I left my heart with Francisco

Francisco Liriano, you're killing me.

Sure, you're single-handedly doing your best to torpedo my fantasy team's ERA and WHIP, and making my prediction that you were going to win 35 games this year look a little foolish. But that's not why you're killing me. You're killing me because you just don't have it anymore, and it's sad.

It's sad to see you pitch this way. Let me back up and say I haven't watched Fran pitch live yet this season. For some reason they just don't broadcast Minnesota Twins games here in mid-Missouri. I mean, I know the Twins are a big money team, but they just don't do it. Because of this, all I can do is watch the highlights and read the box scores. Have you tried to read his box scores this season? It's painful. Every five days he takes the hill, and every five days I want to vomit on my keyboard.

Long gone are the days of 7 innings with one earned and 11 strikeouts. In 2006, Liriano's first legit season as a starter, he was 12-3 with a 2.16 ERA in 16 starts. He had 144 strikeouts and only 32 walks in 121 innings. Over that span, he arguably outpitched teammate Johan Santana, multiple Cy Young award winner perhaps one of the best lefties in the history of the game. Liriano's combination of moving heat and a slider would kill all sorts of hitters.

And now it's all gone. Exhibit A: Today's absolutely abysmal start against the A's. 2/3 of an inning, 6 earned, 3 walks. While his other outings this season haven't been quite this bad, none of them have been good. It's too early to call it yet, but it seems like Liriano is most certainly losing his fight with Tommy John surgery. He's lost speed and movement on his fastball, and hitters and managers across the league have come out and said he's more hittable than ever (aka hittable at all).

And so here we all are, all the people who fell in love with the Twins phenom who was on the path to greatness, only to have his body fail him so drastically. Few ever come back from the precipice of Tommy John surgery, and all signs point to Liriano having only a few toes left on the edge. We were all rooting for him. We didn't need godly, just good. But, at least right now, it doesn't look like that's going to be the case. As of April 25th he's not even a major leaguer, haven't been sent back down to AAA. Hopefully he'll be down there for a few months, get his stuff and his head back in order. If the Twins were smart, they'd tell him he wasn't being brought up any time before the All-Star break, therefore taking some of the pressure off of him to come out and revert back to old unhittable form immediately.

Too many times young athletes screw up on or off the field, not living up to their potential or pissing it away in an endless number of imaginative ways. Fran can only be guilty of a faulty elbow. Who knows? Maybe he'll turn it around five days from now and show some signs of the old Liriano. If he doesn't how will he be remembered? Will we all have to watch him flounder as team after team takes a chance on him? Will we have to watch the husk of the old Liriano pitch, all the while being reminded of the success of 2006? While the end of his pitching career is something nobody can write, we can certainly hope that the next pages are filled with more w's than l's.

Playoff ad campaigns are awesome...unless they involve Dane Cook

It seems like sports advertising treats playoff season the same way athletes do: They kind of keep it going throughout the season, staying consistent, at times rising to the occasion and doing something really flashy, but mainly just lay up and shoot for par. Then, the playoffs come, and they turn it up a notch. Each sport comes up with a gimmick that is usually pretty good. When they hit, they're awesome, and almost every single one of each campaign is great. Are they played about 9,000 times a night? Absolutely, especially during the games themselves. While I would probably cut the airing rate by about a third, at least we're getting some good stuff. I'm a big sucker for epic, and I enjoy sports, and I suppose I like moments (it's hard to hate those, right?) Therefore, the transitive property of equality says epic sports moments are right in my wheelhouse.

What got me onto this topic, anyway? The NBA has had some great ads all year, with the "Where Amazing Happens" commercials. This is one of the better campaigns I've seen in a while, and it really helps highlight some of the most exciting and dramatic moments of the past couple years. The style it's shot in, the piano music in the background, the great photography that catches the emotion of the moments, all of it's great. One of the better things about these ads is that the NBA kept updating them. They made new ones after the Rockets went on their 22-game winning streak and leading up to playoff time. Selling their product with an artistic ad campaign was a great move by the NBA. Now they've followed up with the "There Can Only be One" side-by-side face ads featuring some interesting pairings (Kobe and Shaq being at the top of the list). They skip the in-your-face, punch-you-in-the-gut stuff and just utilize the natural drama of the game itself. Awesome.

One of my other favorite playoff ad campaigns was the 2002 NFL playoff series featuring Don Cheadle. Now, a lot of this came from Cheadle, who could recite the nutrition information off a Luna bar and make it sweet. But his definitive, dramatic delivery and the clips that accompany it make you feel like he cares about the playoffs, and make you want to care, too. Because, let's face it, who doesn't want to be like Don Cheadle? Make sure you check out the Kevin Dyson clip, not only because Cheadle lays out on the field, but also to relive one of the best moments in St. Louis sports history (with a great call from Mike Bush).

While there's been plenty of hits over the past several years in playoff advertising, there's also been some misses. One that comes to mind features one of the most overrated celebrities making millions today. Baseball's inexplicable Dane Cook campaign from last year's playoffs was vomit-inducing. First off, he sucks. Hard. You see those things and you wonder if he watched a game all year, much less all of his life. They are all flashy like a Pokémon cartoon, but they didn't do a whole lot for the game itself. There's only one October? No shit, Dane. Unfortunately, there's plenty of reasons why your commercials suck.