One of my Uncles in Las Vegas was a big George Carlin fan. He was also a big Gallagher fan, didn’t pay taxes, and was eventually audited by the IRS. Carlin died today  at the age of 71.

I can remember as a kid seeing Carlin for the first time at my Uncle’s house. This was a VHS tape he’d bought (he had a big collection). I was pretty young at the time, but I was captivated. He might have been the first adult thing I ever got.  

In contrast to Gallagher, Carlin never came off as irrelevant, no matter how old he got. Quite a feat for a comedian. He wasn’t for everyone, and sometimes not really even for me, but at times, I thought he was hilarious. Certainly deserving of tribute today.

As Salon’s King Kaufman writes  in a nice tribute Carlin occasionally tackled sport in his routines. In fact, one of his most famous bits was “Baseball and Football,” originally released in 1975’s An Evening With Wally Lando. You can read it here on the Baseball Almanac site, or, and I can’t recommend this strongly enough, you can listen straight from Carlin’s mouth  right here:

George Carlin - Baseball and Football

Note: I know opening a file this way is sometimes slow and/or difficult, but due to a problem on my computer I have to post them this way. I strongly recommend you subscribe to this site in Google reader, which automatically formats files like the above into a player.

Another note: Here’s a very nice obit from the LA Times.