Larry Brown Sports

We’ve shown several examples of crazy fans over the years here at LBS, and this certainly is up there with any of them. Fan Jeff Holko wanted to win a contest for playoff tickets so badly that he got his lower lip tattooed with the Detroit Tigers logo.

As The Last Angry Fan informs us, Holko is trying to win a contest run by Justin Verlander. The Tigers pitcher sent out a few tweets detailing his rules for the contest. “I’ll be giving away two playoff tickets to one of the ALDS home games,” he wrote. “Let me know why you should get the tickets and I’ll pick the winner. Get creative.”

Well, Holko certaily got creative, didn’t he? You really can’t beat someone getting an inner lip tattoo. The dude says he had to taste blood and ink for a week — that has to be worth something. Definitely the winner in my book, although I’m not sure which is worse: what Holko did, or what this fan did for playoff tickets. They’re both pretty bad.

Thanks to Sports Feeder 1 for the nice find

One 11-year-old boy is so good at football that his local league had to invoke a rule that bans him from scoring touchdowns. No joke. Demias Jimerson is a sixth grader from Arkansas and he plays in the Wilson Intermediate Football League. The league has a ruled dubbed the Madres Hill Rule, which is named after the former Arkansas Razorback star running back. The rule stipulates that a player cannot score any more touchdowns if his team is already up by 14 points and he’s already scored three TDs.

Want to see what this 11-year-old star looks like? Take a peak at this video, courtesy of FOX 16 in Arkansas:

The kid is a straight up burner, is he not? Pretty easy to see why they had to put a limit on his greatness — he was literally running circles around the other players.

Helmet knock to Guyism

Doc Brown took a beating in his picks last week against the spread. But for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So you know what that means? It’s time to recover and get that record straight.

Once again, the lines are very well placed by the folks in Vegas. There are a few lines that seem to stand out. For instance, both Doc and Del are loving the Giants on the road only giving one point. The only games we truly differ on are the Rams-Redskins contest, and Dolphins-Chargers. Del was unimpressed by San Diego last weekend and thinks the Dolphins will be desperate for a win. Doc was unimpressed by the Chargers as well, but thinks they’re a better team than what they’ve shown, and that Philip Rivers will have an improved week.

On with the picks before we get into more analysis.

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Rays catcher Kelly Shoppach burned the Rangers for two home runs in Game 1 of the ALDS Friday. Seeing him hit the dinger was worth it just to watch the fan in center field throw it back with ferocity:

Over and over and over again. Oh, so worth it. Easily the best home run ball thrown back in the history of home run balls thrown back. By the way, who had Kelly Shoppach as the game one hero for the Rays? Dude went 3-for-3 with three runs scored and five RBIs in his first three plate appearances.

Forearm bash to the brilliant Tim Burke at Mock Session for the GIF

I hadn’t seen that ESPN commercial until my buddy Sam at Play Action Picks shared it with me, but it’s definitely a good one. There’s nothing quite as awkwardly amusing as furry love. What would be sick is seeing Bucky Badger fight a death match with the Oregon Duck for the right to Wilma’s heart. Make it happen, ESPN.

The NBA owners have locked out the players and the sides are working on negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. There is currently a soft salary cap and a maximum placed on the amount of money players can earn. Kobe Bryant is the top earner in the NBA in terms of annual salary, making just over $25 million per season. Few people would argue that he’s not worth more to the Lakers organization. According to a report, team owner Jerry Buss agrees.

In a column on NBA player salaries not matching the value of true stars, Adrian Wojnarowski drops in the following nugget.

“Privately, Jerry Buss has told people that Bryant – who will make a league-high $25 million this season under his current contract terms – is worth perhaps $70 million a year to the Los Angeles Lakers.”

Players like Kobe capitalize on endorsement deals so it’s not as if they’re not making major money. Still, few people would say the game’s superstars are not worth more than they make from their teams. On the other hand, most of the bench players and mid-level guys are worth far less than what they make.

The information above may serve as an argument to remove the salary cap and make the NBA a free market system. I disagree. The most competitive leagues have hard salary caps because that puts teams on equal footing. Look at the NFL and NHL — teams have hope that they can succeed from year-to-year whereas MLB and NBA teams pretty much already know where they stand before seasons begin. Now if you want to remove maximum contracts, that is reasonable. However, it would likely come at the cost of the NBA’s mid-level players, for whom owners might have less money.

Thank you, I am a GM

Above is Boston Bruins fan Anthony Sorrentino. He told NESN.com that he shaved the Bruins logo into his back hair in an effort to score tickets to the team’s home opener. I don’t know what wooly sweater decorations have to do with tickets, but I’m not asking questions. If it doesn’t work out for him, the Lynn, Ma. native should make arrangements to watch the game with LBS staff writer Del, who resides in the same town. At any rate, I’ll take my Bruins playoff beard over the back hair logo any day. Gross bro, gross.

Now that the Red Sox have completed their historic September collapse, the media and fans have the rest of the year to dissect what went wrong with the team. It’s widely expected that manager Terry Francona will not be back, and many other changes to the team could be made. One of the arguments for getting rid of Francona is that he lost proper control of the clubhouse.

A report published in The Boston Herald Friday says some Red Sox pitchers drank beer during games on the days they didn’t pitch. The professionalism of those players has been called into question.

Francona also reportedly had to call a team meeting after a 14-0 win to address negativity and a lack of cohesion. His comments at a press conference Thursday indicate that team chemistry was an issue. But despite all that, the Red Sox were having a successful season and appeared poised for a postseason appearance until their collapse.

Many of these items would never have been referenced had the Red Sox not blown their wild card lead.

Now that they have, the question must be asked: Is drinking beer in the clubhouse during a game an issue?

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The Atlanta Braves blew an 8.5 game playoff lead in September, but you could consider them lucky. Thanks to the Red Sox’s historic collapse, the failures of the Braves have been somewhat overlooked. Not anymore.

Allow us to enjoy this moment of schadenfreude shared by SI Hot Clicks:

I tend to mix up my idioms from time to time, but I believe there is some sort saying about horses and carts. Maybe some of the Braves players could provide some assistance for me. Not like they have anything better to do.

Peyton Manning had been a bastion of good health throughout his NFL career until succumbing to a neck injury recently. In early September, the All-Pro quarterback had a third procedure on his neck, ending his streak of 227 consecutive starts. His former coach, Tony Dungy, doesn’t believe the quarterback will exit the game on this note. However, Dungy could envision Peyton walking away from the game after one more year.

“I don’t think it would be hard to walk away from the game where he is now, with everything that he’s done. He loves it, he’s very competitive,” Dungy said during a guest appearance on PTI Thursday. “I don’t think he’ll walk away like this unless the doctors tell him that he can’t play. I think he wants to come back and have a great year. I could see him walking away after one more year, but I know him as a competitor, and there’s no way he wants to leave because of an injury.”

Dungy coached Peyton for seven years, so we trust his insight on the subject. However, he conceded that he no longer has insider info on his former quarterback.

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