So that silly little foot injury that knocked Rockets big man Yao Ming out of the NBA Playoffs may also keep him on the shelf for all of 2009-2010. Reports are conflicting as to how much time Yao is expected to miss. If I had a dollar for every time one of these Chinese sat out of games because of a broken left foot. From SI.com, who has no annoying autoplay videos on their site that I can find:
Yao suffered a hairline fracture of the tarsal navicular bone late in a May 8 playoff game against the Los Angeles Lakers. The team said last week the injury hasn’t healed and he was out indefinitely.
Yao played in 77 regular-season games in 2008-09, his most injury-free year since 2004-05, when he played in 80. Before last season, Yao missed chunks of previous three seasons with leg and foot injuries.
Like many of the NBA’s stars, Yao had a limited offseason last summer while competing in the Beijing Olympics. I’m sure soaking that foot in mop water hasn’t helped much. Fortunately, tall Chinese players are a bit of an aberration, like four-leaf clovers and games where Tracy McGrady actually plays.
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I don’t know if it’s fair to call Oakland Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell a bust when he still plays for the worst organization in the NFL, but the Oakland Raiders bust-to-be has a unique style of leadership. It’s one that, in my day, I’ve seen emulated in the corporate world. From the National Football Post, emphasis added:
The work ethic of quarterback JaMarcus Russell is still being questioned by many who have worked with him in the past and are working with him now. After he issued a call to his teammates to practice and finish the OTA days strong, he then disappeared and was AWOL on the last day.
Nothing’s more irritating in a workplace setting than that guy. It’s the person that does all the rah-rah talk and gets into everyone else’s business and then neglects his or her own house, usually with some ridiculous excuse like, “I thought this was due next week,” or “My kid was hit by a bus and I have to take him to the emergency room.” Some people just aren’t team players.
|via FanNation|
GameOn found the latest–and almost certainly last–annual piece from the Stephen A. Smith Heckling Society Of Gentlemen. One can expect this video to hold up as the SASHSG swan song, as Smith’s contract was not renewed by ESPN. The video features an unflattering sock puppet in almost a sort of “Triumph the insult comic dog” vein; we see “Stephen A.” renegotiate his contract on an iPhone, try to score an interview with the draft picks, and capping it off with an ode to cheese doodles.
But really this post is just an excuse for me to point out that the reason Stephen A. Smith thinks his contract isn’t being renewed–because the black community didn’t lend him enough support. Oh, I didn’t realize Stephen A’s show was broadcasting live from a Birmingham lunch counter in 1958. And that’s just a callous way of asking, “Why would they?”
Horrible economy aside, the Yankees and Mets deserve a lot of grief for how they’ve financed their new stadiums [stadia?] that opened earlier this year. Those teams asked season ticket holders to help shoulder the costs for their new respective digs, and…you’re not gonna believe this, but those fans aren’t as jazzed about baseball as the teams thought they would be. From the New York Times:
The teams have been recalibrating their prices. The Yankees cut in half the price of their seats behind home plate, some of which originally cost $2,650. The Mets have discounted box seats by as much as 50 percent, even against rivals like the St. Louis Cardinals.
Even the market for Mets-Yankees games, once the hottest ticket in town, has cooled. For the game at Citi Field on Friday, the average price of a ticket offered for resale online has fallen by more than one-third in the past month, to $165, according to FanSnap.com, which tracks ticket prices in the secondary market.
The worst of it all is there are tons of great seats with nobody in them for a lot of these games. It’s the same thing at the Nationals’ park and others around the league, I’m sure. I guess everyone assuming that corporate money was always going to be there wasn’t such a wise move. And I just assumed that rich people would be rich forever and would always want overpriced tickets for baseball games. What a sobering lesson this has been. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to help my favorite prostitute replace the mirror installations on her bedroom ceiling.
The Washington Nationals are quickly becoming the “other team” in major league baseball for me. Sure, I have the team I grew up with, and I’ll always love that team. But then I look across the room and I see the Nationals doing all these debaucherous things and think to myself, I gotta get with THAT team. It’s been no secret that the Nationals, with their impressive array of power hitting and equally impressive dearth of suitable pitching, are becoming a sports darling on this site. I would help it if I could.
Anyway, the Nats are chock full of rejects, closet cases, and baseball miscreants, but for my money, no one personifies this band of fuggups better than ex-Red Adam Dunn, aka The White Manny Ramirez. And that means exactly what it sounds like it means. With one significant exception: Adam Dunn either hits a home run or strikes out, generally speaking. More often striking out:
ASYLUM POLL: How many strikeouts is excusable for a slugger?
In 2004, [Dunn, playing for the Cincinnati Reds,] walked 108 times, but struck out 195 times. Of those, 72 were called third strikes, which means he struck out more times looking that season than Williams struck out — looking or swinging — in any season.
Dunn’s strikeouts–or rather, his teams’ tolerance of them–are indicative of a growing trend in baseball. ESPN points out that 90 players struck out 100 times last year, almost triple the number that did so in 1990.
“[In today's game,] you’ll see three pitchers in the seventh, eighth and ninth inning — and most of them are throwing 95 mph,” Dunn said. “For every crucial at-bat I’ll take late in a game, I’ll always be facing the toughest lefty on the other team. That’s why the strikeout rate is up.”
Or it might be because you have the most nauseating at-bat music in the history of the game. Phil Collins? Really? Why not something more upbeat? Like Pachebel’s Canon? Or the sound of puppies sleeping? Whatever gets you in the zone, Adam. You only have 82 strikeouts on the year so far. Better pick up the pace.
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