WHO’S MY DADDY?
Hey Jon- did you really tell the one about a child custody hearing where the judge asked the child if they would rather stay with their mother. The child answered, “No, because she beats me all of the time.” The judge then asked if the child wanted to stay with their father and the child answered, “No, because he beats me all of the time.” “With who do you then want to stay,” asked the judge? The child answered, “The Yankees because they beat nobody.”
ARE YOU A POLE VAULTER? NO- I’M SWISS
Dwight Perry told me that “in the last 100 years, the world long-jump and the triple-jump have been improved 18%, the high jump 23%, and the pole vault a whopping 50%. Or as sport scientists prefer to call this evolution- the BIG BOING THEORY.”
CONE-HEAD
David Cone’s work on YES has been excellent. He brings knowledge, experience, wit, & boyish charm to the TV booth and imparts all of them without drowning you with info (ala McCarver). When he works with “Flash” Flaherty, they give the viewers an opportunity to listen in on pitcher/catcher conversations.
CARL PAVANO ISN’T ALONE
We all thought that Brian Cashman fouled one off his foot with Pavano but how about Mike Hampton? Hampton got a HUGE contract from the Atlanta Braves and has been on the shelf for three years with injuries. His last ML appearance was in August of ’05.
COLLUSION?
The MLB Player’s Association is sniffing around the Barry Bonds situation to see if there is any evidence of collusion among the team owners for not offering Barry Bonds a contract. Bonds and, for that matter. Bonds and Clemens are sitting at home stewing in their own soup surrounded with the baggage each of them would bring with them. The owners didn’t have to have any kind of a conference to decide not to sign Bonds OR Clemens. All they had had to do is look at the impending legal woes facing both of them. BUT, at least Bonds isn’t alone.
DICK “66” STUART
When I saw that remarkable and unexpected catch made by Manny Ramirez it reminded me of the backhanded catch of a line drive to 1B caught by “Old Dr. Strange Glove” Dick Stuart who said that if it were later in the year, he could’ve gotten out of the way.
MY THIRD GRADE NUN
I remember perfecting long division and the beginning of decimals in the 3rd grade by reading (yes, it was also a reading lesson) the newspaper box scores for the St. Louis Cardinals (Sister came from St.Louis and tried to make us all Cardinal fans).These relevant tools could be used inexpensively in our schools today to help raise Math and reading scores.
SPANISH TRANSLATION
Chris Foster reported in the LA Times that after , Indians 2B, Asdeubal Cabrera pulled off a very rare unassisted triple play against the Blue Jays, he flipped the ball to fans by the dugout- probably next to be seen on e-bay.
Cabrera’s translator, 1B coach Luis Rivera said to the AP that, “As soon as he did, he cried out, ‘Oh, no!’ “
THE RELOCATION CARD
The Sports Curmudgeon referred to the threat of relocating a pro- sport’s team as a “3-card-monte game.” Well sometimes those treats fail.
The Houston Dynamo MLS team once was located in San Jose but when San Jose didn’t build the team a new stadium, they relocated to Houston. “Houston is not exactly falling all over itself to get a new stadium done for the Dynamo either. One proposal has called for the Dynamo to pay for the stadium to be built on land owned by the city and in the end the city would own the stadium. Needless to say, the Dynamo didn’t buy that one.” Houston’s Mayor won’t budge. The team has already moved once. What do they do? Maybe they should talk to the owners of the Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves.
SPECTER-GRAPH
Senator Arlen Specter (he of the NFL “spy-gate” infamy), says the Sports Curmudgeon, represents the great state of “show boating” with all of his proposed saber rattling senate hearings that are looking into violations, by the NFL, of the “Intelligence Espionage Act.” EXCUUUSE ME? I thought that they were only playing football.
IT NEVER HAPPENED, I GUESS
The NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell ruled that he found no new evidence that the Patriots taped the practice walk-through of the Rams prior to Super Bowl XXXVI. I guess that all of those tapes that Matt Walsh handed over were blank and those tapes shown on TV showing a defensive coach, wig-wagging signals, were contrived. Who’s kidding who here, especially when Goodell said that he hated what the Pats did?
THE FINAL ANSWER
“Boston” Ryan said it best about all of the media feeding frenzy over Spy-gate, “remember the ultimate moral of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.”
BRADY’S RIP IS RIGHT
Tom Brady visited a Boston radio station and talked about Matt Walsh, the Patriots, and ESPN and said that too much was made of the situation. In talking about ESPN he said, “They say the craziest things. That’s what ESPN has become. ESPN, to me, is like MTV without the videos. They just have highlights.” D prospective and balance out weigh scandal and outrage? Not a chance in showbiz news where the motto should be “keep’em watchin’, keep’em readin’!”
QUOTES INTERPRETED
Dwight Perry reported that Pimlico Track announcer David Rodman said that some of his more memorable track calls were “Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: sounded like a stooge calling that one” and “Sunny Beach: I’ve heard racing fans say this when their horse fails to win.”
PEDAL, PEDAL, PEDAL
Scott Ostler said that “a guy named George Hood set a world record for riding a stationary bike, pedaling eight straight days and the equivalent of 2,016 miles but still finished 20 feet behind the rack of dumbbells on the far wall.”
