Full disclosure: I meant to listen to the Joe Kelly podcast last week and then I forgot to listen to it until today. Context on my disclosure: There’s a new podcast called “Baseball Isn’t Boring” and it’s affiliated with Joe Kelly but he isn’t on it every episode. Which is good, because that way it can still be a love letter to baseball and not overshadow the sport by focusing exclusively on its best player.
Anyway, listened to the episode today while driving with Fargo to and from the vet (the bump on her eye isn’t a wart, it’s a skin tag, which is great news even if the wart wouldn’t have been bad news, and she had a phenomenal time at the veterinarian—hit herself in the face multiple times from wagging her tail too hard), it was exactly as lifechanging as you would expect. Which is to say: Joe Kelly wrote a book!!!!!!
I know sometimes around here we’ve been accused of getting our Joe Kelly’s confused. “The guy who wrote Ted Lasso isn’t the same Joe Kelly,” say the haters. “The guy who wrote those superhero comics isn’t the same Joe Kelly,” say the haters. “Abraham Lincoln was not Joe Kelly prior to reincarnation,” say the haters. Well, agree to disagree, but we can all agree that this one’s our Joe Kelly. Coming out on March 14th and available for presale right now, A Damn Near Perfect Game: Reclaiming America’s Pastime is on its way, and the benefits to society will be immense. I’m talking discourse benefit: Think of how many promotional interviews Joe Kelly will do this Spring Training. I’m talking economic benefit: Think of what this will do for bookstores, and for consumer spending and thereby job creation in general. I’m talking educational benefit: Think of how many kids will learn to read so that they can read this book. I can’t wait, and neither can this country.
In other Joe Kelly news, the White Sox hired Royals bench coach Pedro Grifol to be their newest manager, picking from the Ned Yost/Mike Matheny tree as they try to recover from two years of overmanagement, ignorance of analytics, and AL Central bottomdwelling. What a pivot! Thankfully, these kinds of managers love speed (as in footspeed, not meth [as far as I know]), so we should see Joe Kelly get to flex those wheels and pinch run now and then in addition to throwing really hard and striking tons of batters out and single-handedly bringing America’s youth back from the catastrophic learning loss brought on by the novel coronavirus pandemic and associated shifts in learning.
What a day.
No Hits, No Problem
Hey idiots, ever heard of a walk? They’re just as good as a hit (if it’s a single and there’s nobody on base and/or there’s a slow guy on first and it’s solidly hit to the left side), and they don’t make your hands hurt. The Phillies got some of those last night, so I don’t want to hear this bullshit about the Astros shutting them down. Talk to me when Justin Verlander doesn’t walk anybody tonight and doesn’t give up any home runs and wins the 2016 Cy Young Award. There’s no way he’ll do all three of these things, and he probably won’t even do one of them, so maybe the Astros can go get bent. (Does that mean what I just realized it might mean? ‘Cause I’ve been using that as a stand-in for something that might actually be less vulgar. It’s so hard to know. I did just google “get bent” [a bold stroke, I know] and one of the things that comes up is ‘Get Bent in Norwich’ which is either a hot yoga/fitness class workshop business or a front for a brothel. It’s in Connecticut, not England, and it partners with something called ‘American Ambulance’ and I don’t trust it one bit. I’m not going to get bent in Norwich, or anywhere for that matter. Yeesh.)
The Burnleys Are Rocking
There’s a song from 1989 called “The Cubbies Are Rocking” which a guy from our hometown posts now and then when the Cubbies are, well, rocking, and I always think of it when a team is hilariously hot. Burnley, right now, is hilariously hot. On Saturday, the lads welcomed Reading to town, gave them a 1-0 lead in the second half, and then punked them, tying the game up minutes later before a stoppage-time dagger from Anass Zaroury gutted the Biscuitmen. Yesterday, the lads welcomed Rotherham to town, trailed 2-1 at the end of ninety minutes, and then scored twice in stoppage time—including once in the tenth minute of it—to pull out three points. After letting teams tie them by doing shit like this all year, Burnley has now won four straight, has won six of seven, and still has only one loss on the season, nearly three whole months ago. They lead the league by five points, or a minimum of three if Sheffield wins its game in hand, and promotion is now looking likelier than not, with the team on the two-points-per-match pace which almost always saves you from even having to play in the promotion playoff.
So, yeah. Burnley is rocking. The Burnleys are rocking. And Saturday morning, on ESPN+, they’ll play Sheffield United for all the world (who pays the subscription fee, which is a great deal if you bundle it with Hulu and Disney Plus, not to be a shill) to see.
The Sens Are For Sale
More on this sometime soon, but didn’t want too much time to go by before mentioning that the Senators are on the selling block, and we’re talking Ottawa, to be clear here. On that note: If I were buying the team, I would try to stir up a lot of confusion over whether we were talking Canadian dollars or U.S. dollars, but then again, that 1) might come back to bite me and 2) is something I already try to do as a habit in life, so why am I saying I’d do it in this specific instance?
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Viewing schedule for the evening:
8:03 PM EDT: Astros @ Phillies, Game 5 (FOX)
People talk a lot about Noah Syndergaard’s “Thor” nickname, but you know who was also pretty impressive? Noah from Genesis. That guy built a huge boat (boats are cool, ever heard a pop country song?) and survived a flood that killed everyone but his family. He also hung out with all the animals, somehow peacefully, and he basically invented the rainbow and possibly also wine. Something for just about everyone in that list. This is why Noah Syndergaard, despite having been born in Norway, is known as America’s Game 5 starter.
7:30 PM EDT: Appalachian State @ Coastal Carolina (ESPN)
Also happening tonight is the Sun Belt, and we’re getting upper cut Sun Belt here. You know how cream rises to the top? This is the Sun Belt’s cream. Not a bad compliment to Kyle Schwarber removing the seams from a Justin Verlander fastball with force.
8:15 PM EDT: Eagles @ Texans (Prime)
I’ve never given much thought to how confusing the Texans’ name really is. Aren’t the Cowboys way more stereotypically a Texas entity? It would’ve been funny if the NFL got really serious about this when the expansion happened and made them name themselves the “Houston East Texans and Sometimes South Texans Depending on the Family” to make clear who they really represent.
Oilers was such a better name.
