Writing a post about something absurd or off-the-wall or inappropriate that Charles Barkley says is almost the blog equivalent of breathing air: It takes almost no effort or thought and happens almost every second of every day.
Case in point: Sir Charles decided to goof on Sammy Sosa's recent skin rejuvenation project that has him looking like something out of the "Thriller" video. So, during the TNT NBA show Thursday night, Barkley, who proclaimed, "I know you want to get in the Hall of Fame, but going white ain't the way to do it!," eventually took to transforming himself into a white man - a process slowed significantly by the continued flapping of his jaw while the makeup person efforted away.
No, on the grand scale, this isn't up there with any Northwestern blackface screwup. But has the Round Mound of Rebound stepped over the line? Nevermind the discussion of whether he'll be able to eat fried chicken and chitluns after he's white. Or is this just another case of Charles being Charles?
Funny, that doesn't look like the Jaws of Life, Joe. (AP)
World Series-winning New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi may not walk on water, but he's apparently one step closer to sainthood in the Bronx.
Not content to simply end the torturous nine-year championship drought for the Bombers, formerly Chicago Joe took time after the celebrations were over last night to come to the aid of a woman in an car accident, lohud.com reports:
"The guy wins the World Series, what does he do? He stops to help," said Westchester County police officer Kathleen Cristiano, who was among the first to arrive at the accident scene. "It was totally surreal."
Girardi and Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte had actually passed Cristiano earlier in the night at a drunk driving checkpoint before the Yankee skipper came up on the minor spinout. The driver, Marie Henry of Stamford, Conn., was uninjured and declined treatment, apparently. And there were no charges in what police described as a simple loss of control of the car.
In fact, the only crime was that Henry apparently had no idea who Girardi was:
"The driver didn't know it was him until after I told her," Cristiano said.
If baseball were nothing but fastballs, we'd all be in the Majors at some point. No matter how hard someone throws, with enough work and time in the cage, building up batspeed to attack a fairly straight ball is within reach of the average human.
What inevitably puts the spikes in the throat of the collective dream is the breaking ball. It's often said that trying to hit a round ball with a round bat is the hardest thing to do in sports. While that's certainly open for debate, there's no denying the difficulty of catching a pitch with a wrinkle square on ash or metal.
And for many a hardballer, the curveball is the pinnacle of frustration. Oh sure, you're slider, changeup and splitter can cause an ill-fated attempt to smash bat over knee on the way back to the bench, but the one pitch that can really make a great hitter look like a T-baller is the curveball.
Known by many names - The Hammer, Uncle Charlie, Yakker, Bender, etc. - there's nothing worse than feeling of being frozen, or worse - twisting in the wind with buckled knees, as a big 12-6 local skims across the plate for a called third strike.
Wait, it turns out there is something worse: it's all in your head.
According to Zhong-Lin Lu, who holds the William M. Keck Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, that filthy hook never happened. It's impossible. All in your head. What you just got punched out on and were made to look foolish by was nothing more than a straight ball and what amounts to an optical illusion caused by spin and the red and white blur of seams and hyde.
In baseball, a curveball creates a physical effect and a perceptual puzzle. The physical effect (the curve) arises because the ball's rotation leads to a deflection in the ball's path. The perceptual puzzle arises because the deflection is actually gradual but is often perceived as an abrupt change in direction (the break). Our illusions suggest that the perceived "break" may be caused by the transition from the central visual system to the peripheral visual system. Like a curveball, the spinning disks in the illusions appear to abruptly change direction when an observer switches from foveal to peripheral viewing.
Got that? It's all in your head, meat.
"Physically, there is no such thing as a breaking curveball. It's mostly in the hitter's mind," claims Lu.
Major League hurler Mike Marshall in a piece in US News' HealthDay begs to differ with the distinguished Lu:
"I can't believe the guy is saying something that was disproved almost 50 years ago. It's absolutely ridiculous. Baseballs move. They really move," Marshall said.
And Marshall knows of what he speaks. Aside from his mound credentials, which include 12 seasons in the majors and a 3.14 ERA, he majored in exercise physiology while earning a doctorate at Michigan State University. He says the devastating movement is no trick of the eye, but rather is due to air pressure forcing the spinning ball downward.
Now, take a look at this nearly illegal curve Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw drops on Sean Casey in Spring Training in 2008. With all due respect to Lu, when Professor Vin Scully gets that excited about a hook, it's a great pitch. Just look where it starts and where it ends and see if you think it's optical illusion or straight up filth:
For more visual observation on the art of the curveball - and whether it bends - take a look at what many students of the game think was the best ever thrown, from the hand of Sandy Koufax (toward the end of the video):
The debate aside, when it comes to a curve's power - perceived or achieved - perhaps the best answer is, "does it matter?"
"There seem to be arguments on both sides," Freddy Berowski, a researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, said. "But what really matters is that the batter thinks it curves."
Sun-Times sports writer/editor Daryl Van Schouwen checks in with this umpire rant:
There has been plenty of discussion lately, stemming from the run of blown calls by major league umps in the playoffs, about using replay in baseball. Forget replay. How about this for a solution: Just get better. Just do a better job. Try to be above average.
Sure, Mr. Cub has a statue at Wrigley Field, but that's not enough to make Ernie Banks happy. (AP)
Ernie Banksis the Cubs. As any fan knows, he's an icon of the team perhaps equaled only in popularity and legend by Ron Santo.
"Let's play two!"
Back-to-back MVP awards despite his team.
512 homeruns.
The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
There's little the great slugger and ambassador of the game didn't accomplish. Yet in this interview with Boston Public Radio station WBUR, the face of one of the most-storied franchises in baseball says he hasn't accomplished anything as a person.
"I haven't done anything yet. ... Nothing."
While Banks fans may scoff at that notion coming from the beloved Cub, he makes it clear he's talking about his shortcomings as a member of the human race and his desire to achieve one more award for excellence - the Nobel Peace Prize. Sure, he got edged out this year by President Obama - maybe that was art of the controversy? - but it remains Banks' largest unfulfilled dream, he tells the interviewer.
"I always had a bigger goal when I was 15, and that was to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I see myself in Stockholm. That has been my journey. I've been chasing the footsteps of my life to do something worthwhile."
Maybe the 79-year-old Banks can get closer to his dream by brokering peace between the North and South Side baseball fans in a city fractured by cross-loathing?
For now, though, the 79-year-old legend is surely plenty busy raising the 1-year-old daughter, Alyna Olivia Banks, he adopted with his wife, Liz. And, of course, still waiting for that championship parade riot in Wrigleyville.
There are few Major League Baseball luminaries more celebrated that Ted Williams. The Splendid Splinter was the last man to hit .400 in a season, stroking at a .406 clip for the Boston Red Sox in 1941.
The famously prickly Hall of Famer and hero of World Ward II and the Korean conflict is considered by many to be the greatest hitter ever and, at least for son John-Henry Williams, was a treasure worth trying to save for all eternity. John-Henry chose to have dear dad cryogenically preserved upon his death at the age of 83 in 2002. Or, more specifically, Ted Williams head.
And that's where things get weird according to a new book, "Frozen," according to the New York Daily News:
In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former exec at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., graphically describes how The Splendid Splinter" was beheaded, his head frozen and repeatedly abused.
The book, out Tuesday from Vanguard Press, tells how Williams' corpse became "Alcorian A-1949" at the facility, where bodies are kept suspended in liquid nitrogen in case future generations learn how to revive them.
Johnson writes that in July 2002, shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors' last .400 hitter.
Williams' severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.
John-Henry, who had a brief pro baseball career, including with the Schaumburg Flyers, was a controversial figure before his father died. But the heat really came down him with his 2002 decision to freeze his father without so much as a public funeral. John-Henry himself died of Leukemia in 2004 and was also treated at the Alcor facility as part of the ted Williams agreement.
The Cubs "7th inning stretch" officially jumped the shark last night.
Ironically, it took Richard Dreyfuss--he of "Jaws" fame--to send it overboard.
The guy admitted he had not watched a game since 1988. He had no idea Bill Murray was a Cubs fan. And, he rambled on about how screwed up our country is. Just what we want to hear while watching America's Pastime.
When "God Bless America" goes wrong - another item for the "I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet" file.
Three teenagers who say they were tossed from a New Jersey ballpark for sitting through the song "God Bless America" are suing the minor league Newark Bears - managed by White Sox fan favorite Rock Raines.
The boys say their constitutional rights were violated when they were asked to leave Newark's Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium in June by Bear's president co-owner Thomas Cetnar.
"Nobody sits during the singing of 'God Bless America' in my stadium,'" Cetnar bellowed during the June 29 incident, according to the suit. "Now the get the (expletive) out of here."
The high schoolers, Bryce Gadye and Nilkumar Patel, both 17, and junior Shaan Mohammad Khan, 16, sued in federal court Friday seeking unspecified damages.
They say when they told Cetnar they had the right to remain seated, he cursed and had two security officers remove them from their seats behind home plate.
No chance the fine high school kids were popping off as that age group is known to do from time to time, right? Whatever the case, principles and beliefs aside, the next time you're at a minor league game in rough and tumble Newark the day before the anniversary of Sept. 11 and "God Bless America" comes on, maybe it would just be easier for everyone to stand? Just sayin'.
Curt Schilling is many things. Outspoken. Conservative. A World War II buff. A bloody-socked World Series hero to Red Sox Nation.
Now you may be able to add U.S. Senate candidate to the list.
Schilling, never one to leave you guessing about what he's thinking, has been chatting on his blog and in the Boston media about the possibility of running to fill the senate seat left open by the death of Ted Kennedy last week.
While my family is obviously the priority, and 38 Studios is a priority, I do have some interest in the possibility. That being said, to get to there from where I am today, many many things would have to align themselves for that to truly happen. I am not going to comment further on the matter since at this point it would be speculation on top of speculation.
My hope is that whatever happens, and whomever it happens to, this state makes the decision and chooses the best person, regardless of sex, race, religion or political affiliation, to help get this state back to the place it deserves to be.
Schilling, refused to comment when his office was contacted by phone by the Associated Press.
The 42-year-old lives in suburban Medfield and campaigned for President George W. Bush in 2004 and Sen. John McCain in 2008.
As a player, he won three World Series, in 2001 with the Arizona Diamondbacks and in 2004 and 2007 with the Red Sox. He became a Sox legend when he won Game 6 of the 2004 American League Championship Series while blood from an injured ankle seeped through his sock. He retired in March.
Reaction among the Red Sox was decidedly jovial Wednesday.
"If he runs, good luck," said first baseman Kevin Youkilis. "I don't know if I'd want to do that job."
Team manager Terry Francona said Schilling should do whatever makes him happy but noted, "I don't think he'd want me as his campaign manager."
Stumbled upon this footage of the best soccer game ever played, a spirited contest which ends in somebody getting kicked in the face on the way off the field. Not real sure what the deal is, but here's the handy Google translation of the summary, just to further cloud the moment:
Defender Sergio Jauregui, Blooming, we applied a flying kick disqualifying Uruguayan striker Leonardo Medina in the classic to the East Petroleum. The former Hurricane is horpitalizado.
So there you have it. But crazy Central American ninja players aside, seeing footage like this reminds me of maybe the most classic karate kick sporting moment of all video time: the Flying Izzy Alcantara.
Alcantara was a cup-of-coffee slugging outfielder for the Boston Red Sox around the turn of the century - this one, that is - who spent his fair share of time with the Triple A Pawtucket Red Sox. (Fun fact: Alcantara hit his first Major League homer against pre-juicing White Sox hurler Jim Parque in Chicago in 2000).
A prototypical quadruple-A player, Alcantara lost his shot at playing in the minor league all-star game in 2001 after this spectacularly nutty moment against Scranton Wilkes-Barre:
So remember, kids, keep the karate in the Cobra Kai dojo and off the diamond and field.
A voracious consumer of all things sports and all things blog, Koster keeps his eyes on the biggest stories in sports while sacrificing any chance at a social life. Waste your entire day with him On Our Twitter .
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