Deep Thought of the Day

Oftentimes, when we see a person walking down the street wearing a replica jersey, we find it enjoyable to turn to our friends and jokingly say, "Hey look, it's [insert athlete's name here]!" when in reality the person in question looks absolutely nothing like the athlete whose jersey he's wearing.

But when you see someone in a truly obscure jersey -- say, for example, a Carolina Panthers Keary Colbert edition -- given the scarcity of such jerseys in the general populace, is it safe to assume that the individual in question could very well be: a) a close friend and/or confidant of the Colbert family, b) a member of the Colbert family, or c) Keary Colbert himself?

I Think I See Blue... He Looks Glorious

Kind of like Roger Clemens' brief season with the Yankees thus far, this video starts off well -- think 6 IP, 3 ER, 7 k's in a win over Pittsburgh on June 9th -- then hits a wall about midway through (sort of like the Rocket did at Coors Field last week).

In any case, there are some quality moments here, and frankly some of the best comedic acting by a really, really old dude since Patrick Cranshaw (R.I.P.) made his inspired turn as Joseph "Blue" Palasky in Old School. The finest moment of that performance of course being the scene wherein Blue -- moments before his death -- is preparing to wrestle a pair of half-nude co-eds in a kiddie pool filled with K-Y Jelly and turns to Will Ferrell's character of Frank Ricard to say, "Ring the bell you fuckin' pansie," a very firm reminder that he (Blue) is indeed very much ready to begin the wrestling match.

We fully understand that the Yankees are an organization steeped in decades and decades of tradition, and that they're one of the most recognizable and (in some people's minds) respected organizations in all of sports and blah blah blah. But wouldn't it be wonderful if some video editing genius reenacted the scene with Blue from Old School and dubbed in Roger Clemens in Blue's place? Just picture it: Right before Clemens came out of the bullpen for every start he would look right at the monitor and say in his most intense Texas drawl, "Ring the bell you fuckin' pansie," and then charge onto the field as the crazed Bronx crowd heaved hot dogs, beer bottles, cheap giveaway t-shirts and anything else they could find onto the field in delirious excitement.

Wouldn't any baseball fan in his right mind -- Yankee hater or not -- pay good money to see this scene unfold?


"Dammit, Blue was old. That's what old people do. They die."
-Bernard "Beanie" Campbell

This Man's Urethra Hurts

Took a trip out to Shea Stadium last evening for the Mets-Twins game. Included in our party: Two Twins fans (one wearing a t-shirt with a giant image of Kirby Puckett’s face), one Mets fan and one Braves fan.

At one point during the game, a Mets fan with a shaved head and glazed-over look in his eyes who was sitting nearby turned to one of the Twins fans in our group and said, “Kirby Puckett’s dead.”

(To give you a sense of the truly hollow look on this guy’s face, picture the coked-out former jock who reads poetry to John Cusack’s character during the high school reunion in Grosse Pointe Blank.)

In response to this Kirby Puckett-related insult (if it could be called that), the Twins fan responded in a measured but slightly snooty tone, “What’s the score?”

At the time, the score was in fact 9-0 Twins, and this was essentially the Twins fan’s way of saying, “Look at the scoreboard, bitch.” In other words, he wasn’t actually asking for the score; his question was a means of pointing out that the Twins were destroying the Mets.

But this Mets fan – not being the sharpest Ginsu knife in the kitchen – didn’t realize this. So, he simply responded, “It’s nine-nothing.”

At this point, his friend – realizing that the Twins fan had been mocking them – leaned in and informed him of this fact. And the Mets fan decided to fire back an insult of his own:

“Johan Santana takes steroids through his penis hole,” he said.

Even if you hate the place, sometimes you’ve gotta love Shea Stadium.

Slow Day at the Office

On a day when the most compelling sports news we can think of is an almost 300-pound man hitting an inside the park homer and very nearly careening off the face of the Earth (which, by the way, is flat) while rounding third base, we thought it might be a good time to empty our overburdened mind of some random, sports-related thoughts:

• Courtesy of our friend Frank G. Yak: Did you know that if Jason Kidd had a child, and gave that child the first name of Kidd, you could conceivably have a sentence that goes “Look, there goes Jason Kidd’s kid, Kidd Kidd, kid.” (The last “kid” of course being the colloquial use of “kid” to mean, essentially, “my friend.” As in, “What's up, kid?”)

• You know you’ve been watching too much baseball when you begin to think of your secondary (cell phone) alarm clock as the cleanup hitter, which thereby protects your original alarm (the #3) hitter from being “pitched around,” i.e., accidentally shut off by you, the person who’s trying to go back to sleep. Does this mean that your alarm clock successfully rousing you out of bed is a home run? Because it certainly doesn’t feel like one.

• Is it just us, or does it seem like the pro athlete population has an unusually high occurrence of appendectomies? Seems like we hear about a pro athlete having an appendectomy about once a month. Or is it possible that pro athletes have appendectomies just as often as people in the normal civilian population, and it’s just that we don’t hear about every single thing that happens to normal, everyday people?

• Have you every played the game where you pick up a baseball and throw it with your opposite hand, and in turn make your friends do the same thing, because it’s one of the most ridiculous-looking things to watch an otherwise coordinated person do? It occurs to us that it would be horrible to play that game with this guy.

• There’s an old adage in baseball that when a team has one talented player who’s blocked by another (usually more experienced) player at the same position, “these things usually work themselves out.” And oddly enough, it seems to be sort of true. But how exactly did we figure that out? Was it just because people were being totally lazy and ignoring their baseball-related problems and then suddenly they started fixing themselves? And will other non-baseball problems create their own solutions if we just leave them alone?

On that note, if you’ll excuse us, we are now going to lie prostrate on the cold floor, drooling on our new shirt, for the duration of the afternoon.

Most Mindless Thing Ever Posted on This Site

Your attention please: Our system has just suffered from a massive, unexpected, crippling brain fart. All circuits are completely blown. Technicians are currently working on the problem, and we expect to have everything back up and running within the next couple of hours. In the meantime please enjoy "Monkey falls out of tree."

Thank you, and a pleasant morning to you.

Chicks Dig the Long Ball

An early nominee for baseball highlight of the year: Dodgers pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo blasting a homer off John Maine on Tuesday and then flipping the bat away in a combination of pure glee and disdainful scorn for the pitch he just annihilated like a juiced-out-of-his gourd Bret Boone circa 2001.

Wrote one youtube viewer in the comments section below the video, "sickest pimp job of a homer ever."

We're not sure we could have phrased it better ourselves.

John Maine should have immediately been ejected for serving this thing up.

If anyone can find Vin Scully's call of this homer, we'd love to hear it. The only version we could find is... umm... not in English. Though we did understand the announcers when they said "Back-to-back-to-back." (Kuo's homer was the third straight for the Dodgers.)

As far as we can tell, they did not use the term "pimp job."

Beware the Gator-Grenade

Just when we thought that a fortnight might pass without hearing a peep from Elijah Dukes, the Devil Rays outfielder went ahead and threw a fresh coat of paint on what is quickly becoming a modern masterpiece of sketchiness.

The latest news: Dukes threw a Gatorade bottle at a foster child living with one of his relatives.

Appalling, right?

Wait, it gets better.

He actually threw the Gatorade bottle at the girl when she informed him that he had gotten her pregnant.

That's just horrible.

Oh yeah, one more thing: She’s 17 years old.

Yes, you read that all correctly. According to the article in the St. Petersburg Times, the sex was consensual and “no crime was committed,” which we find kind of confusing, because we were under the impression that there may be a “statute” in place that pertains to the sort of behavior discussed above.

But we’re not here to play investigator, detective, prosecutor or person who annoyingly stands on moral high ground. Instead, we’d like to focus on the role that the refreshing sodium-filled sports beverage played in the incident. Explains the woman (girl?), “we sat down and told him [about the pregnancy] and he got mad and threw a Gatorade at me.”

Why does this strike us as noteworthy?

In part, we find it rather amusing to picture Dukes sitting down on his sofa to crack open a refreshing Gatorade only to find out something he very much did not want to hear and then in turn discard the beverage. This is amusing, we think, because Gatorade clearly tries to associate itself with relief – i.e., it’s really what you’re looking for after a grueling, strenuous workout. But this episode casts the drink in an entirely different light. It is now the beverage of grief, anguish, anxiety – a drink you’re meant to hurl at somebody after they deliver some of the worst news imaginable.

Also, we find it funny that the foster girl/woman/child chose to invoke the brand name, instead of just saying “he threw his drink at me.” Why was the brand name really necessary? There’s no mention that Dukes “removed his New Era cap in exasperation and put his head in his hands.” If the Gatorade brand suffers an epic and devastating downturn in worldwide sales as a result of this incident – which at this point seems highly likely – the arbitrary choice of the girl/child/infant to mention Gatorade specifically will prove to be very costly indeed.

In light of all this, we’d like to propose an amendment to the English language: From this day forth, the term “throwing a Gatorade at someone” will mean “to assault an individual with unexpected, undesirable news.” So, as an alternative to the very much overused “Listen, I’ve got some bad news,” you can now say, “Brace yourself, [Insert person’s name]. I’m about to fire a 32 oz. Gatorade bomb in your general direction.”

And then tell that person whatever awful thing you have to say.

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Coming soon: A breakdown of our week long and occasionally death-defying trip to South America and what it taught us about the world of sports.

Belize Navidad

Everyone's been working so hard around here of late that we've decided to take the entire office on an all expenses paid trip to lovely Belize. (Actually, not everyone gets to go -- Bruce the Intern has to stay behind to collect the mail.)

The upshot of this is that we have no idea whether or not we'll be able to log onto Internet.com in the coming days, which means that there may not be any new posts until our return next Tuesday.

But keep checking back -- if we don't have Internet access, we'll be attempting to jerry rig a makeshift computer terminal out of several different forms of tree bark and some fish scales.

As always, thank you for your patience and understanding.

-The Management

Fire in the Hole

You have most likely heard by now that Cubs manager Lou Piniella has been suspended indefinitely for kicking dirt on umpire Mark Wegner on Saturday.

Which makes us think that if a suspension of indefinite length is the going rate these days for kicking dirt on an umpire, there’s no telling what might happen to Mississippi Braves manager Phillip Wellman after his absolutely epic tirade on Friday.

But in our humble opinion, the man should be seriously considered for the Nobel Prize.

If you haven’t already done so, watch the video above. Most of the two-plus minutes is pretty standard baseball manager flipping his lid sort of stuff. Running out of the dugout and firing the hat in the umpire’s general direction – seen it. Covering up home plate in dirt – check. Uprooting third base and chucking it into the outfield – seen that as well.

However, something we have never before seen – and now owe Mr. Wellman a tremendous debt of gratitude for having shown us – is the military-style crawl on elbows as if averting machine gun and mortar fire in the trenches followed by the grabbing of the rosin bag and flinging it like a hand grenade towards the stunned umpire at home plate.

Simply incredible.

If you find yourself wondering what the hell the significance might be of a manager pretending to fling a grenade in an umpire’s general direction, you’re probably not alone.

Then again, we probably don’t need to spend too much time over analyzing it. Generally speaking, grenades are used for blowing things up. And as far as umpire-related outbursts go, we'd say that "I want to detonate you with a compact explosive device" is above and beyond the standard "Your strike zone is worthless, Blue" sort of stuff we're used to hearing.

It appears to be only a matter of time before managers are soon storming out of the dugout doing jujitsu or capoeira the second they hit the top dugout step.

Though for some older managers – such as Braves skipper Bobby Cox – learning Brazilian dance fighting could prove to be a bit difficult. After all, at times it looks like both of Bobby's knees are going to explode mid-waddle.

So, for managers over the age of 65, we're proposing an alternative to hand-to-hand combat:

Such individuals will be permitted to carry a battle axe.