Bill Walton (R) with UPROXX's own Vince Mancini

Yesterday, Deadspin reported that ESPN’s golden child and father of Grantland, Bill Simmons, had been unusually silent on Twitter for the past two days, and it turned out that the Worldwide Leader has placed a gag order on him after he criticized First Take’s horrible debate segment between Skip Bayless and Seattle Seahawks DB Richard Sherman. Simmons was arguably correct in saying that the whole thing was embarrassing for everyone involved, but that didn’t stop ESPN from laying the hammer of internal justice upon its most celebrated employee.

The reaction was interesting, in that a lot of people who haven’t liked Simmons for years were all like, “Oh snap, original Sports Guy back???” But I’m going to try to put the basic thought process into terms that Simmons fans might better understand. You know when your best friend starts dating a really hot girl but there’s more than meets the eye to her – like when Valerie Malone showed up on 90210 and started dating, well, everyone, right? – and when there’s finally a struggle between the two, you hope that your friend is going to see the light and dump her sorry ass. But then even when she leaves, he replaces her with Gina Kincaid and you’re like, “This guy just won’t ever learn.”

That’s what I took away from the bulk of reaction to Simmons’ hush-hush yesterday. But you want to know how Bill Walton took it? He took it as, “F*ck it, bros, I’mma say whatever the f*ck I want!”

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If Ben Franklin were alive today, he’d probably smell awful and he’d have to agree that three things are certain in life – death, taxes and people hating ol’ biased Joe Buck. Sure enough, baseball fans complained to the highest heavens and lowest hells about his alleged love for the St. Louis Cardinals during last year’s World Series, and they absolutely bitched and moaned again this year during the NLCS. So of course the San Francisco Chronicle asked Tim McCarver’s babysitter what he thinks about these accusations.

“We get it everywhere we go,” said Buck, referring to himself and partner Tim McCarver. “It’s not unique to San Francisco. It doesn’t matter where we are.”

“It’s easily explainable in the baseball world,” said Buck. “Fans are used to hearing their hometown guys. When you come at it objectively, people aren’t used to it. It gets frustrating. You want to say, ‘No, I don’t hate the Giants.’ “

A very diplomatic and reasonable response by Buck, who I sometimes feel bad for because of all of the hate that he receives from baseball and football fans alike. But there’s another side to this coin that people don’t often recognize – a lot of Cardinals fans think that Buck is biased against the Cardinals. And he had a response for that as well.

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In America’s latest attempt to turn sports into Diddy Kong Racing, here’s the sixth annual “Extreme Race Day”, a Minnesota area event featuring ostrich heats, racing camels, helium-enhanced horse races and more. Please note that we’ve had six of them. We may have finally topped Backflips And Beatdowns, everybody. Congratulations.

The following clips come to us from Awful Announcing, and if you’re wondering why they’d be the ones covering Extreme Race Day, here’s a sample of the hyper-literate banter accompanying a bunch of dudes falling off ostriches:

“These birds are crazy, look out, one might fly in the crowd, start peckin!”

At different points in the video the ostriches are said to have “devilish eyes” and are called “two legged terrorists”, leading me to believe that nobody in Minnesota has ever seen a f**king ostrich and thinks they’re some kind of ancient dragon. They’re ostriches, guys. If you don’t cram them into a starting gate and make someone sit on them they probably won’t try to kill anybody.

Anyway, I’ve kept you away from Extreme Race Day highlights long enough. Check them out below.

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This is basically what I look like when I’m watching ‘The Wire’. Somebody draw this guy a warm bath for Christ’s sake. (via Awful Announcing)

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Links

Potentially the 11 Most Crowd-Pleasing TV Deaths of 2012 |Warming Glow|

The 20 Best Ozzie Guillen Misquotes |With Leather|

Memes Do Come True: ‘Texts From Hillary’ Bros Meet With Hillary Clinton |UPROXX|

Donald Glover Talks About His ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ Easter Egg |Gamma Squad|

The Most Obnoxious Generation: An American Reunion Review |Film Drunk|

On Urban Meyer, Amateurism & Winning |Smoking Section|

The James Van Der Beek 6 Stages Of Fame |UPROXX|

The Incredible Portrait In Portrait Art Of Kim Dong Yoo |UPROXX|

The Start Of Your Ending: Mobb Deep Breaks Up On Twitter? Hav Calls Prodigy Gay? |Smoking Section|

Your Mid-Week Guide To DVD And Streaming |Film Drunk|

The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw 4/9/12: The One With The Three Stooges |With Leather|

Five “Science Reports” We’re Tired Of Seeing |Gamma Squad|

Chevy Chase on ‘Community’: It’s a ‘F*cking Mediocre Sitcom’ |Warming Glow|

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By way of Awful Announcing comes this charming clip the first quarter of Thursday’s Miami Heat vs Atlanta Hawks game wherein Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller and Sir Charles Five Buck Box It Rocks It Rocks Barkley discussing Weight Watchers, Dwight Howard and how sad the Hawks are while accidentally mic’d and on-air.

I think we can all agree that sports play-by-play would be at least 100 times better if announcers could say what needs to be said, such as:

Barkley: “Man I can’t stand to watch this Atlanta Hawks team play.”

Harlan: “This game is terrible.”

Barkley: “It is.”

Harlan: “Look at this game, 31 percent, God almighty.”

…and could start low-fat beef with Sara Rue over the ethical implications of getting paid thousands of dollars to lose two pounds a week:

“I thought this was the greatest scam going, getting paid to watch sports… this Weight Watchers thing is a bigger scam.”

That’s a fun sentence to take out of context. Barkley is being affable and saying, “hey, this is so easy I’m getting paid to do basically nothing”, but it can just as easily be blockquoted to mean “these jerks at Weight Watchers are stealing your money, just have some self control, your digestive system is not FourSquare why do you need points”. Yeah, I can only make this so controversial, but the clip is fun, and if announcing was more like this I’d listen to everything they had to say and not just tune out until the NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE-type stuff started.

I think the true highlight of the clip is Barkley’s “I DON’T GIVE A F**K WHAT DWIGHT HOWARD WANTS” face in response to Reggie.

(p.s. Sorry Sara Rue, I’m glad your jeans fit now but you looked better before.)

The Texas Rangers lost last night’s Game 1 of the 2011 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2. It was another in a well-played string of games from Tony La Russa, who got an enormous faux-hawk and decided he’d rather not ever lose at baseball again. Game 2 goes down tonight, and then we head to Arlington for Dirk Nowitzki, Zooey Deschanel and everything else you think of when you hear “Texas”.

The real story of the game, at least in my household, was how long I could listen to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver speak before saying f**k it to baseball entirely and playing Arkham City. About three innings. The following Dugout is a verbatim recreation of those three innings.

Enjoy, if that’s possible.

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