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My first tennis coach was quite the character. Like most coaches who have "been around" he had seen it all. He was pretty cool about losses and usually found a way to turn a loss into what he would call "a teaching moment"; he'd put his arm around his student, walk around the complex and attempt to soothe the bruised ego of the student by bringing up something he or she did right during the loss. Sometimes it would be difficult to do and rarely if ever did he use his favorite term of doom when talking with a student.
God-awful.
Whenever we heard that from Paul we knew that we had royally screwed up. For him to say that meant there was absolutely nothing salvageable from that loss. You knew you had wasted not only your time but everyone else's including his. No arm around the shoulder, no reassuring words and no walk around the complex. He would look you in the eye and say "that was God-awful".
God-awful describes perfectly what we witnessed on Wednesday afternoon from Jason Hammel. Hammel had been less than spectacular his first three outings with the A's and while there were moments in each game where we could at least find something positive to say there was nothing good about Wednesday. Nothing good at all; he wasted everyone's time including his and put the Green and Gold in a hole that not even a great team known for amazing comebacks could dig their way out of.
Just God-awful.
I think the question on my mind, and probably yours as well, is if he should get another chance and apparently Bob Melvin is going to run him out there again next Tuesday against David Price and the Tampa Bay Rays. I wouldn't do it would you?
On today's Phil Naessens Show, which happens to be my 999th episode, Alex and I talked about Hammel and we also mentioned Billy Burns as well, SLC Dunk Managing Editor Amar joined me to take a closer look at the NBA's Central Division and Halos Heaven Lead Writer "Turks Teeth" stopped by to discuss trade rumors involving the Los Angeles Angels, Josh Hamilton and much more Angels news. I'll leave the player below or you can download the show from my site here.
Click here for Thursday's FanDuel fantasy baseball contest!
