Tag: MLB

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MLB General

Odds and Ends: Ugueth Urbina’s comeback with the Phillies will be slightly delayed


Little known fact: Ugueth Urbina throws right, bats right, but he wields a machete with his left hand. Who knew? ell… the 5 workers on his farm who were attacked by Urbina and other men. The 32-year-old “free” agent was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempted murder by the Venezuelan judicial system.

His lawyer said that the punishment was too severe, probably because if he’d done that in the United States, the defense attorneys would have trotted out his coach and a teammate to say what a great guy his is and he would have only gotten four months in prison. Guess the Fightin’s have to look elsewhere to solve their bullpen problem.

In other news..

[The Offside]: Partying with P-Diddy makes you look like you belong on Faces of Meth

[NBA Fanhouse]: Jeff Van Gundy wants lottery open to all teams

[Boston Herald]: As if having their coach murdered wasn’t enough, Pakistani cricket team welcomed home with “Go to hell” chants

[Our Book of Scrap]: Want to write for SI? Better get that boob job

And finally, a couple of stories from Steroid Nation. First, HGH was found in Anna Nicole Smith‘s autopsy. (Jesus, is there anyone not on HGH? Where can we order a batch? Anyone have Jason Grimsley’s phone number?) Second, if you need your glamour photos done and Glamour Shots by Deb is all booked up, you can have Tony Mandarich do them.

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MLB General

Major League Baseball doesn’t care about kids with cancer



Ain’t hurtin’ nobody

[Update: According to Lopez@Large, backlash against MLB/sympathy for Sunshine Kids has increased donations today.]

Bud Selig and his minions aren’t doing a very good job of making MLB look good. First there was the whole DirecTV exclusive deal fiasco. Now they’re pissing off baseball fans, Craig Biggio, and basically anyone who has a heart.

The commissioners office told Biggio, the national spokesman for the Sunshine Kids foundation, that he has to stop wearing a Sunshine Kids logo pin during Spring Training.


I’m not a disrespectful person and I don’t disrespect the game. But I’ve been wearing this pin for 20 years because it puts smiles on 20,000-something cancer patients’ faces. Major League Baseball does a lot of good things, but this is one of the stupid things.

We understand the need to maintain uniform integrity (because next thing you know Manny Ramirez will be putting his ebay listings on his hat) but this is spring training! How much harm is Craig Biggio doing by having a small pin on his hat. From MLB’s reaction (they told him the umpires would make sure he wasn’t wearing the pin), you’d think Biggio had stitched a Nazi flag on his lid.

Look, we realize that baseball can’t just allow players to wear whatever they want. We certainly don’t want to see nine different colored ribbons out on the field for each players’ pet projects but did we mention this is spring training! Just let it slide.

Links:
[Houston Chronicle]: MLB bars Biggio from wearing pin

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MLB General

Odds and Ends: Are you looking at George’s crotch again?


Well folks, there’s no other way to explain it. Apparently men (or at least the men in this study) are fixated on crotches. Some might say that we “respect the cock“.

A study by Jakob Nielsen to track how different people look at web pages came up with some unexpected results. According to the data, men tend to study the crotch and the face while women look only at the face. This also happens when the image was of an animal too. This was discovered on the American Kennel Club site. We couldn’t even make this stuff up. (via Can’t Stop the Bleeding)

In other news…

[Chicks Dig the Long Ball]: Mascot Madness

[Yahoo]: Pete Rose thinks fans would be elated if baseball reintated him because his name is synonymous with baseball. Actually Pete, your name is synonymous with gambling.

[Leave the Man Alone]: The dumbest theory we’ve heard in a while

[Steroid Nation]: Evander Holyfield finally gets Tyson back for biting his ear

[Awful Announcing]: ESPN to televise this year’s Rock paper Scissors championship

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MLB General

You favorite baseball parks — Lego style


While MLB urns and coffins are getting all the press, we just found somethign that’s a lot cooler. You can can replicas of baseball stadiums built out of Legos and put whatever photo you want on the customized scoreboard. The “deluxe” stadium is made out of 3,500 lego blocks. Currently they have PNC Park, Heinz Field, Camden Yards, M&T Stadium, Citizens Bank Park, and Yankee Stadium but it looks like you can get them to build anything you want.

We’re waiting on a quote for our Veterans Stadium replica. We wonder if a LEGO Santa Claus or a LEGO Michael Irvin stretched out on the field costs a lot extra.

Links:
[Burik Model Design]: LEGO Sports Arenas

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MLB General

MLB loses its erection


Ahhh the last time we’ll be able to make a baseball ED joke and post a picture of Raffy Palmeiro. Viagra is ending its five-year-old endorsement deal with Major League Baseball. The overwhelming reason is that changes in pharmacy guidelines meant that drug companies couldn’t advertise in prime-time anymore and that took away most of the value of the deal. However, the leagues have also been growing increasinly wary of advertising sexual dysfunction drugs in a family friendly atmosphere.


Sports properties saw dollar signs, and there was a land rush,” said Michael Neuman, CEO and founder of Amplify Sports and Entertainment, New York, who had worked on marketing programs for a variety of pharmaceutical brands from Pfizer, Amgen and GlaxoSmithKline. “But when you had ads talking about four-hour erections during NFL games, people from ownership on down started questioning the association.

Links:
[Sports Business Journal]: (Subscription) ED era wanes as Viagra exits MLB deal

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New York Yankees

March 12 in Sports History: Birth of the Yankees


In 1903: Fans of the Boston baseball franchise began printing “Huck the Fighlanders” shirts, as the New York Highlanders were officially approved as members of the American League. The rivalry between the two was truly born a month later. According to the book “Emperors and Idiots” by Mike Vaccaro, a Highlanders player named Dave Fultz intentionally ran over Pilgrims pitcher George Winter while he was covering first base and promptly shouted, “Tell your pitcher to pitch, or get him the hell off the field!” Ironically, the Highlanders could never beat the Pilgrims, as they finished second to Boston in the AL in their first two seasons. The Highlanders then officially changed their name to the Yankees (which they had been unofficially called as for years) on this same date in 1913. One dumb trade seven years later and the Yankees became the benchmark of baseball greatness. Then, on this same date in 2003, they launched their own YES Network, which became available to 3 million more fans who were unable to watch them on televison. (baseball almanac)

In 1987: David Robinson of the US Naval Academy scored 50 points in his final collegiate game, a loss to Michigan. The Admiral won the Naismith award that year as college basketball’s top player and was a consensus All-American (a little redundant, but it’s my favorite sports term). He was drafted number one overall by the San Antonio Spurs, although he didn’t join them until 1989 due to his miltary obligations.

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MLB General

MLB says screw the cable subscribers


MLB has completed a seven-year, $700M deal with DirecTV. A deal that was so bad for the fan, it caught the eye of Senator John Kerry. “Extra Innings” had more than 500,000 television subscribers last year and only 5,000 would be frozen out by the new deal because they can’t get satellite service.

However, everyone had been in an uproar because anyone who doesn’t have DirecTV would have to switch from their cable providers. DirecTV and MLB tried to address those concerns by allowing cable providers the same package if it could match the terms of the deal with DirecTV. Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen. IN Demand’s president said the terms were impossible and called it a “defacto exclusive deal”.

While we feel for MLB fans and we think there should be more choices and not less, what about NFL fans? DirecTV and the NFL have been holding us hostage for years. Where was the senatorial media posturing when that deal was struck? Anyway, back to Extra Innings. May we suggest that you completely screw DirecTV and switch to the web based version. Sure the quality isn’t as good but you get to watch the day games at work.

Links:
[Boston Herald]: DirecTV strikes MLB deal

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MLB General

Go ahead and keep taking HGH


Dr. Don Catlin, the scientist who MLB hired to develop a urine screening test to discover HGH told the Denver Post that a reliable test for HGH might never be developed. MLB banned HGH recently but doesn’t test for it because the drug policy only allows urine testing because blood testing is “an invasion of privacy”. The NFL players union also does not allow blood testing.

So basically, you can take HGH all you want without getting caught unless you do something stupid like having a boatload of it in your house when federal agents raid it.

As for the drug test, we are very suspicious of everyone so we can’t help but think maybe the Dr. Catlin has already discovered a test for HGH and is planting this information with the Denver Post so that athletes who are cheating will continue to do so. Then, just as they think they’re getting away with it… bam… all of the sudden the drug test is the next day and includes a urine test for HGH. And when the results get back, a lot of minor leaguers will be getting their call up to the show.

Links:
[Denver Post]: Test for HGH may be fiction

Categories
MLB General

Yeah and Michael Vick smokes only medicinal marijuana


A report came out that John Rocker was among the names on the client list for the pharmacy in Orlando that was busted last week for distributing steroids over the internet. That news suprised about no one and the general reaction was “well, that explains a lot”. But we find he defense pretty amusing.


That was a growth hormone that was prescribed by a doctor in relation to his rotator cuff surgery in 2003, so I don’t really think there is anything to the story,” Debi Curzio, Rocker’s publicist, told the Daily News for a story on the newspaper’s Web site Tuesday night.

First off, how much does it suck to be John Rocker’s publicist. Second, the excuse that he took it for medicinal purposes is laughable. A lot of people we know with shoulder surgery didn’t take HGH afterward. Finally, if you’re John Rocker, why even bother trying to repair or spin your image. You are in the Bigoted Athlete Hall of Fame. Nothing you do is gonna make anyone think less of you. Just go the Romo route and milk the roid rage persona for all it’s worth.

Links:
[Boston Herald]: Report: Rocker admits taking HGH, but for medical reasons

Categories
NBA General

Kevin McHale is the best GM in Sports?

 

The authors of this Forbes study are just messing with us right? Kevin McHale?  Arguably one of the 5 worst GMs in the NBA?  

We’ve always thought that the best measure of a GM is the number of wins he can muster with the payroll that he has. (It’s actually something we track for baseball called the MLB Cost Index.) However, the authors of this Forbes article are using criteria where they compare wins and payroll but relative to the current GM’s predecessor.  And that’s where the flaw is.  It’s all about how good you are relative to the person who had the job before you.  That’s like saying Steve McNair was the best QB in the NFL last year because of his drastic improvement over Kyle Boller.

Listen, when you have Kevin McHale and Billy King as your #1 and #3 GMs in sports, you have to go back and really look at your methodology.  Kevin McHale has done nothing with that franchise except retard Kevin Garnett and make dumb trades with his buddy Danny Ainge.  Billy King on the other hand has managed to throw money away at guys like Chris Webber, Samuel Dalembert, and numerous head coaches.   Meanwhile his “high winning percentage” is relative to a guy named Brad Greenberg who lasted one year and was what Pat Croce called his biggest mistake as a rookie owner.  And on top of that, Larry Brown was calling the shots when Billy King “won” those games.

Oh and it’s probably a good idea to remove Bobby Clarke from your list. Sorry Forbes, back to the drawing board.

Links:
[Forbes]: Best General Managers In Sports