November 2009 – Page 3 – BeerSlugger.com

November 6, 2009

Mourning the loss of a Favorite T-Shirt

By: Robby Ripchord

You know I should have learned this lesson in college. It’s such a rookie move to make but it basically happened to me two times in one week so I really have no excuse. I’m talking about lending girls articles of clothing to wear home after they sleep over.

You try to be a nice guy and lessen the burden of the walk of shame for a girl by giving her a t-shirt, sweatpants and or mesh shorts for the girl to wear on the walk back to her car and dwelling instead of her having to wear her now rumpled black cocktail dress or ridiculously low cut Halloween costume from the night before. You think you’re doing the right thing but once again this is a case where nice guys finish last. I just lost my favorite pair of sweatpants, mesh shorts and t-shirt in one week. Never to be seen again. In one case not particularly caring about when or where I was going to see the girl again, just getting her out of the house as fast as possible before the required 11am checkout time that has been instituted in my domicile (Rules are Rules!). The other instance being a girl I had seen a couple of times before and had planned on continue seeing until text’s and phone calls ceased to be answered (maybe she’s dead as Billy BeerSlugger pointed out?). She has my favorite t-shirt and sweatpants, a combination which when lost together is up there in terms of disappointment, dejection and anger with the passing of my Grandmother.

I even went so far as to leave her a message last night after a week of non-communication explaining that (in the nicest way possible) I really didn’t care that we weren’t talking anymore, but that I would really appreciate at least my t-shirt back even if I had to pay for the shipping. That t-shirt and I have been through some things together, good times, bad times, really drunken nights but in my life throughout the last 3 years or so there was one constant, that 100% cotton form fitting t-shirt. I liked the t-shirt so much I bought two in different colors and after I lost one at the shore two years ago this surviving t-shirt was clearly the pinnacle of my t-shirt collection. It was as equally important whilst lounging around watching TV as it was as an undershirt while out showing support for one of our local sports teams. It’s hard to replace that kind of comfort and really a little piece of me died that day when she got in her car and left, never to be seen or heard from again. Not because of her but because of a garment which I associate with so many great times in my life.

What is it with girls and more so girlfriend’s in general that seem to know your favorite clothes and wear them constantly? You can’t wear the t-shirt after your girlfriend has worn it, it has to go into the wash because while women generally smell better than men, men shouldn’t smell like women and even if the girl wears it for 10 seconds her scent is all over it. You don’t see boyfriends grabbing their girlfriends favorite t-shirt and parading around the apartment, it just doesn’t work like that and that dynamic is just one of the many I have a gripe with in the long term male-female relationship. But that’s a discussion for another time.

I will miss you t-shirt, you deserve a better fate than this.

note: this article was written while listening to The Fray‘s 2009 album The Fray. And yes I cried a little.

November 5, 2009

Cheaters Never Lose on the Yankees

Sports with Bob McFlurry

You know the Yankees beat us fair and square. You can say that A-Rod’s homerun in game 3 that hit the camera which was leaning over the fence was questionable but in the end it really didn’t matter. We were an out away from coming back to win game 4 and once untouchable Brad Lidge had another meltdown. Ryan Howard went from hero in the NLCS and Wildcard series to zero in the World Series setting a record for ineptitude at the plate. Last night and in games previous Hideki Matsui proved to be a Philly Killer.

I’m not particularly angry, the better team won. The team that went out and got the top 3 free agents in major league baseball and has a payroll a little under double what the Phils have practically bought a Championship and in baseball you can do that. There’s no salary cap, there’s no rule that says you can’t collect the best players in the league like baseball cards and so the better team won.

I can handle the losing part but I can’t really stomach A-Rod and Andy Pettite being champions after both admitting steroid and or HGH use. I don’t dislike A-Rod because he’s good but I dislike him because he lied to his fans and supporters for so long. I don’t like Andy Pettite because he seems to get as much of a free pass on using PED’s that Rodney Harrison has gotten. I’m a big believer in treating people equally across the board and if Barry Bonds is going to get ridiculed by the mass media and an asterisk next to his records the same punishment should go down for the two Yankee offenders.

If nothing else, a World Series championship solidifies a career for A-Rod which has Hall of Fame numbers. I feel like A-Rod will get into the HOF when his playing days are over, maybe even eclipsing Bonds career Home Run mark. However, all things being equal, Bonds and A-Rod taking PED’s why is A-Rod seemingly treated with the kid gloves when it comes to the press? Why isn’t there as big a public outcry over A-Rod as there was over Bonds? Steroid Press Fatigue? Are people just that tired of hearing about it that they don’t care anymore to object? I don’t have the answers.

It’s weird because I don’t hate that the Yankees won, I hate that two players with a history of lying and cheating the game won. As ugly as Hideki Matsui is you gotta give the guy props for showing up big when it counted even though Asian people are notorious for having small penises. You gotta give it to Derek Jeter, a class act that continues to prove his naysayers wrong. For as old as Mariano Rivera is he can still get the best hitters in the game to strike out, pop up and ground out with a calming ease. Flamin’ Johnny Damon made his presence felt in a contract year. These are guys I’m happy for. These are guys who I don’t mind losing to. I just can’t stand to lose to a couple of cheaters who are then put up on a pedestal by sportscasters and journalists for all the world and the kids to see that it’s ok to cheat, you can cheat and still win the World Series without so much as a slap on the wrist. Amazing!

November 4, 2009November 4, 2009

BeerSlugger of the Week

By: Billy BeerSlugger

My award for BeerSlugger of the week goes to Georgia running back Washaun Ealey who was supposedly victimized by an eye gouging incident this past weekend in the Florida vs. Georgia rivalry game.

Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes was suspended for half an upcoming game for apparently trying to gouge the eyes of Ealey but Ealey came to the defense of Spikes per an ESPN report.

“He shouldn’t, I think, get suspended at all. We were just out there playing football… He really didn’t gouge my eyes, He really didn’t get a chance to get close to my eyes… I’m pretty sure it goes on back and forth… We probably do it and other teams do too. It’s all football. We’re just out there trying to have fun.”.

It’s refreshing to hear a player, a freshman I might add, speak to the toughness of the game and not play victim even though his team lost. Spikes caught a lot of flack over the replay of him reaching into Ealey’s helmet. Guys like Mike Golic of Mike & Mike in the Morning saying that kind of behavior doesn’t have any place in football etc. Well I’d like to hear some former players that opposed Golic and hear that he was a saint on the field, that he never cut blocked anyone or did anything that would be considered to “not have a place in football”. Some of your hero’s, some of the best players in NCAA and NFL history employed dirty tactics to win games and needle opponents. It’s not a foul if you don’t get caught and it’s only within the last 5 or so years that with the help of technology we have been able to view these sorts of fouls and pick them out very easily. Like Ealey stated his team probably does it to other teams too. Spikes just happen to get caught on TV and then ESPN took hold of it making a “no harm-no foul” play into a national story.

We ask our football players to be on the edge at all times on the field, to play with emotion, to sacrifice their body to make a tackle or block a 250 pound player running at you for 40 yards at full speed on a kickoff. We ask this of our players and then when they let emotion get the best of them, when they step over that line we chastise them as dirty players and they are ridiculed in the mainstream media. Never mind if Spikes’ helmet went flying off on a play and he got hit, even if unintentional. Never mind if there was an obscene amount of trash talk on both sides and this is a huge rivalry game.

It’s great that Washaun Ealey, the supposed victim, can come out and shed light on the incident, “We were just out there playing football and having fun.”. To players like Ealey and Spikes, the game is fun and these underhanded things to get under the opposing teams skin and gain an advantage any way you can is just part of the game. What does everyone think happens at the bottom of a pile after a fumble recovery? Do you think the players are huddled together on the ground discussing the state of the economy? NO, the team that doesn’t have the ball is punching the guy who does in the gut, in the groin and gouging whatever part of the face that a player can get his hand into to try and get that guy to let go of the ball.

At least in Football you have pads and helmets, if a team wants to go after you in Rugby you’re pretty much due for a trip to the Emergency Room.

As for the suspension, he got caught he’s suspended for a half. Notice it was not an NCAA suspension but a team suspension. I’ve talked to people and they think Spikes should be gone for at least a game but Ealey wasn’t even hurt. It’s really hard to actually get your hand beyond a face mask and do damage. Just another case of ESPN making a bigger deal of something that happens pretty regularly and thus swaying public opinion on a player who for all we know could be the nicest guy you’ve ever met off the field.

I would have suspended Spikes for a Quarter and told him to not get caught again.

PS: For disclosure sake, I hate Florida football with a passion.

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November 4, 2009

How the Phillies Assaulted my Liver . . . Again

ATT00004 By: F.X. Galvin

Is this Déjà vu? For the second year in the row the Philadelphia Phillies are in the World Series. For the second year in a row I am a complete alcoholic mess and am one game 7 away from checking myself into a Betty Ford clinic. I feel like I have entered “Groundhog’s Day.” I wake up thinking about the Phils previous game, as well as the looming game. I am hung over loathing myself and the fact that I have to suffer through work from 8:30 to 5:00. The only way I make it through work is listening to sports radio 610, which fulfills my Phillies fix. After work, if I do not immediately start drinking or need to get ready to go to the bar to watch another Phils beat down, I try to mix in the occasional run or meal. Over the last month, both of these daily regularities have progressively been thrown to the wayside. After, each series closing game I am not sure who needed more rest, an overworked Chase Utley or my liver.

This drunken voyage has begun during the NLDS and has turned into a sloppy, disgusting, obsessive mess. The key highlights of the NLDS have to be the following: Attending Game 1 of the NLDS watching Cliff Lee pitch his first gem of the post season against the Colorado Rockies. This game was indicative for the rest of the postseason. Cliff Lee beasted, I got wasted, blackedout, and called out of work the next day. Major League baseball needs to realize that it is not conducive to alcoholic Philadelphia fans to have 4:00 PM start times. Seriously, what are you trying to do to us?

Ultimately, the Phils got redemption from 2007 and closed out the Rockies in four games on a Sunday evening into a Monday morning. Eagles smoked the pathetic Bucs starting at 1:00, followed by the Phils beating the Rockies at approximately 2:00 am (Long Day). Thank you to the staff at Paddywacks for not kicking out hundreds of drunk Phanatics from the bar until the game was finished. Also, thank you Christopher Columbus for getting me the day off work on the following Monday. As the late, great Harry Kalas would have put it “Christopher Columbus, you are the Man!”

The next step for the Phils and my liver was the NLCS and a rematch with the pretentious Los Angeles Dodgers and their obnoxious, idiotic fan base. “Hi, I am an asshole Dodgers fan, let me get to the NLCS by the 4th inning and let me try to fight Phils fans. If that fails, maybe I can buddy up with the Bloods or the Crips in the second deck and jump a 12 year old for his iPod touch. If that fails I’ll make a quick exit in the 8th inning so I do not have to watch the Phillies embarrass the Dodgers in LA.” Losers.

To the highlight: Being at game 4 of the NLCS for me was the best in person experience I have ever had at a professional sporting event. For me, it was even better than the only NFC Championship victory of the decade by the Eagles over the Dogkiller, Michael Vick – led Falcons. That night again, I was blasted. I do not know if it was the vodka, liver killer mix my buddy made, the 12-15 bud lights I put down before and during the game, or the free shots of Jack that were being given away in at the Wine and Spirits but I was tanked. For what you ask? To watch Jimmy “Willie Mays Hayes” Rollins hit a walk off, two run double to put the foot on the throat of the Dodgers. (I’m sure you can figure out the nickname. He is the only leadoff hitter in baseball that tries to hit a home run every at bat. As Lou Brown says in “Major League,” “Runs like Mays hits like shit.”) Anyway this led to an all night drunk fest topped off with another call out. Thanks Phils, my employer is getting happier with me by the series.

Now, the Phils are approaching game 6 of the World Series against the New York Yankees. The New York Yankees and its fan base are even more pretentious assholes than the Dodgers. The Yankees are the most reveled and hated team in baseball. Yankees fans think they are entitled to greatness every season and anything less than a World Series championship is a disappointment. I coronate these douchebags as the most annoying and arrogant fans in sports. I digress. Again, this series has led to a drunken fiasco. More drunk nights at McGillan’s Ale House, more hangovers, but fortunately no call outs. Yippee, I have matured. I am tired and sick, yet hungry for another championship.

Bottom line, I have enough in me for three more celebrations, game 6, game 7 followed by another parade down Broad Street. My liver as well as every other die hard Philles fans in Tri-State area shares the same sentiment. I have three more drunken parties, two more wins, one Friday call out, a random Phillie led one night stand, and one parade left that my liver can not miss. These events are necessary in obtaining the ultimate championship in Philadelphia sports history. . . Winning the World Series against the New York Yankees. Go Phils! Please do not let my liver down.

By F.X. Galvin

November 4, 2009November 4, 2009

SEPTA Super Sneaky Strike

By: Billy BeerSlugger

It was great of SEPTA’s TWU 234 workers to strike yesterday leaving hundreds of thousands of Philadelphian’s not only without a ride to work, school, doctors appointments etc, but also without leaving them with the proper amount of time to plan for alternate transportation. They struck at 3am in the morning so that it wouldn’t be announced on the 10 or 11 o’clock news or splashed on the front page of news sites before Philadelphian’s went to bed. Which if you’re really trying to piss people off you’re going to sneak attack strike. Not only that but Tuesday, the day the strike began was an Election day.

Not that I don’t give the TWU a little bit of credit for sticking through the Philadelphia end of the World Series but not to inform your ridership at least the night before is downright dastardly. These people have jobs, scholastic careers and other necessary staples of life to attend to that count on SEPTA to get there. I’d love to see the attendance numbers for the thousands of Philadelphia school aged children that need a bus, subway or trolley to get to school. These kids probably love the SEPTA strike because it effectively gives them a get out of school free card today. It’s hard enough to get these kids to go to school as it is without having them walk 4 miles. Lost in the news coverage is the kids who take SEPTA to school and as I always say to my friend who bangs a married chick with kids, “Think about the children.”.

Anyway, I’m not completely against Union’s. My mom was a 30+ year member of the Communications Workers of America, my uncle is a high ranking SEPTA union leader though not the Union that’s striking (as there are 3 unions that serve SEPTA). However, this is really a case of a Union holding a city hostage. When my mom’s union went to the picket line you could at least still make phone calls. It’s pretty customary as well for the people that are striking to show up to a picket line in protest but these lazy sons of bitches, for the most part, are home watching cartoons. Though I did see a story that there was a picket line in front of the Fern Rock station. Obviously they wouldn’t picket anywhere in Center City for fear of being heckled and laughed at.

Per a Union worker in this article

“We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t,” said Harris. “The riding public is not educated on what we’re fighting for. Why should we work under stressful conditions without getting paid for it?”

Well sir, you are getting paid, maybe just not as much as you’d like to. As for the stress of a job, join the club. Without marginalizing the efforts of the workers who really do make SEPTA run, what about those workers in the subways averaging $53,000 a year to take $2 and press a button. I wouldn’t wish that kind of stress on anyone.

Governor Rendell said the five-year contract spurned by TWU leaders called for a $1,250 signing bonus upon ratification, a 2.5 percent raise the second year, and a 3 percent raise in each of the next three years. It also called for an increase in pension payments to workers and no increase in their health-insurance contributions.

November 3, 2009November 3, 2009

The Hurt Locker

HLposterUSA2 By: Billy BeerSlugger

The Hurt Locker is a movie that follows an elite group U.S army unit in the Iraq war in 2004. It is without a doubt one of the most kick ass movies I have seen this year. The premise of the movie is this; the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit disarms bombs. However, this isn’t American soil and this task is made harder by the threat of insurgent snipers and remote detonation.

Jeremy Renner plays the lead and does a superb job pulling off the alpha male, adrenaline junkie leader of the unit, wearing a protective suit (and sometimes not) to diffuse bombs and IED’s. Renner shares a kind of Lethal Weapon/buddy aspect to the movie with costar Anthony Mackie.

What is great about the movie is how believable it is. That’s always the sign of a great movie, how you can kind of lose yourself in the characters and story. The kind of story you rarely find in Hollywood these days and it’s not hard to see why it was an independent film. During it’s limited release the movie went on to the garner critical acclaim and several independent film awards including best picture, best actor, breakthrough actor, cinematography, screenplay and director.

Director Kathryn Bigelow also directed one of my favorite movies of the 1990’s, Point Break. Barry Ackroyd (veteran of United 93) should be commended on shooting the movie in a very natural and raw way. Word is that writer Mark Boal stayed with and went out on routine daily activities with a bomb squad in Iraq. Jeremy Renner trained with real EOD teams prior to shooting and the film was made in Jordan, mostly about 3 miles away from the Iraq border. It brings an authenticity not seen in other Iraq War movies.

Overall, this is just a really good movie. We’re not really big on endorsing movies here on BeerSlugger.com but this anti-hollywood movie with no headline name and just flat out great acting, story, action and cinematography really blows our skirt up.

I doesn’t hurt that there’s really no women in the movie. Women, while I support serving their country in most capacities, are not meant to die on the front lines of battle which is why you won’t see one until Lost’s Evangeline Lilly shows up as the main characters wife. Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) also make cameos.

When it comes out on Netflix or whatever, take the 2 hours to watch this thrill ride. Like my indie pick last year, The Wrestler, this movie could make waves come Oscar season.

November 2, 2009November 2, 2009

60 Minutes of Unchecked Facts

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I didn’t actually see this episode of the investigative news/magazine 60 Minutes since the Phillies were on but from what I and other people on the internet can tell you, their editor needs to do a little better in the fact checking department.

Their segment was on how illegal downloading was costing Hollywood 6 billion a year, which may or may not be that far off, however, the reasoning they give to support this claim is pretty much fabrication or conjecture which ever way you want to look at it.

First there is the claim that Organized Crime (the Mafia?) is making most of it’s money off of counterfeit movies. Now I’m not going to dispute the fact that there are bootlegged movies out there but 60 Minutes is having me believe that Tony Soprano is behind all of this and not some dude with a DVD burner in his basement looking for some extra cash. I mean I could at least warm up to the idea if 60 Minutes gave me any proof. There was some talk about gangs of pirates using mafia style pickups but the focus quickly turned to illegal downloading.

Second, there is the segments claims by director Steven Soderbergh that piracy is costing the movie industry 6 billion a year. Neglected is the fact that Hollywood continues to make more and more money each year. Another Soderbergh assertion is that fewer movies are being made and will continue to be made because of piracy. Another assertion debunked given the statistics on movies 567 movies made in 2004 and 1038 in 2008, almost doubling inside of 4 years and still increasing.

I’ll give you that if movie tickets continue to go up every year then revenues should go up every year but you can’t really say that in this kind of economy. Bottom line Hollywood made more money last year than the year before and the year before that.

The segment also delved into the role Bit torrent plays into illegal downloading and then cutting to a guy saying, “what we have done for 15 years is not put in any speed bumps, any technological blocks in the way of individuals so that the conclusion that the younger generation in particular draws is that if it’s so easy it cant be wrong.”

Well yes it is easy, people can choose to share anything they want on Bit torrent and if they choose to share or download things illegally it is on the government and the copyright holders to find a solution that does not intrude on the openness of the internet. The blocks and speed bumps the guy interviewed in 60 minutes is advocating sound a lot like bandwidth throttling and packet sniffing, things which go against the principles of net neutrality.

While there are millions of Bittorrent users out there, I only know about 3 people who could use Bittorrent effectively enough to download music, movies and the like. So if it’s so easy and so popular, why don’t I know more people that do it? Why can they use iPhones and computers but have no idea how to use Bittorrent even after I wrote an article on it?

I digress, the real focus here is on 60 Minutes and it’s one sided affair with File Sharing and the Motion Picture Industry. There were a few facts thrown in about how the movie Wolverine was leaked and still did extremely well at the box office but overall there was not a peep from anyone on the opposing side of issue of illegal downloading. Further, the “so called facts” that they gave didn’t coincide with any of the generally accepted statistics reported all over the internet.

I wonder how much money CBS makes off of Movie Advertisements a year? Could this be yet another sacrifice of journalism for advertising dollars? The whole thing to me seemed like a propaganda piece for the MPAA, chock full of bogus facts and subjective estimations.

Maybe more people would go to see movies if 90% of them were not lacking in substance, didn’t recycle old stories, didn’t remake old movies or have plots which are so horribly obvious as to the outcome that all you really needed to see was the previews.

What about the film-makers who are using file sharing technology to get their movies seen by the masses or the ones exploring new business models like some in the music business are. Let’s not talk to the copyright professionals or consumer advocates who render baseless most of the MPAA’s claims 60 Minutes. That wouldn’t be a balanced approach to the issue, would it?

P.S: Maybe if Steven Soderbergh didn’t put out pieces of crap like The Girlfriend Experience people wouldn’t walk out of the movie theater requesting their money back like me.