Politics and Metal Bats

Ya know what really gets my goat? When people who know NOTHING about SOMETHING and make waves to have that SOMETHING eliminated, removed, withdrawn or otherwise ceased.

If you have an extra ten minutes, I encourage you to read this article. Its about a politician who somehow convinced a federal judge - WITHOUT ANY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE - to ban metal bats used by youth baseball leagues in New York for safety reasons. This is proof of how terribly crooked America is today; when some pompous old windbag can change a national pastime by offering nothing more than conjecture. This is a city councilman and apparently - when it comes to baseball in New York - he runs the show. What's worse is that the shortsighted judge upheld his bullshit argument. Here's a message for the both of you, Mr. City Councilman and Mr. Judicial System.

YOU MAKE ME SICK.

Welcome, everyone, to the very root of socialism.

I'm not going to go into my rant about politics today and how its membership pool is the very cholera that doomed America's wagon train. No. You filth aren't worth my time.

I had originally intended to write about my fantasy leagues, recent conquests, and an upcoming fantasy football related article that I'll be publishing on a weekly basis. But, this.. This is just wrong...

Fantasy Update

A few years ago my good friend (and then-known-as) Jason "Low Ridin' Muffins" Rollison introduced me to fantasy football, much to my initial disinterest. It didn't take long, but I had come to really enjoy the whole fantasy football thing. I followed the natural progression throughout fantasy sportsdom - moving to fantasy hockey, completely ignoring basketball and ending with fantasy baseball before repeating with football the following year.

I haven't enjoyed a game of "pretend" this much since I was five.

Now, I'm regularly involved in competitive leagues, often with the victor claiming some sort of cash prize. The more leagues I can get in, the more I learn about the game and the more I become addicted. Hell even my girlfriend is heavily involved in the whole fantasy sports thing. (Not to mention she won a fantasy championship in her first-ever effort - six months before I would ever taste a championship.... BAH!).

To get a leg up on all things "fantasy sports", I frequent a website called Rotoworld.com. I find it to be a collection of complete, up-to-date (sometimes up-to-the-minute) and, above all, accurate information relating to athletes. They pool information on athletes from local newspapers, sports channels (Fox, ESPN, local stations) and magazines (they even have their own). This site has rarely - if ever - let me down. So I pretty much live and die by a combination of Rotoworld, Brandon Funston and Matt Romig.

(Kicks self for giving away my best fantasy sources.)

To that end, life without Rotoworld would put a serious dent in my trifecta of fantasy opinion. While Funston and Romig tend to be acceptable sources of fantasy "poop", their updates are weekly at best. This brings me to my purpose for adding the little widgets at the bottom right of my blog. Sometimes, Websense (internet monitoring program) likes to block access to Rotoworld.com because it gets misclassified as "Games", though it offers nothing but information on its' site. This information, albeit, is intended to be used for fantasy sports games but the point I'm trying to make is news is not games (Although Fox seems to make sport out of most news --- and I mean no disrespect to the Daily Show or Colbert Report). So here they are, for those of us who get Websense'd into using my blog as a source of fantasy sports information, I feel your pain. Your cries do not fall upon deaf ears.

Rotoworld and Sex Panther 2.1

Seems like a match to me.

Podcamp

Crock has been on midnights for the past two weeks... Here's what he thinks...

Its no secret that Crock & Murph has been shelved for the time being. In fact, we don't even have a timetable established for its (second) return (this year).

So, to help us build the show back up to its former greatness, Rollo and I will be attending "Podcamp" in Pittsburgh this coming Sunday. I'm hoping we'll learn some new techniques, meet some interesting people and do some serious networking. With any luck, we'll figure out what to do with Crock & Murph in the Morning.

SUYM's focus has been on this new video we filmed but haven't edited yet. Couple that with my rotating midnight shifts and I'm constantly feeling like I'm never getting anything done. Even Arms Longstrom has been put on the back burner.

Whatever.

I'm looking forward to the three fantasy football drafts I'll have this month. The biggest of the three will be occurring on August 25th, where our 4 year old, dynasty-esque league meets at my place to drink, draft and eat a variety of grilled foods.

I'm also looking forward to getting hired on as a real, live Consol Energy employee. It'll be nice to have some dental insurance, rather than this podunk insurance my contracting company makes available.

I'll be winning two of my three fantasy baseball leagues in the coming months. That'll play hell with Rollo's emotions. Lookin' forward to it!