No Boo-Boo Face for Fans of the World Champs

I was preparing a text message to send to Snizza earlier today -- contents: "Time for the Phillies to shoot Ryan Madson into space" -- when my phone buzzed with an incoming text.

The text was from Snizza*, as it turns out, and said, "Artest?!??!?"

*Snizza is a Lakers fan who often writes here about the Dallas Mavericks so people won't think he's an asshole.

The text served as a reminder of what asswipes we both are. The most recently minted MLB Commissioner's Trophy rests in the display case of my favorite team, and Snizza probably still has articles of clothing in his hamper that are champagne-stained from the Lakers' championship.

Sure, Ryan Madson looks like he's throwing spitballs with sterno on them, but he pitched brilliantly for the Phillies last season... and they won the fucking World Series. I'm embarrassed to be so insufferable this quickly after a World Championship... no matter how badly the Phillies are playing.

So let's not load Madson aboard the S.S. Padilla.* Or shoot him into space. Or whatever.**

*Our friend Tommy and I had this saying, back when Vicente Padilla pitched for the Phillies, that they ought to just throw him onto a boat with half a tank of gas and send him out to sea and forget about him. For the next several years, any Phillie stinking up the joint was ticketed, in our vernacular, for said doomed vessel.

**Short of shooting Madson into space, I do think the Phils should force him to change his number back to 63. He switched to 46 this season, and while it's less, uh, Spring-Trainingy, he's pitching terribly with it. Note: His numbers don't look that awful, but ERA for a late-inning reliever is a junk stat; he's been letting in runs that get charged to the guy(s) who pitched before him. Also note: I believe in hokey horseshit like uniform numbers impacting how you play. It's a little compromise with reality for someone who generally skews Sabermetric.

Likewise, Ron Artest is the closest thing pro basketball has seen to Mike Tyson, and now apparently you can add "mercenary" to his list of negative attributes. But the Lakers won the goddamn NBA title mere weeks ago, and the same people who put that championship team together apparently thought replacing Trevor Ariza with Ron Artest was A-OK. So deal with it.

Sometimes I think we need a sign here at T!!! headquarters* that says "What Would A Patriots Fan Do?" They would turn into enormous yankdicks after seeing their team win a title. And that is not what I want to do.

*After a prolonged series of debates, T!!!HQ was established at the Lakewood Landing; it narrowly defeated Matty's laundry room in a runoff election.

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