Wily Mo On the Lo Fo Fo

Nationals Outfielder Wily "Mo Damage" Pena is predicted to miss four weeks after suffering "suffering a significant tear" of his left oblique muscle and start will likely start the 2008 season on the DL. Wily Mo strained his oblique while taking batting practice. Ouch. I guess Wily Mo's damage inflicting campaign isn't limited to non-Wily objects.

Wily told Nationals.com, "When I hit the last [ball], I had to put the bat down and cry. It was [hurting]."

I don't exactly understand why he needed so many [bracketed words], I guess he damages English in some fashion like he does everything else. Either that or "Mo Damage" curses a lot while talking about being injured.

I can't help but wonder what it looks like to see Wily Mo cry. He seems like the type of gentleman who has cried few enough times in his life to count on a single hand. If Wily Mo in his current form actually shed tears the world might stop spinning.

SHUT EM DOWN!

MMM, delicious! How does it taste Lebron? Nice last shot there. It was so good DeShawn couldn't feel his face afterwards. That's some special spice right there. Thanks for being a class act though, and doing something besides walking directly to the locker room after making the game losing shot. While you're 25-7-7 looks good on paper, when you take DeShawn holding your ass to 40% shooting into account, your game doesn't look quite so tasty does it. Maybe I forgot to mention the icing, a scrumptious 1-7 from three point land, and a delicious 7 turnovers.

DeShawn Stevenson Answers the All Important Question I Asked Him

The same email I recieved from the Wizards informing me that Caron would be retunring also held DeShawn Stevenson's answers to his mailbag, where fans get to write in and ask DeShawn questions about anything and everything. Who's question did he answer first? Professor Swag's of course. Yeahhhh. My question was eloquently stated as per usual:

Nick M. aka Professor Swag: What is your favorite thing that you have ever bought?

DeShawn Stevenson: My favorite thing that I ever bought was probably my first car. I got it when I first came in the league, it was a nice Lexus truck.

Having the opportunity to ask DeShawn Stevenson a question isn't the type of thing a couch bound "journalist" gets to do every day, I had to make sure to pick the right question. I must have spent five good minutes thinking of questions along the lines of "If I were DeShawn Stevenson, what would I want to talk about more than anything?" The first thing I did was narrow it down to, "Who would a person who tatoos Stevenson and 2 on his back jersey style want to talk about?" The answer was clearly that Mr. Stevenson #2 would want to talk about Mr. Stevenson #2. Still, I needed to go further. Next, I recalled the picture (above) from DeShawn's (in?)famous MySpace page. This narrowed it down pretty significantly to today's offical Professor Swag question of the day: "What would a man who sports a grill spelling about Papa Smurf in diamondz and poses with an American Exrpress Black Card want to talk about?"
A) Money
B) Spending Money
C) Something That Doesn't Involve Money
D) Both A) and B).

DeShawn's answer was somewhat predictable, I was guessing (insert nice brand) car as my first choice, with house as my second choice. At the end of the day I'm just glad that I have the inution needed to understand what the modern NBA player wants to talk about. DeShawn has probably been my favorite player this season before he answered my question, and he has certainly sealed up the spot for the season now. Caron and Antawn have ranked 2 and 3 respectively. Gil plummeted from 1 to 4 this season, I don't really want to get into that though.

Varrejo eats dick.

Time For Me to Un-Give Up On this Wizards Season

Caron Butler is back in the Wizards starting lineup tonight against Cleveland. Do I really need to say anything else?

This Year's Badger Basketball Themed "READ" Poster Not As Good as Last Year's Badger Basketball Team Themed "READ" Poster

Last year's poster is on top, this year's on the bottom. Sorry the quality on this year's picture is a little crunchy, there's no online pictures of it that I could find, so this is a cameraphone representation of the poster. I picked it up from the front desk at College Library. I don't know if they have it at other libraries, but I would imagine they have to. I think the "READ" themed poster is to promote the American Library Association's National Library Week, which is from April 12-18 this year. Julie Andrews of Marry Poppins fame is this year's Honorary Chair.

Getting back to the 2008 Big Ten Champion Badger basketball team endorsed "READ" poster, my complaint with this year's poster is they gave Coach Bo Ryan, and from left to right Joe Krabbenhoft, Jason Bohannan, Marcus Landry, Brian Butch, and Trevon Hughes a much "realer" book that was afforded Alando Tucker last year. I can't say I've read Alando's Book, Professional Sports Team Histories: BASKETBALL but I can say with a more than reasonable amount of certainty that BASKETBALL is below the reading level of the modern college student. BASKETBALL seems like the kind of book a kid who likes sports would do a 7th grade book report on. At the same time, the book isn't really fair to Alando Tucker since he's not the dumbass college athlete he ends up being portrayed as on the poster. He graduated with a degree in Life Science Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I don't know how "real" a major Life Science Communications is but it most certainly carries with it a more strenuous course load than the football team's major of choice, Agricultural Journalism, so you have to give him some credit. I don't imagine there are that many other First Team All-Americans who actually graduate like Alando did either.

This year's book, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, seems to be more on the level of the college students holding them. Still, it doesn't have the charm of BASKETBALL because it doesn't drive home the same "I'm a basketball player and I like reading books about basketball!" message since it's not about basketball on any level. It's still a fine poster, just not a classic.

Bonus: After searching the UW library system via MadCat I could only locate four copies of Clemente, two of the 2006 edition, and two of the 2007 edition. You'll notice that there are six copies of the book in the poster. This means that at least two the books in the picture could not have been from the University of Wisconsin-Madison library system.

Three of the UW's copies are located in College Library, one in the Main Collection, Room 3191, one in Open Book Sports and Fitness, Room 1250, and one in Ethnic Studies, Room 1193. The last is in the Historical Society stacks. Two copies call number status's are "Not Checked Out" and the other two are "In Process" as of March 7. I wonder if people saw the poster and decided to check out the book in response. It can't be a coincidence that they're "in process" right after the poster came out.

Nationals Season Headed South Before it Starts

That specter they call injury seems to have an attachment with certain members of the Nationals pitching staff. Injury ranks second on the list of qualities inherent to Washington sports teams not under the tutelage of Coach Joe Gibbs Vol. I, falling somewhere short of the locally enshrined Mediocrity.

Shawn Hill is back to his old tricks. His right forearm hurts too much to play catch despite the fact that doctors have said there is nothing structurally wrong with the appendage. As it stands, they are unsure if Hill will be on the opening day roster, and if he is, they say he'll most likely be fifth in the rotation.

Then there was this gem from a Thomas Boswell column from earlier this week:

"Looks like Patterson's arm hurts him," said Orioles executive Mike Flanagan, meaning no harm, just ballpark chat. "He used to have this nice long arm extension. Now his motion is short and he's throwing a lot of curveballs."

Classic.

Since Tom Hanks has established that there is in fact "no crying in baseball," I've looked to some interesting alternatives to deal with the Nats inevitable suckitude:

1. Hire a Shaman, Witch Doctor, Hoodoo man, whatever you want to call him to get rid of the jinx, curse, trick, or whatever afflicts the pitching staff.

2. Teach Hill to throw right handed and Patterson to throw left handed to get around their oft injured preferred throwing limbs.

3. Get Michael Jordon to unretire from the sport of baseball, sign with the Nats, inevitably fuck things up like he did with the Wizards, blame all of our baseball woes on Michael Jordan. Frankly, I would be honored to be able to say that Michael Jordan played the lead role in unraveling not one but two Washington sports franchises.

4. Frame pitcher Johan Satana and Phillies slugger Ryan Howard as the leaders of a scandalous dog fighting ring. Getting rid of the two best players in the division couldn't hurt the Nationals.

5. Get Aaron or Bret Boone to donate some of his family vintage Boone's Farm wine to Hill and Patterson, get them drunk, challenge them in a drunken boast to the tune of"You pussies can't throw with some hurt arms!" get them to drunkenly pitch to prove they aren't pussies.

If the Nationals didn't have 2,371 pitchers I would be more worried than I am as it is.

*Bonus: D'mitri "Da Meat Hook" Young hurt himself swinging in the batting cage because he's fat. 291 pounds fat. Perhaps he was hooking more than his fair share of meat. According to a headline I find humorous due to the randomness of the things being battled, "Young Battling Diabetes, Competition: Nationals First Baseman Having Difficulty Shedding Pounds". Little kids, you gotta look at how well Da Meat Hook and Nick Johnson share the first base position. They take turns being hurt so the other one can play.

DeShawn Stevenson Can't Feel His Face While Bowling Either

As advertised by his t-shirt in this picture stolen from the DC Sports Bog, Deshawn's facial nerves are experiencing technical difficulties while bowling. I have no proof of this but I can say with 93.9% confidence that he makes his signature gesture after rolling strikes in the same way he does after dunking on someone or making a good shot.

I would pay cash dollar$ to see a video of DeShawn rolling three consecutive strikes on the final frame to come from behind to win a round, especially if he was bowling against Chris Paul or any other member of the Hornets.

The beard he's sporting for the beard growing contest he's holding with Chicago Bulls forward and all around bamma Drew Gooden is clearly doing well. It is the kind of beard that I would expect to see at a bowling alley rather than on a basketball court so its fitting that DeShawn is a bowler. I suppose its also the kind of beard you would don when you have a $20,000 straight cash bet that the other guy will shave his beard first.

*Bonus: Note that in spite of the general clownishness of DeShawn's shoes, they are in fact not bowling shoes, but what appear to be low top Chuck's with some chunky red laces.

*Bonus 2: In case you aren't familiar with DeShawn's "I can't feel my face," gesture or just enjoy watching him do, he performs it after dunking on the Pistons at the end of this low resolution video.

BREAKING NEWS: WARREN SAPP RETIRES

Oh, wait. No one cares. He plays for the Raiders. On Sapp's official website, aptly named QBKilla.com, he made the following announcement, "I'm Done!" That is in fact, all the website says. The truth is, the Raiders don't deserve anything more than Sapp's two word retirement announcement. The exclamation point at the end of his statement goes to show how happy players are to get out of the football purgatory that is the Oakland Raiders by any means possible.

Another Reason to Love Woody Paige

In case you didn't already love him for his nonsensical comments and wacky demeanor, today Woodow Wilson "Woody" Paige is wearing a Big Bird tie. Other Sesame Street characters may also grace his tie but I can't really tell because the bar with his name and the number of "points" block everything below Big Bird. If Cookie Monster is on there, I gotta get me one of those ties.

Brett Favre Gone, Perhaps With the Wind

Brett Favre is nothing short of an American icon and he leaves the game of football with records for most career TDs, completions, career passing yards, consecutive starts for a starting QB, career wins by a starting QB, addictions to vicodin by a starting QB, interceptions, and number of comparasions to Tony Romo by Tony Kornheiser. He decided make his decision to retire early in the offseason, denying Packer fans the opportunity to fret for months about the future of a Packers team with Aaron Rodgers at the helm. Some say part of the reason he retired was to let the feeling of inevitable Rodgers led defeat sink in long before the season begins. Of course Rodgers will just get hurt right away like he always does so the Packers will inevitably end up being led by last seasons third stringer Craig Nall.

Despite the fact Favre never played for my hometown team the Washington Redskins, he leaves behind a long legacy of throwing interceptions to the Redskins. The first pass of Favre's career was intercepted by Washington Redskins linebacker Andre Collins, who proceeded to return the interception for a touchdown. In the most touching moment of Favre's career for Redskins fans, Favre launched an errant pass directly to the late, great Redskins saftey Sean Taylor. In doing so Favre eclipsed George Blanda's mark of 277 career interceptions.

Favre is also notable for beginning and ending his career much in the style of baseball legend Ted Williams. Williams hit homeruns in his first and last career at bats, while Favre threw interceptions on the opening and final passes of his career. Favre's final pass was intercepted in overtime of the NFC Finals game at home against the New York Giants. The turnover sealed the Packers defeat after a field goal won the game for the Giants.

In spite of all this Favre is still better than John Elway due to Elway's now scandalized use of the Vortex football in the first Superbowl he won, and then the Vortex Howler in his second Superbowl victory. After investigating reports that Elway could throw such footballs clean out of the stadium, the NFL committee of fair play rescinded Elway's Superbowl rings, leaving Favre with 1 career Superbowl win, and Elway with 0.