Category: Sports

So the family of the Cardinals pitcher who died while driving while intoxicated have announced its lawsuit pantheon:

The suit seeks unspecified damages “over $25,000” from Mike Shannon’s Steaks and Seafood, the owner and driver of a parked tow truck that Hancock hit, and the driver of a car the wrecker had stopped to help.

Over at Overlawyered.com, David Nieporent does my schtick and helpfully identifies some other lawsuit targets:

* The cell phone manufacturer; Hancock couldn’t have been talking on the phone if they hadn’t been so negligent as to invent it, or if they had placed warnings on the side of the phone about not using it while driving.
* Hancock’s girlfriend — she was on the other end of the phone. Plus, he was driving to meet her.
* The owners of the bar he was driving to in order to meet his girlfriend. If they had been closed, he wouldn’t have been driving there; if they were easier to find, he wouldn’t have had to give his girlfriend directions.
* The car rental company; Hancock was driving a rented SUV… because he had just had an accident in his own car. If they hadn’t rented him the SUV, he couldn’t have been driving it.
* Anheuser-Busch, it goes without saying; no alcohol, no accident.
* The Cardinals, for not trading him to another team; if he hadn’t been in St. Louis, he couldn’t have crashed.

Leaving aside that Mr. Nieporent missed some of the obvious big laffs (Missouri Department of Transportation, for building/maintaining the road, and the legacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower, for passing the Interstate thing in the first place), I am not going to participate.

For although the family and their helpful attorneys deserve all the scorn and ridicule we can muster, one suspects that their threshold for slander–at least enough to threaten a lawsuit–is probably very low indeed.

Hey, maybe Congress, following Diane Feinstein’s example, can give the Chicago Bears hope tomorrow:

Durbin unveils legislation to start Griese at quarterback

Sen. Dick Durbin introduced legislation today aimed at blocking the Bears from starting Rex Grossman on Sunday by giving the United States Senat the right to vote on all coaching moves.

The measure, called the Bears Fan Protection Act, would require an exemption from common sense, which the United States legislature seeks to subvert instead of repealing entirely.

Durbin, a Democrat who has claimed to be a fan of the Bears, was furious last week when he learned that the current Bears starting quarterback had admitted to underpreparing for the season’s last game, a loss to the hated Green Bay Packers. Some fans had questioned Rex Grossman’s ability as a quarterback, given his stunning meltdowns in certain games this year.

“This legislation is designed to prevent coaches from inflicting suffering on fans, which leads to the financial and intangible costs of poor decisions,” Durbin said. “Our football teams are more than just businesses. They are a common denominator that cuts across class, race and gender to bond the people of a city. They are a key component of a city’s culture and identity. The city of broad shoulders should not tie its identity to a young, often injured quarterback prone to utter collapse when the pressure’s on. Instead, the city more properly reflects the spirit of a journeyman whose name looks a lot like ‘Grease’ and who’s probably somewhat rusty after a period of inactivity.”

As an alternative, giving other NFL teams the right to veto an individual coach’s decision at least give the government the ability to lobby NFL owners to do what it deems politically suitable for its constituents.

“We need to address the real costs imposed on communities by poor coaching that we have witnessed in the past 25 years,” Durbin said in offering his Bears Fan Protection Act.

Hey, Chavez is nationalizing Venezuelan industry and Illinois legislators want to run the electric companies, so why shouldn’t the new Democrat-run Congress jump into an industry in which its members have no knowledge and experience?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation today aimed at blocking the 49ers from leaving San Francisco by giving National Football League owners the right to vote on all franchise moves.

The measure, called the Football Fan Protection Act, would require an anti-trust law exemption.

Is it possible that our legislators take themselves too seriously, or is this evidence that they don’t take themselves seriously enough?

I mean, seriously, what’s the slogan here? “Government out of our bedrooms, out of our wombs, but into our sports”?

UPDATE: Added link to San Francisco Chronicle story about the actual legislation.

Last night, while watching the postgame celebrations, the Fox commentator stuck a microphone in the face of Bill DeWitt, business frontmn for the St. Louis Cardinals. After he finished his planned platitudes, I quipped in a mocking voice, “And can we have $100 million dollars?”

Well, like so much humor, this was unfortunately on the money, so to speak:

The Cardinals owners, their developer partner and city officials capitalized on the World Series euphoria Friday as they unveiled a model of the Ballpark Village project they hope will change the face of downtown.

Fortunately, elected officials remain resolute, unaffected by trying to latch on to the ephemeral success of a professional sporting event by determining public policy to support a freakin’ pastime run by a for-profit entity:

“It is much bigger and better than what was originally talked about,” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said at a news conference Friday afternoon. The $387 million development would rely on more than $100 million in public funds to finance the project.

Oh, well, maybe not.