Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, has two notable features — a facade that looks like it could start independently spinning and become the Event Horizon at any moment, and an enormous, punt-blocking, mid-field scoreboard that takes up most of the stadium’s free space and threatens to fall and crush us all. Jerry Jones famously refused to move the thing when footballs started striking it. I wonder what he thinks now that soccer players are clipping it?

Enter: FC Barcelona goalkeeper Victor Valdes, incorrectly typo’d on Off The Bench as “Victory Valdez”, making him sound like he’s a character from Cars. During warmups for a match in the Herbalife World Football Challenge, Valdez decided to see if he could boot the ball 90 feet into the air and bang it off the scoreboard. The video above is that effort, and it is impressive. I was wondering what all those soccer jerseys were doing at the Texas Rangers game next door. Kinda wish I’d been around to see this in person.

Maybe the Dallas Stars can play next year’s Winter Classic here and try to ricochet a puck off the screen.

[h/t Off The Bench]

Washington Nationals outfielder Nyjer Morgan should thank his lucky stars that he commit this atrocity of a outfielding play in a road game. Morgan, playing at home against the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday, gave chase to a fly ball that eventually would bounce off his glove and come to rest on the warning track. Morgan, instead of deciding to, you know, look for the ball, decides to throw his glove and pout, while Jones circles the bases like a naked baby running away from a bathtub. Jones would score, and the gentle souls running the official scorebook for this game would give him credit for an inside-the-park home run.

My ass. If this is a four-base hit, then I’m Elton John. Hold me closer, tiny dancerrrr! No, seriously. This has to be at least a two-base error. There’s no way that a guy can get credit for a base while the ball is sitting on the warning track. Judge for yourself and then tell me I’m crazy. It’s after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

This video of the Rangers fan’s scoreboard proposal getting shot down has already made the rounds, and credit has to be given where it’s due; this is a nice spin on the “Let’s Go Down To Floor Level And Make A Big Scene” play. They’re in the middle of the row, both wearing jerseys, and the phrase “Will You Be My Blueshirt Bride?” was corny enough to sound homemade. But yeah, it was a total hoax.

[A] source confirmed Monday the couple was actually actors hired through an agency and designed to be part of the in-game entertainment.

Meaning the Rangers’ game operations personnel were in on the joke, which occurred at 10:19 of the second period of the Rangers’ 5-2 win over the Lightning on Sunday at Madison Square Garden. –NorthJersey.com

Generally speaking, if a woman has all of her teeth, NHL scoreboard proposals are not the way to go. That is to say, don’t ever get married. Unless she owns a controlling stake in Chevron, and even then, be careful. I don’t know why I thought of Chevron. It just sounded like money. Read the rest of this entry »

A former Comerica Park scoreboard operator has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Detroit Tigers because:

Tigers photographers routinely shot inappropriate "soft core videos" of female fans at baseball games, . . . The videos were "freely and openly shown in the scoreboard area to all employees and supervisors on almost a regular basis," and are stored in a room behind the scoreboard, Reanen Maxwell of Beverly Hills says in her Wayne Circuit Court lawsuit, which was filed Feb. 22.

The man, who up until last year was in charge of the scoreboard and selecting and recording crowd shots, Scott Fearncombe, said Wednesday any such reports "were never brought to my attention, and I don't know of any secret stash of videos." Up-skirt shots would have been technically difficult from the dugout-level cameras, he said, "because of the way people are sitting and the angle of the cameras."

You said it, pal. You don't have to tell me about the logistical problems involved in acquiring up-skirt shots. I'm going to have give the Tigers the benefit of the doubt on this because in my dozen or so visits to CoPa, the talent was never such that I wanted to technologically commemorate it. Besides, those Motown chicks get enough attention from police photographers. -KD