“Klotz” As In “Blood”

Atlanta, GA — Investigators are looking into who altered pro wrestler Chris Benoit’s Wikipedia entry to mention his wife’s death hours before authorities discovered the bodies of the couple and their 7-year-old son. Benoit’s Wikipedia entry was altered early Monday to say that the wrestler had missed a match two days earlier because of his wife’s death.

Benoit strangled his wife and son during the weekend, placing Bibles next to their bodies, before hanging himself on the cable of a weight-machine in his home, authorities said. — Local6.com

Nobody was available at WWE offices to comment for the record, but one evidently irritated employee dismissed the matter as “media hype.” “Who care about Benoit, anyway?” he asked rhetorically. “Another steroid freak with the brain of a mollusk, just smart enough to lift weights and shave his chest, too dumb not to hurt himself. We got lots more where he came from. Critters like that breed like locusts.”

“Rosie the Ribeter“

Angels Camp. CA — About 4,000 contestants entered the Calaveras County Fair’s annual Jumping Frog Jubilee this year, twice as many as last year, according to the event’s organizers.

The annual event is inspired by ‘’The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,'’ Mark Twain’s tale of a frog-jumping contest that is weighted in one gambler’s favor when he secretly fills his opponent’s frog with buckshot. Winning owners get a $750 prize or $5,000 if their frog breaks the 1986 record of 21 feet, 5 3/4 inches set by Rosie the Ribeter. — NY Times

French nationals, forks in hand, await the losers.

Suck what?

Waregem, Belgium — The timekeeper waves a large red flag. Spectators wait in hushed anticipation. The nearly 50 featherweight rivals — including Rambo and Duracel — are surrounded by nervous trainers. But the event is not a boxing or a wrestling match. The one-ounce contestants, with gray caps and blue beaks, will be judged on how many “susk-e-wiets” they can tweet in an hour from inside a wooden box.

This is vinkensport, or finching, the 400-year-old Flemish competition in which winning finches are feted like feathered opera divas, and one false note, like a “susk-e-wiat” instead of a “susk-e-wiet,” can lead to disqualification or, worse, disgrace. (Those are the conventional transliterations of the final chirp in the bird’s call; the “correct” sound is susk-WEET.) — NY Times

The only stupider sport I can come up with is soccer, but I’m open to suggestions.

The now-infamous nappy-head incident cruelly coincides with Major League Baseball’s reminder that Jackie Robinson broke its color barrier on April 15, 1947, 60 years ago. Several players honored Robinson and the event by wearing his number 42 during games, a number officially retired by MLB in his honor.

Robby opened the door to some of baseball’s legendary greatest: Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron, Reggie Jackson, etc. Hundreds followed, some great, some good, some everyday. As late as 1975, 27.5% of major leaguers were Black, and virtually nobody disagreed that the game — and the country — were better off for it.

But according to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of major leaguers were African American. By contrast, whites comprised 59.5 percent of the majors’ player pool, Latinos 28.7 percent and Asians 2.5. — espn.com

“This isn’t a good trend at all,” Prof. Brie Birkenstock tells me, when I reach her office at the US Labor Department in Washington. “We’ve had our eye on it for about 10 years. And we’re ready to send our plan, years in the making, to MLB next month.”

You’re from the government and you’re here to help us, right?

“You betcha! We’re going to ask MLB to mandate that each team carry no fewer than 3 Black players in 2008, and 5 in 2012. That will get the percentage up to 12%, then 20%, far more respectable levels.”

A quota? You want MLB to initiate quotas?

“Nobody says ‘quota’ any more, you Luddite. It’s a ‘diversity achievement level’ — a ‘DAL’ in the business. The same principal has been applied in other industries and organizations, starting with the military, government, federally funded programs, and the like.”

Brie, are you batty? A team’s squad consists of the best players it can afford. They’re not gonna add a .250 hitter at the expense of a .300 hitter based on race, any more than they wouldn’t sign a starting pitcher because he’s Black. Half a century ago they sure did, but today that would mean cutting their own throats.

“Oh, we know that. That’s why we’re going to propose a system where a prospective Black player gets points and RBIs added to his stats. Pitchers would have points taken off their ERAs. We’ll ask the teams to come up with a proposal detailing the actual numbers, and negotiate a settlement, but you get the idea.”

Yeah, I get the idea. You’ve been smoking AstroTurf.

“It’s similar to what we directed for hiring veterans, or taking the civil service test, or SATs. It’s a way to break barriers. It works!”

Why not stay with what the Indians’ C.C. Sabathia and Phillies’ Jimmy Rollins are already doing? They’re working with inner-city clubs and youth groups to promote the game, providing equipment, and serving as mentors. They’re treating the problem at the root, so kids get interested again. There’s also “Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities” (RBI), the “Baseball Tomorrow Fund,” “Breaking Barriers In Sports & In Life,” the “Youth Academy”……

“Oh, MLB has been doing this for years, we know. And that’s fine, but it takes too long. What about now? What about today? What about (Gasp!) The Children? Kids need need to see Black players when they go out to games right now!”

She’s getting shrill, and you know what arguing with government is worth, so I quietly set down the phone and stuff my face in my hands. Holy pine tar, what’s next? Women? Disabled players? Blind umpires? Oh, wait. We already got them.

“Anybody going to the game tonight?”

In this town that question usually draws derisive yawns, but today is the Marlins’ home opener, which usually pulls in 25 - 30,000 curious spectators. It’s an Event, you understand, not just another bone-boring baseball game. Balloons. Dancing babes. Copulating horses. Videotaped cockfights between innings (recommended by the new advertising agency to attract the Hispanic market. Probably the second biggest disaster this season, the first being the season itself).

Yes, today’s the Oscar Wilde Game (the “Homo Penner”). Our home town Marlins, not named “Miami,” surprised everybody last season by turning in a better-than-just- respectable season, playing their hearts out, and remaining in the race for post-season play well into September. Over the winter they shored up the squad by firing Joe Girardi, NL Manager of the Year. If the strategy proves effective, they’ll carry it to the next level by breaking Dontrelle Willis’s throwing arm, castrating Miguel Cabrerra, and reinstalling Davey Sampson as team spokesdwarf.

But today’s game is sui generis, a breed unto itself. And the 2-1 Marlins, playing well early, are doing precisely what their opening day opponents swore they must do and aren’t: the shit-eating Phillies are 0-3, having been swept at home by the obnoxious Atlanta Braves. Sports fans in the City of Bodily Harm are besides themselves with rage and grief (in that order), and the long bread knives (traditionally reserved for cheesesteak sandwiches) are out in search of blood. Charlie Manuel, the team’s thumb-sucking manager, is the Designated Usual Suspect. Again.

Upshot: the Marlins home opener might be a real treat even for front-running South Florida fans: pomp and circumstance mixed in with a victory.

Full disclosure: I am a Phillies fan by birth and conditioning, which is why I wrote this post and not my good friend and baseball junkie Vera Lu Senz, whose posts will appear here now and then this season as well. She knows more about the game than any MSM columnist in town, and writes well when she’s drunk. Excellent credentials for a baseball writer.

Everything I’ve ever uttered about college sports understates the case made so eloquently by the jerseys on these two athletes.

(Photo from FoxSports.com)

Everybody loves the SuperBowl, right? Miami in particular is on a 2-week humming high, right? Wrong.

…[A]s the N.F.L. has worked to extend its reach globally, it has run headfirst into a language barrier in its own country. Just a few miles from Sunday’s Super Bowl XLI, the league’s championship game in this largely Hispanic city, is a market of fans that has barely been tapped.
…
Among Hispanics who primarily speak English, according to research conducted last year by TNS Sport, the N.F.L. is the favorite sport, followed by Major League Baseball, the N.B.A. and boxing. But among those who mostly or solely speak Spanish at home the N.F.L. ranked 10th, behind five soccer leagues and other sports.

“The key word is acculturation,” said David Sternberg, the general manager of Fox Sports en Español. “Hispanics who are interested in the N.F.L. tend to be second or third generation.” – NY Times

In Maximo Gomez Park, you could call it the “domino effect.”

Concerned for future market share, NFL officials floated a proposal to prohibit speaking Spanish at home, at least during football season. “If these people really want to become assimilated, they need to dump this relic of their worn-out culture and talk American like real football fans,” a spokesman said. “I mean, really, what’s more essential? Jabbering in some decadent corrupt Latin jargon or appreciation of the West Coast Offense?”

Rep Tom Tancredo (CO) is reportedly willing to introduce the bill in the next session.

Florida’s Board of Regents, charged with governance of the state’s university system, signaled its approval of the measure. “More resources are devoted to football in this state than any other single item,” a statement from that office notes. “Over the years, the Regents have directed all campuses to reduce funds for science and medical research, arts and the humanities, and of course, any but athletic scholarships. We know what’s vital to Florida’s higher education system, and we will resist any threat to professional football which severely limits opportunities for our students, especially the big dumb semi-literate ones.”

Governor Crist, on a retreat in Glory Hole, CA, did not comment on the measure, but his office released a statement categorically denying paternity of Lynn Cheney’s fetus, adding, “The Governor has nothing against Vice President Cheney or lesbians, and he thinks football players’ asses look great in uniform.”

Okay. And how ‘bout dem Bares?

I hold in my hand the world’s worst Sunday Hurled’s sport section, open to a column by Leonard Shapiro, who (I see here) has covered the NFL since 1972. He wants to know, “Whatever happened to civility in sports, and especially in the National Football League?” And

Whatever happened to a running back or wide receiver scoring a touchdown and handing the ball to a game official, acting, as they say, as if they had been in the end zone before?

Whatever happened to a defender sacking a quarterback, helping his fallen foe off the ground and moving back to the huddle without any Dancing with the Stars histrionics, the better to conserve energy to do it again on the next play?

Whatever happened to coaches wearing coats and ties on the sidelines, pregame player introductions without incendiary war dances and exploding fireworks, concepts such as respecting your opponent, honoring the game and acting like true professionals instead of out-of-control thugs?

Shucks, Leonard, I guess don’t know, but let me pose my own questions. Who gives a rat’s ass? Wouldn’t better questions be, What happened to the game where players were allowed to play, and the referees kept their flags in their BVDs where they belong? When defenders were ALLOWED to beat the crap out of a running back, quarterback, or receiver before helping him pick up his teeth and get to his feet?

Rules curbing the game’s violence and injuries have completely pussified it. Quick whistles prevent pounding a quarterback’s torso into short ribs. Arcane penalties stop defensive linemen from bell-ringing, guillotining, or crackbacking their offensive counterparts. Safeties aren’t allowed to so much as exhale on wide receivers for fear of the dreaded pass interference call. Players go entire seasons without bruising or bleeding or breaking a single bone.

This ain’t football, it’s fucking badminton.

Tom Landry, legendary head coach of the Cowboys, always won the praise of oily toupeed network commentators for his coordinated natty apparel. He also ran cheap-shot, late-hit, low blow teams despised by every other squad in the league. I hated the bastard, but I miss the sneaky backstabbing violence he encouraged. It made the game not just competitive, but cathartic. To this day I spit with joy at Cowboys’ fans.

And what’s this with the indoor stadium? What happened to REAL winter football with blinding snow on cement-hard fields of solid ice; mud so thick you can’t see the players’ numbers; gray pea soup fog laying under the lights like meat farts in a crowded sauna? Now they’re playing on clean, spongy carpets in climate controlled living rooms. Pass the Gatorade, won’t you Chauncy, please?

Don’t you miss the sight of a quarterback writhing in pain after having his helmet buried a foot deep into the turf? The musical trill of a snapped femur? The glorious viscous red stain down a jersey from a torn eye socket or mashed nose?

So no, Leonard, I don’t care if Bill Belichick shows up for media events dressed like Charles Bukowski. You wanna whine about the state of the game and its players’ conduct, you’re the problem, not the solution. The real question isn’t sportsmanship, it’s gamesmanship. It’s corporate pollution; putting kid gloves on what should (and used to be) a bare knuckled sport.

Dude, Where’s My Football? Where’s My Football??

No, he’s not a “rap artist.” Ha! “Rap Artist!” Ha Ha! “Shit sculptor” while you’re at it!” Ha Ha HA !

But hang on. It takes about this long for football to get worthwhile. Skip August through December: that’s the dull season, especially if you’re an ignorant Dolphin fan (forgive the redundancy), or follow the fortunes of a team that’s down on its luck. Like Detroit. Or Oakland. But even that changes now and then.

So I’m happy right now because (a) the hated fucking Cowboys suffered a humiliating defeat, which, while entirely enjoyable, falls short of the delight I’d experience if their plane went down in a fiery crash with all hands including ownership aboard. Especially if it landed on Graceland. And….

(b) the Eagles actually won again. They’re my team, you know, by birth not by choice (I’m genetically disposed, not fucking stupid or tasteless — well maybe a bit of each. Or more) — and they’re performing admirably under the direction of their gay quarterback, Jeff Garcia. We know he’s gay because Terrel Owens thus proclaimed him.

Garcia took over when the team’s superstar Q-back, Vomiting McNabb, went down just before Thanksgiving with a broken clavichord (or something). As his name implies, Donovan McHork has a history of upchucking under pressure. Campbell Soup, which uses him and his mother to flog Chunky Soup (that’s what it’s called — I couldn’t make this up if I tried) claims innocence of the athlete’s intestinal sensitivity. In any event, Donovan Upchuck participates in the Eagles’ 2006/07 postseason from the sidelines, sucking cherry Tums while his teammates maintain a respectful distance.

So what does this have to do with “Dr. Black Vomit?”

I’m about 2 months behind on my NY Times Bok Reviews, and I just today got to an amazing review of a book by Molly Caldwell Crosby called “The American Plague,” which is about yellow Fever, a horrible disease that killed thousands of Americans (and others) at the turn of the 20th century. The disease is carried by mosquitoes, but physicians back then were convinced it was spread by contact with infected human beings or their clothes, saliva, blood, nasty looks, contaminated Chunky Soup, etc. The book describes some grisly experiments, many involving “expendable Cubans,” to isolate the root cause.

The book also mentions the efforts of a Civil War physician, Dr. Luke Blackurn of the Confederate State of Kentucky, who rounded up blankets and clothing from victims of Yellow Fever and mailed them to Northern cities hoping to spread death and destruction. He even mailed infected shirts to Abraham Lincoln, hoping to kill the liberal bearded bastard.

Because the symptoms of Yellow Fever include bleeding from the gums/lips/nose/penis/asshole/vagina/ears (etc,) as well as vomiting until the face and tongue literally turn black, even if you’re a Norwegian or a redhead to start with, he earned himself the name of “Dr. Black Vomit.”

He is considered the very first American bioterrorist. What a distinction! The noble Confederate cause! Were he alive today, he’d probably chair the Presidential Commission of Medicare. Or serve as an NFL trainer, seeking an edge against a stronger team whose quarterback’s fondness for barfing in the end zone might serve as the edge an opposing team could deploy.

So, summing up: there’s your connection with football, vomiting, and Yellow Fever. Pop quiz tomorrow. Blow chunks tonight.

Coach Nick Saban, human waffle, barely escapes the Banana Republic by the brim of his Marjorie Stoneman Douglas sun helmet. Coach Pat Riley, injured, hurting, and cognizant that NBA regular seasons are damn near meaningless, limps off the court onto the shelf, uttering an Arnoldinator vow that He’ll Be Back.

Wiccans teach all things comes in threes, so who’s next? How about Police Chief John Timoney?

Chatter overheard on the cobblestones of Philadelphia reveal a germinating movement to bring the Chief back for Act II. The current top cop retires at year’s end, and one announced candidate for mayor (the City of Bodily Harm picks odd years for local elections and the pun is deliberate) plainly stated he’d like to see Timoney return.

Asked for comment, Timoney says, “I have a job. You should try one, too. Punk.”

What do you expect from a guy on record as saying, “If you behave, we won’t tear-gas you?”

With the exception of his department’s conduct during the 2003 FTAA meeting, Timoney has flown under critics’ radar, even with a son (Sean) popped for trying to buy 400 pounds of marijuana from a federal agent, and a daughter who (allegedly) battles heroine addiction. (Sean’s defense lawyer: “from a historical standpoint, both sides of Sean’s lineage, like so many other of Irish-American descent, suffer from alcohol abuse, predisposing him to addictive behavior which led him to drugs.” [NY Post] Where was this legal visionary when Miami insurgents were rolling bombs under radio hosts’ Oldsmobiles?)

Civil libertarians in both Philadelphia and Miami largely despise Timoney like rat poison, to put it gently, although such animosity doesn’t seem to trouble the Chief’s slumbers. One gets the impression that he finds their disapproval a signal of his own effectiveness.

“I doubt he’d go back up north,” one observer offered (requesting anonymity). “He’s not one to shy away, but he doesn’t go looking for confrontations, either, and returning would automatically make him an issue among PWA’s (People With Attitude. I didn’t know, either). That’s less of a problem here in Miami.”

Thanks. I think.

Maybe we could trade him for Andy Reid?

Better than a week after the FIU/UM debate at the Orange Bowl there’s still talk resonating through the nation about it, a sufficiently sad commentary in itself made worse by its composition. While I’ve heard nobody say anything particularly positive about college athletes brawling like barflies, I managed to trip across one local sportshole defending a media mouth’s gleeful on-air celebration:

Take the case of Lamar Thomas. He’s a loud, colorful clown. One would imagine that’s why Comcast Sports Southeast hired him instead of, say, Wesley Carroll or Brian Blades or any other quieter ex-UM receiver.

So when the UM-FIU brawl broke out, Thomas sprayed lighter fluid by singing about how great the melee was. It was unprofessional, inappropriate and dumb. But it was real. Real as a helmet to the head.

Thomas was being Thomas. Did they expect him to be someone else? Thomas gave a loud, singing voice to a part of the populace that loves Miami’s swaggering reputation for nonsense. Should he have lied instead? Maybe called the fight a disgrace even if he clearly didn’t think it was? It was about as honest a moment as you’ll hear in the church of sports. –Dan Le Batard, Miami Hurled

Somehow, from this lopheaded perspective, although the stuttering dunce’s comments were “unprofessional, inappropriate, and dumb,” it was okay, even refreshing, because it was genuine. Does he come off as a thug, a cretin, an insufficiently evolved humanoid with Crisco and Quickcrete for frontal lobes? Well, that’s who he is, that’s why he was hired, so embrace and enjoy it.

Don’t think so, Danny. Assholes get no prettier when they’re on display, and their emissions grow no sweeter with an increase in volume. If the on-field display of poor sportsmanship and immaturity delights the former player turned commentator, he’s poorly placed in his position before a microphone. Let him celebrate his “genuine” appreciation of decency’s destruction in private; perhaps an echoing cave where he can commune with like-minded flying rodents.

That spewed, Le Batard’s point about the way sports coverage has been co-opted by necktie and silk-stocking media nice guys is legitimate. Then again, professional (not amateur) sports themselves have been terribly watered down. Football defense is a study in ballet and finesse; what happened to the bellringer, the head spear, and my all-time favorite, roughing the passer? Pitchers rarely knock down batters any more, and when they do, the sucked teeth and tut-tuts are audible. In the old days both benches would empty, not endure an umpire’s warning. And what the hell happened to hockey? Where’s the blood on the jerseys, teeth on the ice? Dude, where’s my goon?

This celebration of violence does not belong in college play, goaded by adults, let alone media professionals. I suspect the real issue is deeper: what the hell is the purpose of college sports at all? Is there so much room in the study hall that corn-fed and inbred hulks need to be invited in to take up space where real students might attend and learn? Is this the best way for academia to support itself and keep its goober alumni writing checks? Can’t professional sports afford its own minor league system? Is anybody else embarrassed that the highest paid bipeds on the campus are athletic coaches, not musicians, scientists, philosophers, or poets?

Dump this corrupt, mission-drifted mayhem and as a byproduct, we might get a better class of sports journalist as well.