A New Dynasty? The Boneyard Strikes Again

As April chugs along to a close, it is looking more and more like 2010 will finally be the year of the Boneyard. Always an eager participant yet never a serious competitor, the Boneyard have just recorded their second kill of the season with the death of John Forsythe, setting a franchise record with 8 months still remaining.

GM Jess sounded cautiously optimistic in a conference call with reporters, citing the strong remaining roster of the 'Yard. "It's a great position to be in with two points already on the board, and all of our top five picks still marching toward death," he said. "Olivia de Haviland turns 93 in a couple months, and Zsa Zsa Gabor can't have too much left in the tank. If we can get any of that remaining talent to turn into casualties, it should be a special year for our organization."

Mike Carroll Suffers From Premature Prognostication

So you probably expected this to be a Corey Haim post, seeing as how he passed away and will now have an award named after him (more on that later). However we couldn't let the event go without mentioning the ghost of Mike Carroll.

Carroll backed out of the league this year after battling a chronic laziness, and as punishment, the Death Gods are taunting him by methodically killing off his entire '09 roster. To wit, his Icons of America Assassin team would be out to a commanding lead with 3 points already before the quarter-pole of the season, due to the deaths of Chemical Ali (1 point) and Corey Haim (2 points). We would be talking about his place in history, whether this season would be one for the ages. Instead, we're just remembering what a dumbass he is. Instead of a statue in his honor, he gets an unflattering picture of him eating pizza, and an sexual dysfunction joke. And yes, part of that motivation was to ensure that you could Google "Mike Carroll" and "sexual dysfunction" and guarantee results. Although guaranteeing results was the problem to begin with for him (cue rimshot!).

So congratulations, Mike Carroll, for leaving more on the proverbial table than any team before you. The Carroll Award shall now be given annually to the GM who fails to keep the most players who die the next year. In keeping with the spirit of the Carroll, if no GM qualifies, or a tiebreaker is needed, the award shall be given to the GM who is most disappointing in bed, as determined by a panel of ex-lovers.

In other news, Corey Haim died. We would write a long post in memorium, complete with bad puns and '80's references, but this one isn't a big deal to us. '80's child stars are much more Brock's area of expertise. The death is significant only in that it was such an obvious pick that it's an absolute travesty nobody picked him. We think it shows a) the need for expansion, and b) how little effort people put into their under-50 picks compared to the old folk. But from now on, the Corey Haim Award will be given to the most obvious under-50 death that nobody picked. Yes, there have been others in years past that would qualify, such as Brad Renfro, but Haim was an even more egregious oversight, and worthy of the award title. For those interested, the name of the award for most obvious over-50 death not predicted will likely be the Paul Bleeping Newman Award, unless a better one comes to mind.

Holden Your Horses! The Boneyard Gets a Kill!

Score one for the good guys, as the Boneyard ended its roughly year-and-a-half drought with the death of J.D. Salinger. While not a complete surprise, it was nonetheless a great kill for the Boneyard to score points with someone outside their top 3 picks. Salinger, last seen outside the Dakota Hotel in 1980 as pictured above, was not a popular selection among the growing number of Death Pool statheads. These people, known in the death community as sabermorticians, argued that while Salinger looked like a good pick using traditional statistics such as age and lifestyle during youth, there were red flags that should have caused owners to draft elsewhere.

The statheads pointed out that Salinger had an extremely high Castro rating for an American still living in the United States. For the unititiated, a player's Castro rating, named after Fidel Castro, is a calculation of the likelihood that the player may die during the season without the news reaching the Death Pool community (Coincidentally or perhaps not, Fidel Castro is also a member of the 2010 Boneyard team). Typically a high Castro rating is found in players living in dictatorships or Communist countries, where news of the death can be controlled through suppression of the media. A less common reason for a high Castro rating is when the player is an obscure person, usually a controversial selection, such that their death may not even be newsworthy. However, as the recent death of Miep "Asterisk" Gies proved, even the smallest of deaths can be recognized with the help of the Internet.

In Salinger's case, he had been a recluse for many years, so much so that there was concern he may die without anyone realizing it for some time. No photographs have been taken of him in decades. Fortunately this was not the case, as Salinger's death received an appropriate amount of attention, and assassins across the world wept as one.

In any event, the quick kill by the Boneyard serves notice to the rest of the league that last year was a fluke, and they will be a force to reckon with in 2010. Traditionalists will argue that the Boneyard is actually better positioned to win the title than the mighty Tomorrow's History squad, as the History's #1 player is off the board, while the Boneyard still has their top 5 selections alive. However, the sabermorticians prefer the History, arguing that the Boneyard simply drafted poorly, as they did last year, and that GM Jess has a squad of players with poor UZRs (Underworld Zone Rating) and VORPs (Value of Rigor mortis Potential). Who is right? Stay tuned for the first 2010 Power Rankings to find out!

1*

Putting an end to a dark chapter in Death Pool history, Miep Gies passed away January 11, giving Bruce the first kill of the year. If you'll recall, Gies was the most controversial selection at the 2008 Death Pool draft. The ironically-named OC Angels, who had already made the satanic decision to select the great John Wooden, selected Gies, and the pick was immediately challenged on the grounds of her not being famous enough to qualify for selection. Here is what we wrote in 2009 about Gies's qualifications:

Sure, 99 is ripe to pass away, but will we actually find out about it in 2009? According to the world's most reputable news source, Wikipedia, Gies lives somewhere in a cottage in Northern "Holland," and hasn't done media interviews in a couple years. Gies doesn't even have a picture on Wikipedia. For God's sake, anal beadshave their own picture on Wikipedia! And yes, we wrote that sentence solely to pull in the crowd of people Googling "miep gies" with "anal beads."

A vote by all teams was taken, in a process rife with behind the scenes manuevering not seen since Bush v. Gore. In the end, the Gies pick passed by a single vote, amidst rumors that there had been more collusion than the BCS. A subsequent DPG investigation revealed that in fact some had voted to allow Gies purely to spite the group of owners who were against the pick and had also expressed their displeasure with the Wooden pick.

As a result, Gies was scooped up by Tomorrow's History in 2009 when the Angels dissolved, a disbanding no doubt influenced by the backlash from the original pick. When discussing Bruce's tainted heist, we noted:

The selection of the 99-year-old Gies was met with grumbles and groans all the way around, as again there were calls for her (his?) disqualification. Unfortunately, much like the designated hitter and Ryan Seacrest, accepting Gies appears to be a bad decision that will haunt us for years to come.

Truer words were never spoken.

Your 2010 Death Pool Rosters! (final version!)

We're not here to talk about the past. We're here to talk about people kicking the bucket in 2010, and how prophetic we are for picking them.

A couple noteworthy items:

*Much like Major League Baseball, the rich keep getting richer, as defending champions Quoth the Raven have added GM Tori from the defunct Bring Out Yer Dead. We will see how this affects team management over the course of the season, and will analyze the impact on their draft in our first Power Rankings installment.

*Only one new team thus far (Prophet of Death), making this the most experienced, and presumably toughest group of teams to date.

And away we go. . .

Quoth the Raven (Brock & Tori)

1. Elizabeth Taylor

2. Gloria Stuart

3. Nelson Mandela

4. John Wooden

5. Dick Clark

6. Kim Jong-il

7. Abe Vigoda

8. Steve Jobs

9. Annette Funicello

10. Al Davis

Under 50:

1. Amy Winehouse

2. Courtney Love

3. Michael J. Fox

4. Brian Bonsall

5. Pam Anderson

Tomorrow's History (Bruce)

1. Miep Gies

2. Art Linkletter

3. Rose McCain

4. Kirk Douglas

5. Sergeant Schriver

6. C. Everett Koop

7. Beverly Cleary

8. Sadduhara Oh

9. Sherwood Schwartz

10. Jack Klugman

Under 50:

1. Kate Moss

2. Balthazar Getty

3. Paula Abdul

4. Kirk Cameron

5. Pete Dougherty

The Black Hand (Popovich)

1. Margaret Thatcher

2. Peter O'Toole

3. Mickey Rooney

4. Harry Morgan

5. Billy Graham

6. Sen. Robert Byrd

7. Peter Falk

8. John Paul Stevens

9. Jake LaMotta

10. Marion Berry

Under 50:

1. Mindy McCready

2. Mischa Barton

3. Darryl Strawberry

4. Lindsey Lohan

5. Steve-O

The Boneyard (Jess)

1. Zsa-Zsa Gabor

2. Olivia de Haviland

3. Ernest Borgnine

4. Joan Fontaine

5. Betty Ford

6. J.D. Salinger

7. Peter Tork

8. John Forsythe

9. Phyllis Diller

10. Fidel Castro

Under 50:

1. Artie Lange

2. Tawny Kitaen

3. Suge Knight

4. Tara Reid

5. Joaquin Phoenix

Prophet of Death (Nancy)

1. Andy Rooney

2. Muhammad Ali

3. Jerry Lewis

4. Hugh Downs

5. Bob Dylan

6. Hugh Hefner

7. Arnold Palmer

8. Ozzy Ozborne

9. Cloris Leachman

10. John Goodman

Under 50:

1. George Michael

2. Daniel Baldwin

3. James Franco

4. Criss Angel

5. Ryan Seacrest

Celebrity Stalker (Bobby)

1. George H.W. Bush

2. Barbara Bush

3. Keith Richards

4. Stephen Tyler

5. Clint Eastwood

6. Rush Limbaugh

7. Nancy Reagan

8. George Steinbrenner

9. Joe Paterno

10. Yitzhak Shamir

Under 50:

1. Verne Troyer

2. Scott Weiland

3. Bobby Brown

4. Mike Tyson

5. Lady GaGa

The Lucky Fours (Scott & Maile)

1. B.B. King

2. Ariel Sharon

3. Prince Philip

4. Betty White

5. Bob Barker

6. Jimmy Carter

7. Angela Lansbury

8. Andy Griffith

9. Merlin Olsen

10. Stephen Hawking

Under 50:

1. Bridgette Nielsen

2. Gary Coleman

3. Chyna

4. Mary-Kate Olsen

5. David Blaine

Your 2009 Death Pool Champ: Quoth the Raven

Bringing joy to their long-suffering fanbase, one which had grown restless of playing the bridesmaid year after year, the Ravens finally broke through in 2009, amassing a solid collection of 3 kills to become 2009 Death Pool champions. Congrats to GM Brock and the rest of the QTR staff, as their hard work has finally been rewarded.

Because Brock refuses to post on the website, the duty falls upon us to write his victory speech. However, we thought it would be selfish not to share his laziness with the rest of you, so without further adieu, may we present Brock's Victory Speech, Mad Libs version!

"Thank you very much. First, I'd like to [verb] the Commissioner, and the rest of the teams in the league for giving us a [adjective] season this year. I'd also like to take a minute to [verb] the players who led to our [adjective] success: Les Paul, Karl Malden, and Bea Arthur. Without their [plural noun], we couldn't have brought home the [noun] this year."

"Now that that's out of the way, let me [adverb] talk about the real issue here: U$C football. Like [obscure movie character] once said, [even more obscure movie quote from a different movie]. When I'm [verb ending in -ing] in bed late at night, dreaming of [U$C football player]'s [noun], one thing comes to mind: [food served at Ted's]. And when I think of [verb ending in -ing] Pete Carroll once and for all, it reminds me of our success this year. Oh, and by the way, [random Godfather character]."

Congrats again to Brock, and if he ever decides to write an actual victory speech, we'll post it.