FIRE JOE MORGAN: Turdclump

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Sunday, July 13, 2008

 

Turdclump

The Kansas City Star's Jeffrey Flanagan has started a blog wherein he defines all the different types of sports fans. One of them is a "nerdy" character who loves stats. Guess what he named it.

Just guess.

You'll never guess -- just try, even though you'll never guess. It's hilarious.

I'm not going to tell you what it is, but you should try to guess, because you'll never get it.

It's hugely inventive, and super duper hilarious. Guess.

Remember that Mr. Flanagan writes for the KC Star -- one of the best sports newspapers in the country. The same paper that employs Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock (who's a bit goofy on TV, but the man can write). A smart, forward-thinking newspaper with interesting columnists and controversial opinions. Remember that, and then guess what Flanagan named this statistically-minded "nerd" character.

You'll never get it. It's fucking funny, though. Super funny.

Okay. Just guess.

What was your guess? Was it

Mom's Basement

?

If it was, you were right!!!!

Mom's Basement is a guy who never played sports &mdash or probably was embarrassingly bad at them — but nonetheless firmly believes he is an expert on any sport because he thinks sports can easily be reduced to a series of mathematical equations, or acronyms that go on forever, like the OPSTS, which I think stands for "Oh please shove those stats..."

This is painful. One long run-on sentence of pain and misery. Trite, poorly-written, turgid, and simplistic, and it wraps up in the neat little bow of: the worst version of that hacky "crazy stat acronym" joke I have personally ever seen.

Mom's Basement is aptly nicknamed because I'm convinced that's where, at 54 years old, he still resides, crouched over his computer, wearing his Star Trek jammies, researching whether, statistically speaking, it is better to bunt with a runner on second and none out in the fifth inning of night games during the mid to late spring when there is a Democrat in office and the national ratings for "American Idol" are exceeding the ARF (average rainfall) of Moose Squat, Alberta.

Why do you hate periods so much, Flanagan? Jesus. Maybe his editor said, "Okay, fine, you can write a totally hackneyed turdclump about nerds who like stats. But I'm limiting you to three sentences." And Flanagan was like, "Well then, I'm gonna get my money's worth!"

Let's break this monster down.

Mom's Basement is aptly nicknamed

You picked that name, braggart.

because I'm convinced that's where, at 54 years old,

I'm 32.

he still resides, crouched over his computer, wearing his Star Trek jammies,

Dude. Seriously? Star Trek?

Let me explain something to you. "Nerds" don't watch Star Trek anymore. This is a painful, painful joke. You cannot get hackier than this joke.

Jokes about nerds : Star Trek :: Jokes about airplanes : Those peanut bags are hard to open!

researching whether, statistically speaking, it is better to bunt with a runner on second and none out in the fifth inning of night games during the mid to late spring when there is a Democrat in office and the national ratings for "American Idol" are exceeding the ARF (average rainfall) of Moose Squat, Alberta.

Sorry. Can't do the breakdown anymore. It's just too awful. This chunk of text is the linguistic representation of what comes out of a person when they get a colonic.

Mom's Basement cringes at the notion that sports are actually played by human beings and ultimately won and lost by such non-statistical factors such as fear or intimidation or simply stronger wills.

Listen to me, friend. This character you are describing? This person doesn't exist. There is no such thing as "Mom's Basement." Yes, there are people of all ages who (foolishly, I guess? according to you?) attempt to learn things about the game they love. Those dicks. There are people who love statistics, who use spreadsheets, who like the back of the baseball card as much as the front. But they all love baseball. They all love watching baseball, and going to baseball games, and they all acknowledge that there are non-statistical factors at work. Mom's Basement, as you have described it, does not exist.

Mom's Basement is a boogeyman, invented by small-brained people with no aptitude for, or interest in, learning shit. It's the baseball equivalent of a dummy going to an art museum, looking at a Miró, and saying, "That ain't art! My 2 year-old could do that!!!!!!" It's a desperate, desperately unfunny, desperately boring, desperately hacky, desperately transparent attempt to make yourself feel better about not being smart enough to understand what OPS+ means, and because you don't know how to type "define:OPS+" into Google you invent this character and hope you can pick up a few cheap laughs from readers who are as uninventive as you are.

You write for a great paper, man. Act like it.

Labels: ,


posted by Anonymous  # 12:30 PM
Comments:
Hat tip to Travis.
 
Thanks to those of you who pointed to that I forgot to link the blog, which I just did, and to Michael, who correctly pointed out that "OPSTS" is not an "acronym," as I called it, but rather just a series of letters.

I am, as always, a dummy.
 
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