Archive for August, 2009
You have to get up pretty early in the morning if you want to put one past Chicago Cubs general manager Jim Hendry. With his Cubbies 9 games back of the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Central and 8.5 back in the wild card race, Hendry admitted the Cubs have “failed miserably” over the past few weeks and then proceeded to blow everybody’s mind when he suggested that in the upcoming ten straight games at Wrigley, the Cubs better have a “great” homestand.
“We got to get going. We’re running out of time. We need a great homestand and to get some help from other people. We put ourselves in the spot we’re in,” Hendry said.
Ya think? Ladies and gentlemen, it’s insight like this that helps you rise to the senior ranks in the Chicago Cubs organization. Clearly, I’m busting his balls for a somewhat innocuous comment, but come on. Your team is nine games back with 39 left to play. Not only do the Cubs need a good homestand, they need a good road trip after that, need to come back and have another good homestand and then go back out on the road and play well.
I’m surpised he didn’t go with a Tim McCarver-ism and say, “We’re going to have to win more games than the Cardinals over the rest of the season if we’re going to have any hope in catching them.”
Oh, and by the way, the Cubs got hammered last night by the Nationals 15-6 in Carlos Zambrano’s return from the disabled list, so the homestand really didn’t get off to the “great” start Hendry probably hoped to see. Oops.
Cubs GM says sliding team needs ‘great’ homestand [Sporting News/AP]
• MLB Roundup. Zach Greinke struck out 15 in eight innings, a team record, as Kansas City defeated Cleveland 6-2. The Rays have now one eight out of ten after Carlos Pena hit two two-run homers in Tampa Bay’s 7-3 win over Toronto. Adam Wainwright is the National League’s first 15-game-winner after allowing only three hits over eight innings as the Cardinals beat the Astros 1-0. [MLB.com Scoreboard]
• National Hockey League. A group led by Jerry Reinsdorf has withdrawn its bid to purchase the maligned Phoenix Coyotes organization as it was unable to meet the court’s deadline for submitting a firm bid. The NHL, however, filed a bid in U.S. Bankruptcy Court to take over the team and keep it in Arizona. Stellar work, Gary Bettman. [Puck Daddy]
• National Football League. Edgerrin James has signed a one-year contract with the Seattle Seahawks after working him out Tuesday at the team headquarters. The deal is reported to be for $2 million. Seattle cut T.J. Duckett to clear roster space. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]
• Now, if you glue someone’s ass to the toilet in Australia and get caught, do you get a booting? (Obligatory Simpsons reference) A man suffered no injuries – except to his pride and dignity – after he sat down and became stuck on a toilet in a mall in the northeastern city of Cairns, Australia. An unidentified person played a horrible prank and placed fact-acting adhesive glue all over the toilet seat. After he realized he wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, paremedics were alerted and the humilated man was taken to the hospital – with the seat still firmly affixed to his ass – where it was eventually removed with a solvent. Ha. That’s good stuff. [Yahoo!/AP]
You know the guy I’m talking about: he couldn’t stand the constant text messages, how he could never hang out with his buddies anymore and how all she did was nag, nag, nag. But now that she’s dumped his complaining ass, you can’t get him out of the house. Everything is “Tara this” and “Tara that.” It’s enough to drive you up the goddamn wall.
So, one day, you’ve finally had enough of listening to the piece of shit whine, so you decide to take him out for a night on the town. “Screw her,” you say, and to your surprise, he reluctantly agrees. The problem is you never know which side of the manic depressive personality you’re going to get: the pissed off one that’s going to go balls to the wall, drink like a fish and start a fight with some bouncer or the lowly loser who hides in the back of the booth and doesn’t talk to anyone.
May I introduce you to a composite of that lovable loser buddy we have all had at one time or another. Let’s call him “Todd.” Take it away, slappy.
• Little League Baseball. World Series, Pool Play: San Antonio vs. Chula Vista (Calif.). Chula Vista? That sounds made up. [ESPN, 8:00 ET]
• Golf. Top 10. Episode: “Phil Mickelson’s Daring Shots.” Only 10? If they could come up with ten of Phil Mickelson’s intelligent shots, I’d be more impressed. [The Golf Channel, 9:00 ET]
• Shaq plays in the sand and stuff. Shaq Vs. Episode: “Shaq vs. Misty & Kerr.” Please don’t have Shaq wearing skimpy bikini. Please don’t have Shaq wearing skimpy bikini. [ABC, 9:00 ET]
It’s 4:19, You Gotta Minute? (August 25th)
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• Wysh asks Mark Messier about the infamous Gary Coleman photo. If you have never seen it, click over and wallow in the awkwardness. [Puck Daddy]
• Holy crap, someone painted their poodle to look like a Pittsburgh Steeler and other abominations. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
• Can the NHL do anything right? This time it’s Twitter. [Melt Your Face Off]
• Chris Cooley and family take on some bees. What? [Style Points]
• All aboard the Michael Vick Experience! [Shutdown Corner]
• Finally, Billy Wagner is headed to the Red Sox. [Big League Stew]
You would think we would start running out of hottie female tennis players to showcase here on the Sportress, but it appears that there is no end in sight – which is good, since a “Roger Federer Is A Hottie Boombalottie” post that has been bandied about probably wouldn’t go over very well with the readership here. I’m beginning to suspect that the WTA has some sort of secret genetic engineering lab tucked up in the mountains of Switzerland and they just keep pumping these beauties out of it.
All kidding aside, this is heartbreaking news. Cibulková, the attractive and talented 20-year-old Slovakian currently ranked 16th in the WTA rankings, has withdrawn from the U.S. Open due to a ribbed injury – oops – rib injury.
Cibulková has been having a nice season, most notably reaching the semifinals at the French Open.
So farewell for now, Dominika. Best of luck on recovering from your rib injury. I guess bodies just aren’t supposed to contort like that, although everyone at the pool party appreciated the show.
For everyone else, I have prepared a photo gallery for your persual so that way you will be much better informed come next August when she invades New York. Enjoy.
Read More→
Kinky! No, no, no, it’s not what you think – Ichiro is not some masochistic exhibitionist who slaps his own scrotum in front of willing women for sexual satisfaction – well, at least not that I know of – but the Japanese do have many unique sexual practices, so who’s to say?
What I am referring to is comments Ichiro made in an article in The New York Times regarding how he likes women who can appreciate how he handles his bat…you know, how he’s a swinger…no…man, you know what I mean. Via Big League Stew:
“Chicks who dig home runs aren’t the ones who appeal to me. I think there’s sexiness in infield hits because they require technique. I’d rather impress the chicks with my technique than with my brute strength. Then, every now and then, just to show I can do that, too, I might flirt a little by hitting one out.”
Damn straight, Ichiro. It’s not all about the length, it’s about what you do with it. And Ichiro is correct in asserting that proper technique is very important as well. Who cares how long it is if you can’t keep it in play, am I right?
Wait. Are we even talking about baseball anymore?
Ichiro believes the slap single can be a sign of sexiness [Big League Stew]
Mariners’ Suzuki on a First-Name Basis With Records [The New York Times]
• Pittsburgh Steelers fans can’t be too happy about this. [Mondesi's House]
• Matt Ryan is stupid. [Style Points]
• More on the sports talk radio guy Jim Traber-Bill Simmons pissing match. [Awful Announcing]
• lowercase proposes massive realignment for the MLB. I agree. [The Phoenix Pub]
• samerochocinco introduces us to Samermetrics. [The Rookies]
• No sports betting in Delaware? Lame. [Bootlegger Sports]
• Wade Phillips is impressed with the new Cowboys stadium. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
Nimrod Tishman, a young Israeli phenom from…Israel, coincidentally, could begin classes at the University of Florida on Monday and join the Gators basketball team this fall – as long as the NCAA deems him eligible to play despite the fact he played for the club team Maccabi-Tel Aviv during high school, which could affect his amateur status.
Hardly groundbreaking news, but I had to comment on what a strange name he has – Nimrod. Apparently, a man named Nimrod was a Mesopotamian king that is mentioned in Genesis, so perhaps that is how he got his name. But when I first saw it, I thought maybe this young man was named after the Green Day album. Then I realized that Nimrod wasn’t released until 1997, years after Mr. Tishman was born. I contacted Darren Daulton and he told me that he has never seen Tishman during his extensive travels within and throughout the time-space continuum, so there went my theory.
It seems there was little point to this post after all – at least in this particular version of reality. Creepy stuff, man.
NCAA to decide Tishman’s eligibility [ESPN]
Despite all the new social networking methods available to college football coaching staffs to assist in recruiting and keeping tabs on players, don’t bother wasting your breath trying to convince JoePa that he should embrace new technologies and jump head-first into the 21st century – it ain’t going to happen – especially when it comes to Twitter.
Coach Joe Paterno seems to relish his image as one of his profession’s last curmudgeonly throwbacks. No, he tells the media every year, he doesn’t even have a cell phone or send and receive e-mail. His most recent rant was directed at Twitter, which he dismisses as “tweedle doo or tweedle dee, tweet and twit.”
Tweedle doo or tweedle dee, tweet and twit? I’m no doctor, but can we be sure that Coach Paterno wasn’t having a stroke when he said that?
To be fair, should we even expect JoePa to know what Twitter is, let alone tweet? For crying out loud, birds hadn’t even evolved from dinosaurs when he was born. It was just him, Larry King and a fish with legs in a neck-in-neck race to see who would crawl out of the primordial soup first.
JoePa won’t Twitter, but his Penn State staff does [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Jeff Kent, about to be inducted (?) into (onto?) the San Francisco Giants Wall of Fame on Saturday, seized the moment when someone actually gave a crap about what he thinks and discussed something that has been stuck in his awkwardly-haired craw: having his career associated with the steroid era.
“I am embarrassed by the era that I participated in because of the steroids,” Kent said.
• MLB Roundup. Ryan Howard hit two dingers and Cliff Lee won his eighth consecutive start and lowered his ERA with the Phillies to 0.68 as Philadelphia defeated New York 6-2. The Rays hammered Roy Halladay, who gave up eight runs, seven earned, in Tampa Bay’s 12-7 over Toronto. A seven-run sixth inning and five RBI from Miguel Cabrera in the game propelled the Tigers to a 10-7 win over the Angels. [MLB.com Scoreboard]
• National Football League. San Diego Chargers quarterback Phillip Rivers signed a six-year contract extension worth $93 million dollars. Ya betta ask somebodddddaaaaayyyyy![Shutdown Corner]
• MLB. Johan Santana has been scratched from his next start because of discomfort in his pitching elbow. And the hits keep on coming for the Mets. [The Associated Press]
• Wacky friggin’ Germans. A 30-centimeter-long giraffe penis that is part of a Lego display outside of the Legoland Discovery Centre on Potsdamer Platz has been stolen again for the fourth time. The legodong belongs to a six meter tall giraffe constructed entirely out of Legos and here’s the kicker – the penis alone was constructed out of 15,000 Legos. 15,000? My Legos Imperial Star Destroyer was only like 3,000 pieces and that took me forever! Yes, I constructed a Star Wars Legos set – you wanna fight about it? [Yahoo!/AP]
• NFL Preseason Football. New York Jets at Baltimore Ravens. I’m excited to watch the two coaching greats, Rich Kotite and Brian Billick, match wits. Should be a doozy. [ESPN, 8:00 ET]
• MLB Baseball. Detroit Tigers of Michigan at the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Jim Leyland, nicotine withdrawals and baseball. Doesn’t get much better than this. [ESPN2, 10:00 ET]
• Little League Baseball. World Series, Pool Play: Staten Island (N.Y.) vs. Urbandale (Iowa). I’m sorry, but Urbandale, Iowa? Does being “urban” in Iowa mean you have a stoplight and a Papa Murphy’s? [ESPN2, 8:00 ET]
• Basic Cable Movie of the Night. Wild Hogs. Coincidently, that is also the title of something I wrote about my experiences one summer when my family’s cabin was across the lake from a fat camp for girls. I can still remember the smells wafting across the water. [FX, 8:00 ET]
It’s 4:19, You Gotta Minute? (August 24th)
Posted by:• So, Jerry Jones will move the scoreboard for a U2 concert but not for Cowboys games? How come the fuck? [With Leather]
• James Brown (no, the cool one) previews the Tennessee Titans. [Style Points]
• Buffalo Bills Babes Bare Bodies for Maxim. [Epic Carnival]
• Purple Jesus involved in gang-related activities? This I gotta see. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]
• One blogger chooses to defend Christina Kim’s showboating antics after the Americans won the Solheim Cup. Well done. [Waggle Room]
• In light of Carlos Gonzalez injuring himself with a steak knife, More Hardball has a great rundown of other crazy/moronic injuries suffered by baseball players. [More Hardball]
Good news! Thanks to NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson’s benevolence, schools in the Charlotte area are about to receive $150,000 in grants.
The grants will be available to schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Mooresville, Cabarrus County and Iredell-Statesville school systems.
The grants will come through the Lowe’s “Toolbox for Education” program. Lowe’s is the primary sponsor of Johnson’s No. 48 Chevrolet.
Obviously, I’m making a joke above at the expense of stereotypical attitudes about the views and beliefs of Southerners, but in all seriousness, this $150k is going to make a huge difference in these schools.
For one thing, the schools will finally have the funds available to better prepare the teachers to educate their students by teaching them to read.
Wait. Is that a stereotype too? My bad.
Johnson gives local schools $150,000 in grants [Yahoo!/AP]
