CAL IS BALD! Seventy-five thousand including the local Peet and Peden families, traveled to Cooperstown, NY last weekend for the induction of Cal Ripken and Tony Gwinn into the baseball Hall of Fame.
The Peet family owns a house in centerfield because they are all just that baseball crazy. I was going to blog something satirically offensive about Cal Jr. In the end he would be “Cal from Croyden, Pa.,” a two-bit, lower-class car thief I went to school with on the chance that when his name was Googled I would be the first of 10 million to pop up because everyone loves Cal Ripken Jr., especially white people. That was a joke - and a funny one - so no letters, please.
Cal took a white rose from his inside pocket while standing at the podium and tearfully told his wife he loved her. She started crying, then his son pulled the white rose from his pocket and gave it to his mother and the entire family cried. That’s when I jumped from the couch and shouted, “That’s it! Enough already! Got milk! The streak! Cal wins! Cal wins! I’m not worthy!”
ELECTIVE MISERY- The last two weekends, the humidity in the morning hung like a 400-pound wet rug I’ve been meaning to take to the landfill for months. Hundreds showed up Saturday for the Second Annual Run for Chad Off the Hook
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5K in Lewes.
The next morning, hundreds more stepped to the line for the 25th running of the YMCA Five Miler.
Runners are an educated bunch, most as stupid as the summer day is long and sultry and stagnant and buggy, because these are goal-oriented individuals who didn’t wake up early and pre-register just to drop out.
Every guy who runs thinks heat prostration can be cured with Avodart.
I have no idea what women think when their body flashes hot but I know the option of “stop by the hose next to the rich person’s house” is not a river card.
GWINN IS GREAT - I do love Tony Gwinn and that Tyson-type voice and how he could hit and now he looks like a hall of famer, fat and out of shape. But he’s cool and in harmony with his life. I wouldn’t be inducted as the only other guy in the class with Cal Ripken Jr. because how many of the 75,000 who flew in from San Diego for the ceremony. I hope the yellow jersey, going to the San Diego Chicken, was there - the “baddest and best” of all mascots with the David Raymond Phanatic wearing the green jersey in second.
THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN BIKE - The Tour de France is a great example of what lightweight male athletes can do on a really good bike with six-times-normal testosterone levels.
Lance Armstrong, winner of seven Tours and leaver of two women, is an athlete totally not trusted by the French as legitimate just because of the accepted culture of drug boosting in the sport of pro cycling. Greg LeMond doesn’t buy Armstrong or Floyd Landis but Americans have forgotten LeMond. When last year he announced he was sexually abused as a child that cinched it for Americans, who decided he was off his derailer with a sprocket in his pocket. Armstrong is an American icon and spokesman for cancer with an aerodynamic head shaped like a bike helmet. He has been under a cumulus cloud of suspicion but has gotten a waiver from the American people which always brings us back to thunder clouds that follow Barry Bonds from yard to yard. A double standard?
AIN’T GOT NO HOME! Iraq won the Asian Cup in soccer with a 1-0 upset over Saudi Arabia on a header by a Kurd off a cross from a Sunni. This prompted the team captain, on the world stage, to say, “Americans, go home! Today, tomorrow, next week…just please, go home!”
Asked if and when he was going home, to paraphrase Persian or Farsi, “Heck no, yo! I don’t want to get shot or blowed up! Back home anyone could try to kill me.” Fifty celebrators in Iraq were killed by suicide bombers after a semifinal win while only four were killed after the Cup victory by happy bullets that fell from the sky. The tournament was held in Jakarta, the capitol of Indonesia. Did some Iraqi national hero beckon Americans to go home? Later, dog!
SNIPPETS - Camps are open for all NFL players, except for those under indictment for electrocuting wet dogs. One of Michael Vick’s boyz has copped a plea. That was a surprise, since “don’t snitch,” which is easy to rhyme in the dog-fighting world, is the honor code among thugs.
Tim Donagy is the disgraced NBA ref being investigated by the FBI for betting on games he worked. Does this mean he is ineligible for the NBA basketball officials hall of fame?
How about those Phillies? Too bad Philly fans have to root against the Cubs, which just doesn’t seem right. I wrote incorrectly in an earlier column that a relative caregiver had to become a legal guardian for the little live-in teenage relative to be sports eligible. I was wrong (and confused) and who wouldn’t be, reading the DIAA rule book? Now I discover that some athletes in the state use grandma’s address, then grandma signs a form - wittingly or unwittingly - but the kid never actually lives there (for which grandma is very grateful). In the words of my grandmother Rose, “Go on now, git, and take that fat beagle with you!”
