First of all, let me get this out of the way: “How is John?” “John S. Fine.”
Second of all, who wants to see the greatest alley-oop of all time? “But Brandon,” you’re saying out-loud to your computer screen, “I see great alley-oops all the time. The NBA is 90% alley-oops now. The Clippers made it to the playoffs doing nothing BUT alley-oops. You’d have to have something really exceptional to make me care.”
Feast your eyes on Pat the Roc at the CRL Good Life Foundation Celebrity Game. The. End.
Earlier today Brandon posted a highlight reel of the best high school basketball dunks from 2012, which was all well and good except for the part where here we are, only a few hours later, and the whole compilation has been rendered moot. According to this blog post, high school sophomore Victor Dukes did the dunk pictured above in a game that took place on December 31, which is notable for a few important reasons:
Anyway, the video is posted below. As With Leather’s resident dunk expert, please know that everything about this video makes me both excited and incredibly jealous. I can’t decide if I should hate young Victor Dukes or rip off my shirt and zoom around my apartment shouting “OH BABY! OH BABY!” like someone up and made my living room Rucker Park. I suppose I should just do both to be safe.
Here’s the recap from Larry Brown Sports, which is so understated it might as well read “baseball game was arranged and performed”.
The Astros and Nats were tied at 4 in the 11th when Kurt Suzuki attempted to move Roger Bernadina up from first to second on a sac bunt. He got much more than he expected thanks to some embarrassingly sloppy fielding from the Astros.
I guess it’s hard to write “a guy bunted and the Astros jammed their fingers into each others’ asses until they lost the game” and feel okay about it. Seriously, I’ve sat here for 10 minutes trying to think of a time when I’ve seen a worse play in baseball, professional or Pony League T-Ball or otherwise, and I can’t do it. Even that picture is confusing. In one tiny little square you get every explanation for the Astros being the worst team in baseball, and for their 4-31 streak heading into this Futility Armageddon moment.
This is the kind of thing people put into movies about bad baseball teams in the opening montage so you’ll feel happy for them when they stop squatting and farting on the field. Get it together, Astros.
UPDATE: Here’s the Benny Hill version, by request.
Earlier today, Uncle Vinnie over at FilmDrunk introduced us to a vintage film that is near and dear to my heart, Miami Connection, which is about an 80s rock band that moonlights as ninjas in order to clean up the streets of Orlando and its terrible cocaine trade. And yes, I’m so amazingly pissed that I didn’t write that film.
Well, intrepid commenter Ace Rimmer doubled down on the amazeballs with a music video entitled, “The Karate Rap.” Apparently this holy-sh*ttingly incredible video has already made the rounds for the past few months, but I hadn’t seen it until today, and you get the point – it’s awesome.
Created by David Seeger and his wife, Holly Whitsock Seeger, “The Karate Rap” is a reminder that the Mayan calendar should have ended in 1987.
What you’re watching is either a volleyball match between Chinese Women Volleyball TianJin and Army or one of those Powerade commercials where they CGI the ball to make it look like Michael Vick is throwing a football out of a stadium.
This video comes to us from Reddit by way of With Leather editor emeritus Matt Ufford, who labeled his e-mail to me “holy sh*t!” and suggested moving your cursor away from the video playbar so you don’t know when the play is going to end. It’s awesome, and a great contrast to my personal volleyball memories, which are me in gym class standing still while the ball drops in front of me and then suddenly figuring out I was supposed to hit it.
Burnsy’s reaction was almost as good as the video itself:
Was that the dad from Hangover 2 not caring for their ability to win immediately?
If you’re a fan of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, now’s the time to start flapping your arms.
The Angels signed reliever LaTroy Hawkins on a one-year, $3-million deal on Wednesday night, then looked at each other, shrugged and said “ah f**k it, let’s sign everybody”. They suddenly emerged as the frontrunner in deals for C.J. Wilson and Albert freaking Pujols, and according to the report directly to the right of this paragraph and everyone freaking out across the sports world, it looks like the AL West squad landed the biggest and best free agent of the off-season, and possibly ever.
From the L.A. Times:
One day after appearing to have no interest in Pujols, the Angels are believed to have offered the three-time National League most valuable player a 10-year deal for at least $210 million.
It appeared Pujols would be heading back to St. Louis after the Miami Marlins pulled their 10-year, $220-million offer to the slugger earlier Wednesday. The Cardinals have offered Pujols nine years and more than $200 million.
So Pujols gets the ten years he was looking for, the Angels are instantly playoff contenders again and Mel Clark can pitch tired as much as he wants.
Somebody get the Indians to bring in a bunch of guys from obscurity and jail so we can live out our movie in real life, please.
