrogation and lack of sleep will admit publicly that they really don't know the absolute truth. Until then, this happens.

...Why is the media is so fascinated with the whereabouts of Kim Jong Un?

...And at the same time why is the media so quick to pick up on anything they think sniffs of social injustice even if it comes from the complaining of a twelve-year-old girl? In case you haven't heard some kid from Arizona wrote a letter to Dick's Sporting Goods for failing to include female athletes in its 2014 basketball catalog. I guess I really can't take it out on the kid because she wrote the letter directly to the company and her father had to post it on twitter for the world to see. And just to show Dick's that if they don't get their way they were going to take their business elsewhere. I don't know about you but all see is a father exploiting a private letter his daughter wrote just to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Well, they got it. Now go away. And if you want to find another place to buy basketball equipment just look online and keep it to yourself.

...Brother, can you spare a dime, Dept: A good Samaritan gave a seventy-eight-year-old woman some money last week when he saw her holding a sign claiming she needed cash for food and apparently it was not the first time this man reached out to assist this woman. He even did this on days when he didn't have enough money to pay for his own lunch. There's a good chance he would have continued doing this for this woman but when he saw her sitting in a parking lot in her 2013 Fiat he became furious. He was upset that he was giving money to someone who obviously didn't need it and who was driving a better car than he has. I know how he feels. That old shyster has a better car than me too. He ended up telling her if he saw her car in the parking lot again he would bust her window. Either that or have her give him back all the money he gave her with interest and if she starts begging some more then bust her window. Just a suggestion. Later on the woman's grandchildren contacted the man and told him that their grandmother has a panhandling permit and was not doing anything illegal. Is that so? Are panhandling permits issued in the state of New York? You see, I need a new car.

...I feel bad for all the legitimate people that really need a few bucks to get by. After this, they're screwed.

[MrDudleyDoWright]

Every time I come back to MVP mods, I always like going through this thread. For goodness sake Y4L, I give you credit for keeping up with this! More determination into this than what I had after my second or third MVP Dynasties....or whatever Blades' put out there! That's an old timer joker I'm sure anyone who registered on this website after 2009 won't understand haha. I might as well add my own thoughts in too I guess. I really like this thread.

As I sit here typing this out, I'm listening to "Wavelength" by Van Morrison. A guy my age (21) should NOT know who Van Morrison is. I'm an old soul. Don't judge me!

In terms of baseball/random thoughts, I get "jealous" watching the MLB Playoffs year after year because as a suffering and self-admitted Mets fan, along with baseball being my favourite sport, I just wish that one day I can turn on a TV in October and see the heart of Flushing, the ever so corporate Citi Field crowd waving rally towels as the Mets begin Game 1 of the NLCS against (Insert NL Central/West team, probably either STL or SF). The last time the Mets were in the playoffs, I was in 8th grade. I had braces and was re-enacting Mets moments with MVP 2007 Total Conversion Mod that installed with TiT. Boy, was 2006 a fun year. Granted it ended on a sour note, but I can't remember the last time I was satisfied with the way a Mets season went.

2007, well, we all know what happened. 2008 was a rollercoaster ride which ended in a pool of tears as not only the Mets fell short of the playoffs, but Shea was closing as well. 2009-2013 was all a blur. Different managers, overpaid players, smug and moronic owners, even losing WFAN as the radio station for Mets baseball. It's been a rough go, but with the youth this team has and considering 2014 was a modest success, I can honestly say I'm looking forward to the future. Sandy Alderson is building a foundation that the Mets have throughout the years succeeded on. Pitching, Pitching and more pitching!

Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard. 3 out of the 4 are already proven. If Noah pans out, oh boy, look out! Then you have the emergence of Lucas Duda (FINALLY), the showing of Travis d'Arnaud, Wilmer Flores, Dilson Hererra. The stability of Daniel Murphy and the reliable arms of Jennry Mejia, Vic Black and Jeurys Familia, things are on the upswing. Lets just hope, the grey hairs are settling in now....

Hopefully I'm not stepping on anyone's toes here. I'll see myself out now.

[Kccitystar]

MrDudleyDoWright....

[MrDudleyDoWright]

MrDudleyDoWright....

Thanks for making me feel right at home, sir. I'm sure you do know me by my altar ego! Or my Facebook name. Yeah, lets go with that.

[Kccitystar]

Thanks for making me feel right at home, sir. I'm sure you do know me by my altar ego! Or my Facebook name. Yeah, lets go with that.

ixnay on the acebookfay endfray

[MrDudleyDoWright]

ixnay on the acebookfay endfray

I said absolutely nothing. What's Facebook? What's baseball? What is life?

The thread title does say..."Random"

[Yankee4Life]

Every time I come back to MVP mods, I always like going through this thread. For goodness sake Y4L, I give you credit for keeping up with this! More determination into this than what I had after my second or third MVP Dynasties....or whatever Blades' put out there! That's an old timer joker I'm sure anyone who registered on this website after 2009 won't understand haha. I might as well add my own thoughts in too I guess. I really like this thread.

You're welcome. And please come back more often to post in here or just mess around on the site.

Oh, by the way, Blades had at least a dozen "brand-new-this-is-my-final-dynasty" threads over the years. I should know, he had Mark and I remove his old ones just so he could start all over again. He was something else.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 10-19

...Some major league baseball players actually believe that baseball is serious about their claims to speed up the game and they want to have a voice in what goes on to make this happen. Really? What for? Nothing's going to change and everyone already knows it so why are they feeling excluded? And if by some chance a good idea pops up they'll end up shooting it down because they'll think it is not in their best interests.

...When Kansas City won the pennant last Wednesday the two people I immediately thought of from this website were Royal Blues and Spungo. Those guys were always Royals fans even back in the day when they were winning three games a month. Wherever they are I am sure they were thrilled.

...I know both the AL and NL championship series' did not go the full seven games but the Giants wrapped up their series last Thursday and the Royals won theirs the day before. Why couldn't the World Series be moved up to today instead of waiting until Tuesday to start this? This is called making an adjustment and that's something that Selig has never learned to do.

...Now that Brian Cashman has his brand new three-year contract from the Yankees I am wondering who he is going to hand the next one hundred million dollar contract to.

...I don't know why Philadelphia fans are so atrocious but they have been since professional sports has been played there and they have no plans of changing any time soon. You are taking your life in your own hands if you go there wearing the team colors of the visiting team. And that is what makes what happened last week even more puzzling. There is a guy who is very familiar to Eagles fans because before the game he sits in his wheelchair and sings for the fans who pass by him. People know him. He's an Eagles fan and you'd think they would have the sense to leave someone like this alone. But these are the same kind of people that purposely vomit on other fans so it didn't astound me to learn that a woman stole this man's prosthetic leg and took off with it. Police found the leg on the other side of the city on a subway platform so the good news is that both the leg and owner have been reunited. I don't understand why things like this happen in that city but then again I'm just an outsider. I'm not from Philadelphia let alone been there. When I feel like I am going to get sick I head to the restroom as fast as I can and when I see a prosthetic leg I have no urge to do a snatch and grab. I'd never fit in down there with that attitude.

...Required Boston comment, Dept: After that post above what did you expect? That's why this is the random thoughts thread. I go all over the place. As bad as Philly fans are they still take a back seat from their Boston cousins. If that guy had his leg ripped off in Boston someone would have used it as a baseball bat before it was recovered. If I close my eyes I can still see the bleacher fans in Fenway Park attack Jeff Nelson in the third game of the 2003 A.L.C.S. They were treated as heroes for what they did and it wouldn't have shocked me one bit to find out that the team brought them into the clubhouse after the game to meet the players. Can't prove that of course but as they say in those New York Lottery commercials "hey, you never know".

...Amanda Bynes made the news again and all she had to do was be herself. She took a flight from New York to Los Angeles and when she got there she informed reporters that she was going to file a lawsuit against her parents and especially her father. In the past she made posts on twitter letting everyone know that he verbally, physically and sexually abused her. Now she is saying that he never did any of that stuff but instead he ordered a microchip to be placed in her brain and that was why she said the things she did. You got to give her credit for one thing. No one ever saw that excuse coming at all. She also told everyone she was engaged to be married and when the press went to interview her so-called fiancé he told them he hasn't seen her in months and he was just as surprised about this marriage talk as everyone else was. If I were him I would pack a bag and change my name and move somewhere else because eventually when she get out of that psychiatric hospital she's in she is going to come looking for him to start going over wedding plans. All this would probably be really funny if it was part of some movie plot but it's not. No need to kick Bynes when she's down. She's taking care of that all by herself.

...When I heard about that family who had to leave their home because there were five thousand spiders inside of it it literally made my skin crawl. It would only take one spider in my house to get me running.

...Ask yourself this question. Who really wants to be the next Yankee hitting coach? Whomever it is will be inheriting virtually the same roster which means they are still not going to hit and they'll all be another year old. I'd pass on that job faster than a politician running out the back door of a brothel.

...Unless you are a Cowboy fan or a die-hard fantasy football player chances are you have never heard of Joseph Randle. Randle happens to be a backup running back for Dallas and last week he was caught shoplifting a bottle of cologne and a pack of underwear from a store in a suburban Dallas mall. The underwear was worth $39.50 and the bottle of cologne sold for $84.00. Besides the actual shoplifting part the thing I don't understand is that the cologne that Randle stole was a tester bottle. You know, the bottles that they have on the display counter so you can spray some on you to see if you like it? This guy must have been desperate or in a hurry. Randle told the police that he didn’t pay because he didn’t want to take the time to do it and that he should have kept walking to his car if he knew he would be arrested. Maybe he had a big date with Michael Sam. What the hell did he expect to happen? Be named shoplifter of the month and be invited to come back in the store to take a few more things? Randle makes $495,000 a year so that could explain why he did what he did. Who can make ends meet when you are making that kind of money?

...Of course he'll be playing today against the New York Giants. That's all that matters for the Cowboys anyway.

...Cheers to Lenoir City, Tennessee for requiring their residents to maintain their yards and who are not afraid to do something about it when they don't. A woman recently spent six hours behind bars because neighbors were beginning to confuse her lawn with a brush forest. She was given a citation for her overgrown grass and shrubbery and despite having two grown kids living at home and a husband in school they found time to do everything else but the lawn. Last week a judge finally handed down a five-day jail sentence for refusing to comply with the city ordinances that she was given but when she stood in front of the court her sentence was reduced to six hours. If it was the city's intention to put a scare into this woman to start her lawnmower up, it worked because she suddenly found the time to get the lawn done as soon as her six hours were done. It's a good thing for this woman that the city decided not to take a look at the inside of the house. She'd be looking at twenty years then.

...One day last week I had to go to the car dealership because my wife's car had a factory recall on it and I had to wait there for the work to be completed because I live too far from the place to go home while this was being done. While I was sitting in the waiting room another customer came in and began to wait too. It was a woman and what stuck out for me was that she was carrying three purses with her. Usually I see women walking around with one purse so when I saw three I didn't know what to think. I certainly wasn't about to ask her why she had so many and was content to not knowing. What do I know? I walk around with a wallet and car keys and that's it. Then another woman came in and pretty soon the two of them started talking and before long the subject of her purses was brought up. That's all women talk about. Purses and shoes. The woman explained that the reason why she had three purses was because she had her ID, wallet, money and keys in one of them, drinks in the next one and various snacks in the third one. I said to myself that if she ever went on a long trip she'd never have to stop and get something to eat. And when she got up you could tell by how she picked them up that she didn't have room to fit in a handful of napkins. And I complain about what I carry around!

...A Navy admiral gave an interview last week to a reporter to let him know about the latest warfare technologies developed by them for use in every day situations and I have to admit they were quite impressive. Unmanned crafts, lasers and super-powered railguns are part of the Department of the Navy's future. The demonstration that the Navy gave for these new toys were very profound but something kept on nagging at me. Why did they have to show this in the first place? Why go public with this when you didn't have to yet? Why let the enemy know about the capabilities of these new weapons? The way I see it they should find out about this stuff at the worst possible moment so they can't do anything about it.

...For the second time in a matter of months an airline passenger was removed from a flight after a post she made on twitter when she questioned the sobriety of a Jet Blue airline pilot. The pilot in question turned the plane around and made all the passengers get off while he took a sobriety test that he passed. Everyone was then allowed back on the aircraft except for the junior Woodward and Bernstein who covered what was going on for twitter. Jet Blue was right for kicking this woman off the plane because all she was doing was making a bad situation worse. People like this that use twitter have nothing better to do with their lives and are so self-absorbed with themselves that they think whatever they post is important and after it's posted they don't have to take responsibility for it. Screw you lady. I hope you had to take a train home.

...China has banned any TV or movie star that have used drugs, visited prostitutes or been involved in other law-breaking from appearing on any Chinese television, movie screens or other forms of broadcast. The reason for doing this is that the Chinese want to keep the entertainment industry "healthy" because performers who have done these things set a bad example for young people. I can see what they are trying to do. They want these people to be accountable. Too bad this will never work in America because if they banned everyone that broke the law in Hollywood we wouldn't have anything to watch on TV. In this country the opposite happens. Instead of being banned from TV they get more exposure and Entertainment Tonight will have a lead story for the next two weeks. Sometimes these Chinese make sense.

...Jane the Virgin? What the hell?

...Enjoy the World Series! The long off-season awaits.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 10-26

...I was quietly minding my own business and then all of a sudden last Tuesday night I remembered the World Series began after a long five-day layoff. Here I was immersing myself in Oakland's winless season and I had to get back to baseball and I have to say while I enjoyed the way game one ended up the best part of it was that Tim McCarver was not in the announcer's booth. That alone improved the quality of the broadcast.

...Boston's Yoenis Cespedes joined Jay Z's ROC Nation Sports agency last week and with one year remaining on his current contract that only pays him thirty-six million dollars, he is looking to cash in on his own Robinson Cano type contract. For his part it is the right move because Jay Z is someone who demands an outrageous amount of money for his clients (re: Cano) and will gladly go to whatever team caves into his demands first. This will probably mean the beginning of the end for him in Boston because as much as I dislike that team I don't see the Red Sox brass being held up for millions of dollars by a no-talent musician especially when they have Mookie Betts waiting for his chance to play.

...You have to wonder what is going on with the Tampa Bay Rays. First they lose their executive vice president of baseball operations to the Dodgers and now Joe Maddon has decided not to return for his tenth year as manager of the team. Two key losses and free agency hasn't even started yet.

...This never happened to Tony Nelson, Dept: Even though this tactic has been used by women all over the world, a woman in Dubai found a new excuse to leave her husband high and dry by refusing to sleep with him after they were married. She told him that she'd love to but she was unable to because she was a supernatural being called a jinn - or what we mere mortals refer to as a genie. She went as far as telling her husband to go and ask her parents if he didn't believe her and oh by the way after you are done talking to them we have to get a divorce and you got to pay me alimony. If this was a reason to get out of the marriage and get money out of some guy this little ploy did not work because a court in Dubai ruled that she was not entitled to any alimony because she did not tell her husband that she was a genie before they got married. Thank God. Had she won her case it would have started a world-wide epidemic of women claiming to be related to Barbara Eden.

...Got to admit though I didn't know they had divorce in the United Arab Emirates. I just figured when it was time for the husband to move on they'd just gather up a few unused boulders and stone the woman to death and the guy grabs the first twelve-year-old girl he sees.

...Major requirement for the next manager of the Minnesota Twins: don't expect the team to spend any amount of money or get any player that you need. Other than that, good luck.

...Michael Sam, who spent the past seven weeks on the Dallas Cowboys practice squad was waived by the team last week and is now a free agent. Dallas is the second team to cut Sam since he was drafted back in April. It didn't take them long to see what the Rams already saw for themselves that while Sam was a decent enough defensive end in college, there were many other players whose size and skill put them ahead of Sam. I am convinced that NFL teams knew this going into the draft and by coming out and telling the sports world he was gay he practically forced a team to draft him. Well, the Rams did and he couldn't cut it there and the Cowboys, who do anything for publicity were forced to cut ties with him because he couldn't do the job. All the conspiracy theorists out there can't say he didn't get his chance.

...Now with Sam gone ESPN probably has to double their coverage on Johnny Manziel to fill air time.

...Last week I wrote about Joseph Randle, the back-up running back for the Dallas Cowboys who was caught shoplifting some underwear and display cologne. He was fined one week's pay by the Cowboys for the amount of $29,500. That big dent in his wallet did not last long because last week he signed an endorsement deal with the same company (MeUndies) that he shoplifted the underwear from. And then you wonder why kids do not know right from wrong. As soon as I found out what MeUndies did for Randle I checked to see if they had a store where I lived because I figured I would go there and steal some socks and t-shirts just in case they wanted Randle to have a sidekick in his commercials. Unfortunately I found out that MeUndies has no stores where I live and because of that I am forced to get my underwear and socks the same way that I have been doing it for my entire life and that's by purchasing them. What a country. Instead of making an example out of him they made him a pitchman. Now all he has to do to be a full-fledged celebrity is beat his girlfriend up and make sure it gets caught on camera. Then he'd be a star.

...It is that time of year that haunted house attractions draw many people in so they can get scared and scream at things that jump out in front of them all for the price of an admission ticket. There is a disclaimer on the ticket telling you that if you suffer from a heart condition or any other health related issue that you should not go in because if you've ever been in one of these their intention is to scare the hell out of you and when I go in there I get more than my money's worth. That is why I do not understand why a sixteen-year-old girl with a pre-existing heart condition that was so serious she was described by other people as a walking time bomb because she was living with only one lung and often had trouble breathing. Yet this same girl walked into one of these places and sure enough she got a scare and a jolt and the time bomb that was in her heart finally went off ending her life. I realize living with a condition like that she could have easily died just watching TV or taking a walk but why take a chance like this? The last place she should have been is in a haunted house. You can't blame anyone for this because I am sure she just wanted to be a normal teenage girl like anyone else but I have a feeling that her mother knew nothing about this until it was too late.

...Three teenage girls from Denver got the bright idea that they were going to go to Syria to join the ISIS fighters and thanks to one of the parents who was curious as to where his child was they could have made it. They did get all the way to Frankfurt, Germany where thanks to the FBI who put out a notice on their passports, German authorities were waiting for them when they got off the plane there. They said hello, how's it going, turn around and get the hell out of this country. SCHNELL!!! When the girls landed back in the United States they were greeted again, this time by the FBI where they were questioned and released. I don't get why they were released because they were going to give aid to an enemy of the U.S. and their ages (fifteen) should have made no difference at all. They were old enough to get plane tickets and bring spending money and con their parents for awhile. They should be old enough to face charges. I don't think any of them realize how the FBI saved their lives because had they made it all the way to Syria they would have become someone's bride over there whether they wanted to or not and chances are they would have been killed because they wanted to spend more time on Facebook then pop out kids.

...I had to go to a wake last Thursday because my father's youngest sister lost her battle with cancer. There was a lot of people at the wake and some of them brought their kids with them and when that happens things get interesting. There were two girls there that looked to be about twelve years old and two boys who had to be about the same age. The two girls were running around bare footed. This funeral hall has three viewing rooms and on this night two of them were occupied with families for the two deceased relatives. One room was not being used and because there were so many people in the room to pay respects to my father's sister my cousin and I went into the occupied room to have a place to sit and get away from the crowd. Five minutes later those four kids came in the room and started running around like they were playing tag. Nobody stopped them. I never found out who their parents were because not once did anyone check on them. This was the first time I saw a funeral parlor being used as a recess area. At one point one of the girls almost broke a lamp because she was spinning around in a circle because those are the things you do at playtime. Watching these kids act up reminded me of the only time I was reprimanded at a funeral home. I was eleven and I was at the water fountain getting something to drink. My sister was ahead of me and she somehow spilled the paper cup filled with water on her and I laughed. My mother was nearby and heard me laugh and came over and read me her version of the riot act and she got me feeling so guilty that by the time she was through with me she had me thinking that the reason why that guy was in the coffin right now was because I laughed. No way would that work today.

...I can not believe I am going to say this but I want to publicly thank a convicted child molester for being a convicted child molester. Honey Boo-Boo's mother "Mama June" has been dating a man who went to jail ten years ago for child molestation and when the people at TLC found out about it they canceled plans for a fifth season of Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo. Jail must really screw up a person big time. This guy gets out and the best he can do is go out with the lead taste-tester at Krispy Kreme? I'm surprised it lasted four seasons. Each of her kids must have put on at least fifty pounds since the start of the show. Southerners must have really hated having this on the air because of all the stereotypes about them being fat, stupid and lazy and it must have driven them nuts to watch this family prove to everyone that is exactly what they are.

...Kim Kardashian was quoted in a London magazine last week that she wants her daughter to work for the things that she wants just like she herself did. This poor kid is going to have enough problems in her life with Mr. and Mrs. dysfunctional as her parents and now her mother comes out and says she wants her to be just like her. Does this mean in twenty to twenty-five years she is going to be making a sex tape that will leave nothing to the imagination? Or will she be following daddy in the music business so she can scream and swear into a microphone? Kanye West has been doing this for years and he's managed to fool a lot of people. Pretty good for someone with no brains or common sense. No matter what direction this kid goes when she gets older she's bound to get as much attention as her self-absorbed parents. Come to think of it she will be just like her mother.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 11-2

...The 2014 baseball season could not have ended on a better note last Wednesday night as the Giants won their third world title in the last five years and you have to be impressed with that accomplishment even if you are a Dodger fan. This game seven had it all. Great pitching, clutch hitting and good defense. Add all that up and mix well and you have a 3 - 2 San Francisco win. As a Yankee fan I don't want to see them repeat because I'd like to see them win it next season even though I realize that the closest the Yankees will get to the series next year is right next to the TV in their living room. But this Giant team is impressive and dangerous and clutch when it counts. They deserved to win.

...Game Seven observations Dept: How fortunate were the Giants that Alex Gordon was the guy who got that two out hit in the ninth inning? If someone like Jarrod Dyson had hit that ball he probably would have scored because of the way Gregor Blanco misplaying it and Juan Perez having trouble picking it up?...When was the last time a pitcher completely dominated a World Series like Madison Bumgarner did? Bumgarner (18-10, 2.98 ERA) was in the shadows of Clayton Kershaw all year but when it was all over it was Bumgarner who earned another ring while Kershaw gets to think about it all winter long...The shot of the night as far as I was concerned is when FOX showed George Brett standing alone in the luxury seats looking dejected. It's the same look he had on his face in '76, '77 and '78. **** him...I don't give a *$%@ how good Erin Andrews looks. She added nothing to the World Series broadcast.

...Ok, free agency will be starting soon. I can not wait to see who the Yankees sign next!

...Immediately after Pablo Sandoval caught the final out in Kansas City to end the World Series, Alex Rodriguez' season-long suspension from baseball came to an end and he is now back on the Yankee forty-man roster. We'll have to see during next year's spring training games to see if this is a good thing or not. I'm hoping for the best and even if he ends up hitting around .240 he'll fit in nicely with all the other overpaid slugs on the team that did the same thing this past season.

...Kevin Youkilis retired from baseball last week and I can not believe that I am even admitting this but I am going to miss him. When he was with Boston he would complain about everything and he thought every pitch was too close to him - even if the pitcher was warming up in the bullpen. Can't blame him though. That's how they are taught to play in Boston. Complain over and over again until they give you something. But looking past that I grudgingly admit this guy showed more heart and determination out on that field then many of the Yankee players did that played against him. He was Boston's version of Paul O'Neill.

...Just like last year around where I live we didn't have any kids roaming the streets on Halloween night and even though the weather did not give those kids a break (it was rainy and damp) I don't think that was the sole reason for the street being empty. When I was a kid we would have so many going door-to-door that we would have to wait for one batch of kids to go to a house just so we wouldn't overwhelm the people giving out the candy. We were so efficient that we would even communicate to each other from group to group to let each other know what house to go to and which one to avoid. Mrs. Johnson at number 189 is giving out Snickers bars and Mrs. Greene at 177 is giving out some kind of dark chocolate candy. Knowing that we'd pass up Mrs, Greene and double back to Mrs. Johnson at the end of the night for another Snickers. That right there is how to trick-or-treat.

...Miguel Cabrera got bone spurs removed from his right ankle and had a stress fracture repaired to the navicular bone in his foot. In other words doctors got him all fixed up which means he will be able to run all out to first base next year. This is something he hasn't done since his rookie year in 2003 so don't be surprised if he goes out of character and tries to bust it down the line that he doesn't injure his other ankle.

...Here is hoping that fired Cubs manager Rick Renteria finds a job someplace in baseball very soon because the Cubs acted so fast to fill a managerial spot that wasn't even open - at least until Joe Maddon decided to leave Tampa Bay and as soon as that happened Renteria became expendable whether he knew it or not. The Cubs were so bad last season that they made the Yankees look good but Renteria did the best he could with what he had and not counting who the Cubs grab off the free agent market Maddon is going to have virtually the same roster. Good luck with that. Make sure you have plenty of eye-glass cleaner with you Joe because your new team plays outside and you're going to need it.

...Last week started out even worse than anyone could imagine as we all learned about the death of St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Oscar Tavaras. Tavaras was only twenty-two years old and if the scouting reports were to be believed the Cardinals had themselves a good young player with unlimited potential. He died last Sunday in the Dominican Republic in a car crash that also claimed his eighteen-year-old girlfriend. Losing a young ballplayer with his entire career is one thing. Losing a son and a family member and a friend is another. This is a very difficult time for those two families in the Dominican as well as the Cardinal family and I can only hope that they can lean on each other in the months that await them.

...Every time I hear about a ballplayer dying no matter how it happens I immediately recall the events of August 2nd, 1979 and how I felt when I found out Thurman Munson died. All these years I still have that empty feeling.

...I took a walk around my neighborhood the other day just to give my knees some exercise and once again during this time of year it was all about politics. Signs on front lawns telling you who they are voting for. Signs across the street that are pulling for the other guy. One guy had seven different signs for the same candidate on his front lawn. Must have been a relative. Me? I've never had a political sign stuck in my front lawn for anyone. I never understood why people have the need to shout out to everyone who they are voting for.

...During last Thursday's Broncos - Chargers game in Denver a fan who was at the game got up from his seat at halftime and never returned. For me it makes perfect sense because if I was at a Broncos game I would walk out too but this guy was a Bronco fan so that's why his family became concerned. He eventually showed up a few days later in Pueblo, Colorado which is about 115 miles away from Denver. According to the Denver police the man walked all the way to Pueblo and slept outdoors during his journey, hoping to avoid recognition. The family is not giving out any details as to why he decided to leave the stadium to walk over one hundred miles because they are asking everyone for their "privacy." It was ok for them to involve the public and the police while this guy was gone for five days but not now. The only reason I can think of for walking that far would be for a woman. And for that distance she better have been worth it.

...Incredible as this may sound, one of the three girls last week from Colorado that was trying to go to Syria to join ISIS admitted that she was confused about what her role would be if she had actually made it there. And I thought they were idiots for doing what they did. My mistake was giving them some bit of common sense because I thought they knew what was going on over there. As for their roles? The Muslim extremists would have used all of them for breeders and then killed them later for not being pure. These kids weren't confused. They were brainless.

...One day last week Jose Canseco was home at his kitchen table cleaning his gun when it accidentally went off. The bullet went through the middle finger on his left hand and while doctors tried their best to save what was left of the finger he will never have full use of it again. Canseco hasn't been in the news recently so you got to give him credit for taking this route to get some attention. I may not own a gun and I may not have fired a gun but I do know that you have to actually pull the trigger to make it go off. Just ask Plaxico Burress. Final score Gun 1, Canseco 0.

...The city of San Diego will soon be planning one-way travel arrangements for homeless people who would like to reunite with their families but do not have the money to get home to make it happen. For those who want to go home they are willing to give a one-way bus ticket to wherever they want to go provided they don't come back six months later to look for the shopping cart they left behind. For the homeless people who do not want to go back to their original homes the city will be bussing them ninety miles north to Los Angeles because in L.A. what is a few thousand more people selling maps to the stars homes?

...A twenty-four-year-old hot biology teacher from Texas who in her spare time was the school's cheerleading coach has resigned from her job because she had one of her male members of the cheerleading squad over her house at night so they can work on his biology homework together. And just to keep the kid focused on his homework she sent him nude photos of herself as an incentive for the student to keep plugging away at his work, which he did sometimes two or three times a night when he was over to her house. Do you see how these little trysts become public knowledge? It's always one of them doing something really dumb and that's when everyone finds out. What did she think her student was going to do with a nude photo of her, hide it? Since when did teachers stop being smart? A representative for the school district later made a statement saying that it was terribly unfortunate whenever a teacher violates trust of a student like that. That comment must have made every male student in that school laugh because they'd have given anything to have their trust violated the same way. Especially on a Friday night when you have nothing planned.

...Goodbye to manners, Dept: I went out to dinner with my wife last week to a beautiful Italian restaurant that we both enjoy and not long after we were seated another party came in, a man and a woman and their two kids who looked to be junior high school age. Not long after they were seated one of the kids started talking about something they saw online that they thought was funny. The reason why I know what the kid said was that she did not have the common sense to lower her voice in a public place when speaking and probably will never learn it either. She then pulled out her phone and found what she was talking about and showed it to everyone else at her table. Sure enough they thought it was funny and then not to be left out the boy pulled out his phone and found something to show them that was just as hilarious because the laughter was as loud as the first video. That's when it seemed to turn into a battle of who can find the most loud and annoying videos ever and if I had to judge it I would say the contest ended up in a tie. If you ever had to sit behind a loud-talking group of people in a movie theater then you have a good idea of how annoying these people were. Not once did Mom and Dad think of asking everyone to lower their voices. Why should they? The way they must have seen it everyone else there was being quiet for them. Whatever happened to manners? Used to be you'd never leave home without them.

...Did you hear about the home that had 102 garter snakes in their basement? They filled up five pillowcases just to get them all out of there. My concern would be is if that were that many of them couldn't they have overlooked one? And I've seen garter snakes before. I don't care how small they are. The fear factor makes them look ten times bigger to me. I'm so paranoid that I spent some time in my own basement the other day looking around for anything down there worth killing and I was relieved and happy to say that I found nothing.

...No matter what Chelsea Handler does she always manages to remind everyone that she has no class.

...It's that time of year again! Turn your clocks back one hour today.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 11-9

...Thank God the elections are done. People complain about all the political mail that they get but what really gets to me is the phone calls. Twice I had a recording call me and start out with hi John, it's Cindy and I was wondering if you were going to make it out to the polls this Tuesday? Since my name isn't John I really couldn't give her an honest answer. The second time we got this recorded call my wife picked up the phone and after listening to what the message was turned to me and asked me when I changed my name to John.

...Last Tuesday the 4th was the start of the free agent season for baseball and while I have no way of knowing for sure where the top three pitchers will end up (Max Scherzer, Jon Lester and James Shields) I believe I can reasonably predict these two things happening. First, Nelson Cruz is not going to have to wait as long as he did last year to sign with a new team and secondly there is no way the Yankees are going to be able to resist signing Victor Martinez. He's perfect for them. He'll be thirty-six next month and if there is anything Yankee fans and haters can both agree on is that the Yankees love throwing long-term contracts at players at that age who can't do anything but be a designated hitter.

...The Tampa Bay Rays are contemplating tampering charges against the Cubs because they are convinced that Chicago enticed Joe Maddon to opt out of his contract with the Rays because as soon as he informed Tampa that he would not be returning as manager the Cubs were right there waiting for him with a contract and a pen in their hands. They may have a case but with the Cubs giving Maddon a five-year twenty-five million dollar contract there is probably very little that can happen. All the Cubs have to do is grease Selig's palms a little and the Rays will have as much of a chance of proving these tampering charges as someone trying to fly a kite in a tornado.

...A man from Queens, New York was sentenced up to fifty years for posing as a lawyer and as an investment advisor. Queens prosecutors said that because he charged his clients reasonable rates that was what got them alerted to what he was doing. His investment advice was equally suspicious as he was able to continually make money for all his customers. With a track record like that no wonder he was caught.

...While accepting the Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year last week actress Emma Watson was overwhelmed with gratitude for everyone and dedicated her award to her deceased hamster. And she meant it. If she keeps this up she'll be in the same ward as Amanda Bynes.

...There were a lot of pro and con comments about that twenty-four-year-old Australian woman who graduated from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland last week that shared a photo of her breastfeeding her six-week-old son in her cap and gown. I only looked at the photo two or three times. Five times tops. Maybe six. And the only thing that I thought of was it was too bad that she didn't give birth to twins.

...A woman who was giving out candy on Halloween night says she accidentally lost her wedding ring when she mistakenly gave it way with the Halloween candy. For some reason she placed her wedding ring in a candy jar while helping her daughters carve pumpkins and during the night when the traffic of kids picked up she dumped the contents of the jar into the candy bag. Maybe it's me and the cynical view I have of the general public but I just don't buy it. You're giving out candy on Halloween and you put your wedding ring in a candy jar? What's wrong with putting it in your purse or walking into another room and placing it there? My guess is that she remembered that she didn't have it because she left it on her boyfriend's nightstand and the next time she goes there she will bring it home and then her husband will find out later that she "misplaced it" all this time.

...There's a British inventor named Colin Furze who has a reputation for making some fun things and if you're interested you can see some of his work on Youtube. He once invented a Jet Bike that went 50 MPH. It was unsafe but it was one of those things that you would talk yourself into trying out anyways. Now he altered a BMX bike and put ice tires on them. Basically all he did was replace the rubber tires and then put the frozen ice tires that he made and that was that. The fun part was when he was able to ride this on a hockey rink without getting hurt. I know if I did that I'd drive straight into the boards. The best part about all of this is that he gets paid to invent this stuff which is a lot more than I can say for myself. I've thought up some things in the past during the long winters that never really got off the ground. In fact they never went anywhere. Electrocuted seats in the visitors dugout at Yankee Stadium for example. I'm still wondering why they shot down that idea.

...Only in Florida, Dept: Last week in Port St. Lucie, Florida a man walked into a lawn maintenance store and after he asked the clerk to break a dollar into change for him he tried to steal a chainsaw by walking out with it by stuffing it under his shirt. It's obvious he did not have this heist planned out well in advance. The thing that amazed me was that he was able to run out the door and hop on his bicycle and get away with this thing tucked under his shirt. Florida can rest easier now that this criminal mastermind is off the streets and behind bars where he belongs.

...Alfonso Soriano retired from baseball last week because he could not see himself as a reserve player going forward after being cut by the Yankees earlier this year. He also went on to say that his mind and his heart were no longer in baseball. When was it ever? This guy was so lazy that his uniform jersey was cleaner than the ones sold at the souvenir stands and he made Robinson Cano look like he played with as much heart as Hunter Pence does. Tell the truth you lazy SOB. No one wanted you and you knew it. That's why you are retiring.

...A Fool and his Money, Dept: David Ortiz is suing a California-based jeweler regarding jewelry that he bought from him back in 2010 for $127,000 for being fake or low-quality diamond and gold jewelry. And he's just finding out about this now? I don't care how much money you have in the bank when you make a purchase for this amount you have your items checked out. This guy is so stupid that he carries his brains in his back pocket. As soon as he retires from baseball I'll give him a few years and he'll be flat broke.

...If the accuracy of the reports that Alex Rodriguez admitted to taking PED's to the Drug Enforcement Administration back in January are to be believed I think it is too little and too late for anyone to really care if he came clean or not. I am convinced if he had done this before he received his year-long suspension the public perception may have been different but right now? How disruptive is this going to be for the Yankees next year? It's not even close to spring training yet and already they have been embarrassed by the end of his suspension. I don't feel that bad for them because they were the ones who threw that huge contract at him but at the same time they didn't deserve any of this. It's sad in a way because he is going to be totally alone next year and he can't blame anyone for that and if he does no one will believe him anyways. He's in for a long year next year from the boobirds both home and on the road and the only way that's going to stop is when he starts depositing baseballs over the left field wall on a regular pace. If that happens you just watch and see how a lot of fans will cheer him again like nothing happened. Nothing leads to forgiveness quicker than a home run.

...I wonder how all those people that were holding up signs to support him during his hearing feel now?

...The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, Dept: Of all the things I have written about in here over the years I am sure that many of these posts have been brought into question concerning their validity by some of the people who read this weekly Sunday edition that I do. As Mark Twain once said truth is stranger than fiction and all you have to do is go back and re-read some of the pages here in this very thread to see exactly what he means. There's a reason why I brought this up right now and it's because of something that happened down in Texas last week and I'm telling you after I'm done you're going to say I made it up. Last Monday night a woman broke into her husband's friends house and tried to wake him up orally while he was sound asleep in bed. The man then awoke to find her dressed only in her underwear while sitting on top of him. He then asked her what she was doing in his room but he got no response since she was too busy and unable to talk. Finally she took a break and lifted her head and the man realized it was his friend's wife and he told her to get dressed and leave and when she refused instead of letting her finish up he called 911 and the woman was arrested and charged with felony burglary with the intent of committing a sexual assault. If a duck had this guy's brain, it would fly north for the winter. Told you no one would believe me, didn't I?

...The same thing happened to me once but then I woke up.

...I had no doubt that Eric Frein, the man who killed one Pennsylvania trooper and seriously injured another would eventually be caught but I was surprised that it took forty-eight days to do it. I'd of never made it forty-eight minutes if I had to sleep outside like he did.

...Amanda Knox, who the Italians are still trying desperately to get back in the country, got a new job as a freelance arts reporter at The West Seattle Herald newspaper this past Wednesday. This position is only temporary because the reporter covering the crime beat for that paper is retiring at the first of the year and she'll be able to step right in and cover what she knows best.

...Maybe it was because AC/DC has not released a new album since 2008 and you can chalk it up to boredom but drummer Phil Rudd was arrested in New Zealand for attempting to arrange a murder of two men along with threatening to kill and possession of methamphetamine and cannabis. So as you can clearly see he's been busy. Even though the murder-for-hire charge was later dropped because the police said there was not enough evidence to proceed, he still faces the charge of charge of threatening to kill and that could keep him behind bars for the next seven years. This is the second major blow for the band this year as founder Malcolm Young had to permanently leave the group due to dementia. Based on what Rudd did he must have it too.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 11-16

...This week has been exceptionally hard on me because I am cleaning out just about every room in my house and getting rid of things that have been in there for years. I when to the hardware store to get some heavy-duty Hefty bags to help me out and that's the smartest thing I did through this whole thing. The dumbest thing was starting this undertaking in the first place but I am trying to convince myself that it will be worth it in the end. It is beyond any doubt that if I lived alone I would not be doing this right now because I am someone who does not enjoy accumulating things like my wife does. I have come across things that I have never seen before and had no idea it was in the house all this time and I have seen some things that I have not looked at in over ten years that I thought was misplaced, broke or gone forever. This is going to take me awhile because as that old joke goes my back goes out more than I do and just in case I don't get the message my knees will have their own separate objections.

...And for your information it is not that easy to donate stuff to charitable organizations. I collected some furniture to give away and because I struck out with two different charities all the furniture will be placed at the end of my driveway next week for anyone who wants it. I tried to give it to the Vietnam Veterans Association and they said they could pick it up on the 18th and I said that was fine by me because that's this Tuesday but when she told me that it was December 18th and not November 18th I told them to forget it because I was not going to hold on to this stuff for that long. I was still determined to donate these items that I decided to give the Salvation Army a call. I went through my whole speech again about giving away some furniture to them and they wanted me to give them a list of exactly what I had. What the **** I said to myself. No Ma'am I did not make a list of what's down there. They are small furniture pieces and besides I am not done yet and I will be adding more. These son of a ****** wouldn't budge so all I could do is say thanks for their time even though I wanted to say something else. And that's the reason why Tuesday morning I will be dragging furniture down to the end of the driveway for anyone to pick up and take as they see fit. These people take anything and there are a lot less headaches involved.

... Next month Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, California will be putting up for bid letters from Joe Dimaggio that he sent to Marilyn Monroe over the breakup of their marriage. I know that both of them are long gone now but does anyone really need to see these personal items?

...After watching the Yankees sleepwalk through the past two seasons I didn't care who they got rid of because it was obvious that this current group was too old, too expensive or just not good enough. Despite that I was still surprised that they started this house cleaning with Francisco Cervelli, a player who actually showed a pulse last season.

...The Mormon church last week said that Joseph Smith, the man who founded the Church of the Latter-day Saints had as many as forty wives. All I want to know is how the hell he had time to start up a church?

...Despite the toxicology report that showed that former Cardinals outfield Oscar Tavaras was driving drunk when he lost control of his car a few weeks back does not take away the sense of loss and sorrow that many people have been having since learning about the death of this extremely young ballplayer and his girlfriend. But while we mourn the death of Tavaras and think about his career and what might have been for him let's not forget for one second that the decision he made to get behind the wheel while he was that drunk was an exorbitantly stupid one and therefore he should now receive the same amount of scorn and anger equal to the pity he has already had.

...Thank God that Victor Martinez re-signed with the Detroit Tigers. That had to bug the hell out of the Yankees because they were probably just getting ready to throw him a six-year contract.

...I remember the days when I used to get excited to find out who won what award in baseball. Now I could care less and if I didn't read the shoutbox like I do every day I would have never found out.

...I'm very happy that North Korea let Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller return to the United States for whatever their reasons were. Maybe they got tired of feeding them. And the next time someone decides to go to there to preach religion or beg for asylum or for anything else there should be no reprieve for them because if your name isn't Dennis Rodman you probably won't be leaving the country. The first and only rule about North Korea is to never go to North Korea. How hard is that?

...There is a new book that came out last Wednesday called The Lost Gospel and the authors claim that Jesus Christ was married and had two kids. The basis of these claims are based on an ancient manuscript dating back nearly 1,500 years that was found in a British library. Just because it is an old document does not mean that it is true. The thing that really is surprising me is the lack of outcry from the religious communities. They're probably reading the book from cover to cover right now so they can attack everything in it. This ought to be good.

...And one more. Why not? The President of Turkey, some guy named Recep Tayyip Erdogan (say that three times fast) says that in the twelveth century Muslims discovered North and South America nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus got here. Where the hell did this come from? These people are so backward that they haven't even discovered the twenty-first century yet and now they are trying to claim they were the ones who discovered America? What's next? Pearl Harbor was bombed by the American Air Force by mistake? I read enough nonsense this week to last me quite a long time. Muslims discovering America? Yeah ok. If they did there would have been stories of them when they landed here of their exploits. A bombing here, a mass murdering there, kidnapping all the Indian women, a few beheadings, etc, etc. If they really had been here first before Columbus this crap would have happened.

...Next week we'll find out the Muslims landed on the moon before we did but they landed on the other side of the moon so that's why no one knew they were there.

...The Dumbest Generation, Dept: I may be inviting a lot of slack for this so I will say right from the start that this does not include everyone except for the idiots who are in the twenty-something age range and somewhere along the way in their young lives they left their brains behind and still have not noticed them missing. Take for example the twenty-one year old actor and model who, for reasons that ended up taking to his grave, got on top of a stalled commuter train in Connecticut and later died from severe burn injuries when the mechanical arms that draw power from the 12,500-volt overhead wires electrocuted him. This kid was taken to a nearby hospital with burns on 85 percent of his body where he was later pronounced dead. This is a terrible waste of life in my opinion and that's what bothers me the most. I can't say I didn't take any risks when I was twenty-one but when I was that age I wanted to be sure that the things I did did not prevent me from making it to my twenty-second birthday. Fame hits a lot of people on the internet and you never seem to know when the next viral video will be talked about and shared. It could very well be that this guy was doing a daredevil stunt just to make a name for himself and he was taking a selfie when he was hit by the electric shock. Crazy? Maybe. But not as crazy as being on the outside of a commuter train and thinking that nothing bad was going to happen.

...Let's see, first some woman makes a hidden video of herself walking through the streets of New York saying nothing at all and ignoring every greeting a man gave her. I'm sure if by chance no one even bothered to give her an hello she'd complaint about that too. Now in Hollywood a girl pretending to be drunk tries to get directions to a bus stop. Most of the guys she meets just want to give her directions to where he lives so he can give her a different kind of ride. It was a staged video and all the men just like the fake drunk girl were actors just like the original video in New York. I'll never understand why it is so acceptable to make men look like idiots but women are off limits. Maybe a video ought to be made of a single guy, not too attractive or tall, asking out some gorgeous girls. After he gets shot down the women are told that the guy that she was just talking to was loaded and then watch and see how attractive he becomes. Now there's a video I'd like to see.

...Bend Over, Dept: Because of a complaint by local Muslim leaders to acknowledge their holidays the Montgomery County school district in Maryland decided to strike all references to religious celebrations for their 2025-2016 calendars. This means for the first time ever Christmas will not be listed on the school's agenda. Wonderful. What's next? Voting not to celebrate it? Honest to God whose country is this anyway? Why are we so quick to accommodate people who come here and make their ways and traditions more important than ours? And if someone doesn't God help them because they're labeled racist and intolerant. I bet if I pick up a calendar from Iran and flip over to the month of December I'd find that the 25th is just like any other day and that's fine for them in that rat-infested country. But this isn't Iran or Syria or wherever the hell they come from. They want to live here? Fine. But adjust to how things are here and stop with the demands. No one's making you recognize Christmas.

...And this here will end one hell of a week. I'm hoping that something funny happens next week because between finding out Jesus Christ had a wife, two kids and a mortgage and learning that the Muslims discovered America and that they didn't hold groups of Indians hostage after they landed was a little too much. Now this. There is a woman named Sue Ann Hamm and she is the former wife of oil billionaire Harold Hamm and to say that her ship came in is an understatement. Because it did and this woman wants no part of it. She received a one billion dollar divorce settlement and it apparently is not enough for her because she plans on appealing the court ruling next week. I asked my wife if she would accept one billion dollars from me in a divorce and she said where do I sign. She will be paid in installments of seven million dollars a month but that's not enough. How can you spend seven million a month? And even if you do the next month you get another seven million. How do people like that fall into those situations? If someone had to give me a billion dollars the last thing I'm going to do is cry that I didn't get more.