8:57 PM Just got back from Costco, where I secured six cases of owl jerky, a 40-gallon drum of pine cone liquor, three genetically engineered chickens made entirely of wings, a giant squid with a head of fire and talking snakes for tentacles and a copy of Andre Agassi's autobiography, signed personally!
8:09 PM Got five bucks burning a hole in your pocket and an unhealthy obsession for Monta Ellis? Does Mark Cuban have a deal for YOU!
7:51 PM Michigan State football players *allegedly* weren't the only football players in the country involved in a serious dorm altercation recently.
Well, they don’t fool around in Texas, I suppose. William Jacobsen, a youth baseball coach from Little River-Academy, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibilty of parole for sexually abusing two boys, one who played on his Little League team. Jacobsen, 32, was arrested in Mexico where he had fled with his wife, Marilyn Wesson, 58, after initial police questioning. (Frances McDormand in “Fargo”: “He’s fleeing the interview! He’s fleeing the interview!”)
Jacobsen was the first person indicted and tried in Bell County under a new law that went into effect in 2007, which raised the punishment range between 25 years to life in prison without parole for continuous sexual assault crimes that occur beyond a 30-day period. What makes me especially unsympathetic is the fact that he threatened to harm the families of two other kids if they talked about the abuse. Charming fellow.
You know it’s summer when the youth baseball coaches come out and start having opposing players arrested for nonsensical reasons. Actually Bill Marshall is a sheriff’s deputy, part-time Ballston Spa Village police officer, and coach of Galway of the Ballston Spa Junior Baseball League in New York. Marshall had Gary Hall Jr., an opposing player, arrested on Saturday for “intentionally” hitting one his his players with a pitch, and for kicking a batting helmet after the game.
After Galway had beaten Ballston Spa, 2-1, last week, a Galway player punched Hall, 16, in the stomach in the post-game handshake line. According to witnesses, Hall pushed the other player away, then fell to the ground in pain. Hall then kicked a batting helmet near the dugout. If you thought that ended things, you don’t know American youth baseball. Marshall filed charges and had Hall arrested. Read more…
Too many times these days, mentions of youth sports in the news are accompanied by details of disgusting sexual perversion, parental misconduct, or other heinous issues often stemming from the imbalance of authority between adult and child, coach and player. Whatever happened to the halcyon days of yore, when kids were innocent, fun-loving scamps playing carefree games on glorious American summer evenings?
(Lovable scamps … or dangerous insurgents?)
Recently, though, our nation’s youth baseball players started to fight back*. Fed up with getting liquored up and felt up by their coaches, the kids are rising up against the oppression and exploitation of their adult masters. Don’t believe us? Check out this first documented example of the youth athlete revolution, dangerously smuggled to the Twitters via the heroic ‘Duk of BIG LEAGUE STEW.
Baseball players at a middle school in Tennessee got a chance to expand their horizons through pugilism when their coach allowed a few of the preteens to get in a few sparring matches during practice. Of course, parents found out and shut the boxing matches down toot sweet.
Obviously, these are parents without a background in baseball or boxing. Do you want your kids to end up like Robin Ventura? Well, do you? Have you seen Robin Ventura recently? Alright then. We rest our case.
