Weird Sports Names – Guest Comic by Gavin Kelly
Jun17
on June 17, 2017
at 12:03 am
This was sent to me by Gavin Kelly. Thanks, Gavin! I’ll let him say his part:
When my British friends find out that I like American football they almost all complain about how long it is and how stop start the game is and how ridiculous all of the names are.Many of these people are cricket fans. Yet Willey, Wood and Ball are all actually part of the English national cricket team. I also enjoy how US commentators pronounce the Baltimore punter Sam Koch’s surname as “cook”, we all know how it’s really said.
Cricket takes the whole bloody day! Not just three hours like American football. Every 6 balls they change ends and have a little break. They even stop for cucumber sandwiches. Cricket is the most stop start. So this is my reaction against that.Hope you enjoy.
I’ve never understood Cricket. I’ve tried reading up on it multiple times, tried watching it many times, and each time I come away in a state of complete bafflement. It keeps taking the part of my brain wired to understand baseball and stabbing it and making it hurt. It’s not baseball, but it looks kind of like baseball, but what the fuck is happening. The best thing Cricket ever did was give us a great prop weapon in Shaun of the Dead.
Also Brits can’t make fun of our names if they are going to ship us people like Benedict Cumberbatch, a name so ludicrously British that people constantly make up different incorrect versions for fun. My personal go-to is Bendytoots Cumberbund. Also, check out this list of actual people.
Also Dick Butkus will be forever hilarious but no intelligent person would ever say it to his face.
My theory is that his name is part of the reason Dick Butkus is such a badass. As a kid, he had to toughened up quick or he would have been made fun of his whole life. Basically a real life version of ‘A Boy Named Sue’.
Anytime I come across a name like that, I think “yep, I know why he got into football.”
I used to think that about Chargers running back Marion Butts.
For one wild moment, I thought this was a guest comic from the creator of xkcd, and I was all like WHOA THAT’S AWESOME.
Turns out it isn’t but it makes the comic no less interesting. Guess every sports has to have its share of wacky-named players.
It’s pronounced “cook.” It’s German.
But Koch isn’t prounounced as “cook” in German either. There is so far as I know no correct sound in English, but you would be closer if you would call him Kosh.
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ujf/blog/German_ch.html
That may be how he pronounces it, but that sure as hell isn’t how Germans pronounce it.
He’s also a jelly donut.
And a Hamburger.
And a Frankfurter.
How the hell does cricket work
It’s not quite as bad as it seems. There are two ends to wicket, the striker’s (batter) end and the runner’s. They swap ends every over, but don’t worry about that for now. The batter is trying to protect his wicket, which is three poles set in the ground with two sticks – the bails – across the top. At a minimum, the batter is trying to block the ball from striking the wicket. If he puts the ball in play, he may *choose* to run. The batter and runner swap positions, running between the wickets. Every time they swap is one run. So if the batter ends up where he started, that’s two runs. There are equivalents to home runs: if you knock the ball past the perimeter, it’s 4 runs, or 6 if it never touched the ground.
There are a whole slew of ways to get the batter out. If you knock the bails off while bowling (they bowl, not pitch in cricket), or if the batter accidentally knocks the ball into the bails. If you catch the ball before it hits the ground. You can run out either runner by knocking the bails off the wicket while the runner is outside his crease (too far from the wicket) or similarly by dislodging the bails if the batter is outside his crease while batting. Lastly, use of the bat (and hands while holding the bat) to defend the wicket is legal. Using the rest of your body is not. If the ball strikes you anywhere else AND the umpire adjudges that the ball would have struck the wicket, you’re out ‘leg before wicket’, LBW.
A full test match takes up to 5 days and each team gets two innings and each inning goes until the whole side has been gotten out (there are 11 players and it requires 2 batsmen out on the pitch at all times, so 10 outs means the side has been bowled out). Whoever has the higher score wins as long as the other team has been bowled out for both innings. Otherwise, it’s a tie. The other two formats, ODI and Twenty20, are limited overs (an over is 6 balls bowled, no, don’t ask me to explain). Each side bats for 50 or 20 overs, respectively, or until the side is all out. The higher score wins. Ties are possible, but rare.
There are other rules, but that’s the main gist of it.
Names are funny.
Hopefully this can make you cringe the snot out of you Dave. WARNING: TERRIBLE MARIO IMPRESSION AND EVEN WORSE SINGING INCOMING.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhGo8aqQaLk. I regret nothing.
Also, a preview of tonight’s CBS Sports Network game which starts at 7pm American Eastern Standard Time. (So midnight UK) for arena football, (no cringe)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kIlm9yKzyNc
As Raphael said in the first TMNT movie, “Nobody understands cricket. You got to know what a crumpet to understand cricket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc_CesMUb5E
You forgot about one of the most iconic lines of recent cricket history; “The bowler is Holding, the Batsman’s Willey”