If Albert Pujols Is a Machine, the Giants Are an Engine Short

Yesterday you may have seen the newest SportsCenter commercial featuring the token of Joe Mustache’s affection, Albert Pujols. (If not, you can check it out right here.) The spot plays up Pujols as “the Machine”, a nickname which may or may not be validated by Bud Selig and Major League Baseball.

Pujols celebrated the day of his SportsCenter commercial debut by hitting a solo bomb out of Chase Field in Arizona. For the season, he has four homers and 10 RBI. To put it in perspective, the San Francisco Giants have three home runs and 22 RBI.

While Pujols has done his damage in 28 at bats, the Giants have nailed three homers in 228 at-bats.

For what it’s worth, we vow that on these pages, we will avoid turning Pujols into Boston while we morph into Bill Simmons. But don’t be surprised if a “Chasing Pujols” news item accompanies our stunning sports ticker atop the page.

April 14

1925 - WGN broadcasts its first regular season Cubs game in what turns into an 8-2 Opening Day victory over the Pirates. Yes, the Pirates sucked then and no, Harry Caray was not drunk in the booth - he was drunk somewhere in St. Louis (yes, at the age of 11).

1985 - Bob Carpenter fails to score on the Washington Capitals’ first ever playoff penalty shot. Unfortunately for readers of JoeSportsFan’s Media Circus, this Bob Carpenter is not the one who loves snappy lines. He is, however, the slow winger from the Bruins in the inaugural NHLPA game on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

1990 - Cal Ripken begins a streak which leads to the most consecutive errorless games (95) and total chances (431) by a shortstop. The errorless games streak falls 2,537 games short of his consecutive games played streak. What a pussy.###MORE###

There would be about a hundred people around this guy also holding snappy signs that were drawn with a brand new Crayola Magic Marker set and a piece of $.50 poster board from Walgreens…

Instead it’s the NHL, meaning everyone around him is sign-less but is also probably sporting a mullet and a hockey sweater.

While we’re on the topic of fan signs, we thought we’d pull out an oldie but a goodie.  The column was entitled “Exploring Various Fan Signs” and looked at the wide array of stupid signs that fans enjoy creating for no apparent reason other than to draw attention to themselves.

The column led to one of JoeSportsFan’s biggest comment pool in our history.  Evidently, everyone has witnessed their fair share of ridiculous poetry on a piece of $.99 posterboard.

We witnessed a doozy ourselves yesterday across the interwebs.  We’re quite familiar with the use of acronyms to achieve television face time…but we had never seen someone trying desperately trying to get on ESPN *2*.

Mr. Sebek drops in with a few notable (read: clearly insane) fans from the first week of baseball in St. Louis.