Is there any wonder...

that so many people of my generation are genuinely disturbed, when this was deemed as suitable children's entertainment?

Good luck getting that out of your dreams. I'm off to the medicine cabinet.

Say You're Sorry, Even If You Aren't

The Lemur with the story out of Texas, where the coach of a girls high school basketball team that won by a 100-0 score was fired on Sunday (the Lord's Day!) for not apologizing over the experience.

(And before I get into any of this... well, yes, your immediate reaction might be to just make sure that your kid never gets into high school sports. Yeesh.)

The Covenant School of Dallas, a private Christian school, posted a statement regretting the outcome of its Jan. 13 shutout win over Dallas Academy. "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition," said the statement, signed by Kyle Queal, head of school, and board chair Todd Doshier. The coach, predictably, does not agree, and one suspects this will only end when the demon lawyers show up.

Now, a small point about this. I'm no religious expert, but since when is excellence a non-Christian value? I'm fairly sure that during the Crusades, a 100-0 casualty count for the cross-bearers would have been Just Peachy. Similarly, I've read the Book of Revelations (it's especially good when you're feeling altered), and from what I can tell, 100-0 is the point spread you should be betting at the Lake of Fire.

Oh, and just because the opponent in this case is a place that has 20 girls in the entire school, and teaches kids who are struggling with "learning differences" like short attention spans or dyslexia... well, sheesh. I'm sure those afflictions also crippled the Saracens, and some of those demons are bound to have reading problems. Cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of redemption!

C is for Cubs... and Class

This summer, I've been taking the Shooter Eldest to a handful of different stadiums. First it was Yankee, then Shea, and then Camden Yards, just to give her a sense of how things were in other places, and to give the wife a break. (Like all 8-year-olds, she is a great and tireless being.) Because I try to keep her from any potentially ugly crowd scene, this involves a lot of planning, buying tickets in alcohol-free sections when possible, avoiding strong rivalry games, and the like.

Sometimes, I think I overdo the protectiveness, but I'm not a big guy, and they are only small once, you know? It's not as if we need to go to games so badly as to risk something stupid, on top of the expense.

And then something like this comes over the wires, and you wonder if, perhaps, exposing your kids to sports isn't just out and out child abuse.

McHenry County authorities say three Chicago Cubs fans face felony battery charges after allegedly beating a Chicago White Sox fan so badly he lost his right eye. The men are accused of beating 32-year-old Robert Steele of Gurnee during a 2-year-old girl's Sesame Street-themed birthday party. Police said Monday the men were drinking alcohol at the July 19th party and taunting Steele.

(H/t, Chicago Tribune, via Deadspin.)

Normally, I'd react with the usual snarkiness to such things, and the Deadspin commenters did their usual fine work, with profane Sesame Street songs, William Ligue references and the like. But I'm more interested, for the moment, with wondering what this all means, when three men in their '30s feel that sudden and horrific violence is what's called for in the case of finding an Enemy Fan.

Does the quick dissemination of news, especially novel and stupid and bad news like this story, just mean that we hear about all of the dumb as dirt violent morons that we might not have heard about before? Or is it that stories like this help to encourage the sub-humans out there towards greater creativity in their violence... or that the Web helps these geniuses to be exposed to each other, and therefore, to hate each other more?

I'm not sure on any of it. What I am sure of is that grown men decided to throw down at a 2-year-old's birthday party, and used sports as their pathetic excuse for it.

There's a phenomenon where, when idiots enjoy something, it ruins it for you. I play Grand Theft Auto and like it a lot; I'd rather watch Fox News then play it online with a nation of fast-twitchers. It's just not something that I'm thinking I need company for, and I'm sure that if I got into a lot of conversations with other players about it, I'd like it less.

The same goes, one suspects, for sports with people who identify with it so much as to be moved towards violence... and not even violence against a referee or player, which while totally unjustifiable, at least has a glimmer of reason in the madness. No, they are ready to maim someone who, at most, irritated them with his allegiance and/or trash talk. In front of kids. Little kids.

And some part of me would be OK with their team ceasing to exist now, just because it seems like it would be the only thing that would get through their little reptilian brains, that maybe committing unjustifiable acts of violence (and no, I'm not much caring if there was liquor involved; the liquor got in the mouth without coercion, one suspects) isn't just something that gets you arrested and sued, but with any kind of civic responsibility, shunned from all human contact for, oh, most of the rest of your life.

Now, back to the puppets.

Top 10 Questions Barry Bonds Asks Small Children

Hat tip, MSNBC.com...

Someone asked Bonds if he would contact the fan who snags one of his next two home run balls.

"No," Bonds said. "I had a little kid come up to me and say he would give it back to me. I said, 'Are you stupid? You'd have more money than your parents.' "

10. Why are you hitting yourself?

9. Is your mommy and daddy also racist?

8. How much money do you have for my autograph?

7. Why do you think I'd want to talk to you?

6. Is your daddy rich and famous? Why not?

5. What are you going to fail to be when you grow up?

4. Did you know that only fraidy-cats and retards get really nervous?

3. Don't you know that you can get in big trouble for talking to me?

2. Do you still believe in Santa Claus, you little dumb ass?

1. Why are you crying? Don't you like meeting your hero?

Side note -- As a parent, I can appreciate that Barry feels compelled to ask small children if they are stupid, and to hide behind his own when he feels he's taking too much heat from the media.

It makes me feel good that, while I'm far from perfect in my own patience and decisions, and may not be able to give my kids all of the finer things in life... well, at least I'm not going to scar them nearly as bad as this Monumental Fucktard.

To Section 425 At Monday’s Phils’ Game

My brothers and sisters,

I know he was asking for it.

You don’t wear Mets gear, in Philadelphia, to a game with 40K Phillies Only fans at it.

You save that kind of stupidity, if you must, for a Mets game where you’ve got some backup. (The Arizona Diamondbacks, with Doug Davis as the starting pitcher, is just not packing in a big crowd.)

I know that $1 hot dogs and the end of a holiday weekend can make people forget themselves. I’ve seen it happen many times.

I also know that the home team was coming off a Snowing in May weekend sweep in Atlanta, bringing them all the way over .500, despite a putrid April start.

So you were more, shall we say enthused, than usual.

You were also correct in your observation that he was fat.

You were also keen in your observations that he probably could have refrained from having the large ice cream cone. Positively trenchant. Something the Algonquin Round Table would have been proud of.

Giving him and his entire group a geographical precise suggestion can be seen as right neighborly.

He might, after all, have been lost.

Offering to send him to the lower levels the fast way may sound like a juvenile violent threat, but I know that you were kidding.

Or that you just wanted them to have a better view.

When he called for security, who clearly had no greater threat than pointing in your general direction – well, I’m going to agree with you again.

That’s a pussy move. You wear the hat, you take the ride.

Finally, I share in your distaste for his wife, girlfriend or relative that decided to stand, turn, and give you the look of condescension.

As if you were naughty schoolchildren that would be cowed by her look of disapproval. The nerve.

However, having said all of that – having given you every possible consideration… and knowing that if I were also liquored up and in my early ‘20s, perhaps, just maybe, I’d also say and do things that I’d regret later…

I’m still pretty sure that I wouldn’t have chanted

ASS HOLE... ASS HOLE... ASS HOLE...

In front of a guy with his seven-year-old daughter.

And another guy with his five-year-old daughter.

Made us all want to become Phillies fans, it did.

From Far, Far Away.

The final, most telling thing I can say about the matter…

This never happened to us in… Oakland.

Moving on.