Hoax Museum Blog: Sports

The Golf Ball Liberation Army — Watch out all you people who enjoy hitting golf balls. Justice will be done:

GOLF BALLS ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE READY FOR A NEW LEADER.
HERE'S A WARNING FROM THE GOLF BALL LIBERATION FRONT.
WE'RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
THE GOLF BALL LIBERATION ARMY IS ON THE WAY!

Coin Stacking — I never realized that coin stacking was a sport, nor that people could create such intricate stacks. Some of these things really seem to defy gravity. But I see no reason to believe that any of the images aren't real. It reminds me of rock balancing, which I posted about last year. Check out some of the other coin stack pictures here. (via Reality Carnival)

Fake Sports Reporter — As a representative of Westchester Cable Services, Mark Sabia has been allowed into press boxes at sports games for years. The one problem is that Westchester Cable Services doesn't exist. The teams finally figured out he didn't belong there (but it was a good scam while it lasted):

Sabia, who lives in Ossining, was arrested Monday when he showed up to cover Opening Day at Shea and was charged with scamming season passes for almost all of New York's professional teams, as well as for several World Series and League Championship Series dating to 1998. He was charged with five felony counts of falsifying business records and 16 misdemeanor counts ranging from petit larceny to criminal impersonation.

Do Baseball Players Pee on Their Hands? — Given that I've posted periodically about various forms of urine therapy, I was intrigued to come across this slate.com article alleging that many professional baseball players regularly pee on their hands in the belief that the urine will toughen their skin:

"In a recent interview with ESPN's Gary Miller, Chicago Cubs outfielder Moises Alou revealed that during baseball season he urinates on his hands to toughen them up. Alou, one of the few major leaguers who doesn't wear gloves while batting, is backed up by Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who says, "You don't want to shake my hand during spring training." Even Cubs hurler Kerry Wood mentioned on a local radio show that he's tried the technique to remedy blisters on his pitching hand."

The article goes on to argue that urine probably would work well to soften your skin since urea is an ingredient in many commercial moisturizing lotions, but it's very doubtful that it will do anything to toughen up the skin. Slate.com figures that this hand-peeing fad is just another one of the many superstitions that baseball players get hooked on to try to improve their game.

World Record for Smoking — True or False: Did Stefan Sigmond of Transylvania gain the world record for smoking by smoking 800 cigarettes in less than six minutes? If I hadn't seen the picture I wouldn't have believed it was possible, but apparently it is true, although I'm a bit wary about whether using this 'special wheel-like device' should really count. It doesn't seem like you would be fully smoking all the cigarettes. Anyway, I hate smoking, but I'd love to see someone whip out a device like this at a bar and start puffing away. (via RealityCarnival)

Oversized Biceps — I wish these pictures were fake, but they appear to be real. They show bodybuilder Greg Valentine. He got his arms that big by injecting a combination of steroids directly into them. At the risk of being insensitive, I'd say the results look pretty gross. In fact, his biceps no longer look like real biceps at all. They look like strange tumors growing out of his arm. It's a wonder that his biceps are functional at all. (via ChrisDiClerico.com)

Sky Tennis — Here's a cool picture (click to enlarge) that's started going around. It looks totally fake, but it's real. It shows a tennis court that was laid out on the helipad of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai last week. Playing on the court are Andre Agassi and Roger Federer. It was all just a publicity stunt. Regular guests aren't allowed to play on the helipad.

The Ancient Art of Yellow Bamboo — Yellow Bamboo is a form of white magic/martial art developed in Bali. If you sign up to get the free Yellow Bamboo training video then "you can learn very powerful methods to protect yourself and others. If you watch the videos you will see that it is possible to knock down attackers without touching them. This is a very powerful form of personal development." Annoyed by these extravagant claims (particularly the one about being able to knock down opponents without touching them), some Jiu-Jitsu practitioners decided to challenge the local Yellow Bamboo masters to a test "to prove once and for all that no-touch or Chi knockouts are, and have always been, complete and utter bullshit." These were the guidelines for the test: "The YB practitioner assumes a stance on the sand and is given time to prepare his Chi in accordance with YB practices. The challenger then runs 20 feet across the sand and attacks the YB practitioner. As the challenger is making his run, the YB practitioner has to effectively disable or deflect him using his chi." Needless to say, the Yellow Bamboo people completely failed the test.

Cheerleader Toss — The cheerleader goes up, and comes down exactly through the basketball hoop. It seems like there has to be a trick to it somehow, though I can't figure out what the trick might be. As I watched the movie clip, I kept thinking 'what if her foot got caught in the net'. At the very least the net must be rigged so that it would rip away from the hoop if her foot were to catch it.

The Leg Shocker — The Leg Shocker is an add-on device for PlayStation 2, specifically for the games EA Sport's FIFA 2002 and FIFA World Cup 2002. Using this device allows you to feel the game, so to speak. It's a modified shin guard with a built-in hammer that bangs your shin if your virtual player on the screen gets tackled, tackles someone else, etc. There's a movie of the Leg Shocker in action. It's not clear to me if this is an actual working device, or just an art-project concept.

Cluster Ballooning — Cluster Ballooning is air travel achieved by means of tying numerous helium balloons to yourself. I knew about Larry Walters' famous 1982 cluster balloon flight in which he took off from the LA area on a lawn chair tied to helium balloons, so I knew it was possible to do. But I didn't think that people did this regularly as a sport. Apparently they do. It actually looks like fun (the site has some great pictures).

Yale to Harvard: You Suck — In a reworking of the Great Rose Bowl Hoax of 1961, Yale students, posing as members of the 'Harvard Pep Squad', managed to trick Harvard fans into holding up flip-cards reading 'WE SUCK' at the Harvard-Yale football game. I guess it's true that the great pranks never go out of style. (Thanks to Mormagli for giving me a heads up about this on the message board)

Cup Stacking — I noticed this article about the sport of competitive Cup Stacking in today's issue of the San Diego Union Tribune. That would be plastic cups... stacked up... as a sport. All the internet research I've done indicates this isn't a hoax. The sport of Cup Stacking is real. For instance, here's the site of SpeedStacks.com, the leading manufacturer of cup stacking equipment. But still, I'm having a hard time getting my brain around the concept of it. Maybe it's the testimonials in the Union Trib article that are giving me a hard time. Check out what student Jason Counts says about cup stacking: "It changed my life. Before then, I was kind of going down the wrong path. Since I got into cup stacking, I've changed tremendously." Someone please tell me he's kidding.

Surf Rage — Last week British journalists were all abuzz about the 'surf rage' phenomenon: vigilante Cornish surfers waging a kind of guerrilla war against out-of-town surfers. One group calling itself Locals Only! had a website in which it proclaimed it would use harassment and force to defend its surfing spots. But now a bunch of marketing and journalism students have declared that they invented the whole 'surf rage' concept to hoax the media (which, of course, willingly took the bait). The media is now backpedaling, admitting that the Locals Only! group may have been a hoax, but insisting that the surf rage phenomenon itself is real.

Man Lifts Planes, Elephants — Earlier this month 'spiritual teacher' Sri Chinmoy lifted a 5,322lb airplane off the ground. And the guy is 73 years old. I know there's got to be some trick here. How exactly did he lift that much weight? Was he using a lever of some kind? This weight-lifting success follows on the heels of a little 3,100 mile jog he and some of his followers did. Not a cross-country jog, mind you. No, they jogged around a city block in Jamaica, Queens. It took them seven weeks, running for 18 hours a day. The jogging I'm perfectly ready to believe. The weight-lifting, I'm not so sure about.

Remote Control Hunting — If you'd like to go hunting, but, for one reason or another, you don't want to get up from your computer, there's a new option available: remote control hunting. Live-shot.com is a site that allows its members to control, via the internet, a pan/tilt/zoom camera located on a ranch in Texas. The camera, in turn, is connected to a rifle. Aim your shot and fire away. Sounds a little odd, but I guess there's no reason a system like this couldn't be set up. But currently live-shot will only allow you to remotely fire a gun that's in a shooting range. But their site promises that in the near future they're going to allow members to remotely hunt animals such as sheep, antelope, and wild hogs. They'll even ship you the meat from your kill. I don't know quite how the remote control hunting will work (what if an animal never wanders within sight... will your gun somehow be mobile?), but the concept of it has the Texas Parks & Wildlife Commission worried. They're considering a new regulation that would ban "hunting by remote control" (look at the second-to-last bullet point under 'white-tailed deer'). I think I'd support such a ban. The fusion of video games and real-life hunting seems a little disturbing.

Indecently Exposed Toothbrush — Jan Harold Brunvand calls it the "Indecent Exposure" urban legend. It involves a vacationing couple whose hotel room is broken into and robbed of everything save a toothbrush and a camera. When they get home and develop the film in the camera, they discover pictures of their toothbrush up the robber's rear end (to put it not so delicately). It appears that this urban legend has now served as the unfortunate inspiration for a prank that a New Zealand golfer played on his rival. As this article describes it:

The Dominion Post understands bad blood between teenagers Kauika and Aucklander Kevin Chun boiled over when a bare-bottomed Kauika misused Chun's toothbrush as a prop in a photograph allegedly snapped by Iles.

As punishment, Kauika and Brad were banned from representing New Zealand overseas until the end of the year.

Coffin Racing — According to local legend in Manitou Springs, Colorado (legend that may or may not be true), a young woman named Emma Crawford was once buried at the top of nearby Red Mountain. But during a rain storm, her coffin came loose and raced down the side of the mountain. To commemorate this event, residents of the town now hold an annual coffin racing contest through the center of town. A few pictures from yesterday's race can be seen here. I'm not sure who won.

Extreme Kidnapping — If you're searching for unusual thrills, why not try getting kidnapped? Extreme Kidnapping promises that it will allow you to "customize your own kidnapping!" Yup. For the right price, women in fishnet stockings will show up unannounced at your door, whisk you away, and keep you bound and gagged in their basement for a few days. As weird as this sounds, I actually think it's real, mainly because I've heard of this before. Back in 2002 a guy called Brock Enright was in the news for staging 'Designer Kidnappings'. Enright commented that even though all his abductions occurred in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, no one had ever intervened to help the faux victim. Everyone figured the abductions were fake because of the guy with a tv camera filming them (the faux victims like to have a video of their faux abduction). Which demonstrates the way to pull off a perfect crime in our society: just bring along a camera and no one will call the cops because they'll think you're filming a tv show.

Cow Manure Tossing — CNN reports that Oklahoma tourism officials have recalled about 200,000 brochures because they contain, among other things, "a photo of an event in which lumps of cow manure are thrown as a part of a contest in the town of Beaver, in western Oklahoma." The way the article described it, I wasn't sure if the cow-manure tossing was a joke that somehow made its way into the brochure, or if it was a serious event. But a quick google search reveals that it's real enough. Here are some photos of the event. I wonder if there's some kind of special trick involved in throwing a cow chip (does it fall apart easily?), or is it just like throwing a frisbee?