What Was Once Justin Verlander...

Okay, so once upon a time i defended Justin Verlander. I said he couldn't actually be bad, couldn't legitimately perform poorly on the mound. I came to his defense at the start of the season and said that he, Justin Brooks Verlander, would snap out of the malaise that consumed him. Guess what? Justin "Dickballs" Verlander loves dicks and balls. He loves to cradle them like a newborn, to purse his sweaty lips and lower himself slowly, tantalizingly, on top of the man-meat.

Justin Verlander is bad at baseball, and subsequently should mail out monetary reparations for all the poor saps who believed in his potential and acquired him para fantasy. And then he should nail his 1) pitching hand, 2) limp dick, 3) stupid horseface to a shed and be pelted with monkey turds.

Can he be this bad, this frustrating? YES. Statistical backing? YEEEEES!

Dude's ERA for the season: 4.77. ERA for August alone? 8.25!! His WHIP is 1.50 for the month to boot! His groundball/flyball ratio right now is 1.00, compared to freaking 1.22 in '96. He just set a new personal high for intentional walks with 7 (previous high: 3)! This is the WORST. STRETCH. OF. HIS. CAREER. and that's not even taking into account how craptastic he's been save a 6 game stretch from June 22 to July 20.

Look, I know the dude's been the recipient of a dumptruck full of luck; he lost one game a month last year. One game a month! But GEEZ, man. I'm having trouble conveying all this because I am so full of blind, pulsating rage. This man is not just farting in the open mouths of his fantasy owners, but he's crapping the bed for the Tigers as well. How much different would the season have gone if he was the funk-stopping, opponent-stifling, game-changing ace he has the potential to be?

Again, unfair for me to heap all sorts of blame for the Tigers' miserable season on Dickballs and not the inconsistent lineup, horrible trade for the cadaver that was once Edgar Renteria, and the prolonged cranky-injuredness of the ghost of Gary Sheffield, but it's very convenient.

And I guess I shouldn't be upset because I received Dickballs and Corey Hart for Carlos Lee and Phil Hughes (Lee - out for season now, Hughes - infinitely worse than Dickballs).]

Ol' Dickballs legitimately cannot figure out what to do with this spherical piece of horsehide. He used to know, but now he just wants to take a big, sloppy bite. What a C U Next Tuesday, eh?

ESPN sucks, apparently

One of the most asinine jokes of my generation has become the mockery of Mtv: "How can there be a music television that doesn't actually play any music?" It has become a tired cliche because, honestly, it's painfully true. Mtv's lack of music videos that aren't being played from 2 am to 5 am makes it a shadow of its former self, ripe with opportunities to be chastised mercilessly. That's all well and good (any network that features "the Hills" deserves something between "Cancellation" and "Death by Capuchin!"), but another major network is beginning to stumble away from its intended origins. It is losing itself to the hyporcitical "Special Programming" and ignoring more and more the basis of what it covers.

Having said that, allow me to now say that ESPN sucks it righteously, blows a donkey, and all in all produces the program equivalent of public access featuring drunken children skate boarding.

It didn't happen overnight. In fact, one could almost say that is started when Sportscenter lengthened from a smart, tight half-hour to an hour long segment with more storylines. That seemed fine, but soon the smart broadcasters began slinging out hellacious catch phrases (featuring a disturbing lack of dignity... and humor), the storylines overtook the highlights, and viewers began to have polls to vote on. Then ad space became available DURING THE SHOW, with beer companies sponsoring stupid interview segments, a statline only the insomniac could enjoy sponsored by a car they'll never drive, and movie stars hawking their wares all while trying to fain interest in questions that kind sorta almost ties their movie to sports.

Naturally, with all the good poll questions tackled (but really, are there any good poll questions to be asked? Ever?), inane questions involving the rash judgement of any one or any team became the feature. Essentially, the day ESPN died was when it asked "Who's Now?" That bass-ackwards, mentally retardesque dip into depravity was only topped by, naturally, Mtv's hideous choice of reality programming. Stuart Scott, who seems to disregard actual sports journalism now, asks questions about an athletes SOCIAL impact in parties, movies, etc. With that segment ESPN announced that it cared more about appealing to the Pop Culture zealots than catering to its sports niche. Right now taking in any sort of ESPN is like crapping through your bathing suit to get to the toilet: you can see the sports, you can almost reach the sports, but not without going through a complicating middle man.

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Sooooo, Pistons - Celtics, eh? I wonder which team America will root for. America loves Boston. America LOOOVES BOOOSTOOOOONN!!! BAMERISTON LOOOVES MASSACHUSA!!!! No, really, I'm quite fine with how this is going to play out. The Pistons will show up, face off against an exhausted Celtics team, win in 6, and then everyone will complain about how boring the NBA finals are going to be... As if the last 2 minutes in any basketball game ever were riveting (time out..... foul..... shooting... rebound...foul ....timeout.... timeout.... foul..... ).

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Should Roger Clemens be demonized the way Barry Bonds has? Yes. Is it a racial thing? Probably, at some level that nobody would like to admit to. Should both of them be in the hall of fame someday? I think that yes, the earlier parts of their careers (aka the Not 285 lbs. part) should definitely be enshrined, but their "aided" stats should really be asterisked or altogether forgotten... which is sad because those stats are reDIRKulous. DICronculous. CRONlucurlic.

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Honestly, which team would take Gary Sheffield's corpse? (We all know the real Gary Sheffield died in an Atlanta Braves uniform, right?)