mathematically eliminated #7 the Oakland Athletics

It was such a magical glorious run for the A's, to not only fire up from nothing to challenge for the wild card, but to actually steal the AL West title on the last day of the season. They did not lead the division all year long until the very end of the last game. That is amazing. Then they drop the first two to Detroit and it looks like the magic was over. But no, the A's are cocksure assholes who looked at Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder's giant auras and said, "Fuck you Jobus, I do this for us," and they did it.
But then along comes Justin Verlander, who does what only he can do - shut a fucking team down for a complete game 4-hitter, on the road, like a boss. But those scrappy Athletics, who were supposed to be in some sort of pretend rebuilding process - which is what you are required to say the year after you trade away all your good players for a bunch of unknown dudes, had a great run, one that the poor tormented and cockteased fans of Oakland will long remember as the latest and greatest underdog moment of near glory. And as much as I dig the Tigers, I have to admit, it would've been pretty awesome to see an As/Os ALCS, not only for the double underdog factor, but also because of the beautiful uniform colors on display. Dark blue and white is so fucking boring, with pinstripes and old english Ds. Baseball doesn't need more of that. It needs more oranges and yellows and greens and craziness and magic. Alas, the magic came to an end, at least on the west coast.

mathematically eliminated #9 the Texas Rangers

While on one hand I feel bad for the Texas Rangers for having crumbled just barely enough to have lost the AL West and then lose the wild card game, at the same time I don't care. They've had their run. It's always great to see Ron Washington walking like a chicken in the dugout, but whatever. Yu Darvish will have his chance to make others humble in postseason play. The real question is whether Josh Hamilton will be part of this any more.
Though it's also not a real question. Fuck the Rangers. They have weird font on their jerseys. Now I think we can all get behind the Orioles together as a whole to crush the evil entity that is the Yankees. And that's all that really matters in October baseball, right?

mathematically eliminated #10 the Atlanta Braves

So I get off of a shitty work day of a shitty work week and the baseball pre-game is on the amplified modulations of the radio. I check out a couple art openings, walk around the city a little, see a couple old friends, make a couple new ones, get home, tuck my children into the bed, chat with my wife about our individual and separate days, and then turn on the cyber box and the game is over. Haha, wild card game on an early Friday evening, you are so fucking wacky.
So nothing weird happened in this game at all, right?

mathematically eliminated #12 the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Somewhere towards the end of last season, Albert Pujols made that Sammy Sosa-like transition from baseball darling to evil cocksucker. So when he signed a majillion dollar deal to play for the Angels, it only made him seem worse. Thus the Angels season was a power struggle between Evil Asshole Under-performing Haha Stupid Angels and Young Kid Mike Trout Super Human Baseball Is Great memes. Personally, Mike Trout is too stereotypical a baseball player name for me not to assume he is a closet racist, rapes fat chicks for leisure on road trips, and is also a going to end up an evil asshole being he is young and malleable and under the tutelage of elder evil assholes of baseball like Pujols. Thus, the Angels not making the playoffs is really funny to me, like when the Red Sox or Yankees don't make it, just with a west coast flavor. Of course, you cannot make angry light of the Angels without mentioning how stupid the whole "Los Angelese Angels of Anaheim" thing is.
Also, Bobby Grich forever.

mathematically eliminated #13 the Tampa Bay Rays

Rays and Angels were both eliminated last night, even though both won. But the A's winning their game put the end on the season. For the Rays, their status as unheralded spoiler amidst the AL East apple cart was upset when the Orioles decided to play baseball for the first time in fifteen years. It will be interesting to see how the Rays unfold over time, as they have this rep as a solidly built young team, but they still get little fan support in a somewhat shithole locale. I mean, don't get me wrong, St. Petersburg is a chill place, kind of small towny even, and there's some awesome used book stores near the stadium. But that part of Florida is a steamroll flattened vast expanse of clustery suburbanisms, and most environments like that are full of people who don't care shit about shit but themselves. How long can the Rays hold it together?
It should be noted that my homeboy Dylan aka The Necro Butcher aka that guy who got dollar bills stapled to him in The Wrestler movie and made Mickey Rourke have a heart attack, he is a huge baseball fan, and has adopted the Rays as his team. I cannot think of the Rays without thinking of outlaw juggalo wrestler stoner guys with wild beards who were born and bred in the hills of West Virginia. It is a shame that is not their entire fanbase, because then eventually they could draw in the hipster crowds as peripheral parts of this experience, and even work out great marketing deals with Pabst Blue Ribbon and fixed gear bicycle makers and shit like that. It also would probably position them well for a move to Brooklyn a few years down the road, should that become necessary. Or fuck man, half of the baseball fans in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area are actually New Yorkers anyways, you could probably split the season's home games between Brooklyn and St. Petersburg and do pretty fucking well still. Just some ideas, you know, in case the three hits this post gets are MLB marketing dudes with a desire to initiate a bold vision for the futures.

mathematically eliminated #14 the Chicago White Sox

And the crushing collapse of the White Sox is now complete, even though they won earlier in the night. The Tigers finishing off the Royals also finished off the White Sox 2012 season, and there is nothing to do but play their last two meaningless games on the road in Cleveland of all godforsaken places and wait to die.
Tonight actually the final four regular season eliminations could all happen but only the White Sox have gone down officially as of now. I had planned on mocking Obama's White Sox fandom but all the pics I found were kinda stupid, and also when you mock the Prez you run the risk of idiot people thinking that means you love you some Romney. Apparently we are so conditioned to an A or B mentality in America that we have given up even thinking there are grey scales. Perhaps that is why the 50 Shades of Grey book was foisted upon us all as a cultural thing, to force us to accept grey possibilities that involve horrible writing and shitty fetishes (though not literally "shitty" fetishes, as even in our morally decadent state, that's a no-no).
But seriously, fuck the White Sox. I am a Nats fan, but as a fan of awesomeness, there is no way on earth one could ever root against the combination of Prince Fielder and Miggy Cabrera. So fuck the White Sox.

mathematically eliminated #15 the Milwaukee Brewers

With they loss today the Brewers are out of this shit. Prince Fielder is gone so they become a useless collection of useless fuckers to appease a white crowd. Ryan Braun is being hinted at a possible repeat as NL MVP. Let me just make this clear - fuck Ryan Braun, and fuck the Brewers. If there is any team whose history, uniforms, and star players reek of Aryanism, it is this team. I am glad they do not clutter up any postseason baseball with their innate ugliness.
Speaking of Fielder, I sometimes look forward to post-financial Apocalyptic America, because imagine the Tigers and Brewers teams fighting. And then imagine the city of Detroit fighting the city of Milwaukee, although I guess I shouldn't because I'm at first like, "Oh man, Detroit would kill them," but also Detroit is a dilapidated city and their wolve-human residents would have to ride in piecemeal old Ford cars like that Johnny Cash song where he stole one part a year, whereas Milwaukee would send tanks and shit into Michigan and probably broker some fucked up shady deal with Flint where the people of Flint stormed Detroit and there was massive rioting, and then Milwaukee tanks rolled in and just killed everybody and took over the city.
Of course Detroit, your stupid Robocop statue would do you no good then. But hey, you are still alive in this baseball season, have Prince Fielder's chunky monkey ass showing love, and Milwaukee is just riding out their last few games like a bunch of assholes. Makes me sad for Tony Plush though. I am always sad for Tony Plush though.

mathematically eliminated #16 the Arizona Diamondbacks

And though they still haven't even finished playing tonight, by virtue of the Cardinals beating the Nationals, that fake team from out west that doesn't really exist - the Arizona Diamondbacks - has been officially eliminated from postseason contention, and any possibility of winning a World Series this year.

That was I wrote on Friday night before the Diamondbacks game was even over, but then it started raining and my satellite internet went wonky. I only have satellite internet, there is no alternative other than dial-up. I live in a rural area, which is fine, fuck your cyber 4G shit which doesn't make sense to me. I raise animals and eat them and grow my facial hair as wild as a blackberry bush and if it scares you then so be it.
I had looked up pictures of giant diamondback snakes, being caught and killed, being milked for venom, being poisonous crazy beasts. It is odd, in the wild the poisonous dangers are fairly obvious - snakes with rattles or mushrooms with red caps. It is in this invisible cyber world where the dangers are hidden in plain sight, unseen yet fucking up our primordial beauty even more.
Of course all of this is why Michael Morse is my favorite player ever right now. He looks somewhat caveman-like and he is tapped into that primordial tradition, through a baseball sense. You should google that wacky pretend home run last night, as it was fairly amazing. I do not mean to give you a link because I am pretty much done with the internet for the day. I am playing a James Taylor record on actual record (Mud Slide Slim - a classic Sunday morning lounger), and am about to cut two acorn squashes and three carnival squashes in half and bake those fuckers in about a half of inch of water with apple cider vinegar, then scoop it all out and make a dope ass fall squash soup motherfuckers. Today will be chill as fuck.

mathematically eliminated #17 the Philadelphia Phillies

Though they made a valiant yet ultimately useless late season run towards a watered down wild card spot, the hole the Phillies dug for themselves in the beginning was just too deep to overcome. Thus, with a simple 2 to 1 loss at the Miami garishness empty stadium of Escobar, on this 28th day of September of the standard western calendar, they are done for the year. Remember when their pitching staff was going to be the most ominously great thing ever in the history of professional team sports on the Earth? That has not worked out quite like they had thunk, no?
Anyways, in honor of the Phillies and their very special fan base, here are some google image search results for drunken Phillies fans...

mathematically eliminated #18 the Pittsburgh Pirates

Perhaps this will be the saddest elimination thus far this MLB season, as the Pirates were briefly our collective darling, having risen from the ashes of futility like a modern Phoenix (the bird, not the city), to make us love baseball in a special way. But let's be realistic - this is the second or third time the Pirates have done this in recent memory, and all those times have ended in the bitter taste of failure. Can we be content to dabble in success, and have these traditional teams who do not fit the alleged "large market" criteria to teeter at the periphery of relevance until we settle into the showdown of 8 or 10 of the same 10 or 12 teams? What if the Orioles do not make it as well, or are eliminated in the stupid wild card game playoff? Who will be our huckleberry then?
It is sad too because there are few teams with the bold artistic flourish of the Pirates. The bright yellow and black uniforms (traditional to Pittsburgh sports team, which in itself is a pretty cool thing for a city to do), the immensity of figures like LSD Dock Ellis or Playboy Cocaine Dave Parker or Kent Tekulve's wacky sidearm or Willie Stargell's quiet epicness or even the brilliantly legendary yet tragically short Robert Clemente, who was as much a pioneer for the black Hispanics who fill our 2012 rosters as Jackie Robinson was for regular American-Africans. (Man, "American-African" sounds so much more fucked up than "African-American" doesn't it? It is strange how our ears and mouths become accustomed to certain things.) The straight-sided caps, with the pimp stripes around the whole thing. Three Rivers Stadium itself, one of the best overhead blimp shots to be found in baseball history. The Pirates are a wacky and wild and wonderful team historically, and perfect for those crazed folks of western Pennsylvania.
But this is not a time that respects such craziness and wildling behaviors. This is not the age of American hallucinogenic exploration of self as in Dock Ellis, or proudly anti-authoritarian yet 1000% diligent and acceptable as in Dave Parker. This is a time of obedience and respect for nothing but the dollar, a forced worship for an abstract concept that is slowly losing its perceived value and never having had that much actual value to begin with. But the smoke and mirrors have gone into overdrive, and we shall be forced to believe in the exceptionalism of the almighty dollar, and baseball is nothing if not one of the most purely American artistic creations we have come up with as a culture, albeit now an international phenom. So the rule of the dollar means the teams that spend are the ones that succeed, so it is believed that until a team like the Pirates (or Orioles or Royals or Brewers) learns to spend, it will not sustain success. Or you must learn to maximize dollars, as in the sabermetric nerderies of Billy Beane and his philosophical disciples. But it is still based on dollars, not intuition, not magic.
Am I sad Pittsburgh is eliminated from this year's MLB post-seasonal possibilities? Sure, why not. But I am more saddened that the regional ways of Pittsburgh - a sort of cultured hillbilly people, full of Old World influences and New World dreams - has been eliminated. Not this year though, but somewhere along the way while none of us were looking. The ways of the Pittsburghs and the Baltimores and Oaklands and so on and so forth have been replaced by the false gentrification of our western society, which is actually taking the old flavors, sterilizing it "clean" and replacing it with new gaudy facades that look the same whether you are in a city here or one there. It is lifeless and robotic and predictable. That above all is the worst part - so predictable. I did not entertain wild notions of Andrew McCutcheon carrying the torch lit by Dock Ellis and Dave Parker into the October boxes on the 2012 calendar, because I knew better. Spirit like that has already been extinguished, and usually is bought out by piles of dollars, to go play in predictable ways in predictable places, so that nothing gets too wonky or off-kilter. We are not a place of wild spirit and shocking euphorias any more; we are a place of predictable facades and standard orders.

mathematically eliminated #19 the San Diego Padres

The Padres had the day off yesterday (or perhaps they actually played in their camouflage uniforms and I couldn't see them) but they still were eliminated from wild card contetion, by virtue of the Cardinals win at Houston. I am a child of the '80s, so those swank doodoo brown uniforms with the super letters were always the greatest, thus these new-fangled modernist uniforms they wear fill me with hate. I understand keeping with the times, but if your old times are so stylish, why change? Fucking merchandising man, it feeds the sexual juices of that whore called capitalism. Only problem is that whore is old and withered and barren and uncaring and we are only left to sit here and watch her die a painful syphilitic death.
So goodbye Padres.

mathematically eliminated #20 the Kansas City Royals

It has been fun doing this and thinking of teams on the brink of elimination. Last Tuesday, after losing the White Sox, the Royals were about to be forced out. They'd already been gone from wild card contention, but the AL Central is a land of midgets where anything can happen (which hopefully means the Tigers win it, but that is another story). But the Royals were facing mathematical elimination on Wednesday... but beat the Sox. Then they did it again on Thursday. The White Sox flew west to face the Angels and the Indians came to Kansas City, so with there being zero room for mistakes - the Royals had to win out their season, and White Sox lose it out - it seemed like it would happen quickly. But Friday night, both the Angels and Royals won. Then it happened again yesterday, and not only were the Royals still not mathematically eliminated, but the Tigers had moved into half a game of the White Sox. That meant they'd have to start losing too.
Today, in the first game of a doubleheader, the Tigers did exactly that. The Royals were still hanging tough. But then they got crushed by the Indians, 15 to 4, and the magic rally was over. The Royals are now mathematically eliminated from Major League Baseball 2012 World Championship contention. Still though, this scrappy bunch of shitheads outlasted a third of the MLB, solidly ensuring their position as middle class status, albeit very low middle class status. Perhaps this is a thing to build upon, perhaps it is a thing to forget. I am not one to say. Only time to can reveal such mysteries.

mathematically eliminated #21 the New York Mets

Not only did the Mets get eliminated tonight, but they got spanked terribly hard by the Phillies, 16 to 1, at home in whatever it is that is not Shea Stadium. So it looked as though the Phillies were done for, and yet they make this late season run towards an extra watered-down wild card. Meanwhile, the Mets continue to be the Mets. And on the day somebody reminded me this baseball card existed...

Yes, I know that has nothing to do with the Mets, but what the fuck do I care? They are the Mets. No one cares, except for those weird dudes you hear on talk radio in the middle of the night when you are on a long drive and you are like, "Hey, I'll listen to AM radio," and all you pick up is 660 the Fan, and every guy that calls you imagine to look like that James Coco dude who used to act in the TVs - all short and balding and weird looking, like a puffalump but 1/4 Italian, and they live in an apartment smaller than most American people's kitchen, and they are sitting at a small table with the refrigerator like literally right over their shoulder, and there is an old TV on the opposite wall, and that is where they watch the Mets, drinking Diet Cokes like mad, and calling AM radio to further discuss the wild tangents that bounce around their little caged minds.

mathematically eliminated #22 the Miami Marlins

Remember a long time ago when the Marlins opened up that new stadium with the crazy psychedelic motif and had all those big free agents who came in, and it was ushering a new age of baseball in south Florida, where people were gonna love baseball, and the Marlins were gonna be so fucking awesome it was going to knock the Phillies and to a lesser extent the Braves off the NL East throne? Remember that? Yeah, a couple months ago was pretty cool.
Already nobody cares, further proving that the "build it and they will come" fleecing of investors (whether taxpayer dollars or just stupid regular investors) is bullshit. Here is a simple catchy phrase for you to remember for the rest of your life in regards to getting people to point their eyeballs (and wallets) at things: If shit sucks, no one gives a fuck.

mathematically eliminated #23 the Toronto Blue Jays

I will leave the sad specifics to my good pal KS, but by virtue of their loss in the first game of this doubleheader in the stupid Bronx, the Blue Jays were officially eliminated from playoff contention, and thus World Series contention. I am sorry Canadia. Tu eres maricon. Haha, not really. I mean, I don't know, you have a questionable relationship with Greenland at times, but I don't think it is anything serious or worth demeaning you over.
Also of note: fuck the Yankees.

mathematically eliminated #24 the Seattle Mariners

They are now done apparently. I am not even sure of who is on their team as I have an east coast bias, which is why I wear my right pant leg bunched up around my knee at work, and use my office stapler to staple motherfuckers in the head who look at me wrong at the water cooler. EAST SIDE!
Seriously though, forgive my ignorance, but did the Mariners still exist after they traded away Ichiro Suzuki? Or are they in the Pacific Coast League now? Does the Pacific Coast League still exist? I know Triple-A went from three leagues to two leagues at some point a few years back, but I don't know which one ceased to exist. I grew up an International League man personally, seeing the Richmond Braves play as a little leaguer. Back then it was easy to know who the minor league team was a minor league team for, because they had the same nickname. Nowadays, with hat merchandising, there's no fucking way to tell. I went to a game last year to see Bryce Harper play in Richmond and it was the Richmond Flying Squirrels vs. the Harrisburg Winterfells, and they were hyping up a big weekend series against the Charleston Baby Bo$$e$ with fireworks and some sort of bobblehead promotion. Ultimately, this just furthers my belief that over-marketing has essentially ruined the joy of Western civilization, and now we are just left to suffer the diminishing returns of what we have wrought, until death.

mathematically eliminated #25 the Colorado Rockies

I know very little about the Rockies, other than they are the Rockies. They and the Diamondbacks are still in this grey area of my brain being neither of them existed on the baseball cards I hoarded as a youngster, thus they have no illustrated Diamond Kings at all, meaning they cannot be that great. But they are eliminated, having gotten ousted from mathematical contention for the lowered standard of MLB wild cards yesterday evening, while I was still watching football. We are left with 24 teams officially still standing a chance at winning the World Series this year.

mathematically eliminated #26 the Boston Red Sox

Congratulations KS the only guy who reads this blog, your Toronto Blue Jays today put a stake through the heart of this horrid Boston Red Sox season. The illustrious return of the overhyped Bobby Valentine, Josh Beckett being a proud beer-drinker and chicken-eater who refused to let go of his ways, the last great heroes of when the Red Sox became champions and made a million drunken Bostoners feel like life was not worth complaining about briefly - all of it down the drain. The Red Sox have crashed back upon the surface of their multi-generational reality, and now have to figure out a way to make themselves relevant again, last place in a division they briefly had an arms-and-bats race of highest monetary proportion with the Yankees, now overshadowed by not only the Rays but also the Orioles. I mean, really the Orioles? Oh well, not much else to say as it's football season already and who really gives a fuck about baseball outside of the four or five important games you glance at the scoreboard for when there's actual American football to play?

mathematically eliminated #27 the Minnesota Twins

Like I said earlier in the Indians post, both them and the Twins have been out of wild card contention for a hot minute already, but because the AL Central is lackluster, they still stood an outside longshot, mathematically speaking, at their division title. Until today for both. The Twins actually lost to division leader the Chicago White Sox, at home in Minnesota, which only added insult to the injury of having your season officially over from a winning the World Series perspective. So let us sum up the Minnesota Twins season. On defense, it was like this...

And then on offense, it went like this...

And that's their 2012, in a nutshell. All apologies to Kirby Puckett's glorious memory. (Didn't he die? Didn't also like to sex up chubby chicks? I hope so. On the second, not the first.)
The Red Sox flirted with elimination today, but a 9th inning rally means they will survive mathematically at least one more day. I'm sure Bobby Valentine is proud.

mathematically eliminated #28 the Cleveland Indians

And then there were 27. In the AL Central, both the Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins have been already out of wild card contention for the better part of a week. But being the AL Central is the weakest division in baseball, they were still, technically, in the running to win their own division. For the Indians, that ended tonight, as Justin Verlander got all Justin Verlandery on them. A sad ending yet again for the Indians, who could be considered the Cubs of the American League, if they had people who gave a fuck. It wasn’t too long ago that the Indians were sort of in the same boat the Orioles were in, shockingly contending for a division title, only having sat a handful of games out of first at the end of July. But the Indians collapsed like the rust belt manufacturing base, and Indians fans everywhere will once again have to count on Major League, the first one, for their postseason highlights. Jobu needs a refill indeed.