I have sad news: Your oversized Madonna photos are officially obsolete (”Why?!” *sobbing*). But cheer up, Yankee haters, and get to work on those Kate Hudson masks, pronto. America’s favorite steroid abuser has been seen canoodling with the engine that drove “You, Me and Dupree” for the past couple of weeks, but now it’s more or less official. They’re a couple.
Say want you want about Rodriguez, but it takes a brave man to invite both the taunts of Yankee opponents and the terrible wrath of Madonna. One can only assume that he saw “Bride Wars” and determined Kate was the more imminent threat. Read more…
I guess it just wouldn’t be a Magic-Cavs game in Cleveland if the home team didn’t blow a 20-point first half lead. And not only did their early 34-12 lead vanish, it went away nearly as quickly as it came about. By the time the Magic had finished scoring the first nine points of the second half, they had a 64-56 lead and it looked like Nike was going to have to commission a Hedo Turkoglu puppet.
(The most impressive part is that LeBron literally carried Wally for the entire second half)
(Don’t worry Orlando, you still have this very calm, collected man running your team)
ABC counter-programmed against the NBA game with the gripping finals of the National Spelling Bee. Fortunately, they had the good sense this year to keep Mike and Mike away from it, instead going to “Dancing with the Stars” host Tom Bergeron, who was joined during the proceedings by Brooks‘ favorite gymnast, Shawn Johnson. The winner was Kayva Shavishankar of Olathe, Kansas, who got bonus points for having a name that was harder to spell than any of the words on the championship list. She spelled “laodicean” right to win the title, taking home the big trophy and $40,000, which will pay for nearly one year of college. This article says she’s a “budding neurosurgeon,” which leads me to believe that she’s actually already done brain surgery. Props to her if that’s the case. The favorite, Sidharth Chand, flubbed “apodyterium” and finished fourth, joining the 292 other spellers who have ultimately just wasted a whole lot of time studying for this. Anyway, this is all just an excuse to post the video of that one girl screaming the last word back in the ’90s again:
• The BOSTON HERALD says that Terry Francona got so upset about getting ejected from yesterday’s Red Sox-Twins game that he received medical attention in the clubhouse afterward for elevated blood pressure. Tito’s only 50 years old, but has been a walking heart attack waiting to happen for several years. Let’s hope he lives to see David Ortiz go deep again.
• For years, baseball stat-types have been looking for a way to quantify Derek Jeter’s bad defense. Well, the HARDBALL TIMES’ Colin Wyers came up with a metric that does just that. According to the new SZR (Simple Zone Rating), Brooks Robinson is the best fielder ever (which sounds about right) and Jeter is the second worst (foiled by Eddie Yost).
• Here’s your Stanley Cup preview from USA TODAY. This is the first rematch since the Islanders and Oilers played back-to-back Cup finals in 1983 and 1984. The Isles won in ‘83 (their fourth title in a row) but the Oilers unseated the champs the next year. That means it’s now been 25 years since Gretzky and Messier won their first cup. And what a scene it was when it happened (fans with goofy signs were on the ice before the game ended. They’d be tasered these days):
• Speaking of the Stanley Cup, the first two games will be played on consecutive nights this weekend, the first time since 1955 that Cup games have been played two days in a row. And why? No, it’s not Yanni’s fault this time. It’s actually Conan O’Brien’s fault. DEADSPIN says that NBC wouldn’t air weeknight games because if they go into overtime, they could’ve pre-empted one of O’Brien’s first shows as host of the “Tonight Show.” The finals weren’t orginially supposed to start for another week, by which time the world would’ve forgotten about hockey altogether.
• The World Series of Poker got underway yesterday with a special 40th-anniversary hold ‘em tournament. The buy-in: $40,000. About half of the field of 201 has hit the rail, and this special tourney (a who’s who of pro players) will conclude on Sunday. The $10,000 main event doesn’t start until early July. For now, here’s a picture of Phil Ivey getting an arm massage as he casually leaves a giant wad of $100s just sitting on the floor:
• Could Joe Torre have a bigger horseshoe up his butt? Manny gets suspended for 50 games, and somehow Juan Pierre turns into Ty Cobb (uh, except for the racist part). Pierre, who is widely known to be one of the worst offensive players this decade (stealing bases doesn’t make you good), is hitting .440 since becoming the starting left fielder for the Dodgers. L.A. won again last night, 2-1 over the Cubs in Chicago.
• I have to admit that I never thought I’d see the day when John Salley and Patti Blagojevich would be interviewed together, but GOOD DAY L.A. had them yesterday morning as they promoted their new TV show about getting stranded in the jungle. And YOU BEEN BLINDED has the video, which includes Steve Edwards asking the married Salley about his “girlfriends,” which didn’t amuse John at all. Salley also defends Patti by calling our country “communist.” Good times all around.
• BLOOMBERG has a good look at Sonia Sotomayor’s influence in ending the baseball strike nearly 15 years ago. Sotomayor grew up just a couple of miles from Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx, which also happens to be the country’s poorest congressional district. But hey, at least they have a shiny new stadium with $2,500 tickets!
• Now that Shea Stadium has been blow’d up, Tom Glavine has decided it’s safe to pitch again. He threw five scoreless innings in a AAA rehab start last night, and may pitch for the Braves next week. Still, expect something to “flare up” if Glavine’s turn in the rotation comes up when the Braves are in New York.
After second-generation ballplayer John Mayberry, Jr. launched a home run in his second major league at-bat in today’s Phillies/Yankees game on Fox, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver lavished praise over John Mayberry, Sr. (a 14-year major leaguer) and expressed how proud he must be. The camera lingered over a man in a World Baseball Classic Panama jersey and his two pre-teen children.
(Huge hat tip to Matt P of THE 700 LEVEL for helping to get this screenshot of a very focused Not Senior)
Which probably should have been a clue, really, to the Fox Sports crew on site. They picked up on their mistake an inning later and announced they had shown two minutes of the wrong man. Hey, it’s an easy mistake, right? Right?
With tickets that have soared to such astronomical prices, it’s easy to see why we’ve seen so many empty seats at the new Yankee Stadium this season. Your average New York baseball fan really can’t afford to shell out hundreds of dollars just to take in one game. (Go ahead & give them a call, and just try to find some cheap seats.)
(”I just came down to tell you that we’re all out of Fresca.”)
Well, never let it be said that Derek Jeter doesn’t look out for his own. The Yanks star still has plenty of friends & family who would love to see him play in the new digs, but they can’t (or won’t) cough up the dough. So to make sure he still has his own personal cheering section, Jeter is renting out one of the new stadium’s luxury suites.
HOME RUN DERBY races up with some fun photos found of a Chevrolet in New Jersey decked out in full Derek Jeter regalia:
The pinstripes on the trunk, the baseball stitching all around the body, the Yankees logos on the door & by the gas tank, the number 2 - this is one vexing vehicle.
That makes the U.S. 0-for-2 in these quadrennial shindigs, while the Japanese get a shot at 2-for-2 on Monday night, in the team’s fifth faceoff with Korea in this World Baseball Classic alone.
Of course, that’s hardly the story here. Instead, this is a tale of how A) Roy Oswalt couldn’t hold a lead, B) the U.S. couldn’t mount a rally off of Daisuke Matsuzaka and C)Jeter made a horribly costly error in the bottom of the eighth, just as the U.S. seemed to be getting back in the game.
In fairness, the Oswalt-Matsuzaka matchup played out much the way it should have, just perhaps in a slightly adjusted time frame. The Americans got on the board in the first inning, but by the time he was done, it was Matsuzaka who had held the U.S. in check, while Oswalt had folded repeatedly to Japan’s litany of slap hitters.
As for Jeter, in the end his error didn’t affect the decision in the game. But his error, a badly off target throw on a jumping play as he wheeled to his right, gave the Japanese a crushing three-run lead — which soon ballooned to the final five-run margin — when the U.S. could have gotten out of the inning with the heart of the team’s order coming up in the top of the ninth.
It all goes to prove that nothing is certain in baseball anymore, especially in the World Baseball Classic, as much as it really may be a money-grubbing, made-for-TV event. Then again, we already knew that, thanks to our friends in the Netherlands.
Of course, the Americans weren’t the only superpower to go down on Sunday night. Just ask the Lady Vols of Tennessee.
That’s right, the only women’s basketball program powerful enough to copyright their team name as its own brand was eliminated in the first round of the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever. In fact, before Ball State stunned record-breaker Pat Summit’s team in Bowling Green, Ky. last night, the Vols had never lost in either of the first two rounds. That made them a whopping 42-0.
Not anymore. Of course, Summit was as much a realist about the loss as she is about anything else, shining a pretty stark light on her team’s shortcomings.
“I thought we were tentative, maybe uptight,” Summitt said. “But you have to give credit where credit is due and that’s to the Ball State basketball team. They had a lot more toughness. They beat us to loose balls. They made shots.”
Evidently that still makes all the difference between wins and losses, whether you’re Pat Summit or a nobody like Ball State Coach Kelly Packard, who has a whopping 26 career wins.
There had to be some winners on Sunday, and there were plenty in men’s college basketball. But of all the teams going where the Tennessee women (and men, for that matter) fear to tread, none can truly be called “Cinderella.”
Sure, there’s still a 12-seed out there in Arizona. But to call the Wildcats a Cinderella team is as unfair as it would have been to call Wisconsin a slipper-wearing team. In fact, ESPN’s Andy Katzmakes a pretty compelling case that this season’s Sweet 16 is about as chalk-filled in any of recent memory. Sure, it makes for some pretty strong matchups, but that doesn’t help us glorify the next Cinderella. If only Siena had held on …
Was there a more dramatic finish to any of Sunday’s second round games than the fateful standoff between Marquette and Missouri, complete with a pinch shooter and a football-style fumble that cost the Eagles? It seems hard to find one.
In case you missed it, former WWE star Bobby Lashley got into a real MMA fight, and he didn’t do half bad.
Ah, the rituals of spring. The flowers are sprouting, the weather’s warming up, and Derek Jeter has a new girl. And oddly enough, she’s not even famous! I guess you can only date so may Maxim Hot 100 girls before you get bored.
I remember last Saturday morning when I woke up and found out about Alex Rodriguez’s steroid use through the article in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED shortly after going online. One of my first thoughts was wondering where A-Rod had been when he first found out about the article that morning as well. Was he sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal? Running on a treadmill while listening to Madonna’s Immaculate Collection on his iPod? As it turns out, Rodriguez may have been laying in bed with two women.
Pictures have surfacedon RADAR ONLINE that show Rodriguez partying with two lovelies at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas the night before the steroids story broke. Judging from the photos, at least we now know for sure that Alex was able to enjoy his last night of freedom before his life changed forever.
