All sorts of news

First, I don't think "Get my Goose On" and "Gary Anderson . . ." drafted two QBs.

Second, it looks like Ambiorix Burgos had to . . .

Third, no one drafted Vince Young and that is too bad. If this is true, this would qualify you to win the league.

First one of the season!

Nate Burleson, he who didn't like to catch the football if it was for a first down, goes down with a torn -CL. Nice work, Matt Flynn's Backup. You're off to a raging start.

Failure Fantasy Football Rosters

Folks, we've got a hot one brewing here. Mr. Bionic Crotch threw almost 20 incompletions tonight, and he wears a knee brace. Game. On.

Note: the team names are the same as last year right now, post in the comments if you'd like to change them.

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Matt Flynn's Backup

Team - St. Louis Rams

Marc Bulger
Ted Ginn Jr.
Ike Hilliard
Carson Palmer
Clinton Portis
Edgerrin James
Justin Fargas
Ron Dayne
Owen Schmitt
Mike Nugent
Olindo Mare
Nate Burleson
Mike Furrey
Donald Driver


Smelly Pirate Hookers

Team - Oakland Raiders

Kyle Orton
Troy Williamson
Matt Jones
Ahman Green
Julius Jones
Brandon Stokely
Dwayne Jarrett
Lamont Jordan
Reggie Bush
Neil Rackers
Shaun Alexander
Donte Stallworth
Sebastian Janikowski
JP Losman


Get My Goose On

Team - Detroit Lions

Tarvaris Jackson
Rudi Johnson
Javon Walker
Travis Henry
Heath Evans
Ricky Williams
Isaac Bruce
Torry Holt
Ronnie Brown
Bobby Wade
Rian Lindell
Jeff Reed
Willis McGahee
Travis Taylor


Gary Anderson Missed A Chipshot And We Ain't Seen Shit Since

Team - San Francisco 49ers

Chad Pennington
Rashard Mendenhall
Willie Parker
Derrick Mason
Mark Clayton
Travis Minor
Najeh Davenport
Drew Bennett
Bernard Berrian
Vernand Morency
Eric Moulds
Matt Ryan
David Akers
Martin Grammatica


Cleveland Steamers

Team - Kansas City Chiefs

Brodie Croyle
Michael Bennett
Brad Hoover
Amani Toomer
Wes Welker
Kevin Smith
LenDale White
David Tyree
Chad Ocho Cinco
Tatum Bell
Troy Walters
Joe Flacco
Matt Stover
Rob Birones

Just completed my draft board

My gut tells me there will be a few teams WELL represented by this failure league. DEEP into the depth chart.

I will draft either of these two guys

Either.

Failure NFL Draft

Quick and dirty:

When would be a good time to draft failure NFL teams? Would Sunday night be OK? We would've already seen the first games, but it doesn't matter. We're in this for the long term. Plus we'd have yet to see Action Jackson break his dack-sack. I'm thinking about 7pm. Does that work? Otherwise anytime next week would be good too.

Hail to the motherfu . . . .

Is Rich's house for sale, yet? Don't get me wrong, the Gophers won't do much this year, either . . . but this is Michigan. Doug from Dearborn wants wins. The Gophers and Michigan could have the same bowl experience this year . . . watching at home. You would think after Appalachia St. they could have scheduled someone like West Georgia.

You can throw out the records when they play Ouachita Baptist. Ouachita is tough at home.

He Should Belong To All Of Us

For this Saturday, let's all claim Carl as an honorary member.

How long do you think it will take until his arm falls off, Dravecky-style? The second inning? His first warm-up toss?

He's an Olympian

This guy. North Little Rock to Vegas? That is what we call a lateral move.

Is The "MCL" Near His Crotch?

Because he broke that last year.

Tell me this guy isn't number 1. Just sit there and try to tell me. He's number 1. Right.

My Rangers

Too bad it wasn't at home. You will win more games if you don't give up 10 in the 1st inning. Just sayin'.

Define "Failure"

Nick Punto today:

0-5 with 4 strikeouts.

You pretty much couldn't fail any worse than that.

Rub some dirt in it

Lee out 6-8 weeks with broken pinkie: Houston slugger Carlos Lee was placed on the 15-day disabled list Saturday night because of a broken left pinkie and is expected to miss 6-to-8 weeks. Lee left the Astros' game at Cincinnati in the third inning Saturday night after getting hit by a pitch. "It's tough to lose him," manager Cecil Cooper said after Houston's 3-1 win. "It didn't look good. He carried us the last month-and-a-half. It's a big hole to fill, but we're capable of filling it. I'm just now starting to suck it up."
(Updated 08/09/2008).

Weak.

I will take Jose Guillen from KC for the "I just signed a big contract and don't want to be here anymore, trade me now" factor.

The Commish emailed me . . .

and said I had 4 players out of baseball for a couple months. Let us examine:

Frank Thomas: back playing. I will keep.
Andruw Jones: back playing. I will keep.
Shawn Chacon: Out of baseball, but I will keep as idle hands do the devil's work.
Alexi Casilla: Learned how to play baseball (good thing as it helped the Twins).

I will drop Casilla and pick up Griffey Jr. as I see the Sox fading badly (unless someone else has him).

Maybe When You're Old Enough, You'll Realize That You're Not So Tough

Hey everybody! Do you remember that we have a real-life, honest-to-goodness Failure Baseball League? No?!? Well me neither, until a few days ago!

We're into August now, and the failures have had record breaking seasons. We started out the season by drafting heavily in the Twins direction (correct choice), then followed that up with a healthy dose of Indians (don't know how to hit baseball) and now it's pretty much all about the Mariners (liked them better the first time I saw them, when they were called the Ham Fighters).

Collecting these stats is truly a joy, and it affords me the opportunity to enjoy just how good we are at picking failures... and the astonishing number of absolute garbage players in MLB. In fact, I was looking for a replacement for LaTroy Hawkins (because he failed for the 149th time in his career) and I didn't know where to begin. Well, you know a good place to start when drafting failures? Pittsburgh's roster! Oh, they are chock full of losers! Gorzellany, Ian Snell, Paul Maholm... it's low-hanging fruit! So, faithful readers, let this be a lesson... when in doubt, DRAFT PIRATE PITCHERS!

Another fun thing to do is read the comments made on Sportsline about individual players and their fantasy value. Needless to say, most of the guys on our rosters have "little" or "none". I've also seen these comments: "Not Improving" (Justin Upton) and "Awful Again" (Homer Bailey). Hey, think positive guys! You're in the big leagues!

Before we begin with the recaps and the current standings, though, please allow me to pay homage to a man who may soon retire from the world of professional baseball...



Meat Hook.

It's not looking good for Meat Hook these days. The diabee-tus caught up with him (or rather, eating nothing but Wendy's caught up) and his team has fallen into complete disrepair. For 3 or 4 years, however, Meat Hook was the biggest stone-cold gangster in MLB. Let's see... in 1995 he punched a fan who was heckling him - at a minor league game. In 2006 he assaulted a woman in Birmingham (Barons up!). He was later sent to Promises Malibu, which, in addition to being a rehab center, is also likely a porn actress' name. He was sentenced to 30 days, but on the day of his pretrial - WHOOPS FORGOT ABOUT THAT - he failed to show up in court. A warrant was issued, which was funny, because it was the middle of the fucking season. You think they're going to have a hard time finding him?

Anyway, there's a lot of things funny about Meat Hook, but one thing that isn't funny is that he is grossly overweight.

No, wait. That is funny.

Alright Meat Hook, you take the rest of the year off and make one more run at conditioning in the offseason! Of course, by "conditioning", I mean "opting for lettuce on your BK Broiler".

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The standings!

Bacon n Butter - 66
The Jesus Sanchez - 62
Outright Release - 60
Billz - 57
The Short Bus Drivers - 54

Of course, these numbers do not reflect the team statistics, which will be tabulated at season's end. For some of us, namely Short Bus Drivers, those numbers are going to look a lot better at that time.

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Well, enough putzing around, let's get to some awards!

We're going to have to crawl all the way back to April to start handing out the Jose Contreras Failure Awards, but it's worth it because there has been such a staggering amount of non-success in this league, it all needs mentioning!

And so, your failure award winner for April:



Barry Zito!

(hey Barry, is that how many hits you gave up today, or runs?)

Barry didn't just fail in April, he BOMBED. He completed the near-impossible 5 Loss month, posting an ERA of 7.61 on the way. In 23 innings he gave up 3 hoggs and 14 walks. All of these stats made him a pure cash cow for The Jesus Sanchez. And as icing on the cake, he was demoted to the bullpen, just over a year after signing his gigantic goddamned contract. Good thing the Giants suck now, or Barry REALLY would've stood out!

Honorable Mention in April goes to Ryan Howard, who batted .168 and managed to ring up 37 strikeouts. Those are MVP numbers!

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In May, the overall level of failure was lower, but there were still quite a few shining stars. On a team full of underachievers, this month's winner really goes for the glory!



Daric Barton!

(you think you'd want to wait until the canker sores healed before you got your picture taken.... guess not)

Now, the first question you may have is "Who?" And then you will probably snicker and say something like "You misspelled your first name". And it's true. There's usually a 'K' in there, buddy. OH BUT SPEAKING OF K's!!!!! Mr. Barton went down hard 20 times in May, posting a nearly-unbelievable .139 batting average. He slugged .244! Hey bonehead, Carlos Gomez gets that on bunting alone!

When you get 72 at bats, it's not a good thing to strike out in 20 of them.

But, as with most failures, you can't really hold it against him. I mean, come on. Look at that face. He was destined to failure when he was born.

Honorable Mention in May goes to Andruw Jones (.178 with 16 strikeouts?? Check his birth certificate!) and Elijah Dukes (.167, 18 strikeouts and 3 GDPs?? Get that man a Pepsi!)

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In June, the failures came out swinging a hot bat... a hot STRIKEOUT BAT. The totals for punchouts went through the roof with the leading team recording 178 total. That's almost 20 per player! Oh my god, make contact you losers!

So with all those hitters striking out in the hot summer sun, you'd think that pitchers would have an easy go of things, right?



WRONG! IT'S RINCON TIME!!!

This is one of those performances that deserves to be on a plaque somewhere. Let's see, where to begin? 3 home runs? Well, that's not TERRIBLE. I mean, it's pretty bad for a relief pitcher, but not the worst.

Oh. Wait. He only pitched 3.1 innings, you say?

So in the process of getting 10 outs in the entire month, he gave up 10 hits. As mentioned, three of them didn't come back into the field of play. He let in 7 runs, all of them earned. That adds up to a walloping 18.9 ERA. Hitters batted .526 off of him. BUT JUAN WASN'T DONE CONTRIBUTING TO THE FAILURE FANTASY LEAGUE!!!! He got himself cut by the Twins organization that had stood by him even when he was ballooning up to a disproportionate level and injecting steroids straight into his ass. Being cut from the Twins is hard to do. Look at how long it took them with Tony Fiore. And he drove a garbage truck to work.

Of course, Juan is the gift that just keeps on giving all year round. He landed on his feet - well, Cleveland, so really he just landed. Hard. And so far in August, he's throwing a 13.5 ERA Having given up 2 home runs while only getting 4 outs. Absolutely outstanding.

Honorable mention here goes to Rincon's teammate (who can never be cut, apparently) Mike Lamb. Big Mike posted a batting average of .063. No, I didn't forget a number. That's .063 as in "2 hits in 32 at bats". I'm sure Dave Siznewski could get more than 2 hits in a month! And he eats chicken wings with butter on them!

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Finally we come to July, where the real failures begin to shine. This is the time of year when the teams that are out of contention just plain stop trying. It's hot, they can't hit anyway, and even if they did the next guy would strike out. Why not just try for a homer every time???



Jack Cust does!!!!!!

Two things. First, Jack Cust sold me a used Lincoln in Rockford, IL. Second, he damn near set an MLB record in July for strikeouts.

Jack had 83 at bats. At least half of those must've been non-strikeouts, right? OH NO WRONG. He went back to the dugout with his head down a remarkable FORTY FIVE times! He hit .205 on the month, but managed to slug .446. How is that possible? Because of the 17 times he got a hit, 6 of them were home runs. Hey, 6 jacks and 45 strikeouts... like Llewelyn Moss says "That'll work"!

And Jack just keeps on going too. At press time, he has 17 at bats in August, and 8 of them are strikeouts. Awesome.

Honorable Mention in July goes to Royce Ring (yes, that is a real name) who pitches for Atlanta, which recently took a flier on a catcher named CORKY MILLER. Remember that name Twins fans? The guy who made the opening day roster instead of Liriano in 2006? That worked well. Anyway, Royce posted a 21.94 ERA in July, giving up 16 hits to mirror the 16 outs he got. Unfortunately, 13 runs came because of those 16 hits. And... no homeruns? How the hell does that work? Ah, I see. 7 walks. That will do it. Royce.

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And so there you have it folks. I'm going back into hiding for a few months, I'll see you at the football draft!

Finish the job, son

Things are moving along for the Cubs, but a move like this doesn't feel complete. For the life of me I can't figure out how relief pitcher Bob Howry is still calling 1060 W. Addison his place of business. With Kerry Wood returning and N.D.'s receiving star throwing 98 m.p.h. there's little need for another failure-coaster with Marmol in place. Will Carlos throw like he did in the all star game, or will he upset himself with a lead-off walk and then start a-serving meatballs?

But back to Howry. Lou keeps using him, and Bob keeps looking overwhelmed. Maybe he wanted to ace him AFTER his birthday, which was Monday. Lou's that kind of guy. But here's a comparison.

Howry - ends the month of July on this streak:

0-2 with a 13.50 ERA in 10 days.

August 2 vs. Pitt - 1 inning, 2 hits, no runs. That's fine.

August 5 vs. Houston - Blown save, 1.1 innings, 2 runs, 2 hits, 1 of which a home run

Current ERA 5.30

The person aced in this deal is Scott Eyre...the same guy who set the club record for consecutive scoreless innings. Scott, who I can only guess Lou doesn't like personally, was failing just as much of late. His last outing, during the Cubs magnificent sweep of Bud Selig Success Caravan, was .1 innings, 3 hits, 3 earned runs. Ayeeeeeeee.

So, we have two pitchers in a serious funk. But only one is sent away. Why keep the other? Well, check out this face.

Your Baseball Team Is Not Doing Well For The Following Reasons...

1. The first baseman punches the starting pitcher in the face during the game.

nFl

Nice job. Great way to "salvage" your career. Loser.

"Williams weighed around 270 pounds when he signed with Tennessee..."

He plays wide reciever.

A question for the NFFFL draft

Let's say I get the first pick. I take Aaron Rodgers (a very valid selection). The person with the number two pick takes Brian Brohm (also a very valid selection). Who has dibs to Matt Flynn? This is a question that needs to be answered before the draft.

Cut by the worst bullpen in the majors

Hawkins designated for assignment: To make room on their roster, the Yankees optioned outfielder Brett Gardner to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and designated reliever LaTroy Hawkins for assignment Saturday.
(Updated 07/26/2008).

Well, that should just about close the book on Easy Gas.

Minor League Baseball

This is just getting to be expected. You have some guy flippin' bats and hitting umps (I forget his name), shoe/armpit/dip w/ music playing in the background or this fine classic. Now you have this or for the full length. Oh, and if you aim at an opposing player on the field and throw high and outside and hit a fan in the stands, you should be in the minors.

At about the 2:30 mark, "Go back to Peoria!"

At the end, they just want to play ball.

All these players want to do is play in MLB . . . or for the Royals.

Gimme An 'F'!

It's a fight. At a WNBA game.

Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn are involved.

No comment needed

FAIL

Blast from the past

Seriously, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. . . but . . .

Didn't even use a razor blade.

Ghetto.