Thursday Evening Chicanery

Because I'm contractually bound to throw up two posts a quarter, I figure I'd better get to sweetening the sauce. A few notable happenings that we've missed commenting upon in recent weeks...


Jay Cutler's diabetes.

For a second, I couldn't believe we hadn't touched it. Then I thought, well, what else is there to say? Poor kid has diabetes. No more visits to the Purple Martini in the Tech Center for you, young man. Maybe now he'll lose the double chin.

The thing that really amazed me about the story was the fact that the Broncos had evidently ascribed his weight loss to nothing more than a first full season of work. Uh, he dropped 35 pounds. Maybe for an offensive guard or a defensive tackle, but a quarterback? That seems like the kinda thing that might have caught someone's eye, doesn't it? The Broncos's head trainer, Steve "Greek" Antonopolous, is supposedly highly regarded across the league...or is he?

Or have we just been fed lies for all these years by the local sports media? Maybe he's a fraud. Maybe the guy is an electrician with a chapbook full of photos featuring Anabel Bowlen making it with a series of Burmese ladyboys. Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. OK, definitely not.

I can say this for certain: his brother was my junior high algebra teacher and had the worst dragon breath I've ever smelled. Like he ate a Hostess turd pie. I don't know how that fits, but I'm sure it does somehow.

Also...

The retirement of Julio Franco. There are words to describe how I feel about this but I'm not smart or good-looking enough to use them in a sentence.

The guy's pro career started in the late '70s. He was a weightlifter when baseball players didn't lift weights. He gave up a notoriously hard-partying lifestyle to eat nothing but organic food--20 egg whites every morning. He won a batting title, he was the oldest player to hit a home run in major league history, he was once traded for Von Hayes.

And he was, up until a few days ago, playing for the Quintana Roo Tigers in the Mexican League. At age 48 or 49 or 56. Who knows? Happy trails, Julio.