Posts Tagged ‘baseball’
The World Series is here. Yawn.. Sorry folks but I can’t get too excited about the Rangers versus the Giants. I am sure their fans are going wild and painting faces, tailgating in the living room and are as excited as baseball fans can get. All very cool if your fan of those teams. For me, the season ended when the Tigers once again limped to the end of the season. Well that is not entirely true, I am a Yankees fan after the Tigers and the Reds, so I had that going for a bit.
But it is the World Series and it is baseball, so huzzah for that. Here’s hoping it is an exciting series, good pitching duels, dramatic 9th inning game winning home runs and all that. But sports fans, that is not the only baseball story going ’round today.
That for my friends who may not know, is a Honus Wagner T206. So old Honus played for the Pittsburgh Pirates a hundred years ago and his card is very valuable. Why? Well the American Tobacco Company produced somewhere between 50 and 200 of them between 1909 and 1911. Apparently there is at most 60 cards available today, most in crappy condition. Collectors love this card and it is the hardest, and most expensive to get on the market to complete the set.
For me, an old baseball purist who loves the dead ball era, this is a better story then the World Series. It appears that an order of Nuns in Baltimore have just received a rather beat up Honus card from a the will of a benefactor. The gentleman in question had a sister that was in the order of nuns and when he passed on this year, he left all of his possessions to the order, including the very valuable Honus Wagner card.
The gentleman had the card since the 1930′s and he even left a note stating it should be worth quite a lot of money. He was right. The card should go for about $150,000-$200,000 at auction, even in a the beat up condition it is in. It probably got passed from kid to kid, rode a few bicyle spokes before it got to the collector. Still cool. As a side not, a near mint condition T206 Honus Wagner went for 2.8 million at auction this year. So yeah.. the card, even with creases and missing corners, is worth a few bucks.
This is a feel good baseball story, and I like that. The nuns get some much needed cash to do all the good things they do. The gentleman was very generous and helped the order his sister was a part of all her life. And too, some collector will get the much sought after card. A win-win for all involved. To me, much cooler then a World Series without my favorite teams.
The MLB postseason is in full swing. That means that baseball fans are going the extra mile right now to show support for their teams. However, not everyone is open to this support. You have to be careful how you show your team spirit because in can backfire on you. The fan in today’s pic is the perfect example of how this can happen. Check it out after the jump.
Who can forget Morganna the Kissing Bandit who plagued many a baseball player in the ’70s and ’80s? She started with Pete Rose in 1971 and from then on, no ball player was safe. She traveled all over and stole a kiss from all kinds of jocks. Hell, she even had her own trading cards and made big time bank as an exotic dance from Vegas to Houston. She even made it on to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Well why not, she was a stitch.
Sports mascots can be down right funny like the The San Diego Chicken and The Phillie Phanatic. But some mascots make you kinda scratch your head and go, “Huh?” When you think of the Tennessee Titans you would think they would have some Greek god-like massively huge mascot, but no. We get, whatever you call it, but it sure ain’t no Titan in my book. Then again, all can be forgiven after you watch the video.
I sat around on the grass expensively for four goddamn years.
My poor college (I don’t say University cause it sounds pretentious and takes longer) never gets in the news for anything. The last famous alumni we had was me. And the one before that was Denzel Washington. And the one before that was Alan Alda and before that was Vince Lombardi. But now we have this Internet-famous dude. And it’s sports related. Fordham is always sort of good in baseball and this clip shows it. The guy does what everyone who knows how to play the game has thought about doing (or wondered why more people don’t do) at least once.
Also – props to the terrible college announcer. Boom goes the dynamite, indeed. I didn’t have time to announce games when I went to school. I was busy being cool on campus and running for my life off campus. Fuck. The Bronx is not a friendly place. Anyway – watch this shit.
Did they pick the name cause of the Simpson's? Someone find out. Cause if they did, that's awesome.
OK – the bottom line on this story is that this kid in ABQ got hit by a home run at a game. Now, in the history of baseball, there is apparently some sort of thing called “The Baseball Rule” which says:
The Baseball Rule says as long as the team puts up screens to protect the stands behind home plate, they can’t be sued if a fan is hurt.
But a NM court said fuck that, according to this story from Albuquerque…frontier news or some shit.
Four-year-old Emilio Crespin and his family were enjoying a pregame picnic in the left field stands. During batting practice, a home run hit Emilio in the head.
The damage was extensive.
Jake Vigil, the family’s lawyer, said the ball wound up, “Fracturing his skull, causing a subdural hematoma which is now turned into a hard cyst in his brain and he has suffered permanent brain damage.”
Now, the easy answer on this is: fucking people suing everyone – that’s what’s wrong with this country etc. etc. In fact, my original title for this post was: New Mexico Ruins Baseball. But then I thought about it a little more and some questions popped up and it was not so easy a topic as I originally thought. First I thought: New Mexico has courts? I thought they just dragged people out of the saloon and shot them or strung ‘em up or whatever cowboys do. Then I thought: how come baseball does not have to follow the same rules as everyone else? Why did we have to put up with the USFL and the XFL but nobody else can have a baseball league? Fuck baseball. If I have to pay $75.00 a set for a major league game, then let some of that money ‘trickle down’ to the Isotopes so they can pay off that kid who got his head cracked open.
Anyway – what do you think. This shit is complicated.
Five months after saying that steroids users should be banned for a full year, Ortiz was snared in baseball’s long-running scandal.
I don’t know if it just makes me overly cynical, but, I like it when they people that are most vocal towards the steroids problem wind up getting caught. That is apparently what has happened here, as, reportedly, David Ortiz (along with Manny Ramirez) are said to be on the list of 103 names of MLB players that tested positive for Performance Enhancing Drugs in 2003.
It really should shock no one that Manny is on the list, but Ortiz is a bit different since he was so outspoken against steroids use.
These guys tested positive in the 2003 season. They won the World Series in 2004 (I know that because I watched a Lost repeat, Jack and I were STUNNED). You want to asterisk that World Championship? Eh, probably not. Afterall, since everyone was doing it then, it’s not like they truly, as a team, got a leg up on the competition.
So, now 3 names from the list of 103 that was supposedly confidential has been revealed. Three big names in Manny, Ortiz and A-Rod. So, uh, yeah, clearly the game had a problem.