New week, boys and girls. A blank slate. A fresh start. We’re at the middle week of the month. Time flies when you’re … having fun?
Yeah, sure. Why not? We’re having fun. It’s week. We’ve got the Home Run Derby tonight (on Netflix, good luck!). The All-Star game tomorrow. Did you know that both the Panthers and Cardinals report to training camp a week from Wednesday?
That’s right. Not a typo! It’s true.
Bottom line? We don’t slow down around here. We adapt. We adjust. We grind.
Let’s roll.
Welcome to a Monday Nightcaps â the one where somehow managed to piss everyone off in a single inning on Sunday. Amazing.
What else? I’ve got NASCAR wife Gianna Blaney enjoying some R&R in Turks And Caicos, the Dolphins already starting the year with a loss in July, and Aaron Rodgers has taken his (allegedly) final offseason retreat.
When Aaron emerges from the cave, you know football is almost back. It’s like seeing smoke from the Vatican.
OK, grab you some hot dogs and Bush’s to celebrate National Frank ‘N’ Beans Day, and settle in for a Monday ‘Cap!
They really do have a “day” for anything, don’t they? Oh well. The more you know.
For those wondering (and that’s none of you), the folks over at NationalDayCalendar.com tell me that this special day kinda-sorta originated back in the 1800s:
Baked beans originally surged in popularity during the American Civil War and later became one of the first canned convenience foods to hit the market in the 1890s. As a result, they quickly became a staple of the western chuckwagon. While baked beans have a long history, it remains a mystery exactly when inventive cooks first started tossing franks into the mix.
Our research was unable to find the creator of the holiday.
There you go! And that concludes our history lesson for the day. And what a useless lesson it was!
Now, let’s get this class started with umpire Jen Pawol, who last season became the first female umpire to call a game behind the dish, having just an awful time during yesterday’s Blue Jays-Padres tilt:
Lordy. First, she didn’t allow the batter to challenge the call, saying he was too late. That’s not true. He was perfectly within the limits. She just wasn’t looking. Let’s be fair.
Then, she tossed someone … for some reason. Again, not sure what happened there. Wild.
Later in the inning, Pawol appeared to call a balk on the pitcher … only to then crouch down and call the pitch a strike? Don’t know that I’ve ever seen that before.
Listen to the announcers. They are absolutely perplexed. Can’t say that I blame them.
Look, this isn’t about Jen Pawol being a female umpire, so save it. I know that’s what everyone is going to harp on here.
“Oh, Zach, you’re only highlighting this because she’s a girl!”
No, I’m not. Quit it.
I’ve blasted umpires plenty of times before, and they were all men. I called out awful CB Bucknor earlier this year. I wrote about a Royals catcher during spring training. Last month, I called out some hot-shot ump who tossed A’s manager Mark Kotsay for no reason at all.
This was one of the worst sequences I’ve ever seen out of an MLB umpire, and I had to sit through a decade of Angel Hernandez.
In fact, according to the popular site “UmpScorecards.com,” Jen Pawol has been the third-worst umpire this season with a 91.8% accuracy. That’s not my opinio
