Last night there were some sports obits going around about Rosie Ruiz, who I ended up learning was undoubtedly the greatest women’s sports heroine in history. As a child, she fled Cuba at age 8.  As an adult, she achieved the American dream by winning the 1980 Boston Marathon with a record breaking time.  However, things kind of blew up in her face in the post-race interview when it became obvious that she cheated.

Witnesses saw her sneak into the race from the crowd at a point well ahead of all the other women runners, but none of the official spotters noticed her because people weren’t pretending to care about the women’s race back then.  They ended up disqualifying her and even found out that she took a subway through the whole route of the New York Marathon to qualify.  Like a true master woman, she denied until she died.

In the decade that followed her historic victory, she accomplished several other feats such as stealing 60k from her employer, trafficking a bunch of cocaine, having some babies and then finding a loving lesbian partner for the rest of her life.  Her friends and family didn’t even mention her athletic feats in a very sweet obituary, but then some running magazine got wind of it and published the coolest part of her life story.

Those runners that read that running magazine may seem bitter, but at the end of the day she is the greatest women’s marathon runner of all time in my eyes.  I mean who else is even out there that even compares?  Can you name anyone else better?

Rip in peace Rosie – you lived a good one

It was a historic trade deadline for the hated Houston asstros as they get a new hall of fame to anchor the rotation of what was already their most talented team ever.  Zack Greinke now has access to the same fountain of youth that Justin Verlander enjoyed via the esteemed Houston ‘analytics’ department.  Vegas odds indicate we should start expecting an epic WS rematch of 2017, which will be especially juicy with some potential duels between Greinke and his former colleague Kershaw.  Nothing on the line except immortality for the legacies of both themselves and their franchises.

On paper, there is no argument Houston won deadline day, but as they always say we still have to play the games and not everything turns out like it’s supposed to.  Listen I’m not criticizing Zack Greinke’s mental health – even the wokest of woke might find it hard to find a real sob story in a $217M and counting career, but he did have to live almost a decade in Kansas City and Milwaukee and that is a truly traumatic way to spend your 20s.  The only city in baseball that might be worse than those two is Houston, so let’s hope this ‘analytics’ era of the asstros wasn’t exposed forever by Alex Cora or it might come to a swift collapse with some very sad campers.

Big Swinging Dick GM and The Miracle Mets 2.0

The real winners are the Mets and budding New York hero Brodie Van Wagenen.  He started July by berating and throwing a chair at his manager for fucking up way too much and then ended the month by resurrecting the DeGrom/Thor contention window.  The Stroman trade put a smile on every baseball fan, but most importantly it gave hope back to the best fans in baseball as the Mets now have the league’s best rotation by far for the next two postseasons.

The Mets are 13-2 in their last 15 and are a lock to clinch the wild card with time to rest before October.  If it weren’t for an astonishing 21 blown saves throughout this season, they’d be favorites over Atlanta for the division right now.  If Diaz can regain any of his form from last year as the best closer in baseball, the Mets have a shot at pitching their way to a title.

George Steinbrenner Continues to Roll in His Grave

On the other side of town we have the Yankees – woof.  In the past three years, this $4.6B franchise has been gifted stars on a silver platter such as…

1. #1 prospect in baseball Gleyber Torres in exchange for a two month loan of Chapman
2. NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton in exchange for two shitty prospects (collusion)
3. The best prospect of all time Jasson ‘The Martian’ Dominguez for record money

The Yankees rolled into the trade deadline this year with the best record in baseball, and then lo and behold things weren’t free anymore.  Instead of overpaying anyway because titles are worth it (see #1 above), Bryan Cashman opted for prospect hugging.  Maybe the SAVAGES and these juiced balls will make October starting pitching obsolete for the first time ever.  Otherwise, it’s time for Cashman to be canned.  One World Series in 20 years for a franchise like that is flat out not enough.  I can’t imagine how furious George Steinbrenner would be if he was still alive.

Other Trade Deadline Notes:

Twins and Indians – have been enjoying the easiest schedules of all time this year which is nice for them.  The Twins have a bright future, but they’re not quite ready yet and they’re especially not going anywhere with Sam Dyson throwing meaningful pitches.  God he sucks so bad why oh why would they make such a stupid trade.

The Bauer trade for Cleveland?  Well he’s a shithead and their window has passed so yeah might as well move on from him. Puig is dope

Braves – had a budding surefire dynasty until the aforementioned Brodie Van Wagenen pulled out his big swinging dick.  Despite the new divisional competition, their roster is still stacked everywhere except the bullpen.  They acquired closer Shane Greene who had been nearly perfect for the Tigers this season.  Immediately after getting traded, he regressed to the 30yo 4.60 ERA spare who ruined so many juicy moneylines and unders in Detroit these past few years. Still, Atlanta has a deep farm system (they also acquired two other relievers) and you gotta take shots and not be pussies like Cashman to win.

Giants – hilarious and awesome that they went on a fluky run at the most inopportune time possible and now will see Bumgarner walk for nothing.  Flags fly forever though.

Nats and Phillies – not that any good teams genuinely wanted him but it is funny that Bryce Harper left a trash team in DC for an equally trash team in Philly and they’re both gonna stay trash for the entirety of his contract.

If Le’Veon Bell played last year, the Steelers would have won the Super Bowl.  They missed the playoffs by half a game and they surely could have made up that ground with the added production of a transcendent running back.  They already beat New England and should’ve beaten New Orleans in the dome, so I think it’s safe to say they were less than one additional hall of famer away from going all the way.

When that (short-lived) narrative of James Conner being better Bell circulated around, it was more a testament to fantasy’s popularity than it is a reflection of truth.  This summer, the hogwash topic d’jour is the analytical deep dive into the growing consensus that all running backs are all the same and worthless.  My personal favorite is this FiveThirtyEight dude saying Royce Freeman, Isaiah Crowell, and Alfred Morris (lol) are just as good as Zeke.  Apparently, 350 touches from a hall of fame talent is easily replaceable by minimum cost role players.  Is it possible we are overthinking this here?  I love analytics just as much as anyone around, but football will never be a numbers game.  Sample size and controlled variables are elementary requirements to sound statistical studies, and you will never get those from an NFL season.

“You don’t have to have a rushing champion to win a Super Bowl” says Jerry Jones in some very naked posturing.  Well you also won’t win Super Bowls with receiving champions if you wanna go by all these statistical factoids.  The simple truth is all Super Bowl participants have been strong in all facets of the game, with their most overbearing strengths being MVP quarterbacks or dominant defenses.  The teams that succeed via the latter predicate their offenses around the run game.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say our running back who’s won two out of three rushing titles and makes every aspect of our team better is worth the money.  We might as well pay him now too while he’s younger.  The timing works out perfectly to fairly compensate him when he’s in the beginning of his prime and then play hardball when he’s at the end.

The Cowboys have $24 million in cap space right now with another $14M coming off the books next year between Tyrone Crawford and La’el Collins alone.  There’s enough room to match the Gurley contract for Zeke and still match top dollar to three of the four of Dak, Amari, Byron Jones, and Jaylon Smith.  Hell, there might be enough to pay all four if the cap rises a ton with the new CBA.

This is a nice healthy holdout for both sides for the time being – it’s early.  Once push comes to shove, the Cowboys aren’t going to fuck this up like the Steelers did.  Zeke will get his money and then he’ll be getting lifetime rights to a faucet of even more money come February when he’s holding up Lombardi #6 for America’s Team.

GQ just released a big profile on drama queen Odell Beckham so he could vent all of his hurt feelings out to America.  It turns out living life as the highest paid receiver in NFL history is a struggle.  There’s a lot of silly drivel for us common people to sort out but here is the absolute dumbest:

“I felt disrespected, because I felt like I was a main reason at keeping that brand alive. They were getting prime-time games, still, as a 5-and-11 team. Why? Because people want to see the show. You want to see me play. That’s just real rap. I’m not sitting here like, “It’s because of me.” But let’s just be real. That’s why we’re still getting prime-time games.”

Yeah okay Odell.  You were the only reason that the NEW YORK Giants played on primetime.  It definitely wasn’t the whole playing for New York City thing, or Saquon Barkley, or the fact that 1/8 of your schedule was against America’s Team.  Hey does anybody remember what time or against which opponent this breakout catch of his occurred or no?

https://twitter.com/FBForL/status/1066155233292611586

It is very difficult to defend any Gettleman moves after the Daniel Jones disaster, but this is a hard one for any NFC East fan to objectively criticize.  The talent is transcendent, but we’ve yet to see it outweigh his attitude baggage and tissue paper hamstrings.  Maybe it was best for all parties involved to let OBJ reunite with Jarvis Landry and be his sidekick again.  Mayfield is a whiner too but he can sling it way better than Mettenberger could ever dream of so we’ll see how brightly his light shines in Cleveland compared to New York City.

The Rangers got murdered by a combined score of 28-6 over two games this week, but it’s still the D-Backs that leave this series in shame.  You see we had a former pitcher of theirs by the name of Shelby Miller on our roster, but we DFA’d him over the 4^th.  I’m disappointed because he’s shown so much potential in the past, but it had to be done because he was absolute dogshit (8.59 ERA over 8 starts = dogshit).

For those who don’t know, he was with Arizona the past few years with equally dogshit numbers and that is how he became a free agent for Texas to sign.  Fortunately for us, he was nothing more than a lottery ticket minimum signing that didn’t pan out like Minor and Lynn.  Unfortunately for Arizona, they they mortgaged their entire future (now present) to trade for him.  Here is my quote from that linked blog of mine from December 11, 2015:

“I know a lot of people out there view Miller as more of a top end #2 instead of a true ace, but that’s bullshit.  He was firmly in the Cy Young mix for a large chunk of last season until his run support slid from atrocious to literally nonexistent.  Once he had to start going for a complete game shutout every outing, his performance started to suffer (even though he was still awesome compared to most pitchers).  With arguably the best offense in the NL behind him now, he’s gonna breeze through the 20 win mark.”

Boy was I wrong about that. What I wasn’t wrong about though was that it was a dumb trade and that’s assuming Shelby Miller was an actual ace and not a fucken AAA has been.  Good god!  Seriously maybe the worst trade ever holy shit.

The craziest thing about this all is that their owner chose this over a chose this over a Jose Fernandez(!) trade for even less prospects. I mean jesus can you fucking believe that??  Imagine if the d bags had actually pulled the trigger for one of the best pitching talents in baseball history instead of being a bunch of cowards.  They would be contending or maybe even winning the WS every year with a Fernandez/Grienke/Ray death rotation plus Goldschmidt and Swanson still in the lineup.

There also wouldn’t’ve been any water around for Jose to speedboat around on coke binges in and he’d prolly still be alive.  Things might’ve been better off. I bet this collapse wouldn’t have happened either:

https://www.mlb.com/news/dodgers-walk-off-on-five-straight-two-out-walks

Texas hosted an ESPN showcase to open the 2nd half of MLB season Thursday night and gave a 5-0 pounding to the take it up the astros.

A lot of fans were upset that Jessica Mendoza closed out the night by bringing up Nelson Cruz in 2011 but I’m completely fine with it. There were no other sports games on that night and everyone was tuning in for updates on that stupid russ Westbrook trade, so needless to say we had way more eyeballs than any other Rangers game will get this year.  For once I didn’t mind Jessica Mendoza’s voice when she reminded America that our organization has more to be proud of than those trash ass pissants in Houston.

Yes, I’d rather have fallen one strike short (twice) of a dynasty than have the one ring houston got by disgracing the game.  This is a rock bottom rebuilding year for Texas, and instead of tanking our balls away and boasting 0.0 tv ratings, we’re actually competing and in wild card contention.  It’s also cool not being the most notorious cheaters in baseball history so that is nice.

Santana walked off to cap a four run comeback the next night, which was awesome.  We lost the next two to split the series overall but it didn’t matter; I had seen enough.  The JD era is less than halfway over and I’m feeling good about this ‘rebuild’ so far.

In terms of whether we should sell or hold our veteran trade assets at the deadline (Lance Lynn leading the AL in WAR fyi), I’m leaning torwards HOLD.

FILE – In this July 10, 1999 file photo, the United States’ Brandi Chastain celebrates by taking off her jersey after kicking in the game-winning penalty shootout goal against China in the Women’s World Cup Final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. On Monday Aug. 19, 2013, Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy and Chastain visited a soccer camp in Manhattan and promoted “The ’99ers,” the latest in the ESPN Films Nine for IX documentary series that will air Tuesday night. (AP Photo/The San Francisco Examiner, Lacy Atkins, File) MANDATORY CREDIT. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE OUT ORG XMIT: CAEXA301

This will come as a shock to all the strangers who googled their way to my hate blogs the past couple weeks. I hoped to never have to do this, but I am officially manning up and admitting defeat – the women rocked.  They deserve a pay raise – equal pay as men from the USSF, and 2x the share of FIFA revenue as men.  Whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To guesstimate the exact number, let’s say it’s 20%.  This year’s WC brought about $131M, and just for kicks let’s say revenue doubles for 2023 (2015 WC was $73M).  That would be about $54M to the women, up from $30M this year.

In comparison to the men, let’s pretend Qatar is a disaster and 2022 stagnates at 0% growth from the $6B revenue total from Russia.  The men’s prize pool is set at a flat rate of $440 million, which would be 7.3% of revenue.  As you can see, even with aggressively optimistic/negative assumptions on both sides, the men are making eight times more than women from FIFA and no rational brain can say that is unfair.

They do deserve twice the share of their pie because they have more growth potential.  There is an untapped market for women’s soccer all over the world while men’s soccer is set everywhere but here.  The past three years, the women’s team has produced more for that domestic growth than the men’s. Therefore, the upcoming mediation should be a quick resolution ending in equal pay here at home.  Fuck it why not.

The FIFA gap will rightfully remain large in absolute terms and no lawsuit is ever going to change that.  Instead, the women need to keep growing their game.  They have unprecedented new opportunities in both entrepreneurship and philanthropy and it is up to them to capitalize on it.

Ride the momentum from this summer and start developing the domestic league.  Downsize NWSL and shift to a more barnstorming style rather than a traditional league format, at least in the short term.  Play some indoor games too.  Sponsor youth tournaments and run camps, then take them abroad.

Growing the game abroad means scrapping the Ugly American personas.  Use positive marketing, like more cool teacup celebrations against good teams and less dancing around like assholes when running up the score against underprivileged nations.  Realize that loving America and hating its leadership do not have to be mutually exclusive.  Tone back the whining about everything under the sun.  Practice a tiny bit of self-awareness like this:

I personally will never be interested in women’s soccer and will always be a little bit embarrassed that so many Americans could care about it.  However, numbers never lie and it looks like I am firmly in the minority for at least the near future.  I guess I’ll go ahead and start letting other people enjoy it more some.  The 1999 team is still chill.  At the very least, continued domestic success on the women’s front could end up ‘trickling down’ to more expectations/resources for the men’s squad so it could end up actually being a good thing for America.

PS obligatory –

There’s been a lot of big stories in the NBA lately, but last night served as a stark reminder that history will remember this season mostly for the genesis of Luka.  A fucking unreal hit by the Mavericks.  This dude casually transitioned from being a teenage EuroLeague MVP to being a teenage NBA star with no joke the top clutch stats in the league:

Just last summer, the Mavs top assets were Dennis Smith Jr, two semi-expiring contracts (Barnes and Matthews), and a #5 overall pick.  Somehow one year later we are a budding dynasty with the greatest teenage prospect in history teaming up with KP and whoever we acquire next.  It is just impossible to overstate how legendary Donnie and the front office truly are.  This feat is so incredible that we got to watch Giannis win the MVP last night and nobody cares that we passed on him in the draft for $400k in cap room.

The story is that on draft night 2013, Donnie Nelson was so adamant about how good Giannis would be and demanded to Cuban that we take him, but Cuban overruled in order to trade back and get about $400k in cap space to offer Dwight Howard a max contract.  To this day, the Mavs have quite literally never signed a meaningful UFA, but Cuban insisted that we pass on a future MVP just in case we had a shot at Howard.

To the layman’s eye, the decision makes no sense at all.  However, in retrospect, it was the right thing to do.  Dirk was entering the tail end of his career and we owed him the world.  Not only was (is) he our god both on and off the court but he also passed up nearly $200M in wages to keep us competitive under the cap.

That is a staggering sacrifice by our god.  There was only one morally correct approach to take through the end of his career and that was to look short term only and swing for the fences.  Maybe we only had a 1% chance of signing Howard, and if so then that was 1% past the minimum necessary threshold to pass on a future MVP.  Cuban and Donnie did their best to do our god right and I applaud them for it.

Besides, it’s not like it really mattered in the end.  We have the best front office in the league.  They got us someone else better anyway.

It’s been a wild 2019 for the lakers as they are now the official team of narcissism and AIDS.  According to Vegas odds and the mainstream media, AD was the missing piece in turning LA from a toxic and mediocre embarrassment to the very top contender in the league.  Rob Pelinka gets his employment lifeline for the mere cost of pretty much every LA lottery pick from the past and future.  As a New Orleanian, I’m feeling pretty damn good about the trade.

Watching AD on the Pelicans was very much like watching A-Rod on the Rangers – eye popping stats that mostly came in meaningless situations and rarely resulted in winning.  In the seven season of this era, we had one truly successful year that was more thanks to Boogie Cousins and Playoff Rondo than to AD.  He lacked any semblance of a killer instinct or clutch gene and there are exactly zero memories from his on-court play that NOLA will cherish.

Everyone likes to say that the franchise failed AD, and that is bogus.  Demps brought him assets to play alongside from day 1.  Sure, not all of them panned out and it was clear that the Pelicans lacked one of those rare superstar front offices that can create winners from almost any situation.  However, there were enough players around (see above) to produce way more winning than what AD delivered.  In the NBA more so than any other league, the anus is on star players to deliver results and quite frankly AD was an abject failure in that regard.

The biggest mistake in handling AD does not fall on the previous front office or even the training staff, but rather the fans and media for never taking off the kid gloves in his treatment.  It’s hard to blame a city for taking too long to turn on an asset like him, especially given the nature of NOLA’s good-vibe culture and the limited roster flexibility for small market NBA teams.  However, in hindsight, it really is astonishing how little accountability AD had during his tenure here.  He did have that quiet persona and ostensibly high character helping him out, but that image swindled fully down the drain over the spring.  This clip regarding his ‘That’s All Folks’ shirt is pretty much all you need to hear to understand what this guy is all about…

I could not imagine a better pea to Lebron’s pod than this bum.  Kick rocks AD.  Unlike CP3, we will most assuredly not be cheering for you in LA.  Zion generated more excitement to the city through one Commanders dinner with Gayle than you were able to in seven years – good riddance.  Oh and FYI, nobody ever liked your stupid unibrow.

Josh Hamilton got elected (or selected?) to the rangers hall of fame today and all of a sudden ranger nation had a workday of going through all the feels.  First of all I didn’t even know we had a team hall of fame. Apparently we do have one though and we took no time to wait in selecting (or electing?) our god who is undoubtedly the greatest legend to ever grace the Texas Rangers uniform. Unfortunately it was not an easy day of celebration for us but rather a moment that brought out a lot of mixed emotions.

Let me just start by that never have been more ecstatic after a sports play than that game 6 home run.  I was a premature victory joint deep already that had gone south in a disastrous manner before he resurrected my soul.  God damn it was so fucking incredible and should’ve lived forever as one of the most iconic plays in baseball and sports history.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I3e8S0u_Pb0

It was not his fault (and it is no single person’s fault) for the way that game ended up, but what happened happened and all of a sudden our surefire dynasty sputtered into irrelevance buffalo bills style. It’s hard to find a true comp for the emotions that we felt. Falcons fans had that Julio Jones catch in SB51. But I guess it was worse for them because we at least won basketball earlier that year and they’ve never won shit. That is chill I guess.

Unfortunately the legacy of our god took a nose dive from that point forward. By summer of 2012 he had attained a permanent apathy for his craft that only Barry Sanders could rival.

We were cruising to a first place season all year until a historic August collapse that culminated in three game series at Oakland. We were one game up on home field advantage and would’ve clinched the division at a minimum with just one single win in the three game series. Instead, we got swept and had to enter the wild card.  The key moment of the series was this horrendous error in game 162

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Fx4z0V2mY

The play-in game was against Baltimore, the same team that Hamilton had his iconic four dong against four months earlier.  He went 0-4 with two strikeouts on eight pitches.  Never have I seen someone in a 4 spot torpedo an offense that hard. It probably also ruined Yu Darvish’s career too if you really that about it.

He was a free agent that winter and by then it was an obvious decision to for JD to cut loose from the ass of the 2010 MVP and franchise icon. He signed with Anaheim and proceeded to siphon $125M out of Arte Moreno’s pockets.  The rest of his career was cashing checks and relapsing into rehabs.  I will admit that we do have to give him credit for ruining the Angels. Fuck anaheim and fuck that team so I am grateful he plunged that franchise to rock bottom.

Overall, as judgement day on his career comes upon us, I guess it is appropriate to appreciate the hopes our god brought us and to what game six could’ve or should’ve brought us.

Here’s to Josh Hamilton. Please toast your finest cup of ginger ale in his honor, or a beer or whatever. If I know him like I think I do, he probably doesn’t care anymore anyway.