Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Damn UCLA! He's Not the Grand Wizard of Westwood

UCLA has rejected a 3 million dollar donation for kidney research from LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
And in the process, they have just taken the coveted number 2 spot on my most hated colleges after Ohio State.*
Is it silly to root against a team of athletes because of a decision they had nothing to do with? Probably. But not nearly as silly as turning down that kind money from a guy who simply said some things most people find objectionable. You can read about the decision here:
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/04/ucla-donald-sterling-donation
There is absolutely no evidence that Donald Sterling made his money illegally, and if you're gonna call into question all the ethics of billionaires then no one would be accepting money from billionaires. You don't get that rich without underpaying someone, destroying some part of the environment, or just being a dick in general.
So Sterling doesn't want his girlfriend hanging out with black dudes. So what ?
                                             Not quite Aryan, but produces really popular
                                             spoken word albums.
                                                
                                     Kidney disease is actually more prevalent in the African American community than it is in caucasians, so all UCLA is doing is potentially making less black dudes for her to hang around with. What kind of statement is that?
Donald Sterling spent a lot of his fortune for decades paying African Americans millions to not be very good at their job. To be fair, most Clippers, regardless of race, should have been on the Washington Generals, but the point is that some of that money benefitted the African American community. Nothing Sterling did or said--not once did I hear the dreaded, guaranteed to get your ass fired, middle of the alphabet epithet uttered--merits his money being turned down. I'm sure other philanthropists will step forward and cover the donation, but UCLA should have taken that money. In fact, my white "not-wanting-my-girlfriend-to-hang-out-with-anyone-better-looking-than-me-and-that's-a bunch-of-people" ass will go as far as saying UCLA could have taken that money conducted kidney research exclusively on African Americans and I would have applauded.
I was in a bar once (just once) when a guy punched a girl. In the ensuing melee, his wallet dropped out of his pants and someone who strongly resembles me used the money in it to buy drinks for the girl who got hit and for the rest of the bar. None of us liked or respected the guy, but we put the money to the best use possible at quarter to two.
UCLA already had the contents of Sterling's wallet. They never should have given it back.





* I can't even tell you who was number 2 before. It can't be MSU, because I root for them most of the time when they aren't playing Michigan. It was Nebraska after they shared the national championship with Michigan, but I've gotten over it. It can't be a college that rejected my application because that is too large a number to occupy one position on the chart.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

And Maybe Pujols Would Have Gotten Him J.B Schuck's Autograph

Albert Pujols hit his 498th career home run off Tiger closer Joe Nathan Saturday afternoon. I was there courtesy of my buddy Tommy B, and we knew the number of the home run was in the high 400's. It was an impressive looking thing too, at least from our perspective behind the visitor's dugout on the first base line. But it didn't land so far back in the crowd that a regular beer swilling Tiger fan couldn't throw the ball back on to the field. Which, after some coaxing, he did.
                                                    This guy would have kept it.

I love the tradition of throwing an opponent's home run back on to the field. I believe that originated at Wrigley in Chicago, and I'm not gonna research it any further because Wrigley is the coolest ballpark still standing, no one grades me on this blog and because you are not the boss of me. I wish I could say the tradition started at Tiger Stadium, but I didn't see it there until years after I first saw it at Wrigley. Besides, if it started at Tiger Stadium some bleacher bum with a BAC higher than Kaline's career average would have knocked out Chet Lemon*.
But that ball, even though it was not a milestone, was still a rare souvenir.
Only 26 players have hit 498 home runs or more. So there are only 26 possible balls with that exact number attached to them ever.
Strangely enough, two career 498's were hit at Comerica Park, the other being the talented but mercenary Gary Sheffield's blast off the Tampa Bay Devil Rays' Andy Sonnanstine.
On Saturday,a ball boy fetched the discarded ball and brought it over to the left field foul line, where he appeared to hand it to a kid. And I hope that kid's parent/legal guardian/scout leader/creepy next door neighbor knew the rarity of that baseball and arranged to have it autographed. I gotta imagine either Pujols would want the baseball himself in exchange for some pretty cool autographed gear, or at the very least he'd slap his signature on it and pose for a picture.
Either way, that was a ball worth holding on to temporarily. I know I wouldn't have succumbed to the grandstand peer pressure, though it is possible that after a few months I might have succumbed to eBay.



*Not very many home run balls landed in the upper deck bleachers in Tiger Stadium, so mostly Chet Lemon just had to deal with beach balls that smelled like shitty weed.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Playoff Highlights: Buy 'Em By The Sack

Utterly unjustifiable.
Hopefully the internet gods will let you watch the above video. They won't let me post it on here-you know that "any rebroadcast or retransmission of the pictures or accounts of this game…" speech you hear on sports TV. I think the video violates that little edict.
But not nearly as much as Boston winger Milan Lucic violated Danny DeKeyser's manhood.
Lucic was +30 this season, but in one shift he made DeKeyser a "minus two".
                                                    Photoshop it to a gold #17 yourself
Any hockey fan can look at that play, blank out the jerseys and say it's a complete sucker-ass-cheap-shot drunken rec league maneuver.
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck just moved in less than a mile from my house, and the odds are better that they come over with a jam box and break dance on my front porch in their Elektra and Daredevil costumes than there is that the Nut Hacking League will suspend Lucic for a playoff game. He'll get fined, and it will cost him a weekend skiing in Whistler, B.C. and it will be business as usual.
What he really needs is his ass kicked. A good D Mac-style attack until there's so many teeth on ice it looks like One Direction at a cryogenics lab.
No man for any reason should skate up from behind another man and hit him between the legs with a stick, unless maybe the recipient put an ad on craigslist for it.
There is no excuse for what Lucic did. But one of the factors in him doing it is that the league has been so successful in legislating fighting out of the game that Lucic didn't fear reprisal.
Never mind that people in the Bible Belt still don't give a rat's Ecclesiastes about hockey. The fighting is gone. Wasn't that gonna be the magic formula for America embracing the game ? Well, it didn't work.

It just means that one kid from British Columbia can fucking neuter another kid from Michigan as long as he's willing to pay 25 to 50 grand for the privilege.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Last Time The Wings Missed the Playoffs Al Roker was the Center of the Carolina Hurricanes

Tonight begins the Detroit Red Wings 23rd consecutive appearance in the NHL Playoffs. I could get all hype on it and call it "Quest for the Silver Chalice" or "Road to Lord Stanley's Grail" or "Six Weeks Trying to Explain the Significance of The Big Purple Octopus"*, but in reality- right now it's just an opportunity.
Actually, a couple of those playoff appearances the Wings arrived in a carriage that was already a pumpkin, and other times they were heavily favored but suffered the jinx of the President's Trophy. Okay, it's not really an official jinx, more like a bad omen; like your $500 escort having tissue on her face where she cut herself shaving.
                                              Bruins Jarome Iginla, Patrice Bergeron and
                                            Loui Eriksson enjoying the Boston Marathon

Boston, who currently totes the President's Trophy, is overwhelmingly favored to get their names etched on the Cup ( most of them for the second time ), but Vegas would just be a boring hot place with Elvis impersonators and roller coasters on rooftops if the favorite won every time.
Mike Babcock, who could win a game of Texas Hold 'em with a Three Card Monte hand, has been grooming Detroit's youngsters all season. Regardless of the overall record, the just-post-pubescent Wings have won three of four against the Bruins and they aren't exactly rookies anymore. Sure, Brendan Smith still occasionally uses his stick like he's Paul Reubens at a peep show and far-from-rookie Kyle Quincey sometimes looks like he'd be more comfortable taking Luke Glendening's old roster spot on the  Toledo Walleye, but the Wings are capable of winning this damn series. At the very least, they are capable of making it enjoyable for their fans and way more of a pain in the ass than Claude Julien wants to deal with in the first round.
Whatever happens, there are no fans of major professional sports teams from any other city in North America that have had the privilege of seeing their team vie for a championship 23 years in a row. And that's worth toasting even with a red plastic Solo cup.
Thanks for a fantastic franchise, Ilitch family.
LGW





*The four hockey divisions used to be Hanna, Barbera, Warner Bros, and King Features…wait…maybe not...