If you somehow missed it, Tim Tebow was the subject of this week’s GQ cover story, featuring some pictures he apparently posed for several years ago.
They’re kind of mesmerizing, but as far as this site is concerned it’s Mark Sanchez or GTFO. I’m fine with Tebow looking handsome and smiling earnestly and hypnotizing beat writers if the Jets use him appropriately, but he’s yet to make clear his stance on Taco Bell and I don’t think he even owns a boat phone.
The mayhem started at around 4:20 p.m., when the horse’s driver tried to make a sharp turn into the park at the north side of Columbus Circle, witnesses said. The horse lost its balance and went into a frenzy, according to Sidiki Tapsoba, who arranges pedicab rides in the park.
“The horse lost control,” said Tapsoba. “The horse ran, trying to go back to the place it lives.”…
An officer at the scene said the horse ran to Ninth Avenue, where it made a left turn and then waited at the red light. A female pedestrian was able to grab hold of the horse’s reigns briefly, and a police officer reportedly tied it up to a nearby pole.
Y’all know I eat meat with abandon and am in general no hardcore animal-rights activist or anything. But everything about this story seems so sad to me, including but not limited to the photos of the tranquilized horse prostrate on Ninth Avenue in front of Burrito Box.
“The place it lives” is a stable on 52nd and 12th, but… you know. Also, how depressing is it that the horse is institutionalized enough to wait at a red light? Seems like this is no life for a horse. It still had its blinders on when it woke up and was ushered into a police van.
Sorry if I have less sympathy for the injured-but-generally OK driver and passengers of the carriage. Certainly it sucked for them too, but probably not as much as a life of dragging a massive carriage around the same route every day, punctuated by one fleeting moment of terrifying freedom that ended in a drugged heap in Hell’s Kitchen.
Suite owners will have access to a Champagne bar serving Armand de Brignac, an expensive bubbly that Mr. Carter promotes and in which he holds a financial interest, according to a biography by a writer for Forbes. The arena will contain a 40/40 Club, an iteration of his sports-bar-style nightclub chain. There will be a Rocawear store, selling his clothing line, on the arena’s exterior. Even the advertising agency used by the Nets, Translation, is half-owned by Mr. Carter.
There is also an important intangible asset, particularly for a rapper: the bragging rights that Mr. Carter has enjoyed as a part-owner since Mr. Ratner’s group paid $300 million to acquire the Nets. His slender stake was enough for Mr. Carter to thump his chest in his lyrics, promising to “bring you some Nets.”
Mr. Carter has capitalized further on his Nets investment by extending the Jay-Z brand into endorsement deals normally reserved for elite athletes. He stars, wearing a Nets cap, in a Budweiser TV commercial that was broadcast during the Olympic Games. And he was named executive producer of the basketball video game, “NBA 2K13.”
– David Halbfinger, N.Y. Times.
Good read from the Times on Jay-Z’s role in the Nets’ move to Brooklyn and vice versa. Bonus points because it refers to the Jiggaman as “Mr. Carter” throughout.
I reserve the right to write more about this in the future, but I suspect I will take up some rooting interest in the Nets this season and likely abandon whatever minute attachment I still have to the Knicks. You may think this makes me a sellout or a bad fan or whatever, but I wasn’t a very good Knicks fan to begin with, fandom doesn’t seem to operate in any rational way, and I feel way more excited about the new-look Nets than the same-old Knicks.
Here’s what I’ve got off the top of my head:
Reasons to like the Nets
Play a few blocks from where I lived for five years, still hang out sometimes
Cool uniforms
Jay-Z affiliation
Tickets more likely to be available/inexpensive (?)
Brand new arena
Arena easier to get to from my home by subway
Not the Knicks
Reasons to like the Knicks
I liked them in the ’90s
??
Am I wrong?
In regards to actual September call-ups, I expect to also see Jenrry Mejia and Robert Carson return to the roster. And I hope to see Jeurys Familia as well, since most insiders I talk to think he could be a terrific closer rather quickly. It might also be smart to get 3B Zach Lutz some at bats at this level to see what he’s all about…
In addition to presenting the news that Lucas Duda has missed the last four games in Buffalo with “dental issues,” Cerrone predicts which young Mets will join the big club when rosters expand in September. That list seems reasonable to me. I’d guess Elvin Ramirez and Pedro Beato come back too, since they’re on the 40-man roster and have arms.
The other Minor Leaguers currently on the 40-man? Rob Johnson and Mike Nickeas, both of whom we’re familiar with, plus Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Wilmer Flores, Reese Havens, Juan Lagares and Cesar Puello. Nieuwenhuis is hurt and Puello hasn’t hit in A-ball, so neither of them seems likely to see lockers in Flushing.
Lagares hasn’t repeated his 2011 success in Binghamton in 2012, though he has been a bit better since the All-Star break and does hit right-handed, play the outfield and steal bases — three things the Mets might want to check out. Havens, depressingly, has missed the last week with a stiff back after hitting pretty well in Double-A since June. Flores has posted a very Murphish .297/.343/.434 in his first 48 games at Double-A, but he’s only 20 and still in the process of finding a home on defense.
Familia has been up and down (and more down than up) all season in Triple-A, but he’s made two straight strong starts (after three clunkers) and hasn’t thrown as many innings yet as he did last year. So maybe he gets a call and a taste of big-league action before he heads back to the Minors next year to work out his control issues.
The most interesting guy on Cerrone’s list is Mejia. What’s the deal with Jenrry Mejia?
Once compared to Mariano Rivera by people who should not have been making such comparisons, Mejia struggled in the Bisons’ bullpen. Supposedly he paces himself better as a starter and tended to overthrow in a relief role. The results suggest something similar: Mejia has a 5.48 ERA in 16 relief appearances at Buffalo and a 0.95 ERA in six starts. Tiny samples abound, though, and Mejia’s underwhelming rate stats have not been way different as a starter than they were as a reliever. Also, his ERA as a starter has benefited from seven unearned runs. I didn’t see any of them and I can’t say to what extent they’ve been the fault of his defense, but it seems safe to say he hasn’t been nearly as good as his ERA.
The big thing about Mejia, though — or one big thing about Mejia, at least — is that 2013 will be his final option year, meaning despite Mejia’s age, the Mets have limited time to figure out what to expect from him at the Major League level. That’s a shame, because it seems like more than anything he needs some reps: Mejia has thrown only 68 2/3 innings this season, has yet to throw 100 innings in any season at any level, and only has 86 innings across three seasons at the Minors’ highest level. By all accounts he has terrific stuff, but the stats say he hasn’t honed it yet.
That’s not all his fault, obviously, but he’s going to need to do so pretty soon if he’s going to make good on his prospect pedigree for the organization that signed him six years ago.
http://web.sny.tv/media/video.jsp?content_id=23917821
Yeah but later in the practice Tim Tebow nearly completed a 10-yard in.
For what it’s worth, real-life friend Bill spent all four years of high school trying to do the exact same thing before football practice.
Although Jefferies was a disappointment compared to the hype he received in the minors, he did have a 14-year career in the majors, hitting .289/.344/.421 with a 107 OPS+. His OPS+ was better than league average every year until age 28 when injuries struck, and he had particularly good years in 1993 (.342/.408/.485, 142 OPS+, 5.5 WAR) and 1994 (.325/.391/.489, 130 OPS+, 1.9 WAR in the strike year). He stole 193 bases, was a two-time All Star, and posted a career 21.9 WAR.
– John Sickels, MinorLeagueBall.com.
It’s amazing to look at Gregg Jefferies’ baseball-reference page now and realize he was a pretty decent Major Leaguer. In my memory, outside of 29 games at the end of the 1988 season, he sucked.
Mets fans often reference Generation K and/or Alex Escobar when reminding each other of the way prospects frequently fail to match their surrounding hype. And I do that too, of course. But to me no former Met better embodies the distinction between expectations and actual performance than Jefferies, largely because I legitimately expected he’d end up in the Hall of Fame.
I followed the Mets in 1987, but 1988 was my breakout season as a crazy, full-tilt Mets fan. When Jefferies came up in late August of that year, with tons of hype surrounding his promotion, he was electrifying. In his first 13 games, he hit .462 with a .500 OBP and a .962 slugging. Small sample size, obviously, but I was 7 years old and knew nothing of the concept. I was watching this guy I had read about all season in Inside Pitch, and he was everything I had hoped he would be and more.
Ultimately he wasn’t, of course. But I can’t say I didn’t spend a significant amount of time that year trying to affect a permanent squint to make myself look like Gregg Jefferies. And in backyard Wiffleball games, I tried to imitate the way he frequently seemed to stumble over second base on doubles.
In 1989, Jefferies stunk it up out of the gate, and I guess my appreciation for him fizzled quickly. I remember a bunch of nonsense in the newspapers involving an open letter to Mets fans, but I can’t recall the specifics. By the time he was traded to the Royals in December, 1991, I was more upset about the departure of another favorite — Kevin McReynolds — than the loss of the 24-year-old Jefferies. And more than anything, I was excited about the All-Star cast the Mets seemed to be pulling together for the 1992 season.
Oh, baseball.
This comes from the new-to-me but now defunct Tumblr Best of Wikipedia.
From the Wikipedia: Tool use by animals.
The Wikipedia provides a few definitions of tools, but presumably you know what tools are. Basically, they’re anything you use to do something that you can’t do with your own body. For a long time, people assumed we were the only species of animal that used tools because we always think we’re so fancy with our glue guns and our Segways. But it turns out a bunch of animals use tools too.
Most tool use by animals is by primates, which shouldn’t surprise anyone because monkeys are awesome. Most primate tools are just sticks, but they’re really making those sticks work for them. Gorillas use sticks to extract termites from nests and to gauge depth in water. Orangutans use sticks to dig delicious seeds out of fruit. Chimps use sticks a bit more violently; they use them to break open bee hives for honey and have even been seen sharpening sticks to use as spears for hunting. That’s pretty ominous, actually.
Also kind of terrifying: Bottlenose dolphins use conch shells as a kind of utensil, catching small fish in them and then lifting them out of the water to let the fish slide down into their mouths. That on its own isn’t scary, what’s scary is that the behavior appears to be spreading, implying that dolphins are still getting better at stuff. Dolphins were the even-money favorite for next dominant species on earth to begin with; learning that they’re learning only improves their odds.
Bears apparently use rocks to exfoliate, which explains why bears have such radiant skin. Also, dingos have been witnessed moving a table to help them reach food. One time I put a biscuit down on the ground and showed it to my dog. He got all excited, because he loved biscuits. Then I put a red plastic Solo cup face down on top of the biscuit to cover it. He approached the cup, sniffed it a little bit, then walked away looking dejected. I gave him the biscuit anyway, out of pity. Stupid dog.
A certain species of ant picks up small stones and other objects and drops them down rival anthills to trap the enemy ants inside and allow its compatriots to forage without competition. More like inhumantity, amirite?
Perhaps the most interesting use of tools come from birds, previously assumed to be really dumb by this site and others. It turns out crows and seagulls have been known to drop hard-shelled nuts and clams onto roads, wait for cars to run them over, then come back to eat the meaty insides.
Nothing tops this, though: Crows like this one have been seen (as you will see) breaking up bread into little pieces and dropping them into water to bait fish. This is so awesome:
Tedquarters 