Category Archives: Sports

Mike and the Mad Dog Fall Down the Memory Hole

January 31, 2008 Matthew Callan

December 18, 2007

So baseball’s Winter Meetings have concluded, and it looks like the Yankees and the Red Sox are about to get in a bidding war for Johan Santana. And of course, we all know that this will end with #57 in pinstripes, taking his place among the pantheon of
great Yankee hurlers: Whitey Ford, Catfish Hunter, Carl Pavano…

Mikey, tell you what, Hank Steinbrenner is playing this perfectly. When you’re negotiating with another GM, the best thing to do is change your mind over and over again, and talk about it publicly all the time. There’s absolutely no way that could backfire and make you look like a spoiled three-year-old.

And the Mets *snicker* say that they’re making a play for Santana, but we all know they don’t have the horses to pull this off. I mean, the Yankees are offering Melky Cabrera, for crying out loud. What Mets prospect could possibly compare to Melky Cabrera?

You’re a thousand percent right, Mikey. The Mets are NOT in the mix here. The only way I see them landing Santana is if the front offices of the Yanks and Sox are destroyed by two separate meteors striking the Earth simultaneously.
Listen, I’ve been talking with Omar Minaya. I talk with important people all the time. And he told me that the Twins are asking for David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran’s first born son. And even if he agreed to that deal, there’s still NO WAY that package compares to the Yankees’ offer of Ian Kennedy and some guy in the minors whose name escapes me.

January 15, 2008

It’s been pretty quiet in the Hot Stove League, but there’s some rumblings that the Santana sweepstakes could be ending very soon. There’s reports that the Mets have become the favorites to land the lefty, which frankly, I do not believe. I have a LOT of
contacts in the industry, and everyone tells me that the Twins piss on the Mets’ prospects. Literally. I heard Bill Smith sent a jar of his
urine to the New Orleans Zephyrs.

Mikey, the Mets are NOT gonna spend the kind of money it’ll take to sign Johan Santana. We all know Fred Wilpon passed on Vladimir Guerrero, he passed on A-Rod, I’ve heard he wears socks two days in a row so he won’t have to go to the laundromat. Mark it down: they will sign Livan Hernandez and finish in third place.

Santana will be a Yankee, make no mistake. I see him now, starting game 7 of the World Series, taking the hill in front of Rudy Giuliani, Billy Crystal, Regis Philbin, Donald Trump, Lebron James, Kevin Federline…

Things are looking bad for the Mets next year. I don’t see any way they beat out the Phurlies.

The what?

The Phurlies. The Phurladerphio Phurlies.

The Phillies . Jeez, how did you ever get a job talking for a living?

Mikey, I’ve had to do some evil things to get ahead. Black, unspeakable things. But hey, after these commercials, I
yell at an engineer!

January 29, 2008

So now we’re hearing that the Mets have landed Santana, which is something I’ve been saying would happen for weeks now. Naturally, Santana wants to be a Yankee, but the Yanks won’t give up their very special prospects. This is a good move by Brian Cashman, showing financial restraint. This is the NEW Yankees, the GROW FROM WITHIN Yankees. If there’s anything Yankees fans want to see, it’s guys just up from triple-A face Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz.

Excellent point, Mikey. And I tell you one thing: this is only for the money. There is NO WAY Santana wanted to be a Met. I’m sure someone told him Queens is the same thing as the Bronx. He’s from Minnesota, so he has no idea about different boroughs. And maybe he’s colorblind, so he won’t realize the pinstripes on his uniform aren’t navy blue.

Alright, let’s go to the phones. Frank is on the cell phone.

Mike, did you just say that you’ve been saying Santana’s going to the Mets for weeks? Because I listen to the show every day, and I could swear you said as recently as last week that he’d definitely be a Yankee.

Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank

What?!

Frank, let me finish! Frank Frank Frank Frank Frank.
Frank.
Frank.
Frank.
You there, Frank? Frank, I never wrote off the Mets as players in the Santana race. I have been TOUTING them for WEEKS as MAJOR players! If
you think I didn’t say that, you are LOST!

I am positive that you’ve been saying the exact opposite. And Mad Dog, how can you say Santana didn’t want to be a Met when there’s a bunch of different reports that the Mets were his first choice?

Frank, lemme ask you a question: did Paul LoDuca do steroids?

What does that have to do with anything we’re talking about?

Answer the question, Frank! Did Paul LoDuca do steroids?

According to the Mitchell Report, yes, he did.

And you, as a Mets fan, used to root for him, am I right?

Yes, I did.

So how can you sit there on your high horse and tell me not to root for Barry Bonds?

I didn’t say a single word about Barry Bonds! But if you don’t believe me about what you guys said last week, go listen to the tapes.

Frank, I promise you that the tapes will say exactly what we’re saying now. At least as soon as our engineers get through with them.

You dare question us? Get this guy off the air! God, what a disgrace! Eddie, you gotta screen these calls better! I’m gonna say some horrible stuff about your wife on the air later!

Folks, here’s what you gotta understand. When we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean. So when I wrote off the Mets’ chances last week, I meant that they would land Santana. When I said the Yankees would land Santana, I meant that they would keep their prospects.

War is peace! Work is freedom!

We will not be slaves to history, folks. History is a weapon, to be wielded at our command, on our terms.

The Mets are doubleplusungood!

We’ll be right back after this word from the Ministry of Truth.

Football, Rocky Rhodes

Rocky Rhodes: Everything Old Is New Again

January 18, 2008 Matthew Callan

Grant “Rocky” Rhodes is America’s oldest living sportswriter. He first rose to prominence in 1921, when he struck an early blow for civil rights with his groundbreaking article on the Negro Leagues (“Colored Players Not Totally Inhuman”). His weekly sports column, “The Cat’s Pajamas”, appears in 7000 newspapers nationwide when not bumped for “Hints from Heloise” or “Gardening Weekly”. Today, he graces Scratchbomb with his nine decades of sports wisdom to talk about Sunday’s NFC Championship game.

We got this one attendant at the home, Frankie. A little stupid, but a good kid. So this morning he tells me that the Giants are playing the Packers in the NFC championship game. “That probably reminds you of old times, huh?” he says. “Back in the days of Vince Lombardi and stuff like that. I bet Lambeau Field was a pretty exciting place to be back then.”

Sure, it was exciting, if your idea of exciting is freezing your nuts off in the middle of Ass-Nowheresville. Ask a sportswriter his idea of hell, and he’ll say “Green Bay.” That place makes Amish country look like Weimar Berlin. I knew a guy who cut off his pinky rather than go there for the ’61 NFL Championship. A week of eating nothing but cheese and brats and I 0couldn’t get unblocked if I stuck a stick of dynamite up my rear end.

It was nothing like the championship games of the real old NFL. I mean, the real Paleolithic days, when there were no helmets, cheerleaders, or common sense. Guys sacrificed their bodies and minds every Sunday, for little money and even less notoriety. But I’m sure all of them would do it all over again if they could, and if their softened brains could still grasp the concept of decision making.

You wanna talk about a championship game? In 1937, I saw the Providence Steamroller beat the Chicago Cardinals 2-0 in the parking lot of a Studebaker dealership in Davenport, Iowa. It was definitely the best damn football game I’ve ever seen, and I’m sure my fellow spectators, all three dozen or so, would agree.

1937 was the year the NFL tried to increase scoring by changing the ball’s shape to oblong. Before that, it was angular, metallic and sharp. Of course, the old shape was totally impractical, but the league held on to it for a long time because they paid a lot of money to some fella named Calder to design it.

Of course, they hadn’t started filling the balls with air yet. No siree, they still filled ’em up with good ol’ fashioned concrete. The only score in the game came when the Cardinals’ quarterback dropped dead from exhaustion in his own end zone. A linebacker tripped on his corpse and fell on it to record the safety. He was the championship’s only casualty, which was quite rare in those days. Most every game back then would end with at least three guys in the morgue.

Providence’s star player was Stan “Running Back” Wisniewski. He was the perfect man for the team’s patented “run straight up the middle” offense. Stan only averaged 1.2 yards per carry, but he still led the league in yardage every year–mostly because they handed him the ball on every single play.

Back then, you were allowed to call one play in your first game of the year, and you had to stick with that same play all season. It would be another few years before Weeb Ewbank invented something called “strategy”.

“Yup, you really missed out by being born so late,” I told Frankie. “Those were the days where men were men, and football was football. You’ll never get to see something like that in your life so long as you live.”

“Yeah, but I also don’t have to pee in a bag,” he said.

Touché, Frankie.

Baseball, Rocky Rhodes

Rocky Rhodes: The Eternal Bloom of Sour Grapes

January 9, 2008 Matthew Callan

Grant “Rocky” Rhodes is America’s oldest living sportswriter. He first rose to prominence in 1918, when he declared in the Pittsburgh Courier-Picayune that “the Red Sox’ dynastic juggernaut shall never be stopped”. Thanks to an exemption granted by Congress in 1973, he remains the only journalist still allowed to refer to Muhammad Ali as Cassius Clay. His weekly sports column, “The Cat’s Pajamas”, appears in 7000 newspapers nationwide when not bumped for “Love Is” or “This Week in Bridge”. Today, he graces Scratchbomb with his nine decades of sports wisdom to comment on Hall of Fame voting.

Like every other old bastard, I look forward to getting my mail each afternoon. It’s fun to wile away the few hours I have left on this earth flipping through a direct mail appeal from some nut jobs who want to destroy the United Nations. I’m also eagerly awaiting a response to my latest series of threatening letters to Chris Matthews.

But there’s one piece of mail I wait for with baited breath each year, and that’s my annual Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. I treasure my status as a lifetime member of the BBWAA, because this ballot is my chance to make a mark on baseball history. It’s also my chance to totally screw all the players who ever looked at me funny.

That is the greatest thing about this time of year. Any baseball writer who says differently is lying through his teeth, Jack. There’s nothing sweeter than getting that ballot and seeing the name of some schmuck who wouldn’t talk to you after a tough loss, or brushed off your autograph request. To know that his shot at immortality rests in your cold, bitter hands, and to think that you could be the guy to keep him out–if it weren’t for that yearly thrill, I woulda turned on the gas a long time ago.

Of course I’m just kidding, folks. We don’t have our own gas ranges at the Shadywood Assisted Living Facility. Or reliable heat, for that matter. My point is, there ain’t no adrenaline rush like the kind you get from a big fistful of sour grapes.

You know why Gil Hodges never got in the Hall of Fame? Because he once recommended an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn to me, but it turned out to be sub par at best. Why didn’t I vote for Bert Blyleven? Because I knew a guy named Bert in high school, and he once took my best girl down to the drug store for a cherry phosphate. I could never look at Blyleven and not think of that sneaky son of a bitch.

Should a possible Hall of Famer have to suffer for a bad meal, or my teenage frustrations? Well, somebody should!

You know what baseball writers talk about when they get together? It ain’t great games or legendary players. Nope, it’s always a game of can-you-top-this to see who has the pettiest excuse for not voting for someone. My favorite of all time has to be Dick Young. He once told me he didn’t vote for Rod Carew because he once hit a single to tie up a spring training game in the bottom of the ninth. Dick was all set to hit the Early Bird Special at the Steer and Stein, but Rod’s hit meant he had to stay at the game, which didn’t end for another five innings. If there’s one thing you didn’t do, it was get between Dick and a discount meal.

“I’ll never forgive that jerkoff for making me miss $4.99 prime rib,” Dick told me, and he meant it, brother.

Of course, since I haven’t been in a locker room since Watergate, it gets harder and harder to come up with reasons to deny candidates entry with each passing year. Luckily, I can rely on the two sharpest tools in a sportswriter’s arsenal: hate and snap judgment.

Goose Gossage, Rock Raines: Dumb nicknames. No dice. What about the old, dignified nicknames of yesteryear? A solid moniker, like Frank “Excellent Fielder” O’Leary.

Jim Rice: They serve us mashed, unsalted rice every day in this godforsaken place. It tastes like wet socks. Even though it’s the only thing my stomach can digest now, I’m not inclined to vote for anyone named Rice.

Jack Morris: I hated his commercials. Why couldn’t he just eat the cat food his owner gave him? I would never vote for him or the snooty cat in the Sheba ads.

Andre Dawson: The Hall of Fame should not be sullied by a French-sounding name.

Tommy John: What, I’m supposed to vote this guy in because he got some fancy surgery? I’ve had 73 medical procedures performed on my body, and that’s just in the last month. My skin is now held together with only a few pieces of well-placed gaffer’s tape.

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