Holiday Triumphs: Sandy Koufax’s Perfect Gingergame

Continuing the fabled tradition begun all the way back in 2009, Scratchbomb presents Holiday Horrors and Holiday Triumphs: an advent calendar of some of the more hideous aspects of this most stressful time of year–with a few bits of awesomeness sprinkled in.

This item came across my Twitter transom yesterday. I can’t recall who brought it to my attention, so I apologize. I hope sharing this awesomeness will make up for my lack of credit.

The baseball blog Bottom of the Fourth posted a blow-by-blow account of a project of delicious holiday repercussions. The author’s new roommates have a holiday tradition of rendering a famous moment in Jewish history in gingerbread form each holiday season. This year, they chose Sandy Koufax’s perfect game.

Dodger Stadium has been represented in confectionery form, complete with stands, concessions, and restrooms. It is nothing short of stunning. Sadly, this was not prepared in time for Hannukah, but this is a holiday miracle that knows no creed. Even if you care not a whit for baseball, only an unrepentant Grinch could hate this expression of the holiday spirit.

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Holiday Horrors: Traffic Reactions

Continuing the fabled tradition begun all the way back in 2009, Scratchbomb presents Holiday Horrors and Holiday Triumphs: an advent calendar of some of the more hideous aspects of this most stressful time of year–with a few bits of awesomeness sprinkled in.

gwb.jpgBad habits never emerge full blown. You pick them along your life’s journey, and they grow slowly, like mold, until one day you notice you’re covered in them.

I don’t really traditional vices (not to the point where they negatively impact my life, anyway), but I do have a problem with flying off the handle about dumb stuff. I like to say that I’m a good person to have around in a crisis and a terrible one to have around for petty annoyances.

If I had to guess why I do this (other than “I’m a dick”), I’m guessing it’s because said annoyances are often reflections of other people’s incompetence or stupidity. I find nothing more infuriating than being thwarted or inconvenienced because somebody else isn’t paying attention or doing their job the right way. It speaks of my overall fear of a loss of power and control. Hey, I have issues. We all do.

As a subset of this personality trait, I picked up a very bad habit years ago. I’m not exactly sure how; I think it stemmed from the years when I was either in a band or traveling often with friends’ bands to gigs. Getting stuck in traffic was a common feature of these trips. When that happened, the common refrain was, “I better see some bodies at the end of this.” The longer the traffic lasted, the more graphic the descriptions of these bodies would get. It helped pass the time in a frustrating situation and made me feel better, in a horrible, horrible way.

I had a girlfriend back then who would get really upset whenever I said something like this, and she would lecture me about how terrible it was to say stuff like this. “Won’t you feel awful if you get to the end and there’s a horrible accident causing it all?” I snorted these objections away, because in my experience to that point, 99 out of 100 traffic jams were caused by road work or people rubbernecking to see a fender bender, or something equally idiotic.

Flash forward several years. I’m driving up to my grandparents’ house on Christmas morning, trying to make my way to the George Washington Bridge by way of the FDR Drive. On most Christmas mornings, I’d have the road virtually to myself, but on this Yule, the traffic came to a screeching halt just past 125th Street.

I reacted to this with my usual grace and patience, which is to say I engaged my “there better be bodies on the road” setting. As the traffic crawled forward as a snail’s pace, my desire to see death got progressively more gruesome. I demanded severed limbs. Decapitations. Entrails hanging from tree limbs like tire swings.

And then I got to the source of the problem. A big, boaty American car of 1970s vintage had plowed into the divider between the GWB on-ramp and the north-bound FDR. Either the safety barrels’ effectiveness were grossly overstated, or the car had been going at an insane speed. Whatever the cause, the car’s entire front end–engine block, axle, and hood–was folded in on itself, and the windshield completely shattered.

The accident only involved one vehicle, so there was only one NYPD squad car and one fire truck on scene. The fireman stayed in their truck–there was no fire to extinguish–and one cop lazily waved traffic passed one blocked off lane. In that lane, another cop was just draping a sheet over a dead body.

It was just one body, with nothing close to the carnage I had been asking to see moments earlier. I didn’t see a single drop of blood. And yet I felt as sickened and guilty as if I were responsible for the accident, as if I had willed it to happen because of my childish, ghoulish impatience.

So I don’t do my “I better see dead bodies” routine any more. Sure, I’m still miserable to be around in a traffic jam, but not so miserable I wish hypothetical death on anyone. I just wish I could have broken myself of this bad habit without seeing AN ACTUAL DEATH. Or without making this ex-girlfriend piously and retroactively correct.

Mike Florio Does Not Believe in Private Parts

florio.jpgTo me, the upshot of this whole Rex Ryan foot fetish fiasco is that the Jets really should have done a more thorough background check before they hired him. Embarrassing online videos like this can completely derail a team’s season. Just look at what happened to the Rams back in 2005 when that footage surfaced of head coach Winnebago Man.

If you remember, Rex Ryan was passed over for the Ravens head coaching job two years ago, even though he was a highly regarded coordinator at the time. Now, I’m not saying the Ravens knew anything about these disgusting, shameful videos when they made that decision. But I am saying that I’m heavily implying it in a way that could not get me sued for libel.

Of course, I believe in every person’s right to privacy, no matter what kind of dirty, sinful non-procreative sexual nastiness they may get up to in their own horrible homes. But I also believe that you forfeit that right to privacy if you post a video of yourself to the internet. Or if someone steals a video from you and posts it without your knowledge. Or if someone has taken footage of you from across a darkened alley. You’re just asking for trouble if your goings-on can be filmed from 300 feet away with a high-powered telescopic night-vision camera.

In my book, the fact that you’re even mentioned in any way on the internet means you are fair game–particularly if you are mentioned on my site Pro Football Talk, which is mine, by me, Mike Florio. If you wanted to remain so private, maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to be good at football in the internet age. Don’t blame me for your poor life choices, buddy.

If I had received this tip about Rex Ryan, would I have run with it? Absolutely. Fans pay a lot of money to watch and root for their teams, and they have the right to know if the head coach’s wife is a complete freak in the sack. And fans of opposing teams have the right to a fresh batch of heckle fodder.

Not to mention my obligation as a fully accredited, NBC-approved Rumor-monger. If a rumor like this came my way, it would be my duty to report it. If I didn’t, that would make me no better than The New York Times, which decided to ignore this story for a whole day. They denied themselves the opportunity to put a picture of Rex Ryan’s filthy, filthy wife on their front page with a hilarious headline, like the Daily News did.

And to those who say these sordid details have nothing to do with his job, they do once I report on them. At that point, all the media attention that I focus on Rex becomes a potential distraction, thus forcing me to ask my Jets sources how he’s dealing with it. And then I would also have to ask myself how I managed to snag such a scoop and be so handsome at the same time.