Hooters Girls Hold Their Own Baseball All-Star Game, Shane Gillis Kills The WNBA & Mars Rock Sells For Big $$
PLUS: Someone paid over $100k for John Lennon's suit
Thank you to the person at ESPN who signed off on Shane Gillis hosting the ESPYs and ripping the WNBA to shreds.
Yes, I watched the ESPYs monologue because I needed to be prepped for work this morning. I watch so you don't have to.
What you missed was Shane Gillis unloading incredible jokes that uptight athletes refused to laugh at because they're afraid of their fellow wokes attacking them for having fun.
This one will go down as an all-timer:
And then there's this one where Shane tests the crowd to see if they'd cheer for a random black woman by saying she played in the WNBA.
GOLD.
And how about one more where Gillis channels Donald Trump and the WNBA.
THIS is the America I remember from the 1980s when I was way too young to be listening to Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor, but Grandma Kinsey didn't see a problem with me being cultured as a youngster.
THIS IS COMEDY.
Travel sports kids and parents causing chaos at hotels across the United States
In case you missed it Wednesday, I'm officially dabbling in the world of kids and parents gone wild at travel sports hotels. Here's my first report.
It turns out Reddit is LOADED with stories from hotel workers who've had enough.
— LSU superfan Joe M. writes:
I'm glad you found Tales From the Front Desk. It's full of things that people do that would mortify me as a lifetime shiny member. Sports moms (LAX) annoy the shit out of me for many reasons, one of which is deciding which hotel the "team" is going to book five days out. If we got the tournament list in June for tourneys in the fall, you can rest assured I booked a season's worth of rooms within 48 hours of getting the schedule. This also saves me from being in the nucleus of the team hotel. The kids spend all day together. We can all go out to eat, but having a space with downtime for the kid is important. You wonder why the team seems sluggish in the mornings? Because most of you let the kids run rampant in the hotels at night.
Thankfully, almost everyone from our LAX travel crew is pretty sedate and the kids are pretty well-behaved. Usually, we end up at a hotel with a kid or two from 15 different teams, rather than a whole team at a hotel. This crew, no matter where they're from, are 100% better behaved than when kids from the same team are together.
Keep up the good work!
— Jack L. reports:
Just this past weekend. Columbus OH. Orientation for daughters fall college start. Drive 6+ hours to arrive at hotel at just before midnight. Amazed at the crowds of people up and milling about in the lobby, outside, in the bar, at the outside seating at the bar. Wild. Really no big deal. Take a nice suite on the lounge access top floor and go to sleep and stay asleep easily for our early start tomorrow.
We learn the hotel is filled with out of town travel teams for both a hockey tourney and baseball tourney. The next day during day hours, crazy kids running up and down the hall at our end. At one point, they were knocking and running away. Finally, somehow one of the little shits actually pushes and finds our dodgy door open. So I chase after them and encounter the mom who I kinda snapped at. To their credit, mom and dad read the kids the riot act and I get to remember all the times I was a little shit at 10 yrs old. No hard feelins.
Mich Ultras - gross.
Me and the wife spent some time at the outdoor seating Sat night having drinks, old-fashioned (we aint drivin) and witnessed a super douche dad (or coach) offering a group of teen boys money for any digits they could get.
Judging from my perspective I’m sure douche dad needed all the help he could get when he was a boy.
Kinsey:
I hope Jack is sending his daughter to Ohio State, one of America's greatest institutions and the home of the national champs.
— And, of course, Travel Ball Hardo Chris B. in Houston throws his support behind the travel ball families dumping their kids in a room to go get drunk:
Most things described in this article are totally customary. Kids often take Xboxes with them and pack into rooms to play for hours. And/or they have fun at the pool. And/or they push each other up & down the halls & elevators on luggage carts.
Most of the time the parents would be very easy to find in the lobby lounge area. It sounds like the Residence Inn in Glen Mills sucks though, as I have never heard of the front desk telling someone repeatedly that they will just call the room and ask them to quiet down. It's much more customary for a security guard or police officer to go scare the bejesus out of them.
Oh and the complaining front desk workers need to get over themselves and do their jobs managing the hotel properly. Residence Inn and the rest of them know who they booked, they likely gave the teams a discount for a block of rooms.
The Current State of Rec Slow-Pitch Softball In the United States
You guys lit up over this topic.
— Team Screencaps Ragnar Relay Greg in Chicago writes:
I've been playing slow-pitch here in Chicago since 2020; my team signed up for the first time for the Spring 2020 season... and we know how that went.
We're definitely older than most of the league, so playing a bunch of guys in their 20's can be a challenge when they use an illegal bat so the nonexistent chicks attending our games can dig their moonshots.
We joke about asking the umpire for a bat check, and since none of the teams bring more than one (illegal) bat they'd be forced to play with the league POS. We haven't done it though, since our goal is to get out and shoot the shit with friends and drink a few during/after the games.
There have been a few d-bag plays here and there, but by and large the teams realize this is just a beer league.
Kinsey:
I can see Greg playing rec softball at a higher level without blowing out a hamstring. The guy is in game shape. He had no problem running for miles up and down hills in Kentucky in the middle of the night.
— Jason from East Tennessee says the illegal bats are becoming ridiculous:
There’s a big difference between rec/league softball and weekend softball. I was a basketball player but once high school sports are over there are very few opportunities to be competitive after that. My dad and older brother played softball and I wanted to do just that after high school. People joke about slow pitch softball but it used to be full of high level athletes. Lots of guys that played professional baseball or college baseball even. I was probably the worst on good teams but again enjoyed the competition.
The high level softball is virtually over in my area, used to be at least two tournaments every weekend. If you head to Knoxville or bigger cities in the South I believe it’s still pretty popular though. Traveling every weekend gets old. They do have professional softball. Sponsors pay guys to play in the majors and also cover their travel and expenses. I had several guys I play with get picked up by major teams. But normal weekend guys want to win a stage or bigger tournaments.
The illegal bat deal is what basically ruined it for me. A bat can basically be a lethal weapon. It changes bad hitters into hard outs and good hitters into Barry Bonds. You can find these bats pretty easily online so you either get one or you lose. And maybe it’s not the case everywhere but the people who are the most prevalent cheaters are guys who were never that great in HS. Ruins it for everyone.
— Dusty T. knows this world all too well:
Writing to you with some slowpitch tales from AZ. We had a pretty good co-ed church team that played in the D or Novice leagues around Phoenix. A few of the ladies played college softball at small schools, and a lot of the guys had played in high school, so we weren't too terrible in the field. However, we would also have folks play who didn't necessarily have any experience, but just wanted to hang out and have fun.
One league we played in had a younger ump, who apparently had been drafted out into the MLB out of HS, but blew out his knee (or something similar) and never made it past single-A ball. He would ump a game, but would jump in with teams that needed players in the other games he wasn't umping and just hit bombs and was super aggro-competitive. It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen to see a dude try to exert dominance over novice-level slowpitch softball city teams that were just trying to get together and have some fun on a Friday night.
Another D-League we played in had a team that was sponsored by a bat company. In this league, a home run was an out, so they would just hit lasers around the field and mercy rule all the lesser teams. My buddy got hit in the chest with a comeback line drive while pitching in this league and broke a few ribs. We stopped playing when it stopped being about hanging with your friends and having fun with a bit of competition. Boy, do I miss the open-faced meatloaf sandwiches we would get at the 5 and Diner after these games...
— Brad in NC takes us back to his softball days:
I’ve been giving the other kids a turn writing in AND this time I don’t have a gripe. But I do have a few softball memories even if they’re a bit aged.
1) Rec league was almost mandatory for those of us who were cube critters and under age 30. It was very similar to ‘About Last Night’ and other rom-coms where softball culture is about male bonding and possibly meeting women.
2) My employer was too small so I was a ‘free agent’ who joined a team of my friends’ corporate workmates.
3) I did university intramurals but it had still been a year or two since I’d played and I was the new guy. Despite this I ended up as the pitcher.
4) One of the infielders must have thought it was Little League or that I needed constant chatter/encouragement. ‘Shoot it in there buddy!’ He said it with every pitch. I can still hear him now.
5) Illegal bats? No. Illegal shoes? Apparently. I could barely buy gas & food on meager wages so I wore my old soccer cleats – adidas Adi Super with screw-in studs. They were a bad and uncomfortable match with a hard dirt infield. These weren’t Ty Cobb’s sharpened spikes but for some reason one opposing player objected to them. The good ol’ boy umpire inspected my cleats and said ‘Hell them aren’t softball shoes. Them are football shoes.’ (verbatim quote) and made me change into sneakers in the middle of the game!
6) I never saw anyone keeping score but somehow batting stats were posted mid-season where I was shocked to see my name in 3rd place in league-wide batting at .605. I was a righty and went for a low line drive base hit over the shortstop’s head.
7) I was batting with 2 strikes, 2 outs, bottom of final inning. My Tony Gwynn-like plate discipline had me thinking I could wait on the perfect pitch. So I took the next one. ‘That’s the ballgame fellas!’ I managed to strike out looking in slow pitch softball.
8) Of course we went to the dive-est bar we could find after games. No phones back then just real banter and laughter – the kind they fake in beer commercials. I always played Vince Gill’s ‘Liza Jane’ on the jukebox…and I play it now.
— Kurt A. says Make Softball Great Again by refusing to take a walk:
I've been playing rec slow pitch softball for around 10 years. I play on a family team (co-ed) with a bunch of cousins. We have a lot of fun and we don't even need to drink to do it.
I just need to say, if you are playing recreation slow pitch softball, and you're actively trying to draw a walk (especially guys), you're doing it all wrong. I'm proud to say I have never walked in slow-pitch softball, which means I have had to hit some pretty bad pitches, including off the bounce and a jumping above the head tomahawk. Both base hits.
I won't do it. If someone on our team walks, we boo them. If a guy on the other team walks, we make sure to tell him how good of an eye he has.
I don't know what the play is like in higher leagues, but in rec leagues, there's no reason to try and draw a walk. That's a miserable way to live. Swing the bat and have fun.
— Paul B. checks in:
Something that used to be near and dear to my heart. Started off as a charity event team for work that morphed into playing on at least two co-ed teams a week, tournaments, practices, and since I was a pitcher and always early at the field, being a constant sub.
Not to mention the men's teams I played on or subbed for. After about five years I was done as it got to be too much. People just took it too seriously and then my competitive nature made me become obsessive over it.
Some of the people were great and some were just people living out misplaced dreams. My teams were always great. The umps always said it was a pleasure working our games.
Whatever team I had going in whatever league or tourney. I decided to move from the highest competitive leagues we had and go down to complete rec league and tournaments.
That was even worse for me because I couldn't understand why people couldn't do certain things. All in all, we won our last two tournaments, then I took a break for the summer, came back to sub for two teams in two different leagues the next season, won those two games and left forever.
I still look back at the fun times on occasion but the main memory that sticks out is this incredible catch a woman made at the fence off of a blast of my bat that would have won the game. Went to extras and lost. It was in the playoffs. It's funny that is the most memorable moment to me after having lots of great moments.
Perspective on the end of the rec ball season & how old coaches are remembered
— Greg P. says:
My wife teaches all kinds of classes where she works. Leadership, organization…. She came home a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I knew a guy named Joe Smith, not his real name, and I said Yes, he was my baseball coach when I was a kid. Why? She said she had his wife in class and she came up and asked if my wife was married to Greg from Nebraska and I was on Joe Smiths baseball team about 47 or 48 years ago.
I remembered that he was just a few years out of high school. He was a brother of a guy on the team. He did not know much about baseball but he was a good guy and got us to work hard and play hard. We wound up winning the title that year. That lady sent a picture to my wife of a "Coach of the Year" plaque one of the moms had made for him.
I'm sure in 30 or 40 years you will be thought of by some of those kids after their wives take a garden seminar from Mrs Screencaps.
Here’s some meat from a few weeks.
Texan says this washing machine is the last washing machine you'll buy: Speed Queen
— Drew in Katy, TX knows how to be rough on a washing machine and this one is #notsponsored:
I’ve seen the discussion on washing machines. The answer to washing machine problems is a Speed Queen washing machine. These have long been considered commercial washing machines and that is a good reason to get one from the start.
I still prefer a top load though they have both. Ours has been tested for almost 8 years now from our country life on small acreage with three sons.
That means the normal grass and dirt, plus chicken sh_t, pig sh_t, cow sh_t, tractor grime, truck grease, dirt bike oil, cement grit, wood chips, and everything that we leave in our pockets. My wife loves me for figuring this out and buying one for us.
We had been through the other options with all of the problems – especially having to wash clothes twice to get out the dirt or soap. And then there was the constant stench from the front loaders that always grew some type of black mold in the seals.
We gave our previous washing machine away when it was almost brand new in order to buy the Speed Queen. We’ve had one minor repair with an intake solenoid valve leaking and that is because we get some find sand from our water well.
We bought the part and repaired it ourselves. And no, I don’t work for Speed Queen.
— Todd W. agrees:
I've enjoyed the conversation on washers in the column recently, but it's a total amateur hour in there and I'm gonna settle this thing with two words - Speed Queen. Proudly manufactured in the USA (Wisconsin), they make the most generic looking top loader you've ever seen, but they are build to last 25 years.
Yes, they take some heat because they lack certain advanced features (like advanced automated load detection and stupid "Green" features), but it washes like nothing else. Every part is metal, no plastic garbage that breaks at the worst possible time.
Just turn it on, throw the soap in, stuff it with clothes...and they are all clean. Get that Chinese-made garbage out of your life and buy one washer and never have to buy another...ever.
The laundry topic went WAY crazier than I thought. It reminded me of topics like the Blackstone vs. Traeger and you guys going nuts over Crock-pots
— Greg S. remembers:
I started doing my own laundry in college. I continued doing all the laundry when I got married and had a son. He moved out at 18 to go to college and never came back home. He is now 30, married, and just had his first child yesterday.
I also did the grocery shopping, bill paying, and the yard work. Frankly, I was better at those things than her and much faster. She was a hair stylist with her own shop. She was very talented and had a large clientele. I also washed her towels from the shop. I have a bachelor degree in accounting so I kept her books and did the taxes.
I’m a life long govt. employee and only worked 40 hours a week with no travel and earned good vacation and sick time so I had time to handle the load. She worked crazy long hours and odd times so our situation just worked. I’m now 63 and she passed away 3 years ago and had not thought about our situation until reading your discussion on laundry.
— Travel Ball Hardo Chris B. in Houston says:
You found more dudes that do laundry than I expected. I do not do laundry, and while I could probably figure it out I don't even know how to use the washer (we have relatively new front loaders). My wonderful wife spoils me by taking care of all of that. She taught our kids to do their own when they got into high school, so she "only" does hers & mine now.
— Dan L. in Florida learned to do laundry due to an interesting job he once held:
I also am one that does my own laundry. I learned how when I was in charge of the laundry on an ice breaker in the late 70’s. We went to Antarctica for Deep Freeze 79.
When we married we did our laundry together and when we had kids we were blessed for her to stay home and she did most of it. As the kids grew and more activities happened we worked together to get it done. Then college and a few year’s later empty nesters. We still did laundry together, however I noticed there were certain items that she wanted washed and dried a certain way , so we went back to doing it separately.
Basically, when I get home Friday night, I put my work clothes in so they’re ready for the next work week. This works out well. My wife cooks most of our meals during the week and I’ll grill or smoke on the weekends. I also do the dishes because I can load a dishwasher better than a lot of people I know. Something must be going right as we are celebrating our 44th anniversary this week.
— Divorced dad Tom T. does his own laundry:
Divorced for 18 years… do all of my own laundry, and used to do my kids’. I have a top loading Whirlpool that is at least 25 years old. The safety switch broke on the lid… I was able to fix it with a pencil. Still going strong.
— Brian in New Jersey had no choice but to get in there and get his own laundry done:
Gen Xer, born in 1969, so decidedly not a Millennial. Have been doing laundry since my early teens, when my mother, a nurse practitioner working 10 hour days and raising five kids said, "You don’t want to wait for clean clothes, do it yourself." So I did, and have been ever since. Including my wife’s and - when they lived with us, and before they were capable of doing it themselves - two children’s. Love my wife. Works hard at her job, she’s beautiful, brilliant, and a fantastic mother. Has many talents - none of which would ever appear on the pages of Good Housekeeping. Is what it is. Laundry’s a pretty f--king easy thing to do, btw. The machines handle 98 percent of the workload. That other two percent - folding laundry - does suck though. Especially sheets. So just ball them up and stuff ‘em on the shelf. They’ll flatten once they’re put on a mattress.
I need to do more polls that challenge readers
Any poll topic suggestions?
EMAIL: JOE.KINSEY@OUTKICK.COM OR USE MY PERSONAL GMAIL
Random thoughts from one of our prolific emailers
— Rob M. in Florida is always up for chiming in on a variety of topics:
A few thoughts on the ‘Caps Questions bouncing around.
Laundry- I do everything around the house except for two things, laundry and finances. I don’t do laundry because I have no sense of color or what should be washed in the same load. I once washed the towels we use for the dogs with the bath towels and got dog hair all over our good towels. I also once washed my wife’s good sweater with random clothing and then put everything in the dryer, shrunk the sweater to a child size. Now, you might think this was a conscious effort to get out of doing laundry, but when it comes to that sort of thing, I’m just not that bright ( I work in the aerospace industry, laundry confuses me, airplane parts don’t. I try not to dwell on it that much) The finance part is the same, if that were left up to me, we’d be broke. I just don’t do that very well and I know it, a man has to know his limitations, I know mine.
Softball- I played one year of Rec softball a few years ago, one year. That was enough for me, I thought it was going to be a bunch of guys getting together to throw the ball around and have some fun until it was time to grab some beer and wings. To say that I was wrong would be an understatement, I was WAY wrong. I show up in an old pair of shorts and a cheap pair of cleats I think I found at Goodwill, a glove that I had for years in the garage and a Goodwrench hat. We had jersey’s with the lawn service sponsors name on the front, that was the extent of our uniform what followed was some of the most ridiculous events that I have ever seen middle age men do.
1. Showing up one hour before your game and stretching for 45 minutes. I get it, you don’t want to pull anything, however, most of these guys were 50 lbs overweight and had no idea how to properly stretch and most hadn’t seen their toes in years.
2. The giant Wilson bag of bats, batting gloves, knee pads, elbow pads, ankle braces and your giant bottle of water.
3. The game itself is a shit show, these guys screaming at umpires, sliding head first into second, talking trash and generally being giant douche’s.
Once again, one year, one long miserable year. Our team won one game, but the beer was cold, the wings were hot and that was all that really mattered.
Final thought. I have met the guys that brag about the Rec Ball Championships, they are all the same guy, they just have different categories that they fit into, they are as follows.
1. Fantasy Football Champion guy- He has the $12 trophy proudly displayed in his cubicle, he can regale you with all of his victories that last 9 seasons and really thinks you want to hear about it. BTW Fantasy guy, you could not be a GM of an NFL team, regardless of what you think.
2. Flag Football guy- This is Softball guy on steroids, he is in better shape than Softball guy and is twice as obnoxious. His trophy for league MVP is prominently displayed on his desk, don’t ask him about it unless you have a hour to kill.
3. Likes to Fight Guy ( I believe Jim Rome coined this phrase years ago)- He is all of the previous guys rolled into one. He plays all of the Rec league sports, argues with all of the officials and wants to brawl with the other team. No one wants to go near him, we all apologize for him and secretly hope he sustains a season ending injury every game. We feel bad for his wife that has to sit through every one of his games and only hope she is doing the pool guy…..
And I leave you this morning with this Social Security news
Millennials, please send this tweet to your fathers and ask them for their reactions.
As for you older Gen Xers, you're not too far behind. Life isn't slowing down.
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And with that news that you're getting old, let's crank it down on this mid-July Thursday with the sun blazing, temps headed to 81 (!!!!!) and golf with my buddies on the horizon this weekend.
Let's go get after it. Have a great day.
Email: joe.kinsey@outkick.com or use my Gmail