Bartender Geek

So, I saw the following quote, with Yankees Senior Vice President Hank Steinbrenner talking about Alex Rodreguez opting out of his contract with the Yankees. They are NOT planning on pursuing him as a free agent.

"It's clear [Alex Rodreguez] didn't want to be a Yankee," Hank Steinbrenner told the Daily News. "He doesn't understand the privilege of being a Yankee on a team where the owners are willing to pay $200 million to put a winning product on the field.

"I don't want anybody on my team that doesn't want to be a Yankee."

Okay. That last line, I understand.

The rest of it just rubs me the wrong way. One word in particular.

This is a question for the NYY fans on my flost -- how is it possible to root for a "product"?

I guess that's also a question for any Real Madrid fans on my list, but I don't know of any time where someone in the organization was so blunt about it -- but then, I don't follow soccer, so it's very possible that they say stuff like that every week and I just don't know about it.

Is this a disconnect between how the fans and how the owners think of the team? How do you deal with a management who publicly calls the team a "product"? I'm sure that the management of most franchises has to think of the team as a "product" on some level -- if you can't break even, you can't really be a team -- but I can't think of other teams saying it like that.

So, before battles, Maori warriors would do a chant and ritual dance to pump themselves up and intimidate their opponents. This is called a "haka".

The New Zealand national rugby team thought this was a good idea.



But, see, other nations ALSO have war dances. Tongan warriors have their own, the sipi tau. And, of course, the way that you counter a war dance is to do your own:

Well, that was a really fun game until the last sixteen seconds.

Colts-Patriots game, weird, fun game. Until Brady decided to throw the ball to the Colts. . .

So, this past Saturday night, I saw something on television actually worth watching.

Bowling.

See, here in New England, we have this sport. It's called candlepin bowling, and it's been said that "candlepin is to ten-pin as baseball is to softball."

Around here, the kind of bowling that you all outside of New England call "bowling", we call it "ten-pin."
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Now, of course, they will win the first three games of the world series, lose the next three, and lose the seventh game in the thirteenth inning of the seventh game, on Halloween. Just sayin'.

YEAH!