EURO 2008 -  Oh, the drama of nil-nil.The Spaniards foiled floptastic Italia in shootouts to reach the Euro semifinals for the first time since 1984, when they met Oceania in a heavily surveilled contest.The crestfallen Italians will return home to their mothers,to whom they'll pledge to move out of the house before they turn 35. 34 is she keep-a nag-a so much. Spanish keeper Iker Casillas rose to the occasion, stopping two penalty kicks and tipping out a last-minute scoring chance by Antonio Di Natale.

MLB – The Cubs completed a three-game sweep of the crosstown White Sox with a 7-1 win Sunday highlighted by a commanding outing by Ryan Dempster, who improved to 9-0 at Wrigley this year. Aramis Ramirez homered four times in the series, including two yesterday. No, these Cubbies won't be deterred by an injury to Carlos Zambrano. It only goes to prove THERE'S NO WAY THE CUBS WON'T WIN IT ALL THIS YEAR! NOT EVEN ME OR MY JINXING CAN STOP THEM!…In other sweepings, the Angels brought out the brooms against the Phillies, dealing Philadelphia its fifth loss in a row. Meanwhile, Francisco Rodriguez picked up his league leading 30th save of the season, putting him in good position to make a run at a single season record people don't really care about…Mark Teixiera has an okay day at the plate, homering three times (with at least one coming from the right and the left side)and driving in four runs in the Braves' 8-3 win over the Mariners…The Red Sox get a Kevin Youkilis walk-off homer in the 13th to avoid being swept by the Cardinals and handing a quarter-note of humility to riding-high Massholia. Oh, who'm I kidding. A Cards sweep would be noted with a mention about revenge for the Sawx wicked 2004World Series sweep of the same Redbirds. Just thinking about that makes…oh great, now my ears are bleeding.

College World Series – Fresno State advances to meet Georgia in the finals. You might be inclined to describe them as a Cinderella team until you remember even a pumpkin couldn't survive living in Fresno.

Lemmings are indigenous to northern climes, which is a lesson government officials in Switzerland learned this week when they had to change the color of the safety vests worn by the country's railway workers because some Dutch fuckwits followed them onto the tracks thinking the workers were fellow fans. Hey, what's that horn? Never heard a noisemaker like that befoOOAAAHHHHHH!

Switzerland's national railway has told its workers to stop using their normal orange reflective vests after confused Dutch soccer fans started following them on to the tracks.

A railway spokesman said the changed strip had been prompted by an incident in the Swiss capital Berne when a group of Netherlands supporters followed a worker on to the lines after mistaking his uniform for their traditional orange dress.

The Dutch being cool with the drugs and prostitution stuff, they must have figured the railroad tracks were a reasonable place to find something to their liking in another country. Usually that's were I go to view all the cool dead bodies. Maybe they wanted to be the dead bodies. They're into that kind of experiential stuff in Holland/Netherlands/Stupidcloggyville.

The Swiss are typically a peace-loving bunch, providers that they are of cheeses and chocolates. But they're not averse to letting other nations duke it out, as evidenced by a Swiss television station running the subtitles of the Nazi version of the German national anthem before Deutschland's Euro 2008 match against Austria. Hey, what's an Anschluss between friends?

Both the Nazi version and the present-day one come from the same song, Das Deutschlandlied composed by August Heinrich Hoffmann in 1841 from music by Austrian composer Joseph Haydn.

Used in its entirety as the national anthem from 1922, the Nazis once they came to power only sang the first verse while post World War II Germany sing just the third verse, and not the lines that inadvertent viewers were treated to on Monday which included "Deutschland Deutschland uber alles".

Ouf. Who's working in their production department, Jemele Hill? Or maybe just a stray Nazi sympathizer who hasn't been tracked down yet. They didn't all flee to Argentina, you know. Ever think about that, Simon Wiesenthal? I expect your finest milk and honey for the tip. Yours truly, an obedient goy who, even though he has paintings the Nazis stole, totally isn't a racist. 

MLB — No chance of me having the patience to write a wrap-up of last night's games, but I'll at least give a New York-centric update: the Mets won in 10 innings — without Billy Wagner blowing a save.  I didn't realize there was another way for the Mets to go to extra innings… Alex Rodriguez homered for the fourth straight game as the Yankees beat Jake Peavy and the Padres to take their 6th in a row.  They also signed Sidney Ponson, so that streak will be over soon enough.  As will the unlimited buffet in the clubhouse.

Euro 2008 — The last two games of group play (heh… "group play") set all the quarterfinal matchups.  Sweden needed a tie to advance, but the Russians beat them 2-0 to set up a quarterfinal match with scary-good Holland… The Spanish benchwarmers woke up from their siesta long enough to rally past Greece 2-1.  Spain will face the hated Italians in the final game of the quarters… Other matches in this round will be today's Portugal-Germany tilt and Croatia versus Turkey (tomorrow).

SITE NEWS — Yes, yes: that's a new URL you see, although the old one will redirect here.  With Leather's still the same site, though, so don't expect any changes for the worse, like highbrow humor or well thought-out arguments.  Thanks for your patience while we work out the inevitable glitches, bitches.

Austria finished its Euro 2008 yesterday with a 1-0 loss to Germany, but of much more interest to the With Leather readership was this exhibition(ist) game between the countries' comely lasses that preceded the big match (NSFWish photo gallery of painted nipples HERE).  And in this sexy version, Austria actually won, notching a 10-5 victory.

"We played pretty hard, we even had some injuries, like I for example broke my toe nail," 29-year-old [Austrian] bank employee Doris Fastenmeir told Reuters.

The Germans took defeat sportingly and joined their opponents for alcopops [Ed. Note: ???] and dancing at a beach club alongside the Danube. "I was supposed to hold the balls but I really have no idea how to do that," German keeper Jana Bach said. 

I hear that one all the time.  Maybe I'm dating too many teenagers. 

Anyway, careful readers of With Leather saw this story in Saint Andrew's Net two days ago, while careless non-readers have sent us the story repeatedly over the last 36 hours.  Apparently we faced a non-stop tide of body-painted ass and tits until we finally gave it the proper cognizance.  So here you go, everyone.  Here's your boobs.  Lord knows you can't find them anywhere else on the Internet.

[Machochip/Sports Point] 

MLB - Yup. Five whole games scheduled last night, giving us a taste of the looming expanse of lame that midseason baseball offers to an expectant sporting nation over the summer. Ryan Howard is finally getting his act together, albeit still not yet hitting his weight, he has put together two multi-homer games in four days, leading the Phillies to an 8-2 win over the Red Sox. Cole Hamels improved to 7-4 by allowing two runs over seven innings. Afterwards, he said he expects to see the Red Sox again in the World Series, where undoubtedly the false hopes of Philly sports fans will be crushed underfoot yet again… Chipper Jones, opting not to poke out his eye again, got two hits to improve his average by a point to .403 in a 7-1 Braves win over the Rockies…The Mariners, no longer weighed down by inept general manager Bill Bavasi, were unburdened enough to drop their 8th straight at home.

College World Series – The top-seeded Hurricanes oust Florida State and Georgia's bullpen shuts down Stanford. Whew. Feigning interest sure takes a lot out of a fellow. 

EURO 2008 – Germany pulls another Anchluss on Austria with a 1-0 victory to advance to the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, the team that won Germany's group, Croatia, knocked off Poland 1-0 to have its first unbeaten performance in group competition.