Where Are They Now, 2001 Edition; Ernie From Scarface
Last night was the MLB's 80th Annual All-Star Game, an event that saw a Tampa Bay Ray win the MVP award. (Rightly or wrongly, that just happened. Mark it down.)
The night also called for newly elected President Jack O'Barmer to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. His effort wasn't great, but nor was it all that bad, considering he had on such a big bulletproof vest that he looked more like the Michelin Man. Or Tank Abbott.
However, the very sight of seeing a President throwing out the first pitch reminded me of one of the finest first pitches I've ever seen, an offering by ex-President and a prolific drawer of ire, George W. Bush. The following offering comes from the first Major League Baseball game played after the September 11th disaster; I watched it live, and it loses nothing in a re-run 8 years later.
All told, that's a pretty good looking curveball.
But, wait; speaking of good looking, who's that man at the top of the stairs? Rewind back to the 20 second mark; who's this guy?
Closer.
CLOSER.
(Nope, too close.)
I know who that is. I know that face. That's Ernie from Scarface, that is.
No, really; it is.
There you have it, the shocking revelation that Ernie Daniels, the moustachioed henchman and trusted ally of Tony Montana, is actually responsible for matters of natural security.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, really, considering Ernie's staunch loyalty and devotion to protocol is what prevented Tony from shooting his ass in the first place (not shooting in his ass). But it is a bit of a shocker. Especially since I'm pretty sure Ernie died in the film.
Still, though. He's looking well.
(Note: Ernie's surname given here is entirely speculative.)
Bonus: In completely unrelated news that pertains slightly more to the point of this website, the University of Georgia announced the hiring of Mark Pope as athletics co-ordinator. If you take two things that might be worth posting but which don't merit their own post, and put them together in one big cut-and-shut post, then maybe you have yourself a worthwhile post. Maybe.
For some reason, I've forgotten how to enjoy sports. Ever since crying my pre-teen eyes out after Nayim scored the luckiest fucking goal in human history (a cry exacerbated by stubbing my pre-teen toe on the doorframe while angrily storming out of the room; I'm not sure which hurt more), I've kind of detatched myself from the emotion of sport. I expect Arsenal to win every game that they play, but get around the emotional aspect of it all by never talking about football in real life and by rarely watching the games. I expect England to underachieve at everything that they participate in, and get around the emotional aspect of it all by having those expectations continually fulfilled. And I expect the Bulls to disappoint me endlessly, getting around the emotional side of things by spending so much time following the sport of basketball that I am nothing but a passionless wreck. (Readers note: I'm single. Being passionless and going to bed at 6am every day will do that to a man.)
Baseball is exempt from this bland unemotive behaviour, though. Despite it being far from the sport that I enjoy the most, it's the only sport in which I can enjoy sport. Maybe feeling like that makes me insane, or maybe that sentence was just codshit. The grammar certainly doesn't suggest that I have any idea what the hell I just said. But I stand by it nonetheless.
When it comes to basketball, I'll watch any old shit that I happen to come across. (Giggidy.) I'll watch ABA games, and a few years of doing so has bettered my understanding of Ace Custis's defense, Darryl Dawkins's wardrobe, and Olden Polynice's maverick free throw routines. I'll watch Cameroon versus Angola, if it means I can get a Cucumber Amootay player profile out of it. And I saw more of the women's basketball during the Olympics than the men's, although this wasn't really my fault. (See also: previous post about crappy basketball coverage in England.) But with baseball, I can only watch games that the Rays are in. It's just not that interesting of a game otherwise. You can tell what happened in a box score, without watching a single moment of the action. It's arguably the only sport that it's more enjoyable not to watch.
Watching the games of only one team allows me something that other sports just don't offer: I can be a fan again. As deeply and obsessively as I follow the NBA - and the Chicago Bulls in particular - I learnt how to stop taking losses personally about five years ago. (Tip: don't talk to other fans.) Without that, I had lost the most important part of fandom. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it will allow for a far easier time when I get that assistant general manager's job with another franchise that seems so inevitable to a man of such pedigree and qualifications, but it also sucks a little in ways that I shouldn't need to explain. Not so with baseball. I only know and care about one team. That allows for blind passion. And blind passion is awesome when it goes right.
I don't know why I support the Rays. I just sort of do. My first few years of casually watching baseball drew me towards the Atlanta Braves, mainly because they were the only tesm on telly. But after becoming an avid box score watching nerdy old sadarse back in 2005, I found myself always checking the Rays boxscores first. I don't know why. Maybe I'm heavily depressed without realising it. Or maybe I just love false hope.
Either way, it's false hope no more. The Rays are now, officialy, the best team in the American League. I was there for it, watching every minute of almost every game. (I fell asleep during the seventh inning stretch of game 5, which turned out to be an piece of accidental genius.) And I've never had more fun as a sports fan than game seven just now.
In a matter of days, the Rays will soon be the unequivocal best baseball team in the world. Join the bandwagon now, before people start hating you for it. Pink hats not available in the foyer.
Reds manager Dusty Baker took the unusual step of bringing up a rumor Wednesday to deny it.
There's been a persistent rumor floating around the Reds that Baker's 28-year-old daughter, Natosha, is dating and/or engaged to outfielder Corey Patterson.
Baker finally had enough when players on the Astros asked him about it.
There's no truth to it, Baker said. Natosha is not dating Patterson.
"She hasn't even been to Cincinnati," Baker said. "This is so far out of line. It's hurtful to my wife and daughter. How can people stoop that low? I don't know who started it. But I've been hearing from fans, players, announcers."
Heh. Awesome.
No offense to Dusty Baker, Corey Patterson or Natosha. But that's fantastic.
I want to somehow make it funnier, but I'm not sure that's possible.
I know that it's currently the really exciting NBA free agency negotiation period and all that, and that I should be providing incisive dynamic commentary on the wonders/failures of various moves. But I'd be doing you all, and myself, a great disservice if I didn't post sports related handjob videos. It's part of this site's mantra.
I don't really like heckling. I'm English, and we play sports the same way that we used to fight wars - like gentleman. And it's not very gentlemanly to shout at people at work under the misguided idea that it's totally fine because you paid to be there. Regardless of what level of entitlement you feel that you have from handing over your entrance fee, you're still being a twat if you heckle. And we should all strive at all times to not be a twat. So this is why I'm against the practice.
("Sledgling", though, is another matter. Player on player heckles are fantastic. But the fans should probably just shut up.)
If you're going to heckle, though, at least be good at it. If you're going to heckle, plan it in advance. Think about your statements, and compile a rotation of barbs, a menu, a plan of attack, a pincer movement. Research your facts, from such basic ones as learning the names of the people and teams you are heckling, to somethiung more obscure that might actually get a player's attention, and make your endeavour worthwhile. It's absolutely imperative that you are better at the art of verbal warfare than the player you are yelling at. If you're not, you're going to look like a shitarse. Particularly if your girlfriend films it and puts it on the internet.
The Toronto Blue Jays fan in this video demonstrates exactly how not to do it. Seemingly acting on a whim, the fan goes at Tampa Bay Rays reliever Troy Percival with the only Percival-related facts that he has:
a) Percival is old. b) Percival has only won one World Series.
That's not a lot, really. Indeed, so short of ammo is this fan, that he tries to somehow fashion that second factoid into a negative. (Since whenw as winning a World Series a reason to heckle a baseball player? Strange times.)
Worse than his firepower is his delivery. Awkward, incomplete, and suffering from a distinct lack of knowledge towards the names of the guys in the bullpen (readers note: like I said, research is fundamental), the fan compounds his problems by leaving long pauses, getting the team name wrong, letting his girlfriend join in (always a mistake) using the shittest jokes you've ever heard, and filming himself dying this painful death. He sets himself up for an easy downfall.
Percival puts him away comfortably.
Annoying Fan To A Warming Up Troy Percival: "That pitch was high and outside!" A Warming Up Troy Percival To Annoying Fan: "Your mum is high and outside."
A textbook dispatch.
That is how to kick your own ass. If you're going to heckle, you need to win. The people you're shouting at, as the invisble female voice helpfully points out, are professional athletes. You aren't the first people ever to heckle them, and you're probably not even the first ones to do so on that particualr night. So they've had plenty of time to think up their retorts, particularly the old farts like Percival. If you don't have any good weapons in your arsenal, rest assured that they will.
And it's at that point that you'll wish that you hadn't filmed the debacle, because now immature British juveniles like me are laughing at you too.
From now on, this blog will occasionally feature stuff about baseball, on account of the fact that I felt like it.
I am a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays. I'd tell you why, but honestly I don't know. I guess I was just lured in by the false hope offered by Jorge Cantu, Joey Gathright and the sensational Seth McClung. It therefore gives me great pleasure to see them atop the American League East standings this year, after years of being fucking shite. (Note to baseball columnists everywhere - don't cite that 9 out of 10 last places stat every time. Don't dress it up any more than you have to. Tell the truth - they were fucking shite. Use asterisks if you have to.)
This week saw a three game series against the Red Sox. Tampa managed to lose them all. But that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was a damn good punch-up.
The video explains the background to the fight, but if you can't be bothered to listen to those bits, I'll explain it for you.
The Red Sox have a backup centre fielder named Coco Crisp. Everybody hates Coco Crisp. Fans of every team hate Coco Crisp. Even Red Sox fans hate Coco Crisp, albeit partly due to a bad trade that they made to get him.. The only person that doesn't hate Coco Crisp is one who can't talk. Coco Crisp is a marginal talent and a massive twat.
In the second game of the series, when Coco Crisp was making a slide into second base, Rays shortstop Jason Bartlett made a textbook block of the plate using his back leg. This is what you're supposed to when trying to tag out runners. For some unknown reason, Coco Crisp took offense to this. (This is probably because he's a massive twat.) On Crisps's next slide into a bag, he tried to hurt Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura, much to the Rays chagrin.
Crisp then essentially baited the Rays during the post game press conference to deliberately hit him with a pitch. When the next day's starter James Shields then did this, Crisp charged the mound.
What a twat.
Now, whatever you think of baseball's unwritten rules (and personally I dislike almost all of them), it is not in question that the Rays adhered to them entirely correctly. Crisp's twatlike actions the previous day necessitated a deliberate hit-by-pitch, according to these rules, and the Rays obliged in accordance with the rules, hitting him in the leg and not the head. Yet Crisp charged the mound anyway.
Bartlett did everything correctly. Crisp then reacted like a twat. Shields then did everything correctly. Crisp then reacted like a twat. There's a pattern here, and Crisp's behaviour led to a good old fashioned brawl.
What happened after that was just funny. Bullet points:
1: I love baseball fights!
2: The actions of baseball legend Jonny Gomes have drawn ire from Red Sox fans, neutrals, and basically everybody except Jim Rome. Gomes did, after all, get in plenty of cheap shots on an already subdued Crisp. But, remember a few things.
a) Jonny Gomes is great. b) Jonny Gomes had an opportunity to punch Coco Crisp, and, cheap shot or not, we'd all do this if we could. c) When your team mate and friend is in a scuffle, you dive right in there, no questions asked. d) Seriously, Jonny Gomes is great.
They were cheap shots, and his suspension (5 games) reflects this. (Crisp got the longest suspension of all 8 that were suspended, with 7 games.) But you would understand if you followed Jonny Gomes quite how fantastic he is. He steals third while weighing 250 pounds, he womanises, drinks, wrestles, boasts an enormous black cock, hits belt high fastballs over 8 million miles, says dumb shit to the media, can't hit a curve to save his life, has the art of plate discipline down to the fine art of guesswork, never turns down a fight, has a great beard, and runs amusingly in the wrong direction while playing the oufield. He's fantastic. If we could ever get his hitting to the point that he amsters basic comprehension of what pitch to swing at, then we have ourselves a champion.
Coco Crisp, meanwhile, is just a twat.
Just a bit of context there. It's a big man punching a far smaller man when the far smaller man is unable to fight back......but, at the same time, it's Jonny Gomes punching Coco Crisp. Swings and roundabouts.
3: Who said Dioner Navarro isn't a good defensive player? This was textbook subduction. (If that's a word.)
4: Apparently they don't teach boxing in Japan, because Akinori Iwamura's efforts here were ever so slightly effeminate.
5: Oh man. If only that Shields punch had landed. (Note: I say this not because I particularly wanted to see Crisp get hit in the face.....although it would be funny. It is, however, refreshing to see someone swing hard. So many mound charges are pathetic. But Shields swung, and he swung hard. This is how it should be.)
6: It is extremely weird that, after this brawl (in which Gomes, Shields and Crisp were ejected), three more HBP's took place, making 5 total for the game. Red Sox starter Jon Lester hit Iwamura and Rays left fielder Carl Crawford in their next at-bats, and it was hardly coincidental given the two's respective roles in the brawl. (All three got suspensions.) Yet Lester never got thrown out of the game, and nor did Rays reliever Al Reyes after hitting a fifth player late in the game. I think the umpires wanted to go home. But, had Lester been ejected, the Rays might have won. (OK, so probably not. But still.)
7: In the post game interviews after this game, Crisp continued to run his mouth. We're far from the end of this saga.
Sham is a miserable and self-effacing little bastard, whose basketball opinions are often riddled with bias, insecurity, and rank immaturity. He has also never played the sport, and the only game he has ever been to see was a Ware Rebels game back in 2001. The night bus didn't show up and he had to walk the 9 miles home. It was after this that his passion for basketball really took off.
He considers himself to be Britain's foremost NBA expert, an arbitrary title that carries with it no basis in fact, or any worldly significance. He also wrote this section of the website in third person narrative, purely for reasons of arrogance.
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is copyrighted to the website's owner, including (but not limited to)
the really stupid ones that I wish I'd never written.
