He Gone

Over/under on ERA at Coors Field: 16.00

Jason Grilli Is a Terrible Person Vol: 138

Today was perfect. I woke up early and went to class for one of the last times in my life. I got called on by my professor and aced all the questions he asked me. I left school in the early afternoon and when I went outside it was beautiful. Sun-shining, blue skies, high 60's temperature, gentle breeze. I played catch for about an hour, I saw a little Asian toddler feeding a squirrel bread crumbs, I held out my arm and a couple of cute animated bluebirds alighted on my forearm and started whistling "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes," from Cinderella. Or did they whistle "Don't Know What You Got (Till Its Gone)" by Cinderella? I can't remember but either way it was pretty awesome. So what could possibly ruin this beautiful afternoon? What kind of cold-hearted, terrible, sick, perverse person could possibly ruin this magnificent, marvelous, splendid, stunning, phantasma-fucking-goric spring afternoon? Who I ask? Who else but Jason Grilli.

I know, I know, everything is wrong with the Tigers right now and it's completely unfair to place all of the blame for the teams struggles on one middle relief pitcher. Is it Grilli's fault that Miguel Cabrera is hitting .100 after the first week of the season (maybe)? Is Grilli responsible for the bad luck the Tigers have experienced in the first few weeks of the season (probably)? Has Grilli's mere precense in the bullpen made all of the other relief pitchers ineffective, like he's some sort of human kryptonite towards good pitching (definitely yes)? But it's so much fun to have a scapegoat, and since there are no Irishmen on the team, I'm placing all the blame on Grilli.

While I was watching Grilli implode today many thoughts were raced through my mind. Most of them involved some kind of tortuous grisly demise for Grilli, such as that hawk that flies around Fenway swooping down and plucking his eyeballs, and another thought that involved a gnome riding a sleigh pulled by rabbits and chipmunks, which kind of made me happy for a second. Then Grilli walked in a run and the rage returned. By the time I snapped back into consciousness I was naked, covered in blood and had piles of panther carcasses piled up around my apartment. I don't really know what happened during those few hours but I picture it looking like a scene from 28 Weeks Later or to a lesser extent Rob Schneider's "The Animal."

Seriously though, when I watched the game I couldn't help but wonder what kind of pitches does Grilli even throw? Of course there is his bread and butter pitch that can only be described as a 94MPH 4 seam cockshot with just enough movement to swing back over the heart of the plate, but what are his other pitches? From what I saw today I think they are an 87MPH BP fastball that he can't locate and another pitch that clocks in at 79MPH, which I think is supposed to be a changeup but since it bounces three feet in front of home plate every time he throws it I can't say for certain. The only thing I do know for certain is that Grilli doesnt seem to possess one major league caliber pitch in his whole repertoire of shit. The Red Sox were just teeing off on him this afternoon and the damage would have been much worse had Cabrera not flopped onto the ground and stabbed a grounder by Manny that almost certainly saved two runs. Grilli just had absolutley no chance against the Sox and if I didn't hate him so much I might have felt bad about him being completely overmatched and helpless on the mound. However, as much as I enjoy seeing Grilli twist in the wind I realize that he's hurting the team in the process. Wait, I don't mean hurt, I mean absolutely killing any chance his team has at winning while also completely demoralizing an entire fan base.

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Another thing that drives me nuts about The Cheese Man is his seeming complete lack of accountability after he melts down on the mound. I don't ever think I've ever heard or read from Grilli after a game he lost where he said, "Yeah, I know I sucked ass-barf tonight and it's completely my fault that we lost the game 24-1 mainly because I walked 96 batters in a row." If anything I always seem to read that he was testy after the game or wouldn't answer questions from the media at all or was upset about the lack of support from the home crowd.

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Look, if I went into court and forgot to wear pants, stammered a bunch of racial slurs during my opening statement and then accidently set my case notes on fire while listening to testimony and my client finally lost patience and yelled out, "Why I declare, Mr. Adonis X. Wisdom Esq. that you maybe the worst god damn barrister the great state of Alabama has ever seen." I wouldn't get pissed at him or moody in fact I would probably take responsibility and return to him the sandwich he had paid me on retainer. If I were a teammate this lack of accountability would drive me nuts about Grilli. For example if I were a respected veteran and somewhat crazy like Sheffield I would go up to Grilli and say, "I'm keeping it straight Grilli. I've been in the bigs for two decades and I've played with a lot of sucky white dudes...like.....um...that guy with the Brewers....Chuck Crim or some shit, but you are the suckiest suck that I've ever seen suck."

I need to wrap this shit up, so from my possibly irrational and biased point of view I think this is a got-to-go situation. Grilli has had his chance, several of them, so many in fact that for a split second I actually questioned Leyland's decision to bring Grilli into the game today and I've never questioned anything Leyland has done before. I trust Leyland so much that he could tell me it's a good idea to turn to hardcore drugs as a cure for my crippling anxiety and depression and I would probably do it. Grilli just can't get guys out and putting him on the mound doesnt give the Tigers the best chance, wait no, ANY chance of winning and if he comes back to Detroit and blows up on the mound again it's going to be ugly as the Tigers fans have absolutely no patience for him anymore. It's past the point of no return.

One last thing. On Grilli's MySpace he sells t-shirts that have a picture of him pitching with his arm blurred out and the headline "Grilli's Gone Wild" with a tagline of "It's Filthy." Jesus Christ. When I become Emperor of the World in about 20 years I'm going to invite everyone that purchased one of those shirts to a special free screening of "Meet The Spartans." When the lights dim and the movie starts the audience will be shocked to see the movie is just clips of Grilli giving up doubles and homeruns with footage of me laughing spliced in between. As the moviegoers became confused gas would start creeping in from the vents and.....well I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Game 4 Recap

Jesus Christ Grilli......seriously.....fuck.

Who's Your Tiger?

As long as I can remember the Tigers have had pretty terrible ad campaigns to promote their product on the field. The most memorable of these ads (and if you remember things like old Tigers T.V. commercials you are probably some kind of obsessive nerd who hasn't been on a date in months, downloads Hentai and uses your two Netflix rentals on Akira and Videodrome respectively...wait, I just described myself and I still have the nerve to complain about being to busy to update this site) were the ones which aired during the historically bad 2003 season. These commercials featured new manager Alan Trammell donning a pair of shades while wearing a no-nonsense expression and walking around the bowels of Comerica Park banging on doors with baseball bats as the rest of the coaching staff (Lance Parrish and Kirk Gibson) emerged from smoke-filled rooms wearing the same style sunglasses and growling things like "It's go time." These commercials were outrageous on several levels but namely for the fact that Trammell has the friendliest disposition of any player/manager ever and casting him in the role of a bad-ass totalitarian who wore a necklace made of Barbaro Garbey's teeth would be the equivalent of going to a production of King Lear and finding out that Jean-Claude Van Damme had been cast in the lead role (when everyone knows he would be perfectly suited for the part of Edmund...that noise you just heard was my entire readership leaving my site en masse at that tortured attempt at a joke...snobs.)

In 2004 the Tigers switched directions and went with a lighthearted comedic ad campaign that had a theme like "Know Your Tigers" or something equally as lame. These ads featured new editions Rondell White and Carlos Guillen playing catch with some guy and his dog by throwing the chew toy around the horn and Dmitri Young and Eric Munson crashing some kids birthday party and exploding the pinata with a homerun swing. In the latter ad I was always troubled by how eerily subdued the children were at the fact that a large crackhead looking baseball-bat wielding man had just emerged from the shrubs and destroyed their party game. Had this occurred at a party I was at as a child I would have turned around screaming and ran up the nearest tree but I guess that's just because I'm a racist. (I'm kidding about being racist, I may be a lot of things, polygamist, xenophobic, communist but I am definitely not racist.)

Anyways the 2004 ads were as forgettable as they were retarded and in 2005 the Tigers unveiled what may be my least favorite thing in the history of....ever. The Who's Your Tiger? ad campaign. The first incarnation featured children saying cutesy things like "Pudge is my Tiger because I play catcher too" or, "Dmitri Young's my Tiger because I saw Daddy choke Mommy last night." (Jesus I don't know why I'm so bitter.....wait I listed all the reasons above, that's right). However, after the first few ads the commercials abandoned the child narration and instead went with a formula where a narrator spouts an assortment of statements consisting of trivia (100 game errorless streak at 2nd base), useless statistics (batted .330 in day games in May) and corny nicknames (Polly) with the inflection of asking a question before smugly revealing "Then your Tiger is Placido Polanco." (No shit, jerkbag). I think one of the ways to make this ad campaign slightly less hateable would be if they expanded the breadth of players featured as over the past few seasons these commercials have been reserved for the stars of the team and Chris Shelton. So I'm taking up the cause of promoting some of the less popular and unfamiliar members of the team using the formula for the ads as I outlined above. Just to get the ball rolling on this idea and as a service to the p.r. department and the fans I've decided to take the time to create a "Who's Your Tiger" ads for these players beginning with...

"Does your Tiger have an ERA a shade under 6.00, is unilaterally scorned by the entire fan base and has a repertoire consisting of a straight-as-an-arrow 95 MPH fastball and a curve that breaks belt high and over the heart of the plate like it's sitting on a tee for the hitter?"

"Does your Tiger go by the nickname "Cheese Man" presumably because he doesn't wash the gel out of his hair for weeks at a time leaving his scalp smelling like Limburger that was drug under the radiator by a dying rat and does he make your heart sink and stomach churn with a sense of impending doom every time he enters to pitch in a close game?"

"Does your Tiger's appearances usually end with him staring at the dugout floor with his head in his hands after giving up the lead and is his father a former Tigers pitcher whose career could best be described as being the Jason Grilli of the late 70's."

"Then your Tiger is Jason Grilli and I hate you."