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It’s time to take an in-depth look at the New York Knicks, because if we don’t, then nobody will know how their season might turn out, and that would be horrible for everyone involved. Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is, “Just how bad will the Knicks actually be this year?” Worse than last year? Not as bad as two years ago? Better than the Raiders? The answer to this question lies in the hands of one man – super fan Spike Lee, who is, surprisingly, not an actual member of the Knicks’ organization. Nevertheless, he should be, because he is taller than Nate Robinson and definitely more culturally relevant than David Lee. Plus, he knows what “box out” means. Regardless, Spike came by to help me grade the Knicks from top to bottom. It was mostly bottom. Point Guard: Stephon Marbury. My wife is a fan of “Starbury” now, ever since she found out that he released an affordable brand of basketball sneakers for, ya’ know, the kids. They did a news segment on it and everything, where ...

Randy Johnson, 2000 Stadium Club (Topps) It’s not like there was an exact time when the sports memorabilia phase hit rock bottom, but it was definitely the exact moment when this card was released. Hey kids, here is some dirt! Enjoy! Nothing exemplifies the purity of baseball like pre-packaged pitcher’s mound dirt, placed in a see-through peephole on the front of a baseball card that features one of the surliest men to ever take the mound. Let’s, for a second, ignore the fact that we are left to assume that this dirt is from the mound, and game, featured on this card, yet is probably from, at the very worst, the parking lot of Topps headquarters, or, at the very best, the same mound where Sam McDouche lasted an inning and a third against the Single A Birmingham Bellhops back in May of 1997. Yeah, let’s ignore that. Let’s say it is “authentic game-used pitcher’s mound dirt,” trounced upon by the one and only, very sexy Randy Johnson. So…now what? What do I do? Now that I am $10 poorer a...

You may recall (or, then again, maybe not) that I penned a column last year basically claiming that we had all seen the last of one Chad Pennington. Well, never one to shy away from being 100 percent incorrect, I stand by that story. However, it has come to my attention that Pennington is back in the NFL – still with the Jets – and actually playing pretty darn well. This was difficult for me to believe, especially considering that the last time I saw him, his right arm was dangling from his right shoulder, joined only by a piece of dental floss lent to him by Michael Strahan. So, in order to get to the bottom of this story, I had to go to the source. Not the hip-hop magazine The Source – they had never heard of Pennington, but gave him two-and-a-half mics based on the information I provided – but Pennington himself. He was kind enough to sit down for a fake interview… Me : Chad! Get the heck in here, you big lug! Chad : Hey, thanks for having me. Me : Chad, let’s get down to business ...

Alan Ogg, 1991-92 Upper Deck Few names rolled of the tongue like Alan Ogg, and few players rolled with less game than Ogg himself, who was the Michael Jordan of non-Michael Jordanness. To his credit though, Alan Ogg was the tallest man to ever walk the face of the earth, and was most likely, at some point in his insanely tall youth, mercilessly coerced to join the basketball ranks by some sleazy AAU coach, even though Ogg preferred science fiction novels to awkwardly running up and down a basketball court while wearing eight knee braces. One thing that separated Ogg from the other humongous, incompetent big men of his day was the fact that he actually looked and seemed kind of normal. Ya’ know, for a 12-foot tall person. Unlike Shawn Bradley, he actually had some meat on his bones, and wasn’t dunked on at least 18 times by every NBA player with the capability to dunk the ball . Unlike Gheorghe Muresan, he never used his extreme size and non-athleticism to coerce Billy Crystal to make...

*Special Friday edition Tom Waddle, 1992 Collector’s Edge When people hear the name Tom Waddle, they often say to themselves, “Who is that? Like, a rapper or something? Sounds badass.” But in reality, Tom Waddle was a wide receiver, who was also, strangely, white, and not very badass, unless you consider one catch for seven yards in –8-degree weather badass, which, I guess, kind of is. Poor Tom Waddle was caught in a generational gap of Caucasian wide receivers. He was too late for the days of the talented white receivers, who weren’t just defined by their whiteness – guys like Steve Largent, Phil McConkey, and Chris Collinsworth. And alas, he was also too early for the resurgence of the Caucasian wideout, where guys like Drew Bennett, Ed McCaffrey, and Wayne Chrebet thrived in the NFL despite being white. In fact, back in 1992, Tom Waddle was the only white receiver in the NFL, unless you counted Sterling Sharpe, whose great-great-great grandmother was 1/8 Irish (little known factoid*...

Michael Jackson, 1992 Collector’s Edge It wasn’t as bad being named Michael Jackson in 1992 as it was during, say, every year thereafter. There were several subtle differences between the Cleveland Browns’ wide receiver and the pop star, however. For example, Michael Jackson the wide receiver was African-American. Also, he had much bigger shoulders than the singer. In fact, Michael Jackson had the biggest shoulders ever, in the history of the world, ever. In history. Also, the Browns’ Michael Jackson had more NFL touchdowns (2) in 1991 than the King Of Pop (0), but that was mainly because Michael Jackson the singer did not play in the NFL, mostly because he did not prefer tackling grown men. The two MJs also had some glaring similarities as well. For instance, Michael Jackson the singer was No. 1 on the charts in the early 90’s, while Michael Jackson the football player wore No. 1 (even though he was the team’s No. 6 offensive option…go figure). To boot, the two men had been honing the...

Timm Rosenbach, 1992 Collector’s Edge Timm Rosenbach is a name that is synonymous with Cardinals’ football. Other words and phrases that are synonymous with Cardinals' football include putrid, “tickets are still available,” basement, + 13, and “Edgerrin James immediately regrets that decision.” Timm Rosenbach stood out within the NFL landscape, not just because he was below average, but because he spelled his first name with two “m”s, an eccentricity rarely witnessed before the days of Aaron Brooks, who spelled his name with two “a”s, and who was equally awesome before he was kicked out of the league in 2006 for being “too awesome.” Mr. And Mrs. Rosenbach, since separated in an incident not related to Bill Belichick, could not agree between “Tim” – which Mr. Rosenbach claimed made his son sound like a two-bit accountant – and “Timmy” – which Mrs. Rosenbach said made her son sound like “that smelly kid you sat behind in science class in third grade.” The compromise was an unpreceden...

*Special Friday edition Checklist, 1987 Donruss Worst. Card. Ever. Seriously, whose idea was it to have a checklist? That person should be burned at the stake for wasting precious cardboard, and for dashing the dreams of innocent youngsters hoping to find a Ken Griffey Jr. somewhere in the pack they paid $3.50 for, which was money saved up from mowing the lawns of elderly neighbors throughout their block. What a crock of poop the checklist card is. Let’s examine the reasons why: 1) Do you know anyone – anyone? – who actually checked the boxes off of the cards they acquired? Really though, anyone? I don’t know a single person who did this, and if I had, I definitely wouldn’t have traded baseball cards with this hypothetical idiot. Although, I would have checked off boxes when this person wasn’t looking, making them they think they had a 1987 Odell Jones card, when in fact, they didn’t, which would have thrown off everything in their precious little world. (By the way, I didn’t even kno...

Random guy, 1992 Pro Set Yeah, I mean…wow. This is one hell of a card right here, and I’m not even sure where to start. I suppose we can begin with the hat, which is really, I mean…I don’t even know. Then, let’s move on to the wedding ring, which specifies that yes, this man is, in fact, married. Possibly to a woman. Definitely to the Cleveland Browns. (The ring may also indicate that the hat was someone else’s handiwork: “Hey Loretta – get the hell over here and sew these heads onto my Browns cap. And where the hell is the f*$#@* sauerkraut?!” From there, let’s move on to what may be my favorite aspect of this card, which is saying a lot. This guy appears to be sleeping during a Browns’ game, and the card is entitled “Spirit of the Game.” That is some freakin’ spirit right there. It could just be that this guy, an obvious lifelong Browns’ fan, is simply closing his eyes during a crucial play of the game, not really wanting to witness the manner in which the Cleveland Browns are going ...

* Special Friday edition! Jerrott Willard, 1995 Superior Pix Hey, Jerrott Willard…seriously, put some clothes on. And is that a regulation football you’re playing with, or are you just happy to see me? Ha, ha! I kid with Jerrott Willard, of course, but this story has serious roots. Back in 1995, the Cal football program was going through some tough times, mainly due to an NCAA violation involving a potential recruit, a goat, three pints of Johnnie Walker, and a transvestite. Long story. Anyhoo, the program lost some scholarships, and also some other privileges, like full-length uniforms. (You cannot tell from this card, but theses guys are barefoot as well.) Cal tried to compensate for this loss by hiring a pro-bono abdominal trainer for the 1995 season, because, as then head coach Tom Holmoe put it, “If we gotta play half-naked football, we’re gonna look good while doing it, gosh darn it!” This idea seemed to work out well for Jerrott Willard, who could often stuff a third-and-short j...

Bruce Smith, 1991 Score The montage NFL portrait was revolutionized by Pablo Picasso, who, before his death in 1973, created the first known montage football portrait of Mean Joe Greene, which many critics described as his best work. Some even marveled at the humanity of the project, which featured Greene in three parts – one making a tackle, one smiling, and one making another tackle (Mean Joe Greene was a tackling machine – Picasso accentuated that fact like no other before him). Many of Greene’s harshest critics were amazed at how Picasso was able to make the fierce lineman appear less mean than his name would indicate. But by the 1980’s, the montage portrait had become somewhat stale. That is, until 1991, when new-age artist Christo decided to try his hand at it. What happened next was only the most culturally relevant football card ever. The subject was the manly Bruce Smith, and Christo was able to capture at least three of the attributes of Smith’s game that made him a future NF...

This is a warning to all married males. Do NOT – I repeat – do NOT let your wife go food shopping alone! This is a state of emergency! Consider yourself warned! There is a predator on the loose, and I have seen him in action. His main purpose is to seduce your wife at the supermarket, take her home, make her dinner, and then have sex with her! Yeah, sex! Plus, he is Australian! He is not to be trusted! How do I know this? Well, I have been watching a new show on TLC called “Take Home Chef,” which is always on when I get home from work. (Yeah, sometimes I watch TLC when I get home – it’s a helluva lot better than “Around the Horn,” so shut the hell up!) The premise of the show is this: metrosexual Australian dude stalks woman at supermarket, asks her “who she is cooking for,” coerces her into letting him make dinner, which culminates in a shocked, distraught husband arriving home from work only to discover his wife rolling around in batter with some tall, spiky-haired bloke! Seriously, ...

It’s difficult enough to get an interview with Giants’ head coach Tom Coughlin in the offseason, so you can imagine my surprise when he agreed to sit down with me during the chaos of the regular season! And while the perception of Coughlin is that he has the personality of a mouse pad, you will see – he’s actually pretty lively. It should also be noted that while this interview is 100 percent accurate, it is also equally fake. Anyway, on with the interview… Me : Welcome, Mr. Coughlin! Have a seat… Coughlin : Thank you. Me : Can I tell you something? Coughlin : Go ahead. Me : I’ve been sitting here for the past four hours, because last night I was having nightmares that I’d be late for your interview, and that you’d berate me in front of everybody. Coughlin : Wow…Well, that’s real nice of you, but I try not to berate anyone except my own players. Plus, there’s nobody here to berate you in front of. Me : Yeah, I know, but it was a dream, and dreams are freakin’ weird sometimes, ya’ know?...

Carlos Baerga, 1992 Leaf, “Studio” series Carlos Baerga only wears his sunglasses on three occasions: at night, during the day, and when he’s in the studio posing for an alarmingly metrosexual baseball card photo. In fact, this very card is often credited with the turn-of-the-century boom of metrosexuality, but back in 1992, this card was only considered to be one thing: totally gay. But if you really think about it, all you have to do is remove the mustache and the clothes, and you’re left with a picture of A-Rod laying out on the rocks in Central Park. And it wasn’t easy for Baerga to become the godfather of metro. It was so cold in the studio that day that Baerga had to cover up his nipples, which were actually poking through his baseball jacket. It took five interns, eight bottles of Paul Mitchell hair gel, and two cases of wine coolers to even get through this photo shoot, which lasted four hours. (Ultimately, when billing MLB, the Leaf Co. chose “uncooperative nipples” as an expl...

*Special Friday edition Todd Philcox, 1992 NFL Pro Set Sure, the easy joke here, as Todd Philcox lays his hands underneath the crotch area of a miscellaneous 300 lb man, is, “Hey – they didn’t call him Philcox for nothin’.” But Todd Philcox was more than an easy joke – he was a very complicated, drawn-out joke, who, in his two seasons leading up to 1992, had a quarterback rating of 16.3, making him the Brett Favre of his day. Of course, the biggest mystery surrounding Todd Philcox relates directly to this card, and the question that has plagued the minds of football fans for over a decade: Is he posing ? Some have speculated that Cleveland wideout Michael Jackson was experimenting with the first “wide receiver cam,” which would have been, obviously, well ahead of its time. However, Philcox does not appear to be calling out any sort of play. Instead, he stares into the camera with a look that says, “I’m Todd Philcox, bitches. Now watch me fumble this snap.” Then again, if one were to po...

Ryan Leaf, 1999 Donruss Not to defend the career of Ryan Leaf here, but it’s probably pretty difficult to play football when one of the spikes from the Statue of Liberty’s head is shooting up your ass. I’m just saying. Let’s cut him a little slack. Anyway, I cannot recall how this particular play ended, but it was definitely either a) a sack, b) an interception, c) an interception returned for a touchdown, d) a fumble, e) a fumble returned for a touchdown, f) an injured scrotum, g) both a and d, h) both a and e, I) a, e, and f, j) someone in the Chargers’ front office getting immediately fired, k) c and j, l) an incomplete pass that landed 30 yards out-of-bounds, m) f and l, or n) an ill-advised pass that hit an offensive lineman in the back of the helmet, careened into the air, only to be caught by Leaf again, at which point he threw an interception and then injured his scrotum trying to tackle the opposing cornerback on his way to the endzone. Yeah, it was definitely one of those thi...

Ed Lynch, 1987 Topps You probably can’t tell from this picture, but Ed Lynch was ecstatic when he found out he was being traded from the New York Mets to the Chicago Cubs back in 1986. Seriously, he was thrilled. Amazingly, the Ed Lynch-less Mets went on to win the World Series, while the Cubs…didn’t. But that certainly wasn’t Ed Lynch’s fault – his sparkling 7-5 record and dazzling 3.79 ERA placed him 112th in the NL Cy Young vote that year. Not too shabby for a guy with four chins. It is stated on the back of this particular card that “Ed lists reading and sailing among his hobbies.” So, it’s fairly obvious that Ed Lynch was one wild mother – shut your mouth. Unfortunately, Lynch would later retract that statement, claiming he was misquoted. What he really liked was reading about sailing. He couldn’t actually get on a sailboat because he suffered from seasickness, asthma, and nosebleeds, plus the sun wasn’t good for his fair skin. Many in and around baseball at the time believe it wa...

We just got a new hand soap dispenser installed in the men’s room here at work, and this is BIG news. Maybe it is not big news to you, a person who, most likely, works in an environment with many soap dispensers, and many toilets that flush on the first try. But to us, this is historic. Before the soap dispenser, cleaning your hands after dropping a deuce here at work was not very easy. Sure, we had a hand soap dispenser, but it was small, and portable, and was often nowhere to be found when it was time to get poop off of your hands. Maybe it fell in the garbage. Maybe it was on the back of the toilet instead of the sink. Maybe it was in the toilet. Maybe I should have located its whereabouts before I dropped my pants. Regardless, the new soap dispenser is actually affixed to the wall, so it should not fall into the toilet, unless otherwise provoked. Another problem with the old soap dispenser (which was, let’s be honest here – a plastic tube of hand soap) was that it was often empty w...

Steve Buechele, 1989 Donruss Steve Buechele had to wear a hat at all times, or else a strong gust of wind would actually blow the hair off of his head and into the stands, and he would have to wait four months for it to grow back again, unless a fan was kind enough to return it. Amazingly, Buechele was not even, technically, a major league baseball player. In 1985, the substitute math teacher from Arlington, Texas won a free trip to the Texas Rangers’ Fantasy Camp as a result of placing second in the “Annual Arlington Adult Diorama Contest.” (First prize was a gift certificate to Denny’s.) Upon arrival to the camp, Buechele was extremely disappointed, and called his mom from a payphone to inform her that his “fantasy” was NOT to spend a week with “17 jackasses dressed in tight pants who probably don’t even know their multiplication tables.” Buechele, whose brother-in-law was a lawyer, actually went on to sue the Texas Rangers over the concept of “fantasy camp,” and was eventually award...

*Special Friday edition Brooks Kieschnick, 1994 Pinnacle Brooks Kieschnick is not an actor. Brooks Kieschnick is a fantastic baseball player who just happens to make fabulous catches when baseball card companies are there to take his picture. The story goes like this. Kieschnick was a rookie with the Cubs, and was participating in spring workouts in 1994 when the Pinnacle baseball card company arrived to take some rookie pictures for their upcoming “Draft Pick” set. The original plan for Kieschnick was a posed shot in which he was happily juggling four baseballs at the same time. With no shirt on. Upon hearing about the plan, Kieschnick told a friend, “That is gay. I’m not doing that. That is so gay.” Brooks Kieschnick did not believe in posed photographs. (Even his wedding pictures had a journalistic flair.) So, when Pinnacle arrived, Brooks Kieschnick would not stop shagging flies in the outfield. He was shagging flies like Willie Mays. One Pinnacle executive screamed to Kieschnick f...