Norman Rogers: June 2009

Scuddy's Bar

Scuddy's Bar is: wishing Mr. Norman Rogers a safe trip back to his home after a rollicking good time spent throwing apples at tourists.

An Unknown But Fabulous Safe For Work Hottie

Sadly, there are times when the identity of an absolutely stunning hottie is unknown to us. We send out feelers, we call up bureaucrats in distant cities, we wait on highways for lights to change. We want to know who she is so we can proceed with a bit of grace to see what all the fuss is about. We come up empty-handed.

We did find her, and we think she is fetching.

Faye Reagan

The most spectacular thing about her is her ability to arch her back and still look good.

Faye Reagan

She is a natural redhead, and that means she's automatically a favorite of mine.

Faye Reagan

I have put up a small gallery here, but one need not worry--we'll find more of Faye Reagan. She is incredible.

Brianna Banks

What a lovely lady--she can barely keep her clothes on. These are some of the most heavily edited photos we've ever produced.

Brianna Banks

Alektra Blue

As hotties go, wow. Alektra Blue.

Alektra Blue

There is something going on behind those eyes--she has the most intense stare of any woman I have ever seen.

Alektra Blue

A truly, truly remarkably talented and beautiful woman. Alektra Blue has a small gallery here...

Jennifer Stone Is Her Own Special Self

Jennifer Stone

Forget that Jennifer Stone may or may not slightly resemble Jennifer Aniston--I don't see it. I think they're both very lovely ladies, but I think Jennifer Stone is at least a decade younger.

Jennifer Stone

Not that that matters--heavens, I enjoy MILFS (Mothers I'd Love To Frisk) like any other decent, red-blooded American male.

Jennifer Stone

I just don't think you can underestimate someone like Jennifer Stone or write her off as an Eastern European version of some famous American television actress. She's wonderful, and she has a fledgling gallery here...

Safe For Work Hotties Double Shots

Sydney MoonSydney MoonVeronica VanozaVeronica Vanoza

Crissy Moran

Penny Flame

Kyla ColeKyla Cole

A Disappointing Day at the Races

Indy Car at Richmond, Photo Credit: Outdoor Action Photo

It has gotten so bad on the IndyCar series, the drivers are apologizing:

Scott Dixon described the IndyCar Series race at Richmond International Raceway as "a bit of a procession, unfortunately," and said the 300-lap event was frustrating because the lack of passing made it more closely resemble a parade.

And he made those comments Saturday night after ending up in Victory Lane.

Teammate and runner-up Dario Franchitti apologized to fans for an "awful, awful race," while Graham Rahal said he only passed two cars all night while finishing third.

One year after a 26-car field produced what Danica Patrick described as a "carnagefest" on the shortest track on the series, with 103 laps of caution and a dozen accidents, the latest visit was quite the opposite. Twenty cars spent the night speeding single file around the D-shaped oval, with none of the drama fans are accustomed to seeing in NASCAR country.

On Tuesday, IndyCar Series officials and those of International Speedway Corp., which owns RIR, will meet to continue discussions about whether the series will return in 2010.

Track president Doug Fritz declined to speculate Sunday on how those talks will go, but did nothing to mask his disappointment with a race that was missing what fans come to see.

"I wish we had seen more passing and more lead changes and more side by side racing," he said in a telephone interview. "We'd love to see better shows and from our perspective as it relates to the fans, we're as disappointed as the fans are and as the drivers are, as well."

Dixon suggested the cars in the series are part of the problem, and he and others spoke all weekend about how having them all engineered so similarly can stymie the competition.

It sounds like they're afraid to race, and who can blame them? It even sounds to me like the drivers are terrified of the press--hence, the need to complain over the phone to a journalist. How bad it has gotten in the IndyCar series, I do not know. Right now, those miniature pickup trucks are looking like a better bet.

The open-wheel style race car isn't designed for confrontational racing. We've tried giving the drivers guns--sorry, it just doesn't work. We've already seen what happens when you let them adorn their axle caps with spikes and medieval weaponry--it just makes for poorly-considered drama. The open-wheel car is a throwback. It's designed for speed racing only, and the reality of auto racing is that the only way to adequately win a race is to hit your opponent in the rear quarterpanel and send him into the wall or into the air. NASCAR understands this--taking an opponent out for a little doorbanging and a little wall scraping and a little paint trading makes the people in the stands jump up and down and howl, creating a bloodthirsty, rabid fanbase that will buy beer and knickknacks. NASCAR has a better business model, by far.

Auto racing held a certain allure for me as a young man, sort of like beer and loose women once did. Were it not for the rules, I probably would have chosen auto racing over football in college, even though Princeton did not subsidize or organize auto racing as a college sport.

I've never understood that--auto racing is entirely an American sport, since we invented the combustion-engine equipped eauto (or did we? I have no idea). Why is there college baseball, college golf, college swimming, college basketball and no college auto racing? It makes no sense. The Ivy League and two of the major conferences--the SEC and the ACC--could have a thriving college auto racing sport right now if they had any sense.

Only Joe Mauer Can Save Baseball

Joe Mauer At Bat

It's not like I want to put any pressure on the man, but if Joe Mauer were to take steroids, run over an old lady carrying birthday presents for orphans, or marry Amy Winehouse, it would destroy baseball.

The entire Sports Illustrated article about Mauer is masterfully written, but this chunk is as good as baseball writing gets:

Here's another measure of Mauer's excellence: the checked swing, typically the signal of defeat for a hitter in his one-on-one duel with the pitcher. Hitting is timing, the Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn said, and pitching is disrupting that timing. The checked swing announces the hitter's surrender.

"Maybe five times in four years I've seen him take a checked swing," says bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek, a Twins coach for 29 years. "I've seen it only once this year. He's a freak."

The secret to Mauer's success is his serenity, his minimalist movement and emotion. He is the Ben Hogan of hitters, bringing the sweet spot to the hitting area with no extraneous movement. "I think the biggest thing about my swing is I don't have a lot of stuff going on," he says. "Guys have different triggers for timing, and my timing is very simple." As a boy growing up in wintry St. Paul, Mauer pounded balls into a tarpaulin hung in the family garage. His father, Jake Jr., a salesman for a company that designs trophies, rigged up a contraption that would drop the balls through a coffee-can-and-PVC-pipe device, leaving time only for a quick, short stroke. By the time Mauer was a senior at Cretin-Derham Hall in St. Paul, his swing was so pure that he made contact nearly every time he swung (he, in fact, struck out only once in high school), though with little power at first.

"My coach, Jim O'Neill, took me out for batting practice one time," Mauer says. "He would just throw and pepper certain spots. And that's when we found out that middle in or middle a little up was my spot. I was consistently hitting balls over the fence.

"So after we were done, all he said was, 'Why don't you look in that spot the next couple of games?' I think I hit seven home runs in the next seven games. I took that and ran with it, not just for hitting home runs but hitting good pitches."

Mauer has grown into such a finicky hitter that he has swung at only nine first pitches in 202 plate appearances this year. He stands at the plate taking mental measurements of how the baseball behaves out of a pitcher's hand. "I just try to see how the ball moves, especially my first at bat," he says. "I always like to see a couple of pitches before I offer at one. I think ever since I can remember I've always felt pretty comfortable with two strikes."

With each strike pitchers jackhammer away at a hitter's leverage. It doesn't work as well with Mauer. Through Sunday, the average major league hitter this year had hit .186 in two-strike counts. Mauer had hit .253 in such spots. "When I get two strikes," he says, "I widen [my stance] a little bit and stay shorter to the ball. When things go bad, I joke with my coaches, 'I'm just going to go straight to my two-strike approach' because I'm comfortable with it. I don't like to get in that situation, but if I do get there, I don't panic or anything."

I have nothing to add to that. It's too bad I don't get any of their games, it would be fun to watch.