Oderus Not Among Us

Sad news from the metal world, as GWAR frontman Dave Brockie, aka Oderus Urungus, was found dead in his Richmond home last night.

I'm not a huge metal fan, but I know well of GWAR's reputation for humor, fun, and doing things the way they wanted to do them. Judging from the comments from Brockie's colleagues, the metal world has lost a one-of-a-kind voice.

Gheorghe: The Olympic Team

Phelps. Bolt. James. Lochte. Durant. Household names, all. They'll no doubt be joined by the electric Missy Franklin, or England's own Mark Cavendish, or whatever young American gymnast flips herself skyward with reckless enough abandon to capture our easily-won and commercially-influenced hearts. We celebrate these and all the other phenomenally skilled and dedicated athletes readying for the impending start of the 2012 London Olympics.

But quite a different quartet are wearing the colors of Gheorghe Nation (purple gingham check and cream, in case you were wondering - we let Clarence's daughters pick them this year) this quadrennial. We won't bore you with 'they're all champions' platitudes. They're not. But they're all Olympians, which is something everyone reading this would give an arm (or at least a flap of extra skin) to be.

We're uniting behind these four because they don't have anyone else to do so.  Marathoner Guor Marial, sprinter Churandy Martina, shooter Philip Elhage and swimmer Rodion Davelaar make up Team Gheorghe, and we couldn't be prouder. Marial hails from South Sudan, a nation so new and lacking Olympic sports organization that it's not recognized by the IOC. The latter three are residents of the Dutch Antilles, formerly an independent territory of the Netherlands, but now a transitional municipality with no recognized athletic teams. For once, the IOC did something right, allowing all four to compete under the IOC flag in 2012.

Martina is the most prominent member of Team Gheorghe, finishing second to Usain Bolt in the 200m in 2008 before being disqualified for a lane violation an hour later. You can rest assured the GTBOC will not stand for such shenanigans this year.

While he's not fronting the legendary prog-metal performance art ensemble that bears his name, Marial runs track and cross-country for Iowa State. His PR of 2:12 is good enough to compete for a spot in the top 10-20 in London, though he's not really a medal threat.

Davelaar, a senior at the University of Florida (in fact, it's his relationship with Mark that started the ball rolling on Team Gheorghe) competed in the 50m freestyle in Beijing, finishing 57th. He grabbed a silver medal at the 2010 CAC games, which I assume is a made up event.

Finally, Elhage took 45th in the 10m Air Pistol in Beijing. His twitter (@pelhage) bio is fairly impressive, noting that he's a " Olympian, Developer, Promoter & Entrepreneur". G:TB could use all of those things, with the possible exception of 'Promoter', as we've got the Teej doing a fairly good job in that role. But if Elhage can score good Dutch weed, we might have to at least give him a deputy position.

We note for the record that Team Gheorghe is conspicuously lacking in female members, so we're trying hard to convince Saudis Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani (judo) and Sarah Attar (800m) to join the squad. The Saudi government added women to its team under duress, with heavy international pressure ultimately wearing down the Kingdom's sports ministry. Ladies, just so you know, we'd be happy to have you. And not in the way Clarence is thinking.

 In 1996, I was fortunate to spend part of the Atlanta Olympics in the company of Brian Hyde, a 1500m runner on the U.S. team and W&M grad. Though he flamed out in the preliminary rounds, his stories about his experience as it happened (not to mention his ridiculous volumes of impossibly cool free gear) made me and the others with us impossibly jealous. While it's too late this year to get ourselves to London, we're thrilled to know that we'll be able to make up the official party for Gheorghe: The Nation in Rio in 2016. And really, who'd choose London over Rio given the option?

Best wishes to all of our athletes in London. And don't be alarmed if a tall, pale fellow speaking with a difficult-to-place accent shows up in your Olympic Village room. That's just Otto Wolfcastle. He's with us.

Uff Da

Barring some unforeseen act of the Baseball Gods, Adam Dunn will trudge into the offseason as the owner of the single worst offensive season in the history of modern baseball.  Big Donkey inked a four-year, $56 million contract with the White Sox on the strength of seven consecutive seasons of more than 38 homers.

Suffice it to say that he won't reach that number this year.  Dunn had never slugged lower than .454 entering 2011, carrying a better-than .500 mark into the season.  His worst OBP in his 10 previous major league seasons was .354.  In 2011, he's dropped an inexplicable .161/.292/.285(!) in 113 games, recording the worst Wins Above Replacement (WAR) measurement of the 443 players with more than 100 plate appearances.

And it says here that while Dunn was clearly the league's worst player, he wasn't its most disappointing.

The Twins ponied up $184 million over eight years to keep local hero and all-around good guy Joe Mauer at home.  Very quietly, the uff das have been mounting, as Mauer will finish the season having played 82 games, hitting 3 homers and driving in 30.  His slash lines of .287/.360/.368 are decent enough for a catcher, but only if that catcher's name is Jarrod Saltalamacchia (whose .759 OPS tops Mauer's for the bargain 2011 price of $750,000).  Mauer's 1.7 WAR ranks him just below the exceedingly average (and heretofore unknown to me) Ryan Hanigan.

The fine people of the Twin Cities are far too nice to say this out loud, but I'd bet dollars to lutefisk-flavored donuts that they're worried that Mauer will never regain the form he displayed in 2009.  And nobody writes that kind of ending to this story.