Mathematical!

This week, Sports On TV covers the greatest sports moments of the best cartoon on television, Cartoon Network’s ‘Adventure Time.’ If you aren’t familiar with the show, it follows the various quests and activities of a human boy and his dog as they live and fight monsters in the Land of Ooo, a post-apocalyptic Earth full of candy people, inter-dimensional vampire demons, anus-obsessed ghosts and every D&D joke imaginable. It’s a show you either love from the moment you give it a shot, or spend the rest of your life side-eying. Hopefully you’re in the first group.

Be sure to check out the moments and the other Sports On TV columns after the jump, and don’t miss the Peppermint Butler commenting badge we’re giving you for sharing our list around and dropping a comment. Do that, and you’re tops blooby.

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Please forgive my inability to identify baseball video games, since the only games that I play are old school Final Fantasy re-releases for the iPad because I’m a ballllllller. Nevertheless, this bro was getting a quick nine innings in recently as his dog looked on, and I assume that the video game umpire made a call that he didn’t like or the dog couldn’t believe that his owner didn’t swing at that meatball pitch.

Either way, TIMBERRRRRRRRRRRRRR! But a huge tip of the cap to the gentleman for his reflexes, because I love my dog more than anything, but a broken TV? That’s at least a one-week belly rub ban, featuring no cookie bones until a Day 5 parole hearing.

However, and this is a rare case of me considering animal-on-TV violence, if my dog chose to freak out and attack the TV over a real-life bad call, I could probably make exceptions. For instance, if I were a Tampa Bay Rays fan and had been watching this call live…

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photo credit: THQ.com

Unlike the Kitana-costume-donning AJ Lee, whose 10 most beloved video games were featured on Monday, Kofi Kingston hasn’t made any big shout-outs to gaming culture on WWE programming. But much like Lee, Kingston is dedicated to the medium and was totally down to write and rank his favorite games before doing a countdown interview a while back. “The top 10 list is a big deal, so you didn’t have to ask me twice,” says the resident king of resourceful Royal Rumble spots.

Kingston’s life with video games began with the 1987 Commodore 64 title Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior. As a console player, he’s run the gamut. At first, his loyalty was strictly with Nintendo (he despised Sega), but his allegiance began to wobble when the SNES version of Mortal Kombat hit and substituted blood for sweat. Later, he was a fan of the original PlayStation. When he and Zack Ryder were going through developmental together, Ryder’s mom got her son an Xbox 360. Since Ryder wasn’t really into video games, Kingston bought the barely used 360 for a song and soon became an Xbox guy. Currently, he owns all three major consoles plus, as an episode of WWE’s YouTube series Superstar Toyz indicated, a 125-games-in-one arcade cabinet. “I guess that’d be pretty hardcore if you had to put a tag on it,” he says.

As of this writing, Kingston has disappointingly been given nothing to do for WrestleMania 29 on Sunday. If he doesn’t get a last-minute slot, this will mark the first WrestleMania without a Kofi match on the card since he debuted in WWE in 2008. Seeing as how he could especially use some love right now, let’s hand off the reins to everyone’s favorite ex-Jamaican to hear his ballot.

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photo credit: WWE.com

For anyone who has harbored skepticism about the earnestness of AJ Lee’s love for video games (a medium that the Diva has repeatedly raved about), the October 31, 2011 edition of Monday Night Raw busted the hell out of that myth. During a Halloween-themed Divas battle royal, Lee hit the ring as the spitting image of Kitana from Mortal Kombat. Witnessing someone dressed up as the Princess of Edenia of all characters on WWE programming was surreal in itself, but the true coup de grâce to the skeptics was when Lee broke out a Fan Lift at the beginning of the match. Disappointingly, “Kitana wins” would not be uttered that night (Eve, who went as Robin, won), but it still was the most loving shout-out to the gaming faithful on Raw since John Cena did that Punch-Out!!-themed promo in 2010.

The New Jersey native born April Jeanette Mendez originally got into gaming as a child via her brother. The first game she played was either Super Mario Bros. or Excitebike, but as she seriously fell for the hobby later on, she became loyal to the PlayStation. “I was so obsessed with it. Now, I have an Xbox and I love that, so I can’t pick one or the other. They’re both really, really cool,” she says. “Growing up, I was like, ‘Ah, screw Xbox,’ which is terrible because I’m obsessed with it now.”

As of now, Lee’s plans for WrestleMania 29 on Sunday, April 7 involve scheming alongside Dolph Ziggler and newly crowned Twitter demigod Big E Langston when they face against Team Hell No for the tag titles, but hey, a Divas Championship match could always fall out of the sky. Way before the big show, we had a chance to speak with the ex-General Manager of Raw about her 10 most beloved vidja games. Not only was Lee up for the challenge, but she compiled the whole list before the call and put them in order. That’s dedication. (Also, check this space again shortly for another similarly gaming-informed WWE talent dropping knowledge about his favorites.)

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Don’t like reading horrible stories about former sports celebrities molesting children? HERE, HAVE TWO.

The first is Elizabeth Leigh Garner, a 42-year old former Tennessee Titans cheerleader, who is in trouble for getting drunk at a party, following a 12-year old boy (yes, a 12-year old boy) into a bathroom and trying to go down on him against his will. This is a thing that happened in real life.

“He stated she was asking him if he had ever been with a woman,” Roberts reported, adding the boy disclosed she then touched him inappropriately on the outside of his pants. “He also said she was making an attempt to take his shorts off …” and told the boy she would perform oral sex on him.

The boy told Roberts he became frightened and was able to get out of the bathroom and tell his mother. (via Black Mountain News)

That last sentence is such a ghastly reminder of how young a 12-year old really is. Her excuse is equally embarrassing, and the type of thing you can’t really make up.

“Ms. Garner, who was advised of her miranda rights, stated that she was drunk that evening,” Roberts reported, “and that she got the boy confused with a man who also at the residence.”

To her credit, it’s probably totally easy to mix up a grown man with a 12-year old who is sobbing and running off to tell his mother. Here’s a video clip of the story, courtesy of NewsChannel5.com:

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If I’m making a list of things I love and have to constantly defend, “baseball” and “Final Fantasy games” are at the top of the list. I’m a diehard Cleveland Indians fan who has had to justify every crummy “rebuilding” season of fire-sale trades, and I’ve had the “NO, FINAL FANTASY IV IS THE BEST ONE” video game hipster conversation more times than I’d like to admit. I mean, VI is better than IV, but I rep IV.

What I’m saying is that this preview of the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays season in J-RPG form is relevant to my interests.

I swear to God I played this game as a child. I think it was included on some Nintendo 90 games on one cartridge collection.

At the time it didn’t make sense, but now it’s crystal clear.

There’s a lot of gold to be found in the clip (Reyes being weak against artificial turf is especially choice), and while it might not live up to the epic Final Fantasy joke execution of lasagna using Merton in that one episode of Lasagna Cat, it’s what I like to see in my MLB parody videos. Spoiler alert: if you sleep at an inn with Colby Rasmus in your party, you can see one of four dreams about finishing in third place.

[h/t to Sportress]