Bmwolf21

I've seen things like that happen as well, but never anything that was as blatantly obvious and clearly done on purpose as this.

Yep...

Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. Naturally. It's always the entertainment industry's fault - movies, TV, video games...

That's what it says in my previous post: I guess Christensen was released in 2004 and I think is out of baseball.

Oh, and Molina got an out-of-court settlement. Probably ate up a chunk of Christensen's million-dollar contract. LINK

We were just talking about this a couple weeks ago, during the College World Series Super Regionals. The prospect in question was from Wichita State, and the topic came up on the Florida State message boards. I guess Christensen was released in 2004 and I think is out of baseball. There is a good article linked in the message board thread and there are a couple interesting things - the waiting batter was 24 feet away from home plate while Christensen was warming up, and Christensen and others have confirmed that Wichita State pitchers were taught to brush back anyone timing their warmup pitches. LINK It was April 23, 1999. A lefthanded hitter leading off the game for the University of Evansville (Ind.), Molina walked from the third base dugout around Wichita State's catcher. The catcher took warmup pitches from Ben Christensen, a major league prospect whose 95-mph fastball helped him win 21 of 22 college games. As Christensen threw, Molina stood on the first base side of home plate. He was 24 feet away. We know it was 24 feet because investigators later measured the distance from the plate to the bloodstains. -snip- At that moment, the third baseman/catcher's vision was 20/10. He was a .310 hitter who had played baseball since age 8 and wanted to be a big-leaguer. All that would change in the next moment, for as Molina turned his head back toward home plate, he became the victim of an act so contemptible it's sickening. The Evansville coach, Jim Brownlee: "After Christensen's fifth warmup pitch, his catcher calls for a slider, and Christensen makes a quarter-turn to his left. I'm thinking, `What's he doing?' Anthony had his head down, and I'm seeing Christensen turn toward him, and, damn, he lets it go. Then Anthony's head comes up. The ball gets him square in the face. He never saw it." A sledgehammer against the eye. That's a doctor's description of the damage. A fractured left eye socket. Twenty-three stitches. The first test result of Molina's vision after surgery: 20/400, legally blind.

The pitcher is a junior, according to the AJC, so I'd start with 20 games in the HS season - regular season and playoffs - and roll that over into his senior season. The catcher lost his walk-on status at the college level, so that's good punishment for me. The program is on warning, so any further incidents would result in forfeits and possible bans from playoff contention. The coaching staff should be on probation as well. If I were commissioner? If I had my way I'd ban them from playing in the coming summer as well -- no Legion ball, no summer travel teams, nothing. But I guess a slap on the wrist should suffice, since after all they were doing worse things 100 years ago in the pros.

Wow. That's all I can say. "Not shocking given our pastime." You're saying that we shouldn't be surprised when something that probably last happened in a pro game maybe 80-100 years ago occurs in a high school game today. When exactly was the last time you saw something like this happen? Have you ever seen a catcher purposely miss a pitch to let the umpire get hit? The "it's just a silly game" excuse flies in Little League and rec leagues -- not in a HS game featuring drafted/scouted kids who are throwing 80-90 MPH fastballs. Oh wait, if this was 100 years ago they'd be going off to work, right? Or maybe it's OK because we saw worse in pro sports 110 years ago. Yeah, we wouldn't expect the morals and sportsmanship to evolve and crap like this disappear. Nice strawman, BTW. "Let's scream end of the world." No one is screaming end of the world. But there is no way in hell that catcher should see the field for the next 20 games minimum. You let this douche get away with this here, what is he going to be like in college, or if he makes it onto a minor league team where the pressure is even more intense? What does it tell the younger players on the team when the coach backs it, or the little guys in the stands? Why stop there? Don't like the calls? Follow the ump to his car or scare him with your car. Glad to see one adult -- the head coach at the college where the idiot catcher wanted to walk on -- has his head on straight and isn't buying the bullschitt. Hopefully the pitcher gets whatever is coming to him as well. <_<

Gotta say, I'm a little shocked and disappointed that he went over to the Dark Side and joined ESPN...I have no idea why he left SI, but with the major lack of anything resembling journalism going on there (especially on Page 2) I'm surprised he'd want to be associated with them.

I don't think anyone knows what you are saying, at least not in this thread.

Dude - again, you're comparing paid professionals with spoiled brat high school punks who were mad the ump wasn't calling the game their way. And seriously - I don't know how you are NOT shocked at this. The stuff you are talking about was over 100 years ago. I damn sure expect that sportsmanship and general attitudes have evolved in the last 90-120 years, not stayed the same and certainly not devolved to the point that HS kids could be planning an in-game attack on an official.

You're comparing paid professionals with high school kids. What do expect the ump to do in this situation? Should he charge the mound and start wailing on the pitcher with his fists, or maybe kick the catch in the back of the head? I don't know how hard he was throwing, but if the ball had moved a little and hit him somewhere unprotected, this ump could have been hurt bad. He could still have gotten a concussion or some whiplash/neck injuries from the force of the throw. Like the one coach said - I've never heard of this even being suggested, let alone actually planned and executed.

Not a scholarship, was going to walk on according to Reilly, but the school said "thanks but no thanks." Cartersville wound up winning the game 13-1, and when state athletic officials saw the tape, they snapped. "The catcher did not intend to catch the pitch," says Ralph Swearngin, executive director of the Georgia High School Association. "I didn't see the eyes of the catcher tracking the pitch." He put Stephens County on "severe warning" and fined it $1,000. Then some payback came for Hill, who was planning to walk on at Gordon College in Barnesville, Ga., next season. He got the word from Gordon coach Travis McClanahan, who said, Forget it, we don't want you. "I've seen catchers get crossed up before," says McClanahan. "But he appeared to be blocking a curveball in the dirt. I was shocked. I've never seen that happen. I've never heard of a player even suggesting doing that." What does that mean? There was a time when pitchers and catchers actively conspired to hit umpires in the face?

One of the few times I agree with you.

Bingo.

Some good editorial cartoons about Tim's passing HERE.

I don't know, I feel like Captain America is a much more mainstream "iconic" character that changing his appearance drastically would piss a lot of people off and turn them off from the movie. I personally think that Nick Fury is popular more in the comics universe and but not so much in the mainstream, so changing him won't get the big general public backlash that a black CA would stir up. Just my .02 cents...

Maybe he was going to get a bunch of those bullet-hole stickers and make it look like he was driving through a shootout...

Wow.

I did not know that.

Sorry, wasn't calling you out or anything like that. Just didn't think the pic of Russert went with the quote you had, so I was confused.

Wow, I didn't know there was a ST 2 either.

What about Ryan Reynolds? He bulked up pretty good for Blade: Trinity and is a decent actor... I also keep seeing Paul Walker's name on other websites, but he seems a little stiff and can't picture him as CA...

Casper Van Dien?

That's what I thought, but I didn't know if there was some rettata-esque inside joke I was missing...