Okay, hold on. I'm being handed something…sorry. Just a weird coincidence – they died on the same day. No murder suicide, or at least none that the police have discovered yet.

Anyway, after the deaths of MJ and FF we were left not only with gaping holes in our cultural wallpaper, but totally unimportant questions as well. Questions such as: Who, if anyone, can replace the King of Pop? How many times will the phrase "ubiquitous poster" be used in obituaries of the late Ms. Fawcett? And, most importantly, how does Marlins outfielder Cody Ross feel about all this?

Fortunately, Mark Newman of mlb.com is here to tell us

MLB REACTS TO JACKSON, FAWCETT DEATHS
King of Pop and Charlie's Angels star had fans around league

The year was 1976.

Farrah Fawcett had the poster that was on walls everywhere.

Just to clarify: in 1976, Farrah Fawcett owned a poster of KC and the Sunshine Band, which was at the time one of the most popular posters in America.

Michael Jackson was fronting "The Jacksons" — as the band started off on its own a year after leaving Motown. Johnny Bench and Cincinnati's Big Red Machine repeated as World Series champs, and this time it wasn't even close — a powerhouse sweep of the Yankees, following a three-game sweep of the Phillies for the National League pennant.

Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Johnny Bench...wait! Johnny Bench died? Fuck, that's awful. I was a huge "Baseball Bunch" fan.

American icons.

Wait...he...isn't dead? He should be dead because the other two are dead?

Holy shit you guys. I think the guy who wrote this article is going to kill Johnny Bench.

Farrah is gone now. She passed away Thursday from cancer.

Michael is gone now. He passed away at almost the same time due to cardiac arrest.

Everybody stop right now, and take 450,000 guesses as to what the next sentence is. I'll wait.

Okay, ready? Let's see if anyone got it right.

Sparky Anderson's team was one of the mightiest in Major League Baseball history, arguably in the top five, loaded with legends and a Hall of Fame manager.

They ALL died? At the same time as Farrah and MJ? WHY DIDN'T I HEAR ABOUT THIS? FOR FUCK'S SAKE THAT TEAM WAS ARGUABLY ONE OF THE TOP FIVE MIGHTIEST IN MLB HISTORY!

She was a symbol of beauty and then courage for so many. He was the King of Pop, fallen from this decade but nonetheless an icon for countless millions who always held hope he would find a graceful comeback, somehow, that would make us watch him again. You remembered or you were looking it up on Thursday, as hearts ached.

Nationals center fielder Willie Harris' heart ached.

[shakes head after reading]

[rereads last few sentences to make sure he read correctly]

[tracks down and sucker punches Willie Harris out of sheer confusion]

He was the reason that Michael Jackson's music filled Nationals Park throughout his team's 9-3 victory over Boston Thursday night. It was a somber and sad celebration, just as there will be Michael music during the Dodgers' Friday Night Fireworks event.

Sadly, another American icon has just passed away: the English language. Mr. Language was brutally murdered during a bloody online article about — we think — baseball players' reactions to the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

"I heard about Michael Jackson when I was in the batting cage before the game," Harris said… "He is a legend, man. It's a part of life, but sometimes, it's a hard pill to swallow. I'm sure the entire world is saddened because of his death. But at the same time, you have to keep moving and pushing forward."

That's what baseball does. Nothing pushes forward like baseball, other than time itself.

Wait, I can do this. I was just playing Scattergories the other night and "Things that push forward like baseball" kept coming up. Let me see if I remember some:

Football
Basketball
Life
Disease
Giant bulldozers
Courtney Thorne-Smith
America
Mark Sanford
Fire
Hockey
China and Uruguay
Blu-Ray technology
Fleshbot

It was there when Michael came out with "Thriller" and "Bad" and his endless string of hits that helped define not just one generation but two. It was there through his turbulent days in recent years, during his fall from grace. It was there when Farrah drew critical acclaim and an Emmy nomination for her role portraying an abused woman in "The Burning Bed" — in 1984, the last year the Tigers won it all.

Yes, you're reading that correctly. "It" = baseball. Baseball was there when "Thriller" came out.

So that pretty much explains it. That explains why someone would write an article about how Willie Harris reacted to the death of Michael Jackson. It all makes sense now.

In 1984, Michael wore one glove, which is something in common with baseball players.

Can't argue with the facts, guys. That truly is something Michael Jackson had in common with baseball players. He also sang the song "Man In The Mirror," which is an incredible coincidence given that baseball players often look at themselves in mirrors. Some players are even "Bad" at baseball. Like Willie Harris!

"It's a bad day for the music industry, or for anybody," Cody Ross of the Marlins said after his team's game. "It's a sad day. He lived a good life — he made a lot of money and had some kids. Your heart goes out to his family.

And the award for most diplomatic eulogizing of a man who probably diddled some children goes to…Cody Ross! Florida Marlins!

"He made a lot of money and had some kids." Man, you just hate to see a guy like that leave before his time. Heaven got one of its angels back.

"When I walked in today and saw the news, I was taken aback. He one of the all-time greats — like the Babe Ruth of music.

Hundred bucks says Cody Ross was fed that Babe Ruth line just to make this article seem more worthy of exisiting.

"He's right there with Elvis and all those guys."

You know those guys. Elvis, The Beatles, Andrew Ridgely, Deion Sanders, Judge Judy…

I don't want to take away from the beautiful words spoken by Cody Ross, but I just don't feel like I'll be able to grieve properly until I hear from Braves hitting coach Terry Pendleton.

Braves hitting coach Terry Pendleton was born in Los Angeles in 1960 and grew up with Michael's music — and even joined Fawcett on a sitcom set. He said after Atlanta's game that, "you just think people like that are going to be around forever…You don't ever think they're going to die. "

Forgive me – seriously – if anyone out there is related to Farrah Fawcett, or finds this whole discussion offensive. But, I'm sorry – you didn't maybe see this one coming? You thought she would be around forever? The woman whose battle with cancer was chronicled on television?

(True story: when I graduated from college, I told my parents that my dream was to one day write an angry rant about Terry Pendleton's naïve comments about the late Farrah Fawcett that originally appeared in an online article written for mlb.com. Livin' the dream, Ma!)

Braves pitcher Jair Jurrjens, a 23-year-old Curacao native, said, "everybody listens to Michael Jackson growing up. ... It shocked the world. We lost a good entertainer. I hear he was making a comeback too. It stinks. He had some hits. I'm young so I didn't listen to him all that much. The 'Free Willy' song was good."

HERE LIES MICHAEL JOSEPH JACKSON
AUGUST 29, 1958 – JUNE 25, 2009
THE 'FREE WILLY' SONG WAS GOOD

Rays reliever J.P. Howell was focused on a big World Series rematch against Philadelphia, a game his team won at home, 10-4. But he also was talking about the shock of the day.

"I used to listen to his music so it's kind of weird," he said of Jackson.

I actually ran into J.P. Howell a few days ago at my local Best Buy (he was spending way too much money on HDMI cables but I didn't say anything). I was like, fuck, I gotta ask this dude about that weird Michael Jackson interview. Here's what he said:

"Yeah, I mean, Michael Jackson dying was kind of weird, like I said. Telling some guy how I felt about it – now that was fucked up. I mean, I'm J.P. Howell, not David Fricke or whatever…Anyway, you want to play some Beatles Rock Band?"

"For me, the Jackson 5 is the part of Michael Jackson's career that I admired most," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "As a young group they were the bomb back then and they were so impressive because of their youth and their talent."

"Farrah Fawcett, we all remember Farrah Fawcett. And it's really a shame that the lady suffered. We all had that poster up on our wall at some point."

He's talking about the KC and the Sunshine Band poster.

"And God bless her, man, she was a beautiful lady. And it's very difficult to watch her demise that way."

People of mlb.com, here's what I'm thinking: It makes as much sense to ask Joe Maddon about the death of Farrah Fawcett as it does to ask Jaclyn Smith about the death of Nick Adenhart.

Ron Washington, the Texas Rangers' manager, was thinking back on wistful memories as people talked about Michael Jackson before that club's game against Arizona.

"He was from my era," Washington said. "He put out some outstanding music and some awesome dance steps. It was quite exciting. I don't know what to say except I'm going to miss Michael Jackson."

"So, yeah, are we done yet? 'Cuz like I said I really don't have anything to say. It took me fifteen minutes just to come up with that one line about the awesome dance steps. Can I please go? It's the middle of the third of inning."

"I was sad," Florida's Dan Uggla said, and that pretty much summed up what Thursday was like for a lot of people.

Dan Uggla, ladies and gentleman!

They played Michael's music during batting practice before Saturday night's Civil Rights Game in Cincinnati, home of that old Big Red Machine. It was for a completely different reason, though. It was to celebrate the soulful sounds of the Civil Rights movement at its height. Now they play it around the Majors, on radio stations everywhere, because there is no more Michael Jackson, and there is no more Farrah Fawcett.

Here is a fact. Here is how that fact is not related to the article I'm writing. Here is a reminder that two famous people died. Also, baseball.

This impromptu Michael Jackson tribute was executed by the lovely ladies of the LA Sol after they scored a goal over the Chicago Stars. Yes, it's women's soccer and a Michael Jackson tribute. That means the morning crap photos are getting slim. Please fix this, but please don't send me any more photos of baseball players picking their nose in the dug out. Unless they're knuckle deep or using a butter knife, then go right ahead.

******

Goooooood morning. The next couple days will be focused on you and only you.

I don't mean that in a glib way. (Mostly.) The strangely moving aspect of Michael Jackson's death was how we so quickly dismissed the freakshow he'd become over the last 20 years and focused almost solely on the music, and just how fucking great it really was. His death shouldn't have shocked us as much as it did; clearly, something was wrong with that guy. But it did what death is supposed to do: It gave us the needed perspective to hark back and reevaluate the artist, understand what it was we'd truly lost, give us something to all share as one. If you would have told me two weeks ago that Michael Jackson's death would turn into a week of shared grief, I would have thought you were crazy. That weirdo? Come on. And now that it has happened, in retrospect, it seems obvious we'd react this way. We'll actually all remember where we were when Michael Jackson died. Never would have thought that.

And it got me to thinking: What sports deaths would cause us to have that reaction? Who in sports could die right now and jolt people in that way? Who would shake us like that? Whose death would cause such an unconscious re-evaluation?

So, this week's Ten Humans is a thought experiment. It's my list of the 10 people in sports who, if they were to die tomorrow, would inspire similar recalculations in the public consciousness. Whose death would affect us the most? It's a little morbid, I grant you. But I think it's instructive.

A few parameters to let you know where I'm coming from:

1. Age Matters. If, say, Willie Mays died tomorrow, it would be tragic and awful, and it would cause countless reminisces from Baby Boomers — I'm pretty sure there'd be a Bob Costas-Billy Crystal special within the hour — but I'm not sure it would be shocking. That is to say: Willie Mays is 78 years old. The same goes for Vin Scully, or Bob Pettit. Epic figures. Great men. But old. Their death loses points because of their own longevity. Sorry.

2. Culture Importance. Stan Musial was a better baseball player than Pete Rose, but he hasn't contributed nearly as much to the national conversation as Charlie Hustle. We account for that.

3. Historical Recalculation. When Michael Jackson died, we really did dismiss the weirdness — and, perhaps, evil — and remembered what truly made him great. We even felt a little bad for forgetting about that in the first place. That's a factor too: Roger Maris' death grew in significance because we had pegged so wrong in the first place. Our own guilt, revisited upon death, adds to the equation. It's the Man, now that we look at it, we were harsh to that guy principle.

4. Shock Value. Obviously, we remember Len Bias' death more because he was 22 when he died. In the same way you are inherently sadder when a relative dies suddenly than you are when they've spent 15 years slowly wasting away in a funeral home. It's not fair — after all, dead is dead, and it sucks to die no matter how old you are — but them's the breaks.

5. Specific Vivid Memories. The true joy from the Tyson movie — the only real joy, if you ask me — is watching the montage of knockouts, those massive bursts of violence that made him Mike Freaking Tyson. Anyone who watched sports back then remembers just how amazing it was to watch Tyson, and can share those memories, in the same way you could share memories of the Michael Jackson Trapper Keeper you had in the third grade.

Anyway, those are the parameters I'm working from here. What deaths would effect sports fans in a Michael Jackson way today? Here are my nominees. Let's hear yours too.

Muhammad Ali. Kind of a no-brainer, and even though he's old — only 67, actually — and feeble, the public outpouring of affection for him would be enough to stop most normal conversation for a day or so. ESPN's upcoming "30 for 30" documentary series — which you'll be hearing a ton about over the next couple of months — features one film on Ali's fight with Larry Holmes, back when Ali had a mustache and got himself pummeled. It's going to inspire a whole other round of Ali worship ... not that he'll need it. Ali was dominant, important and charismatic, and his late-in-life deification has allowed most people to forget how truly (and unfairly) despised he was at one point by the national media that now reveres him. I think Jeremy Schapp will be on television for 30 consecutive hours when Ali dies.

Charles Barkley. It's insane what Barkley gets away with, even today. Let's not forget: Not only did he get charged with a DUI a few months ago, he told cops it was because "I was gonna drive around the corner and get a blow job." He took a month off, and by the time he had returned, everyone had forgotten about it. Barkley is charming, funny and hilariously blunt, and all this obscures that there seem to be some legitimate demons bubbling underneath there somewhere. (The guy threw a man through a plate-glass window.) Generally speaking, we've all had this quiet grand vision for Barkley; he's too smart and fascinating not to run for public office, or cross over to the mainstream non-sports culture in some dramatic way. But he's not living the most healthy life either. If Barkley died, there would be a palpable sense of loss, and what might have been. Plus, you could just run clips of him talking for about three full days.

Steve Bartman. The glory of Bartman is that he shut up. The guy could have had a reality show by this point, or become some sort of unofficial Cubs spokesman in the wake of the 2003 NLCS. But he didn't. He released one statement about his broken Cubs fan heart, and then was never heard from again. Still, we've all kind of assumed that at some point, he'd return, perhaps right before the Cubs made it to the World Series again, and all would be forgiven. Cubs fans would realize how awful they were to him — and they were quite awful — and the guy could reach full absolution by throwing out the first pitch. I bet he'd get a standing ovation, and we'd recognize the depth of our sins. But what if that didn't happen? What if he were hit by a bus this week? We'd never have closure on the Bartman story, never have a full conclusion to a story that we cruelly invented for him. Bartman would end as a ghost, just two minutes in the public eye, vanishing forever, leaving us alone, dealing with what we had wrought.

Larry Bird. Oh, heavens, to imagine the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth from the aging white sportswriter set! Bird was heaven-sent for the casual sports fan: Talented, hard-working, scrappy and, yes, white: He became the example of Doing It The Right Way even while hundreds of others were also, lo, doing it the right way. Bird's death would bring forth all the stories about how There Can Never Be Another Bird, even though there are Birds everywhere, particularly people fortunate enough not to have grown up in French Lick. Bird dying would be an elegy for a time period that never actually existed. And Lord, in New England no one would stop drinking for a month.

Magic Johnson. Along those lines, Magic's death would hark us back to that day in 1991, when two different worlds collided in a way nobody quite understood. In a way, Magic should die of a heart attack, or a kitchen accident: Something that has nothing to do with this HIV at all. (Considering it has been 18 years since he was diagnosed, this seems somewhat likely.) Magic has gone through so many incarnations that his death might, in a fashion similar to Michael Jackson, remind us of his true genius as a basketball player, rather than the embarrassing spectacles of his television work. We'd all find ourselves lucky to have had the extra time, even if he didn't always use it wisely.

Michael Jordan. Man, lots of basketball players here. Still, the other MJ has to be included. He's probably the closest we have in sports to a Michael Jackson, actually, someone who came around and dominated at the exact perfect social time to have everyone on the planet watching his every move. Jordan had our complete attention in a way no athlete has had since, and surely, the first week of retrospectives would be just like Jackson's, with everyone talking about where they were when he hit the Ehlo shot, or won his first title, or retired (the first time), or beat Byron Russell. We don't have many true traveling roadshows anymore, the circus coming and taking over, and Jordan and those Bulls teams might have been the last glimpse of it. Jordan's just young enough to that we'd all wonder what his next step would be; it still seems unbecoming that the great Jordan's final act could be as absentee president of the freaking Bobcats. There has to be a third act, right?

Pete Rose. For years, people have said the only way Rose is going to make the Hall of Fame is if he's willing to wait until after he dies. Well, we'll find out! I happen to be of the belief that Rose's sins were far worse and for damnable, in baseball terms, than using steroids or HGH or whatever, but with every year that passes, it's more obvious that my view is in the minority. Rose — a guy who becomes more profoundly unlikable the more you learn about him — could benefit from the whitewashing death provides a reputation, and he'd be seen as the sad exile rather than the monstrous pit of self-indulgence he ultimately became, and probably always was. A baseball player was once anonymously quoted as saying, "the only way you'd like Pete Rose was when he wasn't in the room." Death is the ultimate exit from the room. Rose's sins are the sort that we can't forgive while he's alive ... but are easy to let go once he's dead.

O.J. Simpson. There will be no re-evaluation on O.J.'s death: He'll go down in history as a brutal double-murderer, as a relic of a decade in which we, as a country, made a compulsion out of meticulously obsessing over events that didn't actually matter. (Simpson trial, Monica Lewinsky, Y2K.) In fact, it won't be as an athlete that we'll ever really think of O.J. Unlike Michael Jackson, it seems unlikely there will be a revisiting of Simpson's athletic career. As accomplished as his gridiron life was, there were no signature champion moments that could be replayed to offset the wretchedness of what would come later. O.J. was the beginning of empty, gawking culture, a culture we all revel in. Now we use it as distraction. Back then, the rest of the world, the part that didn't involve the O.J. trial, was the distraction. Simpson will be a symbol of a time in American history in which we were all very, very stupid. It seems fitting.

Mike Tyson. Even more so than Magic, the secret surprise about Tyson is that he didn't actually die before now. Tyson has comfortably settled into pseudo tragic hero / comedic punchline now, which is odd, because it wasn't that long ago that he seemed the very nexis of our entire sporting culture, the dividing line between Real Sports Fan and Gawking Sideshow Rubber Necker. Tyson's death would be perhaps the most similar to Jackson's; we watch the old videos of him and be reminded how dominant, how violent, how holyshit he really was at one point. His highs didn't last long, and they were over by the time most of us graduate from college, but at its best, there was nothing like it. It would be worth it to watch that over and over, and I suspect, ultimately, we'd forget the Robin Givens and the Mitch Green and the eating of children.

Vince Young. Ideally speaking — at least for this column's conceit — Young would have died three years ago, when he was at the peak of his powers, the amazing Texas quarterback who pulled off one the greatest single-game performances most of us have ever seen. He could have been our Len Bias then, the one who got away. Instead, he went pro, and that's when all the great college stories explode. But with Young, there's the sense of a mental issue, something in his brain standing in the way, an inner torment that perhaps even he does not understand. Young would be the ultimate little-boy-lost, a superhuman talent who reached the top and then collapsed before any of us, particularly him, noticed what was going on. Any list like this needs a true athletic tragedy. Young's is already happening. Hopefully he can turn it around ... but, as the song goes, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

Other nominees: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Wayne Gretzky, Pele, LeBron James, Mark McGwire, Terrell Owens, Cal Ripken, Derrick Rose, Bud Selig, Bill Simmons, David Stern, Michael Vick, Tiger Woods.

PHOTO: SBB

Yeah...no idea. Was Jackson a Chiefs fan? An Andre Rison fan? Was someone walking by the house wearing this jersey and decided that, because they had no teddy bears or balloons handy, it would suffice? So many questions.

Mourning is a personal, private thing and if one Jackson fan was distraught enough to offer his Andre Rison jersey — a Kansas City Chiefs Rison jersey, no less — to memorialize MJ, I'm fearful that individual may either be suffering an unhealthy level of shock or is clinically insane and should not be roaming the streets of Gary, Indiana in the first place.

Gary residents should take the necessary precautions.

Michael Jackson Tribute Photo [NWI]

Oh, and here's Chad Johnson's measured response (h/t Rookies):

That's all for us. Watch the procession of flamboyant seersucker suits known as the NBA Draft tonight and please stick around for KOGOD's live blog. Things will get going in a half-hour or so.

Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin. Onward.

Stanley Cup

But it's times like these when desperate inspiration kicks into overdrive. After flipping through this Stanley Cup celebration gallery. I figured this would be the perfect day to test this out. Send in your own ideas for next week, so we can make Sundays at Deadspin more absurdly enjoyable. Subject: Pointless Sunday Gallery Post.

Kate Moss

Pete Doherty dangled his model ladyfriend/drug buddy Kate Moss out of a window. Is she playing a kazoo? Unlike the Stanley Cup, Kate Moss was not paraded around in the streets after this occurred.

Michael Jackson's Baby

"Blanket" or whatever its name was part of the most famous act of child endangeerment. I believe Michael Jackson is still its father, or was the baby sold to pay off back taxes? I haven't kept up.

Random Turkish Babies

Well, I'm sure this baby was dangled before it was dropped four stories. The cop below caught it in his jacket, apparently.

Random Pieces of Furniture

This is what comes up when you type the word "defenestrate" into Google images. Yay, for Apartment Therapy.

The reason for this little trip down memory shame is that Michael Jackson extricated himself from whichever alternative Candy Land-like universe he exists to attend last weekend's UFC 84 throwdown. Yes, that shadowy figure wearing the burka and the giant sunglasses trying to remain invisible is Michael Jackson.

Does this help or hurt UFC's image? Either Michael has started taking Brazilian jiu-jitsu lessons on the side or he just really, really enjoys watching shirtless young men crawl all over each other without fear of any kind of legal repercussions.

I choose ... B.

Michael Jackson Loves The UFC [WWTDD]
Michael Jackson Loves UFC, Hates Being Seen [AOL Fanhouse]

Our childhood obsession with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is well documented, to be sure. But exactly how would we have been scarred if we had somehow stumbled onto this version? The mind reels.

Thanks to Mr. Irrelevant (via We Are The Postmen) for bringing to light this old but still quite amusing video game parody goodness (we especially like the boxing glove crotch grab). What would have been funnier, though, is Macaulay Culkin fighting Ted Danson, based on the film Getting Even With Dad.

Michael Jackson's Punch Out Takes Me Back [Mr. Irrelevant]
Punched Out [The Black Table]