Dag. Ger.

FOG:TB Robbie Hummel is out for the season after injuring his ACL in the second drill of the season. The NCAA is in the process of deciding whether to grant him a 13th year of eligibility.

I'm the damn paterfamilias!

We are having a zbaby.

New Music/Old Movie Friday...um...I Mean Thursday

According to Wikipedia, Ogre You Asshole is a Japanese rock band formed in Nagano, Japan taking influences from Modest Mouse, Fugazi and Talking Heads. I'm sold.



For the young 'uns out there, here is the genesis of that kick-ass band name.



No confirmation on rumors that alternate band names included Have You Ever Had Sex With a Woman, Jeez Betty You're Like a Goat or I Thought I Was Looking At My Mother's Old Douche Bag But That's in Ohio.

On that note, here's a final clip for those of you with home improvement aspirations:

Gross

Here's his right side....

And here's his left...along with a fierce snarl that vaguely attempts to distract us from his idiocy.

Special Columbus Day Ghoogles

If I'm gonna be stuck at work, bored bitter and ridiculously sore from 54 holes of golf in 48 hours, I might as well throw something up here...enjoy the most recent internet searches that led folks to G:TB.

• circus peanuts
• some thoughts on mustaches
• hurricane igor
• jason marquis game changer
• eight-day rental
• wiz khalifa
• we got some canes over here
• sadler pi lam
• worst rock songs
• wiz khalifa blogspot
• nazik avdalyan
• worst rock songs of all time
• cee lo green blogspot
• top ten baseball card sets of the 1980s
• todd fuller
• jessee vasold
• macheda smoking
• janet jones hot for teacher
• rachel glandorf
• total recall
• circle jerk blog
• igor pictures
• fresh prince
• orioles buck 2010
• kevin youkilis summer catch
• georgeta bartender ny
• delvon roe tattoo
• dewon brazelton girlfriend
• how to draw quagmire
• jay baller
• joe table
• s.l.price and sports illustrated
• tattoo boy
• todd bouman
• whitesnake video girl
• would you like some making fuck
• zoltan mesko
• odesse vodka review
• 3rd bass
• apex of the vortex
• dave mlicki earnings
• dru joyce iii
• eddie money
• facial expressions in movies
• first place ribbon clip art
• flux capacitor fluxing
• happy birthday cake
• http://www.headshopinternational.com
• kato my little yellow friend
• kevin kline snl italian flatulence
• kim chan
• list of facial expressions
• missionary.spouses.fucking.in.bed.com
• muscular woman
• my little yellow friend
• picture of igor
• ryan atwood jetblue
• stan kasten email
• terrence williams lips
• trix bunny
• was kevin youkilis in summer catch
• yeah click clack
• 1982 topps + hockey sticks
• affair with his girlfriend's mother
• bar stool blogspot.com
• bareback blogspot.com
• barry bonds fight dusty baker earring giants -kent -reds -cubs -alou -rude
• bea hamel filmography

Hard to pick a favorite in that group - there are two or three absolute gems.

At least Spurrier celebrated my birthday in proper fashion...

Somehow, Florida managed to nearly beat LSU despite being badly outplayed at home last night. Somehow, I had to foresight not attend a game that I always attend when it's played at Ben Hill Griffin despite having free tickets offered to me by multiple people. Somehow, I don't have an enormous hangover despite drinking for most of the afternoon ($1 PBR drafts...yum) and the entire evening yesterday.

And somehow, I've made it to my 33rd birthday without a felony arrest on my record. I guess, when I think of things like that, and the fact that I got a new tattoo on my hand yesterday (say goodbye to that job at...well, pretty much anywhere) my life isn't all bad. I've got my (relative) health, friends and family that love me and a super awesome blog where I can hang out and make inappropriate comments to near and (in some cases) total strangers who tolerate and, at times, appreciate my sense of humor.

Wow, I think I've convinced myself that my life isn't over, even though Florida's 2010 Football season is (for all intents and purposes). That didn't take too long at all. Yeah, things ain't so bad. I've got tomorrow off work, I'll probably drink 5 too many tonight and I'll be wearing a Larry Bird Indiana State jersey all day for good measure. Good times. You know what else is good? This video of Jay-Z & Timbaland in the studio. Enjoy.



See you in the comments for some Sunday frivolity.

These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things

Since many of you won't be working on Monday (I will, not that I'm bitter about it), here's a NSFW video of Cee-Lo Green covering Band of Horses' 'No One's Gonna Love You'. Like two great tastes that taste great together, Cee-Lo's sync-heavy riff is the chocolate to the Horses' soulful peanut butter. (That pun, definitely intended.)

Can't figure out how to embed this one, so follow the link. And enjoy your weekend.

Knowing where our bread is buttered

Many moons ago, this little corner of the blogosphere enjoyed unprecedented attention for posting Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory's horrifically bad first pitch. And we even had some more fun at Mayor Mallory's expense via Danny Devito's mound excursion.

Well, now I'm happy to say we are back...with this entry from Charlie Crist:



I'm no political junkie, but one might say that pitch is a pretty accurate description of his campaign so far. (is that even true? geoff, rob, wanna help me here?)

What to Watch/TiVo/DVR Tonight

There is a smorgasbord of sports on tonight, but I suggest that you music fans carve some time/hard drive space for the HBO documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town. The documentary details the studio effort behind the making of this 1978 album which spawned classics like Darkness on the Edge of Town, Prove it All Night, The Promised Land and the epic Badlands.



Springsteen had released three albums at this point in his career, the last of which was the mammoth Born to Run, which skyrocketed him to worldwide fame. But after a year-long recording hiatus due to a lawsuit against an ex-manager, he was ready to get back to work. So we get to glimpse the life of a late 20's small-town guy who is struggling with an avalanche of fame, trying to stay connected to his blue-collar roots and, most importantly, trying to write some good tunes.

Early reviewers say that non-Springsteen fans may find the documentary a bit tedious, but I think you should watch it just to see the look the dude was rocking back in the day.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #4 - 1981

1981. What better way to seduce youngsters than to include mini hats on the baseball cards. The hats always reminded me of the overpriced cups of ice cream I used to get in Yankee stadium that were served in little plastic cups shaped like Yankee helmets. I used to eat a ton of those cups of ice cream. To quote a classic 1981 movie, when I was younger, I swallowed a lot of aggression...along with a lot of pizzas.

1981 was an interesting year for baseball and a fun year for the cards. The baseball season was ripped apart by a two-month strike from June 11th to August 9th that cost teams about 55 games from the regular season. The playoffs featured four teams in each league, a move deemed necessary to offset the curtailed regular season. Based on the legitimate enthusiasm generated by the three rounds of playoff action, it is sadly apt that it took the league fourteen years to formally expand the playoffs. Due to the strike, the playoffs were oddly set up that year. The season was broken down into a first half and a second half. The first half leaders from each of the four divisions played the second half leaders from each division. Conveniently for the sport, each division had different leaders in each half. Inconveniently for consistent NL teams, the team with the best overall records in the NL East and West for the entire year (Philadelphia and Cincinnati, respectively) failed to make the postseason because they finished in second place in each half. The takeaway? Strikes suck.

Most of us remember the salient details of the season and playoffs. In the NL, Rick Monday, Fernando Valenzuela and Fernando's weird eyeball trick led the Dodgers over Tim Raines and the coke snorting Expos. In the AL, the Yanks got past Billy Martin's A's. In the World Series, the Dodgers avenged their weak 1978 showing (when they won Games 1 and 2 but lost the Series) by losing Games 1 and 2 and then winning the Series.

So with that backdrop, let's look into the cards. To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985
#5 - 1987
#4 - 1981

Back to the mini helmets on the cards. I can't stress how much they rocked when I was a kid. They were a brilliant move by Topps to catch the eyes of bored youngsters at supermarket checkout lines and compel them to nag incessantly to their moms to buy them these cards. Sometimes your mom would buckle. And sometimes she would hit you, call you a loser and say she never loved you. But I digress. 1981 was the inaugural year for the Topps Traded sets, the Fall issuance that featured traded players and promising rookies. The traded set was possibly included to lessen the blow from the abominable decision to stuff three rookies onto one card, a move that premiered this year and hung around for far too long in the 1980's. Fernando got his own card in the traded set, as did Raines, Hubie Brooks, Ron "The Felon" LeFlore, Jeff Reardon and...wait for it...Danny Ainge. They were presented alongside newly relocated veterans like Rollie Fingers, Dave Winfield, Carlton Fisk and Gaylord Perry. And, last, and probably least, Mario Mendoza, who moved from Seattle to Texas in 1981.

As for the rookies, Fernando made the biggest splash in the league that year, albeit a splash that, with the use of hindsight, proved to be more like a fat man's cannonball than a future Hall of Famer's dive into stardom. He was the biggest import from Mexico since Corona. A man with throngs of Mexican American fans, a man whose cultural impact inspired numerous pieces of fine art. Like this. But there were other fine players with rookie cards that year. Like Raines, whose brilliance as the second greatest leadoff hitter of all time was overshadowed by coming to the big leagues at the same time as Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. And Rick Dempsey, Mookie Wilson, Mike Boddicker, Pascual Perez, Tony Pena and Bruce Hurst. But not the tragically named Rusty Kuntz.

On a different note, 1981 was a tremendous year for mustaches and/or bad glasses in the majors. Don't believe me? Check out Rich Gale, Joe Pettini and Mario Mendoza below.

Let's talk about Mr. Mendoza for a minute, seen in his regular 1981 card above. And I don't mean his low batting average, his hair or his resemblance to Harold Ramis with Down's Syndrome. I mean the player who signifies the cultural divide between the old school "purists" and contemporary fans with that tired story. Yes, THAT one. Every year, every city's baseball broadcasting team re-tells the tired old Mendoza line story. It usually happens in mid-May, when one of the local team's star players remains stuck in a season-starting slump. Retired color commentators like Jerry Remy or Ken Singleton will tell the play-by-play man of players in their era checking their batting averages to see how they stacked up against Mendoza. The story usually ended with forced chuckles and a comment that "the shortstop position isn't just for defense any more." It's one of those old fables that people over 50 like to present when they wax poetic about the idyllic glory of our national pastime, when boys were boys, and players were boozing pill-poppers who chased coke and tail, not PEDs.

So you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have a piss-poor 1980's theme song and the 1981 Topps set. Optically fantastic yet tragically flawed by a strike. A great postseason (where three divisional series and one championship series went to a deciding fifth game) after a shortened season that distorted statistics. In a sport that is definitively based on numbers, who wanted Eddie Murray to lead the AL with 22 HRs and 78 RBIs? Not me, that's who. So 1981 gets parked at #4.

Coming down the stretch, we are left with the top three years. In chronological order, they are 1983, 1984 and 1989. Stay tuned next week.

From the Archives

I love the baseball postseason. Always have, even when the Red Sox aren't involved. (No, not aggravated by that at all, why do you ask?) And so, in honor of the beginning of another month of late nights, chilly tension, and Tim McCarver's mangling of the language, we present the following, reprinted with permission from the late, lamented Misery Loves Company.


American League Championship Series - Game 7

Red Sox 10, Yankees 3
Red Sox win, 4-3

Boston Red Sox, 2004 American League Champions

A friend of mine from Seattle e-mailed me at about 12:30 last night to congratulate me. My response to him (sent on my Blackberry in the midst of watching the Sox celebrate) was that this was the 4th-happiest day of my life after my wedding day and the days my 2 daughters were born. And that I was willing and hoping to knock it down one notch in a week or so.

As Ruben Sierra's groundball settled first into Pokey Reese's glove and from there into Doug Mientkiewicz', every memory of Red Sox tragedy, every wasted opportunity, every held relay throw or mental error, or managerial blunder, every ghost, and every disappointment washed away. I fell to the floor of my living room and pounded the carpet with both fists, crying, laughing, repeating, "They did it. They did it. They did it."

In the buildup to Game 7, I knew that a Sox win would produce euphoria in the moments after the game, and it did. I soaked up all the post-game celebrations, reveling in the catharsis wrought by this self-proclaimed band of idiots. What I didn't expect, and have welcomed, was the flashback euphoria. I was driving to work this morning, and - from nowhere - my eyes watered and I tore off an involuntary fist pump. It was an adrenaline aftershock of sorts. It's happened 3 or 4 times since.

Forgive me if this post is a jumble of unconnected thoughts - I simply have not completely processed the entirety of this thing. The Red Sox were 1 single inning away from losing this series, 4-0, and the Yankees had Mariano Rivera on the mound with nobody on base. Consider for a moment the "nevers" that the Sox overcame in this series alone: New York had never lost consecutive extra-inning postseason games; Rivera had never blown consecutive postseason saves; a team trailing 3-0 in a best-of-7 series had never extended the series to 7 games, let alone won it; the Yankees had never lost Game 7 of an ALCS; the Sox had never beaten the Yankees in an elimination game. Add to that the well-documented and quasi-tragic history of the Boston Red Sox. Mix in Curt Schilling's injury and Pedro Martinez' not-quite-dominance, and a 19-8 Yankee thrashing in Game 3. Stir in for good measure the fact that Johnny Damon started the series 3-for-29 and that Manny Ramirez finished the series with 0 RBI. I mean, c'mon, you couldn't make this up. They won. They did it.

From this day forward, the Sox will be known as the team that pulled off the greatest comeback in the history of sports, and the Yankees will be known as the team that committed the greatest chokejob in the history of sports. And even though that's wildly unfair to the Yankees - they didn't choke, the Sox scratched and clawed and fought and won - I won't correct anyone who says they did. They are well and truly vanquished. You can't possibly imagine how good it feels to type that and to know that.

So here's to the 2004 American League Champion Boston Red Sox. And in my best text version of the 'One Shining Moment' signoff, here are a few of the things I'll always remember about this series:

• Curt Schilling pitching Game 6 on one leg, with blood pouring through his sock, and shutting the Yankees down for 7 innings
• Dave Roberts stealing 2nd base in Game 4, and scoring on Bill Mueller's single to tie the game. The baseball version of a cardiac crash cart.
• Doug Mientkiewicz' otherworldly scoop on Mueller's short-armed throw to start the 8th inning last night. Even up 9-3, a leadoff error would have probably sent me into arrest.
• David Ortiz. David Ortiz. David Ortiz.
• The bad Johnny Damon morphing into the good Johnny Damon in the span of 3 at-bats in Game 7 - and Ortiz claiming post-game that it was because he told Damon's fiancee to sleep in a separate room.
• Derek Lowe, in a post-game interview, pointing to the Yankee Stadium pitcher's mound and noting that Tim Wakefield was standing there alone, soaking up the good feelings and erasing the memories last year's gut-punch. I simply lost it at that point.
• Keith Foulke getting 15 outs in three games in about 48 hours, giving his team everything left in his arm.
• Manny Ramirez smiling through it all.
• Terry Francona making the right move time after time after time - and I'll give him a pass on bringing Pedro in last night.
• Alex Rodriguez' bush-league karate chop on Bronson Arroyo in Game 6. Karma's a bitch, ain't it.
• Derek Jeter being the only Yankee with any heart in Game 7. Say what you want about that guy - and I've said it all - he is one hell of a competitor. And his teammates went out like so many whimpering puppies, tails between their legs from the first inning on.
• Wearing a bald spot in my living room carpet from pacing back and forth in the final innings of Game 6.
• My favorite aunt (a Boston resident) emailing me after each of the final 3 games - at first worried, then cautiously optimistic, then ecstatic. My last email to her: "Believe, Jan. Believe"
• Mark Bellhorn, not once but twice, hitting homeruns immediately after I told my wife that he'd been worthless in the postseason.

The Sox beat the Yankees. Damn.

But here's the thing: the Sox aren't done yet. They will face a worthy adversary in the World Series, and they will overlook Houston or St. Louis at their peril. Which is to say, they won't overlook them. I'll always have Game 7, but it'll mean something less if the Sox don't close the deal next week.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #5 - 1987

Mike Greenwell. Mike Fucking Greenwell. No player is as synonymous with the late 80's baseball card bubble like Mike Greenwell. He is to baseball cards what Global Crossing or Pets.com was to the stock market at the end of the last millennium. All sizzle and no steak. And a fucking Red Sox player to boot. Sure, he had a modestly successful career, and he managed to hoodwink Boston into paying him $21 million from 1990 to 1996. But his 1987 rookie card was among the most overpriced of the decade, topping out at $6. I vividly remember this because I purchased six rookie cards at a bargain basement price of $4.50 each that year. I probably felt just like the same suckers who bought Yahoo! for $100/share in early 2000.The Greenwell story is 1987 in a nutshell. The baseball card market exploded faster than Jose Canseco's biceps. Everybody hopped in and young, foolish collectors like myself started calculating paper gains in their pubescent heads. The crooked pricing catalogs I naively trusted were just leading me down the primrose path.


But we shouldn't let a schlub with a porn stache overshadow what was a pretty entertaining season. In the alleged "juiced ball" year, the upstart Twins, led by a short, fat man, a tall, fat man, an old man who owned the coolest shirt ever (see below), a Johnny Wad impostor and Steve Carlton's corpse, once again made losers of the speedy St. Louis Cardinals in a thrilling seven-game World Series.

(Is this the best shirt ever? Seriously, look at it. And remember that it came a generation before the ironic T-shirts that faux hipsters annoyingly wear all over town these days. The best part is that you can tell by looking at the neck that it's well-worn and beat up. Clearly, this was in the rotation for Bert for quite some time. If this isn't enough to get him into the Hall, I don't know what is.)

And let's not forget those who reaped the rewards of the juiced ball season. Juan Samuel and Wade Boggs each belted over 30 HRs, and the AL home run leaders included neer-do-wells like Mike Pagliarulo, Larry Parrish, Wally Joyner and Matt Nokes. Andre Dawson put up monster stats and George Bell and Jesse Barfield, along with Dawson, propelled the sales of jheri curl in Chicago and Canada.

To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985

The cards themselves were pretty cool in 1987. The faux wood design looked as cool on the cards as they did on my dad's 1986 maroon Dodge Caravan. The color schemes matched the team uniforms, the logo was cool and there was nothing else to get in the way. Simple stuff. We had a strange crop of rookies this year. Topps was kind of enough to designate the top rookies with a gold chalice, so we knew we were supposed to be excited when we got one of those cards (Danny Tartabull! Sweet!). They made things more confusing by also including a set of "Future Stars" players, and they nailed those players (looking at you, Dave Magadan). Unfortunately, there were manager cards in this set. And manager cards suck.

Surprisingly, this set, which many have called iconic for being the set that lured them into collecting, barely cracks the top half of our ranking for the decade. But too much sizzle and too few quality rookies doom the set. Stay tuned for the top 4 sets, coming at you (hopefully) before the end of the World Series. This year's World Series. Honest. In chronological order, the years left are 1981, 1983, 1984 and 1989. Thrilling stuff, I know.

P.S - Bonus card inclusion to remind Mets fans what a shit-show their franchise has been the last couple years. Sorry I couldn't find a picture of him shirtless, taunting 19 year-old Dominicans.

Happy Birthday, Big Fella

The G:TB Charter says we are only allowed to post football content on NFL Sundays, so I will wish a happy birthday to a guy drafted in the 17th round of the 1973 NFL draft by the Minnesota Vikings - David Marc Winfield.

He will be 69 years old. In ten years.

Ranking Topps 1980's Baseball Card Sets: #6 - 1985

Let's celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1985 season, an exciting one for several reasons. New York fans were able to enjoy a pair of young players cementing their status as superstars. Dwight Gooden won the Cy Young and put up the most dominating pitching season I ever saw (24-4, 1.53 ERA, 268 Ks). And Don Mattingly locked down the AL MVP with a ridiculous .324/35/145 season (an award he should have won three years in a row - look at his 1984-86 stats here and try to make the case for Willie Hernandez in '84 and Clemens in '86. I dare you.). Fans across the country were able to enjoy Whitey Herzog's St. Louis Cardinals, who had an incredibly exciting team. As a Yankee fan in New Jersey, I thoroughly enjoyed watching them play against the Mets on the black and white TV I got from my folks that year (Note to self: add "black and white TVs" to the list of things I'll explain to my kids that will make them look at me like I grew up a million years ago.). The Cardinals team was just awesome - Vince Coleman stole 110 bases, four others stole over 30, only one player hit over 13 HRs and Tommy Herr had one of my favorite stat lines from the whole decade, with 8 HRs and 110 RBIs. And don't forget Willie McGee. And his face. The Cards lost a tough World Series to the underdog Royals that year, who had a Brett (George) and a Bret (Saberhagen) leading them.

I'm gonna dwell on the season a bit more, because it was really a tough one for New York baseball fans. The Mets got to celebrate Gooden's monster year and see Strawberry continue to develop, but they failed to keep pace with the mighty Cardinals in a brutal NL East race. The Mets won 98 games that year, 3rd best in all of baseball, but failed to make the post-season. Brutal juice for Mets fans. And things weren't much better in the Bronx. A solid Yankee team, on the back of Ron Guidry's second-best season ever, won 97 games and almost edged out the Blue Jays for the division title. I vividly remember this race for two reasons. First, the Yankees ended the season with a three-game series against the Blue Jays in Toronto. They were two games down heading in and needed a sweep to win the series. They won the first game, but lost the second to end their season. Also, this series would decide the AL batting champ, as Mattingly and everybody's favorite alleged VD-carrying right-fielder, Dave Winfield, went down to the wire. Mattingly ended up winning, possibly due to racist Yankee fans who turned on Winfield and threw out racist comments to him while rooting for Mattingly. You stay classy, Bronx. My Yankees narrowly missed the post-season, my favorite Yankee narrowly missed the batting title and the team's best pitcher narrowly missed the Cy Young, as Bret Saberhagen edged out Guidry. Bad times all the way around.

Back to the cards. To recap, here are the rankings to date:

#10 - 1986
#9 - 1988
#8 - 1982
#7 - 1980
#6 - 1985

Pros & Cons
I know you are all asking yourselves - why are the pros and cons together!? They've always been separate!? Well, sports fans, the items that make this year's set so intriguing are what make them so tragic. I'll just list some rookies and you can wince on your own: Roger Clemens, Eric Davis and Kirby Puckett. Orel Hershiser was also in this set. But he was so damn boring and inconsistent, that we'll ignore him. I'm not sure why he couldn't pull it together over his career. Maybe he had a Garvey-esque dark side. And, last but not least, Mark McGwire, the biggest rookie card of them all, appeared that year. He showed up courtesy of his presence on the 1984 Olympic Baseball Team. An interesting brain fart by Topps that year was to only include the 16 US Olympians who had been drafted in that year's card set. Players who made the cut with McGwire included luminaries such as Cory Snyder, Odibie McDowell, John Marzano and Scott Bankhead. Omitted from the set were Randy Johnson, Will Clark, BJ Surhoff and Bobby Witt. Inconvenience for you, I'm sorry. Wrong set of Olympians altogether. (first to source this borrowed movie quote gets a french kiss from our bashful The Teej)

But back to the rookies. We had the B-12 Rocket, Captain Andro and little Kirby Puckett, who was so well loved that he undeservedly made the Hall of Fame even though he was a tremendous dirtbag. If you're too lazy to click through on the Puckett story, read these quotes from Frank Deford's riveting article several years ago: "Over the years, (his) ex-wife told SI, Puckett had also tried to strangle her with an electrical cord, locked her in the basement and used a power saw to cut through a door after she had locked herself in a room. Once, she said, he even put a cocked gun to her head while she was holding their young daughter. Puckett’s upcoming trial stems from charges that he pulled a woman into the men’s room of a restaurant in Eden Prairie, Minn., on Sept. 5, 2002, and fondled her."

But even the late Mr. Puckett is not the most tragic figure in this rambling post. The most tragic figure is Eric Davis. Of all the promising rookies to start their baseball careers in the 80's, I'm not sure if there was one who made fans salivate with anticipation about a player's potential more than Eric Davis (Pedro Guerrero may have made some female fans salivate, but that is a story unfit for this family blog). A Gold Glove defender with prodigious power and blazing speed, he was touted as a legitimate 50-50 Club candidate. In 1986, he hit 27 HRs and stole 80 bases in 132 games. The next year, he hit 37 HRs and stole 50 bases in only 129 games. Sadly, injuries decimated his career. And, most tragically, they decimated the worth of his 1985 rookie card, which I owned.

Unfortunately, the degenerate and ill-fated rookies and the mistakes involving the Olympians overshadowed most of the good things about this set, namely the great season and some good looking cards. Topps finally realized that the colors in the cards should pertain to the team's colors. Although the colors wasn't perfect, they were better. But sometimes good colors, or 98 wins, just ain't enough.

Ludicrous Speed

Moranis > Nadal

Binky Griptite's Ghetto Funk Tennis Hour

Bill Simmons recently mentioned this Sports Illustrated article which attributes Luis Gonzalez's late-career surge in home runs to an open batting stance and using more pine tar. Simmons points to this article as the perfect story to sum up baseball's steroid era.

Last week's Sports Illustrated included this article on Rafael Nadal. I suspect it will become the perfect story to sum up tennis' steroid era. S.L. Price writes:

It's that attitude that had made Nadal—a natural righthander who was raised on clay and once used his serve merely to start rallies—the best lefthander since Rod Laver, an all-surface player with one of the best volleys in the game, and a server whose average delivery had risen in the past year from 107 mph to 119. Then, in an August practice session before the Open, Nadal shifted the grip on his racket to stabilize his wrist and began popping serves in the low 130s. He was broken only five times in New York.

So Nadal picked up 12 MPH on his serve through hard work? Then he picked up another 11+ MPH by shifting the grip on his racket? I'm not sure that hard work and a grip shift adds that much pop. And it took him 8 years on the pro tour to realize that he was holding his racket wrong? And he's a natural rightie?!?

I think Nadal picked up some extra oomph at Dr. Galea's office.

Here's a photo of Nadal taken at this year's U.S. Open.


Here's an undated photo I found (in TR's bathroom, of all places); I'm not sure if it was altered.


I'm not the first person to think that tennis has a steroid problem. Go to that link for photos of insanely jacked female tennis players ... if you're into that sort of thing.

All Kinds of Cronk

Thanks to our friends at The Atlantic for publishing the American Mustache Institute's definitive list of the 20 Mustaches that changed history. While there's bound to be some controversy over AMI's slight of Dave, we really can't quibble but so much.

Your Doofus Overlord occasionally relents and takes requests

Especially after watching the clip Mark just ordered me to post:

If you have a minute, I suggest you throw up the clip of Will Hill trucking a guy on the Gator sidelines in a wheelchair during Saturday night's game. It will certainly ease the transition into another week for everyone by providing a few laughs. And if you haven't seen it, it will brighten your morning as well. I put it up on my twitter feed yesterday and I'm sure there are even better clips of it now. Make it happen.
-Mark

Roll it:

A pretty solid little Saturday...

Some quick thoughts on today/tonight's games before I leave the house for a couple hours:

Arkansas is going to score on Bama. Over 20, I'm guessing. To this point, I haven't been blown away by Bama's D. Penn State moved the ball fairly easily in the early going and Arkansas has much better offensive talent. Chris Childs is an NFL WR and DJ Williams is the #1 or 2 TE prospect in the country. Mallet is obviously a huge upgrade over Robert Boldin. The chess match between Petrino (a really gifted offensive coach) and Saban should be great to watch. Bama wins, but they don't cover. Arkansas blows it due to either turnovers or redzone inefficiency.

- South Carolina v. Auburn has great potential. South Carolina needs to win this game if they're going to be considered a legit SEC contender. Auburn is beat up from last week's game against Clemson and a win on the road would be a big boost to the Gamecocks confidence. However, winning on the Plains (at night) is no easy task. I don't trust either QB in a big spot late in the game. If I had to choose, I'd go with Cam Newton but that's just because I value my new laptop. Auburn, just barely.

- The RB matchup in the USCe-Auburn game should be fun. Marcus Lattimore has gotten all the pub nationally, but Auburn's freshman RB, Michael Dyer, was the only RB rated above Lattimore in last year's high school rankings. He's an MJD type back in build and style. I'd set the over/under for number of carries for these two at 60, and I'd take the over. At one point last year both of these guys were Auburn commits. Scary.

- Speaking of scary, Florida v. Kentucky scares me. UK can score, lots. In Brian Hartline, Derrick Locke and Randall Cobb they have 3 very experienced and talented offensive playmakers. Florida's D has been pretty good thus far (save for a couple breakdowns on the back line last week) but this will be their biggest test by far. I'm extremely happy this game is in Gainesville as I feel the home crowd will encourage the coaches to open it up a little offensively. And that's a good thing because, in my opinion, the UF coaches are going to have to take the chains off the passing game a bit if they want to have a shot a winning this game by a comfortable margin. Also, if you're going to open it up a bit, tonight is definitely a better setting than next Saturday night in Tuscaloosa.

- Terrible, inexcusable DUI (45 in a 20, on campus with two (yes, two) open bottles of Crown) or not, Frankie Hammond needs to start seeing a lot more time at WR for Florida. He caught a TD last week and seems ready to get himself back in the regular rotation at WR. This is a necessity if the Gator's offense is going to become capable of making big plays in the passing game. He was the second best receiver for UF in the spring and has proven himself to be a playmaker in games and practices during his time at UF. He's the Gators' best route runner and he has the speed to test defenses deep. Look for him to see more action in the slot and on some deep post routes.

- Boise State v. Oregon State: Sorry, despite the Beaver's recent history of upsets over top 5 teams, I just can't see them going into Boise and knocking off a very good, experienced team that knows it's season is dependent on what they do in there few national showcase games.

Lorenzo the Parrot: BUSTED

I would swear stories like this were made up, but then again, it is Colombia...

A parrot in Colombia has been arrested after it was seized during a police drugs raid.

According to environmental authorities, Lorenzo the parrot was trying to tip-off a local drug cartel when officers conducted an undercover raid early Wednesday. "This parrot was sending out alerts," said police officer Hollman Oliveira. "You could say he was some sort of watch bird."

Authorities claim Lorenzo is one of nearly 1700 parrots seized by officials after being trained by drug traffickers to act as lookouts. Lorenzo caused quite the stir on Wednesday as he was presented to journalists. The well trained creature even showed off his look out skills as he yelled out: "run, run you are going to get caught."

"He spent the whole morning saying that," police Colonel Freddy Veloza told RCN television. Despite Lorenzo's attempts, Veloza's officers still managed to seize more than two-hundred weapons, a stolen motorcycle and a large quantity of marijuana. At least four men and two other birds were also arrested in the raids.

Wait, what? You arrested two other birds? It's an epidemic.