Given the news, I had to.

Paul Tracy can’t wait to bring his special brand of douchebaggery to the IRL. Watch out Danica, Paul will punch you in the face if you look at him wrong.

Well well well, will you look at this:

Most Champ Car teams were told to quit working on their Panoz chassis Monday and expect delivery of their new cars in a few days. Paul Tracy is coming to Indianapolis later this week for a seat fitting. And one of Champ Car’s co-owners admitted to a fellow owner there would only be one series in 2008.

After 12 years of warring that cost open-wheel racing much of its sponsorship, audience and momentum, common sense has finally prevailed.

SPEEDtv.com has learned that the Indy Racing League and Champ Car have officially, and mercifully, agreed to become one entity. A press conference could come as early as Wednesday if Kevin Kalkhoven is back from England in time.

12 years that have killed open wheel  racing in the United States.  As someone who grew up idolizing drivers like Rick Mears and Bobby Rahal, going to pole day every year with my family and listening to the Indy 500 on the radio the decline of open wheel here has been hard to stomach. It’s to the point that the IRL was really on the verge of losing me to NASCAR, with the move of Sam Hornish Jr. to the ’stock’ cars just about being the final nail in the coffin.

Tony George wishes to inform you that the 12 year split is all part of his grand masterplan.  Next step: A laser death ray on the moon. (picture courtesy espn.com)

We’ll see if this helps open wheel or if it is too late. I’m hoping that the combined series will at least have the effect of more drivers per race driving a little more interest and this being in the news enough to draw some people back to give it a try again. Now to try and market the personalities of the drivers (which is what has sold NASCAR so well).

Open wheel is still the way to go for North American racing fans who like speed. Those boats on wheels in NASCAR (which stopped being ’stock’ YEARS ago) don’t hold a candle to the speed and danger of an Indy Car.

HT to Masson for finding this story.

P.S. Yes, I plan on writing here more again. 

Some of our remaining four readers will be disappointed by the fact that I am not, I repeat not, going to write about the Giants’ 17-14 win in Super Bowl XLII. I can’t think of anything that hasn’t been said already, by writers who are more eloquent and memorable than I am. I have nothing new to add to the growing legend of Eli Manning, David Tyree and “The Helmet Catch.” I have nothing new to add to the domination of New England’s offensive line by Michael Strahan, Justin Tuck, and the rest of the Giants’ front four. I have nothing new to add about Tom Coughlin’s ultimate vindication.

Other than talking about it still makes the roots of every hair on my head tingle, even ten days later. If I live to be a hundred, there may never be a Super Bowl quite like that one.

CWAMB thinks Big Mickey has something left in the tank, but understands if he follows The Bus. (image courtesy of NFL.com)

I’d write a legitimate article, but I may still be in cardiac arrest.  It’ll be a damn fine two weeks to be a fan of the Big Blue, that’s for sure.

Regardless of what takes place the first Sunday in February, and it is most certainly not that I’m complaining, but we can all say that we’ve seen Eli Manning be the best quarterback in football for a solid month.

Even Eli’s stumped as to how this happened. (image courtesy of Atomic Sports Media)

Think about that.  Think about that long and hard.

Scary.

It’s that time once again, kids!  Happy Pete LaCock Day!

Oh, don’t tell me you forgot…

There is only one way I will root for the Patriots. If the entire team and crowd at the stadium re-enacts the “Shipoopi” dance from the Family Guy episode Patriot Games.

Otherwise, I suppose I am forced to root for the Chargers and Marmalard.

The worst defense the Colts have played all year, and they are beaten by a team missing both it’s starting QB and RB for most of the second half. Way to go Colts. bleh.

 I don’t know what else to say, really.

In what could possibly be the funniest baseball blog post of all time, Flotsam Media comes up with a statistical formula to measure that most Ecksteinian of descriptions: gritty.

After Tim McCarver’s month-long David Eckstein sploogefest that was October 2006, a serious investigation into ‘grit’ was long overdue. Despite the penchant of sportswriters and broadcasters to throw the term around willy-nilly, I was hard-pressed to locate a firm definition of grit in the baseball sense. Using lots of laptop science stuff, I think I’ve improved the definition, which isn’t really saying much, since there wasn’t one to begin with.

…

RESULTS
Across 13,249 player-seasons, the data appears to have a relatively normal distribution. The data shows a range of about -50 to +50 with one outlier at -90.011 (see below), and a mean and median extremely close to 0. These numbers are promising for the prospects of GRIT as a statistic, as they suggest that the average player is neither extremely gritty, nor extremely talented.

Check the link for actual GRIT statistics. I believe this is a nerdy mcnerderson statistic that people like Joe Morgan could get behind. via Fire Joe Morgan.

Join the CWAMB staff in the funk, as we wish a Happy Birthday to former major league outfielder Oscar Gamble, born December 20, 1949.

Gamble got to the majors as a 19-year-old in 1969, and hung around the majors until 1985, playing for the Cubs, Phillies, Indians, White Sox (twice), Yankees (twice), Padres, and Rangers. He hit .265 for his career with 200 home runs and 666 runs batted in. He was never an All-Star, but he did put together a great season for the White Sox in 1977, batting .297 with 31 homers and 87 RBI.

It takes a lot of talent to get to the majors, much less hang around for the better part of two decades, but we don’t remember Oscar Gamble for being fleet of foot (47 career steals) or good with the leather (a subpar .977 fielding percentage), and the annals of major league lore are clogged with average-to-good hitting outfielders. However, we remember Oscar Gamble for the greatest photograph in the history of bubble-gum cards.

Baby, do you feel my funk now? Awwwwww, yeah… (image courtesy of baseball-fever.com, as well as the Topps 1976 “Traded” Series)

When I was a kid, my dad took my brother Rob and I to Yankees Bat Day a couple of times. The first year, which I believe was 1982, the bats that were handed out had players’ names written on them. Both of the bats that came home with us had Oscar Gamble’s signature on it. My dad was a little leery of them… Gamble was a part of the Yankees squad that had lost the World Series in 1976, spent the Yankees’ World Championship seasons of ‘77 and ‘78 in Chicago and San Diego, respectively, and was back for the heartbreaking loss in the 1981 Fall Classic. Of course, we were too young to know any better about such superstitions then, but we had the baseball card pictured above, so he was something of a hero to us based on his hair alone. He wasn’t quite in the Irizarry Household Yankee Parthenon, with Thurman Munson, Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Willie Randolph, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry and Lou Piniella, but he was certainly a lesser god on that Olympus, where he remains with the Mike Pagliarulos and Rick Cerones.

The only question left unanswered by the legacy of Oscar Gamble is: how the hell big is that hat?

Happy 58th, Oscar.