Bochy, Yost should decide World Series winner with head, fists

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The concept of Phil Jackson as part-time coach of the New York Bockers of Knicker came as a great shock to, among others, Carmelo Anthony, who declared the idea a non-starter.

But we suspect the rumor, from wherever it came before it arrived in the ears of ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne was inspired By Steve Kerr, the best part-time coach in NBA history, by .00606673407482, over his closest pursuer, Luke Walton.

Then again, Phil makes $7 million more than Kerr, so he should have to do a few bus rides to Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

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Speaking of the ‘Bockers, a guy in our office was arguing over the phone with a friend of his about the relative merits of the Knicks v. the Los Angeles Lakers, the first known debate between fans of teams whose combined record is 42-94.

Sad. Some satellite had to give part of its life for that conversation, and I don’t even want to get into how much productivity Comcast lost between his chat and my looking for a hammer with which to beat first him and then myself to death.

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Kate Diamond of Leicester, is not someone you should know or particularly care about one way or the other, but she married a Leicester City fan. And now that the Foxes are closing on a Premier League title as unlikely as the Detroit Lions winning the Super Bowl, she incurred the wrath of the Twitter Obey Or Die police when she dropped this little beauty:

“‎@katediamond I guess my husband's overriding memory of this historic (Leicester City) run will be me, back in April, persuading him not to renew his season ticket.”

And then she followed with this:

“Tune in on the final day of the season to see if our marriage survives that decision.”

A few minutes later, when the What Do You Mean Your Life Is None Of My Business Brigade offered gentle rebuttals, she offered this eminently predictable message:

“Well that escalated incredibly quickly, didn't it? Morning.”

Followed by:

“My mentions are wall-to-wall ‘I HOPE YOUR HUSBAND LEAVES YOU!!’ So if you want me, for second marriages or whatever, probs best to email.”

At least she had a sense of humor – until they started calling her an Aston Villa fan. These days, those are fighting words.

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Oh, and Leicester City will at the very least provide the Premiership’s coach of the year, and it’s not coach Claudio Ranieri. In fact, it’s a bunch of coaches, and none of them coach. They monk.

Indeed, a dozen Buddhist monks from Thailand, give or take the odd chanter, King Power Stadium a few times three years ago at the behest of team owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha to bless the pitch, hand out cloth amulets to staff and players and basically deliver whatever karma Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and Kaspar Schmeichel couldn’t deliver. The grand high imperial monk, Phra Prommangkalachan, put it this way to AFP, “I’m not sure if they understood what I explained to them about it, but they knew that it would bring them luck.”

Managers can be such posers, acting like they fixed bad teams and all, when all you need is a little Buddha in your life.

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Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost is a highly underrated baseball man, but he is indisputably a crap mason. From the Kansas City Star’s 16th-best delivery boy for the years 1996-2002 inclusive, Sam Mellinger:

“This is Ned vs. The Bricks. Each brick (of four) is about 1½ inches thick, and said to require 100 pounds of force to break, and that’s assuming you hit them exactly in the middle, at their weakest point . . . He squats behind the bricks, and smiles out toward his players. He raises his hands and flexes his fingers. There are many ways to break bricks. You can use your forearm, or perhaps the back of the arm above the elbow. Yost is opting for two fists. No subtlety with this man.

“He puts one fist inside the other and pushes down on a small towel placed on top of the bricks, there for a target and protection. Yost raises his fists once, then twice, and on the third he pauses just for a quick moment before bringing everything he has down and through a stack of concrete. The bricks collapse into the middle, and later his left arm and both hands will be marked with large, deep scars. But at the moment, it’s adrenaline and testosterone and accomplishment as Yost raises his arms in triumph and looks out on a standing ovation with the kind of smile reserved for winning a fight or a World Series.”

The Giants, seeing this, have inveighed upon Bruce Bochy inaugurate the season by using his head to reduce the Chancellor Hotel Union Square to rubble.

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And finally, a bit of logrolling. Draymond Green told Tom Tolbert, the infinitely sexier half of KNBR’s 3-7 chat show, that if he could not by law pick Michigan State, his alma mater, to win the national chamnpionship, that he would select Saginaw Valley State as his team of choice.

This led, of course, to someone at SVSU thanking him on Twitter:

“@SVSU_MBB Thanks for the support Draymond! We're headed to Texas for the Elite 8, see you there?”

Our planet is far too small, and it is far too easy for people to reach each other electronically. I mean, it would have killed him to say “Holy Cross?”

Now go away.

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