Jeff King Hated Baseball:

In honor of Opening Day, this is one of the wilder stories I've read about.a player. And it happened with my Kansas City Royals:

Arthur Rhodes was left handed, and was mainly below average during his career. He played in Major League Baseball for 20 years, making a total of $37.9 million in the process.

In 2011, Arthur Rhodes was paid $3.9 million. According to Fangraphs, his performance meant that he should have earned -$5.8 million.

Mothers, teach your kids how to be left handed relief pitchers.

In 2005, Bobby Abreu had an uncharacteristic performance in March and April. He only hit .260/.371/.341. The numbers weren't bad, but not up to Abreu's usual standard.

Then, on May 9, his fiancee, Alicia Machado was filmed having sex with a castmate on the Chilean realty show, La Granja. Abreu immediately broke it off with Machado when the video came out.

I love Jon Bois' writing:

Back in 1993, I got this card in a pack. It was worth $75 when I got it. I thought for sure this card would be my retirement fund. I should have sold the card the moment I got it.

As the years went on, Eddie's taciturn face was a rebuke for my idiocy. I eventually gave the card to a family friend who'd started collecting.

Today, it's worth around $18. Ah, the folly of youth.

I love Weird Celtics Twitter!

A few fun articles about it:

Where did Robert Williams’s nickname come from?:

The short answer is that Time Lord is an ironic reference to a few slip-ups Williams made shortly after getting drafted by the Celtics, oversleeping a introductory conference call with reporters and subsequently missing a flight to Boston, as well as the team’s first practice.

NBA tough guys have a storied and colorful history.

Here's a general list of a few of the league's most fearsome players.

But for my money, the following players are the most interesting:

Jerry Stackhouse

• Sheed and Stack in the Big Apple

Swag is on a million for both of these slides!

Baez did it better. pic.twitter.com/Zhe3CWXnCK

— Conor (@soccer10k84) August 11, 2021

Someone actually thought this was a great idea. 

I think this is the best sports nickname ever:

This is an experiment to see which prediction source accumulates the most points using a standard scoring system.
* The highest possible score is 1,920 points. Each of the 6 rounds has a max possible score of 320 points.

There are three groups of test subjects:
Predictions generated by automated algorithms, predictions generated by experts, and predictions generated by guessing.

I love stories like this about simple kindness:

If I was Oladipo, my sole mission in life after would have been to destroy everything this child held dear. Such insolence cannot be tolerated:

Oladipo got got (via ej_windham/Instagram) pic.twitter.com/SYFO2qly8G

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 26, 2017

When I was in my freshman year at KU, I was playing basketball at the Robinson Center one afternoon. We had the run of the court because of my teammates' scoring prowess and my extremely dirty play and ability to pull down rebounds in traffic.

I love this quote from Grant Brisbee's article about this team:

They took the momentum into the 2015 season, and they're a fully functional death machine right now.

8:11 PM: How interesting that we must now vanquish a former Royals prospect in Affeldt to put some runs up on the board.

8:13 PM: Bumgarner coming in to the game. It's like if Scrooge had to kill the ghost of Christmas Past.

8:19 PM: Yost and Bochy both look like they're trying to concentrate on what their wives are saying.

8:20 PM: After his last run, Butler should be upgraded to Healthy Breakfast or Balanced Breakfast.

8:23 PM: That was a shameful run. Butler is hereby downgraded to Vegan Breakfast.

Physical, emotional meltdown haunts Hunter Strickland, costs Giants:

Machi, whose locker was to the left of Strickland’s, wanted no part of it at all. A clubhouse attendant cut through the throng to grab Machi’s pink jeans and plaid shirt for him.

That combo would be a sight to see. I've searched far and wide for a picture of this outfit, but no dice.

Sports related pettiness is my favorite. Here's Jeremy Guthrie taking a shot at his old team:

The Shame of College Sports:

This article is what opened my eyes to the predatory practices of the NCAA.

Baron Davis's reaction to this dunk always gets me amped up.

Cuban players have long been a mainstay in baseball. After Fidel Castro made it impossible for people to leave the island, the flow of players stopped to a drip. That changed with the defection of Rene Arocha in 1991.

Darko is a Serbian gangster!

"I'm telling you, Darko is a Serbian gangster," Rasheed Wallace said. "Darko's got some bodies back there (in Serbia-Montenegro). He can go psycho on guys."