Hilarious Sporting Injuries Part 844224567 (This stuff doesn't get old)

Stoke City midfielder Liam Lawrence is a major doubt for his side's game on Saturday against Portsmouth. Why? Well, he went over on his ankle. Nothing unusual about that. How did he go over on his ankle? Lets see what Lawrence's manager Tony Pulis has to say:

"He has stepped over his dog on the stairs and his ankle just gave way and he went over on it ... The initial scan has shown no break but we have sent him back for another x-ray to make sure ... We don't know how serious it is at the moment, he may be okay for Portsmouth, but then again he may not be fit. We will have to wait and see."

Liam Lawrence tripped over his dog and now may miss playing time. Insert joke here about his terrier-like performances on the pitch.

Lawrence is, in most senses, a rather nondescript player. He has bounced around the lower leagues without ever making much of an impression. He was called up to the Ireland squad once or twice. However, we now know two things about what Liam Lawrence likes to get up to in his spare time.

1) He has a dog. And a house which is evidently not a bungalow, as it has stairs.

2) He likes to film himself and his friends having orgies, while one of the party does a football style match commentary on proceedings.

An average footballer then.

The Stuff that Dreams are Made of

It is amazing just how much the world of sport can come to you in your sleep. Perhaps this is an offshoot of sports obsession, but high profile superstars tend to appear in the oddest circumstances in my dreams. I am, however, an equal opportunity dreamer - I do save time for the more obscure players to appear too.

One which sticks with me from my youth was when I was training with the great Ireland football team of the mid nineties at Lansdowne Road, presumably in the run up to a big game. I recall vividly playing a nice one-two with John Aldridge and, clean through on goal, mucking up the shot. I also was painfully aware that I quite simply could not keep pace with the players there, but was very grateful to them for giving me a chance (especially to Aldo for setting me up - I think that, with a little work, there was a strike partnership in the making there).

The reason I bring all of this up is that only last week I sat down with San Diego State's superstar pitcher, Steven Strasburg. I believe the meeting took place at some college practice session, probably in Southern California, although I cannot be too sure. Strasburg is getting a lot of hype as the next big pitching prospect, and will probably be the first overall pick in baseball's amateur draft in 2009.

At the time of the dream, my Mariners were 'competing' with San Diego and Washington for the worst overall record in baseball. This would entitle them to the first overall draft pick, and a shot at drafting Strasburg - a potential ace. However, there was quite a bit of talk in the Seattle sports media about potential problems with signing him, were the M's to draft him. Being so hyped a year before the draft, Strasburg will probably demand the biggest signing bonus in draft history. He will be represented by super agent Scott Boras, who drives the hardest bargain in the sport, and has been known to have his clients hold out rather than sign for the team who drafted them. A final complication was the suggestion that Strasburg would prefer to sign with his hometown team (San Diego) over the most inept franchise in the sport (see other posts).

Anyway. I sat down with Strasburg and had a good chat with him, making the case for Seattle. He seemed receptive. He listened intently to what I had to say, and seemed to buy the arguments I was making. Of course, this being a dream, I can't actually remember what these compelling arguments were. A sound case to join the Mariners? This is the most fantastical part of the whole story...

In any event, I woke up feeling positive about the whole thing. The Mariners were in the midst of a twelve game losing streak, and in possession of baseball's worst record. Of course, it's all academic now. The Mariners won their last three games, thus ceding the number one overall pick to Washington. This organisation cannot even lose right. We'll have to keep dreaming.

Rationalising Futility (or Yuni Betancourt ate all the Pies)

I have an odd confession to make. I am a fan of the Seattle Mariners. A rather obsessive fan of the Seattle Mariners. Nothing so odd about that, you say. Many people are obsessive about sports teams of all sorts, and for various reasons. Usually [although not always, but usually] these are logical, to a certain extent. Team X is your local sports team, or the team that you were first exposed to, or the team which was supported by a family member who merely passed the mantle along.

I boast no such rational explanation. I am a twentysomething living in Ireland, with no familial connections to the United States or the sport of baseball; I am an absolute football obsessive, as is the norm for people from my part of the country. However, this is also my eleventh year of following the Mariners. Given the fact that they have been baseball's worst team for the large portions of this season, I have increasingly found myself meditating upon what exactly it is that causes me to routinely stay up until 3 and 4am watching this car crash on my computer. Why is it that the first thing I do every morning is check the local Seattle press for news and recriminations? Why do I get excited when I hear that Felix Hernandez is pitching? Why do I shout obscenities at my laptop when Miguel Cairo/Kenji Johjima/Willie Bloomquist comes up to bat for the M's?

In short, how did it come to this? In this season of all seasons, that is a question worth pondering.

***

I do not recall making a conscious decision to follow the Mariners. Baseball coverage began on a new English television channel, Channel 5, in 1997. I am not even sure how I got roped into watching it. As I have already mentioned, my life did not have much in the way of space for a new sports obsession. I was 13, playing football at every opportunity, discovering the wonderful world of Championship Manager into the bargain, while simultaneously developing an unhealthy interest in the world of Formula One, snooker, cycling and of course in Ireland, Gaelic Games [my county, Wexford, had won their first All-Ireland championship for the first time in 28 years in 1996 - interest was pretty high]. The best excuse that I can come up with was that baseball was new and exciting, but more importantly, it was a reason to stay up late. That's really the best I can think of.

The Seattle Mariners: an Excuse to Stay up Late. There was certainly very little in the way of rational decision involved in my team selection. I vividly recall trying to select a hockey team to follow during a short lived dalliance with the NHL circa 2000, but failing to do so, deeming it too difficult and really not in the spirit of things - who wants to make a well informed choice when following a team? By the same token, I cannot recall actively plumping for the Mariners in 1997, it just seems to have been that way. The best I can come up with was that they were quite good back then, and a little out of the public eye. Perhaps that resonated with me. Unfortunately, I did not realise that the latter part of that formula would be fixed in stone given the nature of the American media. On the whole, I'm pretty convinced that Randy Johnson's mullet was not a selling point.

But seriously: what a bad choice Seattle was at the time. Consider - Channel 5's coverage was based around ESPN's national broadcasts on Sundays and Wednesdays. These always began [and still do] at 7ET, or 12am GMT. Seattle, being on the West Coast, is a full three hours behind this, so home games [or most interdivisional games] will begin at 3am GMT. Needless to say, I am not sure that I even saw the Mariners play once in 1997. In the pre-internet days, it was nigh on impossible to ascertain any information whatsoever about the team, any news, any acquisitions, injuries, and so on. It was the equivalent of sponsoring a starving child in Africa. I felt good to have a team, but in all practicality, knew very little about their day to day existence.

I have very few specific recollections from these early years. Whilst I can recall the 1997 World Series between Florida and Cleveland in quite a bit of detail, including the inevitable meltdown of Jose Mesa with the whole series on the line in Game 7 (but moreso the heroics of the unheralded Chad Ogea in Game 6), Mariners information was thin on the ground. I was aware that Woody Woodward, the then General Manager, was a bad man, who was trading away valuable prospects for mediocre middle relievers (the name Heathcliff Slocumb still resonates). I knew Jay Buhner was a bit mad. And I knew they lost to Baltimore in the American League Divisional Series with something of a whimper in 1997.

The only game I can recall watching involving Seattle was in 1998, when the New York Yankees came to the Kingdome. I believe that is the only reason that the game would have been covered by ESPN. David Cone pitched for New York, the oddly named Paul Spoljaric for the M's. I believe they won. I had a tape of the game which I watched numerous times. Once more, these actions are inexplicable. The M's were in decline. Randy Johnson, the onetime ace, had been sulking and pitching well below par before securing a trade to Houston, where he became Bob Gibson reincarnate. Losing seasons ensued. But better times were to come.

***

It goes without saying that the internet revolutionized a lot of things. Obviously. It allowed access to huge amounts of hitherto inaccessible information, covering a myriad of topics. Of course, baseball was one, and being stuck at home for the summer while on holiday from school (The year was 2000, I refused to work, I was at that difficult age), what else would you do but hunt down boxscores from baseball games? The internet allowed me, for the first time, to be aware of the full twenty-five man roster for the team, and moreover, to keep tabs on the goings on across the game. Channel 5 still gave me live sustenance on Sundays and Wednesdays. The ESPN website provided scores and game reports the following morning. MLB.com gave access to live game radio, when my tempermental phoneline allowed.

Moreover, it was an exciting time to be a baseball fan. Nevermind the steroids fuelled offensive explosion taking place across the game which would reach its nadir in 2001 with Barry Bonds, what was more important was that the sabermetric revolution was taking off. I feasted on the writings of Rob Neyer at ESPN.com (before you had to pay for its increasingly watered down content) and also websites like Baseball Prospectus. What a breath of fresh air it was to learn that, with a little rational thought about things, there were so many possibilities within the game than those merely espoused by the television commentators. A real revelation when put in comparison with the empty rhetoric and resort to cliché so beloved of football analysts and commentators whom I was raised on. I was hooked. Unfortunately, the Mariners' organisation has never particularly placed much emphasis on drawing walks, so this newfound enlightenment was ultimately frustrating. And has remained so.

The years 2000-2002 were a purple patch in my Mariner fandom. The team was good, a perennial playoff contender despite losing Griffey and A-Rod in consecutive seasons. Indeed, 2001 saw them set a new Major League record with 116 wins. Success meant more exposure, and I could watch them on TV more as a result. Safeco Field opened, one of the best of the retro style ballparks in the United States. Ichiro! became the first Japanese position player to play in the Major Leagues, and won both Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards in 2001. Times were good and the Mariners were compelling, even when playoff success eluded them.

***

The period from 2003 until the present has been one of futility. The success of the preceding three years was founded upon neglect of the farm system, and spreading considerable cash around the starting roster to pay for veterans with 'good character' who knew 'how to win'. With the success of the Oakland A's and the sabermetric revolution - conveniently brought to a wider public in Michael Lewis' Moneyball book - the Mariners attitude to team building would no longer cut it. More and more teams were looking through the numbers, seeing and overvaluation of traditional statistics in the market, and adjusting their approach accordingly. The Mariners have been left behind. Loss followed loss. Money was splurged on all manner of free agents to paper the cracks. Carlos Silva. Scott Spiezio. Miguel Batista. Jarrod Washburn. Richie Sexson. Almost $200 million worth of free agent contracts, underwhelming performances, performances which were becoming increasingly predictable if one was subscribing to the correct baseball philosophy. The man responsible for all of these moves, one Bill Bavasi, was only fired over the summer.

***

By this point in my fandom, I was in college, and indulging in some of the better things which life has to offer. The Mariners were awful, and I was no longer in reach of Channel 5. Reading internet reports could only do so much. However, the Mariners are blessed in one way which managed to sustain my interest - they happen to have two of the best and most innovative fan blogs of any team in baseball: Lookout Landing and USS Mariner. These two websites have a devoted following and are updated several times a day. They boast an aptitude for making statistical analysis comprehensible - in essence, to tell us why the Mariners are the worst run team in baseball - but more importantly, they specialise in black, black humour. Probably a pre-requisite for a Seattle baseball fan. However, in sum, it meant that on any given day, there was plenty of tasty baseball discussion and argument to tuck into, even in this season of seasons, with the Mariners losing 100 games with a payroll of over $100 million - the first team in history to achieve such a feat.

What was truly revelatory was the onset of high-speed internet connections and video streaming. Highlights are readily available on the MLB.com website, and this year, I took the plunge and signed up for a MLB.tv subscription, enabling me to watch every Mariner game (every game full stop) live throughout the year. My increasing dependence on this source, coupled with the obvious futility of the team I follow, brings me back to the original question: why do I bother? It became somewhat routine for me to come home drunk at 3 or 4am in the morning, having just messily finished a kebab that I never wanted in the first place, and settle down in front of the baseball to watch Carlos Silva take another pounding. Somehow, I feel this is an apt description of the 2008 Seattle Mariners: a team that can only truly be comprehended through a drunken stupor. What better way to finish off another disappointing Dublin night out than to bed in and watch Yuni 'I ate all the pies' Betancourt lumbering about the infield, or Raul 'Consumate Professional' Ibanez doing his comedy defence show in left field? When I should be going to bed with a pretty girl I picked up during the night, instead I'm getting tucked in with Miguel Batista. Oh dear.

***

Of course, given this simmering fascination with the Mariners, it was always on the cards that I would, some day, make the pilgrimage to Safeco Field and the great Northwest. Well, you do if you share the odd fascination which I am trying to detail here. So, last summer I organised all of my travels in the United States to coincide with the longest Mariners homestand of the year - thus, I was guaranteed to catch a couple of games.

As luck would have it, Jeff Weaver started my first ever live baseball game, against Pittsburgh . Weaver was car crash bad in 2007, reviled throughout the Mariner blogosphere, and came into that game with an ERA of 10.97. This is very bad. In fact, Weaver's 2007 was so bad as to rank as one of the historically bad seasons by a starting pitcher with as many innings pitched as he had (147). Inexplicably, Weaver threw a shutout and the fans were on their feet, cheering every out as the game came to its conclusion.

Even more inexplicably, Weaver would throw another shutout later in the summer and end up leading the league in that category, despite being probably its worst pitcher statistically.

The following night (June 21st), the Mariners again shut out the godawful Pirates. Thus, in my time attending their games, I have yet to see them give up a run. I like to think that the baseball gods arranged this one for me. Given the absolute car-crash suffering of being a fan of Seattle baseball, it was much appreciated.

***

So, all this brings me back to the beginning. I have an unhealthy obsession with a futile organisation. I cannot make sense of this. They are, at the time of writing, the worst team in baseball. I follow every game in all its gory minutae. I pore over the box scores. I visit the websites of the local newspapers far too many times a day. Ditto the excellent Mariner fanblogs. There is no rationalising this. I simply must admit: I have a problem. It is akin to making the announcement at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, but hopefully this shall serve as the first step towards a full rehabilitation. Or, if the Mariners get a decent General Manager, Manager, and a basic clue about how to run a baseball organisation somewhat efficiently, and actually win some games, I'll be back on the wagon again, and it will no longer be such a dirty confession to have to make. Here's hoping.

Hilarious Injuries, Part 432643:

Probably in an endeavour to be treated like a proper football league, the MLS presents to the world a ridiculous footballing injury. Real Salt Lake's Argentinian striker, Fabian Espindola, was celebrating his header from six yards out against the L.A. Galaxy in his Lua-Lua style, with a backflip. Only he landed a tad awkwardly, grimaced, and had to be substituted.

Initial reports of a sprained ankle were upgraded to a full blown leg-break.

Initial reports of a goal were downgraded by the linesman's flag.

Insult to injury.

Big Headed Footballers

There has been a lot of talk about how today's footballers are much 'bigger headed' than their predecessors. They make silly money, drive flash cars, own multiple houses, live lavish lifestyles, and make outrageous demands. They are, in short, arrogant prima donnas.

However, until Monday night, it was impossible to measure 'Big headedness' in any quantitative manner which utilised scientific methods. That was until Dimitar Berbatov stood in beside Alex Ferguson for his first publicity shot as a Manchester United player, and suddenly, it became tangible.

Dimitar Berbatov has a huge head.

(Next to Alex Ferguson, this is saying something).