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I’m tired of liking things, and watching other people who like things do those things they like, which is why I was really happy (and then immediately annoyed that I was happy) to read CBS Sports’ Gregg Doyle’s article on why he’s tired of baseball players pouring champagne all over themselves in celebration of winning a thing:

“It takes a lot of planning to make this spontaneous celebration go off just right.

And the players, they do it. They think it’s great. Why do they think it’s great? Because they’re not much on thinking. They’re fully grown kids, is what they are, and they celebrate like children by doing the same thing everyone else has always done. Why? Because everyone else has always done it.”

When my son graduated from kindergarten, we sprayed him with Orange Shasta and I dumped Gatorade over his mother, so I understand where Doyle is coming from. That’s kids stuff (and also a reason why your wife makes you sleep in the garage for a week). Baseball players are supposed to be men.

Men aren’t supposed to have fun and behave like children. We don’t want them to show enthusiasm or “play like a little kid out there.” Because, trust me, I have seen my son’s T-ball games. And I have watched episodes of ABC’s Back in the Game. The dirty little secret the liberals don’t want you to know is that little kids suck at baseball.

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Readers: Feel enabled! Collectively you are a powerful source of knowledge and pageviews. You matter. You really do! See how I’m building you up? You are terrific! You are a glistening prism of ability. You are the balls. The good kind. The life-giving kind. I <3 U.

Do you feel uplifted and capable? Yes? Good. Now: I need something from you right away. I require. I insist. I dessicate your once brimming waters. Importantly, I need you to fill out the following survey so that I can know some things. These things relate to the facial stylings of Major League ballplayers past and present. With the power of this knowledge I will likely produce something of considerable value to mankind. It will most assuredly change everything. Everything! Even your goddamn Subaru Forester. Yes, even something as solid, reliable, and practical as your goddamn Subaru Forester will change. So do this thing so that I don’t have to do as much work  can change the world:
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I never saw hopes quite so high, nor faces quite so bright,
As when Tito led the Tribe to war that fine October night.
Six years had come and gone since they’d played on at season’s end,
And six decades since a title; yet they’d neither shrink nor bend;
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This article about how no one’s been watching the Yankees this season offers this fun factoid:

On Sept. 22, a Sunday afternoon Astros-Indians game on Comcast SportsNet Houston attracted no viewers, at least according to the way Nielsen measures such things.

Of course, this just means that of the 581 Nielsen families that were surveyed, none were tuning into the Astros. What else were they watching during the game? The crack NotGraphs research squad has been unable to find complete Nielsen listings for the Houston area, but I’ve conjured up my own list:

560 families: The Houston Texans football game
10 families: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo
2 families: The episode of The Golden Girls where the ladies buy tickets to an Astros game but ultimately decide not to go because the Astros are so terrible
2 families: The Real Housewives of Dallas
2 families: The Real Housewives of Austin
1 family: The Real Housewives of Corpus Christi
1 family: Sesame Street, with Chris Carter counting strikeouts for an hour, and still not counting all of them.
1 family: Lucas Harrell and Kate Hudson, starring in “How To Lose A Game in 10 Minutes.”
1 family: The Static Channel
1 family: Would have been credited with watching the Astros game, because it was on their TV, but it turned out they were all dead.

Update: As with most of my great ideas, it turns out that someone has had this one first. Last week, Scott Weber of the always excellent Lookout Landing did something incredibly similar . So similar our titles are pretty near identical. I was not aware of his work before writing this post because I am an idiot. My apologies to Scott. Please go check out his fine work.

Update #2: This is for commenter reillocity below:

Last night, Buzzfeed Sports took a short break from posting pictures of adorable animals in baseball uniforms to chide the Pittsburgh Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season, let alone won a playoff game, for more than 20 years, for celebrating their win over the Cincinnati Reds:

PIC: Team Gets Way Ahead Of Itself, Throws Party Because They Made The Quarterfinals Of A Tournament pic.twitter.com/WgmuwTETcl

— BuzzFeed Sports (@BuzzFeedSports) October 2, 2013

And, of course, they were right to do so. For who isn’t sick to death of the city of Pittsburgh and the Pirates and all their bullshit happiness at finally winning, and releasing the tension that has been building up for more than a generation. Fuck those guys.

Thankfully, as he always is whenever someone is being joyful or doing something remotely interesting, angry dad Brian McCann was there to tell them to tone it down and cut the fun short:

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Vine, for those of you who don’t waste your lives entirely, is the latest way phones and social media have ruined everything. In this case, they’ve ruined videos and/or all of visual storytelling by reducing it to six looped seconds of whatever regular people deem important enough to record, which is universally bullshit. A Vine is a GIF, but loud and shameful and horrible.

Billions of people have Vine, though, even Major League Baseball:

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PITTSBURGH — The teammate who distracted Andrew McCutchen during batting practice Monday, causing the star outfielder to be hit in the face by a ground ball, has been identified by sources as injured catcher Michael McKenry. One Pirate, who asked to remain nameless, referred to McKenry as “that insufferable attention whore” and said “He does his stupid little song and dance out there all the time during BP…it was only a matter of time before someone paid the price.”

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St. Louis Cardinals fans should be wary of postseason ticket scammers, the St. Louis office of the Better Business Bureau says…. The Internet has become the arena of choice for sports fans looking to buy or sell tickets…. Be careful buying tickets from someone on the street…. Don’t buy from sellers who try to lure buyers from a legitimate site to another site for a “private” transaction…. If you are buying tickets through an online classified ad site, don’t pay by wire transfer.
–“Be wary of bogus Cardinal playoff tickets, Better Business Bureau warns,” BND.com

Hey, you, with the wallet in your pocket. Are you looking for playoff tickets? I’ve got all of the playoff teams right here. The ones with the Red hats, ones with the Blue hats, even ones with the Green hats. The guys who are probably going to win the thing, and the guys who are probably going to lose the thing. Good places to watch the competition, too. Right near everything. And also near the important thing. Also on the other side of the place they play. And some seats higher in the air, in that other part of the place where things are happening. Are you rooting for the victory of one of the teams that are playing in the thing? Oh, good. You should get my special tickets for the people rooting for the team in the thing.

I have lots of tickets, all of them real and certified by the people who certify tickets. I have tickets for the time of the activity when the winning might happen. Also tickets for the other times and parts of the whole thing, whenever they are. Are you looking for the daytime tickets? I have the daytime tickets and the nighttime tickets. Also the most important tickets, but they are for costing more money.

The playoffs is for the baseball, yes? With the bats and the balls? The base balls? Yes, it is a wonderful sport event with very fun playoffs. And very hard to find tickets that you can find here, from me. I root, root, root for the hone team. Do you? With these tickets you can buy the peanuts and also to cracker the jacks. Do you need phone charger to cracker the jacks? I sell that item too, with real Apple logo glue on with real El-Mar Glue. If your phone is crackered with my phone cracker tool kit you can use any provider around the world for your phone service needs. How will you feel at the playoff competition with a phone that can use any provider for your needs? Good, right? Very good. So you should buy the tickets and also the cracker.

I actually am running out of the tickets, so you need to buy fast. It is one, two, three, four strikes and you are out of tickets to the balls game. I will even throw in a head bobble doll of the Joshua Hambilton. There was an overproduction of the doll so I have access to many of these. I will give you sixteen dolls if you buy one tickets to the playoff match. More if you buy more.

No tax if you pay cash. Also, I only accept cash. Also, I don’t know what tax is. Also, the tickets are invisible. Also, you should give me your phone so I can do magic to it. Also, I am going to make your phone disappear.

Goodbye. Enjoy the balls game.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry — I just saw something on the news about baseball, and the season, and it being over — and I realized — I totally missed our draft. My bad, completely. I see now that you left me 9, 10, 12, 50 voice mails about it back in March, and there have been some e-mails since then. I’ve been completely behind on e-mail though — swamped at work — so I’m just getting around to it. You said I could pick my team from the folks still on the free agent list, right? Again, I’m really sorry about it. I guess I’ll take Josh Donaldson if he’s still available. Matt Carpenter. Hisashi Iwakuma. Oh, they’re taken? How about Jose Fernandez? Michael Brantley and Henderson Alvarez just for September? No? All gone? Yasiel Puig — I’ve never even heard of him, but his stats look okay. No? He’s not available either? Who’s out there? Anyone I can grab just for the post-stretch run? B.J. Upton? Oh, he’s still available? Great. Thanks. I guess I’ll take him and, uh, Dan Uggla? Oh, Jeremy Hellickson is available? Cool. Cool. That’s a good core. I promise I’ll do my best to remember next year. I’ll even set an alarm. Oh, I’m not invited back in the league? Someone took my place when I didn’t respond to any e-mails or pick up any players or make any transactions? That’s not cool, man. You can’t just kick me out without a vote. Oh, there was a vote? Come on, you can’t just schedule a draft and not remind people and expect someone to remember it. How the heck am I supposed to remember which month the season starts? It changes all the time. Like Hanukkah. Okay, whatever, I guess we’re just not friends anymore. I have to go anyway, I’m in this Emmy Awards pool and I need to make my picks.”

Once upon a time, I made you a promise. As I am a man of my word and glad not to have to think of anything creative to write about today, I plan to make good on that promise. I watched and reviewed the pilot episode of ABC’s new Little League sitcom, Back In the Game, so you didn’t have to see it and wonder if you’re missing anything. I will be doing every Friday between now and when it is canceled, or I am politely asked to stop, which will probably be soon.

Anyway, Back in the Game revolves around Terry, a down-on-her-luck, newly single mom with a 10 year old son, Danny, who has just moved back home to her father, “The Cannon” (no, I’m not making that up), a former minor league baseball player. Her son wants to play baseball to impress some girl who only dates ballplayers. Again, these kids are 10. Anyway, he sucks, and doesn’t make any of the Little League teams, and this being a pretty horrible Little League organization, he’s told he’s not allowed to play. Hijinx ensue when Terry and another single mom, whose movie producer husband died and left her a fortune (we are told in tortured exposition) band together to offer to coach and fund, respectively, another team for the misfits.

Here, for everybody who has forgotten, is the trailer for the series:

That actually makes this show seem far worse than it actually is. The setup, while tortured, is actually fairly funny. Maggie Lawson, for all her inherent hotness, actually conveys her world-weariness really well. And her character, a former high school baseball player and All-American softball player in college, is far more formidable than in the trailer above, especially in her dealings with the douchebag who runs the league and never played high school ball. James Caan is far better than I would have expected, and makes what should seem like a horrible and grating character actually sympathetic.

What doesn’t work?

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