Don't Call Johnny Manziel Un-American

Over the long Memorial Day weekend, several sports outlets reported that Johnny Manziel vacationed in Las Vegas for the holiday.  A photo of the new Cleveland Brown QB (third string, remember – that’s why they drafted him in the first round) and New England Patriot’s oft injured TE Rob Gronkowski, poolside, surrounded by bikini glad young women, swirled around the Twittersphere, causing many a pundit to ponder how Manziel could be so audacious.    

Well, Manziel is 21.  He’ll be 22 in December.  It’s legal for him to drink.  It’s legal for him to gamble.  I think it’s legal to hang out at a pool with young women in bikinis, although I have no firsthand knowledge of any such thing, as I didn’t have a copyrighted nickname to go with serious bank when I was 21.  So, what’s the big deal?

I’ll admit I’ve gone through three cycles now of indifference, loathing, and now kind of liking Manziel. 

I remember watching him almost single handedly beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa his freshman year and thinking, “that kid is pretty good.”  I was surprised a freshman won the Heisman trophy, but figured it was bound to happen eventually.  

 

The loathing part set in the summer following the Heisman when Manziel went insane frat boy and was in the news constantly.  And, yes, I realize he was doing what a lot of college kids do, but I don’t like them either.

Now that he’s landed in the pros in purgatory, otherwise known as Cleveland, I figure he’s adult earning money to play a kid’s game and he can do what he wants to do. 

To my knowledge, he hasn’t tested positive for any banned substances, or claimed he was taking them to increase his fertility, like Robert Mathis.  He hasn’t been caught on hotel surveillance cameras after knocking out his wife, like Ray Rice.  And, hopefully, he hasn’t murdered anyone that we’ll learn about in a few years, like Aaron Hernandez.

I think it would be great if Manziel turns out to be somewhere in the middle of the extremes that make professional sports and especially the NFL so tedious.  On the side of the ledger are the squeaky clean, too good to be true, dare I say politically correct, players like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady who never deviate from the script.  On the other side of the ledger are the Mathises and Rices and Hernandezes that make one feel a little uneasy for enjoying the sport if players like this play it, on drugs, or by extending violence beyond the field, or even murder.

Why couldn’t Manziel be like Joe Namath or Ken Stabler, two other SEC QB gods from the past?  As a leader of the Oakland Raiders in the 70’s, Stabler and others often stayed out late the night before games.  As long as it didn’t affect their play, Coach John Madden was fine with it.  And, Joe Namath was quoted once as saying, "It seems almost un-American to me for a bachelor not to go around having a drink with a lady now and then."  Well, wasn’t that all Manziel was doing in Vegas?  Namath and Stabler just didn’t have to worry about Twitter, that’s all.

MLB Standings by Run Differential: Look out for the Mariners and Marlins

As the Memorial Day weekend approaches, most MLB teams have played a little over forty games, or roughly a quarter of the season.  We’re still twenty or thirty games away from getting some clear meaning from both individual statistics and team statistics, but I thought it might be interesting to look at what the standings would look like if we just focused on run differential instead of wins and losses.  Ideally, the Pythagorean projections should be applied to a larger sample, like the entire season, but we can get a small glimpse of what might unfold in the 120 games or so left to go.

Here are the American League Standings as of Wednesday, May 21^st.  (Ignore the yellow that ESPN highlights my favorite teams with).

 

So, in that wonderful exercise all sports fans love to play, If the Season Ended Today:  the Orioles, Tigers, and A’s would all be division winners with the Angels, Yankees, Blue Jays, and possibly the Twins duking it out in the wild card (I include 4 WC teams because all teams haven’t played the same number of games, but are all within 0.5 games of each other).

But now let’s look at the standings based on run differential.  In the AL East, the Blue Jays are actually the only team with a positive run differential, so they would win the division.  In the Central, the Tigers remain division winners, as does Oakland in the West.  But, the wild cards would be the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California on the West Coast of the United States of America and the Seattle Mariners.

Go Mariners.  Boo, no Yankees.

On to the National League where the standings look like this:

Based on win / loss records, the Braves, Brewers, and Giants would all be division winners, with Rockies, Nationals, Cardinals, and Dodgers all within 0.5 games and vying for the wild card.

But the National League is even more intriguing than the AL when you look at run differential.  In this scenario, the Miami Marlins win the East, the Cardinals win the Central, and the Rockies win the West.  The wild card would come down to the Braves and the Giants.

So, keep an eye on the Marlins and Rockies, as that could be fun, and reserve your skepticism for the Brewers and even the Nationals.

(Just a FYI note here:  the Cardinals have underperformed their Pythagorean projections for two years running and are doing it again.  Could this mean Matheny stinks even worse that you think as a manager?  A column for another day).

Four Really Creepy Commercials I See Way Too Much

Since I’ve been writing for the Oregon Sports News, I’ve actually increased the amount of sports television I consume to include glances at the NBA playoffs and the NHL playoffs while going between the MLB game of the night and the Mariners’ game.  With watching smaller networks like RootSports and TNT, comes a saturation of repeating commercials. 

It’s safe to say, I’m no longer excited by the prospect of switching to Verizon and I’ve begun to tire of the formerly quirky fun Flo at Progressive, although I still think Wendy is pretty enticing with that Tuscan Chicken sandwich.  But, lately I’ve grown increasingly disturbed by a few commercials, so I thought I’d share my Four Really Creepy Commercials I See Way Too Much.

Number Four – Creepy Wire Kid

Creepy Wire Kid is presumably the son of Creepy Wire Wife, who we’ll discuss in a minute.  DirectTV has some great commercials, like all those if /then / this happens / ditch cable spots.  “Don’t get body slammed by a lowland gorilla.” But, the latest campaign to get rid of ugly wires, unless they belong to your creepy marionette family is a little bizarre.  How exactly does the kid get caught in the fan?  Where were the top of his wires?  And, who’s holding the wires?

Number Three – Creepy Wire Wife

This is the first of the marionette family pieces, and I’m betting we aren’t stopping with Creepy Wire Kid that’s number two.  Creepy Wire Wife has the shock value of WTF, and the comedic element of Dave Chappelle wanna be who proclaims, “not weird.” I think the most disturbing part of Creepy Wire Wife is her complete lack of coordination as she spills lemonade all over the place.  I thought the movie about the dude who wanted to marry his computer was weird enough, but this is definitely not not weird.

Number Two – Uncomfortable Sister Behavior 

Now, I don’t have a sister, and if I did, she probably wouldn’t crave Hot Pockets, as she would have presumably been raised by parents too.  But, the idea that you introduce your sister to a friend and they immediately start making sexual innuendo over opposite ends of Hot Pocket is definitely creepy.

Number One – Sexual Harassment at the Jack-in-the-Box 

Company Pic Nic

Two things.  Company CEO Jack.  “Daddy Like.”  Nuff Said.  Just watch it.

Who exactly plays adult co-ed dodge ball?

During the local television broadcasts of Seattle Mariner games and Seattle Sounder games, an organization named UNDERDOG Sports Leagues has been advertising the formation of summer, adult, co-ed sports leagues. 

Among the sports were the to-be-expected offerings like kickball, (which from my understanding is usually a thinly veiled excuse to drink outdoors during the day, but that might be a southern thing and not a Pacific Northwest thing), flag-football, and volleyball.  For the slightly more skilled adult, there were co-ed slow and fast pitch softball teams.  But, the one offering that surprised me, if for no other reason than it has been systematically phased out for children due to its barbaric “bullying” quality, was Dodge Ball. 

Adult Dodge Ball?

Who exactly plays adult co-ed dodge ball?  

 My experience as a child was that there were generally speaking two types of dodge ball players:  the predators and the prey.  The more athletic and aggressive boys of fifth and sixth grade, predators, took the opportunity to punish the less athletic (or let’s face it – completely un-athletic) boys and girls (no sex discrimination here) by cornering them and smashing that infamous red ball off their head.  The coach would smirk with satisfaction, as he was also that athletic, aggressive boy at 10, but in the spirit of making sure no one went to the nurse’s office, he would remind the players to aim below the shoulders.  This would usually result in weak boy prey being targeted in their boy zone and weak girl prey being targeted in the chest.

Fast forward to adulthood.  How many of the prey who survived dodge ball in PE as children want to relive that as adults?  Maybe some of them grew into athleticism and want revenge?  I’m betting there are some of those, but the experience of being victimized usually leads one to be more sympathetic to those less fortunate.  In other words, we’re all democrats now and can’t have adult co-ed dodge ball on our resume of interests or extra-curricular activities.

And what about the predator adult counterparts?   Do they seriously think the easy pickings of middle school are still there to be tormented in adult co-ed dodge ball?  I’m thinking, no, so do these games degenerate into Lord of the Flies meets the Hunger Games on a nice Saturday morning?

I am modestly interested in witnessing this social experiment, but not nearly enough to even think about signing up for the league and a therapist.