Tag Archives: Brandon Leftridge
Leftridge: Royals April Recap
At this juncture, there’s no point in discussing just how abysmal this year’s Royals team is shaping up to be; everyone knows how unbearably awful they are and almost everything that is worth saying has already been said.
The starting pitching is uniformly poor.
The offense—teeming with youngsters full of promise and talent—has looked overmatched and been ineffective.
The bullpen has been inconsistent and riddled with injuries.
Ned Yost is a complete jackass ill-equipped to manage a t-ball game.
Yes, pontificating on the sorry state of your Kansas City Royals is akin to beating a dead horse—and then repeatedly raping that horse while the young horse’s son looks on, crying.
That’s why I thought it might be beneficial to take a look at the good—and it’s an admittedly short list—that transpired over the first month of the season. With bad, surely there must come good, right? Anyone…?
Leftridge: Drunken Online Purchases: MAD Magazine Edition
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If you’re like me, you like booze. It doesn’t matter what kind—we can get into that at another time. And if you’re even MORE like me than I’d care to admit, you enjoy getting on the Internet once you’re drunk and buying stuff.
But what to buy?! Man, there’s an open cesspool of goods to be had. Maybe you had your eye on that thatch of Elvis Presley’s pubic hair. Perhaps your collection will be complete once you’ve obtained a shot-glass full of Patrick Duffy’s saliva. Maybe you just can’t make it another day without a piece of French toast that looks as though Jesus was burned into its grainy surface.
Or maybe, if you’re like me (30 and slightly retarded), you won’t make it without 85 MAD Magazines spanning from 1988-1997. And yeah, your wife will probably be PISSED—you’ve got nowhere to keep them, that money was better suited for a down payment on a wheelchair (don’t ask)—but you can’t help it. You’ve had 14 beers, goddamnit, and $140 seems WAY reasonable.
Leftridge: The Incredible Lightness of Dick Clark
Look, I’m sorry that you’re gone; really, I am. You had a lot of family members probably and this is inevitable at 82 years old and I’m sure that a handful of them are sorry that you’re gone (except those that stood to inherit something. I’m sure they’re probably pretty stoked, and why not?). Point being, you’re dead.
But what did you add, really?
Oh sure, I remember Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve throughout my youth. I remember a man aesthetically youthful beyond his years, a virtual teen foraging deep into his 60’s, as it were and then a 70 year old, and then, unsurprisingly, an octogenarian riddled uncomfortable by a stroke and the damage of time.
You kept giving it your best, however, whether you were under pressure from the Stroke League of America (I’ve seriously heard that this was an issue) or from simple vanity.
Leftridge: Completely Effed-Out Chiefs’ Season Prediction Piece
Maybe it’s just my perception, but it seems like every year, NFL schedules are released earlier and earlier, and each year, that turns out to be more and more of a blessing for Kansas City sports fans.
Oh sure, Sporting KC looks totally legit, and they’re sure to provide countless hours of entertainment for thousands of fans over the summer, but the Royals are predictably turning into an abortion and that WNBA team I’ve been pining for is no closer to fruition than they were two years ago when I had that really weird sex dream about Lisa Leslie (let’s make it happen, baby… have your people [agents?] call my people [Hearne?]).
In St. Louis (or Detroit, or Texas, or Cincinnati, or Washington—or any other city where the baseball team could feasibly be better than the football team), they don’t CARE about the release of the NFL schedules. In BBQ country, however, it’s big news.
And like any self-respecting windbag with a Wang 2200 and a license to spout pointless drivel, I’ve made some predictions about the fate of the 2012 Kansas City Chiefs. Gather round and have a gander, won’t you?
The season kicks off at home on September 9th against the Atlanta Falcons.
Leftridge: Yost Must Keep Broxton in Check, Even if Broxton Threatens to “Yokozuna” Him
It’s easy to overreact. It’s easy to look at the Kansas City Royals’ just-concluded West-coast trip and think that the sky is falling. It’s both upsetting for the fans and demoralizing for the players to leave Wednesday evening from Oakland thinking that the team should easily be 4-2 instead of 3-3.
Game 3 against the A’s was in the bag. After taking the lead in the 12th, the Royals watched their dream slip away like so much bacon-wrapped-sausage sliding down Broxton’s gullet.
Closer Jonathan Broxton, that is.
When the behemoth took the mound in the bottom of the inning, however, it didn’t feel good. Perhaps I’m conditioned by so many nervous hours spent watching Mike MacDougal’s hat fly across the infield as he uncorked a wild pitch in the bottom of the 9th; maybe I’m still troubled by nightmares of an aging, incompetent Roberto Hernandez laboring his way through yet another blown save. Whatever the case, it felt blown as soon as it began.
Leftridge: 10 Enlightening Observations From Opening Day
Ah, Opening Day.
For baseball fans, it’s like Christmas in April. Well… Christmas Part Two: Santa’s Revenge. I mean honestly, do you know a lot of Muslim baseball fans? I can only count like, six or seven, certainly no more than eight, so it goes without saying that most baseball fans also celebrate Christmas. But I digress.
It signals the end of a long, harsh winter (well, except for this freakishly warm previous one), a time to cast aside prior failure and set shoot for the stars (unless you’re in the AL Central, and then it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Detroit Tigers will be taking it all, and with frightful ease).
Alright, alright… so for most Kansas City baseball fans, it’s “same shit, different day.” But it’s all about watching the team grow and flourish in incremental, yet important ways. Starters going a bit deeper under the tutelage of new pitching coach Dave Eiland. The maturation of principal parties like Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain. The solidification of last year’s mostly-impressive bullpen.
Leftridge: Horrible Bosses Part Two: Frank Martin Says Goodbye
When a person is unreasonable, their natural inclination when dealing with disappointment is frequently irrational. Often times, no one is more unreasonable (or irrational) than your garden-variety sports fan.
When Carlos Beltran left the Royals in 2004 for greener pastures (and nothing says greener than “Houston, TX”), fans were understandably miffed. Here go the Royals, once again, the sorrowful fans bemoaned, crying softly into their Kaufmann Stadium nachos.
A once in a lifetime player, and for what?
Blake Wood, who was out of baseball after a 2010 stint with the Rockford Riverhawks, whoever they are.
John Buck, who is still catching with the Miami Marlins, despite having the dubious honor of having the lowest percentage of runners caught stealing in all of baseball in 2011.
Mark Teahen, the lynchpin of the deal, who was released by the Blue Jays in January and is currently on a minor league deal with the Washington Nationals.
The trade, by nearly any tangible measurement, was a bust. And yet strangely, after all of these years, the casual fan would point this blame solely at Beltran. He was a spoiled dick, a diva, and a gargantuan greed-monger who did that shit where the cartoon wolf’s eyes cha-ching and turn into giant, old-timey cash register dollar signs.
Frank Martin is the Carlos Beltran of Kansas State University… Sort of.
Tales From the Tweet: Timsanity Strikes NY, NFL Strikes Saints & Soria Strikes Out
There are literally 1,313,045 things happening in the world of sports right now that are raping my Twitter feed. So while I usually like to spend my opening paragraph waxing poetic about the modern era of “sports and social media; what they mean to you,” I figure we should treat this like Whitney in the bathtub and dive right in.
First up, Denver, Colorado, best known for their… shit, I don’t know… cheeseburgers? (Seriously—is Denver known for anything other than mountains and John Elway? Help me out here) Anyway, Denver, best known for their stuff, made waves like… Whitney slipping quietly into the bathtub? by signing Jesus H. Manning and then trading Jesus H. Tebow (or did they?! dun-dun-DUN) to the Jets.
Local radio personality/aspiring Mensa member Bob Fescoe watched the press conference and had this to say:
@bobfescoe (610 am)
“Peyton has a huge forehead”
“John Elway looks like the team mascot”
Brilliant, Bob, just… brilliant.
Leftridge: Tournament Kicks Off, Work Production Plummets, Your Wife Doesn’t Get “What the Big Deal is”
Of the 15 college basketball experts on the front page of ESPN.com (Jay Bilas, Doug Gottlieb, Dick Vitale, et al.), nine have Mizzou advancing to the Final Four, five have KU going, and K-State… yeah, so anyway… It’s pretty clear that lofty expectations are being placed upon the Big XII Champeen, the evil dissenter, the little team that could, the Missouri Tigers. Obama’s got them in HIS Final Four as well and you KNOW that’s a big deal because, well, the president is never wrong, right? If I’m not mistaken—and I don’t believe that I am—he has the presidential authority to veto whatever ACTUALLY happens in order to make his bracket accurate.
Congrats in advance, Mizzou!
But if I’m not mistaken, I think they have a few games to play before they can begin cutting any nets and/or punching people at nightclubs (I’m not passing judgment on any particular team with that last statement, simply stating what happens to be a growing national trend with most college athletics participants).
The excitement gets under way on Thursday at 11:40 CT when Manhattan’s finest take on ninth seeded Southern Mississippi in Pittsburgh (PA, not KS).
Leftridge: COUNTERPOINT: Why Signing Manning Would be a Silly Move for KC
We have become a soft nation built on easy solutions. We demand convenience, rapidity and satisfaction, yesterday. Our sense of patience—threadbare to begin with– has been raped by social media, where, in a matter of moments, I can learn that my aunt just ate some really delicious chicken, Bea Arthur has gone on an inexplicable shooting rampage at a bustling cafeteria and Terry “likes” Amanda’s video of the dog smoking a cigarette.
Sports are no different.
In fact, watching a team fail year after year to field a competitive product tends to exacerbate the need for this immediacy. We live and die with each heartbreak, our tired corpses glistening with team-colored body-paint, our novelty foam fingers pointed tragically at the ground. We want our team to win NOW and OFTEN and AT ANY COST.
So in our quest to microwave the proverbial burrito of success to jarring temperatures, faster than anyone ever imagined was humanly possible, people across the city are now crying, “Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks EVER, a true winner in every since of the word, is available! Let us throw BAJILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT HIM SO HE CAN MAKE SWEET LOVE TO THE FANS OF KANSAS CITY WITH HIS TALENTED ARM AND SOUR FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.”
Leftridge: Payton Pays for Pain, Football Fans Say, “Okay… and?”
So apparently, former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams was paying his guys to inflict injury upon opposing players throughout his tenure with New Orleans, and quite possibly, before.
Oh, that’s right, our sick and sadistic tale begins long ago, when Williams was head evil-defensive-guy with the Washington Redskins… that’s right. THOSE Washington Redskins. And obviously, his pay for pain program worked out in DC, right? Right?!
No. Because football is what it is. It’s a bunch of overgrown, testosterone dripping assholes who WANT to knock the ever-loving shit out of one another. They do it without provocation, without incentive; they do it because it’s PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL.
Williams joined the Saints in 2009 and immediately began inflicting ass-bashings to opposing offenses. According to court documents, things came to a head in that year’s NFC playoffs.
In the divisional round, the Saints walloped the Arizona Cardinals, 45-14. A week later, they beat the holding-out-for-a-hero Minnesota Vikings, 31-28 (you remember, the game that changed the way playoff football would be played forever). While this was going on, the Saints defensive players were being paid to injure the opposition, as specifically restricted by the NFLPA’s forbidden “bounty program.”
Tales From the Tweet: Braun Beats the System, Ozzie’s Man-Boobs & Something About a Border War?
With all of the hype going into today’s matchup between Kansas and Missouri, you’d think that Twitter would be a bit more abuzz. Not so. Aside from the expected dick-cheese taunts from fans on both sides, it’s been mostly quiet. Oh, the prodigal son will return to check out the game and eat some food (presumably between bursts of pedophilian-protector defense):
@JPosnanski
“Heading back to KC for the last Mizzou-KU game. Barbecue will be eaten. Winstead burgers will be consumed.”
But somehow, this doesn’t feel as exciting as it may have been a week ago, you know, before the Tigers took a big, fat monkey-shit against the Kansas State Wildcats… AGAIN. Oh sure, it’s a possible final meeting (doubt it), and there’s a lot on the line, but after Mizzou’s narrow escape against the Jayhawks in Columbia just a few weeks ago, this one has disappointment scrawled all over it.
Look, what Mizzou has done this season has exceeded expectations. They’re a fun team to watch, no doubt, but it doesn’t appear as though all of the HEART! HUSTLE! GRIT! DETERMINATION! in Dickey V’s loins is enough to overcome the grotesque size differential. Therefore, I’m taking the Jayhawks to win, teased with IND at NE ( 40) and BAL at Spain (-7). IT’S A TEASER BET. LOOK IT UP! EVERY SPORTS BOOK IN CANADA TAKES TEASER BETS, PUNK.
Sorry—where were we? Ah yes, on with the Tweets.
Leftridge: Spring Has Sprung, Grass Has Riz, Here Comes Jonathan Sanch…iz?
Cue the effed-out Don Henley song that seemingly has NOTHING to do with baseball, yet is played incessantly at major league ballparks around the country and on highlight clip-shows, ad nauseam. You know—the one about Dead Head stickers on a Cadillac, don’t look back, you can never look back. Yeah, that one.
Or you can go with John Fogerty’s “Centerfield,” the baseball song with the deceptively difficult hand-clapping rhythm that makes 30,000 white people look even whiter than they actually are.
Whatever your poison, it’s baseball time, boys and girls. All around the league, pitchers, catchers, coaches and overachievers will be reporting to either Florida or Arizona today, to shake off the rust, lose their Chipotle-guts and start the wheels a’turnin for the next 6 months where we’ll be consistently reminded that, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Boy howdy.
The fresh-faced, eager beavers of the Kansas City Royals are a compelling team for a number of reasons.
Leftridge: Tales from the Tweet: Now With More Iron Sheik!
Do me a favor. I want you to sit back, close your eyes, and think of the craziest Iranian person you know. I know, I know, this might take a second, but I’ll wait patiently.
There, you got it? Good.
Look, I don’t know who you thought of—the guy who runs the place where you go to get your car fixed, the one who runs the lunch place who makes you feel slightly uncomfortable (because he never smiles while you scarf down your shawarma)—but I promise, unequivocally, that the person who you thought of isn’t nearly as insane as the Iron Sheik.
Born Robert Edelman in Adina, Minnesota Hossein Khosrow Vaziri in Tehran, Iran, “Sheikie,” as he refers to himself, is absolutely, certifiably nuts. Cocaine fueled rants on Howard Stern aside, one need look no further than his brilliantly disturbed Twitter feed. Let’s examine.
@the_ironshiek
“i watch the lebron i watch the kobe. if i want i beat the living fuck out of both of them make them cry like virgil. still i respect them”
One of the former WWE Heavyweight Champion’s favorite running themes is hatred of his 1980’s wrestling colleagues. Is this shtick? Can he not break character, lo’ these many years removed?
Leftridge: TV Time; Much Like the Mighty Missouri, ABC’s “The River” is Full of Waste
Rivers are inherently frightening things. If you’re not being Jeff Buckley’d or Ned Beatty’d (drowned and raped, respectively), you’re encountering catfish-punching rednecks, Mexican picnics and hill-people on homemade watercraft. Rivers—especially around these parts—are muddy, murky affairs, perfect for getting attacked by unseen, underwater beasts like the alligator gar, or inadvertently inner-tubing with the dismembered corpse of Prospect Corridor hookers.
Gone are the days of pursuing a Twain-ian river adventure, where one listlessly rafts down a scenic bloom of natural beauty. No longer is one liable to stumble through the thicket to find a kick-ass Alan Jackson river party, replete with plastic cups of Budweiser and bikini clad temptresses grilling Oscar Mayer hot-dogs. Today’s local streams have much more in common with their seedy South American counterparts.
The Amazon is the world’s longest river, running 4,000 miles from Peru to Brazil—coast to coast, in other words—and, during the wet season, can stretch to 30 miles wide.
That’s fucking huge.
Leftridge: Giants Win Super Bowl, Brandon Remains Unconvinced
And when the dust settled, only one could truly be called a champion.
Or some such bullshit.
But seriously, what a great game, right? If you had no rooting interest, if you hadn’t laid any money on the line, how could you possibly disagree with how awesome this game turned out to be? You can’t, plain and simple.
Oh wait… I can complain (shocking, right?). Again, as an unbiased, financially inculpable party. And why’s that? Because now, in the wake of Eli Manning’s second Super Bowl victory, as his brother sits by, nursing a broken-neck/tingly arm/age problem, the pundits will begin to decry, “Eli is the better Manning! Eli has two—count ‘em TWO rings to be placed in his safe!”
But those people are idiots.
Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl. Is Eli Manning a better quarterback than Dan (Fucking) Marino? Of course not. And is he a better quarterback than his brother? No way.
If we all know one unflappable fact about football, it’s that it’s a team sport. Occasionally, there will be one person who tries to single-handedly do it themselves, but it usually doesn’t work out too well (for a very recent example, see Tom Brady um, like, last night).
So Pats fans, what in the hell happened?
Leftridge: NY Giants Order Pizza, Travel to Indianapolis for Some Reason
The week leading up to the Super Bowl is a long, arduous journey full of peril, ridiculousness and mostly, a lack of real intrigue. It’s “Media Week,” they say, but permit me to make a really bad pun and call it “Media Weak.” I’ll wait for your peals of raucous laughter to subside before continuing…
…all better? Good. Then let’s carry on.
During Media Week, reporters, writers and journalists of varying caliber all descend upon the host city—in this case, rusty old Indianapolis—and attempt to mine gold from what is more often than not, a freshly blown nose. They try to find angles that others haven’t covered—BREAKING NEWS: Tom Brady’s Pee Wee Coach’s Sister-in-law Grew Up Two Miles From Lucas Oil Stadium!—or they mercilessly beat to death stories that everyone else is writing about—Can Eli Step Out of His Brother’s Shadow… in His Brother’s Own City?!—dun-dun-DUN!
Leftridge: How to Throw a Super Bowl Party Everyone Loves
To some, there’s nothing more important than the game itself. It stands alone in the pantheon of sports importance, a crowning achievement borne from months of blood, sweat and tears. One participant will be crowned victorious, their name forever etched upon the hallowed high cliffs of greatness; the other will be a footnote, their epic campaign all but forgotten, trampled under the sweaty sole of failure.
Will it be Tom Brady and his New England Patriots?
The new dark-lord of the modern football era.
The Yankees in shoulder pads.
Led into battle by two distinct forces: one, a handsome, unparalleled story of triumph, the other, a dour, stone-faced super-genius cloaked in both mystery AND a loose fitting hooded sweatshirt.
Or perhaps it will be Brother Eli, eager to crawl from beneath the giant shadow of his more esteemed sibling. Eager to prove, perhaps, that his legacy should be built around more than a miraculous helmet-catch.
Or maybe, none of this matters. It’s just a fucking football game. What REALLY matters is what kind of party you throw. That’s right: you can make or break the Super Bowl by what kind of shindig you manage to perpetuate. I know, I know… that’s a ton of pressure. But look, Sunny Jim—if you follow my advice, you’ll be fine. So let’s begin.
Leftridge: Here Comes the Pro Bowl; Shoot Me Now, Please
Here’s what’s wrong with the Pro Bowl: nobody gives a shit. The players don’t care, a stadium-full of confused Hawaiians don’t care, and unquestionably, television viewers back in the States don’t care.
Do you remember who won the Pro Bowl last year? Of course you don’t. NOBODY DOES. Even the Washington Redskins’ DeAngelo Hall doesn’t remember, and HE WAS THE MVP (oh and by the way, the NFC beat the AFC, 55-41). The year before, the AFC won 41-34, and the two years prior, the NFC won by a combined score of 72-51. Seriously, the over-under for the past 10 years is close to something like, 215 points. And why is this?
Well, if you know more about the Pro Bowl than I do—and trust me, you probably do—you know that the game is played with a whole ‘nother set of rules.
Leftridge: Tales From the Tweet: Pioli Perverts Privacy & Darvish Does Dallas
Well, it’s been awhile since I cracked open the ol’ Twitter and had a looksie, and because of the absence, I expected a cornucopia of information to come cascading down upon my head as soon as I logged in. Twitter, however, had different plans. Namely: there wasn’t a whole lot of anything going down. Despite being in college basketball conference play, baseball arbitration coming and going, and the NFL playoffs being in full bloom… crickets.
One thing that was being tweeted and re-tweeted, however, was reaction to the recent Kansas City Star expose by Kent Babb about the frighteningly “Russian factory-like” working conditions at One Arrowhead Drive. Since you’ve probably already read the piece—and if you haven’t, you should—I won’t rehash it in painstaking detail. Even if you haven’t read it, you’ve probably heard the key pieces: decoy candy-bar wrappers left on stairs to test employee laziness. Spy-thriller tales of bugged rooms and tapped phones. Constant, paranoia inducing monitoring of all comings and goings. Todd Haley trading in his grimy, sweat-stained ball cap for a tinfoil hat.
So what do local radio people have to say? Well, it depends where you work. If you’re with 810, you said nothing.
