Sean May digs the iPhone and seedy strip malls

Here's something I never thought I'd see. A professional athlete standing in line at a seedy looking strip mall. But here's Sean May on iPhone Day in NC waiting with the other iPhone nerds for his chance to make Steve Jobs even richer.

I'm actually impressed May didn't pay someone to wait in line for him. This is probably his offseason workout plan to shed those extra pounds. Keep at it big fella.

Thanks to MurphyMac for grabbing the pics.

-WCK

The Hippie and Barry Bonds

You may remember on June 29th, the night Bonds hit his 750th home run, a homeless looking dude ran out on the field and shook hands with Barry. Well, turns out he wasn't homeless.

One of my buddies was sitting almost right next to the guy. Here's his brief on the shaggy-hippie man:


To clear up any confusion as to the young man who rushed the Giants field on Friday, June 29^th, maybe I can provide some of the scoop. For those of you unfamiliar with the “drama” that went down during that otherwise common ballpark night, a man in his early 20’s managed to get on the field in the 7^th inning. Security was probably taking an extended 7^th inning stretch because the guy had time to go up to Bonds and shake his hand. Bonds (possibly feeling woozy from all the drugs in his system) returned the cordial gesture by wrapping his mammoth arms around the guy and gave him a “half-hug”. This hallmark moment was interrupted by the impending security force that surrounded the guy. Maybe love was in the air because they were surprisingly gentle with the intruder as they escorted him away.

My visual on the whole scene was a bit iffy not only due to the fact that I was a few beers deep and had upper deck seats, but there was one unmistakable truth about this guy…I knew who he was immediately! The entire game leading up to this event, a scruffy, hippie-wannabe kid sitting right behind me was yelling up a storm with his buddies. Yelling at the Giants. Yelling at the opposing Diamondbacks. Yelling at his roasted peanuts. Not in an obnoxious way. Just in a way that reminded me of Red Sox fans. (OK. So an obnoxious way!). He was clearly many beers ahead of me that night.

As soon as I recognized the guy, I took a look back at his friends he was with and saw the look on their faces. It was f-ing priceless! They had no idea he was planning on rushing the field. I doubt even the scruffy hippie had any idea he was planning on rushing the field. After the initial shock wore off, his friends proceeded to high five each other knowing full well this would be a great story for their grandchildren. Unfortunately for them, they probably didn’t realize they should have been scrounging around for money to bail their buddy out of jail.

Rumors surfaced that the guy was homeless, but I can definitely clear that rumor up. Hippies may look homeless, but this was no homeless guy. All-in-all it became a great story to tell after the game. I just wonder if the person who had the best view of the whole experience didn’t black out from all the booze.

Random Athlete Encounter #1: Chris Gatling

For those of you who do not remember, Chris Gatling was the Golden State Warrior's power forward in the early 1990's, although he may be best remembered now for getting dunked on mercilessly by Shawn Kemp and then giving the Rainman a congratulatory handshake once Kemp returned to earth. You can watch it on this top 10 video of Kemp's best dunks. The one where Gatling gets dunked on is #5.
I find this interesting considering Gatling had a couple of the best dunks of the 90's as far as I'm concerned, one a two handed rip off a missed three where he took off just inside the free throw line and threw down on David Robinson and another one on Manute Bol circa 1992 at a game I was at at the Arena that I still remember vividly.

This random encounter actually occurred just a few months ago in Vegas during the now infamous NBA All-Star weekend. I was out there primarily for a friend's bachelor party weekend that he scheduled months in advance not realizing that it was going to be one of the more insane weekends in Vegas history. Accordingly, we were forced to stay at the Hooters Casino behind the MGM which I now fully and quite surprisingly recommend. After the first night there where we entertained the bachelor at a fine Gentleman's establishment for a few hours (thank God not the Minxx where Pacman Jones had his little run-in with club security) we were all feeling quite unmotivated the next morning. Not being one to be easily deterred while having only a couple days in Vegas, I quickly ordered up a couple bloody mary's to get me going the next morning while almost everyone else in my party decided to get some food and just pass out for a few hours. With only a couple of us semi-conscious, I found out one of my buddies was betting on horse-races at the MGM sports book and realized this was the perfect way to spend my pre-All Star game Sunday. This is mostly because horse-racing is the only form of betting I ever manage to come out ahead in, blackjack's about even and poker I always get cleaned out.

So I get to the MGM sports book and my friend's got a nice little set up at the personal monitors and they have about 8 different races you can switch between so I get set up and begin a furious pattern of scoping out the ponies in the various races and running back and forth so that I get my bets in before the ponies start racing. Somehow in my ecstacy I failed to realize that two guys about 6'5 and 6'10 had sat down right next to me. So I'm ordering free Corona's and getting animated about these horses and I realize one of the guys next to me keeps happening to be betting on the same horses as I am by chance. On the first bet we both had a nice win on the same horse and we start talking and he says it's the first time he's ever bet on horses and he pulled out the win and I thought he looked familiar but I had horses to focus on... this was serious business. So we're yelling at the horses as they win and lose, just enjoying a typical Vegas Sunday, and then some more of my friends start showing up to say what's up and join us betting on horses, including another huge Warrior's fan. He looks over and tells me that the guy I'm betting on horses with is Chris Gatling.

Now, for most of you, seeing Chris Gatling would be probably not be a huge deal. But for me, I first started getting into basketball just when Gatling came into the league so I totally reverted back to my childhood and, not to mention the inspiration from the free Coronas, I was stoked. So I look over at him and say "dude, are you Chris Gatling?" - kind of like I was addressing the King of Spain. He looks over clearly surprised at being recognized and considering every living basketball celebrity was in Vegas that weekend and I'm clearly very excited at seeing him, he was just like "yeah." So I was like, "man, I remember going to a game in Oakland and seeing you dunk over Manute Bol when I was a kid. F'ing awesome!" And he replied "Cool" and I swear he gave me the same handshake he gave Shawn Kemp after getting dunked on back in 1993. Gotta say that made my weekend and even though some of my friends saw Jordan, and Nique, and Daryl Dawkins, etc, I couldn't have been happier than to have been betting on horses with Chris Gatling. And to put my excitement in perspective, one of my friends saw me that next week back from Vegas and all he could ask me about the weekend was "so, dwyermaker... did you get Gatling's digits or what?" All I can is that's life as a Golden State Warriors Fan, for better or worse!

--dwyermaker

Editor's note: We're gonna see if we can do a weekly post about random athlete encounters. Hopefully yours are more exciting than ours. If it's a decent story, we'll post it and link it up with our other buddy sites. We won't name you of course, we'll keep you completely anonymous. We also have no way of proving if any of the stories are true, but that's ok. We have diplomatic immunity. If you have pictures, even better.

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