Dan Marino Is Lying To You

Good morning, Chochachos. It’s Wednesday, September 2nd. The Rockies are back up a game in the NL Wild Card race, and the Red Sox may be turning things on at the right time. Let’s go.

FIRST BASE: SIX SHOOTER Jonathan Papelbon has been maligned this year despite putting up solid numbers; this is one of the cases where the statistics, to hear his critics talk, don’t tell the whole story. For the talk of Daniel Bard being groomed as the “closer in waiting” to those that newly-signed Billy Wagner opens the door for the Sox to jettison Papelbon in the offseason, Papelbon was still an effective closer, if not as dominant as before. Last night, Papelbon relieved an ineffective Hideki Okajima with the bases loaded in the eighth inning and the Sox up 7-4 — and didn’t give up a run (Thanks to a large degree by a ridiculous sliding catch by Jacoby Ellsbury). He finished off the Rays, now six back in the Wild Card standings, in the following inning for his first regular season six-out save. Meanwhile, the Rangers swept their doubleheader from Jays and sit 3.5 back. In the NL. Cole Hamels 2-hit the Giants for 1-0 victory, and the Rockies beat the Mets 8-3. In other action, Albert Pujols hit his 42nd home run in the Cardinals’ 7-6 win over the Brewers, the Yankees beat the Orioles 9-6, and the Braves beat the Marlins, 4-3.

SECOND BASE: NUTRISYSTEM? NUTRI-SHIT IF YOU ASK ME This morning I was watching SportsCenter when I saw the ad for Nutrisystem — the weight-loss meal subscription plan that engages in portion control — featuring Chris Berman, who claims to have lost 41* lbs. on the diet. He joins celebrities such as Dan Marino, who lost 22* lbs., Marie Osmond, who lost 50* lbs., and Don and Anne Shula, who lost 32* and 23* lbs., respectively, on the diet plan, according to their statements.

I have a piece of news for you: this is a CROCK OF SHIT.

Everyone I’ve listed above is a celebrity. Now imagine, if you will, that I’m a celebrity (bend your brain). I am overweight. I want to lose weight. How would I go about doing this? Would I:

a) Subscribe to an info-mercial based diet system that sends you plastic-wrapped, subpar microwaveable food, OR:

b) Hire a personal trainer?

To spare you the suspense, the answer is b. I would go so far as to guess that of the celebrities listed above, zero of them consistently use, or have ever used Nutrisystem. I would go so far as to say that Nutrisystem basically admits this. See all those asterisks above? I got those straight off the Nutrisystem web site. Every single “testimonial” from a celebrity about their weight loss carries one of those asterisks, every time their weight loss figure appears. Here’s how Marino’s bio reads:

I saw the success my buddy Jim Stuckey had on the program, so I gave Nutrisystem a call. Boy, am I glad I did. I lost 22 lbs.* on the program and I feel great. I haven’t been this weight since I started playing pro football back in 1983. I got a variety of delicious foods to eat, and they were super easy to prepare. It was an easy, convenient and delicious way to feel satisfied.

“My friends call me ‘Skinny.’”

The weight just kept coming off. My goal was getting to 20 pounds lost, and I got to 22*-and I’ve kept it off for two years now. My wife loves the way I look and my family is amazed at how much younger I appear. I even have a new nickname. My friends call me “Skinny.” I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that. I wanted to look better and feel better than I had since retiring, and Nutrisystem help me reach that goal. Nutrisystem was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

On each page on the site that an asterisk appears, somewhere these words will as well: “*Results not typical.” So that’s it, folks: if you want a diet “system” where losing 22 lbs. isn’t even typical, Nutrisystem is the one for you. But I wouldn’t take Dan Marino’s word for it.

THIRD BASE: GFAIL There was a minor panic from some quarters of the Internet when GMail went down for about 100 minutes yesterday. Google was doing some upgrades and took part of its server offline, not realizing that they had miscalculated how much those servers kept GMail chugging along — that’s the story according to the GMail blog. Sounds good enough to me, and I was able to access GMail through my iGoogle portal. Still, some people reveled in the “GFail” episode. A certain floppy-haired former sports blog editor exulted on his Twitter feed: “By the way: So rarely is stubbornly hanging onto Yahoo! Mail worth all the mockery I receive. Thanks, Gmail!” He’s right about one thing: it’s rare that holding onto other mail systems is worth it. I consistently recruit people who have no reason otherwise not to switch to GMail — can’t, for work or paranoia reasons — to make the leap, and many of them just won’t do it, hemming and hawing about people not finding their new address, or whatever. I’m sure they felt good yesterday, but let me impress this upon them: they likely spend far more than those 100 minutes negotiating the anachronistic layouts of those mail systems per year already; this evened the playing field for a bit. GMail was, and still is, better than any other mail system, and the fascination — from GMail users and non-GMail users alike — with a slight service disruption is silly. It’s the Internet. It happens.

HOME: YES Deadspin put together a comprehensive look at the Mets’ season-to-date, an exercise in creative losing that would make Cubs fans proud. Some Mets fans are over it, consoled by the fact that “no one cares,” but to deny the cause-and-effect involved — and to ignore the sheer artistry of their losing — would be unfortunate. Seasons like this often seep into the ether once they’re over, gone forever, and this one probably will, too, so we’ve got to cherish it while it lasts. These results aren’t typical.