Jerry Crasnick's "Sources" are Usually Idiots

Does he choose these miserable quotes intentionally? His "Starting 9" columns in and of themselves have been getting better over the last couple of years (probably because he stopped choosing topics like "best bunters" and "best players under 5'6"), but man, the people he quotes to reinforce his choices continue to sound like a bunch of tards. This installment of the column is about guys who are having underappreciatedly awesome seasons. I agree with most of the picks, but check out what some knowledgeable "baseball people" had to say about them.

Re: Ben Zobrist

Some people in Tampa have noticed that when Zobrist completes his swing from the left side, he has a follow-through similar to Ted Williams'. We kid you not.

Wow. First of all, why is Jerry channeling the first person plural douchebaggery of Will Leitch? Second of all- comparing the swing of a Hall of Famer to that of [player X] is just about the most useless, subjective, anecdotal way to hype up [player X]. Don't do it. Ever.

Re: Russell Branyan

"After Russell was out there for seven to 10 days this spring, Don told me, 'This guy has a good swing. How the heck does he strike out so much?'" Zduriencik said.

The "Don" quoted there is Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu. As in, a guy who gets paid good money to make decisions about baseball players. And somehow he can't seem to figure out (or allegedly can't seem to figure out) why this player has struck out in more than 40% of his career at bats. Hmmm. Here are a couple suggestions: 1) He's a big guy so he probably has a very long swing, and 2) he probably swings at a lot of terrible pitches, and 3) he might not have a very good eye. But don't mind me, I'm just camped down here in my mother's basement, avoiding girls and sunlight and lobbing steroid accusations at Raul Ibanez.

"He's sustained it for this length of time, and I believe it's going to continue. I don't see anything fluke-ish about it."

Referring to his great season so far? You don't see anything fluke-ish about a guy with a career .237 BA in more than 2500 PAs hitting .308 over the course of a couple months, at age 33? Interesting. Enjoy the ride, M's fans.

Re: Jason Bartlett

The Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers Association named Bartlett the team's MVP last season after he posted a .690 OPS, so that gives you an idea what he means defensively to the Rays.

What. A. Bunch. Of. Dickheads.

"He's my favorite player on that club because he does something different every day to beat you," an NL scout said.

Interesting. If I were a scout, my favorite Ray would be Evan Longoria, because he's fucking awesome at everything. But I guess Bartlett is OK too.

Re: Marco Scutaro

"He's another example of how the real baseball players have caught up with the cheaters as they've detoxified," an NL scout said, only half in jest.

I hope he was saying it fully in jest, because if he was saying it even 1% seriously, he should be stripped of his job and shot into deep space. Scutaro is slugging .429 this year- and he's never cleared .400 for a full season in his career before.

Ryan Madson, speaking re: Ryan Madson

"When you have success like that, you come to believe in yourself," Madson said. "I can't give enough credit to pitching in the playoffs and World Series and the confidence it gave me. I feel more in control, more calm and focused out there now."

Kind of sounds like he's making a sales pitch for an anti-depressant.

Re: Mark Reynolds

"I give him a lot of credit," Arizona GM Josh Byrnes said. "Everybody focuses on the strikeouts, but he plays good defense,

By any measure, from ones as simple as errors (34 last year) or fielding percentage (just a hair over .900) to ones as complex as total fielding runs above average (-7.0), Reynolds is a complete butcher in the field.

he runs the bases

You cannot play a non-pitching position for a baseball team without doing this.

and he's one of our toughest players.

Watch out, Eckstein. It's great that you're playing for the Padres now, but there's a new gritty grinder in the NL West.

He does a lot of things to help us win."

Please don't include his defense or his ability to run the bases amongst those things.

Bill Simmons: Blissfully Unaware

More from Joe Buck's diary: "Still disappointed the audience didn't eat up that Pauly Shore joke. My 1997 comedy jokebook said that would kill!"

Joe Buck is a sanctimonious douche nozzle who has unsuccessfully tried to parlay his kush nepotistic job in sportscasting into a comedy personality career. No argument here.

But look what Bill posted just one hour before that.

I enjoy McDonald's southern chicken sandwich even if its the Ja Rule to Chik Fil-A's Tupac.

Jeebus H. Crust.

1. Ja Rule hasn't been relevant since sometime between 2002 and 2004 depending on your level of interest in rap/r&b duets.
2. Referencing Ja Rule to Tupac was a tired and easy joke back in 2004, which was 5 fucking years ago.
3. Using the McDonald's southern chicken sandwich as an excuse to trot out that reference is terrible.
4. I can't prove this, but Chik-Fil-A is wildly overated. The best thing they do is the waffle fries. Their chicken sanwich is the Dr. Dre of sandwiches at best.

I'll Bet Bill Simmons Secretly Likes the Lakers

I hate Bill Simmons, the Celtics, the Lakers, and Kobe Bryant. (I also hate Nebraska, the hipster music scene, and grapefruits, but I have separate blogs which address those topics more directly.) So it sometimes feels counterproductive to rip on one of those things because it might make it seem to some that I support the others. Hate on a Simmons anti-Laker article, now it looks like I'm a Laker fan. Write about what a piece of shit Bryant is, now I'm agreeing with Simmons. But sometimes you've just got to tuck your nuts back, damn the torpedoes, and do something that scares you. This is one of those times.

The way Simmons writes about the Lakers is infuriating. You'll never see a better collection of backhanded compliments, inconsistent analysis, absolute and total hypocrisy, and flat-out atrocious writing that is so rife with favoritism and bias that it makes you want to write an anti sports media blog just so you can tell the world how you feel about it. The thing is, Simmons writes about the Lakers like this all time time. Constantly. Presumably because they're his favorite team's rival- but I have a different theory. You know those Congressmen who are constantly pushing anti-gay legislation, but are allegedly gay themselves? So it's like they're doing a self-loathing kind of thing (if it turns out that they actually are gay)? Yeah, I'm going to guess that Bill is the same way with the Lakers.

Don't get me wrong, the Celtics are still his favorite team- but he doesn't mind kicking back and watching the gold and purple every once in a while either. After all, he is a huge fucking front runner. No way (especially considering he lives in LA) he isn't intrigued by the idea of cheering for a championship team. I mean, what do you want him to do, suffer through a whole calendar year without a Boston championship to soothe his insecurities? If you're about my age (24), this comparison should work: Bill is the kid who was a Cowboys fan in elementary school, a Packers fan in middle school, a Patriots fan in high school and college, and has since discovered that his great aunt used to live in Pennsylvania so naturally he's become a huge Steelers fan. You know the type. Anyways that's my Simmons/Lakers theory. I'll bet the motherfucker even has a Lakers car window flag thingy. And that brings us to his latest turdclump of an article, currently on the front page of ESPN. I don't have time to address the whole thing, so I'll just pick out some lowlights. The thesis is: sure, the Lakers deserved to win their title. BUT JUST SO YOU KNOW THEY REALLY AREN'T THAT GOOD. AND NEITHER IS KOBE. I MEAN, HE KIND OF IS REALLY GOOD BUT I JUST DON'T LIKE HIM.

In Kobe's case, we already knew we were following one of the better basketball careers of all time.

And we're off to the races with the backhanded compliments. Yeah, Kobe is having one of the "better" careers of all time. If you want to compare across different sports, he's probably in the same league as your John Elways, your Mickey Mantles. You know- guys that definitely stood out as being better than most. Bill's thoughts on Paul Pierce's career: easily the greatest of all time in any sport or other profession.

Jon Barry told us after Sunday night's game that Kobe is the closest thing to Michael Jordan that any of us will ever see.

Ever?

I haven't even turned 40 years old. I have half my life left, if not more. You're telling me I won't see another hyper-competitive, super-athletic 2-guard average 30-plus a game and win an NBA title? (Hell, I just saw it three years ago with Dwyane Wade -- a performance that, by the way, surpassed Kobe's effort this month.)

It's pretty fucking obvious that Barry was talking about Kobe's entire career, not just this season. So one title from Wade doesn't really qualify as the same thing. That's a quick insult to Kobe that, by the way, really shows the reader that Bill is a mental midget.

I found the constant stream of Kobe-related hyperbole to be a little off-putting; it was like hearing a buddy self-consciously mention how cool his girlfriend was so many times that it made you wonder, "Wait, is something going on here? It's almost like he's trying to convince himself every time he brings it up."

When a Boston fan and MSM member who can't go three weeks without writing something about how Larry Bird cured cancer while saving the NBA and juggling chainsaws writes something like this, all you can really do is chuckle. Chuckle and start hoping the Red Sox start losing more games, lest we hear more about how Dave Roberts altered the history of humankind when he stole a fucking base. That's really the only possible way to avoid Bill's dumbfuckery- hope Boston's teams don't play well. He often then starts ignoring them pretty quickly.

The complicated answer is that you can't explain all the reasons why the 2009 Lakers were better than the 2008 Lakers in one sentence. Fortunately, that's why I'm here.They had the second-best player in the league (Kobe), the second-best center (Pau Gasol), a talented forward with a unique set of skills (Lamar Odom), a breakout swingman (Trevor Ariza), a terrific leader and character guy at point (Derek Fisher), and that's about it. They caught three breaks from February on -- Kevin Garnett's knee injury killing Boston's season,

WE WAH FACKIN' RAHHHHHHBBED! DE-AH COMISSIONAH STARN, PLEASE DO NOT AWAHD THE LAKE-AHS WITH THEY-AH CHAMPIONSHIP- THEY DIDN'T TRULY EAHRN IT.

Cleveland stupidly opting not to move Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract for one more piece, and Yao Ming breaking his foot in Round 2 -- and cruised from there.

Bill's analysis as to how the 2007-2008 Celtics won it all- The legendary Boston crowd willed them to victory.

You would not call them great, just very good.

This is a critical distinction which everyone understands and cares about.

I would compare them to the 2003 Spurs, 2005 Spurs or 2006 Heat -- the cream of a flawed crop of contenders.

ONLY BOSTON TEAMS CAN WIN TRUE, PURE CHAMPIONSHIPS! YO-AH CHAMPIONSHIPS AHHHHH FLAWED! OW-UHS AHHHHH REAL!

But wait, you say. Kobe played so much better in the 2009 Finals than the 2008 Finals. Everyone kept saying it so it must be true! Actually, not really.

2008 Kobe (six games): 25.7 pts, 4.7 rebs, 5.0 ast, 3.8 TO, 21.8 FGA, 8.2 FTA, 40.5 FG%, 80 FT%, 32 3FG%, 42.8 MPG.

2009 Kobe: (five games): 32.4 pts, 5.6 reb, 7.4 ast, 3.2 TO, 27.0 FGA, 8.8 FTA, 43.0 FG%, 84 FT%, 36 3FG%, 43.8 MPG.

This is great stuff. "Everyone keeps saying that Sammy Sosa was a much better home run hitter than Tony Gwynn, so it must be true! Actually, not really. And here are the numbers which show that what everyone is saying actually is true, and that I'm a dolt." Only in Bill's world can you score seven more points per game, grab an extra rebound (as a guard), dish out two and a half more assists, cut more than half a turnover, and shoot better from the floor, the line, and from downtown- and not be playing much better.

But if you're selling the "Kobe finally gets it" angle, then why was he gunning for 40 points at the tail end of a Game 1 blowout when he had already taken 30-plus shots?

Because it was a blowout and nobody cared.

In Game 2, why did he go one-on-four for the winning basket (and miss) and ignore three wide-open teammates?

Paul Pierce never does this. Nor do any other players Bill actually looks up to and respects, either.

Why did everyone so willingly gloss over the fact that, from the second quarter of Game 3 through overtime of Game 4, he missed 31 of 46 shots and kept shooting, anyway?

Oh my God, he was in a shooting slump for a whole game and a half? WHY DIDN'T THE MEDIA REPORT THIS? WHERE WAS CNN? WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?

Or that, near the tail end of Game 5, Kobe was so desperate to drain the clinching dagger that he clanged two 27-footers and allowed Orlando to climb within 12?

Boy, how lucky were they to escape with that win after the Magic had made it a four possession game?

Or that he didn't have a single clutch moment in the Finals other than his sweet dish to Gasol during their frantic Game 4 comeback?

You know who had a real clutch moment? Dave Roberts, that's who.

And so on and so forth- this is a very long column and the bullshit I covered here barely spans a third of it. I'm sure you can see why it bothers me to "support" the Lakers like this, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do. And what I've got to do hate on Bill. And hope he gets crushed by a meteor. Oh, before I go two last things-

Did the '09 Lakers really like each other, or was it like a Bill-Hillary thing? I don't know. I couldn't tell.

But fuck, man, did you see the 2008 Celtics? Totally different story. Just ask Bill. THEY CHEERED FOR EACH OTHER FROM THE BENCH LIKE NO TEAM EVER HAS BEFORE. UBUNTU, BABY. UBUNTU. NOW THERE WAS A TEAM THAT CLEARLY LOVED EACH OTHER AND STILL HANG OUT AND PLAY BOARD GAMES TOGETHER TO THIS DAY.

As I watched the Lakers celebrating Sunday, I thought it looked like a bunch of actors celebrating the game-winning scene in a sports movie.

Bill knows all about acting and Hollywood- did you know he used to write for Jimmy Kimmel?

Geoff Baker Condescends To Us, Misses The Point

In light of the Raul Ibanez blow-up where the red-hot Phillies LFer lashed out (rightly) against more or less baseless steroids accusations and more saliently (and less rightly) against "people who live in their parents' basements" or whatever, Geoff Baker, a Mariners "legitimate-blogger" has submitted this overly facile, self-aggrandizing and utterly beside the point "explanation" of the blogger-vs-journalist scrum.

Take a few seconds to read it, because I'm not going to quote extensively from it.

Let's skip to the part after Baker spends half his word-count waxing grandiloquent about the myriad "consequences" that his stories held for their subjects (Particularly re: former Blue Jays manager cum Vietnam war liar Tim Johnson) and get right to this quotation re: the Ibanez blogger:

In the end, [Johnson] suffered far greater than I did. Why? Because I was right.

Now, can the blogger who wrote about Ibanez say the same thing? No, he cannot. Because he never really takes a position.

He throws some innuendo out there, under a provocative headline, then couches it with a bunch of well-researched statistics on park factors, and the like. Makes it all look like a fact-finding mission.

Do you see the obvious, stupefying disjunct on Baker's part? He's confusing investigative journalism with editorial journalism. What on earth does some blogger saying "Hmmm...Ibanez is putting up record numbers. Let me crunch some statistical models and see if I can find a logical reason why this could be" have to do with Baker interviewing sources in order to write a standard lead story?

A: Nothing.

Why are people are so incapable of recognizing the internet's various outlets for sports writing for what they are?

Blogs are generally opinion. They are that by nature. On the other hand, journalism like that which Geoff Baker is thumping his chest about by nature aspires to be objective fact. There is little to no relation between the two. Just because bloggers add statistics to their posts doesn't mean they're trying to make a factual, investigative claim.

If you want to compare them to journalists (which seems a foolish venture to begin with, since they're independent in their operations for the most part whereas journalists are part of a for-profit conglom.) compare them to the Dan Shaughnessy's and Jay Mariotti's of the world--people who have almost no access beyond that of the average fan and yet who expound from a position of authority (whatever that position of authority might be).

Don't hold Deadspin to the standards of Sportscenter or Sports Illustrated. From the snarky nature of the posts to the ultra-snarky nature of the comments, it's clear that Deadspin was always built to model radio call-in shows like Jim Rome's The Jungle.

Are sports opinion columnists an inherently bad thing? The title of this blog suggests they might be--but only when they're completely uninformed. Why on earth should anyone be pitching a fit because a blogger suggested--however foolishly--that he would like to examine statistically whether it was possible that Raul Ibanez might be exploiting PED's. Why is this a bigger deal than when Jay Mariotti says "Jerry Reinsdorf is only doing __________ because he is cheap."

At least the former wasn't selling sensationalism and tabloid journalism.

Why on earth would you hold either to the standards of investigative journalism? Unless, of course, you just plain missed the point.

Baker spends the rest of the article grandstanding about what a tough guy he has to be to hobnob with "Killers, or Hell's Angels, or major leaguers and steroids" as if that's at all relevant to the topic at hand, thumping his chest about how "he has to look the players in the eye, and bloggers aren't ready to do that." Snooze.

Look--If you want to make some sweeping judgments on how sports bloggers relate to "legitimate journalists," don't compare them to investigative journalists. It's clear from their inherent lack of access that they simply can not be nor aspire to be that. Compare them to editorial journalists. And you know what? For the most part, sports bloggers compare pretty fucking favorably to those. I'll take the bloggers at Hardball Times, Baseball Daily Digest, and Ump Bump (flawed as they all are--hell, opinions are like assholes, etc) over the Mike Celizic's of the world any old day.

Too bad Baker--and everyone else, it seems--wants to compare them to Tom Verducci. Ridiculous.

FJM Hall of Shame: Rick Reilly

Ladies and gentlemen, the first inductees for the Fire Jay Mariotti Hall of Shame will be inducted over the course of this summer. The first few will be awarded the title of "Inaugural Inductee" since their candidacy is so obvious, they will go down in history. Without further ado:


This is the man whose columns relate the human side of sports - which is certainly not the worst of goals. This is the man whose stories graced SI for 23 years and has been at ESPN since 2007. If you want to read a sample of what one of his columns usually looks like, read this FJM post, also from 2007. Apparently he has won the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters' Association's Sportswriter of the Year award eleven times.

He might be a good guy who helps charities, but his articles are still mindless tripe. In general, he is inducted for his crimes against decent writing, for his throwaway pop culture references, for his overly sentimental attitude and for his lack of logical thought while writing. We here at FJM are not here to indict Mr. Reilly's charity work or his attitudes on life, but rather to indict his awful sportswriting on a national level.

Here are some of his lowlights, as chronicled here at FJM:

• Rick goes out on a limb to castigate the Georgia HS pitcher who beaned the umpire.
• Rick humorously breaks down the national anthems at the Beijing Olympics.
• Rick, after exhausting research, declares which franchises rule which cities.
• Rick, in his position of power and authority, declares that Utah is the undisputable national champion of the 2008 season.
  
• Rick gives us fans the lighter side of Super Bowl preparations.
• Rick has something to say about Magic Johnson's AIDS. (!!!)
  
• Rick wants to retroactively take suspected steroid users' MVP awards and give them to other suspected steroid users. (!!!)
  
• Rick thinks that Rachel Alexandra is a victory for gender equality, democracy and world peace. In case you forgot, Rachel Alexandra is a horse.
• Rick has a few ideas about how to improve baseball.

One note about the last link. In it, Rick wants to call out baseball for its tolerance of steroids. He writes:

In the Small-Balls era, nobody -- not the players, not the owners, not the writers -- tried to stop it. Where were all these books when we needed them?

In the comments section, FJM reader Fred Trigger provides perhaps the best comment in FJM history:
Writers didn't try to stop the steroids because they were busy writing things like this:



For his lack of historical awareness alone, he merits first-ballot status. For everything else, Mr. Reilly's resume clearly welcomes him into the hallowed ranks of this previously-empty hall. Don't worry, Rick: you'll have company soon.

New Feature: the FJM Hall of Shame

We here at FJM have had quite a few HOF debates over the years - focusing around a few core players like Robert Horry, Craig Biggio (twice!), Tim Raines, LeBron James and other NBA stars, a host of NFL players and Curt Schilling. Articles about Hall of Fame-eligible players are easy pickins', since there's no clear definition for what constitutes Hall of Fameness in any sport, and it's usually not hard to find some way to argue against what any writer is saying.

Anyways, since this blog sees so many names repeated over and over again headlining and tagging on these hallowed pixels, we thought it only makes sense to honor the writers out there who've managed to achieve truly pathetic status. These writers have consistently (consistently) committed some of the most egregious fouls sportswriters can commit:

• lacking basic research skills
• poor syntax or grammar
• misusing or abusing statistics
  
• a naive lack of any critical powers
• oversentimentalizing sports or life
• heavy and wanton use of anecdotal evidence
• disparaging things they don't understand or
• anything else we like to complain about.
  

Since we're already hypocritical enough as it is, we're going to do the same thing that every sportswriters' association does to their respective sport - induct writers based on no set metric other than that we think their writing is not just bad, not just extra bad, but truly worthy of the Hall of Shame.

Certain obvious candidates will be inducted quickly and easily - there's nobody out there arguing that Babe Ruth wasn't a Hall of Famer and I'm pretty sure inductee #1 (who will arrive later today) will be voted in with 100% of the ballot. But you're welcome to start the debate about which writers truly belong in the next class, which be inducted approximately whenever I get to working on the next one.

Bill Simmons now condensing anecdotal bullshit to 140 characters or less

From the Sports Guy's Twitter:

Just parked next to a Lexus with a Lakers flag sticking out of it. The city of LA with a 2-0 Finals lead redefines the word "bandwagon"

ZOMG, someone who can afford to buy or lease a Lexus decided to show their affection for the Lakers with an annoying car flag. That completely redefines the the word "bandwagon!"

(Note: I live in LA and have seen car flags for fucking weeks now. You seeing one on a Lexus now proves less than nothing. Eat shit.)

I'd like to apologize for saying the city of LA defined "bandwagon" with a 2-0 Finals lead. I meant "frontrunner." Please adjust your sc...*

Yeah, everyone knows that Red Sox Nation defines "bandwagon." For the true definition of a "frontrunner," peep this and this.

*Simmons went over the 140 character limit. The cutoff word was "scorecard." Now cackle with the laughter that can only be summoned by a man who once wrote for Jimmy Kimmel.

Throwaway Post Because It's Been Almost a Week

It's not exactly summer/fall 2007 around here anymore in terms of the frequency of our posts. Everyone knows that. I'm OK with it- a lot of our rage (OK, well, maybe not my rage, but most of my co-bloggers' rage) about bad sportswriting has subsided over the years. And hey, Jay Mariotti fired himself last summer, undoubtedly as a result of our work here, so you could argue we've already reached the top of the anti sports media blogging world. I'm sure all fifteen of you readers will agree. That's right, I said it, the top. Who the fuck is Fire Jon Margun? No, but seriously, I think a week between posts is excessive. So while I don't have time right now to write a real post, here are a list of topics that are chafing my taint right now. Feel free to join in the bitching in the comments.

-I understand that the AP is going to report on the results of David Ortiz's eye exams, and other useless stories relating to his slump, and that those newsy-type stories will be prominently displayed on most sports new sites. That's OK with me- if the fine and upstanding racists who inhabit Red Sox Nation want their Big Papi news, give it to them. But I just toured around several such sites- MSNBC's sports section, ESPN, CBSSportsline, and Fox Sports. Every last one of them had one of their columnists breaking down and providing analysis for this fascinating story. WHAT IS IT? IS IT HIS MINDSET? DOES HE NEED A SECOND OPINION ABOUT THE EYE THING? IS HE ON STEROIDS? IS HE ACTUALLY 71 YEARS OLD? OH MY GOD PANIC PANIC PANIC

Shut the fuck up, please. Just shut up and leave this barely-a-story alone for a few weeks. I'm begging you. Factual news about it I'll have to tolerate. But the analysis needs to stop. Please. Kthxbye.

-Mark Schlereth has tapioca inside his head. The guy is a total boob. But he puts tons of emphasis on the word football when he talks about football players and football teams playing football games on football fields. So if you're not actually paying attention to what he's saying, as is the case with 84% of ESPN viewers, his idiocy kind of sneaks past you because of how self-assured he sounds. He's sneaky like that.

-Orel Hershiser is a reasonably tolerable color guy when ESPN sticks him in the booth, which is not nearly often enough. Too bad that when they do so they often pair him with Chris Berman. Do you hate Chris Berman? No? You think he's not that bad and kind of clever? Get the fuck off this blog.

-The NBA's decision to have four days of down time before starting the Finals on a Thursday night and then not playing game 2 until Sunday night really smacks of insecurity. Apparently they were terrified of not getting favorable ratings if they scheduled those games on, you know, Tuesday/Thursday or Wednesday/Friday like they should have. What's the matter, NBA? Why so worried about public perception? Do you have a tiny penis?

Yeah that's all I've got. Real post from Dan-Bob coming sometime soon.

Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate (chanted)

I think Chris W said it best when he linked me to this story: you... you have to root against this kid. Hard to say it but it's true. Don't get me wrong, it's very inspiring and all that. But if he does anything notable WE WILL NEVER HEAR THE FUCKING END OF IT. It'd be like if David Eckstein took a bullet for the president while laying down a World Series-winning inside the park home run bunt. No offense to you, Kevin Laue, but I hope you quietly complete your college career without achieving any level of significant success. And without ever playing in the NCAA tournament. Or on national TV. Ever.

Laue's story has already inspired many, and he knows that coming to New York will provide him with an even bigger stage. But he's confident his impact will be felt on the court, too.

"I'm a risk. Coach Rohrssen was willing to take it," Laue said. "He has no reason to worry."

I, for one, am terrified.

Jose Canseco Update

Just so you know: Jose Canseco got his ass beat in his MMA debut, lasting a mere 1 minute 17 seconds. Well, at least he made some money. Which was the point.

Here's the full YouTube video of the fight, which includes all the silly pre-hype and the entire fight, in which the 6-4 Jose Canseco looks like a toy poodle getting kicked around by his owner, the 7-2 Hong Man-Choi.

Here's a quote I never thought I would ever hear, spoken by the announcer of the fight [if you don't believe this, watch the video]:

"I've got to say, cerebral fight so far from Jose Canseco!"

Too bad he wasn't cerebral enough to last a minute and a half.

From the news article:

“That’s a big man,” Canseco said after the fight. “I ran into one of his left jabs and that almost knocked me out. You have no idea how scary it was facing a man that big.”

"But I'd gladly do it for a few thousand bucks," continued Canseco, " Really anything to keep me in the spotlight."

"Why did you run into one of his left jabs?" asked dan-bob. "Really, why did you even schedule this fight in the first place? Is money really worth getting ass-whipped in public, you has-been retreat?".