Though he openly admits his plea to replace Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni (“that ‘stache he sports is very foreign-looking. I never trusted the man anyway”) is all-too reminiscent of the CSTB celluloid punching bag, “Eddie”, Knickerblogger’s Robert Silverman tells MSG chieftan James Dolan (above), “unless Cablevision scientists have figured out a way to bring Red Holzman back from the dead, there isn’t a coach alive that would be able to pull this so-called team out of the gutter.” So why not just hire Joe WalshSilverman and see what happens?
I’ve been watching this Beckettian exercise in repetition and failure that you call a basketball team since the end of the Carter administration, fer chrissakes. Let’s apply a little basic math. If I’ve watched about fifty games a year, minus the few nights that I have some semblance of a social life, for thirty years at 2.5 hours a game, that comes to approximately 3,000 hours of intense study (and I think your so-called offense consisted of dumping the ball into the post and standing around watching King/Ewing/Melo shuck and jive for at least 2,876 of those hours). I don’t know if that’s impressive or sad or frightening or all of the above. I’ll let you be the judge of that. I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty — after so many hours in the belly of the beast, I can tell what’s going to happen in a game. I know when the other team is about to go on a run. I can smell a turnover coming like a fart in a crowded cubicle. I may not be able to diagram a play or run a practice, but my psychic powers will make up for any and all strategic deficiencies.
I can see you’re impressed. But wait, there’s more! If you glance at my resume you’ll note that when I’m not glued to the tube, I have spent many a year writing, directing and acting in stage plays. As such, I’m well-versed in managing a group of whiny, pouting, narcissistic, me-first divas. A group of individuals who, possibly save for their sexual preferences, are not that dissimilar from the rancid, cancerous personas that supposedly make up the majority of NBA rosters. Plus, the same basic ingredients that make for great theater make for great basketball – rhythm, tempo, floor spacing, unselfishness, and possibly having someone in a tiger costume show up in the 2nd act.
Seriously, EAT MEX’S DUST, JOHNNY FUCKO. Derek Erdman has just introduced the Keith Hernandez Coat Rack, possibly the greatest former athlete-turned-SNY-mouthpiece inspired coat rack of our generation. At a mere $100, you can afford to buy one for each of your homes (unless you’re Fred Wilpon)
Thursday morning salutations to longtime CSTB whipping boy Johnny B. Badd, whose day was undoubtedly brightened with the following press release ;
FLUSHING, N.Y., January 26, 2012 – The New York Mets today announced that John Franco, the club’s all-time leader in saves and games pitched, will be inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame during the Mets Hall of Fame Induction ceremony presented by Citi Sunday, June 3 prior to the 1:10 p.m. game against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Franco saved 276 games for the Mets over his 14-year career (1990-2004) with the team, the second-longest in franchise history behind Ed Kranepool’s 18 years of service. The four-time All-Star compiled 424 saves during his career, the fourth-most in major league history and the most by any lefthanded reliever.
“It’s a tremendous honor to be elected to the Mets Hall of Fame,” said Franco, who is currently in his fourth year as a Club Ambassador with the Mets. “I would like to thank Fred Wilpon, Saul Katz, Jeff Wilpon, the Hall of Fame Committee, all of my managers and coaches and of course my teammates. My entire family is looking forward to June 3.”
“John set a very high standard during his career both on and off the field,” said Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, who serves as Ex-Officio for the Selection Committee. “It’s great that during our 50th anniversary season we can have John – a true New Yorker in every sense – inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame.”
If you’re thinking all this fantastic event is missing is Fox Bots, keep in mind, “Grammy Award-winning musician and Berks County resident David Cullen will also be performing uncomfortably close to the pitcher’s mound in a protected area as he entertains fans and all-stars in attendance.”
…or he’s a dead GM walking. At least that’s the conclusion we can come to after the 2-15 Wizards canned head coach Flip Saunders Tuesday, with one unidentified agent telling the Washington Post’s Mike Wise that making assistant Randy Wittman the interim coach is a poor band-aid (“Witt is Flip without the accomplishments.”). In calling for Grunfeld’s termination, Wise’s WaPo colleague Jason Reid writes, “excising Saunders from the Wizards’ dysfunctional situation is like arresting a lowly accomplice while permitting the mastermind to go free.”
It’s fine to stay on message about your “plan.” Marketing slogans about “New Traditions” have their place. When teams exhibit little effort, as the Wizards did while going through the motions on the road and dropping to 2-15, the person ultimately in charge actually has to lead.
After Washington’s awful performance the past two seasons, and Grunfeld’s poor judgment while enabling the Wizards’ high-profile knuckleheads through the years, Leonsis needs to initiate an organizational purge. So far, he has ignored the biggest problem.
The Wizards coddle their players, offering excuses for their missteps. Each time the Wizards fire a coach, they validate their players’ repeated acts of ignorance.
Why should Andray Blatche attempt to do better when he plays in an organization that apparently places little value on accountability? How is JaVale McGee expected to learn the right way when, eight days after Saunders took issue with his showboat dunk, the coach is the one taking the blame for this disaster of a season?
Is it any wonder the players had tuned out Saunders? And when Saunders gets fired just 15 days after management declared his job safe, is it any wonder they don’t take anything seriously?
Given that it was the Mets’ decision to trade Carlos Beltran to San Francisco last summer rather than attempt to resign the veteran outfielder, I’d be pretty surprised to learn there are Amazins’ fans who deeply resent Beltran for hooking up with the Cardinals this winter. But that’s sort of what the New York Daily News’ Andy Martino alludes to in goading a “I’m not thinking about the fans, I’m thinking about myself,” comment from Beltran at last night’s Baseball Assitance Team charity dinner.
“I just want to have the opportunity to be in the playoffs,” he said. “What happened in 2006, you have to turn the page. That’s over. We can’t bring 2006 back to 2012. It has been six years. If they want to continue to think about that moment, then that’s their problem. Like I said, I have turned the page. I have really moved on.”
If his words sounded selfish, it is worth noting Beltran’s generous nature with teammates. From Angel Pagan to Lucas Duda, he provided frequent counseling on psychology and swing mechanics. The fans? Well … it’s complicated.
It was Beltran, after all, who told the Daily News last March that New York baseball fans “act like they own you.” His tenure included disagreements with team brass over knee surgery and his decision to forgo a voluntary visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Both of those controversies earned him fresh criticism from some in the public, and solidified the complexity of his time here.
“Unfortunately, in the past years, there were things that happened,” Beltran said. “Sometimes, as a player, things that happened in the clubhouse, they should stay in the clubhouse. But unfortunately, sometimes in comes out, and you have to address the media.”
While it would be a stretch to claim Beltran was nearly as popular in his Mets tenure as say, Mike Piazza was in his, was his relationship with the fans nearly as fractious as his relationship with WFAN? Judging by the way his comeback efforts were applauded by the (admittedly few) who attended Mets games last season, isn’t this “complication relationship” a bit overstated?
Terry intends to offer his hand to his opponent in the pre-match formalities that will inevitably draw the focus on Saturday, though it remains unclear whether Ferdinand will accept it. The QPR defender is expected to speak with the club on Thursday about the issue and will only then decide whether or not to shake hands prior to kick-off.
Lord Ouseley, an FA Councillor and chairman of the anti-racism campaign Kick it Out, has urged Ferdinand to do so. “Here we have the due process taking place, where a player will face the consequences of his actions,” he said. “But there is every reason for players and indeed fans to show civility and respect toward each other and focus on the football. I have nothing against that. A handshake now is part of the reconciliation and honesty that needs to take place.
“It is not about retribution and continued hostility. It is about reconciliation. It is about how to take the heat out of the situation of the two clubs meeting again, and problems with fans’ behaviour as a result of what happened between the players previously. A handshake before the game will not deflect from what went on before and how it will be dealt with.”
Former Mets catcher Clarence “Choo Choo” Coleman, one of the more celebrated members of the inaugural Amazins’ squad, returned to Flushing this past weekend for a card signing event attended by the New York Times’ George Vescey. While Coleman’s kept a low profile of late, toiling in a Virginia Chinese restaurant prior to flying to NYC (his first airplane journey in 35 years, reportedly). And what’s a trip down memory lane…without challenging Ralph Kiner’s version of legendary events?
Perhaps Coleman heard fans in line reciting famous Choo Choo anecdotes. This one really happened: Charlie Neal, who roomed with Coleman in 1962, was ragging him in spring training of 1963, saying, “I bet you don’t know my name.” To which Coleman replied, “You No. 4.”
Then there is the Ralph Kiner story about interviewing Coleman in 1962, and asking, “What’s your wife’s name, and what’s she like?” Coleman replied, “Her name is Mrs. Coleman — and she likes me, bub.”
On Sunday, Coleman shook his head politely and said it never happened that way. Kiner, on the phone from Florida, softly said it did.
Another part of the legend is that Kiner asked Coleman how he got his nickname and that Coleman said he did not know.
“When I was 8 or 9, I ran around a lot,” Coleman said Sunday. “My friends called me Choo Choo because I was fast.”
(“He could have told me that,” Kiner said, fondly.)
Of Kyle Williams’ two fateful turnovers on punt returns in yesterday’s NFC Championship, at least one of ‘em appeared to be the handiwork (knee-work?) of a player strangely unfocused on the crucial stakes involved. In Monday’s New York Magazine, Benjamin Wallace-Wells considers quotes from various New York Giants and concludes that Williams — the subject of death threats following his monumental gaffes – was “targeted for extra violence because they knew he had suffered several concussions in the past.”
After the game, reporters crowded around the locker of Jacquian Williams, who’d forced the second fumble, hoping for an angle: Had the Giants noticed something about Kyle Williams’s technique, some weakness in the 49ers punt-return scheme? “Nah,” Williams said. “The thing is, we knew he had four concussions, so that was our biggest thing, was to take him outta the game.”
Devin Thomas, the reserve wide receiver who recovered both of Kyle Williams’s fumbles, was even more explicit. “He’s had a lot of concussions,” Thomas told the Star-Ledger columnist Steve Politi. “We were just like, ‘We gotta put a hit on that guy.’ … [Giants reserve safety Tyler] Sash did a great job hitting him early and he looked kind of dazed when he got up. I feel like that made a difference and he coughed it up.”
It certainly sounds like the Giants’ special teams players were told about Williams’s history of concussions, and that they went after him because of it. (That this has so far drawn no attention from beat reporters suggests that such planning is commonplace). It’s impossible to know whether Thomas is right — if Williams in fact was concussed or woozy during the game — but he didn’t look himself yesterday: There was the third-quarter punt that skimmed off his knee after he seemed to dawdle, unsure whether to pick it up or let it roll, and at least two punts that he fair-caught though he had plenty of room to run. Sports Illustrated’s Ann Killion also noticed “a fumble on a reverse that he fell on, a strange sideways diving catch on another punt that could have been disaster.” Williams played virtually the whole game at wide receiver and didn’t register a single catch.
(a man likely to be despised and ridiculed by persons of all political persuasions. And on the right, Tim Thomas)
Bruins goalie Tim Thomas declined to attend the defending Stanley Cup Champions’ visit to the White House earlier today, and while last spring’s Conn Smythe Trophy winner isn’t speaking to the press about his absence, it is presumed the avowed Glenn Beck fan would prefer not to be seen yucking it up with the incumbent Commander In Chief. Puck Daddy’s Greg Wyshynski supports the act of defiance, opining, “good on Thomas for using this moment — where a professional sports team participates in what’s both an honor for their accomplishments and a political photo opportunity — to make a political statement of his own.”
It’s the moment when Thomas will no doubt lose a lot of supporters, for sure, when they realize an athlete they celebrate has stark political differences than they have. He’s not the first nor the last athlete to choose not to visit the White House.
It’s a moment in which a professional athlete uses his fame, his influence for something he believes in, and does something that won’t be popular among fans or media. Sean Avery did the same thing: Potentially alienating his teammates by taking a political stand on gay marriage.
If he’s celebrated and Thomas is demonized, what does that say about our real tolerance of free speech? That it’s only free when we agree with it?
(And for the “separation of politics and hockey” crowd — that flies out the window when you agree to be a backdrop to a speech in an election year. Or any year.)
I get the gist of Wyshynsk’s argument, however, a cursory check of obscure search engine Google reveals little if any criticism, let alone “demonization”. Either hockey fans are apolitical, share his views/biases or most likely, are willing to tolerate all sorts of things so long as Thomas performs on the ice.
When it was further demonstrated that Sandusky continued to be a presence on campus, in the locker room and even on Joe Paterno’s sideline with young children by his side, damning questions rose to a din: how could Joe Pahave been content with silence, given the possibility that children continued to be at risk? Did Joe Paterno, and the campus leadership, care more about their brand than anything that resembled human morality? Was a football program that had become the economic, social, and cultural center of an entire region, more important than all other concerns? Had abused children become, in the view of Penn State’s leadership, an unfortunate collateral damage necessary to keeping the cash registers ringing? The conclusions most people drew were not kind.
Let Paterno’s last teachable moment be this: if your football coach is the highest paid, most revered person on your campus, you have a problem. If your school wins multiple championships, and a booster drops money to build a statue of the coach, tear it the hell down. And if you think children are being raped, the minimum just isn’t good enough, no matter whether or not you wear a crown.
(from the CSTB archives, Love, left, shown with former boss Kevin McHale, right, as the latter explains what was revealed when he tore away the “worth seeing” sticker from The Bastards’ ‘Monticello’ sleeve)
…but unfortunately, the New York Post doesn’t pay their Hoops Du Jour columnist to write about any of them. On Sunday, Vecsey muses, “we all struggle, our constitutional rights are being sold down the river by numb, corrupt elected officials, and our land, pets, and infrastructure are being abused…I am ashamed actually giving credence to whether a 23-year-old basketball player feels insulted being offered $15M per year.” Funny, I don’t feel guilty at all agreeing with Pete that Minnesota’s reluctance to offer Kevin Love a 5 year max deal instead of of 4 could well haunt the franchise for years to come.
How can Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor not realize an extra $17 million (roughly $78M total) is wholly worth the investment to maintain the electrically charged concurrence the infinitely improved T’wolves have going for them?
Why would Taylor not want to lock up Love as long as possible (to keep or trade) when an insurance policy is readily available to protect him against a career-ending injury?
>Surely Taylor must understand better than most (Kevin Garnett’s history with the team comes to mind) how rare it is to luck into a fixated forward that flexes for double-doubles as fluently as Charles Barkley articulates two straight prepositions.
For all concerned — especially in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul — and for the sake of Love’s teammates, coaches and Wolves’ fans (only recently removed from the endangered list), hopefully Taylor will come to his senses.
And Love will get a grip on reality. I seem to remember him saying last season, “All I want is $50M for five.” Of course, that was before Russell Westbrook got profoundly rewarded.
MSG TV’s Jill Martin had a word with Metal Mike Piazza during halftime of the Knicks’ double OT loss to Denver, and the former expressed his desire to roll around naked on a pile of Savatage bootlegs to enter the Baseball Hall Of Fame as a NY Met. Tommy Lasorda and Murray Chass, while not necessarily unavailable for comment, aren’t gonna answer my phone calls either way, so forget about it.
An OT goal by the Rangers’ Marian Gaborik with 3.6 seconds remaining gave the Rangers a 3-2 victory over the Bruins earlier today, a contest that feature spectacular goaltending by Tim Thomas’backup, Tuuka Rask. Despite the frustrating conclusion, Rask showed, in the words of NESN’s Joe Haggerty, “he can break sticks in a fit of pique with the best of them.”
“[They were] great saves by him. I think it frustrates him because he thought he grabbed the [puck], but it kept popping up in the same spot,” said Rich Peverley. “Three chances, and maybe four, and they finally got that last one.”
But that didn’t stop the excitable Rask from emotionally slamming his blocker down like a battle axe on the crossbar after the rebound goal had eluded.
Rask was still flapping his arms around animatedly as he skated off in the background behind a Rangers’ group slapping each other on the back following the victory, and was no less emotional in the postgame locker room
“Yeah…it was two rebounds. It hit my glove twice, but ah…that’s what sucks the most. Three seconds? [Expletive],” said Rask. “Somebody liked it, I guess. It was a pretty thrilling end. Not for me, though.
“Well [expletive], I mean three seconds left – it sucks. You’re pretty riled when that happens. I broke my stick. I had success doing that. Sometimes I can’t break ‘em, but this time, I broke it. [That’s] something positive out of it.”
In the wake of a New Orleans Saints fan claiming he and his family were bullied at last Saturday’s Saints/Niners NFC Divisional Playoff game, the New York Daily News’ Fillip Bondy weighed in yesterday with repeated jabs at San Francisco’s allegedly “soft” football patrons (“all the real fanatics live in working-class Oakland and cheer for the Raiders,” “San Francisco is famous for the Summer of Love. In the summer, New York doesn’t love anybody and nobody loves New York,”). While not particularly funny, Bondy’s column succeeded in raising the ire of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Osteler, who warns his New York colleague in advance of tomorrow’s NFC Championship, “when I see you Sunday I’m going to slap you upside the head with my low-fat, gluten-free butterscotch scone.”
New York weather makes fans tough? Snow? Snow is annoying, but hardly character-developing. All it develops is your already-prodigious whining skills. San Francisco has manly weather. We have fog so thick that you can be walking down the street and get stuck in it like a fly frozen in an ice cube. And wind? Dozens of cars are blown off the Golden Gate Bridge every day. That swimming helps us develop big lungs for cheering.
Our average income is higher than yours? Don’t worry, you’ll close the gap with your next Wall Street Ponzi scheme. If not, hey, we’re all Democrats out here, we’ll just give you whatever you need.
Of TNT analyst Shaquille O’Neal’s insistence that Andrew Bynum is the Association’s “Best True Big Man”, the obviously dissed Dwight Howard would like O’Neal to “sit down and get on with his life”. An equally dismayed Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don’t Lie goes a tad further, opining that Shaq’s vendetta against Howard, “is more sad than anything.”
Shaq, who chafed at Howard’s supposed theft of his Superman persona years ago, just needs to get over it. The pampered, petulant athlete bit works when you’re an actual athlete. But as a gabby wonk on a TV show? Silly biases and harbored grudges don’t tend to go over as well. Especially when even fair weather NBA fans and viewers can see right through you.
We’re enjoying the heck out of O’Neal’s turn on NBA TV and TNT this year. Like Howard, even at his worst O’Neal still has quite a lot to offer, and his presence on the set far outshines ESPN’s milquetoast coverage. He’s at his best as the goofball, though, and not the spurned giant in winter. Let it go, man.
I’ve nothing but respect for Dwyer’s work, but this is a rare instance where I’ll disagree. If TNT producers aren’t encouraging Shaq to continue his feud with Howard, than full credit to O’Neal for understanding the heel announcer gimmick is especially entertaining when 100% of the viewership knows you’re totally full of shit. This isn’t the first time O’Neal has made a premeditated public statement that would cause most reasonable persons to lay low for several weeks ; TNT knew full well they were not only hiring a guy with zero broadcasting experience, but one who’d previously endeared himself to the public by boasting of sleeping with Venus Williams and taking a dispute with Kobe Bryant to a very intimate space.
So I’d suggest Shaquille O’Neal is totally getting on with his life by using the wide forum his new gig has afforded him. If he’s smart, he’ll continue to diminish Howard’s accomplishments, perhaps to the point of suggesting Eddy Curry or Darko Milicic have supplanted Superman II as the league’s top (big) dog.
…though that’s no reason for Col. Tom Coughlin’s charges to resist to the temptation to drench their coach with the coldest available supply if the Giants succeed in beating San Francisco in Sunday’s NFC Championship. The Gatorade dousing, long thought to be an innovation of the ’85 Giants, receives a historical overview from the New York Times’ Sam Borden in Saturday’s edition, dispelling an urban myth in the process.
George Allen, or so the story went, was dunked with a bucket of water by his Long Beach State players in 1990 after they won their final game of the season. Allen, the former coach of the Washington Redskins and the Los Angeles Rams, was 72 and was said to have developed pneumonia that led to his death a few weeks later.
In an interview this week, however, his son George Allen Jr., a former senator and governor of Virginia, said that was simply not true.
“He got a cold from it, but that was not the cause of his death,” the younger Allen said in a telephone interview. “He had a heart arrhythmia. It had nothing to do with the Gatorade shower.”
Allen added that every time he saw a coach doused on television, it made him think of his father. “And not for any bad reason,” Allen said. “It makes me think of him because getting that Gatorade shower meant he went out a winner.”
Clever parody Character assassination is no longer reserved for the likes of @crankyvince or @amareisntreal ; The Indy Star’s Bill McCleery reports that coaches and administrators at Lawrence North High School (IN) had statements attributed to them that were the work of young hoodlums.
One online imposter assumed the identity of Principal Brett Crousore, also the school’s wrestling coach, and made reference to male sexual anatomy. That tweet also suggested the existence of inappropriate relationships between the coach and student-athletes.
Another tweet, purported to be from football coach Tom Dilley (above), was racially charged. It seemed to express the idea that Dilley, who is white, prefers black players to represent the school.
“I don’t even want to see you at practice,” the tweet proclaims, “if you’re white.”
Another tweet, suggested to be from basketball coach Jack Keefer, offered the following: “I love it when the girls wear those black yoga pants.”
The tweets originated from three Twitter accounts, Crousore said, though he declined to say how many students are thought to have been involved in the online impersonations.
(EDITOR’S NOTE : Though I’d never seriously suggest there’s a correlation between stat crunching and problems in the sac(k), at one time in this blog’s history — January 28, 2006, to be exact — I made a bold attempt to combine TWO GREAT INTERNET FIXTURES that should never, ever go together).
Some shitty tabloids offer advice to the lovelorn and/or unattractive. And some major sports portals offer fantasy sports tips for persons Colin Cowherd charitably calls “nerds”.
Here at Can’t Stop The Bleeding, I’ve often considered both features to be an utter waste of time. However, if some enterprising person were to say, mix up the mailbag a bit, you might have a terrific new column.
And with that, I’ve taken the liberty of combining some random letters to (and responses from) ESPN’s Fantasy Games expert Scott Engel and The Mirror’s resident Sex & Health guru Dr. Miriam.
Q: I’m 17 and sex for the first time with my girlfriend was painful as my foreskin has always been quite tight. When I’m erect, it doesn’t pass over the tip of my penis. Will this problem go away?
A: As I have said many times, drafting Antonio Gates gives you a clear advantage over your opposition on a regular basis. But he still doesn’t quite match up to the elite WRs in terms of overall yardage. Plus, RBs will be flying off the board in the first two rounds, and you must grab the best one available with one of your first two picks. Drafting at the end of round one can still give you a shot at a very good RB (Rudi Johnson or Steven Jackson might still be available).
Q: I’m in a 12-team league where we are only allowed to retain one keeper. My options are Larry Fitzgerald (I sacrifice a sixth-round pick in 2006) and Steven Jackson (10th-round pick). The other owners will be keeping some good RBs as well, (Larry Johnson, Tiki Barber, Willis McGahee, Thomas Jones, Willie Parker and Warrick Dunn to name a few). With these factors in mind, who would you keep and why?
A: A domineering, self-centred and uncaring person who is smugly convinced of his own importance is a turn-off.
Power struggles and jealousy can create anger and resentment and these dangerous emotions get acted out in sex. You feel bullied and controlled out of bed so your sexual response levels have plummeted. You can’t give your all to someone arrogant about receiving it.
Q: I’M a 54-year-old man whose libido seems to have died.
I’ve had a couple of girlfriends over the past few years and really enjoyed sex with them. One was a lot younger and a bit too demanding. She wanted sex at night and in the morning and I just couldn’t cope. But things aren’t going too well with my new girlfriend either.
The worst thing – apart from the loss of confidence – is the thought I may never be able to form another relationship again.
I don’t expect to be a three-times-a-night 20 year old again, but it would be nice to be able to perform when needed.
A:I would never use a keeper pick on a defense/special teams, as you can always grab a quality unit in your next draft, and top skill position players are much more important. Plus, defenses often vary in performance more often than skill players on a year-to-year basis, so even the best defense comes with some amount of risk. You’re talking about an 11-player unit that could undergo changes, deal with injuries or simply suffer if the offense plays worse next year and puts them on the field too often.
Q: If the Colts don’t re-sign Edgerrin James, what would be the value of Dominic Rhodes? Can he be a top running back behind the same line in the same system if the Colts use him as their featured back?
A: It’s one thing to fantasise about being spanked hard, but a good dose of the cane could cause him an injury and he’s being unfair placing you under this kind of pressure.
For starters, forget the cane. If you’re new at this, stay with your bare hand. Not only are you far less likely to do any real damage this way, you’ll find it far easier to develop a feel for what you’re doing.
With my apologies to both the Ramones and Dennis Green for the above headline, ESPN Deportes’ Enrique Rojas reports Indians righty Fausto Carmona is accused of trying to obtain a US visa under a false identity.
Colonel Maximo Aybar Baez, a spokesman for the Dominican police, said on his Twitter account that Carmona, whose actual name is Roberto Hernandez Heredia, was arrested after leaving the U.S. Consulate in the Dominican Republic on Thursday.
Authorities said Heredia is 31 years old and not 28, as he has claimed.
“This arrest is part of the measures taken by the National Police (NP), in coordination with the American Consulate. The NP invited Dominican prospects not to be misled by those who sell fake illusions based on illegality,” Baez said on Twitter.
The pitcher was trying to renew his visa so he could attend spring training in February.
Well, no. Of course not. But in a stretch far bigger than any in his current journalism career, Seattle Weekly’s Duff McKagen, he of stints with Velvet Revolver, the Fastbacks, the Fartz and some ’90′s LA band I can’t quite remember the name of, takes to ESPN.com to insist if NY Giants QB Eli Manning fronted a band, “he’d be the type that would be doing just strictly studio work” (“there would be no way that an always-image-conscious audience would back a singer as ungainly on stage as Manning telegraphs to us all from the field”)
He is what punk rock was to mainstream rock in the ’70s. What “grunge” was to hair-metal in the ’90s. What old-school country is to modern country music. A punch in the gut.
No makeup and no offstage gimmickry. No B.S. and no frills. Just results and elation.
(what does this video have to do with the story below? Absolutely nothing, but now that there’s no doubt Timmy Vulgar and the camera love each other, perhaps David Stern can do the right thing and order the Pistons to book Human Eye, instead).
Younger Pistons’ fans won’t want to miss “Totally ‘90’s” night on Friday, February 3 when Detroit hosts Brandon Jennings and the Milwaukee Bucks at 7:30 p.m. at The Palace of Auburn Hills. The first 10,000 fans in attendance will receive a commemorative Ben Gordon poster and the halftime musical performer will be 1990’s rapper Vanilla Ice, who’s single “Ice Ice Baby” was the first hip-hop single to top the Billboard charts.
It would appear that even the most fleeting of associations with ICP is enough to elevate an act from the State Fair circuit. And with that in mind, perhaps the creative minds behind The Gathering (and subsequently, the Pisons marketing department) might wanna consider another veteran artist who is hot on the comeback trail?
Who amongst us hasn’t taken the court and wished we had a Tzizit with superior moisture wicking capabilities? I’M LOOKING AT YOU, CHARLIE WARD. Link courtesy The Classical‘s David Roth, who adds, “good to see Tamir Goodman has been staying out of the sun.”
