Sports people are odd people

Having discovered that the inspiration for Royals was a 1976 photo of Kansas City Royals' George Brett, two radio stations in San Francisco have dropped Lorde from their playlist because Kansas City and San Francisco are playing each other at rounders.

Countering this - and presumably to ensure that Lorde doesn't lose out - a Kansas City station is playing Lorde a lot more:

“I respect the work of Mr. Brian Figula, 96.5 KOIT program director, and his team of broadcast professionals, but we won’t let their anti-Royals spirit ruin this moment,” KZPT general manager Tony Lorino said in a statement. “A few angry San Franciscans who don’t have a song called ‘Giants’ won’t rain on our parade.”

Oh, if only it were true that there was no song called Giants. Someone has done this:

The World Series is played over what feels like 2,000 games of about forty hours each. There's time for a lot more of this sort of thing to happen.

Rich people have different problems to us

Oh, the horrors of the modern world. The New York Mets have had to issue an apology to Seinfeld after letting Lady GaGa enter his box without asking after:

she complained about the paparazzi at a game on Thursday night.

Hmm. Lady GaGa complained about paparazzi, did she? Are you sure that the 'oh, they're looking at me' wasn't a blatant attempt to gain, rather than avoid, attention?

Quick-think officials moved her to a vacant celebrity box, where Gaga took off a leather jacket to reveal her underwear and then proceeded to flip her middle finger at the snappers down below.

Anyway, it turned out they've shoved her into Jerry Seinfeld's private box by accident.

What made it worse was all these photos appeared in the newspaper, after Lady GaGa had told her boss she was visiting her sick father in Baltimore.

Jay Elvis? Never heard of you

Normally, Gordon is quite keen to splash a non-story about JLS, but for some reason he's buried today's:

ASTON, MARVIN, JB and ORITSE are across the Pond recording their second album and thought they would go along to a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game on their night off.

But despite their single Everybody In Love getting airplay on US radio, they are still relatively unknown.

They tried to get VIP courtside tickets usually reserved for the likes of DAVID BECKHAM and LEONARDO DiCAPRIO but their request was denied.

Wouldn't you have loved to have seen that conversation? "What? You've been on the radio and you want free VIP tickets? My grandma's been on the radio. She's calling that Bill O'Reilly all the time. And she doesn't get in for free. Go queue over there for the paid tickets, Jay Elvis, and take your friends with you."

Elsewhere, Gordon Smart gets over-excited at the thought there might be naked photos of Kate Moss in existence, despite her being a model who has done dozens of naked shoots.

Bad news for Universal: Amy's apparently move back in with Blake. Next Winehouse album's doomsday clock moves from 'back end of 2012' to 'sometime, never'

Rockies settle ticket claim

The Colorado Rockies had a few problems with their ticketing for their World Series run when they put them on sale last week - in a disaster that recalled the worst days of Glastonbury, the server fell over (or, if you believe the baseball team, "fell victim to a malicious DOS attack") and there was great upsetment.

Jeff Sobieck was one who was upset; he'd got a confirmation that his purchase of 12 tickets had been successful before the system went down and he launched a lawsuit. The Rockies have settled this out-of-court. The size of the pay-off hasn't been revealed, but Sobieck had been seeking money to cover the amount he could have sold the tickets on for as damages.

In other words: despite the resale of tickets for higher-than-face-value being illegal in Denver, the club has paid off a scalper for loss of earnings on tickets he never received.

Even more curiously, the team has done this despite a 1917 law in the city which would have made it illegal for them to grant entry to anyone who they knew had bought Sobieck's tickets from him:

Denver's ordinance also has prohibited the operator of a ticketed event from selling tickets to anyone who would resell them at a premium, and has made it operators' responsibility to refuse to honor tickets purchased from scalpers, brokers or speculators if the operator "has knowledge of the unlawful purchase of such ticket."

And Harvey Goldsmith thinks the UK ticketing system is unworkable. Surely by revealing that he intended to resell them, Sobieck had effectively made the tickets he hadn't bought in the first place totally valueless?

Slide, The Hold Steady, slide

Lots of Hold Steady news, coming from all angles: there's a new single (Stuck Between Stations) out on May 7th; then they're going to pop up on the new series of Later With Jools Holland. There's a mini-UK & Ireland tour been set up:

Mon 2nd July London Shepherds Bush Empire
Wed 4th July Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
Thu 5th July Manchester Academy 2
Sat 7th July T In The Park Festival Scotland
Sun 8th July Oxygen Festival Ireland

And, on top of all this, Vagrant/Full Time Hobby will be releasing the band's first two albums. Previously only available in the UK through import or, more honestly, bittorrent, Almost Killed Me and Seperation Sunday are getting a May release.

And, on top of that, the band have recorded a version of Take Me Out To The Ball Game for the Minnesota Twins. Craig Finn was excited when Twins' musical director Kevin Dutcher approached him:

"He thought it would be cool for us to record 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.' He was like, 'I'm gonna be playing your record, so it'd be cool if you guys could do this.' It was all unofficial, but we decided we should do it.

"I mean, the Hold Steady, we're all sort of sports guys. We're more likely to be drinking beer and eating wings and watching baseball rather than collecting some obscure 7-inch."

Something to do with rounders, we understand.