Of course you want the best for your child. If he shows an interest in music, you buy him an oboe. If she buries her nose in books all day, you drag home a box full of young adult novels each month. If he wants to join the circus as a clown, you ground him for a year.
And if a fast-talking man claiming to be affiliated with the Baltimore Orioles strides into your town with a briefcase full of baseballs and dreams of a baseball academy to nurture your boy’s Major League ambitions for the ridiculously low price of $3,000, you write the check. Okay, maybe you don’t, but 11 sets of loving parents in Cumberland, Rhode Island, did. Bad idea. Read more…
Professional athletes lead different lives than the rest of us. They travel incessantly and don’t see their families for weeks at a stretch. Strangers ask them to sign scraps of paper and hold their babies for a round of pictures. Their careers end before they turn 40, leaving them ill-prepared for a world that doesn’t need a left-handed ball hurler.
And, if the Baltimore Orioles are any measure, someone’s constantly shoving guns in their faces, forcing many of them to carry concealed weapons most anywhere that doesn’t require a uniform with stirrups.
• VARIETY shoots up news that “Semi-Pro” was the top grossing film of last weekend, but netted only $15 million - “the lowest opening for a major Will Ferrell comedy in almost a decade.”
• The BALTIMORE SUN is shattered that the Orioles’ Kevin Millar decided to break out the pink bat, only to have it splinter after two trips to the plate.
The BALTIMORE SUN revs up news of the Orioles pitcher running around town in a 1981 Trans Am - complete with a big ol’ Firebird right on the hood and a license plate that reads “I heart Dixie”. Read more…
• PRO FOOTBALL TALK finds out that everyone’s favorite inventor of neologisms, Emmitt Smith, may be back next season. (My personal favorite Emmitt-ism: “debacled”.)
