By Neil Patrick Healy

STOCK UP: Spring training’s super dad

A routine spring training game on Saturday, March 5, of the Pittsburgh Pirates vs. the Atlanta Braves became center stage for an everyday hero in the form of a dad. A little boy was sitting in the stands looking up something on his phone when the batter had his bat slip out of his hands, flying right in the boy’s direction. In just a split second, the father reached out his large, vascular wrist and blocked the bat from colliding right into his oblivious son’s face.

This dad is yet another example of fathers being superheroes at baseball games. It seems that something about the American pastime raises fathers’ senses and makes them perform at new heights. There are countless videos of fathers catching foul balls (barehanded and with gloves) while having their infant strapped to their chest. I’ve even seen one video of a dad catching a home-run ball with his beer WHILE holding his infant in his other arm. This dad saving his unaware son’s nose from looking like Owen Wilson’s ensures enshrinement in the baseball dad hall of fame.

STOCK DOWN: UFC 2

With just one week until EA Sports releases its latest UFC video game, the marketing team must be hitting its heads against the conference room table after last weekend’s UFC 196 fights. The two fighters gracing the cover of UFC 2 are female fighting sensation Ronda Rousey and Irish trash-talking extraordinaire Conor McGregor. In case you haven’t been following the antics of the octagon, Holly Holm upset Rousey back in November when she was kicked with the force of a freight train. What could make things worse for the cover of this game? McGregor lost last weekend to Nate Diaz and ended his undefeated streak and his invincible persona.

This video game cover is a more painful version of the Madden curse, where anyone on the cover is bound to lose their next fight. For every Peyton Hillis falling off the planet after he graced the cover of Madden back in 2011 (1,143 yards combined in his final three seasons before retiring in 2013) there will be a curse for this UFC game. Anyone on the cover will not only lose, but get knocked destroyed. Beware of the curse.

Neil Patrick Healy can be reached at neil@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @NP_Healy.