This is not a baseball blog 23 (I think)

Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba (in middle)

Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner who seemed to have radio ear muffs on all weekend.

This is not a baseball blog #I've forgotten

It wouldn't be baseball season without at least one of these:

Bond villain Hugo Drax from Moonraker

Red Sox 3rd Baseman Mike Lowell

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

If this is the final nail in the coffin of this season:

Ipswich 3-2 Norwich

: I shall be forced to join the French Foreign Legion, in order to forget ("Forget what? I've forgotten.")

work life balance

I can't believe I missed the grand national on this blog. First time since I started. Bah.

Sporting Dream Could be a Nightmare

For much of my life I have harboured a hope that the three English football teams most important to my family- Norwich City, Leyton Orient, and Brentford- would play in the same division. I just didn't want it to be the old 3rd division. Bah.

Come on Norwich, pull out another improbable victory over relegation from the jaws of the defeat. The only other way to avoid this meeting of the teams is for Orient to get relegated themselves, and that's hardly the positive outcome one would hope for.

Phelps Confirms My Predjudices

Michael Phelps photographed getting his Jamaica on? Further proof to me at least that out of the pool all competitive swimmers are boring.

Phelps and his aqualung bong

A sight to warm the heart in these dark times.

Norwich beat Ipswich 2-0. That's it- recession over.

Are the Rusholme Ruffians the next NFL franchise?

Jim. not Stephen Patrick, Morrissey

I'm not sure what was more astonishing this afternoon, the infuriatingly inventive play of the Miami Dolphins as they humbled our New England Patriots, or the fact that the NFL is now using "Every Day is Like Sunday" by Morrissey to promote NFL.com. If this trend continues can we expect Major League Baseball to promote the post season with "Hand in Glove"?

Many people have probably already thought of this, but....

I am really glad that sports drinks were developed at the University of Florida instead of at Florida State otherwise instead of Gatorade we'd be drinking Seminole Fluid.



8/24/08: I knew there had to be an antecedent, and so with great regret I acknowledge this douchebag Admunsen to my Scott: some goober who got lucky at word play and yet is a sexist tit

Let He Who Is Without Sin...

Crazy Bela is up in arms about the Olympics gymnastics scoring.

Go tell it to Yang Tae Young, Bela. And ask Paul Hamm to give back his stolen gold medal from Athens.

Meanwhile, I am stunned by the performance of Team GB, stunned and delighted. They must have prepared for the Beijing smog and the mass of humanity by going to smoky restaurants and on British public transport (Ah, in-jokes).

I am so happy for all those British athletes who after spending years in the shadows of the more dominant (and less successful) sports like soccer are now feted as national heroes in a sport-mad country. Plus the UK is out-performing Australia, which is ALWAYS a cause for VE Day-like mad abandon street parties.

A little bit of self-indulgence

To the post-modern British patriot who found this post and the attendant comment thread so reactionary and objectionable, might I point to the following from the New York Times (in a great story about the athletic achievements of team GB):

'Britain, which will host the Summer Games in 2012, may not be able to stage a no-expense-spared Olympics the way China has. The week before the opening ceremony, Tessa Jowell, Britain’s minister for the Olympics, said that the Bird’s Nest in Beijing would be the last “iconic” Olympic stadium. Organizers must already be wondering how to follow Beijing’s cast-of-thousands opening ceremony; re-forming the Beatles is not an option.' (the rest...)

Now stop bothering with this petty point scoring by me and read the much more mature post on energy below. Thank you.

2012 fireworks cache, Stratford East

PS: As the kids say, Hhar me now, bo, selecta, swallow back, holler, big up ya self, everything that I in, coming at ya like Cleopatra, come in a couple of bars, recognize, represent, keep it real, you gotta check ya self before ya wreck ya self, swallow back... and hello.

Wetter, Crapper, Less Complete

Memo to:

Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic & Paralympic Games (LOCOPG 2012)
1 Churchill Place
Canary Wharf
London, E14 5LN
United Kingdom

9th August, 2008

Dear Lord Coe;

I watched the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympiad last night with great interest. Upon its conclusion, I turned my thoughts to the opening ceremonies for London 2012 and it is to that element of your event I turn my attention now.

Unless you can persuade the Queen or one of her heirs to run around the roofline of the stadium suspended from a wire-fighting rig and then light the cauldron with a Dunhill desk lighter and one her own majestic rose-scented farts, you are screwed. I also think its a safe bet that the British version of the grand pageant of history as symbolized by dance, flash cards, fireworks, and percussion instruments will be a bit rubbish. The Chinese also had genuine Scottish bagpipers, which I imagine annoyed you to no end, as it makes your plans to include Chinese opera seem very derivative.

And that's before we consider the chance of rain.

Sincerely,
Wisdom Weasel
Floreat Expatria
17 Dungrumblin Towers
Rock-around-the-clock-land, Maine.

How Britain will light the Olympic cauldron, 2012

Damn

The patent absurdity of grown men playing a kid's game for millions and millions of dollars just became a little less enjoyable for me with this news.

He was an egotistical, selfish, and whiny man who allowed his image to be coopted to lend a sheen of rebellion to a megalithic sports corporation. But we knew that, and somewhow he was still fun- and sometimes awe-inspiring- to watch. And now I have to endure seeing him sit next to Joe Torre yucking it up in the dugout (pinestripes or no, its still an image that makes me want to vomit).

Bye Manny, you talented douche.

Chippy Scouse Bird to Wed Potato

Seeing as the football/soccer season is over (apart from some crap competition in Europe of no account, in the same way as the 1994 World Cup wasn't a real world cup) there isn't much news to report. However, just when you thought you'd have to wait until the end of August for the return of overheated British sports coverage, lumpy and thuggish Man U and England superstar Wayne Rooney is about to get married to his life long gold digger Colleen.

The ceremony is going to be a closely guarded affair with no press coverage. Thankfully, a sharp eyed paparazzi was able to infiltrate the stag night:

This is not a Basketball Blog

Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A:

Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics


Bill Cosby's 'Little Bill' educational cartoon character.

This is Not a Baseball Blog 21

Both men frail, very frail.

Red Sox principal owner John Henry

C. Montgomery Burns
.

The Wide World of Sports

Baseball is America's game. Football, or soccer if you prefer, is the sport beloved of the rest of the world. With that in mind, would you rather:

a) Be a lying, arrogant, greedy, adulterous kiddy-fiddler whose ass bled from too many performance enhancing drugs and who has squandered the trust of two great sports towns and some shite outfit called the Yankees?

Or:

b) A pie-loving, perpetually adolescent set of giant teeth with a gut and feet of gold attached caught up in the ol' Eddie Murphy "my gaggle of prostitutes have testicles" caper?

Answers on a post card to MLB and FIFA. The winner will be selected between rounds as Sepp Blatter and Bud Selig wrestle to see who can make their beautiful game more tawdry and attractive to borderline Nazis (the late Marge Schott would have made a perfect Lazio Ultra).

Match the athlete to his date

This Is Not A Baseball Blog 20

In a fitting tribute to the roots of this feature, this one comes from my darling wife Country Mouse. Watching the Red Sox in morning baseball action yesterday, my beloved took one look at pitching phenom Clay Buchholz* and announced:

"Clay Buchholz is a lady".

You be the judge:
A Lady...

Clay Buchholz

(*Her irrational whipping-boy of the 2008 season: last year it was Wakefield, in 2006 Papelbon)

Terms

OK Mr. Norris: here's the first challenge issued to you, as the losing party, in our first Red Sox vs.Yankees face-off of 2008.

1. Visit your local supermarket, corner store, or bodega.

2. Purchase a carton of Tropicana or other similar beverage.

3. Purchase a sleeve of the smallest Dixie Cups (or equivalent) you can find.

4. Go to a bar, your place of work, a nearby Home Depot, or somewhere you won't get beaten up.

5. Pour the beverage into the small cups.

6. Put on your Yankee hat.

7. Offer the cups to passers by, friends, or associates saying each time:

"I am a New York Yankees fan, so can I offer you a shot of juice?"

That is all (although a photo would be nice).

The Yankees' Jason Giambi before...

...and after

Yay!

First blood to me. Watch this space.