Thursday, July 31, 2008
TLBR Exclusive: Interview with Manny Ramirez*
Just after the regular season trading deadline ended at 4 p.m. ET, TLBR was able to conduct an exclusive interview* with former Red Sox LF Manny Ramirez.
(* - yeah, I made it up.)
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Q: Hey Manny, if you're facing West, which way is L.A.?
A: 
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Q: Manny, if a plane leaves Boston at 5 p.m. ET and is traveling at 600 mph, how long should the 3,000 mile trip take?
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Q: Manny, if a plane leaves Boston at 5 p.m. ET and is traveling at 600 mph, how long should the 3,000 mile trip take?
A: 
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Q: Manny, let's play a little game of "Name That Tune." The song I'm thinking of is a 70's disco tune by four demographically diverse homosexual men. The song is a favorite of Derek Jeter and Yankee groundscrew people. What is the first letter of the abbreviation in the refrain?
A: 
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Q: When you become a free agent this offseason, how much of a chance is there that you'll return to the Sox?
A: 
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Q: There were times when you played the outfield that you made embarassingly bad plays. Once such play came recently in Anaheim. Can you think of anything more embarassing than falling down, then rolling over a ball in play?
A: 
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Q: Your batting helmet has always been one of the more disgusting on the Red Sox, covered in stick-em and pine tar. Has that ever caused a problem for you with an at-bat?
A: 
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Q: Can you show me your "dead sexy" pose?
A: 
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Q: What can you say to your critics in Boston who thought you didn't care or didn't play a good left field? How do you plan on changing your style of play in Dodger Stadium, without the Green Monster behind you?
A: 
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Q: Can you think of any other Boston athlete, beloved by his fans due to his performance in the postseason, who was so quickly excoriated and run out of town?
A: 
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Q: You were recently almost cited for jaywalking in Seattle. Have you ever had any previous close calls trying to cross the street?
A: 
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Q: During the lead-up to the trading deadline, you were rumored to be going to the Florida Marlins. Hanley Ramirez is a good friend of yours; are you close with anyone else on the Marlins roster?
A: 
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Q: California girls have sayings which have taken to becoming trends, like "whatever," "that's hot" or "gag me with a spoon." Can you show me your best "talk to the hand?"
A: 
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Q: You're argubly the second or third most popular athlete in L.A. now, behind Kobe and David Beckham. Can you give me your best Becks impression?
A: 
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Q: In some of your final comments as a Red Sox leading up to the trading deadline, you commented that you wanted "peace." You're a Dodger. What does that mean to you?
A: 
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Best of luck Manny. Sorry it had to end, but it needed to be done.
Thanks for a hell of a ride.
You're a gangster.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Happy Belated Bastille Day
It's amazing what happens when the income-generating work gets in the way of the mind-to-fingers-to-keyboard-to-world process of blogging.
I was bored of being bored, and thus started TLBR. But now, I've got too much going on. And that's getting old and, well, boring.
So I shall make no bold predicts on the rate of updates, but don't quit on me. Perhaps this is, again, the time I solicit the outside world to be contributing writers (coughcoughDAILYUPDATEcoughcough). But until TLBR acquires a stable of writers, expect instability.
Enough woe is me. Let's get on with some thoughts that I've accumulated over the last weeks, but never codified:
MORE OF A REMINDER why Bob Ryan is the best. As columnists all over the country either bow out to television, sell out to other entities, or whine and complain that the business would be better off with dial-up and Tandy typers, Bob Ryan continues to plate his fastball wherever he wants.
THE PACKER DEPARTURE EVERYONE CAN AGREE UPON. Billy Packer done as color man for CBS' telecast of the Final Four. See ya. Get to steppin'. Don't take any highlighters or post-it's on the way out. Maybe you can make a three-person booth with Bucky Waters on ACC telecasts. I don't care. But get out. And welcome, Clark Kellogg. Insightful, positive, and most importantly, professional.
(alert and apology in advance for a Simmons-like old sports story/reference to a long-time friend...) I remember my friend Dave and I used to laugh when Clark Kellogg was talking about teams who should be in/should be out of the NCAA Tournament. He rarely said anything bad about a team, leading to a bracket with like 320 teams. And in meeting him once, and purposely asking him about a few teams that were esoteric and probably not deserving of a spot, he said nothing but good things and - MOST IMPORTANTLY, BILLY - knew the players, the coaches, the schedule, and pretty much anything you would expect a person getting paid to talk about the game to know. So this ought to be refreshing. And thanks to the locale of the Final Four this year, I'll have plenty of chance to watch the games on my couch.
I'M SHIPPING OUT OF HUNTS POINT. Hey Papelbon, enough already. It's simple: it doesn't matter what you say, how you say it, or who you say it to if it's L'Affaire Yankee/Red Sox. We know what you said and what you meant, even though you don't always do a cracker jack job of being tactful or complete.
But it's the Bronx. It's the Yankees. It's the Red Sox.
Johnny Damon, who hit the second-most memorable home run in Red Sox playoff history behind Fisk's game sixer off the foul pole, is now one of the most reviled MLB players in the Hub. To paraphrase Coach Boeheim, without Johnny Damon, we don't win one shampooing World Series.
Nowadays, he's a villain. If Damon had signed with the Texas Rangers after 2004, there would have been a video tribute. Instead, there were bleacher folks yelling about making videos with his wife.
It sucks that Yankee fan buffoons yelled at your pregnant wife. Perhaps next time, don't bring her. That will save the chance for any potential foolishness.
Or, here's a surefire solution - shhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
A MODEST PROPOSAL. I've heard of the indie punk songs "Take the Skinheads Bowling," and "Takin' Retards to the Zoo" by Camper Van Beethoven and the Dead Milkmen, respectively.
But taking the homeless to the movies?
Talk about glossing over the problem. Good thing the Democrats are the party with heart.
WAY TO SUCK, MAXIM. We here at TLBR has been on the Sarah Jessica Parker tip for a while.
You know, the tip that asks "what the shampoo is the deal?"
We often like to quote the Peter Griffin/Family Guy line of "Sarah Jessica Parker looks like a foot."
And Maxim magazine, the pseudo-porn that has the highest readership among males, 24-30, who devote 30 seconds of their one-hour layover to Hudson News on airport layovers, called her "The Unsexiest Woman Alive."
But Matthew Broderick must have kicked some ass.
They backtracked.
F-minus, Maxim.
ARE YOU A FAN OF IRONY? If so, click here.
EVERYONE'S DOING IT. In a rip from Deadspin, via Fire Joe Morgan, I read that (Murray Ch)ASS has a blog.
Don't (Ch)ASS' blog. And by "don't read it," I mean that literally and not in the "hey
there, curious 4-year old, don't touch the red hot burner on the stove."
But I'm just not a fan of the old guard "blogs are for idiots; blogs are killing journalism; Buzz Bissinger is right" crew.
Blogs aren't killing journalism. Bad journalism is killing journalism.
NEW TWIST ON BAR GAMES? And to think, I was excited to bet on chickens at a bar in Belize.
This puts new meaning to "thinking outside the box."
(full disclosure: for candor purposes, that was the tamest one-liner I could come up with)
BEWARE OF THE MONTHLY BILL. When I first saw the headline on this article, I thought "Yeah, so what? Ever heard of Mickey Mantle?"
Speaking of Mantle, Murcer, and other dead Yankees, TLBR and friends will soon be putting together the "Yankee Dead Pool."
It will be similar to other dead pools, but since it's our first foray into the wrongness of the afterlife, any and all suggestions will be welcomed.
More details to follow...
C'est ça. Take care of you...
I was bored of being bored, and thus started TLBR. But now, I've got too much going on. And that's getting old and, well, boring.
So I shall make no bold predicts on the rate of updates, but don't quit on me. Perhaps this is, again, the time I solicit the outside world to be contributing writers (coughcoughDAILYUPDATEcoughcough). But until TLBR acquires a stable of writers, expect instability.
Enough woe is me. Let's get on with some thoughts that I've accumulated over the last weeks, but never codified:
MORE OF A REMINDER why Bob Ryan is the best. As columnists all over the country either bow out to television, sell out to other entities, or whine and complain that the business would be better off with dial-up and Tandy typers, Bob Ryan continues to plate his fastball wherever he wants.
THE PACKER DEPARTURE EVERYONE CAN AGREE UPON. Billy Packer done as color man for CBS' telecast of the Final Four. See ya. Get to steppin'. Don't take any highlighters or post-it's on the way out. Maybe you can make a three-person booth with Bucky Waters on ACC telecasts. I don't care. But get out. And welcome, Clark Kellogg. Insightful, positive, and most importantly, professional.
(alert and apology in advance for a Simmons-like old sports story/reference to a long-time friend...) I remember my friend Dave and I used to laugh when Clark Kellogg was talking about teams who should be in/should be out of the NCAA Tournament. He rarely said anything bad about a team, leading to a bracket with like 320 teams. And in meeting him once, and purposely asking him about a few teams that were esoteric and probably not deserving of a spot, he said nothing but good things and - MOST IMPORTANTLY, BILLY - knew the players, the coaches, the schedule, and pretty much anything you would expect a person getting paid to talk about the game to know. So this ought to be refreshing. And thanks to the locale of the Final Four this year, I'll have plenty of chance to watch the games on my couch.
I'M SHIPPING OUT OF HUNTS POINT. Hey Papelbon, enough already. It's simple: it doesn't matter what you say, how you say it, or who you say it to if it's L'Affaire Yankee/Red Sox. We know what you said and what you meant, even though you don't always do a cracker jack job of being tactful or complete.
But it's the Bronx. It's the Yankees. It's the Red Sox.
Johnny Damon, who hit the second-most memorable home run in Red Sox playoff history behind Fisk's game sixer off the foul pole, is now one of the most reviled MLB players in the Hub. To paraphrase Coach Boeheim, without Johnny Damon, we don't win one shampooing World Series.
Nowadays, he's a villain. If Damon had signed with the Texas Rangers after 2004, there would have been a video tribute. Instead, there were bleacher folks yelling about making videos with his wife.
It sucks that Yankee fan buffoons yelled at your pregnant wife. Perhaps next time, don't bring her. That will save the chance for any potential foolishness.
Or, here's a surefire solution - shhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
A MODEST PROPOSAL. I've heard of the indie punk songs "Take the Skinheads Bowling," and "Takin' Retards to the Zoo" by Camper Van Beethoven and the Dead Milkmen, respectively.
But taking the homeless to the movies?
Talk about glossing over the problem. Good thing the Democrats are the party with heart.
WAY TO SUCK, MAXIM. We here at TLBR has been on the Sarah Jessica Parker tip for a while.
You know, the tip that asks "what the shampoo is the deal?"
We often like to quote the Peter Griffin/Family Guy line of "Sarah Jessica Parker looks like a foot."
And Maxim magazine, the pseudo-porn that has the highest readership among males, 24-30, who devote 30 seconds of their one-hour layover to Hudson News on airport layovers, called her "The Unsexiest Woman Alive."
But Matthew Broderick must have kicked some ass.
They backtracked.
F-minus, Maxim.
ARE YOU A FAN OF IRONY? If so, click here.
EVERYONE'S DOING IT. In a rip from Deadspin, via Fire Joe Morgan, I read that (Murray Ch)ASS has a blog.
Don't (Ch)ASS' blog. And by "don't read it," I mean that literally and not in the "hey
there, curious 4-year old, don't touch the red hot burner on the stove."
But I'm just not a fan of the old guard "blogs are for idiots; blogs are killing journalism; Buzz Bissinger is right" crew.
Blogs aren't killing journalism. Bad journalism is killing journalism.
NEW TWIST ON BAR GAMES? And to think, I was excited to bet on chickens at a bar in Belize.
This puts new meaning to "thinking outside the box."
(full disclosure: for candor purposes, that was the tamest one-liner I could come up with)
BEWARE OF THE MONTHLY BILL. When I first saw the headline on this article, I thought "Yeah, so what? Ever heard of Mickey Mantle?"
Speaking of Mantle, Murcer, and other dead Yankees, TLBR and friends will soon be putting together the "Yankee Dead Pool."
It will be similar to other dead pools, but since it's our first foray into the wrongness of the afterlife, any and all suggestions will be welcomed.
More details to follow...
C'est ça. Take care of you...
Friday, July 04, 2008
