The Largesse Recommends Strange But True Sports Stories

Look.  I’m not going to pretend that I watch tennis or anything, but of course I ended up streaming the ridiculousness of today’s portion of the Isner-Mahut match online.  And of course now I’m reading about how there are no words and that we’ve never seen anything like this before and never will again…

No shit.  It’s completely unbelievable.  It’s awesome in the most literal sense.  It’s the kind of thing I used to read about in the single most important book from my childhood: The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories.

The Gritty Largesse Recommends South Philly

Had the pleasure of attending Game 3 of the World Series in Philadelphia.  Also had the pleasure of single-handedly altering the outcome of the Series by simply being present with my Jeter shirt on, albeit under several other layers.  Game 3 was rather rainy and cold as you might remember, and it also represented the kickoff of a very intense sporting weekend in Philly (Yanks-Phils on Saturday night, Giants-Eagles Sunday, Yanks-Phils on Sunday night, throw in a Pearl Jam concert and a Flyers game on Saturday and you’ve got yourself quite the 48-hour clusterfuck.)  Given the insanity that was engulfing the entire Sports Complex in South Philly, I decided to get to Game 3 about five hours before the first pitch, find parking, and simply enjoy my surroundings.  I decided to live-blog it.  Below is an account of my time spent roaming the streets of South Philly from 3pm until 8:15pm on Saturday, October 31 – fucking Halloween no less.

The Triple-Option Largesse Recommends Innovative College Football Offenses

Like most Americans, I enjoy watching football on Sundays but nowhere near as much as I do on Saturdays.  What keeps me tuned in on Saturday afternoon?  The tradition? Yes.  The rivalry?  Yes.  The passion?  Yes.  These intangibles absolutely improve the viewing experience, especially in person, but football played on a college field, to me, is much more interesting than that played on a professional one.  College football offers a variety of team philosophies and approaches. From Hawaii’s four WR spread to Georgia Tech’s (formerly Navy’s) Wing –T, any style of football you can imagine is played on Saturday.  On Sundays, with the exception of the wildcat, you will see roughly the same style of game.  Although not generally partial to any logic resembling “different is better”, I think it applies here, augmenting both performance and viewing experience.

The Looping Largesse Recommends Caddying for John Kanzius

A few weeks ago the CBS news program 60 Minutes did a twenty minute segment on a man named John Kanzius.  Mr. Kanzius was an American inventor, a self-described autodidact (look it up), and, in all likelihood, the wealthiest man to ever live in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Mr. Kanzius also took it upon himself to treat his own cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) by building and using radiation machines in his barn, much to the chagrin of his doctors.  This is how we do in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Some call it poverty and a crisis of health care.  I call it ingenuity and man-strength.  This particular version of man-strength is unique to Erie, Pennsylvania.  If you don’t believe me go see for yourself or take a trip along the interweb superhighway to learn more about Mr. Kanzius.  Neither disappoints.

The Fantasty-Inducing Largesse Recommends Keeper Leagues

As our ages inch upwards and our verticals inch downwards, we at The Largesse find the need to compete grows as we get older.  Most of us are now much closer to coaching Little League than we are to having played it, and this time of year is a cruel reminder of what could have been if we had just kept our foot on that bag or taken the bat off our shoulder in that final at-bat and reached the promised land of Williamsport and ESPN.  With our newfound maturity, we seek out new ways to release our competitive energies; from golf to our salaries, everything means everything because we don’t really have more “official” outlets anymore.  We were raised to play sports, most of us (Alistair throws like a girl, but don’t tell anyone), and now that our skills have peaked and deteriorated before anyone else even recognized we possessed them, we are off in search of a way to declare our primacy and belittle those closest to us.  We play, of course, fantasy football.

The Hulkamaniac Largesse Wishes Terry Hogan a Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday, Hulkster.  Leg drops: all around.

He's a real American. He fights for the rights of every man. He's a real American, fight for what's right, fight for your life!

Animal humor after the jump.

The World Champion Largesse Recommends Derek Sanderson Jeter

Where to start?  The four rings?  The sterling reputation?  His friendship with Yogi Berra?  How about the two runs he scored in Tuesday’s All Star Game (his tenth ASG)?  Tell you what, let’s just keep it simple; here’s some “stats.”

The Largesse Goes on a Jazz Odyssey

We’re going to go a bit free-form this weekend.

Let’s all congratulate Plax for a couple of things.  First, his Penguins (somewhat improbably) won the Stanley Cup last night, bringing success to the single most underrated city in the country.  Plax and I once drove to Pittsburgh to see a midget named Man Boy run down a bar and pour shots in people’s mouths.  (True story.)  We went to a Pirates game so we wouldn’t have to tell people we went all that way just to see a midget, but then two things happened: Man Boy was worth the drive and so was the whole city of Pittsburgh.  Cool town.

The Largesse Angrily Denounces ESPN

The Worldwide Leader has experienced a rather precipitous decline.  Once THE authority on all sports news, ESPN has morphed into something laughably predictable, unfunny, and downright insignificant.  When it burst onto the scene in 1979, ESPN was a two-trick pony: Sportcenter and any sports that they could find to air for 24 consecutive hours (especially lesser televised sporting events such as women’s tennis, hockey, and collegiate sports such as boxing or wrestling.)  It took ESPN three years to secure contracts from professional sports leagues.  Think about that for a minute: ESPN existed for three years without any contractual relationships with any professional sports leagues.  Instead, they perfectly honed their Sportscenter-craft, showed exercise programming and operated day-to-day with little information about what sporting events they would be able to air, oftentimes settling for Australian Rules Football and anything that Bob Ley could report on with the utmost integrity.  Bob Ley is dope shit.

The Largesse Unabashedly Denounces: LeBron James

Recently, I had the privilege of watching the Cleveland Cavaliers play the lowly Washington Wizards.   And let’s get the obvious out of the way: LeBron came as advertised.  First, the man is physical perfection.  (Not gay. He raises every metaphoric bar that exists in the world of athletics.  He surpasses every other player on the floor in every major category—height, weight, speed, coordination, ball handling, earning potential, explosiveness, etc.  In fact, the only player who exceeds him in any category is the taller Zydrunas Ilgauskas, a 7’3” Lithuanian who likely grew up miles from a volatile nuclear reactor chewing on pellets of Miracle Grow. People say shit like this about a lot of athletes, but LeBron actually does it.  He is, by all accounts, a total freak of nature.  The most incredible part of his game, though, is that despite LeBron’s size, between the foul lines he compliments his physical attributes with a gear that nobody comes close to.  Incredible.  He is all the Monstars from Space Jam put together, except LeBron is covered in tattoos and does not want to procreate with Babs Bunny (who, coincidentally, is way underrated).