Here’s Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times: “Mariners infielder Tim Beckham drew an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs. Considering he’s been hitting .211 since April 7, here’s hoping he kept the sales slip.”
When Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, is having trouble falling asleep, he often turns to reading The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm. Such was the case the other night, after which he emailed:
“I just ran across this entry and thought it might interest you — Canada: Free health care. Low crime. Birthplace of William Shatner. Two out of three ain’t bad.”
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Here is The Sports Curmudgeon, once more: “I fear that Thursday was just a tad scary. CBS Sports streamed a six-hour program devoted entirely to Fantasy Football. The key parts of that previous sentence are: 1. Six-hour, and 2. Fantasy. . . . Even a 12-year-old boy with his first access to a Victoria’s Secret catalog would find something else to do in less than six hours. Can Armageddon be far off?”
I’m note sure what is a greater sign of the impending Armageddon — six-hour fantasy football shows, the fires in the Amazon rainforest, or the Hasbro Toy Company owning Death Row Records.
Happy retirement to Brad Rock of the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. He’s done as of month’s end, after more than 40 years with the newspaper. His one-liners have populated this column on more than a few occasions over the years. . . . Here is Deseret News columnist Doug Robinson on Rock: “Rock is a writer first and a fan, well, never. He doesn’t even watch sports on TV unless he has to for the job, and he never roots for one team over another; free of loyalties and prejudices, he could write honest accounts with an objectivity and professional distance that are disappearing fast in the era of advocacy journalism. You know he’s doing his job well when readers accuse him of being a BYU fan and a Utah fan the same week.” . . . Robinson’s complete piece is right here.
It was a really bad week for the NFL and Major League Baseball. . . . The NFL took a whole lot of criticism, and deservedly so, for the debacle in Winnipeg on Thursday night when the Oakland Raiders and Green Bay Packers played an exhibition game on an 80-yard field. . . .
However, that was nothing compared to the weekend that MLB had. For some reason, MLB’s pooh-bahs chose to have all teams wearing either black or white uniforms — visiting teams wore black, home sides wore white. And it was beyond awful. . . . A fan should be able to tell who is playing by the uniforms, but with the New York Yankees in Los Angeles to play the Dodgers — two teams with iconic uniforms — you had no idea at a glance just who was on the field, and it was the same in every MLB park. . . . On top of that, players were permitted to put nicknames on the name bars, but home uniform tops had white lettering on top of white. . . . In most parks, the umpires wore black shirts. So whenever the visitors were on defence it looked like they had a seven-man infield. . . . Oh, and the home team pitchers wore all white except for their caps, which were black. . . . Ai-eeee! What a horrible, horrible experience the whole thing was. Here’s hoping we aren’t subjected to anything like this again.
You may have noticed that Oakland punter A.J. Cole arrived in the Manitoba capital wearing a t-shirt that had “Winnipeg, Alberta” on its front. . . . Patti Dawn Swansson, aka The River City Renegade, informs that Winnipeg, Alberta, t-shirts and hoodies “are available from TeeChip on the Internet. They come in sizes S-XXXXXXL and nine colours. I’m not saying I endorse them, but they might make a good gag gift for family and friends unfortunate enough to live in Wild Rose Country.” . . . Swansson’s latest musings, readable as always, are right here.
Department of Pet Peeves — Writers who use “morning” and “a.m.” in the same sentence, as in “the opening game is scheduled to start on Saturday morning at 10 a.m.” . . . Posters that indicate a tournament or event is the “first annual.” There isn’t such a thing. The first one is the inaugural; the second one is the second annual. . . . To be continued.
Headline at RollingStone.com: Our Very Smart President Wants to Nuke Hurricanes, Report Claims
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TAKING NOTE 