Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Story Before

See this happy-go-lucky picture of Mark Prior in a San Diego Padres uniform? Yeah, take a long look at it, because it took me a half hour to find it and you probably won’t see this dude in a Padres jersey (let alone anybody’s MLB threads) any time soon.
In what turned out to be one heck of a day for the Padres, disabled list phenom Mark Prior — who has yet to pitch in a regular-season game for his hometown club — was shut down for the season to undergo season-sending surgery on his bum right shoulder.
Buddy Black announced the here-we-go-again decision prior to Sunday’s game in San Francisco, which Trevor Hoffman fitting blew in the 10th, coughing up a 3-1 lead and eventually falling to the Giants 4-3.
All’s well that ends well, I guess.
The 27-year-old Prior, for the record, hasn’t pitched since August 2006. The second pick in the 2001 draft out of USC was 1-6 with a 7.21 ERA in his final nine games for the Chicago Cubs.
Despite the shoulder, elbow, oblique and Achilles (are we leaving anything out?) problems, the Padres took a flier on him this year hoping the San Diego product could resurrect his career in his own back yard.
But that plan backfired and now his future with the franchise is in the air, having signed only a one-year, $1 million dollar deal in the offseason.
But at least he’s been a consistent pitcher in the Big Leagues, opening the year on the disabled list for the fifth straight season for a grand total of NINE trips to the DL in EIGHT years of professional baseball.
Well, I guess you will be seeing this photo of Prior again. Right next to the term “injury prone” in Webster’s 2009 edition.

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Then again, this shouldn't be much of a surprise, given that knucklehead Nate J. was able to take Prior deep back in the day. And yes, there's even video proof here of Jaberjaw hitting the bomb against Prior, who he calls a "Hall of Fame Hopefull." That's South Carolina for 'ya.

Joe Buck and His High Horse School of Journalism

“Hi Class, thanks again for showing up to Lazy Journalism 101, I’m professor Joe Buck and our motto here is, “Beat that dead horse that nobody cares about until people start caring about it.” Let’s jump straight into this week’s dead horse story: OJ Mayo taking money from a shady agent’s rep. Who would like to comment on this story? Anyone? Anyone? Nobody wants to get fired up and worked up into a tizzy about this? Oh, I see a hand in the back there, Pat Forde, please share your thoughts.”

“Well, teach…it’s like this:

"When you recruit someone radioactive, you better have everything checked down to the smallest detail. Or else your program turns into Three Mile Island."

“Very well done, Mr. Forde. Equating a broke kid from middle-of-nowhere West Virginia whose mom didn’t have enough money to pay for a cell phone bill to a nuclear disaster is a great use of hyperbole and I commend you greatly. Who would like to piggyback on Mr. Forde’s statement?”

“Professor Buck?”

“Yes? Who are you? I’ve never seen you in this class before, Mr.--?”

“Yeah, it's BG and actually I was looking for the bathroom but I wanted to say that I don’t think anybody really cares about this story. Are we really supposed to be surprised? Didn’t SLAM Magazine write the whole ‘Mayo signing with SC thing seems fishy’ article like a year ago? This sort of thing happens all of the time.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself, but how can you argue that this doesn’t compromise the integrity of the NCAA, the NBA and American society as we know it?”

“Seeing as how the NCAA makes billions of dollars off of these players, seeing as how their coaches make hundreds of thousands if not millions off of these players, why not pay them a stipend? Say $20,000 for each full scholarship? Then if they are still greedy and can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar then slap them with a lifetime NBA ban. If I was OJ Mayo I probably would have held out for a hell of a lot more than a TV and a new iPhone.”

“You would make a terrible talking head and there’s no room for you in this class, get the hell out of here and please don’t trip over my soapbox on your way out the door. Class, please pay no attention to that man. There is always outrage to be found in every story. Now go out there and find it."

Happy Mother's Day Mrs. Mayo

Alisha Mayo isn’t the only one receiving gifts this Mother’s Day.
Over the holiday weekend, her son O.J. Mayo received some not-so-good publicity from EastSidePN about gifts he allegedly received while attending USC his freshman year.
First Reggie Bush, now O.J. is finding himself in hot water over gifts he reportedly received as a Trojan.
Why isn’t this a surprise?
Division I college athletes have been receiving gifts for decades, especially at big-time college programs like USC. (I have a friend who played Division I water polo at a much smaller university who used to receive unmarked packages filled with money years ago, so you could only imagine what gifts basketball and football players might receive at a BCS program).
This is just one more “con” for the NBA’s 19-year-old draft rule, which forces should-be professional athletes to go the amateur route for one year despite the fact that many of the one-and-dones have little regard for NCAA rules and regulations and in turn cripple their college programs long after they’re gone.
USC men’s basketball program has already been sanctioned for failing to meet the APR standards, they have huge shoes to fill now that Mayo has declared for the draft, now they could be facing even bigger problems .