Random Thoughts

I've been utterly swamped over these past few days with issues both personal and work-related, but I've got about a gillion random thoughts in my head that I thought I would get into a post here in no particular order while I have a minute to come up for air.

Check out Tiger Woods. Divorced for all of one day, and comes out and fires his best round of the year. Nice media coverage while Tiger was hitting rock bottom right in front of our eyes just a few weeks ago, where nary a single reporter, news outlet, blogger or anything else I saw managed to make the connection or even to mention at the time that Tiger was just finalizing his divorce. That weekend Tiger shot +18 and finished in second-to-last place in the tournament, the guy was literally probably having knock-down, drag-out screaming fights with his soon to be ex-wife about money, where to live, what to do with the kids, etc. If you ever doubted that golf was mostly a mental game, what Tiger did on Thursday after the year he has had on the links pretty much puts that question to rest.

And then check out the Philadelphia Phillies. In a crucial four-day period that sees the NL East-leading Braves going to play a tough Colorado team on the road, we have the NL-worst Astros coming in to our house for a 4-game set where we should be able to pick up a couple of games and basically be tied with the Braves for the divisional lead, heading into the last 35-40 games of the 2010 regular season. Instead, the Phils get their asses swept at home by the lowly Astros, missing four chances to pick up games in the postseason race, and leaving themselves a full 3 games back in the division and already out of the wildcard lead as we head into our second west coast trip of the season, where we traditionally have fared horribly. That is as pathetic a performance as this team has come up with in the past few years. As I've said all season long, this team just seems to have lost that "eye of the tiger" that they clearly have had the past couple of seasons. The Roy Oswalt trade was another stroke of genius for this team and GM Ruben Amaro, but it seems less and less like their year in 2010 with every passing week of games in the books.

Does anybody remember what the end of August used to be like when we were kids? I do. It was hot. Effing steamy, sweaty, muggy hot. Every year, all of August was basically hot as hell in the northeast, you could count on it as surely as the sun coming up each day. Well, nowadays have you noticed how the summer is basically over in the northeastern U.S. by the middle of August? Anybody who makes beach plans for the last couple of weeks before Labor Day these days better pack their sweaters and some windbreakers, cuz once again we are looking at 70-degree high days and lows in the evenings dropping into the 50s. Global warming my ass.

This week I had one of the biggest morons I work for -- a guy who is so clueless at what we do that I must have had 50 or 60 conversations with others about how inept and unskilled he is at this job over the past year or so -- advise me "don't ever let yourself think that I am infallible" when he found an error he had made in something that I had not commented on previously. Of course, the first 185 times I found similar errors in his work, I did point it out to him, and 185 times I got a predictably unintelligible response justifying why his language was better than my suggestion, even when pointing out things like obvious typos and blatant problems in syntax with some language in his agreements. But then he finds an error and now I should always remember that he isn't infallible. I'll have to try to remember that. Maybe I'll tie a string around my finger so every time I see it it will remind me that this clown is not infallible. It's just so rich.

While I'm on the topic, we had our annual review process at work a month or two ago, and I really cannot imagine anyone being worse at administering this process than my current employers. These people seem to view the reviews as their opportunity to mention every single specific mistake you've made over the past year, instead of focusing on the way you did your job overall for the past 12 months. I mean, if I respond to every request within 10 minutes, maybe three or four hundred times over a year, but then exactly one time I miss an email and do not respond to one request for two hours, am I supposed to show up at my review and hear all about that one fuckup and how I need to set more realistic deadlines for my work? Or should I hear how great a job I did at setting deadlines and responding promptly to requests over hundreds of instances over a 12-month period? I know I have my own experiences in conducting reviews and others' viewpoints may not necessarily agree with my own, but I feel like this is a very clear answer, and yet the powers that be at my job simply do not get that. I mean, when you've got 24 different people reviewing your performance, and 23 of you know with total confidence that you are a certain way, but then one outlier jackass reviewer makes a negative comment that the other 23 powers that be know is simply not an accurate reflection of how you actually performed, how does that one outlier comment find its way into the review? Can people really be that clueless about how the annual review process is supposed to work?

I guess that's all for now. I've got a million things going on and it's a good bet you'll get to read about most of them in the coming weeks right here on the blog. For now, enjoy what is likely to be the last 90-degree day of the year in the NY area on Sunday and try to get in your last bits of fun before summer officially departs us once again.

More on Tiger, and Another Poll

Interestingly, a little over half of those who voted in the poll earlier this week indicated that they still believe that Tiger Woods will end his career with the all-time lead in major championships won, meaning that he would have to win at least five more majors in his still-young career.

While that number may sound high to many of you out there, to me it illustrates the the stark change in the public's perception of Tiger's golf abilities after the past couple of months. Obviously, if you had asked this question in a poll sometime in the summer of 2009, before Tiger's Thanksgiving night crash into a fire hydrant and all the shitstorm that ensued, the results would probably have come in around 95% of respondents believing Tiger would break all the time record for major championships in professional golf. That surprises no one. But what is a little surprising is that if you had asked this poll question just a few months back, after Tiger had been busted with all the cheating and the disgustery, after his scripted press conference just preceding his return to the game, and after he had announced that he would be coming back before the 2010 Masters, I still think you would have had probably 85-90% of voters who believed that Tiger's game would not be affected, or at least not be affected much, or not for very long.

What we've gotten instead, however, is a truncated season full of almost's and not-quites from Tiger Woods this year, with a few horrifying performances thrown in for good measure. After last weekend's debacle, the only question left for this season it seems is:

How will Tiger Woods fare at the PGA Championship this weekend?
Let's see how smart my reading audience is:

Tiger Poll

Taming the Tiger

The top three signs that Tiger Woods is completely and totally off his game.

1. Scores. Tiger Woods finished this weekend's tournament at WGC-Bridgestone at +18, a full 30 shots off of the lead, and ended the tournament in 78th place out of 80 players in the weekend's tournament. This marks Tiger's worst score in any golf tournament as a professional player, and his worst four-round tournament at Firestone in his career, a course where he has previously failed to finish in worse than 4th place at any time in his professional career. This weekend saw Tiger shoot all four rounds over par at a golf tournament for the first time in nearly eight years, and only the fourth time in his 15-year career, the first time outside of one of the sport's four major championships.

2. The Goatee. Those who watched Tiger or saw this highlights this weeknend noted that the goatee is back for the first time in a few years. Although Tiger has done this before, I felt like I could tell from watching him this weekend that this time the goatee was there with a real purpose: to spark a comeback, a rebirth. To convince the others he was playing against, to convince the fans, and, I sense, most of all to convince himself that something has palpably changed from his play over most of the rest of this year, which has already seen some of Tiger's most human-looking performances in an otherwise glorious professional golfing career. As I looked at Tiger's scruff around his mouth this weekend, I could not help but think back to when Michael Jordan cracked out the goatee when he returned to the NBA in Washington and tried to help make the Wizards a champion or at least a contender. At some point when the greats who never thought they could lose it, suddenly feel like they've lost it, they turn to a cosmetic change like facial hair, haircut, their clothes or uniform, etc. as if that is actually going to have some positive impact on their sports performance. And, as was the case with MJ a decade ago, it rarely ever works.

3. Attitude. More than just reading the box scores on Monday morning, if you actually watched Tiger Woods play this weekend, then you saw a guy who is wholly different from the golfer we have watched so many times step up in the clutch, whack the ball down the middle of the fairway 25 yards further than anyone else, and just blow away the field on Sunday, if not on Thursday. Tiger simply did not exhibit one whit of the perserverance, of the concentration, and most of all of that absolute focus and insistence on winning, that has made people like him, Michael Jordan, etc. so successful over their careers. For the first time that I can recall, Tiger was walking up to the ball on Saturday and especially on Sunday, barely taking any time to prepare, make a read, take some practice swings or anything, and just hauling off and wailing the ball. Most often into the crowd, off some trees, or wherever it may land. In many many years of watching Tiger do his thing, this is the first and only time I have seen him looking so vulnerable, and just generally so damned human.

It was almost enough to actually make me sad for the guy.

More Quick Hits

Lots on my mind today, and not a ton of time to spend blogging, so here we go in the "quick hits" format once again.

First, I was actually interested in watching the Winter Olympics for the first time this week on Wednesday night, even though Hammer Wife basically has the NBC coverage on the tv in the room with me all night every night this week. For whatever reason, I just don't find most of the winter Olympics to be fun to watch. I mean, of course I -- like the rest of the free world outside of the U.S. of A. -- don't take silly hobbies like snowboarding seriously as an Olympic sport, as America only lobbied for these to become Olympic competitions over the past couple of Olympics since we figured we could stuff the ballots with some free gold medals in those hobbies since we are after all the country that spawned the X Games and which otherwise has the money and the free time to pursue such newfangled activities. The figure skating does not particularly interest me, and basically any sport that relies on judges to subjectively decide who wins a medal -- judges who time and time again, mind you, have proven themselves to vote with their eyes closed based on biases wholly unrelated to who the best skaters are on that given day -- are more or less dead to me. I watched an hour or so of the ski jumping earlier in the week, but come on that is about as bad of television as there is. It's basically just a guy skiing motionless down a pre-dug track on a hill, and then pushing off with his legs while he stands, motionless, in the air for maybe five seconds as he floats to the ground. I'm not saying I could or would go and do that myself right now, but if you had to invent a boring, absolutely-no-action tv sport, that would pretty much be it. That, or the luge, which basically amounts to someone lying on their back for 80 seconds and trying to remain as motionless and flat as possible. I also saw some of the mogul freestyle skiing a couple of days back, but how many times can I watch someone break their knees over and over again by just bumping up and down in a way that deliberately impedes their pace and keeps the action slow and boring?

But then came the ladies' downhill skiing on Wednesday night, and I have to admit this was really pretty cool. Not being a skier myself, I am always amazed at how quickly these people move and how sharply they take these turns back and forth. What was cool on Wednesday night was that -- and I don't know if this was due to track conditions or what -- these skiers were completely and totally out of control from the moment they left the gate until their either face-planted or somehow finished the race still upright. Without exception every single one of these downhill skiers had absolutely no control whatsoever, and basically they each experienced the most terrifying minute and a half of their lives as they hurtled at 75 miles per hour back and forth down a track with a hugely steep downhill slope and much sharper cuts and curves than most other downhill tracks in the world, and you could just tell that each and every one of them was just praying to hold on for dear life. It was pretty amazing, and the complete franticness of the pace combined with quite a few entertaining face plants made for the first interesting watch of the entire Olympics in my view.

Oh and while I'm on the topic, I've seen several people mention in blogs or elsewhere how much they enjoy the speed skating. Really? At least in the head-to-head battles on the large course, there are some nice straightaways for the skill people to have the chance to power ahead and maybe even pass somebody due to their incredible leg strength and drive to win. But most of the speed skating they've shown so far is this ridiculous short-track kind, which I cannot understand how people can enjoy. There is no straightaway to speak of at all in this thing, and one lap takes all of maybe 7 seconds, 6.8 of which are all curves as the skaters are by design too busy crossing-over their skates on the curves to even think about actually racing. It's more like WWE skating than actual speed skating in any event, and I don't care if Apollo Ohno wins gold medals at it for America. In fact, I'm sure the silly short-track is just another format pushed into the Olympics by the Americans because we think we can win the gold in it with more regularity than the old, more pure speed skating of days past. At least with the heads-to-head skating races on the large rinks, there is some actual time and opportunity for those with the most actual speed skating skill to come out in front. Short-track speed skating is like the super-turbo version of a classic Winter Olympics sport, just a push-and-pray donkey's dream of someone who grew up watching real speed skating in the real Olympics, back when they used to only come around every four years instead of every two years nowadays. I think of the short-track speed skating as the Rush Poker of the Winter Olympics, which might sound like a compliment to many of you who have extolled the virtues of the Rush on your blogs but who are actually just unknowingly shilling for full tilt as they further bastardize poker in the name of the almighty dollar.

On an unrelated sports note, does anybody know why is Tiger Woods having another "press conference" on Friday at the PGA headquarters in Florida? And why on earth are these jackmonkeys on the radio saying he better say he's sorry so he can move on with his life? He already said he's sorry. About five different times. And I have news for you -- unless you are Elin Woods and happen to be reading this blog (I'm sure she is a big fan), Tiger never owed you any apology for what he did. Period. You're not married to him. He never made any promises to you regarding his off-the-course activities or his fidelity to his wife. And he certainly doesn't owe you five different apologies. So get up off the guy's back please. What Tiger did is despicable to say the least, and if I'm his wife I wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near him, not for any amount of money (even $300 million). But this lemming-like insistence across the media and the country that Tiger had better apologize (again!) on Friday in front of the cameras is just that -- lemming behavior. Newsflash: for the most part, the media in this country are the least intelligent, least integrity-having, and least honest or "good" group of people out there. Mindlessly following what they tell you to think to serve their own selfish agendas makes you closer to a 1930's Nazi than a 2010's American. So wake up and give the guy a god damn break.

Lost was effing awesome this week as any true Lost fan knows. So much left unanswered, but we probably got as much information in this show as in any episode in the series's history. That Flocke is "recruiting". That Jacob touching the six people he touched (Sawyer, Hugo, Jack, Sayid, Locke and either Sun or Jin) allegedly is what set them up to eventually end up at the island, as had been assumed. That strangely the other of Sun / Jin, Claire, Charlie, Rose, Bernard, and especially Kate were not touched by Jacob and were not drawn to the island by him in that way. That the mysterious numbers from the first couple of seasons are somehow connected to the selection of these six people. That Jacob is looking for "candidates" to replace him as guardian of the island. That Ileana scooped up Jacob's ashes and put them into a bag to take with her to the temple presumably for some purpose. That there is some kind of a "referee" in the battle between Jacob and Flocke in the weirdo blond kid who showed up out of nowhere a couple of times in this episode. That Sawyer was able to see the kid, while Richard Alpert of all people was not. How much of what Flocke told and showed Sawyer is actually true though? And is Sawyer really going to fight for Flocke, or as Doc Jensen of EW surprised me with in his column this week, is Sawyer running one final con, against the doer of evil, the Man In Black. Can Sawyer even fool Flocke like that, is that even possible to do? We'll have to wait and see. I'm just glad Kate wasn't featured this week again, for that I am eternally thankful. And WTF is up with the alternate reality storyline? The more they show of that story line, the less likely it seems to become to me that this is actually just a final flash forward to the end of the series when the Losties finally get it right. Although I will still say that it is obvious to me that the writers will find a way to bring the two story lines back together, as there is just no way that they are going to keep these two realities separate without tying the two together in some way.

Ahh, and of course, there is always poker. Lovely, fair, poker. Mother fucking dickshitting poker. Poker is destroying me right now. After all my talk of playing less after a great 2009, I have broken my own rule between double guarantees week and now the FTOPS and am instead playing a lot, which would be great if not for the Sick Ass Beats I take about 10 to 15 times every single night. Last night's standout hands include my KK vs TT on a KTx flop, allin, and then another Ten on the turn (that's not something you see every day!) in the $100 1-rebuy tournament on full tilt, and the flickaflonk in a $220 heads-up nlh sng who called my preflop raise with KK with his K6s, flopped 457 and called an allin from me for twice the pot on the flop, and then of course turned the 3 to bury me. I've been such a dick in the chatbox to these monkeys over the past several weeks of just plain brutal suckouts that it's a wonder my chat hasn't been perma-banned. I know I can play profitably in most of the games I play, but withstanding the kinds of suckout streaks I have seen over the past month-plus is more than any human can take. Rest assured that if most of you had to play my hands for even one night, your heads would fucking explode and we'd be cleaning up your brains off the walls for weeks. Clearly, I need a break from this shitgame right now. When you run like I do, too much poker can definitely be detrimental to my world view.

OK back to the grind. Working for the man sucks almost 1/1000th as much as playing poker does!

The Tiger, and the Trade

OK ok, enough with the emails and blog comments. Quickly I will give my opinion here on the whole Tiger Woods fiasco, and then on to more important things, this week's trade of Roy Halladay to the Philadelphia Phillies in their attempt to become the first National League team ever to appear in three consecutive World Series.

First -- Tiger. There's a reason that I haven't really mentioned this here before, and that's because, generally speaking, I just don't see what the real story here is. I mean, yeah it's another man in a position of extreme power, influence, fame or riches who it turns out is a raging pig-ass immoral bitch. Tiger isn't anywhere near the first, and he'll be nowhere near the last. Sure it's always a little disappointing to see a guy knocked down from the top of the world like this, but again, I am at this point far beyond the point of surprise when it comes to the illicit sexcapades of anyone with a modicum of recognizable success these days. It's more or less just like baseball players using steroids at this point -- I just assume that any man who again occupies any position of power, influence, fame or riches is in fact cheating on his wife. Repeatedly. And often it's with totally freaky-deaky people like hookers, porn stars, transvestites, minorities or others somehow different from the person involved, etc. It's just the nature of the beast.

Basically, what it comes down to is that men are weak, in particular men who have 18 billion pounds of pussy thrown in their face every single waking hour of every single day. It's real easy for me to sit here with my feet up on my desk and claim that I would never, ever cheat on my wife. And I believe it too. But throw a hundred hot pieces of ass at me every single day I am alive, all of whom would do basically anything I wanted them to do at any time, any position, in any way whatsoever, and have them be not only willing but really begging to get it on with me, and you just can't say in a vacuum what you would actually do in that situation. It's the sad truth about the way men are. And that's not intended to be any kind of an excuse. It's just a realistic observation about what I see in the world today. I doubt that Tiger set out to marry Elin but then immediately fuck as many other bitches as he could find. I bet for a while he believed he would stop womanizing along with his decision to get married. But it's just so much pussy, all the time. It's wrong as hell what Tiger has done, and frankly I cannot believe how reckless he has been with the voicemails, the sexts, etc. he has sent, but in the end this just shows that Tiger is no different from most other mega athletes, famous people or incredibly rich people in the world today.

I should also mention how much more this sort of thing seems to be happening since our own acting president got busted chasing blowies instead of fighting Osama Bin Laden back in the late 90s. I've said this a million times but I'll say it again now -- the worst result of the Clinton presidency was not the breakdown of oversight and regulation of areas that are in need of such oversight and regulation, and it wasn't even the lack of attention placed on very real enemies that were quietly amassing forces to launch attacks against our country. The worst result of the Clintons (and I do mean both of them, because Hillary staying with that pig for her own personal gain is just about as bad and unthinkable as what Bill did in my view) was the loss of morals that that entire regime based on lying, cheating and selling out set as an example for Americans -- really, for humans -- all around the world. When people see the acting leader of the greatest, most properous nation in the history of the earth fingering his fat young interns with cigars, splooging all over the White House, accepting millions of dollars to free outright serial-killing criminals in his last days of office, and going before Congress and before the cameras and outright lying under oath, this has a severe and long-term effect on morals of everyone alive. And I definitely blame the Clintons as a significant factor in the seeming growing habit of the rich and famous acting with absolutely no morals whatsoever, giving no respect whatsoever to the lives of their wives, children, other loved ones or the millions and millions of people who look up to them.

The last point I would make about the whole Tiger rigamarole is just how funny it is that men will cheat on any chick, no matter how hot she is. I mean it's great being a man, really. Elin, the hot, young blond thing that she is, gets cheated on a million times by Tiger Woods. He goes to hookers, porn stars, even Perkins waitresses for crying out loud, just to avoid boinking her one more time. Christie Brinkley has had like four husbands cheat on her hot ass. Frigging Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley with a transvestite hooker for crying out loud! You ever wonder why women paint their fingernails and toenails, have every hair painfully ripped from every nook and cranny of their entire bodies, color their cheeks, their hair, their lips, outline their eyes, extend their eyelashes, and get fake stomachs, fake tits, fake lips, eye jobs, chin jobs, elbow jobs, and I could go on and on and on? Because it's true what they say: for every super smokin hot chick you can show me, I can show you a man who is tired of fucking her. It's just the way we are as men.

Now on the real business of the day, which is the trade of Blue Jays pitcher Roy Halladay to the Phillies. In a nutshell, this looks to be a three-team deal that essentially involves the Phillies sending former Cy Young winner Cliff Lee to Seattle, along with top pitching prospect Kyle Drabek and another top prospect to the Jays, in exchange for the Phils receiving Roy Halladay and the Mariners' two top pitching prospects. There are various reasons for the Jays and the Mariners to do or not do this deal, but I'm only concerned here with the Phillies's motivations, which in this case relate to securing an appropriate long-term commitment from a staff ace. Here, Cliff Lee had indicated that he would be looking for a 5- or 6-year deal similar to the one signed by CC Sabathia with the Yankees before the 2009 season when Lee's current contract is up after the 2010 season, and the Phillies as a franchise prefer to keep starting pitching contracts to fewer than four years -- a strategy which I strongly agree with, as long as you can effectively continue signing good pitchers for shorter agreements over time. Halladay, however, had already indicated an extreme interest in signing a long-term deal with the Phils, among other things due to the team's spring facility's location just a few minutes away from his family's Clearwater, Florida home, and he has since done so, negotiating a 3-year extension with an option all at roughly $20 million a year in connection with this trade.

So what the Phils are getting out of this trade in a nutshell is swapping out Cliff Lee, who was going to pitch in Philly for just one more year and then would have left the team as a free agent since the Phils already knew they were not keen to giving Lee the deal he is looking for to make his millions now, and bringing in Roy Halladay instead, for the next four years instead of Cliff Lee's one year. As I said consistently all through last season, I believe that, even with as great as Cliff Lee pitched in Philadelphia, Halladay is still that much better overall of a pitcher. His career numbers are slightly better, and he is that much more of a workhorse than even Lee has been in his time in Cleveland and Philadelphia. And in contrast to Lee's shaky 8-9 beginning to the 2009 season in Cleveland, Halladay has been one of the most consistent pitchers in the game, finishing in the top five in the AL's Cy Young voting in each of the past five seasons. Halladay throws about 8-10 complete games a year, he goes deep almost every single night when his GM hasn't totally messed with his psyche by promising him a trade to a contender and then not following through with it, and the guy is absolutely awesome at all aspects of pitching in the major leagues. But Cliff Lee has been awesome as well, and ultimately again this is not a deal that says that Halladay is a far better pitcher than Cliff Lee. Instead this deal says that Halladay can be a Phillie at a "reasonable" price for four more years after 2010, whereas Cliff Lee is only staying there for one more year at most and then he will be gone to more lucrative waters (located in the Bronx, New York most likely).

The big question right now I think is how the people of Philadelphia will react to this deal. It does seem that Phillies' GM Ruben Amaro has made a shrewd long-term decision for his team, locking up one of the greatest pitchers in the game today for the next five seasons instead of retaining a slightly lesser pitcher for only one more season. But that's not necessarily how the Philly fans are going to react to it. Cliff Lee, even in his short time in the City of Brotherly Love, was beloved by the hometown fans. He came in at the midpoint this season and immediately took over the mantle that had been held by Cole Hamels in the Phils' run to the championship back in 2008. He pitched so good for his first several starts as a Phillie that he was the absolute talk of the town, and that only magnified with Lee's incredible shutdown performances in the 2009 postseason. The Phanatics love this guy, and now he's gone, seemingly swapped for a roughly equal talent in Halladay, but not someone who has done anything yet for this city like Lee already had. Shipping Lee off unceremoniously like this as part of this three-team deal is not necessarily going to make Ruben Amaro a beloved figure in the city, at least not until Halladay goes nine innings in his first three starts for the Phils in 2010.

And then there is the small aspect of Amaro giving up top pitching prospect Kyle Drabek to Toronto as part of this deal. You may recall that talks for the Phillies to acquire Halladay before the trading deadline last season eventually stalled out because of the Phillies' refusal to include Drabek in the deal. So, back in June Amaro turned down trading Drabek for Halladay, acquired Cliff Lee and kept Drabek instead. And now here we are some six months later, and Amaro is giving up Cliff Lee, getting Roy Halladay and giving up Kyle Drabek to the Jays after all. This, in addition to giving away the other top prospects the Phils traded away to Cleveland to acquire Cliff Lee last season when the Halladay deal eventually broke down. So to all those out there who say this deal is a slam dunk, I think that is a silly position. It seems like Amaro made a short-term decision in acquiring Cliff Lee last season without really thinking through (or knowing about) Lee's future contract plans, and now Amaro is trying to undo that trade and go back to the deal he had wanted all along for Halladay, except that now he has to give up Kyle Drabek as well to get himself back to where he preferred to have been last summer anyways. Only time will tell how good this deal really is, although my suspicions are that the Phillies would not be giving up Drabek to make this deal happen if they truly thought as highly of Drabek as they have led others to believe over the past season or two in Philadelphia.

MATH Recap, and the Wide World of Sports

Congratulations to que31dawg for winning this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament, and to Bayne for cashing as well in the smallest field of the year. Yours truly managed to bust out first, as my AK allin preflop fell to QQ to take about 3/4 of my stack, and then AK lost to KQ allin preflop for the last grand or so. What can you do. And que31dawg, if you have a blog please let me know and I can link it up for you here.

Today the big topic on Hoy land is the world of sports, starting of course with Tiger Woods. That guy is effing sick. I heard somewhere and totally agree with the statement that the only truly transcendently great athletes are the ones who are greater than their entire sport. Babe Ruth -- take him away from baseball in the 1920s, and the fans would have gone wherever he went to play and completely forsaken the league. Muhammad Ali, whose whole aura outshined the rest of his competitors put together. Michael Jordan, who you still literally cannot turn off if you are channel surfing and happen to run into one of those 30-minute 1990s finals recap shows. My lord remember what Jordan did to Portland in that one finals, with all the threes? And then that look to the sidelines with the hands upturned, like "what can I do?". Sick. Anyways, Tiger Woods is another such athlete. I admit it -- I only watch golf to see Tiger. I wouldn't watch that drek otherwise, but to me when Tiger is involved, it is almost always worth watching.

When I was abed with mono a couple of months back, one Sunday I happened to flip to some golf, and Tiger was a couple shots behind some unknown about halfway through the final round on a Sunday. I literally could not drag my ass out of bed, so I ended up sitting there and watching the last couple hours of coverage, completely mesmerized by Tiger, waiting for the camera to get back to his next shot, and watching him completely dismantle the field as he made a back-9 burst. By the time they got to 18, Tiger and the co-leader were tied and playing together. They both got up to the green with a long put for par, and Tiger's opponent missed before tapping in, giving Tiger an opportunity to steal it. He sank a fucking 25-foot put along a curve and slightly downhill like it was cake. This was the one where he slammed his visor on the ground as it went in, if you watch any golf. Watching Tiger play is often like that. He is just that good. To think that these other players are expected to go out there every single week and play hard knowing that Tiger is lurking in the field, waiting to pounce on their every mistake, that is just wrong.

Anyways, twice this weekend Tiger came to 18 at Torrey Pines needing to birdie in order to stay alive for his 14th major tournament victory. First, on Sunday he teed off right into the left bunker, but then recovered nicely, pitched onto the green and boom, he had cupped it with what, a 12- or 14-footer to tie Rocco Mediate and force an 18-hole playoff on Monday. It was a hugely clutch hole especially given that it started off smack in the sand and given Tiger's repeated wincing from the pain his recently-operated-on knee. And on Monday the story was eerily similar. After swapping the lead a couple of times during the tiebreaker round, Mediate finally claimed the lead on 15 after three consecutive birdies and so the pair headed once again to 18 with Tiger one shot back, knowing Mediate, one of the shorter hitters on tour, would play the long Par 5 safe for par and knowing Tiger would need a birdie to stay alive and force sudden death. Once again, Tiger came through, including sinking another decent putt under what had to be extreme tension to make birdie once again and force a playoff hole. Is anyone else not surprised that Mediate folded on the first hole of sudden death? I can only imagine what that guy must have been thinking, giving his all like that for not four but five straight days full of golf, and seeing the best player in the world ride up from behind and catch him to tie just at the very end, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for the world's 163rd ranked player. I bet in his mind he folded like a tent just as soon as he watched Tiger birdie the 18th to take his weekly score on the hole to I think 4-under. As I heard Trey Wingo explain this morning on ESPN Radio, Rocco Mediate threw everything and the kitchen sink at Tiger Woods this weekend, but apparently the sink only grazed him.

But the bigger news story of the day, in New York City circles anyways, is the firing of Mets coach Willie Randolph. In just the latest in a long, long string of bad manager terminations for this ownership group with the Mets, as the Wilpon brothers seem to really enjoy leaking out word of an imminent firing at least a couple of days before the actual firing occurs. Just to make things interesting I guess. The result of course is that the organization comes off looking like a bunch of filthy sons of bitches. I mean, everyone in the area knew, knew, that Randolph's firing was just a day or so away. All the papers reported it over this past weekend, citing sources close to the organization, suggesting that the Mets coach was day-to-day at best. Then word came out on Sunday that Mets GM Omar Menaya was accompanying the team out to Anaheim for their 3-game series with the Angels, something he apparently rarely does, which could not have made it more obvious what was about to happen.

For his part, Randolph clearly did not know he was on the chopping block as late as 1am last night, after his team beat the first-place, 42-28 Angels 9-6. He gave his usual post-game press conference, and trust me, he was wayyy too upbeat to have any idea what was about to happen. And yet, somehow, the Mets brass -- namely, GM Menaya -- decided that the middle of last night, at 3 effing am, was the right time to announce Randolph's departure from New York. So Randolph got word at 3am, following a win over a first-place team and the Mets' second consecutive win overall, that he had been fired, and presumably had to fly back home to New York alone to consider his future.

Of course, upon further inspection I think it's pretty clear to see why Omar Menaya would choose this exact time to make his move, regardless of the consequences of the middle-of-the-night firing or the leaking of the news as early as this past Friday and Saturday in all the major nyc news sources. It's this simple: the Mets had won on Sunday, and then they traveled across the country to face the first-place Angels, and after winning that game too, Menaya suddenly faced a dilemma. Either sit back and wait until the team comes home to New York, when he might be looking at a team fresh off a sweep of a division leader on the road and on a 4-game win streak overall, at which time Menaya's fear of the sports fans in New York would leave him exposed to hating from all sides of the Mets' fanbase. Or, Menaya could just fire Randolph right away, before Randolph has a chance to win another game against the Angels and put Menaya further into an already poor position. And Menaya, as the Mets organization always seems to do, chose the easy way out, at the direct expense of the psyche and the reputation of yet another bad coach in this city.

Way to go, Mets. I'm a friggin Phillies fan and I'm calling you classless. I'm Hoy and I'm calling you classless for crying out loud.