Hello, fuckers. I am back (somewhat) from a summer spent learning the ins and outs of the legal sports betting industry for strictly self-serving business purposes. Also, my wife had our second child two weeks ago, on my birthday. We named him Chase, and he’s a real home run. Oh shit there’s stickers.

Anyway, I have thoughts about the CBP Beer Cycle. Behold, idiocy wrapped in the vestments of PT Barnum:

So many questions. Among them:

Has Jesse ever ridden a bike before?

Are we supposed to suspend our disbelief and just accept that he got this monstrosity to its live shot placement on his very own?

How does one fall to the side of a cycle craft that has three wheels? NO BALANCE IS REQUIRED.

More poignant here than poor Jesse (who has a delightful workman’s comp coming that I’m sure the folks at Farmers will put on their shelf of the weird and wonderful), however, is the decision to create the bike in the first place.

Prior to me rolling on the video, Tom McCarthy, who orates with the subtlety of a rototiller, said something along the lines of, “wow, the beer comes to you!” Yeah, you know what else brings the beer to you, Tom? The beer man. And he can do steps.

You see, the problem with this… thing… is its own novelty. Draft beer, cool!… until you remember that kegs are heavy and not meant to be transported long distances by human power. We have machines for that now, and strapping those bad boys to the back of the Phanatic’s ATV seems all too sensible if it were not for the overblown legal concerns that prevent Major League Baseball from doing anything even remotely inventive. Keep in mind, this is a league that needs a special weekend to allow players to wear custom footwear, when that sort of thing is par for the course in the thriving NBA. So I get not allowing a certainly-willing Phanatic to drive slunked-armed Phillies relievers in from the bullpen on his Suds and Duds Mobile, and rather opting for the safer option of allowing him to fire frozen hot dogs at old ladies’ faces and putting an hourly employee on a vehicle that is destined to injure him and everyone in its abbreviated path.

Of course, the whole segment – invention of the bike included – may have just been to set up John Kruk, who plays a caricature of a caricature of his hick demeanor which was never interesting in the first place and has a mismatching voice to boot, to crack about how you have to pump the keg handles, right, Tom? As if we haven’t heard the one where Kruk plays the drunken hillbilly who didn’t prepare for the game and just occasionally offers his elementary musings while a real character, the Sarge, rides with tops down in a Cadillac somewhere. Alas. The Phillies stink again and the beer cart might not make it through the week, which may somehow be longer than the Phils’ dwindling playoff chances.

Did you miss me?