Sports Talk

Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings, Sports Talk | 10 Comments »

Bobble me…

XMBaseball.com, some kind of weird joint venture between Major League Baseball and XM Satellite Radio is currently running two web promotions. The first is a robo-call where you can have Derek Jeter or David Ortiz call your house at a particular time and basically recite a MadLib with your chosen name(s), hobbies, favorite sports teams, etc.. My son Avery would probably get a kick out of it, but when I typed in all the info, I was told that Derek can’t say the word “Avery,” and asked if he could call without mentioning a name. No thanks, robo-Derek, the effect would most certainly be lost. And of course, if he can’t say Avery, he can’t very well say Brandon, lest he upset Avery. Catch-22…

Anyway, the other web promotion is a feature that let’s you Bobble head anyone you want. That one’s easier. Ladies & gentlemen, Bobble-Brian:

Categories: Sports Talk, The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on Bobble me…

Yankee Stadium Construction Espionage

This has to be my favorite baseball story of the year so far.

It seems that a construction worker from the Bronx, Gino Castignoli, who is also a Red Sox fan, took a job on the construction team for the new Yankee Stadium, with the express purpose of burying a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey in one of the stadium’s concrete slabs in order to jinx the stadium and the Yankees. After that one day on the job, he quit, stating that he would never set foot in Yankee Stadium even if they “gave him free tickets” and “let him sit in George Steinbrenner’s box.”

Alas, two anonymous co-workers ratted him out. On Saturday, a team drilled for five hours in the offending concrete slab and found the jersey under two feet of concrete. The shirt, tattered from the jackhammers but still easily recognizable as a Red Sox jersey, will be auctioned off by the Jimmy Fund to raise money for Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Yankees will contribute a Yankees Universe T-shirt as well, which will benefit Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Here’s the best part, though (you have to watch the embedded video in the article to catch this). Hank Steinbrenner, George Steinbrenner’s son and principal owner of the Yankees, had this to say about the incident:

I hope his coworkers kick the [expletive] out of him

And Mr. Castignoli, who has no remorse about the incident whatsoever, responded thusly:

Tell Hank he can come meet me if he wants to try – and tell him to bring [catcher Jorge] Posada, because he’s the one Yankee I can’t stand.

This is the kind of stuff that makes the Yankees & Red Sox one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports. As for jinxes, well, Boston fans know all about jinxes, now don’t they? Not to mention, as long as there’s stuff like this in the building, the Yankees will be well protected. As Derek Jeter said in a recent interview, “the ghosts don’t have far to go – just across the street.”

Go Yanks!

Categories: New York, New York, Sports Talk | 1 Comment »

A-Rod Attacked in Fenway Park

Tip o’ the hat to Ilya Burlak for pointing out this unbelievable story. Seems a Bristol, CT middle school took their kids on a class trip to Fenway Park in Boston. A red-tailed hawk, who nests in an overhang near the stadium’s press booth, suddenly decided it didn’t like one of the students very much. It swooped down, talons extended, and scratched the scalp of this innocent, 13-year old girl, drawing blood but not seriously harming the girl (see picture).

Here’s the kicker. The girl’s name? Alexa Rodriguez!

As Ilya says, you just can’t make this stuff up…

Categories: Sports Talk, The World Wide Weird | 1 Comment »

A Red Sox fan gives in to Yankee Class…

Click through to find out what made Peter Hughes, originally of Brockton, Mass, say this:
“It’s going to be hard to root against the Yankees ever again.”

(Hat tip: Joe Catania)

Categories: Sports Talk | 5 Comments »

Still an Andy Pettitte Fan…

Given recent events in the baseball world, I thought I’d comment on what Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens have said and done over the last week or so. My perspective is that of a lifelong Yankee fan, and also as a father of two young boys.

I mention my kids because I’m very much of the opinion that sports, for adults, is entertainment. It’s a diversion from the things that truly matter in our lives – our families, our jobs, our communities, our politics, etc. As an adult, my interest in whether or not a professional baseball player cheated to win a World Series doesn’t amount to much more than idle gossip. It simply isn’t that important in the big picture. But kids view sports differently. Kids dream of becoming professional athletes. They emulate them. They watch their every move and listen to their every word. The athletes are, for better of for worse, heroes in their world. Superheroes, like Superman or Batman, but real enough to watch on TV and during the occasional trip to the ballpark.

My older son became fully aware of baseball right as it was becoming obvious that Jason Giambi had been taking steroids to achieve his unusual bulk and, consequently, his inflated stats. At the time, I encouraged him to look up to the likes of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, but steered him away from Giambi whenever I could. When he asked (and he did ask), I told him that Giambi was a great baseball player, but not a very good person, because even though he hits homeruns and wins games, he cheats.

And no one likes to play with a cheater.

My younger son is now at that age where he follows and roots for the individual players. And, of course, my older son is still fully fixated. Therefore, the widely publicized Pettitte/Clemens events present me with another dilemma. When the season kicks in, they will almost certainly hear about it and ask me what I think. And here’s what I think I’ll tell them:

Andy Pettitte is also not a smart person. He got hurt twice, and instead of listening to his doctor, he took medicine from someone who was not a doctor. That’s a very dangerous thing to do, and he’s lucky he didn’t get sick or make his injury worse.

But he didn’t cheat like Jason Giambi did. It’s true that taking the medicine was against the rules, so he did break the rules. But he didn’t take the medicine every day to make him pitch faster, strike out more batters, or win more games. What he did was wrong, but he wasn’t lying to his teammates every time he played in a game. Also, he admitted that he was wrong and said he was sorry. And that’s why his teammates supported him.

It’s hard to call what Pettitte did role model material, but at least based on what we know right now, he’s doing a pretty good job of showing kids how to handle things after you’ve made mistakes.

Roger Clemens, on the other hand, continues to surprise me. Back in December, I wrote this:

Instead of lawyering up, Clemens is adding the charge of “lying about steroids” to the one of “using steroids” that Mitchell delivered . . . For all of his on-field accomplishments, he’s counting on being proven (or believed) innocent at this point, because if he’s ever actually proven guilty, his actions today will do just as much to keep him out of the Hall of Fame as any drug he ever took.

Given Pettitte’s testimony to Congress, and whatever physical evidence Brian McNamee may or may not have, Clemens seems to be losing that battle. If it turns out he did use steroids or HGH, I will waste no time in telling my kids that what Roger did was even worse than what Giambi did, because not only did they both cheat, but Clemens also lied about it – loudly and frequently, and that’s the opposite of saying you’re sorry.

And good boys always say they’re sorry. Otherwise, they get punished.

Categories: Sports Talk | 3 Comments »

So how was you’re commute this morning?

This is Brian Greenberg, blogging live from a very crowded Penn Station in midtown Manhattan. Conditions here are as follows: GIANTS. FANS. EVERYWHERE.

AND no one knows which subway to take, so they’re all standing in the middle of crowded hallways reading directions they printed out off the web, AND they all need to purchase a single-trip Metrocard for the subway, AND none of them know how the machine works, AND I just got hit in the face with a couple of hundred red, white and blue balloons being lugged through the rush hour crowd by some guy with dollar signs in his eyes.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure a bunch of these folks are drunk.

Sigh…Enjoy the parade, folks, I’m late to my 9am meeting.

(P.S. To all you smug commuters that drive or take the bus, note that there’s a party at Giants stadium at 2:30pm this afternoon. Have fun with that traffic on the way home!)

Categories: Sports Talk | Comments Off on So how was you’re commute this morning?

Hey, Red Sox Nation…

This one’s for you:

Categories: Sports Talk | 2 Comments »

The Dog Ate My Baseball…

After the final game of the 2007 World Series, catcher Jason Varitek gave the gamee-ending ball (a strikeout) to relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon. Papelbon claims he doesn’t have it anymore because his dog ate it.

Seriously.

Here’s what he told the Associated Press:

“[My bulldog, Boss] plays with baseballs like they are his toys,” Papelbon told the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American. “He jumped up one day on the counter and snatched it. He likes rawhide. He tore that thing to pieces. Nobody knows that. I’ll keep what’s left of it.”

Red Sox spokesman John Blake says, “the ball was in the hands of one of the players and we take his word at what happened to it.”

OK, John, but I think you’re going to be the only one…

Categories: Sports Talk, The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on The Dog Ate My Baseball…