Knoblauch stories...

[MSBNYY]

Talking about doing wacky things has always been a trademark of this group. Yet unlike most groups of people, we tend to actually DO these things.

Get 100 people to dress up in Hawaiian shirts for no reason? Done.

A group trip to Coney Island where we ride bumper cars? Done.

Ride a mechanical bull? Done.

And one of the simple yet early things we discussed was a bleacher karaoke event. This finally happened a couple of years ago, when a large contingent went to TG Whitneys and took over the machine.

One of those people was Knoblauch.

Apparently, this wasn't Knoblauch's first venture in the wild world of karaoke. He talked about how one time, he wowed a bunch of old ladies by singing a Sinatra song to perfection. And he also mentioned how people told him how great he sang I Go To Extremes, by Billy Joel.

And that's the song he chose.

If you think American Idol auditions can be bad, Knoblauch's singing of "I Go To Extremes" would likely make Simon pop a vein.

This performance was one of the most memorable karaoke performances I had ever witnessed. There were bad singers before him. There were WORSE singers before him.

But for some reason, this "so bad it's good" performance really stuck out.

Knoblauch's voice was cracking so much I thought he was Peter Brady. But it wasn't that. Knoblauch really thought he was going to rock the house and kick ass with this song, and every time his voice crack there was a legitimate look of bewilderment as if he was thinking, "what the fuck?"

He was legitimately shocked.

I just found that to be extremely funny.

To this day, I can't hear that song without being reminded of that performance.

[dabadguy]

How about when they showed a shot of him in Minnie during the game and were commenting on all his pins that covered his jersey.

[$heriff Tom]

Hey, who was Teddy yelling at during that game? They kept cutting back to Teddy giving someone the business, who was sitting there with a hangdog look on their face. Was it you, Mike? Or was it Knoblauch?

[dabadguy]

Who else? He was yelling at me. Michael Kay said "what's wrong with that guy, the Yankees are winning"? It was something like that. I thought that was the funniest moment ever on tv for the creatures. They went back to him two or three times and showed him flipping out. I know Jw has it all on tape.

[$heriff Tom]

Eh, you were awake and posting at 6:08 why?

It was classic TV, yes. I thought it was you. Whoever it was had a "this is corny" face on the whole time Teddy was lacing into him. I remember at the time I had the game on with the sound down, as i was on the phone. I saw this unfolding and immediatly reached for the remote, and got the 2nd and 3rd time around, with the announcers having a laugh at the whole imbroglio.

[MSBNYY]

2003--The first ever bleacher softball challenge. Several weeks of hype as the heated rivalry between Team Tom and Team Mo come to a head. The time for talk was over. Time to put up, or shut up. Time to separate the men from the boys.

And as is the standard, teams warm up by having a catch. Loosen those arms. While jumping slightly to catch a throw in his warming up period, Knoblauch screams in pain, hurting his knee.

First and only warmup injury in the history of the challenge.