Last year, a raffle to support a small-town Illinois little league team raised only $10. This year, the people involved in that raffle have upped the ante by offering cookies and lemonade, and holding a yard sale. Wait, no, I’m sorry, they’re auctioning off an AR-15 assault rifle and a 30-round magazine.

This is a raffle you’ll want to win, because Atwood, Ill., is overrun by a bunch of drug-smuggling pirates, and sure, your stealth melee attacks are important for sneaking into outposts and turning off alarms, but eventually you’re gonna want to stand on a tiger cage and blow everybody away. That’s what little league baseball is all about. Little league baseball or FarCry 3, I keep getting those two confused.

“We could have went with a basic shotgun or something simple,” said league commissioner Steven McClain. “But obviously it’s not going to draw the attention, not going to draw the volume we’re hoping to make.”

…

Helping the struggling baseball program seemed like a no-brainer. The [Atwood] armory sponsors a team and knows the need for money was great.

“All that money collectively goes towards paying for shirts, hats, gloves, field maintenance, umpires.” (via Illinois Homepage)

They’ll find even more money if they search all the treasure chests in the area.

My favorite part of the story is that the woman who runs the place where they use weapons to raise money for causes is named CHARIDY BUTCHER:

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After a brief hiatus, the Sports On TV column returns with one of the most requested shows ever: Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 16-season strong cultural landmark, ‘South Park’.

‘South Park’ has been around since 1997, and has changed along with the times. When it started, Parker and Stone were getting $1,200 to make video Christmas cards for Fox executives. In 2012, they are influential, Tony Award-winning, multi-millionaire media moguls. One thing hasn’t changed: in season one, Kenny was getting ripped apart by football players. In season 16, Tom Brady is guzzling a Gatorade bottle of a child’s semen. Sports are one of the weirdest, stupidest, most ritualistic and overly-glorififed things human beings can do, and ‘South Park’ has been in tune with that since the very beginning.

So, in the Interest of easing us back into regular Thursday columns, here are my choices for the 20 greatest South Park sports moments. Like a lot of the shows we do, there are a ton of moments we had to leave out, so a part 2 will probably happen. If we left out your favorite moment, or you have something to say about a moment we chose, be sure to drop down into our comments section and let us know.

As an added bonus, participating in the discussion and sharing the column on Twitter or Facebook (courtesy of one of those handy buttons at the bottom of the post) will net you the BAT DAD BADGE. You don’t want the Bat Dad Badge? I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA.

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Previous ‘Sports On TV’ columns (for ‘Saved By The Bell’ and ‘Full House’) have been fun to write but a pain to suffer through for research, because seriously, have you tried watching an 8th season episode of ‘Full House’ in 2012? Those columns sorta celebrate the badness of sports on TV, and how they get shoehorned in when people run out of love triangles and job jokes don’t have anything to write about.

So it’s with great pride that I present the third ‘Sports On TV’ effort, celebrating the 25 best sports moments from one of the best and most under-appreciated animated comedies ever made, FOX’s ‘King Of The Hill’. If you haven’t seen it before or just flip past it when you’re looking for ‘Squidbillies’ episodes on Adult Swim, the show’s entire 13-season run is available on Netflix streaming and is one of the best ways to spend 130-ish hours. What made the sports on ‘King Of The Hill’ great is that they aren’t accessories to the action … they’re focal points, important or not, just like in real life.

I’m lucky to have some great guest columnists this week, so I hope you enjoy the list. And yeah, there are at least 40 other moments we could’ve included here, so consider this part 1 of an eventual 50 Greatest Sports Moments Of ‘King Of The Hill’. We’ll loop back around when I realize Golden Girls didn’t have 20 sports moments on it.

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One of the Internet’s greatest time-wasters, aside from YouTube black holes and Reddit threads, is the Sports Illustrated photo vault. Forget, for a brief second, that you can browse almost every Swimsuit Issue photo ever taken, because while that’s certainly something that I can appreciate, it takes away from the awesomeness of the other images, like Drew Brees presumably telling Peter King that his face isn’t made of chocolate or Barry Sanders hanging out with Josef the lion.

The other day, SI.com released a new gallery of famous athletes and sports personalities in their little league baseball days, and it might be my favorite thing yet. Between Eric Chavez and his baseball jeans and Doug Flutie’s awesome participation trophy, this gallery is spectacular. But my absolute favorite is that image of New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick above, because it is the most Little Rascals thing I’ve seen since The Little Rascals.

As a recommendation, I think the SI Vault should also include a collection of sports bloggers’ tee ball and little league photos. They can start with mine after the jump…

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“Wow!” you’re thinking. “What a crazy clip of adults brawling at a Little League game. I should find out more. I’m sure they had a great reason to fight and weren’t just rolling around on the ground being arrested in front of children because they’re crazy assholes.”

From The Ledger-Enquirer

In a report on the dispute, police said Davidson was was playing loud music near the right field fence after Northern won the game. That’s when a woman identified as Rose King and Iram King came over and she demanded that Davidson turn down the music. Chadwick said some teams bring their music to play between innings, before the game or after the game.

Police said Davidson turned down the music, but words were exchanged about the players. Iram King started to walk toward Davidson when he said, “What do you want,” or “Why are you walking over here.”

A witness said Iram King told Davidson,”I’m here to f… you up.”

Davidson’s reply was, “Well, here I am,” before police said the men tussled.

and then Bat-Dad showed up, and

I think the most disturbing thing about this video, other than the fact that this could be my family reunion, is the weird camera work. Was this taped with that Matrix camera that spins around you? Were those crane shots? Did our shot go through the fence, and why is Orson Welles storyboarding our Little League Dad fights?

Anyway, the moral of the story as always is this: don’t be these guys.

[via Cosby Sweaters]

Watching Huntington Beach, California, little league pitcher Braydon Salzman get cranked in the face by a *PINK* sound effect and a line-drive is not funny. There’s no way you could expect him to react in time. Even a line-drive leaving the bat of a 40-pound little leaguer could severely injure or even kill you. If you watch the video, it starts off scary — you don’t know if the kid is going to come up with both of his eyeballs. He can’t make the play at first, but he eventually stands up under his own power and gets an ovation. That clears the way for something very special to happen: super slow motion replay.

Super slow motion replay can make almost anything funny (and beautiful, come to think of it), and you can’t help but laugh watching the ball crush this kid’s flat-ass brim and knock him to the ground. The announcers point out that he’s hurt and scared, but “more upset that it might’ve ruined the brim of his cap … he likes it so straight!” Something about the analytical tone of the call makes me laugh out loud.

As if this wasn’t funny enough, the next pitch the kid throws bounces in the dirt and ricochets into the umpire’s balls.

[h/t Failblog]