Starting Five

1. Bud Selig channels Glenn Shorrock, lead singer for The Little River Band, by telling A-Rod’s peeps, “I want to make you understand/I’m talking about a lifetime ban….”

 

We’ll go dancing in the dark.

Being banned from parks.

And reminiscing.

You have to be impressed with the work that kitty cat does in this video.

Soooooooo, New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez is getting a taste of what it’s like to be Texas congresswoman Wendy Davis this week. It’s as if MLB and Bud Selig are telling him, “Pal, THIS is the outcome we want. All that’s left is for us to figure out the most plausible way to manipulate the “rules” (ha ha ha) in order to make that happen.”

Baseball –and George Costanza’s former employers, who are into him for $86 million from 2014-2017 — simply want A-Rod to go away. At the very least, they want to make an example of the three-time AL MVP who once seemed destined to break Barry Bonds’ Hank Aaron’s home run record. To that end, they are threatening him with a lifetime ban unless A-Rod, who turned 38 last Saturday, agrees to a lengthy suspension. Probably more than a year.

Baseball is telling A-Rod: If you want to prolong our drug investigation, then we’ll just invoke Article XII (B) of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which states: “Players may be disciplined for just cause for conduct that is materially detrimental or materially prejudicial to the best interests of baseball, including, but not limited to, engaging in conduct in violation of federal, state or local law.”

In other words, as the USA Today reports, by not confessing to drug usage A-Rod is guilty of lying to baseball and sabotaging its investigation, which is itself a violation of the CBA.

Let’s end this item the same way we commenced it: With a 1978 pop song that aptly describes A-Rod’s plight. Deborah Harry, the floor is yours (was there ever a more beautiful female lead singer, by the way?)

2. Summer of Stupid (cont.): Tough Mudder F*&%$#!!!!!

Some day we will look back upon the Tough Mudder/Warrior Dash Era of American participatory athletic events and ask ourselves why masochism seemed so cool. Whither our guilt? Until that time, enjoy this video of a Tough Mudder racer in Buffalo, N.Y., (Is there another Buffalo?) being strangled and briefly suspended in mid-air by a wire which might have been carrying up to 10,000 volts of electricity.

What’s next, after physical torture? Emotional torture? How about a race in which midway through you must sit on a chaise and tell a psychologist embarrassing stories about junior high dating and what your uncle did to you when no one was looking? I’d just call it “Anguish.”

Anyway, let’s face it: If they actually created a Hunger Games-type event in which the winner earned even as little as $10,000, there’d be a mass wave of entrants. Wait. The CW already has done this, sort of.

3. “I’ll Take ‘2008 University of Florida Receivers’ for $200, Alex.”

I recommend you read this item while listening to country recording star Brad Paisley’s “Accidental Racist.”

Former Gator tight end Aaron Hernandez, 34 receptions in 2008, a season in which the Urban Meyer-coached and Tim Tebow-led University of Florida won the national championship, is the most notorious sports story of the summer, if not all of 2013.

Former Gator flanker/all-purpose back Percy Harvin, a team-leading 40 catches in ’08, was the most prized offseason acquisition in the NFL, as the Seattle Seahawks pried him away from Minnesota for three draft picks. They promptly awarded him a five-year contract extension that includes $25 million in guarantees. Former teammate Adrian Peterson, who someday could become the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, called Harvin “the best all around player I ever seen.”

And then there’s Riley Cooper, who tied for fourth on the team in receptions with 18. Cooper was also Tim Tebow’s roommate. Recently, Cooper did at least three stupid things, four if you hate country music:

1) He attended a Kenny Chesney concert clad in a sleeveless flannel shirt (“Sun’s out, guns out”… uh, that’s just a figure of speech, Mr. Hernandez).

2) He uttered a racial slur, using the N-word (“I will jump that fence and fight every nigger here, bro”).

3) He uttered a racial slur while someone was videotaping him with a smart phone.

Fall out?

A) Marcus Vick, younger brother of Philadelphia Eagle QB Michael Vick, offered $1K bounty (money, presumably, that he will borrow from his big brother) on Twitter to any safety who lights up Cooper this season: “Hey I’m putting a bounty on Riley’s head. 1k to the first Free Safety or Strong safety that light his ass up! Wake him up please”

B) Cooper will not host next year’s BET Awards.

C) People may begin to have honest discussions about the N-word. Granted, as the video shows, Cooper utters the term with hostility and hatred on his mind. He is the Paula Dean of the NFL right now. But this is hardly the worst thing a member of the 2008 UF receiver corps has done this summer. Just ask Odin Lloyd.

Enter any NFL locker room, or New York City subway, or hip-hop recording studio, and you will hear the word “nigger” or its variation “nigga”, spoken every day. The difference is that it is mostly uttered by African-Americans, and half the time it is simply a substitute for “dumbass.”

But that’s not how Cooper meant it. He most likely meant it in the way that Chris Rock defined the term in arguably his most brilliant monologue.

D) “Riley Cooper” will be a lyric in a rap or hip-hop song by week’s end.

E) Cooper at least had the good sense to own up to his failure. There was no attempt –Congressmen, please pay attention — to blame his actions on something or someone else. Because if he had attempted that, every fellow NFL player would have stood up and said, “Nigger Child, please.”

4. “Who Can Take a Rainbow/Wrap It In a Sigh…”

Phoenix police proudly announce the apprehension of Jordan Newman, a.k.a. “The Candy Man” thief, who is accused of stealing more than $2,900 worth of candy bars from area (from “participating”) Circle-K convenience stores in the Valley of the Sun. I’m sure there’s a joke to be made about police searching his cavities for evidence. I’m assuming that bail will be set at $100,000 (please, hold your snickers to a minimum).

Also, this is not Newman’s arrest, but here’s a pic of a Phoenix policeman tackling another area candy burglar. The ACC promptly ejected the officer for the remainder of the game for aiming too high.

5. This is exactly why the Shakespearian line, “First thing we do…let’s kill all the lawyers” has survived nearly five centuries.

 

An attorney for San Diego mayor Bob Filner, who was groping for some type of sustainable defense of his groping-addicted client, is blaming the city of San Diego for not providing Filner with adequate sexual harassment training. My suggestion is that Filner be sent directly to a communal prison cell at San Quentin for one week to better understand just what sexual harassment –and worse– really is.

This is the Lance Armstrong defense: It’s not my fault, it’s the fault of the people I work for not stopping me from committing these heinous acts. This is exactly the quality we look for in a leader.

Reserves

Last Friday night the Hudson River, an estuary whose tides run in opposite directions, was the site of a pair of tragedies. If you follow the news at all, you probably heard plenty about one of them. It made the Today show, after all.

Not far from the Tappan Zee Bridge, some 20 miles north of Manhattan, a speed boat filled with a group of friends struck a barge. A 30 year-old bride-to-be and the best man in the wedding were both ejected from the boat and their bodies were later recovered.

It was an unmitigated tragedy and, as the parents of the young woman were quoted as saying in a statement released yesterday, “We are devastated by the irreparable damage that has been done to the lives of so many. None of our lives will ever be the same.”e

God bless those poor people. They described themselves as “shattered”, and I’m sure that they are.

As I said, there were a pair of tragedies on the Hudson last Friday night. Walking along the riverside park on their way home after their shift at a restaurant where I work – situated along the Hudson  — friends enjoyed the great view and the warm night. One of them made a decision that ultimately cost him his life. It was a fateful choice made by a vigorous and strong young man who, like many who fit that description, likely thought of himself as somewhat invincible. He was swept away by the tide. His body was ultimately found three days later.

How we lost our friend, Marco, who received barely a fraction of the press that the aforementioned party did, other than a disdainful item in the New York Post, matters little to us now. All we know is that we miss him. Profoundly. Marco was a tall, handsome 28 year-old Mexican immigrant who always wore a smile. He was one of our food runners, which is arguably the most demanding and stressful job at our high-volume outdoor eatery.

That young people will die suddenly and unexpectedly is a fact of life. That we lost one of our favorite and most beloved co-workers is not simply a banal trope, but the absolute truth. Marco was a lesson for all of us — and not about the effects of just one decision. No, Marco’s lesson was that if you greet everyone with a smile and if you work hard that you will enhance the lives of everyone around you.

We will miss you, Marco. We already do. Thank you for being a part of our lives.