Shyzer.com

It’s that time of year again!

National League Division Series

  vs.  

This is essentially Manny versus the Cubs. I’m not sure if Los Angeles has any additional players, but from what I gather the Dodgers sucked until July 31, traded for Manny Ramirez, and then proceeded to win every game for the next two months thanks to Manny hitting a gazillion home runs. Or something like that.

On the flip side, I didn’t think Chicago was that good until recently. I saw them play a bit over the past two weeks and I’m a believer. A believer that Chicago beats Los Angeles in 4 games that is.

  vs.  

Dammit, of course the two NL teams I could root for end up playing each other in the first round. I could go back and forth on this, but it boils down to two things. Who I want to win and who I think will win.

Two of my favorite ex-Mariners are located in this series - the Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer and the Brewers centerfielder Mike Cameron. Moyer is older than dirt and yet he still makes players half his age look like fools at the plate. Toss in the fact that I (honestly) could probably throw harder than he does and it baffles the mind that he’s still playing. I love Cameron, but it’s hard to top Moyer. Thus, go Phillies?

Yeah, not so fast. I know they’re the better team on paper and they’ve had a chance to rest their starters and the Brewers are banged up and their pitching is a mess and blah blah blah. Milwaukee is hot and in recent seasons the hotter teams have done better than the rested (02 Angles, 03 Marlins, 05 White Sox, 07 Rockies). But then I look at the recent schedule and notice that Philly swept Milwaukee just last week and that’s enough for me. Plus, Milwaukee can only go so far with running CC Sabathia on short rest, right? I think Vegas has the odds of his arm flying off his body during the series somewhere around 48%. Philadelphia beats Milwaukee in 5.

(This is like the third version of these predictions I’ve written. At first I had Milwaukee winning this, beating the Cubs, and then losing in the WS. Now I have them losing in the first round. Let this be a lesson for anybody who is thinking about using my predictions as a guide to gambling.)

American League Division Series

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Repeat after me: You don’t win the AL East without being good. You don’t. You can’t. Not in this century. So to everybody thinking that Tampa is a fluke, they’re not. At the time I’m writing this, I don’t even know who they’ll be playing seeing as Chicago and Minnesota are still playing tonight. No offense to the AL Central, but it doesn’t matter either way. Tampa beats Chicago in 4 or Minnesota in 3. That said, seeing Ken Griffey Jr. playing in the World Series would put a giant smile on my face.

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First off, let’s take a moment and enjoy the fact that the New York Yankees aren’t in the playoffs this year. Ahhhh. There’s nothing quite like gloating, huh?

On paper, the Angels are a better team than Boston, right? Better record, far more rested, they have home field throughout the playoffs, the Mariners finished more than 40+ games behind them - and yet I’m still not sold. Their hitting is downright finicky. Their OBP (on-base percentage, which factors in hits and walks) is 19th in the league. Slugging (total bases / at bats) is 18th. They’re 25th in walks, a stat where Boston, Chicago, and Tampa are 1, 2, 3.

Long story short, their record is so good simply because they played the majority of their games against three shitty teams! I honestly don’t even think this will be close. I wanted to say Boston wins in a sweep, but I’ll toss Los Angeles a bone and say Boston wins in 4.

League Championship Series

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Philadelphia’s lineup is freaking stacked and yet every time I watch them, it seems like their 3-4-5 hitters are going 1-10. And which Myers is going to show up and pitch? Hopefully not the one that sucks. Because he really sucks. Badly enough to blow at least one of these games and help Chicago beat Philly in 5.

  vs.  

Boston is a good team, Tampa is a good team, whatever. I want Tampa to win this and I’m blatantly going to favor them for no reason other than desire when I say Tampa beats Boston in 6. I know damn well this is just a passionate pick, but whatever.

World Series

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I want to pick Chicago. I really do. But this is the fucking Cubs we’re talking about here. Something’s going to happen like it always does and Tampa wins in 6, thus ensuring that Cubs fan worldwide cry themselves to sleep for another winter.

[link to vid]

Is there anything better than seeing two old guys yell obscenities at each other?

[via zefrank]

As the baseball playoffs rapidly approach, I’d like to take this time to issue a blanket warning. The next comedian, broadcaster, or dancing monkey who tries to wittily point out that the World Series should be renamed since only American teams play in it will be punched in the crotch. Repeatedly. By me.

11 Dominicans
6 Puerto Ricans
5 Venezuelans
3 Japanese
2 Mexicans
2 Canadians
1 Panamanian
1 German
1 Nicaraguan

That’s the combination of foreign born players on the World Series rosters last year for the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies. Neither of these teams have an especially large contingent of foreign players either. In fact, some teams in this year’s playoffs have significantly more.

In fact, MLB’s public relations department not only keeps tabs on all the foreign born players, but routinely lets us know how global the game has become. Case in point:

Of the 855 players on rosters at the start of the season, 239 were born outside the 50 states, the commissioner’s office said Tuesday. The percentage dropped to 28.0 from 29.0 last year, when it was just off the record of 29.2 set in 2005.

There were 3,356 of 7,021 minor leaguers born outside the 50 states, with the percentage rising to 47.8 percent, up from 46.2 last year and 45.1 in 2005.

Not only is it 30% for the pros, but almost every other player in the minors calls some other county home!

It’s called the World Series because the world’s best players usually end up playing here in America. Teams are scouting in Asia, Latin America, and the rest of the world almost as much as they are in Florida and Texas. For every Oklahoman farm boy and California surfer dude on a team’s roster, there’s a good chance the guy sitting next to them in the locker room speaks a first language other than English.

So if you’re uneducated about baseball and enjoy being punched in the crotch, please go ahead and keep repeating that same stupid line this autumn. Otherwise, please shut the hell up and go enjoy some baseball.

I literally just had a 10 second phone conversation that went something like:

You get the thing?
Yeah.
You talk to the guy?
Yeah.
Good, c-ya.

I hope the feds aren’t tapping my phone.

I find my self continually wondering if I’ll ever stop being amazed by Lady Luck. When I’m 50 or 60, will I still find myself stunned by her sudden appearance? A large part of me hopes the answer is “hell no.”

After being turned down for countless jobs, learning far too much bad news, and being stricken by what medical professionals can only describe as Bubonic Plague, Ms. Luck decided to part the dark clouds of gloom and smile down upon me.

Last week, the November edition of ShopSmart magazine hit newsstands (yeah, I know November is two months away) and Hey, It’s Free was surprisingly mentioned as one of it’s top seven money saving sites on the Internet. (page 34!) For those of you who don’t keep up to date with the Freebie World, this is akin to an athlete being profiled in Sports Illustrated. The only way this could have been better is had they done a full page spread on HIF.

Words can’t express the amount of pride and validation that has bubbled up within me thanks to this surprise of surprises. My first national print mention! I’ve sunk more blood, sweat, and tears into that site than any other project in my life - including most relationships. At the very least, the bump in ad revenue and countless local news mentions was a lovely bonus.

And yet on the grand scale of awesome news learned during the month of September, that ranks a distant second. You might be wondering what possibly could top such a wondrous occasions? Did the Seattle Mariners offer me a job? Did Barack Obama ask me to join his foreign policy team? Even better.

Try finding out that I’m back on my mom’s free airline passes. For a year. Minimum.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I CAN FLY FOR FREE TO PRACTICALLY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD FOR ANOTHER YEAR!

I really don’t know how to put this to people. I’m a traveler at heart. I’ve spent the last three years of my life helping out my family and there’s no better thing in this world that I could be doing. But I can’t wait to get back out there on the open road. I’m at my best when I’m moving with the tide, flowing from here to there with no regard for the unforeseen.

World, here I come. But first I need to hit up New York. And Spartanburg. And Louisville. And Orlando. There are a few people I need to visit.

Am I the only one who ends up having hallucinogenic dreams after taking NyQuil? I’ve been sick as a dog this week and finally decided to give NyQuil a shot the other night. Long story short, I spent the entire evening battling demons after being shrunk down to the size of a pea. Suddenly the wrinkles in my blankets were mountains and I was convinced I needed to tramp through them down to my dogs at the foot of the bed. I think I made it about half-way before daybreak.

Then last night I realized DayQuil has the exact same benefits as its counterpart, minus all the crazy.

Is it wrong that I’m slightly missing the crazy?

I’m not sure how many of you have noticed, but during the Olympics Shyzer underwent a pretty extensive makeover. Most of the aesthetic changes have simply been to “clean” up the site. The RSS feed is now much more prominent, the search bar actually stays in the sidebar(!), links now have a dotted underline to make them more noticeable, the footer has been cleaned up, and now the comments like approximately 1 gazillion times better. I’ve even incorporated gravatars! The only page that still needs work is the archives and I can live with that for now.

All of this is a long-winded way to say that I’m kinda happy with the way Shyzer looks. And kinda proud. I don’t usually pat myself on the back, but I really enjoy this theme now. I’m even contemplating releasing it to the world as a freebie and letting anybody use it.

I would like to add that I’m aware Shyzer looks like ass when using IE6. My response? Which one of you fools are still using IE6!?! I know there’s at least one of you as it has a 2% market share in my stats. So, uh…stop? Please? The entire Internet thanks you.

Oh, and the Firebug extension for Firefox is a damned Godsend. You can test out edits LIVE! I know nobody reading this runs their own website, so I’ll shut up now. I just wanted to get that in for the record so that when I look back, I’ll know when it was that I finally discovered Firebug.

You know when you sit down to perform an activity that should only take five minutes and then you look up at the clock and eight hours have passed?

Yeah, I hate that.

In my quest to find a suitable chat software for the freebie forums, I was led to God knows how many different forums on the web. Unfortunately for me, in order to test out their chat software, I had to register on them all and make a few posts before I was granted access to the rooms. In doing so, I was reminded of something that I find peculiar about the Internet.

People love virtual Yes Men.

Time after time and time, I found forums that were dedicated to certain niches and which made little to no effort to bring in people with opposing views. I fully understand seeking out people with similar viewpoints and interests. But making it a closed group of only like-minded individuals sitting around in a virtual circle jerk kind of seems counterintuitive to me.