The Barrister
If you’re a sports fan, weekends can be a magical/utterly depressing time as you get to enjoy/loathe your teams without the burdens of work (presumably), only to have Monday come around with your outlook on the week unreasonably shaped by how things played out. When the Bills beat the Pats last September, work was great, if very hungover, on Monday morning. Anything seemed possible. On the other hand, when the Sabres drop a back-to-back against the Leafs over a weekend (I’m sure it’s happened at some point, probably several times), Monday feels like garbage. Everything is lost.
Living in New York City helps with this a bit, since I can blend in with the plebeian masses and keep my more hideous sports allegiances hidden for a few days if need be. But, pathetic, emotionally-wrecked mess of a human that I am, I tend to wallow a little.
This weekend was a mixed bag, with the Mets winning a pair, the Bills looking like a hot turd sandwich with a side of miscommunicated routes, and both Liverpool and the Red Bulls leaving two points on the pitch with depressing draws. All of which is to say that I’ve certainly felt worse on a Monday, but, as you'll see after the jump, I still don’t feel at all close to good.
If you’re a sports fan, weekends can be a magical/utterly depressing time as you get to enjoy/loathe your teams without the burdens of work (presumably), only to have Monday come around with your outlook on the week unreasonably shaped by how things played out. When the Bills beat the Pats last September, work was great, if very hungover, on Monday morning. Anything seemed possible. On the other hand, when the Sabres drop a back-to-back against the Leafs over a weekend (I’m sure it’s happened at some point, probably several times), Monday feels like garbage. Everything is lost.
Living in New York City helps with this a bit, since I can blend in with the plebeian masses and keep my more hideous sports allegiances hidden for a few days if need be. But, pathetic, emotionally-wrecked mess of a human that I am, I tend to wallow a little.
This weekend was a mixed bag, with the Mets winning a pair, the Bills looking like a hot turd sandwich with a side of miscommunicated routes, and both Liverpool and the Red Bulls leaving two points on the pitch with depressing draws. All of which is to say that I’ve certainly felt worse on a Monday, but, as you'll see after the jump, I still don’t feel at all close to good.
NYP, circa always When the Mets are your bright spot, consider killing yourself.
On July 3rd, almost two months ago at this point, I stood in the right field food court and watched fireworks following the Mets’ 11-1 douching of the Phillies. The team was 44-37, right in the hunt for the NL East and Wildcard, I loved America with a rare and drunken sense of patriotism, and all seemed roses for this young team of confusingly successful underdogs.
Since then, as we know, the team has tanked, winning only 15 games and losing 32. Following the script of woeful second half collapse that has been the norm since 2007, the team has been unwatchable lately. Unless Dickey is pitching, because, well, it’s still nice to see a Cy Young candidate playing for your squad, even if the team playing behind him is the athletic equivalent of Paul Ryan’s economic plan. Ooooh! BURN! Comments that marginalize half our readership and piss my Deeg brethren off!
YOLO.
I’ve sadly been willing to follow along with the Mets these past few weeks despite the fact that the season is long since over. As noted, Dickey remains compelling and, well, this is about where I expected their record to be in April, so I may as well watch the young kids continue their development into polished veterans of mediocre baseball. Coming off five straight losses, including a four game ass kicking sweep served up by the Rockies (ouch), Mets fans needed a little boost in the form of the Houston Astros. As you all have probably noticed, my fandom thrives on the extremely pathetic “at least we’re not those guys,” and this weekend’s series didn’t disappoint.
The Mets have not been scoring much these days, hence the abysmal record, though they managed to scrap together enough in games 2 and 3 of the series against Houston. And by “enough,” I mean 2 and 3 runs, respectively. I watched these games passively, as I tend to do when a team makes me want to vomit, but Dickey moved to 16-4 with an ERA of 2.76, and Ike Davis hit a pair of homers yesterday, moving his mark up to 24 on the year. While Dickey is obviously the best story of the Mets’ season (Johan’s no-hitter being dwarfed by his ongoing injury problems), Davis’s ongoing, baffling success – if you can call it that – is by far the weirdest. He’s batting .223, but over a quarter of his hits have been homers, leaving him with 70 RBIs on the year. He’s been unbelievably frustrating with 114 strikeouts (compared to 92 hits), but he’s still been producing. 134th in MLB as far as BA, but 40th in terms of RBIs. Begrudgingly, I guess we have to say he’s having a ok maybe even good year? Fuck me.
The team is still 11.5 games out of both the NL East and Wildcard, so this is all monumentally stupid for me to care about. But, here I am. A reliable idiot.
Speaking of idiots...
On July 3rd, almost two months ago at this point, I stood in the right field food court and watched fireworks following the Mets’ 11-1 douching of the Phillies. The team was 44-37, right in the hunt for the NL East and Wildcard, I loved America with a rare and drunken sense of patriotism, and all seemed roses for this young team of confusingly successful underdogs.
Since then, as we know, the team has tanked, winning only 15 games and losing 32. Following the script of woeful second half collapse that has been the norm since 2007, the team has been unwatchable lately. Unless Dickey is pitching, because, well, it’s still nice to see a Cy Young candidate playing for your squad, even if the team playing behind him is the athletic equivalent of Paul Ryan’s economic plan. Ooooh! BURN! Comments that marginalize half our readership and piss my Deeg brethren off!
YOLO.
I’ve sadly been willing to follow along with the Mets these past few weeks despite the fact that the season is long since over. As noted, Dickey remains compelling and, well, this is about where I expected their record to be in April, so I may as well watch the young kids continue their development into polished veterans of mediocre baseball. Coming off five straight losses, including a four game ass kicking sweep served up by the Rockies (ouch), Mets fans needed a little boost in the form of the Houston Astros. As you all have probably noticed, my fandom thrives on the extremely pathetic “at least we’re not those guys,” and this weekend’s series didn’t disappoint.
The Mets have not been scoring much these days, hence the abysmal record, though they managed to scrap together enough in games 2 and 3 of the series against Houston. And by “enough,” I mean 2 and 3 runs, respectively. I watched these games passively, as I tend to do when a team makes me want to vomit, but Dickey moved to 16-4 with an ERA of 2.76, and Ike Davis hit a pair of homers yesterday, moving his mark up to 24 on the year. While Dickey is obviously the best story of the Mets’ season (Johan’s no-hitter being dwarfed by his ongoing injury problems), Davis’s ongoing, baffling success – if you can call it that – is by far the weirdest. He’s batting .223, but over a quarter of his hits have been homers, leaving him with 70 RBIs on the year. He’s been unbelievably frustrating with 114 strikeouts (compared to 92 hits), but he’s still been producing. 134th in MLB as far as BA, but 40th in terms of RBIs. Begrudgingly, I guess we have to say he’s having a ok maybe even good year? Fuck me.
The team is still 11.5 games out of both the NL East and Wildcard, so this is all monumentally stupid for me to care about. But, here I am. A reliable idiot.
Speaking of idiots...
I know it's preseason, blah blah blah, but I have eyes and they've watched some football lately and the Bills appear to be only a few small steps away from a tire fire right now. I have dropped hard and fast to pretty much zero confidence in this squad and deep regret at buying Week 1 tickets for MetLife, despite the Mario Williams/D-Line/Dave Wannstedt’s mustache koolaid that everyone – including myself – has been drinking since Ralph actually decided to open his checkbook and signal that he, for once, remembered to give a shit about winning. That new dawn of Ralph belied, of course, by more recent, head-scratching moves that have brought Vince Young in, then out, and that now see us with another potentially over-the-hill QB backing up our potentially never-had-a-hill QB.
Point of Order! --- When we’re taking solace in the fact that “at least we aren’t the Jets” – a team that has actually won playoff games this millennium, rather than in 1995 – something is terribly, terribly fucked up. Of course, that the state-of-things for Bills fans is fucked up is not news.
To really drive it home, there were corners of the #BillsMafia talking shit about Jim Kelly on Saturday night. I KNOW!! My favorite was when some genius, piggy-backing on the bile-inducing Kelly wasn’t "all that” gem dropped by some other similarly IQ'd scholar, who denigrated Jimbo’s legacy by saying that “Kelly won us the same amount of championships as Rob Johnson.”
Watching a team suck so completely for 12 years is bad enough. Watching with the knowledge that pockets of your fan base are willing to piss on the only good years for the squad is completely rage-inducing. With any luck, Yachtsman will make good on his idea of starting a column about these too-frequent instances of stupidity within our ranks since, well, #FacelessInternetPotshots are what the Deeg is all about. I, for one, am tingling with anticipation.
And then there’s the footy...
Following Dickey’s win and the Bills’ loss to Pittsburgh, yesterday brought with it the bookend fixtures of Premiership and Major League Soccer as Liverpool started my day with an early season match against the League Champions, and the Red Bulls ended my day with a late season match against the Eastern Conference leading Sporting KC.
When I woke up yesterday, I was still enraged over the clown shoes Bills conversations from the night before and still convinced that, even at Anfield, Liverpool was going to be wiped off the field by a superior Man City squad. LFC’s first match against West Brom was the stuff that nightmares are made of, with Daniel Agger being sent off and suspended, and the lowly Baggies taking a 3-0 victory. With the Sky Blues coming to town against a depleted, Dagger-less defense, forgive me if I expected a massacre.
What we got was very different, and probably what most fans hoped for out of the first week disappointment at The Hawthorns. New manager Brendan Rodgers’ system seemed to be taking hold in a positive way, at least after the first twenty minutes or so, and LFC seemed poised for the upset. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as least for my shit-stained squads, defensive mistakes cost the Reds their 3 points in the end, as Martin Skrtel transitioned from first-half hero to second-half goat. (sorry if videos end up broken)
Point of Order! --- When we’re taking solace in the fact that “at least we aren’t the Jets” – a team that has actually won playoff games this millennium, rather than in 1995 – something is terribly, terribly fucked up. Of course, that the state-of-things for Bills fans is fucked up is not news.
To really drive it home, there were corners of the #BillsMafia talking shit about Jim Kelly on Saturday night. I KNOW!! My favorite was when some genius, piggy-backing on the bile-inducing Kelly wasn’t "all that” gem dropped by some other similarly IQ'd scholar, who denigrated Jimbo’s legacy by saying that “Kelly won us the same amount of championships as Rob Johnson.”
Watching a team suck so completely for 12 years is bad enough. Watching with the knowledge that pockets of your fan base are willing to piss on the only good years for the squad is completely rage-inducing. With any luck, Yachtsman will make good on his idea of starting a column about these too-frequent instances of stupidity within our ranks since, well, #FacelessInternetPotshots are what the Deeg is all about. I, for one, am tingling with anticipation.
And then there’s the footy...
Following Dickey’s win and the Bills’ loss to Pittsburgh, yesterday brought with it the bookend fixtures of Premiership and Major League Soccer as Liverpool started my day with an early season match against the League Champions, and the Red Bulls ended my day with a late season match against the Eastern Conference leading Sporting KC.
When I woke up yesterday, I was still enraged over the clown shoes Bills conversations from the night before and still convinced that, even at Anfield, Liverpool was going to be wiped off the field by a superior Man City squad. LFC’s first match against West Brom was the stuff that nightmares are made of, with Daniel Agger being sent off and suspended, and the lowly Baggies taking a 3-0 victory. With the Sky Blues coming to town against a depleted, Dagger-less defense, forgive me if I expected a massacre.
What we got was very different, and probably what most fans hoped for out of the first week disappointment at The Hawthorns. New manager Brendan Rodgers’ system seemed to be taking hold in a positive way, at least after the first twenty minutes or so, and LFC seemed poised for the upset. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as least for my shit-stained squads, defensive mistakes cost the Reds their 3 points in the end, as Martin Skrtel transitioned from first-half hero to second-half goat. (sorry if videos end up broken)
It’s hard to feel good about letting it slip so completely through your fingers, especially after the beauty that was Luis Suarez’s free kick goal [WATCH THIS] in the second half, but there were good things to take from the match. The team is clearly still settling in with the pass-and-move, possession style implemented by Rodgers, and it was at least heartening to watch some pretty beautiful football from the squad. Raheem Sterling is a monster of a talent up front, and Joe Allen is as calm a presence in the midfield as Steven Gerrard circa 2005. Shitty result, but at least I’m looking forward to next week’s match against Arsenal with some cautious optimism, which is more than I could say yesterday morning.
As for the Red Bulls, their match was much less inspiring, though they were playing at Kansas City, the leaders of the Eastern Conference, and they did manage to retain their second place position with the 1-1 draw. The game was basically a sleep-inducing bore until the closing minutes, as Dax McCarty – arguably my favorite player on the squad due to his relentless hustle and general disregard for his shocking lack of talent – missed a golden opportunity to close the game with a late goal. What he did instead can’t really be described... (cue it up to 6:20 for the heartbreak)
As for the Red Bulls, their match was much less inspiring, though they were playing at Kansas City, the leaders of the Eastern Conference, and they did manage to retain their second place position with the 1-1 draw. The game was basically a sleep-inducing bore until the closing minutes, as Dax McCarty – arguably my favorite player on the squad due to his relentless hustle and general disregard for his shocking lack of talent – missed a golden opportunity to close the game with a late goal. What he did instead can’t really be described... (cue it up to 6:20 for the heartbreak)
Yuck.
Looking ahead to the coming week, Liverpool has the second leg of their Europa tie against Hearts on Thursday, followed by Sunday’s match at Anfield against Arsenal, the Red Bulls face off against DC United this Wednesday while the Deeg bumbles through out Fantasy Football draft, the Mets have a bunch of games against teams that will beat them, and the Bills have one more preseason game to lose while they install a new backup quarterback who we will continue to talk too much about.
All in all, plenty to get depressed about, so expect me to be back here soon, complaining about more shit that makes my eyes bleed and my heart, inexplicably, soar.
Cheers.
Looking ahead to the coming week, Liverpool has the second leg of their Europa tie against Hearts on Thursday, followed by Sunday’s match at Anfield against Arsenal, the Red Bulls face off against DC United this Wednesday while the Deeg bumbles through out Fantasy Football draft, the Mets have a bunch of games against teams that will beat them, and the Bills have one more preseason game to lose while they install a new backup quarterback who we will continue to talk too much about.
All in all, plenty to get depressed about, so expect me to be back here soon, complaining about more shit that makes my eyes bleed and my heart, inexplicably, soar.
Cheers.
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