OK, I know nothing about sports, as you guys know, but I clicked through to see what this was, and the juxtaposition in the caption made me laugh:
“Zito’s struggles in San Francisco have been legendary since signing a large contract there in 2006.” (emphasis mine).
Now, I did only the briefest further skimming research on wikipedia to see what his “legendary struggles” were, so hopefully I didn’t miss any serious personal tragedy (and, he does seem like an interesting fellow!), but:
Can I get a “large contract” too please? I promise that can come up with some struggles that are more “legendary” than some pitching ups and downs, and athletic injuries from which he seems to have recovered nicely.
Seriously, I clicked through to wikipedia thinking that I was going to get the epic story of Odysseus or something. (“Alone, framed for a crime he did not commit, and strung-out-sick on the heroin that he was unwillingly administered while being held captive in the back room of “Menards”, Zito freed the sex slaves, and only narrowly escaped a subsequent assassination attempt by the Triads.”)
(Ducks)
The pitchers at that link were cool, but the writing and captions were genuinely god awful. They really fail to actually capture what’s in the image. So, um, yea, don’t read the words. Just look at the pictures.
FYI, my showing of this picture to Zazzy has led her to start looking for other cool lists of pictures, which has led to her finding pictures of baby animals, which has led to her scrolling through these lists saying, “Awwww… [name of baby animal]” in increasingly higher octaves.
All of the research that says lottery winners aren’t any happier for their winnings tends to make me yell “I WILL BE TWO STANDARD DEVIATIONS ABOVE THE MEAN! SEND ME THE MONEY!”, so I hear ya, Glyph.
It’s an adorable picture though. 🙂
I’m always skeptical of that research. I have to assume it is based primarily if not wholly on self-reported data, which is notoriously unreliable. My hunch is that the more accurate representation is that people aren’t as happy as they anticipated they’d be after winning the lobby. But I doubt most of them would trade their post-lottery lives for their pre-lottery ones.
Pat is going to kill me, but…
Zito didn’t pitch particularly well this year. Yes, 15-8 looks good, but the Giants scored a lot more runs for him than usual, and Bochy got smarter about taking him out after 5 or 6 innings. Zito was still a below-average starting pitcher (below replacement level, according to Baseball Reference, meaning you could sign a minor league pitcher who’d be more effective and make about $18.5 million dollars less.)
But he did have two great starts in the post-season, and that is a nice picture.
Oh, that game (Zito didn’t pitch that night; he was celebrating winning the pennant along with the rest of the team.) I was there. The picture doesn’t show how hard it was raining. The sky has opened up. After the Giants had won, Fox went to about five minutes of commercials before the National League awarded the trophy, and 30,000 of us stood like idiots in the rain waiting for the ceremony. On the walk back to BART I stepped in a puddle that was about two feet deep, and I didn’t get any wetter than I was before.
Totally worth it.
Dope. If you haven’t already, I recommend clicking through the link. The picture size here doesn’t do it justice. For whatever reason, it only offered me the option of full size, which was too big, or medium, which it is now. If there is a way to make it larger and someone can go backstage to do that, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, yea, click the link and see that shot (and others) in all their glory.
OK, since I started off with a semi-snarky comment, let me try to make amends – this one’s for Mike too:
OK, I know nothing about sports, as you guys know, but I clicked through to see what this was, and the juxtaposition in the caption made me laugh:
“Zito’s struggles in San Francisco have been legendary since signing a large contract there in 2006.” (emphasis mine).
Now, I did only the briefest further skimming research on wikipedia to see what his “legendary struggles” were, so hopefully I didn’t miss any serious personal tragedy (and, he does seem like an interesting fellow!), but:
Can I get a “large contract” too please? I promise that can come up with some struggles that are more “legendary” than some pitching ups and downs, and athletic injuries from which he seems to have recovered nicely.
Seriously, I clicked through to wikipedia thinking that I was going to get the epic story of Odysseus or something. (“Alone, framed for a crime he did not commit, and strung-out-sick on the heroin that he was unwillingly administered while being held captive in the back room of “Menards”, Zito freed the sex slaves, and only narrowly escaped a subsequent assassination attempt by the Triads.”)
(Ducks)
The pitchers at that link were cool, but the writing and captions were genuinely god awful. They really fail to actually capture what’s in the image. So, um, yea, don’t read the words. Just look at the pictures.
FYI, my showing of this picture to Zazzy has led her to start looking for other cool lists of pictures, which has led to her finding pictures of baby animals, which has led to her scrolling through these lists saying, “Awwww… [name of baby animal]” in increasingly higher octaves.
All of the research that says lottery winners aren’t any happier for their winnings tends to make me yell “I WILL BE TWO STANDARD DEVIATIONS ABOVE THE MEAN! SEND ME THE MONEY!”, so I hear ya, Glyph.
It’s an adorable picture though. 🙂
I’m always skeptical of that research. I have to assume it is based primarily if not wholly on self-reported data, which is notoriously unreliable. My hunch is that the more accurate representation is that people aren’t as happy as they anticipated they’d be after winning the lobby. But I doubt most of them would trade their post-lottery lives for their pre-lottery ones.
Pat is going to kill me, but…
Zito didn’t pitch particularly well this year. Yes, 15-8 looks good, but the Giants scored a lot more runs for him than usual, and Bochy got smarter about taking him out after 5 or 6 innings. Zito was still a below-average starting pitcher (below replacement level, according to Baseball Reference, meaning you could sign a minor league pitcher who’d be more effective and make about $18.5 million dollars less.)
But he did have two great starts in the post-season, and that is a nice picture.
Oh, that game (Zito didn’t pitch that night; he was celebrating winning the pennant along with the rest of the team.) I was there. The picture doesn’t show how hard it was raining. The sky has opened up. After the Giants had won, Fox went to about five minutes of commercials before the National League awarded the trophy, and 30,000 of us stood like idiots in the rain waiting for the ceremony. On the walk back to BART I stepped in a puddle that was about two feet deep, and I didn’t get any wetter than I was before.
Totally worth it.
Dope. If you haven’t already, I recommend clicking through the link. The picture size here doesn’t do it justice. For whatever reason, it only offered me the option of full size, which was too big, or medium, which it is now. If there is a way to make it larger and someone can go backstage to do that, I’d appreciate it. Otherwise, yea, click the link and see that shot (and others) in all their glory.
OK, since I started off with a semi-snarky comment, let me try to make amends – this one’s for Mike too:
Chuck Prophet, “Willie Mays Is Up At Bat”:
http://youtu.be/hqcO-scKpoo