The Bench Jockeys

March 24, 2015 – The Cactus and Grapefruit League games are wrapping up and skipper’s are setting up their rotations. Thus, its time for The Bench Jockeys to offer our predictions for the upcoming MLB Season.

What we know:   Pretty much nothing.  We did not agree on anything.  The betting lines have Mike Trout as a 1:1 favorite to take home the AL Most Valuable Player hardware, but it is interesting that none of the Jockeys see the Angels in the World Series despite the potential output of Trout, Pujols and Calhoun.  As a group, we see Felix Hernandez dominating the AL.  (Spound is still waiting for Tanaka to produce for his 2014 fantasy team, and we are not quite sure what Brittany is seeing that the rest of don’t with respect to Joe Kelly of the Red Sox.)

Ian really wanted to take a flyer on the Mariners in the Series and likes Cano as a dark horse AL MVP pick, but he couldn’t pull the trigger.  Britt and Craig both go all-in with an old skool LA-NY series and Chris and Ian both projected the same unlikely AL Champ to lose versus the pitching depth of the Nats.  And of course, the ever-diabolical Spound is rooting for the Cubbies to find their way back to the Championship just so Billy Sianis’ curse can play-out yet again…106 years and counting.

Send us your thoughts in the comment section.

March 21, 2015 – Believe it or not, even though 4 of the 5 Bench Jockeys have limited gearhead knowledge, we all took notice of Kevin Harvick’s sensational Win/Place streak.  Not since Richard Petty’s 11 in 1975 has a driver rattled off so many consecutive Top 2 finishes in NASCAR.  Prior to the Auto Club 400 in Fontana, California this weekend, the “Freaky Fast” No. 4 Jimmy John’s Chevy has earned its stripes as Harvick currently stands at 7 consecutive Top 2 finishes, dating back to the end of 2014 when Harvick captured the Sprint Cup Series title.  Harvick has qualified at the number 2 start position for the Auto Club, and is primed for another strong performance in Fontana where he has won before in 2011. As a result of his recent successes, he is the NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader for 2015.

We assume that the fact that Harvick’s run has surfaced on The Bench Jockeys (as well as a few other more mainstream news sites) will be the kiss of death for his streak, so we wanted to weigh-in before it was over.  Sorry Kevin : (

March 22, 2015 Update – Kevin Harvick did secure 2nd place at the Auto Club 400 to make it 8 straight Top 2 finishes in a row.  The pressure continues to mount for Harvick in a sport that greatly depends on the intentions and competence of others.

 March 21, 2015 – The most exciting 36 hours in college sports ended with a bang as the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament concluded late last night with the 11th seed, Dayton knocking out Providence in a final coup d’ grace bracket buster.  The flurry of upsets that began on Thursday afternoon with with 3 one-point victories by UAB, Georgia State and UCLA served notice yet again to both fans and bettors that on any given day the prohibitive favorites can fall to an ambitious buzzsaw and dreams of playing on a Sweet 16 weekend can end early.  Hope you enjoyed your stay, ISU, VCU and SMU; please pick up the play-at-home game on your way out of the arena.

On Friday, higher seeds prevailed in 15 of the 16 matchups but even in a tournament where only 5 lower seeds emerged victorious in the 32 first round games, there is only 1 entry out the 11.57 million entries on ESPN’s Tournament Challenge that picked all 32 contests correctly.  1!  There are 38 entries that had 31 of the 32 teams picked correctly;  that’s .000328% of all ESPN’s brackets.   So when Iowa State and Baylor fell before you left the office on Thursday and you tore your office pool bracket sheet to shreds, feel some solace that you were not alone.  In fact, you might want to pull that baby out of the trashcan and tape that it back together.  As long as you didn’t have the Cyclones or Bears advancing too far, you may be still in line for a payday, because on the whole, favorites did much better than they have in recent years.  The chalk still talks going into the weekend games.

And speaking of a payout, I will leave you with this report from Vegas… Kentucky was 1:500 to beat Hampton and some schlub bet $600 on Kentucky.  The spoils of his wager… $1.20.

March 11, 2015 – Opening Day for NFL’s Free Agency period has already raised a few questions.  The day was more about trades than FA pick-ups.  Therefore its seems like a perfect time to launch my new addition to The Bench Jockeys called, Ma Nishtana.

Q1  – Why, Father, why is this trade worse than all other trades?

One this night (or some night recently), the Jets acquired Brandon Marshall to bolster its passing game without an NFL QB. Talk about a waste of resources.  That’s like putting a Porsche engine in your Dodge Dart.  Marshall became frustrated with Cutler slinging the ball all over the field in Chicago.  Can you imagine Marshall on a fly pattern looking back to see Geno try and side-arm the rock out to Chris Ivory on 70% of his routes?  Marshall (who is also an NFL Network commentator) will certainly be able to cover a game and play in it at the same time.  64 Catches/709 yards….

Q2 – Why is the Jimmy Graham trade worse than the previous trade?

One this night, the second best team in football acquired the league’s second best tight end in Jimmy Graham.  Something is very wrong when a team is allowed to trade one of the best offensive players in the game for back-end draft picks.  The NFL cap is forcing teams to make idiotic trades and drop fan favorites; it is both ugly and insulting to the fan base.  At least Pete Carroll will have a reasonable excuse to throw it from the 1 yard line next year.

Q3 – Why is the deflate-gate investigation worse than all other cheating investigations?   

Does one get the feeling the NFL is holding the release of any written report on the deflated footballs until a time that nobody cares.  I fully expected an indecisive report to surface with 8 minutes left on the clock before Tampa’s first pick.  The report will only be leaked prior to that time if the NFL has anything on the Patriots other than a ball boy relieving air from 11 footballs in under 90 seconds instead of his bladder.

Q4 – Why on this night are you allowed to tamper but on all other nights you cannot?  

Because, my child, on this night, it’s called legal tampering.  Is this the tamperer’s reward for finding the afikomen?  Has this particular NFL period existed before?  Apparently, now you can talk to a free agent but you can’t make any monetary overtures.  What exactly did Dolphins owner Steven Ross and Ndamukong Suh talk about?  Unless you were living under a rock, you certainly knew the Dolphins were going to throw an obscene amount of money at Suh… Glad that the entire NFL universe was able to work out the particulars of the deal prior to the end of the legal tampering period, because if they followed the NFL’s rules, Ross and Suh were likely discussing the Real Housewives of Miami…356 pounds of girth changes hands and teams – clearly against the rules – without any backlash, but 1 pound of air leaves a football on a cold night and it makes international news… Roger’s Salary should be lowered to $30 Million tops next year.

March 8, 2015 – As the Harrison brothers (Aaron & Andrew) and the University of Kentucky’s men’s basketball team continue their pursuit of perfection with the SEC Championship and NCAA Tourney looming, The Bench Jockeys started thinking about how other siblings have performed over the years in the sportsworld and how we would rank them as a sub-group of athletes.

What we discovered was the Harrisons have a long way to go to crack the Top 100, let alone the Top 20 that we have digested and analyzed for your consideration herein.  This was way more difficult to quantify than one would think.  There were  many siblings that did not sniff our list but were remarkable for their achievements.  A few of the particularly noteworthy are highlighted below.

For example, we all know that Jackie Robinson was arguably the best second baseman of all time, but did you know that Jackie’s older brother, Matthew “Mack” Robinson, earned a Silver Medal in the 1936 Olympics in Munich.  He finished 2nd by 0.4 seconds to none other than Jessie Owens.

We knew that we could not ignore the most popular sport on earth – soccer – but the Charlton brothers finished on the outside looking in. Who were they you ask?  Sir Bobby and twin brother, Jack, won the 1966 World Cup for England.  Jack was FWA Footballer of the year in 1967; won 2 Fairs Cups; a league title and FA Cup.  Sir Bobby survived a tragic air crash in Munich in 1958 that killed many of his Manchester United teammates. He went onto play over 600 games for ManU, with a goals per game average of an incredible .328 while hauling in an array of individual honors.

Here’s a fact that might win a few bar bets for you:  Both Marat Safin and his sister, Dinara, are the only brother-sister tandem to achieve a world number 1 pro tennis ranking – Matt in 2000, Dinara in 2009.  We suspect that you might have an inkling about the tennis sibs who did make our Top 20, however.

Lastly, before we move onto our rankings, we considered the array of brothers who played cricket.  The Aussies tout the Chappells of the 1970s, the Zimbabweans love the Flower twins of the 1990s and currently, the Pakistanis queue up to see the Akmals, but none of us are actually smart enough to really understand which are the best sibs – so we left them all off of the list.

And now without further adieu….let the outrage and second-guessing begin.

Why the Richards?  Over the 100 year history of the Stanley Cup and professional ice hockey, both Henri and Maurice “Rocket” Richard still both rank within the Top 25 of their sport; with The Rocket securing a spot within the Top 5 all time.  Although one could argue that Serena Williams may be one the five best women’s tennis players in history, and Venus did earn a number 1 ranking in 2002, the fact is, second-fiddle Venus is not as dominant in her sport as the lesser (just slightly lesser) Henri was in his.

We welcome your thoughts…but it won’t change our minds.

The Bench Jockeys are giving Spounder his own continuing feature which will be found under the category, Ma Nishtana.  “Why Bench Jockeys, why?  Why is the content in Ma Nishtana different from all other categories?” you ask.  Because the analysis found in Ma Nishtana seeks to ask and answer questions much like Di Fir Kashes (The Four Questions) from the celebration of Passover.  The Q&A format will be easy to understand for even the simple-minded son.

Interestingly, the term “Ma Nishtana” has taken on a new meaning as well – which also suits the snark scale at The Bench Jockeys.  According to the urban dictionary, “Ma Nishtana” now also connotes the “utter lack of surprise” to some bit of news.  For example, Dan Synder overpaid another aging retread in free agency. Ma Nishtana.  Or ESPN is reporting something about Tiger. Ma Nishtana.  Or the over-under on the NBA All-star game is 280. Ma Nishtana.  Get it?

So when the mood hits him, Spound will drop some righteous Ma Nishtana.  Enjoy this new featurette which we hope will heighten your reading pleasure.

– The Bench Jockeys

March 7, 2015 – Not one week after The Bench Jockeys released their odds on prospective candidates winning their respective party’s nominations, we already have some changes to make.  Marco Rubio’s poor support at CPAC costs him a bit in our eyes and Scott Walker’s strong showing gives him a boost as we see it.  We expected Ted Cruz to best Walker (which did not happen) and Walker almost toppled Rand Paul in the CPAC straw poll.  As a result, Cruz also slides a smidgen.

However the big story on the Republican side of the aisle was the scuttle-butt from Dr. Carson’s assertions that doing time can  change a man’s sexual orientation.  Are they teaching that now in med school?  I think they might be bringing the leeches back too.

Although quick to apologize, the content of Carson’s mea culpa was not the prescription he needed.  Consequently, we are dropping him down quite a few pegs to the third tier of possible nominees.  Reluctant to announce in the first place, the good doctor may now be rethinking the whole thing, especially as every word he utters will now be parsed by the media.

The beneficiary to Carson’s slip-up may actually be Rubio since the Carson and Rubio camps are not too far apart on many issues.  As a result, we only slightly decreased Marco’s odds in spite of the CPAC straw poll numbers.  Check out this link for the most current odds at  http://thebenchjockeys.com/?p=1556

March 1, 2015 – Quinnipiac University conducted a telephone survey in Iowa during the week of February 16th seeking opinions about the projected field of Democratic candidates for 2016.  The survey involved 619 likely Democratic Caucus participants. The predictable results were released on February 26th.

Democratic Party Iowans overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton (61%), with Elizabeth Warren earning runner-up honors at 19%.  Biden placed third with 7%, Sanders was fourth at 5% and Jim Webb finished in fifth at 2%.  Hillary maintains a stronghold on her path to the Democratic Party’s nomination and the odds that The Bench Jockeys have offered (1:7) seem in line with these results.  [For those of you who read The Bench Jockeys and do not gamble, a 1:7 line means that you would have to bet $7 to win just $1.]

Right now, Hillary is just that sure of a lock. What was remarkable is that not one of the 619 Iowans who participated, voted for former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.  Not one.  With only six potential candidates, Quinnipiac extended its inquiry to include a question about who the voters would support if their first choice opted not to run.  Even with Hillary out of the picture, O’Malley only secured 3% of the votes.  18 of 619 votes.  Biden (30%) and Warren (23%) were the leading pretenders.  Look for Marty to take a page out of the Bill Clinton playbook and have his Celtic rock band – O’Malley’s March – booked on a few late night talk shows this summer if he cannot gain traction in this incomplete field.