Halloween is right around the corner so Machochip editor Alex Ferreyra paired a list of Halloween candies with sports figures he reads about every day. Some he hopes to find in his bag of treats and some he’d egg the owner’s house for signing to a multi-year contract. So read on because, when your team reaches into the offseason bag of goodies, you never know whether you’ll find a trick or a treat.

By the end of Halloween night, I’ll be in sugar shock from having eaten my way through a bag of mini-Kit Kats. So in anticipation, I may as well use this time to break down the awesome and God awful in Halloween candy to highlight the best and worst in sports figures today. Because like candy, just because something looks good, doesn’t mean your team should take a big bite of it.

The Best…
Full Candy Bar—If you see a line forming around the block of a house during Halloween, one of two things is happening. One, a girl’s showing her boobs in lieu of giving out candy. The second, and more likely reason is that the wonderful owners are giving out full-sized candy bars, none of that mini-bar shit. Finding this house is essentially like finding the X on the treasure map or the house with the girls flashing her cans. That’s why Albert Pujols fits perfectly here. The Cardinals stumbled upon him after the Colorado Rockies and Tampa Bay Rays (who are pretty good at sniffing out talent) passed on him. Ever since then, he’s been the consummate pro player, a God-fearing man who puts the fear of God into pitchers. He’s maintained a ridiculous .334 batting average and averaged 45 home runs a year. And this has all been on a bum elbow! Like the full sized candy bar, all you have to do is enjoy watching Pujols play and be thankful for the gluttonous goodness that comes with it.

Mini-Butterfingers—When you open up a Butterfinger, there’s something so stiff and crumbly about it. That is until you bite into it and taste the deliciousness of what amounts to chocolate-enveloped peanut brittle. Alex Rodriguez is like that because his persona is so guarded and strange—he’s a starfucker! he likes strongly built women! he shills for teddy bear companies!—that he’s a little off putting to even the fans of his team. But once you see him in action and get a taste for what he brings to the plate, you forgive the outward appearance and enjoy the unexpected middle. Yes, you even forget A-Rod’s frosted tips, represented on the candy bar by the white powdery substance that forms when it gets older.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup —You usually get those singlets of RPBC during the H’ween season, which sucks big time. Arguably the best of the lot, there’s something mysterious about the RPBC that makes it so alluring. Oh look, it’s a piece of chocolate! But when you bite into it., you get something totally different, a little like Kobe Bryant. His exterior is all gloss, sheen and hyper-performance, like one of those new MacBook Pros. But inside, deep in that peanut butter center, you know there’s something different brewing. Brooding, difficult, dangerous even. But like Lakers fans, you stick with it because he’s so damn good and you’ll forgive the 20 pounds you gain just to experience the awesomeness they bring.

The Okay…
Candy Corn—when I asked a bunch of friends the best and worst question, candy corn came up often. But the responses ranged from “candy corn—wtf is that?” to one friend emailing me that he loved candy corn 60 times back-to-back. It was that kind of “it’s great!”/“it sucks,” love or hate response I got for it. I think that ‘s what people think about Tony Romo. Sure he’s a Pro Bowl quarterback, but if you had Pro Bowl talent at running back, wide receiver and tight end, we’re pretty sure we could be voted in. But more often than not in big situations, he fumbles the snap or is somewhere else—probably thinking of Jessica Simpson in her nightie—and turns the ball over. Romo needs to stabilize his quarterback play when he comes back from his pinky injury, or else he’s going to start to feel like dead weight to Cowboy fans—or the bloated feeling the morning after consuming 4,000 calories in candy overnight.

Dubble Bubble— Dubble Bubble is our favorite gum of all time. Its round, glob form is perfect for us to cram multiple pieces until our cheeks look like Popeye’s or a chipmunk’s. But the problem is that Dubble Bubble wears out its taste too fast, to the point where we have to spit it out and reinsert seven pieces every five minutes. NFL coach Bill Parcells does this, except with football teams. Whether it’s the New England Patriots, New York Jets or Dallas Cowboys, Parcells takes one of these underachieving teams and in three years leaves them for another. Sure, he leaves them better than he found them, but his dictatorial style of coaching and volatility relating with the owners leaves them basically back at zero once he leaves, wondering “what if” he stayed. It’s the same “what if” you ask yourself when you wonder if that last piece of gum you stuck in your mouth was the reason the wad sucked your filling out of place.

Pica Limon—Growing up in Los Angeles, plenty of Mexican neighbors dropped these little packets of Pica Limon in our pail. If you never had a Pica Limon as a kid, you really missed out on what is essentially tequila training for children. Essentially these packets contain chilli powder and lemon salt. MMMM… doesn’t your mouth just salivate at the thought of it? Ours does. That’s why our Pica Limon is David Beckham, who after teasing LA Galaxy fans with a year and a half of okay play, he’s leaving for AC Milan during the off-season and promising to come back (yeah right). The salivating they did upon his arrival hasn’t let up, the same way the pica limon leaves us looking for anything to quench our thirst, like some water or… tequila (we learned that part the hard way when we were 11)! So will Beckham be Galaxy fans’ thirst quencher if and when he comes back stateside and brings them, oh, say to the playoffs for the first time since his arrival? Or will his play be so subpar again that it’ll leave them with a taste so bad only tequila shooters can shoo it away?

The Bad…
Good & Plenty—A lot of people don’t seem to like licorice in a hard candy shell that looks like the pills from Valley of the Dolls. Seriously, has there ever been a worse combination? I guess there’s Isiah Thomas and the New York Knicks. In his tenure at Madison Square Garden, Isiah had a multi-million dollar sexual harassment lawsuit leveled against him as his detrimentally overpaid point guard was having sex with interns in his jeep while his center was having trouble staying under 325 pounds. His combined record over two years in New York was 56-108, and the only reason he’s not currently the coach of the team is because they’re continuing to pay his multi-million dollar coaching salary to add “input” to the team while Mike D’Antoni tries to clean up the mess Thomas created at MSG. Another reason Thomas and Good & Plenty go together is the recent mysterious overdose that happened at his home in Purchase, New York. Thomas claims that it was his daughter that was ill, and there was no overdose as the papers claim. But the police say that a 46-year-old man was taken out of the residence, not a young woman. So, Isiah, what were you popping—Good & Plentys or Lunesta?

Pennies—Seriously, who decided it was a good idea to give out as a treat something you could find on the street? Maybe in 1960 it was a profitable idea for kids, but in 1987, you just couldn’t roll with pennies unless you were a bully with a sack of them, out to steal some candy. That’s why this slot goes to Pacman Jones, formerly of the Dallas Cowboys. Like a plastic jack-o-lantern weighed down by multiple single cent pieces, Jones is apparently more trouble than he’s worth. Traded in the offseason to the Cowboys from the Tennessee Titans, Jones is now in a rehab center and out for the season after an off-the-field scuffle with his own bodyguard. Yeesh, we’d rather have the Good N’ Plenty.

Candy Apples With Razor Blades In Them—Many of the Cincinnati Bengals football team have done jail time and/or been suspended by the league. Seriously, talk about a bad bunch of apples. You don’t even need to x-ray these guys to know they’re bad to the core. Their play sucks, too, as exhibited by their 0-7 start to the season.

So there you have it. Like everything in life, sports and candy aren’t immune to the bad things. That’s why life’s best take in moderation because before you know it, your team is full of deranged egomaniacs throwing apples with razor blades at each other in the locker room. Happy Halloween everyone!