Turns out the chupacabra that was shot in Kentucky last week was nothing but a raccoon with some sort of disease that rendered it hairless. Incidentally, that’s also pretty scary. Not goatsucker scary, but scary.
A mesmerizing photo gallery of laughing women with salads.
Chris Jaffe details his method for predicting Hall of Fame votes and concludes that Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven will earn the nod this year. Good; they both deserve it.
I’ll reiterate, though, that if the BBWAA keeps steroids users — and worse, merely suspected steroids users — out of the Hall, then entry to Cooperstown will ultimately be rendered meaningless. Barry Bonds helped his teams win many, many games. He probably used illegal drugs to do so, but no one tried to stop him at the time. Players — Hall of Famers included — found ways to cheat long before the 1990s and will continue to do ad infinitum.
As you may have noticed, the comments section looks different. Thanks to the tireless work of Matt Cerrone, the comments on this site — as well as MetsBlog.com and SNYRangersBlog.com, and ideally a few more of our SNY.tv blogs in the coming days — are now on Disqus.
I’ve never made anyone register or log in to comment here*, and you will still be able to post as a guest in the new system. Just type your comment and hit “Post as…” and Disqus will prompt you for a name and email, same as what was here before.
But because many of the community aspects of the new system are pretty cool, I urge you to log in and comment via Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo! or Open ID, or sign up through Disqus.
That way the personified and ominous SNY can monitor your activities from smoky back rooms, petting a cat and plotting your demise. Also, you’ll be able to more easily comment on other SNY blogs (and other blogs on Disqus like MLBTradeRumors.com), and the site will keep track of how many other readers like your comments. Validation!
(Also, for the paranoid: I was kidding about the monitoring your activities thing. This change is to liven up the commenting communities on our sites and take some of the burden off our servers. You’re paranoid so you probably won’t believe me, but no one’s up to anything shady.)
Finally, you may have noticed that you now have the option to “recommend” posts on this site on Facebook and “Like” the site in general (on the top right of the page below the search bar). We’re still working on some stuff with that, but feel free to recommend and like away. There’s even this new (still in-progress) TedQuarters fan page on Facebook. You like me, right? Please, tell me you like me!
Of course, all these changes come just in time for this site to slow down for the holidays. Consider it, I don’t know, a transition period. You slowly adjust to the new comments section and to officially declaring your like for TedQuarters on Facebook while I publish 1-2 posts a day through the New Year. Then, come January, you’re fully ready to comment and like away and I’m all refreshed from vacation, and we all come out swinging in 2011.
But not swinging in the Rex Ryan way. This is not that type of web site.
Thanks, as always, for reading and commenting and everything else, and thanks for helping make this site the Internet’s second most awesome TedQuarters. The Top 10 Things of 2010 will start rolling out this afternoon.
*- Except one time, very early on, when I screwed something up in the admin. I do reserve the right to someday make you log in to comment, but I won’t do it before we enjoy some hilarious and rampant trolling.
I’ve got about a billion overdue expense reports to file and Christmas gifts to buy in the next couple days, then I’m taking off from Thursday until the New Year.
But since I don’t want to leave this blog totally dark for the next week and a half, starting tomorrow I’ll be rolling out one post per day about the TedQuarters Top 10 Things of 2010. I’ll probably post some other stuff too as it comes up, but it will otherwise be mostly quiet around here.
What are the TedQuarters Top 10 Things of 2010? Well, you’ll have to wait and find out. But I’ll admit now that it’s a very biased list, it includes a bunch of stuff I’ve already talked about here and some things I haven’t but that all certainly fall within the normal realm of things discussed on TedQuarters.
So, you know, look out for that. You might also notice some minor changes around the site, since this blog remains the guinea pig for our SNY.tv Blog Network and we’re trying to get our act in gear for next year. I will probably mention them when they are completely functional and worth mentioning.
Matt Cerrone and I are trying out a new video feature today, based on the popular Islanders Interactive series Chris Botta has been doing over at IslandersPointBlank.com.
Essentially it’s like talk radio, except Cerrone and I are sitting there talking on video. It’ll probably run about 20 minutes, only you don’t have to watch it the whole time since there’s not going to be a whole lot going on, you know, visually. So basically a podcast, only with a video streaming so you don’t have to forge a mental image of what it looks like when Cerrone and I sit around and talk about the Mets.
Anyway, we need Mets-related phone calls to make this happen. Please call (212) 246-0416 between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. ET. You’ll talk to the producer first, then eventually get patched through to Matt and me. Unless you turn out to be a crazy person, your question will air on the video, which will be up here, at MetsBlog and on SNY.tv sometime in the afternoon.
I’ve got Christmas shopping and an upcoming vacation on the mind, and I’m struggling a bit to come up with anything to write about. But I’m vain enough to reprint things I’ve already published, and I figured revisiting the year via a selection of my own Tweets would make for a decent year-in-review post. Problem is, I can’t find a way to see any Twitter before May 26. So indulge me in a partial year in Tweets:
May 26: Oh thank god. I was concerned Fernando Nieve wouldn’t get in this game. #youhavetwomopupguysforjustthissituation
June 1: I am embarrassed and terrified by how few of NY Mag’s 101 Best Sandwiches in NY I’ve had. Looks like I’ve got a long night ahead.
June 3: ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE JIM JOYCE!
June 4: An A-ball team is now calling batting practice “hitting rehearsal” to avoid calling it “BP.” That’ll teach ’em.
June 7: Prediction: Some guys drafted tonight will turn out good and others will suck.
June 11: You can scold Lady Gaga for wearing a bikini bottom to the Mets game, but you’re just jealous she can get away with never wearing pants.
June 15: Painter Thomas Kinkade was arrested for DUI Friday on an idyllic cobblestone road by the charming old lighthouse at dusk.
June 18: Campbell’s is recalling 15 million pounds of SpaghettiO’s. In a related story, there are 15 million pounds of SpaghettiO’s.
June 24: Obviously Johan Santana sucks now because he had extramarital sex with a woman on a golf course eight months ago.
June 30: Me, after filming five intros: “Does being introduced as ‘Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner’ ever get old?” Kiner: “How could that ever get old?”
July 4: Jeff Francoeur, who has a .718 OPS, said all the Mets OFs deserve playing time upon Beltran’s return since none is “flat-out sucking.”
July 8: Funniest outcome: LeBron James announces he’s signing with Olympiacos then suffers career-threatening finger injury while flipping everyone off.
July 16: Source: The Yanks would like to have Joakim Soria, distinguising them from all those teams that would not like to have Joakim Soria.
July 20: When managing an MLB roster, the most important thing to know is never, ever risk losing Fernando Nieve on waivers. Too risky!
July 23: Jason Bay has struggled all season, presumably because of something Carlos Beltran did.
July 29: Source: Adam Dunn is lazy, but won’t DH because he hates baseball so much he wants to torment it with terrible defense.
Aug. 5: Are we discounting the possibility that Brett Favre’s photos were actually aimed for his wife and intercepted?
Aug. 6: Why do crappy baseball teams lack the confidence that the good ones have? The world may never know.
Aug. 9: According to Alex Cora, if a team is committed to winning now, it should hang on to Alex Cora.
Aug. 12: Heath Bell leads the National League in saves, but he’s dead last in old men beaten up.
Aug. 16: Jerseyites always get all dodgy when you ask them about Taylor Ham, a local meat product. Be honest, Jersey: Is it people?
Aug. 21: I saw Wyclef Jean in concert once. It was awful. I left thinking, “I hope that man is never a head of state.” #votepras
Aug. 25: Look I know Jeff Francoeur hasn’t had a hit in two months, but please, give him credit: He’s had some really long at-bats.
Aug. 31: Will the media hordes follow Jeff Francoeur and his pursuit of 100 home runs to Texas?
Sept. 1: Don’t forget: Tommy Hanson and his longtime family friends will deny it, but he’s totally cousins with the band Hanson.
Sept. 5: Mets steaming as clubhouse cancer Mike Pelfrey draws ire for fantasy football grandstanding. “Thinks he’s John Madden,” grumbles one.
Sept. 5: My biggest regret is that I lived nearly 30 years without knowing about the sandwich I just ate. Holy hell. Everything is different now.
Sept. 10: Carlos Beltran should not have torn Johan Santana’s left anterior shoulder capsule.
Sept. 13: Paraphrasing Daily News: Jets should not have objectified this extremely sexy bombshell reporter. WITH SEXY PHOTOS!
Sept. 15: Pretty sure every single person at Citi Field is on the line at Shake Shack.
Sept. 20: I’d like to score a role as the drunk in an action movie who sees something crazy then looks at his drink like, “whoa, that’s good stuff.”
Sept. 27: Jets overcome injuries, penalties, widespread charges of moral turpitude to beat Dolphins, 31-23.
Oct. 3: Not sure why people are so fired up about Dickey pitching here. Doesn’t crack the top 1000 dumbest Mets moves this season.
Oct. 6: I think maybe Cee Lo Green is going to unify the planet in utopian harmony the way we thought Wyld Stallyns would.
Oct. 9: Knowing that Mariano Rivera has been to Taco Bell is like knowing that the Beatles met Muhammad Ali. Historic confluence of awesome.
Oct. 13: An errant dart just struck an unopened soda can and sent a stream of ginger ale shooting across the office. It was awesome.
Oct. 16: Jeff Francoeur’s rocking a historically great 3:1 FA:PT in the ALCS. That’s feature articles:pitches taken.
Oct. 18: Fox vs. Cablevision is like the Yankees-Phillies World Series of corporate disputes.
Oct. 19: Listening to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver guarantees you’ll appreciate the broadcast you hear next. It’s like taking the donut off the bat.
Oct. 28: ALERT: Man in suit proceeding south on 5th ave. on a Segway.
Nov. 1: Will Tim Lincecum’s performance tonight help sway the vote on Prop 19?
Nov. 8: Even though the Giants debunked Moneyball, the Mets have hired Paul DePodesta.
Nov. 16: Charlie Samuels fired today? Dammit, I had Nov. 16 in the pool. Wait – noooooooo!
Nov. 17: It’s laughable that Bud Selig still thinks Abner Doubleday invented baseball. Everyone knows it was Wally Backman.
Nov. 21: Mets hire manager at 3 a.m. Pakistan Standard Time.
Nov. 22: It’s bizarre to me that many Mets fans who argued that Wally Backman has changed seem certain that Terry Collins cannot.
Nov. 28: What kind of party is it, exactly, that could prompt a man to defile the mashed potatoes?
Nov. 29: Apparently a WEEI caller today suggested that the Red Sox pay Derek Jeter $20 mil and bench him behind Marco Scutaro.
Dec. 3: In Colonial Williamsburg, everyone wore tight, tapered knickers and stayed ironically detached from the whole revolution thing.
Dec.6: OK Jets fans, this is awful. But we need to remember one thing: Tom Brady wears man-UGGs.
Dec. 7: Heard this: A mystery team has made a bid for an unspecified player. Terms not disclosed.
Dec. 9: To me, what the Mets are doing this offseason *is* exciting. Extremely so. I could hardly care less what makes headlines.
Dec. 13: Sandy Alderson is so much cooler than Mike Francesa.
Dec. 14: From the Internet today you’d get the impression that the Phillies won’t lose a single game in 2011. C’mon. They’ll lose at least 5.
Dec. 15: Most amazing thing about tonight’s Knicks game: I’ve now watched three straight Knicks games.
You know why we yawn? Don’t worry, no one else does either. But I bet anything you can’t read this whole Times article without yawning at least once.
Y’all know I’m no PETA activist, but I pity this poor parrot for how many times it must have heard that song:
Hat tip to Jonah Keri.
A burglar in D.C. used the computer he just stole to take a picture of himself with the money and jacket he also stole, then posted it on Facebook. He’s still at large. Who is most stupid now?
Tedquarters 