Some of the calls last night were atrocious. Strikes being called a foot and a half outside the zone, that "safe" call at second (Jeter) towards the end...

Brett Lawrie will get suspended after he completely lost his cool because of terrible calls in another game last night:

via assets.sbnation.com

And let me recommend you read that piece, as well.


The fact is, we, as a country, can do better than this. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution there was no such thing as standardization. Everything was bespoke, so nothing was interchangeable or replaceable. This was obviously a problem when you needed a new flange or bolt or something, so as soon as we as humans had the ability to mass produce objects of standardized proportions, we did. The constant hassle of unreliability was considerably lessened.

There is no standardization with umpires, right now, only guesswork, even though there are clearly stated rules. We have guys in baseball getting called out at first when the 1st baseman is two feet off the bag, we have guys getting called safe at 2nd when the SS tags him out by a foot, we have strikes and balls being called all around, inside and outside the strike zone, and we have the ability to fix it.

We have tools like PitchFX, we have instant replay. There's no reason why the people charged with getting things right on the field shouldn't have the same tools at their disposal as a drunk fan at a bar. Baseball is not a fast game, but baseball plays happen incredibly fast, and it's my opinion that years of HD television have proven umpires simply aren't up to the task on their own at an acceptable level.

I'm not saying every pitch should be reviewed, but how about a PitchFX alert that gets sent to the ump when they've called a ball three inches inside the strike zone or a strike four inches outside it? How about another umpire watching the broadcast from inside the stadium who can alert the managers when a call gets blown on the base paths, and give the managers two reviews per game?

I'm just spitballing here, I'm sure there are holes in my suggestions. I'm sick of the players and teams getting screwed over because of an antiquated system we have the ability to fix. What do you think?

Aaaaand we are back again with more multi-make, multi-class racing from Virginia International Raceway as everything from BMW M3s and Mustang Boss 302Rs to GTIs, MINIs and the first ever Kias to turn a wheel in anger return to our televisions on the SPEED channel.

The Conti' series is the opening act for Grand-Am as that series crosses the country, but often times puts on a better show than big brother.  61 cars make up the field at V.I.R. today in the Grand Sport and Street Tuner classes at what is thankfully a fairly large course that will no doubt see some bumps and shunts before the day is over.

Start at 0:40 and see what happened last year at Barber to see a little of what I mean:

Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge at Barber Motorsports Park (via GrandAmVids)

The top qualifiers to start the race in GS are Al Carter in the #45 M3, Joe Foster in the #15 Boss 302R, the #79 M3 of James Clay, the #35 WRX STi of Bret Spaude, and Jack Roush Jr. driving his #61 Boss 302R.

Getting a rolling start behind the larger displacement cars are the ST leaders headed by David Murry and Sam Schutlz in the #73 and 09 Porsche Boxsters, a pair of Volkwagen GTIs driven by teammates Chris Gleason (#181) and Ryan Ellis (171) and Adam Burrows in the #12 Kia Forte Koup - one of the only two Kia race cars in the world.

Eggs/bacon = eaten. Cold one = cracked. Let's get to the racin'...

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GRAND-AM, the sanctioning body that controls the Rolex Sports Car Series (Ever seen the 24 hour race at Daytona? That's them.) has placed a $25,000 bounty on the Ganassi Racing TELMEX BMW/Riley which has won six races in a row stretching back to the 2010 season. Tactics like "rewards" weight and engineering restrictions were apparently deemed too subtle for GRAND-AM Director of Competition Mark Raffauf. Drivers Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas now face an entire field of Daytona Protoype Boba Fetts.

Again: the sanctioning body of a sport offered $25Gs to anyone who can beat one of its competitors. That's unheard of, and there's an official "wanted" poster below the jump.

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This is the best Tumblr since F*ckYeah, Brazilian Girls, and should be viewed by everyone.

via 24.media.tumblr.com

There are so many ways to appreciate this: nostalgia, history lesson, sartorial tips for the hipsterly-inclined

via 29.media.tumblr.com

via 27.media.tumblr.com

Sweet Glass Onion shirt, brah.

... and, of course, blackmail material for when Mom won't let you go to the Poconos, or your when your Spanish teacher needs a little extra incentive to bump you up to the Gentleman's C.

via 29.media.tumblr.com

The internet giveth and giveth.

Now that Coach Edsall is gone - can the athletic department please axe that stupid crescent wrench "C" logo he dragged in with him?

A) The interlocking "UC" logo looks good

2) It's the main logo everywhere else, as far as I can tell, and

iii) His campaign to get everyone to call the university "Connecticut" instead of "UConn" (hence the wrench) was that of a delusional outsider to the institutional, fan and media culture.

Thanks, coach, but no thanks.

Given that most football analysis and statistics from me would be more or less on the same level as the bar top over which they were spoken, I generally excuse myself from putting them forth in any but that environment. This Saturday, however, we find ourselves facing an opponent well within my area of expertise: dicking around on the weekend. It is my sincere hope that Dear Leader T Kyle will excuse this borrowing of his headline format for the exercise.

Some people never quite shake the notion, learned at college, that Thursday is the Official Unofficial Start Of The Weekend. Bleary Friday mornings spring like mushrooms from the wet grass of Thursday evenings spent like Saturday nights. And if you think that least sentence was disorienting, Alabama is playing tonight. One could, of course, watch the Tahd exact maximum burnination on their overmatched and patsy of the week, Georgia State. It could be argued that watching SEC football any day of the week is Time Well Spent, but with the outcome of this game facing about as much uncertainty as the recent results in Myanmar, we might want to spice things up for maximum time wastage. Play along with Coach Trogdor at home while watching the game and laugh merrily at the cries of the burning peasants. (Handsomely paid peasants, at that.)

Frigga is the high goddess of Norse mythology and wife of Odin. The Old English frīgedæg "Frigga’s Day" eventually became our "Friday." One of the most commonly accepted meanings of her name is "beloved," and without the anticipation of a Dawgs game to occupy most of the firing neurons in our grey matter, I might suggest you leave the comforts of home to find yours.  The goddess is also associated with married women, so benuptialed readers might want to skip the nightlife scene and catch Fresno at Boise State. Or, you know, turn off the TV and talk. Here’s some background music.

Which brings us to Saturday, and all the nihilistic pursuits one might undertake during a Georgia bye week. A good pre-game taunting of Tech fans is always a good time. You may wish to remind them of this incident, and remark on its interrelatedness to their season as a whole. ["GEEK TRUCK" being a pretty good name for the Ramblin' Wreck itself.]

Wisconsin/Michigan is a game which may provide some early distraction for those who don't wish to see how  Sakerlina can win vs. Troy with the entire team's eyes trained on Atlanta for four quarters. Noon around my household is sometimes several hours past cocktail hour on a Saturday, but such marathons require planning, discipline and research for proper execution. These brief hours of sunlight might be best used to git up, git out, and git somethin', like the ingredients for some seriously artery-clogging, mouth-burning gastronomic creations. (I skipped the optional dry blue cheese and served it with corn chip scoops and Brooklyn Lager.)

But for real, y'all: that's enough not watching SEC football on a day when SEC football is being played. How about Ole Miss at LSU? A matchup already discussed on these internets that lends itself nicely to spicy food and properly executed cocktail consumption.

The curious among us might want to spare a glance at Army vs. Notre Dame at 7:00, if only to see how many of the approximately 57,000 seats will be filled at Yankee Stadium, where the game will take place.

via www.chicagobreakingsports.com

Hopefully more than that. It's not going to be that cold, and small "Y" yankees generally regard anything in the 40-50º range as "football weather" anyhow.

The Battle of Tennessee goes down half an hour later, but who cares? Life should be breezing right along in jaunty fashion for you at that point anyway. Any advice I could give for this stage would and should be adhered to in only the loosest of ways, and any direction is really up to a stiff breeze as you sail into the night sea, confident in your mastery of the Bye Week.

These, as one Mr. Hall has stated, are your watchwords if you are to ascend to the lofty and rarefied heights of the truly functional drunkard. It is even important to maximize productivity when 80% of your brainpower is dedicated to foo'baw and foo'baw-related activities. Welfare only buys well-drinks, you know.

Just as modern cosmologists like Saul Perlmutter stand on the shoulders of giants like Einstein, I present this treatise so you may stand on my prone form as you reach for the top shelf.

Planning

The important thing to remember, as the tired trope goes, is you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. I like to pre-make a batch of bloody marys and set them in the fridge so I don't have to put forth any effort in the a.m. The prospect of doing work at whatever ghastly hour you rise can dissuade you, and thus break you from your goal of drinking all day. Here in Ye Olde New England it is often difficult or impossible to buy booze on Sundays so you have to make sure you stock up [and refrain from drinking it all on] Saturday if you want to drink all day on the Sabbath. That last point is where Planning meets Discipline.

Condensation running down the sides of your icy glass of bloody in the morning seems like it needs food accompaniment, if only from a purely aesthetic standpoint. Your experience may vary, but whatever sop you choose, it must be purchased beforehand. The reason for this is so you don't have to leave your den of iniquity. If you are driven from your home by hunger, you will have to face the low-thinking masses who may frown on drinking at 10a.m. on a Sunday and deny you your pre-meal apertif.

It is important that these people go to hell.

Nature understands this, and it's better to be out of the area when the smiting actually occurs. You don't know when this might be, so it's best to stay home. You're out of pre-made bloodys by now, and home is where the beer is anyway. Now you're firmly en route to a day spent sailing to blackout island. I can only show you the path, you must stumble along it yourself.

Research: Flippant

Some research is really only useful for dazzling the proletariat until they are too distracted to notice you have stolen their drink. For example: do you know why we call it "booze"? Here's why: E.G. Booz had distinctive bottles in the shape of cabins made for his Old Cabin Whiskey starting in 1860.

via i47.photobucket.com

[Side note: take the bourbon trail tour. Do it. Seriously.]

Research: Life-Saving

"In blinding pain" is not one of the definitions of "functional," and time spent cursing the world for your cruel existence is not productive time. I've done the research, and nearly everything having to do with striding our besotted path well comes down to just one word: congeners.

"Congener" has Latin roots meaning "born with." These chemicals gestate with the alcohol during fermentation or are added later. They give color, smell and taste to the spirit. They also add misery and pain to your mornings, and crush your spirit.

Natural order emerges from the cruelty of pure indifference. The scales must be balanced. So bourbon, naturally, is absolutely loaded with congeners. It's the things we love that hurt us the most.

Which brings us to tequila.

Oh, cheap tequila: the feisty angel who takes our innocence to her amble bosom, and them vomits on it. We loved you before we knew what love was, but now we see you for the scabrous whore you are, so we drink Cabo. 

Tequilas are like hotels, and beginner tequilas are the equivalent of spring break hotels you stay at when you're 18. They are the generic "Beachside Inn" on the Redneck Riviera with a thick, brown ring around the tub, and the improperly grounded light switch/emergency defibrillator. With age comes wisdom and, hopefully, a paycheck - so accommodations improve. Nicer hotels, like nicer tequila, leave one more likely to wake up refreshed instead of repelled, and also less likely to wake up with body lice. Again, your experience may vary. The lesson here is to pay more before in order to pay less later.

Thankfully, this does not need to be the case with whiskey. A $100 bottle of Woodford Reserve Masters Collection will still feel like eight hours spent in a cement mixer the next day. If you're looking for a solution, it can be found in Irish whiskey like Jameson, or Bushmills if you're a traitorous protestant.

Most Irish whiskey is triple filtered, minimizing exposure to the nano-demons with pitchforks we call congeners. Whiskey fix can therefore be achieved without the subsequent lust for death's warm embrace and mysterious sick days which reflect so poorly on that performance evaluation.

Go ahead and buy that Old Fitzgerald 1849, but save it for when hangovers of the skull-crushing variety are appropriate: football season.

Parting shots:

- DO NOT MIX. Simply drinking whatever some idiot orders for the next round because they saw it in a commercial on Spike! is the mark of a fool. Just pick one kind of booze per night and stick with it. Shots with a bunch of crap in them count as mixing. Let your coworkers order Screamin' Pink Specials at O'Doulihanski's corporate night, and then tell the bartender to make yours a Jameson. You will be amazed at the results.

- No Jaeger. Ever. That crap is literally black with congener-coloration and should be left to fake-tanned juicers with backne, people who go to bike week, and other mudskippers fresh from the primordial ooze.

- No sugary or artificial flavoring. You know who flavored vodkas are for? People afraid of alcohol flavor in their alcoholic drinks. They grow up, attain a position of power, and cut your school's athletic program. They, and their drinks, are to be detested.

- No ibuprofen and no acetaminophen. Taken it he presence of alcohol, they are like putting bullets into your liver. The point is to keep drinking at a robust pace as a lifestyle: crystallizing your liver shortens both life and style. Bloody Marys actually help in the mornings after because they're loaded with vitamins and the booze helps you come down slower. It's only delaying the inevitable, but it's a pleasant delay.

- Drink good beer. Unfiltered or semi-unfiltered beer actually contains a lot of B vitamins, and you can talk yourself into believing this makes it healthy.