No first place for you, Chicago Cubs. Oh, why, why? (Bangs head against refrigerator). The Philadelphia Phillies, bolstered just before game time with the addition of pitcher Kyle Lohse from the Reds (6-12, 4.58 ERA, tiny, ill-advised goatee), beat the Cubs 4-1 on Monday. The loss dropped Chicago to one game behind the front-running Brewers in the NL Central. Cole Hamels went eight innings for the Phils, and Tadahito Iguchi hit his first homer with Philadelphia, which has won nine of 10 and trail the NL East-leading Mets by three games. Of course, everyone on the Phillies’ roster is now injured, so take that into account.
• Angels Need Tony Danza, And Now! If there’s one person we’re pretty sure is not on steroids, it’s Ichiro Suzuki, who had three hits to bolster Miguel Batista’s four-hit, seven-inning pitching as Seattle beat the Angels 2-0. The Mariners have won four straight and are three games back of the Angels in the West.
• Tata, Athletics. Jordan Tata; remember that name. Brought up to take the place of injured Kenny Rogers in the Tigers’ rotation (hey! You’ve forgotten his name already, haven’t you?), Tata went seven strong innings in Detroit’s 5-2 win over Oakland.
• Luis, Luis, Oh No, You Gotta Go Now. You know who should be here? Luis Castillo. He would have loved this. As Castillo packed his bags for New York (Mets! Not Yankees …) Joe Mauer muscled in three runs to lead the Twins over the Royals 3-1. It was Minnesota’s third straight win.
• It Goes To 11. Does anyone give a fig for Carl Crawford’s 11th-inning homer that gave the Devil Rays a 5-4 win over the Blue Jays? Anyone?
The first 1500 fans will receive the comic book sponsored by Lasting Expressions prior to the Redbirds game against Omaha. The ‘Birds join the Durham Bulls and Buffalo Bisons as the only teams with a custom comic as part of the Triple-A giveaway.
“Baseball and comic books - the perfect partners; boys and girls, for generations, have spent hours reading comic books and passing countless summer hours playing baseball,” Redbirds President/GM Dave Chase said. “Today’s children are watching super heroes on movie screens, but the heart and soul of the big screen version is the paper and ink of comic books. Triple-A Baseball would be hard pressed to find a more perfect partner.”
The perfect partners indeed. If anyone has a cover of this, please send it to us, but more to the point: We’ll give a free post to anyone who grabs one of these and sends it our way. Oh, and a backrub. Oh, and eternal love. Definitely eternal love.
All this week, Ramsey is forgoing the practice of filming himself while at Wal-Mart and instead reporting live from Tennessee Titans training camp. He has some real insights; we are certainly John Clayton is terrified. Meanwhile, he hasn’t forgotten what’s really important; say, Lindsay Lohan. Plus, he’s responding to user email!
As you’ve surely heard by now, legendary 49ers head coach Bill Walshhas died. He was 75 years old, which is older than we realized; something about the guy always seemed young to us.
He will be sorely missed, obviously, and we’ll leave the deeper eulogizing to those who knew the man, not just the coach.
In case you’re one of the people who would love to see Michael Vick tossed into jail for a decade while he deals with his own rape stand, it might be instructive to look at the case of former Portland Trail Blazer Qyntel Woods.
Sports By Brooks reminds us that, as recently as 2004, Woods was charged with dogfighting himself. He was busted when police found him abandoning an injured dog on the side of the road, which, while better than electrocuting it, still isn’t so cool.
Woods received 12 months probation and 80 hours of community service, perhaps picking up dog excrement.
SBB believes this augers no jail time for Vick. We think that if Qyntel Woods was as famous as Michael Vick, he’d probably still be in prison.
We’re pretty used to professional sports teams and leagues making ridiculous policies for their Web sites. But the Green Bay Packers might have just taken the taco.
As discovered by Packer Backer Blog, the Packers have a “policy” that requires anyone who links to the Packers’ home page — anyone who links there — to link ONLY to Packers.com, and not to any internal page. It all says so right there on their “copyright” page … but whoops, there we went, linking internally again! Don’t sue, Packers!
Other sites may link without prior permission to the home page of the Green Bay Packers, www.packers.com, (the “Service”) only through a plain-text link. Permission must otherwise be granted by us in writing for any other type of link to the Service and/or copyright content owned by the Green Bay Packers.
Seriously: The Packers claim that their “copyright” says you can’t link to anything but their homepage. Shame, too, because we’d just love to link to that ProShop. Oh well!
According to the site, to link to an internal page, “you may write to Jeff Blumb, Director of Public Relations, 1265 Lombardi Avenue, Green Bay, WI 54304..”
They also have some rules for anyone who links to the front page. They are:
• (a) shall not create a frame, browser or border environment around any of the content of the Service;
We have no idea what this means, but sure!
• (b) may link to, but not replicate, Service content;
Well, then, we’re totally not entering this essay contest.
• (c) shall not imply that the Green Bay Packers are endorsing or sponsoring it or its products or services;
OK, we’re not implying it, we’re saying it: “Will Leitch” is an alias for A.J. Hawk. He’s been writing this site from the beginning. The Packers love Deadspin and constantly give it backrubs and reach arounds.
• (d) shall not present false information about the Green Bay Packers or its products or services;
The Packers are going to be awesome this year, and they are clearly revolutionaries in the world of Web contest. Absolutely!
• (e) shall not use Green Bay Packers trademarks without prior written permission from the Green Bay Packers;
Does that count as a trademark? Or just an “implied endorsement” not to use that service. (No, not “Service.” Just service.)
• (f) shall not contain content that could be construed as distasteful, offensive or controversial.
Whew. We think we covered all that’s required of us. Now, thankfully, we’re allowed to link to the Packers home page! Thanks, Packers!
Believe it or not, folks, the NFL season is much closer than you can possibly imagine. So close, in fact, that, if we’re going to fit in every NFL team preview by the start of the season, we have to go this early. So there you have it.
Last year, we asked some of our favorite writers to opine why Their Favorite Team Was Better Than Yours. Ultimately, we found this constrictive, and it also might have killed James Frey. So this time, we’ve just asked them to just run free, talk about their team, their experience as a fan, their hopes, their dreams, their desires for oral sex. All our teams are now assigned; if you sent us an email and we didn’t get back to you, we’re sorry, and we accept your scorn. But today: The Indianapolis Colts.
Your author is Will Carroll, a a senior writer at Baseball Prospectus, contributed to Pro Football Prospectus 2007 and writes about football at Sports Illustrated and Rotowire. Considered the pre-eminent writer on the topic of sports injuries, he’s also the only writer that correctly predicted that their team would win the Super Bowl in our previews last season. His words are after the jump.
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Repeat, repeat, repeat. Is that the only word that’s going to be used when we talk about the Colts in 2008? Yes, quite possibly.
Last season was about getting the monkey off the team’s back. The monkey wore red and blue and might look a little like Bridget Moynihan, but that’s another story. The 2007 season for the Colts is about hunger. Can a team in the age of parity approach dynasty or, more important, remind people that the Patriots weren’t the best team of the era? Is one ring enough for Peyton Manning, or is it enough to keep him from the inevitable Dan Marino comparisons that will come up when Manning heads to Canton? At least then, he’ll be the only Manning around.
Boiling down all those questions to one leads us to this: Can they repeat? The answer is a clear yes. It’s not going to be easy, but the team isn’t any worse. Manning is still the best QB in the league, he still has the same weapons — maybe better. Joseph Addai — who came very close to fulfilling my prediction of being Super Bowl MVP — will carry the load alone. The kid is good, certainly worthy of the lineage of Colts carriers that goes Eric Dickerson, Marshall Faulk, Edgerrin James and now Addai. Add in a surprising pick of Anthony Gonzalez, and you’ve given Manning his favorite thing in the world — a slow white guy who knows how to run routes. Ok, Gonzalez is Latin, but give him some time under the RCA Dome and he’ll look white enough. It’s Indiana for cripes sake.
Oh, you want to talk about the defense? Look, Bob Sanders isn’t the difference. The Colts defense stunk all year, but it was better than it looked. There’s no depth, there’s some questions at the corners, but Indianapolis is built on bending, not breaking, assuming you define bending as giving up 30 points. There’s some guys you might not know about like Freddy Keiaho and Matt Giordano, plus no one knows the ubiquitous Tampa-2 like Tony Dungy. But that doesn’t even matter. Essentially, Peyton Manning is the defense. Give up 30? He’ll usually find a way to put up 31. Give up 20? Heck, that might as well be a shutout with the quick strike Indy offense.
So how does this season end up? Same way it did last year, despite a record that won’t look as good, thanks to a brutal schedule. The Colts standing tall on the field in Arizona, a little drier than they were last year. Manning gets his MVP trophy to go with the everything else in the NFL he has on his shelf. Tony Dungy waves and walks off into the sunset, retiring on top as many thought he’d do last year. Then we can start talking about the new stadium and a new word for the NFL - threepeat.
Understandably, the NFL did not like that one of the faces of its network was being portrayed as a Vick apologist. Deion sent a column responding to the criticism to The News-Press and the NFL Network on Friday morning.
That night, [Deion’s editor] received an e-mail from Thomas George, the NFL Network managing editor, which read: “This column and subsequent variations of it (are) not approved by NFL Network. It cannot run.”
We find this disappointing; we encourage anyone at the offices of The News-Press to send us Deion’s yanked column. We will happily run it — it seems wrong not to include his defense, no? — and anonymity is guaranteed. Though it will be sad not to have the “approval” of the NFL Network. Whatever will we do?
No first place for you, Chicago Cubs. Oh, why, why? (Bangs head against refrigerator). The Philadelphia Phillies, bolstered just before game time with the addition of pitcher Kyle Lohse from the Reds (6-12, 4.58 ERA, tiny, ill-advised goatee), beat the Cubs 4-1 on Monday. The loss dropped Chicago to one game behind the front-running Brewers in the NL Central. Cole Hamels went eight innings for the Phils, and Tadahito Iguchi hit his first homer with Philadelphia, which has won nine of 10 and trail the NL East-leading Mets by three games. Of course, everyone on the Phillies’ roster is now injured, so take that into account.
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As you’ve surely heard by now, legendary 49ers head coach 
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