To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Whatever the line is in Vegas that Aaron Rodgers breaks his throwing hand while giving high fives during the introduction tonight, be they like 10,000,000 to 1 or something like that, I’ll take that bet. I call him “Mr. Glass.”
Buy My Books!
The St. Louis Cardinals’ ninth inning pitcher, commonly called the closer, bears the name Isringhausen and the nickname “Izzy.”
I so move that the nickname be revised hereby to “Izzy Or Izzn’ty.”
Thank you, that is all.
Buy My Books!
Blues defenseman Jay McKee dissembles about the latest Blues loss:
“I feel bad for the teams that (Nashville) is battling with,” McKee said. “Those teams were counting on us tonight.”
Do you fellows have any more feel-bad in your tanks for the St. Louis Blues fans?
Buy My Books!
Buy My Books!
Uno the beagle retires from the show ring:
He was one of the greats in his sport, an underdog who was bred in Belleville and lived in a small Southern town who became a most popular champion. He thrilled fans by running around like a playful pup, until there was nothing left to prove. Last week, he bowed out.
So long, Uno the beagle.
Less than a month after winning best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club, his team made it official: America’s top dog has retired.
“If anyone could bark out signals like Brett Favre, it’s Uno,” David Frei, host of the Westminster television coverage, said Friday. “Like Brett, he did it all.”
Buy My Books!
Brett Favre Set to Retire After 17 Years.
Report: Gary Gygax, ‘Father of D&D,’ Dies at 69.
Seriously. What’s left for a Wisconsin boy? Governor Doyle and high tax rates? The Aaron “Mr. Glass” Rodgers era in Packers football?
You know, I once met Gary Gygax when GenCon was still in Milwaukee, as nature intended it. It was after TSR sued Game Designers Workshop into oblivion for including trademarked properties like elves and hit rolls into the Dangerous Journeys system. Gygax looked like an old biker and regaled me and a couple of friends with some stories about another system he was developing and some weird role-playing anecdote about carnivorous trees.
I never met Brett Favre, though, and I actually foolishly turned down a chance to see him play the last year. However, I think that the conversations would have been similar.
Buy My Books!
Stadium tax might live on after 2014:
The amount of sales-tax revenue distributed in 2007 to the Miller Park stadium district increased by only 1.8% over the previous year, raising new concerns the five-county tax will not be retired as hoped in 2014.
Which raises the distinct possibility that the stadium will be empty because the Milwaukee Brewers become the San Antonio Migrants or the stadium will be replaced to keep the Brewers in town before the sales tax is retired.
But you’re telling me that taxes with expiration dates are more likely to stick around than tax cuts with expiration dates? This is a stunning turn of events, indeed!
Buy My Books!
Best Buy makes a pledge that Rams fans might not like:
We pledge to make even the away games seem like home games.
Best Buy threatens to make even the away games blacked out because they didn’t sell out.
Of course, St. Louis would probably be better off with three hours of Cops instead of watching Marc Bulger doing his impression of a side of beef in a Rocky movie. There might be children watching.
Buy My Books!
Remember the cocaine scandal of the 1980s and all of the players implicated in it?
Keith Hernandez and some other guys.
There’s your long range impact of the report, fellows. People who need to run hysterical daily columns about events in the sports world today shriek that this will impact players forever and predict fire and brimstone for those implicated, but in twenty years, it won’t be a footnote, even. Just something mentioned parenthetically in some sports biographies and may be included in the index.
Buy My Books!
The Rams are so low in the football standings that, if they lose another game, they’ll fall completely out of the football standings and be in first place in the NHL Eastern Conference.
Buy My Books!
Vick Indicted on Dogfighting Charges:
Michael Vick and three co-defendants were indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on state charges related to a dogfighting ring operated on Vick’s Virginia property.
The grand jury passed on indicting the Atlanta Falcons quarterback and two of co-defendants on eight counts of animal cruelty, which would have exposed them to as many as 40 years in prison if convicted.
Vick, who already pleaded guilty in federal court to a dogfighting conspiracy charge and is awaiting sentencing on Dec. 10, was indicted for beating or killing or causing dogs to fight other dogs and engaging in or promoting dogfighting.
Double jeopardy? No, ha ha! It’s different jurisdictions! So he’s being prosecuted for the same action, with the same crime name, but it’s not unconstitutional!
Ah, the innovations in the legal systems since our founding fathers put quill to paper. Not for our betterment, but it does wonders for prosecutors’ conviction rates.
Buy My Books!
Canadian Dollar Trades Equal to U.S. for First Time Since 1976:
Canada’s dollar traded equal to the U.S. currency for the first time in three decades, capping a five-year run on the back of booming demand for the nation’s commodities.
The Canadian dollar rose as high as $1.0008, before retreating to 99.87 U.S. cents at 4:16 p.m. in New York. It has soared 62 percent from a record low of 61.76 U.S. cents in 2002. The U.S. dollar fell as low as 99.93 Canadian cents today. The Canadian currency last closed above $1 on Nov. 25, 1976, when Pierre Trudeau was Canada’s prime minister.
Because as we all know, the Canadian teams sell tickets in Canadian dollars but overpay their stars with American dollars. If this trend continues, the Stanley Cup will return to Canada where it belongs instead of states like Florida and California.
All economic news is good news for somebody. Funny how half-empty the press is with economic stories where it’s half-full with stories about how criminals and other mal-intentioned people are really just like you and me.
Buy My Books!
Leonard Little, defensive end for the St. Louis Rams, kills a woman while admittedly driving under the influence (BAC .19) and is sentenced to 90 days in jail for involuntary homicide.
William Anderson, nobody in particular, kills a police officer while allegedly driving under the influence (BAC .154) and is sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for aggravated DUI.
Just so we plebes are clear, did Leonard Little get a lighter sentence because he was a football player, or did William Anderson get a heavier sentence because the victim was a police officer instead of a suburban mother?
Because these “nuances” of the law kind of look like special treatment for someone.
Buy My Books!
Green Bay Packers tied for first place in the NFC North!
Buy My Books!
Perhaps David Beckham is building interest in Soccer in America the old-fashioned way: He’s making it look dangerous:
So much for David Beckham’s debut season in America. It’s all but over now that the 32-year-old English midfielder is out six weeks with a sprained right knee, to go along with his famously injured left ankle.
Wow, he plays like one game and comes out of it with an injury? Here, I thought soccer was a sissy sport, just a bunch of Europeans in shorts slapping at each other and maybe making dour and superior faces at the other team. Apparently not. Beckham hurt his knee in tackle:
The 32-year-old midfielder sprained his medial collateral ligament in a tackle during the Galaxy’s loss to Mexican team Pachuca on Wednesday night. He was expected to be out about six weeks while he rehabilitates behind the scenes.
Maybe I’m mixing my European hooligan sports up. Is soccer the one where they have the one where they give a football-like ball to one guy, and then everyone jumps on him and starts gouging him and whatnot? In that case, I am with Bernie Miklasz: Damn the fiscal responsibility, build a whole new complex in the middle of nowhere, funded with tax dollars, for a soccer team that will fold in a couple months. Because all the soccer teams in St. Louis that have failed in the last decade or so (the Steamers, the Storm, the Ambush, the Steamers again) made one critical mistake: they played their games in population centers, where both fans who wanted to go could easily come to see a game. A publicly-funded soccer stadium deep in Illinois, at the very edges of the St. Louis “Metropolitan” area (which covers pretty much from Indianapolis to Columbia, Missouri, according to boards that want to extend their unelected taxing power over the same). Hell, Bernie, if you build it, they will come. Both St. Louis soccer fans. Me, I’ll watch the eye-gouging highlights on the television’s promotions for its highlights program when they interrupt a hockey game.
Wait, this just in: Apparently, tackling in soccer is just stealing the ball from another European in shorts who’s making dour and superior faces. Jeez, Beckham. Stealing a ball in soccer? How dangerous is that, unless you’re using a handgun to do it? Given that you’re British, I don’t think you know what those two words–hand and gun–mean together.
Rub some dirt on it, Becks.
Buy My Books!
I don’t know how else to explain that they’re running another story on the guy who wants to trick Collinsville into wasting its tax revenue on a sports venue.
Has the Post-Dispatch ever found a cockamamie tax-spending scheme that didn’t make it want to hump a land developer’s or highly paid consultant’s leg?
Buy My Books!
Efforts to bring professional outdoor soccer back to St. Louis will enter a decisive phase on Monday when a prominent Metro East lawyer will propose a $100 million stadium complex in Collinsville that he intends to be home to a Major League Soccer franchise.
A $100 million dollar complex that’s funded as a public/private partnership wherein the city takes the fiscal risk and the private guy reaps any rewards that accidentally occur in spite of this being a Major League Soccer stadium being built in the middle of nowhere.
Public/private partnerships: is there anything they won’t try?
Buy My Books!
Hey, congratulations to Tony Gwynn on making the Hall of Fame.
I see my rookie baseball card is now worth like $10. Let my retirement commence!
Well, at least I only traded a couple commons circa 1986 for it.
Buy My Books!
Ballpark Village moves closer to scoring state cash:
The Missouri Department of Economic Development recommended Tuesday that the state pitch in about $26.8 million for the development of Ballpark Village, fortifying hopes that the project adjacent to Busch Stadium can be finished by the time St. Louis hosts the Major League All-Star game in 2009.
Always glad to help the millionaires out with my tax dollars.
Keep up the good work, fellows, and perhaps soon you’ll have Mayor Slay washing your car for you.
Buy My Books!
There were rumors a couple years ago that the Cardinals were going to sign Rickey Henderson to a small contract at the very end of his Major League Baseball career. I wish they had because unlike some of the loudmouths in sports, I get the sense that Rickey Henderson doesn’t take himself as seriously as he makes out.
But here are the 25 greatest Rickey Henderson stories.
Buy My Books!