Slumping White Sox Explore Alternatives To Euthanasia

Greg Walker, Chicago White Sox batting coach and oft-touted fall guy for the team’s sleepy offense might not have been the one to dream up last night’s profoundly retarded clubhouse exhibit, but I bet nobody’s happier to have his name out of the papers for a few days.

In a move one might better expect from a Duke-graduate Cubs fan planning a bachelor party in Kenilworth, the Sox clubhouse was decorated with a tableau of blow-up dolls and baseball bats. Now get this, some of the hee hee bats were haw haw inserted into the dolls dude!

Yeah, it’s a regular Algonquin Round Table in Major League Baseball.

While the Sox have every right to be concerned about repeating - with depressing exactness - the awful 2007 season of wasted pitching via petulant non-hitting, this is the wrong approach. As badly-needed motivational initiatives go, instead of one reeking of moronity, desperation and latex, I suggest the Sox consider all the options the world of sport has to offer.

For example, Saturday’s Kentucky Derby reminded us that for some competitors, the end of a bad day comes not in a clubhouse but in a little white trailer staffed with a doctor, a syringe and a map to the glue factory.

Let me be clear: I am not, under any circumstances, advocating that 2B Juan Uribe (Avg .181) be led into that trailer.

I only suggest renting and parking that trailer in 3rd base foul territory, so that repeated trips back to the dugout while going 0 for 4 include for each batter a glimpse of what might be.

That’s got to work better than proxy-rape humor - the whole point of a wake-up call is that it’s something you don’t hear all the time.

Triumph Of The (Free) Will (Stewart)

Political and religious philosophers agree: left unsaddled by a healthy fear of an angry, magical clerk in the sky, people behave like real assholes. The (Republican) party line goes: given a fraction of a chance, your fellow man will in his natural state show himself to be a pilfering, hoarding dick. And no self-regulation, it is repeated, can interfere with this imperative of narrow self-interest. Without fear of imposed authority, no drinking well remains unpooped-in for long; there is nothing beyond grabbing or ruining, nobody and nothing beyond encroachment. We cannot make the right choices. Our hopeless flaws can be tamed only by laws - of morality, of the market, of the land.

Fuck that, says Will Stewart. The Texan from Austin, accountant, baseball fan and indisputably good person is the guy in the left field stands who caught Chicago White Sox DH Jim Thome’s game-winning 500th home run ball at U.S. Cellular Field on Sunday. Stewart did something unexpected in a decade history will remember for its appalling culture of greed. Ball in hand, fully aware of the (at least $100K) potential dollar value to Thome, Stewart did not grab. To the chagrin of clergy, cops, and commodity traders the country over, Stewart failed to conduct business as usual by opening with a price negotiation.

Instead, Stewart gave Thome the ball. For no price. While the club has showed their gratitude by handing Stewart a pair of season tickets (which he then donated to Thome’s favorite charity) the fact remains Will Stewart passed up a six-figure payday - in 2007 - out of common decency.

“I feel it is a part of Chicago baseball history,” said Stewart, right after handing the ball back to the White Sox slugger during a postgame press conference.

On the other hand, O.J. Simpson recently enunciated a markedly different take on the ethics of sports memorabilia when he said “Hey, take this fucking pillowcase off and put those fucking balls in it“.

Paging the sky clerk.

man’s best friend’s gambling problem

www.lasvegas.com/pokerblog reports…

in other poker art world news two paintings from artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s 1903 series of dogs playing poker brought a record price of more than ten fold the pre-auction estimated sale price. The New York auction house, Doyle, believed the two paintings, Waterloo:Two and A Bold Bluff, would bring between thirty and fifty thousand dollars. The hammer price was $590,400. The previous record for a Coolidge painting was $74,000. The two paintings went to an unidentified bidder in New York City. Suddenly, you remember that you have one of the reproductions from the Coolidge Dog’s Playing Poker series and you think it might be worth a bundle; so, what do you do? A good starting point would be the official dogs playing poker website. Doyle New York holds an annual “Dogs in Art” auction to coincide with the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.a subsequent auction of coolidge’s lesser-known series cats shitting in a box did not fare as well at the hammer.

rivered again!

seems no matter what i do, every jackass on the planet ends up doing it years later. my pal greg dunlap and i have been playing poker for fourteen years and, true to form, america was late to the party. now that the general public is in love with texas hold ‘em, the game is on tv, in homes and online for millions of amateurs lining up to donate their sheckels to the older hands.

but it’s still poker. which means that even amateurs can get cards. the bad beat is a regrettable part of the game, where almost winning hurts a lot more than plainly losing. enjoy riveredagain.com, the poker equivalent of gaping at horrible accidents on the freeway.

we need more athletes named juicy

congrats to italy’s women’s water polo team who took the gold today. contributing to the victory at the center forward position was giusy malato, righthander and 2002 italian world cup team captain.

congrats as well to the nbc announcers on the gold medal telecast where italy beat greece for making the phrase “juicy mulatto” sparkle with all the emphasis it deserved.