Played in a home game on Saturday with the local baseball/football/lacrosse dads and reaffirmed several things about poker for me:

- I hate limit poker, especially with enough calling stations to give pot odds to just about any two cards

- I have pretty well figured out each one of the players and can make accurate reads about 75% of the time

- Making accurate reads 75% of the time isn’t good enough when a guy calls to the river with Ace-rag and rivers his ace to beat your pocket queens

- Making inaccurate reads 25% of the time can cost you a lot of money when you have flopped trips and lose to a flopped nut straight that passively calls, even on the river

- Pat is a really awful poker player. He dropped $100 for the third time in four home games playing $.5/1. The first thing everyone says when they get a call about a poker game is “Is Pat coming?” Now that’s bad.

- Pyramid Hefeweizen goes well with Tostitos and guacamole.

- A nice exchange for my biggest pot. I flopped the nut straight with 89s, check-raised the flop, check-raised the turn, sighed when the river put the third diamond on board, and checked it down, figuring him for a rivered flush.

Me - “Sigh, your frickin’ rivered flush is good.”
John - “I don’t have a flush”
Me – Spreading my cards, “Then you LOSE”
John – “&%^#&%$#&-er!”

- Bad poker with good friends, good beer, and lots of laughs = win-win, even if I only broke even financially

Pre-Memorial Day ramblings

- Props to the American public for choosing Taylor Hicks over McPhee. Sure, I’d rather have her feeding me grapes while wearing nothing but one of my dress shirts, but the show isn’t “Feed Todd Grapes” (although there should be one… call my agent, stat!). Hicks definitely sang better on Tuesday. She’s been singing more and more like Crystal Gayle lately with the swooping notes and artificial country twang. Elliott will have a nice career opening for Harry Connick and Michael Buble while Daughtry will be fronting some rock band. Taylor will be playing nightclubs and county fairs in a couple of years, singing right next to Ruben and Fantasia, while McPhee will be on Skinemax playing a singer who will do anything to make it to the top.

- Speaking of McPhee, I just lurve it when women wear nothing but a men’s dress shirt. It just reeks of sex. Now, be honest guys, you’ve got that image in your head right now… McPhee tossing her hair back, wearing your shirt, and kneeling in front of… oh, you get the idea.

- Oh, hey, Party Poker just sent me even more free money yesterday, so I immediately threw into a SnG and placed. That’s the way to keep my business, guys!

- Is it my imagination or is the SnG traffic at FullTilt going down? SnGs are taking longer to fill and I’m not sure whether it’s due to ring games or tournaments. And did I mention that I suck at ring games?

- I’m part of a pilot group testing a new online baseball Sim at WhatIfSports. It called Hardball Dynasty and it’s horribly addictive. You control the entire machinations of a baseball organization, from Rookie ball all the way to the Majors. You budget payroll, scouting, medical staff, and coaching for all levels. You can set lineups, adjust pitching rotations, and develop players within your farm system. It takes a LOT of time (of course I would never dream of using company time to run spreadsheets of my minor league teams), and though it has some bugs, is tons of fun. Think of Madden football, but with minor leagues and real people running the other teams.

- My son’s team is rolling along in first place (12-2). He’s still batting leadoff, hovering around .375 with OBP of .480 and the starting shortstop. I know you don’t care, but it’s my blog.

- My daughter’s softball team is the equivalent of the Bad News Bears without the swearing. They can’t field, can’t hit, can’t pitch. It’s almost physically painful to watch them play. I feel bad because I can’t help the coach, who is genuinely nice guy, but doesn’t know how to teach or manage the game. He’s good at reassuring the girls and patting them on the back, but he rotates their positions and rarely has the right people at the right positions. I offered to help early in the year, but he said that they had plenty of coaches. None of them have the faintest idea what they’re doing. They all suck, but they’re out there helping.

- Democrats are beginning to eat their own out here in California. The gubernatorial (I love saying “gubernatorial”) primary features Phil Angelides and Steve Westley fighting for the right to take on the Governator in November, and they’ve already begun taking potshots at each other, ignoring the mesomorphic incumbent. Apparently, Angelides is a developer that rapes the land, and Westley is a crooked politician who takes money for political favors. Nice.

- Number of positive steroid tests for Barry Bonds = 0

- Number of people who insist Bonds is using steroids = 150,000,000

OK, what the hell, I guess I'm in too

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

21 things nobody cares if I answer...

Not that TripJax axed me specifically or anything, but after reading several bloggers’ posts about these questions, I felt compelled to join in, if only to feel like I’m part of the “in” crowd, to validate my sad and pathetic existence.

Not really, but I felt like wallowing because I’m buried at work and need to work on something other than the 15-page proposal that’s due to my company’s President in a week.

1. What is the biggest mistake people make at a NL table?

If you mean a NL tournament, it’s going all-in early in a tournament pre-flop with less than Aces. Put it this way, if you have Kings and the other assclown has something as lame as Ace-rag (and is stupid enough to call/push), you’re only 70-30 to win. In other words, 30% of the time you’ll be logging off at the end of the hand. If you really think you’re any good, you can outplay the field and get better odds later.

2. What is the biggest mistake people make at a Limit table?

I hate limit, so I’m the wrong person to ask.

3. Why do you play poker?

Competition. Money matters, but not as much as the thrill of competition. Put it this way, I’ve got over a grand moldering in Neteller. If it was just about money, I’d have cashed that in a long time ago. Either that, or worked on my game to move up.

4. If you weren't playing poker, what would you be doing?

Spending time with my family. Or not. Probably wasting time on my computer playing games or fantasy sports.

5. What is your favorite poker book and why?

Haven’t read one. My mom saw me playing poker with friends, so she bought me Gary Carson’s book for Christmas a couple of years ago (it seems pretty basic), but I haven’t read it cover to cover.

6. Who is your favorite poker player and why?

I like Toto. Sometimes it seems like he’s not even looking at his cards.

7. Which poker player do you dislike the most and why?

Men the Master. He just seems like a pompous blowhard.

8. Do your coworkers know about your blog?

Not that I know of, but then not even my wife knows.

9. What is the most you have won in a cash game or MTT (both live and online)?

Cash Game (live) $200
MTT (online) $550 (WPBT IV second place)
MTT (online) $535 (FullTilt WSOP Horse qualifier)

10. What is the most you have lost in a cash game or in one day total (both live and online)?

I think about $100, I’m pretty chicken. If I lose, I walk.

11. Who was your first poker blog read?

CJ’s Up for Poker

12. What satisfies you more, your aces holding up for a big pot or a bluff working for a big pot?

Oh, bluffs are cool, but I loooooove sucking out.

13. Why do you blog?

I’m one of those blustery types who likes my opinions to be heard, whether or not they’re welcome, whether or not they’re politically correct, whether or not anyone else cares.

14. Do you read blogs from an RSS reader like bloglines or do you visit each blog?

Bloglines, though I visit to comment.

15. Would you rather play poker for a living than do what you currently do for a living?

Nope. Poker is a fun little diversion, but I never want it to seem like work.

16. Do you wear a tin foil hat on occasion?

Only when I wear my tin foil shoes. It’s important to coordinate your accessories.

17. If you had to pin it down to one specific trait, what does a great poker player have (or do) that separates them from an average player?

A total disregard for money.

18. Is Drizz the coolest person on the planet for naming his baby Vegas?

No, I concur with those that say Drizz is BRAVE for suggesting it, and his wife is COOL for accepting it.

19. What is your primary poker goal and are you close to accomplishing it?

Never go net-negative. So far, so good. Roughly + $2000 for my brief tenure.

20. What is your primary online site and why?

FullTilt and Stars, because I’ve had continuing success there with no losses.

21. What site do you dislike and why?

I dislike Party, but I’ll play there when they give me free money (like they did last week). I’m one of those anal guys that will poke around a site for a long time before I’ll deposit money, so I haven’t put any money into any really crappy sites yet. UB has totally effed up their SnG structures, so I won’t consider them anymore.

Side note: Party gave me $30 last week. I've already doubled that in a couple of SnGs. I'll try to run it up over $200, then cash out. If I lose it, que sera sera.

Zoos are cool!

From the Yahoo wire:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in
front of horrified visitors, witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident
Sunday at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary
macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned. It recovered and fled onto
a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death.

The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: "In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday."

"Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild animals," it said.
Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident, including photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear tried unsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on the structure, built of crossing horizontal and vertical poles. Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed onto a horizontal pole, and, standing stretched on two legs, "used its sharp canines to pull the macaque, which was shrieking and resisting, from its perch."

The bear then brought the animal to a concrete den, where three bears ate it. The zoo said it "usually wasn't possible" for keepers to intervene when an animal killed another.

The park plans now to move the Barbary macaques — which are large monkeys but often inaccurately called "Barbary Apes" — to another part of the park, it said.

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Here's the Dutch guys site. Don't go if you like monkeys.

Dead Pool

Show of hands, who here knows what a “Dead Pool” is? Good, because you’re about to get a chance to review my Dead Pool draft picks.

[By the way, this is the surest sign of a problem gambler. Betting on other people dying is a major karmic red flag.]

Some basic rules: The person had to be famous BEFORE the circumstances that caused their death. Deaths must be before 11/15/06. You can’t have a hand in their death [I supposed this is to prevent someone from gunning someone down to collect the $150+ prize]. Points are compiled in two categories: total deaths and age-related bonus points of 100 minus the age at death, so picking a young soon-to-be-corpse is worth more than a 99-year old codger. Money is 75% to the points leader, 25% to the death leader. Total pool is over $200.

Anyway, I had a mid-round position in the serpentine draft that spanned a week on the WhatIfSports message boards. I was a late addition to the draft, replacing an owner who bailed, but I was willing to put up the $10 entry fee for a chance at fame and glory. My basic strategy was to pick a lot of relatively young, fat drug users or cancer victims and to avoid the obvious 80+ year olds who might die, but not accumulate many points.

Round 1 – Bobcat Goldthwaite – Stand-up comedians have a notoriously short lifespan, and drug-abusing comedians that have lost a lot of weight are always a reasonably safe pick. Side note, Earl Woods went third in the draft, generating all sorts of Olajuwon, Bowie, Jordan references. Earl didn’t even live through the fourth round. The top two picks? Amy Fisher (just busted for drugs) and Tammy Faye Bakker (circling the drain) Other notable picks: Sean Preston Spears (going for the elusive 100-pt bingo), Osama Bin Laden, Michael J. Fox. Best pick: Earl Woods.

Round 2 – John Goodman – Fat guys who weigh over three bills are also pretty safe picks, especially when they haven’t been seen acting recently, a possible sign of health issues. Other notable picks: Lindsay Lohan, Estelle Getty, Ricky Williams. Best pick: Ibrahim Al-Jafaari, anyone even near Iraq is a good pick, especially a politician.

Round 3 – Kate Moss – I really like this pick. Tons of upside here. Young, drug-addicted, bulimic, dangerous lifestyle. Everything points to upside here. Other notable picks: Charlton Heston, Jack Kevorkian, John Daly. Best pick: Verne Troyer, an inspired pick given that “little people” typically don’t live long [sorry, Iggy].

Round 4 (two picks) – Louie Anderson, George Carlin – Back to the drug-addicted comedian route. Anderson gets bonus points for obesity and depression, Carlin is in his sixties and must be getting ready to find that spotlight in the sky. You start to see theme picks here with Golden Girls (Bea Arthur and Betty White) and fat coaches (Charlie Weis and Rick Majerus). Best pick: Steven Hawking, amazingly only 64 years old and not likely to be brilliant much longer.

Round 5 – Andy Rooney, John Forsythe – Departed from the basic strategy to get two dusty old television veterans. I didn’t even know John Forsythe was still alive until my wife watched the Dynasty reunion show and I saw the rapidly declining Forsythe. He can barely stand up, let alone make it to November. Ditto for the cantankerous Rooney. Best pick: Keith Richards, who had fallen but had gotten up at the time of the draft. Reports were that the head wound wasn’t serious, so he dropped to the fifth round. Subsequent reports have him in surgery, making this pick like a Willis McGahee pick.

Round 6 – Mike Metzger, Doyle Brunson – This was two days before Metzger’s jump at Caesar’s Palace. I figured I had a chance at a 70-pt bingo if he went Evel on me, but essentially ended up wasting the pick. Other than Stuey Ungar, no legend of poker have died recently. Dolly seemed the obvious pick to break that trend. Best pick: Gary Busey, a drug-abusing motorcycle rider who doesn’t always wear a helmet? Sign me up.

Round 7 – Superstar Billy Graham, Bobby the Brain – Ahhh, my wrassling theme picks. Wrestlers don’t live long. While it was tempting to go more mainstream with my wrestling picks (Jesse the Body, Hulk Hogan, etc.), I went for the old Kayfabers with known tumor issues. Best pick: Arthur Lee, recently diagnosed with acute leukemia to add to his list of drug use, prison time, and rock star status. Will be a first round pick if he survives until December.

Round 8 (three picks) - Angela Landsbury, Dick van Dyke, Jerry van Dyke – Not picks I’m proud of. I dithered between the van Dyke brothers (both of whom are old and worth relatively few points) and the Olsen twins (one of whom is young and a bulimic drug abuser). Oh well. Best pick: David Blaine, I considered him, but didn’t go with my gut. Now, rumor has it that his body is breaking down from literally living in a fish bowl.

Round 9 – Montel Williams, Naomi Judd, Wilfredo Benitez – Three strong picks, cancer survivors’ bodies typically break down more frequently and more catastrophically. Benitez has similar symptoms to Muhammad Ali, but is much younger and living in Latin America, hardly the best place to get healthier. Best picks: Fats Domino, reportedly very sick, and Suge Knight, always a potential drive-by victim. I had both guys on my radar, but had them snaked out from under me.

Round 10 – Zeljko Rebraca, Bobby Hamilton, Marco Andretti – In order, irregular heartbeat and freakishly tall, cancer surviving NASCAR driver, and Indy rookie. Indy qualifying always has horrifying crashes and rookie drivers are typically involved. Rebraca was found by Google-ing “irregular heartbeat NBA”.

I’m not entirely thrilled with all of my selections. I had done research on several people prior to the draft and didn’t pick them soon enough. My favorite pick by far is Kate Moss. My missed pick is Suge Knight. He's just about due to be capped. As with most drafts, once the Dead Pool season begins, we’ll have some surprises and some “sleepers”. Get it? “Sleepers”?! Oh god, I kill myself.

Some random things that piss me off:

Decaf in the morning - What the hell is the point! There’s this guy who gets to work at around the same time I do (800am). If I see him in the parking lot, I rush ahead of him to the elevators. If I see him in the hallway walking toward the kitchen, I run. Why? Because this assclown makes DECAF coffee! We have one of those three burner coffee systems with one brewing station and each pot takes about ten minutes to brew. So if he beats me to the station, I’ll have to WAIT for my morning coffee, which my wife will tell you is a bad thing. If you don’t want CAFFEINE in the morning, get the hell out of my way! Drink fucking hot chocolate or tea or something! Coffee has one purpose, to wake my sorry ass up so I don’t pass out at my desk.

Useless Little League dads – OK, so I understand that not all dads play baseball well, and not all dads know their catcher’s mitt from their batting gloves. But goddamit, get your ass out there and help! Hold the hitting stick, shag overthrows, police the kids that are screwing around. Don’t just sit there like a fucking lump! We all know that they’re shitty ballplayers and don’t want to embarrass themselves and their sons. We. Don’t. Care. Get out there and help the coaches! At least volunteer… If they don’t need you, they’ll tell you.

School projects that parents do instead of their kids – You should see this shit. They want us to believe that their little paste-eating tornado of hyperactivity hand-lettered the multi-staged science project that analyzes the chemical reaction of Cobalt and Cesium in a partial-vacuum. Bullshit. All you’re teaching your kid is how to take credit for someone else’s work, so they’ll grow up to be plagiarizing, bootlicking incompetents. Congratulations.

“Would you like the value meal?” or “Would you like some fries with that?” – Listen, you pimply faced dork, if I wanted a fucking value meal, I’d say “Give me the Value Meal. Since I didn’t, you can assume that I just want my goddamn burger!” It’s not like I’m an interplanetary immigrant who is learning the benefits of American fast food convenience order-placing.

Michelle Wie – Whoop-de-fucking-do. She made a cut in a men’s’ tournament. In a minor league men’s tournament. In a minor league men’s tournament in Korea. This is roughly like Manon Rheaume (who was much better looking, but I digress) playing minor league men’s hockey in the Philippines or something. She still hasn’t won a single trophy against WOMEN, and people are trumpeting her “accomplishment” because she made the cut against a bunch of 5’3” dry cleaners and gardeners. Now, if she can beat those dry cleaners and gardeners, that might be something. But in all likelihood, she’ll end up behind by double digits by the end and still call it “a victory”. Nice to have such incredible talent combined with an incredibly low bar for oneself.

Why Full Tilt Poker has my business...

Dear Tilter,

As a player who has already earned an entry into our WSOP $50K HORSE Qualifier tournament, we want to inform you about an important date change.

Harrah's and the World Series of Poker just announced that they have moved the $50K HORSE tournament from Tuesday, July 25th to Wednesday, July 12th. In order to ensure that the winners of our online qualifier has enough time to secure their travel and hotel reservations in Las Vegas, we are moving our WSOP $50K HORSE Qualifier tournament from 4:30PM ET
on Saturday, July 8th to 4:30PM ET on Saturday, July 1st.

You have been automatically registered for our July 1st tournament, and we apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause. If you are unable to play in our WSOP $50K HORSE Qualifier on July 1st, you can unregister from the tournament to receive $535 cash in your account.

Feel free to contact us at support@fulltiltpoker.com if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Team Full Tilt

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I took the $535 for a few reasons.

1. I've already planned a family vacation for the weekend of 7/1, the new qualifying weekend
2. I'm scheduled for a Certification Training during the new week of the WSOP $50K HORSE
3. Money talks

Awesome service from FTP! You guys rock!

Not that anyone asked or anything, but Trevor’s pitching stint went reasonably well. Two innings, two runs (both unearned), NO walks, two strikeouts (the same guy twice), and no emotional meltdowns. The biggest problem is that he’s one of the best infielders on the team and having him on the mound means that the fielding behind him immediately suffers. Plays that he would have made easily weren’t made behind him. Luckily, his team had an otherwise easy time with the cellar-dwelling “opposition” and the score was 11-1 before he even took the mound in the top of the fifth. His main problem was that he threw TOO many strikes, allowing the hitters to get very confident and aggressive at the plate. I told him he needs to dust a couple of hitters to keep them loose, and he looked at me like I was nuts. Oh well, maybe the killer instinct will come later… By the way, he was on base three times and scored three runs as the leadoff hitter, so he’s got that going for him.

Dropped two SnGs last night, but wasn’t particularly worried. One was with JJ running into QQ. Eh, it happens. The other was with AQs against KQs turning a king and rivering a flush. Frustrating, but it happens. In retrospect, I should be a little more peeved by it all. After all, I lost $60. That isn’t chicken feed. The Monopoly money aspect of online gambling should really be studied. It just doesn’t FEEL like cash. Losing is less painful than it should be. Then again, at least I’m not John Daly…

Props to the Sharks for getting home-ice advantage for at least one round in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Even when they were reasonably assured of a playoff berth with a week or so to go in the season, they kept pressing forward, knowing that the upsets might come in the opening rounds, hoping to get home-ice. Well, it worked, and because of Edmonton’s spirited run through Detroit, and Dallas’ remarkable collapse to Colorado, the Sharks will be hosting either Colorado or Edmonton in the next round. If Anaheim wins tonight, the Sharks will have home-ice for two consecutive series (assuming they win the first one), but I don’t think the Sharks want any piece of the Oilers right now.

Barry Bonds seems to have found his swing, and it’s odd that SportsCenter keeps making him the lead story all the while talking about how MLB won’t have a celebration when he passes Babe Ruth. Well, moving into second place on any list is noteworthy, but not celebration-worthy, so Selig’s reluctance to give the MLB stamp of approval to a game-stopping presentation isn’t really “news” until Barry approaches Aaron’s record. Oh, and if Barry was taking the same stuff as Rafael Palmeiro, why did it show up for Rafe and not for Barry or Sheff?

Does anyone really believe that the Immigrant-lay-around-and-watch-Oprah day had any impact on the beliefs of American business owners? Does anyone really believe that if you walked up to a Home Depot and offered $20 to some “immigrants” to clean their yard, they would’ve said “No, I’m honoring the Immigrant Work Stoppage”? This was more of a way for some Hispanic lobbyists to get some camera time than a genuine effort to HELP all immigrants. How many Vietnamese immigrants skipped work? Chinese? Canadian? Put it this way, how many non-Hispanic people were interviewed about this? Calling it an “immigrant” issue is disingenuous and misleading. It’s about Mexican immigration. Period. Stop trying to make it seem like there are thousands of Japanese or Dutch refugees flooding our country.

Youtube.com

Side note for WWF afficianados: Someone posted clips from "Hell in the Cell", by most accounts, the most brutal bumps you will ever see.

For whatever reasons, I've moved up (a little) in SnG buy-ins recently. I'm playing either the $20 or $30 HORSE or NLHE SnGs at Full Tilt, or the $25 Turbos at PokerStars. And I've stayed consistently profitable, if not WINNING the tournaments. Steady cashes are the norm. Actually, 3rd place in a $30 is more profitable than 1st place in a $10, so I'm doing OK. Tight-weak play is seemingly rewarded since people are actually paying attention. After a couple of circuits of folding my blinds to raises from one LAG (and building a table image), I raised 3x in MP with 78 sooted, and took back some blinds. That pretty much convinced me that my table image was set, and I played to it, stealing blinds at opportune moments, pretty much with any two cards. I ended up taking third after my AQs lost to ATo when I played it right preflop, but lost to a ten-high flop.

I'm on the low end of the HORSE variance right now, losing to the Pot Odds fairy on 7th street. I get the money in with the best hand, but my opponents are getting pot odds to call, and hitting the river on me. Not sure if that constitutes a "leak" or not. After all, my money seems to be getting in at the right times, the cards just aren't cooperating. For example, in Razz, the bad guy is raising on 4th street, pretty clearly drawing to a wheel. He gets a face card, while I make my 8-6 on fifth. I bet, he calls. He gets another face on sixth, I pair my board. He bets, I raise, He calls. He bets the river (which doesn't help me), I just call. He flips a wheel with three cards hidden. Did I do something wrong here? I clearly had the best hand on 5th and 6th. While he was drawing to his wheel, I was drawing to a six. In chat, he said he figured that he was drawing for 5-6-7-8 to beat me. Well, yeah, but I was also still getting cards, and even if he got a seven, I could still outdraw him. So did I misplay it? Did he? Did we both play it right, and the cards jus happened to favor him this time? I'm still working things like that out in Razz.

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My son will likely make his Jr. 80’s pitching debut today. For those of you who are out of the Little League loop, Jr. 80’s are 13-14 year olds that play on an almost-full-size diamond (80-foot basepaths), a huge adjustment for the kids from Majors (60-foot). In actuality, Trevor should still be in Majors; his 13th birthday is in June, the age cutoff date is April 30. But Trevor already played two years in Majors and wanted to move up in competition. Now he’s gonna be pitching against some high school students. I only hope he doesn’t get hit by a line drive.

He’s got a decent sinking fastball, an inconsistent cut fastball, and a slurve that doesn’t break enough to get whiffs, but might get some pop-ups. I doubt he’ll strike anyone out; his main task will be to NOT walk anyone. I’ve been working him on throwing a weighted nine-ounce baseball (3x regulation weight) to build up his arm strength and it’s worked so far to add some hop to his fastball. If he pitches today, it’ll likely be in a mop-up role since we’re playing the worst team in the league, and the coach is trying out guys to be a spot pitcher for later in the year. We’ve had so many rain-outs that we’re stacking up games and doubleheaders at the end of the year, and arms are at a premium.

Frankly, I’m not even sure I want him to pitch, but once the coach approached me about having Trevor help ease the load on the staff, I couldn’t decline. The boy just doesn’t seem to have the killer instinct necessary to pitch. Now he might surprise the hell out of me (and my wife) by showing unexpected grit and toughness, or he might collapse like Rick Ankiel or Steve Blass. Or he might be somewhere in the middle. Best case? He pitches two innings, maybe gives up a run or two, but doesn’t walk anyone. Worst case? He walks the entire lineup and cries on the mound. I’ll be a wreck.