Hail Of A Day

Check out this ref in the South Carolina/LSU game.  The big debate is if the ref intended to hit this guy or not?  What do you think?

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In keeping with the sports theme on today’s blog posts, here is an interesting article about a guy that snuck onto the field, pretending to be an LA Dodgers baseball player.  He had a complete uniform.  What’s really disturbing is how easily he did it. 

Well, I hope his little fantasy camp was worth it, because he’s going to be in prison for 4 years.

Man accused of posing as Dodger on field - Yahoo! News

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This was submitted to me by avid reader, Brent, who discovered this tale of heroism by the great Tony Romo….

A Fine Sunday Indeed For Tony Romo

By RANDY GALLOWAY
rgalloway@star-telegram.com

Meanwhile, even as devout football fans, the Whites had been on the road and out of touch with the NFL events. They particularly didn’t want to know the Dallas Cowboys’ outcome. The TiVo at home was waiting. Bill planned to watch the Cleveland game immediately, with suspense attached.

But a couple of miles from the house, while driving on MacArthur Boulevard, the Whites had their own mini-disaster. A tire blew on the Mercury. Bill, luckily, managed to nurse his wounded ride off the street and into the lighted parking lot of a strip mall.

For troubling news on a Sunday, it didn’t rank up there with taking a direct hit to the chin from the helmet of linebacker Willie McGinest, but Bill became a bit woozy himself when he discovered his jack was malfunctioning. Never a good thing at midnight.

Plan B kicked in, however. One of those cigarette-lighter-plug-in air compressors was available. Except it was leaking more air than it was pumping.

“I don’t know, a hundred cars, probably more, had to go by. Nobody was stopping,” said Bill. “That’s just kind of the way it is in today’s world.”

And then …

“Bill was fooling with that tire, and I was standing beside the car watching him,” Sharon said. “The next thing I know, a nice-looking young man, very well-dressed, but with something strange on his chin, he walked up, smiled, and said, ‘Hey, you need some help?’ ”

Sharon hadn’t even noticed a car pull up.

So now it’s Bill and the well-dressed young man both bent over a flat tire at midnight on a Sunday, trying to figure out why a faulty air compressor plugged into the cigarette lighter was leaking more than pumping.

“I didn’t get a good look at him at that point,” Bill said. “We were both trying to get the tire pumped up.”

Sharon, however, took a second look. “You are Tony Romo,” she said. No reply, just a smile, and then it was back to work on the compressor.

Finally, they got the tire aired up. Enough, anyway, to make a slow drive home.
“I didn’t want to bother him,” Sharon said, “but I asked again, ‘You’re Tony Romo, right?’ ” I knew it was him by then. But he smiled and said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ ”
Sharon: “I did something no 50-year-old woman should be doing, but I screamed real loud, and then jumped up and hugged him.”

Bill’s immediate response was “Don’t tell me how you guys did. I’m going home to watch it.”

Are you kidding me???  Tom is out for the season. Can you even imagine how sick they must feel about this in Boston?  In unrelated news, check out the amazing Marion Barber soaring through the air.  Things look really good for the Cowboys, not so good for the Patriots after week 1.

Sources: Brady out with ACL tear - NFL - Yahoo! Sports

I wondered why, so I thought you might be interested…

Over the last three nights, NBC has led its primetime Olympic coverage with synchronized diving. According to the stacks of letters that have poured into the Fourth-Place Medal Investigative Unit Headquarters, you’ve all been watching but are baffled by one facet of the competition. In that case, you’re in the right place. After successful forays into the cases of Cullen Jones’ disappearance and the identity of the hot Paraguayan, Fourth-Place Medal will today tackle the mystery of the showering divers.

After completing a dive, competitors swim to a ladder, climb out of the pool and head immediately to a bank of showers that sit adjacent to the diving boards. Then, in full view of the crowd and NBC cameras, they shower off. Divers keep their suits on, of course, usually appearing only to rinse off their hair and arms. Oftentimes, the divers will receive their scores while still showering off. What’s the purpose of this?

Theories have ranged from ‘to get the chlorine off’ to ‘they want to have fun’ — seriously, that last one is a direct quote from NBC’s diving analyst, Cynthia Potter. Neither are the reason.

Divers shower in between each dive to keep their muscles warm after getting out of the pool. The temperature of the pool water and the air are usually different (the pool is usually around 80 degrees, with the air temperature between 68 and 72 degrees). This difference can cause muscle tightness. To combat this, divers warm up in either the showers or a hot tub.

Mystery: solved. (Although we’re still a bit unclear as to why the showers are out in the open.The water cube cost over $200 million to build. They couldn’t have put a privacy wall in?!)

The mystery of the showering divers - Fourth-Place Medal - Olympics - Yahoo! Sports

An American NBA basketball player, Chris Kaman, made the decision to play for Germany in the Olympics, after filing for German citizenship based on his Grandfather’s German heritage.  On a technicality he was able to pull this off, but does it make it right?  The guy can’t even speak German.

Personally, I think it’s pretty lame.  He wasn’t good enough to make the American team so he does an end around to get into the Olympics.

What do you think?

Have passport, will dunk - Olympics - Yahoo! Sports

In preparation for the upcoming olympics, Time wrote up a list of the top 100 athletes to watch. This has a quick blurb about each of them.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1819129_1819134,00.html

This is an interesting story.  The sons of Wayne Gretsky, Joe Montana, and Will Smith are all attending and playing football for the same high school.  Do you think the cheerleaders might have an interest in Nick Montana?  A handsome kid and the son of a famous multi-millionaire.

Rivals High - Great expectations for Montana, Gretzky sons

This is a great article that I thought you would like. I admire the courage that Paul Pierce had to step up and take the assignment of guarding Kobe Bryant. Arguably, this will be the turning point in the series and will make Pierce a legend…

LOS ANGELES – At halftime of a pending disaster, with his offensive game seemingly left back in Boston and the NBA Finals on the verge of being squared up at two games apiece, Paul Pierce asked his coach for the toughest assignment in the NBA.

“I want Kobe,” he told Doc Rivers. “Give me Kobe.”

If the Boston Celtics were going to storm back from a 24-point deficit and move to the brink of their 17th NBA championship, then it would need two of the things Pierce has never been famous for – defense and leadership.

For 10 seasons he’s always been a scorer. Now with that even failing him, he went with trying to be a champion.

So he asked to guard Kobe Bryant, the dangerous Los Angeles Lakers scorer. The locker room was stunned. Yes, this is a prideful defensive team where guys make these kinds of requests, but he wants Kobe? Nobody wants Kobe. Certainly not when the game was all but lost anyway.

“That got everybody hyped up,” said Leon Powe.

The third quarter started with a surge of Celtics energy. Then Pierce delivered a huge block of Bryant, right in front of the Boston bench, that sent hopes soaring. With each defensive possession, Pierce’s presence grew and the Lakers’ lead shrunk. He muscled Bryant sometimes, stayed in front of him all the time and even found time to find his own offensive game.

By the fourth quarter, with the deficit erased, Bryant still in single digits and Pierce heaving in exhaustion, Rivers figured the point was made. He tried to switch the pressure off of Pierce, send a trap of two or three guys to handle the MVP.

And Pierce, hands on his shorts and breathing heavy in the huddle, would have none of it.

“He told Doc, ‘No, no, I got him. I got him. Just show, don’t trap. Don’t go messing up our whole defense to just get the ball out of his hands. Just show and I’m going to go get him,’ ” Powe said.

He got them. Boston 97, Los Angeles 91 in an historic, gritty comeback – the biggest in NBA Finals history – putting the Celtics on the verge, up 3-1 with a Father’s Day closeout here looming.

“It’s a dream if I can come out here and win on Sunday,” said Pierce.

For most of Pierce’s 10 seasons in Boston, the idea he would willingly give up on conserving energy for offense to fight the potentially impossible defensive fight of containing Bryant, seemed improbable. That he’d try anything to win this championship, do the blood-and-guts dirty work, seemed impossible.

While he’s far tougher and competitive than his reputation allows, the questions remained.

This is a guy who as a rookie was practically introduced to the city of Boston by getting stabbed 11 times in the face by some two-bit rapper. He was a good player, certainly, but mostly on the offensive end where the glory was obvious. He became known as the best player on some of Boston’s worst teams. In a franchise known for winning and winning only, where hanging banners is all that matters, Pierce’s willingness to lead never seemed to match the past greats.

Maybe the standards aren’t fair, but no one said being a Celtics captain is easy. Give me Kobe? Yes, that’s what Russell would have said. That’s a Havlicek move. Bird. Cousy. Cowens. D.J. or Maxwell. That’s what Celtics do, the guys with those numbers hanging from the rafters, right next to the championships they won.

“He dug deep,” said P.J. Brown. “In that second half, you could just look at him and see it. He wanted this. He wanted this bad.

“It was like, ‘This is my time; I’m leaving this on the floor.’ ”

Up and down the roster the whole mood changed with his repeated requests. If anything, Pierce should have been sulking. He’d been terrible since the series shifted to his old hometown. He was 4 for 20 from the floor in a game and a half here. In the first quarter alone Thursday, his plus/minus was an appalling negative 21.

But here he was; stepping up, standing up, even if this game looked like it would be one long embarrassment.

“When he started guarding Kobe, I think he just started competing,” said Ray Allen. “I mean, he had been competing, but you could see he just went up another level. … It took for Paul to say, ‘Let me guard him.’ When he said that, I knew.”

Pierce didn’t score all the points – although he finished with 20 to Bryant’s 17. He didn’t grab all the rebounds or make all the stops. But he led the charge for a relentless pack of believers.

He was the catalyst of a victory that will go down as legend even for the league’s most legendary franchise.

“I knew we weren’t going to lay down,” Pierce said. “It wasn’t about believing we can win. It was just going out there and competing. We got aggressive and stayed aggressive.”

In the end, after the Staples Center had begun to empty in disappointment, after the L.A. kid did the quick television interview and looked so tired he might collapse, Pierce acknowledged the family and friends hugging and dancing behind the Celtics bench.

Then he threw his headband into the stands, pumped his fist and shouted proud and loud with whatever he had left in him, one game he knew now from cementing his own legacy.

“That’s how you do it,” he screamed again and again. “That’s how you do it.”

That’s how Celtics’ greats have done it forever

No quit in Pierce - NBA - Yahoo! Sports

Tags: basketball

Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a cross country flight?  Dock Ellis pitched while high on LSD?  Follow the link below to get the details.

ath1337 » Blog Archive » Baseball Players and HGH: You’re Doing it Wrong . . . Try LSD

Tags: wadeboggs, baseball

You may have seen the viral video a couple months ago where Kobe Bryant jumped over a speeding Aston Martin as it was heading towards him. It’s up to you to believe, or not believe, it’s validity. Kenny Smith of TNT did a parody of the jump that is absolutely hilarious. This is most assuredly what would happen to me if I tried to jump a car coming at me. If you’ve seen the original Kobe clip, skip ahead to the Kenny clip about 2 minutes into the video.

These clips are great. Check out the link below the video for all of them….

College’s greatest dunks