I used to collect baseball cards when I was a kid because, well, every dude does at some point. I am a HUGE baseball fan and some of my fondest memories were opening up a pack of 89′ Donruss and seeing a cool new Rated Rookie, and a Will Clark or Mark McGuire. I studied the stats like a nerd, and compared collections with my friends. I started keeping track of a lot of player’s careers, and learned a ton about the game.

I stopped collecting over time because I grew pubes and started being more interested in trying to get girls to let me touch their boobs and actually playing baseball then looking at a bunch of pictures of adult males on cards. But today I was in a candy store and saw a pack of Topps, and decided I was going to re-live a bit of my youth, so I bought it.

First of all it was 2 fucking dollars! Bull shit! I don’t want to sound old or anything (but I’m old as fuck) but when I bought cards they were 75 cents. But whatever, it’s been a while. But then I opened up the pack and there was a grand total of SEVEN cards inside. SEVEN! RIP OFF!!!

So I paid about 28 cents per card and got a couple of mildly decent ones, but in general I feel ripped off. When I have a kid I ain’t shelling out 2 bucks a pack for that shit. I’m telling his ass to get on the tube and watch Baseball Tonight on ESPN and learn from Peter Gammons’ old ass.

I did get a piece of bubble gum that was surprisingly fresh though, which I’m chewing now, so it wasn’t a total loss I guess.

Los Angeles Dodger outfielder Matt Kemp and Colorado Rockie catcher Yorvit Torrealba were both suspended Thursday due to a brawl earlier in the week. The scrap was initiated by Kemp, who shoved Torrealba after bumping into him running out of the box. Torrealba, however, did not back down to the 6-2, 230 pound Kemp, and wound up dropping him in a rather adept takedown. Kemp received four games to Torrealba’s three.

Fired.

22-year-old Wisconsin grocery clerk Jake Brahm will spend six months in federal prison for starting a terrorist hoax. Brahm began and circulated the Internet rumor that seven NFL stadiums would be hit with “dirty” bombs on October 22, 2006, and claimed that Osama Bin Laden would hail the bombings as the “American Hiroshima.” The rumors resulted in heightened security for each stadium, which Brahm will be paying to the tune of $26 grand on top of his six months in the clink.

Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz, who in addition to being one third of the 3 sure-fire Hall of Fame inductees to come up with the team during the 80’s (Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux being the other two) also rocks one the longest running beards in all of sports, and he may be done pitching forever as of today.

The 21 year vet who has spent his entire career with the same team said his shoulder has been troubling him all year and he just can’t take it anymore. He is going to have immediate surgery by Dr. James Andrews, who has operated on pretty much every pitcher at one point in their career. After watching the news conference footage on ESPN I got the feeling that he thinks he isn’t going to pitch anymore, and that he would be happy just to be able to lift his arm above his head.

I’m not a Braves fan or anything, but they have been doing it about as right as a team can do it for the past 20 years or so. They have held on to all of their stars for a as long as they could without ever crippling the franchise by over paying to keep them, they made the playoffs for over a decade straight, and in the age where managers get fired like Taco Bell employees, they have held on to Bobby Cox since I didn’t even know how babies were made, so I root for him to pull of a miracle.
I doubt Smoltz can come back from major shoulder surgery at 41 years old. But the dude has more scars on his pitching arm than a cutter goth chick and he’s been able to come back from all of his previous surgeries successfully, so who knows?
I don’t know why he would want to come back though. The guy is so rich he has to move money out of the way just to take a shit. But even the greatest athletes have a tough time knowing when to hang it up. *cough! Michael Jordan! *cough!

And somewhere down south, a car pulverized a group of cyclists who were competing in a 34 km race near the Mexican and Texas border. The driver is American, 28-year-old Jesse Campos who fell asleep at the wheel, collided into the bikers, killing one, injuring 10 others. Oh, did I mention he had been drinking too? Sucky, but epic photograph snapped by a news agency photog: