Mr. Bitter

I covered last Sunday’s Vikings-49ers preseason extravaganza and got to write a column about it.

(I can’t link anything here on the blog - apparently, that’s the problem I’ve been having. But google my name and Brett Favre and it’ll come up.)

Anyway, the Favre press conference ended with me asking him if training camp matters. He gazed into my eyes (no, really - he makes eye contact) and spent three minutes hemming and hawing about it, not wanting to dismiss the importance of camp, but not wanting to imply that he missed anything. Here’s a transcript without the extraneous ands and buts:
“In college, everybody practiced three weeks before we played a game. That’s a very short amount of time. I think physically speaking as players get older … I think the chemistry and camaraderie and all of those things are very important. If you can get that in college in a short amount of time, you obviously you can get it in pro football because you spend a lot more time in pro football on football. You don’t have to worry about class and things like that. I mean there’s so many restrictions in college football and yet it gets done. From a physical standpoint, as you get older, it’s tougher. Older players go in and a lot of them do one-a-days and things like that. I can only speak from last year. The chemistry obviously worked out. Which to me is the first important thing. But I felt fresh for probably the first 10 or 12 weeks. Then I hit the wall. And not the rookie wall. I hit the old man wall. Where we’re driving in Wednesday morning and I was kind of like, ‘Oh, boy. The last thing I want to do is sit in meetings this morning. Or go out to practice.’ But you do it. If I decided to play, then I;m gonna do that. That’s not to say I’m going to feel great every day. The rookie wall’s different. The eleventh game, they’re used to being done. I’m used to playing 16 games. That’s not to saw that it’s without pain. One thing I know as you get older, you tend to complain about a lot of stuff, not only to yourself, but to everyone else. If it’s eight weeks of training camp, then it’s eight weeks. If it’s two weeks, it’s whatever everyone else is doing, really. And I keep using college as an example. As much time as we spend in pro football, we still make a ton of mistakes. You get four plays in a game tonight. You want to see the other guys play and things like that and I understand that. It really doesn’t do the older veterans a whole lot of good. I always get in trouble from my family for saying, ‘It is what it is,’ but that’s so true. If it was two preseason games, which I would much rather have, then you go in, knock it out and do it for real. To me the most important ingredient for our team and really teams in general is chemistry. And it was a perfect fit last year. And no one knew how that would sort itself out but it was a perfect fit. And now, the guys know where I stand, I know where they stand, now you’ve just got to go play. And that’s hard enough. So, we’ll see.”

And now you know what it’s like to interview a famous athlete.

The news today is that Stephen Strasburg has a torn ligament in his pitching elbow and will need “Tommy John” surgery, meaning he’ll likely miss the entire 2011 season.

Strasburg, of course, was babied to new levels since coming up to the Nationals. He was on a strict pitch count, never passing 100. They announced at the beginning that he wouldn’t surpass 105 innings in the majors. Etc.

And did it help? Not at all.

I’m obviously not taking delight in any of this. I like Strasburg, got to cover him in college, and was excited about him coming to the big leagues. But it’s pretty obvious that the babying doesn’t help at all. And that’s one of the big problems I have with pitch counts - there’s no evidence that it’s keeping pitchers healthier. Pitching injuries are up in the last 20 years, not down.

The thing that really annoys me is that every time a guy throws 110 pitches, if he gets hurt within a month of that outing, the story will note how many pitches he threw in that one game. As if every pitcher’s arm explodes as soon as it hits 110 pitches in a game.

And after surgery, of course, they’ll baby them some more. For the record, Tommy John had 91 complete games after his surgery, compared to 71 before surgery. He had 11 complete games in 1977, his second season after the surgery, and went on to pitch 12 more seasons.

So, something has gone haywire here at the blog. Posts haven’t been showing up. I do not know what the problem is but I’ve been asked by several of you what’s up. Anyway, the long-term plan is to back up the data and install new blog software. That’s probably a couple of weeks away. Until then, we’ll see how it goes.

Testing. Testing. Testing….

My blog appears to be not showing up as late, so I’m writing this as a bit of a test post, while also updating what’s been going on lately. We had a summer Santa on Sunday with three Santas rambling on the wharf. The weekend before was a lot of fun - went to see Concrete Blonde on Saturday, then went to the Tosca Project with exWK on Sunday. Both shows were great. OK, let’s see if this worked

* UPDATE * Apparently, one of my posts was causing a problem. I’m not sure why. But it’s been deleted. It was about the idiot from Santa Clara writing an opinion piece mistaking the stopper in baseball with the closer. I think it was part of a larger conspiracy. I tried to repost it here, but the same problem happened. I can only guess there’s something about the link that my blog doesn’t like.

It’s interesting living in San Francisco. There’s obviously a lot of interest in the World Cup thanks to all the people from all over the world here. There’s a ton of great bars that serve as home to various ex-patriots (still the greatest assignment the Contra Costa Times ever gave me - sending me to various national bars during the 1998 World Cup). But there’s also an interesting contingent of hipster soccer fans here - people who literally hate all sports except soccer.

I know one of them - the Little Drummer Girl hates all sports but claims to be a soccer fan. Just like she hates all music yet claims to be a music fan.

Anyway, all the hipsters are talking soccer this month. I’ve been talking soccer with actual immigrants. Today, I was out on Project 20 on an all-immigrant crew and we watched Chile-Spain and Switzerland-Honduras during our lunch break. We talked about some of the reasons soccer doesn’t work here.

And, to be clear, it doesn’t. The U.S. advancing is a cute little story as far as it goes, but the Americans won’t get any deeper than the quarterfinals - if they even get past Ghana tomorrow.

(Prediction - home continent advantage hasn’t reared its head yet. Tomorrow is the last chance. Home field advantage wouldn’t overcome a Brazil or a Germany, but I don’t think the U.S. is good enough. The vuvuzelas will be honking. Ghana in the upset.)

Anyway, we’re hearing the same crap about Landon Donovan’s goal that we heard in 1994 and 1978. Probably some clown even said it in 1950 when the U.S. upset England in group play. “This is the big boost that will finally turn soccer into a mainstream sport in America.” It’s not going to happen. And the reason is that the only people in the U.S. who like soccer actually hate sports - Hipsters and yuppie parents. I already mentioned the former. The latter sign their kids up for soccer because it makes for cute videos and they’re such pussies about their kids that they don’t want them playing “dangerous” sports like baseball or football. These kids aren’t playing by choice. And as soon as they can, they quit the sport and they don’t go see Double-A soccer in person because they never cared about the sport in the first place.

Oh, and girls like soccer. Because they never wanted their ACLs in the first place.

I was walking down Valencia this afternoon at lunchtime and noticed a Burger place. The menu in the window included instructions on ordering a burger, starting with, “Select your meat.”

I am not eating a burger at a place that markets itself to idiots who don’t know how to order a fucking burger.

We have a new winner in the “Catty, competitive things said by a woman I’m interested in about one of her alleged friends whom I’ve also been involved with” competition. We were discussing said friend and she said, “She says she’s bi. I am bi.”

This is, of course, awesome. Seriously, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If I had realized how to work the whole “Women are insanely competitive with other women who they call friends” thing in my 20s, I would have been dangerous.

And how the hell did I not know about the “Happy Meal” at Madrone on Sundays? A shot of Fernet and a can of PBR for $5??? Who needs a toy?

Bitter brother sent me an email today:

“Whenever you form your next band … you need to include a vuvuzela player. Just to run around blowing on that thing at random intervals.”

I like it.

Hey kids, we’re starting a new game today: Porn? Or Not Porn? An unnamed friend of mine had a couple of Facebook exchanges with an unnamed actor. She made me check out his IMDB page (which I will not be linking, on the off chance he could figure out the source because he clearly would be the type that would Google himself). And prominent there is a link to a movie he was in: “Harry Putter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets.”

“Oh my god, he’s in porn,” I exclaimed. “No,” screamed my friend. I mean, c’mon, look at the title - the slightly changed from a mainstream movie, a chamber pot? I mean not only should this be porn, it should be scatological porn.

I finally deigned to click on a video link and … alas, it doesn’t appear to be porn. I can’t say for certain, because I only watched the first five minutes. Most porn I’ve see has nekkid people within two minutes.

But what a waste of a good porn title. Also, I went through this guy’s IMDB page and it’s filled with title that could be porn. “Infidelicacy.” “California Tango.” “Crooked Tongue.” “In Search of Lovecraft.” “The Pillow Case.” “Voyeur.” “Salivate.” Plus, he played the “Horny White Guy” in “Rice Cracker.”

Every one of those could be porn. In fact, I wish every one of them was porn. Anyway, I’m instituting a new game. Periodically, I will put a real title up on the blog. It will either be Porn. Or Not Porn. You’ll get to decide.

Here’s our first one:

“Oriental Jade”