Your world confuses and frightens me

All over my Internets tonight, nothing but Human Cock Fighting. And heavy on the cock, really.

I get that people like to see people beat the crap out of each other; hence the big "Woo!" noises when a safety lays out a receiver, independent of the outcome of the play. I'm not above watching a good boxing match myself, especially if the fighters either have some personal venom in it, or there's some historical merit to the proceedings: Ali-Frazier fascinates me on a near Trickster Mythos level.

But really, are we all so immune to the charms of The Association (or non-March college basketball) that we're rather watch two guys in shorts wrap their legs around each other's necks until one of them says Hello, Sailor?

Tonight in hoop, there were two double-overtime classics, with the Spurs outlasting the very game Grizzlies and the Rockets taking out the Jazz. The Grizz took the elder statesmen of the league to the limit at home, with rookie OJ Mayo looking like the game's next great player; only a very hot Tony Parker could save them. The Rockets rode Ron Artest (!) to 28 points to win despite missing Tracy McGrady; the Jazz are missing Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur and Ronnie Milsap.

This, from a league with perhaps the biggest talent base of any sport outside of soccer, and the only thing I've done in the last two paragraphs is make 70% of the readers bent that I'm talking hoop again.

But anyway, back to the human cockfightery.

There's something going on here, and it's not just the Nature Abhors A Vacuum moment of boxing opening the door wide for a competing thrill. It's that, with the utter abandonment of the playing field by pro wrestling for safe bloodsport thrills, and the increasing pussification of the NFL (don't hit the quarterback in 40% of his body, don't pull the ball carrier down from behind by grabbing inside the shoulder pads from behind, don't hit the ball carrier out of bounds even if it's damn near impossible to pull up on the off chance that he cuts it back inside)...

Plus, with the Web's always-on and always-available fountain of video goodness that used to make us feel bad, until seeing so very much of it made us all lose whatever shame we still had around...

Well, maybe I'm just old school for not being more into Human Cockfighting. But, um, still. This is, really, what you want to watch?

The Vegetarian Menace

Now, when you look at the following clip, you probably think it's just one more baseball slap fight. This one's in better video quality than most.



Sure, you could put it in the teammate on teammate file with Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis in Boston, Dioner Navarro and Matt Garza in Tampa Bay, and Michael Bennett and Carlos Zambrano in Chicago. Those are just the ones off the top of my head; I'm sure there hav been others.

But what's really going on here is Fielder giving in to the inevitable homicidal rage that takes over all vegetarians. From Hitler to McCartney, as well as the classic passive aggressive types like Gandhi and Schweitzer, the practice of not eating meat just leads to blowouts like this. Someone slip some veal in Fielder's tofu, and all will be well in Brew Town.

(The fact that I've named my roto baseball league The House of Meat has nothing to do with this assessment.)

The Joy of Camp

One of the small points that no one remembers about the USFL, in that no one remembers anything about the USFL, is that they didn't have any preseason games. The first week was a little ragged, but not too bad, and my memory is that the league had fewer injuries during the year.

You'd think that the NFL, given the salaries involved now and the cap that means that every team is just an injury or two away from having fatal flaws, would do everything they could to avoid injury. But since the teams all bundle the games into their season ticket plans, I guess the money works out for them.

Anyway, the reason I was thinking about this was the Steve Smith swinging party coming out of the Carolina camp. For those of you who only have eyes for Saint Brett, this may have flown under your radar, but the star Carolina wideout has been suspended for two games for a camp altercation with cornerback Ken Lucas which left the defensive player with a broken nose. Lucas needs surgery, and will be out for several weeks. Frankly, given the roid rage, heat, and hyper-competition, I'm kind of amazed that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

I also can't help but wonder... is Smith being punished not for the violence, but the effectiveness? Did Lucas really piss him off, or is he still enraged about the quarterbacks that he had to put up with (David Carr! Vinny Testaverde! Chris Weinke!) in the non-Jake Delhomme portions of his career? How happy is DeAngelo Hall, really, to have gotten the hell away from him?

Oh, and finally this. Just how bad ass is Smith, and does the bad-assery actually more or less keep his fantasy draft position more or less unchaged, despite the sudden loss of 12.5% of his seasonal value?

(Your answers, in order.... yes, he should be, very, and you should drop Smith down at least 10 to 15 places in your queue. Which makes him a great sleeper pick, really.)

Epic Drop: Top 11 Causes for the WNBA Brawl

Hey, when the ladies of the hardwood throw down, and ex-Piston, Bullet and Sixer Thug Rick Mahorn is in the thick of it, you know I'm there, people. Along with the rest of the sports blogosphere, in all likelihood...

Update: Now with more video footage than 90% of my audience has ever watched of the WNBA. Lookie lookie, girl fight!

Genius.

On Second Thought, I Don't Really Need to Take My Kid to Yankee Stadium

Hey, Yankee Fan -- the next time this happens, and we all know there will be a next time -- can you do me a favor and chant "E-C-W!" instead of "Boston Sucks"? It would have more of an old-school charm, really. (Ht Deadspin and Busted Coverage, and you can more or less skip the rest after the first 20 seconds)

Post #900 is an Unwritten Rule of Epic Droposity

Your list of the top 12 unwritten rules of baseball is here, and if MLB ever wants to start making up ground on the NFL, they are just going to have to do more of this, really. A century ago, brawls were much more common, along with all kinds of cheap shots from infielders, vile chatter and racial slanders from the infielders and managers, crazed doctoring of baseballs, and more...

You do not have an answer for the triple decker pecker wrecker

UFC 75 - Unacceptable

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No one does.

Tough Times in Oaktown

So the Southern Californian Angels of The Greater San Diego Megalopolis signed Torii Hunter to 5 years and $90 million, under the thought that he'll provide protection in the order for Vlad the Impaler... and as Hunter is still just 32, it's probably not that bad of a deal, though he hardly strikes you as an $18mm a year player, Gold Glove or no. I'm also not at all scared, as an A's fan, by their deal of Orlando Cabrera for Jon Garland. as I kinda think that Garland is a worse idea than giving a kid some starts, especially since the Angels are said to have a farm system and all. If these are their big off-season moves, it's probably a net zero on the whole, and doesn't take them from the 94 win up to the 100 win plateau. They are still, after all, on the hook for many more years of Gary Matthews Jr. (.742 OPS last year), and had Garrett Anderson as their third-best offensive player last year. If Torii Hunter doesn't produce like he's got a contract to earn, they are still going to struggle to score runs, and at some point, that bullpen is going to show some serious cracks (K-Rod and Shields' ERA crept up to 2.81 and 3.86, respectively, and both numbers were the highest they have been in the last five years).

No, the bigger problem is that the speculation has begun as to what kind of haul they will get for Haren and Blanton... and the awful idea that moving both for prospects might be the best idea. When your big off-season move is to move Magical Man-Elf Marco Scutaro to Toronto... well, how exactly does the team propose to win games next year? The offense was paced by Jack Cust, who has no defensive position. The next best hitter in 2008 could be Daric Barton, who also has no defensive position, at least as of yet. The team is on the hook to Mark Kotsay and Eric Chavez for more money than anyone else wants to give them right now, thanks to way too much interest in back surgeries. That profile of Injured But Presumed Talented includes Bobby Crosby, Rich Harden, Huston Street, Justin Duchscherer, Mark Ellis...

Well, this isn't exactly the young and exciting team that you'd want to see in advance to a new park opening, with seats and suites to sell and a rising motion to pitch. Seattle's ascension last year also means that the division is more than Angels Or Bust. I'm also not as up on the A's farm system as I used to be, and they did get a couple of useful pieces last year in Travis Buck and Cust. But it still looks a lot closer to 75 wins than 95, and while Hunter is not going to be a great player for the Angels in three to five years at $18 million, he's going to be plenty good before then.

Of course, this is all contingent before the Other Shoe Dropping... which is the word that Johan Santana's days as a Twin are over. On the off chance that he doesn't go to MLB+ East, and wins up in LAALand... well, then they go to 105+ wins with any kind of health, and the rest of the division gets to play the sucker wildcard bet. Which, as we all know, is always reserved for MLB+ East Runner-Up.

So, on the off chance that someone of influence in Green and Gold sees this, my single plea... if you have to deal Haren or Blanton, deal both and flush the year... but move them *out* of the AL, so that you don't get to see them tear you up for the rest of their careers. Because Danny Haren is a stone cold killer, and Joe Blanton is just the kind of smart pitch-to-contact guy that the A's kind of offensive players can never do anything with.

And after you fire sale these guys, announce that you did it because you knew you weren't going to win this year, and cut the ticket prices. Because on some level, the fans of this team *know* that you've been cashing luxury tax checks from MLB+ for years now, and not spending that money on the team. And if you haven't really been trying full-out, why should the fans pay full-out?

As an A's fan, you knew I couldn't let this go

Continuing our Animal Week theme... today's Epic Drop concerns the major rat infestation at Angel Stadium. As always, we're looking on the bright side of things.

Top 11 Advantages of the Angels' Rat Infestation

All those years in California, and I never made it to an Angels game. Phew.