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27July2005Wednesday

Oddjack Cultural Oddsmaker: Gawker vs. Onion Softball

READ MORE: Cultural Oddsmaker, Gawker, The Onion

gvo.jpgIn an effort to make our yearly navel-gazing quota and meta-blog requirement for Gawker, this week’s Oddjack Cultural Oddsmaker breaks down today’s media softball game between Gawker and the Midwestern faux news juggernaut that is The Onion. Blogging roving satellites and bloody stumps Andrew Krucoff and Chris Gage escaped from the celebrity legal beat to handicap this epic battle of athletically challenged dorks. Point and laugh, after the jump.

SoftballSPECIAL.jpgNeither team shows up: 1.5/1

An Onion staffer will realize that neither his paper nor Gawker’s web site is in any way making a difference, even in a sort of meta-critic, post-irony, Daily Show with John Stewart kind of way, at which point he will swing dejectedly at a junk pitch while thinking of placing a pillow over a sleeping child’s face: 2/1

Onion writer Joe Garden gets Conan O’Brien’s slot when he leaves for the Tonight Show, regardless of the outcome of this game: 14/1

Game is live-blogged on new Weblogs, Inc sports site: 1/4

Fabian Basabe swings back and forth from the top of the back-stop, heckles Gawker editor Jessica Coen, and calls her the N-word: 12/1SOFTBALLLEG.jpg

Onion desk jockey Herbert Kornfeld is revealed as an Asian man who looks like he goes to the gym quite frequently, gets two hits: 16/1

The seventh-inning stretch will be “Rocky Mountain High” sung by Jim Anchower into a bong: 4/1

A double will be referred to as a “Baby Godzilla”; a triple, as “the bad Godfather”; and a homer, as “Plato’s Retreat.”: 7/1

A Daily Candy staffer will be called in as a ringer: 6/1

The game becomes a basis for one of Maria Schneider’s “Pathetic Geek Stories” where the Onion staff is caricatured as a stampede of wild ponies: 15/1

Area man reluctantly admits how much he hates company softball games: 1/5

New York Post, New York Daily News, New York Times cover the game and Gothamist summarizes the next day using links from all three sources: 2/1

The gays will win: EVEN

Fun with the Over/Under

SOFTBALL-SPECIAL-2.jpgErrors: 79
Faces on balls: 7
Minutes Gawker media publisher Nick Denton and Gawker editor Jesse Oxfeld argue over who is “pitcher” and “catcher”: 11
Groin massage therapy procedures: 29
Cumulative SPF protection applied by these back-fat writers: 1,086
Misidentifications of a rotator cuff: 18
Number of “Guest Players” Gawker uses: 9
Cheesehead hats worn by attending fans: 2
Number of Conde Nast employees who give a shit: 27
Minutes devoted to fact-checking: 3
Deaths: 2
Number of times Area Man shakes head in disgust and says, “every time, this happens every fuckin’ time he comes to the plate”: 5
Denton’s baseball cap size: 14
Number of poorly executed high-fives and fist pounds: 23
SOFTBALLEND.jpg

Previously: Oddjack Cultural Oddsmaker: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [Oddjack]