A Terrible, Awful, Horrible Video that Makes Me Smile Every Time

By: Laurie | October 1st, 2007

I am a horrible person.

Let’s just get that out up front and get it out of the way, because I know you’ll be thinking it by the end of this post. Because, truly, something this horrible should not cause a normal, rational (and yes, even maternal) person to feel this kind of amusement.

That said, keep one thing in mind: It’s Carlos Ruiz we’re talking about.

Carlos Ruiz. You know. Former Galaxy guy, currently flopping his trade at Dallas. (HATE Dallas.) The Carlos Ruiz who apparently has some neurological issues, because no matter where contact is made on his body, it apparently causes him great pain in the facial area, because that’s inevitably the part of himself that he grabs.

And grabbing his face seems to cause some kind of bizarre paralysis, because once he grabs his face, he falls to the ground and becomes unable to get up for minutes at a time. (Unless a foul is awarded immediately, in which case he pops right up. Maybe the sound of the whistle is some kind of miraculous, paralyis-ending trigger? I wonder if they ever tried it on Christopher Reeve? Truly, the human body is an amazingly complex entity.)

And, sadly, Ruiz gets away with this kind of thing far too often.

It is for this reason that I would like to nominate Houston player Ricardo Clark for sainthood. Or at least Player of the Year.

What did Ricardo do? Well, he apparently decided that if El Pescadito (Ruiz) was going to pretend to be hurt while dishing it out to other players… Well, Ricardo decided to show him what the real thing feels like. At the bottom of this post you’ll see a clip of Clark landing a kick in Ruiz’s shoulder as if he (Clark) is Beckham blasting a free kick.

(And you’ll never guess which part of himself Ruiz grabs afterwards.)

I’ve watched the video three times. It’s still making me smile.

What the video doesn’t show is what apparently happened before, when Ruiz landed a knee in Clark’s back, knocking him down. Both were shown red cards and face suspensions.

Now of course I must say here that I’m not, in general, justifying violence. And where would the game be if everybody reacted like this? And…well… blah blah blah blah blah.

Two things, though.

1) I’m hoping MLS takes into account the kind of ~~slimy worm~~ person Ruiz is when they mete out punishments, and
2) Anybody else want to chip in for Clark’s “Thank you from the fans” fund to cover his fines?