Good morning, and welcome to Thursday’s Cheat Sheet.
Let’s jump right in.
Giants beat Mets, move on to face Cubs in NLDS
Okay, let’s get this out of the way: there’s no such thing as even-year magic. It doesn’t exist. That’s sports superstition, and while there’s nothing wrong with a little healthy superstition (for example, I’m going to trim my beard today, so as not to have to worry about wrecking a potential Cubs postseason winning streak) the Giants being good every other year isn’t magical. It’s just a coincidence.
But it is a pretty big, ridiculous coincidence.
I wrote in one of these very columns just a few weeks go that the Giants might not even make the playoffs. They were in a tailspin, and they made the wild card game last night thanks to the patented twin pillars of the Giants’ October success: flawless performances from Madison Bumgarner and a timely home run by some random dude.
Bumgarner threw a four-hit shutout, further cementing the October legacy established by his dominant run in 2014.
And then this year’s Cody Ross, Conor Gillaspie (tough to misspell your own name twice, but here we are), took Jeurys Familia deep in the ninth for a three-run blast that effectively sealed it.
World, meet Conor Gillaspie.
He just set up a @SFGiants–@Cubs #NLDS. https://t.co/Q4F1uxVpqA #WildCard pic.twitter.com/wcGDJ0VNnc
— MLB (@MLB) October 6, 2016
So the Giants will now play the Cubs, finalizing the playoff schedule. If you believe in such things, and again, you shouldn’t, it’s the positive even-year Giants vs. the cursed Cubs. If the Cubs win, hopefully, finally, thankfully, we’ll be able to move past superstition as a legitimate driving narrative from the media, which is supposed to deal in facts. (A novel concept!)
What’s that? You want me to make a prediction?
Sorry, I couldn’t possibly do it.
I don’t want to jinx anything.
VR might be cool, but are people really going to wear these things?
I might officially be too old to talk about this kind of thing. I mean, I’m not that old, but the bar feels pretty low. If I was sixteen, maybe I’d be dying to try out Playstation VR, or any number of other VR tech that’s currently hitting the market.
(I once agreed to stay over at a kid’s house just because his older brother had a Dreamcast. I didn’t even like the kid that much, and then his brother went to another house and took the Dreamcast with him. I do not have fond memories of that night.)
But watching folks wearing those Daft Punk helmets, holding sticks that look more NSFW than anything else, and you have to wonder about how self-conscious you’d feel joining in.
Or maybe I’m just projecting my own issues here, and soon everyone will have those on, and no one will ever go outside for anything.
(Oh, wow. That might very well be the first “old man yells at things” sentence I’ve ever written. This…this is bad.)
Quick hits
-If you watched the NL wild card game, you were treated to the ad for Curves Connect, a new online dating service from the folks that brought you Farmers Only. And if you’re familiar with the Farmers Only brand of horrible commercial, well, you probably know what to expect here:
Boy do I hope they’re going to be all over the MLB playoffs! I know I won’t get tired of that jingle at all!
-Julian Edelman is super happy to have Tom Brady back.
-Gregg Popovich was pretty disgusted by the VP debate. He couldn’t even finish the thing. In all seriousness, I’d probably vote for Pop over just about any politician at this point.
-NFL salary cap insight can be hard to come by, so I really appreciated Andrea Hangst breaking down where teams are at just partway through the season in terms of dead money, injured players, and more.
-Former Florida QB Chris Leak is being investigated for sexual assault, and the details aren’t fun.
-Bill Belichick found a loophole that gets Tom Brady out of media obligations, which is just about the perfect Patriots story. You know, aside from all the times they were found to have cheated.
-South Carolina men’s basketball coach Frank Martin gooshed a spider during his press conference. Had he then announced they were playing a home and home against Richmond, it would have been fantastic.
-A look at the year’s most surprising MLB seasons, including Cubs ace (no, seriously) Kyle Hendricks.
-Here’s a pug dressed as a sheep while among sheep. In other words, an adorable dog in sheep’s clothing, which changes the meaning of that axiom just a tad.
-ESPN and TBS are both going to large score bugs on their broadcasts, which makes absolutely no sense. As TVs have gotten larger and clearer, the need for a large score box is further diminished. All it does is clutter the screen. They should be getting smaller. It could be to help improve readability on mobile devices, as more and more people are streaming broadcasts.
Cynically, it might be to better facilitate in-game advertising, which is just disappointing. There’s nothing better than when a sports broadcast actually goes au naturale, just giving you the event itself. Few do it anymore. Soccer on occasion just runs a tiny score bug, and golf generally does a good job of this too. But their days might be numbered as well.
Fake news headline I wish was real
Report: Trump Strongly Considering Booting Pence From Ticket, Naming Himself as Running Mate
One last glorious moment of procrastination
I don’t normally know much about the context of these gifs, but in this case, I know absolutely nothing. And yet, that’s not stopping my enjoyment of it.
