Home Run Derby

Continuing Home Run Derby’s quest to find the most unique and creative personalized baseball Jerseys/shirts we can find … we’ll stay in Dodger Stadium for a second week with a slightly more disturbing Jersey of the Week.

Apparently … The Devil is a Dodgers fan.

Frankly, I’m a little surprised.  I totally had the Prince of Darkness pegged as a Yankee fan.  Maybe he’s a Joe Torre fan and followed him to LA.  Or maybe ol’ Satan got a little disenfranchised when the Tampa Bay Rays changed their name from “Devil Rays” and started winning baseball games.

I’m kinda even more surprised that MLB would allow “SATAN” as a name on a Customized Authentic (or Replica - I can’t tell) Jersey. 

But lo and behold, if you try to customize a Dodgers Jersey with “SATAN 66″ at MLB.com at MLB.com … it works.

Mind you, you can’t get “666” as a number through the MLB.com shop.  I guess you gotta know someone to be able to pull that off.  Or put it on.  Take your pick.

SATAN 66 Jersey Rating:

• Cleverness: 6
• Originality: 6
• Understandability: 6

The Jersey loses points because it’s missing the third 6.

This really shouldn’t shock anyone, seeing as how fundamentalist preachers have been telling us that Los Angeles is a pit of sin for years.  And Dodgers uber-fan Alyssa Milano once played a Vampire in a movie, didn’t she?

We’re used to seeing MLB players get caught doing nasty things …

• Manny Ramirez picked his nose
• Mark Buehrle took a bat to a space heater
• Greg Maddux played with his balls
• Which leads to that whole crotch grabbing thing

Not to mention that whole Greg Maddux farting thing a little while back … you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player get caught farting.  

Until now.

Watch as the reigning American League Cy Young award winner, C.C. Sabathia, lets one rip in the Indians dugout … and then brags about it.

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May 4, 2008, St Louis, Missouri

Busch Stadium - the Cardinals of St. Louis host the Cubs of Chicago

Naturally, when these two rivals meet, their diametrically opposed fan-bases will compete in ludicrous displays of alcohol-fueled machismo to show whose fans and … by extension … whose TEAM is better.

What better throwdown than a Blindfolded Jalapeno-Eating contest between a Cub fan and a Cardinal fan?  A furious display of capsaicin ingestion will settle the score even before the rubber match on the field below.

You know this can’t end well for the Cub fan … let’s watch him get Punk’d. Cue the video …

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In this crazy YouTube world we live in … you always need to remember to look for a camera before doing anything … shall we say … potentially embarrassing?

That goes double if you’re a professional baseball player. 

Triple if you’re a future first-ballot Hall of Famer like San Diego Padres pitcher Greg Maddux, who got caught in the dugout the other day … digging around.

And it wasn’t his nose.

I know there’s lots of crotch grabbing and adjusting in baseball (HRD did a big post with lots of pictures) … but there’s a line between adjusting and doing something else.   When your hands are down your pants … I think you’re crossing into “something else.”

And Maddux pitched the bottom half of that inning!  I hope he washed his hands.  Then again … maybe that’s why Maddux has such great control on the mound.

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Well, they took the Pedro Martinez cockfight video down.  One call to the Dominican works wonders I guess. 

With all the National attention this is getting (AP, SI, ESPN, Howard Stern) … I’m a doofus for not downloading that video yesterday.  Because now it’s gone.

UPDATE:  The Video is back up …

For those of you wanting to see Pedro Martinez holding his coc-  uhhh … rooster before it was brutally killed by Juan Marichal’s bird, here’s some stills from the video.

Pedro Martinez holding his rooster before the fight.

But wait … there’s more …

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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…)

Everybody loves it when big fat guys take off their shirts and dance at baseball games. Remember the big Oriole Fan who was ridin’ dirty a few months ago?

But Colorado Rockies fans (and their ticket brokers) need to learn an important lesson of having a successful sports team. Sometimes you have to act like you’ve been there before.

The following video is proof that the Rockies had never been to a World Series. The Yankees or Cardinals wouldn’t do this …

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Sitting in the dugout during a baseball game can be so boring sometimes.

There’s nothing to do except wait your turn.

Maybe you can eat some sunflower seeds.

Or, I don’t know … maybe chew on your fingernails or maybe pick your nose.

Or both.

Let’s watch as Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez demonstrates some personal grooming and hygiene in the Boston dugout.

Pesky TV Cameras

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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