Ah You? Ah No!

Random thoughts on sports, culled while I was on hiatus:

:: Over the last two weeks, the Baltimore Orioles have launched a nine-game losing skid with a game in which they gave up thirty runs. That's an already notorious event in this MLB season, but what gets me is that this was the first game of a double-header. Those guys gave up 30 runs, and then had to go right back out and play that same team again. Ouch.

They finally snapped that losing streak with a win in the first game of a three-game set against the Red Sox just this past Friday night -- but then they went right back out on Saturday and got no-hit by a rookie pitcher.

And yet for all that suffering of one of the more impressive streaks of futility I can remember (although obviously not even close to that epic losing streak with which they began their 1988 season), as of this writing the O's still have a better record than my Pirates.

Oy.

:: The Buffalo Bills made their final roster moves the other day, eliminating a number of fairly surprising names. Quarterback Craig Nall, brought in last year to be part of a supposed three-way competition for the starting job? He's gone now, with rookie third-rounder Trent Edwards apparently the backup to JP Losman. Running back Shaud Williams, who has somehow managed to maintain a stranglehold on a roster spot the last few seasons despite being the embodiment of "Meh"? He's gone, too. I'm surprised that Terrance Pennington, a seventh-rounder last year who got quite a bit of game time in 2006, was cut; sure, he's not exactly the reincarnation of Howard Ballard, but I didn't think he was disastrously bad and might have grown into a decent player. He still might, actually, but unless it's on the practice squad, it won't be here, 'cause he's gone.

The biggest disappointment, for me, is the release of defensive end C.J. Ah You. First, the Bills need all the help on the defensive line they can get. (Ryan Denney suffered a broken foot in camp and Anthony Hargrove -- who lives in the apartment building next to mine, by the way -- is suspended for four games. The Bills signed Al Wallace last week to help, and then he promptly got hurt so the Bills put him on IR.) Now, Ah You was a seventh-round pick this year and scouting reports at the time made clear that he was unlikely to be any kind of impact player in the NFL, but I was really hoping he'd buck those odds and become a defensive stud, because I think it would be really funny to hear 73,000 people chanting Ahhhh YOOUUU! whenever he makes a play. I'm always bummed out when a player with a potentially amusing name fails to make the squad.

:: Ahhh, New England, the home of everything good and virtuous in sport!

:: A conversation of mine from The Store the other day, in anticipation of the Bills' opening game next week against the Broncos, which will pit (among other matchups) generally productive running back (and former Bill) Travis Henry against the Bills' less-than-stout run defense:

Guy I Know: Hey, I think Travis Henry already has 185 yards rushing against us.

Me: Yeah, and he's already fathered two more kids.

Cheap shot, I know, but Lord, Travis. There are ways to keep this stuff from happening, you know. Nine kids out of wedlock, in four different states? WTF?!

:: And speaking of kids out of wedlock, the NFL's Oh-so-dreamy Golden Boy is now just eight kids behind Travis Henry! Tom, Tom, he's our man! If he can't do it, no one can! And no tut-tuting for him, because he's the Caucasian GQ-model quarterback who fathered his out-of-wedlock kid with the actress he dumped for a supermodel. That's OK!

:: Apparently the Michigan Wolverines decided to channel the spirits of the Detroit Lions when they played Appalachian State the other day. Whoops. What's funniest? The attendance for that game, at Michigan's home field, was more than 109,000 people.

:: I'm filing this under a sports post because I first heard about it while listening to the Jim Rome Show the other day (Rome's monologue on this here). It's probably mean to pile on at this point, but Miss South Carolina's disastrous answer to a question is now the stuff of Interweb legend, no? Now, let's avoid making this a "Dumb Southerner" thing, because I know people from Buffalo who'd probably be that incoherent if put on the spot like that. (Heck, maybe I would! I'm not afraid to admit that I write better than I talk.) And I suspect that this question was the last thing she expected; she probably figured to get a "How do you solve world hunger" or "How do you fix the schools" or something like that; "People can't find the US on a map!" probably threw her off just a tad.

And besides, there's a bit of truth to her answer, right? I'll bet lots of people don't have maps or globes or spend any time looking at them except for when they're trying to drive from here to a Burger King over there. Hell, look at American reading habits. Lots of folks don't have books, so why should they have maps?

Still, I can't help but be tickled by such verbal constructions as "US Americans" and "the Iraq". You know what I find funniest in that whole excerpt? It's not even something she says! If you listen close, you can hear this goofy quiz-show suspense type music underneath her reply, and the second time she says "the Iraq" (at about the 42 or 43 second mark in the video linked above), the music makes this "Ding!" sound, like you'd hear on a quiz show when the contestant gives the right answer. That little chime elevates this from bad comedy to surrealist comedy, in my opinion. Therefore such as.

OK, that's that. Look for my annual NFL Preview Post later this week! It'll be a hoot! (It usually is, because I'm almost always wrong about an awful lot of stuff.)