Archive for July 12th, 2006
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
When I was 11 and hoping, praying for the Redskins to repeat as world champions, Ickey Woods came along and unexpectedly ruled the universe. If you think I’m overstating things a bit, consider this: he scored 18 touchdowns, created a nationwide dance sensation and went to the Super Bowl as a rookie. As a rookie named Ickey. Then he promptly fell off the face of the earth for 17 years before resurfacing to appear on SBL…
Hear Ickey Woods on Sports Bloggers Live
What follows is pretty damn great: 10 minutes of conversation about the Shuffle, Ickey’s offensive line-playing wife, his brother Cokey(!), the endzone celebrations of today and, oh, so much more. My brother sums it up well…
The man is pretty much hilarious. My favorite quote from the interview came when Ickey was explaining the creation of the Shuffle. After demonstrating it in its most primitive form to teammate Rickey Dixon, Dixon replied, “Maaaaan, that thing is whack! You need to put some steps to it!”
At this point, it’s pretty safe to say that if we get Don Majkowski, Timmy Smith and Christian Okoye on the program, my career checklist will be pretty much complete.
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
When I was 11 and hoping, praying for the Redskins to repeat as world champions, Ickey Woods came along and unexpectedly ruled the universe. If you think I’m overstating things a bit, consider this: he scored 18 touchdowns, created a nationwide dance sensation and went to the Super Bowl as a rookie. As a rookie named Ickey. Then he promptly fell off the face of the earth for 17 years before resurfacing to appear on SBL…
Hear Ickey Woods on Sports Bloggers Live
What follows is pretty damn great: 10 minutes of conversation about the Shuffle, Ickey’s offensive line-playing wife, his brother Cokey(!), the endzone celebrations of today and, oh, so much more. My brother sums it up well…
The man is pretty much hilarious. My favorite quote from the interview came when Ickey was explaining the creation of the Shuffle. After demonstrating it in its most primitive form to teammate Rickey Dixon, Dixon replied, “Maaaaan, that thing is whack! You need to put some steps to it!”
At this point, it’s pretty safe to say that if we get Don Majkowski, Timmy Smith and Christian Okoye on the program, my career checklist will be pretty much complete.
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
Big ups to my Dad for throwing out the first pitch at the Frederick Keys game Monday night. It was his birthday and he was out at the yard for a company event, so they somehow managed to get him on the mound alongside Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich. Apparently, he let loose with a wicked cutter that broke outside-in on the righthanded batter, who happened to be Keyote the mascot…
Keyote swung and missed and the pitch landed in the catcher’s mitt, which is pretty great. I mean, it could’ve been worse, much worse. He could’ve been Tom Lasorda or Carl Lewis, who looked their father’s never taught them to throw.
Fortunately, mine did. He taught me that and so much more, but sports has always been a common bond. So it’s good to see him celebrating his birthday in style, taking the hill at a minor league game, where the play is pretty damn close to pure. Just look at that smile.
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
OK, before we start: Seriously, this is just the worst sports day of the year. Do you realize we did a post below on bowling? Can we please get back to the games tomorrow? What? No afternoon games? Man!
Anyway, we’re going to continue our thumb-twiddling by looking at the American League, or, as it’s now known, The League For Real Men. You could make an argument that the best four teams, and perhaps eight of the best nine, are all in this league. But that’s a silly argument; it’s much more fun to argue about whether Joe Buck makes you want to cry more, or Tim McCarver. (We say McCarver. But we’re a Cardinals fan. You know how it goes.)
So, it’s tight all around in the AL. Much discussion has revolved around the possibility that the wild-card will come out of a division other than the AL East. We don’t see this as a lock, by any stretch, but the White Sox do look more awesomer than anybody else, we think. The Red Sox’s pitching seems likely to solidify by the end of the year, and as long as we don’t have to hear him talk on television anymore, we plan on continuing to enjoy the Papelbon. In the West, Oakland has had every opportunity to show off what was supposed to be its best team in years; we are officially unimpressed, so we think the Rangers will pull it off. They will then lose in the playoffs, fire Buck Showalter and win the World Series next year. That leaves us with the wild-card: Detroit or the Yankees. Frankly, Yankees fans should be happy they’re this close; it’s looking ugly, old and hurt out there. This might be the last playoff chance for a while. We like the Tigers.
So, we apologize, Detroit fans: We stink at predicting and just doomed you. Give us your predictions in the comments, everybody, so you can look back and point come October.
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
OK, before we start: Seriously, this is just the worst sports day of the year. Do you realize we did a post below on bowling? Can we please get back to the games tomorrow? What? No afternoon games? Man!
Anyway, we’re going to continue our thumb-twiddling by looking at the American League, or, as it’s now known, The League For Real Men. You could make an argument that the best four teams, and perhaps eight of the best nine, are all in this league. But that’s a silly argument; it’s much more fun to argue about whether Joe Buck makes you want to cry more, or Tim McCarver. (We say McCarver. But we’re a Cardinals fan. You know how it goes.)
So, it’s tight all around in the AL. Much discussion has revolved around the possibility that the wild-card will come out of a division other than the AL East. We don’t see this as a lock, by any stretch, but the White Sox do look more awesomer than anybody else, we think. The Red Sox’s pitching seems likely to solidify by the end of the year, and as long as we don’t have to hear him talk on television anymore, we plan on continuing to enjoy the Papelbon. In the West, Oakland has had every opportunity to show off what was supposed to be its best team in years; we are officially unimpressed, so we think the Rangers will pull it off. They will then lose in the playoffs, fire Buck Showalter and win the World Series next year. That leaves us with the wild-card: Detroit or the Yankees. Frankly, Yankees fans should be happy they’re this close; it’s looking ugly, old and hurt out there. This might be the last playoff chance for a while. We like the Tigers.
So, we apologize, Detroit fans: We stink at predicting and just doomed you. Give us your predictions in the comments, everybody, so you can look back and point come October.
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
Ichiro Suzuki has been acting more erratically the last few years, we’ve noticed, coinciding almost directly with the Mariners’ struggles the last few years. But in an interview Monday, Ichiro might have lost it a little while discussing the team’s difficulties.
“If there is a problem, we need to notice what creates the problem. The problem usually isn’t just on the cover. You need to look much deeper. For example, if we’re talking about a tree and the tree has a problem, you need to look at the root. But you cannot see the root. The mistake is to keep watering the fruit. That’s not going to solve anything.”
This doesn’t appear to be a translation issue, but rather some curious philosophizing on Ichiro’s part. We really tried to follow it, but we got kind of confused around the “look deeper into a tree to see if you should water the fruit” section. Which part is the root again?
Ichiro The Philosopher [Seattlest]
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
Ichiro Suzuki has been acting more erratically the last few years, we’ve noticed, coinciding almost directly with the Mariners’ struggles the last few years. But in an interview Monday, Ichiro might have lost it a little while discussing the team’s difficulties.
“If there is a problem, we need to notice what creates the problem. The problem usually isn’t just on the cover. You need to look much deeper. For example, if we’re talking about a tree and the tree has a problem, you need to look at the root. But you cannot see the root. The mistake is to keep watering the fruit. That’s not going to solve anything.”
This doesn’t appear to be a translation issue, but rather some curious philosophizing on Ichiro’s part. We really tried to follow it, but we got kind of confused around the “look deeper into a tree to see if you should water the fruit” section. Which part is the root again?
Ichiro The Philosopher [Seattlest]
Continue Reading July 12th, 2006
Since it’s the day after the All-Star Game, otherwise known as one of the worst sports days of the year — we still can’t quite believe there’s no baseball tonight — we thought we’d solicit everyone’s thoughts on the second half of the baseball season. And since it’s fun to tell the Web site people how biased and wrong they are, we thought we’d get the ball rolling with some guaranteed-to-be-wrong predictions of our own. Here’s how we think the division races will shake down, as if we have any insight, like, at all.
First, it kind of looks like the Mets are good to go; there should be plenty of Pedro-related drama in the second half to keep matters entertaining. As much as we’ve been pulling out our hair about our Cardinals, they’ve had as tough a first half as we can imagine, and they’re still four games up. Assuming Pujols back doesn’t split in half, they should be OK. In the West, the Dodgers seem most likely to sneak away from the pack, particularly if Barry Bonds is, you know, in jail at the end of the year. And the wild-card? They’re three games out, but we envision the Brewers being the fun second-half team that takes everyone by surprise. They might kick in and pull it off a year early.
We, as mentioned, know nothing. Please expound your wisdom in the comments.
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