(Double!) Short Bullshit Post

Argh, don't have anything substantial to riff on so I'll just make it short with a couple general complaints. I'll do a full writeup of something shitty later in the week. Suggestions welcome in the comments.

1) This complaint pretty much speaks for itself- Chris Berman hosted Sportscenter tonight. Seriously. First time I've seen him on there in more than a year. Guess what? He was terrible. Fuck that chodemunch. Hacky, unfunny, and unnecessarily drew attention to himself. BACKBACKBACKBACKBACKGAWWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN OH GOD I AM A WORTHLESS PECKERHEAD. I can't believe he used to pretty much be the network's "go to" guy for highlights (like 15, 20 years ago). And I can't believe he still gets to do NFL Live every fall. Thank God MLB network is so good. I can turn to their Baseball Tonight-ish show to get my fix in that department, and reluctantly turn back to ESPN if absolutely necessary for other sports.

2) This is a complaint that requires a little more nuance. Are real horse racing fans as hung up on the fact that there hasn't been a Triple Crown winner in however many years as most major sports websites make them out to be? Do they care that much? Are they desperate for it? The media really makes it seem like it's a huge deal- and if that's the case, I don't think I understand why. I don't care about horse racing (in fact I despise it) so I can't relate directly. But I can relate, at least to some extent, by thinking about how much I care about very rare accomplishments in sports I do like a lot.

When the Patriots went 16-0, I didn't care. Not because I despise the Patriots, but because it's not a big deal to me to see a team accomplish that very rare feat. To make a better example, I don't hate or like the Colts, but I've never been super excited to see them open 10-0, 12-0, whatever. I'm not sitting here, hoping some team goes undefeated for a season just for the sake of it. Doesn't matter to me.

How about someone in baseball hitting .400? That hasn't been done in forever, but it's not like I find myself being really excited when Mauer or someone else is over .400 in June. Whatever. It's just not that compelling to me. Same goes for long hit streaks. Didn't Ryan Zimmerman get to 35 or something last summer? I actually kind of like the Nationals, but I wasn't desperately hoping he'd get into the 50s.

Of course, these analogies are imperfect for a number of reasons. The football one isn't great, because I have a favorite football team, whereas many horse fans hoping for a Triple Crown don't have a favorite and will just root for whoever wins the Kentucky Derby to win the Preakness and Belmont. And the baseball ones are about secondary accomplishments, not winning "championships." But still- are horse racing fans really super hung up on this? Are they desperate to see that accomplishment just for the sake of seeing the accomplishment? Would they feel OK seeing it if it was done by a relatively unimpressive horse against terrible competition, as opposed to an all time great horse against good competition? I don't know. I certainly won't lose sleep about it, but I do wonder.

Long story short: horse racing is fucking stupid and I wish it would leave major sports media coverage forever. Keep it where it belongs: as a place for gambling addicts to squander their last few dimes before telling their wives to divorce them and to please take the kids.

Rick Reily finds another asinine story to wax poetic about

If you love to see a strong female take on the boys, if you think fillies should be given every chance to compete with studs, if you despise sleazy efforts by rich men to keep girls off the field, we have a heroine for you.

Her name is Rachel Alexandra and she's beautiful, fast and young.

Surely there must be some catch. No woman I know is beautiful, young, AND fast.

Oh, and she's a racehorse.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

/slowly conceals erection

In fact, she's one of the fastest racehorses in the world. You can see her run in Saturday's Preakness, but only thanks to a last-second triumph of brains over bullies.

None of these triumphs being carried out by Rachel Alexandra herself because in fact, she belongs to a species of animals that are so dumb, they'll run back into a burning stable unless you tie them up.

So how come Alexandra the Great didn't win the Kentucky Derby? Because she wasn't entered.

Not run Rachel Alexandra? That'd be like leaving your Lamborghini Diablo in the garage! Making Emeril order Domino's! Sticking Halle Berry in a nunnery!

Oooh, double topical reference.

"Colts should run against colts and fillies should run against fillies," explained Rachel's then-owner, Dolphus Morrison, a man whose thinking is so caveman he could star in a Geico ad.

These references are so fresh, that if they were made into a movie, it'd be about a guy who moved from West Philadelphia to Bel Air, and would star Will Smith!

He believes the Derby is a "showcase" for future stallions. He means, of course, stallion owners, who can show their horse's speed in the Derby and then get much more in stud fees when they retire them way too early at the end of the season. Money over history, in other words. So the Derby was won by Mine That Bird, a gelding. So how'd that work out for the breeders, Mr. Morrison?

I'm sure that none one of the other horses in that field will get lucrative stud fees. Not a single one.

But pessimism ruled at Pimlico and we were looking at a Masters without Tiger Woods—until last week.

Tiger Woods: A player who's been dominate in his skill sport for over a decade :: Rachel Alexandra: A racehorse who had only beaten other 3 year old fillies before Preakness.

That's when Jess Jackson, owner of Curlin, bought Rachel and immediately entered her in the Preakness.

The multi-millionaire buys a sure-fire lock and enters it into the Preakness. I can't wait for the heart warming Disney movie.

Until things got ugly, which they usually do in this game. Because Rachel wasn't originally a Triple Crown nominee, she could only run in the 14-horse Preakness if 13 or fewer nominated horses entered, which looked like it would be the case. But then Mark Allen, the owner of Mine That Bird, announced he was thinking of entering his other horse —Indy Express—just to bump Rachel, thereby getting back his star jockey. (Hey, Mark, I don't like your chances for Sportsman of the Year.)

Wait--you mean in a sport where the specific function is for gambling, someone tried to do something to increase their chances of winning? I'm shocked. Shocked and appalled.

It got worse. Adding his name to the list of co-conspirators was Ahmed Zayat, owner of Pioneerof the Nile, who said he'd also like to block Rachel with an extra horse. Sure! If you can't beat her on the track, beat her in the registering office.

Yeah, and fuck the NCAA for enforcing academic standards on athletes. Stop beating college teams at the registrar's office.

The whole thing made you want to roll around in stable manure just for the comparative cleanliness of it.

Which is still cleaner than being involved in a "sport" that derives most of its revenue from the gambling losses of the lower-class. Oh wait...

In the end, the female was saved by … a female. Marylou Whitney, a great lady of horse racing, said she'd pull Luv Gov in the Preakness if Rachel wasn't allowed to race. "We think Rachel Alexandra is wonderful," Whitney's husband, John Hendrickson, told the New York Times. "It is ladies first for us."

A nice gesture and all, but if Marylou Whitney weren't a millionaire, I doubt she'd be so eager to forfeit the roughly $100,000 in fees it took to enter Luv Gov in the Preakness.

Imagine that.

That caused the two conniving owners to drop their scheme in shame and give Rachel her spot in Baltimore.

They didn't abort their plan because of shame. They aborted because they understood the decrease in expected utility from entering multiple horses.

To repeat: In the face of fear and chauvinism and collusion, the very best athlete will get her chance. And isn't that when sport is at its best?

At no point did Rachel Alexandra realize she was looking "fear and chauvinism" in the face. She's a fucking horse used in a large gambling enterprise run by multi-millionaires. Get over it.

i love jokes and hate horse racing

its tuesday, and feels like monday because the week just started. so i thought id share an article i really enjoyed before spending the rest of the week tearing apart ones i hate.

The Debriefing: If Vick's a Jerk, So Are Preakness Organizers

by "mjh"

goddamn bloggers. always using bizarre indecipherable pseudonyms.

http://www.aolsportsblog.com/2007/05/23/the-debriefing-if-vicks-a-scumbag-so-are-preakness-organizers/

if were going to make 1,000 michael vick-related posts, this might as well be one of them. aol fanhouse, which i usually find to be extremely "blah" (as in, nothing i really like... nothing i really hate, either) has published a doozy of a piece comparing dogfighting to horse racing. now, before i post some sections of the article, ill put it all out there up front: i HATE horse racing. not dislike; i dislike the designated hitter rule. not "am bothered by"; i am bothered by the usc trojan football team. no... in the world of sports, there is nothing i HATE quite like horse racing.

how ridiculous is it? lets just start the complaining with the obvious fact that its a bunch of animals. if horse racing is really a "sport" lets get a panel of judges down to sea world, have them assign scores to the routines being done by dolphins and killer whales, and televise it. i know id watch that before i watched the kentucky derby. furthermore i cant stand the super-rich-or-super-drunk-white-people-only culture, the completely uninspiring storylines, or the fact that most people who call themselves horse racing "fans" really only care about 3 goddamn races. when that one horse war emblem just barely missed winning the triple crown 4 or 5 years ago, and they showed the millionaire owners and their families crying in the stands immediately after the race, i wanted to reach through the tv and slap the shit out of those people. are you kidding me? on top of all these other complaints, as this author points out, horse racing is also pretty cruel to the horses. im not sure if it should be equated to dogfighting. thats probably a stretch considering the whole point of dogfighting is for the animals to maul each other, while horse races in and of themselves are usually not violent. and its silly for him to put "the preakness" in the title of the article, rather than "nearly all major horse races." but still... fuck horse racing. without further ado, heres some of the better one liners and points this guy makes:

I'd also recommend taking one particularly charismatic pitbull, grooming it as a noble and magnificent champion (name it something like "Marmaro," maybe), and then have it brutally mauled to death during a nationally-televised pit fight. You'd be surprised at how much people love that stuff.

this as part of a sequence of fecicious suggestions to vick as to how he can pass off dog fighting as a legitimate kind of entertainment. "marmaro" is a sweet name for a barbaro parody of an animal.

later, to clarify his position, this is part of a list of things the guy says he would rather do than defend vick:

...buy WNBA season tickets...

buh-zing! coincidentally, ive heard the WNBA made fun of by being referenced as the HBA: horse basketball association.

I just want to know why horse racing is acceptable if dog fighting is evil. Do both take advantage of animals solely for the entertainment of humans? Yes. Are both responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of animals? Yes. Do both cause immeasurable suffering and injuries to the animals involved? Yes. Do human beings profit off of this pain and death? In both cases, yes. What other standards are there?

like i already said, this is definitely oversimplification and not a 100% fair comparison. but still, a valid point at its most basic level. and one that a lot of people fail to appreciate as they get swept up in "triple crown fever" this time of year. speaking of which- how mad must the owners of the belmont stakes be every time the horse that wins the kentucky derby fails to win the preakness? there goes millions in ad revenue, thanks to decreased ratings expectations. mwah mwah. i picture them as a bunch of guys dressed in seersucker suits, angrily punching through their top hats like villains in old silent movies used to do when their plans got foiled.

And when (a horse is) in a truck being shipped to the slaughterhouse, the horse isn't thinking, "Well, I've had a great run, but I feel like since I helped Elroy Ryerson hit that exacta and buy himself an extra bottle of Thunderbird, I can go out on top." He's thinking, "I DON'T WANT TO DIE, GET ME THE HELL OUT OF THIS TRUCK."

gambling just so that you can buy extra thunderbird... a terrifying scenario. maybe you should drop down to colt 45 or old english for a while, until things in your life turn around a little bit.

People see Seabiscuit and have this romanticized notion of how well horses are treated, but very few horses get the Seabiscuit suite. Not every race horse gets the immaculate stable, the company of numerous female horses, and a feast of oats and carrots everyday. Not every horse gets to develop a close, personal relationship with Tobey Maguire.

they damn well should. if he spent all his time befriending horses he wouldnt have any left over to star in crappy movies like a certain giant blockbuster that was recently released.

But most horses aren't in Barbaro's tax bracket. If a horse can't make money, or stops making money, he'll soon be holding together your child's next arts-and-crafts project. You know how much money would've been spent on Barbaro if he finished out of the money in the Kentucky Derby? About enough to buy a bullet and a ride in a dump truck.

couldnt have said it better myself. every kid age 14 or under that sent barbaro a get well card should have to watch a 3 hour tape that consists only of footage of injured race horses being euthanized. every person over the age of 14 who sent it a get well card should be spayed or neutered. if youre going to engage in that kind of activity, especially with all the other stuff going on in the world today, you should not be allowed to reproduce. the planet has enough out of touch and stupid people as it is.

look, its not that im a animal rights activist. i used to date one so believe me, i know how frightening and crazy they can be. you wont see me giving money to PETA (or even liking PETA) or refusing to eat anything but free-range-super-organic-cage-free meats. but the point remains- a large percentage of horse racing fans probably love animals and dont want them to be treated badly, and they have no idea just how shitty life really is for those things. also horse racing is fucking dumb.