As you rev yourself up for tonight’s rather enormous Game 6 matchup between the Heat and the Pistons, we invite you to take in the Heat dancers and Extreme Heat dance team, firing themselves up for the game tonight. How can this not make you excited? How are you not fired up? Dance, Heat … DANCE!
Anyway, to the game: Good ole Bill Simmons thinks the Pistons are done, while Free Darko, talking about the Heat, laments that “there are just too many thorny individuals on that team for it to ever mean anything in the abstract; they will forever seem vulnerable, the axiomatic power of the Blessed Two constantly having to override the roster’s overall goofiness.” (We like it when NBA stories use words like “abstract” and “axiomatic.” We also like poop jokes.)
The Pistons, of course, are trying to come back again from a 3-2 deficit, like they did against the Cavaliers. And Pat Riley once again tries to remind the nation he’s alive. We can’t wait.
ZST Executive Office have announced the full line up and bout order for June 4th’s SWAT! 05 card.
The card will see continuations in the 2006 ZST Genesis Leagues. Previously, the only competitor in the ZST Genesis Leagues to not have a scheduled opponent was Yuki Ito, of Tsuyoshi Kohsaka’s A-Square Gym. Now, Ito has pulled out of the Genesis League due to a detached retina which could cause him to miss not only this event, but the next SWAT! event in August, as well. The 2006 ZST Welterweight Genesis League will continue with four competitors.
The main event of the card is a bantamweight match between two teammates from Rodeo Style, Ranki Kawana and Hiroshi Nakamura. Only five fighters at the last SWAT! were able to pick up victories within the ten minute time limit, and Kawana and Nakamura were two of them. Now, the two young teammates will battle one another, gunning for a finish, as both hope to become the ZST Bantamweight Genesis League Champion for 2006.
ZST Executive Office Presents ZST: SWAT! 05 June 4th, 2006 Gold Gym South Tokyo Annex Tokyo, Japan Doors Open: 16:00 Fights Start: 16:30
Tentative Fight Card (Card Subject To Change):
75 KG, 1R 5M Katsunori Kikuno (A-Square) vs. Ichiro Kojima (Freelance)
2006 ZST Welterweight Genesis League Match 75 KG, 2R 5M Keigo Hirayama (PZT) vs. Yojiro Uchimura (P’s LAB Tokyo)
2006 ZST Featherweight Genesis League Match 65 KG, 2R 5M Tetsuya Nishi (B-CLUB) vs. Toshikazu Shimizu (Urono Dojo)
2006 ZST Lightweight Genesis League Match 70 KG, 2R 5M Yukio Soma (Freelance) vs. Taro Toimura (RIKI GYM)
2006 ZST Bantamweight Genesis League Match 60 KG, 2R 5M Keisuke Tamaru (Uruno Dojo) vs. Shinbori Okita (U-FILE CAMP Akabane)
2006 ZST Featherweight Genesis League Match 65 KG, 2R 5M Masayuki Iida (U-FILE CAMP Machida) vs. Shin Katayama (T-Pleasure)
2006 ZST Bantamweight Genesis League Match 60 KG, 2R 5M Yuichiro Yajima (Zendokai Headquarters) vs. Ichiro Sugita (Shinon Juku)
2006 ZST Welterweight Genesis League Match 75 KG, 2R 5M Yoshimichi Takino (Rodeo Style) vs. Masashi Takeda (U-FILE CAMP Machida)
2006 ZST Featherweight Genesis League Match 65 KG, 2R 5M Yasutomo Tanaka (SK Absolute) vs. Ro Omura (PZT)
2006 ZST Lightweight Genesis League Match 70 KG, 2R 5M Toshiyuki Saito (RIKI GYM) vs. Hiroyuki Ota (Team POD)
2006 ZST Lightweight Genesis League Match 70 KG, 2R 5M Masanori Kanehara (Musashimurayama MMA Dojo) vs. Hisashi Hiyama (Rodeo Style)
2006 ZST Bantamweight Genesis League Match 60 KG, 2R 5M Ranki Kawana (Rodeo Style) vs. Hiroshi Nakamura (Rodeo Style)
For some reason — perhaps it’s the Cardinals-Cubs series tonight — but we started becoming rather nostalgic and wistful about Harry Caray today. We’re not sure why. Jack Buck was always our favorite announcer anyway. Maybe it’s just because we don’t have many Harrys anymore; people who are liable to do and say anything, and do and say it in as entertaining a way as possible. Maybe if they let Rick Sutcliffe do all the games drunk, maybe. Or maybe we’re just vanilla Jim Nantz/Joe Buck/Greg Gumbel-ed out.
Anyway, we were hoping to find a video of Harry pronouncing “Grudzielanek” or explaining how Dawson spelled backwards was Nosewad, but, alas, we could only find this Rapping Harry commercial from the mid-80s. For now, we guess, it will have to suffice.
In what amounts to a scary, stupid, lucky (for DET…AGAIN), stupid, scary, scary, scary, scary, scary, stupid, scary stroke of horrible-ness, Heat guard Dwyane Wade missed shootaround this morning with the flu.
Many of you may remember a similar situation last year, wherein Wade’s ribcage got the flu, allowing Detroit to weasel away with a 25-point victory in Game 6. Of course, that opened the door for their Game 7 win.
Pat Riley is out of ideas, having blown all the creativity on a high concept series of B-movies.
“There ain’t no Plan B. There’s not any Plan B. If the guy misses, you’re not going to replace him,” Riley said. “But the point is, he’s going to be there tonight.”
“He’s going to be fine. He’ll be here tonight, yeah,” Riley said. “It’s just something that came on. He’s going to be fine. He’s being very well taken care of.”
Just keep saying it to yourself and anyone who’ll listen, Pat. Put the vibes out there, if you’re into such things.
We hated to bring out the old Brokeback PS out of retirement, but these are desperate times, and you know what they say about desperate times - sometimes you need to do things with more effort and that may be more extreme than during normal times.
We firmly believe the only way Miami wins tonight is by convincing everyone on Earth that Ben Wallace is a cowboy. We couldn’t think of any cowboy movies that had easily manipulated posters, so we went to this one.
So, if you’re in Miami, or anywhere else for that matter, you need to drop everything you’re doing and go make hundreds, if not thousands, of t-shirts that say “Ben Wallace Likes Movies”. Only then will these guys be defeated.
We’ve been fortunate enough, during our time here in New York, to see the Shea Stadium crowd riled up a few times, including our favorite, John Rocker’s return to Shea for the first time, in June 2000, since his infamous 7 train remarks. (As was typical at the time, the crowd booed him lustily, and he proceeded to throw a scoreless inning.) But we had anticipated that this weekend, when Barry Bonds came to Shea, would be the loudest of all. We actually feared for Bonds’ safety, a rare occurrence.
But we don’t feel that way anymore. Perhaps if Bonds had not finally limped past Babe Ruth, it would be different, but for now, there’s a lack of palpable buzz about Bonds’ trip to Shea Stadium tonight. Sure, the tabloids are trying to stoke the flames, but we’re not sure even the rabid New York fans have it in them to get too crazy about Bonds anymore. (We’ll be at the game tomorrow, but we’re not really the booing type. We’re more the “quietly keep score” type. Nerd.) The Bonds business seems over now, no stomach for outrage, no fever for fury. Perhaps this is for the best. It’s tough to be too fired up to razz a guy with a walker.
Well, before we could even try anything, all the comments have disappeared from the whole system. They’re still on the site from what we can tell, but internally they’re gone. We may have to resort to TypePad registration, which could kill the whole commenting business altogether, although once you’re registered and looged in once, you’re good. Still…
Oh well. Let’s see if we can get rid of the sidebars and banner next!
The Major League Baseball draft is next Tuesday and Wednesday, and, as anybody knows, it’s the most boring draft of all the professional sports. (And if you sat through any of the NFL Draft beyond the first 10 picks last year, you’ll realize what a strong statement that is.) So you end up looking for any storyline you can find to write about. And the Washington Post has dug up a good one: The possibility that the Orioles could end up drafting Jeffrey Meier, the child fan who grabbed the famous fly ball in the 1993 ALCS. The team is legitimately considering it.
“I wouldn’t be at all opposed to [drafting Maier]. In fact, I’d say it’s a very interesting development,” [Orioles owner Peter] Angelos said. “You can say the Orioles are very seriously considering him. I know this much: I was at that game, and he certainly did seem to be a heck of an outfielder. Sure, we’d take him. In fact, I like the idea more and more, the more I think about it.”
We think it would be a uniquely baseball story if Meier end up playing for the Orioles, but we can equally imagine him being drafted by the Yankees and going on to a Hall of Fame career, torturing every Baltimore fan throughout eternity. That might be fun to see.
Killer Crossover has an interesting interview with some guy about working out draft prospects and a bunch of other stuff. The guy like actually does that for a living - it’s the opposite of like how we go on podcasts and pretend to know things.
Shawn Marion’s elbow from last night might be reviewed by the league.
Comment moderation is back on, but that’s an even worse pain in the ass. Even at a setting of “1″, this thing is sending all the comments to junk. We found a program to fix it, but we need to install it, and that’s not something we know how to do. So, this could be the unremarkable end of YAYsports!, assuming we accidentally erase everything.
As you rev yourself up for tonight’s rather enormous Game 6 matchup between the Heat and the Pistons, we invite you to take in the Heat dancers and Extreme Heat dance team, firing themselves up for the game tonight. How can this not make you excited? How are you not fired up? Dance, Heat … DANCE!
Like, literally.
We’ve been fortunate enough, during our time here in New York, to see the Shea Stadium crowd riled up a few times, including our favorite, John Rocker’s return to Shea for the first time, in June 2000, since his infamous 7 train remarks. (As was typical at the time, the crowd booed him lustily, and he proceeded to throw a scoreless inning.) But we had anticipated that this weekend, when Barry Bonds came to Shea, would be the loudest of all. We actually feared for Bonds’ safety, a rare occurrence.
The Major League Baseball draft is next Tuesday and Wednesday, and, as anybody knows, it’s the most boring draft of all the professional sports. (And if you sat through any of the NFL Draft beyond the first 10 picks last year, you’ll realize what a strong statement that is.) So you end up looking for any storyline you can find to write about. And the Washington Post has dug up a good one: The possibility that the Orioles could 
Short EXPLOSIONS only today - see explanation at the end of this post.