Hitting The Bottom of The Sixth...

    Today is August 16th. The only time a player in the MLB was killed during a game happened on this date back in 1920. Ray Chapman from the Indians took a bean ball to the head from Spitballer Carl Mays of the Yankees. I don’t know why I thought of the Red Sox immediately when I thought of this.

    Oh, yes I do. It was somewhere in the 6th inning last night, as the Orioles were chalking up 5 runs. I was wishing this was National League and Aaron Cook had to bat against Carl Mays in the next inning. Of course Mays would be 111 years old this November if he were still alive, so I’m thinking his bean ball wouldn’t still have the cheese, as Dennis Eckersley might say….

    I think what I liked best about Mays is that he was one of these phony baloney pious types that refused to play on Sunday, but also threw at any batter that dared to crowd the plate. When Mays was with the Red Sox, Ty Cobb threw his bat Mays because he was sick of getting hit with pitches. True to form, May hit Cobb with the very next pitch.

    When Chapman got hit with Mays’ killer fastball, he fell twice trying to reach  first base. I can’t actually see anyone on this current bloated Red Sox line-up with enough heart to leg out a grounder, let alone trying to reach first on their knees, their brain swelling to the size of a raccoon and blood filling their eyes. As much as I’d like to see it; your Boston Red Sox don’t have the moxie, as they say.

    When the benches emptied and players from both teams crowded around the sides of the dieing Chapman, Mays never left the mound. He just stood there tugging on his jock, wondering what he was going to do next Saturday night, with Sunday off and all. Even though he got traded to The Yankees, Mays would have been a perfect fit with today’s Red Sox.

Italy's New 'It' Boy...

    The decision to leave London was pretty easy, although no one would blame me for sticking around until The Pats/Giants game. I could have busied myself with some theatre in the West End, or a fox hunt or two; but frankly, I was getting sick of British teeth, and the game will suck anyway. The Giants will be lucky to put together 8 wins this season. They are already complaining that the beds at Giant‘s training camp are too uncomfortable and want ownership to supply them with softer mattresses. No wonder Justin Tuck had to be talked off the ledge. How can you expect a professional athlete to put up with a lumpy mattress used by, shutter, a college kid…
    Actually, that’s partially a lie. The decision to flee came shortly after Nadzeya Ostapchuk, the ‘female’ shot putter from Belarus who was just stripped of her Gold Medal for doping, ripped a sink out of the men’s room wall and chucked it at my head after an off-hand observation that women don’t normally pee standing up. But that’s a story for another time. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

    Perhaps the biggest news of the day is that Kelly Clarkson has co-written a new anthem for the Dallas Cowboys called ‘Get Up’, and honestly, nothing would get me out of my chair faster than a Kelly Clarkson song. Every day it becomes more and more apparent that the NFL is sick and tired of being America’s Number One Spectator Sport and are doing everything in their power to wussify the game for that rare level of mass acceptance available only to the most mediocre of entertainment options.
    Reality TV shows at training camp, a shirtless Tebow in GQ for God, The Falcons’ Harry Douglas refusing to return punts in the pre-season (of course, The Falcons hold camp at a place called Flowery Branch, so what do you expect?).
    I just received a call from the Grammar Nazis that I am not allowed to use commas inside parenthesis, but I’m not going to fix it. I told them I had to catch a train to the dedication of the memorial to Mussolini’s buddy Rodolfo Graziani just outside of Rome and they were OK with that. Heck, even the Pope is OK with that. The Vatican is sending a representative too…

London Calling

    Idea for a new Olympic event; trying to get from Heathrow Airport to the Saint George Hotel in London in less than four hours. Cabs are out, because the fare would be higher than most of the cute, little, off-brand country’s GNP. Can you see Coach Click-Click-Lipsmack-Tock explaining to Burkina Faso’s Olympic Committee that he just blew two week’s per diem on one cab ride? Remember, these are the people that killed Capt. Sankara in ‘57 over an unpaid bar tab.
    You could take a train, but when I tried there were three different rail strikes before we even left the terminal, and don’t get me started on no handicapped access on The Tube or we’ll have Oscar Pistorius bouncing around here complaining that he isn’t allowed to cheat, I mean, compete. Maybe next games he can get Casey Martin to drive him the 400-meters in his golf cart.
    You get bonus point if you can get anyone to look up from their newspaper or remove their ipod from their ears as three or five soccer hooligans beat and rape you, but you lose points if anyone spits, or gobs as they so cutely call it, on your shoes.
    Just one of the few thoughts that run through my head as I wait… and wait…

    Another quick thought: there is nothing wrong with the Red Sox that can be fix by Billy Martin, a bottle scotch and someone else’s pick-up truck, but  screw the Sox, it’s The Games, after all. USA, USA, USA…

    When I lived in China in the 80’s the air was so thick with coal dust everyone was wearing surgical mask. By the Beijing Games the air was even worst, but everyone was now wearing masked because of the armed robbery prices they were charging for simple things like clean water or a little fresh meat that had had even a passing acquaintance with refrigeration; and still Beijing wasn’t as bad as London. Literally, smog the size of charcoal briquettes. It’s all those frigging Dick Van Dyke-like chimney sweeps chim-chim-cheree-ing the soot into the air, I tell ya. And Gordon Ramsey aside, the Brits can’t cook.
    Now, I’m not here to be an ugly American, that would redundant. I’m here to talk about The Games. But, I seem to have run out of space. Maybe tomorrow I can answer the bigger questions, like why do all the women’s volleyball teams feel they need to make-out after each and every point, win or lose? I’m not complaining, mind you, Just asking…

On The House

    The Pat’s are getting about 20,000 fans daily down at camp this pre-season, so I figured I had better go down and check it out before Bob Kraft wises up and starts charging admission. He’s going to need that injection of fresh cash to help him keep shoveling coke up the noses of the pelt to which he’s become accustom since Myra passed.
    We’re talking pre-season workouts, and not even real workouts; but those lame-ass, ‘don’t even look at the quarterback or you’re back on the bus to Penn State rookie‘, workouts. The only thing these camps prepare you for is an early season hammy that will linger until Easter. Even still, the Pat’s are getting so many fans coming to watch, they’ve had to replace the turnstiles at the gate with Matt Light just to get people into the stadium quicker.
    I stopped by the press area to see if there was anyone there who owed me money, but rightfully, they had the radio people shunted off in their own pen with razor wire fences and Stacey James manning the door (when he wasn‘t busy metaphorically knob-gobbling the national press). Interesting side note: they tricked the radio people into the pen with promises of five minutes alone with Mark Hannon, where you could either beg for a job or stick a Nike Vapor Pro up his ass, depending on your pride level. Naturally, very few Vapor Pros were needed.

    Like every other moth in the dump, I was drawn to light of Tom Brady over near the end zone, playing toss. He was wearing what we used to call ‘pennies’ in gym class, so the other players knew not to hit him, and in case that didn’t work; he also had two large black men in ill-fitting suits on either side and a personal Foxboro cop on stand-by, ready to shoot or talk your ear off about all the over-time he just got screw out of because the casino is going to Taunton. To be fair, the extra security was needed because the Pat’s are sharing camp with the Saints, and who knows how many of those bounties are still active.
    Also standing with Brady was former Red Sox pitcher, Tom House. House is now a quarterback ‘coach’ because… Well, I’m not sure why. House was the gink in the bullpen that caught Hank Aaron’s record setting 715th home run and then ran all the way to home plate to give the ball to Aaron. House had to dough pop then Dodger’s left fielder, Bill Buckner and step over the crumpled body of Al Downing to get there, but House made sure the historic ball made it to Aaron. And what did Hammering Hank, always the gentleman, give House for his efforts? Not one red cent. Of course, this was in the days before eBay, so maybe they didn’t know what the open market value of the ball would be; but Aaron might have cracked the wallet a little for the effort. Hell, he's toss the ballboys a hundred just for shuttling the hookers away from his locker when the press would come in for a post-game presser.

    Anywho, rather than find out; I’m going to take a wild guess at why Tom House is working with Tom Brady and predict that Brady will have his best season ever! See, House was also one of the first major league baseball players to use steroids back in the 70’s. He didn’t just use them, he took college classes to study the long-term effects of human growth hormones during the off-season. Now why would Bill ‘Any Competitive Advantage’ Belichick want a man with 40 years of steroid experience on his staff? Hmmmm…
    I was going to ask Bill that very question, but he wasn’t at practice today. He was off at the funeral of another drug abuser, Garrett Reid…