Bad eye costs millions

So the St. Louis Cardinals signed this 16-year-old named Wagner Mateo from Santo Domingo. His physical showed possible problems with his right eye, and further examinations were inconclusive. You can read a Yahoo Sports article here.

It does look kind of silly. If he was good enough to sign, how could this be such a problem?

Well, I'm telling you. I have a bad right eye. I played little league and junior high baseball and it was never much of an issue. But later, when the pitching got better, and especially now, even playing softball or pick-up baseball with friends, I really cannot bat right-handed (my natural side). For whatever reason, when batting that way, I just can't pick up the ball.

Three million is a lot of money and, as unsympathetic as it sounds, I can completely understand the team voiding this contract. Like that article says, that money could be the difference in luring a free agent to the team.

College Football Already Showing its Prejudice

This stinks for me, because I really want to enjoy college football and usually it takes a good few weeks before college football screws up their own sport/season. As we all know I, along with everyone else, can name 5,000 ways that a non-playoff poll based system is ridiculous and retarded; and the 2009 season was quick to give us more proof.

The Houston Cougars are currently 2-0, meaning they are undefeated. No big deal sure... except one of those wins this past Saturday was against #5 Oklahoma State, AT Oklahoma State, by a 10 point margin, in a game they lead almost the whole way through.

Yet we get today's rankings and in BOTH the AP and Coaches polls the Houston Cougars are ranked below Oklahoma State. What a bunch of crap, what are these people possibly smoking? Hell... in the Coaches poll Houston isn't even ranked at all!!! Are you serious? They just beat the #5 team in the country and have an unblemished record but somehow they aren't worth being ranked?

Yeah Oklahoma State beat Georgia, that's cool, seriously, no sarcasm from me on that. And yeah Houston may in fact lose a game or more by the end of the season, but we don't know that. We can't be ranking teams based on what we think might happen. The only thing we know is OSU beat Georgia and lost to Houston; and Houston won both its games so far. It doesn't matter what may happen, until Houston gets the loss; because if someones only loss is to 1 other team; and that team is undefeated, the undefeated team by any natural logic should be higher.

It'll never happen because people care too much about bribes, politics and money, but I seriously wish all the non-automatic-qualifier teams would just disband from the BCS and start their own playoff and let the 6 BCS conferences have their stupid bowl system. Clearly humans are too stupid to run anything like this; we know the computer rankings would have this correct, but because the computers don't give false credit to USC, Florida and the rest for beating up on Idaho Institutional Facility and Florida Directional School by 50 points we gave the computers even less say in the matter.

And why do the coaches get a vote in the first place? They clearly have a conflict of interest, and that's not even counting the fact that they don't watch ANY of the games... so lets base a championship off what they think?!

Yeesh, thanks again college football for proving that you can in fact produce worse and worse results year-in-year-out.

The Milwaukee Mile - Act IV: Scene 2

ok.... a room full of official like people sitting around at a table, having an official discussion/meeting:

aaand... Scene!

---

Head Officially Official Person "Ok people, what did we all get together to talk about?"

Secondary Official "I think we needed to discuss changing the butter we use on the popcorn at our annual pig race"

Thirdly Official "What!? no no no silly; we're here to discuss what to do about our go-cart track."

SO "We have a go-cart track!? That's awesome! Can I go drive my gold rimmed golf cart on it tomorrow?"

HOOP "You two are confused, that thing is just some artistically designed parking lot. It was done by some guy who was trying to pay homage to the fact that we had just entered the 20th century with a giant 0"

SO "Wow that is kind of cool, do you think we could build a mini-golf course around it?"

TO "Ooohh that'd be great, we should make sure it has big waterfalls, and one of those awesome holes where you hit the ball in a tube and don't know where it will come out on the other end"

HOOP "No no guys, thats not in the plans, I think the idea we were here to discuss was how to go about turning that parking lot into looking like a giant piece of cheese, in homage to the great cheese rush of 1972."

SO "But I thought you said it wasn't a parking lot? What next, its going to be a drive-in movie theater too?"

Citizen in Attendance "Are you people insane!? That is a racetrack! Its been here for over 100 years; we've been holding automobile races there annually, its been quite a popular place and a part of the states tradition, but its in trouble right now because the people who hold the races don't want to come back."

HOOP "Wait, it is, well that sounds kind of neat"

TO "Why don't these people want to come back to our track, are they too good for our track; well I don't want them if they are some elitist group who thinks they are too good for our cheese."

CA "They don't want to come back because you guys appointed someone who didn't have the finances to actually run the track and pay everyone the money they owe"

SO "Well what a stupid guy, he'll ruin us all by not paying these bills. However else are we coing to get these speedboats into our new lake?"

CA "There is no lake, are you people even listening? We need to come up with something to do about this whole debt issue. We can't possibly bring in the events we want if we still owe these organizations 2 million dollars; they want to come back but need to be paid for this past year first."

HOOP "My gosh, how could we let a situation like this happen, who appointed this financeless bum to run our beloved car racy thingy?"

SO "Wasn't me, was probably Brett Farve or something."

TO "It couldn't have been Brett Favre, he does no wrong, silly. I think it was you HOOP"

HOOP "Well it doesn't matter, the more important matter here is how we will get this money that needs to be paid to the horse wrangler so he can get these chariot races back where they belong."

SO "Well I think I know a guy who might have a couple bucks, I think he even once bought a used car, so he can probably even negotiate this so called debt down a little bit."

TO "I just don't know if that will be enough, we need someone who has money and can competently run this track. We don't want to lose something with.... what was it?"

CA "Over 100 years of racing!"

TO "yeah yeah, we can't lose a track with over 100 years of something-or-other. If only we knew who would be a good person to put in charge of this matter."

(Man enters room)

Mr. D. "Hi everyone, I heard there was a meeting to discuss the problems at our racetrack. My partners and I wanted to offer up our services. We are all very successful and rich guys with a bankroll of over 1 billion dollars and we all have had a very large number of success running many different businesses and ventures including ones associated with racing. I brought along here even certified letters from banks asserting that we have the financial capability to get the debt taken care of and to get the track back up and operating in a profitable manner."

HOOP "Holy wow mister! I don't believe I see a name tag, did you sign in at the door?"

Mr. D. "Ummm... No. I didn't see anywhere to sign up out there"

TO "Well you have to sign in at the front desk, its official policy."

HOOP "Yes I believe we're going to have to ask you to wait outside until we conclude our official business here sir, no meeting crashers allowed"


-END SCENE-

---

And if the play is a little too confusing for you, try reading the novel the play is based on.

The Quick Notes from the IRL's trip to the Land of Chicago

-Congrats to Daniel Herrington notching up his and his owner’s (Bryan Herta) first victory; the start of a bright future for both I think.

-Not saying Herrington owes him a portion of the winnings, but it might be nice of Daniel to buy James Davison a nice steak dinner for the block party Davison threw behind Herrington once he got the lead.

-He also might want to go have a chat with Mike Potehken who he bumped with no less than 72 times before something on Potekhen’s car finally broke.

-Congrats to J.R. “Captain America” Hildebrand for winning the Lights title and putting on almost a Alex Lloyd-ish type of season in Lights this year!

-Here’s hoping Hildebrand doesn’t repeat a Lloyd-ish type of post-Lights couple of years of IndyCar limbo.

- Every ting goona be alright!

-The competitive American in me really wishes Team USA (run by AGR) will forego Marco and put “Captain America” in our A1GP car full time this year; I really think he’d give USA a shot at the title.

-Dear media and Versus announcers; we watched live, on-screen, two cars side-by-side, while 1 of the 2 cars was pushing THE BUTTON, and the cars stayed side-by-side with absolutely no visible difference in speed. What more do we need to stop pretending the button produces power of any kind of significance.

- Eeeery ting gonnna be all right!

-Super props to Jon Beekhius and the Versus crew for their piece on the black boxes, and the Power/Philippe crash, and also the piece showing behind the scenes team radio etc from the previous race.

-I have the next great piece for Versus; Not all people have read Dr. Stephen Olvey’s great book, so do a piece showing us what its like to be the Delphi Safety Crew for a race, what they do during a race, what they talk on their radio channel about, how they have to double as clean up crew, and how they sit at ready while we enjoy the action.

-If I told you after Indianapolis, that I just came back from the future and had a picture from later in the season of Mario Moraes, Graham Rahal and Marco Andretti 3-wide on an oval, during a green flag, and they all came out of it in one piece, you would have told me I was full of crap.

-For the second oval in a row, Ryan Briscoe edged out a car that had THE BUTTON’s remaining while he didn’t.

-Hey Versus announcers, don’t worry if you stop talking about THE BUTTON so much, Every Ting Gonna Be All Right!

- Great job again to the broadcast crew for giving us all the action all over the track, instead of following leaders in line, something that has pained viewers by ESPN/ABC for many years.

-That said, stop showing us spouses at the end of races. If you’re going to show us anything at all, go split screen and instead of spouses give us shots of teams/owners, I want to see what Chip and Roger are doing while their cars are neck and neck.

-Justin Wilson was running as high as 5th, and finished in the Top 10. Dale Coyne wants to know what you think about his “road course specialized” team now.

-The only thing that guts me more than cutting away from a pass is following a guy coasting around on a victory lap only to cut away right before he celebrates with donuts or jumping out the car. Briscoe and especially James Davison pulled some very impressive victory donuts the past few races, and not a single one made the TV screen.

-Dear IZOD, don’t be afraid to plug some of the other apparel you make; I’m interested in non-Indycar clothing too; heck just do a commercial with Hunter-Reay wearing any of your clothing so long as it means a new commercial. Seriously, you can make a new commercial, no worries, Every ting gonna be alright!

-In what is no doubt the BEST EVER one-off paint scheme, Sarah Fisher and her crew are going pink in Homestead, raising money and awareness for the fight against breast cancer! And if you don’t want the Sarah Fisher specific gear, there is plenty other great awareness apparel with proceeds going to the same fight.

-The ICS owners want to move the start time of the Indy 500 back to where it used to be, which would allow some drivers to do “the double” with NASCAR’s Charlotte race.

-While many whine about how Tony Stewart, John Andretti, Robby Gordon & Sam Hornish Jr would be the only possible gains from “the double” they are all missing the one guy who has been doing a ridiculous amount of doubles in every series he can for the last 2 years, and one who has said he wants a shot at Indy… Kyle Busch.


Pictures via indycar.com