Rebuttal

Dork 3: I do not dispute that the world is full of effete, likely terrorist-sympathizing soccer fans, all of whom have demonstrably poor taste in leisure activity. My point, instead, was that this is AMERICA, where the likelihood of a telephone conversationalist inadvertently disclosing the score of some arcane match between the Gstaad Aperitifs and the Toulouse Fighting Dandies is about as high as Dennis Kucinich landing the Obama VP slot. Which is to say that it could happen--but first you'd see a massive outpouring of leftist elves taking to the streets and demanding political representation, so you'd be on notice.

Thank you, however, for noting the elegance of my broach.

"Me and Bobby McGee"

Like many of you out there, I've always wondered why Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson never had a professional baseball career. I mean, the guy appeared in Sports Illustrated for his exploits in track and field, football, and rugby while attending Pomona College. He earned a Blue for boxing at Oxford while on a Rhodes Scholarship. He was a helicopter pilot in the Army, an English Professor, and dabbled in singing and acting. A Dodgers uniform really would have helped round out the picture.

Finally, I have an answer as a result of the kind people over at the Situationist pointing me to Robin Turner's recent article on names in Wales Online, excerpted below:

[R]esearch into names at America’s Yale University conducted by Joseph Simmons, assistant professor of marketing, indicates that people subconsciously make decisions based on their names.

In a paper titled Moniker Maladies: When Names Sabotage Success, he says someone called Sandy is, for instance, more likely to buy a Saturn (a type of car), move to San Diego, and marry someone called Sandler.

A person called Richard, he argues, is more likely to buy a Renault, move to Richmond, and marry Ricarda. He said,”This phenomenon is called the name letter effect (NLE), and appears to be an unconscious effect.”

In America, baseball strikeouts are represented by a K and he found batters with K initials struck out more often than others.

Similarly, he discovered C or D initialled students tended to have lower exam results than A or B initialled students.

Mr Simmons says future parents should consider the name-letter effect but shouldn’t panic. He told a conference in the US, “I will be the first to admit that the effects that we have observed are quite small, and so there’s no need to panic if you recently named your child Christine or Diana.”

Sure, the effects are quite small so maybe Kris's nonexistent baseball career had more to do with genetics than his name -- maybe he just didn't have the right DNA for success. Unfortunately, we may never know: Kris's siblings are named Karen Kristofferson Kirschenbauer and Kraigher Kristofferson, and neither ever played in the majors.

A Retort

While I applaud Dork 1 for ceasing to hide behind the cloak of anonymity provided by the Internets and finally including a picture of herself (quite a fetching broach, by the way), I must contest the characterization of a Euro 2008 semifinal match as a “non-major” sporting event. In fact, Euro 2008 is the third largest sporting event in the world (after the World Cup and Summer Olympic Games). The truth is that a lot of people like soccer: the 2006 World Cup in Germany had a total cumulative television audience of 26.29 billion, with 715.1 million viewers tuning in to watch the final between Italy and France. Dork 1, I know it would require rescheduling your midday handball game, but my soccer brethren and I extend an invitation to you to join with us to watch the Euro 2008 final tomorrow (it should be a cracker). I don’t want to force your hand, but I might remind you that isolationist policies with respect to events in Europe led directly to Hitler’s rise.

Point of decorum

In the age of TiVo, it is acceptable to answer your phone and immediately ask your caller not to tell you the score of a major sporting event that has concluded but that you have not yet had time to watch. A soccer game does not, however, qualify as a "major sporting event"--so requests not to divulge a score thereof are unnecessary and, frankly, moronic. I'm looking at you, Dork 3.

Party On, Shawn

Little known fact:
In 2002, pitching for the Colorado Purple Jesuses, Shawn Chacon hit .257. That's 4 points higher than David Bell's career average with Philadelphia. Thanks, Ed Wade.

Special Ed

Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon inadvertently achieved folk-hero status in Philadelphia this week when, during a verbal altercation with Houston GM Ed Wade over his pending demotion to the bullpen, he grabbed Wade by the neck and threw him to the ground. Wade (pictured at right, using The Force to crush the proverbial windpipe of Philadelphia baseball) was the Phillies' general manager from 1998 to 2005, during which time he presided over the following atrocities:

1. Trading Curt Schilling to Arizona for a four-player package headlined by Travis Lee.

2. Committing $17 million over four years to David Bell.

3. Granting full no-trade clauses to Bobby Abreu and Pat Burrell, thereby ensuring that they could be dealt only for lousy terms (Abreu) or not at all (Burrell).

4. Jose Mesa.

I could go on. Wade has continued to work his magic in Houston, trading for Miguel Tejada one day before he was implicated in the Mitchell Report and getting his pocket picked by (of all people) new Phillies GM Pat Gillick in the Brad Lidge deal. As for Chacon, it remains to be seen whether this is the end for him, or whether he will rise, Sprewell-like, from the ashes of management-choking infamy. In the meantime, his agent should really give WIP a call: Philadelphia sports radio is nothing if not ready to embrace a daily call-in show about choking Ed Wade.

Hankball

After Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang's recent foot injury, sustained while running the bases in an interleague game in Houston, team co-president and Jabba the Hutt look-alike Hank Steinbrenner (pictured at right, shortly after swallowing a whole fish) chose to blame the situation on the National League's failure to adopt the designated-hitter rule, saying:

"The National League needs to join the 21st century. They need to grow up and join the 21st century.... I don't like that, and it's about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s."

Hank's heart is clearly in the right place here. His team just lost its best pitcher, probably for the season, and he's pissed off. What do you do when you're pissed off, and things look bleak, and you don't know what to do, because you have no actual skills, because you inherited your job from your similarly callow and bitchy father, and even if you did know what to do, you wouldn't have any good options anyway? You start blaming other people. Or, better yet, other institutions, or arbitrary forces of nature. Why is the Yankees' pitching staff decimated? It's the National League's fault! Why are Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes getting run into the ground before they have a chance to fully develop? It's a liberal media conspiracy! (We never hear any of the good news about them...) Why are the Tampa Bay Rays legitimate contenders for the AL East crown? Sunspots!!!

Frankly, I'm with the Hankster on this one. Baseball without the designated hitter is totally 1800s (er, totally pre-1973; but Hank is a busy and important man; he doesn't have time to worry about the rules of scalar implicature). And there are plenty of things that pitchers did in the 1800s that they don't do anymore. Like take used balls home to eat. But while we're saving pitchers from the many perils that surround them, why stop at the designated hitter? Stand on principle, Hank! Pitchers are supposed to pitch, and that's it. Too many pitchers get injured covering first base on ground balls hit to the right side of the infield. We clearly need a designated fielder to stand behind the pitcher and take over his duties as soon as the ball leaves his hand. There should also be someone who can act out the pitcher's emotions and frustrations for him after the game, so as to prevent those all-too-avoidable hand-meets-wall incidents.

Save the pitchers! Write to your team's front office and tell them to support the Hankball reforms! More on this as it develops.

Skynet's Revenge

Okay. So I'm watching the NBA Finals and the camera is scanning around the Staples Center to find celebrities and I'm fine with this. I've accepted the fact that I'm not sitting court side any time soon in a championship series: I'm not Jack Nicholson or Sly Stalone or Eddie Murphy. These are superior beings and they get to sit closer to greatness. That's only fair. And the other seats taken up by filthy rich producers? I'm okay with that, too: I'm not sure what producers do, but they get a free pass because I'm embarrassed to ask.

However, I draw the line with tin cans watching sports: Wall-E get the hell out. Seriously, I know ABC, as part of the Walt Disney Company, is trying to do a little "product promotion," but is nothing sacred? A robot sitting in the stands in Game 3?

That said, I am looking forward to Game 4. I hear Pepsi has kicked out Magic's orphans and a couple of leukemia victims from the Make-A-Wish foundation to make room for ten vending machines in the second row.

The best part is that, in the third quarter, KG has agreed to catch an alley-ooped soda and dunk it in Gasol's face. The orphans are going to love that back at the shelter.