Today on Life, Death and Violence: Men! And the manliest man thing of all? Sports! Yes, little birds, today we’re covering sports history. Throw that baseball into the endzone and make sure you don’t go offsides so you can get that service ace! Touchdown! These are sports things, right? Our sports memory has been hazy ever since that time in the fourth grade when our father made us go to Little League practice and we told him we didn’t want to do it anymore, but we went and got hit in the eye. We had to get stitches and then perform as Young Cain in Children of Eden that very night. Sports! The glory of victory and the suffering of defeat or something like that. Come running with us and Joseph as we explore this mystical world.
LIFE! (Ten hut, hike, yooouuu’rrreee OUT!)
- 1970: Niecy Nash: Gold Medalist in the 2008 Olympic Sport of Cleaning and Negotiation (it wasn’t an aired event. NBC evidently didn’t think that it was worth their airtime), Niecy Nash knows how to werk it and get what she wants for the people she’s helping. She also looks fantastic with her signature flower. Unfortunately for the sport of Cleaning and Negotiations, Ms. Nash retired in 2010 and has since disappeared from the highly televised sport, except, of course, on Style Classic, which showcases her stunning feats and most amazing victories. Ms. Nash supplemented her income as a Cleaning and Negotiations champion by being a police officer in the city of Reno, Nevada from 2003-2009.
- One possible theory for her tragic and early departure from Cleaning and Negotiations is that Ms. Nash became so emotionally shattered after only managing 5th place in the 2010 edition of Dancing With the Stars, a ballroom dancing competition and a sport that she so heavily wanted to succeed in. We eagerly await the return of Ms. Nash to our airwaves in the sport of her choosing, but until then, we can only watch her victories.
- 1983: Mirco Bergamasco: We guess he plays rugby and we’re not really sure how that’s played, but we eagerly look forward to learning if it’s solely played by guys like the Italian Bergamasco.
- 1994: Dakota Fanning: Ms. Fanning, seen just prior to her 2004 Gold Medal at the Athens Olympics in Adorability (another unaired sport), also scored a silver in the 2008 Beijing Olympics after a narrow, crushing defeat to a little Chinese girl.
- Next year’s London Olympics are set to be her last as by the time 2016 rolls bye, she’ll be 22 and aged out of the event.
- Dakota, on the side, films many movies and is considered a Respected Female Starlet, though many are eagerly waiting for when she finally Lohans, but we don’t think that’ll happen. Dakota seems like a nice girl even if we’ve never seen any of her work, including the seminal 2003 film, Uptown Girls which co-starred now-deceased actress Brittany Murphy whom we just loved in Clueless.
DEATH! (We almost died playing Muggle Quidditch once. No, really*)
- 1961: Davey Crockett: Davey played for the Detroit Tigers (put yo hands up for Detroit!) during their 1901 season and has his name carved into some stone at Comerica Park, but we haven’t seen it, mainly because we’re too busy looking at bronze sculptures of real players like Ty Cobb and Al Kaline. He did not wear a coonskin cap and that photo is not of him as we could not locate a photo of Davey Crockett the Baseball Player. Instead, we present to you, our dear readers, the above photo of former Pittsburgh Pirate Dale Long looking mighty fine while eating a sandwich.
- 2000: Sir Stanley Matthews: Sir Stanley ate no meat. Sir Stanley drank no booze. Sir Stanley was boring, but he did play soccer, or, as you European pansies call it, football, and is considered to be one of the best players that the English have ever produced.
- He has a stupid nickname: “The Wizard of the Dribble.” That’s really stupid. Also, he played for Stoke City and Blackpool, whatever that means and was also an inaugural inductee into the English Footballers Hall of Fame in 2002. Too bad he died before the ceremony. We don’t really get soccer. It’s just a lot of passing and the field seems way to big. Give us hockey any day.
- He retired when he was 70 and was able to play at the top level until he was 50, which we guess is pretty impressive given the average lifespan of a sports person’s career. Maybe it has something to do with all the not-drinking and the not-eating meat. We don’t believe that. Then again, we aren’t star ‘footballers.’
- 2008: Paul Frere: Italians drive fast and make lots of left turns like nobody else. VROOM! He also wrote about racing.
VIOLENCE! (War is a sport that some nations are good at and some nations are bad at, just like real sports)
- 1836: Shoot em up! BANG! BANG! ZOOM! The Battle of the Alamo began and, by the end, Davy Crockett
the Baseball Playerthe Folk Hero would be dead. - 1847: Yesterday’s Battle of Buena Vista continued!
- 1941: Glenn Seaborg creates and isolates plutonium paving the way for nuclear weapons.
- 1997: Fire on Mir! ABORT ABORT!
OTHER NEAT THINGS THAT HAPPENED TODAY (We’re good at bowling, but is bowling a sport?)
- 632: The Prophet Mohammed retires from the sport of Public Speaking.
- 1903: Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to the Americans forever, one of the worst plays in the history of the sport of Foreign Affairs, at least from the Cuban perspective.
- 1954: The Sport of Hunting Diseases begins a major match as man starts to inject kids with anti-polio vaccines.
- 2005: The French pass a law requiring teacher’s to speak positively about colonialism. The law is repealed the next year. The Sport of Colonialism is dead! Long live Colonialism!
Now if you’ll excuse us, friends, we’re going to learn how to play rugby while practicing our favorite sport: Drinking.
*This did not happen.
