Questions and Answers

Let’s get right to the questions and answers.

Bearcats Blog, where oh where are the links you promised late last week?

Great question. Last week, I ended up traveling and decided to hold off until Tuesday. It will be linky fun.

Bearcats Blog, you keep saying that things are going to get back going, but they have not. What’s up with that?

Things are about to change on that front. We are rapidly approaching the start of the football season, and with that, there are magically more things to write about. I’m not going to lie, the summer nothingness was really hard to deal with. I thought it would be hard back in December (twss) but it was much, much harder to deal with in June than one could imagine. Plus, with the whole move over to Bloguin, everything was very stop and go for a while. Some of that was on me, some was on them, and some of it was just things that happen. I was reticent to add new things to the old blog after we had started moving things around. Plus, add in moving and everything that comes with that, and time was really pressed. I could have made time if we were in season, but we aren’t, and there isn’t a whole lot of interesting shit happening. It’s all going to be perfectly good though peeps. I am going to start a Big East football preview that will not be as good as other Big East football previews. I will try to see if I can interview any of the players or anything. By interview, I mean ask them things on twitter. I don’t mean pull out a tape recorder and do my best Frost impression. That was a Frost/Nixon reference for the kids. The Memorable things will probably continue, but maybe not until next week. Today is this piece, tomorrow is links, Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be hopefully at the Reds games both days. Friday will be a day where I write about something. The Bearcats Breakdown is over. It’s fucking July, I’m sure none of you give a shit about how Biggie McClain played last season. I might do one about Cash Wright, he was up next before the moving. Also, I’ll be involved in a couple of other things. Our good friends at the East Coast Bias did another edition of their Big East basketball roundtable, of which I am a part. I’ll post my answers to the questions here when that goes up there. I also participated in a Big East football overview with new Bloguin friends Randall Simon’s Sausages. It’s going to be up Friday, and that’s probably going to be the Friday post. It’s going to be a tease where I post the first question or two here, and then say to read the rest, go there. Probably shouldn’t tell you everything person who randomly stumbled upon the blog for the first time and doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Rest assured, that after this week pretty much, things are going to be awesome. Ok, not awesome, they are going to be things.

Bearcats Blog, what’s the best way to watch baseball?

If not in person, I suggest through dvr. Watching baseball live on FSN, or TBS or ESPN or WGN kinda blows a long dick. FSN can especially be a bitch. Saturday night, the big Volquez debut, their HD channel is a bitch and doesn’t have a signal or whatever until the 6th inning, when the score is 8-1. Thanks for nothing. Don’t forget the July 4th Cubs game, where I noticed there was no picture in time to record the game on WGN. The reason I suggest recording games is this. Baseball is boring. I love baseball, but it’s boring to watch. What takes place over 3 hours, can easily be viewed in half the time. You skip the commercials, the 10 minute pregame bullshit, the standing around, and the pick off attempts. I press the ff button to each pitch, so I see everything that happens. If it’s a pop up, ff to the next batter once the guy is definitely going to catch it. And, if the game is a blowout, like the Sunday night game last night for example, you can fast forward on a slower fast forward function and see everything that happens, without taking up too much time. This works especially well if your dvr, or tivo, whatever, has multiple fast forward times. Mine has 4 speeds. I go with the second one. God this turned into boring talk.

Here’s a great reason to fast forward baseball. The announcers fucking suck. Thom Brennaman is a fucking asshole. Jeff Brantley + Thom = me thinking shut the fuck up the whole time. I didn’t think that Brantley was that big a tool, but Jesus, he kinda is. I wish FSN didn’t go with the ‘name’ in Thom, but went with Dan Hoard. Dan Hoard is awesome, and not a douche. Maybe he could have made Chris Welsh entertaining. Hahahah, yeah fucking right, he’s not a miracle worker. The thing that pisses me off about Thom is his arrogant asshole tone that he jumps into. Yesterday for example, he’s blabbering on about the Reds swinging at the second or first pitch. Well ass face, let’s look at the facts. Aaron Cook was throwing a ton of first pitch strikes. In the instances the Reds didn’t swing, they were down 0-1 a lot of the time. Now would you take and go down 0-2? No, you fucking swing the bat. It would be one thing if he said it like, “The Reds are swinging at the first few pitches a lot, maybe they should try a more patient approach to work the count and see if Cook will make a mistake.” Instead we get something like this. “Once again, the Reds swing at the first or second pitch. As a big league team in a pennant race, you CAN NOT do this. Here’s Votto, pop up to left on the first pitch. My dad’s in the Hall of Fame, so that makes me the smartest fucking man on the face of the Earth.” You have to imagine the scorn in his voice for the Votto line. And, he slurps Orlando Cabrera, who is nice, like the O Dog is Barry Larkin. Cabrera fucking always swings early in the count. Yet, they don’t make mention of this. They don’t make mention when he’s wasting outs in the 2 hole or lead off spot. If you are going to get all high and mighty, do it about everything. Don’t be selective in your disdain of what’s happening on the field. He definitely puts the ass in Thomas.

That last bit got me so worked up, that anything else I write, I will have Thom Brennaman’s voice in my head, and I will break my laptop. That’s if for another edition of questions and answers.