I’m still shaken by the problems caused at minor league ballparks by bobblephiliacs. Folks who show up at the Bowie Baysox’ Matt Wieters figurine giveaway night next week will actually be prevented from leaving the stadium until all 1,000 little Wieters are given away. Turns out freaky ‘head hoarders mussed up Lindsay Czarniak‘s and Pat Sajak‘s promotions last year.
But is locking people inside the stadium the right response?
WHERE’S THE ACLU?
While the rest of the liberal media ignores this chipping away at our civil rights, trust that Cheap Seats Daily will continue to monitor the behavior of The Man throughout Bowie’s figurine giveaway.
ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!
Full disclosure: If the hoarding police move on from bobbleheads to tube amplifiers, well, I’ll see you in Supermax!
(BTW: A Sajak bobblehead just went for only $5.99 plus postage on eBay, or about $60 less than Czarniak’s.)
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Another Nationals game ends too late for the morning newspaper. Those who depend on the Titanic, um, platform of the Washington Post for their Nats news found nothing in today’s edition. New-school superstar Dan Steinberg reports the MASN telecast of the Nats/Reds tilt went away during a ninth inning rain delay and didn’t return in time for the Nats’ comeback that sent the game into overtime. I was “watching” the game on my computer, with the digital pitch simulations and statistical overloads offered via ESPN’s GameCast. I shut my laptop for the night heading into the bottom of the 11th, when my screen flashed that the Nats had a 66 percent chance of winning. (Those odds must have come from the same guy who said bet the mortgage on Mine That Bird in the Belmont Stakes.) The bad news: The Nats lost on a two-out double in the top of the 12th by Jonny Gomes. Only the Natinals would fall to a guy who misspells his first AND last names. The good news: Nobody was in the forest to hear the tree fall. Wire reports put the crowd at Nationals Park at less than 100 after the delay, and, again, the result was too late to make the newspapers. It’s like it never happened!
Oh, wait. They keep standings in baseball! And it looks like last night’s late loss REALLY DID count: The Nats are now 15-42, back on a pace to match the Amazin’ Mets’ 120 losses.
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For the Titanic, um, platform of this week’s City Paper, I wrote about Luke Thomas, the local radio voice of mixed martial arts. Thomas, a Brookland resident, is an interesting and smart guy, and his drive to see ultimate fighting succeed in the mainstream impressed the crap outta me.
But mainly I wanted to write about him and his WJFK show just to get “ground and pound” in a column.
Is that the greatest sports cliche going or what? When “ground and pound” gets an entry in Webster’s, we’ll know Thomas’s MMA mission has been accomplished.
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Maybe there’s hope for NASCAR after all.
Driver Jeremy Mayfield was recently suspended for an unspecified violation of the racing giant’s substance abuse policy. Mayfield publicly denied any wrongdoing and sued to restore his good name.
But NASCAR’s playing hardball, and somebody from within leaked to ESPN that Mayfield was caught with crystal meth in his system in a post-race urine test.
If true, this is good news for real NASCAR fans. I mean, when NASCAR was started all those years ago by former D.C. gas station owner Bill France, all the big racers were moonshiners. Well, meth is the new moonshine, made by outlaws in the same sort of backwoods and dirtwater locales where the first-generation drivers learned to go fast while running from the law.
So, again, if the meth stories are true, good for NASCAR!
But, alas, I think Mayfield’s getting railroaded here. Methheads don’t have teeth! And they don’t drive cars! Real tweakers have to sell their cars to get meth, and are left riding little bikes from dealer to dealer! Now, if Mayfield was caught after the race trying to unload his #41 All-Sport Body Quencher Toyota for some crystal, I’d believe the charges.
I am bothered that the guy drives a Toyota, though.
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A very interesting discussion among season ticket holders is taking place over at Dan Snyder’s message board, extremeskins.com.
Seems Snyder’s ticket staff is offering fans with seats in the lower bowl of FedExField the opportunity to relocate to the once hallowed Joe Gibbs Level of the stadium without any charge. That’s the club seats, which have never sold out since the stadium opened, and in recent years, as the patches of yellow grew bigger and bigger and more visible on TV broadcasts, we’ve seen Snyder’s sales staff go to silly lengths to push these on the fans, such as offering signed jerseys and helmets and U2 tickets and doing away with the long-term contracts that were once required. Now, according to several extremeskins.com posters who claim to have been offered the relocations, in an effort to hold onto fans who were threatening to not renew their general admission season tickets, Snyder is selling club seats at general admission prices and has eliminated the contractual strings.
That’s gotta burn all the saps who are locked into long-term club-seat contracts or renewed their season tickets by the alleged deadline in early March.
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Interesting story about the Washington Mystics in today’s Washington Post. Interesting not because the Mystics win yesterday in Detroit put the team at 3-0 for the FIRST time in franchise history, though that paints a pretty sorry picture of the Mystics history. No, the interesting part is that the Post used wire copy to break news of the historic achievement.
Looks like the Mystics don’t even rate a beat reporter any more.
Sucks for them, but it ain’t surprising when you take into account that the paper left the Mystics out of the Post 200.
Every other major sports franchise in the D.C. market made the Post’s list.
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Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com