For those of you that don’t read my stuff or suffer horribly crippling amnesia every few weeks, I’ve been tearing apart John Dudley, a columnist (in the loosest sense of the word) for the Erie Times-News, and his columns, sporadically. Partly because I had to read him through most of my younger years, partly because he took some unnecessary shots at Bob Sanders (who, by all accounts, is a great guy), and partly because I think I could do his job better than him, Better Pwn A Columnist was born. As always, if anyone would care to send my hatred his way, I wouldn’t stop you.
For this, the third installment of a 2,193 part series, J-Dizzle decided that he was going to lay down some knowledge the only way someone like he can. With 26 consecutive one-line paragraphs- or as it’s known, “Plaschke-style”. So let’s see what insider knowledge he has on some little-known prospect. (His words in bold, mine in not-bold)
How did I do in the first round? Nailed the Philly series, came within a 3OT game going the other way of doing the same with the Pittsburgh series, was wrong about the Habs (but did say that the Caps were capable of a Sharkian collapse…)…and let’s not talk about the Bruins. In short, poorly. Now to continue that unparalleled awesomeness, looking at the all too common 4-6-7-8 Eastern Conference Semifinals.
I got sick of making lists all the time for no reason. So now, until I come up with something that sucks less, I’m going to pretend it’s a recurring feature and call it Bullet Points.
Soundtrack: If I were unoriginal, I’d link to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” here. I am not that unoriginal, even if it means that this has nothing to do with the post at all.
This year, the NFL changed the Draft up for the first time since roughly when I learned to walk. The first round was on its own Thursday night, with the second and third on Friday night and the rest on Saturday. Most of the other things, coverage teams and whatnot, stayed the same. But much like my classic “The Pro Bowl Sucks, Now What?” post…I believe we can improve things. TO THE LIST!
In case you weren’t aware, by day, I am a mild mannered Food Scientist. That is, until Ralph Wilson dies and leaves me the ownership of the Buffalo Bills in his will. IT COULD HAPPEN DON’T KILL MY DREAMS. Anyway, my profession, and the industry of food itself, tends to take a lot of flack from people. Namely, complete idiots. These are the people that believe Jack LaLaine when he tells you that “you need a degree in literature just to understand this stuff!” (No, Jack, just a rudimentary understanding of chemistry. Of course, I could probably put Dihydrogen Oxide on a label and scare you). Generally, I spare most people my rants- my apologies to the random girl at the Phyrst last year that I yelled at for thinking that organic foods were far superior, don’t mess with a drunk food scientist- but every now and then, someone is so dumb, I feel the need to mock them anonymously via the internet. This is one of those times.
Ah, playoff hockey. When we are reminded that NBC sucks, Versus sucks, Crosby sucks, and every shot is a RISING SHOT. WSR’s covering the Oregon Trail conference, so I’ll try my hand at a horribly gimmicky preview of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Yes, I’m a Pens fan, and no, I’m not horribly biased. Only slightly…only slightly.
(1) Washington vs. (8) Montreal
What It Is, Baby: Washington has been a juggernaut, racking up 121 points through the season and scoring goals at a pace that you normally have to shoot at Jose Theodore to accomplish. The Habs…not so much. The goal differential for the season pretty much tells the tale- Washington: +85, Montreal: -6. That’s not to say the Caps are unbeatable- in fact, far from it. Their penalty kill leaves a lot to be desired (to the same degree that the Chesapeake Bay is “damp”) and the defense/goaltending overall are suspect. The team racked up a lot of points/goals against an exceptionally average division and could very well be headed for an upset of San Jose Sharkian levels. For Montreal to do so, they’re going to have to get a hell of a series from guys like Scott Gomez and Tomas “I’ll get you a Satanic” Plekanic (could not resist). Not to mention, Jaroslav Halak and/or Carey Price is going to have to start playing out of their collective gourd again- though they do have the USS Hal Gill on their side. Which is nice. But the Caps have this Ovechkin guy, perhaps you’ve heard of him? He was the guy eating through your ski lift cable.
How It Goes Down: Caps in six. This should absolutely be a sweep on paper, but I think Montreal can steal two games before wilting. That is, of course, your sign to wager heavily on a Caps sweep. Regardless of the games needed, I think AO breaks out in the series for roughly a metric assload of points. (more…)
My brother suggested after the last post that having a soundtrack to it might be appropriate. And because I like anything that makes this more like a Xanga post, I’m down with it. So until I get sick of the idea, I’ll start every post with a song- whether it has something to do with the topic or whatever, or not.
Now, let me get one point across- I honestly don’t hate Tim Tebow. I think the Jesus crap is a little overdone- “LOOK AT ME I’M SUCH A GOOD CHRISTIAN I QUOTE BIBLE ON MY EYEBLACK”- but he’s a ridiculous athlete, and a remarkably successful quarterback to this point in his career. He is what you would want the face of a franchise to be and, as an added bonus to the excessively old (and thereby not always great with the race stuff) ownership in the NFL, he’s as white as…well, I am. He commands a near-cult following, but doesn’t seem fazed by it, no matter how many love letters he gets from Dan Shanoff. If he wasn’t TEBOW, I think he’d be a fantastic, low-risk, mid-round pick for a team.
That said, if the Bills pick him at #9, someone at One Bills Drive is high (on Jesus, obviously). So let’s break this down the only way I can- LIST STYLE! (guitar solo) ROCK
Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently (Hey, Patrick. How ya doin’ buddy?), you may have noticed that the Final Four is upon us. The telltale signs are there: brackets in the office, irrational hatred of Duke, a smoldering crater where Gus Johnson used to be, all of it. What is it that makes March Madness such an event- and where do other sports fail to capitalize on these traits? Let’s pretend you care.
(You knew I was going to go back to list-writing eventually. The only way I do well with transitioning is to use absurd analogies tying everything together. For all our sakes, I spare you. And yes, Logic, that had the word ‘anal’ in it.)
It’s that special time of year. The birds are chirping, the grass is borderline visible, and spring training is upon us. Of course, you know what that means- other than the return of exposed skin on the opposite gender, which is lovely- another round of whining about statheads ruining the sport of baseball. The debate seems to be the loudest in baseball (I don’t recall anyone burning down a village when QB ratings were introduced to football), and I feel like that’s for good reason…even though it’s wrong.
Something we can all agree on is that Logic should be the star of the next season of Tool Academy. Seriously, I don’t care how many calls we have to make, VH1 was invented for that exact purpose. Another thing we can agree on is that statistics in baseball are more significant than in other sports. For those of you that have been out of school too long/drank away knowledge/hate numbers/occasionally get dates/all of the above, I’ll explain. Baseball is unique in that it has an incredibly large number of games, and a large number of events within each game. So you get a repeated test against a certain set of variables, and then 161 more repeated tests under different conditions. As these repetitions add up, it becomes more likely that the various statistics are representative of the true values that player should achieve. Football doesn’t allow for this, because even something like passing attempts (which is a huge number) only comes in 16 test situations. Outliers are more likely to exist, because the actual mean is harder to define. Basketball and hockey have simliar problems. Throw in the relatively isolated nature of events in a baseball game (that is, if a guy hits a home run, his own pitcher had nothing to do with it), unlike other major sports which are either inherently team-based (football), have a lot of ebb and flow making singling out instances difficult (hockey, basketball), or both. This is an incredibly long way of saying that baseball players will, logically, eventually regress/progress to whatever the statistic should be, whereas in other sports, it is possible to be lucky/flukey/play the Bills and Lions for the majority of the season (kind of. You know what I mean.). (more…)
You haven’t heard of John Dudley. Why? Because you a) have never lived in Erie, PA, b) are a fan of intelligence or c) Jay Mariotti is all the blowhard you need. Dudley writes- in the loosest “there are words on paper that he put there” sense of the word- for the Erie Times-News as a sports columnist. He also likes to fancy himself as a credible voice on national stories. I mean, if you wanted a take on Tiger Woods, why would you read Dan Jenkins when you could read THE John Dudley (seriously though- Jenkins piece is fantastic and he is a remarkably entertaining, if infrequent, Twitterer). Generally speaking, he (and his cohort, Matt Martin) drove me nuts through my formative years- because before the internet, I had to read the Erie paper and the occasional SI in the doctor’s office to get my sports news. I had always wanted to tear a piece of his apart for humor’s sake (fisking, as the kids say), but then he wrote this.
A Russian hockey team with an amount of firepower that would make even SPECTRE’s most elite evil scientists blush goes out with a whimper against a Canadian team that was considered dead in the water just two days prior. Throw in some early playoff exits, and the face of the team, Alex Ovechkin, is starting to get a reputation for choking (I, for one, am stunned that those steel teeth can chew through a cable, but not pare food down to an acceptable size) in big moments. Sure, there were other stars on that Russian team- Evgeni Malkin, for one- but at the end of the day, it was AO’s team. So, without further ado, I’ve assembled a list of things to keep away from Ovechkin. Just in case.
McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys (unless approved for children under 3)
Legos (Mega Blocks may be ok)
Mr. Potato Head
Cucumbers
Carrots
Celery
Loaves of Bread
Croutons
Popsicles
Hot Dogs
Pop Bottles
Blow-Pops
Dum-Dums
Saf-T-Pops
Bottle Caps
Alexander Semin (/rimshot)
Pierre McGuire (Er, wait, that’d be the other way around)
Logic’s groin area (Just kidding. No risk there. BA-ZING BLOG BURN)
