Preseason Picks: Lord Buddha Tabs the Astros

With Spring Training now upon us, and with lab-tested and science-approved psychic John Edward having predicted the imminent onset of predictions, many of our most luminous luminaries are gracing us with their MLB preseason picks. Over at ESPN, Buster Olney has picked the Tigers to win what he is calling the World Series. Over at The View, the ladies have predicted that David Wright will be dreamy. And in a less televised, more transcendental sphere, the Lord Buddha has surprised many Western prognosticators by picking the Houston Astros.

“Well, picked them for what?” the Westerner asks, somewhat predictably, and with a fistful of Freedom Fries jammed inelegantly in his mouth hole.

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Tommy John to Have Miguel Sano Surgery

Tommy John’s worst fears came true this weekend.

The highly-retired former pitcher has a tear in his U.S. work visa and will need Miguel Sano surgery. John will fly to the Dominican Republic this week to undergo a study of his bones in order to determine his true age.

John was injured while walking to an AARP meeting.

It’s a bummer for canasta fans who can’t wait for John to return to his place at the table in between two other 70-year-old former athletes.


REPORT: Man Paralyzed by Search for Exact Right Ballcap

HatDOWNTOWN — A local man was hospitalized early this morning after experiencing acute paralysis of his interior self, a condition which doctors believe is the direct result of a protracted and ultimately fruitless search for the exact right new ballcap ahead of the upcoming season.

Patrick O’Connell, the 26-year-old grad student who suffered the episode, is in critical but stable condition.

“We’re only now piecing together the details,” said Rakesh Mehta, a spokesman for the hospital. “It appears, however, as though the patient was intent on finding a hat that simultaneously demonstrated some manner of historical and regional significance, exhibited pleasing aesthetic qualities, and finally was also distinct enough so as to telegraph to others (mostly men) his sophistication as a consumer. A complicated endeavor, all told.”

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Ichiro’s Future

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Mets Announce “Instagram” Broadcast for Brooklyn Viewers

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An example of the Instagram feed from Saturday.

NEW YORK, NY — In an effort to attract a largely untapped but also generally affluent demographic, the New York Mets, in conjunction with local carrier WPIX, presented an Instagram broadcast this weekend — available only to viewers in the New York borough of Brooklyn — of their spring-training game against the Miami Marlins.

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Unfortunate Team Hashtags

Every year, thousands of well-intending Twitter users will slip their tweets unknowingly into a baseball Twitter search. For those like myself who leave a Tweetdeck search column running, I have the pleasure of encountering these non sequitur tweets. I’ve compiled a few, and graciously omitted those I see annually in my Chicago #Bears feed.

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I JUST WANTED BASEBALL NEWS. stop. CANNOT BE UNSEEN. stop. SEND HELP. stop.
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Brunch GIF: Masahiro Tanaka’s First Glorious Stateside Splitter

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Owing to how they’re merely a collection of binary code made visible to the human eye by some combination of interlinked hypertext documents and the microprocessor within the reader’s own computer, the two GIFs here of Masahiro Tanaka striking out Ben Revere yesterday by way of his first glorious stateside splitter are not technically edible.

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Banknotes Harper Versus Colonel Sanders for Good and All

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“Then I guess,” concluded Banknotes Harper from across the conference table shaped like bad-ass tits, “we can’t agree to a sale price.”

“I suppose not,” drawled Col. Harlan Sanders. “The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise will remain mine, as it should be.”

“So it would seem,” said Banknotes Harper. “Perhaps I’ll console myself by instead purchasing …”

Banknotes Harper stood, and his erection flipped the table. Colonel Sanders stood, too, flaccid as silly, floppy pancakes. “You wouldn’t dare,” Colonel Sanders trailed off.

“By purchasing, yep, every chicken in the world, ass-back,” thundered Banknotes Harper.

“No!” Pleaded Colonel Sanders.

Banknotes Harper buzzed his secretary. “Eunice, arrange to purchase all chickens everywhere. For lunch I’ll have some sirloins and then more sirloins.”

“Fuck-stick!” bellowed Colonel Sanders, as he brandished the pearl-handled .38 he’d been carrying in his sock.

Banknotes sprung into action, stripped nude and bounded across the tits-table. He disarmed Colonel Sanders with a textbook Krav Maga maneuver, and then landed a right cross on each of his teeth, individually. Colonel Sanders tumbled to the ground in a heap but quickly ate a bunch of chicken — the last bites of chicken that Banknotes Harper did not yet own (Eunice, moments ago, had buzzed him to say that the purchase order had gone through) — for nourishment. Colonel Sanders rose up with a huge gun and shot Banknotes Harper in the lungs and feet. Banknotes Harper then began punching the crap out of Colonel Sanders, who died.

Banknotes Harper then tied a Gadsden flag to his executive letter opener and planted it in Colonel Sanders’s forehead. It whipped in the indoor business breeze. Watching the whole time had been Barbi Benton. She was sitting on the Banknotes Harper Excalibur’s Choice Office SofaTM.

“Eunice,” Banknotes Harper said with his finger on the buzzer. “Hold those sirloins. I’m going to have sex. Give the chickens to the people.”


Samson on Survivor: Review and Recap

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I had hoped we could spend many weeks together, dissecting the Survivor journey of generally despicable Miami Marlins president David Samson. Unlike my previous trip through terrible baseball-related television, I actually enjoy Survivor. At least the people acting terribly to each other in this show are doing it with a greater purpose in mind.

Alas, (spoiler alert) despite professing to have watched the show from the very beginning, David Samson’s season was about as effective as the Marlins’ in 2012: A lot of big moves that backfire and eliminate him early. At least now we know this is an organization-wide problem.

I would like to embed the video for you, but CBS’s video player doesn’t seem to allow that. So, instead, I’ll direct you to their site, which none of you will go to. I mean, you might have watched it if it was right in front of you, but since it’s not, you’re probably just going to keep reading to enjoy all the terrible decision Samson makes, the ridiculous things he says, and the hilarious things people say about him. That’s how the Internet works. Sucks for you, CBS.

This season, as we discussed last Friday, has split the “tribes” up into three groups based on what the contestants supposedly use most in their everyday lives: Brains, Brawn, or Beauty. Obviously, that’s often not a clean distinction, as the beauty team has a student from Northwestern and the brain squad has a professional poker player who is absolutely ripped, but whatever. The brains (average IQ of 130, including Samson, arrive via helicopter to meet their opponents, who arrived by speed boat (beauty) and in the back of a truck (brawn). Super subtle, Survivor.

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Pleasure GIF: Gregory Polanco Homering So Much Today

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According to the actual “rules” of “baseball,” any single home run technically only produces a quantity of runs equal to the number of players already on base plus one. According to that part of the human body, however, responsible for the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine into the brain, certain home runs are manifestly worth more, others less, in terms of aesthetic value.

This true truth having been established, one might readily conclude that, owing to how his whole life is in front of him and to how his levers are longer than a Terrence Malick film, that Gregory Polanco’s home run this afternoon against the Yankees’ David Phelps is not unlike a grand slam or maybe two grand slams.