Big Baby Shoves Kid...or does he?

The father of the 12 year old kid whom Big Baby of the Boston Celtics pushed (and it looks like he did it accidently) wants an apology.

If you look at the video (and I really dislike the jerk who put it together - either shave off the beard or grow a moustache, you poseur!) he's running past the kid and his hand just accidently hits the kid in the back.

If you've got Kindle, you've got Jacoby Ellsbury

Last night, Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury endeared himself to a whole nation of fans when he stole home off of Andy Pettite.

Jacoby first rose to national baseball prominence during the last month of the 2007 season, when he helped the Red Sox get to the World Series and win it. His 2008 season was also excellent, although he platooned with Coco Crisp for much of the year.

After a slow start, batting wise, to 2009, Jacoby has started to hit, and his steal of home - a straight steal, not a suicide squeeze, was his tenth of the year.

Athletes go broke quicker than anybody

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1153364/1/index.htm

According to a Sports Illustrated article published in March, 2009:

• By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce.

• Within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

• Numerous retired MLB players have been similarly ruined, and the current economic crisis is taking a toll on some active players as well. (Last month 10 current and former big leaguers—including outfielders Johnny Damon of the Yankees and Jacoby Ellsbury of the Red Sox and pitchers Mike Pelfrey of the Mets and Scott Eyre of the Phillies—discovered that at least some of their money is tied up in the $8 billion fraud allegedly perpetrated by Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford.)

You note that they don't give the percentage of how many MLB players go broke after two years or five years. Obviously it's much less than 60%...otherwise they'd surely mention it. There's perhaps a reason for that... although as the above paragraph states, lots of baseball players invested in what they thought were wise investments with fraudsters, instead of sheer stupidity...

Three basketball players were mentioned, whose main problem is that they have a gazillion children - each by a different woman:

Children almost always complicate the issue. How to limit paternity obligations is a challenge for pro athletes. Former NBA forward Shawn Kemp (who has at least seven children by six women) and, more recently, Travis Henry (nine by nine) have seen their fortunes sapped by monthly child-support payments in the tens of thousands of dollars. Last month Henry, who reportedly earned almost $11 million over seven years in the NFL, tried and failed to temporarily reduce one of his nine child-support payments by arguing that he could no longer afford the $3,000 every month. Two weeks later he was jailed for falling $16,600 behind in payments for his child in Frostproof, Fla.

An aversion to family planning goes hand in hand with neglect of other forms of financial foresight, which can affect what happens to athletes' fortunes even after they die. Hall of Fame linebacker Derrick Thomas, who died at 33 following a January 2000 car crash, had ignored the urging of his financial adviser to make a will, and his entire estate was left for the court to divide, touching off a legal battle among the five mothers of his seven children. (Of the estimated $30 million Thomas had earned in the NFL, he had only $1.16 million in valued assets at the time of his death.)

>>How to limit paternity obligations is a challenge for pro athletes.

I would think it would be very simple. Don't have unprotected sex with a woman. Use a little thing called a condom, or better still, get a vasectomy! Then you can have all the sex you want without fear that you'll have baggage hanging around your neck for the rest of your life!

Beat the Streak 2009 is here!

http://www.mlb.com/mlb/fantasy/bts/y2009/

I missed out on yesterday's game, but got started with today's game. I've already made my first 10 choices (the most you're allowed to make at one time is ten games). Of course, some of those I'll modify on the day of the game, but it's important that you never miss a game, because if you forget to choose a player, that ends your streak, assuming you've got one!

So, I chose Dustin Pedroia for today, and he rewarded me by hitting a homerun in his first at-bat.

These early games are really a "crap-shoot," as it's too early in the season to know if a player is on a streak or in a slump. But if Pedroia's homer is any guide, looks like he's starting out as hot now as he was when the season ended last year.

My next 10 picks (which may be modified - I'll update you each day with any changes) are

April 7 - Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox - homerun
April 8 - Dustin Pedroia again. He hits Scott Kazmir well
April 9 - Jacoby Ellsbury has a good average against Garza. I'll see how he does in these first two games, then may or may not keep him.
April 10 - Derek Jeter. He hits well against Sidney Ponson.
April 11 - Mark Loretta (Dodgers) against Brandon Webb.
April 12 - Ryan Howard (Phillies) vs Aaron Cook
April 13 - Jed Lowrie of the Red Sox
April 14 - Derek Jeter
April 15 - Derek Jeter
April 16 - Manny Ramirez

Slight hiccup on the road to fame and fortune

I have blogged here many times about how I discovered the Tennessee Lady Vols, but today, after a historic loss, I feel the need to blog again.

In all of her 30+ years as a Women's basketball coach, none of Pat Summitt's teams have NOT made it to the Sweet 16. Until last night, when her young team - 1 senior, 1 sophomore, the rest freshmen, bowed out in a rather bad loss to a number 12 ranked team - they were ranked number 5.

And I feel sorry for the team. And for Pat Summitt. All of the freshmen were All-Americans, and apparently they were all friends, but when it came to the big stage, they had more losses this year than any other Pat Summitt team. (Except one, with Chamique Holdsclaw. That team managed to win the Championship ()after the retun of an injured player who was their point guard) ...this team couldn't even get out of the first round.)



But what really makes me laugh, and shake my head, is the attitude of The Summitt - the official message board for the Lady Vols.

Indeed, it was the attititude of this board that turned me against the Lady Vols, all those years ago.

I had first heard of Pat Summitt as the winningest coach in women's college basketball, and looking for female role models, I decided to watch the Lady Vols. Of course the game I chose to watch was one that featured Tennessee against UConn, their historic rival. (Indeed, that's *why* I had heard of Pat Summitt, there was a lot of hype about the game, as there was every year, but this year the Lady Vols were undefeated and trying for an undefeated season. They would end up being defeated, rather badly, by UConn, in that game.)

Nevertheless, I liked Pat Summitt, and as an aside, it really irritated me to see men coaching women's DIvision I basketball teams - although they have done so for 20 years, of course. Now on the one hand I didn't care, a coach is a coach, but until the men's Division I game has 50% women's coaches, the Women's division sure as heck shouldn't have men's coaches! [Sadly, though, I think many women...even today, in 2009, would rather play for a male coach, because men have the "right" to tell them what to do, whereas women ...don't. Sad. But no sadder than those religious teams that won't even let women referees ref a game between two male highschool teams, because women "mustn't be in power over men" as happened in 2007...]

Anyway, so I found the WCBB message boards. Every team has one - for all its college teams, but football is the most popular, followed by men's basketball. Sad to say, most of the women's team barely had a presence on those official boards. The two most vocal ones were the Summitt and the Boneyard (UConn), and while a few others such as Duke and North Carolina had somewhat active boards, they paled in comparison to the actvity going on at those two. Which made only sense, I suppose, as the Lady Vols and the UConn Huskies are the two most successful WCBB programs in the country.

I'll wrap this up for today with a few books on the Lady Vols and UConn, and take it up tomorrow with my tale of the Summitt message board...the karma destroyers who made the Lady Vols what they are on this day....

Baggy uniforms fine, stripes bad

I was surprised today to find out that a Chicago high school basketball team had been assessed a technical - at the very start of a tournament game - because their basketball uniforms.... had an illegal stripe.

And I'm thinking... what?

We've got kids running around in baggy shorts extending past their knees, that look absolutey stupid, like they're swimming in fabric (how many poor people could be clothed if the excess fabric was removed from basketball shorts and made into shorts for them????) and yet they're penalized because a stripe on the jersey went horizontally around the chest instead of vertically at the sides?

Scary.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-21-lawndale-jerseymar21,0,6599783.story

Are Women Poor Sports?

Sports Illustrated dedicated a few pages to this question in an article published in 1955.

There was never any question that *men* were good sports, trained to be so after decades of competition. But women? Well...'they were learning.'

Seems to me that being a good or poor sport is as individual as the athlete. Anyone wanna tell me Ty Cobb was a good sport?

The Question: Norbert L. Harms Of St. Louis, In His Answer To The Hotbox Question, "should Women Hunt?" Said: "...basically, Women Are Poor Sports." Are They?

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1129995/2/index.htm