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I got my hands on an advance copy of Hu$tle, ESPN's Pete Rose movie. Interesting. Kind of hard to concentrate on the plot because you can't watch this movie and not spend all of your time wondering what that thing is on Tom Sizemore's head.

You can say a lot of things about Rose's hair, but one thing you can't say is that it's fake. It's about the most hair-like head of hair you'll ever see. But instead of having Sizemore attempt to grow a moptop (or hiring Liam Gallagher), the producers outfitted the actor with something that bears only a passing resemblance to actual human hair.

Now, in Sizemore's defense, it's not easy to look like Rose, who has a pretty unique set of features. But Sizemore plays him with some sort of unidentifiable East Coast accent that, combined with the strange beleaguered facial expressions he often wears, bring to mind a middle-aged, toupeed version of Boner from Growing Pains. (You know, they never explained how Boner got his nickname. Not that it takes a genius to come up with a plausible theory. His dad could have been, say, an osteologist.)

Anyway, it got me thinking about my favorite baseball hairdos. And as I pondered it, I realized that since the most outlandish hairstyles tend to come from the 1970s -- well before athletes were on the tube 24/7 -- my frame of reference is baseball cards.

So instead of giving you my top five coifs, I'm going to widen the category and give you my five favorite baseball cards. (I'm doing this from memory, by the way, so forgive any minor errors. And, as always, I'd love to hear what you guys think.)

5) Nino Espinosa, 1980 Topps. I can't tell you anything about Nino Espinosa's career other than he was a pitcher for the Phillies that season and he had a ginormous afro that reached its peak in '80.

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4) Dale Murphy, 1977 Topps. Murphy was part of a card that highlighted the National League's rookie catchers. (Before he was a center fielder he was a catcher -- and, as I recall, a very bad one.) It's his rookie card, so when he started winning MVP awards in the '80s, the card actually became quite valuable. So I started going through the old shoeboxes under my bed to see if I had any tucked away. I found two, which would have meant a decent chunk of change for a 13-year-old. Alas, one of the other catchers on the card was Gary Alexander, who got traded to the Indians in the late '70s. He hit the occasional mammoth homer, but usually he just struck out. I couldn't stand him, so I ripped his face off the cards. Eighty bucks down the drain.

3) George Hendrick, 1977 Topps. The Indians outfielder was wearing a visor. Nice work ethic. I think that explains why he was much better once he left Cleveland.

2) Billy Ripken, 1989 Fleer. Ripken appeared on a card holding a bat on his shoulder. Someone had written "F--- FACE" on the knob of the bat. Imagine being Billy Ripken. Your brother will be forever known as baseball's iron man. You'll be forever known as F--- FACE. That's rough.

1) Oscar Gamble's traded card, 1975 Topps. The greatest afro ever. During my sophomore year in college, my roommate Mitch and I took the card to Kinko's, blew it to poster size and put it on the wall. No, we weren't very cool.

I received a fair amount of hate mail from Yankees fans telling me I'm an idiot for calling the organization classless for demanding that the Devil Rays forfeit the game they were late for due to Hurricane Frances. (I even took a shot from the 10 Spot, for crying out loud. Tough to bounce back from that.)

Most of the arguments were based on the notion that Major League Baseball, not the Yankees, was at fault. I never said MLB didn't mangle the situation. MLB did a terrible job keeping on top of Tampa's situation and could have avoided the whole mess.

But that doesn't change the fact that the Yankees' claim of being the aggrieved party (George Steinbrenner told the New York Times, "We want the truth to be told and then you'll see how we've been put upon") was tacky and classless. All they had to do was say, "Major League Baseball has put us in a bad situation and we apologize to our fans for any inconvenience. But what we've gone through and what our fans have gone through is nothing compared to what the Devil Rays, their families and their fans went through. At this time our thoughts are with them. God forbid this situation should repeat itself, but if it does, we hope that MLB will do a better job keeping us abreast of the situation."

One reader did make a very good point (one I intended to make but didn't) -- that the Yankees players weren't at fault. On the whole, they're a pretty classy bunch.

This riff's about NASCAR, so if you're one of those NASCAR haters, just scroll down. Earlier this year I wrote in SI that the new Chase for the Championship system was a bad idea. My problem was that the old points system was pretty arbitrary, while the new one is incredibly arbitrary. But I gotta tell you -- I was wrong.

I mean, it is arbitrary, but Saturday night's race was the most exciting we've seen in ages because so many drivers had their seasons riding on it. It's unfair that Jeff Gordon loses his big lead and now has to deal with nine guys suddenly popping up on his heels. But he knew that was the situation coming into the season, and it's no sillier than having baseball teams play 162 games, then see their overall success gauged on their performance in a best-of-five series and a couple of best-of-sevens. I was wrong on this one. It's a solid, exciting system. Good job, NASCAR.

If George Bush loses the election he's got a future singing in a U2 cover band.

And if your dog popped a cap in you, don't you think you'd make up a story for the cops? Maybe "I thwarted a kidnapping" or something? Anything's better than "A defenseless puppy shot me in self-defense."

Stay classy.

Mark Bechtel is the Scorecard editor for Sports Illustrated and writes a Daily Blog every Wednesday for SI.com.