Who's On First?

My son and I were watching Rain Man the other night. The movie's main character, an autistic man named Raymond (Rayn-mon) played by Dustin Hoffman, recites Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine when stressed.

How long has it been since you've watched the entire "Who's On First"? Enjoy.

Bonds HR Ball Headed to Moon?

Marc Ecko, the fashion designer and graffiti glitterati who last week purchased Barry Bonds' HR #756 ball for $753,000, says he will abide by public sentiment and either:

1. Donate the ball to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.


2. Brand the ball (shown right) with an asterisk and ask the Hall if it will accept it into the museum.


3. Put it on the space shuttle, satellite launcher or some other kind of rocket and put it into orbit around the earth.

Ecko, who once produced a hoax film depicting him tagging Air Force One with graffiti, said yesterday during an interview on The Today Show that he wants to "democratize" the ball that eclipsed Hank Aaron's all-time home run record. Thus, he has set up a website where collectors can vote on the fate of the ball

The vote ends Sept. 25, but vote early and vote often. I hit my vote several times and the website never kicked me back for multiple votes from the same IP address, nor does the site require any log in or email recognition. For a guy who thrives on marketing and publicity, it seems Ecko missed a chance to grab some names . . . and maybe even a future buyer for the ball.

-- courtesy Beckett.com

Evel Auction Snakes Seller

Where were you Labor Day Weekend 1974?

I was at Moody Coliseum on the campus of SMU in Dallas, watching what then was called "closed circuit television" of Evel Knievel's "motorcycle" jump over Idaho's Snake River Canyon.

The jump was a daredevil failure but a commercial success, as millions of P.T. Barnum's "suckers" paid up all over the nation to watch Evel shoot off the launching pad, his parachute on his rocket unfurled early, and he drifted into the canyon. . . it was a hell of a lot safer than when he tried to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace in 1967 (below).




The X-2 rocket? I had no idea where that thing ended up, until this week, when it showed up at auction. The guy, I guess the curator of a motorcycle museum in Niagara Falls, Canada, wanted $2,100 but didn't get it.

What Ever Happened to Hard Work?

Why would anyone want to spend thousands of hours teaching other people's kids how to play baseball? Good question, but one evidently oblivious to some parents of youth baseball players.

I personally enjoy this time with my own boys, and with the other boys on their teams. However, from time to time, you will have to endure an email or phone call from a parent explaining how busy their life is dropping and picking up their player from practices, or how difficult it is for Joey to bat in the lower half of the lineup.

(If more people understood how a batting lineup is supposed to work, it would all make sense.)

Parents want their kids to play a high level of select baseball, yet they many times do not encourage the player to work on his own to make it happen. Select baseball, like any travel-level sport, requires skills taught in practice by an instructor/coach. But those skills must be honed by the player on the player's own time. Whether it is the player's dad/mom helping him with the drills or encouraging him to work on his game, or time spent with a private instructor; it doesn't matter.

The point is, a player cannot expect to attend two or three team practices a week and make significant personal progress -- he must work on his own. Team practices make the team alot better; personal workouts make the individual player alot better.

It seems there is a level of entitlement (from which some, but not all, suffer) leaving some parents and players thinking, "If I want it, I should get it."

What ever happened to hard work?