Sean the Sports Intern, "The Beginning"

A little background info:

My name is Sean Maginnis, and I am a broke, jobless, Sports Broadcast intern living in the Kent area.

I currently live in the rec room of my Dad and his girlfriends house in Kent. I sleep on a roll out mat.

My internship is with Comcast SportsNet. It's a simulcast radio/TV show done with KJR Sports Radio in Seattle. For those of you who know about it, it's the Dave "Softy" Mahler Show on KJR.

Let's get started...
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Right out of the gate I'm throwing you a curveball.

I'm starting at the end of my day as opposed to the beginning. Very Tarantino-esque, if you will. As I'm leaving the Clear Channel building in Seattle on Thursday, I notice an unusual site on my way to the bus stop: A clown car.

The vehicle resembled a San Francisco style trolley, but on four wheels instead of tracks.

There were 6 or 7 clowns hanging off the vehicle complete with honking noses, goofy make-up, and seltzer-water sprayers to boot. To the average person, this would be a comical sight. Hilarious even.

I'm not the average person.

Clowns do not amuse me. Grown men wearing ridiculous make-up and hanging out with little kids all the time? Something is wrong with this picture. Clowns are cause for concern, not laughter.

Here are my clowns of the week:

1. The entire population of "Mannywood". Listen up, you bandanna'd, fake dreadlock wearing loonies: Manny Ramirez is a cheater. plain and simple.

On the show yesterday, Dianna suggested they change the name of Mannywood to "Mannyroid"...lame play on words, but it does illustrate my point. When a father takes his son to a ballgame, he should be pointing to Manny and telling his kid "Don't ever be like him, son." Instead, there will be an entire cheering section dedicated to a man who got caught using steroids.

True fans of baseball and fair play can take solace in this fact: One place Manny will NOT have a cheering section is with the Hall of Fame voters. (Here's a great story about it by Jayson Stark from ESPN: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&page=rumblings090703 )

2. Texas Longhorns Linebacker Sergio Kindle. This rocket scientist crashed his SUV in to the side of an apartment complex. Apparently, he was far too busy texting to be bothered with such burdensome tasks as watching the road...or steering.

After pushing the vehicle back on to the road with a little help from his friends (anyone else digging the Beatles reference?), he LEFT THE SCENE OF THE ACCIDENT.

Last I checked, that's called a hit-and-run, correct?

Here's where it really gets good.

Apparently, Texas state law has no provision covering hit-and-run accidents that result in damage to a building, so it looks like Sergio lucked out on this one.

That's a pretty big loophole(apartment hole?), Texas. (Here's the full story: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4294788 )

3. CHINA. (Wait, what?). Yes, you read that correctly. China. Congratulations China, you rode Yao Ming like Seabiscuit, and now his feet have given out on him. Being 7'6" puts a huge strain on the human body, and the joints in particular. Combine that with the running, jumping and pivoting neccessary to be a professional basketball player, and the potential for injury skyrockets.

Yao has been in and out of the Rockets line-up for the better part of two seasons with a stress fracture in his foot, an injury that never seems to have healed correctly. Now let's say the Chinese had given Yao a summer off from training with the national team to rest and rehab the injury. Suddenly Yao's career is extended by 5 or 6 years.

But that didn't happen, and now Yao may be done for all of next season, and possibly his career.

And the saddest part about the whole situation is that Yao would do it again in a heartbeat; that's how much he loves his country.

Congratulations, China. Looks like the meat grinder has claimed another victim.
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Working in a sports oriented radio station in Seattle, it's basically a given that you're going to be surrounded by UW Husky fans.

Being a recent WSU graduate (I BLEED CRIMSON AND GRAY) and intern, I fully expected to recieve numerous lashings of the tongue variety on the job.

That being said, here are a few statistics from the week for you:

Number of days I worked: 4

Number of days I rocked my Coug gear: 3

Number of days I was harrassed by Huskys: 0

...Gotta love those numbers.

Here are my numbers of the week:

502: Number of career saves for Mariano Rivera. In an age of steroid buffed, mirror kissing, Toronto strip club frequenting(if you haven't figured out who I'm referring to by this point, you might as well stop reading and go lie down for a while) caricatures of athletes and "men", Mariano Rivera represents all that is right in baseball. Here is a guy that plays with nothing but heart, intensity, natural ability and one NASTY pitch (thrown from about 30 different angles).

2-1: Score of the Seattle Sounders - Portland Timbers game. Futbol has taken off like wild fire in the Emerald City, and the renewed I-5 rivalry may help to fill a gap left by the departure of the Seattle Supersonics. The game, regardless of the outcome, was a great moment for soccer in the Northwest.

Doesn't hurt that my Sounders brought home the "W".

4: Number of times Softy used the word "Dookie" during Thursday's show (somewhere, the 2nd grader in all of us is giggling uncontrollably).

2: Number of Sedin twins the Vancouver Canucks signed to identical 5-year, 30 million dollar contracts. THANK GOD. Maybe next year they won't choke in the play-offs...again...
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And that's all for this week. Softy vowed to light off fireworks INSIDE the station today, so I decided this might be a good day to take a breather.

With any luck, I'll have some more non-sensical ranting about interships and sports next week.

Until then, keep it real sports nerds.

---Sean the Sports Intern