Baseball Brawls

I may have written about how I don't completely understand baseball. One thing I do enjoy, though, is the more or less sanctioned mass brawls. I got this from "The Onion", titled "History of the Bench-Clearing Brawl." Enjoy.
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The Yankees–Rays spring training brawl was a notable bench-clearer, but hardly exceptional in the grand scheme of things. Onion Sports remembers some of the best:

1861: A pitch thrown by New York Knickerbocker pitcher Chic Paulding at the head of Atlanta's Byron Teagarden starts the Civil War

1898: After getting hit by a pitch, Honus Wagner walks briskly to the pitcher's mound and waves his handkerchief right in Kid Nichols' face

1903: Without realizing they too could fight, the Chicago White Stockings get their asses kicked in their own dugout

1968: While not a bench-clearing brawl, the time when Bob Gibson wordlessly stalked onto the field, cut Ron Santo's throat, and walked back to the dugout is certainly worth mentioning

1972: Following a brushback pitch from Tom Seaver, Dave Kingman storms the mound with his bat and swings it at Seaver; he whiffs nine times in a row before finally connecting and sending Seaver's head 475 feet over the left-field bleachers

1987: Oakland A's manager Tony LaRussa notices his team struggling in a sixth-inning fight with the Texas Rangers, forcing him to call up players from the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats to join in the fray

1998: The Yankees and Orioles engage in what is not so much a bench-clearing brawl as it is a fracas

2002: A controversial strike call during a game between bitter rivals the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals results in a stadium-clearing brawl

2003: In Game 3 of the ALCS, Pedro Martinez grabs Yankee coach Don Zimmer by the head, playfully tosses him to the ground, and then slowly digs his metal cleats into his skull

2006: In a brawl between the Dodgers and Brewers, 78-year-old Tommy Lasorda unexpectedly storms onto the field screams loudly while running around in circles, causing both teams to slowly retreat to their dugouts and look around nervously

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Under Armour Commercials

TV commercials nowadays are an interesting thing. I'm sure there's some definition for advertising, and it likely involves trying to sell a product based on its merits. Nowadays, though -- Super Bowl commercials are Exhibit A -- it is not so much about deceiving you into buying a product you probably don't need, and more about getting the audience's attention with something shocking or amusing. I'm okay with this, as commercials don't (at least consciously) really influence me to go buy stuff -- see, if I'm feeling lazy enough to have sat my half-white butt down on the sofa to start watching TV, I'm not likely to get up off of said butt and go buy the product right away.

Anyway, the subject of this entry is the supercharged, testosterone-injected, incoherent commercials from Under Armour. I simply can not wrap my mind around these things. They're not funny. Or shocking. They are just a bunch of meatheads who have been in the weightroom since they weren't recruited out of high school, running around in overly-tight athletic apparel catching footballs, yelling ambiguous catch-phrases like "we must protect this house!" and "click-clack" (special pause between 'click' and 'clack', for emphasis).

"We must protect this house!" -- What does this mean? Does it mean something like "win at home" ? How does this encourage me to buy your brand? Is it a metaphor? As in the 'house' is the football player's body, and the apparel is to protect it? Are these men capable of understanding what a metaphor is?

"Click-clack" -- This is the sound of football cleats on the pavement between the locker room and field. This has no connection to playing in the actual game, or being good. For all we know you could have click-clacked your way from the locker straight to riding the pine the whole game.

I'm so confused.

Last of all, "armour" is the British rendering for "armor." Were they going for sophistication here?

So many questions...no answers. Seems to be a trend with my blog.

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Bite me, Post

Don't tell me I didn't pre-empt these two articles from The Washington Post with my very first post back in July:

Plagiarism #1
Plagiarism #2

Sure, they did all the "legwork" (actual research), but you know I was the catalyst for the idea. If I felt like I could afford the lawyer fees (trans: "if I feel like I had a case") I would sue their thieving A's. I suppose I could always commission the ACLU since it would be a completely baseless and frivolous lawsuit -- that is and always has been their cup of tea.

Yes, let it be noted that it took me 40+ posts before I took a cheap shot at the ACLU -- rest assured that it will not be the last.

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Letter to Celebrity

Dear Mr. Indecisive / Insecure / Some Possible Combination of Both,

Alright. I've had enough of this and it needs to stop. Right now.

I admit from the outset that you will be worth more money than I can imagine -- according to Wikipedia your net worth is $300+ million...but for all we know you could have edited that entry yourself -- so you will always be able to rub that in my face. Point conceded.

(Okay, maybe amidst your hectic schedule of stealing samples and riffs from artists with original talent you wouldn't take the time to rub it in personally, but I'm sure you could get your 300lb bodyguards to beat it into me)

I can even say I sympathize with your situation to a certain extent. At one point you were an emerging musical artist and needed to distinguish yourself. You needed a performing name that would create a persona and mystique about you that would set you apart from all of the other chumps.

So then you came up with a recording name: "Puff Daddy."

Sorry to get hung up on semantics, but... Is it just me, or when you play word association with the word "puff," isn't "cream puff" the first thing that comes to mind? Or at least something that is soft, fluffy, and lacking in substance? Maybe it's just me. But it really doesn't convey the "bad boy" image you were probably going for.

So then you started complicating things by making sure that it was publicly announced you were changing your name to P.Diddy. Then, to simplify things for us who have trouble with the alphabet, you dropped the 'P', leaving just Diddy. (Very gracious of you, by the way). WHO / WHAT/ WHEN / WHERE / WHY IS 'DIDDY'?!? I have no idea.

Think of all the wasted "Puff Daddy" pre-printed letterheads. I can't imagine your confusion when signing checks after changing names; I know my sisters had a tough time after they got married, and they only had to change their last name--once!

And now that you're looking to get into acting, you want to be called by your real name: Sean Combs. Sean's a good name. I say stick with it and save your publicist, the mailman, or anybody else that might associate you with your name, the headache.

Your unadoring non-fan,
JD

PS Any clarification, ie significance of your chosen names, would be enlightening. I am in Japan for work, and tonight it's raining, so I'm bored out of my mind.

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