The Simmons Review- V.15
Friday, October 20, 2006
Okay, so I lied.....twice in fact. First lie, that I was being lazy today. Second, that I wouldn't talk about Simmons until after the Playoffs. Well, sue me....I'm going to. You know why? His running NLCS Game 7 Diary is an abomination of respectable journalism. I'm going through this quick, so keep up.
Time for Quadruple-A Game 7
1. The Title......we get it dick......you think the NL is bad. Re-used jokes are as clever as referencing the same 80s TV show every column.....wait.....
2. 5:20 -- Just called my buddy JackO to do the "SUPPAN! PEREZ!" routine. "I'm watching Survivor," he says. "I don't have a ton of interest in a Quadruple-A Game 7." Oh. You're friends are losers and not sports fans if they don't want to watch a Game 7 of the NLCS....period.
3. 5:22 -- With two outs in the first, Albert Pujols comes up to a round of boos. Win or lose, he has been the breakout star of this playoffs as everyone collectively realized that he's kind of a jerk. Barry Bonds, move on over! There's a new sheriff in Jerk Town! Umm why is that again? Can we have an explanation please? If it's the Glavine comment that's just retarded.
4. 5:22, 5:34, 5:25.....Nice timeline douche.
5. 5:28 -- This seems like a good time to mention a story I told in my book -- back in 2003, when the Red Sox acquired Suppan, we watched him stink it up for a few weeks, followed by me angrily calling Gus (who was producing "Baseball Tonight") to scold him for not telling me that Suppan sucked, followed by Gus laughing, "I thought you knew!" Holly"fuckin"wood!!!
6. 6:10 -- Leading off the third, David Eckstein rips a 3-2 pitch down the left-field line for a double. You know what Fox? You can show me every conceivable stat to prove how much Oliver Perez sucks, but I'll settle for this one: David Eckstein just ripped a double down the left field line. Let's see...where do I start with this one. Eck has always gotten doubles off of bad pitchers: 18 doubles in 2006...the picthers? Wheeler, Snell, Paronto, Capellan, Buchholz, Denny Bautista, Chad Bradford, and Vargas.
Oh wait I forgot some.....Roy Oswalt, Ben Sheets, Kenny Rogers, Freddy Garcia, Chris Capuano, Jake Peavy, Zach Duke, Doug Davis.....and hey!!!! Oliver Perez. Great research Simmons.
7. 6:44 -- Suppan bounces a pitch in front of home plate that hits Valentin in the face. That's quickly followed by Endy Chavez stranding two runners to end the inning. This is terrible. I feel like I'm sitting in the stands watching one of my neighbor's kids playing in a Babe Ruth game. Can we all agree that this game can never be shown on ESPN Classic, no matter how it ends? Umm, sure.....great pitching games won by a two run homer in the ninth shouldn't be shown on ESPN Classic. Are you sure you're a Sports Fan?
8. 6:47 -- Wait, another stingray attack? Yikes. I think the stingrays are furious that we haven't respected them enough to name a professional sports team after them. Now they're taking it out on us. And frankly, I don't blame them. If this is a joke it's not funny, but....ummm.....The Devil Rays are in your fabulous American League East Bill. You know the ones with a logo of a stingray????
9. 6:54 -- Guess which one of the following three things McCarver did NOT say in the past three minutes:
- "Nothing in baseball can quiet a crowd like good pitching."
- "Well, David Eckstein, like most of us, has 20 digits. Ten fingers, ten toes."
- "Joe, you haven't truly lived until you've had an enema."
If you want to steal my schtick that's cool, but at least try to be funny when you do it.
10. 7:13 -- Poor Suppan ... he has been mixing his fastballs and pitching great ... now he just loaded the bases on a one-out walk, a throwing error and then LaRussa (incredibly!) electing to walk the late Shawn Green to load the bases. I thought LaRussa was a genius? Would Albert Einstein have walked Green with one out? What about Stephen Hawking? I say no. Tony LaRussa just lost the Cards this series. I'm writing it down right now. Just shut the hell up please.
11. 8:43 -- Or, maybe not. Wainwright just snuck a 0-2 deuce past Beltran to end the series. Wow. I mean ... wow. Has a dramatic playoff game ever ended with the best player on the better team striking out looking? That couldn't have been more anticlimactic. It's not possible. Congrats to the Cards fans -- that's a great win. Even if they almost killed you in the process. Really?!?!?!?!?! That was anti-climactic?!?!?!?!?! You are pompous ass. That curve ball was filthy. But wait you're right.....2 outs in the ninth....down two....bases loaded....and your best player at bat. Yep, that WAS f'ing boring.
I'm not even rating these things anymore because they are just putrid. If you are going to write on National League Baseball just do some research. Don't you have an editor??? I've never wanted the Cardinals to win more, so he just shuts the F up.
10 Comments:
I am a huge giants fan, but I will squeal like a school girl if the cards win. Simmons was once the voice of the fan, the outsider, but now he reeks of failed dreams and bitter disappointment. The Sports Guy died years ago. The farther we get from his glory days the worse it gets. Go Cards.
Ben Sheets is not a bad pitcher! He's not and he will win 20 next year.
I repeat this in my dreams.
Well, the NL does suck. So he has that going for him.
Did Shawn just call you his fuck buddy?
To answer his question, I think people read Simmons for the same reason they still ordered Mike Tyson Pay Per Events for years. Even tho he'd completely lost it, people could remember the time that he was the dominant force in his genre and would hold out hope that he would someday return to his old form.
Eskadoni nailed it- when you read Simmons stuff now, it's obvious that he's bitter that he hasn't sold a screenplay and resents that he's still writing the same stuff for ESPN.
That being said, there are some individual criticisms (Eckstein and Pujols) here where I would disagree with AA and support Simmons. However I do agree with the theme of this article as a whole.
Spect...Sam
Read it again. He's not saying Ben Sheets is bad. He's saying that Simmons didn't do any research into who Eck had his doubles from on the season.
By the way, as a big Brewer fan, i'm extremely dissapointed. An 83 win season team is in the world series. And Ben Sheets poor performance and health is one of the reasons
His precious Red Sux didn't make the playoffs so he feels the need to continually rip on the NL to make himself feel better.
Seriously, he brings nothing to the table when he does a running diary like that. Why did he bother writing it if only for the purpose of shitting on the Mets and Cardinals?
I used to really like Simmons, but the quality of his columns have severely waned since he's been out in LA. That and he needs to stop with the whole average joe Boston fan schtick. He's gotten to big for it. I would think his ultimate goal is to be a well-respected national sportswriter and I can't see how that will ever come to fruition if he still acts like a Boston homer.
Really Dan? Which ones??? I was too busy getting aheard of myself to notice....
and "my schtick" would be the multiple choice that I did the day before not making fun of McCarver.
Thanks for reading friend.
What I gathered from that was he listed Roy Oswalt to point out that good pitchers give up doubles to Eckstein too.
Sorry for the confusion everyone....that comment is what we in the blogging community call sarcasm. Ha..just messing with you. Of course Oswalt is a great pitcher. I was just showing that Bill Simmons calling Eckstein a bad hitter is an un-researched and biased point. Eckstein has been a very consistent hitter for about 5 years now. In fact, I didn't add this in, but he doubled off of Simmons' boy Schilling in 2004 and 2005.
He's just pissed his Mets lost.