Earlier this spring, The Nation’s David Zirin accused TNT analyst Shaquille O’Neal of using his position as owner of a Newark, NJ multiplex to pull the plug on screenings of “Mumia : Long Distance Revolutionary”. Perhaps unaware that TNT’s studio show takes place in Atlanta, protestors set up shop at Sunday’s Spurs/Warriors game in Oakland. From Indiebay.org’s Gerald Smith :
Shaquille O’Neal has long been a wannabe cop. He says he was “raised” by the Newark Police; he’s a big supported of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and a “reserve police officer” in a number of cities; on a “ride along” in Baton Rouge police internal affairs accused him (then cleared him) of flushing a suspect’s head in a toilet. His canceling of the movie furthers a 30-year campaign by the FOP to see that Mumia dies in prison.
Mumia supporters including the documentary filmmaker Stephen Vittoria demonstrated at the Newark theater. In Oakland protesters came to the NBA playoff game from the Oakland Teachers for Mumia, the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the Port Workers Solidarity Committee. The slogans on the pickets signs included: “Shame on Shaq”, “Show the Movie”, and “Say It Ain’t So Shaq”, and pointed out that while NBA superstar LeBron James spoke out for Trayvon Martin when that teenager was killed by a “reserve” wannabe cop, Shaquille O’Neal instead chose to attack Mumia.
Shortly after Tyson Chandler — not an entirely passive observer — suggested a paucity of ball movement has a role in the Knicks’ struggles with Indiana in the Eastern Conference Semis, the New York Daily News’ Mitch Lawrence took an opposing approach, declaring New York’s fate in the series rests entirely on whether or not Carmelo Anthony is willing to step up and hog the fuck out of the ball embrace his role (“Anthony didn’t shoot nearly enough in Game 3…and and now they’re staring at a 2-1 series hole because their superstar scorer failed to do what he’s paid millions to do”).
Anthony has to know that if the Knicks are going down in this round to a good Pacers team, but nowhere near a great team, he has got to go down shooting. He didn’t lead the league in scoring and place third in the MVP balloting, his best finish in his NBA career, because he was John Stockton passing the ball or because he did a bang-up job deferring to his teammates.
Late Saturday night, when he spoke on the podium, he knew he didn’t make a basket in the fourth quarter, but didn’t realize he had only taken three shots in nine-plus minutes of action. Like all of his playoff losses that don’t ever seem to bother him, his two-point fourth quarter also didn’t seem to sting him too badly.
“Everything comes down to making shots,’’ he said, “and we didn’t do that.”
“You are from the Dominican Republic. You are an older player. Older players don’t get better. You’ve had injuries consistent with steroid use. You showed up on the list from 2003. You fit all the formulas.” So wrote the Boston Globe’s resident shitstirrer, Dan Shaugnessy, who on Wednesday of this week, confronted Red Sox DH David Ortiz with a tone that could charitably be called accusatory (“in 2009, you didn’t hit a home run until May 20. Now this. You are Baseball Rambo. What is the difference?”) While Ortiz denied his hot start to the 2013 season was in any way chemically enhanced (along with implying his interrogator might be, y’know, a racist) , on Saturday, he mounted a subsequent defense, this time with Shaugnessy standing an open-hand slap away from the former’s locker. From WEEI.com’s Alex Speier :
“Look who it is,” Ortiz said.
He paused for a moment, then noted — loudly enough that all in the clubhouse were party to his address — that on the very day on which Shaughnessy interviewed him, he took a test for PEDs. Ortiz said he would be sure to pass along results of that test to the columnist. Ortiz became slightly more animated as he noted that he’d taken 40 tests administered by Major League Baseball.
“I’ve never tested positive,” Ortiz told the columnist, who had referenced the fact that the New York Times discovered in 2009 that the slugger had tested positive for a performance-enhancer in 2003 (at a time when a) there were no penalties for positive tests and b) test results were supposed to be anonymous).
When the report surfaced four years ago, Ortiz disputed that he had ever knowingly used PEDs, something that he mentioned anew to Shaughnessy as he walked towards the clubhouse door.
“By the way,” Ortiz said, “let me know what I tested positive for in 2003.”
Young was apprehended around 11:30 p.m. Friday in San Clemente, Calif. after he attempted to break into a home. When officers arrived at the scene, Young attempted to flee on foot. When cornered, he tried to fight the officers.
“There was a brief struggle,” Lt. Joe Balicki of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department told the Detroit News “He wanted to fight with the deputies. They ended up subduing him.”
Young is still in custody as of Sunday, according to multiple reports. He’s being held on $75,000 bond.
On May 5, Young was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence after he was pulled over for an illegal left turn. He was arrested again, 15 hours later, for trying to steal his vehicle out of the impound lot.
(Editor’s Note : Though the Thought Police over at Yelp.com have unfortunately shut down the account of our good friend, Randy L. of the Bronx, he’s graciously offered to weigh in a subject that’s bound to dominate the tabloids and talk radio tomorrow morning – GC)
Greetings, mouthbreathers, premature ejaculators and social networking enthusiasts — or am I being redundant? Much as I’d love to talk about the splendid job Joe Girardi has done keeping the New York Yankees in contention despite the ineptitude of our oversexed GM and the routinely poor judgement shown by our disabled third baseman, once again, there’s a distraction to deal with. Fear not, Yankee Universe, I’ll not allow this latest family spat to derail our attempts to capture a 28th World Championship. But given that Hank Steinbrenner is unconscious at this hour (most hours, actually) and the aforementioned Brian Cashman is too busy updating his Christian Mingle profile, ONCE AGAIN, it comes down to yours truly to clean up the shit pile.
I’m sure I’ll get no arguments from even a cynical bunch of creeps like yourselves when I call Mariano Rivera the classiest individual who ever set foot on G-d’s earth. The Anti-Michael Kay, if you will. Mo has long exemplified what it means to be a great competitor and a wonderful, humble human being (though to be frank, it’s not hard to look like a relative saint when you’re sharing a locker room with the likes of Jason Giambi and Nick Swisher). If I had a son, I’d want him to grow up exactly like Mo — though developing a second pitch wouldn’t hurt. If I had a daughter, I’d also want her to grow up like Mo, though I will grant you he’d make a somewhat homely girl, and given all the terrible bullying problems we read about each day, maybe her path to becoming as successful as dear old dad would be a little less rough if she could resemble, say, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. When you really think about it, having the values of Mariano Rivera and the good looks of Megyn Kelly would be quite the winning combination. Hey, what d’ya say, scientists?
Standing in stark contrast to the grace and professionalism that Mariano Rivera has exhibited throughout his sure-thing Hall of Fame career, is reliever Joba Chamberlain. Though I give the latter some credit for having made it to the big time despite a mother who makes Courtney Love look like June Cleaver by comparison, this organization’s patience with Joba is wearing thin. We’re a little more than a year past this fat tub of goo’s ill-advised decision to jump around on a trampoline like he’s the second coming of Nadia Comaneci…WHICH HE ISN’T. Bad enough we had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but that’s nothing compared to the shit this mental defect pulled yesterday in full view of media and spectators. Thankfully, it happened in some baseball backwater where most of the rubes and hicks in attendance are too slow-witted to grasp the enormity of what they just witnessed.
Let me make this perfectly clear for you, Mr. Chamberlain. Your teammate, the great Mariano Rivera, is going to enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum on the first ballot. You, on the other hand, stand a very good chance of making the Arby’s Frequent Customer Hall Of Fame, that is, if you don’t choke to death on their grey “meat” products that you so gleefully shovel into the trash compactor you call a mouth.
I cannot help but notice that while all of this nonsense is going on, there’s an exciting young player in Flushing who seems to have fallen out of favor with his manager and teammates. We’re badly in need of youth in the Bronx. The Mets are desperately in need of bullpen assistance — so desperate, they might even take your contract if we’re willing to pick up all of it. Their tastes in relief specialists are sort of like Nick Swisher’s in escort services yours in trampoline emporiums, Joba ; super cheap and poorly maintained.
So let this be a warning the next time you even think of looking at The Great Mariano Rivera sideways. It would be a pleasure to rid the New Stadium’s otherwise perfect clubhouse of your flatulence, and don’t think Cashman can save you this time. I’m calling the fucking shots around here and the sooner you get that through your misshapen skull, the better. You’re no Mariano Rivera. You’re no Megyn Kelly. And you’re sure as shit not Nadia Comaneci.
Most professional athletes would have far too much pride to don a ridiculous costume like the one shown above, especially after allowing 8 runs in fewer than 5 innings. But not Mets P Jonathan Niese, who somehow managed to shrug off his rapidly escalating ERA (and any obligation to ask his relievers to stand up for Jordanny Valdespin) and entertain the several dozen paying customers who sat thru a 9th inning rain delay at Citi Field (with the home team trailing by 10 runs). Niese wasn’t alone in checking his ego at the door ; the aforementioned Valdespin more than did his part to generate a storyline that might in some small fashion, distract from the manner in which Sandy Alderson didn’t even wait until the All-Star break this year before his club started charging major league prices for minor league talent.
“Football is an ambiguous sport, depending both on grace and violence. It both glorifies and destroys bodies. At the time, I could not reconcile the apparent inconsistency.” If you’re thinking that sounds a little like Ricky Williams, well, you wouldn’t wrong, but instead, those words come from former New York Jets WR and 1969 Super Bowl standout George Sauer, who shuffled off this mortal coil earlier this week. As the New York Times’ Frank Litsky reminds us, Sauer eventually outgrew the gridiron lifestyle and wasn’t shy about saying so.
“When you get to the college and professional levels, the coaches still treat you as an adolescent,” he said in an interview in 1971 with the Institute for the Study of Sport and Society. “They know damn well that you were never given a chance to become responsible or self-disciplined. Even in the pros, you were told when to go to bed, when to turn your lights off, when to wake up, when to eat and what to eat. You even have to live and eat together like you were in a boys’ camp.”
Ten years later, he remained just as disillusioned. In an interview with The New York Times, he called professional football “a grotesque business” designed to “mold you into someone easy to manipulate.”
After leaving football, Sauer furthered an interest in writing, turning out novels, poetry and book reviews.
“He didn’t want to be anything but a poet and a writer,” John Dockery, a former Jets teammate and roommate during road games, recalled in a 2008 interview, “but he was given skills he didn’t want. He wanted something else. He walked away from the money, from everything, because it was too painful for him.”
Over the years, the LA Times’ T.J. Simers has made a (low) art form of consistently baiting the likes of Jeff Kent, Jim Mora and Dwight Howard, though it is fair to say the columnist must’ve been rubbing his hands with glee upon learning OF Josh Hamilton had signed a 5 year, $125 million contract with Angels prior to the 2013 season. Hamilton’s widely publicized religious beliefs either make him a role model or an object of ridicule, usually depending on his performance at the time (or whether or not you’re a Rangers fan). Even before tonight’s 0-5 outing in a 7-5 win at Chicago dropped Hamilton’s batting average to .206 (.612 OPS, .267 OBP), it would an understatement to say Simers was circling overhead. What follows might be Simers’ first demolition of Hamilton (“at least Dwight Howard works up a sweat…Hamilton comes across like the poster child for every athlete who knows he has guaranteed money coming”), but barring a sudden trade, suspension or retirement (of either party), it probably won’t be the last.
“I hear it from the stands every night,” Hamilton says. “You have to come to the understanding that people like to bring up your weaknesses and failures and throw them in your face.
“But it doesn’t get to me what anyone says. When you have the mind-set of what I have been forgiven for already, these people, these human beings bringing up things that God has already forgiven me for, it has no effect on me whatsoever.
“I will never ever satisfy or make 80% of the population understand me, love me or care anything for me. They will have no feel for me or understand what I stand for, which is my relationship with the Lord.”
The Angels signed him to hit baseballs. The facts are sometimes blunt, but most fans probably care more about his swing than his relationship with the Lord.
“I understand,” Hamilton said. “We’re all different. It depends on your starting point, and mine is the Bible.”
Given that context, he had dropped below the Methuselah line before being motivated by Page 2.
“Does it mention anywhere in the Bible,” I asked, “what it takes to hit more home runs?”
“It’s important to me to do well and that’s why I work hard to improve every day,” he said. “But when the game is over I stop thinking about it.”
Some 7 years after a Houston police officer was accused on participating in a 3-way in a Minute Maid Park unisex restroom, the Houston Chronicle’s Jose de Jesus Ortiz reports the Astros hope to identify a fan who “stood up and pretended to expose himself while inside Minute Maid Park’s exclusive Diamond Club “. I’ve only lived in Texas for something shy of a decade, so I didn’t realize not exposing yourself was actually a crime, but if nothing else, this should mean that David Cone oughta feel very free to accompany the Yankees on their next visit to Houston.
Sitting in the section that became famous as the seats for former President George H.W. Bush and first lady Barbara Bush, a fan appearing to hold either a cigar or a hot dog weiner stood up and dangled it while Philip Humber pitched to Albert Pujols.
The fan appears to be right behind the prime two seats former Astros owner Drayton McLane and his wife Elizabeth used. Fans in those seats get plenty of air time on television, and the fan clearly timed his prank to appear on the telecast.
The Astros have monitored that section closely under new owner Jim Crane, but at this point the Astros say they don’t know the fan in question.
“I would never tell people how to spend their hard earned disposable income but sub 10,000 fans back to back nights to see the hottest team in baseball is not getting it done,” complained Indians reliever Frank Herrmann after a pair of midweek evening games versus Oakland were played to tens of thousands of empty seats at Progressive Field. To his credit, Herrmann set off a minor craze amongst teammates and management by giving away tickets via his Twitter account, though the Plain-Dealer’s Bud Shaw warns it’ll take more than 6 weeks of decent baseball to turn the tide (“It’s just so much easier to narrow it down to bad fans or cheap ownership and cover them up with blame”).
The Indians don’t need a hot month or two. They’ve been 30-15 as recently as two seasons ago after all. They don’t need a Cy Young candidate to attract big crowds. They had two winners in consecutive seasons. They need consecutive playoff appearances, and perhaps another World Series appearance, at the very least to move the needle. That’s the only way they’re going to put Indians’ tickets back on the family Christmas list.
The comparisons between the relatively blind allegiance awarded the Browns versus the tepid following of the Indians is as moot now as it was when closer Chris Perez raised it. This is a football town, which is not the same as saying it’s a terrible baseball town.
I once attended a press conference at Auburn where basketball coach Sonny Smith was announcing his departure, in part because he felt basketball was an afterthought in football-crazed Alabama. Head football coach Pat Dye, who was also the athletic director, made the announcement.
First question: “Sonny, tell us about your decision to leave.”
Second question: “Coach Dye, how’s football recruiting going?”
Cleveland isn’t quite Auburn, Ala. But waking up the sleeping giant in the 1990s required a new ballpark, a robust economy, an exciting team with a Murderer’s Row lineup, a poor division and the sense that October baseball was a given. Oh, and the Browns moving to Baltimore.
On Sept. 4 2007, Jupiter police and paramedics found Seth Tobias drowned in his pool. Medical examiners ruled he had a lethal mix of alcohol, cocaine and the sleeping pill Ambien in his system.
A five-month police investigation concluded there was no foul play, and prosecutors declined to pursue a criminal prosecution.
Tobias’ brothers – Samuel, Spence, Scott and Joshua – accused his widow of murder in a civil battle to keep her from grabbing their late brother’s $25 million fortune under Florida’s “slayer statute.”
While there’s been no shortage of media sneering over the respective efforts of Rob Thomas and Zach Braff to raise funds for new film projects via Kickstarter, I did recently propose the hi-tech begging efforts on behalf of the proposed Dino Costa “documentary” (read : fluff job) as an especially desperate measure. That said, it would take a very, very sad project to out-suck Mr. Costa in the overall scheme of things, and it would appear that such a fundraiser has come to public attention. SF Weekly’s Katy St. Clair chronicles the shakedown attempts on the part of Fight Club, a budding schlock rock combo with a rather fearsome lineage ; the group includes the sons of Neil Schon, Greg Kihn and Sammy Hagar.
The son of tequila entrepreneur and rock star Sammy Hagar, worth an estimated $120 million, was starting a grassroots campaign to get his band off the ground. “Unlike the perception you may expect,” Aaron Hagar wrote on Indiegogo, “We do not share in the lifestyle and success of our parents. We need your help to fulfill this dream.”
The band is trying to raise a whopping $103,562 to cover recording costs. Which, WTF? The concept of raising cash via crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo is au courant, but needing that much money to put out music seems a concept stuck in ’70s stadium rock. All you need now is a good Mac and, better still, good music. Unfortunately, the demos FightClub has released so far sound like something that would play during the credits of Porky’s Revenge, or during the montage from an ’80s teen flick, where a nerd transforms himself into a stud to shock everyone at the prom. It’s hard rock reminiscent of Sammy Hagar, with booty-bass drums, high-pitched vocals, and sah-weeet guitar licks behind lyrics about fast women, all with zero irony.
FightClub has promo videos of the project on the Indiegogo site, along with exuberant messages from Aaron. Goal: $103,562. Raised as of press time: $21,006. “I’m speechless,” says Aaron in a YouTube post. “We’re not even a week into this thing and we’ve reached over $10,000.” Judging from the comments, most of the early contributions seemed to be from friends, which might explain why they soon fell off. (The campaign began at the end of April and will go until May 9.)
Not that the boys aren’t trying to sweeten the pot. A $25 donation gets contributors two digital song downloads, but $2,500 gets you dinner with FightClub: “Imagine the stories we have to tell?” the pitch goes. “All travel and accommodation expenses to L.A. need to be paid by yourself in about a 45-day window while we are recording. Limited to 4 guests per day. We cover dinner bro.” But wait, there’s more! If you throw in an additional $2,500 and bring your donation up to $5,000, you get dinner with the band plus a day in the studio. Mas tequila!
I just started helping out on the community side for an NYC startup called TradeSports and was hoping to get some advice from you as we try to find our sea legs. Can’t Stop the Bleeding is pretty sweet and it looks like you’re getting pretty good engagement on your posts.
We’re a mobile second-screen sports app in the fantasy genre that’s premised around a team’s real-time win probability during the game. That chance to win is constantly changing, and we seed that number based on a proprietary algorithm as well as users’ in-app actions.
We think that a crowdsourced and statistically driven win probability that updates during the game is fairly interesting from a content standpoint. But we’re trying to find the most useful and compelling application of this data outside of our game.
Since you understand content and the average sports fan, I was hoping you could offer some advice! Ideally, we’d like to create a community around our blog as well as our game and would love to hear your thoughts on how we might do that. If you’ve got some time and are willing, I’d love to hear your pointers!
Appreciate it.
All the best, Pat benmarket.com
Dear Pat,
whenever I’m presented with a question regarding a mobile second-screen sports app in the fantasy genre, there’s really only one course of action I can recommend. Have you ever thought about trepenation?
Alex Ferguson announced earlier today that his 26th season managing Manchester United would be his last. During that tenure, Ferguson’s trophy case became obscenely crowded ; 13 Premier League titles, two European Cups and five F.A. Cups are the more treasured portions of a haul that saw Manchester United become one of the most successful clubs in the history of modern team sports, and a global marketing juggernaut to boot. With Fergie’s impressive reign almost in the rear view mirror, it’s almost hard to believe there was ever a spell in which his job at Old Trafford was in jeopardy. But as this item from When Saturday Comes’ Ashley Shaw illustrates (“Where it all began at Man Utd”, December 2006), things came perilously close to ending for Ferguson towards the end of 1989 :
United were playing dreadful football before ever-dwindling attendances and during a 2?1 home defeat to Crystal Palace in December, Stretford End diehards unfurled the infamous banner, “Three years of excuses and we’re still crap – Ta-ra Fergie” – the die appeared to have been cast. In the intervening years Ferguson has had to deal with many crises, but none have rendered him as powerless as the day the hardcore support openly called for his head.
Part of the crowd’s frustration lay with the board. Chairman Martin Edwards’ failed attempt to sell the club to Michael Knighton, the ball-juggling businessman who later had such a strange time at Carlisle, had made United a laughing stock and highlighted the meagre funds available to the manager. Even so, most agreed that the manager had squandered what little money there was. The acquisition of former Dundee United winger Ralph Milne in November 1988 turned Fergie’s transfer dealings into a bad joke.
By 1989 five United managers had failed the main brief of the job. Ferguson knew when he took over that, in his own words, he had to “knock Liverpool off their fucking perch”, yet three seasons in, his targets looked as imperious as ever while United floundered in mid-table. No one in that meagre 33,514 crowd would have entertained the notion that eight of Fergie’s flounderers against Palace would go on to win the title three seasons later. Yet Mark Robins’ famous Cup-tie winner a month later at the City Ground turned the tide and Ferguson rode his luck all the way to Wembley and beyond.
OK, the above is a rather large exaggeration, particularly in light of Mets sophomore P Matt Harvey being one Alex Rios infield single removed from pitching the first perfect game in team history (and becoming the first hurler since Harvey Haddix to toss 9 perfect innings or more without collecting a W). But credit where due, Mets PR Director Jay Horowitz (above, left) — a frequent target of mockery at CSTB — has a rather thankless job. In the pre-internet era, we can safely assume Jay was entrusted with all sorts of sordid coverup duties given the club’s large collection of reprobates and arrested adolescents in the 1980′s and 1990′s. In more recent years, Jay’s tasks have gone from coming up with a company line to explain bullpen masturbation, reporters getting bleached, M-80′s tossed at children, pizza boys being assaulted and catchers declaring their heterosexuality (I’m referring to Mike Piazza, by the way. Paul Lo Duca dating the Garden City H.S. prom queen is a totally different subject), to the more mundane chores of lying on behalf of Fred and Jeff Wilpon. So to be very clear, all kidding aside, my heart goes out to Jay, whom few sane persons would swap jobs with.
Given the public relations disasters Jay has managed over the last few decades, I must admit, I wasn’t shocked to hear discussion on WFAN Tuesday morning of the Mets allegedly giving Harvey permission to attend Wednesday night’s Capitals/Rangers playoff game at MSG rather than ride the pine watching his teammates play the White Sox at Citi Field. Frankly, I just put it out of my mind instantly — it sounded like the sort of thing the Astros would’ve allowed Roger Clemens to do, and all things considered at present, who’s to say Matt Harvey isn’t more important to the 2013 Mets? For those who couldn’t believe the team or player would allow themselves to look so foolish in front of sports-radio and internet jackals, after everything Mets fans have been thru (see above) was this really the most improbable occurrence?
Well, as it turns out, yes. It was the most improbable occurrence. It was all a gag engineered by Jay Horowitz. And I’m so impressed with how Jay tapped into the fan base’s inherent paranoia and distrust of the organization, I won’t even ask if he’s the same guy who came up with the April Fool’s joke of making Colin Cowgill the team’s starting center fielder.
(Editor’s Note : Earlier this month, we received word from Yelp.com that sometime CSTB contributor, baseball exec and tireless consumer advocate Randy L. of the Bronx, had been banned from the site for a second time, with his most recent reviews of NYC restaurants and merchants lost to the digital ether. However, with the assistance of a team of forensic specialists from M.I.T, we have successfully recovered one of Randy’s most recent essays, a March 30, 2013 critique of the elite NYC gym, Peak Performance – GC)
I’ll start this review by making it clear that I have never personally made use of Peak Performance’s facilities. Between my important work in the Bronx and my charitable efforts on behalf of Teach A Labrador To Read, I don’t have a lot of time for primping and preening in front of mirrors like some desperate male hustler. Don’t get me wrong, physical fitness is great — I wish someone would explain the concept to CC Sabathia — but much of what passes for self-improvement is really an all-too-predictable manifestation of terrified male insecurity.
All of that said, I have sincere respect and appreciation for the ownership and management of this gymnasium ; if any of them would like to try their hand at an internship with America’s Premier Sports Franchise, I’d certainly keep an open mind. Why am I so bullish on Peak Performance? I’d be violating a confidence (and possibly some right to privacy laws) if I told you the full story, so instead contemplate the following, purely hypothetical scenario (if you’ll humor me for a moment) :
Let’s imagine there’s a fabulously successful professional sports franchise, and despite cosmetic appearances that suggest a pair of genetic lottery winners are the club’s brain trust, the operation is actually being run by a man with the initials “R.L.” (an executive, I should stress, of the highest intellect and capacity for caring). This baseball executive has long suspected one of his most highly paid employees of dabbling in illegal performance enhancing substances, and with the assistance of a towel boy at an exclusive Manhattan health spa, has obtained crude, hidden-camera footage of said employee being injected in the buttocks.
(Also, there’s a video clip of him taking human growth hormone, too)
Most establishments upon learning of such nefarious video taping measures, would be susceptible to a bribe rather than destroying the evidence and having the towel boy deported. But not the spa in this story. Those guys know how to stand up for their customers, even the ones who have personal “trainers” that look like Wendi Richter with a zucchini in her pants (not that you were staring).
Though I am sure the executive (who must remain as nameless as he is brilliant and handsome) regrets being unable to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement with this gym (or shall we say, “wellness center?) at least there’s someone in this G-d forsaken world with an ounce of integrity left.
For years, Chicago has conned the baseball world into believing Wrigley Field preserved the tradition of baseball; that it is the seminal stadium from which the popularity of baseball grew. Nostalgia is pushed on fans, many of whom paid $25-$50 to park in a near-by resident’s garage or the ever popular convent parking lot where nuns finger $20 bills with the dexterity of a bookie.
Perhaps the most curious aspect of Wrigley Field are the freeloaders who squat on various neighboring rooftops in seats only marginally less distant than Voyager II. They don’t just pilfer the game as they once did, years ago, when they put out a few lawn chairs and watched a couple of innings from across the street. Building owners have erected stadium seating – large metal bleachers onto which dozens of people sit, often paying large sums of money to sit across the street, at least 200 feet further than the farthest outfield seat. Literally hundreds of fans cram into these steep bleachers in full view of fire inspectors and building code enforcement, convinced that they are enjoying a unique experience.
They have another tradition, that of singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the 7th inning, led off-key by some minor celebrity dragged in to aver his undying allegiance to a team whose moniker is “The Lovable Losers.” And they are, in more ways than one.
Given Carmelo Antony’s shooting struggles of late, would someone paid to analyze the New York Knicks be out of line in suggesting that either a) ‘Melo’s shoulder is bothering him or b) perhaps there’s another role he could play besides being the team’s first, second and third option every time down the floor (the fourth option, of course, being a witness to J.R. Smith missing a three)? If that analyst is MSG’s Bernard King, well….if this team took the microphone away from Marv Albert, do you really think they’d hesitate to pull the plug on King’s Twitter account? From the New York Daily News’ Roger Rubin :
King took to Twitter Monday with three dispatches worth of pointed criticisms of Anthony and the Knicks. “If Carmelo’s shoulder is hurting that bad — work the paint — drive and dish — become a facilitator — it’s a TEAM game,” read one of them from King’s Twitter account.
Said King in another tweet: “I was always taught — Take High Percentage shots — don’t force it — don’t be a one man show — don’t over dribble — ball movement.”
The official Twitter account for King, who does some broadcasting work for both MSG Network and NBA TV, was shut down shortly after the dispatches were posted. According to a published report, the Knicks claim King had allowed a friend to use his handle and that those posts did not reflect his “sentiment.”
While Kluwe tells the New York Times’ Pat Borzi he has no intention of dialing it down (“while I love being able to play football, there are things in life that matter more than a child’s game”), the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Chip Scoggins — presumably part of that elitist media cabal that won’t allow Dino Costa any bigger a platform than Fox News’ “Red Eye” —- argues, “it’s absurd when people blame a bad punt on the belief that Kluwe is too distracted by his activism.”
Regardless of whether they admit it, the Vikings are jettisoning Kluwe partly because they grew tired of his outspokenness. It’s naive to think the move is based solely on his age (31), salary ($1.45 million) or how he performed last season (inconsistently). Kluwe has become the most visible punter in NFL history because of his social activism. The Vikings deny that Kluwe’s public stance on issues factored into their decision — not that they would ever admit it — but they likely prefer someone who embraces the anonymous life of an NFL punter.
That’s entirely their prerogative, of course. Teams release players all the time for any number of reasons. The Vikings unloaded Percy Harvin because they basically thought he was a head case and too unpredictable.
“My career averages are good,” he said. “It’s not like I’ve been scraping by. I really hope that I get a chance to catch on with someone else.”
So do I. The NFL is simply more interesting with Chris Kluwe in it.
Liverpool F.C.’s planned expansion to longtime home Anfield comes after the club scrapped plans to build a new stadium on Stanley Park ; Liverpool City Council is currently attempting to purchase neighboring homes, but as the Guardian’s David Conn explains, many locals are “filled with anger and heartbreak at the area’s dreadful decline and at the club for deepening the blight by buying up houses since the mid-1990s then leaving them empty” (“their resentment is compounded by the fact that they are being forced to move so that Liverpool, and their relatively new US owner, Fenway Sports Group, can make more money)”.
Residents’ bitterness derives from when the club started buying houses in Lothair Road, without saying they were doing so or making their intentions clear. The club used an agency to approach some residents, while some houses were bought by third parties then sold on quickly to the club. That left residents with the belief, which has endured ever since, that Liverpool were buying up houses by stealth, to keep prices low.
The club have never publicly explained in detail what they did, and declined to answer the Guardian’s questions about their historic behaviour and current plans. Neighbours, many of whom have lived in Anfield for decades, remembering a vibrant, flourishing area, believe Liverpool bought and left houses empty to deliberately blight the area, intending it would prompt people to leave and drive house prices down.
Fenway Sport Group’s current plan envisages expanding the Main and Anfield Road stands, with both sides of Lothair Road, and one side of Alroy Road, demolished. A hotel is proposed behind the enlarged Main Stand on the footprint of Lothair Road’s even side and Alroy, because a commercial property does not have the same right to light as homes. A development, probably bars and restaurants, with training promised for young people, is proposed opposite the corner of the Kop and Centenary Stand. With Liverpool having purchased a whole row on Anfield Road, they have already knocked those houses down, so there is no obstacle to enlarging that stand.
James McKenna, chair of the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ union, says the fans have sympathy for the club’s neighbours. “The stadium expansion is all about the club making more money, and fans will have to pay more for tickets,” McKenna says. “To do that, Liverpool have played a part in derelict houses, streets boarded up. It’s a blot on LFC’s record.”
The above image was posted to J.R. Smith’s instagram account earlier today, shortly after the Knicks dropped a 102-95 decision to the Pacers in Game One of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Previously, Smith followed a 4 for 15 shooting performance with the tweet, “First an for most I wasn’t clubbing before the game so y’all can kill that. Don’t try an find reasons when I miss shots! #HopOff.”
OK, I’ll admit when I see a headline reading “Baseball Coach Disappears With 20K”, my first thought was, “shouldn’t Wally Backman be refered to ‘manager’?” Fortunately for the Las Vegas 51′s, Wally has nothing to do with the following story, as MiNBC’s Josh Marshall reports a coach for the Great Lakes Cyclones youth baseball squad has gone MIA with dough from the team’s fundraiser.
“We trusted him as a baseball coach and I could never see him doing this kind of thing,” said cyclones player Caleb Roumayeh.
Cyclone players and family are concerned for the future of their season.
They say more than 20 thousand dollars is gone along with any contact with the coach who was in charge.
“He was nowhere to be found his email were coming back undeliverable his phone has been disconnected his Facebook was gone and he pretty much just vanished with all the money,” said Renee Ray.
Today, the team hit the diamond to do what they know best.
“They want to play ball they want to be out here and enjoy it but our kids the last few days have been through a lot,” said Coach Larry Green.
“We trusted him as a baseball coach,” said Roumayeh.
The team faced with fees and insurance for the kids is fighting an uphill battle; however, with help from the community the team is staying afloat keeping family members hopeful.
