Random Thoughts On A Sunday Morning Updated To 11-19

[sabugo]

Certainly things are not well in Venezuela right now, protests increase and every day more are injured, 13 deaths so far, killed either by the national guard who shoots at close range or by armed militia called Tupamaros, the protests continue every day without stopping, you know what is happening in Ukraine? we are going through the same.

We are fighting against a corrupt regime that does not care who murder people, even some governors loyal to the state are making calls to people to attack the defenseless protestants, if you would like to know more about what is happening, you can follow me on twitter @carlote34, you can see pictures of the fight that we maintain, even strong images of some students that this government has murdered.

A lot of portuguese people from Madeira (portuguese island) live in Venezuela, so I'm aware of what's going on and how hard you guys have it there.

Stay strong and stay safe, I'm hoping everything turns out for the best.

The same goes for the ukranian people, who are the 2nd largest immigrant community here in Portugal.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 3-2

...I feel bad for the Australian officials who are working hard to get everything ready for next month's Major League games that will be played at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Baseball's pretty big down under and it's getting even more popular so you can understand the organizers are doing everything they can to make the best impression possible. So you can understand their disappointment when they heard that one of the players who is making the trip to Sydney say publicly that there is no excitement in going to Australia and honestly can not think of one reason to get excited about going there. One thing that is pretty clear here is that Zach Greinke is not that well known down there because if he was they would have ignored his comments and just considered the source because Greinke has as many psychological issues as Derek Jeter has base hits.

...I understand the need to promote baseball around the world. The game doesn't need any bolstering in Asia anymore because they are baseball-crazy over there. There hasn't been a regular season game in Europe yet and I wonder if that is next and if relations with Cuba ever improve they will go wild to host a few major league games there. But let me tell you what I really miss. Opening Days that begin in Cincinnati. I remember many years ago that on the first game of the season, even though there were a full slate of games to be played in the eastern time zone, the Reds would begin their game a half hour before everyone else. That was baseball then and it's just another tradition that has been taken away over time.

...So far the first few days of Yankees camp have been pretty good. The shock of Derek Jeter's retirement announcement has worn off and life has gone on as we know it. But then Alfonso Soriano put a smile on everyone's faces (well, at least mine) when he said that he also may retire at the end of this season. He said it depends on how he feels. If he feels ok, Soriano will play next year. If he doesn't feel ok then he won't. That's good. There's no room for debate. Either one way or the other. Here's hoping he has a year like Curtis Granderson had last year.

...Last week the temperature around here rarely got above ten degrees and on two occasions I was forced to leave the house to run some errands and get gas and each time I was out I saw people walking around without a coat on and who were seemingly oblivious to the cold front going on literally before their eyes. And here I was wearing a winter coat with the hat and gloves along with it and I'm saying to myself that even with this stuff that I'm wearing I'm the one that ends up catching the colds instead of them.

...Colorado has been raking in the money since retail sales of marijuana became legal this past January 1st and it's no wonder because their highways have been jammed with out of state visitors since that day who have all suddenly decided to visit the Centennial State. Some of the money that the marijuana sales generate will go towards substance abuse prevention and youth marijuana use prevention. In other words they plan on printing out a bunch of pamphlets to pass around to all the schools in the state telling schoolchildren to avoid it but once they are of legal age by all means buy as much as you want. And in Washington, the other state that legalized cannabis in 2014, things are looking just as good financially for the state. Economic forecasters are predicting that Washington's new legal recreational marijuana market will bring nearly $190 million to state over the next four years. It should be noted that this figure was estimated before the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl because by the middle of the fourth quarter when the Seahawk fans knew they were going to win they started lighting up and passing the pipe around and running out to get more. You have to wonder how long California with all their money problems will hold out and join these two states because if they do their sales will overshadow Colorado and Washington combined.

...I have to give Orioles manager Buck Showalter a lot of credit for being a no-nonsense sort of manager especially with the young prima donnas that seem to be all over baseball now on every single team. When Hall of Famer Frank Robinson visited Baltimore's spring training home last week in Sarasota, Florida, Showalter casually asked Josh Hart, a ninteen-year-old prospect of the ballclub if he knew who he was. Hart said he didn't and that he never heard of him. Now had you asked him if he knew who Mario Brothers were he'd be able to tell you but Frank Robinson to him was a mystery. Showalter couldn't believe it and instead of giving him chapter and verse on who Robinson was and what he accomplished he made him submit a one page report to him so he could be sure that he knew who he was. Talk about an easy homework assignment. Although it would have been funny had he given Showalter the report the next day just as he asked but instead of writing about Frank Robinson he wrote about Brooks.

...This isn't the first time we've heard of younger players not knowing who the older players were. It's just that this time it happened to make the wire stories. I remember something that Don Mattingly of all people said many years ago about Babe Ruth that still is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. Early in his Yankee career he was asked a question about Babe Ruth and he said that when he was growing up he thought that Babe Ruth was a cartoon character and the reason why he thought that was because he wasn't born until 1961 and that he grew up in Indiana. There are some things you just can not make up.

...A big middle finger to Joe Torre and Tony Larussa for changing the rules concerning home plate collisions. Understand that I don't get any satisfaction out of seeing the catcher or the baserunner get hurt on these plays but by putting these rules in you could cause other injuries. One of the new rules states that the catcher can not block the plate without the baseball. What if he's waiting for a throw? Where is he going to wait, in the on-deck circle? When the throw is coming what do they expect from him? To run in front of the plate, catch the ball and either run or dive back to make the tag? Try to picture that in your mind's eye for a moment. Wouldn't that leave the catcher wide open to any base runner who is charging towards home as fast as he can? And the other thing that is now banned is that baserunners can not deviate from the direct path to the plate in order to initiate contact with the catcher. Now what the *$#& do you want to do that for in the first place? Again, try to picture this. You've just rounded third and are going to try to score but before you try to do that you are going to veer off a foot and a half to your right so you can plow the catcher. What for? This is all being done because of the injury that happened to Buster Posey a couple of years ago but as serious as it was it wasn't a cheap shot and it was part of the game.

...There was a bill in Arizona last week that was currently awaiting the approval or rejection of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that many people across the country were paying close attention to. It was a bill that would protect any Arizona businesses that refuses service to gays and others on religious grounds and that the governor ended up vetoing last Wednesday. This was one of those topics that if you came out and publicly said you supported it you risk the chance of practically getting labeled a monster and someone who is intolerant towards others. You may think I am exaggerating the point a little here but I don't think by much. Right or wrong I feel that this is something that should only involve the people in Arizona because it should not matter what I think, being a New York State resident. It's none of my business. The NFL also kept watch on what happened down in Arizona because as they said in a PR statement last week their policies "emphasize tolerance and prohibit any kind of discrimination." This is also the same league that employs rapists, killers and wife beaters. I don't trust any organization that comes out making statements like this because you have no idea when the sincerity stops and the bull**** takes over. Without even saying it the NFL is getting the point across that if the bill passed the Super Bowl may not be played in Arizona in 2015. If that ended up taking place it would not have been the first time that the NFL took its football and went to play somewhere else. Back in 1990 when Arizona voters refused to honor Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday the league moved the 1993 Super Bowl to Pasedena, California and as soon as the NFL saw that those same voters were going to play nice when they approved King's birthday as a holiday a few years later, they gave them the 1996 game. Maybe the next bill that comes before Governor Brewer is the one to send the Cardinals back to St. Louis.

...A man's got to live somehow, Dept: Spring training has already started but Ervin Santana has not budged one inch on his demand for a fifty million dollar contract for four years. That's pretty steep for a guy who didn't even have a winning record last year. So, he's sitting home waiting for some major league team that is dumb enough to sign him and he knows that could happen at any time after someone goes down with the first major injury of the spring. Besides, Ubaldo Jimenez recently got a deal for around the same amount of money he's looking for with Baltimore and wherever he goes Santana knows he can give up just as many home runs.

...There is a wild tiger that is loose in the northern part of India that has killed ten people over the course of two months, some so bad that they were beyond recognition. Since this has been going on the people in that area have been terrified of where and when this tiger is going to strike again. Right now a hunt is going on with the intent to shoot and kill this animal and be done with it but amazingly enough there are some wildlife conservationists who do not want these hunters to kill it and they also don't want it to be captured and be sent off to a zoo someplace. Naturally they did not offer any answers on what should be done about this problem. It seems that all they were good for was telling everyone what not to do. Somehow I don't think they'd have any problems with a hunter shooting that thing where it stood if they were face-to-face with it and they were going to be her next meal.

...What the hell is going on down in Florida? They've already got Pythons, boa constrictors, alligators and some snail that has a hard enough shell that it can puncture your car tires. Now they have something called a tegu lizard that has already been seen by residents in central Florida more than one hundred times now. These damned things can reach up to four feet in length and weigh up to thirty-five pounds and while they are not a threat to people, they have a bite on them that can literally crush the bones in your hands. Just like the snakes they have down there these lizards were originally released into the wild by idiots who bought them as pets and didn't know what to do with them anymore. If I lived down there I wouldn't go anywhere without a baseball bat in my hand ready to clobber anything I see slither around. All of a sudden the snow and freezing temperatures don't seem so bad.

...Finally I have to stop and remember the greatness that was Harold Ramis. I first saw him when one of the TV stations in town began airing reruns of Second City and this guy was hilarious. They all were. Writer, actor, director, comedian, the guy could do it all and he did. R.I.P.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 3-9

...This past off season the Mariners made the biggest news by giving Robinson Cano a ten-year, $240 million contract to play second base for them but somehow Cano thinks that he now has the right to tell the Mariners what free agents they should go out and get. General Manager Cano wants the team to sign Ervin Santana and Kendrys Morales. The money involved in signing the two of them should not be a problem mainly because it won't be on Cano's dime. Spring training is only a couple of weeks old and already he is telling the front office how to do their job. What a helpful sort of guy he is. Pretty soon he'll want to start managing the ballclub too.

...Giancarlo Stanton is a pretty good outfielder for the Miami Marlins and probably one of the few decent players left on that team after Jeffrey Loria sent the rest of them to Canada during the 2012 off-season. To be truthful that is all I knew about him until I saw a picture of him that was taken about a week ago that made me realize immediately that this guy is an idiot. I've attached the picture here so you all can see for yourself and maybe after taking a look at it you'll also agree that he's an idiot. Now I don't know if this is an alligator or a crocodile. Does it matter? Look how close Stanton is to this thing. Those things are pretty fast and had it turned around and saw someone behind him the crocodile would have had a quick and easy lunch and the Marlins would have had one less outfielder.

...Did anyone happen to see that 75-foot putt that Paula Creamer sunk to win the HSBC Women's Championship in Singapore ? It was a thing of beauty and it could not have happened to a more nicer woman than her. This clip is sure to make the top sports highlights once this list is compiled at the end of the year and despite what happens between now and then this is always going to be a highlight people are going to stop and watch whenever its on. I have never seen anyone make that long of a putt. I made a fifty-nine footer once but that doesn't count. That was on the computer.

...There is something that I do not understand about people who post pictures of themselves on the internet doing something that if they stopped and thought for one second would realize that what they are doing in not a good idea. The quintessential of this is the female soldier who for reasons known only to herself decided to get in her car and hide out in it just so she would not have to salute the flag. She uploads the picture and lets basically the entire world know what she is doing and tells them to save their comments because she doesn't care, only she used stronger language. If she didn't feel like saluting she could have got away with it without anyone knowing about it but what she did was the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot and just in case that wasn't enough, shooting yourself in the other foot just to be sure. The chain of command at the Fort Carson, Colorado Army post where this soldier is stationed have not commented much what she did and only said that they are aware of it and are looking into it. Now I have a question for all the ex-military and current military members on this website. When the Army makes that kind of comment that only means one thing: she's screwed. In the Army it's called the stockade. The Naval term is brig. No matter what branch of service you are in you want to avoid these two places although for this woman that will be impossible. Maybe the next time she takes a picture of herself she'll be doing it behind bars.

...It seems that the Red Sox's "Boston Strong" logo was actually stolen, Boston style. That's when they take want and not worry about it. You see, there is a charity down in El Paso, Texas that actually trademarked “B Strong” seven years ago and they are now considering taking legal action against the Red Sox in an attempt to reclaim sole possession of the logo. This particular charity provides financial assistance to multiple organizations in the El Paso area and was formed in honor and memory of a young boy who died tragically in a skiing accident. Now it seems to me that since this organization had this logo for all these years now that the legal team for the Red Sox would have discovered that it has already been in use and that a trademark was on it. What I think happened -and it would not surprise me at all if it did happen like this- is that the Red Sox lawyers told the team to go ahead and use it because they are bigger than some charity from a small town in Texas. The reason for this lawsuit is that the "B Strong" logo in Boston has taken away attention and potential donations from the charity in Texas and the worst part is that the Red Sox have sold that logo on T-shirts and other merchandise and the money that they made from those sales were given to different charities but not the one in Texas. This tells me that the Sox knew what they were doing ever since the first day they slapped the Boston Strong logo on the Green Monster at Fenway. Can you imagine if this was the other way around and the Red Sox trademarked that logo first and a small town organization decided to use it? They'd have their lawyers on the phone threatening legal action until they made sure they scared them real good.

...Last week the Cleveland Browns announced that they will be getting new uniforms sometime before the 2015 draft and according to Browns team president Alec Scheiner these uniforms are going to be "cutting-edge." This isn't the first time I've heard this term used and I've never understood what it meant. What is cutting edge and what does that have to do with uniforms? Well whatever it means here the Browns are going to keep it under wraps until a year from now when they have their grand unveiling. Then they can mark up their replica jerseys 15% because they're cutting edge.

...Why is it that the lousy teams like the Browns and just recently the Buccaneers seem more concerned with their uniforms rather than the players that wear them? After this season Tampa Bay is going to have another losing record. They'll just look different doing it.

...The entitlement that some kids have sometimes borders on the ridiculous and if you don't agree that after reading this that this girl does not deserve a slap in the head (or more) then I really don't know what else to say. An eighteen-year-old girl in New Jersey is suing her parents because she has claimed that they threw her out of their home and cut her off financially. Don't you just hate it when that happens? She is suing them for immediate support, current private-school fees and future college tuition. In other words, everything. Mom and Dad claim that their adoring daughter moved out on her own free will because she refused to abide by their rules. They said that they want her home but she is demanding that they pay her bills even though she doesn't want to live at home under their rules which are in part having her think long and hard about continuing a relationship with a boyfriend that may be a bad influence, being respectful and abiding by a set curfew. Wow, after reading that you can see why she left home. Who can live under conditions like that? It has been a few months now that this girl has not lived with her parents but it's not like she's been out on the streets. Not even close. She's been living with her best friend whose father just happens to be a lawyer and he has been bankrolling her lawsuit and just to turn the knife even more, part of the lawsuit is that the girl's parents reimburse him for the legal fees, which are now over $12,000 and climbing. How do you like that? This guy wants them to foot the bill for a lawsuit directed at them. I think right about this time I would have been fuming. Basically what this girl wants is for the court to tell her parents to support her financially in every way while she still does whatever she wants to do. Just when you thought that the Gimmee generation couldn't do anything more to make themselves look more pathetic they end up proving you wrong by pulling a stunt like this. I hope this girl gets smacked in the face with a huge helping of reality and then after that get smacked the old-fashioned way.

...No matter what this won't end well and that's what I feel bad about the most. I just know if that was my kid that was suing me for all that money I would not feel the same towards her ever again despite winning or losing the case and it would be more about her total lack of regard towards me than the dollars and cents part. I really feel for these parents.

...Hold that Eulogy, Dept: When a coroner down in Holmes County, Mississippi received a phone call from a hospice nurse about a seventy-eight-year-old man who passed away and then another call from a family member of the man to confirm it, he thought no more about it since calls like this are very common in a business like that . The coroner and a representative from a funeral home drove to the deceased's home to collect the body for funeral preparations and while they were there, checked the body for a pulse before they put the man in a body bag for his ride to the funeral home. Once they got there they brought the dearly departed to the embalming room to prepare the body for viewing. What happened next was something straight out of The Twilight Zone. Right before they were to start work on the body, the bag moved. Then it moved again. Then his legs started to move like he was trying to kick his way out of the bag. Now either this guy was the world's heaviest sleeper or someone made a mistake because this man was breathing and he wanted out of that bag. The coroner immediately called an ambulance and after hooking him to monitors they confirmed that he was in fact breathing. Why they couldn't tell that just by looking at him I don't know. They had to depend on a monitor to confirm what they were looking at. In a way this story almost reminds me of the guy in Brazil who showed up at his own wake and scared the hell out of his family. Can you imagine what the family of the deceased-and-now-alive-again man were doing after the coroner drove off with the body? Phone calls were made to people in town and around the country letting them know what happened and many tears must have been shed because of the loss of their loved one. But wait...hold that Kleenex! They get a call from the funeral home to inform them that they couldn't embalm the body because all of a sudden he started to breathe again and that people that are alive usually do not like to be embalmed. Then all the phone calls that they made to let everyone know of the poor guy's passing had to be re-made all over again this time to tell them that his condition improved and they were not going to believe by how much. And I guarantee you that after they heard this news and the shock of their relative being alive that they had to forget to call someone back to let them know he's still alive. As for the man himself, God knows what's going through his mind after he found out what happened to him but I think one thing's for certain. For the rest of his life every time he falls asleep he's going to pray that he wakes up in his room and not in the morgue.

...I'll tell you what the state of Massachusetts avoided a huge problem last week. First a guy who was caught taking Upskirt photos of women avoided any jail time when his lawyer exploited a loophole in the law and was able to get his case dismissed in front of the top court in the state. Soon after that the sale of cameras in Massachusetts tripled. But that did not last long as the state's legislators quickly got together to write a bill that banned this kind of thrill seeking behavior and was immediately signed by Governor Deval Patrick. Now these people who engaged in this stuff have two choices to make. They can focus their interests on something that won't get them arrested or if they still insist on taking pictures of women in compromising positions they can always apply for a job at the TSA, since they have the law behind them when they do the same thing.

...R.I.P. to Doctor Frank Jobe who passed away at the age of eighty-eight last Thursday. Jobe was the brilliant surgeon that performed reconstructive elbow surgery on Dodger pitcher Tommy John back in 1974. That surgery today is known as Tommy John surgery and it has saved the careers of many ballplayers over the past forty years.

...Daylight saving time arrives this weekend so if you are up right now as this is posted turn your clocks ahead one hour.

...Finally, Yogi Berra's wife died last week. She was living in an assisted living facility in New Jersey because of complications of a stoke that she suffered earlier this year. My condolences go out to the entire Berra family but what stood out for me was how long these two people were married. Back in January they celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary and how many people can you say have done that?

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 3-16

...A small town about a half hour away from where I live made national news last week for all the wrong reasons. Two twenty-year-old college students at the state university in Brockport, New York were charged with torturing and injuring a black Labrador retriever when they picked the dog up and held him upside down and forced him to drink beer from the tap during an off-campus party. One of the idiots took a photo of the dog at the keg and posted it on his Twitter account and that is how they were caught, proving once again that Twitter is a cesspool of stupidity. Both participants were issued appearance tickets to appear in court and the dog was taken away to an animal shelter where he'll be able to drink water instead of Budweiser. The more I hear about the things people do to animals and other people the more I prefer to be around my dogs.

...Don't Shoot the Messenger, Dept: I admit that each year when the day comes that I have to get my taxes done it really isn't something that I look forward to. Apparently this fifty-three-year-old Missouri man felt the same way - and then some. This guy was so upset about the result of his taxes that he pushed his tax preparer to the ground and tried to choke him since obviously it was his fault that he had to end up paying Uncle Sam. Besides getting a tax filing that he evidently was not expecting, he now faces a third degree assault charge. He must have to pay a good chunk of change to have gone nuts like that.

...Don't forget now that this Saturday is the first Major League game of the year as the Diamondbacks and Dodgers go at it down in Sydney, Australia. It will be on the MLB Network on the 22nd starting at 4:00 am (1 am in the west.) I miss baseball and I love baseball but I am not getting up at 4 am to watch any game because at that hour my pillow does not like to let me go. If this is something that you plan on doing then my hat's off to you.

...There was an incident last week that happened in a neighboring town at a bowling alley of all places. Police were called to break up a fight that when it was all over thirty people were involved. During the scuffle one guy got a direct hit in the head with a bowling ball and as for the guy that hit him witnesses swore that it was the only strike of the night that he got.

...I usually do not hawk any products in here but there has been one program that I have been using for years now that has really helped me with the spam mail problem that we all seem to get. Mailwasher Pro is a nice utility that lets you preview your e-mails before it gets on your computer. So if you want that e-mail you download it to your e-mail program and if you don't you set up a filter so that it never gets on your hard drive. The reason why I am bringing this up now is because in recent weeks I have received e-mails letting me know that my long-lost brother has been found (I only have a sister) and that my homes in San Francisco and Chicago are now in the process of being foreclosed unless I act fast. I don't think for one second that any of you guys in here are gullible enough to fall for nonsense like this but it's nice to know something like this is around.

...General Motors is doing a recall this month about a problem with the ignition switches of some of their popular models even though they knew ten years ago that this problem existed. To explain what the issue is in as few words as possible is where the key is inserted and turned to start the car, it could easily be moved out of the "run" position into the "off" position and when that happens the power braking and steering and the airbags can stop working. At least thirteen deaths occurred because of this before GM conducted an investigation and finally did their recall. GM blames a series of internal miscues for the reason why it took so long to recall these cars which when put in another way meant that the big shots who run the place kept on passing the buck with this problem and hoping it would go away. Maybe if we are lucky ten years from now they will let everyone know what they found out during their internal investigations.

...In case anyone missed it there was an election held in North Korea recently. Or at least it was something that those people call an election because head nutjob Kim Jong Un was elected to the highest legislative body in North Korea unanimously, since there was no one else on the ballot. The North Korean voters have no choice who to vote for since there is only one candidate's name on the ballot but they have the choice of voting yes or no if they approve of the choice of candidate. Thanks to Jon Un's election staff they helped the people say "yes" when it was their time to vote by pointing guns at their heads and issuing other threats that were just as bad. Who wouldn't have voted for him? All they had to do is remember how well he treats members of his family.

...Rashard Mendenhall retired last week at the age of twenty-six from the Arizona Cardinals because he said he just didn't want to do it anymore. If a baseball player retired at the age of twenty-six you would wonder what the hell was the matter with him but when a football player does it you really can't blame him. Mendenhall said that it wasn't a physical issue that made him retire but maybe those head injuries that he's seen other players have could have got him to thinking about it. This reminds me of when Napoleon Kaufman retired from the Raiders after the 2000 season to enter the ministry. He never looked back and his life after football has been just fine. I wish him well.

...A minor league catcher for the Red Sox named Jon Denney was pulled over recently for driving with a suspended license and had he just kept his mouth shut while this was going on I would have to look somewhere else to find something to talk about as far as my favorite punching bags were concerned. Denney told the police that he was a Red Sox player and he didn't care what they were going to do because he had money and would make more money than they would ever see. He went on to say that after he is arrested he would be out in no time because of who he played for and that he made three million dollars a year. Red Sox officials must be besides themselves right now and probably can not wait until he makes his way up to the major leagues because with an attitude like that he will fit in well with everyone else.

...The next time you see someone unwilling to help their fellow man and you want to let them know what you think about it hold up a minute and read this and when you're done maybe you'll change your mind. A Colorado man named Ray Ortiz is suing the city of Boulder and his rescuers for $500,000 because he was trapped in a submerged car that he says is their fault. Back in September Ortiz was driving his car on a flooded road that he says the county should have closed. You know, to prevent people like him from driving on it. That's why the city of Boulder is getting sued. He is also suing the first responders because they did not realize that he was trapped in his car until they pulled it out of the water after it went off the road and into a creek. Here is the part of the story where this man's luck was extraordinary. He found a small air pocket in the back of his car where he stayed and waited to be rescued two hours later. Despite admitting that he is lucky to be alive he is suing the rescue workers because he feels they should have known he was down there. It's pretty clear what is going on here. Some lawyer got to this guy and convinced him to sue for a half million dollars and even if they settle for half as much he'll still come out way ahead. The city of Boulder is going to have lawyers also and they are going to ask this Ortiz guy why didn't he simply put his car in reverse when he saw that the road he was on was becoming a body of water? This man should be thanking his rescuers and sending them coffee and bagels where they work instead of slapping them with a lawsuit. So the next time you see someone who doesn't want to get involved maybe they have a good reason not to.

...I always find it intriguing on how the mind works or to be more specific, your memory. I witnessed something last week that made me think of something that happened to me in the service because what I saw for this one guy was the case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and in my case the exact opposite. My brother-in-law had to go on a business trip recently and I went with my sister to pick him up at the airport on his arrival home. We got there about twenty minutes before the plane landed and suddenly had to use one of the restrooms. I walked into the closest one where we were sitting and some little kid must of had one hell of an accident in there because there was urine and you-know-what on the baby changing station and all around it. I turned around and walked out, suddenly deciding that I did not have to go that bad. A few other people after me walked in and then walked out soon afterwards. When one guy came out one of the airport workers was walking by and he let him know what the situation was in there. This guy had to be a supervisor or something like that because the next thing I hear is a loud whistle as this guy was collaring the first employee he saw as he made him grab a mop and some other equipment to clean up the restroom as quickly as he could.

So I'm watching this and for some reason it takes me back to something that happened to me when I was in school for the Navy at the San Diego Naval Base. I went to school at night, from 11 pm to 7 am in the the morning. Then we'd go back to the barracks or out for awhile before we got some sleep. It took time to get used to but it was a nice schedule. I noticed that all my time in the service that the Navy was obsessed with keeping things clean and I never figured out if this is how they really liked it or if it was just the perfect way of keeping everyone busy all the time. I didn't mind because I always kept things clean even before I joined up so it was not much of an adjustment for me. One night we were assigned to clean a section of the school that used during the day. I was in a room by myself in the back cleaning and where I happened to be you could not see me if you were standing out in the hall. That's when I happened to overhear a Chief and a 1st class Petty Officer talk about how they were going to organize a major cleaning of our barracks as soon as school let out at 7 am. They said those guys usually walk back to their barracks after they are done with school and the ones that go back will be doing the cleaning. Now I don't mind cleaning but only up to a point so after I knew that those two were gone I got the hell out of there and went someplace else to work. When school let out that day they didn't give anyone a clue as to what was going to happen but since I had the heads up I went off the base to have breakfast and stayed out until noon when I knew that everything was done. Nothing happened to me when it was time for school the next night except that they kept on calling me a lucky SOB. No one ever knew. Right place, right time. And a dirty restroom in an airport reminded me of this.

...For any of you who have ever wondered how it must be to live in the Northeastern part of the U.S. just consider what we had here last week. Last Monday and Tuesday it was nice. We got a little taste of spring as the temperatures started to go up a little and by Tuesday it made it up to 62 degrees. It was a welcome change from the single digit temperatures we were having not too long ago. I ran a few errands that day and people were driving around with their windows down and one guy went as far as taking his convertible out for a spin. Then Wednesday came. It snowed so much that it was officially called a blizzard by the weather service. That's what usually happens when you get over twenty inches of snow in one day. Everything was shut down and I don't know how many times I looked out the window looking to see if the plow guy came. The next day I found out that he came by twice but you could have fooled me. Wednesday was also the last day that it snowed and the next three days we had nothing but sunshine. We came full circle in a matter of seven days last week around here. My advice to any of you who are thinking of moving east because of your job or if you want to go to school in this part of the country or for any other reason, think again and then keep on thinking until you decide to stay right where you are.

[GoRedSox34]

I will DVR the 4 AM game and then watch it when I wake up on Saturday. Can't think of a better way to start the day

I'm heading down to Florida this week and I will be at two Red Sox spring training games, against the Pirates and the Yankees. I'll try and post pictures in this thread when I can.

[bctrackboi11]

America's Navy: Fighting terrorism one dust bunny at a time!

[RedbeardMtn]

I saw the story about the guy suing the rescuers. The incident occurred in the midst of the beginning of the floods out here that resulted from many days of nonstop rain onto already saturated soil. We got about 2-3 years worth of rain over 3-4 days. The area he was in was totally destroyed by the flood. Up here about 20 miles west of there, we were cutoff from all major routes out of town for 2 months. Apparently the mans friends were rescued, but the recsuers didn't check his car and assumed the guy in the car was already dead and didn't bother to check. Then two other cars rear ended him and pushed him further inth the water. I objected to the suit upon hearing about it, but as I envisioned rescuers standing around not bothering to check a car submerged in rising water, I could begin to see his point. To a point. He's also suing the people who hit his car and pushed him further into the water, and didn't check on him either. I can imagine the furious anger I would feel if I were trapped inside of a car in flood waters and aware that recsuers were standing nearby, but to file a lawsuit is an interesting direction to go. Hell, it's been six months and theres still towns unreachable by roads anymore. Our local economy is gone. But nothing a good ol' lawsuit can't make worse.

rd

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 3-23

...Rolando McClain is trying to get back in the NFL after abruptly retiring last year for what he said were personal reasons and partially because he was arrested more times than he made a tackle last year. Soon after he was signed by the Baltimore Ravens McClain was arrested for the third time, this one for disorderly conduct and also for resisting arrest. Convinced he was being picked on he told the Ravens he was quitting and now he wants to come full circle. It is amazing how fast you can change your mind as soon as your money runs out.

...Not to long ago a pit bull attacked and mauled a four-year-old little boy from Phoenix, Arizona so bad that the child received injuries that, according to his doctors, are so severe that they will require months and possibly years of reconstructive surgeries. The pitbull responsible for this was taken away and at a hearing that is scheduled to be held later this week a judge may decide if the dog is to be euthanized. But just like most things these days if you create a Facebook page and post a convincing sob story you will get people to support what you are saying and that's what happened here as over 40,000 people have joined in a campaign to save the dog's life. The people that want the dog to live are not saying they value the dog's life above the child's. But at the same time maybe they should take a very close look at the damage this dog did to that boy's face, a face that never is going to be the same. It's easy to show mercy towards a pit bull when the child that he hurt is not a relation to you. I love dogs but my love does not extend towards this breed of dog. You can't them and then when you realize that you really can't trust them it is too late to do anything about it.

...I found out last week that this upcoming summer there is going to be a wedding in my family and that I am going to be invited to it. I am the kind of person that does not feel snubbed if I am not invited to the wedding reception. In fact if I could make a deal with anyone who is getting married not to invite me I promise I will still send a check. That's how much I don't want to go to these things. Towards the end of the week I got a minor scare when I was checking my e-mail. It was from the wedding party and the first thought I had was that I was going to be asked to be in the wedding but I quickly dismissed that because I realized that no one would be dumb enough to do that. Well, it wasn't that. What I got was an e-mail that was sent out to all the married guys and it contained a question. As a married man what advice would you give to the soon-to-be groom? Immediately you want to tell the guy to run for the hills and if I wanted to be brave and actually write that I would have a wedding party full of women mad at me. Besides, why should this guy get let off easy? I don't even know him. It didn't take long for me to think of something to tell him that would really help and at the same time keep me out of the doghouse. I told him that if there are errands to be run he should go out and do them by himself because if he does that it will take a lot less time and it will save him thousands of dollars each year. For example I had to go to the supermarket last week to get bread, a bag of salad, some salad dressing and tomatoes. I asked her if that was all that she needed and she told me that was all she wanted. So the next day I took a drive and got bread, a bag of salad, some salad dressing and tomatoes - and that was it. I was out so fast I could have left the car running. Do you think I could have got away with that had she tagged along? She would have found twenty more things to get while we were collecting the four things we came there for. I learned this lesson the hard way and if this guy who is getting married stops to think about it he'll realize I was right.

...There have been some stupid things written about President Obama since he has been in office and I'm not talking about anything that Sarah Palin is given credit for. I recall one time in the past he was criticized for swatting a fly during an interview and some people complained. Last week his name was brought up because the daughter of his former pastor was convicted of laundering thousands of dollars from a state grant for a Chicago-area job-training program. What she did had nothing to do with Obama but they still found a way to associate him with it. I hope for his case that no one in his kindergarten class is facing jail time because they'll find a way to make him an accomplice.

...Although I am not an owner of the Playstation 4 I happen to be a big fan of Sony in the console gaming department simply because they are not Microsoft. Sony has sold more than six million PS4's since the launch of the system back in November of last year and that is more than the Xbox One and the Wii U by Nintendo combined. I have nothing against Nintendo but anything that gives Microsoft a kick in the gonads is all right by me.

...In Flagrante Delicto*, Dept: It was nice outside during the early part of last week so my wife and I went outside and brought one of the dogs with us for a short walk. While we were walking there was this lady who lived down the street who, because a lot of the snow has melted in the front yards, was working in front of her house and she had on a very tight pair of jeans and was bending down picking up stuff. My wife caught me looking and of course had ask me what I was looking at. I knew I was busted but I had to think of something and fast. "I thought it was a lawn ornament left over from Christmas" I said, which was all I could come up with her staring me down. It wasn't enough.
*Latin for "while the flame is still burning." It's a fancy way of saying someone was caught red-handed, like me.

...Ryan Braun is getting ready for the start of the season as the Brewers head north soon from Arizona. He said he didn't seem worried about what the fans around the league were going to say to him because he knows it will be severe at times. It probably will, especially in Arizona where they really have a special bond with him. That should have been all that he said but he had to continue. He said that he would perform like he always does because he wanted his work to speak for himself just like every artist should. Wow. Move over Van Gogh and Picasso. They are going to tear him apart this year. I can't wait until he gets to Philadelphia. And some of you thought that Alex Rodriguez had the market cornered with saying stupid things.

...The PS4 continues to get cooler and cooler. Last week Sony unveiled a Virtual Reality headset that is currently under development for their latest and extremely popular console system. They call it Project Morpheus and this headset will give players a high-definition, 3-D view of games and motion-tracking technology that allows players to pan their view around with the movement of their heads. It is still not known when the headset will be available for sale and also how much it will cost but if I were a PS4 owner I would start saving some money for this right now.

...Can you imagine if this headset was available when those Dead or Alive Volleyball games came out just a few short years ago? I'd have been in that game for so long that they would have had to forward my mail.

...Here's a nice little story that will either make you laugh or shake your head or both. Back in December a twenty-year-old college student hailed a cab in Chicago because she was supposed to meet some people at a restaurant that was less than two miles away from where she was. Once she got there she asked the cabbie if she could pay with her credit card and when she found out she could, she gave the guy her card. The card swiper in the cab was not working at the time so they used a phone device called The Square which is an application that allows merchants to charge customers through a mobile device. Her card was accepted through that and being the courteous person that she is, she told him to add a two dollar tip to it which is pretty nice considering the entire ride lasted a few minutes. So, the girl signs her name and goes on her way and thinks nothing more of it until she received her charge card statement the next month and found out that the cab ride which she thought cost her at least twelve dollars was actually $787.33. The first thing the girl and her mother did was contact VISA to complain about the charge but they told them they couldn't help or do anything because the girl had signed off on the transaction. The Chicago Police couldn't do anything about this either since a crime was not actually committed, although with the Chicago Police even if a crime was committed they couldn't do anything about it either. At first the cab driver was not helpful when he was contacted about this but as soon as the complaint reached Chicago's department of Business Affairs he suddenly became very helpful and tried to refund the money but was unable to since all he had left was the last four numbers of the card. This story does have a happy ending as the Business Affairs people got in touch with the people that ran that phone app and they are going to send her a check for the entire amount that she was charged. It was a hard lesson to learn but I am sure that she will be looking at every card transaction a lot closer now for the rest of her life because chances are she won't get bailed out like this again.

...Best wishes to Reds reliever Aroldis Chapman, who was hit right above the left eye by a vicious line drive off the bat of Kansas City's Salvador Perez in a spring exhibition game in Arizona last Wednesday. If you have not seen the video of this yet here is the link to the ESPN article that has a video of it. Believe me, it is something that you only want to see once. Chapman had to undergo surgery where they placed a metal plate above his left eyebrow and it will remain there permanently. This is probably going to confuse the hell out of TSA officials for the remainder of his career. The Reds team doctor said he could start to throw off a mound in about six to eight weeks and maybe get back out on the field near the end of May. That's all well and good but I don't imagine that throwing on the sideline or in the bullpen is going to bother him. It's when he finally gets back on the mound that the real test begins. And don't forget about Perez, the guy who hit the ball. This is going to affect him too. I wish them both well.

...I am surprised but at the same time grateful that this does not happen more often. Sure there's been some similar injuries to pitchers over the past few seasons and there's been even more close calls. And how about the college game? Those jokers make the pitchers face hitters holding aluminum bats. Talk about an accident waiting to happen.

...Richie Incognito, everyone's favorite teammate, has expressed interest on joining the Oakland Raiders because he thinks that by becoming a Raider it would fit his personality the best. The Raiders, to their credit, have not said they felt the same way about him but you never know. It's still early. I know one thing for sure that if he does go to Oakland no one on that team is going to let him know what his twitter account is.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 3-30

...This is it! Opening Day, or rather night. Baseball even screws this up thanks to that unfit commissioner we have because Bud Selig is the kind of guy who could ruin a perfect sunset. Anyway, this is the day when I consider winter to be officially over despite whatever the temperature is outside. Tonight it will be the Dodgers visiting San Diego at 8:00 pm, 5:00 pm for you lucky SOB's who live on the west coast. Monday and Tuesday is when the real fun starts with thirteen games on the 31st and nine on Tuesday, April 1st. And away we go!

...If anyone is friends with JoeRudi26 on Facebook send him a message to see if he's ok because when he sees all the live games on the MLB Network starting tomorrow the guy's going to be holed up in his house and the only time he'll open up his door is when Pizza Hut gets there.

...Those of us who are lucky to have DirecTV will get a free preview this week beginning tomorrow of the MLB package that they have. It runs from March 31st to April 6th. I'll have baseball overdose before this week is over.

...I wonder what the people of Detroit were thinking when they turned on the news on Friday morning and heard that Miguel Cabrera got a ten-year 292 million dollar contract extension from the Tigers? The same people who can't put two nickels together are going to be expected to cheer on this guy for the next ten years even after he breaks down years before he contract ends.

...Among the things that I will be looking at this week is how the expanded instant replay is going to work and how long is it really going to add to the games? It goes without saying that the Red Sox are going to be the first team to benefit from an overturned call. There's an old saying that goes there are only two things that are certain and that is death and taxes. Well, there's another one and that's all of Major League Baseball bends over for the Boston Red Sox. Don't be so quick to send out the arrows after that last comment because I've had more anti-Yankee posts than anyone here ever since they forgot to show up for the 2012 ALCS against Detroit. Another thing I want to see is if the new rule concerning catchers collisions will still cause collisions... Very curious to see the reaction Milwaukee gives Ryan Braun on Opening Day there. Will they let him have it or are they going to have short-term memories and treat him like a returning hero? My guess would be the latter...I hope Yasiel Puig is a one year wonder because I can't stand that guy...I don't want to see anyone injured but if Robinson Cano happens to get spiked while turning a double play I promise to only watch the replay of it ten times and that's it...Am I worried about the Yankees? I can not shake the feeling that all they did was spend an enormous amount of money over the winter without fixing much. I can't include the Masahiro Tanaka signing here because it's his first year and no one knows how he will turn out...That all being said I am thrilled that baseball is back. It's the sport I care about more than all of the other sports combined.

...What the hell is David Ortiz going to whine about now after the Red Sox caved in and gave him a brand new contract because he suddenly could not live with the one he signed for that paid him fifteen million dollars a year? You can see why he was upset. They were paying him sweat shop wages and were getting away with it. Ortiz is happy now, at least for awhile and if the Red Sox are lucky maybe for the full season.

...I have seen a lot of articles about the demise of Windows XP next month and from what I have been reading they seem to have been ghost-written by Microsoft themselves. There hasn't been many positive things that I have read about this system even though it has been probably the most stable of all the operating systems out there. They are doing everything they can to push Windows 8 on you and if you don't have enough horsepower to run it they are trying to push you to buy a new computer. Good move because everyone can dish out over $500 just like that to buy a new one.

...No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Dept: Last week a Virginia Beach, Virginia sixth grader saw one of her classmates cutting his arm with a very small razor during class. After observing this for a minute the girl walked over and took the razor away and threw it in the garbage. There were no teachers around while the boy was in the act of cutting himself so the girl took it upon herself to step in and help because if she didn't this kid could have ended up hurting himself seriously. In another era she would have been given an award by the principal in front of the school and big deal would have been made of it, as it should have. But that was how things were. What happened this girl, Adrionna Harris, was the exact opposite and it ended up with the family seeking the help of a local TV station just to get the school system to return their calls. That's because the next day she mentioned the incident to a guidance counselor and before you could say "time for lunch" she was given a ten-day suspension with a recommendation for expulsion. When the girl's parents learned about what happened they tried to contact the school but their calls were not being returned and that is how it stayed until they decided to contact a local television station that airs a segment on their news program where they go out and investigate problems sent in by viewers. By a remarkable coincidence as soon as the media got involved the school began returning the phone calls from the Harris family and a meeting was set up the next day to go over her suspension and expulsion. This ended up being just a formality as Adrionna Harris was allowed to return to school the following day since the school district was very upset about all the bad publicity they were getting locally because of the news coverage and on social media where they were as popular as Mel Gibson at a Bar Mitzvah.

...No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Take Two, Dept: There's a little schoolgirl in Colorado that is suffering from a rare form of childhood cancer and because of that she has had to undergo chemotherapy and by having those treatments it has caused her to lose all of her hair. As you can imagine, this in turn has made her a target of some mean comments from some kids at her school so her best friend decided to do something about it. She showed up at school the next day with a shaved head to show her support of what her friend was going through. That didn't last long because the school told her to go home because her baldness violated their dress code. If they could have got away with it they'd have sent home the little girl that had cancer too. And just like that little girl in Virginia two thousand miles away that I talked about in the post above, once people heard about what the school did they quickly went back on their original decision only because they were overwhelmed with bad publicity for doing something stupid that they never should have done in the first place. There's no sincerity about it when they have to reverse their decision only because of the people who have heard and read about it were outraged over their lack of common sense. Wouldn't it be something if one time a school somewhere in this country would reward the children that have the courage to act like this instead of using them as disciplinary examples? What's going to happen next week? Is some kid going to be expelled because he walked on the grass? Don't laugh - I wouldn't put it past them.

...Evelyn Lozada and her fiance, outfielder Carl Crawford of the Los Angeles Dodgers welcomed a healthy eight pound baby boy to their family last week. This is the reason why Crawford did not make the trip to Australia with the team when the Dodgers opened up the season with Arizona as he stayed behind to be with her. The Dodgers were nice enough to grant him paternity leave even though there is an 80% chance that the kid Lozada popped out isn't his since half the NBA and NFL players could lay claim to the baby before Crawford started sniffing around and won the prize.

...L'Wren Scott, who was Mick Jagger's girlfriend for the past thirteen years before she committed suicide last week in New York City, left her entire nine million dollar fortune to him according to provisions set in her will. Despite the loss of a loved one this was a fortunate turn of events for Jagger, who before the reading of Scott's will was attempting to get by on the last 300 million he had left to his name.

...You would think the Tampa Bay Rays would be more upset with pitcher Alex Colome for being suspended by Major League Baseball for violating its drug agreement in one of the oddest ways possible. Colome tested positive for something called boldenone which believe it or not is a steroid developed for veterinary use that is used on horses. While Colome gallops off to serve his fifty game suspension the Rays realize that no matter how stupid this was for him to do it's still never going to overshadow anything Alex Rodriguez has done because as far as steroids go he's done them all including the ones for cattle as well as horses.

...Ask anyone you know and they will tell you that having a crocodile as a pet is as smart as jumping out of a plane without a parachute. I'm so scared of these things that I don't even like to look at pictures of them. The ones that don't feel this way learn the hard way like this idiot in Russia that made international news last week. On a recent trip to Africa this guy wanted a souvenir to bring back to his comrades in Mother Russia so he decided to buy a baby crocodile instead of a t-shirt and a hat like a normal person would. Africa had no objections to him buying this and bringing it home since they had enough already and were glad to see one go. Like everything else this little crocodile grew up and in its present state it is now six feet long and weighs a solid fifty-five pounds and it has also taken over one room in his two-room apartment even spending time on the couch, presumably watching Animal Planet. The owner, whom I have no sympathy at all for is trying like hell to sell this thing to anyone dumb enough to buy it but has had no offers as of yet. Go figure. However the guy does own a cat but that can change at any moment if the crocodile has anything to say about it. If I were the cat I would run out the front door the first chance I get because in that place three's definitely a crowd.

...Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson died last Tuesday at the age of 95. Football fans in western New York loved him because he refused to move the Bills even though several offers were made over the years that would have allowed him to do so. It was Wilson's wish to sell the team after he died and although I am not a Bills fan myself, I see many of these fanatics every day during the football season and I would not know what they would do if they didn't have the Bills to fill their lives. R.I.P.

...Any week when a brand new total conversion mod comes out on this website is a good week and the release of the 1984 mod really made it a good week. Thank you Jim and Dennis. What an unbeatable team!

...For some reason a kid from Norway took his receipt that he got from McDonald's last week and had it tattooed onto his right arm. It was too bad for him that he was really hungry that day because the tattoo went from his elbow all the way to his wrist. It was a good thing that he wasn't buying for someone else that day or else they would have had to continue it on his left arm.

...If he had any thoughts of becoming a manager at a Burger King some day he can forget it.

...Since he began hosting the Tonight Show Jimmy Fallon has been a hit. I just wish I could stay up late enough to actually watch him.

...Enough talk. Let's play ball!

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 4-6

...Last week lameduck Commissioner Bud Selig said that major league baseball's revenue could top nine billion dollars this year. And in case you just skimmed over that I said billion and not million. Huge difference. I think it's great because I want this sport to be successful despite who's running it. But wouldn't you think with all the money these people are raking in that they could at least let the fans listen to the games on the internet for free like they used to?

...My quick observations on baseball's opening week: Instant replay is going to be a nightmare and wouldn't it figure that the first team to get screwed by this would be the Chicago Cubs?...Robinson Cano's inaugural at-bat as a Mariner saw him ground out to shortstop in the first inning. Did he run all out down the line because it was his first official appearance as a Mariner? What do you think?...Jose Reyes, who seriously challenges Cano as the laziest player in the game couldn't even make it out of the first inning during the Blue Jays opener in Tampa when he came up with another accommodating injury that will keep him out of the lineup for awhile. Reyes was more than happy to sign that $100 million contract but he never actually said he was going to earn it...Ryan Braun got a standing ovation by the hometown Brewer fans who treated his return to Milwaukee as if he had nothing to do with missing the second half of the season last year. If Braun had played for Boston they'd have given him a parade...Yasiel Puig couldn't be bothered to make it to Dodger Stadium on time for Opening Day so he had to sit it out. That guy is getting to be more trouble than he's worth...And the Yankees just couldn't get through the week without an injury. Good going Teixeira you son of a *#&#;%&.

...In an article published by Fortune Magazine, Derek Jeter was named one of the top leaders in the world. In fact he placed eleventh in a list of twenty. As much as I am a fan of his even I have to question putting him on a list like this. As captain of the Yankees he holds that job six months out of the year and that's it. He's never had to make a leadership decision in December for instance unless it is deciding what to get his family for Christmas and whomever he's shacking up with at the time. But he's a top leader in the world. And yet for nine years this leader couldn't get Robinson Cano to run to first base.

...One bit of good news besides the return of baseball last week was the announcement that Chelsea Handler will be leaving her show on the E! Entertainment network when her contract is up at the end of the year. I tried to watch her show a few times when I couldn't sleep and it was just awful. The show is called Chelsea Lately and if you haven't seen it you are not missing much. She is a foul-mouthed mean obnoxious woman who thinks she is funny but isn't. What she mainly does is insult and put down other celebrities about anything she can think of. Some of you older members in here might say that wasn't that the same act that Don Rickles has been doing for over sixty years? No, because Rickles got laughs and you knew when he was insulting someone like Sammy Davis, Jr or Frank Sinatra that he didn't mean it and he always had a smile on his face when he was doing it. Not this woman. When she is ripping into someone you know damn well that she means it and she enjoys it at the same time. I found other things to watch on TV late at night when I couldn't close my eyes. Somehow I don't think E! is going to mind once her final show is completed.

...Believe it or not, Dept: A man by the name of Christopher Miller was just released from prison early last week after serving a fifteen year sentence for robbing a shoe store back in 1999. Most people would celebrate being free after all that time by treating themselves to a nice dinner or spending time with family. Something like that. Not this guy. He made a beeline to the bus station in Atlantic City, New Jersey with a ticket to a nearby town that just happened to be the same one where he committed his crime all those years ago. While he was walking around taking in the sights he came across the same shoe store that he robbed back in 1999 and he figured with all the pointers he picked up in prison that this time he could knock off the place and get away with it. Inspired, he walked into the shoe store and demanded money and then became very angry because the employees told him to get lost. Miller had to improvise quickly so he figured if these people are not going to give me the money he was going to do the next best thing and that was taking the cash register, which only contained $389, and get out of there as fast as he could. The police were called and Miller was caught just two blocks away from the robbery. The police later said that they were surprised that he got that far because cash registers aren't exactly easy to carry around. After he was taken to the police station and booked Miller was asked why he hit the same shoe store for a second time and he replied that the first time he robbed them all those years ago he told them he'd be back. When he gets out of jail again he will be an old man. May as well give it another shot. Third time's a charm you know.

...When I saw the commercial for that new Taco Bell breakfast waffle sandwich with an egg and bacon inside of it I had to wonder to myself what exactly they were thinking because sounded to me like the most disgusting thing sold by these fast food places since the bacon sundae by Burger King.

...Last week I called my pharmacy to get a prescription refilled. It was something that I expected to be a quick and easy process. Give them your name, date of birth, prescription number and when you want to pick it up and then that's it. I was told by the person on the other end of the phone that my health provider wants me to get ninety day supplies of whatever I have to be filled. I told them that it was fine and I was expecting that because that is how it's been since I had this health plan. Then I was told that this ninety day supply would cost me twenty-five dollars. I was just about to tell them to go ahead and fill it when the lady told me to let her check to see how much a thirty day supply would run me for. I did some quick math in my head and I figured that a one month supply would cost me a little over seven dollars. I wasn't even close. A one month supply for the same pills was only going to cost me one dollar. I told them I didn't understand that at all. If a thirty day supply is one dollar wouldn't it just make sense that a ninety day one would cost me three dollars? No matter how I tried to convince this woman she was having none of it so I was forced to settle for the thirty day refill. They may not know how to add but I do.

...Every day we have a lot of people that visit this website from all over the world such as Latin America, Europe, Asia and Canada and I've always wondered what these non-citizens of the United States think of our country's school system after I hammer them for the stupid things that they do, which seems to happen on daily basis. Well, here's another one that they can talk about in the pubs in London and this one happened in Florida, which should not surprise anyone. A little five-year-old kindergartner was preparing to eat her meal during her school's lunch period but before she did she stopped, bowed her head and was about to say a prayer of thanks. Before she had a chance to say Amen she was cut off by a teacher who was in the lunch room and she informed her that she was not allowed to do that at school. The little girl told the teacher that it was "good to pray" which in turn prompted this reply that really set everyone off when she told her "no it's not." That did it. The parents pulled the kid out of school and are now home schooling her where she can pray at all her meals from now on without being censored. The school is denying that this entire incident ever took place because they said they were informed that it happened during the week of March 10 and they are just hearing about it now and besides, since you are dealing with young children there is quite a bit of an "opportunity for miscommunication," which is a very polite way of saying that the kid doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. The school also says that the parents never contacted them about this and the parents deny it, saying they sent them several emails. I give the school a little bit of credit here since they didn't suspend her or expel her or send the kid to counseling or even call the cops. But why did a little girl reciting a prayer to herself make them uncomfortable? Well, I suppose you got to look at it through the school district's eyes. This kid is probably going to be the kind of child who holds doors open for people and says please and thank you and they're just not used to dealing with instigators like that.

...I'll tell you one thing if that kid was reeling off some Muslim prayers before she dived into her sandwich the school would have cleared the room to give her privacy because they wouldn't want to feel insensitive towards her and avoid a lawsuit at the same time.

...If Mike Francesa, Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason had their way they would string up New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy because he missed the team's first three games of the season because he was with his wife in Florida as she delivered the couple's first child. That's what they are mad at him for and they really let him have it on their respective radio shows last Wednesday. It's not like Murphy is staying home until the All-Star Game. He gets three days to be with his wife, which is the same amount of days any Major League player gets for paternity leave. It is going to be fun to watch these three idiots fall all over themselves after they are forced to apologize. Especially Dr. Esiason, who said that he would have told his wife to have a Caesarean section before the season to avoid any conflict with opening day. I don't know how many women's groups are out there but by the next day one of them must have put pressure on WFAN radio where Esiason has his radio show because he was falling all over himself apologizing to Murphy, his wife, the newborn and all other women that he may have offended and if he could have thought of someone or something else to make amends with he would have done that too.

...While on the subject of know-nothing loud-mouthed radio hosts I see that Chris Russo has resurfaced on the MLB Network. He was partnered with Mike Francesa on a New York radio show called Mike and the Mad Dog and this show was broadcast live on the YES Network and all he ever did was scream and yell about everything. He hated everything except the San Francisco Giants. The only thing different now is that he's calling himself Christopher Russo. It's the same skit except that he's the number one guy now. Trust me, you'll hate him.

...All of these radio guys that try to be controversial or do a lot of screaming and yelling do not compare to a guy I used to listen to in the 70's. During those years baseball was not on TV every day like is now so I used to listen to out of town games on the radio every night. One night I was trying to pick up something and I came across a talk show and since it was nighttime, it came in very clear. Whoever this guy was he was furious at the New York Yankees for something. He was yelling at George Steinbrenner, Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, the Yankee announcers, the Yankee ushers, you name it. If you can try to picture me at a Red Sox convention and that was Pete Franklin's radio show out of Cleveland. Oh, did he hate the Yankees. And he would yell at callers if they asked a question that he didn't like. I was hooked and I listened to him as much as I could depending on if I could get a good signal. This was a radio show worth listening to because he was entertaining and he had a hell of a following during those years.

[DYoung21]

On the Murphy topic, I just can't even see how these three would even say such a thing publicly. Even if you somehow believe that, wouldn't you think, "We are going to get torn to shreds if we say this." Boomer's comment was especially absurd. What a caring husband. And he's too oblivious and moronic to realize that type of a procedure would warrant Murphy missing even more time due to the fact that his wife would even more time to recover. As someone that has a baby on the way, this just hit too close to home and pissed me off.

Rant over.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 4-13

...As a long time dog owner this is the time of year that I dread the most because it is my job once the snow is finally melted to go out on my deck and pick up my dogs calling cards (if you get my drift) that they left on my deck since it first snowed back in December. Many times the snow was so high they could not get off the deck to go on the grass and from the look of my deck right now I wondered to myself if any of them bothered to step off the deck and do their business on the lawn. It is not an easy job to do but I always get it done. The main thing to remember is to watch where you walk when you are doing it and incidentally that brings me to something that I have noticed about dogs over the years. Have you ever noticed that your dogs never step into what they did? When I call them to come in they come running and they get close to stepping in it but they never do. They leave that for me.

...I read an article last week about former Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain. McLain is remembered for being the last thirty game winner in baseball, a feat he accomplished back in 1968. That's not what this article was about though. During his playing days he would drink a case of Pepsi every single day. That's twenty-four cans of Pepsi - daily. I imagine his locker at Tiger Stadium was right next to the bathroom since he drank that much every day. After his playing days his weight got completely out of control and over the course of time he eventually weighed close to four hundred pounds. He spent a lot of time in a wheelchair because the extra weight put too much pressure on his knees. Last year he elected to have weight loss surgery and has lost a remarkable one hundred sixty-two pounds, which is the equivalent of four small children or one order placed by Prince Fielder at Sonic. All kidding aside that is one hell of an accomplishment.

...I did a little research of the players that the Yankees lost last year due to the team not offering a contract to them or in Robinson Cano's case, greed. Joba Chamberlain is making a nice first impression in Detroit and is showing their fans why they hated him in his last couple years in New York. He has a record of 0-1 and has only pitched two innings and has given up five hits, three runs (all earned) with a 13.50 ERA. I wish him continued success. Phil Hughes is doing his damnedest to make everyone forget that he was once a sought-after prospect and at the same time making the Minnesota Twins wonder what the hell they were doing when they took a chance on him. Hughes has not won a game yet and to his credit he hasn't lost one yet either. He's pitched ten forgettable innings so far this year and has surrendered twelve hits and eight runs (all earned) with a 7.20 ERA. Also in those ten innings he's pitched he has given up two home runs. Fans sitting in the bleachers at Target Field this year should expect to see plenty more this year from him. All I want to say about Hughes is that I am thrilled to see him in another uniform. Curtis Granderson's gone but still stayed in New York when he joined the Mets but he is still playing like he is a member of the Yankees and by that I mean lousy. He's hitting .135 this year with one home run, three runs batted in and twelve strikeouts. Mets fans should be aware that he won't be doing much better than this all year. Robinson Cano has a pretty good average (.324) but aside from that he's hardly holding up his end as the most feared bat in the Mariners lineup. No home runs, three runs batted in.

...Just a few days ago I started watching re-runs of a show called Time Trax which was on TV twenty years ago. It must have been in syndication because I've never heard of it until now. I am watching it because it is a complete take-off from Quantum Leap with some changes added here and there. On the whole it is not a bad show and it ran for two seasons. I even looked into getting the series on DVD from Amazon but both seasons are sold at a very high price since they are manufactured on demand, which is a nice way for the video industry to sell titles not previously released on disc for a high price where they fill individual orders by burning DVD-R discs instead of pressing mass-produced DVDs. That means instead of a DVD set that should be below the twenty dollar mark is selling for $34.99 on Amazon and as far as I am concerned it can sell for the same price for a long, long time.

...Leave it to David Ortiz to cause a stir when the Red Sox visited the White House last week during a visit with President Obama. Ortiz, who believes he can do anything he wants, took a picture with Obama as he was holding up his Red Sox jersey that the team gave him. It looked innocent enough but Ortiz had a secret agreement with Samsung, the maker of the phone he was using, to get Obama's face plastered on the internet via a high-quality photo from their phone. Even before the Red Sox went to the White House Samsung announced that Ortiz would be tweeting and sending photos on their behalf and that is precisely what he did when he snapped the photo with the President. Naturally once Ortiz got wind that a photo taken with the President is frowned upon when used for commercial purposes he denied that it was part of his new endorsement deal. For anyone who has watched this guy over the past decade this isn't surprising at all. When he's caught doing something either he lies his fool head off or finds someone to blame and since he couldn't point the finger at Obama or Samsung, who were the people who paid him very well for this, he had to resort to lying. I just hope that very soon he finds out for himself that there is a big difference lying to the White House as compared to a group of sportswriters.

...There is a guy who runs a website called Tater trot tracker.com. What this guy does each day is view all the home runs that were hit and then times how long it takes for the batter to round the bases and tap home plate. This sounds like a complete waste of time to me but even here after I looked around for a bit I ended up learning something. David Ortiz set the record for the slowest trip around the bases with the home run he hit against the Rangers on April 9th when it took him 32.91 seconds to complete his journey around the bases. It goes without saying that this happened in Boston because Ortiz wanted everyone to see what he did, even the people that were returning from the concession stands to their seats. He strolls around the bases and shows up other teams and you rarely hear anything about it. He's lazy and doesn't know the first thing about hustling and when you put him next to some other well known lethargic players like Soriano and Cano he makes them both look as fast as Rickey Henderson was. I’ll never understand why this guy can get away with stuff like this.

...A man whose mother is a resident of the East Neck Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a nursing facility for older people is suing the Center after he found out that they hired strippers to perform for their patrons and if that wasn't bad enough a picture was taken of his eighty-five-year-old mother having a good time and stuffing money in front of one of the dancer's underwear. Parts of his complaint are so preposterous that it is almost laughable and I think that a lot of people today would probably end up agreeing with him, which does not say much for society as a whole. He argues that his mother was "placed in apprehension of imminent, offensive, physical harm" just because there was a man dancing in front of her. Granted, in an old age home exotic dancers are not an every day occurrence but for anyone to say that any of the residents were placed in harm's way because of it is crazy. It's clear that the man's attorney has a way with words and is trying to make this woman sound like a victim who was taken advantage of. He stated that for eighty five years this woman was a traditional Baptist and a hard working woman who now was defiled. The way this guy made it sound this old woman was beaten and not given food or water for days instead of hiding a few bucks inside the only piece of clothing this dancer had on at the time. The picture of this woman does not show her afraid of anything or even backing away from the dancer. Instead she is leaning forward giving him the money. This is just another instance of a case not being a case until a lawyer convinced the client that there was one. I'm just curious about one thing. I'm wondering if there were female dancers available for male residents there because if there were I know where I am going if I cannot live on my own.

...Police in Lufkin, Texas responded to one of the most unusual calls that they ever had last week when a woman contacted them to complain about the quality of the marijuana she had purchased from a dealer after she decided the quality of her purchase was substandard. She told the unbelieving police officers that she spent forty hard earned dollars to buy the stuff and all she received was "seeds and residue." Before contacting police she went back to the dealer to object about what she spent her forty bucks on but the dealer was uncompromising and told her all sales were final and besides she didn't have her receipt with her. To make matters worse for herself the woman pulled the small amount of marijuana from her bra when the officer asked if she still had it. After she did that she was arrested for possession of marijuana. Her bail was set at $500. The only thing that surprises me here is that this didn't happen in Florida. My dogs are smarter than this woman.

...During baseball's opening week last week there were a lot of televised day games so I decided to take advantage of it and I went out to get lunch and a drink so I could have it while I was watching baseball. I went to a convenient store that had pretty good sandwiches and when I was going to get my drink I saw something that made me look twice just to be sure I read it correctly. These people had diet ice right by their other fountain drinks. I always thought ice was ice and that was it. How the hell do you make it diet? Of course when I told my wife what I saw she didn't believe me. So I told her to get in the car and I'll take you there so you can see for yourself. Well, she saw it and I told her to take a picture of it because I was going to write about it in this week's random thoughts because I figured you guys wouldn't believe me either.



...It was in the 70's here last Thursday and I went outside for a little while without my coat on and I felt out of place. I kept on waiting for the temperature to drop, the wind to pick up and the clouds to turn gray and sure enough the next day that's what happened. There's a better chance of you winning some money on a lotto scratch-off than having two nice days in a row around here.

...Usually when you are facing disciplinary proceedings from a college it means you have been accused of doing something they didn't like such as pulling a prank that went over the line. But for one Yale University student it was quite different because they were threatening to kick her out because she was too skinny. Weighing in at ninety-two pounds soaking wet Yale accused Frances Chan of having an eating disorder when she was really just genetically thin and for the past few months she has had to have weekly mandatory weigh-ins where a Yale Health clinician told her to gain weight or pack her belongings and go home. Stuffing herself with ice cream, pizza and anything you could grab out of the vending machines she was only able to gain two pounds since this began last December. Fast-food delivery places were double parked in front of her dorm and the drive-thru people at McDonalds all knew her by site. And still only two pounds. We all should have this problem.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 4-20

...I hope that everyone is enjoying a very happy Easter and that wherever you are it is a nice day outside and there's a good ball game on TV.

...Last week during the Red Sox - Yankee telecast on Sunday Night Baseball the ESPN cameras were roaming the stands between pitches hoping to catch some fans holding a sign that said how much they loved their network or yet another Jeter will you marry me sign. They got really lucky in the fourth inning when they caught some guy in the box seats fast asleep while the game was going on. They poked some fun at him but what ESPN didn't realize is that there were many more fans like him all over the country sleeping through that game too.

...Last week after watching the Baltimore Orioles ball girl make a great play on a ball that was hit down the left field line that she thought was foul, the Boston Red Sox purchased brand new gloves for their first and third base ball girls at Fenway Park and gave them instructions to go after every ground ball hit by an opposing batter because they figured that would eliminate triples and cut off a few more runs. They never miss a trick.

...If you don't remember who Nick Johnson was or even if you've never heard of him just look at Francisco Cervelli and that is all you need to know.

...I will be one of the first to agree to the fact that Jackie Robinson was an exceptional man and as good as he was as a ballplayer he was even better off the field with the way he inspired people to be like him and understand what he had to endure. But I do have a problem with Major League Baseball putting on the brakes to make sure everyone is watching just so they can pay tribute to him each year when Babe Ruth, someone who one could argue did more for the game, is ignored year after year. Ruth helped baseball recover from the 1919 gambling scandal by single-handedly capturing the public's attention for the sport for the entire decade of the 1920's. But his uniform number is not retired across the board like Robinson's is and I have never understood why.

...A Utah man took his two sons camping last Tuesday at the Sandthrax Canyon in Utah for a little father and son time but while they were there Dad made a wrong turn and managed to get them lost for a few days before they were rescued by a search team in a helicopter. The father's excuse for getting lost was that "everything out there looks the same." You don't say? You know why that is? Because everything out there does look the same. All there is is dirt and rocks and then when you turn around you see more dirt and rocks. What the hell did he expect? Road signs? Directions that say next mountain one mile? You know what would have helped too? A compass. At least they were found and are home now but I'll tell you one thing. I'd never want to travel with this guy anywhere because he sounds like the kind of guy who would drive to California and end up in Michigan.

...FOX broadcaster Joe Buck got married the week before last to former NFL cheerleader Michelle Beisner, proving yet again that a big bank account does wonders for your looks.

...Back on the sixth of April Sony announced that it has sold more than seven million PS4s worldwide, covering more than 72 countries/regions. The only reason why that bothers the hell out of me is that I'm not one of the seven million.

...Frazier Cross, a deranged seventy-three year old man shot and killed three people outside of two Jewish community centers near Kansas City, Kansas including a fourteen-year-old boy. He didn't know any of these people and they didn't know him. He shot them because they were Jewish, which in his mind was a good enough reason. This was a man with a life-long hatred for anything Jewish and anything he saw wrong in this world was somehow the fault of the Jews. All his life he has been involved in the hate movement against Jews and even went as far as trying to run for U.S. Senate as a write-in bid four years ago. You would think that in all his seventy-three years that he would have run into one person of Jewish persuasion that he thought was a pretty nice person but apparently not. I won't try to find the words that attempts to understand the workings of a mind like that but rather I will take that time to reflect on the three lives lost that never should have been.

...Do you know what I really like to know about this? Why the Jews? Why are they a magnet for something like this? I'm not Jewish and that's why I'm asking this. Growing up there were Jewish kids that we played with and I never had the urge to give one of them a left hook as a greeting. Jews have contributed to all facets of our society. Brilliant doctors, inventors, leaders, actors. The list goes on. They're people and I don't understand the instant resentment that they seem to attract from people who view them only as a target of hate. Maybe we'll never know.

...During a recent trip to Lake Placid, New York a man from New York City began to have severe stomach pains that got so bad he had to check himself in the emergency room there. The doctors there told him that he needed an emergency appendectomy and he informed them that they had to be mistaken because his appendix was removed in 2013 so they had better look again. After convincing him that his appendix was still alive and kicking the man consented to the surgery and once he recovered from that ran straight to the first lawyer he could find to take his case which wasn't hard at all. They found out that during his first operation that a three centimeter yellowish mass was removed instead of the appendix and that he was never notified of this. This ought to be one interesting court case if it gets that far. You can't expect the doctor to remember to do everything now, can you?

...Kids Nowadays, Dept: Back in February a Pakistani family that was angered by gas cuts and price increases became violent and began throwing stones at police and gas employees from the inside of their home when they arrived to try to collect bills owed to them. A minor scuffle took place and the result was that the entire household was arrested when one of the victims complained that the whole family had beaten him up. The entire household was placed under arrest and booked, including a nine-month-old baby boy who happened to be in the house while this was going on. Taking the Barney Fife philosophy of nipping it in the bud to the next level, the police arrested the boy and accused him with attempted murder along with the rest of his family. The police charged the infant with planning a murder, threatening a police team and interfering with state affairs. While being fingerprinted at the police station the child began to cry uncontrollably and it was unclear if he was tired or hungry, in need of a diaper change or was just upset at the fact of being caught by the police so soon after beginning a life of crime. The police may have a hard time bringing him in again for questioning because the family quickly sent the child away to an undisclosed day care facility in another town until the heat dies down. Hopefully this will give the kid the much-needed time to regroup and plan another assault on the police. If there was any leftover doubts as to how backwards these people really are this incident should confirm it once and for all. But at the same time they have to be doing something right because we constantly give them money.

...I wonder if this kid will be tried as a minor or an adult?

...And I thought our justice system was bad.

...I turned on my XP laptop last week and contrary to reports from Microsoft about the sky falling down I was able to whatever I had to do to get around like I always have. I've got Malwarebytes Pro installed on it along with a good ant-virus program. If I am going to be on it for a period of time like if I am playing High Heat or Larussa baseball I will just disconnect from the internet. Microsoft does not expect you to think.

...After reading the ESPN The Magazine article about Yasiel Puig and how he escaped from Cuba I am further convinced that he is nothing but an immature, selfish SOB.

...Now if I were a resident in the city of Portland, Oregon I would be looking for sales of bottled water and stocking up on it for awhile because the Portland Water Bureau was forced to dump thirty-eight million gallons of drinking water because security cameras caught three teens hanging around one of their facilities around 1:00 am last Wednesday and one of them leaned over the side of the reservoir and urinated into it. Why they were hanging around a water facility in the middle of the night is unknown and if the kid really had to go that bad he could have went to the nearest tree and taken care of business and some dog would have had something else to take notice of the next time it was sniffing around there. Instead this guy gave the business to the city of Portland, who had no choice but to get rid of all that water. I don't blame them at all for doing what they did but if I were them and they were going to empty the reservoir anyway I'd have done a few things first. I'd start out with giving this kid an empty water bottle and I'd tell him to fill it up with water and drink it. And I'd have him do it again and again until his bladder was full - you know, just like the first time he was by the reservoir. Then I'd get another plastic bottle and this one would be big enough for him to relieve the pressure in his kidneys and I'd instruct him to you-know-what in the bottle and then I'd fill it up with some water, close the lid, give it a couple of shakes and then make him drink from it. Why not? Oh I know, too harsh. Everyone has rights, even the idiots that do things like this at the expense of others But wouldn't it have been something if they took this kid right back to the scene of the crime and conveniently turned the security cameras off and made him do this? Something tells me that the next time he has to go he'll find the nearest men's room.

...Last week, Malcolm Young, the guitarist and co-founder of AC/DC along with his brother Angus has left the band after forty years due to illness and has returned home to Australia and if any of the rumors are to be believed he will never rejoin them on the road again. Any time I hear news about this band it immediately brings me back to when I first heard of them when I was in high school. They had this little guy who wore a pair of shorts and a school kid's uniform and played a great guitar while at the same time never once stopped moving his head. Bon Scott was the singer at that time and after all the time that has passed since he died in 1980 the albums with him in it were the best that they ever made. Hells Bells, the first album made after Scott's death was a big seller but something besides the change in lead singers wasn't the same. A lot of things did remain the same like Angus Young still dressing as a young schoolboy even though as the years went on he began to look more and more like death warmed over. The albums after that didn't sell so well and as the years went on they started sounding less and less like AC/DC and more like a band that I never heard of and didn't want to. This is the most I've thought about AC/DC in a long time and I just hope that whatever is wrong with Malcolm Young he recovers from it.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 4-27

...One week ago on Easter Sunday a man dressed as Jesus Christ went to the Boston Garden to watch the Bruins playoff game with the rest of the great unwashed in the stands. When he was first shown on the Jumbotron he was given a nice hand by the crowd but that didn't last long. By the second period Judas Iscariot's men dressed as security guards surrounded the Son of God and escorted him out of the arena as the Garden serenaded him with a shower of boos. Who was this guy kidding? Boston fans weren't fooled for one second. They know damn well their God looks exactly like David Ortiz.

...It must have been one hell of an Easter. Even before the city of Boston showed what they are really made of a redneck couple down in Tennessee made for some hilarious news when one accused the other of not being a very good driver and if it wasn't for some quick reflexes he could have been a victim of road rage. As they arrived at Easter service last Sunday the husband in this amusing tale complained to his wife that she was driving erratically with him and their daughter in the car, didn't pay attention to traffic rules and even made some up on the way. When mass let out he was not looking forward to the return trip home and figuring that he would have a better chance of making it home safely even if a blind person were driving, refused to get in the car with her. As he was walking away and wondering how he was going to get home his wife got in the car and drove off in the direction he was walking and then slammed on the gas and hit the curb right in front of him, causing him to jump back into the trees to avoid being hit. Any thoughts of a peaceful Easter dinner at home were now gone. She was later charged with aggravated assault and was booked in the county jail on a $1,000 bond. I can't wait to hear what these people are going to do on Memorial Day.


...I've tried but I just can't figure out those new Sprint commercials with the hamster as the father. And there's also that stupid blond kid who is doing a Heidi take-off but for some reason only speaks French and has cartoon birds all around her. Yeah I get it, they're selling the Sprint Network. Somehow. But like this?

...Has anyone seen those new baseball caps that have an LCD screen so you can change the logo on the cap or change it to a picture of your favorite player instead? The cap sells for seventy-five dollars and comes pre-loaded with twenty images of your choosing. Included on the cap is a small USB port that allows you to connect your hat to your computer or tablet so you can add or remove images. This cap would serve no purpose for me because I can think of twenty Yankees that I'd never want featured on any hat I was wearing. I can see it now. The next time someone is held up and is forced to hand over their expensive shoes they'll have to hand over their cap at the same time.

....What the hell is it with these younger players in the game today and why do they make it so easy to hate them? Bryce Harper is a conceited, arrogant punk that acts like he's already too good for the game and he's got that type of face that every time you see it you want to punch it. Yasiel Puig? Forget it. He's in his own world and the only person he listens to is the guy in the mirror and that sure as hell isn't Don Mattingly. Jackie Bradley, Jr. hasn't done anything yet but it's only a matter of time considering the environment he's in. I can't imagine what the younger players five or ten years from now are going to be doing. Whatever it is they'll probably make these guys tame by comparison.

...Kyle Farnsworth is the closer for the New York Mets? You know that's not going to end well.

...The next time I hope to hear about Carlos Gomez is when some pitcher beans the SOB in the head and maybe after that he'll stop being such a poser.

...Cheers to the Florida man who caught an 805 pound mako shark last week and then brought it home, cut it up and cooked it for the community that he lived it. The shark was so big that it fed 250 people. It's about time we eat one of these things because usually it's the other way around.

...Just a few weeks ago Rolando McClain announced that he wanted to play in the NFL again and Ozzie Newsome, the General Manager of the Baltimore Ravens gave him the opportunity to come back and work with the team during their off season conditioning practices. He did, but his comeback only lasted one day until he decided that he really didn't want to play football anymore and his heart wasn't in it and this time he really means it. Any Raider fan who watched him play towards the end of his brief career in Oakland knew this already. What a big break this is for Newsome. As a fellow Alabaman he gave him another chance but McClain must have forgot how much work is involved in being an NFL player and when it all came back to him that's when he decided to walk away for good. By the time training camp opens in three months McClain will be a distant memory and one less problem the Ravens will face this upcoming season. The next time this guy makes the news is when he trades in his football uniform for an orange jumpsuit.

...One of the first things a lawyer is taught is not to ask any questions that you don't know the answer to because you might get a response that you don't expect to receive. It's a common sense rule not just for lawyers but for anyone but as we all are well aware of common sense is not shared by everyone. Take for instance a fifty-nine-year-old German man who was visiting Austria recently when he got the bright idea to walk into a police station in Salzburg and asked the police if they "had anything" on him. It must have been a slow night because the police asked him to take a seat while they checked their records. Like finding some money in a pair of pants that you haven't worn in a while, that is how the police felt when their database showed that the visitor who walked in from the street was in fact a wanted man. In fact he was in high demand because a Vienna court had previously issued an arrest warrant for four counts of fraud and embezzlement and were very desperate to get in touch with him. Like I said, not everyone has common sense. This guy had better like Austria because he's going to be there awhile.

...I watched the Wrigley Field 100th Anniversary game last Wednesday and the Cubs really did a great job making that day special for everyone. Those vintage uniforms worn by each team added a nice touch to the day. The first thing that came to mind when I saw them was that I hoped Dennis James was watching. It was nice seeing former players like Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Ferguson Jenkins there being cheered by the crowd again and by Sammy Sosa not being there it made the day even better. What kind of person tells a team that he wants them to retire his uniform number? That's an honor a team gives to a player and not something that you demand but Sosa never was smart enough in the first place. I hope the Cubs never cave in to him. As for the game? Damn. Half of the people in mental institutions around the country are in there because they were fans of the Chicago Cubs and the ballclub slowly drove them crazy over the years until they finally snapped and after this game was over there had to be a few more check-ins. Thanks to Pedro Strop the Arizona Diamondbacks turned a 5 - 2 deficit into a 7 - 5 victory and that sent everybody home with the usual miserable feeling after the home town fans walk out of Wrigley. Strop's got a live arm and if the strike zone was three or four inches off the plate he'd be a sure-fire Hall of Famer. And yet he almost got out of it. He threw seven straight balls to start the ninth and on the eighth pitch he got what appeared to be a double play ball and that would have bailed him out but when Starlin Castro bobbled the ball you could have picked up your seat cushion and walked to the nearest exit because Cub fans knew what was going to come next. Somehow that was the fitting way to end the day. Happy Anniversary Wrigley.

...I can understand anyone's desire to go to Hawaii since I was lucky to live there for a few years and never wanted to leave. But if I had to get there the way this one kid did last week I think I would have stayed home. A sixteen-year-old boy hopped a fence in San Jose, California and stowed away in the wheel well of a plane that was headed to Maui. He survived cold temperatures at 38,000 feet and a lack of oxygen for a the entire 5 1/2 hour flight all because he got into an argument with his family. The kid was unconscious for most of the flight and didn't even recall it when asked about it later. Hawaiian Airline officials kept on saying that the boy was lucky to be alive to survive something like that. The kid's name is not being released because he is a minor and also because he is an idiot. I happen to think that someone who is sixteen should be able to make better decisions than this and not resort to running away, especially the way he did it. He really was lucky to be alive but that luck just might run out as soon as he gets back home.

...Someone asked me last week if I was worried about the Yankees because Ivan Nova is out for the season and it getting Tommy John surgery. It's hard to shake someone's original perceptions of you because I haven't given a s*** about these players for years but I used to for a very long time and even though I keep telling people that they still think I am going to go in a panic because something like this happened. Ivan Nova is going to be fine and he will continue to give up home runs in video games that he is in until he returns to the Yankees in the second half of the 2015 season. They've got people in Triple A that are able to step in. Spending time thinking about this is the last thing I am going to do.

...I'm not a bad fan. I'm still a Yankee for life. But watching what this team has done on and off the field (mostly on it) since 2010 has made me more dissatisfied with them as time went on.

...I say all these things and I feel this way but when I think about it it is not really the Yankees that have me so annoyed but rather baseball itself. I don't know how much money the SS (Selig Society) put in to making that enormous instant replay room in New York but even with all the modern technology they are using there blown calls continue to be made. Umpires at Tropicana Field lost track of the count in the fifth inning when Yunel Escobar was at bat. There must have been some hot girl in the stands or something because they had to use instant replay to get the right count and they still got it wrong. Escobar should have walked but was called out on a questionable pitch. They use instant replay as a crutch now and it hasn't helped the game in any way as far as I can tell. This could be why I am so disinterested in the game now. I still love it and always will but now when I hear the news about a Yankee starter who is going to be gone for a long time my lack of concern about it bothers even me.

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 5-4

...Last week it was discovered that a new bug was found in Internet Explorer, Microsoft's version of web browsing done the wrong way. This bug would allow hackers to remotely execute code on your system that would permit them to install programs and compromise your data. All this would be done without your knowledge of course because if these guys couldn't do all this stuff without you knowing about it half of the fun is already taken away from them. The attacker could eventually gain full administrative access to your computer and that would give them the free path to change settings without you even knowing what they did or even when they did it. Microsoft is currently working on a fix for this and for all I know they have a patch available now for download to prevent this from happening. People who do not use Internet Explorer at any time have nothing to worry about and Microsoft couldn't help but scare XP users one more time when they said that XP users who use their browser are more at risk of attack and they will not receive a patch to fix the issue. Anyone who is using XP and insists on using Internet Explorer to do their web surfing is already asking for trouble and this was before this latest intrusion was identified. It's like trying to get a sun tan in the middle of the freeway. Eventually you're going to get hit.

...I don't believe that there is any amount of money in the world that will get me to eat yogurt.

...I read last week that ESPN is worth around $50.8 billion. I'd of never guessed that much for a network that practically ignores hockey unless there is a fight and only thinks there are two teams in major league baseball since that is all they ever show.

...I've been watching a show on FOX the past couple of years called The Following and it is probably one of the most disturbing shows that I've seen in quite a long time. There's violence in it but if you can find that on most shows on any network you can think of unless you only watch the Christian Broadcasting Network. It's not the violence in this show that makes me so uncomfortable but rather the complete willingness to kill others and if need be, themselves if that's what it calls for and the blind sided faith that the followers put into the man (Joe Carroll) that they have devoted their life to. Sure, it's a TV show. It's written that way and it's just acting and I get that but this happens in real life too and there is no director yelling "cut" at the end of the day. Jonestown back in the late seventies and Heaven's Gate are two that come to mind right away. What all of these have in mind (including the fictional television character) is that these people were all lead by charismatic leaders that made you feel good about yourself when you did what they wanted you to do. Eventually Joe Carroll is going to get caught and he'll continue to live in reruns but what worries me is if there is someone out there taking notes.

...Michael Pineda, et al, Dept: So many things have been said about Yankee pitcher Michael Pineda ever since pine tar was discovered on his person while on the mound at Fenway Park pitching against the Red Sox. How he had the nerve to do this against the Red Sox of all teams is unthinkable and unforgivable especially when you consider the Red Sox pitchers have no use for pine tar and don't even want to be within fifteen feet of the stuff. Boston questioned Pineda when they faced him in New York about the exact same thing so it should make you wonder why he would even attempt it when he got to Fenway, a place where every close call goes Boston's way and they don't let you forget it either. The answer is that Pineda was not aware of any pine tar being on him until it was detected by the home plate umpire.

Come again? You have to keep in mind that this happened in Boston, a place that encourages the people that work out on the field between innings or during pitching changes to become part of the action. Think back to the 2003 ALCS. This was some time after when Manny Ramirez tried to pick a fight with Roger Clemens on a pitch five feet away from him. Things started to calm down and then the Fenway Park groundscrew staff who were assigned in the Yankee bullpen decided to attack Jeff Nelson with a rake and a pick ax. That started another fight. Why? Because they were losing the game.

Let's jump ahead eleven years. The Red Sox believed that Pineda got away with something in New York and they were fit to be tied. Especially Jerry Remy, who has more important things to worry about these days. Boston was waiting for him in Fenway and like finding a coiled up snake in the bushes, Pineda didn't know what bit him until it was too late.

Who watches what happens on the field between innings at Fenway Park before they cut to commercial? No one? I do. There are security people that come out on the field and stand in front of each dugout to prevent anyone with the idea of running out on the field to do something to thing again. These people are occasionally in the Yankee dugout and what happened was one of them purposely bumped into Pineda and put some pine tar on his next. The Yankee pitcher was sweating so much that he didn't even feel it. Could I be wrong about what happened? Could be, but my point is that I put nothing past the Boston Red Sox.

The end result? Michael Pineda was ejected and suspended ten games and as an added bonus the Red Sox won the game. What a productive night!

...Carlos Beltran, whom I've been a fan of since he joined the Yankees and not before, is upset with Major League Baseball because he believes that they should provide translators for Spanish-speaking players for each team when they are being interviewed by the media. All I've got to say about that is why?? Is this really needed and why should baseball or individual teams be expected to provide a Spanish translator? Take a look at any roster in baseball and you will see a lot of Spanish speaking players that can help out if needed. A quick glance at the Yankee roster shows six people including Beltran that speak Spanish and English. Of course one guy may be more affluent than the other but the point is there are many people in every clubhouse that can lend a hand in case a language question comes up. Stick to hitting the ball Carlos and leave the thinking to people who have brains.

...After being fed up with watching C.C. Sabathia put in another poor outing for the Yankees and as soon as I was positive that he turned the game over to Seattle for good I decided to turn the game off to watch a movie but as it turned out the movie that I watched was just as bad as the Yankee game, if not worse. It was a movie called Her and all that I heard about it was that it was a strange movie but the hype didn't do it justice. Joaquin Phoenix was in it and as messed up as he is in real life that's how he was in this movie so that meant he just had to be himself. He nailed it. He plays a soon-to-be divorced guy who purchases a new operating system that has artificial intelligence with a female voice and personality and over time he and the operating system end up falling in love with each other. Obviously this OS was not created by anyone at Microsoft because if those guys made it the relationship would have never got off the ground. In the end Phoenix can't even hold on to his OS because she runs off with other operating systems (I still don't know how this happened) to continue to find out and learn about themselves. And that's how it ended. Almost immediately after the credits started rolling I remained seated, only half paying attention to the screen and the only thing that came to mind was that I wasted two hours of my life watching it and if I can get just one person to avoid this movie just by what they read here I've done my job.

...The next time Sabathia pitches I am going to have a book at my side so I can go to that as soon as he falls apart.

...Before last week if anyone asked me if I had ever heard of Donald Sterling I would have said no. John Sterling, yes. Donald Sterling? No. I am not a big basketball fan and it has been over twenty years since I watched an NBA game, which should give you a good idea how important the NBA is to me. Just like anyone else who turned the TV on or was on the internet I heard bits and pieces of Sterling's conversation with his girlfriend and the first thing I said was "he's done." And being banned for life from the NBA insured that he was. I'm not defending the man at all but something about this entire mess doesn't seem quite right. As I understand this whole thing began with a tape recording from a conversation between him and his girlfriend and the girlfriend, this V. Stiviano person, swears that she is the one who did not leak the tape to the press and no one's calling her a liar for that. And is that tape authentic? I believe it was Sterling on the recording that was released but could the tape been edited to make him look as bad as possible? Keep in mind this woman who says she didn't release the tape is being sued by Sterling's wife for 2.8 million dollars for targeting her husband. And why is this woman walking around town now with a visor covering her face if she's done nothing wrong? She better stick to her story because it is illegal to record a conversation in California without the consent and knowledge of both parties. Again, I'm not doubting that these were Sterling's words and the trouble that he got into was of his own doing. I just think he had more than a little help on the way.

...While I was in the supermarket line the other day I was behind two people that were obviously doing their shopping together and while they didn't have that much stuff they were taking a lot more time then you would expect. It's not like their cart was overflowing with items. When it was my turn to pay the cashier smiled and apologized to me because those people didn't know how to pay with their card and they ended up paying for their groceries five times in a row. Don't ask me how. All I want to know is how do I usually end up being behind these kind of people when I go to the store?

...From India, with love, Dept: Last Friday started out very interesting for me. Or maybe I should say annoying. The phone rang at 8:20 am and when the phone rings that early in my house that means something's wrong or my wife forgot something that she had to bring to work. Instead it was someone with a thick Indian accent telling me that they detected something wrong with my computer and they wanted me to go to a web page so they could fix it. He also said something about working for Microsoft but I couldn't understand everything he said with that thick accent. To best describe how he sounded just walk into any 7-11 and ask the guy behind the counter how much something is. When I informed him that my computer was not even on at the time and that he woke me up he tried to backtrack and said that they detected something last night "in the evening sometime." He couldn't even tell me what time they detected the intrusion on my computer. Maybe they were from Microsoft after all.

[Kccitystar]

...From India, with love, Dept: Last Friday started out very interesting for me. Or maybe I should say annoying. The phone rang at 8:20 am and when the phone rings that early in my house that means something's wrong or my wife forgot something that she had to bring to work. Instead it was someone with a thick Indian accent telling me that they detected something wrong with my computer and they wanted me to go to a web page so they could fix it. He also said something about working for Microsoft but I couldn't understand everything he said with that thick accent. To best describe how he sounded just walk into any 7-11 and ask the guy behind the counter how much something is. When I informed him that my computer was not even on at the time and that he woke me up he tried to backtrack and said that they detected something last night "in the evening sometime." He couldn't even tell me what time they detected the intrusion on my computer. Maybe they were from Microsoft after all.

Totally sounds like a scam. I don't even know how "Bill" from India gets American numbers. Plus, MVPMods has got an IT team somewhere

[gotribematt]

...From India, with love, Dept: Last Friday started out very interesting for me. Or maybe I should say annoying. The phone rang at 8:20 am and when the phone rings that early in my house that means something's wrong or my wife forgot something that she had to bring to work. Instead it was someone with a thick Indian accent telling me that they detected something wrong with my computer and they wanted me to go to a web page so they could fix it. He also said something about working for Microsoft but I couldn't understand everything he said with that thick accent. To best describe how he sounded just walk into any 7-11 and ask the guy behind the counter how much something is. When I informed him that my computer was not even on at the time and that he woke me up he tried to backtrack and said that they detected something last night "in the evening sometime." He couldn't even tell me what time they detected the intrusion on my computer. Maybe they were from Microsoft after all.

I got the SAME call Friday afternoon.

Being that I don't work do to being physically disabled I had nothing better to do then to spend the time just to mess around with the guy.

I spent about 20 minutes acting like I had no clue how to even turn the computer on. Once I finally figured out this grand accomplishment i spent anthe 10 minutes trying to get me to learn how to open the internet. All this time I'm amazed he hasn't given up. Then a few more minutes spent trying to learn how to get to this website so he can get contol of my computer to figure out the problem just as I'm getting to the site I "accidently" hit something that turned off the computer. This was the end for him and he felt the need to say F you and throw in a couple of insults which made my day as I was openly laughing at him by now and left him with a few words for this wonderful person who scams people out of their hard earned money.

Moral of the story. Don't mess with us disabled people. We have nothing better to do most the time then mess with you when our BS meter has gone off.

[DeadShot]

I got the SAME call Friday afternoon.

Being that I don't work do to being physically disabled I had nothing better to do then to spend the time just to mess around with the guy.

I spent about 20 minutes acting like I had no clue how to even turn the computer on. Once I finally figured out this grand accomplishment i spent anthe 10 minutes trying to get me to learn how to open the internet. All this time I'm amazed he hasn't given up. Then a few more minutes spent trying to learn how to get to this website so he can get contol of my computer to figure out the problem just as I'm getting to the site I "accidently" hit something that turned off the computer. This was the end for him and he felt the need to say F you and throw in a couple of insults which made my day as I was openly laughing at him by now and left him with a few words for this wonderful person who scams people out of their hard earned money.

Moral of the story. Don't mess with us disabled people. We have nothing better to do most the time then mess with you when our BS meter has gone off.

LOL!

[DaSteelerz]

Updated to 4-6

But wouldn't you think with all the money these people are raking in that they could at least let the fans listen to the games on the internet for free like they used to?

I know, right?

[DaSteelerz]

As far as the scammer - I would have done the same thing... that is great... I might have flipped the script on him and told him I work for NSA...

[Yankee4Life]

Updated to 5-11

...Last Monday Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price reported that his two Labrador retrievers were missing from his home. They were eventually found and returned to him at his home later on in the day. The first thing I thought of when I heard this was that some Bruins fans found out where he lived and stole them.

...Lady luck was with me on Tuesday when I had to get our car looked over at the dealership where we bought it. The place is kind of far from where I live and for me to get there I had to be right in the middle of the going-to-work traffic that particular morning. What made me go to bed early the night before and wake up at 5:00 a.m. the next day was that something called a "check engine light" was on in the car and my wife thought the wheels were going to fall off as well as the roof and if that happened "how would I get to work?" Not wanting her to walk to work or at the very least thumb a ride I told her I'd take care of it for her. The terrifying check engine light ended up being nothing to be concerned about. It ended up being something else that was making that light go on and I wish I could explain exactly what it was here so I could let all of you know but I was just nodding my head in the unconscious way that people do when something is explained to them that they are never going to understand. This was only about a ten minute job to do but I ended up waiting there for an hour and a half because there was some part on the car that had a factory recall and if I had the time they could have taken care of it that day. I did and they did and once that was finished they explained again exactly what the hell they did and I began nodding my head again like I knew what they were saying. The lucky part? This repair, if it wasn't ordered by the factory would have cost around $600. I'll take that kind of luck any day.

...I thought being traded to the Rangers and playing in their bandbox of a ballpark was supposed to help Prince Fielder put up better numbers?

...Mariano Rivera's new book The Closer: My Story went on sale last week and naturally the writers had to do their best to stir something up out of nothing. They made a big deal about a Rivera statement when he said he would take Boston's Dustin Pedroia (oh no!) over ex-teammate Robinson Cano because Cano did not display "the red-hot passion that you see in most elite players." I don't know why they latched on to this comment to try and make something out of it. All Rivera did was take the diplomatic way of saying that Cano was a lazy SOB.

...Speaking about Rivera, one day before his book came out he was busy outside of Yankee Stadium because a street nearby the ballpark was re-named after him. River Avenue and 161st Street in the Bronx is now known as Mariano Rivera Avenue, thanks to the unanimous vote by the city council. I'm sure that after Jeter retires he won't be happy unless they re-name the Bronx after him.

...Jose Fernandez of the Miami Marlins is having an outstanding year so far and I'm very curious to see if he has another good year like his rookie year in 2013. He's been pretty healthy so far and outrageous as this may seem it got me to thinking if he was playing for the Yankees instead of the Marlins he'd of had Tommy John surgery by now.

...I read an article about some guy in Minnesota that got a ticket because he drove around a pothole because he didn't want his car to drive over it, which makes perfect sense to anyone who lives in these cold-weather states. Salt eats up the roads and come spring time it's almost like driving around a mine field. If the cops around here started giving tickets for this I'd have had my license taken away years ago.

...Who says kids don't listen to their parents anymore? When there's a problem the knee-jerk reaction is to blame Obama but in this instance it's Mrs. Obama. School kids are blaming the First Lady for the noticeable lack of appealing lunches they have had to have because of the new standards mandated by the Healthy and Hunger-Free Kids Act, a law that Michelle Obama was very active in getting passed. What these junior Palins and O'Reilly's out there fail to realize is that Congress and the Department of Agriculture approved the new standards for school cafeteria meals and not Mrs. Obama, but as their parents can tell them it is much more fun blaming them anyway.

...I have been following that story of the two hundred Nigerian girls that were abducted a couple of weeks ago by yet another Islamist militant group that is trying to make some kind of a statement. You got to hand it to those people because they never seem to run out of terrorist groups and they always seem in competition with each other to see who is the worst. And everything they do is in the name of Allah and they make it sound like Allah sent them registered mail so they know what to blow up or who to kill or in this case, who to kidnap. This is supposed to be a peaceful religion but whoever is still believing that line is just as nuts as those people. The only peaceful Muslim is one that doesn't have a gun in his hand yet. I'm hoping that all of these young girls get rescued and are able to go home where they belong but these people who have them have never cared if they lived or died and if given the choice they'd take the latter, which is just fine by me. All of these militant groups should be lined up and be given the same send off.

...North Korea took the gloves off last week when they called President Obama a "crossbreed with unclear blood" and went on to say that he had the "figure of monkey." Until now I was unaware that the Republican Party had offices in North Korea.

...I went on a little trip the other day that I have been putting off for quite a few years now. I took a ride to where an old ballpark by the name of Silver Stadium used to stand and where I spent thousands of hours as a kid watching baseball. If anyone's interested, I found a link that has a lot of pictures of the park over the years right up to the very end but aside from the very old ones from the 50's and 60's these photos do not do the place justice.

As I said I have been pushing this off because it's hard to go back to a place that you loved so much knowing that it's gone now but one day last week I found myself driving towards there and this time I didn't turn around and I'm glad I didn't. 500 Norton Street was a famous address around here for anyone who followed baseball but now it's the address of a neighborhood community program that handles matters such as complaints about landlords, a place to anonymously talk about drugs or violence in the neighborhood and a place to go to get permit applications for things such as awning and shed installations. The building where all this goes on has a couple of plaques on the outside of it letting people know what used to be there, which I thought was a very nice touch.

But what's behind this small, compact building is what really caught my eye. There's an open field with still some of the greenest grass you'd ever seen and you can tell they do a good job keeping the grass short. It's not as short as infield grass but it still looks good. The playing field where the ballpark once stood is now home to three businesses: a machine shop, a sign making shop and one that gave me no clue as to what they did. I imagine that open field is for future tenants to build as they see fit.

Every kid who spent time at this ballpark had a nice story to tell about it. I won a ten-speed bike once on kids night that got my sister so jealous she ended up riding it more than I did. The players I saw, the autographs I got, you can't replace that. I have so many fond memories about that place that you wouldn't believe half of them. The last year they played ball here was in 1996 and many people believed that they could have continued playing here but there was a big push to get out and modernize. A guy that does reviews of minor league ballparks gave a very accurate one as to why the ballpark is not there today.

I finally asked someone if they didn't mind if I walked around that open field for awhile and the woman said to feel free to and to take my time. I got the feeling that I wasn't the first one to ask this person this question. While I was out there walking around I was trying to picture in my mind where everything was. Now third base must have been right around here. That means the box seats and grandstands were not too far behind me. I don't know how right I was but I had fun doing it because as far as I was concerned I was on hallowed ground. Seeing greats like Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron make guest appearances here and being able to watch players like Ron Guidry, Dave Righetti and Cal Ripken, Jr before they made it to the major leagues is something that the bulldozers and wrecking ball could never take away. That's what made it worth coming here today. As I was taking the long walk back to my car I saw something out of the corner of my eye laying on the grass. A plastic bottle. I picked it up and threw it away.

...I had the MLB Network on late Friday night and they were doing live look-ins in Texas because Yu Darvish had a no-hitter going against the Red Sox. When David Ortiz hit a pop up into short right field that fell between the Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor and right fielder Alex Rios it was ruled an error and the no-hitter wasn't broken up. When Harold Reynolds saw that play in the MLB Studios I thought he was going to fall out of his chair because of the call. He kept on calling it the "worst call in the history of the game." He must have forgot about the perfect game that Armando Gallaraga was robbed of four years ago. I haven't seen so much bluster come out of a baseball commentator since the days Joe Morgan was announcing for ESPN. Even when Reynolds was pointed out the rule that explained why Rios was given an error on the play he still kept it up and insisted it was a hit. If any of you saw that instant replay you'll see that Rios did his best imitation of Alfonso Soriano and completely misplayed the ball. It was an error and the call was right. All of the MLB Studio announcers agreed with the call except of course for Junior Joe. And people wonder why I don't watch the MLB Network more often.

...Finally, Happy Mothers Day to all your mothers. Wether they are still with you or not, if they live five minutes from you or five hundred miles, a phone call and an I love you is worth more than a nice bouquet of flowers. Happy Mothers Day!

[GoRedSox34]

Well I actually met Jackie Bradley Jr. and he's a class act so don't talk **** about people you don't know

[Yankee4Life]

Well I actually met Jackie Bradley Jr. and he's a class act so don't talk **** about people you don't know

What are you talking about?

[Jim825]

What are you talking about?

It looks like he's a few weeks behind in reading your posts. You mentioned something about Jackie Bradley Jr. on April 27th.

[Yankee4Life]

It looks like he's a few weeks behind in reading your posts. You mentioned something about Jackie Bradley Jr. on April 27th.

Yes I did Jim and I had to go back and see what got him so riled up.

Jackie Bradley, Jr. hasn't done anything yet but it's only a matter of time considering the environment he's in.

That was the extent of it and anyone that wants to know what I was talking about will have to go back to the April 27th edition of this thread.

I don't know why that had to be brought up now Jim but since it has I better get something straight right now. This is a thread where anyone can come and post any random thought they have. This isn't my private thread. It gets updated on Sundays and that is how it has been for almost nine years now. The things I write are my own viewpoints and opinions about things - right or wrong- and my own observations that I see throughout the week.. I completely get it that I may be the only one who agrees with me on some things. My intention is to write things down as I see them and maybe provide a laugh along the way.

If you ask anyone in here who the most critical person of the Yankees is they'll say it's me and I wouldn't argue the point. I think they are the most overpaid and underachieving team in the majors and I don't even want to get into how I feel about the individual players on the team. But when I talk about them no one says a word. It's ok to put down the Yankees and when you can get a Yankee fan to do your work for you that's even better.

But have the same person make a comment about the Red Sox and all of a sudden we have a problem. And it wasn't even insulting. I don't know what GoRedSox expects when he comes in here and reads what I write because it's never going to be anything positive about the Boston pro sports teams. That's how it is and that's how it's going to be unless I get amnesia and start to believe I am a Boston fan and when I get my memory back and someone tells me what I was doing I'd jump off a tall building.

My friendly advice to GoRedSox34 is to not read this thread anymore if you are afraid I may say something about a ballplayer you happen to meet. I don't care who you meet. If he plays for the Red Sox he's not a favorite of mine. Live with it.