Continue Reading May 6th, 2008
Yeah, well don’t get too smug, Tigers’ fans. Considering that you started the season 0-7, and you couldn’t beat a wildly off-target Daisuke Matsuzaka on Monday, losing 6-3 — your fourth straight loss — I wouldn’t be mocking the Lions too loudly. It may not be long before your fans are wearing paper bags on their heads. But I kid Tigers’ fans. Um, Fire Millen?
Daisuke-K (5-0) surrendered eight of Boston’s 10 walks, but Mike Lowell (!), Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz all hit homers for the Stockings, who won their fourth straight. From AP: “Matsuzaka had coldlike symptoms throughout the day and didn’t feel good.” Awww … get out there and pitch, mama’s boy. But I kid Dice-K, who lasted five innings, with Dancin’ Jonathan Papelbon pitching the ninth for his 10th save in 10 chances. By the way, thanks for the photo, Sox and Dawgs.
• Rock On. Which Santana is better? The Angels’ Ervin (6-0) or the Mets’ Johan ($137.5 million through 2013)? Discuss. Quiz: Which one was born in Venezuela, and which was born in the Dominican?
• While On The Subject Of The Mets … Matt Kemp — he’s the NL Player of the Week, you know — had a home run to lead off the game as the Dodgers beat Oliver Perez and the Mets, 5-1. That’s nine wins in 10 games for Torre’s squad.
• In Case Of Fire, Use Stairs. Well, that didn’t improve Ozzie Guillen’s mood any. Matt Stairs’ home run was the only meaningful offense in Toronto’s 1-0 win over the White Sox, which featured a great pitching duel between Dustin McGowan and Javier Vazquez. Toronto closer B.J. Ryan walked the bases loaded in the ninth, but Pablo Ozuna grounded into a 1-2-3 double play to end the game.
• Go To Bed Old Man! One day after being mocked by this writer as being old enough to have fought the Nazis alongside Indiana Jones, Jamie Moyer threw my words back into my face, outpitching Arizona’s Max Scherzer in an 11-4 Phillies victory. Moyer, making the 558th start of his career, went seven innings. Although with 11 runs, I could have lasted five. Moyer also doubled.
• Eric The Half-A-Bee. Larry Brown Sports makes the case against the Brewers sticking with Eric Gagne as their closer. Making the case for Gagne will be the actual Larry Brown.
Continue Reading May 6th, 2008
Sometime in the not-so-distant future, when all the oil and electricity is gone, global warming takes a firm hold and mankind is left to fend for itself in a feral state, I would expect scenes such as the following to occur with frequency. But not yet. For the love of God, not yet. As you might have read, on Saturday a woman plowed into a group of Red Sox fans with her car, killing one, reportedly because she was being taunted for being a Yankees’ fan.
According to authorities, Ivonne Hernandez had gotten into a fight with another woman in the parking lot of a Nashua, N.H. bar. As she was leaving, the other woman and the group she was with — all Red Sox fans — noticed that Hernandez had a Yankees sticker on her car. They began taunting her, yelling “Yankees suck!,” prompting Hernandez to turn her 1997 Dodge Intrepid toward the group. She accelerated and slammed into a 29-year-old man, Matthew Beaudoin, killing him.
“I want her to rot in a cold jail cell for the rest of her life and remember every day the face that hit her windshield,” Faith Beaudoin, the victim’s sister, said in a phone interview. “I want her to remember that she took a wonderful, kind-hearted gentleman. She has children of her own. How could she want to harm another’s child?”
Hernandez, a 43-year-old mother from Nashua, was arrested at the scene. Amazingly, alcohol seems to have been involved. And here’s the mug shot you’ve all been waiting for. Form an orderly line, fellers.
Here’s a tribute to the late Red Sox fan.
Sox-Yankee Rivalry Cited In N.H. Fatality [Boston Globe]
Yankees Fans Hate Red Sox Fans [Larry Brown Sports]
Continue Reading May 6th, 2008
The NBA Closer is written by Matt McHale, who’s interested to see how the Celtics plan to stop LeBron tonight. (He suggests napalm and well-trained attack dogs.) When he’s not making violent anti-LeBron plans, he can be found relieving his NBA bladder at Basketbawful. Enjoy!
Mmmm…more home cookin’. The Detroit Pistons had the Orlando Magic over for a little playoff dinner, and Stan Van Gundy’s team is still choking on the crap they got served at the end of the third quarter. The game clock mysteriously froze at 4.8 seconds, which gave Chauncey Billups the extra time he needed to hit a momentum-changing three-pointer with “0.5 seconds” left. The three-that-wasn’t-a-three gave the Pistons a 78-76 lead going into the fourth. Here’s some video of the refs getting it wrong. Here’s some video of the TNT broadcasters proving the refs got it wrong. And here are some reactions from both sides. Guess which side was not okay with it?
Said Van Gundy: “They had to estimate how much time (was left) and they estimated 4.6 seconds. I mean that’s…that’s almost funny, I mean you know. How long did that play take? Well, you know, I don’t know, 4.3, 4.6, I mean 4 or 5 seconds right? I mean they estimated 4.6. What can you do?” The answer rhymes with “bend over and take it,” Stan.
Lead official Steve Javie, uh, declined comment after the game. But in all fairness, his hands were tied because the league’s replay rules don’t allow for reviewing a play to figure out when the shot clock started, should have started, etc. Because David Stern likes to kick things old school.
All that crap aside, it was an entertaining game. The Magic fell behind by 14 in the first half, fought their way back to regain the lead, had that lead unrightfully taken with them, but still could have tied the game in the final 20 seconds had Rashard Lewis (20 points, 5 rebounds, 6 turnovers) not missed a running scoop, or had Dwight Howard (22 points, 18 rebounds, 5 turnovers) not missed a putback. And, of course, they might have had another shot at it if Hedo Turkoglu (12 points, 7 assists, 6 turnovers) had managed to grab the offensive rebound off of Superman’s miss. Oh, and it would have helped if Orlando’s Big Three hadn’t kept throwing the damn ball away.
Billups led the Pistons with 28 — although it should have been 25 — while Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Price added 17 each.
Defending chumps. Okay, um, wow? I knew the Hornets were pretty good, and I also felt that Chris Paul should have been named the league MVP, but … well, wow. I don’t think anybody expected them to manhandle the Spurs in Game 1, much less do it again in Game 2. But that’s exactly what they did in a 102-84 victory that — according to my thesaurus — fell somewhere between stunning and unthinkable.
The Spurs actually led by a point at halftime before getting ripped 36-18 in the third quarter. The beatdown was getting so out of hand that Gregg Popovich sent a little “Get yer heads out of yer butts” message by benching his starters in favor of lineup consisting of Ime Udoka, Brent Barry, Fabricio Oberto, Robert Horry and Jacque Vaughn. And you know what? Those guys inexplicably made a little run. Pop eventually hustled his boys back in for one last crack at it, but CP-MVP turned it up a notch and the Hornets won going away. For the second straight game, in case you skipped ahead.
Paul finished with a really-shoulda-won-MVP-like 30 points and 12 assists (with only 1 turnover). David West struggled mightily (10 points, 2-for-11, 10 rebounds), but Peja Stojakovic (25 points, 5-for-7 from three-point range) picked up the slack. Tyson Chandler had 5 points, 11 rebounds and 2 blocked shots, but he was limited to 27 minutes because of foul trouble. He still got in his quota of alley-oops, though.
Timmy Duncan played a little better (18 points, 6-for-11, 8 rebounds), but Tony Parker (5-for-14), Michael Finley (2-for-7), Bruce Bowen (1-for-7) and Manu Ginobili (4-for-10, 5 turnovers) were so awful that all the flopping and eye-rolling in the world couldn’t save them. If it wasn’t for the ageless gunning of Brent Barry (14 points, 4-for-5 on threes) the Spurs probably would have lost by 30.
Memo to Steve Kerr and the Phoenix Suns: Remember how you went out and traded for Shaq so that you could slow things down? Because you thought that was the only way to beat San Antonio? Well, here’s the thing … they are very old. And it turns out that runnin’ and gunnin’ actually was the way to beat them this year. That’s the sound of painful irony slapping you upside the face. Like Bill Simmons said, R.I.P. to the Seven Seconds or Less era.
Fun fact: Danny Glover really is getting too old for this shit.
