jimmy

1. The Houston Astros will compete in the AL West. I know people expect Houston to be competitive in a few years, but sometimes these things happen ahead of schedule. They will compete with the Oakland Athletics for the division. The Angels and Mariners will hover around .500, and the Texas Rangers will have a really shitty season.

2. Yasiel Puig will be placed on the disabled list with a leg injury. After all of the hubbub of him being a cancer in the Dodger clubhouse, the worst thing to happen to baseball and other things that these white straight male sportswriters write about the guy, Puig will hurt himself in June trying to extend a single into a double. The same white straight male writers will have a grin of smug self-satisfaction and masturbate themselves into ecstatic oblivion.

3. Clayton Kershaw will be on the disabled list. After signing the big contract extension, he will inevitably get injured. Oh wait! It’s already happened!

4. Tampa Bay Rays will win the AL East. Meanwhile the Yankees and the Red Sox will continue to play five-hour nine-inning games that will set the entire Eastern Seaboard into a somnambulant daze.

5. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals will be in the World Series. At least, that’s what I’m rooting for.

6. Most of the major tv providers will continue to balk at paying for SportsNetLA all season long. Dodger fans get used to not seeing them on television and are able to fully live their lives as productive members of society. The Dodgers will have to cut payroll to Tampa Bay Rays level, and the Angels begin to enjoy a new era of popularity.

Here will be the division winners:

AL East: Tampa Bay Rays
AL Central: Kansas City Royals
AL West: Houston Astros
AL Wildcards: Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics

NL East: Atlanta Braves
NL Central: Pittsburgh Pirates
NL West: San Francisco Giants
NL Wildcards: LA Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals

It’s a bit funny to see people’s reaction to last night’s La Habra Shake (thanks Militant Angeleno!). I felt the 5.1 quake here at The Manse, a slight rolling sensation. Once I realized it wasn’t going to get any stronger, I went to confirm to my grandmother that it was indeed an earthquake and not just her first step into dementia.

On the news it’s been noted that we’ve had a 20-year lull since the Northridge quake, so it’s interesting to see people’s reaction. I heard people saying they ran outside which, while understandable, is probably the most retarded thing to do. Sure you probably won’t be trapped in a building should one collapse, but you could be hit with pieces of building, trees, power lines, busted water main, busted gas lines. In fact the chances of bad shit happening outdoors is greater than just staying tight inside in most cases.

I’m fine with these smaller quakes. As I pointed out yesterday, I’d rather deal with these sorts of quakes rather than the bigger stuff like the 6.7 Northridge quake, the 7.3 Landers quake in 1992 which was quickly followed by the 6.5 Big Bear quake that same day. I’d rather have five smaller farts rather than one huge gargantuan one.

So maybe this means people will flee from where they came from. Please? LA is dangerous! OOGA BOOGA!!

I was behind an SUV (of course) that had this bumper sticker at a red light. I really wanted to get out, go up to him and shatter his knee caps with a crowbar and whisper, “Is this man enough for you,” while licking his tears of pain. Unfortunately I didn’t have a crowbar.

When I was a teenager I always imagined one of two scenarios when I reached 35.

1. I would be a productive member of society, doing lord knows what, but in a nice apartment (never a house) doing fun things and just chugging on the machinery of life.

2. I would be dead of an overdose before I reached 30.

It’s funny to see these romanticized visions we have of ourselves back in the infancy of our schooling age. Or, maybe, it’s just me.

Fun note: if I only expect to live until I’m 50, 70% of my life has already passed.

Here’s the newest podcast using a name suggested by Dominick. I play with sounds and fall in love with the dance hall airhorn. We talk about the end of True Detective, what I should do for my birthday, my recent hikes, how shitty Brendan’s week was, the Dodgers in Australia, how fun the Dodger drama will be this season, and me having sex with lumberjack mascots.

I think we also have a new theme song which opens the show: Fly Young Red’s “Throw Dat Boy Pussy”.

The other music selections include Leaether Strip’s “Spellbound”, a cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees, surtur13 (aka Derrick)’s “Mirage”, not a Siouxsie cover, and Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer”.

You can listen below or, better yet, subscribe to the feed.

Today I decided to walk nonstop from my manse to the top of San Pedro Hill. I’ve been to the top of the hill before but never from my abode. So I figured, why not? It seemed like a good idea.

8.72 miles later, aching feet and body later, I guess it was still a good idea. Despite making it 1,400 feet up there, my enthusiasm has muted with each electro-chemical neural transmission within my body.

It was a gloomy day as you can tell from the photo above. The fog still lingered, and there was quite the breeze in the air. I was wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, and I could feel the chill of my sweat-drenched shirt each time a gust blew. But it really wasn’t that bad. As I passed Marymount College and turned to Crest Road, I realized the win was freezing my hands. I had to keep clenching my fists to try and keep them warm. I really wished I had mittens at the point no matter how silly they would have looked.

What was pretty remarkable when I got to the top was being able to see the Manse from such great heights. It’s located in the parking lot you see towards the bottom-center in the picture above. Here’s the zoom:

Well, that’s not really the precise location of the Manse, but it’s close enough should you want to stalk me. For what it’s worth, the Manse’s elevation is just under 300 ft while the top of San Pedro Hill is just over 1,450 ft.

As you can tell, there are some rich bitches who live up there. I guess they don’t blink an eye when the lose a shoe.

I knew the Dodgers had three runs. I knew somehow that they won. But I didn’t give a shit because I needed sleep, and a game that started 2 a.m. PDT didn’t stand a chance.

Thanks to a spot of rain, a first pitch that was scheduled at 1:45-ish a.m. got pushed back. SportsNetLA had to fill time, so there was John Hartung and Orel Hershiser talking about how Clayton Kershaw would handle the occasion considering his bad spring and awful start against St. Louis in the final game of the Dodgers playoff run. For the fourth time in an hour. (John just asked the question. Orel was confident Kershaw would turn it around.)

As this droned on, it’s not that hard to imagine why sleep would win.

What I saw was Kershaw getting into a jam in the first inning, back-to-back one-out singles by Aaron Hill and Paul Goldschimdt making things sticky. But I’ve seen Kershaw negotiate his way out of these situations, and it was no different in this case.

I saw that Scott Van Slyke hit a booming shot to left field in the second inning. D-Backs left fielder Mark Trumbo jumped at the fence to make a play for the ball, but the ball hit the base of the wall about ten feet away towards centerfield. Everyone thought it was a home run except for the umpires. They correctly saw it was in play.

That’s really about it.

Since anyone can read a box score we can see that Kershaw pitched into the seventh inning giving up only a run, that Yasiel Puig went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts, that Van Slyke went 2-for-3 with a walk and an actual two-run home, that the Dodgers are 1-0 with the 3-1 win. And, most importantly, the game lasted two hours, 49 minutes, a sportswriter’s dream.

At the end of it all, however, fuck everyone involved. I know there are plenty of people happy and thrilled that baseball has returned. And yes, I do agree with that. I too still love baseball, but who the fuck schedules a real game that counts in the standings that starts at 2 a.m. in that team’s market? This 35-year old dealt with a grandmother who got a touch of food poisoning and diarrhea, so staying up until 5 a.m. is out of the question. Even though I did try, though in hindsight I should have realized it was a losing proposition.

And, most of all, fuck the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable. There are those who are more than happy to stay up through the late night hours to watch a baseball game. But because a lot of fans don’t have Time Warner Cable, they were not able to watch the game without the combination of an MLB.TV account and a VPN.

We know about the $8 billion television deal with TWC. We know TWC wants an outrageous $5 per subscriber or so for the Dodger-only channel. There are people who do want to watch, feel the need to watch. But they’re shit out of luck.

“Things will eventually work themselves out,” we are told by the Dodger brass.

Gone are the days of the-customer-is-always-right ethos. Welcome to the 21st century where the bottom line reigns supreme. Mo’ money! Mo’ money! Mo’ money! Fuck the 99%, the rich need to get richer.

So until then, you the Dodger fan who they are saying they are trying to serve will just have to twiddle your thumbs. Fuck you.

I am a fortunate one. I do have Time Warner Cable and this channel. I get to see that stupid hashtag “#INEEDMYDODGERS” burned on the top left corner of every broadcast, retarded if you ask me since I already have the damn channel so the need is quenched.

I don’t know when other providers will pick up the channel. But hey, Champion Broadband picked it up so there’s momentum!

It’s really hard for me to reconcile the reasons I love watching college athletics yet despise the NCAA. I truly believe college athletics is a modern day plantation with the so-called student-athletes being the free labor. Sure, they say that the kids are getting an education, but when a scholarship can get cut when they have a career-threatening injury, that’s hardly a free ride.

Hell, I’m not even getting into the issue of athletics taking precedence over academics with most of the money generated going to sustaining the athletic programs with almost none going anywhere else.

Yesterday Jill Painter-Lopez of the Daily News tweeted:

This morning came this from Joan Niesen of Sports Illlustrated:

That shows you the extent the NCAA will go to grab their money, none of which goes to the “student-athletes”, the people who make the NCAA what it is. As San Diego State head coach Steve Fisher said, the NCAA requires teams that lose to immediately go home no matter what time of day (or night, as it were) it is. Like this is a twisted version of America’s Next Top Model.

The NCAA can afford to let the kids have another night in town and leave in the morning. But no. The profit making machine has to squeeze every penny out of the blood of the unpaid athletes.

I’ve always said that the NCAA is one of the most corrupt cartels this side of the Medellin drug cartel. It should be killed, maimed, murdered, whatever. It’s time to end this and pay the athletes.

So why the fuck am I awake at 9 am to watch a 3-seed Duke struggle against a 14-seed Mercer and continuing to be a part of this injustice? Hell, why the fuck do I wake up 9 am on Saturdays during football season to go on a day-long watching spree? I keep the two issues separate, and I really enjoy college sports. I’m not perfect.

Duke struggling against Mercer was indeed the upset of the day, the Bears from Macon, GA making Nancy Grace proud with the 78-71 lead. Again I found myself rooting for Mercer despite having Duke going all the way to the championship game. Deep down I know the feel-good story trumps my inane predictions that are doomed to be wrong.

Secondly, Stephen F. Austin State made a splash with their lumberjack mascot:

Abbey Mastracco of Fox Sports West told me that he had a mullet which is hard to see in these pictures. I told her to tell Mr. Lumberjack that if he gets rid of the mullet, I’d give him the night of his life. Sure SF Austin needed a four-point play at the end of regulation to get the win in one of most amazing sequences possible in the Tournament, emphasizing the “Madness” in March Madness. But I will always remember that lumberjack. Their win means three of the four 12-seeds have advanced. Like I said yesterday, this happens so frequently it’s hard to consider this an upset.

Although Coastal Carolina didn’t become the first 16-seed to beat a 1-seed despite leading by as many as 10 points over Virginia, I did learn their nickname is the Chanticleers, a rooster in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Their mascot is named Chauncey.

As for my bracket, thanks to Duke it’s completely fucked. Since the drama decreases with each round of the Tournament, my viewing will be sporadic over the weekend. In other words, sorry. No more diaries of the Tournament. Besides, in several hours I have to watch the Dodgers season opener. Ugh.

But one question remains: where is Mr. Lumberjack right now?

At some point early on in the Tournament, we are given a lesson in the futility of filling out brackets. After filling them out, everyone is smug with all of their picks. They got the upset no one else has. Hell, I did it too: I have 16-seed Cal Poly beating the 1-seed Wichita State as the first ever 16-seed victory over a 1-seed. (Nyah nyah nyah.)

But it looked like humility would be upon us very soon.

Early on in the first game of the day between 6-seed Ohio State and 11-seed Dayton, it looked like the Buckeyes wouldn’t have a problem with the Flyers. But then Dayton started hitting their shots, Ohio State missed theirs and things weren’t looking good. Dayton took a 33-30 halftime lead.

Almost more incredulously was what was going on in Milwaukee between the 2-seed Wisconsin and 15-seed American. Halfway through the first half, American had a 13-10 lead. Of course things got back to normal as Wisconsin despite being down 17-10 came back to take a 32-22 lead at the half.

Meanwhile in the Dayton-Ohio State game, the Buckeyes took a 10-0 run to retake the lead midway through the second. Things were returning back to what was expected. Except that no one told Dayton that they were supposed to fade away. They stood face to face with Ohio State and made a thrilling finish.

After Dyshawn Pierre made three free throws to give Dayton a 58-57 lead with 26.3 seconds, off it went as you can watch in truncated form below.

Dayton got the 60-59 upset win, and the first blows for humility rang down from the heavens.

It’s funny what happens though. Sure, I had Ohio State marching on in my bracket. But as the game went on, I found myself cheering for Dayton. When Vee Sanford made that bucket with 3.8 seconds left, there was a very audible sound of cheerful disbelief that escaped from me.

Back in Milwaukee, all that can be said of American University is that they had a good 10 minutes. Wisconsin thoroughly outplayed American 43-13 in the second half for the 75-35 win. But those 10 minutes in the first half gave a lot of hope to the likes of Star Jones, Judge Judy, Danny Glover, Ralph Nader and Jordan Belfort (aka The Wolf of Wall Street).

After the morning four games, things cooled down. The urgency to be glued to the television became less severe. Besides with all of the commercial breaks it could drive one mad. Besides I needed to go for a jog, take a shower, go to market, cook dinner, etc. Or, as most normal people would say, live their lives.

But the games were always on the background. There was the 12-seed Harvard “upsetting” the 5-seed Cincinnati in the last morning game. There was the 12-seed North Dakota State “upsetting” the 5-seed Oklahoma in overtime in the late afternoon game. 5-seed St. Louis holding on against 12-seed North Carolina State in overtime despite trailing by double-digits in the second half.

I really don’t count the 12-5 victory as an “upset”. In 119 games between the 5- and 12-seeds, 43 have won, or 36%. Since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, only three times have there not been a 12-seed to get through the first round.

As things were going chalk (with the exception of the 12-seeds, obviously), there came the 13-seed Manhattan and the 4-seed Louisville. On Selection Sunday, everyone was in near agreement that Louisville got screwed with their 4-seed. How dare they disrespect the defending champs? Despite this quite a few people have them in the Final Four.

Manhattan is lead by head coach Steve Masiello. Masiello was a walk-on for Kentucky in the late 90s when Rick Pitino was the head coach. He was an assistant for Pitino in Louisville from 2005-2001 before getting the job at Manhattan.

The game was tied 60-60 with just under two minutes left. That’s when Louisville’s Luke Hancock took over. Hancock stole the ball, got fouled and hit both free throws for the two-point lead. If that wasn’t enough he hit two three-pointers to seal the game as Louisville escaped the gym with a 71-64 win.

As for the most important thing, my bracket, I managed to avoid disaster. Ohio State losing hurt since I had them going to the Elite Eight against Florida. I also didn’t realize that I picked 15-seed Wofford over Michigan. What the fuck was I thinking?

Tomorrow will bring another set of games, more chances of my bracket going the way of a road strewn with landmines.