Gus Grissom snuck dimes aboard the Liberty 7 capsule. Alan Shepard trumped that by taking a modified 6 iron and a golf ball on Apollo 14. Today, NASA permits astronauts to take a few items along on shuttle flights, as long as they aren’t potato chips.
STS-124 Pilot Ken Ham appeared on “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” a sports talk show syndicated by ESPN radio. He talked about the upcoming Discovery flight and the trinkets he’ll take aboard — sports jerseys and CDs of the double Mike show. Wait, the pilot is in charge of entertainment? I thought whoever called “Shotgun!” chose the station?
Astronauts are a brainy lot. You can’t tell me the beautiful mindsthat took them from childhood to a shuttle mission are the same ones that can tolerate the mush-making emptiness of sports talk radio. I hope ESPN won’t torture the STS-124 astronauts with irresolvable discussions of “Manny being Manny.”
I blame Big Mouse for this. NASA entered into a partnership with Disney, the parent company of ABC and ESPN. The space agency explained this curious arrangement in a press release:
Disney’s Youth Educational Series and NASA have developed an online program known as the Space Ranger Education Series. It includes fun educational games for students, as well as materials for educators to download and integrate into their classroom curriculum.
Ok fine, if it is for education, let it slide. Just keep Ham, Kelly Nyberg, Mike Fossum, or any of the other astronauts from ESPN dead ends like Woody Paige or Stuart Scott during the mission.
Wet blanket alert: Still, I believe promotions aside, ESPN’s presentation of pro sports has its place, just not aboard the space shuttle. How about an agreement? Keep the jockery out of the shuttle and the brainiacs out of the Budweiser Hot Seat. Well, other than the accountants behind salary cap formulas and rotisserie league number-crunching geeks.
John Hodgman commented on sports integration in society perfectly in the beginning of his book, The Areas of My Expertise. He apologized for not providing any significant information on sports in the book by writing, “May I direct you to everything else in our culture?”
Now with that said, Fischer totally hacked Berry and the Spurs were ripped off!