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The top 10 science-fiction sports of all-time

All right, so BuckBokai tries to come off the disabled list today – yes, it seemed like a career-ending injury for a while there, thanks to Father Time (who, as Charles Barkley once so philosophically stated, is undefeated). But fingers crossed that this time BuckBokai once again plays at his steady level.

So to (re)start things off, let’s get back to the basics with a look at the Top 10 Science-Fiction Sports ever devised.

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R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010), world’s funniest umpire and Kirk precursor

One of BuckBokai’s faves – and surely one of anyone who digs on sports and science-fiction movies – has passed on, is no more, has ceased to be, has expired and gone to meet his maker, et cetera. Leslie Nielsen succumbed to complications caused by pneumonia in a Ft. Lauderdale hospital last night.

Nielsen is most remembered among sports fans (and the general movie-going populace) for his starring roles in “Airplane,” also featuring Kareem “Roger Murdock” Abdul-Jabbar, and the “Naked Gun” trilogy alongside He Who Shall Not Be Named plus a most memorable turn in episode one by Reggie Jackson. Goddamn it, too, if that umpire scene in Naked Gun I still isn’t one of moviedom’s funniest baseball scenes ever. We love it!

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Happy 12th, Harmon Bokai!

BuckBokai today wishes an extremely happy birthday (and thus perhaps a San Francisco Giants win in game three of the World Series tonight; more on this below) to Harmon Gin Bokai. Young “Buck” was born on October 31, 1998 in Marina del Rey, California.

While no evidence that the Bokai Family still lives in the coastal town exists (most of the autobiographical information on Buck will be gotten by outlets such as this by way of a 2026 baseball card), it’s nice to think that the future Hall of Famer is growing up in the vicinity of Starfleet’s future headquarters.

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Rangers vs. Giants World Series: The future is here

Well, welcome to the future: the San Francisco Giants (!) and Texas Rangers (!!!!) will meet in the 2010 World Series, thereby giving the first World Series title ever to one of these entities, snapping a half-century long deprivation of such, and eliminating the possibility of using either squad to represent far-flung o-so-strange science-fiction futures.

Like the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates to which BuckBokai devoted an earlier entry, the Giants and Rangers are seeking to break historically notable runs of futility. In fact, the vanquished team in 2010 goes home with the second-longest active run of World Series futility. Reads the all-time list:

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Sports Guy on boring stuff, Unbreakable 2

Bill Simmons, a.k.a. The Sports Guy over at ESPN.com, has outdone BuckBokai – imagine that – and in his latest LOL-packed mailbag column, Simmons riffs on “Seven Topics You Should Never Discuss.” The ‘Guy brings some salient points to the discussion about the undiscussable; unfortunately, his list is rather bereft of science-fiction references.

You should never discuss, proclaimeth the Simmons:

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Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1960 win: A science-fictional notion

From the Synchronicity Department comes a neat little tidbit from Robert Sheckley’s Immortality Inc. (You know, the book they totally warped to make the awesomely weird Freejack.)