- In the best of times, Milton Bradley is a tolerable headache for your baseball team, a guy who has immense talents on the field and equally powerful abilities to wreck a clubhouse off of it. He’s a head case who has slammed plastic bottles down at the feet of fans during games, sought to storm the press box during a game to confront an announcer who was being critical of him, interjected himself into the middle of someone else’s traffic stop on an Ohio highway and attacked multiple umpires on the field to dispute calls. He’s been with a multitude of different teams because his act wears thin so quickly and no one wants to put up with his volatility for long even if he’s producing on the field. The Chicago Cubs are his latest victim/franchise, bringing Bradley in this season to provide some left-handed power in their lineup as they look to contend for another NL Central crown. To say that Bradley has been a disappointment would be putting it lightly; he’s batting a hearty .237 with 5 HR and 16 RBI. Those aren’t good numbers for anyone, but they become even worse when you consider the other crap Bradley has been pulling. Two weeks ago, he mistakenly thought a ball he caught in right field was the third out of an inning and threw the ball into the stands. His mental error allowed a crucial run to score in a game the Cubs lost and afterward, Bradley didn’t seem all that heartbroken by his actions. That was followed up by an incident in today’s game between the Cubs and Chicago White Sox in which Milton Bradley went full-on Milton Bradley. After flying out in the top of the sixth, an unhappy Bradley return to the dugout and proceeded to attack the water cooler in the dugout. That’s become a trend for the Cubs of late, with pitchers Carlos Zambrano and Ryan Dempster also attacking the cooler in recent weeks. However, manager Lou Piniella took exception to Bradley’s tirade and order the temperamental outfielder to head to the clubhouse, change out of his uniform and go home. Piniella then followed Bradley up the tunnel and the two exchanged words. “This has been a common occurrence and I've looked the other way a lot and I'm tired," said Piniella after the game. "I'm not into discipline, I'm really not. I'm going to put his name in the lineup tomorrow and that's it.” In other words, Piniella is going to overlook this meltdown and pretend that all is well. Bad move, Lou. Another Milton meltdown is coming soon and another one after that, so it’s time that you accept that reality and ask your general manager to find a way to move this hothead out of town before he ruins whatever slim playoff chances your mediocre team still has……
- If I had to put a percentage on the number of Mexican police officers who are corrupt and accepting bribes from the various drug cartels running amok south of the border, I’d go with a solid 45-47 percent. That may even be low, because every time I look it seems that there is another story of federal agents in the country conducting a sting to take down corrupt cops. The latest came Wednesday in the city of Hidalgo in central Mexico, where federal agents arrested 92 municipal police officers accused of providing information and security to one of Mexico's most ruthless drug cartels. The arrests stemmed from an investigation that started in October and has led to the arrests of 124 suspects and the discovery of 12 safe houses in which 14 secret graves were found. The feds are placing blame for most of the operation on the Zeta drug cartel, so if you have any Zeta members in your drug cartel fantasy league, you may want to consider putting them on the bench for now. Having the feds run a major sting operation on your cartel just isn’t going to allow Zeta members to put up the sort of production that has made them one of the strongest sources for fantasy drug cartel league production in the past. They won't be able to do nearly as much kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking in Hidalgo now that the feds are on their case. Authorities also allege that Zetas were paying the Hidalgo police officers 3,000 to 5,000 pesos ($228 to $380) every two weeks, which doesn’t seem like a lot until you consider the fact that this is Mexico, where many people make significantly less than that on a biweekly basis. Since the announcement of these arrests came on Wednesday, I’d be looking for the next mass arrest of Mexican police on corruption charges to come late next week or early in the following week. That would keep up the pace we’ve been on recently, although it would be less than stunning to see that pace quicken even further……..
- Ripping a kid is never something I want to do, so I’ll handle this next story a bit differently. Instead of mocking 13-year-old Whitney Lapic of Shillington, N.J., I’m going to focus more on her mother, Debra Stanley-Lapic. Whitney Lapic is the National Marbles Tournament champion after beating out a competitor from Allegheny County in Wildwood, New Jersey. Yes, I said the national marbles championship. Nothing says winner quite like being a standout marbles player. But as I said, I’m going to go easy on this kid and so her mother is the logical target. Debra Stanley-Lapic was herself the national marbles champion 36 years ago, yet she allows her kid to embrace full-on dork-dom and become a competitive marbles player too? If you’ve gone through the experience of playing marbles and being rightfully ridiculed by your peers for it, why would you allow your child to follow in your footsteps? It’s hard enough being a kid and growing up with having the added burden and stigma of playing marbles. If it’s possible, marbles might be an even dorkier competition than those kids who are slammed into the spelling bee and look really awkward and nervous trying to spell difficult words on national television. Who still plays marbles anyhow? What is this, 1959 or 2009? It doesn’t matter that Debra Stanley-Lapic and Whitney Lapic are the first mother and daughter to win a national championship, because that’s not a distinction anyone should be proud of. The blame here doesn’t go on the kid, because she’s just too young to know better. The mother takes the brunt of the responsibility for this one and unless she wants her daughter to spend the next 4-5 years of school being shoved inside lockers, given swirlies and having her book knocked out of her hands, she should find a new hobby for the girl……….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Prison riots are always fun to see, mostly because as long as prison officials stay out of harm’s way, there are no losers. You have a bunch of convicted criminals rioting and getting out of control, so even if some of them are injured in the process, it’s no big loss. Plus, these are usually some of society’s most violent individuals and as such, you know they’re putting on a good riot. This edition of Riot Watch! takes us to Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California. An uprising at the maximum-security prison resulted in a seriously injured inmate being taken to an outside hospital for treatment and six other inmates suffering minor stab wounds and other injuries. To quell the unrest, which took place in the prison's main exercise yard and involved about 17 inmates, officers used pepper spray and rubber bullets. Oh, and you’ll be absolutely stunned to learn that authorities believe that this mini-riot was gang-related. A gang-related riot in a maximum-security prison? No way! I do want to give credit to the inmates who manufactured the seven weapons found at the scene of the riot by prison officials. I love hearing about inmates scrapping together whatever materials they can find, having people smuggle things into the prison for them and finding a way to carve out a shiv. It’s a bit like MacGuyver fashioning a bomb out of a toothpick, a watch and a piece of gum, only MacGuyver wasn’t looking to cut someone with his creation, he was looking to escape or take down the bad guys. So all in all, not a large-scale riot and nothing was burned or destroyed as far as I can tell, but still a solid 5.5 on the Riot-O-Meter, so I’ll take it…….
- One of the best YouTube moments of all time is the bear that was caught in a residential area, hit with a tranquilizer dart and subsequently fell from a tree and bounced up and down on a trampoline before falling to the ground. I can never get enough of that clip, but I’m guessing it wasn’t quite as funny for the residents of a Highlands Ranch, Colorado neighborhood who spotted a large black bear wander from the woods and into their lives. A resident on Ramshead Court in Highlands Ranch heard several dogs barking about 9 a.m. Friday and looked out the window to see what was going on. "Then I started focusing and saw a big bear claw. And then I called neighbors and told them to get their dogs in and their kids because we have a lot of kids in the cul-de-sac," Rod Michotte said. Michotte clearly isn’t the best thinker in tiems of crisis, because after calling the neighbors, he eschewed the idea of calling 911 and instead dialed his wife at work to let her know what was happening. “I said, 'Get off the phone and call 911!" Cindy Michotte said. Well said, Cindy. Following his wife’s sage advice, Rod Michotte called 911 and Douglas County deputies notified the Division of Wildlife. Police kept an eye on the bear until wildlife officers arrived, with the animal mostly sitting in a tree and not looking to do much damage. Also, the bear weighed in at only 150 pounds, so this wasn’t a huge, hulking animal. DOW officers hit the bear with two tranquilizer darts and the black bear fell onto the family's trampoline, severely bending it. Too bad no one videotaped it, because this could have been another classic YouTube clip. Bears bouncing on trampolines are always good for a laugh or 50. Oh, and the Michotte children are apparently angry because the falling bear messed up their trampoline, so a word of advice for them: get over it. Sometimes in life, a tranquilized bear falls onto your trampoline and screws it up. Laugh about it, get a new trampoline and move on. As for the bear, wildlife officials placed the 2-year-old animal in a bear container and took it back to the foothills, where it was set free. Officials say that roaming bears are common in Douglas County and that there are typically several sightings every year. Bears receive one free pass when they wander into a residential area, but if they do so a second time they are put down. Here’s hoping that this bear stays in the woods and off of trampolines from here on out so that it can live a long and happy bear life……
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