I am currently writing about sports from a hotel room in Philadelphia. My girlfriend graduates from Penn State this morning, and I’m in town to mark this very special occasion in her life. The reason I’m mentioning that here is because of the weird thing going on where I leave Texas and important things happen. The last time I left Texas for a few days, the Boston Marathons got bombed and a plant blew up near Waco.

Sometimes, great things happen. For example, I leave Texas for JUST A MOMENT and Norman The Scooter Dog has shown up to throw out the first pitch at a Texas Rangers game and be a dog who rides around on a goddamn scooter all day. Motherf**ker.

Rangers Ballpark in Arlington will be filled with the sounds of cracking bats and barking dogs this evening, as the Texas Rangers hold their annual Bark in the Park event at the stadium.

People can dress their dogs in their best Rangers gear and strut it out on the field during a pre-game parade. The top five best-dressed pooches get a prize. (Registration has already closed for Bark in the Park, so if you haven’t registered, don’t just show up at the ballpark with your dog.)

This year, the event gets a little twist, as Norman, a multi-talented dog who stars in the Hallmark Channel series ‘Who Let the Dogs Out,’ will “throw” the ceremonial first pitch. (via Whatever)

If you aren’t as familiar with Norman as I am, yes, you read that correctly: Norman is a dog who rides scooters and shit, but he is also the star of a Hallmark Channel show named after the Baha Men. Who has the HALLMARK CHANNEL, anyway? That network should just be stillframes of greeting cards and puppet shows with Hummel figurines.

Deadspin has a clip of Norman scootering around the park, which is enough to make me angry at my absence, but I can’t wait to see him throw out the first pitch. I’ll update with video of that as soon as its available.

Until then, please enjoy this Friday-friendly assortment of Norman videos. You’re welcome.

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I guess you could type the phrase “Pirates catcher helpless in the face of” a lot of things — sliding players, incoming fastballs, fate — but this one is a doozy: Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Chris Snyder’s wife was driving their car and (allegedly) almost hit a pedestrian on a scooter. The guy followed the car to a gas station and tried to attack her. Snyder recently had back surgery, so couldn’t do anything to help. The WTAE Pittsburgh headline makes it sound way worse: “Pirates’ Catcher Forced To Watch As Wife Attacked At Gas Station”, like this guy was the head of a terrorist organization on 24 and had handcuffed him to a pipe or something.

Passerby Joe Changle was the first person to stop and help, and the story he tells is a grand one.

“He swung at me a couple of times. I told him, ‘Don’t do it again, or I’m going to put you down.’ And he came over again. I just tripped him up, put him on the ground and held him down.”

While Changle tried to subdue the suspect, police said Modhwadia bit him in the arm.

An off-duty Pittsburgh police officer happened to be driving by and stepped in to help and that’s when, police said, [attacker Subhash] Modhwadia began throwing punches with a key between his fingers.

The criminal complaint says Modhwadia then took off his shoe and threw it at the officer.

The image of a pissed off 44-year old Indian guy on a scooter throwing fake Wolverine punches is just the appetizer, as the following paragraph should be inked onto something and stored in the Hall of Records.

“He took off his shoe and threw it. Another guy came over and said he was an off-duty cop. He picked him up threw him in the weeds. The (suspect) came back up again. Then the police came and he took his shoe off and threw it at the cop and hit the cop with his shoe,” said witness Chuck Crooks.

Sure, but what happened with the shoe?

So let me recap this for you: a professional athlete who has recently had back surgery is well enough to ride around in a car and get out of the car when someone tries to attack his wife and family, but he’s not well enough to step in and handle a guy whose most dangerous weapon is a shoe, and who could be easily tripped by a passerby and tossed into the bushes by another. Also, how awesome is it that a criminal being thrown is witnessed by a guy named “Chuck Crooks”?

I don’t remember reading the Yahoo fantasy update about Chris Snyder being paralyzed (and I can’t imagine any amount of soreness would keep me from defending my wife and children), but hey, at least for once him standing around doing nothing didn’t lose the game.

In case you needed more reasons to hate Tim Tebow, here he is on last night’s edition of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” being affable and talking about how college athletes deserve to ride around on scooters and eat Bloomin’ Onions. Tebow also talks about being the child of missionaries, sponsoring an orphanage, and his predictions for this year’s Denver Broncos (“pretty good”), so basically the worst thing you can say about him here is that his suit doesn’t really fit. I could make fun of him for writing an autobiography (and calling it “Through My Eyes”) at age 23, but I wrote a semi-autobiographical novel when I was 22, and I’m not exactly a storied football star.

At some point you just want Stewart to call him “Tammy Tebow” a bunch of times and get him to flip out and jump over the desk. Hopefully Tebow can get to 46 and still not have any awful stories to tell. And hopefully those Ohio State guys enjoyed their illegal Surf and Turf.