Archive for April 2nd, 2008
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
Most of us have probably made the ridiculously stupid decision to drink and drive at some point in our lives. Some of us may have even been pulled over, which makes the stupid decision become an expensive and humiliating one. (Here’s a tip: Refuse the breathalzyer.) But even if those circumstances did befall you, I’m guessing nobody attempted to weasel out of it the way Jacksonville Jaguars’ safety Brian Williams did back in 2006.
According to the Florida Times-Union, Williams offered up sex with his female passenger to the arresting officer “if you let me go.”
This was the capper in the mind-blowing documentation released by officer E.E. Bridges, who also alleges Williams called him a honky, accused him of racism and also threatened “sex acts with the officer’s wife and daughter.”
Yikes.
What ever happened to the days of sucking on pennies and black licorice?
Sex With An NFL Player’s Girlfriend? Here’s How! [Sports By Brooks]
Jaguar Back Gave Officer An Earful [Florida Times-Union]
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
Right now, you can vote for the song that the Mets should play during the eighth-inning singalong at Shea this year. The choices are as boring as you’d expect: “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Sweet Caroline,” … jeez, is that the theme song from “Friends?” Ack!
Anyway, Radio Exile is trying to liven it up a little bit, encouraging readers to write in “I Came to Make a Bang” by The Eagles Of Death Metal. We could not agree with this cause more, though of course we’d go with “Lament for the Auroch.”
Anyway, get out there and vote. We’re going to the game Wednesday, and we’ll jump from the upper deck if we have to hear that Friends song.
Meet The Mets, Greet The Mets [Radio Exile]
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
Anyone who discovered our little site here in the last two years — as opposed to being one of those sorry souls who were here at the very beginning — might not know about Darren Prince. Prince, famously, is Dennis Rodman’s lawyer, who took exception with our coverage of Rodman’s first book signing, and blasted us with a rather intense Blackberry-tapped email.
Our favorite part, to this day:
How pathetic are you or maybe financially compared to Dennis how broke are you or sexually you probably have not had the amount of women your whole life that Dennis has had just in the past year.
Well, as much as we love Rodman, he’s apparently having some “financially pathetic” times. He will now literally do whatever you ask for money.
Instead of joining a VH1 reality show, he’s pimping himself out via this ghetto website. Here are some of the a la carte options:
* Game of HORSE - $100
* Game of PIG - $70
* Ride down Michigan Avenue on the back of his Harley - $80 (BARGAIN!)
* Tattoo consulting - $80
* Consulting on how to pick up chicks that will “yield panty-dropping results” - $125.
The site is right here. We’d pay him $100 to write a post on this here site. That’s surely better exposure than playing HORSE, right? (Though having PIG be cheaper than HORSE is kind of brilliant.
Rent Rodman
(UPDATE: Congratulations to Thrillist Chicago: This is an April Fools Day site, and they punked us. Color us impressed. Good work, gentlemen.)
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
Every two weeks, the gents at Free Darko will be taking a look at the deranged ecosystem that is the National Basketball Association in their own indelible fashion. Here’s this week’s entry, from Bethlehem Shoals.
Enjoy.
—–—–—–—–—–—–——
Last week, Chris Andersen, the high-flying, kooky Birdman, returned to the Hornets after a two-year exile from the league. All we know is that his suspension came for something other than weed or PEDs, results that the NBA is, for some reason, all too happy to make public.
The Birdman was a cult figure even before the weirdest dunk contest performance ever in 2004. This was possibly the most athletic white man in the game, an energy guy who made bursts of defense and rebounding decidedly unnerving, and a true innovator of NBA hairstyles. Now, this episode has made him even more colorful. Andersen wandering through Oklahoma City in a drugged-out haze is about the most Lynchian thing sports has ever concocted, and totally belonged in Skeets’s Bedlam tournament.
That’s because, with all due respect to anyone dead from an overdose or stuck going to weekly meetings, drugs are really cool. That’s not my personal opinion—it’s an integral fact of post-1960’s American culture.
If I blew your mind with that one, let me walk you through it: From the hippies, to disco and the fashion world, and up through Wall Street, grunge, and hip-hop, they’ve lent an element of danger and hedonism while enhancing their own darkly glam reputation. You could even make the argument that pot, as much as that damn saxophone, helped elect Bill Clinton in 1992.
The one place this isn’t true is sports. Say “drugs” around a major league, and the conversation will automatically turn to PEDs, which are about as sexy as dropping a grand on a new clutch. After you calm down the guy yelling about Bonds’ skull size, and move things over to the so-called “recreational” family of substances, you’ll find nothing but a mixed bag of lamentation, novelty and disdain.
In no particular order, you’ll hear about Dwight Gooden, Daryl Strawberry, Len Bias, Brett Favre, Roy Tarpley, Dock Ellis, George Gervin, Michael Irvin, Tim Raines, Michael Ray Richardson, Robert Parish, The Jailblazers, Lamar Odom, the entire ABA, and the entire NBA. These stories range from gut-wrenching tragedy (Bias) to farce (Ellis), but for the most part, they carry with them some kind of negative connotation: Players who do drugs compromise their careers and will most likely fuck us over as fans. We’ll turn them into running jokes as much as good taste permits, since they’ve turned their back on the all-important totem of victory.
This is perfectly understandable, since mostly we watch sports to see who wins. Even if we only discover after the fact that an athlete was partying too hard, it tramples their on-field integrity because, we assume, they could’ve played harder. Except for Favre, of course, who did it all for the love of the game.
Drug-abusing players are viewed much like those injury-prone pussies but worse, because, supposedly, this is shit that people can control (says the serious fan, who has like a one in 15 chance of becoming a beer-logged alcoholic). The worse the problem is, the more it irks us, and the more ruthless we are, always asymptotically approaching Bias. These athletes owe us performance, damn it.
But here’s where I stop and ask: Is coolness absolutely irrelevant in sports? Unless a player is conclusively felled or wasted by drug use, why doesn’t it give them a certain edgy charisma?
Pot doesn’t register; it’s just too mundane, especially in the NBA. At this point, I find it more deviant if an athlete—or ordinary person—has never touched the stuff. Here’s Josh Howard, talking to Henry Abbott:
Henry: One theory I heard about why you went as low as 29th is that some teams were concerned that you might have a problem with marijuana.
Howard: I think a lot of people have that problem. How that could stop me from getting drafted, though? How many guys in the lottery smoke pot? The weed thing, just about everybody smokes.
No one would ever accuse Howard of slacking, having a bad attitude, or helping bring down the league. If a player’s getting suspended (I see you, David Harrison!) or otherwise obnoxious (Zach Randolph), I guess it works as a punchline. But it’s certainly not adding to anyone’s mystique, as it did Parish’s, or making them stand out from their peers.
It’s when you get to harder stuff that things get tricky. Maybe it’s tacky to say that the 1987 Mets are much more interesting if they celebrated with one big clubhouse kilo. Or to suggest that the ABA without cocaine is like Blue Cheer without acid, which is why this Undrcrwn tee exists:
But ultimately, I think this comes down to what it is we want to get out of fandom. If we see athletes only as warriors who might run for office one day, drugs are evil. If they’re fodder for often hypocritical gossip, they’re a goldmine for satire.
But if we see them as cultural icons, and acknowledge that they’ve got some of the same properties as non-lame rock stars and actors, then the answer’s a little more complex. And even if no one admits this in public much, I suspect none of us are wholly immune to it — just as pretty much everyone’s first cigarette had at least a little to do with teenage rebellion.
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
As has been well documented, if Moises Alou, back in 2003, just slowly jogs away from the left-field wall, no one ever knows who Steve Bartman is, and people can go back to blaming Alex Gonzalez or Mark Prior or whomever they want to blame. (You know, people who actually played.) A few years ago, Alou said he “forgave” Bartman, as if he’d done something wrong. Now he’s taking it even further.
Now Alou — the only person who would really know — admits he wouldn’t have caught the ball anyway.
“Everywhere I play, even now, people still yell, ‘Bartman! Bartman!’ I feel really bad for the kid,” Alou told Associated Press columnist Jim Litke. “You know what the funny thing is?” he added a moment later. “I wouldn’t have caught it, anyway.”
As Litke pointed out, that’s not what he said then:
“I timed it perfectly, I jumped perfectly. I’m almost 100 percent that I had a clean shot to catch the ball. All of a sudden, there’s a hand on my glove. Hopefully, he won’t have to regret it for the rest of his life.”
Hey, Moises: Thanks for speaking up now, you doof. We do, however, give him credit for not tearing an ACL when he was jumping up and down, something that we know now, apparently, to be a total drama queen performance.
Steve: Sorry, man, for the millionth time, that all this happened to you. STAY HIDDEN. It’s better where you are.
Can’t Truss It[Deuce Of Davenport]
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
You may remember, from a year and a half ago, Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya being injured because of his addiction to Guitar Hero. (It happens. We understand.) Well, Zumaya, who is out until midseason, apparently has not lost the jones, as this recent Facebook picture attests.
You can find a couple more here and here.
We have discovered the secret of Detroit’s struggling bullpen. Dammit, guys, this is not considered rehab!
Joel Zumaya Puts His Life In Rock’s Hands [Deadspin]
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
Up until this morning, this was what the new Ernie Banks statue looked like in front of Wrigley Field. Yes, they missed an apostrophe.
This morning, though, some intrepid copy editing chiseler went in and fixed it. It’s a shame; we liked the idea that Ernie Banks was physically allowing the Cubs to play two. He’s that important.
Ernie Banks Update: They Fixed The Statue [We Are The Postmen]
Continue Reading April 2nd, 2008
Filed under: PC, Sports
American Football fans will have to turn to one of of their consoles or portables to get their next Madden fix, as Peter Moore has revealed EA’s cancellation of Madden ‘09 on PC, citing “serious business challenges” in releasing sports titles on home computers.
The title will still appear on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, DS and PSP, leaving PC Madden fans feeling a bit left out. Moore notes that Madden ‘09 is not the only PC title receiving the axe, and that it represents a larger decision by EA Sports to cut back on their number of PC releases. It’s unknown if EA will continue to release future versions of Madden on the PC, or if this is the end of Madden on the PC altogether. Luckily, gamers can still experience the latest iteration of EA’s flagship sports franchise on a plethora of platforms. Just not on the computer.
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