Addendum to my previous post:

Joe Girardi might as well shut the hell up as well.

Has he forgotten that there's a digital trail of all of this stuff?  I agreed with him at the time, for what it's worth.  Baseball is not football.  Perhaps it's logical to replay the missed homerun calls and whatnot, but the umpires have always been a part of the game.  Unless you want to do away with them entirely, you're just going to have to deal with a bad call from time to time.  (We know a thing or two about blown calls here in Detroit, of course.)

So a play that was obviously a double by Joe Mauer, in the 11th inning, of a tie game, wasn't cause to call for replay.  Got it?  But a flukey play where Omar Infante overran second base and then slipped on his way back, during regulation, in a game that the Tigers were already winning, a game in which the Yankees scored a grand total of zero runs, is cause to call for replay.  Got it?

So here's the deal - just shut up.

If you manage to dig your way out of this hole - down 0-2 and sending Phil Hughes out to face Justin Verlander tomorrow - people will be singing your praises for years to come.  If you don't, then you'll be on the hot seat just like every other New York coach who fails to finish the job.  In neither case will that play at second base have made the difference.  Robinson Cano and Alex Rodriguez combining to bat .100 (or whatever it is) will have been the reason you lost.  Or [insert hero here] going on a hot streak and beating up Tigers pitching will have been the reason you won.

You know what I've learned in recent years?

Just shut up.  When you lose, be pissed about it.  Make a few comments about what you should have done better.  Then shut the fuck up.  I've learned this because my teams have lost a lot.  At times, they've been screwed by the officials.  But whining about officials is still the act of a loser.

So, with a hat tip to whatever sbnation is, let's just put this to bed and stop the whining.

1. Elbow down
2. Players running off the field, since the whistle had been blown
3. Running back reaches the ball across the line

So shut up, seriously.  If you want to pretend that you can see everything that happens during every play, then acknowledge that you gained most of your yards on plays during which your right tackle was holding.  Then... shut up.

Should Valverde still be the closer?

The answer is no. Valverde should not be the closer.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then just enjoy a chuckle at my expense and don't worry about it.  I'm angry and bitter for a change.  Normally Notre Dame leaves me in this state, but they just seem to keep winning this year.  So my Tigers have had to pick up the slack.

If you know what I'm talking about and you disagree with me, then I have some bad news for you.  You're an idiot.  I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you.  (And it saddens me to know that Jim Leyland is probably one of you, for whatever that's worth.)  Valverde has been a damned disgrace all year.  Even when he somehow finishes a game without blowing it, he gives up a few baserunners and gives us all heartburn.  Enough is enough.

So now Verlander has to go out and finish these rednecks tomorrow.  That will give me an excuse to have a few beers and watch an extra ballgame and whatnot, but it never should have gotten to this point.  Assuming that he does his job and we move on to the next round, the rotation will have to be anchored by Fister and Sanchez.  Not a bad pair of pitchers, incidentally, but we'll probably only get one start out of our ace.  That's a tough deal when every game matters this much.

Fucking Valverde.  Ruined my fucking night.

Holy Smokes

When I saw the video clip where Piers Morgan speaks with Stacey Dash about the reaction to her support for Mitt Romney, I probably should have been impressed by her dignity and class in the face of the typical liberal response.  If a black person steps out of line, then by golly that black person is a race traitor... and so on.  Then you add in the fact that she's a woman, and we know that all women are inherently liberal, even if they have the audacity to think otherwise.  So the response was predictable, and her response to the response was far more dignified.

None of that really stood out to me though.  As I watched the interview, I couldn't believe how absolutely gorgeous she is.  She was kinda cute when that movie Clueless came out, but that was like a hundred years ago.  This chick has to be at least 40 years old by now, right?  And yet she looks way better.

Then I read the brief article that accompanied the video clip.  She's 46 years old?  Holy smokes.