Skipper Taps Out Early, Crew Follows Suit

Just resting my eyes, boss.

Off the coast of Scotland on Friday, the coast guard was informed that boats in the area had been seeing another ship going "round in circles" of the coast of the island of Kerrera. A rescue boat was sent to the scene, and a helicopter was put on standby. When the coast guard officers found and boarded the circling ship, they discovered that the captain was "asleep at the wheel" and the remaining crew members were "tucked up in their bunks."

As it turns out, that the ship, called the Morvern, had left its home port of Oban at about 7am. The coast guard discovered them asleep just after 8 am. They had been out to sea for just over an hour, and the entire crew is already asleep.

Now, this pretty much sets the bar for half-assing it at work. First of all, 7am is pretty damn late for leaving to go fishing. In Swansboro, North Carolina, if you leave to go fishing anytime after 5am, it's called "Gentleman Fishing." So they're late to work by about 2 hours, then they only last another hour before calling it a day. The best thing about this story, however, is the totally cavalier attitude of the crew by not making any effort to cover it up, at all. The Captain just turns the wheel hard to starboard, puts his head down, and craps out. They could have at least taken turns to sleep, making sure the damn boat was going in a straight line. Unbelievable.

Since alcohol did not play a part in this incident, the crew was woken up and allowed to continue, but the skipper is being investigated.

In case you're wondering, this story came to us via our favorite newspaper.

Pedro claims to have never eaten a hot dog, ever.

The HPO mailbag has been exploding with questions about why we constantly refer to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as "the team that Pedro Martinez owns." The answer, dear readers, comes in the form of statistics. Allow us to digress.

Pedro Martinez has made 20 career starts against the D-Rays (the only team he has faced more times is the Yanks). He is 11-4 in those 20 starts. 5 of those starts were complete games, and 2 of those 5 were shutouts.

In 135.2 innings pitched, he allowed 95 hits, struck out 172, walked 27, and surrendered only 5 taters. His ERA against Tampa is 1.99, with a WHIP of 0.90 and a BAA of .193

His peripherals look something like this: 6.37 K/BB 11.41 K/9IP .33 HR/9

That, coupled with the fact that he once beaned the first batter of the game, then pitched a one-hitter, pretty much means he owns that team.