I’m not generally much for the soccer or futbol or football or footy or whatever you wanna call it. I usually leave that up to Mustafa to cover up here on the Deuce. A funny thing did happen while watching USA actually compete and ultimately lose to Brazil 3-2 in the championship game of the Confederation Cup however…I watched.

And i didnt just watch when we got into the 2nd round and beyond, I actually watched us lose the first couple games. Not sure why either. Maybe i was just bored, working from home and in desperate need of something interesting on the television. Well, i did indeed find interesting television, great drama even, and it made me keep watching, even when USA was losing. I watched and for the first time saw what the rest of the world sees when it watches soccer…that it is actually a pretty enjoyable sport to watch.

No offense to the MLS, but, it just isnt as interesting. The players arent as good, plain and simple. Brazil and Spain were all-star teams, USA as well to a much lesser degree, but they competed and showed that USA soccer might just be beginning to turn a curve in international soccer. USA can now show up with the best of the world and, at the very least, compete for 90 minutes…and sometimes even win.

This is what USA Soccer needs to do if it wants people like me, the non soccer fan, to watch their games. I didnt grow up playing soccer, it wasn’t on tv when I was a kid, we had crappy indoor scocer as our local “pro” teams that came and left quicker than swine flu, so it has taken me quite a bit to warm up to thinking that soccer is a real sport that I would think about watching. 2 things were needed for me to really care about the game: 1) Have a team to care about; and 2) have that team be interesting to watch.

Sure, I could watch the DC United play, they would be my local team by default, but the quality of play in the MLS is so much lesser than, say, the Premiership, that it’s like watching the XFL…and we all remember how much that stunk. I could watch Premiership soccer like Mustafa, but I’ve never been to England and could give 2 shits about what is going on in that country’s soccer leagues. In reality, I just want to watch good, American soccer, because I am a gigantic homer. Now, I actually can…sorta…at least in international play. I cannot wait until the World Cup games.

So, congratulations to the USA Soccer team. They did more than just not embarrass themselves and they bought themselves many new fans of soccer. Its ok that they didn’t win, they were interesting. They competed and they did so with energy and passion. For that, I thank them. They were a joy to watch.

(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Now that baseball has proven that they can adapt to the modern times by adopting Instant Replay, we at the Deuce think it’s time for the great American past time to take a few more steps to becoming a modern day sporting bonanza. Here’s a few other ways that we think Major League Baseball can take steps towards modernizing the game for the 2000s.

1) Allow Cheerleaders

The NFL has them, the NBA has them, NHL even has rink girls, baseball needs cheerleaders. Who wouldn’t rather see a bunch of cheerleaders dancing on the dugout instead of homer run homer? Baseball has to realize, like all the other sports already have, that sex sells and people need that sexually charged visual stimuli when there is a break in the action…which there are a ton of in a typical baseball game. Teams in Latin America and the minor leagues have already thought of this, the pros need to up their game.
2) Turn on a Pitch Clock

Think of what the 24 second clock and the 35 second clock have done for basketball and football. They’ve sped up the game and made it more enjoyable with constant action and less farting around. With a pitch clock, the pitcher would have something like 15 seconds to get the pitch off from the moment that he catches the ball from his catcher. No more shaking off pitches and running through the count again, no more constant glances to a base with no throw, no more standing around playing with the rosin bag and scratching yourself waiting for something to happen. If the pitch isn’t thrown, the batter gets an automatic ball.

3) Screw It, No More Umps, Computerize it all.

Baseball is not a game where a human’s discretion really should into play. There are no penalties or fouls. There is just whether the ball is inside or outside lines, whether the player touches a base and whether the ball touches the player or not. Certainly, the current margin of error can be erased with modern technology. With instant replay now in effect, baseball has made a great stride but it is time for them to go all the way. Tennis employs the Hawk Eye technology which can be used for line calls, cricket is testing it out right now as well, so why can baseball not use them for foul lines?

Baseball has already tested out the Questec system for balls and strikes, why not use it full time? This would take out individual strike zones for umpires favoring pitchers or batters on any given night. It’ll be a level playing field for all.

For whether or not a player is out, bio-kinetic sensors and microchips in the balls, gloves and bases could easily tell if contact with a player was made before contact with a bag was made no longer making the ghost base tag force out allowable. The game would finally be played the way it was supposed to be played without umpire’s personal preferences getting in the way.

4) No More Rainouts

Be a man, get wet you pansies. No real sport played outdoors cancels a game because it is raining or snowing. Nascar will do it because you’re in a vehicle flying around a track at 200mph and its a bit dangerous to bank when you’re hydroplaning. Tennis and Cricket will do it because…well because they are a bunch of pansies. Baseball should strive to be tougher than tennis and cricket players. Dangerous lighting is a perfectly good reason to stop a game, but rain? Come on, you play outside, deal with the weather.

5) Relegation

This would redefine modern baseball as we know it. Take a page from the English Premiership and force the lowest performing teams drop down, out of the Majors, and allow the best lower level league teams move up to the Majors. Crazy? Sure it is, but will it force bottom feeders like the Royals and the Nationals to get their shit together and get it together quick or there will be no more MLB television revenue coming in. Its a reward system for not sucking and makes the super long regular season almost more meaningful than the playoffs and certainly more meaningful than it currently is.

So here’s how it would be done. The easy way to do it is to take the 3 worst teams from each league right now, 6 teams overall and drop them down into the newly created lower level that we will for now call AAAA. Baseball functioned quite fine before the expansions to 26 then 30 teams with a 162 game schedule and it will again. Then, add in 2 expansion teams to the new league make it a nice 8 team league (like the AL and the NL were before expansion in the 60s) and have them play the old 154 game schedule. Bingo bango you now have the Major League Baseball – Premier League of 24 teams and the Major League Baseball AAAA League of 8 teams. Every year, the worst team in the AL and NL would drop down to the 4A league and be shamed and the best 2 teams would pop up to the Premier league.

Now that is exciting baseball. The Nationals right now are no more than a AAAA league team anyway, they should be playing against teams that are more their level until they can make it up to professional standards.

Man…one can dream.

Baseball photo by Matt McGee

Avram’s victory hearse may roll down King’s Road yet.

Emile Heskey? Really, dude?

Has a picture ever said so much? More than likely but this is spot on. I would have posted something on Chelsea yesterday but I just didn’t have it in me. Chelsea could still win the league but it would take a Chelsea win and a Manchester United loss followed by a Chelsea win over Man U. That’s it.

As crazy as it sounds, I’m not sure how much Chelsea winning the Champions League would salvage the season in my mind. Losses to Spurs and Barnsley were painful enough. Another loss to Liverpool would hurt but a season without silverware would hopefully mean Avram Grant would move upstairs. However there’s no guarantee of that happening. A CL win means a better chance of him staying. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

I don’t want to root against my team and I won’t yet I fear what victory means. Of course I want Chelsea to win the Champions League. However Grant blundering into victory could be costly. He’s shown time and time again that he has the combined tactical awareness of Paul Bremer and Rich Kotite. After being screwed out of United match tickets and still not receiving my supporters club package, I deserve something. Give me Big Cup glory and a new manager. Is that so hard?

Good thing F1 boss and sexual holocauster Max Mosley doesn’t own Chelsea. He would most certainly deal with defender Tal Ben Haim in a harsh manner.

Ben Haim put keeper Petr Cech out for the season after running into Cech’s face with his cleats during training on Sunday. The cleats caused a laceration straight to Cech’s jawbone. He received “30 stitches sewn in the deepest area of the wound that stretches from his bottom lip to his chin, a further 20 on the outside of his face and also required plastic surgery ‘for aesthetic reasons’.

The collision was an accident but nonetheless puts Chelsea in the position of having one legitimate keeper coming into the Premiership and CL homestretches. All we need is for something to happen to backup keeper Carlo Cudicini and we could have a repeat of last season. If Ben Haim insists on being slow and useless, the least he could do is not injure his own teammates.

Speaking of Herr Mosley, his weak pleas that his Nazi orgy had nothing to do with Nazis have been bukkaked back in his face. Wunderbar! One of the hookers who participated in the orgy reported by News of the World claims that he ordered the Nazi orgy by name. “Max KNEW last week’s orgy was to have a Nazi theme—he ORDERED it!”

“We were only following orders,” said [News of the World's] informant, who does not wish to be identified. but admits she was one of five prostitutes who turned up at Mosley’s Chelsea dungeon at 11.30am on Friday, March 28.

“Max told Mistress Switch that he wanted a German dominatrix and she got one—Mistress Zena. She’s German and wore a German military uniform. Then Mistress Abi was booked and had to be in German uniform, too—a German Luftwaffe tunic. All the outfits come from army surplus stores.

…”And I was told to expect a very strong Nazi theme, including demeaning body inspections, brutality and that two submissive girls, called Leah and JD, must play the parts of camp inmates.

One has to appreciate that the ho used the Nuremberg defense. Daniel Day-Lewis would be proud. Never break character.

It’s easy to see why one would mistake the events that took place for a Nazi-themed orgy. Apologies due to Herr Mosley. His papers seem to be in order.