LAUGHING STOCK: Ball State's Dane Cook — no, not that one — was arrested for not paying cab fare. What a hack! |
Hey, look everybody: Dane Cook got arrested! Okay, not that Dane Cook. Not the Dane Cook who’s so unfunny you want to plunge a corkscrew into your brainstem every time you see him. Not the Dane Cook who surely sold his unfunny soul to Satan in exchange for the monstrously profitable career as the new Bob Hope and is now destined to spend the next five or six decades torturing all of us with his schmaltz comedies, before spending his golden years receiving fake awards, playing golf in Arizona, and doing the occasional Pennzoil commercial.No, this Dane Cook plays free safety for Ball State. It isn’t known if he is funny, but it’s a safe bet that he’s funnier than the other Dane Cook, who — incidentally and to our great shame — is from Boston. The Ball State Dane Cook got busted recently for, get this, not paying a cab fare. The story is a little vague, but authorities in Muncie, Indiana, are slapping him with a theft charge, which is a class-D felony in those parts. Like the Michael Bolton character in Office Space, the poor bastard now faces losing his job, in addition to being stuck with that shitty name for all eternity.
Let’s be generous and give him just four points for this one. Not that taxi drivers should ever have to put up with crap from hulking jocks, but when you have a name like that, you get at least one mulligan.
Yet another
Meanwhile, on the heels of this past week’s child-support case involving former Oakland A’s first-baseman Troy Neel, we have another. This time the cad is Jason Caffey, who once played for the Chicago Bulls as an only very occasionally effective reserve big man.
According to new reports, Caffey owes one Lorunda Brown more than $200,000 in child support and legal fees. Caffey apparently has 10 kids with eight women, and Brown is one of the latter. In October, an Atlanta judge rejected his appeal for bankruptcy, clearing the way for an arrest warrant on the child-support charges, which was issued this past week.
These new revelations, incidentally, move Caffey up the list of famed deadbeat jock dads. Previously, he was just below Evander Holyfield, as the former heavyweight champ has long been known to have nine illegitimate children, while previous reports had Caffey with just eight (by seven women). Apparently he continued procreating after his career ended.
Fifty points for Caffey — it should be noted that the only time the public ever hears about these athletes who have multiple illegitimate children is when they fail to pay support and that information ends up in a court complaint. So who knows how many Caffeys there are out there? This stuff is getting out of hand.
It develops character
Here’s a weird one. A young man who a decade or so ago helped Mexico win the Little League World Series was arrested this past week on kidnapping charges.
The suspect’s name is Everardo Daniel Ordonez, and he played first base for the Linda Vista team (from Guadeloupe) that won the LLWS in 1997. Another suspect in the case, Gustava Gialil Baca Marcos, is the brother of one of Mexico’s most famous ballplayers, Daniel Baca Marcos, who pitches professionally for the Mexico City Red Devils. Observant baseball fans will notice that this is the same team for which Kansas City Royals closer Joakim Soria played.
Apparently Ordonez and Gustava Gialil Baca Marcos kidnapped an 18 year old and kept him at a home owned by Daniel Baca Marcos. Authorities have yet to link the star pitcher to the crime, but the investigation, as they say, is continuing.
Prominent South or Latin American baseball players have been inveigled into kidnapping scandals with increasing frequency of late, but usually as victims (think former Red Sox Ugueth Urbina) and not as perpetrators. Seventy-five points for these two hombres.
Yawn
Every year, it seems, someone on a Super Bowl team gets arrested for some dumb thing and we end up having to hear about it nine hundred thousand times before the damned game. Some, like the Barret Robbins case, are at least interesting. The case involving backup Steeler tight end Jon Dekker is not. Dekker — who busted up his knee in August and was on injured reserve all season — got drunk at a party in Alexandria, Virginia, and then tried to run away from cops this past week. Give him one lousy point, mostly for wasting our time.
When he’s not googling “Dane’s cooked” and “Laffy Caffey,” Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone. He can be reached at m_taibbi@yahoo.com.
