C-Rod (Cheat Rod)

Okay, yes, cheating goes on in baseball all the time. Less now than formerly, when pitchers put substances on their gloves to affect the ball and didn't get caught (do they still try to do that?), batters thrown out at second or home who know they're out, but are called safe, say nothing. Outfielders sometimes pretend they've caught the ball when they've only trapped it. But that's them, effecting their own play. The hitter still has a chance to hit the messed-up ball, for example.

Then there's the dirty play of C-Rod.

Below is the excerpt from the recap of the Yankees vs Toronto Blue Jays game of May 30, 2007:

"Rodriguez hit an RBI single with two outs in the ninth that made it 7-5. Jorge Posada followed with a high infield pop and Rodriguez ran hard, cutting between Clark and shortstop John McDonald.

Replays showed Rodriguez shouting something, and Clark backed off at the last second. McDonald was only a few steps behind Clark, but couldn't make the catch and ball dropped for an RBI single.

"I just said, 'Hah!' That's it," Rodriguez said. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."
McDonald started jawing with Rodriguez, and third base umpire Chad Fairchild got between them. Toronto manager John Gibbons came out to argue, and exchanged words with Rodriguez and third base coach Larry Bowa before leaving the field as plate umpire Eric Cooper intervened. Rodriguez stayed on the bag with a smirk.

When Jason Giambi stepped up to hit, he seemed to get into it with catcher Jason Phillips and Cooper settled them down.
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Giambi followed with a two-run single. When the game ended, many of the Blue Jays stayed on the bench, staring at Rodriguez and the Yankees.
"They have their opinions," he said, adding he pulled the trick to help the Yankees "win a game. We're desperate." "

My own thought is, by interfering with the play he should have been called out. It's easy for players to ignore shouts of "Drop it" from the dugout, but when it's said on the field it interferes with the play.

C-Rod is also the guy who, a couple of years ago, slapped the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's hand as he tried to get to first base. He was called out for interference, and serve him right. This should have gone the same way.

Fantasy picks for Tues, May 29

Well, gee whiz. Ichiro got his hit - thank you Ichiro. The Detroit Tigers were 3 outs from winning their game for me - and lost it in the 9th inning! Grrrr.

So time for a new streak.

Mariners are hot... I'm going for Ichiro to extend both his and my streak, and for the Mariners to defeat their division-leading rivals, the Angels.

Softball College World Series

I have looked in vain on CBSSportsline.com for any news on the softball college world series, which had regionals this past weekend. Not a peep of news about it.

I can't say that they're ignoring it because it's a woman's sport - I caught a glimpse of a men's college baseball world series regional game as well - and CBSsports isn't mentioning that at all. Ditto lacrosse..which I think is also going on.

Actually, with the end of the school year coming up I bet all kinds of sports - gynmastics, swimming, etc,. are also winding down their season - and if I paid more attention to my local paper (Yorktown, Virginia) I'd probably know what was going on with those - but for reasons I won't go into at the moment I haven't had time to read a paper in 2 weeks.

But, that's what I hope the Mudville Megaphone will eventually become - a central clearing house for professional and college sports, treating each with equal weight. The difference between the MM and other sports sites, for example SportsPageMagazine (http://www.spmsportspage.com/) is that we'll deal with personalities, while they deal with scores, recounts of games, etc. SPM features the WNBA and lots of women's college sports, so check them out.

Anyway, CBSSportsline does have a button called WorldSports, under the Other Sports tab, which deals - a bit - with college sports and there are a few headlines there
http://www.sportsline.com/worldsports

But for covering women's college sports I think ESPN is better. Unlike CSB Sportsline, they actually have Womens BB as a tab on their front page, instead of buried as Sportsline has it. They also have a tab called ESPNU - covering University sports, and are covering the various college championships there.

http://espn.go.com/
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/index

MLB Fantasy Picks May 27

Well, Derek Jeter let me down yesterday..typical. But...time to start a new streak.

Now, Ichiro is hot, but he is also now at a 19-game hit streak. So he's due for a 0-fer, isn't he? Nevertheless, he's my choice.

Boston RedSox to win again, also.

Meantime, do the Jazz have any other players apart from Carlos Boozer? He's the only guy CBS Sportsline ever shows in their front-page page photos between the Jazz and Spurs...starting to get annoying.

MLB Fantasy picks May 26

Well, Derek Jeter is one shy of his longest hitting streak (he's at 19), and he's going up against a pitcher whom he has hit well. So I'm going with Derek Jeter to get a hit today. My streak is currently at 9. The Beat the Streak player with the top streak is now at 30 (there was someone with 36, but he chose Placido Polanco yesterday....and Placido didn't get a hit.)

Boston Red Sox won yesterday - and I'm going with them again today.

Commercial hunting reservations

You know what these are, eh? Places where tamed animals are let loose so that hunters can go and shoot them, and then act like they'd actually done something? Or other animals with no natural enemies can grow to enormous size and feel no fear...until they feel a bullet entering their body....

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/25/monster.pig.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
is the URL.

Here's the excerpt that struck me:

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Monster Pig. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Through it all, there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation for doing.

"I was a little bit scared, a little bit excited," said Jamison, who lives in Pickensville on the Mississippi border. He just finished the sixth grade on the honor roll at Christian Heritage Academy, a small, private school.

His father said that, just to be extra safe, he and the guides had high-powered rifles aimed and ready to fire in case the beast, with 5-inch tusks, decided to charge.

In other words, the boy chases this suffering animal for 3 hours with a hand gun, meanwhile Dad and guides had high-powered rifles and could have [perhaps] finished it off immediately, but they didn't because they wanted the boy to get the honor of killing the pig all to himself.

To get that big...I wonder how old it was?

"It feels really good," Jamison said. "It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

Other than that... well, at least they're making sausage out of it so they'll get food out of it, as opposed to just taking the head to mount and leaving the rest of it to rot...

Ichiro watch

Articles specifically about Ichiro

May 25, 2007
http://seattle.mariners.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070524&content_id=1983955&vkey=news_sea&fext=.jsp&c_id=sea
The 1,000th game of Ichiro Suzuki's Major League career started with the kind of hit that makes him almost impossible to defend -- a one-hopper to the right of the first baseman that turned into an infield single.

Businesswomen and sports Watch

May 25, 2007
http://cbs.sportsline.com/autoracing/story/10197346
AUSTIN, Texas -- A former stripper was sentenced to nearly three-and-a-half years in federal prison Friday for attempting to embezzle more than $1 million from a bank to start her own stock-car racing team. Fatemeh Angela Harkness, 31, pleaded guilty in January 2004 to conspiring with banker Gary Jones to embezzle more than $1 million from his Austin bank from 2000 to 2003. She received a 40-month sentence.

I don't really think car racing is a sport, but I thought I'd include this anyway because of that fact that they call Fatemeh Harkness a "former stripper." Not a former "exotic dancer" but a "stripper." And the fact that they felt it necessary to mention this at all, instead of a "businesswoman who conspired with banker"... yada yada yada.

An Austin, Texas newspaper calls her a stripper:
http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=184873

This 2004 entry calls her a former kindergarten teacher.
http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/?SecID=278&ArID=97168

Bike Watch - May 23, 2007 onward

This page will feature chronological links regarding bicycle racing:

May 23, 2007
http://www.sportsline.com/cycling/story/10193587
MALIBU, Calif. -- They turned out the lights on the Floyd Landis courtroom drama Wednesday, a whopper of a case that whirled wildly between arguments about wardrobe choices, malfunctioning machines, shoddy science and much more.

May 25, 2007
http://www.sportsline.com/worldsports/story/10197311
ROME -- Italian Olympic Committee prosecutors on Friday recommended that 2006 Giro d'Italia cycling champion Ivan Basso be banned for 21 months for his involvement in the Spanish doping scandal, the news agency ANSA reported.

May 25, 2007
http://www.sportsline.com/worldsports/story/10197236
SANTUARIO DI OROPA, Italy -- Marzio Bruseghin won the 13th stage individual time trial of the Giro d'Italia on Friday, and Danilo Di Luca finished third to retain the overall.
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May 25, 2007
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/more/05/25/bc.cyc.riis.doping.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Bjarne Riis, the 1996 Tour de France winner, admitted on Friday he used performance-enhancing drugs during his career.

Fantasy choices, 5/25

MLB Survivor - time to start a new streak. Thanks loads, Mariners! Anyway, for the next three games I'm going with the Boston Red Sox over Texas.

By the way, MLB Survivor is easier than ever. Last year, you could only choose a team 3 times. This year, you can choose the same team as many times as you like. Of course the prizes are no longer that great - free tickets to the All-Star game, but no transportation! Well, just to keep my hand in...

Beat the Streak - Up to 9 now thanks to Placido Polanco yesterday. Am taking Derek Jeter today.

Josh Hancock's dad needs to get a grip

Not only is he suing the restaurant where Josh Hancock drank for over 3 hours, but he's suing the driver of the stalled car and the tow truck that was trying to pick up the stalled car.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2881602

This is just ridiculous. Sure it would seem as if the restaurant shouldn't have let the idiot drink so much - but they didn't force the liquour down his throat. If they'd said, "no more drinks" he'd just have gone to a bar and gotten sloshed there. As someone on the message board at this story said, some people can be drunk as skunks and not show it.

Josh Hancock is to blame for his death - no one else is. His dad should just realize that - but of course he's got the chance to get millions of dollars from these people - or from their insurance companies, rather...and of course all that money will repay for the loss of his son.

If he does win a big settlement, I hope he starts a foundation for Dads on how to teach their sons not to drink and drive...

Fantasy choices for Thu, May 24

MLB Survivor: Mariners (the Royals are surging, I hesitate to bet against the Yankees - they can't be this bad! so I've decided to go with the Mariners).

Beat the Streak: Placido Polanco

MLB Survivor and Beat the Streak

Prior to founding The Mudville Megaphone website (www.themudvillemegaphone.com), I had a blog called MLBSurvivorStrategies, in which I shared my strategy for MLB Survivor and Beat the Streak. Now that I've founded the Mudville Megaphone blog, I've moved that info here.

So, what happens is, before noon each day, I'll share my choice for the player each day who'll get a hit, and the team each day that will win.

I chose the Minnesota Twins to win today, and they did, so my MLB Survivor Streak is now at 1. (I had a streak going until yesterday, when the Arizona Diamondbacks let me down.)

I chose Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners to get a hit today, and he did. That gives me a 8 game streak (I'd had a longer streak - but Alex Rodriguez decided to cool off on the very day I decided that he'd stay hot....)

What has your teenager done recently?

That was the headline at the CBS Sportsline website a few minutes ago, when I went there to check on the scores of various baseball games. I was wondering why a report on the laziness of today's teenagers was on a sports website, and clicked on the link, only to learn that they were talking about 18 year old Samantha Larson, who has become the youngest individual to climb Mount Everest.

And of course I was surprised by the fact that the headline hadn't called out the fact that she was a female. Indeed, I'd seen headlines about this in the last couple of days and hadn't bothered to read them - I don't th ink any of them specified it was a girl/woman who'd done it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/19/eveningnews/main2828885.shtml

Which on one hand is good. The fact that someone who accomplishes something physical/adventurous/dangerous is no longer newsworthy, only what's been accomplished, and apparently the age, is. Equality at last?


.....and....wow.

Just checked out her blog: http://www.samanthalarson.com/

(Hate the design of the site, but that's by the way).

At age 13 she climbed Mt. Aconcagua, now with Everest out of the way she is the youngest person to have climbed the Seven Summits... I am soooo impressed. Of course she did all these climbs with her dad and climbing partners, nevertheless the courage and fitness required for all this.

Wow.

Three women in the Daytona 500

I'm not a fan of car racing - and in reading the antics going on in the last few years - drivers deliberately causing crashes because they're upset when someone passes them - I'm less interested in it than ever.

Nevertheless, since there's a chance that history will be made this year, thought I'd share the first few paragraphs of this CBS Sportsline article:

Duno will be third woman in Indy field if she survives Sunday


May 19, 2007
CBS SportsLine.com wire reports

INDIANAPOLIS -- Milka Duno made it a three-woman race Saturday.
The rookie driver from Venezuela turned some of her fastest laps all month to tentatively qualify for the May 27 Indianapolis 500 with a four-lap average of 219.228 mph.
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Now all she has to do is survive one long Sunday of waiting. If she does, it would mark the first time in the 91-year history of the race three women have been in the same field.
She would join Danica Patrick and Sarah Fisher, both veterans at Indy, on the 33-car grid.
"I sleep very well tonight," Duno

http://cbs.sportsline.com/autoracing/story/10188738

More articles
5/25/07
http://cbs.sportsline.com/autoracing/story/10198904
Sizing up the 500: It's anybody's race
May 26, 2007By Pete PistoneSpecial to CBS SportsLine.com
INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indy 500 might not carry the prestige it once did, but this year's 91st edition carries more storylines than an episode of Desperate Housewives.

Fathers vs. sons, a record number of women drivers [3], former winners looking to repeat and veteran drivers looking for redemption -- this year's 91st running of the 500 has it all.

5/27/07
List of all the women in the Indianapolis 500 over the years - except for the extra 2 in this year's race.
http://cbs.sportsline.com/autoracing/story/8516333

5/27/07
http://cbs.sportsline.com/autoracing/story/10200270
Danica Patrick was third when rain delayed the race, ended up in 8th place. Comments from the other two women as well.

Floyd Landis

I picked up the June 2007 issue of Bicycling yesterday, the one with FLoyd Landis on the cover and inside, making like a boxer. This magazine of course came out before the revelations of 5/18-19/07, that someone in the Floyd Landis' camp attempted to blackmail Greg Lemond into not testifying by threatening to reveal that he'd been sexually abused as a child.

Now, I really haven't been keeping up with this saga. I had hoped Landis was innocent but didnt really believe it, any more than I believe most of the athletes who say they "accidentally" ingested steroids.

Certainly the drug testing program needs work [I wouldn't trust a lab in France very much at all..]- but then every program where reporters learn information from people "close to the subject" who don't want to reveal their names because they don't want to get into trouble, needs work. [That's not like whistle blowers at businesses where public safety is affected, where this needs to be done, but in the world of sports, it's disgusting and those people should be found and upended into a toilet bowl for a swirly.]

Anyway, how stupid are these people that they'll try to blackmail someone to keep him from testifying? Especially about something like child abuse - as long as he's the victim and not the abuser, why should he be ashamed about it?

Did Landis know what his camp was doing in this regard? Is Lemond going to sue the jerk who phoned him for millions of dollars? [I'd be surprised if he doesn't.]

Does anyone care, or do people read it like they watch the Jerry Springer show, in fascination at how people make complete idiots out of themselves and don't even apparently realise it.

Where are all the women in Bicycling magazine?

I picked up Bicyling magazine, the June 2007 issue, today.

I paged through this issue, and in over 69 advertisements that appeared in its pages, 5 featured women. All the rest featured either men (about 70% of the resy, while 30% didnt' have any people in it - just photos of cars and bikes.)

Now obviously a lack of female representation in advertising is not the fault of Bicyling but of the advertisers, nevertheless it's an interesting and saddening trend.

And what were the 5 ads that did feature women? Well, one only featured the side view of a woman's naked buttock. It was advertising a bike seat. So, that features a woman as a sex object. ("So comfortable you don't need shorts," is the logo, but still...)

One features a woman doing yoga in silhouette and relaxing in a hot tub - this was an ad for Arkansas toursim. (Also featured the only blacks I saw in any of the ads.)

The next was of a woman putting a bike into the back of a car, advertising something called Thelma. The woman is dressed in shirt (not revealing her belly button!), skirt (down to her knees, can you believe it?) and Crocs, rather than biking gear.

There's a full page ad for GU energy gel. Has tiny inset photos, one of kids running a race and one of a woman rider. I'm not sure but I think one of the riders in the full color center ad is also a woman... the first time a woman in a bicycling mag ad is shown actually doing any biking.

There's a beer ad that's got a skinny woman and man dancing, the woman of course wearing a tank top and swaying her hips, the guy with unbuttoned shirt revealing his abs...In silhouette on the bottom of the page are a man and a woman on bikes...and the woman is biking in front of hte man, leading instead of following...

Another ad for GU, featuring two road cyclists, the one behind being a woman...

A full page ad for Diamond Back racing featuring their women specific bike - way back on pg 128

A Dahon ad featuring the back of a woman - dressed in shirt covering her torso and blue jeans, as she runs out of the picture.

And then an ad in the very back "classified" sections or whatever it's called, featuring a woman in an ad for a pajama gram - the ad is for the man to send this to mother or wife.

It's been some years since I last read Bicycling magazine, but I noticed this dearth of women in advertising even then... it hasn't gotten better.

WNBA started today

I was surprised and pleased to see that there was a WNBA game on national TV today, ESPN or some channel like that. I didn't watch it...I was trying to find out if the DiceK-pitched Red Sox game was on TV, but it wasn't.

I have too much to do lately to watch any sports on TV, although I would have taken a break to see DiceK. It does seem as if this Japanese rookie has gotten his stuff together and is now being the great pitcher that the Red Sox hoped for when they paid so much money for him. I hope so - I would like him to succeed.

Anyway, there are a couple of WNBA teams that I will watch if they show em on an appropriate channel - Shanna Zolman has been a pro for a year, Sidney Spencer starts her inaugeral season this year. They're both former University of Tennessee Lady Vols players. I'd also like to see Chamique Holdsclaw play. There are a few other Lady Vols in the pros but I'm not too interested in them ... I would like to see Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird... not to mention Lindsay Whalen (I'm an old inhabitant of Minneapolis, Minnesota - Lindsay was a Lady Gopher.)

But I simply didn't have time to watch the WNBA game today...and I won't make time to watch any NBA games until the Finals come on. I hope it'll be Detroit vs the Jazz.

Wherefor art thou, sportsmanship?

From Monday, May 7, 2007 game Seattle against Yankees:

"We'll take it," Willie Bloomquist said. "It's just a good thing there's no instant replay in baseball."

Bloomquist was out by a foot in his attempt to steal second base, but was called safe. He later went on to score.

It's unclear from the article whether Bloomquist knew he was out at the time, but he probably did.

Of course, this is not an isolated incident. Umpires blow calls all the time and players say nothing (unless the call goes against them, of course.)

And of course it's been going on since baseball began. Over a hundred years ago.

I've seen it myself hundreds of times in the three decades I've been watching the game.

But it's still rather sad, that players remain on base even though they know they're out. Of course if Bloomquist had said, "Hey, ump, I was out by a mile," he would have been made the laughing stock of the team and the baseball world... and that also says a lot about our society.

(Though let me emphasise that in other countries where a soccer player who misses a goal is shot and killed by a fan, and soccer games need to be played in areas where there are no fans - says a lot about their society!)

SI's Referee study - C - R- A -P

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/basketball/nba/05/02/bc.bkn.refereebias.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

is the URL for an article which states that white refs call fouls more often against black players, (and that's the headline) and black refs call fouls more often against white players (but of course that's not in the headline.)

The NBA is disputing this, but I'd say that any basketball fan can dispute this. For one thing, most basketball players are black...so gee, I think more fouls would be called on black players than on white players.

When Shaquille was *the* name, ever watch a white center try to guard him? From Luc Longley of the Bulls to Arvydas Sabonis of the Trailblazers, they'd be standing straight up with arms extended, Shaquille would shove them out of the way - they'd be called for the foul.

In other words - superstar athletes always get the call vs rookies - yet I've yet to see a study about that.

Book: The Lobster Chronicles

This blog will cover not only the wide world of sports but the wide world of the outdoors as well...so I can get in a plug for a book that I think everyone with an interest in the water will enjoy.

The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island
Linda Greenlaw
2002

Anyone who's read The Perfect Storm may remember that Linda Greenlaw was in it - she was a swordfish captain at the time. She retired a few years later to become a lobsterman, and this is her story.

It's a bit fictionalized in places, which I don't really care for but at least she tells you this ("I have taken the liberty of composite characters in a few cases" "I have also played with thre chronology"), unlike some people who make up their biographies/memoirs out of whole cloth and pretend its the honest truth....

She's a good writer, she's got an interesting story to tell.