As the last smidgen of interleague play fades from our consciousness — and we’ll never forget that magical June of 2007! — we lament, for a moment, that tonight’s Rangers-Cubs game will be played in Arlington rather than at Wrigley. We would love to see how Sammy Sosa’s homecoming to the Friendly Confines would have went.
In general, we remain confused how to respond to Sosa’s quixotic comeback and “drive” for 600 homers. Mark McGwire retired, vanished, and we were all had to deal with what was left in his wake. Barry Bonds keeps hitting eff-you homers and confronts us, daring us to doubt him. But Sammy just plods along, quieter, meeker, happy to be playing the game but still probably pretty much an asshole. One of the three biggest names in the whole steroid mess, remaining out there, plugging away, about to hit a 600th homer than hardly anyone will notice. How Sosa continues to dance between the raindrops is beyond us.
Anyway, yeah: It would have been nice to see how Cubs fans would have treated him. Oh well.
The Los Angeles Times has a nifty collection of celebrity photos taken at sporting events on their site today, which got us to thinking: Which LA team had the best celebrity sightings in the fall/winter seasons? One might automatically say the Lakers win this, but not so fast. Let’s do a quick tally on some of the frontrunners.
Our scoring system is thus: If you suck, you get minus points. (That’s rather basic.) If you’re awesome, it’s plus points. If you bring your kid to the game, that’s good; the younger the kid, the more points. Some things are just sad, and will not even be graded … such as Luke Walton doing the knuckles thing with Jeremy Piven, for instance. Britney gets docked several points for leaving the game early, and also for E-Mail My Heart. And Frankie Muniz is a nice enough kid we’d imagine, but he scared us. Well, let’s see what we’ve got, after the jump.
Our favorite caption, by the way, is this one:Actress Sandra Bullock checks on a young boy who was injured when a puck came into his area during the first period of the Los Angeles Kings’ NHL hockey game against the Detroit Red Wings in Los Angeles. And if you’ve ever had a puck come into your area, we have a feeling you’re not laughing right now.
How can a Jew not root for a team that put Denis Leary in the booth to cheer on Kevin Youkilis on the field? How can a team that claimed an historic championship after an 86-year-drought due in large part to the genius of Jewish general manager and boy wonder Theo Epstein not swell the hearts of Jewish sports fans? What isn’t to love about the team that put a Jewish linguist from Princeton behind home plate? The Red Sox have the largest number of Jews on their roster. Can the Yankees beat that? Could they ever?
We are not going to ask Gary Sheffield what he thinks of all this.
With the news yesterday that running back Quincy Wilson has become the 10th Cincinnati Bengal to be arrested in the past 14 months, we now need the measured, no-nonsense sports commentary of Kige Ramsey more than ever. If you’re unfamiliar, just think of him as the Jason Whitlock of Youtube … if, you know, Jason Whitlock fixed lawnmowers and carried around every book he owned wrapped in a belt.
We find Ramsey just about perfect in every way. Others, however, may think him a bit unpolished. Not to worry: The blog Bengal Stripes has a few pointers for him:
How to improve your Youtube home sportscast set-up:
1. Get somebody else to operate camera
2. Remove refrigerator from doorway
3. Show marginal enthusiasm
4. Prepare
5. Make sure calendar shows correct month
6. Update wood paneling
We’re pretty confident that with these changes, Ramsey will soon unlock the secret to getting us out of the Middle East. And this just in … a Browns player has now been arrested. There’ll be precious little time for biscuits and mustard today.
Julio Franco, who recently celebrated his 89th birthday, is becoming a “clubhouse cancer”. Since the losing streak, my source told me that Franco has become the ringleader of a “racial divide” in the clubhouse between the Latinos and non-Latinos. While it isn’t a straight divide, it was painfully obvious there was something going on during last night’s debacle at Yankee Stadium, where the Latinos were sitting in the dugout while the non-Latinos were on the dugout railing the entire game.
We find it amazing that Franco could ever be considered a clubhouse cancer, considering, well, he is actually older than cancer. We are always wary of the whole “Latinos vs. non-Latinos” subplot people like to ascribe to the Mets — or any other baseball team — because it always carries a smack of the “they’re taking over our game!” xenophobia you see from time to time. But if there is a revolution, we do fully expect Julio Franco to be leading it.
It can be difficult to keep the fans entertained at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, so they’ve tried a new technique: reenacting already historic television scenes. We might not know the official ending, but we know how it really ends: The Pirates lose.
• Goodbye Barry? As a commenter mentioned yesterday, chances are that Prince Fielder, shown above, is not thinking about the home run he just hit, but rather of a stack of delicious pancakes that await him at home plate. It must be what motivated him toward an inside-the-park home run on Sunday, and it could be speeding up his home run trot here. Hey, better syrup than horse steroids, we always say (it’s true; we always say that). On a day that The day after Barry Bonds hit career homer No. 748, Fielder and rookie pitcher Yovani Gallardo stole the show as Milwaukee beat the Giants 5-4. Fielder hit his NL-leading 26th home run and Gallardo was strong through 6 1/3 innings as San Francisco dropped its fifth in a row. Oh, and Gallardo also had a double in his first major league at-bat. The Giants have lost 17 of 23 overall. Now the San Jose Mercury News is saying that Bonds may be traded before the July 31 trading deadline, which would look very strange. The only thing less attractive to many fans about him breaking Aaron’s record as a Giant would be him breaking it as a Yankee.
• We’re Pretty Sure That Gandalf Helped Somehow. Your Chone Figgins update just got a lot bigger and bolder. Figgins got six hits, count ‘em, including a game-winning triple in the ninth, as the Angels beat the host Astros 10-9. He drove in three runs, matching Garret Anderson’s 1996 franchise record for hits in a game.
• John Maine, The Slider And You. Back home in the friendly confines, where John Maine feels comfortable and Mr. Met knows where all the restrooms are located. The Twins could only muster four hits in 7 2/3 innings off of Maine, as New York beat visiting Minnesota 8-1. Home runs by Carlos Delgado and Ricky Ledee highlighted a 15-hit attack.
• McCann Do Attitude. Brian McCann homered and drove in four runs off of Curt Schilling to lead the Braves past the Red Sox 9-4. Schilling didn’t strike out anyone, the first time that’s happened since 1993. McCann was coming off a 3-for-22 road trip.
As the last smidgen of interleague play fades from our consciousness — and we’ll never forget that magical June of 2007! — we lament, for a moment, that tonight’s Rangers-Cubs game will be played in Arlington rather than at Wrigley. We would love to see how Sammy Sosa’s homecoming to the Friendly Confines would have went.
Via 
