| This Week's Oddball Items Of Interest |
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Not Just a Box of Rain
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| The holy water |
Lawd knows just about anything qualifies as sports memorabilia these days, with people eagerly scratching and clawing for handfuls of dirt and grass, chunks of cement, paper cups, used condiment packets, and even toilet seats from famous stadiums or significant events. So it shouldn't boggle the contents of anyone's skull that an enterprising soul is peddling rainwater from the historic suspended Game 5 of this year's World Series on e-Bay. "Some will laugh but others will covet this tangible piece of history in the making," the proprietor states in a moment of profound truth. "You are bidding on rain from the same storm system that brought the game to a screeching halt. It was collected no more than 5 miles away from Citizens Bank Park. It will be contained in a small vial and then sent to you via priority mail. I do not know what size vial or exactly how much you will get but it will be no less than 2 ml." Well, as an avid drinker of nature's own pure, untouched-by-humanity bottled tap water from a plant in the wilds of Jersey City, that's good enough for us, although if you choose to invest, you might want to hire one of them questionable authentication firms that can make sure -- for a fee, of course -- that Ty Cobb game-worn undershorts with pink hearts on them are the real McCoy. Not saying the memorabilia industry is crooked, but it is easy to get soaked.
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Romance in the Toilet
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| Ralph Wilson is for lovers |
One of the week's hotter news stories is the report out of Buffalo that a couple was busted for doing the nasty in the can at Ralph Wilson Stadium while the Bills were forming love piles with the Jets down on the field. Stadiums and arenas frequently host such public displays by folks who are unable to keep Mr. and Mrs. Happy quiet until the final gun, but at least Toronto's Rogers Centre offers more gracious accomodations. We realize that public turlets are popular hot spots, but a public turlet in a packed sports stadium has to be one of THE most unpalatable sites for makin' bacon that this space can think of. Granted, the Bills boff was in the women's turlet -- the men's edition in most stadiums is usually a facsimile of Buffalo's old toxic Love Canal -- but still. Maybe, for the sake of simple decency -- no doubt a line of ladies with barking bladders were inconvenienced by the Buffalo love birds -- it's time to put saltpeter (the anti-viagra) in stadium concessions or at least add waterbeds and divans to the restrooms in toney palaces like the new Yankee Stadium or the Mets' Citi Field, which -- according to this report -- will have little redeeming value for general public whose dollars were used to, um, erect them.
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Instant Hustle
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| Rabies mean RBIs |
If you follow our National Pastime, and pay handsomely to do so, you may be irked by the increasing number of multi-millionaires who are lollygagging their way down to first base after putting the ball in play. This past season, Rays manager Joe Maddon was actually moved to attempt some sort of action to rectify the inaction of one of his charges, but clearly measures more drastic than a benching are needed to rid the game of this galling trend. Well, we think we've found the ideal solution, courtesy of a runner in Arizona who bolted a country mile with a rabid fox attached to her arm. Deranged animals are both plentiful and cheap and there's nothing like a spiral-eyed fox or raccoon with dripping fangs -- or at least the threat of one -- to make even Manny Ramirez get the heavy metal out of his pants. It should be fairly easy for teams to keep a crazed critter two in a cage in the dugout and send it out for a conference with whomever dares to try sauntering his way into a rally-killing double play in the World Series. In fact, this space is willing to bet that rabid animals will be the performance-enhancer of the future in Major League Baseball.
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Here's to the Losers
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| Shiner on, you crazy diamond |
As the old saying goes, if you can't be the best at something, you might as well be the worst because at least its a distinction that sets you apart from the vast forest of mediocrity. Welterweight Peter Buckley embraced that credo and is about to hang up his gloves and stiptic pencil after tasting the canvas to the tune of 256 defeats. The number could hit 257 if he loses his farewell bout. Buckley's career as a professional tomato can earned him recognition as the world's worst pugilist and put him in the ranks of such paragons of futility as: the Washington Generals, the thoroughbred race horse Zippy Chippy, the Bulgarian women's ice hockey team, Charlie Brown's baseball team and the Socialist Workers Party of these United States.
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Unfounded Rumor of the Week
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| PGA's new courses are waiting |
No week would be complete without the latest from the SI.com washroom, where the sound of clanking pipes, dripping water, hissing steam, and the random gunshot is often drowned out by plausible whispers. We hear from sources "in the know" that outgoing President George W. Bush has been so pumped about reviving manned missions to the moon because once he's out of office he'll be working to help major pro sports, especially Major League Baseball, move off the planet. "Ticket prices and salaries are already in the stratosphere," says our source. "League poobahs figure why not go all the way? The moon is the ideal neutral site for the World Series. The atmosphere is only slightly thinner than Denver's, and fans always want more home runs. The NFL and NBA are looking into opening the 2010 season on Mars and the NHL is foaming at the mouth to crack the Martian market." Any right-thinking individual has to reckon that well-heeled folks who already pay astronomical sums for private rides into space will gladly fork over just as big for seat licenses and luxe transportation to and from games and PGA tourneys at courses with spectacular views of that little blue ball the rest of us call home. As for the rest of us who have only a few coppers among the cobwebs in our china pigs, there'll always be lawn darts. You read it here first and -- naturally -- last.
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| Please direct all snide remarks, brickbats and stink bombs to John_Rolfe@simail.com |
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