Playoffs - Quarter Finals - F the stinking Mets

First things first.  I am sure by now that everyone has heard the Adrian Peterson stuff, which is just another act in a long line of thuggery from athletes who are paid to play the most popular sport in America right now.  It makes me a bit sad to be able to draw a line from AP and Ray Rice, to Greg Hardy, to Aaron Hernandez, to Jovan Belcher, to Plexico Burress (stupid), to Donte Stallworth to Ray Lewis (allegedly), to Rae Carruth...and so on.  And those are the names I can remember off the top of my head.  I find myself wondering who to blame.  Obviously, each of these men made choices that lead to their actions and crimes (alleged or otherwise) in their off the field lives.  But we as a society glorify them for the exact same violent streak when it happens in the confines of a football field.  Coaches nurture it, cultivate it, purposely enrage it under the guise of "firing up" their players.  I work in a job that requires no violence.  But I do have to use problem solving skills and come up with quick and cost effective ways to do/fix things for which I usually dont have the proper tools.  I dont turn that off when I go home.  When I am at home and something breaks or needs to be fixed, my brain automatically starts thinking, "What do I have here that I can use as a temporary fix for this until I have time to get to the store to buy the long term fix?"  Is it all that much of a stretch to think that football players, who are prompted and prodded to be aggressive and violent wildmen for 40+ hours a week and to hit their opponents, to "take out the head and the body will follow," will not have their brains automatically jump to that when they are confronted with a situation in their home lives?  Don't get me wrong, I am in no way, shape or form justifying or condoning violence towards any person in any way.  I am just pointing out that maybe glofiying violence in sports isnt the way we want our society to be trending and that we should definitely be teaching our kids that professional athletes shouldnt be role models just because they are good at sports.
I am guessing that only a couple of you remember when Charles Barkley, back in the early/mid 1990s, came out and said that he didnt want people's kids considering him a role model and it created a huge media storm and fan backlash against him.  He was pointing out that kids should be looking up to their parents and to people who did good work in the community, not to athletes who happened to be good at something extremely trivial.  I was too young to know it at the time, but Barkley could not have been more right.  Too often we equate being good at a sport with being a good person...and the two do not always come in the same package.  But kids dont see that.  Kids start looking up to athletes because they see their parents doing it.  I was talking with a co-worker today about the AP situation and he told me that he had put his 11 year old son's #28 Vikings jersey away in the closet this weekend and that when he told his son what AP had done to his little boy, my co-workers boy was so saddened that he almost broke down in tears.  But the boy hadnt come to be a fan of AP because he watched and liked him.  The boy started idolizing AP because my co-worker (a huge Viking fan) had cheered and rooted for AP for several years and the boy equated that cheering and rooting from his father (who he idolizes and wants to be just like) as reason enough to believe that AP was worth idolizing.  Kids cant understand the difference between rooting for a player and celebrating a man. 
I hadnt really thought of this much before today, but it will definitely influence how I handle myself in cheering for athletes around my children.  I actually see it already.  As a way to annoy my wife (and get my daughter interested in the Bears), I taught my 3 year old to say "Go Bears," which she does at every sight of the Chicago C or Bears logo...and at other completely random times, and to say, "Jay Cutler is my favorite player."  A couple weeks ago, we taught her about Adrian Peterson and told her that AP is on her fantasy team, and she even made up unprompted stories about him.  Last night, when we were telling her that we didnt want to root for AP anymore because he was a bad man who did mean things to his son, she responded with, "But Jay Cutler is not a bad man.  He is a good boy."  That was when it hit me that my kid thinks that Jay Cutler is a good person solely because I root for him, and in her eyes, I would never root for someone who is a bad person.  I dont think that means that we need to stop rooting for football players, or baseball players, or hockey players (thats for you Jim), or any other athletes, but I do think that means we, as a society, need to do a better job of glorifying other jobs, like teaching, doctoring, nursing, construction(ing?), and people who do things that make a difference for the sake of making a difference like volunteers for Habitat for Humanity or people who give blood/plasma.   I know most of you dont have kids yet, but when you do, please remember this.  Rooting for sports teams can create a lifetime bond and hundreds of shared memories for parents and children, but it needs to be put in proper prospective in order for our kids to have a healthy interest.

Now that thats out of the way, a house keeping/expectation setting note.  I know that there is a consolation bracket (I didnt know this last week), but I am going to pretend that it doesnt exist.  If you cannot make the playoffs, I am not going to write up a little ditty about your feel good, everybody gets a trophy matchup.  This also applies to something that has been titled "the 5th place game" between Kyler and I, which I will never acknowledge again, even under threat of prosecution.  If I get arrested, and the judge is all like, "did you play in the 5th place game in the Tater Tot league in 2014?"  I will be all like, "I dont know what you are talking about your honour." And then Ill get 20 days in the clink for perjury...but whatever.  Non playoff games arent happening in my world.

So, there are only 2 games to recap today.

#3 UCCMA - 10
#6 BySs - 1

No wonder no one could hit Quintana on Saturday.
His ball was radioactive, radioactive.

Jim's team was dominant this week, putting up a 313/400/464 line...AS A TEAM and with Giancarlo Stanton out after Thursday...and stealing 10 bases.  Sorry Kyler, you ran into a buzz saw offense this week..not much you can do in that situation except hope that you can win the pitching categories.  Wait...Jim also had a 1.94/0.96 line on the pitching side?  FYL.  For Jim, Michael Brantley 400/483/520 4R 5RBI 2SB) and Freddie Freeman (400/480/550 1R 3RBI 1SB) renewed their Escalator Club memberships while no one did for Kyler.  Really, outside of Jonathon Lucroy (385/467/462 3R 5RBI), no one on Kylers squad had a particularly great week.  On the pitching side, Kyler is glad that he never ever ever ever has to endure another Tim Hudson (2K 54.00/8.00) start.  Hudson played the part of pinata this week against the Dodgers, giving up 6 runs on 8 hits in only 1 completed inning...it was the shortest start of his 16 year MLB career and sent the Dodgers off en route to a 17-0 drubbing of the Giants.  For Uncle Jimmy, there was no one who encapsulated this week better than Jose Quintana, who twirled a 7 inning, 1 run, 5 baserunner, 13K gem at the Twinkies on Saturday.  When that happens, as an opponent, you know your fucked for the week.


#5 Les Moles - 7
#4 MBHB - 5

As a completely objective outsider to this matchup, I can definitively say that this extremely close matchup came down to 2 crucial points.
- 1 - The Mets decision to shut David Wright down prior to Tuesday's game left MBHB in a huge hole in the counting hitting categories.  Les Moles won Runs by 1 and RBI by 3.  An active 3b, almost any active 3b, would have pushed MBHB over the top in 1 or both of those categories.  I wish that it had been only 1, because I have no idea what would have happened in the case of a 6-6 split and I like it when things completely break down (its like Kyler said with USC football or Duke basketball or the Skankees).  As it was, Wright sat, MBHB fell and fuck the Mets.

- 2 - Our old friend Houston pitcher Dallas Kuechel decided that he was going to spin 6 no hit innings at the best offensive team in baseball on Sunday afternoon, giving Tom the victory in QS and keeping the ERA and WHIPs low in a very tight race where a single run (more likely 2) and a few baserunners would have flipped those categories.  I guess its fitting that, in a season where I have at times both ridiculed and praised Houston pitcher Dallas for his obscurity and success, that he would be the one to drive the nail into MBHB's season.  If I ever make fun of him again, even if he gives up a Hudson (which allowing 6 runs in a 1 inning outing will now be called), I want someone in the comments to simply post, "Dallas says playoffs." 

No wonder he had such a great week

A couple of quick notables from the match up:  Carlos Santana played himself into the keeper conversation over the last couple of months, hitting 284/396/557 in games active for MBHB, and finished it off with a 346/379/654 5R 6RBI 1SB week.  For Les Moles, Andrew McCutchen had an Escalator Club week, finishing 345/406/517 with 5R 1RBI and Ian Desmond pushed the counting stats with 5R 5RBI 3 SB to go along with his 348/423/435 slash line.  On the hill, Felix Hernandez had 2 QS, 16K and 1.38/1.23 ratios, but came away winless.  His line was matched almost perfectly by Jon Lester, who finished with 2 QS 15K 1.29/1.21 ratios, but his teammates hit enough to get him a pair of wins (which also happens to be the number of wins that Les Moles won that category by).