Wow, Here’s an Original Discourse on Baseball

Baseball still struggles to find a foothold in many corners of the globe, as American-based freelance writer Steven Wells outlined bluntly last month in England’s Guardian newspaper.

“Most American males over the age of 30 will parrot the line that soccer is ‘deadly’ to watch,” Wells wrote. “And yet, every week throughout the summer, hundreds of thousands of Americans ... dutifully troop into state-of-the-art stadiums to spends three hours [or longer] watching baseball -- a sport so glacially tedious that it makes even the dullest MLS soccer game look like Topless Humans vs. Gorillas No-Rules Roller Derby on Crystal Meth.”

Trivia time: Which will be the host city for soccer’s World Cup final next summer?

Flat-out funny: With tires blowing out on almost every car and crashes occurring on almost every lap because the Lowe’s Motor Speedway track was too fast, NASCAR driver Tony Stewart was asked by his pit crew midway through Saturday’s race at Concord, N.C., whether he needed anything.

“Yes,” Stewart replied. “A renewal of my life insurance policy.”

That sinking feeling: “Hapless louts,” Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune calls the Minnesota Vikings, what with a 28-3 drubbing by the Chicago Bears following hard on the heels of some players’ infamous “sex cruise” on Lake Minnetonka.

But Reusse sees a positive.

“Jay Leno now has a choice,” he wrote. “He can include Vikings jokes in his monologue based on their talents either as boatsmen or as NFL players.”

Don’t play it again, Sam: Baseball umpires have their faults, but technology is not the answer, according to Rocky Mountain News columnist Bernie Lincicome.

He writes, “Adding instant replay to baseball is as unthinkable as putting a whoopee cushion in a church pew, lug nuts in the chicken soup, graffiti on Mt. Rushmore, mascara on the Statue of Liberty, a screw top in the wine cellar, a Texan on the Supreme ... well, I could go on, but you get the idea.”

Stinging words: Michelle Wie, who received permission to move her ball away from some bees swarming around a gold lantana plant at Palm Desert, gets no sympathy from the Baltimore Sun’s Peter Schmuck.

“I don’t even know what a gold lantana plant looks like,” Schmuck wrote, “but I once had a bumblebee fly up my pants leg at Mountain Branch ... so I think I can speak with some authority on the subject, and I don’t think that kind of thing is going to fly with Tiger and Phil and Vijay.

“The bumblebee story is true. It stung me three times [which I didn’t know was possible]. My playing partner ... said I looked like I was auditioning for ‘Riverdance.’ ”

Trivia answer: Berlin.

And finally: Swedish hunter Ulf Ilback was bedridden for two days after being knocked out by a goose. According to the Extra Ostergotland newspaper, Ilback’s son bagged the bird, which swooped from 60 feet and struck the unwary Ilback on the head.

“I guess it wanted revenge,” he said.