I came across this at Deadspin a couple days ago, and an alert, non-sports-enthusiast reader brought this to my attention again yesterday: The Detroit Free Press reported that Joel Zumaya is apparently a 12-year-old boy. For those of you too lazy to follow the link, trainers think Zumaya's playoff forearm trouble resulted from playing PS2's "Guitar Hero" video game, not from throwing Fox-tracked 118 mph fastballs. As the Free Press so aptly puts it, "Hummin' Slowed by Strummin'." Ummm... what? Since when is pitching, no matter how fast, been described as "hummin"? Good work, Free Press. As Planet Killer so appropriately notes, puns and rhyming have gotten out of hand in sports headlines. I'm still waiting on the story out of D.C. that proclaims "Bush Asked About WMD's, Responds 'LOL... OMG, BRB!'"... or maybe a report out of Iraq that so poignantly notes "Sunni Killin' Results in New Blood Spillin' High."Anyway, back to sports. If I was Zumaya, I'd be embarrassed to injure myself playing a fake guitar to "Stairway to Heaven," and only slightly less so than if I had pulled a quad playing Dance Dance Revolution or slipped a disc during a particularly involved version of "Baby One More Time" on Karaoke Revolution. Of course Zumaya isn't the only pitcher with a technologically-related injury lately. Carlos Zambrano's apparent internet porn habits resulted in an arm injury a couple years ago. (This was refuted, in part, but I still like to think of Zambrano as a porn fiend). At least he had the balls to injure himself looking at porn instead of playing a fake guitar, I suppose.
With all these huge contracts being tossed around, I think it's high time teams start adding clauses about DDR, Guitar Hero, and the like, instead of just Roethlisberger-style motorcycling. I hear Soriano has gotten so into SingStar Rocks that he's skipping his off-season conditioning routine.
3 comments:
Does a baseball player really need to play Guitar Hero? Doesn't he make enough money to pay Eric Clapton to teach him how to play real guitar? This is funny.
As I mentioned yesterday to an accomplice, there is double shame in this story. First, there is the obvious screw up on Zumaya's part in getting injured. But the extra shame is that the only way to injure yourself in a way that would mess with his throwing would be a result of his sucking gnarly ass at the game. As demonstrated yesterday on ESPN, hitting the piddly little faux-guitar that hard means you are just plain dumb or mentally challenged. In either event, he sucks at baseball AND video games now.
Good job, twit-monster. You have pimply tech0boys laughing at you now, too. Seriously, I second the addition of this crap to contracts or else the $100 million the Sox spent on Matsuzaka will be a huge waste when he gets an eye put out by one of those sketchy Nintendo Wii controllers.
Makes you wonder if teams will start clamping down on video games in the locker room. I've read and seen multiple stories on professional sports teams who have big screen tvs and consoles in the locker rooms, etc for the players.
Or *gasp* video game clauses in contracts.
I still remember a few years back reading an IGN interview with Peyton Manning (if I remember correctly) where he said he went online to play Madden all the time w. random people. I found that enjoyable.
Post a Comment