The Sports Illustrated baseball preview just arrived on my doorstep. I would give a full review of it, but after seeing what they wrote about the Mets, I was forced to burn the magazine in the desert as part of an ancient Jewish cleansing/heating ritual.
While I’m not much for curses and superstition, I could not have been more depressed to see that my favorite team was picked to win the World Series. I remember when this kind of thing would excite me and give me hope for the season. Now I realize that the same brain trust that wrote this thought that:
- The Detroit Tigers would win the World Series in 2008 (they finished last)
- Rick Reilly was a talented writer worth employing for 23 years
If their pick of the Mets to win it all wasn’t upsetting enough, they also managed to observe “The Drill” while not mentioning that it is the most pointless and dangerous waste of time since I smoked PCP and took my unicycle on the NJ Turnpike. Instead, they simply explain the drill,
Shortstop Jose Reyes exhausting himself in a hitting drill during which the batter must take 80 opposite-field swings at 80 machine-fired curveballs in six minutes.
We’ve covered this topic ad nauseam, but I just can’t help myself.
- Problem: Jose Reyes has a low OBP because he swings at too many pitches.
- Solution: Have Jose practice swinging 13.3 times a minute, thereby teaching him patience and plate discipline.
Imagine you are teaching someone how to be a carpenter. Your pupil is very gifted, but is careless with his hammer and often misses the target and nails his hand to his foot. To improve his precision do you:
- Teach him to relax and focus on guiding the hammer accurately and safely
- Bring him to Chuck E. Cheese and make him play Whack-A-Mole for 3 hours without a break
If you chose option #2 then you are essentially brain dead and well qualified to be a major league baseball manager.
Tags: carpenter analogy, Chuck E. Cheese, Jerry Manuel is functionally retarded, jinx, Mets, PCP, Reyes, Sports Illustrated, the drill, unicycle, Whack-A-Mole
(4.75 out of 5)
Very well-said, Nerdzah Ball. You should know since you were the young carpenter who, if not for chuck. e. cheese whack-a-mole, could have been a contender for The Carpenters. Instead, Sharon Carpenter got the job and subsequently died of an eating disorder.
Who was Sharon Carpenter? Was she in a different Carpenters and also happened to have the same death as Karen? Very strange.