Trevor Story's Thumb Fell Off, Or Something, Everything is Stupid.

             I know last week I came on here and said despite the better year the Rockies were still pretenders, but a funny thing has been happening. The defending national league champion Metropolitans, the perennial 'Classiest fans in Baseball'  refuse to run away with the Wild Card. (I still don't take the Marlins seriously, though I should.) Mets split a subway series where they were clearly the superior team and should have at minimum gone 3-1 in and the Cards just can't handle the fact that the Cubs are the big swinging dick in the division for the foreseeable future. So you wake up on a day where the grass seems greener, the sun seems brighter, things look positive. You realize that if the Rockies stay hot, maybe 8-2 over the next 10 could find themselves in true playoff contention.

But life as a Rockies fan is pain, and Trevor Story is out for the next 2 months with a torn ligament in his thumb. Putting the rest of his season very much in jeopardy and thus ending the most amazing fantasy rookie season we may ever see. Obviously this sucks but isnt a career threatening injury by any means, but what the hell? Why can't we ever have nice things? Why can't we ever be able to enjoy an offensive juggernaut fully intact? Ugh, whatever, baseball is stupid anyway. (Lies). Broncos camp has started anyway. (Kubiak has absolutely no clue which is the lesser of 3 evils at QB.) 

Unfortunately since the Rocks stood pat at the trade deadline we will have to wait until the end of the season for them to trade off Car-Go. No one wants such an awesome dude with a great bat leaving this team but our pitching staff consists of Road Warrior De La Rosa who will always push out winning records despite all the elements working against him and Jon Gray who just isn't there yet. We need help in the starting pitching rotation and an offensive deficient contender will gladly trade off some pitching for his bat. Either way, this season is unfortunately a wash right when it got exciting. At least the future still looks promising, but ....shit. 

Woody Paige Retires From the Denver Post

     So i'm not going to sit here and fellate Woody Paige for 2000 words because for the last few years i've found him to be an obnoxious troll who took the 'You Kids Stay Off my Lawn' type attitude. While he did keep relatively current by being active on twitter and being a regular on Around the Horn, Woody fell victim to the crusty old white sports journalist who refuses to adapt to the modern world, and for that his footprint/influence on the sports world definitely suffered.

Having spent a full paragraph telling you why he sucked, even I have to admit that his resume was UNDENIABLE. 35+ years at the Denver Post covering everything from Elway forcing his way to Denver, to the 2 Stanley Cups for the new Avs, the Me7o and Iverson Nuggets and everything in between. Woody was there for it all and kept his name on the tip of people's tongues as much as Horse Teeth Elway and Patrick WAHHH. He may not have been an upper echelon city tribal sports media personality like Wilbon, Kornheiser, or Bob Ryan but he was definitely that 2nd tier with guys like Cowlishaw, Blackistone, etc. etc. (You know the entire cast of Around the Horn). He gave Denver sports media a much needed shot of relevancy it never had before him. So while i wasn't a huge fan, its a big loss for Denver sports media. However, if you want to keep up with Old man Paige, hes going to be writing a column twice a week for the  Wackjob Religious Zealot Weekly  Colorado Springs Gazette.

PS. His chalkboard sayings behind him on ATH may have been corny as a post-Chipotle shit, but i'll admit it'll always bring me a fresh out the oven piece of nostalgia.

Trevor Story is real, and he's fantastic. Plus other Rockies notes.

            Before I get into that Adonis pictured above, I need to cover a few other things about the Rocks. Now that we're 102 games into the season you get a very good picture of what this team is and i'd have to say i'm content. Not happy, but content. The Rocks are 2 games under .500 and 5 games out of the wildcard, not out but no one considers them a threat nor should they. The team for the first time in seemingly a decade is not going to lose 100 games. They're not championship contenders by any stretch but they're trending in the right direction.

              The Rockies are in a situation unique to them and them alone: they are a team that has an owner (Dick 'I hope gets hit by a rogue Light Rail train' Monfort) who has strangled this team financially for years by not allowing any serviceable amount of money be spent to improve the product on the field. Plus, playing a mile at altitude the park designers have to choose between if they want WAY too many home runs to be hit or make an outfield so big that its not plausible for 3 outfielders to have sufficient coverage of all the real estate. Either choice leads to pitchers having a massively inflated ERA which in turn scares off pitchers from signing here. So how do you fix a dickhead GM and a stadium that is actively keeping FA's from signing? You do what new-ish GM Jeff Bridich has done; stock pile draft picks while you're a bottom feeder team, pump what little money you're allowed into making the farm system as high quality as you can and hope to god you come across some good ground ball pitchers. For the most part, its worked, or started to at least. Rockies have the most runs scored with an offense that is 2nd to none consisting of Car-Go, Blackmon, Lamehieu, Arenado, oh and TREVOR STORY. The team can flat out hit. So much so that the team is starting to pull itself out of the squalor and ruin that the bottom of the MLB is. You'd love to see better pitching, but again that's a deck stacked against you in that stadium so it will have to be home grown or traded for. (Which is another reason I've come to like the Tulo trade). The team seems as though its heading in the right direction and if they can put together a pitching staff that at least keeps them within striking distance of other teams, they're poised to 'make some noise.'

            Now onto a man who walked into a dreary and depressing Coors Field and shined a light brighter than we've seen in a while. He's teaching under privileged children to read while simultaneously saving kittens from burning buildings; Jammin up Super models while making grown men weep in envy (not really, but you and i could both see that happening.) Trevor Story is so much better than even he was hyped to be, which was quite a bit. At the time I was furious about the Tulo trade, thought it was another blatant salary dump of a player who rightly was unhappy losing and would require an exorbitant amount of money come contract time. But my good personal friend Jeff Bridich knew something I didn't. Story started off the season on pace to hit approximately 300 home runs in the first 10 games. After a few months, like all rookies do, he slumped and stuck out quite a bit and some doubt started to creep in. However since July he's picked it back up and is now leading the National League in home runs....AS A ROOKIE. MORE than Bryce Harper, Giancarlo Mike Stanton, Kris Bryant, Yo Cespedes, all of them, as a rookie. its been a rough go for a few years at Coors but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe, that soulless dickbag still owns the team so who knows. 

Saban Wins 5th National title for Bama, with a huge set of nuts and some black voodoo.

You shifty son of a bitch.

      First off, HOLY SHIT WHAT A GAME. That is why you watch college football, for games you hope can be half as good as that was last night. 40 FUCKING POINTS in the 4th quarter. Insanity.

Deshaun Watson is absolutely incredible, obviously reminiscent of Vince Young in the Rose Bowl against USC. Wish he could have pulled off the win like Vince, but c'mon Saban's testicular fortitude Harry Potter dark magic would never have allowed for that. Saban who's soul was sold to Lucifer about the same time as Bill Belichick, would not be outdone. That onside kick was so perfectly executed, its not possible properly articulate how well that entire plan came together. Dabo who is an incredible coach was only playing checkers to Saban's chess from there on out. Outside of the 4th quarter, where both teams adopted a strict no-defense-played policy, every gain for Henry was some increment of -3 yds, 7 yds or 51 yds and Watson was roasting the Bama D in more ways than is acceptable to talk about in polite company.

       Which makes you wonder how steep that deal with the devil was, in absolutely no universe does a team playing like Clemson played last night deserve to lose. No team should ever play that well and still manage to lose a game, but thats how it breaks for Saban. He could run for governor of Alabama on a platform of kicking orphans and strangling puppies and still win with 70% of the vote (30% Auburn fans who will soon be paying out of state tuition.)  Comes up the victor for his 5th national championship, getting a fat bonus check from Alabama and Nike, and leaving that visor wearing dickbag Lane Kiffin in the parking lot. 

                                  Live look at Kiffin about 45 miles outside of Arlington, TX:

When you're wrong, you're wrong. I, was wrong. Mike Malone was a good hire for the Nuggets.

        When Croenke and management decided to hire Mike Malone I hated it. Guy just got fired from the Kings! The Kings suck! If he can't hack it on the shitty team that constantly threatens to relocate, how the hell can he handle this rebuild undertaking? Well two things from that thought  process become clear : 1. Mikey Malones got some coaching chops, and more importantly: 2. Boogie is a young prodigy at driving a coach off a team the  likes of which we haven't seen since Kobe or Me7o.

I went to Nuggets-Hornets yesterday. (Sat 4th row behind the hoop, nbd. No, seriously no big deal. The tickets were $28 on stubhub.) What I watched was a young Faried-less Nuggets team beat a very good hornets team. Now the jury is still out for me as to whether Faried is actually a good player or not but beside that point this was an impressive win. Mudiay played extremely physical on the smaller Kemba Walker, forcing him through a hail of screens. Gallinari was hot early and Malone made a great coaching change when Cody Zeller was absolutely roasting (never in my life thought I'd type that) Jokic in the post, Switched Nurkic onto him with Arthur to help out.

Team is obviously a far way off with fighting for a tail end of a playoff spot, but Mudiay looked great and have to hope he can get some chemistry to grow with Faried. Team is at least trending up finally.

Sidenote- never has one 7'2" man who has to wrap his warhammer around his leg to ball, ever looked so fresh.