Bone-on-bone Mike Vrabel, comeback Red Sox, Garrett Crochet selling beer, award-winning NESN, ESPN idiocy, speed and outfield play

Tuesday 8/25/26

Red Sox ground out another win. Nothing pretty, not that it matters. Get ‘em any way you can here in the fleeting days of summer. Ranger Suarez wasn’t sharp again. 4 walks in 5 innings. Didn’t matter last night, but will in October. Also surrendered 4 hits and hit 2 guys. That's a ton of traffic on the base paths. Somehow the Marlins only scored the one run against him.

The Sox weren't any better, going 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position. Ugly number. Still, they scored when they had to. A win being ugly doesn't mean it isn't encouraging. Good teams find a way to come out on top when parts of their game aren't working that day. You have to in baseball. It's different from other sports in this manner. This is another reason why it's the sport most like life, which is also why it's the greatest sport.

Red Sox are now tied with the White Sox for the most comeback wins in the American League this year. How surprising is that? Didn't seem like it was that long ago where it felt like if they went down by so much as a single run early they were cooked.

Saw a Garrett Crochet Sam Adams commercial last night. You need to be doing a beer commercial right now? You were bad while you were in there this year, then you went on the shelf and have been there every since, and here you are as the final month of the season on NESN hawking beer? Just because something isn't a big deal doesn't mean it's a good look.

NESN postgame show was awful like society is awful. You can't read anything, you can't listen to anyone. It's all "literally" and "at the end of the day." No one can talk. Everyone speaks in the same phrases that have no meaning whatsoever. Then the two guys started talking about their dogs for some reason, and then moved on to whether or not they wear socks.

NESN's sideline reporter Jahmai Webster can barely speak. Ah, I see that he's won Emmys. "Award-winning." So meaningful. People win awards because they're that great at what they do, don't you know. That's definitely how awards work. Honestly, is there a more useless, misleading term in the world than "Award-winning"?

It's a world where everything in it gets worse, so of course ex-NFL players can now go back and play college football again. College football is nauseating. "College football." You feel gross just writing it without quotes.

Query: Is it possible to be a FBS college football coach in 2026 and not be a wretched human? You can't have any morals and do it. So I guess there's your answer. To me it's like making a deal with the devil.

What about being a football coach in general? Or at the NFL level? You're pretty much for the destruction of brains on account that it gets you stuff.

Mike Vrabel likes to fancy himself this master motivator. A guy like him makes me think of what happens when cartilage wears down and it's bone-on-bone. Short shelf life when it's bone-on-bone. I doubt you have a coaching fixture with this guy, who I think is a shit bag. Then again, what constitutes a fixture now as an NFL head coach? Five years is a long run.

I never have ESPN on unless it's for a game. The idea of watching ESPN programming is...I was going to say absurd to me, but really I should say idiotic. Because you'd need to be an idiot. I was never into ESPN. I never thought it was witty, clever. SportCenter to me was just anchors saying their would-be catch phrases again and again. You can get simple people to think this is high-level verbal entertainment. It's like shaking some keys in front of a baby.

You could have it on in the background, though, I suppose. Get some highlights. With the internet, this meant less and less. You could get highlights anywhere. It's kind of like with record reviews. Once, you got them from a music magazine. Now, you can get them from any internet idiot.

The problem that the publishing world has, and that those magazines/outlets/venues have, is that they doesn't employ any writers who are any better than the internet idiots, in part because these people also aren't out there (and even if there were, it would stil just be people hooking up their friends and people like them). So why pay to read one thing when you can get it a million places for free? It all sucks equally. We could go off into that whole topic here, but let's leave that for later.

But like everything else, ESPN made sure to get worse and keep getting worse. Now, the station is Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee and variants thereof, but mostly just Smith and McAfee. The worst elements of an educated society. Not that this is an intelligent society. But if you were trying to make the dumbest society possible, these are two guys you'd make fixtures of entertainment and programming.

As I said, everything gets worse, doesn't matter what it is. Nothing is untouched. Well, I am. And look how that's working out, the whole going in the opposite direction thing. That McAfree has "made" and released an AI-generated album makes perfect sense in this world, as if there was no way he wouldn't. We act like everything has to be stupid. And we have to be stupid.

How bad of an organization are the Cleveland Browns? It's like the Jets West. Those two jokers are your options at quarterback, and then you pick the molester? When that's your QB battle, you might as well not play the season. You're only going to suck. It's not just that Sanders and Watson suck. It's the mindset of the entire franchise. That you're willing to accept either guy as your quarterback. No standards, no expectations. You shouldn't even be looking at either of the two. Joe Milton would have been a guy worth trading for, even if he didn't end up being good. You had to do something different instead of going with either of those guys.

Want some insight into Jarren Duran's game? We all know about the batting average. But he's lost speed. Haven't heard that from anyone else, have you? You're not going to. He doesn't run like he did. Speed was central to his offensive game. He's always been bad defensively, because speed doesn't assure good or even average defense. People who don't know baseball think you have to be fast to be a great outfielder. Nope. Speed is down the list of attributes you need to be good in the outfield. You think Dwight Evans was fast? Because he wasn't. How many right fielders have been better than he was in the history of baseball? And he played half his games in one of the biggest right fields in the game.

Duran is at his best--or was--when utilizing his wheels. Then it was like he was working against his own strengths. I think he wanted to be a power hitter. He committed to that, and his speed game--and his speed--lessened.

Team halls of fame aren't a big deal and merit little discussion. It's a neat honor for a good player who meant something to a city/region. But that Adam Vinatieri of all people isn't in the Patriots' Hall of Fame says so much about the Krafts. How do you let that happen? I know, there is fan voting and whatever...but that's clearly a fuck you to Vinatieri.

I don't know exactly how much, but a lot less than what happened would have happened without that guy. Would the Patriots have gone on to have the greatest dynasty in sports history without Vinatieri? Brady was Brady, but I'll say no. And he's not even in your team hall of fame? All these years later, too? Vrabel is in that hall of fame. There's no comparison between these two as players or in terms of their importance to the franchise and its history. I think it's embarrassing.