"Where's Ben Wallace, String?"

HBO’s ‘The Wire’ is the best TV show ever made. There, I said it.

In 5 seasons over 60 episodes, David Simon’s law and streets epic was literature on television, an experience so dense and rewarding that it somehow managed to simultaneously depict life in Baltimore as realistic and hyper-romanticized. It’s one of those things you’ve either seen and worship, or have resisted all your friends screaming OH MY GOD YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE WIRE NO SERIOUSLY BORROW MY DVDS AND WATCH IT for like ten years.

This week’s Sports On TV column is in reverence to this masterwork of Orioles jokes and cereal references, and my only real disclaimer is that there are tons and tons of spoilers inside, so it’ll work best if you’ve seen the entire run of the show. If you haven’t, you should still click through … out-of-context Wire quotes are like gold, glittery paint on the Internet and should be experienced.

And yes, I took notes on a criminal f**king conspiracy.

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Welcome to the first edition of With Leather’s newest, least cool weekly feature ever: SPORTS ON TV, where we countdown the greatest sports-related moments from your favorite, mostly not sports-related television shows.

This week’s edition tackles ‘Saved By The Bell’, an UPROXX network favorite about early 90s southern California high school kids who get to do anything they want whenever they want and face zero consequences. The show ran from 1989-1993, but existed in one form or another before that and afterwards until 2000. I’m not too proud to admit that syndication eventually showed me every ‘Saved By The Bell’ episode five times over, so we’re starting there. Maybe we’ll get to those clips of Urkel playing basketball next week.

Anyway, pre-column notes:

1. I only included moments from the primary run of ‘Saved By The Bell’, so that means no ‘Good Morning Miss Bliss’, ‘Saved By The Bell: The College Years’ or ‘Saved By The Bell: The New Class’. The TV movies feature the most popular cast, so I included those.

2. I really wanted to include video of each moment, but you know how the Internet works. I don’t want you to read this in two weeks and not be able to see what I’m talking about. Besides, the entire run of the show is currently available on Netflix.

3. Big thanks to the special guests who contributed commentary on some of their favorite moments.

And now, in no particular order, the 20 greatest sports moments from ‘Saved By The Bell’. If you’ve got a favorite sports moment that didn’t make the list, be sure to drop in on our comments section and let us know.

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If there’s a 12-year-old kid out there that’s a national master at chess, that kid gets his own post. Justus Williams of the Bronx is such a youngster, but really, I’m just happy that people are still playing chess. It’s still the best context to make “beating the bishop” jokes.

Williams became the youngest-ever black US Master in chess last September (that’s about the equivalent of a second-degree black belt). They’re now calling him “The LeBron James of chess,” probably because calling him the “Tiger Woods of chess” would bring on a whole different connotation other than “He’s really good at chess and just so happens to be black.”

His chess skills have taken him to Brazil, Canada and Greece. It’s not uncommon to find him challenging and beating opponents four and five times his age.

Justus and his family hope his success in chess will help others experiment outside their comfort zones. They’re spreading the word through a campaign called “Dare to be Different.”

–NBC NY, via Ben Maller.

And that’s why, as you can see in the video, he’s “just like any other 12-year-old,” but I can’t remember the last time I saw a male sixth-grader with an earring, although it’s a lot harder to tell being 1,000 yards away from the nearest elementary school.

No cats were molested or killed while this photograph was taken. Probably.

A chess coach in Illinois has been accused of some sort of freaky misuse of his access to children, according to authorities.  An as-yet unnamed man who coached an elementary school chess team in Evanston allegedly sent photos of his young charges to a prison inmate.  But hey, who hasn’t done that for kicks from time to time?

While the pictures are not inappropriate, it was what was allegedly sent with the photos that has parents unsettled… The children’s coach allegedly sent pictures of the chess team to an out-of-state prison inmate…

“It doesn’t seem like anything happened besides pictures being sent and certain words being written on the pictures,” [one parent] said.  [Another] parent said the photos were sent with graphic letters.

That pisses me off. Some inmate gets photos of chess kids, yet no one responded to my Craigslist ad titled Searching for pictures of Bobby Fischer.

All in all, that’s probably not as bad as getting into a drunken fight and killing a man over a game of chess.  Unless the agreed-upon stakes of the game were life and death.  Hey, fair’s fair.

[Sports by Brooks]

Saturday's New York Times included a feature on Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA and the iconic rap group's love of chess.  Maybe if some girl taught me the game then slept with me, I'd be into it, too.

RZA, 38, learned the game when he was 11, from a girl who, as he writes in ["The Wu-Tang Manual"], also took his virginity… Now they play chess almost every day, and RZA, holder of the Hip-Hop Chess Federation belt — a trophy he picked up last fall at a tournament in San Francisco that featured rappers and martial-arts experts — is turning his interest into a business. [note: WuChess website here]…

Marley Kaplan, chief executive of Chess-in-the-Schools, a nonprofit group that teaches chess in poorer New York City school districts, said that RZA’s involvement might encourage some children to play, but that she doubted it would make a big impact. “Most kids get interested in chess through schools and through family and friends,” she said. “We taught 20,000 kids this year and I bet if you surveyed them, none of them knows that he plays chess,” referring to RZA.

Wow, is that crown of thorns too heavy, Saint Marley?  "La la la, I've dedicated my life to a non-profit organization helping urban youths, I'm better than famous people."  Lighten up a little.  Have sex with a Republican or something.

The organizers of the upcoming World Mind Games, an event where nerdlingers will be pitted against dorkus malorkuses (malorki?), are testing participants for performance-enhancing drugs, though they don't know exactly which ones. I would imagine those mind-expanding drugs might be on the short list. A mind is a terrible thing to expand, so I keep mine small and stored in a jar on my mantel. 

"Bridge and chess are recognised by the International Olympic Committee and we have the obligation and duty to sign the World Anti-Doping Agency code," IMSA president Jose Damiani said. "So we will proceed in Beijing with anti-doping tests."

Damiani did not say how many tests would be conducted or which substances testers would be looking for but another official was quick to respond.

"We follow WADA's instructions but we cannot see what drugs could be used to become smarter," World Chess Federation Vice-President Georgios Makropoulos said. "Otherwise they would be sold in every pharmacy around the world."

Clearly they've never heard of poindextrose (mixed with crayons shoved up my nose for maximum Simpsons reference quotient), which I've been taking in concentrated doses for weeks. I believe I'm just seeing the effects now. I feel smarter already. I…wait, I'm a blogger by trade? What have I done with my life? Oh God, I need to be stupid again. Where's Mike & Mike when you need it? That'll kill some brain cells.

[Machochip]