What if Major League Baseball suddenly discovered that every single baseball that had been used since 1923 actually was manufactured in a Central American prison that used the human hides of criminals that had been put to death?

I'm thinking it would take at least 3 years for Bud Selig to talk the baseball "purists" into using a different material. It would take another 2 years to talk pitchers into using something different. The pitchers would say crazy things like, "I can't throw a splitter the same way unless I'm using baseballs made from human hide!"

GO PADRES!!!

I'm sorry, but do I really need to spell this out? Could there possibly be any reason for why I would write this besides "Dex is losing his sense of humor"?

JBox and I are going to set up the autopost thingy for every single Open Thread through to the end of the season. The notes we write won't make any sense in relation to the game because we'll have written them over the course of two days at the end of August, but at least they won't be late anymore. Also, if they somehow do make sense given the context of the game, then it proves that we're clairvoyant.

This is also the Open Thread where Drama's hoping that everybody makes an appearance. I'm down with that.

You bring the torches and I'll bring the gasoline. We're gonna burn the mofo down.

WE DON'T NEED NO WATER! LET THE MOTHERF_CKER BURN!!!

I've always thought that the Forbes Team Valuations were bunk. I understand the financials and how they figure them, but in a real world situation, the values have always come up short of what people were willing to pay.

Now they rank the "Worst Cities to be a Sports Fan" and San Diego comes up as the second worst city to be a sports fan. They base this on median income to cost of attending and then compare that to how well the teams perform.

What blows me away is how terrible we apparently are. Sure, the Padres have sucked this year, but we have made it to the playoffs recently. The Chargers may have disappointed in the postseason, but they basically dominate the regular season.

Well, maybe we can dig deeper. Oh, here's the error. According to Forbes, we've only had ONE playoff appearance. The Chargers have been to the playoffs plenty of times recently, and so have the Padres.

Forbes: "Oh... well our formula only counts last year..."

But we only have two pro teams. Even if you only count one year, that means that we've had HALF our teams in the postseason, which makes it really fun.

Forbes: "Yeah ummm...."

And what's this about us only having a .425 winning percentage? Sure, the Padres are terrible if you're only counting this year, but The Chargers had a .688 winning percentage! (not to mention the previous years, which you've ignored)

Forbes: "Oh... well we just added the wins in football to the wins in baseball..."

But there are only 16 games in a football season. You can't compare a football win directly to a 162 game season. The numbers will get all messed up.

Forbes: "Oh... You can't? I mean..."

The rest of the list is completely ridiculous as well. It sucks being a sports fan in Indianapolis? In Pittsburgh? In New York!?

Wouldn't you have thought that when Forbes had their interns come up with this formula, that they would've checked the results to see if they made sense? When you have those kinds of cities coming up as the worst cities to be a sports fan, and they're actually cities where sports fans thrive, then maybe the numbers need to be reworked before people start to distrust everything else that you write about sports.

Gotta give them credit though. They sure know how to write a linkbait headline. You'd just think that Forbes would have a little more class.

Ktick - MyVideo

Here's the video of the Cuban Taekwondo competitor kicking the official in the face and the build up to it. My favorite part is the announcers.

"This goes completely against the spirit of taekwondo!"

Maybe it goes against Taekwondo's spirit, but I'm pretty sure the rest of Taekwondo is about kicking dudes in the face, which Matos has down pretty good.

[HT MMATKO]

I watched the Closing Ceremonies last night and was struck by how NBC managed to burn me out on the Olympics over the course of less than 17 days. I wasn't a guy who did a lot of watching on NBCOlympics.com (much like 95% percent of America) and I kept scouring the NBC affiliated channels to see what different sports were on. As NBC kept telling us, there was to be so much stuff during the Olympics, that we'd have to be checking CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, Univision, Bravo and USA constantly for sports coverage.

Instead, the reality is that CNBC and NBC were often showing the same thing (48kg boxing over and over and over it seemed). Other channels, rather than showing Olympics coverage of any sort, were showing paid programming. The west coast, rather than receiving coverage live, received live to tape from the east coast. Viewers got a steady diet of the "glamor" sports.

My experience with the Olympics consisted of lots and lots of volleyball (we get it... AVP on NBC... we get it), catching Phelps whenever I could and confusion as to why I only saw half an hour of stuff like archery and fencing while every single boxing match was being displayed. Didn't NBC get word that America isn't into boxing anymore? Swords and bows and arrows is where it's at.

After Phelps got his 8th medal and gymnastics finished up, I know we were supposed to shift right over to the track events, but I got burnt out on the lack of variety and the fact that I knew events were going on, but weren't being televised. I ended up missing lots of the track events partly because they were on too late and partly because there was nothing enticing about them. This Olympics was the Phelps show and NBC marketing floundered when it came to showing off anything but Phelps (and Shawn Johnson). 

The closing ceremonies were excellent as could be predicted by the opening ceremonies, but I had to laugh at how terribly cheesy Jimmy Page looked while standing on the double decker bus and the cast of Rent. The Chinese had to be thinking, Did you guys not see the show that we threw? Did you really think that interperative modern dance and an old man on the guitar would work?

And what was up with the glow in the dark umbrellas? The Chinese threw 800 Tai Chi masters at us. They threw 2008 drummers with glow in the dark drumsticks at us. The worlds largest LCD screen. People flying around the stadium on zip lines. London is apparently going to throw a lot of the ho hum at us. Jimmy Page? David Beckham? That's relevant?

I wonder how many people will buy the DVD that NBC was pushing towards the end. Pushing the commemorative DVD to anything kinda seems cheesy, and this coming from the guy who bought a Blue Man Group CD. I like Bob Costas and Jim Lampley OK, but I dunno how much of that I can take. Maybe I'll Netflix it.

And I never did get to see the Brazilian Synchonized Swimming team in action. That's gotta count for the fail.

Freedom of speech? HA!

Open forum? I don't think so.

Friendly banter? Only if we see it that way too.

In light of a recent, unfortunate occurance, I thought it appropriate to point out to everybody that the Gaslamp Ball comments section is a place for you to chat and discuss and ask and answer questions, but it's not and never will be an open forum. There are going to be many things that we don't advocate and some things, which we do. If you want clarification, you can always email me or jbox and we'd be happy to explain our reasoning, but sometimes there isn't a good explanation. We'll let barbs and jabs go, but there's a limit to everything.

Here's a good timeline of how we might react:

"That comment really made you look fat." (We'd let this go. It's funny in a non-sensical sort of way.)

"No. Seriously. You're fat." (This we're starting to wonder about.)

[In response to an unrelated comment] "That's fine and all, but you're fat" (In context with what happened before, this probably gets deleted)

"I know this has nothing to do with anything, but Gaslamp Baller XXXXX is a fat horse. We're all Padres fans and that fatty XXXXX should learn to develop a thick skin. We're all on the same side, but that fat horse oozes over to both sides " (And there's the Banleted. That's a combination of Ban and Deleted.)

If we call you out on it with a warning, don't whine. You expected somebody else to take it and now you're going to take it with a warning. If you don't like it, we've been told on numerous occassions that there are better Padres blogs and that the UT Forums are a good time, so make your way there.

99.99% of what we see looks fine to us and we love having you guys around, but jbox and I do this in our free time and for fun, so try to understand where we're coming from too. Thanks, yo.

It's an afternoon game? And we're losing already? And the Open Thread is up late?

Feels like home.

GO PADRES!!!

I think my favorite part about Padres baseball is the fact that it's not over... and I mean really over... until sometime in late June.

GO PADRES!!!

It took me like 6 guesses.