Blog blast past: Top 5; How I Met Your Mother's greatest sports episodes

The 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother airs tonight. It promises to have singing and dancing — despite Marshall's chronic case of dancer's hip! — the WWE's Stacy Keibler playing a bartender at MacLaren's. From May 18, 2009, here is the series' top five sports-related episodes (as the title likely implies).

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL (Season 2)

The gang has a tradition of getting together for Super Bowl Sunday. Ted and Marshall like it for the football, Robin and Lily enjoy the commercials and gambling addict Barney needs to keep track of his multiple wagers. However, their ritual is threatened after the owner of the bar where they hang out, MacLaren's, dies and his wake is at the same time as the game.

No one seems to have ever met the owner and Future Ted can't seem to remember his name in the retelling. Was it Mark or Mike? Carl, the bartender at MacLaren's whom Ted once believed was a vampire (because he always wear black and they only see him at night), guilts them into attending by saying they'll never be allowed back in the bar if they don't attend.

It turns out that memorial services are the one time when Barney does not "suit up." He tells everyone he plans on "going out of this world the same way I came in, buck naked; open bar for the fellas, open casket for the ladies." Unfortunately, they have to go a full 24 hours before they can get together to watch a Tivoed game, meaning they have to keep from learning the score while living in New York City, the media capital of the world.

This presents problems since (a) Robin is the media, as a news anchor at little-watched Metro News One; (b) Marshall is speaking to Lily's kindergarten class, and one of the scamps demands a bribe to keep silent about who won the game; (c) Ted has to go to a sports bar to pick up hot wings for the belated Super Bowl party and (d) Barney is a gambling addict.

Barney races around the city trying unsuccessfully to learn the score, even after bumping into Emmitt Smith. "The game was yesterday?" the NFL's all-time rushing leader says. "After you win two or three of them, you kind of stop paying attention."

Ted sets out to get the hot wings after using an old pair of sunglasses, headphones, a cereal box, duct tape and a hole punch to MacGyver up a device called the Sensory Deprivator 5000 that will prevent him from hearing or seeing the score of the game. Unfortunately, everyone's best-laid plans fail, and they all end up learning the score, but that doesn't stop them from having a good time.

LUCKY PENNY (Season 2)

Since HIMYM is a love story told in reverse, it's apropos to include an episode that is told entirely in flashbacks. Ted and Robin (at this point, they were dating) try to figure out who's at fault after he misses a flight to Chicago to interview for his dream job. They were late getting to the airport because Ted had to go to court to pay a ticket he got for hopping a turnstile at a subway station.

It turns out Ted jumped the turnstile because he was coming to the aid of Barney, who was stuck on the train after losing use of his arms and legs. It turns out that Barney, to win a bet with Marshall, ran the New York City Marathon without training, which comes back to haunt him only after he finishes the 26-mile, 385-yard race.

It turns out Barney ran the marathon after borrowing a bib from Marshall, who was injured and unable to compete. It turns out Marshall was given to rubbing petroleum jelly on his nipples to prevent chafing before going out on training runs. (Runners actually do this.) It turns out that Robin crashed at the apartment one night. In the morning, she opened the bathroom door, only to find Marshall, getting ready for his run, rubbing petroleum jelly on his nipples and repeating to himself in the mirror, "You are ... Marshall! You are ... Marshall!" to himself. Robin takes this to be a warmup ritual for another form of exercise and says, "Oh my god!" Startled, Marshall falls and breaks his toe.

It turns out Lily told Marshall about preventing chafing, so it's her fault.

INTERVENTION (Season 4)

Not a sports episode, but it addresses how HIMYM's Canada references are either uber-knowing or totally stereotypical.

Referring to a dirty Canadian sex act called an "Old King Clancy" is an example of the former. Robin Scherbatsky's TV demo reel including footage of her covering a bass fishing derby in the middle of a blizzard on a "snowy August first in Medicine Hat" is an example of the latter.

Marshall and Lily are moving out of the apartment they had shared with Ted and start discussing who should be responsible for what portion of their damage deposit. They point to the hole in the wall near the door, flashing back to the time when Robin got loaded on Molson and started acting really Canadian, re-enacting Game 6 of the 1994 Stanley Cup final while wearing a Roberto Luongo sweater and goofing around with a stick and a puck. The obvious setup is that she put the hole in the wall with a shot. Marshall challenges her to shoot the puck through the open door, but when she does, Lily catches it. The two exchange words, with Robin chi, "I'll give you summer teeth, some are here and some are there." Ted separates them, causing Barney to yell, "Ted! You never break up a girlfight!" — and punch a hole in the wall.

(Bonus points to the writers for putting Cobie Smulders, who's from Vancouver, in the Canucks' old black sweaters instead of their current blue ones, since it was a flashback.)

In another episode, Robin dates the sports anchor at Metro News One, an ex-hockey player named Kurt "The Ironman" Irons, who takes her to a Canucks-Rangers game at Madison Square Garden. She comes back the next day all agog after her brush with Canadian celebrity.

Robin: "I met Mason Raymond ..."
Everyone: (stare blankly)
Robin: "... of the Vancouver Canucks!"
Barney: "What's the opposite of name-dropping?"

THE BRACKET (Season 3)

Throughout Season 3, Barney was plagued by a mystery woman who kept sabotaging his attempts to pick up women. This leads him to create The Bracket in the style of the NCAA basketball championship — "the top 64 women I've slept with, divided into four regions ... in order to figure out systematically which one has the most cause to hate my guts."

LITTLE MINNESOTA (Season 4)

Late fall is often a lonely time for Robin, the Canadian expat. (In the first season, stuck in New York over U.S. Thanksgiving, she and Ted try to fill the void by volunteering at a homeless shelter, but end up eating turkey dinner at a strip club with Barney.)

Marshall takes pity on Robin and invites her to a bar that is strictly for people from Minnesota, warning her that she'll be kicked out if they learn she's Canadian. Robin blends in extremely well, telling people she's from Bemidji and stealing Marshall's story about where he was when on Jan. 17, 1999, when Gary Anderson missed the field goal that would have sent the Vikings to the Super Bowl. (Whenever anyone in the bar is reminded of that day, they all say, "Damn!")

However, when she breaks Marshall's record on the fishing video game in the bar, that's the final straw.

Marshall: "She's Canadian! She's Canadian! She's not from Bemidji and she doesn't know anything about the Vikings."
Robin: "I do too."
Marshall: "Robin. In the 1999 NFC championship, which the Vikings lost ..."
Bar patrons: "Damn!"
Robin (a beat too late): "Damn!"
Marshall: "... who was the kicker who missed the field goal?
Robin: "... Rashad Tarkenton?"
Marshall: "Gary Anderson. Who is now retired and owns a fly-fishing business ... in Canada."

Robin sheepishly leaves, but not without defending Canada's honour (and ironically, this aired the day after the Bills in Toronto disaster).

"I'm proud to be Canadian. We may not have a fancy NFL team, or Prince, but we invented Trivial Pursuit — you're welcome, Earth. Plus, in Canada, you can go to an all-nude strip club and order alcohol. That's right. From Moose Jaw to the Bay of Fundy, you can suck down a 20-ounce Pilsner while watching some coal miner's daughter strip down to her pelt. Jealous?! In Canada, people don't care where you're from. As long as you're friendly and loan them a smoke or hand them a donut. I'm proud to be Canadian. I wish I was there right now."

Marshall then puts things right by taking Robin to a bar for Canadians called The Hoser Hut, where the patrons not only sport toques and hockey sweaters and act overly apologetic.

Marshall: "Wait, I bumped into him, and he apologized to me and gave me a donut?"

The episode ends with Marshall singing karaoke to Robin's early-'90s Canadian bubble-gum pop song, Let's Go To The Mall.

What most people don't know, and really no one born after 1976 should know, was this was not the first sitcom to satirize the Vikings' inability to win the Super Bowl. Apparently, a few days before the Super Bowl was played in 1975, there was Mary Tyler Moore episode where Lou Grant lost Ted Baxter's money after betting on the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Vikings.

Of course, the Steelers won that game and have gone on to become six-time Super Bowl champions. The Vikings remain stuck on zero.

And that, kids, is the story of why the Vikings are cursed. (Not really.)

(Here is the intro for the original piece.

Kids, back in 2009 there was a sitcom called How I Met Your Mother. Watching it was kind of a rear-guard action. The age where people watched a situation comedy on a broadcast network at a certain time every week had long become obsolete, but you still blocked out time for the season finale. It had relatable characters and the L.A. Times, a newspaper published in the now-underwater city of Los Angeles, called it the "most modern and consistently fresh traditional sitcom of the last few years." It also liked to weave in sports references, be it Ted Mosby saying the only thing he talked to his dad about was baseball, or your uncle Marshall playing "BaskIceBall," where he and the other males in his family of mayonnaise-guzzling Minnesota giants put on skates and pads and basically just whaled on each other. Sometimes, whole episodes even revolved around sports and as your Uncle Barney liked to say, it could be "legen, wait for it, dary!")

He did all that for one lousy joke...

Posting the trailer for Paper Heart (comedienne Charlene Yi explores if there is such a thing is love, she's the girlfriend of Michael Cera, who does his whole awkward-cute routine that has already started to wear thin) can actually be justified here. It's a stretch.



How do you justify putting this on a sports blog? Well, comedy is a collaborative enterprise, just like sports. It only works if everyone buys in. That clip also spins off into how grateful one should be for everyone Judd Apatow family of performers. And there is a YouTube clip that's surfaced of Seth Rogen, circa 1996 (he would have been 13 or 14 years) doing stand-up comedy in Vancouver. He jokes about playing rugby, so that justifies a bit more.



Also, do you remember that Vanity Fair spread last month on the New Kings of Comedy. There was the one picture of Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Jonah Hill (AKA the obnoxious one in Superbad).

Lord, I apologize, but the immediate point of reference was a 1997 Sports Illustrated feature on baseball's new breed of slugging shortstops. In hindsight, it revealed that Alex Rodriguez was always shallow and mindless:

" 'C'mon with me to New York, DJ,' Rodriguez says. He has been trying all evening to persuade Jeter to fly with him the next morning to an awards show, having failed at dinner with his A material: " 'Cindy's going to be there. Cindy Crawford!' "

(That wouldn't have been so apparent if you were about the same age and only a couple years' removed from having a Cindy Crawford poster on your bedroom wall.)

That article mostly focused on A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and, wait for it, the Blue Jays' Alex Gonzalez.

Jonah Hill is Alex Gonzalez. Please consider the stretch made.

Blog blast past: Top 5 Simpsons sports episodes, Part 1

The Simpsons -- teacher, mother, secret lover! -- begins it 20th season on Sunday night. From November 2006, here's the top 5 sports-themed episodes from the show's golden age.

Every fan knows The Simpsons had its Golden Age and the Long Plateau, divided precisely at Sept. 28, 1997, The Principal And The Pauper, when it's revealed that Principal Skinner stole another man's identity while in Vietnam. (All together now: Worst. Episode. Ever.)

So, here's the Top 5 sports-themed episodes from the Golden Age:

DEAD PUTTING SOCIETY (Season 2)
Homer's resentment toward to Flanders' attempt at friendliness ("Your beer comes from farther away than my beer! Your wife's butt is higher than my wife's butt!) spills over when Homer signs Bart up to play in a mini-golf tournament against Todd Flanders. Homer makes a bet with Flanders that the father of the boy who doesn't win has to mow the other man's lawn wearing his wife's Sunday dress. With the pressure on, Lisa becomes a 4-foot-2 yellow-skinned Phil Jackson, tapping into some Eastern wisdom to help Bart focus.

Lisa: I want you to shut off the logical part of your mind. Bart: OK. Lisa: Embrace nothingness. Bart: You got it. Lisa: Become like an uncarved stone. Bart: Done. Lisa: Bart, you're just pretending to know what I'm talking about! Bart: True. Lisa: Well, it's very frustrating! Bart: I'll bet.

The Funny: Homer gets his at the end of the episode, when Bart and Todd Flanders, after several nerve-wracking playoff holes, decide to call their championship match a draw. This means Homer and Flanders both have to mow the lawn in a dress -- excepts Flanders enjoys it since it "takes me back to my fraternity days."

BART THE DAREDEVIL (Season 2)
It wouldn't have even been thought of as a sports-themed episode when it debuted in the fall of 1990, but it predated the X Games and extreme sports' movement into the mainstream, a development that spawned a bajillion Blink-182 videos and Mountain Dew commercials in the late '90s.

(It even got to the point where it was an easy parody -- remember the "Extreme!" guys in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle?)

The Simpsons go to a monster truck show, where unfortunately they arrive late. Lisa, of course, had to have a saxophone recital. Homer drives into the arena, leading to a harrowing encounter with Truckasaurus. (Even funnier is that Homer has to drive the mangled family car home.)

Inspired by Lance Murdoch ("If he's not in action, he's in traction), Bart fantasizes about becoming a daredevil, imagining an intro of, "If he's not in class, he's risking his ass." (Remember, this was 1990. You didn't hear the word "ass" on TV back then, especially if you were a kid living in a cable-free household.)

Bart begins doing a series of skateboard stunts for the neighbourhood kids. He gets the idea to leap Springfield Gorge, but Homer prevents him -- with disastrously hilarious consequences.

LISA THE GREEK (Season 3)
Homer proclaims NFL Sunday to be Daddy-Daughter Day when he discovers Lisa has an almost eerie prescience for helping him win his bets. Remember, the main reason people watch the NFL is because they have money riding on it. In fact, she's much better at it than the network guys, like Smooth Jimmy Apollo (voiced by the late Phil Hartman): "Well, Chet, when you're right 52 per cent of the time, you're wrong 48 perc ent of the time!"

The humour comes in how Lisa, normally so moral, gets such a rush from helping Homer clean out his bookie (Moe, of course) and turn into an eight-year-old gambling addict. She even incorporates her new hobby into an essay on the happiest day of her life:

Ralph Wiggum: ... and when the doctor said I didn't have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life.
Ms. Hoover: Thank you, Ralph, very graphic ... Lisa Simpson, would you like to read your essay?
Lisa: The happiest day of my life was three Sundays ago. I was sitting on my daddy's knee when the Saints, who were 4½ point favorites, but only up by 3, kicked a meaningless field goal at the last second to cover the spread.
Ms. Hoover: Dear God!

Of course, Homer blows it by taking Lisa's gift for granted. Hurt, Lisa offers him this proposition: If Washington wins the Super Bowl, she loves him; if not, Buffalo wins. This creates a very anxious Super Sunday for Homer.

Barfly: "Whaddya got ridin' on this game?"
Homer: "My daughter!"
Barfly: "Whatta gambler!"

(Also funny: In repeats the following season, "Dallas" was dubbed in for "Washington," and that again correctly predicted the Super Bowl's outcome.)

THE HOMER THEY FALL (Season 8)
After Homer gets beaten up by the fathers of school bullies Dolph, Jimbo and Kearney at Moe's, Moe the Bartender decides to revive his failed boxing dreams by putting Homer in the ring. Predictably, Marge objects --"Of all the crazy ideas you've ever had, this one ranks somewhere in the middle." However, it turns out Homer more than meets state requirements to "box, wrestle or be shot out of a cannon." (Apparently whatever state Springfield is in was founded by circus freaks.)

Refusing to fight, and simply waiting for his opponents to punch themselves to exhaustion so he can push them to the canvas, Homer cleans out the ranks of ASSBOX (Association of Springfield Semi-Professional Boxers):

Moe: OK, you're fighting a guy named Boxcar Bob.
Homer: Brawled his way up from the boxcars, did he?
Moe: Uh, no, not yet, he still lives at the train yard. But he's a hungry young fighter. In fact, he's actually fighting for a sandwich.

This gets Homer a shot at the champ, Drederick Tatum, who, uh, kind of looks like a certain boxer from real life.

The Funny: You learn more of Moe's backstory, there's a Raging Bull parody, and well, making fun of boxing -- the sham fights, the B-list celebrities, its bottomless capacity for farce -- is like fishing with dynamite.

HOMER AT THE BAT (Season 3)
Let's see: Parodies The Natural, the song Talkin' Baseball ("Mike Scioscia's tragic illness made us smile / while Wade Boggs lay unconscious on the barroom tile") and George M. Steinbrenner III's micromanaging ways: "Mattingly! I told you to trim those sideburns!"

Writers and baseball are always a natural mesh, and there's enough baseball-fan humour and knowing references to support this episode. Darryl Strawberry's a team player ("Some of these guys have a got a bad attitude, skip") and José Canseco is a glory hog ("Don't worry, ma'am, I'll save your cat"). Plus we find out Mr. Burns is really, really old, since his initial hand-picked team of ringers consists of Cap Anson, Honus Wagner and Mordecai (Three Finger) Brown. In fact, his right fielder has been dead for 130 years.

Waylon Smithers, acting upon Burns' orders to "scour the professional ranks -- the American League, the National League, the Negro Leagues," puts together a team that's more stacked than the late-'90s Yankees. Of course, all of of Waylon's wizards are waylaid by various calamities, meaning the real Power Plant team has to play the championship game -- except for regular right-fielder Homer Simpson, since Strawberry is still OK to play. Naturally, Homer gets his skull-cracking chance at glory.

Lisa: "No, Mom, it counts as a hit! Dad won the game!"
Marge: "Well, I guess he'll be happy... when he comes to."

WHY NOT...

LISA ON ICE (Season 6)
Funny at times -- "Ralph Wiggum lost his shinguard! Hack the bone! Hack the bone!" -- but mostly this episode is a cop-out.

Why? Firstly, the show's writers want to make a point about overly competitive sports parents, and they chose hockey, a foreign game, rather than go after America's triple-threat of baseball, basketball and football. (Granted, they went after youth football in subsequent seasons.)

Secondly, the ending. Bart gets a penalty shot against Lisa with four seconds left in a tie game. The winner will be showered with praise, the loser will be taunted and booed until Homer's throat is sore... but they remember all the good times they've had as siblings, and decide to let the game end in a tie. Except for one thing: In real hockey, the clock doesn't run on a penalty shot, so the ending is a cop-out.

One could argue that the writers played on the average American's ignorance of hockey. It still only makes the ending snort-through-the-nose funny, if not actually funny.

(This post was almost 99% Greg Hughes' idea.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

The kids today, they're like those hip musicians with their complicated shoes

This is one of those it's hell-being-30-something moments.

The Onion's AV Club reported yesterday that there is something called a Seinfeld Campus Tour, "a 26-city, 10,000 mile cross-country road trip in a 60-foot long Seinfeld branded, bio-diesel fueled bus designed to integrate the show directly into the digital, on-the-move, multi-tasking lifestyle of college students and members of the 70 million plus millennial demographic." (Stop: Too many buzzwords.)

Question from the stocky, slow-witted bald guy (but not short!), who's apparently passing to the other side of the generation gap: You mean when someone of a certain age says "not that there's anything wrong with that," in the presence of someone 18-24 and they just smiled and nodded, it was a pity smile? They were just humouring the geezer for being trapped in a time warp?

(At the same time, there's no language barrier with the young youth today who were barely out of kindergarten during The Simpsons' peak years. Seinfeld was about nothing, but it tapped into something that was very peculiar to its era.)

This is not so unsettling. It's good to know that biggest challenge on college campus in the most powerful country in the free world, the one next door to Canada, aren't the thousand students who need remedial reading courses when they arrive in university. Many struggle with comprehension since their entire school career has been solely based on being able to pass a standardized test (which was such a good idea that, of course, it was implemented in Ontario and helped put in on the fast track to being a have-not province). It's not having to deal with students from areas of the United States where so many people don't believe in science, to the point that laws actually had to be passed requiring evolution be taught in classrooms.

No, it's that undergrads don't know about Junior Mints or where the notion of being "(blank)-worthy" got started.

That's a shame.

Cleveland rocks...

Does anyone know if this for real?

New meaning to the term 'mobile defenceman'

For anyone who hasn't seen it, Puck Daddy had a post last week about Kevin Smith's upcoming Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which is due to be released around Halloween -- Seth Rogen's character plays hockey.

Paraphrasing Brodie Bruce in Mallrats, "How could something so big as Seth Rogen portraying a hockey player in a Kevin Smith movie get by me? I must be slipping in my old age!"

There's no word if there's a scene where Rogen's character ignores his girlfriend to play a video game. That's only funny maybe, once, twice in a lifetime.

(Also, on the subject of hockey and movies, The Love Guru trailer is a little lacking in NHL content.)

UP AT 6: VIKES MAY MOVE MOUNTAIN

As you were trying to see things from the OmniTouch point of view...

• Daily Norseman ponders whether the Vikings would really cut off their nose to spite their face trade All-Pro left tackle Bryant McKinnie.
• A day in the life of people who produce pirated DVDs. Who knew there was another trick that involved poking a hole in the popcorn bag?
• It is possible to be ribald at a hockey game without making gay fans feel uncomfortable. New York Rangers fans ought to try joining the 21st century.
• Well, that was just dumb: Guy buys raffle ticket and put it's his neighbour's name; neighbour wins the car.
• Dave Zirin notes how Brett Favre embodied an archetype that was restricted to white athletes; that was written here a couple weeks ago, but it didn't seem like such an individious thing. How has Brett Favre-bashing not made it to Stuff White People Like?
• The inaugural Canadian Women's Hockey League championship goes today; the odds it gets a mention on Hockey Night in Canada? (Kingston's own Jayna Hefford is playing for Brampton in the final vs. Mississauga, so go Brampton.)

CAN'T SPELL BOWDLERIZED WITHOUT BOWL

It's suspected that some of you might be fans of The Big Lebowski, so this dude abides by passing along Randball's Q&A with the founder of Lebowski Fest -- which goes this weekend in Chicago.

Apparently, in the bowdlerized U.S. cable version of the Coens' profane masterpiece, the line, "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" is changed to this is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps."

HEAVEN'S GOT ONE HELL OF A BAND...

R.I.P., Jeff Healey. All the other guys who never learned to dance won't know what to do without you for the next little while.

Related:
Musician Jeff Healey dies of cancer (Canwest News Service)

PLEASE, NO A-CHANNEL COMPARISIONS

Stammering, clamming up, nervous mumbling -- it's like a dramatization of the senior prom (from what I'm told by people who actually had the dough, not to mention a date).

(Hat tip to on 205th.

UPDATE: It's on Deadspin now, but since the young anchor goes to a school that pushes its Christian environment, he probably has enough people praying for him.)

LIES MAKE JOE BUCK CRY

Here's a link to what Bob McCown was talking about on Prime Time Sports last night, that Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson aren't a real couple.... sob sob sob. How will we go on... take it away, Air Supply!



Related:
Are Romo and Jess faking it for the money? (on 205th)

SOMEONE SURE WAS DAZED AND CONFUSED, BACK IN THE SUMMER OF '79

It's good to know that Richard Griffin is making sure the Jays blogosphere is ready for next season.

The Toronto Star baseball columnist is the equivalent that assistant football coach in Dazed and Confused telling Pink, Donny and Benny, "Guys, don't go soft on me over the summer, layin' around the pool, chasin' the muff around." Griffin evidently wants all the compilers of the various Jays blogs to abstain from any and all activities that would get in the way of our world-class backbiting and carving-up of his unique genius in 2008. Apparently, the commitment forms got lost in the mail.

How else to explain this gem in Griffin's retrospective the other day about MVP voting?

"Should it be given to the best player in the league or to the player who was most indispensable to his team, no matter where that club finished?

"... A perfect example of a year when the two processes could not be separated was the 1979 NL MVP voting. A couple of first basemen split the prize, Willie Stargell of the Pirates and Keith Hernandez of the Cardinals. Stargell clearly had the best offensive numbers, but Hernandez shared the award because of his defensive contributions and clutch hitting for a team that finished third in the NL East." (Emphasis mine.)

Oh, please. Even someone who was two years old in 1979 can debunk that without breaking a mental sweat. Pray tell, how did Willie Stargell clearly have "the best offensive numbers" over Keith Hernandez in the summer of '79?

Runs created/game
Hernandez: 8.6 (in a fairly historical average setting)
Stargell: 6.8 (in a somewhat better hitter's park, Three Rivers Stadium)

On-base-plus-slugging (OPS)
Hernandez: .930
Stargell: .904, but in 218 fewer plate appearances

Percentage of team's runs accounted for:
Hernandez: 29% (210 of 731)
Stargell: 14% (110 of 775)

It's not even necessary to go into the true alt.nerd.obsessive territory such as adjusted batting runs (Hernandez had twice as many as Stargell, 47.4 to 21.9). There's no need to quote Bill James, who called Stargell being co-MVP the worst award selection of the 1970s.*

No amount of leadership that Stargell provide to the We Are Family Pirates could bridge the gap in numbers between him and Hernandez, who did prove his own leadership chops later on. Griffin must have written that just to raise the ire of baseball nerds, to make sure that they were paying attention, or weren't too distracted by the whopper Marty York spun the other day about Roger Clemens joining the Jays. (Sure.)

It has to be that. One wouldn't want to think that if Griffin could be that far off the mark with a matter of simple statistical fact that any stugots could look up, how bad could he get it wrong about the stuff that only he as a journalist is privy to? The mind reels.

So either Griffin was testing people or he's just that incompetent. Or maybe he spent way too much time with Bill (Spaceman) Lee during the summer of '79 and it permanently scrambled his circuits. There's always that. Anyway, yours truly, much like Randy (Pink) Floyd, I might play ball when it comes to Griffin-bashing next season, but there is no way I'm signing that commitment form (wads it up, throws it general direction of Richard Griffin).

Oh, and good luck getting Drunk Jays Fans to sign off "no sex after 12."

Related:
MVP vote a fascinating exercise (Richard Griffin, Toronto Star, Nov. 11)

(* The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 282.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

THE WRONG KID DIED...

Rotten Tomatoes has a good article up on Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Basically, any time there's a new Judd Apatow movie coming out, life stands still.

THE SIMPSONS TAKE ON THE STEROID ERA

A bit too Family Guy-esque in the length and lack of subtlety, but still fairly humourous. Thanks to Pete Toms for the link.

SOMETHING.... MID-NINETEEN EIGHTIES

If this can't cheer up a New York Mets fan today after the epic their team had, nothing will...



It's got Joe Piscopo, Soupy Sales, Dr. Joyce Brouthers and a young John Gibbons trying to lip-synch for about a two-second shot at the 1:42 mark. It's almost sublime in its badness.

INTERVIEWING A LEGEND

Co-blogger Neil Acharya has interviewed Ice-T for TheCyberkrib.com in advance of the hip-hop legend's show tonight at The Phoenix in Toronto.

A JOKE ABOUT "FAVOURITE POSITION" IS JUST TOO OBVIOUS

Ordinarily, this space has no use for Sports By Brooks and other so-called sports blogs that put T&A ahead of actually examining the sporting life. (Sorry, it's a higher calling to stimulate that erogenous zone known as the brain.) They do get a hat tip for helping unearth that a certain starlet played hockey at one of the snooty Eastern boarding schools she was expelled from.

WHERE'S HOWARD BEALE WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

It's about time someone on a news network did it, but the sincerity is somewhat dubious.

INSIDE THE MOBB CANCELLATION

Co-Blogger Neil Acharya has an article at theCyberkrib.com which examines the ramifications of Mobb Deep having a recent scheduled show in Toronto cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

Related:
Mobb Done? (theCybercrib.com)

SARCASTIC CANADIANS WHO ARE UGLY AS F--K BY TRADITIONAL STANDARDS NEED A TROJAN HORSE

Seth Rogen gets his big starmaking vehicle with Ottawa's Jay Baruchel riding shotgun -- a switcheroo from their days on the late and lamented Undeclared.