Home Run Derby

The Anaheim Angels have the Rally Monkey …
The New York Yankees have the Rally Squirrel …

The Boston Red Sox could have had the Rally Hawk …

… until it went and attacked a middle school student on a Fenway Park tour on Thursday. 

Here’s a pic right after the attack.

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So today is Easter, and it’s only the second time in the past nine years (2005) that Easter hasn’t fallen during the baseball season. 

Sure, Spring Training games are going on … but that just doesn’t count. 

Let’s check in with the Easter Bunny and see if he (or she) has a favorite MLB Team … turns out he’s partial to a lot of MLB Clubs.

Here he’s spending quality tme at Busch Stadium with some Cardinals fan named Scott …

Billy the Marlin of the Florida Marlins is one of the Bunny’s closest friends … (more…)

What the heck?

The New York Times says that Pedro Martinez occasionally practices throwing pitches with his eyes closed because it “has helped him develop a consistent arm angle and release point.”

But I’m pretty sure Pedro’s just imagining throwing a ball at the guy that found that video of him at the cockfight.

What do pitchers Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal have in common?

• Both are/were starting pitchers.
• Both are from the Dominican Republic
• Both are considered among the best Latino pitchers of all time
• Both led the MLB in ERA: Marichal 2.10 - 1969; Martinez - 1999, 2000, 2002-3
• Both led their league in wins: Marichal 24 - 1968; Martinez 23 - 1999
• Both have 2,000 strikeouts: Marichal 2,303; Martinez 3,030
• Both have 200 wins: Marichal 243; Martinez 209
• Both are likely Hall of Famers (Marichal’s already in the HoF)
• Both fight roosters in their native Dominican Republic

Wait - what was that last one?  That’s right.  Pedro Martinez and Juan Marichal are cockfighters.

Cock Fighting … in my opinion is a barbaric sport just as much as dogfighting is a barbaric sport.  Right Mr. Vick?  Right Little Jerry?

The practice is often legal (if not celebrated) in many countries like the Dominican Republic - but that doesn’t make it right. 

For years, people have bred roosters to be aggressive - beyond their natural tendency to fight to establish a dominant pecking order.  In these fights, the birds often fight to the death merely for sport and gambling opportunities.  Occasionally, sharpened metal spurs are attached to the birds’ talons.  Louisiana will be the last state to ban cockfighting (in August 2008) in the United States.

If you’re squeamish or simply not interested in seeing Marichal and Martinez shake hands in a Dominican cockfighting ring before their roosters fight to the death … I suggest you don’t play the attached video.

That’s right … we’ve got video.  (more…)

Last Thursday (Oct 4), Home Run Derby pulled a scoop with a grainy video and pic of a skinned goat carcass hanging from the Harry Caray statue outside Wrigley Field that someone had hung in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.  The perpetrators were obviously looking to Reverse the Curse of the Billy Goat which has supposedly haunted and doomed the Cubs since 1945.

The traditional media picked up the story over the weekend.  The Chicago Sun-Times reported it sometime on Saturday and then Sports Illustrated and MSNBC followed later that night.  And the news wires had all picked it up for the Sunday morning papers, conveniently after the Cubs had been swept out of the playoffs. 

Only the Sun-Times ran a photo of the goat in their online edition, and that was just a grainy video grab like HRD had done.

The Chicago Tribune (stiil the owners of the Cubs) only had a teeny tiny blurb about it in an AP wire report.  I wonder why they didn’t trumpet this news?

Well, Home Run Derby has since acquired a high-res pic (sent to us by a reader) of the goat dangling from Harry Caray’s arm.  I haven’t seen it anywhere else.

It’s from a different angle and shows a cardboard proclamation behind the goat.  The Goat’s name is apparently Leon “Bill” Bartman …

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This is a sure sign that Cub fans are taking this 99 years without a World Series Championship thing a little too far.  Or they’ve crossed the line from praying for their beloved Cubbies to sacrificing animals for them a la Santeria.

Someone hung the carcass of a goat on the statue of Harry Caray outside Wrigley Field. 

How this helps the Cubs win a World Championship, I have no idea.

Gruesome picture and a link to video after the jump …

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