You wouldn’t normally think of Match.com as a place to go for sports news, but here we are: The online dating company has polled their 20 million-plus members to find out which U.S. cities have the highest number of female baseball fans. This is the kind of thing Baseball Reference should be doing. I don’t need to know how many pitchers have tripled in the 8th inning since 1972, I need to know that if I walk into Progressive Field wearing a Ryan Garko jersey I can walk out dating something besides myself.

So who topped the list? If you’ve been staring at that picture of Anna Kournikova in the header, you should already know.

So where are the hot beds for ladies who love baseball? We looked up the top 10 cities for baseball crazed gals and we found that our community has some serious baseball fans! In fact, nearly half of the women in St. Louis are baseball fans according to their Match.com profile. Even in our 10th ranked city, the Twin Cities metro, over a third of the women are fans of the boys of summer.

That’s not a huge surprise. Everyone I’ve met from St. Louis who wasn’t one of Nelly’s St. Lunatics has been awesome. Milwaukee, Fresno, Cincinnati and Worcester fill out the top five, which seems to have been decided upon based on the cuteness and strength of their closest team’s most popular player. So no, if I tried to pick up girls at the Prog it wouldn’t work — I’d have to travel 40 minutes south to Akron, Ohio (#9) where “the women of The Tribe are showing their support”. I wondered where they were doing that. Most of the women I know in Cleveland assume the Indians suck whether they’re in first place for three and a half months or not.

Akron comes in just behind Des Moines, Iowa, referred to on the list as the home of the movie The Field of Dreams. That’s probably my third favorite baseball movie, behind 61 Home Runs and Eight Of The Men Are Out.

[via Match.com]

It’s been almost thirty years, but we have our first indication that Dennis Rodman is a normal human being: he hates LeBron James.

TMZ is reporting that a “local patron” of Akron, Ohio, named Michael Douglas stopped by a local bar because he heard Rodman was drinking there. Like any free-thinking citizen of Ohio, he approached Rodman and asked him if he was “in town to check up on LeBron”. So, like any free-thinking human being interacting with someone from Ohio, Rodman shoved him. TMZ makes sure to note that the Michael Douglas in question is not the actor, but he got shoved on his ass, so he’s at least Falling Down.

Police aren’t pursuing an investigation due to lack of evidence and Rodman’s reps are saying he has “no idea what this is about”, so here’s my theory; somebody told Michael Douglas the Ohioan that Dennis Rodman was drinking at a bar in Akron, but it was probably just a really tall black guy who didn’t want to be bothered and this guy went a-quippin’ and got pie-faced for it.

More people should get pie-faced for making LeBron jokes in public. I should be getting pie-faced almost constantly. I should be the Marc Summers of LeBron James jokes.

Dear Cleveland, all of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers supporters wherever you may be tonight;

As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted last year, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier. He plays for the Miami Heat, and because the Heat lost the NBA Finals, Governor John Kasich has drafted a proclamation making the Dallas Mavericks, assumedly even the ones like Caron Butler, honorary Ohioans.

Ack, sorry, I can’t keep up the Comic Sans. Who types like that, honestly? Anyway, the Governor’s proclamation is more or less childish schadenfruede (can schadenfruede be childish? Do you have to enjoy the ill-will of a child?) and should be taken with a grain of salt. Although if I was Jason Kidd (or whoever), I’d move to Dayton (or wherever) and use this as an explanation for why I shouldn’t have to update my driver’s license. I enjoy a good Nelson Muntz-style NYAH HA as much as the next guy, and as someone who lived in Cleveland for four years and considered but ultimately decided against buying both LeBron James AND Shaq jerseys I should find this hilarious. And sure, I do, but not as much as if metropolitan Akron had just stepped back and smirked while LeBron baked in his own slightly-less-great-than-God agony.

Ohio should keep doing this and make Art Modell everyone who played ’97 Florida Marlins honorary Michiganians.

[Proclamation pic courtesy of OTB]