i just wanna b a baseball fan

Folks, I don't know about you, but, this is one of my favorite times of the year! Pitchers and Catchers are reporting for Spring Training in Arizona and Florida and we are a little more than a month away from the first pitch of a new baseball season. I absolutely love baseball. It's my favorite sport and only hockey comes anywhere near baseball in my hardened sports heart. That is why I have so much anger right now towards the industry I work in, The Media. Instead of talking about what teams are expected to finish where, what new players to watch for, the players that have switched teams and how they are going to perform, all we hear about are steroids. Earlier this week, I was truly outraged at The Media on two fronts: 1; As I was putting on my gear to hop on the bike for the morning ride down to The Dungeon, I was watching one of the few sports shows that I actually leave the volume up for, "First Take" on ESPN2. I like how First Take covers sports and I especially enjoy the "1st and Ten" segment that debates 10 sports topics. Besides "PTI", it is the sports-related show that I enjoy the most. This morning, as the show was coming on the air co-host Dana Jacobsen was giving a run down of what was coming up on the show, and, of course, her top story was "A-Rod talks to The Media" spiced up with "Do you believe him?". Then, incredibly, she stated that later on during the show they would bring on a "Facial Recognition Expert" to determine whether A-Rod told the truth or not. R U FRAKKIN' KIDDING ME? It's bad enough that The Media just will not let this story die the death it should have last week, now The Media just has to know if A-Rod is telling the truth to the point that a television program is bringing on a "Facial Recognition Expert". 2; Apparently, it is all our fault as baseball fans that the "Steroid Era" has lasted as long as it has! As I perusing the nation's newspaper's online I ran into this story in the Baltimore Sun. According to this genius, if baseball fans would just boycott ballparks because of their "outrage about the Steroid Era", baseball would be forced to do something about "The Steroid Mess". In other words, baseball fans, it is all our fault. If we just stopped going to the ballpark, Bud "It ain't my Fault" Selig and Donald "You can't touch us!" Fehr would just wave their Magic Wand and clean this all up! If I interpret the term correctly, The Media has "jumped the shark" on steroids. This morning "The Sports Reports", an ESPN Sunday morning show that used to be really good, spent the first half of the show talking about A-Rod and steroids. Not about the start of Spring Training this week, not about whether the Dodgers or Manny are going to blink first. Just A-Rod and steroids. All I want to do is watch, and report, on the baseball games. Since I am still a member of The Media, I am going to do something that I am lucky enough to have the power to do. I am going to stop talking about steroids. Period. Done. "The Southern California Baseball Report" starts tomorrow (2/23) on ESPN Radio 800 with previews of the three SoCal baseball nines, the Angels, the Padres and the Dodgers. The SCBB will be a steroid-free zone for 2009. I don't care who does what with 'roids. They will not be mentioned. I will praise those who need to be praised. I will bash those who need to be bashed. But not about 'Roids. All I want to be is a baseball fan lucky enough to be reporting on baseball. Just the games. And that's all I'm going to be.

love? motel 6? or nights on cold corinthian leather

most people that i've told that my wife has sleep apnea get a worried look on their faces......then half of them say "that's too bad", and the other half say "what exactly is "sleep apnea?"". my answer is, "fuck, i don't know, she snores and she stops breathing." before the ailment took the life of former nfl legend reggie white, i had never even heard of sleep apnea. even after my wife started working for a company that specializes in respiratory medicine, including sleep apnea, i still didn't have any idea what it was. all i knew was that the company treated her well and paid her very well. then about three years or so ago i would go to bed at night and she would be snoring. she never snored much when we first got together, and i thought she only snored when she had had a couple drinks, but then the snoring got progressively worse even when she didn't drink. then it got to the point where she snored loudly and then would stop breathing completely. i would lay there for a minute waiting for her to start breathing again, and then i would shake her and she would start to breath. it sounded like she was struggling for air, sniffling and snorting and i thought to myself, this can't be good. as a matter of fact, it was terrifying. i asked her about it and she told me that it sounded like sleep apnea and that her brother had it. it took almost two years to get my hard-headed wife to get herself checked out and, of course, she has sleep apnea. she was given this machine to use with a mask to wear at night that makes her look like darth vader. it looks like one of those car vacuums with a long hose. i feel horrible for her. when i walk into the bedroom to go to sleep and she has the mask on i wonder how in the hell she can sleep in the thing. most of the time she can't keep it on all night and when she takes it off it sounds like the roof coming off of dorothy's house in "the wizard of oz". the apparatus makes all kind of funny noises at night while it is in operation. oh, and it makes her grind her teeth. she seems to go in streaks when it comes to wearing the thing. she will go a week or so without the thing on and she snores and she stops breathing and i shake her and she struggles for breath and on and on........when gets up to take a leak at night and finds me sleeping on the couch she knows it's time to put the mask back on. she gets mad about it. but she puts it back on. and the pattern repeats itself. i was at my father's house last week and arrived just in time to hear my old man and my stepmother bickering over the fact that he's not bothering to wear his sleep apnea mask. and the fact that he stops breathing when he doesn't. and that she isn't getting much sleep. and on and on and on.........

the pathetic pads, the flailing friars

If you read yesterday morning's Onion-Tribunal, you probably read the column with Nick Canepa and Tim Sullivan debating who was the bigger bust, Ryan Leaf or Matt Bush? In my opinion, I think the question is which ORGANIZATION is the bigger bust when it came to picking Ryan Leaf or Matt Bush. The choice of Your Morning Hot Miltchocklit? Your Pathetic Pads. Your Flailing Friars. You have to remember that back in '98, the Chargers HAD to pick a quarterback. There was no choice in the matter. If the Bolts had picked a player at any other position than quarterback, the team would have been filleted by Charger fans and every Sportstalk Radio Host and TV Talking Head in existence. Even though there was this great debate over which quarterback San Diego should pick, Indianapolis had the first selection in the draft and Bill Polian was no fool. He did his homework. I think we all knew the Colts were going to pick Peyton Manning which left the Chargers with no choice but to pick Ryan Leaf. Over the years I have heard many times about the Chargers not doing their due diligence on Ryan Leaf's nasty disposition. True or not, what difference would that have made? In the end the San Diego Chargers had no choice but to pick Ryan Leaf and hope for the best. San Diego's baseball franchise is a totally different story. The Padres had the choice to pick any player they wanted to and picked Matt Bush. I am a Mission Bay High alumnus and I was pissed off. None of the players passed over for Bush are total superstars, but, none of them have been complete morons like Bush. The Flailers make the excuse of other players being Scott Boras clients and about how much money those players might take to sign, however, you have to remember a couple things. 1; John Moores had gotten his new ballpark and real estate empire downtown and even though the statement wasn't exactly uttered by Moores, it was inferred and believed by Padres' fans that the team would start shelling out more dead presidents for better quality players on the team. True or not, that's what Padre fan thought. Matt Bush don't count as spendin' more dead presidents. 2; Once again, when you want to throw around the "not doing due diligence on personality issues" accusations, it's the Padres, not the Chargers, that fit the bill! All the Flailing Friars had to do was ask around ol' MB High, just a few miles from Petco Park, and they would have gotten all the info necessary. If they did so, they ignored it. So, in the end, the Pathetic Pads just didn't want to spend the caaaaash and we all know that's true. Yes, Ryan Leaf was an absolute disaster and an embarrasment not only to the San Diego Chargers, but the city of San Diego itself. But, the Matt Bush debacle shows me that the Padres just didn't give a damn about the product they put on the field, they didn't think to maybe reward their fans and the city that shelled out the money for the flawed palace on Tony Gwynn Drive, they only gave a damn about the money. That's what makes the Pathetic Pads, the Flailing Friars, the loser in this comparo. Bring on Jeff Moorad! We can only go up from here.

just me. trippin'

I don't know why it has taken me so long to start doin' this? I love to write, I read a lot of other people's blogs, I think I can blog better than them (If there is such a thing), and my mind is overly analytical so this is just a natural. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons I have never done this is because of where I work, the industry I work in, and having some of the things I say getting back to the folks I have to deal with on a daily basis. I mean, seriously, those of you that have worked here and have left this joint know exactly what I am talking about without having me say a word about it here. There is also the possibility of people who would like to have my job sending on the things I say to the people I have to deal with, or live with, on a daily basis. This is nothing if not a cutthroat business. I've got a few scars to show for it. In the end I just said "fuck it". Some things need to be said and I feel I am just the person to say it. Stay tuned.