For those of you New Yorkers not going to the Steinberg-Magary-Bissinger toolfest tonight, I’d like to recommend a much nobler cause than getting drunk and hoping for angry outbursts from Pulitzer winners: the Doodle for Hunger charity auction benefiting Capuchin Food Pantries.

As you can see from the above selection of works by famous athletes, this may be your only chance to own a shitty drawing of a stick figure playing football.  Unless you know a five-year-old.  And, although it wasn’t unveiled at Capuchin’s website, there will also be a masterpiece from Eli Manning (see final item).

For next year’s show, I’d like to nominate Brady Quinn and Michael Strahan.  Just because there’s something really enjoyable about seeing pro athletes being absolutely terrible at something.  Well, terrible at something besides wearing condoms.

Baseball's All-Star Game will be played in New York City this year, which will be a nice little swan song for Yankee Stadium since the Yanks are going to miss the playoffs this year (oh please oh please oh please).  And to raise the profile of the game around the city, MLB will be placing 42 replica Statues of Liberty around the city, all of them eight-and-a-half feet tall and swaddled in the tacky colors of MLB teams.  From the insufferably long MLB.com article:

[The statues] will start showing up on Friday at popular locations around the Big Apple, including Times Square, Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Stock Exchange and, yes, the Statue of Liberty. 

Each one will be uniquely designed with bold graphics and colors featuring each of the 30 Major League Baseball clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, the American League, the National League, four All-Star statues and statues commemorating the final season of Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium, an additional version for the host Yankees, and one to be determined to be painted by the artist as a surprise.

Oh great.  Because NYC tourists needed 42 more reasons to stop walking in the middle of a Manhattan sidewalk and take a picture.   This is gonna be fucking annoying.  And yet… Thanks to my suck-proof bonds of fandom, I'll probably still seek out the Mariners statue.  As will the new M's GM, since the team needs an outfielder that moves better than Raul Ibanez.

[Awful Announcing]