Sunday, August 09, 2015

MLB dugout brawls, Meek Mill tries to fight back and Riot Watch!: Aquatic Edition in Brazil


- Meek Mill has lost virtually every round of his hip hope battle with rival Drake. He’s less famous, seemingly less talented and definitely less capable of quickly churning out responses when Aubrey Drake Graham and it seems like comparing Drake to Caitlyn Jenner during a recent onstage freestyle isn't going to help him rally in this fight. The Philadelphia rapper not only went to a tired reference that saw him rap, “ "Did five months, came home, that's perfect timing / To make a sucka n***a look sucka without trying / If Quentin Miller wrote that shit, what were we buying?", adding, "N***as turn to hoes; Caitlyn Jenners turn to Drizzy Drakes,” but he then kicked it up a notch by threatening to go full-on sixth grade by giving his Toronto counterpart a wedgie. Yes, the always-feared move of pulling the elastic strap in a dude’s underwear up as far as possible, wedging his drawers as far into his butt crack as possible. Meek Mill didn’t specify whether it would be an atomic wedgie or not, but clearly this sort of attack has to have Drake absolutely terrified to walk into any room without several bodyguards to protect him. That the rap came in Meek Mill’s hometown suggests that he may have felt a bit too emboldened by performing in front of friends and family and simply allowed his words to get away from him. The good news is that he was going to lose this battle either way, so his pathetic performance on that Philly stage didn’t make a difference one way or the other……….


- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! The dissidents went aquatic this weekend in Brazil, where at least 30 boats of all sizes took part in a parade protesting the contamination of Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, where sailing events will be held next year during the Olympic Games in Brazil. A water quality report released last month claimed that the bodies of water to be used for the various outdoor aquatic events in Rio are hopelessly polluted, with no possible means to sufficiently clean them up in time. So why is the Living Bay organization organizing an event in which sailboats, schooners, tourist boats, canoes and fishing boats made a 7-mile round trip from the Marina da Gloria on Guanabara Bay to Urca, a neighborhood located at the foot of Rio's iconic Sugarloaf mountain? Because a) there is never a bad time to enjoy a beautiful day on the water in your favorite boat and b) the organization claims that athletes train in the bay under precarious conditions and that the bay must always be in good condition regardless of its use in large events like the Olympics. A slow-speed boat parade with whoever doesn’t have something better to do for the weekend doesn’t exactly bring the sort of rage and loud outcry that a protest needs to get sufficient attention to bring about change, but in between now and next summer there are going to be dozens of reminders about how filthy Brazil’s waters are and how unsanitary competing in them will be for Olympic athletes, so use this situation as a way to get used to what’s ahead……….


- This has been a long and perpetually disappointing season for the Detroit Tigers. Their string of four American League Central titles in a row will end this year, they sold off several key pieces at the trade deadline in the unofficial waving of the white flag on their competitive hopes for the campaign and now, the stresses of the season are causing them to turn on one another. Enter the dugout slap fight that broke out between Detroit Tigers shortstop Jose Iglesias and catcher James McCann in the dugout midway through the sixth inning of Friday night's 7-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox. Because there are dozens of cameras in every major league stadium and nothing of note goes unnoticed, TV cameras captured Iglesias shoving McCann before the two were separated and not surprisingly in a sport with its own mysterious, unspoken code of conduct, none of those involved wanted to talk about what happened or why. Neither player spoke to reporters after the game and teammates would only say that the matter was settled. Tigers manager Brad Ausmus likened it to brothers fighting and downplayed any significance to the mini-brawl.  "You spend seven months with each other, there's going to be disagreements, and sometimes, it leads to pushing and shoving," he said. "I've seen it dozens of times during my playing career," Ausmus said. "It's generally just because they care about winning and losing, and that's what it was tonight." Smart money on the cause of the conflict is  a key play in the top of the sixth inning in which Iglesias appeared to ease up too quickly on fielding Rusney Castillo's grounder up the middle, resulting in a single. After Xander Bogaerts hit a two-run double to give Boston a 7-2 lead, the dugout pyrotechnics followed in short order as the Tigers suffered another loss in a season full of them……….


- Never forget that being on the supposed right side of the law doesn’t mean that a person is any less of a criminal than those they arrest or prosecute. Pennsylvania's top prosecutor is proving this truism by stepping into a role that usually belongs to people her state’s law enforcement officers arrest, jail and haul into court.  State Attorney General Kathleen Kane was arraigned Saturday in the Philadelphia suburb of Montgomery County on charges that she leaked secret grand jury information and then lied about it, which is shocking because government and law enforcement officials never lie or attempt to manipulate the facts of a case in order to serve their interests. Kane is the first woman and first Democrat to be elected Pennsylvania's attorney general and having that designation attached to your name and then possibly ending up losing that job and trading your power suit for an orange jump suit isn't really going to help the cause of future women achieving the same sort of career success. In her defense, Kane maintains she is innocent and is fighting against calls for her resignation from critics, fellow Democrats and even Gov. Tom Wolf. Prosecutors say Kane leaked grand jury information to get even with a former state prosecutor she thought made her look bad and even enlisted aides to spy on office employees and others to keep tabs on a grand jury probe into the leak. It’s all shady as sh*t and when someone is accused of such extensive wrongdoing and faces criminal charges because of it, there are definitely at least a few dirty deeds under the rug somewhere……….

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