The cops in Russia found this when they arrested a 79 year old retired dude who had turned himself into a regular old drug kingpin. Breaking Bad for real I guess.
It certainly appears as if the Rangers have run out of gas. Damn.
Rangers are on life support; end appears to be near
By GIL LeBRETON
Ft. Worth Star Telegram
glebreton@star-telegram.com
ARLINGTON — In truth, it was just another recorded song, played between innings during another ballpark promotion. But on this night, it rang with ominous sobriety.
Running on Empty, the great Jackson Browne sang. And, indeed, it seems that the Texas Rangers finally are.
I’m not a coroner, but I can tell a stiffening corpse when I see one. And this once-so-warm body, after a gallant, youth-infused fight, finally appears to be shutting down.
All at once, the Rangers can’t seem to score any runs. The starting pitchers are handing opponents early leads. With the 6-1 loss to the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday, the Rangers have now dropped three of the last four series that they’ve played — five of their last eight.
Not even the brief return of All-Star third baseman Michael Young could brighten the night.
The bandwagon is careening back downhill. On Aug. 17, nearly a month ago, the Rangers were 17 games over .500 and 4 1/2 games behind the division-leading Los Angeles Angels.
They will wake up Wednesday 16 games over .500 and six games behind the Angels.
Worse, in a nine-game homestand that was supposed to narrow the gap between the home team and the Angels and set the stage for a weekend showdown series, the Rangers instead have lost ground.
They’re running on empty. The Rangers’ scoreless streak reached 22 innings before David Murphy hit a solo home run to lead off Tuesday’s fourth inning.
Five Oakland relievers conspired to shut out the home team for the rest of the night.
And so it goes lately. Starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy failed to make it out of the fourth inning.
Then, with the issue still in doubt in the sixth inning, rookie Neftali Feliz came out of the bullpen and — gasp! — was discovered to be mortal.
Feliz faced eight batters and five reached base.
Even his customary reliable control betrayed him. He hit a batter and walked three.
It was that kind of night.
"Right now we don’t have any of our key ingredients going," center fielder Marlon Byrd said.
"No pitching. No defense. No hitting. We have to pick it up before we’re mathematically out of this thing."
For now, though, even the math seems daunting. While the Rangers were silently losing to the Athletics, the Boston Red Sox were increasing their wild-card lead by beating the Angels.
Young’s return from a hamstring injury had been eagerly anticipated.
His first at-bat in the opening inning was roundly applauded — as much as 15,964 can applaud.
But the air was already out of the night when Nelson Cruz was announced as a pinch-hitter for Young in the bottom of the third. Young wanted to wait another night, it was announced, before testing the leg further.
No matter, as it turned out. The lineup is back into the slump it endured in June. Timely hitting has been nonexistent.
The Rangers are making it easy for the Oakland pitchers, just as they did last weekend for the Mariners.
"This team isn’t offensive," Byrd said. "We need pitching and defense. We need timely hitting."
With three errors, even the Rangers’ fielding betrayed them Tuesday night.
With each passing night on this damp homestand, the handwriting on the wall appears to be coming more into focus.
This wasn’t the year.
The Angels have been too consistent. Too resourceful. They have better starting pitching — and they made it even better for the stretch run.
It seems in Chicago they have just realized that Jay Cutler is an ass. Winning would cure that.
Someone must tell Jay Cutler to wise up
Bears quarterback needs dose of reality, to say nothing of maturity
Rick Morrissey In the wake of the news
Chicago Tribune
September 16, 2009
Who is going to tell him?
By that I mean, who is going to tell him? Who is going to get in Jay Cutler's face and inform him the Green Bay debacle was ridiculous?
The four interceptions in Sunday's opener were a career high, but the poor decision-making and the recklessness were nothing new. He did that periodically with the Broncos. It's up to someone in the Bears' organization to tell him that being blessed physically is not a license to throw risky passes over and over again.
But for the life of me, I can't figure out who that person would be.
It's also up to someone in the organization to tell Cutler that his on- and off-field demeanor needs to change. Some TV analysts were annoyed by Cutler's attitude in the press conference after the Bears' 21-15 loss to the Packers. The attitude is nothing new either.
"I thought he looked completely immature," former Saints and Colts coach Jim Mora said on the NFL Network. "He acted like he didn't even care."
Added former Rams coach Mike Martz: "He just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that he represents a great head coach and the rest of those players on that team. Somebody needs to talk to him."
If you have been led to believe it's all about you -- if a team bets its future to acquire you and then gives you smooches at every turn -- it might be hard to listen to someone tell you it isn't all about you.
But that's the situation Cutler and the Bears find themselves in after exactly one game.
So who's going to tell him he needs to change?
Lovie Smith? The blank-faced guy on the sideline who only shows signs of life when it's time to challenge an official's decision? No. Smith has gotten to where he is by being a "player's coach," meaning he speaks no evil to his troops. The chances of Smith telling Cutler, with feeling, that his crazed quarterback act has to end are zero.
(A Denver radio host presented an interesting scenario to me Tuesday: The Bears don't make the playoffs for the third straight season, the McCaskeys fire Smith and bring in former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan to be reunited with Cutler. My on-air response was something along the lines of, "Hmmmmmmmm.")
Ron Turner? If you ever have gotten the indication the Bears offensive coordinator is a budding Buddy Ryan-like motivator, please let us know.
Jerry Angelo? The general manager has handed the team to Cutler and said, "Here, it's your baby." He could have helped tone down the hype surrounding Cutler in the off-season, but didn't. He also could have added a front-line wide receiver in the off-season, but didn't.
Brian Urlacher? Not his style, plus he's out for the season. Injured players tend to be nonentities in the NFL.
Ted Phillips? Only if Cutler complains ticket prices are too high.
Olin Kreutz? He has his own problems with the offensive line. The question is whether the Bears center will reach the point where his natural instinct to protect his quarterback will give way to doing what is right for the team. Kreutz is busy in the trenches and might not be intimately familiar with the art of quarterbacking. But he does know what a dumb decision looks like on film.
This guy from Vanity Fair nails the late night talk show hosts, in my opinion anyway.
Jay Does Right What Conan Does Wrong (And Vice-Versa)
by Jim Windolf
Vanity Fair
September 15, 2009, 4:39 PM
Jay Leno is the comedy equivalent of those running backs who plough straight into the defense. He goes straight up the middle for a gain of three or four yards each carry. The thing he does is not pretty to watch or particularly thrilling, but it's effective. It wins. NBC executives were probably wise to hand him their prime-time ball.
In years to come we'll look back on this period and say it was a great time for the comedy talk-show format. David Letterman can suck the laughs out of a room some nights, when the self-loathing rises in his throat and expresses itself in crazy tics and Jerry Lewis-like outbursts, but he remains an interesting character. Conan O'Brien hasn't had the most wonderful start as host of The Tonight Show, it's true; but, despite the stiffness that has crept into his performances these past few months, he's still fun to watch most of the time, especially when he goes deep into his own particular patch of cartoonish absurdity. Jon Stewart has earned the love of his ardent followers by serving up angry political material with a light touch. And his Comedy Central colleague Stephen Colbert is probably the quickest and most alert improvisationalist on the air. Meanwhile, Craig Ferguson, following Letterman in the darkness of CBS at 12:37 a.m., or whatever the hell exact minute it begins, is somehow able to spin 20 minutes of slightly insane shenanigans out of nothing more than his latest goofy observations and a few puppets. He's the Scottish love child of Jean Shepherd and Captain Kangaroo. (We would need science to step in and make something like this possible, but I think you know what I mean.)
And then there's Leno. Supposedly he has lost some weight, been working out, but he looked fatter than ever last night while making his debut as host of The Jay Leno Show on NBC at 10 p.m. His ongoing survival gives more credence to the Merv Griffin theory of celebrity, which, if I have it right, holds that people with huge heads are more likely than others to be stars. Leno is probably the most impersonal of all the nighttime talk-show hosts. His motto is that of an unsentimental comedy professional (or jaded hack): “Write joke, tell joke, get paid.” He is also skilled in the low art of backroom office politics, chronicled in Bill Carter's book on the 1990s late-night wars, The Late Shift. And he considers it part of the job to go glad-handing among the NBC affiliates. Over the past year, when his survival seemed in jeopardy, he went out and worked all that much harder. As Carter reported in a recent New York Times piece, Leno played 160 shows outside of his television work, one of them taking place at an afternoon chicken festival in Fresno, California, in hundred-degree heat. Like that determined running back, he is willing simply to outwork the opposition. To go straight in and pick up a few yards. Lets himself get banged up in the process.
In the 1980s, Leno was among the best of the mainstream, brick-wall comedians, his act spiced with blue-collar disdain for bourgeois life and consumer culture. He got to sit at comedy's cool table, for a few fleeting years, when the cult of viewers who wouldn't dream of missing an episode of Late Night with David Letterman saw how hard he made Dave laugh in his many guest appearances. The two of them went way back, having written jokes for Jimmie Walker (“Dy-no-mite!”) together. But once Leno got The Tonight Show, he settled down a little, placing less emphasis on anything that might have made him an original comedian and playing up a comforting, generic quality.
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