September 23, 2012
From the UJBR Throne Room, the story of “Lucky Lohrke,” from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Takes a Swing at Baseball:
Update: Forgot to say that this story was published before Lohrke’s death in 2009, having lived to the (lucky) old age of 85.
(Hit pic to go to the Amazon age.)
September 13, 2012
This is so weird.
Made by these folks.
Related: Excerpts from our darn good baseball book.
• This was actually made by a company based in Taiwan. Here’s a 2010 story on them here.
August 15, 2012
Elijah Porter was distraught when Canada’s 4x100m relay team were stripped of their bronze medal following the final in London, a decision which was taken when video replay evidence showed that Jared Connaughton stepped out of his lane during the race.
But rather than simply feel sad for his idols, Elijah decided to do something to try and cheer them up: he sent the quartet a medal he had won in a recent football tournament so that they didn’t finish their summer empty handed.
The athletes, the story says, were so touched that they took a pic of the letter and medal and put it on Twitter. Here it is:
That’s one nice 10-year-old kid. Bravo, Elijah.
August 2, 2012
An Australian daily newspaper has rebranded North and South Korea as “Naughty Korea” and “Nice Korea” in their standing medal count, drawing split social media responses with some on Twitter lauding the idea as comic genius and others insisting that it is tantamount to racism.
As noted by the Trending Now blog on the UK edition of MSN.com, the Australian free daily, The Mx, also referred to as the Brisbane Metro, published a medal count that included North Korea as “Naughty Korea” and South Korea as “Nice Korea” in Wednesday’s edition. At the time, the two nations were right next to each other in the medal count, making the contrast between their names visible and notable.
Related: UJBR Sports Spectacular
July 31, 2012
LONDON — Larisa Latynina won 18 Olympic medals in gymnastics for the former Soviet Union, but she attended swimming Tuesday night. Michael Phelps was racing. He was trying to beat everyone in the pool and Latynina’s record as well. And when the moment came, she knew exactly what a great champion should do. She put on her lipstick.
Well that’s just sweet. And a nice example of the kind of small, encouraging human stories an event like the Olympics can flush out.
Well done, Michael Phelps, and well done Larisa Latynina.
July 28, 2012
Nope – not for dope. For other reasons….like kicking a referee in the face. (Not very sporty!)
Click on pics to make them larger. Click again to really zoom in.
That’s “Ejected From the Olympics,” from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. (Page 177 if you’ve got one at home!)
Happy Olympics, everybody!
July 12, 2012
Karl Kissner, 51, was going through his grandfather’s attic in Defiance, Ohio this past winter when he came upon a collection of turn-of-the-century baseball cards estimated to be worth around $3 million, reports David Briggs of the Toledo Blade.
The almost 700 card find are in near mint condition and include baseball legends Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Connie Mack.
The heck with metal detectors—we want baseball card detectors! We’ll go through every attic in the country!
P.S. Sounds like something you’d find in this book…
June 22, 2012
Uncle John has a favorite new sport!
First, a drawing:
Now, a video:
This has been “Heavy Shiled Lifting. With Singing.”
Update: And so we have just educated ourselves, and discovered that this is a display of Varzesh-e Bastani, an ancient Persian sport still practiced in Iran and neighboring countries today. (The shields are called sangs.) It is apparently party of a broader practice called Zurkhaneh. More here.
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May 12, 2012
Playoff hockey is a world of its own. Game 7 playoff hockey – out of its own world.
• Here’s the NHL “ice-tracker.”
• Live blog from WaPo. And from Hockey Inside/Out.
• Live Blog from USA Today looks good. Bleacher Report too.
• If you’re into this sort of thing: Here’s the Twitter feeds of the Rangers…and of the Caps.
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• Rangers score, 1:32 of the first period.
1P 18:00 First goal has won each game in the seriesby Mike Boone 9:44 AM
• After 2 periods Rangers are up in shots 20-19.
* 11:25 in third – have to go! Yikes! What a game!
Giveaway ends June 30, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
U.S. straw sizes, in order of increasing diameter: Cocktail, slim, jumbo, super jumbo, and giant
