Bo knows..............patches?

So I'm currently watching the Yanks take on some team apparently named after a building super from the Bronx and noticed that they are wearing a #34 patch. Why are they memorializing Bo Jackson? He had one crappy year for them back in '94 when he wasn't the Bo of old after breaking his hip. Still the greatest athlete........EVER! Fuck you world wide sports leader ESPN for saying that Bo was #72!! Are you kidding me!?!?! The man was Bill Brasky before we even knew who Bill Brasky was. An 8-foot two-ton beastman who could palm a medicine ball. Secretariat was #35 on that list as well. Glad to know that we have come a long way as a society when a fucking glue ingrediant is higher than a black man on a list of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Serinity Now!

Hey Baron, too soon with the patch joke?

p.s. Bo knows this,

Fuck the horse.

p.p.s I don't care if I'm nine years late complaining about the Sportscentury list. It's still a travesty.

Welcome back, Phil

M. Kay, 

I was fully prepared to blog my disgust at what was a terrible effort for the Bombers this past weekend.  However, I am now hopeful with the re-emergence of Phil Hughes last night.

For those of you who missed it, the young Mr. Hughes demonstrated an arsenal that he was not thought to have possessed previously.  He actually has a cutter now, and a pitch that has been called "Uncle Charlie".  It is a dirty pitch, with lots of movement. Probably a lot like your Uncle Charlie. He had command of his pitches, and I couldn't recall being this excited about one of his outings since I watched his body all of a sudden break down during his no-hitter. 

So, can we finally put a stop to this crazy Joba as a starter experiment yet? I love Mariano, but we and the front office need to recognize that this is not the same "seven pitches and thank you very much you can all go home" Mariano. He is probably the best closer I will see in my lifetime, but we need to start thinking about the future. Let's put Joba back in the middle relief spot. Based on the events of this past Friday night, let's even see how Joba would do in that closers role against the Sox. Mariano has become to the Sox what Byung-Hyun Kim once was to the Yanks. I hate that. 

Oh the Humanity!

Dear Baron,

We are waiting for your thoughts on this weekends' action. Right now General Motors is defeating capitalism surprisingly.

Oh wait, that's the Tigers up on the Yanks 4-0 in the 7th.

Let us know when you spot something.

-M Kay's Jowels

Getting Tea-Bagged

Dear Yankees,

Thank you for ruining my weekend. That was a wonderful display of failure for 72 hours. Whatever happened to Destiny, Mystique, and Aura? Not to mention there other friend Swagger? Did Melky leave one of them in a ditch at some point the last few years after over-serving them too many Vodka-Red Bulls? (not now, I'm in the zone chief) I don't get it. Brian Cashman, please go send scouts to the Meat-Packing district to find these four things. The Yankees need them back. You could also sell them to the Miami Hurricanes football program who would probably pay top dollar for those lasses. Though they most likely wouldn't be the most unique name to play for the 'Canes. That goes to WR Bill Shakespeare.

-M. Kay's Jowels

p.s. Would the Jets please sign Buress. I don't see anything that could go wrong.

Brien Taylor, NBA coaches, NFL referees, and Santa Clause: The Reason my Collection is without Value

At some point in time we all collected sports cards.  Some of us stuck with baseball, whereas some of us may have even bought a few Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Batman waxpacks by Topps.  You know you did.  I had boxed my collection away years ago, believing that once the players in my collection made their parade of HOF speeches, I could cash it all in for enough coin to fill Scrooge McDuck's money bin.   

This past month I had been cleaning up, and came across the various books and boxes that held my collection.  I had not seen these cards in years.  I devoted some time to looking through the cards and I was disgusted; both in my taste and the collection's value.  The phrase "not worth the paper its printed on" was repeated in my head as I sorted through the Kevin Maas', Phil Plantier's, and Brien Taylor's of the sports card world.  Then there was the occasional and unfortunate Oh-Pee-Chee Premier (whatever the hell that means) hockey card.  

My disgust, both at myself, but more at the card companies, grew as I uncovered basketball cards of NBA coaches.  As if this scene has ever played out:

Kid 1:  You got the new foil pack? Open it up, let me see what you got!

Kid 2:  Oh boy, I can't wait.  Please, please, please, God I don't ask for much, but please let there be a Larry Brown card inside. 

Kid 1:  Hurry up!

Kid 2:  Mike Fratello!

Kid 1: Lucky.

Anyway, I think we all agree that getting the card of an NBA coach is an insult, especially when you are a kid.  It's like getting to the bottom of a Cracker Jack box and discovering that you got the box without the prize inside.  It rivals the checklist as the worst card possible because it is filler, and could have been a really sweet card of an actual NBA player.  What about the player cards I actually had?  Well my collection consisted the likes of Brad Daughrety, Scott Skiles, Ron Harper, Wayman Tisdale, Rex Chapman, Nick Anderson, Sarunas Marshalonis and other forgettable players.

The NBA coaches cards were bad, but the real crime was committed by Pro Set football cards.  I have no idea who they thought their target audience was, but the set included World League Football cards, for some reason, and cards of actual referees.  Referees?  Referees names are to be announced at the beginning of the game, as they are simultaneously forgotten.  They are then required to blend into the action, becoming invisible until they either make a bad call or get accidentally hit so hard by a player that their caps fly off (exception was the ref this year who stood like a block of granite in LSU vs. USC game).  Jesus, Pro Set even made a Santa Claus card.

Score 1992 baseball is the worst set EVER. The terrible art work would be enough, but the pictures are laughably bad. I don't know who was taking those pictures, but they are all either mid throw, mid swing, in pain on the ground, skipping in the air; just terrible. Hot garbage. 

I sorted through the cards saying, "Bum, Bum, who?, bum, bum, Goose Gozzo?, bum, bum".  

Much has been made about how much steroids and other performance enhancing drugs have hurt the sport of baseball.  It is rarely talked about how this scandal has left the baseball cards from the steroid era with dubious value.   

The Mark McGwire 1987 Donruss Rated Rookie Card that I had been saving in a UV protected, Kevlar, air-tight case? Worth anywhere from $20 to $50.  Or, his 1987 Topps Rookie card? cha-ching! $14.95 to $29.95.  At the time I looked through my cards I had at least thought my Alex Rodriguez cards were safer.  Now? Not so much.

The only hope I have now for my collection is that collectors of the future will seek these cards out for their infamy or novelty, like they would a Pete Rose, OJ Simpson, Rae Carruth, Michael Vick, or Paul Crewe card.

Basketball Pads?

Allow me to digress into the world of basketball... while the NCAA tournament is still fresh in everyone's mind, I would like to address a disturbing trend that really came to the surface this year; the wearing of padding under the uniforms.  

When I say padding, what I really mean is that players are now wearing what amounts to flak jackets.  Think bull riders on ESPN2 on a Saturday at 11pm.  Has it really gotten to the point where in order to play basketball we need to wear pads?  Nike, for its part, offers "Nike Pro Combat base layers" on a webpage entitled "Nike Battleproof Combat".  The website proclaims "Ready for the Final Combat" in reference to the "Final Four".   Really?  All I can think of is "Bill Lambier's Combat Basketball" (1991) for Super Nintendo.  Remember that gem?  Well, apparently Hudson Soft's depiction of the future of basketball was more prescient and accurate than EA's prediction of the future of football: Mutant League Football (however, in all fairness there is still time for teams to be comprised solely of robots, skeletons, and aliens.  Maybe Bones Jackson really is the desiccated corpse of Bo Jackson?).

I have to believe that this trend  is a way for companies to cash in on a sport that is low on equipment and tends to make its money from shoes.  Nike alone offers the "deflex short" ($70; sliding pants), "deflex top" (bullet-proof vest), and the all important "deflex sleeve" (piece of spandex with a pad at the elbow).  Word has it that in the first weeks of practice, Tom Izzo took this all to another level by having his players wear football pads.  The rationale was that he wanted his players to get used to contact.  Tough teams exemplifying hustle are fun to watch, however, if players are getting hit frequently and hard enough to necessitate the wearing of pads, I'm pretty sure that's a foul.

This unfortunate trend prompted UCLA coaching great John Wooden to say the following to Steve Inskeep of NPR, "I think they're permitting the game to become a little too physical today.  I've been watching the games in the tournament.  There's not a game when you don't see them on the floor a good part of the time.  There's been a lot of blood here and there."  Coach Wooden summarized his views by adding, "I think permitting the game to become too physical takes away a little bit of the beauty. 

I haven't heard basketball described in this way since the cage games of the early 1900's.  Here's to hoping that this trend and its associated accessories goes the way of the LA Gear Catapult and Reebok Pump.