Here’s a recap of the weirdest or most overlooked sports stories on the Interweb this week. Plus, as you’ve come to expect, “Charm” isn’t a word I’d ever  associate with the Lingerie Football League.

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Monday Wow. Um, yeah but can you do it twice, Bango? Basketball
Tuesday The Top 200 Fantasy Baseball Team Names. Who are the creative masterminds naming their team “The Boston Red Sox?” Baseball
Wednesday This just in: LeBron is still a tremendous jerk. Basketball
Thursday Tiger’s got his own sneaker … and so do all his lady friends too, I guess. Golf
Friday Miguel Olivo is more of a man than you (or, for our female readers, more of a man than your man) Baseball
Saturday The Most Exciting 2 Minutes In Sports. Set your watch to it. Horse Racing
Sunday A Pirates fan vowed to bet $20 AGAINST his team every game this season. Here’s a spreadsheet of how it’s going. Baseball
Eighth Day The Women’s Movement moves right into Charm City (and shoulder pads).

The White Sox signed veteran Omar Vizquel to a 1-year $1.38 million deal on Monday. And now all you White Sox fans are in deep, deep trouble.

Vizquel will be 43 years old at the start of next season. That’s just three years younger than Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. That’s old for a player from whom the team is hoping to get some time at shortstop.

Dude, they didn’t sign him to do wind sprints all day, dude. Yes, I know that, devil’s advocate voice. There’s no need to call me dude twice.

Clearly, Old Man River is there to teach the youngsters to keep their heads down, knees bent, to watch the ball into the glove, step into the throw and release. Vizquel’s got 14 Gold Gloves. He’ll do a fine job. At any rate, he can’t do a much worse job. The South Siders’ 4-5-6 guys made up 62 of the team’s 113 errors last season.

But the Vizquel signing signifies two things. 1) That Alexei Ramirez, Gordon Beckham and a platoon of guys that I’ll confuse with one another until the day I die are the future of the Sox and 2) Vizquel just got paid $1.375 million to be a glorified fielding coach.

Going with Beckham is a no-brainer. Even sticking with the Cuban Missile is understandable for another year. But the terrifying part about this Vizquel deal, if you’re a Sox fan, is that platoon of dudes waiting to take over in April. There’s really no reason to believe you’re going to get more than 80 games from Little O in the field (he hasn’t fielded in more than 84 games in either of the last two seasons and he’s only getting older).  So the primary responsibility will fall to guys like Brent Lillibridge, Mark Teahen and Jayson Nix. The “plan” (quotation marks implies sarcastic tone) is for Teahen (whom they traded for Chris Getz, their best 4-5-6 fielder) to take over at third, while Beckham takes over at 2B.

But Teahen had a .956 fielding percentage at third last season in 107 appearances, that’s just four points better than young Beckham and about 35 points off where the White Sox want their thirdbaseman to be.

Is Vizquel going to fix all those guys? Not unless he has magic in ‘im.

The Sox were on the right track by shuffling off Chris Getz, but for Teahen? That’s not even a stopgap. Couldn’t they have packaged a couple of those messy infielders and sent them off to the Mets or Pirates? Those teams are dumb, surely they would have traded two dimes for a quarter, right?

If there’s a silver lining here it’s Vizquel himself. He made 18 errors his first season in the league (1989!) and had a droopy fielding percentage. And although I’m not into story morals, if there’s one here, it’s that players can go from quite bad to quite good.

In the case of the Sox, they’d better or it’s going to be a long season.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr

So to borrow the form of Dante’s Divine Comedy, we split up the different types of fan-anger into nine circles. And while there are different rings and regions of hell that could have afforded more classification, we stuck to nine circles. It’s our hell, and if you don’t like it … well, let’s get to the fan-hate.

Circle 1: Those who comment on the Internet
Easily the most harmless form of a fan’s discontent. These unfortunate souls hide behind anonymous names and let it fly. But hey, if people didn’t have this outlet, there’d probably be more violence at the stadiums.

Circle 2: Those who boo, hiss and heckle
These Bronx cheers are a step up from simple Internet posts. It’s still relatively anonymous, but these fans at least have the commitment to show up to the stadium.

Circle 3: Those who wear a player’s jersey, long after he is traded away
It’s one of the more obstinate displays of displeasure. This fan continues to wear a jersey of a long-departed player, partially out of their outrage and partially because they shelled out $150 bucks and don’t want it to go to waste.

Circle 4: Those whose use posters and markers to send a message
Most signs are pretty supportive. Others spell out ESPN or CBS in order to get on camera. And then there are the guys who bust out their magic markers in order to send a message.

Circle 5: Those who throw stuff
Tossing stuff onto the field is obviously a major step up from straight booing. And you could sub-divide this based on what’s actually being thrown. A crumpled up program or cup of beer? Not a big deal. But when it devolves to batteries or bags of urine? Then we’re talking about something else entirely.

Circle 6: Those who place the grocery bag over their face
There’s no better universal sign for a fan’s longtime anger than the paper bag over the head. Sure, someone might have tried the plastic bag, but that can’t possibly send the same message. And while you could argue that the paper bag is a little over-done, but it still sends a pretty clear signal that fans would rather not have themselves identified as supporters of that particular team. It’s also a sign that someone took the effort to sneak a paper bag into the stadium.

Circle 7: Those who buy billboards
This one seems like a much more expensive version of the message board post. It always follows the same pattern. Someone drums up some fans and collects enough money. They buy the billboard and insert some clever slogan, and then the local news reports on it. Does it ever work? Who knows.

Circle 8: Those who walk out
This is a pretty rare bird in the world of fan discontent. For a fan walkout to take place, things need to get so dire, that someone champions the cause of an uprising. The biggest one in recent memory came in 2007, when a Pittsburgh businessman led a walkout at a Pirates game. Only about 1,000 people took part, but the attention it drew only highlighted exactly how bad things have gotten for the Pirates.

Circle 9: Those who cheer their team’s failure
Dante wrote that the inner-most circle of Hell is reserved for traitors. And in the sports world, it’s when a sports fan turns into an abomination. He or she is now actively hoping that the franchise fails, be it for a better draft pick or simply out of schadenfreude. There might still be a glimmer of hope when a fan reaches this point, but you’d never know it, because they’re too busy clapping at every fumble.