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Freak Speak

Intentional Walks in Baseball? Give me a break!!

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Humor Post #43 from the world’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Middle School Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

You thought I was done turning sports rules upside down? Hey, I’m just getting started. I mean, pro baseball just expanded their playoffs. That’s rule changing, isn’t it? And they want the new round of playoffs to be ONE GAME. Remember, baseball isn’t like football or basketball where you have the same team every game. In baseball, the main ingredient changes every game. And that would be the pitcher. A baseball team changes from a Monday to a Tuesday like a cake changes to a pie. Both have most of the same stuff, but boy, they don’t look or taste the same. Not that I’m talking about tasting a baseball team, but you get the picture. Anyway, what I’m saying is that this first round should be best two out of three. That would at least test the main part of both teams’ starting pitching staff.

But here’s the rule I really want to change in baseball: THE INTENTIONAL BASE ON BALLS. I want it banned, banished, killed, have the big kabosh put on it. It’s way worse than the “Hack a Hulk” intentional fouls I talked about in my last post. At least there the player has a chance to make two points. In baseball, he just gets to first base with no chance to make even a double.

Let’s use Barry Bonds as an example. Now I was about three years old when he was blasting just about everything out of the park. But everyone knows about him. And in 2004 — I looked this up — he was at bat 617 times and walked 232 times. That’s over 1/3 of the time! Now “only” 120 of these walks were listed as “intentional,” but come on. You know what happened. Most pitchers who did take the chance of facing ol’ Barry probably gave him nothing to really hit and he ended up getting an “unintentional” walk.

And just to stick this amazing fact in, Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals was given an intentional walk in the World Series WITH NO ONE ON BASE. The Texas Rangers were so afraid of what Albert could do them they didn’t even give him the chance to bat WITH NOBODY ON BASE. Oh, am I repeating myself? repeating myself? Well, that’s because it’s unbelievable to me that the whole sport wouldn’t let all their paying customers get to see what they buy their tickets to see. Let’s see, wouldn’t that be one team’s pitcher trying to get out the other team’s best hitter?

So I don’t know what else to say about it. I guess we could let football teams let the other team’s best runner get a free three yards every time he touches the ball. As soon as that guy got handed the ball, the game could be stopped and the runner’s team would get a free three yards.

I can’t figure out how you could work that “intentional walk” or “Hack the Hulk” in hockey. Makes me want to get more into hockey.

Now I’ll shut up. Let’s just get rid of the intentional walk in baseball so the fans get to see hitters hit.

From your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

Why can’t teams decline to take foul shots and keep the ball instead?

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Humor Post #42 from the world’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Middle School Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

As I’ve said many times here before, I like sports. Watching them at least. I’m not the greatest in them but I’m never the last one taken in a game so I guess that’s better than nothing. But that doesn’t mean that sports are perfect. After all, they were invented by humans so we know there’s always room for improvement, don’t we? And who better to improve some of our favorite pastimes than yours truly, the old Crankmeister.

“What are you talking about, Mr. Crankenfuss?” you ask with all the proper respect owed me. Well, I’ll tell you. I was watching the Orlando Magic play the other night and they were about six or seven points ahead. So the other team — right now I can’t even remember who it was — starts fouling Dwight Howard, Orlando’s star. Why? Because Howard can’t shoot foul shots worth a flip, that’s why. And sure enough, he was clanking them all over the place. So I began thinking, “Ya know, it’s not fair that Dwight has to shoot those foul shots. He doesn’t have to shoot a regular shot unless he wants to. Why should he have to shoot foul shots if he doesn’t want to?” And it means that a team behind Orlando can always foul ol’ Dwight whenever they want to. So why can’t Orlando decline the penalty? That’s right, why can’t Orlando say, “Yeah, we know you fouled our guy, but we’d rather take the ball out of bounds instead.”

THAT’S WHAT THEY DO IN FOOTBALL!!

Yep, that’s right. For those of you totally out of the loop, in football you don’t have to accept a penalty. You can say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” At least to some of them. So why can’t you do that in all the sports. When your opponent does something against the rules, why can’t you say, “That’s all right, bro’. No problem here. Let’s just keep playing.”

Case in point: You’re ahead by three points in a basketball game and the other team’s got the ball. There’s ten seconds left. You don’t want them to try a three-pointer. If they make it, the game’s tied. So you foul them, they make one or two foul shots, you get the ball back and win the game. That’s not right, people. The other team should have the choice of declining the foul shots so they have a chance to hit that three-pointer. By “breaking the rules” (fouling the other team), your team gets rewarded.

So I say let the teams or players decide if they accept any penalties.

Just my two cents worth. (Or less.)

from your Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

All that minus a bag of chips

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Humor Post #40 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

I can’t be the only person in the world with the following problem, can I? I get out a bag of potato chips or Doritos. A nice new bag all full of fresh snacks for a growing dude like myself. Now comes the hard part. Opening the stupid bag. I take the bag gingerly on either side of the top seal and gently pull my hands apart. Of course you know where that gets me. Nowheres-ville. So I pull a bit harder. Still nothing. My need for an immediate snack makes my frustration grow. And you probably know what comes next. I give the bag a quick, violent snap outward. If I’m lucky I get my chips. If the usual thing happens, I get my chips all right, but they’re scattered all over the floor, having exploded from the bag. Then it’s a race between me and my dog to see who can get the most dusty chips off the floor. I usually win, but that’s because I’m good at blocking him out.

I’ve already written about this before. And I did it in verse. But the crisis continues and I wish I could find a solution.

So I went to YouTube where so many solutions to so many earth-shattering problems are found and I was able to find the this British guy who seemed to have a great method for opening that evil bag of chips. Ooh, he’s a master. Check it out here. There’s only one catch. I tried his method and I mucked it all up again. Chips all over the place. And my mom’s not that keen on having me experiment with new bags all the time. It did make for a great explosion sound though. Maybe this guy will come out with an instructional DVD.

It’s not just me who has this kind of problem with packaging. It’s sad to see Daniel opening his bags of rice cakes — he’s on a diet, the poor sap — and getting all ticked off when his attempts lead to the top rice cake always getting crumbled into rice pebbles. Rice cakes don’t exactly hold together too well and he ends up trashing at least one, usually two, rice cakes per package. (BTW, that’s a pretty mean thing for the company to do, calling them rice cakes. Uh, they’re about as far from cake as you can get unless you’re thinking of mud that gets caked on your shoes if you slosh around near a creek. That’s just cruel. Here you go, Daniel. A couple of nice cakes. Yeah, tasteless styrofoam peanuts is more like it.)

Anyway, time for ADD boy to get back on topic. It’s not just bags of chips that are hard to open. Cereal bags (inside the boxes) can be killers too. Sometimes they open right but usually I put a big tear down the side of the bag and a bunch of the cereal pours out into the box. Then the bag can’t really be closed and the cereal gets stale faster. Which is good for the cereal company, I guess, but not for ol’ Crankenfuss.

Now let me make something clear here. (“At last,” you’re probably saying.) I realize this isn’t as important as the end of the world that some people claim is going to happen soon. Yeah, if and when that happens, I probably won’t be jumping around whining about bags of chips. But little things add up, you know? Annoyances like this could be holding me back in my rap writing career. And that would be truly tragic, wouldn’t it?

So unless I want to give us snacks forever, I’ll keep working at finding a cure for this bag disease. Maybe I’ll end up with a Nobel Peace Prize for something for bringing inner peace to all those millions of people who suffer like I do.

So if you have any cool tricks you can teach me, let me know. In the meantime, so long from
The Dude with the ‘Tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss

Freak Speak

I hate Time Warner Cable!!

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Humor Post #39 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

WARNING: I’m really angry and I have to write about it NOW!! There won’t be any humor (stupid or otherwise) in this post. Usually I can joke about things. Not today. And the fault is totally with Time Warner Cable! Yes, that’s worth repeating. It’s all Time Warner’s fault.

As most of you know, I like sports. And there’s this show every Sunday called The Sports Reporters. It’s on ESPN and four reporters sit around and talk about what happened the past week in sports. So today I’m all set to listen to what they have to say about last Sunday’s Super Bowl and about Jeremy Lin, this Chinese dude from Harvard (of all places) who’s come out of nowhere to be a new superstar for the New York Knicks. I had the DVR set to record the show — it comes on at 10:30 — but I was busy doing other stuff till 10:45. No big deal, I thought. I’ll turn it on now and watch it. So I settled back on the couch and turned it on. BUT IT HADN’T RECORDED! WHAT!? I was furious. I know it was set up. I’d checked it two days ago to be sure. The whole series is supposed to be recorded.

By now it was 10:48. I watched them talk about Kobe for about three or four minutes, which was good but I was almost too mad to watch. Then, during the next commercial I thought, Ooh, maybe this show has a “Start Over” gizmo. (On some shows you can click on something to start the show over, though then you have to watch all the commercials too.) Yay!!! It had it. So I started the show over and paused it so I could go in the kitchen to toast a couple bagels so I could really enjoy the show. I was feeling so relieved. So I get out all the stuff I needed for a nice breakfast, put the bagels in and get myself all mentally prepared for the show.

But then, just as the bagels were popping up, I hear the TV go back on. OH, NO!! The Pause thing had come undone, the next show had come on, and of course the Start Over thing wasn’t going to work anymore. Now I’m even madder. I’m jumping up and down yelling stuff at the TV I can’t put in this post. This is not the first time this type of stuff has happened. It happens a lot. And we just just got a new box from Time Warner about two weeks ago because our old DVR kept messing up.

I can’t trust the setup. What is this — the 20th century??

We’d get Direct TV or something else if we could, but there are too many trees in the yard to get a satellite signal. So now Daniel and Maureen are talking about maybe having Tivo on top of Time Warner. They need the high-speed internet connection since they’re on the web a lot. And they pay way over $100 every month to Time Warner. They have one of their top packages. Shouldn’t they be getting better than this for their money? And I’m the one who has to suffer for it too.

I was all set to post about my cool new way to tell time — and believe me, this new method could change the world — but now I don’t even want to be anywhere near that TV or DVR and they’re in the same room with this computer. I might have to actually go outside and play.

from the Dude with the ‘tude and the angriest blogger on the planet right now,
Dr. Crankenfuss

P.S. If anyone knows how to find a way to see The Sports Reporters from today, I’d sure appreciate it.

Freak Speak, Uncategorized

I don’t want to be a planet. I want to be THE SUN!

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Humor Post #38 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Woo-hoo! Anybody see that shot by Austin Rivers to beat UNC last night? Yeah, I guess a couple million people did cause that’s all they were talking about on Sports Center afterwards. Yeah, I’m a Duke fan. Have to be since Daniel is, and without him I don’t get to post here. But I’m not really that happy for me. Hey, it wasn’t me who made that shot. And it wasn’t me who won the game. Actually it wasn’t even the school who won. I didn’t see any buildings playing out there. Yeah, I guess Duke got all those guys to come to Duke so officially Duke won, but I’d still rather be one of the Duke players or especially Austin Rivers after that game. He’s the one who did it, not the fans, not Duke, just him and his team.

Yeah, just like I said about David Freese of the St. Louis Cardinals way back in October, I think it would be SO COOL to be a sports hero and have everyone jumping up and down over whatever it is I did. I can’t even imagine how good that must feel. But I’d sure like to find out.

See, the deal is Austin Rivers gets to remember making that big shot the rest of his life and even if I remember the same thing, I’ll be remembering someone else being the hero. Ya know, I’d rather be thinking about myself making that shot, being the hero in some way. Wasn’t it more fun for the New York Giants in that Super Bowl parade than it was for all the people cheering for them? That’s why I’ll keep working to be somebody so people might remember me too. Don’t know what it’ll be yet. Much as I hate to admit it, it probably won’t be sports or I’d already be a star at something. (Though I can always hope. Gotta keep working on that cross dribble.) And it probably won’t be at hip hop, cause even though I think I can write pretty good stuff, I think I’m — sorry to say — at a racial disadvantage in that career. (Again, I can hope and if I keep working, maybe Usher will notice me like he did Justin Bieber. I know lots of people hate JB, but Usher thinks he’s cool and he knows a lot.)

Somewhere I heard that you can divide everybody into two groups: the 10% that are the movers and the shakers, the people everybody else follows and goes ga-ga over. The other 90% are like the fans that cheer for Duke or Carolina. Nothing the matter with them, nothing at all. A great bunch of people, I’m sure. (Well, most of them anyway.) It’s just that they’re not the ones making the shots. I wanna be the guy making that big shot.

It’s like the way the Universe is all set up. There’s gabillions of planets revolving around a bunch of suns. The planets are like all those fans out there. The suns are like the stars that the planets follow around. I wanna be a sun, not one of the planets. You ever notice that the Sun is so cool, it doesn’t even have a name, like all the planets have. It’s just THE SUN. Like “I don’t even need a name, dude. You know who I am.” How cool is that?

Now I have only one thing left to figure out — how am I gonna be that sun?

from your “still waiting to reach his potential” dude with the ‘tude,
Dr. Crankenfuss