LET THERE BE SHARK WEEK!
I'm in San Francisco still, but won't be attending the final game of the Giants' homestand. Bruce Bochy is giving me the day off to rest. Thanks, skip.
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Shark Week begins tonight on the Discovery Channel. It's the most wonderful time of the year. The most memorable moment of Shark Week '06 for me was during a piece on shark attacks in South Africa. The narrator noted that, as deadly and fearsome as sharks are thought to be off the coast of South Africa, more people in that country are killed by hippos each year than sharks. And you have the same thought at reading that fact that I did upon hearing it:
Hippo Week !
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Let's assume that Barry Bonds does not hit 755 and 756 this afternoon against the MarlinBrandos. That puts the Los Angeles Dodgers on deck for three games. Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run against the Dodgers, specifically Al Downing. So why don't the Dodgers just re-sign Downing, now 66 and, we can only assume, with a well-rested arm, to pitch exclusively to Bonds once he reaches 755? Why not? That way there will only be one trivia answer we'll have to remember.
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Thanks to Johntouragers G.A. and L.A. for their faithful comments. They can see, if they go back to last night's blogs, that I adjusted the list of names who'd congratulate Bonds, as well as having added a Final Jeopardy! question.
Five Reasons I Did Not Do The 'Journalist In A Kayak' Gimmick at AT&T
1. It's been done.
2. Too cold.
3. You can't see the damn game from a kayak in McCovey Cove.
4. My nickname's Spilly. Put me in a kayak with a laptop and only bad things will happen.
5. Afraid some enterprising marketing dude at The Discovery Channel would conjure a 'Shark Week' stunt in which a great white attacked one of us as we sat there helplessly.
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This Ain't BB's Final Year
Barry Bonds will be back next year, even if it's not in a Giant uniform. Why? Dude's got 2,909 career hits. You think someone this obsessed with numbers is actually going to retire when he's that close to 3,000? Whether Bonds reaches 3,000 walks (2,531 as of this morning) first is the question.
The Giants announced attendance at AT&T Park (my favorite outside of Yankee Stadium and Fenway) as 43,001 last night, a sellout. I'm not sure if that included all the stranded-room only ticket buyers. The Giants also announced that it was their 27th sellout of the season...and today will be their 28th.
Would Peter McGowan really let a gift horse such as Bonds leave after this season? No way they're contenders--even though they've won four in a row--so as long as a World Series is not in the immediate future, why mess up a good thing? Bonds would probably reach 3,000 hits around August of next summer, if he remains unhealthy. You know what I mean.
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In the current issue of GQ , Kevin Hench runs down the ten worst athletic performances in a sports film by an actor. Not exactly an original idea, but it's always fun to read these lists. Somehow Robert Redford's swing in "The Natural" escaped the Hench-man, as did the entire cast of basketball players from John Tucker Must Die .
Hench also had a five-person sidebar extolling those who "got game". Not included on this list, but I think they deserved to be:
1. The dude who played Jimmy Chitwood in "Hoosiers".
2. Dennis Quaid in "The Rookie".
3. The cast of "Murderball". (I don't care if it was a documentary; they were awesome).
4. Carl Weathers in "Rocky" (How come this gets overlooked so often? Weathers then was better than any actual heavyweight currently).
5. Kurt Russell in "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes".
Feel free to add your own and send them in.
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Vladimiir Guerrero won the Home Run Derby at AT&T Park twenty days ago. He hasn't hit a home run since.
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Apropos of nothing, and until someone tops it, I'm voting "Ahoy, Polloi!" from Caddyshack as the best film pun I've ever heard. Here's why:
1. Brevity: Two words.
2. Bi-lingual: A Greek phrase used as an English pun.
3. Multi-functional: It's both a greeting and an insult.
4. Mellifluousness: Rolls off the tongue since both words end with the same sound.
5. Perfect Usage: You've got a situation that's nautical and calls for an insult for an interloping caddy attempting to ingratiate himself with the upper crust. There's no possible better phrase to use here. Harold Ramis, or whover wrote this line, it's genius and you should be recognized for that.
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NBCSports.com's John Walters goes into the world of college sports and well beyond. From Notre Dame to the latest in pop culture, JDub tackles it all.
First off, I know I am not worthy of being metioned in the same sentence with G.A. in the blog. Now I know how Mel must feel in Flight of the Conchords when she is around Bret and Jemaine. Second, I haven't seen the GQ piece yet, but please tell me that the cast of Dodgeball did make the list. Spilly? I thought your nickname was Flippy? Lastly, a day off? What happend to your BB campaign of 'No Sleep Til 756?' Sorry fellow Johntourage members, it looks like the t-shirts may have to be scrapped.
Whole blog's been stuck in bold for like 10 paragraphs. Again, this is the HTML equivalent of "fly's down." I'm here to help.
So you've impressed us in the travel-impaired world of journalism by getting a flight to San Fran bankrolled. But then you get a day off with Bonds at 754? I'm thinking it's just a day off from the blog. It'd be like covering The Trial of the Century for months, then with the jury close to reaching a verdict, getting a personal day. I know now that Bonds didn't hit 755 on Sunday, which was certainly statistically likely, but even with an editor named Barry, it's impressive.
Brian Doyle Murray has a co-writing credit on Caddyshack, impressive if only because his most recent credit is for "Club Paradise." Not as funny as Caddyshack. This could start a guys-in-show-business-because-of-their-brother list. I nominate Ron Howard's weird brother, Clint.
Although I've never been threatened by a shark or hippo, I had a
close call with a killer whale who almost tipped our catamaran, and
a rhinoceros who charged at the windshield of our VW bus in Kenya.
So bring on Whale Week and Rhinoceros Week. Moreover, I'd like to know how hippos kill their prey. Do they sneak up and smush them?
Did you all see the three Orca that tried to drown the baby Gray whale? What a great start to the week. Why no FCC to save us from that...
Although I can't bear the thought of that, I think Led Zeppelin acknowledged the phenomenon of murderous whales when they wrote: "I don't know but I been told. Female whale ain't got no soul."
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