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The Daily Digest for Wednesday, April 16, 2008 |
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April 16, 2008 |
≡ The Daily Digest ≡
 Stern: A trash talker? Who Knew? |
= To Our Readers =
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= Tonight’s Menu =
>> Anaheim, Ca.: An unlikely nemesis for the Angels, the 8-6 Kansas City Royals, come into Angel Stadium having won their last five against the 9-6 Halos. Gil Meche (0-2, 7.13 ERA) will pitch for Kansas City tonight against Jered Weaver (1-2, 3.79 ERA) for the Angels. With Anaheim on a three-game win streak, the sharpies like the home team: it takes $150 to try to win $100 on the Halos, but the Royals are even money.
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: The 6-8 Dodgers will have ace Brad Penny (1-2, 3.86 ERA) on the mound tonight against Paul Maholm (0-1, 4.35 ERA) of the 7-7 Pirates. Pittsburgh lost last night for the first time in six games and the Dodgers won for only the second time in their last six. Even so, the oddsmakers like the Dodgers with Penny up: it takes $190 to try to win $100 on the Blue Crew while a $120 wager could earn the same $100 on the Pirates.
>> Houston, Tx.: The 23-58 Clippers will end their injury-plagued season against the 54-27 Rockets tonight at the Toyota Center. The Rockets are 7-2 against the Clippers in their last nine match-ups and both teams are on losing streaks: two for the Rockets and six for the Clippers. With one game left in the season, Mike Dunleavy’s five-season record is 175-234 (.428) and the hedge-clippers see another loss tonight. The Rockets are favored by 14 with an over-under of 186, so the projected final is Houston 100, Clippers 86.
= L.A. Stories =
What’s Bruin:
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: Tom Dienhart of SportingNews.com just rated, from first to 10th, the coaches in the Pac-10. USC’s Pete Carroll was no surprise in first, but then came Dennis Erickson (ASU), Mike Bellotti of Oregon, Mike Riley of Oregon State, Jeff Tedford of Cal and then Rick Neuheisel in sixth, although Dienhart described him with the same enthusiasm he had for Carroll:
“I get the feeling that a more mature Neuheisel is going to excel now that he is back home. It’s hard to top his package of enthusiasm and smarts. Even better: Neuheisel has assembled a blue-ribbon staff headed by offensive coordinator Norm Chow and defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker. This gonna be fun.”
Following Neuheisel are Jim Harbaugh of Stanford, Tyrone Willingham of Washington, Paul Wulff of WSU and Mike Stoops of Arizona, of whom Dienhart writes: “It’s time to win - now.”
>> Los Angeles, Ca.: Add FoxSports.com’s Jeff Goodman as the newest on the Kevin Love-to-the-NBA bandwagon, writing that the All-American center will declare for the NBA on Thursday. Our best guess is that if he believes that he will be drafted in the top half of the lottery – the top seven picks – he will go professional. The money will be substantial enough at that level that there’s no good reason to wait.
Laker Lines:
>> New York, N.Y.: “Of course we want Lakers-Celtics. There’s nothing else. There’s no second-best scenario. That’s it. We’d kill for it.”
That’s an unnamed ABC staff member speaking with SI.com’s Jack McCallum about the prospects for a Boston-Los Angeles series in the NBA Finals. Boston will end the regular season with the best record in the league (they’re 65-16 now), with Detroit second (currently 58-23) and the Lakers third (57-25).
Boston beat the Lakers twice this season, but early on: 107-94 in Boston on November 23 and 110-91 at Staples Center on December 30, both times with Andrew Bynum in the line-up, but without Pau Gasol.
As McCallum points out, a Boston-Los Angeles final hasn’t happened since the Reagan Administration, in 1987 (a Lakers win). But for Boston, there is the matter of the Pistons first; the Celtics won two of three from Detroit this season, but all three games were struggles.
= Panorama =
The National Pastime:
>> Kansas City, Mo.: With the season now underway, the minor-league Kansas City T-Bones of the independent Northern Baseball League have stepped up with the wildest early-season promotion of this year: A “Michael Vick Welcome to the Neighborhood” program on May 28.
Vick is serving his 23-month federal prison sentence in nearby Leavenworth, Kansas and the T-Bones are taking full advantage:
An auction of game uniforms will raise funds for local animal shelters and pets from shelters who are up for adoption will be showcased to fans attending the game.
Of course, the uniforms to be auctioned will be special, prison-stripe models, and the visiting team, the Gary (In.) Southshore RailCats, will wear orange, prison-style jumpsuit tops. They would have worn full jumpsuits, but as T-Bones promotions director Colin Aldrich noted, “that would restrict movement.”
Players will be encouraged to enter the field in shackles and spotlights and escape sirens will blare throughout the game.
Ideas that didn’t make it was surrounding the inside of the stadium with barbed wire (!) and have the players enter the field in a paddy wagon. However, “Who Let the Dogs Out” will be played continuously.
College Hoopla:
>> San Francisco, Ca.: Do you know who Blaine Taylor is? He could be the next coach at Stanford, especially since his contract at Old Dominion University has, according to Jake Curtis of the San Francisco Chronicle. “a clause in his contract specifically allowing him to leave for Stanford.”
Curtis writes that “Taylor was a Stanford assistant under Mike Montgomery from 1998 to 2001, when the Cardinal finished the seasons ranked no. 7, no. 3 and no. 2, respectively. He is familiar with Stanford’s recruiting limitations, having been there when Stanford signed Casey Jacobsen, Josh Childress, Curtis Borchardt and Chris Hernandez.”
Taylor has been at Old Dominion for seven years, playing in the Colonial Athletic Association, and the Monarchs have won 24 or more in three of the last four seasons and made the NCAA Tournament twice. If he wants the job, he can also point out that he hasn’t been thrown out of any NCAA Tournament games recently, as Johnson did last month.
>> Stillwater, Ok.: Being a six-million dollar man isn’t as enticing as it used to be. From Dave Sittler of the Tulsa World:
“[E]very other right-minded coach, will take a long, hard look at what happened to Sean Sutton and ask if he really wants to be the guy who became the second choice after [Bill] Self said no.
“Which are yet more factors that could make OSU’s Plan B look an awful lot like Plan Z.” Sittler noted that the candidates being discussed now include Billy Gillispie (Kentucky), Anthony Grant (VCU), Tim Floyd (USC), Lon Kruger (UNLV), Kevin Stallings (Vanderbilt), Tony Bennett (WSU), Sean Miller (Xavier) and Jamie Dixon (Pittsburgh). How does Stillwater look better than where all these guys are now?
The front-runner appears to be Massachusetts’ Travis Ford, who turned down an offer from Providence last week. Does that excite anyone?
NBA Hoopla:
>> Seattle, Wa.: It’s obvious that Seattle and the SuperSonics are going to part company sooner or later; sooner, if the NBA has its way. That doesn’t sit well with Seattle Times columnist Steve Kelley and he said so this morning:
Nobody in the NBA, nobody, talks more trash these days than commissioner David Stern.
He has belittled Seattle, a city that has supported his game for four decades. He has mocked citizens as solid as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Costco CEO Jim Sinegal. He has treated the state legislature and city council with finger-wagging disdain.
Stern has trash-talked so much this season that if he were a player, he would have fined himself.
The trouble is, Stern’s no good at it. Surely he knows his trash talking sounds clumsy. It’s too much Park Avenue penthouse and not enough Rucker Park playground.
In the meantime, the NBA Board of Governors is supposed to vote on Friday about the proposed re-location of the team to Oklahoma City. A three-owner committee visited Oklahoma City and recommended approval of the move.
>> Oakland, Ca.: “Tonight ends a season as weird as the last one was satisfying, then, and unless a lot of people spill a lot of beans, Warriors fans will be as befuddled as Raiders fans were in January, February and March. This is, need we say, no way to treat the paying worshippers.”
That’s Ray Ratto’s take on the disappointing season of the Golden State Warriors, who will miss the playoffs after last season’s electrifying first-round upset of Dallas in the Western Conference quarterfinals. It’s hard to think of a 48-33 team as a failure with one game last in the season, but the questions about missing the playoffs will come continuously until next season. Ratto noted that Monday’s playoff-killing loss to the Suns “left the nation that fell in love with them wondering if the Warriors weren’t simply a charming but certifiably crazy date.”
Rings & Things:
>> Athens, Greece: The Greek national weightlifting team was embarrassed when 11 of the 14 members of the team tested positive for performance-enhancing substances in March, but now the finger has been pointed toward China.
A Shanghai-based company called Auspure Biotechnology reportedly sold diet supplements to the Greeks via the Internet and the shipment is being blamed for the positive drug tests. The Chinese government’s food and drug oversight agency confirmed that the company has been temporarily shut down, according to the Associated Press.
According to the AP story, “Agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying confirmed that Auspure sent a letter of apology to officials of the Greek team. But she told the [China Daily] newspaper the allegations that Auspure accidentally included banned toxic and cancer-causing substances in the diet supplements have not been substantiated.”
It’s another problem for the Chinese in advance of this August’s Olympic Games, after a series of product recalls for lead-tainted toys, faulty toothpaste and contaminated pet food. Instead of boycotting the Games, Olympic athletes might want to boycott the food service facilities in the Olympic Village!
>> Brisbane, Australia: Also getting into the unsafe food service act was a bakery in Brisbane, which served up chocolate muffins at a morning tea attended by several Australian Olympians at the Queensland University of Technology. The problem is that the muffins had paper clips in them!
The Brisbane Times reported that three workers from the Merlo Kitchen Catering Company had been suspended, although no one was injured at the event. Two people bit into muffins and discovered the paper clips and when the other muffins were tested, clips were found in another 13!
Said one wag, the authorities “will leave no scone unturned.”
~ Rich Perelman
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