Category: Sports

hit the 714th (and last) home run of his career on this date in 1935.

Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle reminds us that life is unfair:

— Kelli White, first-time loser, forfeits four years of victories, loses the next two years of competition, including the Olympics, loses her income, and is publicly disgraced.

— Now, if any big-time baseball player gets similarly BALCO’d, busted by hard evidence of steroid use, here is his Draconian punishment: zero fine, zero suspension, zero public disclosure, zero loss of sponsorship and endorsement money, and a paid drug treatment program. Seriously. That’s it.

*****

— The bottom line at the U. of Colorado, from the board of regents: Many young women claim they were sexually assaulted, scores of young men were recruited for the football team using drugs, booze and sex, but let’s not get carried away and hold accountable any of the adults who run the system.

— Yet if a college athlete accepts a free T-shirt or a Happy Meal, he’s a felon for life.

From Morning Briefing by Larry Stewart in the Los Angeles Times:

Bill Walton, asked by CBS’ Craig Kilborn about reports that Britney Spears had a crush on his son Luke, said, “Isn’t she married?”

From Sideline Chatter in The Seattle Times (catching up from earlier in the week):

• Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe, to The Denver Post, on his academic career: “I was a terrible student. I graduated ‘Thank You Lawde.’ ”

• Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times, on the Pac-10’s stance on adding an extra national-title game to football’s bowl season: “The conference is adamantly opposed to extending play beyond the regular season, and proved it this year in the NCAA basketball tournament.”

• Mike Bianchi of The Orlando Sentinel, on Jessica Simpson singing the national anthem at this year’s Indianapolis 500: “At least we won’t have to worry about the (exhaust) fumes killing any of her brain cells.”

Delivered by Randy Johnson Wednesday night (he pitched a perfect game against Atlanta Tuesday night):

10. “After this, I can go 0-15 for the year and honestly not give a crap”

9. “My pre-game dinner at Denny’s tonight? On the house!”

8. “Shows everyone that even though I’m 40, I can still…I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought”

7. “Cool to get congratulatory call from the President, even though he kept calling me “Larry”

6. “Can walk up to guys who’ve thrown no-hitters and whisper, “Loser”

5. “All the pine tar I can eat!”

4. “Your catcher hugs you and it feels kinda…nice”

3. “Maybe people will finally forget about the time I killed that bird”

2. “It’s just one more thing about me that’s perfect, am I right, ladies?”

1. “George Steinbrenner just offered me a billion dollars to sign with the Yankees”

“The essence of horse racing is wagering. Take away gambling, and you might as well have two mice running for all the interest it would generate.”

William C. Rhoden, The New York Times

Yeah, but where would we find jockeys?

Larry Stewart from Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:

Cancel the wedding plans. It appears Luke Walton and Britney Spears won’t be getting together any time soon.

When “Access Hollywood” told Walton that Spears had a crush on him, Walton said the feeling was mutual and he’d like to find a ticket to a game for Spears near the Laker bench.

Times reader Mario Gamez offered to sell his two front-row seats right behind the Laker bench for tonight’s game to Walton for $5,000 apiece.

“I’m only trying to help Luke close the deal,” Gamez said.

The bad news: Spears’ publicist, Nicole King, said that the pop singer was on an international tour until August.

*****

Through the roof: So how outlandish is $5,000 for a front-row seat? According to Eric Baker, president of stubhub.com, tickets to tonight’s game are the hottest of the playoffs, and probably hotter than tickets would be if the Lakers made it to the NBA Finals.

Baker said the resale value of courtside seats was $15,000, and about $1,500 for floor-level seats. Face value of courtside seats for this series is $2,400, and face value for the best floor-level seats is $240.

At Only Baseball Matters, Greg Hunnicutt tells us about a remarkable at bat.

In what was still a close, two run game, with the Dodgers ahead 2-0 against the Cubs in the seventh inning, Alex Cora managed a home run after an 18 pitch at-bat against Matt Clement. With the count at 2-2, Cora fouled off 14 straight pitches to stay alive. Clement, who pitched solidly despite giving up two runs on four straight infield hits in the third inning, made fourteen very good pitches against Cora, all coming down and in against the left-hander. Cora, mostly weakly fouled off each pitch. But he stayed alive. At first the fans seemed disinterested, as they often can in the more routine parts of a game. After about the eighth consecutive foul, the mood in the stadium seemed to change.

Camera shots of the fans and the Dodgers bench showed that mixture of humor and fascination that begins to set in when faced with the strange and absurd. With each successive foul after that, the atmosphere became more charged. On the eighteenth pitch, Clement left a ball over the plate, and Cora hit it out. There was a collective sense of amazement in the stadium, and I expect among people watching at home.

The Dodgers web site has the story, too, complete with the pitch-by-pitch video and Vin Scully with the call. It’s worth a look, but as Hunnicutt says, the fun must have been between pitches.

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times —

It must be cool being Luke Walton. Your dad is Bill Walton, you play for the Lakers and now comes word that Britney Spears has a crush on you.

That’s what “Access Hollywood” told Walton after the Lakers’ game against San Antonio on Tuesday night.

“Oh yeah?” Walton said. “I’ve had a crush on her for a long time.”

His next move, he said, is getting her a ticket to a game.

“I’d sit her as close [to the court] as I could get a ticket,” he said.

From Sideline Chatter in The Seattle Times —

If Los Angeles ever lands another NFL team, look for local rain-barrel sales to go through the roof.

“I don’t think we’ll ever see another football team here,” former California Gov. Gray Davis told ESPN.com. “The NFL keeps claiming they’re going to come here. It may happen.

“It could also rain beer.”

Admittedly not that funny, but for Gray Davis amazing.

The New York Times has an article on Ethiopian long-distance runners today (Tuesday). It’s worth reading. NewMexiKen thought the following gave some indication of how important running is to the world’s fourth poorest country (but one never colonized by Europeans).

The social event of last summer in Addis Ababa was the June wedding of the reigning men’s Olympic marathon champion, Gezahegne Abera, to Elfenesh Alemu, who finished second in the women’s race at the Boston Marathon last month.

The wedding was at the national stadium, and the train on the bride’s dress circled the quarter-mile track and was carried by scores of schoolchildren.

It’s a good article.

NewMexiKen was busy Sunday joining 17,804 other fans to watch the U.S. Women’s National Team beat Mexico in soccer 3-0. The teams battled each other, 90-degree heat and the altitude to give us a good game. And it was truly exciting to see 32-year-old Mia Hamm, recently voted ESPN’s Best Female Athlete, score a goal, her 149th in international competition.

From Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle:

— Brooklyn high school guard Sebastian Telfair has opted for the NBA draft and signed a $15 million contract with Adidas. So he’s pretty much got the prom expenses covered.

— “I’m on Cloud 40 right now,” Telfair said, raising questions about what kind of education you get there at LeBron James High School.

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:

Always hustling: Pete Rose might never have been a very good con man.

At least that’s the implication from a story ESPN’s Joe Morgan told at a recent Texas Ranger luncheon.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Morgan said Rose had a paper route as a kid, and one day called the district manager, saying he’d been mugged and robbed. When Rose was asked how much he’d lost, he said, “Hold on a minute. Let me count it.”

Author David Shields writes about going pro in The New York Times:

I suspect the real reason the N.F.L. and N.B.A. don’t want high schoolers and college underclassmen to play with their ball is that they don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with National Collegiate Athletic Association, which serves as a sort of free minor league and unpaid promotional department for the pros. The N.C.A.A. is a multibillion-dollar business built on the talents of players who are often unqualified for or uninterested in being students and who benefit materially from the system only if they are among the few who turn professional.

Teenage pros are hardly limited to football and basketball. In his first season of professional hockey, Wayne Gretzky was 18. The new star of Major League Soccer is 14-year-old Freddy Adu. John McEnroe turned pro after his freshman year at Stanford. Tiger Woods did so after his sophomore year. Venus Williams and her sister Serena left school in their early teens to play tennis. Gary Sheffield entered the major leagues at 19, as did Mickey Mantle.

Most baseball players don’t attend college, and few graduate. Only 22 percent of the players in the N.H.L. attended college. Yet there is never an outcry over youthful debuts in hockey, soccer, tennis, golf and baseball.

NewMexiKen has gone 360 degrees on this. Now I say, pay them to play in college or let them turn pro.

Update: Greg Hansen talks about college vs. the NBA in today’s Arizona Daily Star.

Charles Einstein’s Willie’s Time (1979) is the only ballplayer biography ever to be a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize.

Englishman Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile at Oxford — 3:59.4. Bannister’s record lasted only 46 days, when Australian John Landy ran 3:58.0. The current world record is 3:43.13

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.

From AP via ESPN, ‘Crybaby Award’ may cost youth coach his job.

New MexiKen saw this story (a coach gives a 13-year-old a trophy with an infant on it) in this morning’s newspaper and then the story was sent to me.

Clearly this coach was insensitive and thoughtless, and the fact he had a trophy made shows me too much premeditation. But, that said, if my memory is correct, every coach I came across in high school was just as insensitive, just as ready to ridicule the athletically-challenged. That doesn’t mean it was OK then, but it didn’t become national news either. Sounds like there are a lot of crybabies.

“Ratings for the first day of ESPN’s NFL Draft telecast were up 11 percent over last year. That’s understandable. Interest was sky-high because many viewers thought it was a military draft.”

Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, takes a look at the new Raiders:

You have to admire the Raiders for their core belief that a productive football career and a life of crime aren’t mutually exclusive. And that every young man deserves several second chances.

The Raiders drafted three players with police records, which gives new meaning to the term “starting lineup.” The three players have a cumulative eight significant legal/academic mishaps on their records.

Give the Raiders credit. They didn’t just draft a bunch of random guys; they drafted a self-contained support group.

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:

Local broadcaster Alan Massengale, tongue planted firmly in cheek, on why the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority wanted to prevent jockeys from putting advertisements on their riding pants:

“Such offensive ads could ruin the mood at the Crown Royal Derby party attended by Ford Motor Company executives, the official car of the Kentucky Derby, the first jewel of the Visa Triple Crown.”