Stupid Baseball Names (AKA Nate wigging out)

Every year, the NFL Draft gets me more excited than George Michael in a sex toy warehouse. I take the weekend off, and usually throw a big party, though this year I'm opting out of the party. I read up on all the prospects, I buy a disgusting amount of snack food and adult beverages, and I anticipate the draft like a kid on Christmas morning.

No shit. I'm very, very excited.

So I've been reading over all these draft guides and mock drafts, taking in all the names and bios, and all these names got me thinking. So...

In the spirit of Atari Bigby, Key-Yon Rambo, and former Philadelphia 76er World B. Free, I give you the two most annoyingly stupid names in baseball. I'm sure there's more to come.

• Phillies CF Shane Victorino. Victorino? Really? The first time I heard this name, I was in the car listening to the Cubs play Philadelphia, and the announcer kept saying his last name over and over, without the "Shane." So I thought the guys name was Vic Dorino, or Vic Torino. It was only after the play-by-play guy said it over and over that I realized it was Victorino. He said it so much I feared my ears were bleeding, so I had to turn it off out of pure annoyance, I slapped the radio knob, literally yelling at my dashboard. Victorino? WTF? Why not Loserino, Achieverino?
• Rockies CF Ryan Spilborghs. WTF? What, you had cups of Romulans, Talaxians, and Borgs, and you decided to spill the latter (who says dorks can't be funny)? What kind of drunk European ancestor, after eating too much rotted fish, decided on that name? Being in the midwest, I hear a lot of Fjellands and Torgenfels and other bizarre Scandinavian names, but Spilborghs? Blech. Never mind, I feel bad for the kid.
  

Classy

Bottom of the fourth inning, Cubs up to bat against the Pirates at Wrigley. Fukudome hits one into deep center, where the Pirates CF Nate McClouth underestimated the wind and had the ball drift over his head. McClouth had to run up to the ivy and grab the ball.

When he did, a fan dumped a beer on his head.

I laughed when I saw it. To McClouth's credit, he didn't skip a beat, grabbing the ball and getting it in quickly (but not quickly enough). It's funny, but dumb. Cubs fans at Wrigley, as a general rule, are drunken boobs (especially the ones in the bleachers). That kind of behavior is to be expected. The outfield bleachers are a motley gallery of shirtless ex-frat brahskis with their trophy girlfriends, spoiled brat burb-kids who took daddy's Land Rover dowtown to see the game instead of going to school, and well-sauced middle-aged gomers who spend the entire game yelling gynecological references about the opposing outfielder's mother. It's a freak show. I love Wrigley, and I will always love my Cubbies, but it's embarrassing.

What bothers me more than the waste of a $5 Old Style is the fact that, on the replay, WGN cut the footage of the offending fan.

I'm sick of the Tribune Co. acting like their fans are sacred. Things like this happen all the time, and the Worlds Greatest Newspaper, along with the rest of TribCo, sweep it under the rug. No wonder Reds announcer Marty Brenneman called Cubs fans the most obnoxious and annoying in sports earlier this week when Cincinnati was in Chicago. Brenneman's a jackass, but so are a lot of Cubs fans, and so are the heads at 435 North Michigan.

Earth, water, and air for Clinton!

From WTHI in Terra Haute...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Before Former President Bill Clinton arrived in Clinton, Ind. Friday morning, he made a surprise visit to the Clinton for President campaign office in Terre Haute.

The office was destroyed late Thursday night by fire.

Former President Bill Clinton met with fire officials investigating the scene.

Officials say the fire appears to be electrical, but they've called in the state fire marshal calling it a high profile fire.

Dammit, fire! You're so sexist! I'll bet you wouldn't burn an Obama office!?!? Y'know, fire, just because someone speaks eloquently doesn't mean that person is better than you or me.

You just wait until the superdelegates hear about this, fire.

Rice-a-Roni, the Arizona treat

From CNN's "Ticker" blog-

"In a new poll conducted by Marist College and WNBC, a McCain-Rice ticket would beat a ticket that includes both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in New York -- a state that reliably votes for the Democratic candidate."

First of all, this story appears two posts above a story about how Obama and Clinton will never run together cleverly titled "Pelosi again says joint ticket won't happen." Pelosi says this because, well, IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. And frankly, I'm tired of hearing people talk about it.

Secondly, McCain would open himself up to a world of hurt should he take one of the key architects of the Bush administration as his running mate. That said, people don't vote for VP, which is why some Obama supporters wouldn't automatically opt for Clinton should she run at the top of such a ticket, and it's why some Clinton supporters wouldn't automatically opt for Obama should he run at the top of such a ticket. Those groups would cry sour grapes and support McCain.

Third, this poll is shit. I'm sorry, but there is no way McCain beats Obama or Clinton in New York. Not in this election, not this year, and not on these issues. You're not going to find any other numbers to back this New York thing up. Period.

Fourth, A JOINT TICKET WILL NEVER HAPPEN. EVER. SO SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT IT. Seriously, I don't like being annoying all-caps guy, but I'm tired of seeing morons at anchor desks doing a circle-jerk over Obama/Clinton Clinton/Obama. Pipe dream, folks. Knock it off.

Our liberties we prize and our rights we....oh whatever.

Only in Iowa.

I'm in my car yesterday, doing deliveries for my "real" job. Windows down, it's in the upper 50's, and for some reason it feels like a summer day, likely because this winter has been the mother bitch of all winters. The sun does enough for me that I don't need a jacket, and I've got a Cubs spring training game on the radio.

Then it happens.

During a break, I'm brought back to reality. I say I'm brought back to reality, but I can't quite convey the force of this action. Let's just say it was something like having an intense itch in your netherregion, but instead of using your hand to scratch it you used a cheese grater.

What brought me back was the forecast, or more specifically the "winter weather warning" that the announcer was droning about for parts of Iowa. 62 degrees, sunny, and less than 24 hours from an ass load of snow.

That's Iowa! Joy!

I'm annoyed by having two sets of clothes to switch back and forth between; summer and winter. I miss the convenience of wearing flip flops everywhere, of never needing a heater, of burning my hands when I touch the steering wheel. I'd rather deal with humidity and mosquitoes than a shovel and an icy sidewalk. And I'll take a hurricane over a tornado any day. With a hurricane, you buy lots of liquor, lots of food, and have friends over for a few days. With a tornado, you hop out of bed at two in the morning to shut the weather alarm off and scramble downstairs. Which one would you rather deal with?

I need cheesecake from European Street in Jacksonville. I need macadamia-encrusted grouper at Gypsy Cab in St. Augustine. I want to watch the shuttle take off in Titusville, cruise the bee line in a hard rain, and watch armadillos scurry away from me on the back nine at Disney's Magnolia course.

So spring break didn't work out, but the week after the semester is over I'm headed to the keys for ten days. Ten days to recharge my batteries so I can deal with this place a while longer. Don't get me wrong, I love that the average IQ here is so much higher, and you guys have great state parks. And the girls here are damn cute and they can actually hold an intelligent conversation.

But I've gotta get out of this place. You guys are driving me nuts with your parking ticket obsession.

Food for thought

Any predictions on the Clinton camps spin Wednesday?

-Spitzer's fault?
-Mississippi isn't important (Tried and true, I'd go with this one)
-The entire state is sexist (The "Swift" theory)
-We were outspent there (Only works if they didn't promote their fund raising amounts)
-Complete and total denial; "Clinton wins 93% of the vote in Mississippi" (Not too crazy for this campaign)
-Nader stole our thunder (The "Watson" theory)

Have a theory of your own?

He's got my vote!

Ralph Nader, last night, on The Daily Show.

"We have all these problems! Look at daily life (grins) not on the show..."

(That was Ralph Nader making a funny)

"...you have congested traffic, you have day care costs that are tremendous, cell phone plans that are manipulated."

That's it. I'm hooked. A President Nader will eliminate traffic! Free day care for everyone! And Sprint will no longer tell me what services they offer me and at what price! That's my decision. Or Ralph's.

Get real

NBC Nightly News had a piece Monday night that covered a recently released study saying Americans got less sleep than the rest of the world, and that we were all tired.

Duh.

When I have time, which isn't often, I grab a power nap. It helps me a majority of the time. 15 or 20 minutes. I know I don't reach that restorative REM stage when I do that, so I'm also a big fan of the 2-hour nap when I'm really tired, but I almost never have that kind of time.

Anyhow, they had some sleep doctor on throughout this report, asked him the usual questions, and he said naps were good, but that there was no substitute for eight hours of sleep!

Eight freaking hours? Are you kidding me? Who gets eight hours of sleep every night? I get to bed by two or three. I get up around seven, eight if I'm lucky. Nine or ten on a rare weekend morning when I have no homework, don't have to go to the other job, and I don't have to try to rush to the bank in the twenty minutes they're open on Saturdays or run any other similar errands.

So I guess I'm curious. How much sleep do you get?