This amazingly hilarious animated short about the infamous and unbelievable incident is truly a keeper. Produced by No Mas, the short documents Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellis’ 1971 no hitter against the San Diego Padres while under the influence of LSD. While many have believed this to be an urban legend, Ellis disclosed after his retirement that it was true. While this might slight the other accomplishments of his career, being known as the LSD pitcher, nothing can take this moment away from Ellis regardless of the drug’s voodoo status. What is probably more interesting (and not funny) is the abundance of “legal” drugs that many players were on during that period in sports history. Still, Ellis paints a vivid picture of that day, and artist James Blagden creates one of the funniest cartoons about baseball seen in a long time.

via UNDFTD Team Blog

What a relief, then, when news hit the Interweb that Michael’s brother and band mate Jermaine Jackson had incongruously caught a foul ball at a Dodger’s game against Atlanta last Friday. According to published reports, the surreal event occurred when the team’s shortstop Rafael Furcal sent a foul flying into the dugout, where Jackson was sitting (and wearing, presciently, a catcher’s mitt himself). “Jermaine, a right-hander wearing a Manny Ramirez No. 99 jersey, made a nifty backhanded grab and celebrated the snatching of the souvenir,” wrote the account posted on the Dodger’s official website, which also used the occasion to goof mercilessly and cornily on the Jacksons theme (”Jermaine Jackson found a new meaning for the word “Victory” on Friday evening at Dodger Stadium”; “Not surprisingly, Jermaine caught the ball while wearing one glove. A baseball glove.”). The incident brought a little levity to the whole Jackson family’s experience of late, and that of the Dodgers. The Dodgers’ season has been dramatic enough, with the team currently in first place in their league and likely to go on to an especially exciting playoff run on the hunt to the National League pennant. That the team and the Jacksons are both still capable of a miracle, however tiny and ridiculous, felt like a cloud had lifted: even though L.A. lost to the Braves by three points in that game, Jackson’s unexpected catch seemed an auspicious omen of victory, indeed….

30 years ago this week, The Detroit Tigers visited the Chicago White Sox for a double header. During the intermission between games, a Chicago disc jockey who had long railed against how disco was a threat to his and his fan’s beloved rock n’ roll (a thinly-veiled racist screed some say), he invited fans to get in cheap to the baseball game if they brought a disco record for him to destroy in center field. Obviously, a slightly different crowd gathered in the bleachers, smoking weed, chanting “disco sucks” and throwing their disco platters as frisbees at the players.

“And then all hell broke loose,” Jack Morris, a Tigers pitcher, said. “They charged the field and started tearing up the pitching rubber and the dirt. They took the bases. They started digging out home plate.”

As the fans raced onto the field, outnumbering their expectations by about double their usual 30,000, officials called off the second game and tried to restore order to the park. Regardless of the damage, and malintent, the night had for disco, which unfairly lumped seminal classics into the same pile as the low-brow ‘hits’, the story is humorous and visually evocative of the time period when rock was still king. “Disco Duck” may taken the fall, but it could be argued that through the night’s events the true art of disco (see: Larry Levan, Arthur Russell, Giorgio Moroder) was saved.

via New York Times

1. Richard Ashcroft: Before he was singing bittersweet symphonies with The Verve, this psychedelic shaman was considered a top candidate for a pro football/soccer career. Apparently, he took part, albeit briefly, in the Legends football match against Germany in June.

“My leak was the football. To the age of thirteen years he was one of the best in the football team of the school. At the age of fifteen to being present at Soccer Bobby’s Charlton School. The football was replaced by another obsession: The music.”

via Myspace

2. Greg Dulli: This dark and stormy confessional rocker was a high school baseball and football hero before he became an anti-hero in the Afghan Whigs.

“I played basketball all through school and then even played in this 30-and-under league for a little while. It’s funny, as long as I’ve known him [Lanegan], I guess we’ve never been around a basketball court, but at some point this run [we should]. We threw a baseball on the last Twilights tour, in North Carolina, and my arm hurt for a week after that. But Mark pitched in high school.”

via Pitchfork

3. Scott Weiland: The STP/Velvet Revolver frontman wasn’t always a scrawny junkie – he once played basketball on his Orange County high school team.

“I started playing music as well and when I hurt my back junior year, it was right before the season started and I told the coaches that I didn’t think I was going to continue. So I said I think I’ll continue with my band, and I was in the Magical Ensemble, this top singing group in school. The varsity football coach and wrestling coach told me how I was going to ruin my life and I was letting everybody down.”

via  Journal Gazette

4. Rod Stewart: Mr. “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” was making his way up the ranks of junior soccer clubs before rock stardom struck.

Very early, Stewart realized that soccer was a chance for him to earn a good living. He practiced hard everyday, and in his late teens he signed an apprentice contract to play with the Brenton Football Club.

via Oral Cancer Foundation

5. Topper Headon: Few people know that the ‘Human Drum Machine’, drummer for the Clash was an ambitious footballer that seemed to come to music by fate.

This punk rock drummer who played for the Clash remains hugely underrated, so it comes as a surprise to learn that he arrived at the profession by accident. Aged 13, a broken leg put paid to his footballing ambitions and it was a doctor who suggested the drums as a way of venting his frustration. Within six months he was playing for a jazz band in a Dover pub.

Via The Independent

Click here to view the embedded video.

It also has a sweet soundtrack composed by Michael Brooks (Real World) plus well placed tunes including TV on the Radio (hear below), a Spanish version of Hallelujah (covered by the likes of Jeff Buckley to Leonard Cohen) and numerous merengues for a spin round your living room no doubt.

TV on the Radio – Blues From Down Here

‘Sugar’ is  writtten and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck who burst onto the independent film scene in ‘06 with their debut Half Nelson, that brought its star, Ryan Gosling, an Academy Award nomination for best actor.