Fun with Baseball Cards

As my summer vacation nears its end, I am rapidly attempting to get through the million items on my "to do this summer" list. One of those tasks was organizing all of the baseball cards in my house. I spent a few hours sorting today, but a lot of that time was spent laughing at the dudes on these cards! So I present my first installment of... Fun with Baseball Cards!

Let's start with this one. It's a card for Giants catcher Kirt Manwaring. But if you take a look at it, I think you'd agree, it's actually a card for (the best player not in the Hall of Fame) Mark Grace. Think about it. If you were on a baseball card and someone on the card had just been plowed over... wouldn't you want to be the one who just laid someone out as opposed to the guy who just got laid out? If I were Mark Grace, I'd have lobbied for this picture to be on my card.













Now... we've all seen the awesome mullets some of these guys were sporting, right? I mean, look at Ron Hassey here:














This is a pretty good representation. You could go through these cards and see hundreds of mullets. But please... please... tell me... what is THIS:














Is Victor Rosario actually going for a jheri curl mullet?? Because that's what it looks like! And if that's the goal, then I'd say he accomplished it. But I think he was really going for this George Bell look:














Bell has the Ice Cube thing down and looks smooth. He'd already had 227 HRs when that picture was taken, so maybe that helped. Victor didn't have any Major League homers. It shows.

Finally, to end today's segment, I'd like to introduce you all to Mr. Shooty Babitt:














There's nothing terribly ridiculous about Shooty. Other than his name being Shooty. And his last name rhyming with "rabbit!" With a name like this, imagine if he'd been a great player. I'd love to have a Shooty Babitt jersey! Looking at the back of this card, we can see his speed and RBI potential:

















By comparison, Shooty's minor league stats are slightly better than our crazy mullet man, Victor Rosario:
























Well, this has been fun. I realize now, however, that I've completely forgotten what blog I'm posting on. Isn't this a racing blog, Ron Furious? Why, yes it is! Forget all that I've said in the post. What I meant to say was:

The Best Event of the Year Race Fans Don’t Know or Forget Exists and Why IT Should Be Our Motorsports All-Star Race

This weekend while F-1 is in Hungary, IndyCar is off, and NASCAR is on week 72 of their 178 week season; probably one of the most fun motorsports events of the year will be going down. It will include an Indy 500 winner, a motorcross champion, a drifting champion, dirt, pavement, and a jump! It’s the Rally X event at the X Games in L.A.

For those unfamiliar, the event consists of 2 side-by side courses that are half dirt and half streetpavement. Each contest/matcup consists of each car doing 1 lap on each course (switching courses at the end of each lap) with the finish lines being next to each other, the contest is a head-to-head single elimination bracket. Last year Kenny Brack came out of driver seat retirement to do this event and won it. Ryan Hunter-Reay was tweeting how much he wanted to do it while watching, and truly with jumps (over each other) and the new Super Rally competition that includes 4 cars on the same course together, you can’t even begin to imagine the amount of fun it is, not only for the drivers, but for fans.

The only problems are as an official X-Games competition, the amount of participants is limited, the location is static and it currently conflicts with many other motorsports calendars. Since IROC and now A1GP are gone, we really have nothing except the 24 Hours of Daytona to serve as a fun competition between the best of all the series; we need a true All-star race.

Right now NASCAR has the crapass abomination called the All-Star Race which is nothing close. Seriously what other All-star sporting event lets all its normal participants compete instead of only the All-Stars? And IROC has been gone for a while now, and even when we had it was too much home court advantage to stock car drivers.

Rally-cross is everything we need for an All-Star event. You won’t find many drivers in NASCAR, IndyCar, ALMS, Grand-Am, Karting, USAC etc. who wouldn’t be willing to do it just for a weekend of fun; and you could easily build courses all over the country so that everyone has a chance to get it each year (whereas X-Games are now stuck in L.A.). Heck you could even make it so only drivers could be the co-pilots so you got Jimmy Johnson in the driver seat and Juan Montoya as co-pilot and then they switch for the next round.

The drivers could even put their normal sponsors on the car, even more rewarding not only those sponsors but better positive relationship for the driver with their sponsor.

This kind of All-star event should NOT be in a static location, the X-Games are evident to why that’s such a bad idea; L.A. has had the X-games every year since 2002 (when Philly had it and the Games normally rotated locations). Last night as Pastrana pulled off the double back flip, and skateboarders went for Big Air, there were maybe a few thousand in the stands, and that’s pretty generous. The same happens with NASCAR’s All-Star race, if you put something that is supposed to be a spectacle/showoff in the same place, it loses its spectacleness and the locals get tired of it. This MUST be a travelling circus (so to speak).

I’m sure someone like Eddie Gossage would be drooling and ecstatic it if it were announced Texas Motor Speedway landed the 2012 Motorsports All-Star Race. He’d put up the money to build the temporary Rally course, could even use part of the oval for it. Heck, take it a step further, since there’s no homerun derby, you could have all the drivers do a Go-Kart race in addition to the Rally fun. And if you kept it from being oval-only like IROC both ovals and road courses could bid to host it, spreading the wealth and truly making it feel like an All-Star event. Heck there could even be a special 3rd event that used sports cars on the original home track to help seed the Rally stuff, just like the baseball All-star games decide Designated Hitters or not depending on whose park it is.

It can’t be too terribly hard to get ALMS, Grand-Am, IndyCar, NASCAR, USAC and such to agree to take the same week off in the year, it’s not like the benefits to doing so are non-existent. The event would only serve to help them all gain new fans when the fans of all the series crisscross. More importantly it would help racers and fans become more respectable and friendly to each other when they meet up.

Someone out there make this happen, shoot I’ll work pro-bono to help work out the logistics to make such an awesome event happen.

And for those who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about; watch Rally X this weekend as Indianapolis 500 winner and X-Games gold medalist Kenny Brack goes to defend his title. Trust me, it’s worth it and that’s why someone needs to make it happen as the official Motorsports All-Star Race.

The Cubs: All-Bust Team (2000-2010)

Being a Cubs fan is a tough job. It's bad enough that we have to watch this team lose so often, but we also have to sit around and watch "future hall-of-famers" head to the disabled list, the bench, the minor leagues, and/or other teams. In fact, we could field an entire roster with players who were supposed to be stars at their respective positions and didn't quite pan out just in the last 10 years. The starting line-up would look something like this:

C - Todd Hundley

After he hit 24 HRs two years in a row for the Dodgers, the Cubs brought in the son of former Cub great Randy Hundley to answer all of our catching problems. Maybe the steroids wore off (Hundley was named as a user in the Mitchell Report) but he managed just 28 HRs total in his two years in Chicago. Even worse were his batting average (around .200) and his OBP (under .300).


1B - Hee Seop Choi

Who needed Mark Grace? Choi was the new Mark Grace. He was the power-hitting, Asian Mark Grace. I even raved to my friends about the homerun I saw him hit over the pool in right field when he was an Iowa Cub playing against my hometown New Orleans Zephyrs. Unfortunately, Choi's minor league heroics did not translate to the Major Leagues, where he only hit 40 HRs and 120 RBIs in his career. Of course, most of that is the Marlins' problem since they gave us Derrek Lee for Choi back in 2004. (By comparison, Lee hit 78 HRs and 205 RBIs in the two years following the trade.) One of the few times we've successfully sold high on a prospect that didn't reach his potential. Speaking of which...

2B - Bobby Hill

After the Cubs drafted Hill in the 2nd round in 2002, all we heard was how great he was going to be. He would soon be our starter at 2B and would be there for years to come! Like Choi, I made sure I got to see him play for Iowa a few times. He was going to steal bases and drive in runs. He was the next Sandberg! So you can imagine that fans were reluctant to embrace the trade that sent him to Pittsburgh in the Aramis Ramirez deal. Good thing Aramis has hit about 280 HRs while Hill knocked out 6 in his short Major League career.


3B - Aaron Miles

Am I stupid, or what? Everyone knows Miles is a second baseman. Well, here's the deal. Our team thought it was a great idea to let Mark DeRosa get away before last season. Why? Oh, because we could sign Aaron Miles instead. DeRosa hit 21 HRs and 87 RBIs in 2008. While those were great numbers, they were even more important because DeRosa provided insurance at 3B. Sure enough, when Aramis Ramirez missed half of last season, instead of DeRosa's 23 HRs, 78 RBIs and his ability to play 3B, we had Miles's 0 HRs and 5 RBIs, along with his .185 average. But hey... he was a switch-hitter!

SS - Nomar Garciaparra

I remember the day we traded for Nomar. He had hit over .370 one year. He had once hit 35 HRs. He was mentioned with A-Rod and Jeter whenever anyone talked about the game's best shortstops. Of course, in a Cubs uniform, he couldn't even stay healthy for half a season and was never the same. Some people blame steroids. Others blame a more likely cause: the Cubs.

OF - Milton Bradley, Felix Pie, Kosuke Fukudome

OK, so everyone knew what to expect from Milton Bradley. And even as he was imploding, we still thought he could get it together. The biggest mystery now is how we got the Mariners to take him from us for Carlos Silva!



Pie, on the other hand, was a five-tool player! Remember? We wouldn't trade him for anything. You could've offered us the Yankees' starting line-up and Jim Hendry would've rejected that. But then we found out his five tools were like striking out and maybe chewing bubble gum or something. In the end, we got a couple of minor leaguers for him as the next Sammy Sosa turned out to be the next Corey Patterson.

And then there's Fukudome. When we signed Kosuke, we were told he had 30/100 potential. We just didn't know those numbers would be 3-year totals! (After 2.5 seasons, he's totaled 29/138.) He's not a bad player and seems to be a great teammate. But the Cubs are paying him the salary of a Major League All-Star and he isn't even good enough to start on a pretty bad team. Instead he is in a platoon with Xavier Nady in the FOURTH outfield position. Meanwhile, Sam Fuld and Micah Hoffpauir remain in Iowa.


SP - Rich Hill

I don't get this one. In 2007, Hill was 11-8 with a 3.92 ERA and 180+ strikeouts. A year later he ended up being traded to the Orioles (of course) for a player to be named later. He is currently playing for Boston's AAA team.

RP - Antonio Alfonseca

After saving about 100 games for Florida in three years, Alfonseca blew 9 saves for the Cubs in 2002 while saving only 19. Removed from the closer role in 2003, he posted an ERA near 6... which is the number of fingers he has on each hand! Sometimes, kids, 12 fingers just aren't enough.


Manager - Lou Piniella

I like Lou and I've enjoyed his grumpy grandpa attitude as much as anyone. But zero playoff wins in four years didn't quite cut it. Dusty Baker may have ruined Mark Prior's arm and all, but at least I was having playoff parties at my house where we all had toothpicks in our mouths. Hopefully Girardi or Sandberg can lead us back...

Scapegoat - Steve Bartman

Of course, everything on this list and everything bad that has ever happened to the Cubs is this man's fault. Don't forget that.

The Hornets cannot trade Chris Paul

I have spent many hours this summer reading about Pete Maravich. I've watched tons of videos as well. I was always a huge fan, but there was so much that I didn't know.

Unfortunately it makes Chris Paul's recent behavior seem even more pathetic. It may be hard to understand if you haven't lived in New Orleans, but Chris Paul (along with Reggie Bush, Sean Payton, Drew Brees, etc.) became the face of a rebuilding city. We didn't even know if we were getting our team back from Oklahoma and then Chris Paul came along to renew excitement and represent the city.

So now he wants a trade and doesn't want to be there. I am hoping the Hornets do not give in to him. At this point, I'm losing respect for him and would ordinarily think we should get as much as we can for him. Then I remember how much the New Orleans Jazz gave up to get Maravich from the Hawks in 1974:

- two players from the upcoming expansion draft
- a first round pick in 1974
- a first round pick in 1975
- a second round pick in 1975
- a second round pick in 1976
- the option to switch first round position in 1976 and 1977

People around the league were furious that Atlanta ripped off the new expansion team so badly, while Hawks staff openly joked about how one-sided the deal was. Atlanta head coach Cotton Fitzsimmons even mentioned using a mask and a gun!

Atlanta's attendance dropped 34% and the Hawks made no improvement on the court, finishing 4th, 5th, 6th, 4th in the Central Division over the next four years. (They'd finished 2nd in all four years since drafting Maravich.)

Chris Paul cannot be replaced. The risks of him holding out or not playing his best can only hurt him in the long run. The Hornets need to make him stand up and keep his commitment or show everyone that he is a baby and is willing to quit on his team or watch them suffer until his demands are met.

It looks like the Hornets are set on keeping him, which is great. I'm hoping he changes his attitude and we can quickly forget about this.

Of course, the Hornets also need to do a better job of getting Paul some serious help, but that's a different complaint for a different day...

Turning On the Lights

Now that the soon-to-be-name-changed Indy Racing League has made the decision on the relative-ish-ness amongst where they will later decide on some specific rules for the IndyCar Series; it leads many… ok.. maybe a small group… ok maybe just a small few of us… to wondering, so what does this mean for the minor leagues?

We now know that there will be a base chassis frame (to be built by Dallara)  which at first sounded like the perfect opportunity for the IRL to steal borrow Lola’s idea of having a similar base that could be used for Indy Lights and then upgradable to the full IndyCar Series.

It would have been technically feasible as there could have been 1 approved body kit and smaller engine for Indy Lights, and then for any team to upgrade to the major leagues, they’d simply need to buy a different kit and better engine, not a chassis too. Dallara probably would have been super happy to oblige too, that’s even more base chassis they get to make and sell, right?

Only it was not to be, because shortly within the chassis announcement came a slight problem to that theory; the minimum cost of this new “safety cell” announced earlier this month was $345,000. A nice cut for IndyCar teams but nothing that an Indy Lights team could touch, especially since the engine and body-kit are still needed to be complete.

It seems it would have to made sense to have Dallara’s base chassis a little cheaper but guarantee them that they would get 100% of the body (I’m not calling them aero) kits in Indy Lights and then make IndyCar body kits a little more expensive (which would help the other IndyCar Series body kit makers get more ROI too). But since I’m not the type to waste time debating what could have been; lets spend time talking about what can be.

So we know 3 things:

1.    Indy Lights teams will not be offered a chassis upgradable to the IndyCar Series.

2.    The current Indy Lights chassis isn’t known for being all that relatable to the current IndyCar Series chassis, and certainly won’t be to the new one

3.    The current Dallara IndyCar chassis will not be relatable to the new chassis coming out.

So what does that mean? It means Indy Lights gets a chance to re-invent itself right along with the IndyCar Series. It means they should take this moment to do the MOST important thing for Indy Lights drivers AND team’s crews. Make sure the 2012 Indy Lights chassis best teaches and prepares drivers/team members for the new 2012 base chassis that will be constructed by Dallara.

It only makes sense to keep it in the realm or relevance. Right now most in the paddock think the current transition is more akin to a baseball player going from college baseball with classes to attend, aluminum and graphite bats and only 50 games, straight to the pros with 162 games, wood bats and full time players with no class to attend. Its not a total shock to go from one to the other, but its definitely missing that relatable step… the A, AA and AAA minor leagues.

Since the Indy Lights Series is the final step before the big leagues, it should be the most like the big leagues. Which is why I agree when the series decided not to take the current Dallara and move it to Lights. But lets take it a step further and make this recommendation:



Submit an RFP to only Swift and/or Lola for the Indy Lights chassis of 2012.

Why?

For starters, it would be a good consolation (and profitable one) to one of the chassis makers you just told ‘no’ to on their IndyCar Series proposal. More importantly, that consolation would be the sign of good faith to them that you DO want them to be involved in your leagues; and maybe enough that they would be a little more encouraged to join the body-kit competition in the IndyCar Series.

While she’s an engineer and surely not Swift’s official spokesperson, the idea in theory alone made sense to Swift’s Pinkgineer (Rachel Nichols) via twitter:

“Walking into this question blind but I don't see why not”

More so, both Lola and Swift would certainly give us something sexy to look at on the track which would make both fans and drivers happy, and just might help bring more interest to the series.

But most of all for me, doing so would sure go a long way in easing the pissed off-ness of all these people on the internet who won’t seem to shut the f up complaining about Dallara being picked for the tub maker duties, which is responsible for about 80-90% of the pissed off-ness... and truly shutting up internet whining and getting a cool looking new car is the best win-win I've heard of since drinking beer to help restore the Gulf Coast.

Joey Votto and Marlon Byrd

Joey Votto hates Marlon Byrd. He hates all Cubs and their fans. In fact, Votto ran into Byrd on the street the other day. Grab Bag Sports has exclusive video of the encounter...

some post-All-Star Game notes

I knew it was going to be an exciting All-Star break. I mean, Bobby Valentine, supposedly one of the smartest baseball guys in the game, predicted Jose Ortiz to win the Homerun Derby. The part that was odd to me, though, was when the other guys started joking about it and Joe Morgan (I believe) said something like, "Well, I'm sure Jose must be his middle name." I didn't take that to mean, "My friend Bobby must know what he's talking about and probably just got confused." It was more like, "Ortiz is hispanic, so odds are... his middle name is probably Jose! Hahahaha."

Now I could care less. But I do know that guys have lost jobs for things like this. Remember Steve Lyons getting fired by Fox? (Short version: before Lou Piniella came out of retirement to lead my Cubs to two glorious playoff sweeps, he was in the Fox booth with Lyons. He said Frank Thomas needed to get "en fuego" and said Marco Scutaro's surprising performance was like finding a wallet on Friday and hoping to find it again next week. Lyons said Lou was "hablaing Espanol" and that his wallet was missing!) I was watching that game and thought it was pretty funny actually. Saying he couldn't find his wallet had nothing to do with Lou's speaking Spanish. But he got fired anyway. I miss Steve Lyons and, coincidentally, don't watch the weekly FOX broadcasts nearly as much as I used to.

So tell me... is assuming a man's name is Jose based on his ethnic background really OK? Then again, maybe this is part of ESPN's training. Just ask Bob Griese and Juan Pablo Montoya.

---

On the other hand, last night's broadcast of the actual game went pretty well, I thought. Maybe I'm just happy that the NL finally won! (Of course, it's not like my team has any shot at using that home field advantage.) But I watched Saturday's FOX broadcast of the Cubs-Dodgers game and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver were using it as like a tune-up for the All-Star Game. I was a little worried, as it was not exactly the best broadcasting I'd heard in a while.

For one thing, right at the beginning of the game, Buck mentioned Rafael Furcal. He then said, "Not an All-Star, but he should be." And that's all. Just moved on to something else. See, I think that's unacceptable and shouldn't be allowed. If he isn't going to complete that statement himself, there needs to be a producer or someone who prompts him with: "OK, Joe, then who do you kick off of the NL team?"

I'm kind of tired of hearing guys say things like that. You are paid to analyze. If Furcal deserves to be on the team, he needs to take someone's spot. So who is it, Joe? Who do you want off of the team? It's way too easy to make friends and say, "That guy should be an All Star. This guy should be an All Star." Then your roster ends up with 73 of the guys you're trying to make friends with by saying on national television that they were robbed.

Oh, and of course, Furcal did end up on the team! Maybe Joe had some pull? Is his middle name Jose? There's definitely a mystery to crack here.

And McCarver had some gems of his own during Saturday's game. At one point he said the Dodgers' pitcher should not have tried to stop a ball up the middle because "there are eight fielders behind him." No wonder the Dodgers took 3 out of 4 games from the Cubs. They're using an extra fielder! I call BS on the Dodgers... unless you're telling me Tim McCarver doesn't understand there would only be seven players "behind the pitcher."

Either way, I was happy with the outcome and thought it was a great game. Plus, any thoughts that David Ortiz got lazy and sent an impostor named Jose were crushed at the end. Cubbie Marlon Byrd's throw was amazing and all, but surely Jose Ortiz would've beaten it. Only the real Big Papi is that slow.

---

Finally, moving on from the All-Star Game, I just thought I'd mention that I enjoy all the new "NOBAMA" bumper stickers I'm seeing. I don't really care one bit about politics, but the way the words are written in red and white, it allows me to tell myself it is an anti-Alabama bumper sticker. As an LSU fan, I can totally get behind that and am pleased to see so many people caring about important sports rivalries as opposed to politics.

a few book reviews

As a teacher, I tend to read a lot during the summer since I have more free time. I've read about 8 books so far this month and noticed four of them were about sports. So I figured I'd give quick reviews.

Pistol Pete: Heir to a Dream by Pete Maravich and Darrel Campbell

Maravich is my favorite basketball player, rivaled only by Jordan. (Put these two on a team together in NBA Live '96 and see what happens!) This book was written right before Maravich died, but was completed after his father's death. It is definitely an interesting time for him as his life sort of finally makes sense to him at the end. Very sad at times. I definitely want to get my hands on one of the newer biographies that have come out recently.

9/10



SEC Basketball History & Tradition by Chris Warner

This is not exactly very well-written. There are misspellings and it is not organized very well at all. But the research and information is undeniably good. Great read for someone who grew up as a fan of an SEC school. It was fun reading about my favorite players from when I was younger (Shaq, Chris Jackson, Allan Houston, Billy McCaffery), the older guys I missed out on watching (Maravich, Barkley, Rupp), and then tons of people I'd never heard of. Afterword with Dale Brown brings it up a point.

8/10


Juiced by Jose Canseco

I've been wanting to read this for years, but libraries don't seem to carry it. Found it used for .75 cents last week and read it in a day. Hilarious stuff. It's everything you expect from this book, although some will be disappointed in the lack of committed finger-pointing. He says a lot of "this guy HAS to be using steroids" and not as much "I injected him myself" as we were led to believe. It's really about how he studied steroids to the point that he believed he knew how to not only increase performance on the field but to also improve quality of life! And you have to at least admire his passion. Wedge tells me there is a sequel, so now a new quest begins. I also need to check out the A&E documentary Last Shot.

7/10 (for entertainment value)


The Big Field by Mike Lupica

I am a huge Mike Lupica fan. I think he is an excellent sports journalist and his young adult books are always really good. I've had them on my summer reading lists for my students for the last 5 years or so. His stories are always about kids who are underdogs and, of course, how they overcome adversity. But his characters are believable and kids and adults can both relate. From a teacher's perspective, Lupica does not always do a good enough job integrating strong female characters. In fact, there are none in this story outside of a mother. That part is kind of unrealistic to me. But his stories are always good. If you haven't read his stuff before and are interested in young adult lit, I recommend Heat, Travel Team, and this book to start with.

8/10

My Grab Bag Story

So we have a new site! And a new contributor in Andy (yes, the SpeedGeek himself)! And a returning member in Deuce? Maybe?

I like the new name. Andy told us a story about his experience with baseball card grab bags (maybe he can tell it here) and I had a similar story. When I was a kid living in New Orleans, my dad would sometimes take us on crazy road trips. If they involved watching music or sports, I was down. But sometimes we'd just go to random towns. Boring, right? So the first time he took us 90 minutes away to Ponchatoula, LA, my brothers and I were dreading it.

When we arrived in Ponchatoula and began to go into all of these antique stores on their main street, we thought things couldn't get any worse. Until we entered the single greatest antiques store ever found by a baseball card nerd. The guy who owned this store sold his antiques and did really well. But he usually hung out in the back room of his store, which was an amazing little card shop! He had such a huge supply of cards stashed into this small "store" about the size of my living room. We figured we'd at least found a place to hide until it was time to head back home to civilization. But then we found out about his prices...

This was the early- to mid-90s. Beckett was the Bible, right? Right. Everyone knows that. Well, this guy started his prices at HALF of Beckett. Think about that for a second. Think of all the cards you collected and the ones you paid a certain dollar amount for. Now imagine paying half of that. As a 13-year-old, it was like winning the lottery. If we were more enterprising children (or had less of a conscience) we'd have come home from the many trips we eventually begged to take there, carrying bagfuls of cards to sell to our friends for twice what we paid for them. The guy asked us not to do that though, so we never did. He was just happy to help kids have fun in a hobby that was quickly becoming an adults-only pastime.

And the grab bags? They were all marked $1 and labeled by sport. You would get at least $5 Beckett value in each bag (with special bags containing bigger scores, of course) in addition to one unopened pack! It didn't matter if it was 1987 Topps or 1993 Score or whatever it was! An unopened pack to a kid or teenager is like gold, especially for $1. Some grab bags had better packs, obviously, and you could get a 1989 Upper Deck or 1984 Donruss, for example.

At this time, we were mainly into the NBA and usually went to the basketball packs. We ended up with more Shaqs and Jordans than our friends even knew existed. We'd have so many extras we'd give them away like candy to our friends.

"What? You're giving me a Dan Majerle rookie card? Beckett says this is worth $5!"

"Dude, we have 23 of them in that one shoebox alone."

Seriously, we would save up $10 or $20 each and beg to go to Ponchatoula and spend all of our money on grab bags. The guy who owned the store knew then what we all know today: 99.9% of those cards from the 80s and 90s are financially worthless. But what it did for young sports fans and collectors is immeasurable.

Years later, even after that guy closed his store, I found myself bringing my own family to Ponchatoula, which also happens to be like the strawberry capital of the universe. No one sells cards there anymore, as far as I know, but I'll never forget that antiques store and those grab bags.

So Grab Bag Sports it is...

Unfortunately for me, the launch of this site comes at a pretty low point for me as a sports fan. The Cubs are so terrible and aren't even fun to watch anymore. I still do it, but it isn't fun. I usually put it on while I'm working these days. Or trying to fall asleep. Meanwhile, I'm hearing the Hornets not exactly refusing to listen to offers for Chris Paul. That would be a serious blow, possibly the nail in the coffin, as far as my interest in the NBA goes these days. (The Hornets need him and so does that city and its kids... if you trade him right now, personally, I'm done.) There's also a College World Series going on without LSU, which is always sort of sad.

So, maybe the Cubs will do something exciting soon? If not, there's always Saints stuff coming up! Either way, I'm looking forward to the new site and I think Allen has done a great job. Get ready for more nonsense from me soon.

Furious Wedge Becomes Grab Bag Sports

Roughly three years ago, after a good 6 years spent writing separately about anything and everything, my good friend Mike and I decided to open up a new collaborative avenue, specifically to talk sports... or at least of all things, find a place to bitch about the Bowl Championship Series.

It was a very on the fly decision (one we never really expected others to find, let alone read) and when Blogger asked me for a name to type in, Mike just took two of our numerous obscure online handles/screennames (my 'SandWedge' and his 'Ron Furious') and smashed them together... I believe it went something like:

Me: "So what should we call this thing?"
Mike: "hrmm..."
Mike: "How about, Furious Wedge.... hah, thats just nonsense"
Me: "Seems perfect"

And alas, that's really the entire story of how SandWedge and Ron Furious became Furious Wedge. Maybe one day we'll explain the nicknames. While I know we'll both still complain about the BCS (because it still sucks), but quite a few things have changed, most notably; neither of us live in New Orleans anymore. We've gone from a few posts about football to covering just about every sport that gets any kind of mainstream coverage. There was a time when only I contributed because Mike was just a tad little busy with a new baby.

Then there was the start of our now annual Blogathon, an event conceived almost as well as our name: "hey do you think we could actually live blog the entire Daytona 24 race?" The event had over 20 different guest bloggers posting in a 2 day period with Mario Kart and chat rooms, ridiculous, but so perfect. There have been a few attempted additions to the staff to no permanent avail, and there's been times when I've talked almost primarily IndyCar Series. I still find it almost ridiculous our site is hit regularly by people in more than 30 states and 20 countries.

The one thing we know for sure at this point is that we are at our best without much in the way of rules, but more in the line of...well... humor. We've never been a place to just republish the news with a link; and we don't generally take much of this stuff TOO seriously, at least not as much as we analyze or make fun of said news. To date, the only hiccup we've found is with our nonsensical name; quite a many people think of me as a single person called "Furious Wedge," due to my own fault in creating a twitter account with that name; or we just get too many blank stares when trying to cover events in person as a member of the media.

We plan to continue to do the same thing we've always done, only with a little change of scenery, and a much anticipated addition to the cast. We're glad to welcome in the awesome Andy "SpeedGeek" Miller, and also welcoming back Ryan "Deuce" McLaughlin who, I kid you not, took a leave of absence because he couldn't get internet at his new house due to being too rural!?

So knowing that we were getting this band together provided a good time for a renaming; only we needed something that would accurately portray this random selection of sports talk, and what better than the infamous bag of random mysteries. Are you going to get a rookie Ken Griffey Jr. baseball card, or even that Billy Ripken card with the curse word on it, or add to your collection of Oil Can Boyd? (my apologies to any of our readers who have never had the joy of collecting baseball cards).

And with that, I'll just say, as always, thanks for reading this nonsense :)

The Midst of a Sports Hangover

If sports were alcohol, I’ve been partying for 3 weeks straight, and today I find myself waking up with a headache and trying to compose my memories about what exactly happened. I’m not even sure if hangover is the right word considering I’m, figuratively, still having some drinks with the World Cup and College World Series still in full swing and now Wimbledon has started up and already has a few upsets and near upsets to go with day 1.

So apparently its the blowing of Vuvuzelas as the reason so many Americans can’t get into soccer now. Yet Joe Theisman, Dennis Miller, Joe Morgan, Todd Harris, Thunder Sticks, loud booming sound systems and TV timeouts have never prevented them from watching any of the other popular American sports? At least vuvuzelas are consistent, after 5 minutes you don’t really notice them, just white noise. Can’t say the same for Marty Reid. But even with that conclusion, I do agree the World Cup could most definitely make a few changes to better the sport; however I disagree they should do anything to make the sport work for Americans (more scoring). Here are the only 2 things they need to do:

1) Stoppage time no longer a secret. We can all agree that the nonstop clock/action is part of what makes soccer great, but it presents the stoppage time conundrum. It’s simple; you assign a clock operator, just the same as in basketball, American football and hockey. Whenever there is a stop in play we can watch an official secondary clock adding up time; then when the game time hits 45 and 90 minutes we watch the stoppage clock count down to 0. And just like that we get added excitement of final seconds and accountability, instead of injuries taking up 10 minutes of game time and getting only 2 minutes of stoppage time.

2a) You go down for an injury; you have to sit out for a few minutes. I think we can all agree diving is easily soccer’s BIGGEST problem. It’s easy; if you go down grabbing at a body part then you must sit out for at least 2 minutes of game time. If the medical team has to come out and cart you off the field, it goes up to 5 minutes. And just like that people stop faking injuries.

2b) All diving is subject to post-game review and penalties. So Ronaldo wants to fall down even when guys don’t hit him, and manages to fool the ref… fine that’s his prerogative, and not always the ref’s fault depending on his angle. But for now on, post game video is reviewable and for each 100% certain dive a player takes, they must sit out 20 minutes of the next game, they dive two times, they’re gone for almost a half; maybe next time they’ll think twice about pretending someone snapped their tibia by breathing on them, only to get up and sprint down the field after they realize no one is giving them any attention.

As with three weeks of partying, some of the thoughts may be delayed or hazy but, I do remember a question for one Mr. Barnhart. I’m pretty sure there’s a good chance I remember you let a car with metal coil hanging off go around the track in green flag conditions over 200 mph. I don’t believe you’ve yet addressed why you didn’t immediately go to yellow flag conditions, especially considering how short ago Felipe Massa was almost killed by shedding parts from another car… but even better, can you let us know why you allowed a team with such disregard for its fellow competitors to continue to race?

NEVER over-celebrate before winning a championship. It seems simple, you know, like say... not doing a full team dog-pile because your team made it to the halfway point of the playoffs... yeah that’s totally the kind of thing not worth of a dogpile, doing so may result in breaking your wrist and not being able to play the other half of the playoffs.

I can’t be certain I’m remembering this last one fully, but I think if your husband wins the Indy 500, laws of physics no longer apply to you, feel free to run down pit lane barefoot while cars come at you doing 60 mph. 

Thank you Dustin Johnson. You started your final round of the U.S. Open with a Triple Bogey, Double Bogey and regular ole Bogey, and even managed to fit in 5 more bogeys into your game all the while managing to only finish 5 strokes off the lead. You sir, give myself and every other scratch golfer out there hope.

Can we make a new rule banning Helio Castroneves from the front row of race starts? It’s pretty clear he has no intention of ever following proper race starting procedure, but I guess neither does race control.

NBA, I could swear when we all started this partying you were a good month into your playoffs... but that just can’t be right… I totally remember you just crowned your champion last week which would mean your playoffs took over two months to complete… Please tell me I have that wrong.

Don’t worry if you started further back and finished better than your competition… Rookie of the Year is only a title… a title that comes with a cash prize…

I’m starting to have drawbacks already, is it time to for ABC to cover an IndyCar race again because I don’t feel challenged by Versus, I need someone to mess up more in the magnitude of like: telling me you think the race leader is suddenly in 15th place because you still don’t know the paint schemes of the cars; something which Marty Reid pulled off so flawlessly during the final 30 laps of the Indy 500.

I swear I’m not making the following up. During the coverage of the Brazil-North Korea World Cup match, Mike Tirico told us that Kim Jong-Il talks with the team’s coach Kim Jong-Hun on a regular basis about game strategy… and yet that wasn’t the weirdest part… apparently he does so: "using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye."

NFL, we know a lot of people think you’re great, we also know that you think incredibly high of yourself, but you need to learn something from your half-brother NASCAR. More is not always better.

I wanted to note that I’ve bashed the heck out of IndyCar for their generally unexplained refusal to accept SMI’s deal 2 years ago for Las Vegas and New Hampshire... and as such I should return the favor when I think Randy Bernard is on some kind of roll, they’ve announced engine basics, ICONIC decision is about a month away; and best yet, Baltimore and New Hampshire just got added so here is an honest applause from me. However, there is one place where I think he needs to recheck his math. So the Indy 500 is going to start earlier, that’s nice, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to understand that Indiana changed how it observes Daylight Savings time, which means 12 Noon is the time it should move to, not 11am.

Am I the only one who finds it just a little silly in college football that the Big-12 now has ten teams and the Big-10 now has twelve teams??

Lastly; The one record I generally never thought I would see broken? Whether or not each incident was entirely their fault, remembering and re-checking with my online sources, in 2002 between Eddie Cheever Jr. and Tomas Scheckter the Red Bull Cheever Racing team smushed up roughly 12 cars in one season (give or take a few as its hard to confirm practice crashes online). By my other unofficial count, KV Racing Technology just hit 13 this weekend…

Now of course you would think KV has an additional driver advantage to the Cheever team of 2002, but keep in mind Cheever did employ both Scheckter and Buddy Rice for two races (one of which Tomas won), which brought their total opportunities in 2002 to 32. (15 races that year x 2 drivers + 2 bonus races with both Scheckter and Rice).

What KV has done is bested Red Bull Cheever's mark needing only 28 chances (3 drivers x 9 races + 1 for Paul Tracy at Indy) no asterisks is needed next to this record. Paul Dalbey from PlanetIRL estimates the count is actually 16 smashes for KV, I'm not even sure what it says for KV Racing that we're not sure if they've officially torn up 13 or 16 cars so far this year, either way the record is as good as theirs. There are nine races still to go, how high can the mark be set? I guess more importantly, do you think they get frequent buyer discounts from Dallara by now?

Awesome Sports Weekend Ensues

You may have noticed a little lag in posting in the last 2 weeks here, but unlike the fine people running BP, we're not going to hide and make excuses... ok maybe excuses. Alas I can report it has nothing to do with us disappearing; but actually has to do with us working behind the scenes on a new site as well as some soon to be announced changes (for the better).

Even that isn't taking all the time, to be fair its just a monumental time for sports right now; we don't have an IndyCar race this weekend but we're loaded with World Cup games, NCAA baseball Super Regionals, NBA finals (if you like that sorta thing... Ron), Formula One's return to Canada, the 24 Hours of Le Mans and tons more.

Right now you'll find all of us doing plenty tweeting out there if you need your Furious Wedge fix; just think of it as some kind of cone device that we put over the massive outflow (or spill, if you will) of not posting. So lets get some stuff in here real quick.

Firstly, let me give a little shout out to Pat and all our other readers out there in England. You guys are great, we love you all, which is why its a shame U.S.A. is going to beat you in a little over an hour.

Seriously though, the World Cup (along with any other international competition) is my biggest drug, always consumes my sporting life. I'm waking up at 6am, on a Saturday!! today so I could watch South Korea pull an awesome upset, but not in upset fashion over Greece, more like "oh by the way we're kicking your ass" fashion.

Then Argentina plays some of the most aggressive first 45 minutes I've seen, seriously with all their hair and aggressiveness I bet they were even hitting on the Nigerian player's wives at the half. Nigeria looked good in the 2nd half but that wasn't enough, and I'll just say this about yesterday's matches... Mexico should be ahead in Pool B as the only winner right now.

So if World Cup is the addiction, the NCAA baseball playoffs has to be that crazy ass night you remember only when you wake up in the morning, just think "The Hangover." I L-O-V-E the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, if not just for the great university name and mascot, but every game they play is every piece of drama you can. Its almost like they have a checklist as they go in a game: pitchers duel for a few innings, check; grand slam, check; wild pitch scoring a winning run, check; controversy with coaches getting tossed, check; diving catches to save innings, check; extra innings, check; amazing game saving plays, check, a guy throwing a complete game and then throwing relief 1 night later, check... and that was just their first weekend.

Right now they're down 4-2 to South Carolina in a game that already includes 2 innings with bases loaded, one with walking a run in, another with a 2 run home run, a sliding/tripping out at first base and now somehow we've started another pitchers duel... This is going to be so hard once England/USA starts, my brain might just explode.

At least SPEED here is stupid enough that they cut the 24 Hours of Le Mans off the TV for NASCAR practice. That bears repeating, SPEED, a channel dedicating, allegedly, to showcasing cars and motorsports, is turning off the world's premier sports car race and showcase of technology, so that they can instead put on hours of box-cars using 30 year old technology run tests to see if they have any leaks... At least SPEED got a little sense in that they are continuing Le Mans online for Free, now if we could only get them to somehow do 24 straight hours of live coverage for Daytona 24... or at the least, not ban teams from doing live updates during races.

Apparently there's some NBA league out there, but I'm sure Ron can tell you more about that; I can tell you D.C. is all up in a frenzy over Stephen Strasburg.. and how can you not be? Kid (and I use that term because he is) threw ridiculous stuff, has many major pitches and all of them are the extremes of their kind. High 90 fastball, curve that drops 3 feet, change up that goes 20 mph slower than the fastball with no tip to when its coming... I now have a few Nats tickets to go check this out in person, surely something that melt my face like that scene in Indiana Jones.

Oh yeah and Boise State finally realized they need to go to the Mountain West, and Nebraska joins the Big 10.... which means the Big 10 now has 12 teams.... and the Big 12 now has 10 teams... You can't make that up. Now what are the odds Louisiana Tech finally comes to the conclusion they are nowhere close to "West" and get out of the WEC joining the SEC opposite Texas A&M???

So with all this and more going on, I need to get back to this, see you on twitter, and look out for some big announcements for Furious Wedge very soon. In all seriousness to all you World Cup fans, may everyone be safe, may none of the 300 players who fall down grabbing at legs actually be hurt, and may the best teams win...USA!

Send Mike Conway a Get-Well Card

(props to Pressdog for alerting me to this)

Dreyer & Reinbold Racing has offered to deliver your get-well e-wishes and old-school mail and cards directly to Mike Conway.

Click HERE to use the contact form on the DRR Web site to send Mike an e-message.

Or snail mail your best wishes to:

Mike Conway
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing
4501 West 99th Street
Carmel, IN 46032

Reports as of today are that Mike is in good spirits and is expected to make a full recovery from leg and vertebra fractures. Really hope to see him back in the Dad's Root Beer car soon; he was simply 6 turns away from a podium and equaling his best finish in the series, I for one am anxious to see his great momentum back on the track.

Get well soon Mike!