Stupid baseball tricks.....

Check out this vid of a catcher pulling a fast-one on a homeplate umpire. It's not so nice, if you're wondering.


I did this once (less obviously) in high school in about 1987 when the homeplate umpire was our assistant principal who had just given me detention after the following exchange with my feminist American History teacher Ms. Wiest:

(Ms. Wiest babbling on about how hard it was to be a woman on the Plains in America in the late 1800's)

Tim (to person sitting next to me): how come we're spending more time on this than the Civil War?

Ms. Wiest (overhearing Tim). This is more important. If you don't agree, you can tell me in detention while writing about great American woman of the Plains.

Tim: (loudly) that'll take five minutes.


That was probably my first encounter with Political Correctness. My answer was a bit too chauvinistic, and I wouldn't today shoot back with the "five minutes" remark, but I would still push back against Ms. Wiest's agenda.

Fantastic prank on Charles Barkley

Ah, teleprompter gags.....

The carnage from rookie hazing week

Check out the link above to see the results of one of baseball's underheralded traditions: hazing the rookies by making them wear ridiculous outfits in public.

Typically, during the last game of a series, the rookies' regular clothes are taken from their locker and replaced with comical outfits. The rookies then wear the outfits from the stadium to their bus, signing autographs along the way, then to the airport, on the flight, and then to the team hotel in the new city, or beyond.

Here's Dice-K and Hideki Okajima as a Teletubby and a pirate, respectively.

Prank that probably went too far....

Check the link above to see the 8th round of a long-running prank war. The prank-er (Amir) sets it up so that the prank'ee's (Streeter) girlfriend thinks she's been proposed to AT YANKEE STADIUM!

Streeter is likely respond with a 9th round of pranks, but I don't see how he can escalate this any further beyond having Amir arrested and sent to Guantanamo.

Awesome prank

Slightly less serious than the "Bin Laden options" is this story of an awesome, awesome prank via Deadspin.

An OH high schooler distributed posters that when held up by the opposing team's fans just after halftime spelled "We Suck," as you can see on the video

The prank was pulled off perfectly - I'm pretty sure that none of the victims even knew of the prank, but sadly, the school chose to suspend the prankster. I guess they had to do SOMETHING, but given that the rivalry is institutional, and no one was hurt, why all the fuss?