Anybody who knows me will tell you I'm the ultimate "glass is half-empty" kind of guy.
Simply put, I'll bitch about anything. But after perusing my clips from the past few months, I find that I have complained nearly enough about some of the more absurd figures in the bizarre human m?lange we've come to know as the world of sports.
So indulge me, if you will, while I take care of some unfinished business.
Bruins Coach Claude Julien
I know I swore off my once-beloved Bs earlier in the season, but I have to admit they showed real heart in proving me and a lot of other people wrong by taking the Montreal Canadiens to seven games in their recent opening round playoff series. Who knows? If they'd had somebody on the ice in the first three games that could score, they might even have won that series.
The fault for that little bit of coaching brilliance can be laid squarely at the feet of Julien, who decided, for reasons passing understanding, to bench sniper Phil Kessel for the first three games of the series, ostensibly because he wasn't "physical enough" to match up with the "big, bad Canadiens."
"It's not really about Phil Kessel not being able to do the job," Coach Brainiac said in a post-game press conference. "Right now, it's about putting a team on the ice that can compete against the type of competition we've got& We need more grit."
More grit? This is a guy who survived testicular cancer, but he's not tough enough to play in the first three games of the most important series of the season? Not to mention that Kessel is one of the only Bruins who's been able to put the puck in the net with any regularity the past two seasons.
Smooth move, bench troll. See you on the golf course.
Jose Canseco
Want to know how ass-backwards this baseball steroids controversy has become? Canseco is starting to become the voice of reason, although, really, the only ones positioning him that way are the sycophants in the media who have been buying this guy's garbage since he first began booting balls in the right field for Oakland back in the '80s.
It's bad enough that this punk is now passing himself off as some kind of moral authority because he willingly admitted to being a cheat. But now whenever a talk show host has the temerity to call him on it, he hangs up like the spoiled little "bonus baby" I've always known he was.
Jose may have hit an all-time low recently with the number he's been doing on Alex Rodriguez. While being careful to point out that he can't "prove" Rodriguez cheated, Canseco has no problem telling anyone with a microphone and a note pad that he did "introduce" A-Rod to a known steroid distributor—just another example of the "guilt by association" mentality that's become such a big part of this truly sordid chapter in baseball history.
Canseco did accomplish one thing, though. He actually has me feeling sorry for A-Rod, and I didn't think that was possible.
Hank Steinbrenner
I know I'm running short on space, and there really aren't enough superlatives, or ink for that matter, to communicate my growing contempt for this piece of walking landfill.
Who could have imagined we'd one day be reminiscing about the glorious George Steinbrenner era? But Junior's done it. All this guy seems able to do is bump his gums and destroy a once-proud franchise, which, as a lifelong Red Sox fan, I'm fine with. But I was pretty sickened at the way Steinbrenner recently undercut Manager Joe Girardi in the New York press by suggesting that reliever Joba Chamberlain should be moved into the starting rotation. Even in his worst moments, the old man wasn't that low-rent.
Ordinarily, I'd tell Hank to get out of the game altogether, but I like him right where he is, opening his pie hole and running the Evil Empire into the ground while the Red Sox assume their rightful place at the top of the baseball food chain."
