Category: Sports

Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.

Best line of the day about doughnuts

RENTON, Wash. — Seahawks rookie wide receiver Golden Tate apologized Tuesday and said he was “very embarrassed” after police in suburban Seattle gave him a warning for trespassing into a gourmet doughnut shop at 3 a.m. last weekend.

The former Notre Dame star says it was a foolish mistake but that he is glad to have learned a valuable lesson without getting arrested.

Tate says a friend took a couple of maple bars from the shop, which is at the bottom of the building in which Tate lives.

He says “they are irresistible.”

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll says he has talked to Tate, and agrees that maple bars can be irresistible.

AP via ESPN

Idle thought

So who you going to root for in the World Cup?

I mean, we’ll all root for the U.S.A. of course, but anybody else?

Charles Pierce says he’s going to root for Ivory Coast.

UPDATE: According to European oddsmakers, the 14 favorites (of 32 contenders) are, in order, Spain 5:1, Brazil 5.5:1, Argentina 8:1, England 9:1, Holland 11:1, Germany 15:1, Italy 17:1, France 21:1, Portugal 29:1, Ivory Coast 51:1, Serbia 67:1, Chile 81:1, Mexico 81:1 and U.S.A. 81:1.

Everybody else is 100:1 or worse.

Schedule of matches for the Group stage.

Best line to put a little balance into it of the day

“Look, I hate to be the skunk at the garden party here. And, by all accounts, [John Wooden] was a wonderful man. But it should be noted before we’re all swept away in a tsunami of Hoosier piety that anyone arguing for John Wooden’s integrity based on the UCLA basketball program that he ran is simply arguing against the historical record …”.

Charles Pierce

UCLA basketball during its dynasty was about as bad as programs this side of John Calipari can get. Cars, cash, clothes, stereos, airline tickets, abortions — for 15 years. If Wooden didn’t know, it’s because he didn’t want to know.

Best line of the day

“When I was maybe nine, I remember crying and being so upset, and my mom would walk down the sideline and just tell me it was all right. There’s some days now, in stadiums filled with fifty thousand people, where I could still use her.”

Tim Howard, Goalkeeper, United States of America, quoted in a profile by Hampton Sides in The New Yorker. Link is to abstract of article.

‘Topes

98 degrees at game time. But a great breeze and almost comfy sitting in the sun. Sunset one hour away.

Third inning and Hu’s on first — but he got to second before I could snap a picture. And then he came around to score. 3-2 Isotopes. 95 degrees at 8:00.

Middle of 6, ‘Topes up 8-2. Big crowd enjoying the show (fireworks after game). Hu has scored twice and batted in two. De Jesus with long 2-run homer to left-center. 9:00. 93 degrees. Excellent night.

Green Chile, Red Chile, Taco and Salsa line up for the race to third base. Salsa won. iPhone photo.

Isotopes win 9-3. 9:45. 89 degrees. Need a jacket.

Bring on the fireworks. (Fireworks show was terrific and watching scores of little kids run the bases even better!)

Galarraga pitches 28-out perfect game

Video highlights.

Charles Pierce sums it up arguing for the commissioner to overturn the call.

I mean, it’s not like there aren’t already fluky perfect games dotting the major-league record book. The first recorded one was by a guy pitching for the Worcester Ruby Legs. (Major leagues? Please. ) And, for 74 years, they counted Ernie Shore’s having thrown one in June of 1917, despite the fact that Babe Ruth started the game by walking Ray Morgan and then slugging the home plate umpire. This earned him an ejection, which brought on Shore in relief. Morgan got thrown out trying to steal and, until they changed the rules in 1991, Shore got credit for a perfect game because he retired the next 27 guys. How is that less complicated than what I am suggesting? Let’s give Galarraga seven decades, too. He more than earned them.

Shore retired the next 26 batters, not 27.

Nobody’s perfect

Detroit Tiger’s pitcher Armando Galarraga threw the 21st perfect game in 135 years of major league history tonight — and inconceivably the third this season.

Well, he would have, except that first base umpire Jim Joyce just didn’t know it and inexplicably called the 27th Cleveland batter safe at first when he was clearly out. Not even close.

Galarraga got the next batter to end the game and preserve the shut out.

Instant replay anyone?

Joyce apologized after the game and Galarraga accepted the apology with grace.

Here’s the video.

The first out in the ninth was a spectacular catch that preserved the perfect game for Joyce’s screw up. Here’s that video.

Football lines of the day

Alas, Lawrence Taylor is yet another sports figure (or celebrity or politician) in the news for horrible behavior. At The New Yorker Michael Shapiro however, gives us a glimpse of what made Taylor a special athlete. An excerpt:

I was working on a story for the Times Magazine about his sudden legend and had arranged to meet him at his home in Upper Saddle River, but before I went I spoke with Harvard professor Howard Gardner, who had written on levels of intelligence. Gardner postulated that Taylor’s brain worked like those of great artists or composers: rather than process information in steps, it did so in clusters. As a result, he did not need to watch and practice a play repeatedly to be able, at game time, to anticipate what was going to happen. Just once, and he’d remember and be able to recall it with a speed that eclipsed the cognitive powers of lesser souls.

It’s an interesting brief read.

Elsewhere, Charles Pierce thinks Ray Lewis has no business criticizing Tim Tebow. Again, an excerpt:

Here’s a tip. Maybe people are going out of their way to help Tebow because he’s white, and handsome, and famous, and a notorious god-botherer of the kind that makes me run away and become an animist healer. Or, maybe, people are going out of their way to help him because he hasn’t yet, you know, been within blood-spattering distance when people got stabbed.

4 minute mile

Englishman Roger Bannister ran the first recorded sub-four-minute mile — 3:59.4 — 56 years ago today. Bannister’s record lasted only 46 days, when Australian John Landy ran 3:58.0. The current world record is 3:43.13 held by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj (who also holds the 1500 and 2000 meter world records).

The four-minute-mile was such a symbolic barrier that Bannister was Sports Illustrated’s first ever Sportsman of the Year.

Bannister retired from running at the end of 1954 and ultimately became a neurologist.

[A mile is 1609.344 meters.]

Damn Yankees not quite so damned

“Contrary to popular belief, the Yankees are only the fifth-most despised team in the majors, according to an Internet algorithm built by Nielsen Co. that analyzes how people feel about certain things.”

WSJ.com

Most disliked — the Cleveland Indians, followed by the Red Sox (YES!), the Reds, and the Astros.

Least disliked — the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics.

Yup, it’d be a damn shame

“A great number of major-league baseball teams have their spring training sites in Arizona. Most, if not all, of those teams have players of various Latino origin. This is also true of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the several minor-league teams that play their entire seasons there. Baseball has been very, very good to Arizona. Be a shame if something happened to change that.”

Charles Pierce with an idea he got from Keith Olbermann

Best ‘never thought about it before, but good question’ line of the day

“Opening Day is all about renewal: same old white lines, same old thin sunshine, same old wondering how those F/A-18 fighter planes time their screech-by to coincide with the end of the anthem.”

Roger Angell : The New Yorker

Go read Angell’s whole Opening Day blog post. It’s only two paragraphs. If you love baseball, you love Angell.

Idle thought about an idle thought

Wally suggests in a comment that writing about golf on TV is a perfect storm of inactivity.

But I’m thinking, Wally, that Richard Sandomir gets a tidy salary from The New York Times to write about golf on TV:

On another subject, Nantz evidently wanted to portray himself as a Woods critic.

On Saturday, he said he was disappointed in Woods’s frustrated outbursts, although most would not call his words very profane. On Sunday, Nantz came off as a scold when he called the language “foul.” Even some of Nantz’s colleagues said Sunday that Woods seemed less himself when he was not exhibiting his emotional side.

If Nantz and CBS don’t want to hear Woods, don’t aim a microphone at him.

But that would be a shame because I thought it was classic when Woods executed poorly and, again talking to himself, said, “Eldrick!”

Idle thought

Jim Nantz persists in saying Woods and Choi shot the same score all four rounds.

But, of course, they didn’t. They shot the same score yesterday and today.

On Thursday and Friday Woods was 68 and 70, Choi 67 and 71.

It doesn’t matter, but these guys get paid good money to inform us.

Best lines of the day, so far

“Something fluttered down into Phil’s line as he hit a short birdie putt at 2. I’ve never seen that before, but this is only my 60th Masters.”

“Tiger bogeys three of the first five and is six back, his worst start on a Sunday while in contention in a major. Something on his mind?”

Dan Jenkins (danjenkinsgd) on Twitter

Jenkins, the author of Dead Solid Perfect, Semi-Tough and Baja Oklahoma (among others) is 80.