baseball

Chris Knight's avatar

I really liked Redford.  Yes, he and I had different beliefs on a number of issues.  There’s no denying that.  But unlike a lot of “celebrities” these days Robert Redford never used his star power to shove his opinions down the throats of anyone.  He understood that he was an actor, that he was there to play a part in a movie.  He was above such things as making his personal politics a factor in his professional career.

The man was an amazing actor.  And a very good director.  Some of my favorite movies that he was in are The Sting, Sneakers, and The Natural.
Indeed, The Natural is the first Robert Redford movie that I ever saw.  We watched it at a birthday sleepover at a friend’s house when I was in fifth grade.  I thought it was an amazing film.
So in honor of Robert
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Chris Knight's avatar

Relief pitcher Charlie Kerfeld asked for and received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O as a bonus when he signed a new contract with the Astros in 1987. Roy Oswalt got a shiny new bulldozer for helping his team get to the World Series. A.J. Burnett required the Blue Jays to give his wife eight round-trip limo rides per season from their home in Maryland to Toronto when he signed as a free agent five years ago.

Those are just a few of the wacky stipulations that professional baseball players have demanded or agreed to in their signing contracts, according to this entertaining lil’ article at CNN.com. One thing that I didn’t know until reading this: Michael Jordan was still getting paid by the owner of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls when Jordan tried his luck at baseball in the early Nineties. Why? ‘Cuz Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf was also the ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

The Class A West Michigan Whitecaps have added the following gastronomic monstrosity to their ballpark menu: the Fifth Third Burger.

A heart-stopping (perhaps literally) 4,889 calories of beef, lettuce, tomato, salsa, sour cream, chili and Fritos on an 8-inch sesame seed bun. Total weight: nearly 30 ounces.

The ballpark management suggests that one of these hamburgers can feed four people. But if one person manages to eat the whole thing, he/she will earn the right to wear this t-shirt:

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Chris Knight's avatar

This may be the dumbest thing that I’ve ever heard from the world of sports journalism: a few weeks ago the National Collegiate Athletic Association implemented new rules for live blogging at NCAA-sponsored sporting events. The whole thing got started when a sports writer was thrown out of a college baseball game for providing an online chronicle of the action as it happened. The NCAA screamed about “infringing” on the rights of the broadcast partners.

In the wake of the uproar, last month the NCAA established some… strange… regulations for live blogging by professional sports reporters at college athletic events:

Football
– Three posts per quarter and one post at halftime

Baseball
– One post per inning, including extra innings

Basketball
– Five posts per half, two posts in halftime, two posts per each overtime

Not only that, but each blog must display the NCAA logo (what the… %@#&?!?!?) and ...

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